The screen flickered almost imperceptibly, a sign of the homesteads outdated communications system. ‘It works perfectly well’ David’s father had always declared from behind his worn glasses, thus it was never upgraded but held together by DIY fixes and patch jobs by well-meaning neighbours. Now it would never be changed, nothing in that house would lest it taint his memory. The face of an old woman looked out from the screen, her grey hair barely contained into a loose bun, as strands reached out medusa-like at the crown of her head. Her sun touched skin, tanned from a decade of afternoons pruning roses in their country garden, was blushed Scarlett at the cheeks as she waited to deliver a difficult message. 

“David, I hope this message finds you well.” 

A long silence, weighted with tense discomfort. 

“I know we haven’t spoken since…” 

Another silence, why wouldn’t she just say it. The woman attempted to take a deep breath but visibly found her lungs shallow, David’s own breath was thin. 

“It’s been too long since we spoke, not since…” she paused, a reality unacknowledged, unspoken “…and I blame myself for that.” Of course she couldn’t say it, couldn’t bring herself to address their shared loss, even now, when her reluctance had driven them lightyears apart. 

“I know that I struggled to discuss what had happened. And I’m trying to, I promise. It’s just not something I can…” David felt his frustration growing, say it or don’t. “I’m not like you, I couldn’t just carry on. Not all of us can just move on so easily.” Venom hung on her lips where it had dropped from her words, sharp and cruel, it burnt at the young man’s ears and sizzled painfully against his the thin membrane of his wounded heart. A nauseous fury rose in his throat, all bile and acid, partly that she could spit such poison against her own son and partly that she was right. 

The steel of her face abated, suddenly wounded she stared off screen through the window David knew looked out over the distant fields of the family farm. “I’m sorry. That’s not fair. Your going back to Starfleet was your way of processing his…” her weak voice caught in her throat, her tearful eyes looked as they had months ago when she had first summoned him back to Earth. The wound was fresh for her, kept raw and angry by the mementos that surrounded her; the house they had built, pictures of the child they had raised, the life they had tended through baking summers and frozen winters. David’s own wound remained unhealed. Well bandaged as it was by the blue of his Starfleet uniform, it festered beneath untreated and malignant. 

“Say it.” he whispered to the recorded message. 

She wiped a tear from her eye before if could breech the dams of her wrinkled eyes. “… of processing his death”

He had expected to feel relief that she had said it, or at least wounded at the reminder of his father’s recent passing. Instead it slipped from his shoulders like water from the ducks back, simply another reminder of the fact. 

“But i’m not writing to rehash these things.” She sniffed, pressing the emotions back to their deep recesses, “there’s something else that I need your help with.” David snorted in wounded amusement, of course she wasn’t writing to repair their relationship, of course she wanted something. “I hope remember uncle Saul? 

“Barely, he’s been gone for years.” David muttered as he stood and moved towards the replicator. 

“Then again, perhaps not, he’s been gan for years.” A faint smiled touched the young man’s lips, his father had always spoken with a thick scottish accent, clearly the decades had taken their toll on his mother’s lexicon. “Recently he’s been working in the former demilitarized zone, mostly out of…”  His mother’s voice was overwhelmed by the pleasing whistle of notes as a tumbler appeared, punctuated by the clink of ice against the empty glassware as the top cube settled into place. 

“Apparently his engineering  skills  have  been  useful  on  the  border  colonies, where Starfleet doesn’t often make an appearance…” His mother continued as David reached behind the knick-knacks on the small shelf afforded him in his junior officer quarters aboard Helios, pulling the tall scotch bottle from the shelf and pouring himself a glass. His mother wasn’t the only one effected by his father’s choices. A pang of sadness hung on the ends of his soft smile as he looked over the bottle, marked simply with the name of the makeshift distillery that had sprung up in their barn, ‘Mitchells’, the bottle was almost empty, almost emptied several months ago one evening when he had first received the news of his father’s death during Frontier Day. Between the two of them they had offered more than one toast. Another pang tugged at his heart with sadness at the thought of the young Tellerite who had opted to transfer to Starbase Bravo rather than join Theta Squad aboard the refitted Akira-class, the events of their recent encounter Unimatrix Zero to much for him to bear. 

“Well, last I heard he was on working out of Allicent Base with some like minded people…” Theta Squad, another recent loss in David’s life, family members were dropping like flies it seemed. Since Bib had been promoted to XO and Log had transferred off-ship they had been reduced to a squad of two, a scientist and an explosive expert, hardly a capable response team. Captain Tanek had offered his condolences when he handed the two of them a padd that finally listed the others as MIA following the destruction of the Exodus sphere; he had been honest, heartfelt, but the captain had never quite understood that it was more than simply friends. They had been made into a family on Nestus and then given a home on Deadalus, they had been everything to each other, happily adventuring across the galaxy, safe in each other’s arms. He hadn’t seen Ole since that day, when he had taken the padd and left the room, it was a big ship but not that big, he had no doubt the gigantic Bolian was avoiding him. His own way of processing. 

“Are you listening? This is the important bit.” Even across the lightyears his mother knew how to scold him. 

“Yes Mother.” David replied to the recorded message, suitably admonished over the lightyears as he returned to the seat at his small desk. No doubt she was about to ask for a favour to arrange transport aboard a Starfleet ship or use what little connections he had to attempt to expedite a support request. 

“I got a message yesterday from Saul. It was different.” Her panicked face unsettled David’s stomach, she had always been a strong pillar of confidence, save for the time when they had found a mouse in the cupboards. To see her so shaken was unnerving. “I think he’s in real trouble. I think he needs your Starfleet.” He could see the cause of her reluctance now, not born out of the most recent use of their strained relationship but what had se them at odds years ago. His parents had long viewed Starfleet with suspicious eyes, a ‘high-minded military’ she had called it, recent history had done little to dissuade that opinion, when he had enlisted with them his mother hadn’t spoken to him for six months. To ask for its help now must be difficult. 

“His message is attached. I hope you can help him.” She looked pleadingly towards the screen, the desperation in her eyes reaching across space, chilling David. “I hope to hear from you soon.” Her arm reached towards the screen to end the recording but she paused. “I miss you.” 

David sucked in a sharp breath. “Computer, pause!” She looked scared, weak, alone. An old woman lost on a sea of pain and sadness, at the mercy of the overwhelming waves and the beastly thoughts that hunt upon the bleeding heart. It was finally too much, the last crack in his emotional armour, to see her so afraid. His heart finally split beneath the weight of his barely balanced emotions, precariously stacked one atop another, a mute cacophony of rending walls of cold repression. He felt his chest begin to heave, reaching for ragged breaths as he began to sob at the vision of his broken mother; his heart screamed in the unending silence, clawing at the screen, desperate to reach her embrace. As her tanned face filled his vision he whispered apologies to the empty room through tear slicken lips, his body folding in on itself as it attempted to find solace in its own arms. As his beloved stars sailed by the small window of his private quarters David Mitchell began to admit all that had been lost.