Author's Note: This story is a coda to 'Thicker Than Water' and 'Getting Up Again'. It has not been beta'd, so any mistakes are mine.

Star Trek and all its intellectual property is owned by Paramount/CBS. No infringement intended, no profit made.

The buzz went around the corridors, ratcheting up the tension that was already at fever pitch.

"It's true! He's here! The Admiral's come!"

At this level, of course, there was only one Admiral. The man who had commanded the ship that had faced down the Expanse and then later taken a decisive part in the Battle of Cheron; the man who was already a legend in his own lifetime.

It was a tradition for at least one of the senior members of Starfleet to attend the graduation day celebrations. The rumor had only started a day or two ago that they might be privileged to receive a visit from Admiral Jonathan Archer, but as this had never happened in any previous years it had gained little credence. He was an exceptionally busy man, still in constant demand as a diplomat in the process of guarding and guiding the fledgling Federation of Planets that owed so much of its existence to his inspiration, courage, determination, charm and sheer hard work. Up till a few days since he'd been confidently placed by gossip on Andoria, negotiating with the Imperial Council; now, it seemed, he was back on Earth. And – for whatever reason – he hadn't returned aboard his flagship, the Endeavour. He had been brought home by the USS Pioneer.

That news – incidental as it might seem to many of those at this level of the Academy – was of vital interest to one of the newly minted ensigns who were to formally graduate that day.

Keri Grenham re-braided her long platinum-blonde hair for what felt like the hundredth time and studied her reflection in the mirror anxiously. Her uniform was as neat as perfection could require, her make-up appropriately subtle. She'd already received messages of support from her Mom and Dad, who would be out there with the family in the special guest seating.

Confident that her appearance was about as good as it was ever going to be, she stepped away from the mirror and walked to the bedside cabinet. There was an old book lying on it; she touched the cover gently, as though it were sleeping and she feared to wake it.

British Naval Battles.

She'd had it a long time. Had read it from cover to cover long before she was able to understand a tenth of what she was reading, and even when it had been borne in upon her that the subject matter was so abstruse as to be virtually useless to her, she'd read and absorbed it anyhow, finding it fascinating. Even if this had not been so, she'd have read it over and over again, in the effort to connect to the mind of a man whose image had become … not precisely vague, but somewhat attenuated over the busy years of her growing up: the man who had owned that book, and given it to her because it was something precious to him.

He too was a survivor of the Expanse and the Romulan War, where he'd earned himself such a reputation that when the newly refitted Pioneer launched in 2163, he was given the captaincy after only a few months as Endeavour's XO. He and his crew had already written their own pages in Starfleet history, but they were rarely seen back at Sol. He'd married (what storms of selfish, girlish grief that news had caused her!), but his wife had died tragically young, and they'd had no children. He'd taken his pain back out among the stars, and seldom came home to the world that contained his wife's grave.

Starfleet had their own cemetery – too large a place altogether, after the Romulan Wars. The cadets were taken there as a matter of course, to show respect to the men and women who had made the ultimate sacrifice. She'd gone to find the grave, feeling some guilty need to apologize to the woman he'd loved so much. The woman who, all those years ago aboard Enterprise, had given her a packet of jelly beans in the effort to make her smile. Nothing marked it as special – all the headstones were identical here. Each bore the names of the honored dead, their dates and the name of the ships on which they'd served, and perhaps one or two words chosen by their loved ones. One small detail, however, was different. In front of the white marble headstone, a clump of yellow English daffodils was tossing in the March wind.

Now, remembering those valiant yellow flowers, the tears pricked at her eyes and she dabbed at them hastily; this was no time for her mascara to run! Faced with everything the daffodils represented, her apologies had seemed futile, and she'd turned tail and fled – a piece of cowardice that had shamed her ever since. One day she would go back. In the face of what she'd learned on the day after her eighteenth birthday, it was more imperative than ever that she should do so.

Reeds don't run.

He'd said that at some point – treacherous memory had mislaid the details, but she could still see the seriousness on his face, when everyone else had been laughing. For so long afterwards she'd made him a very figure of romance, her own private Sir Galahad in a blue coverall, and secretly made believe that her name too was Reed so that a share of his reflected luster might fall upon her. A pretence that, although she'd outgrown it along with so much else in the necessary and complex business of becoming an adult, had made the bombshell of the truth strike even harder than it would otherwise have done, when it was revealed to her on the day after her eighteenth birthday.

He was her father.

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