The shuttle is late. Spock straightens when his shoulder threatens to rest against the wall he stands next to. Once more, he considers taking a seat among the others waiting at the shuttle port terminal. He would, but to seat himself would be a capitulation to the delay. Instead, he adjusts his stance, reviews the arrivals monitor once again, and then studies the tarmac, as if the shuttle might have arrived without an accompanying announcement.

It is needless to stare out those windows, but the prick in his mind that portents Tabitha's nearness has him restless, the long muted bond that lingers as a low hum at the edge of his consciousness now flaring bright, like something just out of the edge of his vision that he cannot quite catch sight of.

Again, he turns on the screen of his padd, refreshes his inbox, and waits for it to load, only to have it return no new messages. The action was illogical the first time and subsequent iterations have not increased in rationality through repetition.

There is but one shuttle scheduled for this gate, and one planet it originates from, a fact clearly discernible, if not by the overhead monitor, then by the makeup of the group around him. The others waiting at the same arrival gate stand stock still or sit with padds in their laps, their robes neatly draped around them, and no propensity towards fidgeting. For once, the ratio of humans to Vulcans is what it might be at home, the odd individual dotting the crowd, marked by their dress, their hairstyle, how they sit with legs crossed or kicked out in front of them in an unimaginable casualness.

In his uniform, the recycled air is uncomfortably cool. Spock tucks his padd at the small of his back, his hands firmly clasped around it.

A number of small groups engage in conversation among themselves. He recognizes more than one Vulcan in the waiting area and likely, were he to shift his stare from the monitor, would find himself compelled to greet them. At his back, he thumbs the control to his padd, powering it down. As he did not send a response to Pike, it does not follow that he would receive another communication from him. He has one drafted, a suggestion of a number of other times he is available neatly listed out and an entreaty that the Captain choose at his own convenience, and yet when he had his finger hovering over the button to send the reply, he had hesitated.

But he will consult his schedule when he reaches his office and reconfirm his class schedule for the following semester, as well as his parents' travel plans to ensure that a scheduling conflict will not arise twice. It would be better to be certain than to be hasty, though even so, he does not find any comfort in such fact, certain that despite the urge to avoid impulsivity he likely should have sent his response already.

It is no matter. He is not going to do so now and is expecting no other messages, so he does not further adjust his grip on his padd and simply continues to study the monitor. When he is tempted to once more lean his weight on the wall, he forces himself further upright, sure he does not want to attract any more attention than his Starfleet uniform and insignia already draw to him.

En masse, the crowd shifts when the monitor finally blinks from delayed to arriving. Humans may be tempted to press around the door, a needless throng that passengers must then push through. As it is, the other Vulcans simply continue to wait. Spock remains where he is at the back of the crowd, watching the first passengers disembark. Those who have an acquaintance meeting them are greeted at the gate with an exchange of ta'als, while others disappear past Spock and into the terminal without pausing at the assembled crowd. If he were to turn to watch, he would be able to soon see them be lost to the shift of pedestrians outside the transport station entrance, slipping away into the city beyond.

He does not allow his attention to be borne away by the pull of idle intrigue. Instead, he keeps his eyes forward and only moves when a break in the crowd reveals a passenger several heads shorter than the rest and markedly alone.

Tabitha has grown taller. She no longer reaches to his waist but rather considerably higher and her hair, once cut to her chin, is now coiled in a style the type of which he has never seen her wear before. He had known via their conversations over his subspace monitor that she had ceased to wear it as she had when she was younger, but seeing her now puts him in mind of their mother's hands twisting through it, arranging dark hair into a neat, long braid, one serviceable for travel.

Just beyond the doorway, she sets her bag at her feet, the strap still held in both hands, and stands there stock still, the passengers a swirl of movement around her. More than one alters their course in order to step past.

He slips his padd under his arm and moves forward, cutting through the crowd. She does not see him immediately, scanning the others that stand there waiting, but her search cants too far in the wrong direction to spot him until he is nearly close enough to call out.

He is not forced to, as she finally sees him, their eyes meeting and holding as he closes the last of the distance between them.

"Greetings," he offers, lifting his hand in a ta'al, as the crackle static of their bond flares like a spark on a live wire. Spock immediately staunches it, wrestling the blaze of her consciousness aside until it is little more than a flicker, the curtailment only delayed by how foreign the act is, so long has it been since he has had to cushion his thoughts from another.

A couple with a young child step around them. One of their bags brushes against Spock's arm. Tabitha releases her grip on the strap of her bag to return the gesture, the motion abbreviated with how quickly she again grasps the strap.

Her jacket is fastened to her chin, and she briefly pushes her mouth into it before lifting her face far enough to say, "Hello."

Another passenger pushes past. Her shoulder shrinks from the proximity.

He takes a step backwards, but the motion hardly prompts her to follow.

"Was your flight acceptable?" he finally asks, when she has still not moved.

Again, Tabitha has to lift her mouth from her collar to speak. "Yes."

Across the room, a standard safety announcement blares suddenly, the noise blanketing out the hum of greetings and din of conversation. Her chin tucked into her jacket, Tabitha looks from side to side, the fabric of her collar pushing out slightly as she turns. Carrying what must be a ka'athrya in a protective case, another passenger approaches. When Spock steps aside to make room for him to pass, Tabitha still does not follow, though her eyes do, tracking Spock as he attempts to create enough space for the other passenger to pass unencumbered.

"Come," he instructs and it is only after the ka'athrya bearing passenger has moved past them that she shuffles forward, her bag dragging across the ground behind her. Around them, the crowd is diminishing, pairs and trios making for the exit, though the greater ease of movement compels no increase in speed on Tabitha's part.

At her hesitancy, he reaches for the strap she is still holding tight to, only to have her shake her head. Strands of hair that have worked their way loose shift against her cheeks. Instead of relinquishing the bag to him, she shoulders it, both hands needed to pull it high enough to clear the floor and even then, the weight of it knocks into her knees.

Spock turns to look at the front of the terminal, the slice of street beyond the doors, and then back at her. "We are walking to campus."

Tabitha nods.

"It is six blocks."

Her chin remaining in her coat collar, she nods again.

Spock does not sigh. "That is not too heavy for you to carry?"

Her chin lifts. "It is not." And then, "I have to use the restroom."

He waits for what is long enough that he flicks his comm open and considers contacting Cadet Uhura with a request that they meet even later, though having already changed their schedule once, he is not inclined to make that particular call. Instead, he closes his comm with a snap. He does not turn on the screen of his padd.

As it is, when Tabitha reappears, he considers the stands of air taxis and the traffic, the bus schedule he long ago committed to memory, and the hills between them and campus.

"Please be efficient," he prompts as he leads her across the street, turning back to ensure she is following him and nearly once again reaching for the bag that hits her thigh with each step.

Tabitha stops repeatedly to look around her, first at the facade of a building they pass and next at the sight of two dogs being walked, both pulling on their leashes in an exuberance that is only tempered by the woman holding them back. The last time Tabitha was here, Spock was in his dress uniform and the city was packed with the teeming masses of graduating cadets and their newly arrived families, his own among them. Then, he had seen little of her, award ceremonies and farewells to classmates filling the time he had available. His memory of those days center mostly on one lunch he had sat down to with her and their parents, before Sarek's attention was necessitated at the Federation assembly in Paris and Tabitha and Amanda had joined him there, halfway across the planet but far enough they might have already been home in Shi'Kahr.

That next morning, a quiet office had awaited him, the half written code of the Kobayashi Maru staring back from a monitor, his classmates shipping out on their first assignments and his fingers poised over the keypad as campus had slowly emptied out of the families that still remained. Aunts, uncles, cousins, some of his classmates with more siblings than he had known to expect. Illogical, he had thought, there in his new office, silence wrapping around him. Thoroughly without reason, to weigh down so many others with such extravagant festivities.

Spock casts a look down at Tabitha, her chin still tucked into her coat and her hands disappearing into her sleeves where she has tugged the cuffs down past her fists. "Did you bring gloves?"

She shakes her head without looking up. Perhaps their mother had presumed the weather, fair as it is, would be warmer today. Though if so, it would be an uncharacteristic oversight, what with Amanda's attention to Tabitha's needs.

Spock does not allow for a reason as to why such negligence might have occurred to come to mind, certain he does not need to consider any cause for disorganization, for hurry.

"They are not needed," he hears so softly that had a hover car zipped past them then, he might not have noticed. As it is, Tabitha does not look up from where she is studying a man carrying an iced coffee, the straw bobbing in the murky liquid and his attention on his comm. Spock palms his own, again considering the distance to campus and begins to walk faster.

"This way," he instructs when they finally reach the first Academy buildings, steering Tabitha down a path that runs along the edge, past the Engineering building and T'Elah Hall.

"Where are we going?"

"My office."

"Mother said that classes are not in session."

"As I am not a student, that hardly affects my own schedule." He had requested his parents schedule their upcoming visit for the weekend and had not requested additional days as some of his colleagues make a habit of, what with how they take advantage of the lull between semesters. Spock has no need to do so and finds the quieter pace of campus refreshing after the bustle of the term, a chance to focus on work that otherwise would have to be slotted in among meetings, classes, and the myriad of other commitments that typically fill his days. Of course, as he waits for Tabitha to catch up with him before beginning to walk towards the Xenolinguistics building once again, he is not exactly at his leisure now, as he might have anticipated only this time yesterday.

Around him, such changes in schedules do not seem to plague the few cadets milling about the mostly empty edge of campus they have reached. From here, he can see the areas of lawn on the slice of the quad that is visible, the grass trampled after the impromptu celebration of the previous afternoon and the small knots of instructors where they have come together in conversation, pausing today as they might not during the rush of the semester. Even at this distance, and even with so few others about, Tabitha cannot help but stand out, tucked into her coat as she is and the bulk of her bag hanging from her shoulder, the strap held once again in both of her hands.

He tries once more. "I can carry that for you."

She pulls the strap higher but does not release her bag to him. "I would like to call Mother and Father."

"Now?" He cannot help but turn in the direction of the Xenolinguistics building, still a significant distance away given their pace thus far. "I have a meeting."

"I called home from the shuttle but neither answered and I wish to try again."

"It is not a convenient time." For anyone except perhaps Tabitha, a sentiment that he does not voice. Instead, he takes a step towards their destination, only to have her not follow. He is not particularly disposed to a discussion of what prevented Amanda's attention to her comm. "Tabitha, please."

"Mother said she would like to know when I arrived and as I have now been on Earth for-"

"-She will have seen that you called and can infer that having dropped out of warp, your communicator was once again functional."

"As I did not leave a message, it would be prudent to specify the reason for my call."

"She can logically deduce that-" He stops himself. A rational argument has never been of any use, so it would not follow that now would be any different. "When we reach my office, you can leave her a message."

They make it thirty more meters before Tabitha again stops walking. "-Why would I have to leave a message?"

"Please come along."

"How can you anticipate she will not answer?"

"Tabitha-"

"-I am hungry."

He draws in a breath. One that he does not let out as forcefully as he would like. "You are hungry now?"

Brown eyes stare up at him. "That is what I said."

"Did you not eat on the shuttle?" he asks.

"No."

"Can you wait until my meeting has concluded?"

"No," she repeats.

He shifts his padd to his other hand, turning from Tabitha towards the Xenolinguistics building and back to her again, her shoulders hunched against the relative coolness of San Francisco and her bag still slung from her shoulder. The wind and their walk has worked loose even more strands of her hair. They lay dark against her cheek, just before her ears. Never overly fastidious in her appearance, he doubts that even if she knew, she would brush them back. Indeed, the front of her shoes are scuffed, red dirt worked into the toes and more still clinging to the hem of her pants. Too clearly he can imagine her sent outside while Amanda quickly packed for her, Tabitha told to enjoy the freedom to run about before a long shuttle trip; an excuse to have her out of the house, away from doors shut tight and barred.

Such a ploy had once worked on Spock, and even now he can remember the roll of small, smooth stones in his hand as he had dawdled on the veranda, picking at the kal-toh board and the half played game abandoned there. Sybok had promised to return to finish it, though memory now fails him as to whether the board had already been put away when Spock had finally returned from Earth, or if it had not simply sat there for longer, untouched and cleaned up at an even later date.

Tabitha again hitches her bag higher on her shoulder. Spock considers the length of time lunch will take when consumed at the rate Tabitha typically completes tasks, the hours of work he has to complete, and finally opens his comm.

"Hi," Nyota answers nearly immediately.

For a moment, he allows himself the thought that he has called her simply for the pleasure of conversation. "How was the remainder of your evening?"

"You know what finals are like?" Nyota asks. Beside him, Tabitha's brow creases. He shifts slightly away. Without waiting for an answer, Nyota supplies, "As absolutely different as possible."

Tabitha's eyes are on his comm in his hand. He turns his shoulder to her. It his hardly the first time he has found the public nature of conversations held on Starfleet's comms nettlesome. "Suitably enjoyable, then."

If her laugh is not confirmation enough, she adds, "It was pretty nice."

With his attention on the direction of the Xenolinguistics building and not on how Tabitha continues to watch him, he tells her, "Perhaps fortunately, you may be at your leisure to continue the head start on your leave between semesters."

"Family time?"

He looks down at Tabitha only to look away again. She continues to peer at him. "I am perhaps less available today than I had otherwise anticipated."

"Oh, of course, take all the time you need."

"I do not wish to inconvenience you," he says. He considers his words in the face of her break from her studies. A much needed vacation, he is sure, what with how diligently she works during the semester. "If you would like to be done earlier, you are welcome to begin."

No matter that he will not then see her. Inconsequential. Unimportant. An easily dismissed thought, that.

"No, it's fine actually," she says. "I'm more than happy to wait and do it with you."

He begins to shake his head. Then, he looks down at Tabitha and halts the motion before it can begin. "There is no need."

"I-" She clears her throat. "I'll wait."

He refuses to let relief rise through him. Or the upswell of gratification. "Tomorrow, then?"

"I'm free all day."

"Excellent."

There is a pause in which he is sure he should say goodbye, though he does not, his gaze still on the path to the building in which they are currently supposed to be meeting, the one they have by now spent so many hours in together that it seems to be intrinsically associated with her, the shape of his office and her presence there with him linked inexorably in his mind.

The intake of air is clear through the comm connection when she quickly inhales. "Listen, yesterday when I came by, I also wanted to let you know that I really enjoyed the semester with you." She laughs softly, though at what he does not know. "I kind of forgot to tell you that when I saw you, so."

Further completion to her sentence does not come, not with how he waits for it, his eyes scanning across the parts of campus he can see from his vantage point.

Twice now, they have stood just there on the steps to the library, the corner of the building facing him. They had spoken at length as other cadets and instructors headed to dinner at the end of their days, but she and he lingered, finishing their conversation as time ticked obliviously onward.

He nods. "Likewise."

"So," she says again, her voice once more tinged through with formality, losing the quiet of her previous statement. "I'll see you tomorrow."

"Enjoy the remainder of your day."

"Yeah, you too. Have fun together."

An illogical statement to be sure, but even as she disconnects the call he feels no urge to correct her.

"Who was that?"

Spock flicks his comm closed. He does not look at Tabitha. "We must go to the market, unless replicated food is suitable."

Tabitha does not move. He knows, even as he looks down the path that cuts across campus, that she is continuing to watch him. "Mother says you have a cadet."

"Pardon?"

"That you have a cadet working for you of whom you frequently speak. Was that her?"

"What would you like to eat?" By the time they sit down to it, the meal will be later than a lunch, and at the speed at which the rest of the day has passed, it might well qualify as an early dinner. "Pok tar?"

"Klitanta s'mun t'forati."

"No."

"Mother had promised to make it tonight."

Klitanta s'mun t'forati requires thirteen ingredients, six of which are not available on Earth. Of course mother would have promised something of that sort, a complicated and favorite meal before a trip off planet, one of their last nights to eat on the table tucked into the corner of the veranda as the sun slipped behind the mountains, casting the cliffs and jutting rocks in deep golds and pinks.

Again, he looks down at the dirt clinging to Tabitha's shoes. "I can make you pre tarmeeli."

Tabitha's eyes narrow as she considers before she nods once, short and abrupt. "Acceptable."

"Come," he says again and this time without the pressing constraint of a meeting, he guides her in the direction of the grocery store at a more sedate pace. Still, he turns once to look out across campus like he might recognize any of the figures walking there, though they are too distant, writ too small against the backdrop of buildings and paths and lawns that he leads Tabitha from.

…

The rain begins on their return from the market, soaking into the bag Spock balances in the bend of his elbow. Palm up, Tabitha holds her hand out from where she has retreated under the eve of his building, water pouring from the awning above them to splatter against her fingers and pool in her palm before she tips her hand to let it dribble out. She immediately repeats the process, mindless of the door Spock is blocking from shutting with his foot, lest it slide closed between them.

A wet palm print mars the front of her jacket when she finally wipes her hand off and follows him inside, their footsteps echoing through the lobby to the turbo lift, where he presses the button to his floor. The bag crooked in his arm drips water onto his sleeve and he ineffectually wipes the screen of his padd off, juggling it and the groceries. His comm, kept tucked into his palm, remained dry and he flicks it open only to close it again when the lift doors open.

"Here," he says, stopping halfway down the hallway when Tabitha, still examining the wet that clings to her hands and clothes, threatens to continue walking. Inside, his apartment is favorably warm, heat edging away the chill that had taken up residence in him, laid there by the breeze that had kicked up off the water as they walked from the store. Here, wind doesn't flatten his clothes, and the only entry of rain into his quarters is the smack of drops against the window and the wet boot prints left as he toes off his shoes and Tabitha does the same beside him, shrinking even further in stature in sock-clad feet.

A noise turns his attention from where he sets the groceries in their appropriate place, a shuffle of padds and the click of them being rearranged. "Do not."

Tabitha's hands return to her side and she looks at him over her shoulder from where she is standing before his bookshelf. She remains there as he resumes unpacking the grocery bag, and he tracks her on the periphery of his vision when her progress around the room restarts with an examination of the objects on his coffee table and then the table itself. It is an oddity for any Vulcan household and yet provided with the other furnishings of his apartment when he had first arrived.

He had judged the effort to remove it as more burdensome than its continued presence, though he remains uncertain as to whether it truly serves any purpose, as he is perfectly capable of setting his belongings on the table that sits adjacent to his couch, or the desk in the corner of the room. Furthermore, its very existence only ever serves to remind him of one of his few visits to their grandmother's house as child, when he had asked after the benefit of unnecessary furniture. Instead of providing any useful answer, his grandmother had continued to implore his parents to ensure that he did not strike his head on the corner of her own coffee table, despite the fact that he was significantly taller than the object. It had only had solidified his opinion of the furnishing as both useless and a potential hazard, though why he would walk into it of his own accord he had never determined.

Tabitha had been far from a consideration back then. His classmates had their own families enlarged by subsequent siblings, but when his parents made no mention of a similar impending arrival, Spock had spent his childhood presuming he and Sybok would be alone in their status of offspring. Sarek's offspring, rather. A distinction never lost on Spock, even when Sybok had come to live with them.

As it were, Spock was absent from Tabitha's own first visit to Seattle, deployed on an introductory training mission that first year at the Academy when his family had finally found time to visit Earth. So he does not know if similar concerns were afforded to Tabitha's interaction with the table. It would be likely, despite Spock's successful navigation of the environment, as their grandmother had never possessed any particular inclination towards logic. And surely had Sybok ever come to Earth, a trip he had never made, Spock is certain it would be a warning issued in triplicate.

"You have this," Tabitha says.

He completes slicing through a k'vass before he turns, and then resumes chopping it into even cubes when he sees what she is holding.

"That should be obvious." He waits for the sounds of her replacing the framed picture on the desk, already sure he will have to adjust it back to its proper place. "Those padds contain my students' papers. Please do not read them."

"Why?"

"They are none of your concern."

"What is this?"

Again, he pauses, the knife suspended above the cutting board. "A syllabus I am preparing for the coming semester," he answers when she waves a filmplast towards him.

"What is Interspecies Ethics?"

"Did you not bring school work with you?" He scrapes the k'vass into a waiting pan. "A book of your own?"

"Why do individuals of different species need to be taught to be ethical?"

"They lack a propensity for logic." He crosses the room in a handful of strides, removing the filmplast from her grip and insinuating himself between her and his desk. "Please find alternative entertainment than the perusal of my belongings."

"Where is your subspace communication monitor?" she asks, only to find the screen on the desk as soon as the question has left her. She slips around him and turns the screen on, her fingers a quick tap as she keys in the only code that he has ever called from it. Assuming neither of their parents have moved their own array since he was last home, the monitor in the study of their house is currently pinging with an accompanying flash of the indicator light.

It will ring to an empty room, the silence of which echoes in the quiet that Spock and Tabitha stand, her eyes fixed on the screen and his hands behind his back before he finally reaches over her head and presses the button to disconnect the call, lest it continue to chime into emptiness.

"They are occupied," he says and maintains the control necessary to keep his mind strictly blank as to exactly how.

"I wish to speak to them."

"I am aware." Not only from her repeated insistence, but the look she fixes him with. The determination that her expression carries is certainly intended to induce him to remedy the problem, and if he were not certain that urgency is underlying her look, the snap that arcs between them nicks at the edge of his thoughts, a bright blaze of her tenacity. He is hardly accustomed to the need to sheild his thoughts. Carefully neutral, he says, "They will answer when they are able."

He shuts the monitor off entirely with what he intends as some finality, but it only serves to leave her looking at the dark screen, her hands loose at her sides.

"The food will be ready soon," he offers and while her eyes slide away from the monitor, the news does little to spur her to any action beyond that.

It is only when he has returned to stirring the simmering k'vass that she moves, drawing back a chair from the table, the one he typically makes use of as it is the most pleasingly situated, with a view out the window near it. From there, he can see the tops of trees, while the other chairs face either a wall or the interior of his apartment. For a moment he holds a spoon above the pot. Then, he resumes his task, his back to her and only the sounds of bubbling pre tarmeeli and the rustle of the paper she sets out on his table filling the room.

By the time he places two steaming bowls on the table, three of her pencils have rolled to the floor and the remainder of her belongings have crept across the surface in a march he well recognizes from his visits home, so that he is forced to move two sheets of paper and an eraser to make room for their dinner.

"Is that a le-mataya?"

She whisks her drawing from the table so quickly that it flutters a nearby sheet. "No."

Their father would have bought her the paper, an indulgence presented with the other supplies that Sarek routinely furnishes her with. The few times Spock has been back to the house in Shi'Kahr, the table in the kitchen had been covered with piles of paper and pens and brushes, all precisely arranged in an order that he could not discern, Tabitha's fingers smudged with color that was worn into the heel of her hand and pressed into her nail beds.

She pulls her spoon through the bowl in front of her slowly. He pauses with his own spoon halfway to his mouth to ask, "What, then, were you drawing?"

A slight crease appears between her brows. Her hair remains disordered, strands threatening to fall into her face. "This is not the way Mother prepares pre tarmeeli."

"This preparation is far more efficient."

"It will not taste the same."

"You said that you were hungry."

Slowly, she takes a single bite, replacing her spoon alongside her bowl as she chews. Dipped into her meal as it has been, it leaves a smear of broth on the table.

He is accustomed to the absence of conversation during a meal, though the silence is rendered far starker by having another sitting at his table with him. Amanda had long since banished the Vulcan tradition of avoiding discussion over a meal, announcing it needless and, in her opinion, illogical. The vehemence of her declaration had made clear to both Sarek and Spock that they would do well to agree with her conclusion, and neither had stated the fact that opinion or no, logic was immutable. Still, even with the routine dialogue his mother insisted on, Spock had found the difference between meals taken at school and those he ate at home jarring, finding solace only in the inverse upon becoming an instructor and being afforded his own quarters, shared meals loud and distracting in the Academy's mess hall, and pleasantly quiet when he returns to his apartment each evening.

Tabitha's spoon taps against the side of her bowl. For some time, she examines the pool of broth in her spoon, making no move to eat it.

"Mother said you have switched schools," Spock finally says and her eyes rise from her meal to meet his.

Then, she bends forward quickly, her spoon pushed into her mouth. "That is correct."

He waits for her to give an opinion on the change, though she remains silent, examining a piece of shredded plomeek before carefully eating it.

"You are now at the Shi'oren Interspecies School?" he asks. Needless, as he knows the answer.

Logical, then, for Tabitha to not answer. Surely she heard their mother tell him, a conversation that recounted nearly every available detail of Tabitha's academic trials and yet left Spock somehow still with further inquiries. Which is attributable to a natural curiosity, he is certain. He attended but one school in Shi'Kahr, and though Tabitha apparently found it lacking, he had never been prevailed upon to change institutions, nor had he sought out the option himself, so he hardly knows of the differences Tabitha is now experiencing, or possible similarities.

Though he is certain there are few, if any.

He begins to ask further details only to stop himself. He is not certain he truly wishes to know.

After dinner, he places the uneaten remainder of her meal in the status chamber in his kitchen and the excess he had cooked but not served in a matching container next to it. As he cleans, Tabitha returns to her drawing, kneeling on the chair so she can better lean over the table and her head ducked down, unmoving even when he passes by her.

Her attention pulled away, it leaves him to his own pursuits, constrained as they are by her presence. Eventually, he sits on his couch beside the small pile of bedding he had collected and balances his padd on his knees. He spends some time returning messages, the banality of the task interrupted tonight by Tabitha shifting in her chair, the scratch of her pencil across her paper twice pulling his attention.

Near the top of his inbox, below the as yet unanswered missive from Captain Pike, sits a series of messages Nyota sent him in the previous days. Glancing up to ensure Tabitha remains diverted, he opens the first, a paper she had sent him on Tellarite verb usage that he had read immediately upon receipt. It had come on the heels of a rather lively debate over the nature of comparative xenosociological theory, and the reply he had written sparked a second conversation, this one held over mugs of tea that she had brought to his office for - as she had stated with a smile pulling at her mouth - a recognition of the logic of the argument he had constructed but not the capitulation of her original point. The other message is in regards to a question a student posed to her in the wake of one of Spock's lectures, and the next the original communication he had sent over finding a time to meet to grade the final papers. One more look towards Tabitha confirms that if he were so inclined, he could start grading now, as she is unlikely to offer herself as a distraction, though even as he glances at the padds that await his attention, the call with Nyota comes to mind, her insistence that she wait for him quelling any urge to begin without her.

"Tabitha," he says and when she does not acknowledge him, repeats her name a second time.

"Yes?" she finally says, only slowly raising her focus from the paper in front of her.

"I am going to reschedule my meeting for tomorrow."

She turns back around. "Understood."

He begins a new message to Nyota, offering her a selection of times the following morning, for whichever is convenient for her, and a suggestion they meet in his office, which is likely needlessly specific, but perhaps prescient, with the increasing amount of time they have spent in other places on campus, as twice now she has approached him in the library and joined him there for an afternoon, and once they walked back from the gym together. She had repeatedly adjusted how the straps of her shirt had laid over her shoulders, bare as they were otherwise. It would have been distracting, had he not been occupied with the fact he had just submitted his application to Pike and had gone to the gym as a way to manage the excess agitation the day had left him with, cooped up at his desk, as he had repeatedly reread the accompanying cover letter that he had rewritten twice, in an attempt for perfection and the aspiration for an interview.

Now Spock faces the entirely possible fact that given the difficulty of Spock's schedule, Pike will decline to adjust his own.

Again, he looks towards Tabitha and then calculates the time that has elapsed since Pike sent him the offer. Tabitha's pencil continues to scratch over the paper, and she shifts in her seat, drawing one leg up, the bottom of her foot now on the chair and her chin on her knee as she continues her as-yet unidentified drawing. Though it must be a le-mataya, for no other animal possesses a similar shape.

"Tabitha," he says again and this time does not wait for her to look at him. "I have a second meeting this week, before Mother and Father arrive."

Her braid dragging across her back in a nod is his only acknowledgement. He rereads the message to Nyota before he sends it, then immediately writes to Pike as well. He similarly submits the message before he can decide otherwise, attempting for a measure of resolve in his chosen course of action.

He does not allow himself to think that such resolve is likely entirely unsuccessful.

Regardless, he does not allow himself to refresh his inbox, instead picking up a padd containing a part of the Kobayashi Maru's code, complex enough to ideally serve as a suitable avenue for his focus.

That night, Tabitha approaches him as he tucks a sheet around the couch cushions.

He pauses. Bent over as he is, they are nearly eye-level. "I do not have a second bed for you."

Still, she hovers. "That is not what I wished to inquire."

He waits, the cushion lifted and the sheet threatening to slip before he finally resumes the task. He tugs the sheet tight and smooth, the neatness with which he arranges it pleasing.

"What, then?" he asks.

When she continues to stand there silently, he shakes out a blanket and settles it over the couch. "If you need to raise the environmental controls, you may."

"I am not tired," she says.

"Then do not go to sleep," he suggests. He watches her take in the transformed couch. "Do you require an additional pillow?"

"Why did neither Mother nor Father answer?"she asks and the corner of her mouth tightens so slightly that he is willing to attribute it to a trick of the light.

"They are not currently available," he says. A simple explanation, and succinct.

"Why?"

"As I said previously, they are occupied." He hands her a pillow and an accompanying pillow case. "Please be of assistance."

She holds both at her sides, one in each hand as she stares up at him. "In what manner?"

At a loss, Spock asks, "Did Mother not explain?"

"She said-" Tabitha sets the pillow on the coffee table and simply looks at it for a moment. "Father did not say goodbye to me and Mother intimated that he is ill."

"That is accurate," Spock says in a way that he intends as phlegmatic, only to find that Tabitha's brows draw together.

"How ill?"

"It is nothing of any concern."

"Then why do they not answer my calls?"

"When you were ill with Denubian flu, Mother focused solely on your care." It was the same week as his entrance exams for the Vulcan Science Academy. Sarek had been in the kitchen that morning when Spock had come downstairs, expecting his mother but finding her still in Tabitha's room. That breakfast had passed in silence, the smertau bugs chirping in the garden the only accompaniment to the crunch of krei'la as Spock had chewed, the noise grating after a night of too little sleep, hours spent restless in anticipatory nervousness he had been at a loss to staunch, and one exacerbated in the morning light by the certainty Sarek was clearly aware.

"I was young, I do not remember," Tabitha says.

"They will be here soon," Spock says as steadily as he can.

"How do you know that it will not delay their travel?"

"The… course of his illness will have passed," Spock says, resisting the urge to allow the distaste at voicing such an explanation to cross his features. "You need not worry."

"I am not worried," Tabitha says. In her hand, the pillow case crumples in small folds as her grip tightens. "I am simply seeking a logical explanation."

"They will be here soon," Spock repeats, at a loss for what else to offer.

At some length, Tabitha picks up the pillow again, placing one corner of it into the pillow case and attempting to stuff the remainder of it in after, her small hands ineffectively pushing at the down. Spock takes it from her, her protest coming in the sharp movement of her eyebrow that remains raised even when he hands it back, each corner of the pillow neatly apportioned in its proper place within the case.

"Perhaps," he says as she holds it in front of her, turning it this way and that before simply crossing her arms over it, instead of placing it on the couch. "If you are not fatigued, you could write to them. I am certain that when Mother is able, she will share your letter with Father."

Indents form in the pillow from Tabitha's hold on it. "I did not bring my padd." She shakes loose strands of hair out of her eyes, an ineffectual motion with her hands held tight to the pillow. "I could not find it, and it was time to leave for the shuttle port."

"Do not avail yourself of my personal communications," Spock instructs and leaves Tabitha perched on the edge of the couch, his own padd balanced on her knees and her face bathed in blue light as he dims the lamps for the night.

Alone in his room, he lights his meditation candle and arranges himself on the floor in front of it, clearing his mind of thoughts as he studies the flicker of the flame, the familiar shapes of the shadows it casts on the wall. His breathing evening out and his body growing still, he attempts to ignore the tapping of Tabitha's fingers on the padd in the other room, and so too the pull of her thoughts against his, unobtrusive other than the fact of their presence.

When he finally arises, the sound has stopped. He would typically spend the remainder of his evening reading or perhaps practicing his ka'athyra, his mind unwound from the business of the day and his thoughts free to turn towards the steadying rhythm of leisure pursuits. Tonight, he walks on bare feet back to the main room of his quarters, still awash in a blue glow. Tabitha's hand is spread on the padd, casting a long shadow on the ceiling and illuminating the soft rise and fall of her chest. The message is half complete and unsent. He places the padd within her easy reach, should she awake again. After a moment, he pulls the second blanket from the arm of the couch to lay over her.

Around the room, the unmistakable signs of her presence are clearer than just the small mound of her beneath the blanket, her shoes still drying near the door, dwarfed by his own boots, and her jacket hung beside his own. He straightens both garments, so they will dry evenly, and adjusts her shoes, so that they are parallel and perpendicular to the wall. Her bag he sets closer to her, pulling the sides of it more neatly shut, though he does not fasten it closed. Two of her pens have rolled from his table, and he retrieves them, setting them with the rest of her collection. She has left a stack of paper on his table, the top sheet of which is turned upside down, though the outline of lines of pressure she has left is clear even through its back.

With a look at her on the couch, her breath raising and lowering the blanket, he lifts one corner of the paper, but he can still not determine what animal she depicted. Curious, as her drawings are typically so carefully crafted, nearly anatomically precise in a way that she has only continued to master as she refines her fine motor skills. This, while well rendered and aesthetically appealing, is not an animal he is familiar with, though he maintains it shares a certain resemblance with the le-mataya that scream in the desert at night.

Surely they are doing so even now. Odd to think of them under those familiar stars, stalking through hills so distant. As if his presence on Earth would render theirs at home somehow immaterial. Illogical, at best, and clearly a reason to believe it is time for him to retire as well.

He crosses to the door of his bedroom and with one last look at Tabitha curled as she is on his couch, goes to bed.