A Divided Asset
By
Pat Foley
sequel to "To Grandmother's House"
As T'Pau's Palace dwindled in the ochre sky behind them, Spock turned his gaze from the foreshortened figure of his Grandmother, and back to his parents. After their long absence, after his new acquaintance with his unknown Grandmother, it seemed almost a new era in his family life.
He had so much he wanted to say. Most of it inappropriate by Vulcan standards. Still he longed to say it.
But as he looked from one to the other of his parents, he realized the aircar was full of tension. Not joy in their reunion. Even Vulcans celebrate some joy at such times. But his Father's face was set in his sternest Vulcan mode, looking straight ahead. His mother kept glancing anxiously at his father. Neither were looking at him.
He seemed to have been forgotten for some greater issue. Or rejected as that issue.
Spock lowered his head as the tension sunk in. He'd been so… pleased…to have his parents return. Weren't they pleased to have returned? What was wrong?
It was the tension and negative emotions of their departure that had returned. Not his parents. Or those conflicts had returned with his parents.
They passed over the city of Shikahr, Vulcan's capital city. Spock looked down at it, thinking about how isolated he had been the last half year. For the first four months that he'd been with her, T'Pau had kept him at home, isolated, because rare mutated cases, even reinfections, of the virus were still breaking out. The last two months, she simply said he was doing well enough with his tutors. He hadn't argued. His stay with T'Pau had begun to seem to him something akin to a dream. A floating period out of time. Normal existence waited outside the Palace gates. Here, inside, there were no problems. There was contentment. Belonging. He hadn't had such exclusive attention from a parental figure since his infancy. He had let himself savor it.
They landed outside the Fortress gates. Sarek helped Amanda out. Spock followed them into the house, trailing behind, again almost forgotten, his heart sinking within him.
Dinner was a largely silent affair. Spock could tell his father was upset with him for some reason, and his mother was upset with his father. He didn't understand why.
He picked at his food.
"Darling, you have to eat," Amanda said, looking over his barely touched plate. "I thought now that you were home, and could have some of your favorite foods—"
Spock glanced anxiously at his father, who looked at him with the repressed air of someone with questions he could not ask. "I'm not hungry."
Sarek gave his wife a glance which seemed to say, as clearly as if in words, that this was yet another regrettable and unfortunately expected incident.
Spock put his fork down. Somehow he'd become a bad child again. And he didn't understand why. "May I retire?" he asked. At least in bed, he'd escape this atmosphere.
But Amanda went into her son's room as Spock left his bath, freshly sonic showered, dressed for bed.
"Have you unpacked?" Amanda asked him, hesitating in the doorway. "Is there anything you need? I saw that you didn't bring much with you."
"I just brought my reader and school computer pads," Spock said.
"Did you go to school?" She approached the bed as he climbed under the coverlet.
Spock paused in settling the blankets over him, and looked up at her. "Grandmother had me tutored. I haven't fallen behind."
"Was she kind to you?" Amanda asked, not reacting to that implied criticism. "You look well," she said, as if doubtful how that could be after his spending six months with her abusive mother-in-law,"But…"
'She told me stories of my Grandfather," Spock said. "She took every meal with me. She saw me to bed every night." His face set. "She was kind to me. And whatever Father believes, she did like me."
"It sounds like you both got along very well," Amanda said, and hesitated. After all T'Pau's multiple slights, she found Spock's recounting hard to understand. "She never—?"
Spock's eyes widened as he surmised her question, and he froze, looking up at her. "She never disciplined me," he said, "If that's what you are asking. She had no need to. I was good. I am good!" he insisted, past all his parents' unspoken assumptions and recriminations. "No matter what you or Father believe."
"I didn't mean – I wasn't—" Amanda said, biting her lip. "Darling, I'm sorry we weren't here for you. We were told you were immune. And then, when you did fall ill, it happened so fast, and we couldn't get home in time."
Spock looked down. "It is of no matter."
"You don't have to be so Vulcan," she sat down at the edge of the bed. "It's just you and I here now."
"I am Vulcan," he insisted, looking down.
"You sound more and more like your father." Amanda said, trying to make light of his mood. "I suppose after all that time with his mother, that's to be expected."
"You needn't have suffered concern," Spock said, rejecting her invitation for candor. "Grandmother took care of me."
Amanda set her mouth. "You're my son too," she said, her voice trembling. "I haven't forgotten that. Even if you prefer to." She rose from the bedside and turned to leave.
"Everyone was dying around me," Spock said quietly to her retreating back. "Or fleeing."
She turned at this.
"I watched them," Spock said, hushed. "For a while I thought I would be all right. Then I fell ill. And I went to the infirmary. I thought I would –" he didn't say anything for a very long moment, while she paused, stricken, tears in her eyes. "Then I woke up. In Grandmother's house," he added, his voice hushed, evocative of his amazement at that delivery. "And it was over. I was saved. Safe."
"I am so sorry. But can't you forgive me, darling?" she begged. "Forgive us. I wanted to take you with us."
Spock stared at her in puzzlement. Didn't she realize the conflict was not from him? He'd been so pleased at his parents' homecoming. He was only responding to their conflicts. But that was beyond his eight-year-old abilities to explain, or even fully understand. He could only fall back on Vulcan control. "There is nothing to forgive," Spock said, recovering himself. "My illness was no one's fault."
"Oh, Spock," she said and reached for him. He stiffened and turned away, and she dropped her hands. "Won't you even let me touch you? Did she drive that out of you?"
"Don't say bad things about Grandmother," Spock flared. "Father was cross with her too. She did nothing wrong. All she did was help me."
"I can help you too," Amanda said. "I want to help you now."
He looked up at her, coldly rejecting in the face of his confusion and disappointment. "How?"
She drew a sharp, pained breath. "I love you."
Spock shook his head slowly. "You know I have to be Vulcan. Father would not approve."
She bit her lip. "You're tired. It's been a long day for all of us. Go to sleep."
"Good night, Mother," he said, remote and cool. He rolled over onto his side.
Several days passed and if anything, the tension seemed to get worse. Spock was enrolled back in his day school, appearing in his uniform to breakfast. Just another disciplined Vulcan child. But he had no appetite even though he'd been eating less and less. His body felt hunger. But even though he spooned up cereal, he couldn't seem to swallow it. The oppressive atmosphere made the food catch in his throat. Finally, he put down the spoon.
"I didn't do anything wrong," he said quietly.
Sarek looked at him sharply. Amanda straightened. "Of course you didn't."
"It wasn't my fault I fell ill," Spock looked directly into his father's eyes. "Or Grandmother's."
Sarek did look at him then, dark eyes flashing. "Your Grandmother—", he stopped himself.
"I don't understand why you hate her." Spock's hands folded into fists.
"Remember your control," Sarek reprimanded. "And the guardsman is waiting to escort you to school," he added.
Spock looked at his mother, then rose and fled the room.
Amanda pushed her hair back as if its length was smothering her, breathing hard.
"I think you've forgotten to take your Triox," Sarek said. "Re-acclimating to Vulcan after such an absence is a long and -"
"I don't care about re-acclimating to Vulcan," she said.
Sarek stared at her hard. "What are you saying?"
Amanda sighed and pushed her own breakfast away. "This isn't working, Sarek." She looked up at him. "And I want my son back."
"We have returned. You have him back."
"No. I don't. I have her grandson back. I have your son back. I want my son back."
"Spock has made a decision to be Vulcan."
"And I thought I could live with that, but I don't think I can."
"We are all still adjusting to our return, Amanda," Sarek said patiently.
"And you have to stop blaming Spock for his stay with T'Pau."
"I am not."
"Well it looks like that to him. And to me." She bit her lips. "I know you were frustrated that you couldn't get him away from her until we returned. I know you keep waiting for her to drop the other shoe, or use whatever knowledge you feel she gained during that time against Spock or you. But she hasn't."
Sarek looked pensive. For a Vulcan, almost worried. "T'Pau thinks long term, and plans accordingly."
"Well, we can't live in dread of some Machiavellian move on her part," Amanda said, exasperated. "We have to just live our lives, as ourselves. Let's just let it be over."
"But is it?" Sarek steepled his fingers, staring remotely through them. Calculating possibilities in this definitive chess game with his formidable parent.
"She hasn't made any moves to discredit or disinherit him. By Spock's account, they got on like a house afire."
"Even for English, that is a particularly odd expression," Sarek said, still wrapped in his odd remoteness.
Amanda let out an exasperated breath. "Look, I want you to do whatever checking you need to do to put your concerns about T'Pau to rest. And then we need to move on, Sarek. You're making Spock miserable. You're making me unhappy. And you know you can't fight your mother."
Sarek snapped out of his disciplined trance at that, his dark eyes blazing at this inadvertent slur on her part.
"And this time she hasn't even done anything," Amanda continued, blindly, missing his reaction.
"She has already done far too much to my family." Sarek rose, stalked to her, a lithe predator on the move.
Amanda looked at him and realized how what she had said, unthinking, had wounded him further when he was already stressed nearly past his control.
"Oh, Sarek. I don't care that she hasn't accepted me. Except as it affects Spock. Please don't let that bother you."
"It is a terrible disservice to my family, causing multiple ongoing problems." His hands were hard on her, raising her to her feet, facing him, Vulcan strength briefly untempered. "But you are correct. I have not been able to resolve it. Nor to meet my promise to you in that regard. I have failed in that."
"I don't blame you for it. I don't care."
"I do."
"I know, but," she shook her head helplessly. "You're affecting Spock now. Just let up on him. Let him be who he is."
"No Vulcan can be who he is, Amanda." He looked down at her. "A lifetime of the strictest discipline is required to rise above that state."
"Well, seeing as how you have trouble with mastering that, how about giving your eight-year-old a break," Amanda retorted, then bit her lip at his predictable stiffening at that blow. "Sarek, I know you have this…thing…about never being conquered. Never giving in. It's part of your clan heritage, part of who you are. You almost can't control it. That you can't best T'Pau in this eats you up inside. And all your disciplines aside, it brings out something feral in you. But Spock and I are suffering from that, and for this conflict between you two. All we see is that anger, overlaid by control. And I'm human and he's just a child. Neither of us have your strength. And it frightens me. Upsets your son. So you have to control it. This evening, we are going to sit down with Spock and settle this. And I mean it, Sarek!" And she turned on her heel and left.
But her son had other ideas.
Spock didn't have a terrible time in returning to his usual day school. Nothing like the bullying he experienced when arriving at a new boarding school. His current levels in school had been forwarded from his tutors to the school, and his transition was seamless. Spock walked through his day only partly present. But as soon as school was over, he had other plans.
T'Pau's Palace was outside of Shikahr proper, on the edge of the vast Shikahr Plains, far opposite to where the Fortress stood in the Llangon foothills. His school was in the center of the old city. Too far for him to walk to the Palace. But having lived at the Palace for months, he was well aware of the tourist busses that visited the outside of the Palace on their circuit of ancient Vulcan sites. The Tourist center and the depot from where the vehicles took off wasn't that far a walk from his school.
He slipped away from the school and his waiting guard escort easily. He didn't find it much harder to reach the depot undetected and stowaway in a convenient maintenance compartment on a bus. It was very hot, waiting, and there was a noxious exhaust that partially choked him, but he managed it. He bided his time, holding his breath, until the chattering tourists exited at the Palace and disappeared on their tour. And then he snuck out, presenting himself to the guards at the gate.
"I've come to see my Grandmother," he told them. He had calculated his mission well. He was only a few minutes early.
The guards were bemused but escorted him in, and he found T'Pau in her usual place at this hour, the table just being set in a secluded part of the gardens, far from the sight and sound of the tourists circling the perimeter.
"Greetings, Grandmother," he said, straightening himself before her, his hands behind his back. "I have come for tea."
Her brows rose in astonishment. "How did thee get here, child?"
Spock innocently shifted his gaze to Eridani, dropping over the yardarm in the ochre sky, rather than meet his grandmother's gaze. "I took a bus." He sighed a little at her imperative silence, her brows still raised. "A tourist bus." He met her eyes.
"Does thy father know that thee are here?"
"Not yet," Spock said. "I wanted to see you. I've missed you, Grandmother. I thought perhaps I could stay the night." He looked at her hopefully. "Have dinner and breakfast with you. Then go to school from here tomorrow."
"But we must tell Sarek immediately. Thy parents will be concerned. Thee will be missed, child."
"I thought you might have missed me. I thought you might be lonely," Spock said. "You are all alone here."
She looked at him, astonished at his perception and concern, and in spite of herself, touched. "I no longer have first claim to thee."
"My parents won't be home till later anyway. And they have each other. They don't need me like you do," he insisted. "Only the guards will miss me. That's not the same thing."
"But thy guards have no doubt informed Sarek of thy absence. There will be an unnecessary search. They will be concerned."
"I don't think so," Spock said, a trifle truculently.
She turned to her attendant for a communications device. "I cannot fail to notify thy father."
"Please, Grandmother. Can't I stay just for the night?"
"I am not averse," she said, "But that is thy father's decision, not mine."
Spock came up to her, closer, anxious. "Don't tell him till after tea, Grandmother. Please."
She frowned at him. "But thee are pale, child. And –" she didn't get to say anything else, because Spock's eyes rolled up in his head and he dropped at her feet.
"He has relapsed," T'Pau said, turning pale herself. "Call the Healer's Enclave. And the human physician," she ordered her aides. "And notify Sarek."
Everyone flew to follow her commands, while she knelt by her grandson's body, frowning at his pale face and shallow breathing, and drew him into her arms.
Twenty minutes later, the healers had finished their examination and the human physician was putting away his scanner.
"Well, it's not a relapse," Mark Abrams said, repacking his kit. He glanced at the attending healer, whose set face and straightened posture indicated his reluctance to deal with this. The human physician shrugged. Attached to the Terran Embassy Hospital since its inception, he was not unfamiliar with Vulcan healers' complete 180s upon any emotional component to a condition.
"What, then?" T'Pau asked.
"A bit of anoxia. See the traces at the edge of his lips? He must have been in a place where even the low oxygen levels on this planet were even lower. But that will reverse on its own, in fresher air. And that's not at the heart of his faint. He's also showing signs of not having eaten, or for that matter, hydrated well, for quite a few days. Nothing's in his digestive track. His blood sugar is practically unregisterable, even for a Vulcan. Either someone hasn't been feeding him – and I doubt that's the case – or he just hasn't been eating."
"I concur," the healer said.
"That is not logical," T'Pau said.
"Perhaps not. But Spock has a habit of not eating when – " Abrams shrugged. "Let's just say he tends to lose appetite when there's contention."
Spock stirred and moaned, his lashes flickering.
"Hey, there, Tiger," Abrams said. "Or since this is Vulcan, should I say lematya? Had a nice nap?"
Spock looked in confusion from the physician to T'Pau to the healer and blinked. "Have I fallen ill again?"
"Just suffering from terminal stubbornness," Abrams said. "I think you could use some juice." He reached out a hand, and at T'Pau's nod, an attendant put a glass in it. Abrams offered it to Spock.
The boy sat up, folding his legs under him and took a sip. He blinked and shook his head as if clearing it. "I'm perfectly well."
"Given that Spock's condition and its reasons involves no need for my services," the healer said, chary at this emotional theorizing, "I will leave this to you." He gave the human physician a repressive look and hot footed it out of the door.
"You will be well, if you can manage to eat," Abrams said.
"I came for tea," Spock confessed, looking down at the glass in his hands.
"Not a bad idea to eat something," Abrams said. "If gone about the wrong way."
"Sarek is on his way," an entering attendant announced.
Spock looked up, anxious. "No. I can go home on my own."
"Not the way you came, buddy," Abrams said. "And don't try that trick again."
"I'm not yours to command," Spock flared.
"I'm sure not the boss of you, yeah," Abrams said. "But your dad is, and –"
"I'll go," Spock said, struggling to sit up.
"Sarek is here," an aide announced, and Spock's father walked into the courtyard. Tall and striking in his Council tunic, he was also clearly past patience.
"Spock," he said, his voice stern. "What do you mean by this?"
Spock got shakily to his feet, with Abrams keeping a hand on his arm, half in support, half in concern that the boy might dodge his way out of the Palace. With Spock, one never knew. "Easy, Sarek. He's not quite well."
"He's not –" Sarek raked his son with an evaluative glance.
"Nothing a few calories, a little rest, won't cure. He was doing quite well the last time I saw him. But seems to have had some trouble now acclimating to his changed, uh, circumstances."
"I just came to visit Grandmother," Spock said stubbornly, his head down. "I'd like to stay."
"Negative," Sarek said.
A look of rebellion crossed over Spock's face, one that T'Pau found fascinating. She'd never experienced it with her Grandson toward herself.
"Then I want to go back to school," Spock insisted. "My last boarding school."
"Absolutely not," T'Pau flared in her most emphatic mode, rarely used except to announce major judgments, this development driving her to interfere in what was Sarek's purview. "I will never allow that."
Sarek did a double take from Spock to T'Pau in surprise, then back to his son, emphatic in his turn. "You are coming home. You will go to your day school. And in future," he added, for T'Pau's enlightenment, "whatever school I decree."
"I'll just come here again," Spock said, eyes flashing, standing straight, however shakily, and squaring off defiantly against his formidable father. "You can't stop me."
"Kroykah," Sarek muttered. "Enough of this." And he picked his struggling son up and carried him out past T'Pau and Abrams.
Abrams gave T'Pau a helpless look, and when he saw she was too stunned herself to react, he rushed after.
"Kroykah, indeed," T'Pau mused, amazed. "A child who will stand up to Sarek." She itched to call her guards, prevent this. But Sarek was correct. The child was his to command.
"I won't go," Spock snarled to his father, kicking and struggling.
"Stop this. Now." Still disbelieving this disobedience, Sarek set him down by the aircar. Spock further disillusioned him by ducking away, dodging around him and running. Sarek caught him. Goaded by multiple issues, his control failing, he disciplined his child through the parental bond, an acid wash of disapproval against his son's unshielded and vulnerable mind. The boy collapsed.
"Sarek," Abrams ran up huffing in the thin air to catch the boy again as he fell. "What have you done now?"
"The greater questions is what has T'Pau done to my son?" Sarek said, staring darkly from his child to the palace.
"Maybe we should get that healer back," Abrams said, recognizing an injury that was telepathic and not physical as the boy lolled unaware, his breathing shallow. "I don't know how to treat this."
Sarek shifted his gaze back to Spock. He laid fingers against the boy's temples. Even unconscious, the child flinched and moaned. "He is not seriously hurt."
"If you say so," Abrams said, standing back, watching as Sarek straightened and rose. "But what are you going to say to Amanda about this? Even more, what are you going to say to Spock when he comes out of this?"
"That he had best adhere to my strictures."
"Sarek, I've been here, on planet, treating your son while you've been away. Here, at the Palace. I didn't see any contention between him and T'Pau. They got along well. I think your mother is even fond of him."
Sarek stared at Abrams. "Fond?" His very tone disparaged the human word.
"If she weren't Vulcan, I'd say more than fond. And he of her. He was content. Eating well. Again, if he weren't as Vulcan as you insist he be, and if he wasn't missing his parents terribly, which he certainly was, I'd say he was happy."
"You've completed your task, physician," Sarek said coldly. "You may leave."
Abrams stared off at Sarek for a moment, his chest rising and falling as he strove for breath in the thin air and the heat. Then he shook his head, and slapped his medical kit to his side. "Your child, Sarek. Your decision." He climbed into his vehicle and took off.
"What have thee done, Sarek?" T'Pau came up behind Sarek, as he bent to pick up his son.
Sarek whirled to face his mother. "More pertinent, what have you done to him?"
"He was well in my care," she countered. "Yet a few days with thee and he is clearly only well on his way to being ill."
"I speak of what you have engendered in him."
T'Pau froze. "Your accusations are baseless. I have done nothing."
"He was committed to the Vulcan way. To obedience and logic. In your care, that has changed."
"You are in error, Sarek."
Sarek rejected that ambiguous denial, a Vulcan jerk of his head to the left. "Deny his heritage and your interference if you will. I will break this …attitude… which you have instilled in him. Whatever it takes. Even if I must send him away."
T'Pau rose up at that, her face set. "Never back to the last school. If thee do that, Sarek, I will take him from thee."
"You will never do that."
"I say again, thee are in error, Sarek. And thee will not bend that child to thy will. Think rather what thee must do to keep him."
Sarek blinked, staring at his mother. "What can you mean?"
T'Pau approached. She looked down at Spock, breathing shallowly, sand crusted on his cheek. Her face was set in fascination and regret. She turned her eagle gaze back to Sarek. "Be careful, my son. That child was bred to rule a dynasty. Thy dynasty if thy gain him. But according to legend, another's should thy lose him due to error and folly."
"If you are planning to engineer that, T'Pau," Sarek warned, "You will not succeed."
"Not I," she denied, stepping back. "Thee seem to be engineering that solely by thyself."
"He is my son," Sarek repeated.
"Is he?" T'Pau asked, curious and wondering, looking from the boy to his father. "Is he?"
~fini~
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