Sarek moved purposefully, his sensitive ears scanning for the presence of his son. He paused a moment to listen more closely, and could hear rustling coming from his study.
He turned the corner into the main hallway and found the tiny blue shirt Amanda had dressed him in earlier that morning, and a meter away was his cloth diaper. The door to his private office was ajar, and he pushed it open to see Spock standing completely naked by the window with his hands pressed against the glass.
"Spock."
The child didn't acknowledge him, and when Sarek stepped forward to collect him, he slipped on the smooth stone floor and landed awkwardly on his back with enough force to cause his diaphragm to spasm, which caused Spock to squeal with absurd delight. Sarek sat up and rubbed the back of his head, but when he put his left hand down, he noticed the floor was wet, and so was the back of his shirt.
Spock had urinated on the floor.
He took a brief moment to suppress a budding, reflexive disgust and gather his patience, and then he stood.
"Spock, come here."
His son didn't move.
"I told you to come here."
Spock offered no visible reaction. Sarek knew he understood the command, but he also knew from observing his interactions with Amanda that he possessed a preference for defiance.
"If you will not come to me, then I shall be forced to come to you. You would be wise to obey."
Spock still didn't move. In two long, calm steps, Sarek was upon him. Spock attempted to dart around him and run away, but he underestimated the length of his father's arms.
"No!" he screeched.
"Yes," Sarek said.
He took extra care to keep his voice level, determined to set a proper example of emotional control. Spock seemed oblivious to the lesson, however, and began to writhe and scream, "No no no!"
"Yes."
"Rai!" Spock wailed. "Rai!"
He was fascinated by his son's attempt to communicate in Vuhlkansu when English failed to yield the results he wanted, but rather than risk exacerbating his tantrum by replying in English, he simply replied in Vuhlkansu, "Ah." Yes.
"Let down," Spock pleaded. "Put down."
"Put me down," Sarek corrected, just as Amanda had done.
"Put ne'?" Spock wondered, confusing the English word me with the Vuhlkansu word ne', which meant "down."
He pointed his tiny right index finger to the floor and whimpered. Sarek understood that at least some of his son's emotional outbursts likely stemmed from his inability to adequately communicate with a limited vocabulary and muddled pronunciation.
Amanda insisted on raising him to be bilingual, rather than allow him to acquire Federation Standard English at school, which was possibly adding to Spock's confusion. Vuhlkansu and English were completely unlike in terms of phonology and syntax, and he'd noticed that Spock had an understandable tendency to use both lexical systems as one language.
"The correct statement is 'put me down,'" Sarek repeated. "Put me down."
Spock's face contorted in momentary confusion, but his brow relaxed and he said hopefully, "Put me down?"
"Please," Sarek added, wishing to take the opportunity to impart manners. "Put me down, please."
"Putmedownplease," Spock echoed.
He decided to comply with his son's request to reinforce his usage of proper grammar and calm, polite communication.
"It is inappropriate to remove your clothing in a setting that is not private," Sarek began to explain.
His lecture fell on deaf ears. The moment Spock was returned to the ground, he scampered through the puddle on the floor and straight for the door, leaving a trail of small footprints in his wake.
It was troublesome that his son had so much difficulty remaining still and focused – almost as troublesome as the urine on the floor of his study.
He sidestepped the puddle and went in pursuit of Spock once again. He collected the shirt and diaper on his way back down the hall, and found the child staring from the wall into the central atrium of their home where Amanda kept a small garden.
"Outside," Spock pointed, pressing his finger against the glass.
"Spock, it is inappropriate to be in communal areas of the house without clothing."
"I want to go outside."
"Spock, listen to me," Sarek said firmly, holding up the clothing. "You will wear clothing in this part of the house."
Spock held out his arms, a gesture that Sarek took to understand meant that he would allow himself to be dressed, but he turned his gaze to the window.
"No, you relieved yourself on the floor of my study, and as a result you must get clean."
"I want to go outside," he insisted, bouncing up and down.
"You will come with me."
"Outside?"
Sarek realized Spock was determined to persist in his obstinacy, so he bent down to pick him up. Spock sensed what was coming and attempted to flee again, but Sarek was faster, and Spock curled into the fetal position and began to struggle and scream, "Outside!"
The shrieking continued down the hallway and into the guest bathroom, where the hard surfaces of the tiled walls amplified the sound. Spock had remarkable lungs, and he quickly suppressed the nibble of irritation that his son's irrational behavior began to elicit in him.
By the time Sarek was done cleaning the lower half of his body in the sonic shower, Spock was completely beside himself. His demands to go outdoors had turned into tears, which soon evolved into choking, hiccups, and streams of mucous.
It would be illogical to attempt to reason with him while he was so emotional, so when they were done in the bathroom, he carried Spock to his bedroom to dress him.
This simple act was also met with fierce resistance. Sarek had never diapered a child, and though it turned out to be a simple enough task, it was made difficult by Spock's relentless squirming. When he attempted to clothe him in a clean, gray shirt, Spock's eyes grew wide and he yelled, "No! Want blue!"
"You wish to wear the blue shirt?"
"Yes. Blue," Spock huffed.
"This is the shirt I have selected for you," Sarek told him.
"No!"
"There is no difference between this shirt and the blue shirt you wore earlier aside from color," he explained.
Spock persisted in his irrational belief that there was, and so began another twenty minute battle of wills and tears. It disturbed him that his son could be so passionate about the color of a shirt. He had always harbored a quiet concern that Spock's humanity would be a severe handicap to proper emotional development, and the events of the past hour were beginning to confirm his misgivings.
Amanda insisted such behavior was normal for a child of his age, human or Vulcan, but Sarek wasn't so sure. He decided to research it further at the earliest opportunity, and turned his attention back to stuffing Spock's short, flailing legs into a pair of small trousers.
As Sarek finished dressing him, he noticed Spock's eyelids begin to droop, and less than a minute later, he was sound asleep in his father's arms. He located a small terrycloth hand towel and wiped the wet emotional residue from his cheeks and chin, and positioned him on his back in the middle of the small bed.
He stood and inhaled deeply to collect his focus. His son was more willful and illogical than he'd realized, and Sarek resolved to provide him with more consistent guidance in accordance with Vulcan customs.
As he left Spock to his slumber, he activated the low-energy force field on the threshold that Amanda often referred to as a "baby gate" and shut the door. He made his way to the master bedroom and saw I-Chaya, the family's pet sehlat, sitting anxiously by the portico entrance. He let the animal outside, and then stripped himself of his urine-soaked clothing.
Yes, his son was in dire need of guidance.
He took several extra minutes in the sonic shower to lightly meditate and recenter himself, and emerged twenty minutes later. He dressed and prepared to clean the mess Spock had left on the floor of his study.
On his way to the kitchen to collect the necessary supplies, he noted Spock's bedroom door was slightly ajar. He was certain he'd shut it tightly, and when he gently pushed it open, he saw his son was no longer lying in bed.
"Spock?"
He put his hand through the threshold: the force field was inactive.
"Spock?"
He scanned the bedroom and turned to march back down the hall when he heard his data PADD chirping from his study. His hurry to acknowledge the transmission and his distraction over his son's unruly behavior produced a rare moment of inattention, and he stepped barefooted into the urine that coated the floor by his desk.
His teeth gritted almost on instinct, but he consciously relaxed his jaw and collected his PADD.
Amanda.
She had called twice and left five messages during the time he was in the shower. His wife could be highly emotional on matters concerning their son, so it seemed wise to postpone communication with her until he had located the child. He silenced the incoming communication alert and skimmed the contents of her written messages.
1015 – When you feed him lunch, please use the plastic dishes.
1017 – Also, he's started getting picky about eating certain foods. Don't let him get away with it. If he refuses to eat, let him go hungry.
1018 – But make sure he stays hydrated.
1022 – One more thing. He's figured out how to deactivate the baby gate on his door.
1028 – Sarek?
He gingerly stepped to the guest bathroom to clean his feet and then searched every conceivable area of the house for his son.
No success.
His PADD chirped again and then chimed with another message.
1040 – What are you doing? Please answer.
Her persistence was indicative of worry, and as he'd told her countless times before, worry was illogical.
He moved to the back of the house to perform a more thorough and methodical search, but as he passed the door to the master suite, he felt an unanticipated rush of warm air.
The portico door was cracked.
He had left it unlatched when he'd let I-Chaya out, and between Amanda's warnings that he was tall enough to reach the handle and Spock's earlier demands to go outside, the exterior of the house seemed the most logical place to resume his search.
The desert surrounding their estate was not a place for a child ignorant to danger. It was home to sixteen species of poisonous reptiles, several species of predatory mammals, approximately thirty species of toxic plants, and various stinging and biting insects. Worry was illogical, but he hurried to collect the appropriate footwear and made his way to the outdoor terrace.
Spock's clothes were once again in a heap on the outdoor stone patio, and Spock was nowhere to be seen.
His PADD started to chirp again, and he knew he could not continue to ignore his wife. He was about to answer her transmission when he heard a sharp scream radiate from a collection of boulders approximately thirty meters to his left. It was unlike any sound he'd ever heard his son utter, and it spoke to a part of his consciousness that always remained hidden under thick layers of rationality and self-control. Almost always.
Worry was illogical, but he ran barefooted in the direction of his son's cries all the same.