AN: The plot thickens! Or more perhaps more accurately - thins (?) as we get some answers. Thank you for the reviews everyone! xx


Spock

He awoke and reached for her. But she was not there. It was as it had been 242 days earlier, when Elder Sosik had performed p'pil'lay between he and Nyota. There was a dark vacuum in his head, a gaping hole where his ashayam should have been. He felt his parents still, and he took small comfort from them, but of Nyota he could sense nothing. No that was inaccurate. The lack of her presence he felt. There was a sense that she ought to be with him, as if at any moment she would return to him and their bond would once more thrum with her life and love.

His thoughts keep reaching, trying impossibly to stretch between them and touch her, but the path to her mind, their bond, was severed. Although he was physically unarmed he felt pain. He used the basic tenets of enok-ka-fi (meditative pain control) to bring the discomfort under his control. It was not so terrible, not so consuming as it had been when last he had been separated from her in this way. Perhaps because this time it was familiar.

Instead of reaching pointlessly to Nyota, he reached to his father. There was no way for him to communicate clearly with his father over such a distance. Without a physical connection they could only exchange vague thoughts and feelings. He felt concern and reassurance from his father. It calmed him more than it had reason to. He had no idea of his situation, what his captors intended to do with him, but that confidence he felt from his father's made it logical to assume Sarek did. That some plan was being put into motion.

More centred he reached briefly to his mother to reassure him he was alive. He felt her relief and it also helped calm him.

Spock opened his eyes. He was in a cabin. It was not a brig cell, but a Spartan, non-descript room in the Vulcan style. He had not been restrained, though neither was there anything in the room he could utilise as a weapon. The few pieces of furniture, including the bed he lay upon, were built into the walls.

He pulled himself into a sitting position. He was panicked. Unease and discomfort washed over him. He needed to find Nyota. He needed to find his ashayam and join their minds. It was difficult to reconcile the reality that he could not. He recalled in vivid eidetic detail the memory of Nyota lying still and bleeding in his arms after their p'pil'lay on Earth. Was she even now lying like that on the Enterprise? In pain? Dying? T'Pau had said the shock nearly killed her. Had this severing succeeded in doing so? Was she dead?

His heart rate had increased to 130% of its usual tempo and he was having difficulty keeping his breathing even. Sinking down into his thoughts he folded his legs into a loshirak mediation position and calmed himself. To fret over things he had no influence over was illogical. He meditated upon several of the more appropriate analects of Surak as he found his emotional control once more. When he felt his fears to be more or less contained, he reached again for his father. He tried to focus his thoughts entirely upon Nyota - to ask his father if she was alive. Again he felt reassurance from Sarek. There was no way to be certain if Sarek had understood his query, but it was comforting all the same.

He had been awake for only a period of 37 minutes when the door opened. Two entered the room. Although he did not open his eyes he recognised them both instantly. 'T'Prak. T'Pring. Your actions are as illogical as they are inexcusable.' he remarked with a calmness that was entirely false. He did not deign to open his eyes or move from his mediative position to address them.

'Logic alone guides my actions Spock.' replied T'Pring. Her voice, whilst recognisable to when last he had heard it a decade earlier, was changed. It was not as cool and still as he recalled.

'You are guided by emotion T'Pring. Perhaps anger, perhaps grief. I do not know which, nor do I care.' he said.

She ignored his statement. 'Why have you not responded to my missives?' she inquired.

'I had no wish to exuberate your apparent madness.' Spock replied.

'And yet you attempted to free yourself of your human wife. It is known Osasu Sosik performed the ritual.' She said. 'Why did you not call to me? I would have bonded with you in her place and cured you of the Tel-has-mar.'

'Call to you?' Spock inquired. In his surprise he opened his eyes and regarded her for the first time. She looked much as she had when last he saw her. A decade was not so long to a Vulcan. Her hair was still dark and long, her face attractive, her bearing proud. But her eyes were wider, her stare hot and intense where it had once been cool and unaffected.

'Kah-ka (The Bond – arranged betrothal) remains between us. I would have come. With Stonn lost to me, it is logical we renew our kah-ka through the Van-kal t'telan (ceremony of bonding).' She almost sounded like the old, logical, perfectly Vulcan T'Pring of his adolescence again, save of course her subject matter.

'You speak of things of which you are ill-informed T'Pring.' he replied. 'Did not your pid-kom inform you nothing of our Kah-ka remains?'

T'Pring frowned infinitesimally, but quite expressively for a Vulcan and very expressively in comparison to the T'Pring he recalled.

T'Prak spoke. 'The bond to your human had replaced it. Now that she is gone from you the bond to T'Pring remains.'

Spock frowned. He reached within himself. 'That is inaccurate. I sense nothing.'

'You are not an Elder. I sense it.' she replied.

Spock looked up her and realised that she was lying. He had not ever known a Vulcan, especially one as venerated as a Clan Matriarch to lie before. 'You are lying.' he remarked in amazement.

'Ko'fu-il. Prepare yourself.' T'Prak directed at T'Pring. The younger Vulcan nodded and left the room, giving Spock a lingering look that he did not understand.

'As a match for T'Pring Osasu Stonn was far superior to you Spock.' T'Prak remarked. 'But few suitable males remain and she requires a mate. She is all that remains of my bloodline. You are unworthy with your human blood, but you are also of Surak's line, of blood that is old and princely. Sarek is Administrator of High Command and the T'Sai and Pid-kom's bow and scrape before your human mother. This is distasteful to me, but perhaps T'Pring will redeem your line, a T'Sai of the High Clans to give you worthy Vulcan children. In return for bonding to you, you will give my granddaughter back her sanity. Save her from the tel-has-mar. It is a logical arrangement.'

'I will not bond with T'Pring.' Spock replied calmly, hiding the confusion he felt at T'Prak's mad plan.

'You owe it to our race to take a Vulcan wife Spohkh. It is much spoken of.' she said. 'Bonding with T'Pring will cure you of the tel-has-mar you suffer at the loss of your human. This is why you reneged on your previous attempt at p'pil'lay is it not?'

Spock regarded her and attempted to let her see the seriousness of his words. 'No it is not and you who have unlawfully done this thing to me, you who have seen into my mind without my permission, must surely know this.'

T'Prak blinked. 'The bond was strong. But you had already attempted to sever it once.'

Spock felt himself becoming angry. 'You attempt to use logic to defend actions you know are indefensible. No choice did you offer me, you severed my tel-tor (marriage bond) against my will.' He said. 'You hold me here against my will. You think to join me to your granddaughter against my will. You think I will accept these things? That if you force me to bond with T'Pring I will suddenly accept your logic? I will not. You cannot succeed.'

'The bond-sickness mars your logic Spock. Once you bond to T'Pring your thoughts will be clear once more.' she said.

Spock ignored her words. 'T'Pring's thoughts will not be clear however. 249 days have passed since Stonn was lost to her. Bonding to me will not heal her so-resh (madness). It is too late, and I am not Stonn.'

T'Prak nodded. 'That is not certain. What is certain is that she will give you children. And they will not be so-resh.'

Whatever pity, understanding, Spock had felt for the matriarch courtesy of his human blood dissolved. It was not concern for T'Pring that motivated her actions, it was pride and vanity. She wanted her bloodline to continue. She was too old to procreate herself, and so her mad granddaughter was to do so on her behalf. She would have heirs, and of Sarek's 'princely' blood as she put it. 'I will not bond with T'Pring.'

'Then you will die.' T'Prak remarked. 'And I will have T'Pring given to another.'

Spock wondered if perhaps T'Pring was not the only one suffering from so-resh. 'Sarek is aware of my situation. My death would prove a great difficulty to you.'

'Your death will be easily explained.'

'It is known to him this was against my will. He will not accept your explanations.' Spock replied.

'I cannot be blamed for your death in the throes of plak'tow, or your illogical actions whilst afflicted, especially since I have offered you a wife. My own granddaughter at that.' she replied.

'It is not my time.' Spock said.

'You were injected with a large dose of synthesised yamareen while you were unconscious. I anticipate you will enter an induced plak'tow within 6 hours. Combined with the tel-has-mar, you will not last long.'

Spock frantically tried to verify her words. He assessed his physiological well-being. He was indeed suffering from a massive hormone imbalance.

'Your plak'tow will demand you mate with T'Pring. Since you are currently unbonded the compulsion to bond with her will be irrepressible. Your human will not want you back when she learns you have mated with, bonded and impregnated another female.' T'Prak informed him calmly.

'You know very little of humans and even less of she that is my wife.' Spock replied attempting to project confidence. In truth her words scared him. He recalled his previous brush with pon'farr. The madness. The burning rage and lust. He had called T'Pring so-resh, but compared to a Vulcan in the throes of the blood fever, she was a paragon of logic and reason.

'Your words are hollow Spohkh son of Sarek.' she said before turning and leaving the room, the forcefield and door sealing after her.

Spock reached to his father, let him feel his panic. Let him know that he did not have much time. He hoped Sarek and Jim Kirk located him before he could betray Nyota in madness. The thought of causing her such pain was intolerable to him.

He resumed the loshirak position in the midst of the bed again. Whilst he still had the mental control, he went through a thorough an-prele pain control exercise to help him attain better focus. Once he was calm and still in his thoughts, he focused all his will upon the difficult process of entering kan'sorn. A deep form of mediation that resulted in a near comatose state. If T'Prak or any other attempted to interfere with or meld with him in such a state, he would die. Having gone to such lengths and taken such risks to capture him, T'Prak was unlikely to risk such a thing. It would buy him some time. And if she did - well, since death was preferable to succumbing to her plans for him, he found it a logical course of action.

He slowed his heart, slowed his breathing, stilled his thoughts. Time lost meaning as he sunk closer and closer to kan-sorn. Thrice his concentration wavered and he found himself rising up to consciousness once more, but his need was great, he returned his focus to his task, bent a stubborn human will to the near impossible. He would succeed.