The characters are not mine, they're Paramount's, and niether is the basic story, which I read a while back and has been bugging me ever since.  I just wish I could *find* it again!
 
Dedicated to Bec, Ally, Charon, the "unforkettable" fork and especially to Becky, for writing the letter.
  

"I hate coming here," Kaiya said, looking around with wide, nervous eyes.  "It's too scary."
Kathryn frowned at her.  "You always say that, but it isn't really.  I've been here many times."
"But... what if he actually comes tonight?!"  Kaiya looked around wildly, praying that no sign of him would appear.
Kaiya's mother smiled down on her only daughter.  "That *is* what we're counting on," she pointed out gently.
Kaiya's shoulders sagged.  It seemed that there was no way to get out of it, her mother was determined that they visit the memorial park tonight.  For the first time, she looked at the place closely, taking in the tall, dusty trees that seemed to stand guard, the small wooden meeting hut with paint peeling off - an oddity in this century - and the patchy grass beneath them.
The hut was unused now, and a large sign was planted in the grass, saying that it was available for use.  A new building had been built last year, a mile or so up the road.
Kathryn walked past the hut, through the trees, and Kaiya followed her silently.  Some kids had thrown rocks through the large windows, so primitive that they had been fashioned from glass.
There weren't any kids around tonight, though, and Kaiya doubted there would be.  The wind was howling ferociously, whipping up the sand from the ground and blowing it at speed across the land.  Thick, dark clouds were gathering above and, though there was little chance of rain on this desert planet, no one wanted to take the risk of being caught in one of the patent storms that Nature could produce when she felt so inclined.  Every child was safe at home, entertained by traditional methods such as carving or sand painting, or by the latest holovids and stories.  Almost every kid, anyway.
Kaiya kicked up some sand, and it was whipped into a dance with the rest of the sand already running before the wind.  She knew that, just around the corner, the tombstones began.
"I want to leave," Kaiya said, trying to sound insistant, resolute.  "He's going to be here any minute, walking among the graves... I'm not ready to meet up with someone from the other side!  I can't do this!"
Her mother fixed her with a firm gaze.  "We have to stay, and you know it.  Don't back out now, Kaiya, please!  He - he was your father, after all.  Nothing - not even death - can change that."
Kaiya kept walking, one slow, dragging step at a time.  The expression on her face was pained, taut, and her mother hesitated briefly.  She was torn between the welfare of her daughter, and of her husband.  She passed through the small memorial park silently though, alert for any sign of his arrival.  This end had the older memorials and graves, those from the earliest days of the colonists settlements.  Towards the other end, she knew she would find the newer ones.  Those of only a couple of months, or years.  That's where he would be tonight...  Despite herself, she looked up to the full moon and shivered.
"That's him!" Kaiya said, pulling her mother back to Earth.  She was trembling with fear at seeing someone from the 'other side', and quickly melted behind Kathryn, peeking out around her hips.  He was as tall as Kaiya remembered, quite a bit taller than her mother, but he looked far less broad, and his skin more sallow and fragile.  His eyes were sunken, his hair limp and thinning, and he was stooped as if supporting a terrible burden.  Kaiya hadn't realised before what death could do to a person.  How it could change their life forever.  She felt a lump rise in her throat and she wanted to call out to him, to cry and protest that this wasn't right.
But it wouldn't change a thing.
"What - what if he can't hear me?" she choked out.  "What if he doesn't want us here at all? We shouldn't have come!!"
But Kathryn went forward, and Kaiya was left with no choice but to follow.  The three reached the grave at the same time.
Her father turned and faced the gravestone.  Kaiya couldn't see his face well enough, but she could hear the soft, quiet sounds he began to make, and she realised he was crying.  The thought was strange to her - she had never heard him cry in life.
"He doesn't seem to know we're here," Kaiya said, a catch of disappointment in her voice, bu at she did, he turned to look over his shoulder, looking almost right at her.  Once, the fire in his eyes could make her tremble - now she felt only sorrow.
"No," Kathryn whispered softly.  She seemed almost to be talking to herself as her tearful eyes regarded at him sadly.  "But I think he can hear us, more or les.  Maybe - maybe not with his ears, but he hears."
Kaiya regarded her curiously.  "You were never very spiritual before, Mom."
"Your dad was, though."
The man who had been Kaiya's father looked up, then gazed across the moonlight yard, towards the small ruined hut.
"Go ahead, Kaiya.  Tell him," Kathryn urged.
"I don't think I can," Kaiya replied.
Kathryn glared at her with a glare that had once made even Captains tremble in their boots.  "I've tried my best.  I've told him how I feel, but it's not enough.  Now, *you* have to try.  You *have* to, Kaiya.  He's bound to this place.  That's why he comes here night after night.  We need to set him free."
"Okay," Kaiya agreed, because she recognised the truth in her mother's statement.
The man's head turned again.  He was barely visible at all now, it was so dark.  Clouds were creeping across the moon, creating only dancing shafts of eerie silver light.  Kaiya moved a step closer.
"You don't have to stay around here anymore," she told her father.  "You did everything you could have, and more.  You always did!  I'm grateful for the time we had together, not -" The words caught in her throat, and she had to pause slightly before continuing, "I'm not sad because of what we might have had.  We're all right, Dad.  And so are you."  The last few clouds passed across the moon, blocking all light.
She thought about the night it had all happened.  Kaiya had gone with her parents to the little hut, to help her father finish cleaning it out.  The Orion pirates had come in just after that.  She remembered screaming as her father tried to throw the men out, then two shots being fired by one man, whilst the other used the butt of his disruptor rifle like a club.
The old hut hadn't been used since that night.
"Dad," Kaiya continued, "you were brave.  You only did what you thought was right, just like you always did.  No one can blame you for doing that."
Even as her soft words were swept away on the wind, they seemed to have a strange effect on him.  He turned slowly around,only a dark form in the night now, but Kaiya could sense that the burden was being lifted from his shoulders.  She could could imagine his spirit glowing brighter - free, or finally getting there.  He was taking a last look.
At least, she hoped he was.
"I love you," Kaiya's father said, speaking to the darkness, thinking out loud.  His voice was so quiet, so soft.  Just as she remembered it from her days as a small child.
"We love you too."  The reply came from Kaiya and her mother simultaneously.
The clouds parted then.  A blanket of stars appeared, filling the sky, and the moon shone down with enough light to read by.  Kathryn went to stand beside her husband before the wide face of the tombstone.  Kaiya stood for a moment, snuggled happily in between them, but then her father started to leave.
He walked silently through the rest of the small plot, starting out slowly, then picking up speed, like a starship leaving spacedock.
"Do you think it worked?" Kaiya asked.
"Do you?" Kathryn asked, squeezing her daughter's hand.
Kaiya looked down the small path that her father had just walked.  "I think so."
Her mother smiled down at her.  Then both of them began to rise, slowly, and drifted into the sky.  Toward the moon, towards the stars... fading as they went.