Gretchen had been returned to her bed in Starfleet Academy, and had cried herself to sleep.

She missed her mother and her family, Tom and Harry, and Voyager, the one true constant in her life.

As she lingered at the Academy in the next few days she could feel it creep up on her again. That quiet sadness that had accompanied her for so many years.

Even without the despair, it was still there.

She was beginning to be uninterested in it all. Life at Starfleet Academy. The classes and labs, the tests and lectures. The thousands of people and the endless blue sky.

She went through the motions, hardly seeing anything.

And yet the voice had not returned her to Kronos or Voyager. She knew the Vision Quest would end when it needed to. And it had not ended.

She did not have enough energy to fight with the voice. To argue that she was done with this second life.

There must be something here I'm still missing, she thought despondently.

At the end of the week there was a ceremony to welcome the Vulcan diplomats to campus. Classes were canceled for the second part of the day, and most students would be attending the ceremony. Ironically as a diplomatic admission herself, she was one of the few students not required to attend.

I should do something different, she thought to herself.

After looking through the Academy guide and the latest edition of the digital newspaper, Gretchen decided to visit the gardens.

Starfleet Academy had 15 acres of gardens, dotted with greenhouses and other small science buildings, monuments and benches. While the greenhouses had plants from all over the galaxy, the main gardens focused on plants native to Earth. Gretchen had not explored the deeper gardens in any depth, only having walked through the area briefly on her orientation tour with Kathryn. And she had not really been able to enjoy them then, having been distracted and tense at the time.

Gretchen headed out, passing the main greenhouse quickly. She relaxed as she continued to go farther in the gardens, where that there was no one else around. Gretchen breathed in the open air deeply. As she looked around the beautiful space she was determined to enjoy her visit this time.

There were all kinds of bushes and brightly colored flowers, most of which Gretchen did not know the names of. She meandered through, taking her time, reading the occasional signs and plaques in the garden.

Finally she reached a more familiar spot, the rose garden which was located between the dorms and classrooms. She was surprised to find that there was no one there.

I've never seen this so quiet, everyone really must be at the ceremony.

Suddenly an elderly man appeared in the middle of the bushes, he seemed to be lifting up out of them.

She realized, as she came a little closer, that he was wearing work clothes and holding gardening tools in his hand. As soon as she realized it, he called out to her.

"Would you like to help me prune the roses, cadet?" The elderly man stared at her, as if he could read her thoughts.

"I don't know," answered Gretchen, "I've never pruned roses before."

"First time for everything," grunted the elderly man.

"Are you the gardener?" asked Gretchen, walking closer to him.

"I'm Boothby," said the elderly man, a little sharply, "Yes, I'm the gardener. Come here."

He handed Gretchen an antique looking tool, and gave her some instructions, "You do these rows," he ordered finally.

"I've never cared for plants before," said Gretchen nervously, "I was born on a ship."

"You're here now," grunted the man, walking off to the next row, "This is Earth. The human homeworld. You should learn to work in the soil."

The weather was beautiful, the space was quiet, and Gretchen began, for the first time, to work in the garden.

Boothby had grunted in approval at Gretchen's three rows of roses, and had sent her on her way, with an invitation to return the next day.

Gretchen had gone back the next day, and the next.

Soon it became a habit, and before her classes, Gretchen would spent an hour every weekday morning in the gardens helping Boothby.

Kathryn would often pass her on her way to her early morning study sessions. She would wave at Gretchen and smile at her amusedly. She had laughed when Gretchen first told her, and good naturedly let it be known that she thought Gretchen was out of her mind to get roped into helping in the dirt, at Starfleet Academy.

But Gretchen's favorite part of the day was beginning to be gardening. Gretchen had learned how to prune roses, how to apply mulch and fertilizer, and even the various landscape architecture principles of what made a good garden. It was completely different from anything she had been taught at the Academy or Voyager.

There was a quiet and a peace in it. A stillness.

Life at the Academy continued and the coming week was an unusual case, as two large Starfleet ships full of officers and crew were docked next to campus to attend the Vulcan diplomatic summit. Admiral Janeway had been the first to arrive, to help plan the summit. Then had come the Academy opener with just the diplomats and students, but now two solid weeks of lectures, meetings, and ceremonies were happening with larger implications.

Campus was suddenly busier and stuffier all at the same time. Some of the more ambitious cadets were touring the ships, getting brief internships, or shadowing officers. Certain professors were trying to utilize the active officers in their own classes. In Gretchen's Modern Sports and Games, her teacher had recruited 6 active officers to give demonstrations of their favorite recreational activity.

It was meant to give the cadets a chance to ask questions about life onboard a real star ship, and to see what officers did for enjoyment and stress relief. Today the students would see all the demonstrations, and choose a short sub-class to take for the next two weeks. Gretchen was eager to hear what the options would be.

I wonder if anyone will teach dance, she thought in anticipation.

Gretchen took a seat in the gym, and the class started. One by one the presenters came out. The first demonstration was Velocity.

No surprise there, thought Gretchen, smiling to herself. Her mother's favorite sport was popular on campus, and there were constant complaints from the students that there was not a campus team yet. It was a newer sport, and the Academy had not quite gotten with the trend yet. It was natural that one of the younger officers felt the need to show it off. Gretchen was sure it would be the most popular mini-class.

Three-dimensional chess was next, and it was in the opposite position of Velocity. A popular game in the days of Captain Kirk, it had fallen out of favor and was no longer taught regularly at the Academy. Gretchen had played it once as a teenager, and had no strong feelings about it.

Poker was followed by Light Ball and Rhythmic Jumping, all of which were new to Gretchen. As the last presenter walked towards the front of the gym, she did a double take and then breathed in deeply.

It can't be…

Gretchen stared at the face. It looked younger yes, but also wrong somehow.

He doesn't have the tattoo yet. That's what's wrong.

It's my father.

Gretchen grabbed the bleacher underneath her and stopped herself from moving. She was not at all prepared to see her father today.

She breathed in and out slowly, trying to calm her heartbeat as she stared at his presentation on boxing.

Why is he here?

I didn't want to see him. It's just too hard to tell him no. He's been telling me how I should think and feel for so long.

Relax, Gretchen told herself, This isn't your father, not yet. He doesn't know who you are, and he won't be telling you anything.

Not unless you take boxing. And you hate that sport.

Gretchen felt proud of herself at the end of the class as she signed up for Rhythmic Jumping, the closest thing to dancing she could find. She was saying no to her father.

But the next class when she saw him she found herself staring.

He looks so different without the tattoo.

She had known, of course, that he hadn't always had it. That it was a show of loyalty to his dead tribe. His family that had been killed by the Cardassians.

A marking. A memorial. A sign on his own body. On his very face.

It was how her father had dealt with it. With the loss. With the pain. The loneliness. The guilt.

She knew the story but it had never seemed quite so real as now, staring at her father's plain face. He had told the story to her when she was young, matter-of-factly, in the unemotional basic way one tells a small child, and she had never really thought of it.

They were people she had never met, gone long before her birth, in a distance place she had never seen. Her father had said it so simply, explained it so patiently, as if it were a bedtime story.

But it had really happened. All of that had been real. His plain face was the proof of it, once upon a time her father had not been marked by the loss of his family.

She felt in something of a daze as she went back to her dorm.

With his tattoo, I guess he feels like his family, his tribe is always with him…It would be nice if I could find something like that too.

My crew will never be buried, there are no bodies, no one remembers them but me but…there must be something.

"What do you think Boothby?" she found herself asking the gardener the next day.

He wiped his dirty hands with a rag, and looked at her seriously, "There are all sorts of ways of memorializing someone. I think it would be a shame to cover your pretty face with a tattoo."

"I didn't mean that," said Gretchen, a little defensively, "That's my father's thing anyway…But I don't know very much about funerals and gravestones and all of that….except I always hating shooting people out of the ship to float in space."

Boothby nodded, "Have you ever been to a graveyard?"

"No," said Gretchen, "But there aren't even any bodies to bury. Besides, they never even saw Earth, a stone somewhere just…doesn't seem right to me."

"You'll find it," said Boothby matter-of-factly.

"Everyone keeps telling me that," said Gretchen in frustration.

"Must be a reason," said Boothby, with his stern voice.

Gretchen sighed.

That night she dreamed of them. Of Thomas, and Lynna, and Mary, and the long corridors of the ship. She wasn't sure what happened in the dream, but their voices came back.

She cried in the shower as she prepared for class.

But it had not been a bad dream.

Somewhere in her brain they were recorded, somewhere in her soul, where she couldn't always access, they were there.

She had known they were in her past, and hoped that they were in the afterlife waiting.

She had not felt them in a long time. But now she had.

Underneath it all, they were still there.

The present suddenly felt a lot less lonely.