A mother understands what a child does not say. - Jewish proverb

The holovid started with a young man walking, his simple clothes tattered and streaked with dirt and his blood. Dark circles gouged under his haunted eyes and tear tracks ran down his pale, moon face into his red beard.

The people seated around the stage watched the vid as intently as the audience, both seated here and seeing it around the universe. The set on the stage consisted of two half-moon couches, one on either side of the show's host. He sat in a simple chair in the center, a sign with the show's name lit up behind him. The sofa on his right was empty, but the left held three people, one young man, and two older women, all human like him.

The host, Cruz Colt, stroked his dark brown beard that now showed a good bit of gray, like his hair. It made a striking contrast with his dark olive skin. He leaned forward in his seat to sit with his arms resting on his knees. The audience quieted, knowing this gesture meant the most interesting part of the interview started now.

"Finn," he began, addressing the young man, "we already covered how well your new song is doing and what a departure it is for your style. But you brought your guests to talk about a different part of it."

"Yeah, yeah!" Finn Jackson leaned forward too, pulled a hand over his short hair covering his rounded cheeks that stayed that way despite diet and exercise. He bounced back, moving constantly as he explained. "It's the vid. Look, I already said the song's a true story and that it came out of a bad point of my life. I hit bottom, I was a mess, and after waking up from one too many parties that I couldn't remember, I couldn't see any direction but down. But I already was at the underside of down."

The woman next to him, dark to his paleness, laid a hand on his arm and he calmed. His head shot in her direction. His gray, simple shirt and pants were the opposite of her red outfit.

"I'm lucky. I got my mom, and I rolled over on that crappy club floor that last night and called her. She saved me, not just cuz she said come home and clean up. It's what she said about how I got lost. It cleared my head and I had more places to go besides down."

Cruz stated the obvious, "You two are very close."

"Yeah, my dad died when I was pretty little, but my mom and me – we're always there." Finn stopped for a second to smile at her. Caia smiled back. "So, when we started filming, I knew the story was that focus."

A still shot showed from Finn Jackson's video where he held up a padd to his mother with a word he wrote about how he viewed himself and how he was labeled by others. The playback started from that moment as Caia read the single word – Coward – took the padd and wiped out the word. Finn fell forward and she caught him, only their arms in focus and the rest blurred. She cradled him until he could stand on his feet, reborn.

Murmurs ran through the audience and when Cruz again mentioned the bond between mother and son, Finn Jackson said, "Maybe you know what it's like. You know, your dad and mom, somebody like that?"

A real smile spread over Cruz Colt's face. "Yeah, I do. But now, the next segment – you turned things a bit."

"We have so many kinds of people in the Federation and I wanted to the song to be universal, I mean as much as it can." Finn leaned over to look at the last woman. "My mom knows Amanda from some project and who doesn't know about her and her family? They're perfect for showing how some dynamics cross over lines."

Caia responded simply, "So I spoke to Amanda."

The other woman spoke. "I thought it was an excellent idea and so did Spock when I told him. We were happy to take part in it once we could make the scheduling work."

"Did you," Cruz asked Finn, "come up with his word or did he?"

"He did, although I asked him beforehand if he'd mind writing something like that."

Like Finn's moment in the holovid, Spock approached his mother. The angles never completely showed him, but focused on the padd, its word – Oddity – and Amanda's hands wiping away the word and cradling his face. Her lighter skin against his light, Vulcan pigmentation made a wonderful divergence, while their hands and bodies were hazy, and that blur merged them into one form.

Amanda in the studio flinched at seeing that word again; then something special came over her as she watched her hands cup her child's face in the video. It was something to behold and it mirrored the vision on screen.

Cruz leaned on the sofa arm. "Now we come to the mystery at the end."

Finn shrugged. "I'll tell you what I can. I needed someone else, so I called a friend of mine – I'll just say her name is Lauren. She didn't want to do it, so I asked her if she could recommend somebody. She said, 'You want somebody with that kind of relationship? Ask them.' And she pointed at these two women. Thing is, they're not related, but Lauren said they were more related than she was to her mother, more than a lot of people are. And that hit me."

"How?" Cruz asked.

"Because it's talking about that universal bond, so of course I needed it to mean dads that also have to be moms and anyone else who's a mom, but not because of biology."

"You even re-wrote the lyrics."

"Absolutely! Cuz it's that important! Besides, I didn't do a lot, only changing the lyrics to 'she who's like my mother'. Lauren talked to them for me – the two women – and it took some convincing for the daughter figure. But we finally got there after we agreed to a few things. We didn't release their names, we didn't show anything that would give away who they were, and only the mom figure could see the word on the padd."

"You know," Cruz turned to Amanda, "some people say it's you again in that part of the vid."

"Do they? What a lovely idea. I suppose I could see why they might think it."

Cruz Colt honed in. "It is you."

"I didn't say that. It's simply that the basic form you see in the third section fits me. It also fits a number of women with that height and build."

"You also have a friendship with a woman Vulcan."

Amanda smiled. "I have several. I do live there, you know. And are you so sure the woman in the holovid is Vulcan? I don't see anything like that."

"Makeup and camera angles could take care of that."

She sat back into the couch. "Mr. Cruz, I suggest everyone pay attention to the message in the song. It's an excellent one and it is universal. That is far more important than who are two people in it for one minute. It's about what they do in that minute, not their names."

Cruz shifted in his seat, gauging, and then nodded. "Let's see the last segment."

Finn leaned forward again and tapped on the other man's seat. "You're going to see a couple other things that's different in it. That's cuz our second unit director took it and he didn't get the directions straight once or twice, but it ended up being perfect."

The vid closed in on a pair of dark brown boots, scuffed and scarred. They walked in slow motion down a small set of wooden steps and out to where an older woman waited. Both women's forms were blurred and softened until the younger one fell to her knees. Her legs became clear as they slammed down, raising a puff of dust.

The younger one held up her padd, but the camera angle was from behind it; no one could read the word on it except for the older woman across from her, even though her arms and the tablet came into focus. The young woman in the scene had insisted on this; it was even the first time the older woman saw it.

The maternal figure made her outrage clear even though her face was blurred; not at the younger woman, but for her and against the world that made her think it was true. She didn't wipe it from the screen; she snatched it and threw it as far from them as she could.

Now she cradled that dark head against her middle until she took the younger woman's arms and raised her to stand.

The holovid ended with Finn, Spock, and the younger woman standing at the edge of an ocean, its water washing at their feet.

The audience applauded from everywhere and Cruz needed to wait a second before he talked. "It's a fabulous job, Finn. Congratulations."

Jackson shook his hand with thanks.

Cruz looked at Amanda, smirking. "She does look like you."

Amanda grinned. "I never said she didn't."

He chuckled.

Inspired by Mike Posner's Be As You Are video.