It had been the trip of a lifetime. It was ironic that someone that made a living out of traveling in space cherished so dearly traveling on Earth. But the fact was, Molly had never traveled that much on her home planet. So the two weeks she had spent with her uncle back home had been two of the most intense and extraordinary weeks of her life. They had also been incredibly emotionally intense.

Lucas had taken her back to New York City, to the small neighborhood of Elmhurst, Queens, where she had grown up, nineteen years after she had left. It was… different. With the work her uncle had done, it had stopped being the poor, working class, falling apart neighborhood she had known for ten years of her life, but rather it had life. It was vibrant. People seemed to actually enjoy living there.

The apartment she had grown up in had been cleaned out but left mostly intact. The building remodeled and a thousand times safer. Below it, on the first floor of the building, there was Mary’s Place, the creative writing and literature center her uncle had founded in her mother’s name. The place was modern and full of life, and yet, piece’s of Mary’s life could be seen here and there, overlooking the people that were interested in writing just as much as she had been.

Across the street, next to the park Lucas had taken her to play so many times, was the Mary Holloway Memorial Library. The largest community library in the five boroughs and if Molly could hardly contain the tears when she walked into Mary’s Place, here the usually stoic Intelligence Officer lost it completely.

In fact, she had been both speechless and in tears most of the day. Random people she had never seen had come and greeted her, telling her stories of how much the infrastructure her uncle had created had changed theirs and their kids’ lives. Some of them even seemed to know her mother’s story better than she did.

Lucas had been strangely silent most of the day, softly smiling at those who came and went. Molly could not thank him enough for the community he had made flourish in the area. In the afternoon, he had taken her to the gravesite of both her parents, awkwardly choosing to stay behind.

“I can’t do this on my own, Uncle Luc.” Molly had told him. “I know it hurts you, but it hurts me too and… I need you with me.”

As Lucas reluctantly agreed to walk with his niece to the simple stones on the ground, Molly told him that she knew. She knew why he wanted to stay behind. In fact, she knew the whole story, not understanding why he had never told her. Finally, reaching for a small wallet, she took the picture her and Calvin had found on the cherry wood box Lucas had given her, and pointed at the inscription on the back.

As they sat on the grass in the late afternoon sun, Lucas told his niece why he hid his love from her mother from her, and in return Molly told her uncle something that had been in her mind for a long time. That in the end, the genetic material might not be completely his (even if they did share a part), and the name on her birth certificate might not be his either, but in the end… in the end a father was not just a provider of someone’s genetic code. A father was so much more. A father was someone who care for their children regardless of them being biologically their own. A father was someone that loved on a child like no other man would, and would raise them, teach them, and prepare them for later life. And to Molly, that had been Lucas all along. For Molly, he might not be her biological father, but he was her father. And that would never change. She had called him dad at the end of the sentence to make her point clear. What Lucas hadn’t know was that it had been the first time in her life the word had felt right with the person she was giving the name to.

That night, Molly gave him the ring that had been in the same hidden compartment of the box.

The next day was spent in Manhattan. Lucas took Molly to explore the touristic part of New York she had never seen. The centuries old buildings… the hustle and bustle of people on the streets… For the first time in her life, Molly understood why the Big Apple was such a global attraction. She couldn’t believe that was even the same city she had grown up in.

They spent the last week in Missouri, at the Holloway’s residence. She hadn’t seen the place in over nineteen years, and her grandparents had been more than delighted to have her home.

Finally, the last few days of the trip were spent in San Francisco. Robert happily hosting his adoptive daughter and the man he had so many times conversed with without the girls’ knowledge. In those last few days, Molly filed a name change with the Superior Court of California to revert her family name back to its original form.

The last day, Lucas had insisted he would personally take her back to the Dresden, under the excuse that he wanted to have a drink with Cal before he left. Molly knew better. She knew he didn’t want to just let her go on her own.

It was now one day since Lucas had left, and three days since uncle and niece had set foot back on board the dreadnaught. As Molly checked her messages, one in particular caught her eye. It was a missive from the Superior Court of California for San Francisco county, United States of America, Earth, informing her that her request had been approved, and her legal name permanently changed. She was now, officially, Molly Grace Holloway. The name she had been born with.

Part of Molly was overjoyed. Part of her felt guilty for dropping her mother’s maiden name. But after spending so much time with Lucas, she had realized that Holloway was not just her father’s name. It had been the name her mother had embraced and died as, and it was also the lsat name of the man who had been the real father in her life — her uncle, Lucas Eliot Holloway.

After nineteen years, Molly was done hiding away from her past. And changing her name had been the right thing to do.

Promptly, she updated her request with Starfleet to change her credentials across the board, to include the document she had just received. It would probably take a week to have everything back in order, but she had no problem waiting.

As she logged out of her terminal, Molly sighed and smiled. She had been a Wright for nineteen years. It was time to be a Holloway again.

Capt. Molly Holloway, CIO