I had that whole conversation from that last minute before the Kelvin's destruction playing on a loop in my mind as I wrote this; it seemed appropriate, since of course if she was bracing herself to hear that Jim had died she'd be thinking of his beginning, and of losing his father.

> I love the... tentativeness that they have with each other; rebuilding bridges that they both probably thought gone forever.

I drew on a lot of extended family experience for this one, which is not always easy to talk about (I've scrapped this comment half-a-dozen times!) but I'm really glad it came across well in the story.

Anyway, I'm glad you liked this chapter of my rambling nonsense! It was one of the ones whose reception I was worried about, given prevailing fandom opinion of Winona.