“Not that it was easy,” he added. “I tried so hard to talk you out of staying in Starfleet. I was so afraid that we might lose another one of us to space, that Mama might have to grieve all over again. We argued so fiercely. But the things you said about the reasons for your commitment to space, the value of the risks you took… I never admitted it then, but they helped me forgive Baba for going out there and getting himself killed. As hard as it was, Nyota, we worked through it because we were family.

“So when we learned what had happened to you at Maluria, we couldn’t understand why you wouldn’t turn to us, wouldn’t let us help you with that loss. Instead, it felt as if we’d lost you too—and by your own choice.” He shook his head. “That was almost worse than if you’d died. At least I would’ve understood then why you didn’t come back.”

Nyota was weeping now. “I wanted to, brother. I wanted to know what I’d had taken from me. I still remembered what I felt for you all.” He scoffed. “I did. But what would it have been like for you, to have me come into your home like a stranger and demand you share a relationship with me when I couldn’t give anything back? How could I do that to you? What could I have offered you without my share of the history we once had?”

“You could have offered your presence,” M’Umbha replied proudly. “Your participation. Nyota, you speak of memory as a thing of the past. But memory doesn’t end.” She took Omar’s hand in hers. “When we lost Alhamisi, I felt for a long time that I would have no more joyous memories of my husband. But then I met Omar, and I found I could still build new memories to fill the void.”

M’Umbha took her hand. “You could have been part of those memories, Nyota. We would have been happy to have you. In twelve years, imagine how many new memories you could have formed with us to make up for the ones you lost.”

Nyota looked at her mother’s hand clasping hers, felt her cool, leathery skin… and suddenly she was in another time. Her mother’s face was younger, her hair still black, and Nyota could feel her own hair lying long and straight against her spine. Malcolm paced nearby, lean and beardless, intense with emotion.

“I won’t insist that you give up your dream,” M’Umbha said. “Only you can decide what it’s worth. Just consider everything that’s at stake.”

A flash of the young Malcolm shouting… then Samara wailing, fleeing to her room… Nyota sitting beside her on her bed, cradling the thirteen-year-old, promising that nothing would take her away.