Perrin circled around the lobby, waiting with an idea of how to pass the time until Sarek would be ready to meet with her. But the idea was one that came and went through the years, beaten down by guilt, yet different from knowing now her father was dying. In the end, she stayed away from the receptionist not sure if he would be notified of a request for his comm number. Something must change, Perrin repeated in her head to the rhythm of her shoes clicking on the tan tile floor. Like her need to get back to her life, she felt a rising pull, especially since seeing Valor twice now, to resolve her past; blocks of memory were pushing to the forefront of her mind. Now seeing him a third time, she amended as a large group descended from the lobby stairs headed by Valor. He was focused on Perrin while reaching his hand over to pat another human ambassador next to him on the back; Perrin did not run. She felt the same fear rushing over her, but more intensely from the realization that she would have to admit it if she bluntly avoided him.
She waited as he came over, wavering under her tunneling vision and a sense that the ground was funneling down beneath her. Valor eye's darted back to the group, stopping short of Perrin to tell the receptionist some story that had her laughing. After they crossed out into the streets of ShiKahr, he waved at the receptionist and finally sat in a chair next to Perrin. She smiled, barely seeing Valor's face through a haze of black. Focus; the word did have their same effect when sitting next to him. Valor kept his gaze just beyond her as he started to speak.
"Perrin. Sarek is not telling me much about the situation—"
"Then there is nothing I can tell you. Whatever he wishes I must comply with; it's only logical." She countered.
Finally speaking to him, she felt bolstered by her pain. He couldn't look at her, but he could so easily take her family away, Perrin furiously thought.
Seeing an opening when Valor failed to respond, she walked towards the receptionist to ask her if Sarek's emergency call to the Klingons was over.
Valor grabbed onto her shoulder and spun her around to face him, finally staring squarely into her eyes.
"I did nothing wrong!" he shouted. Some, including the receptionist, eyed to him, startled.
He lowered his voice and leaned in. "He led to the deaths of hundreds subverting basic protocol. You know how he was; all he wanted was a new way to keep his mind off the fact that he was letting his life fall apart. You came to me when you were sad, scared, worried—not him! I was doing the right things, I kept the Romulans from finding an excuse for all out war." Valor's fury laced through his words but Perrin fought back with hers.
"Yes; so you could be where you are now, you did the right thing! Though that every Vulcan at the trial found fault in your methods does call them into question, Head of Federation Bureau of Planetary Treaties, Tim Valor." She spat. "You should have said nothing and those deaths would not have occurred. My father would never have been found out by the Romulans."
"If a child knew—" He started.
"Among Vulcans discussion of such a private matter in a public space is most inappropriate." Coming out of a turbo lift behind them marked "authorized personnel", Sakkath's voice started out with a commanding boom, though his expression showed a deepening modesty as he finished addressing Valor with recognition.
"There is an unused office on the 14th floor." He offered. A few other personnel came up in the turbo lift and stopped to watch Sakkath.
Valor withdrew then. He followed out in the direction of his group, smiling to the receptionist who returned one with effort and panic. The personnel continued on with a quick greeting to Sakkath, going into a room filled with data crystals kept in micro cubbies that workers, dressed identically, picked and handed out to be put into one of the several terminals in the room. Perrin watched it all for a moment. When she felt herself steady out, she thanked Sakkath.
"I must thank you; conversation was getting a little dull." She hoped to stir him away from too many questions. He quirked an eyebrow in response.
"I was merely addressing his inappropriate behavior. It did not seem that you were having a conversation, it looked more like the arguments two of the other human interns engage in when one fails to index the semantics properly." But he once again toed away from delving into anything, instead moving back from Perrin to carve out even more personal space for himself than most Vulcans. Perrin felt he probably did so from embarrassment, Sakkath's gaze followed Valor crossing to an American style dinner as he shuffled away.
Noticing a lithe looking Vulcan coming down the stairs, Perrin remembered him as one of Sarek's aides. He waved Perrin over and did not move. She thought it was strange only because Sarek and almost everyone else that knew why she was here kept close to her. He must not be aware of the situation, Perrin presumed.
Wearing dress pants and a lilac tea shirt, she didn't worry about tripping on the stairs as she went up. She was glad to live in a time where stairs were for show and most everywhere relied on turbo lifts. Stairs were reminders of spending a lot of her childhood nursing bruises from falling down them in her home. They were long, stone, and uncarpeted. Her bruises took weeks to disappear. If I just knew about cellular regenerators then, she thought.
She said goodbye to Sakkath, expecting to leave him in the lobby but was surprised to hear his very faint footsteps coming up behind her as she met with Sarek's aide. The aide seemed not to care that he was following them and led them both up two more flights to a row of especially opulent offices, each guarded, and each with double doors spanning the wall they were carved into. The one they faced was inlayed with a red stone, used to spell out a phrase in multiple languages, only one she could read: Ambassadeur Sarek.
"You know the Ambassador?" Sakkath finally stopped following as Perrin walked behind the aide into Sarek's office.
"Not really. I just—"
"Who is this?" Sarek got up from his desk and eyed Sakkath from the long distance between them. He did not want for detail even from where he stood as he noted, "You wear the pendant of a clan near that of my own." It was on Sakkath's collar.
"You honor me, Ambassador. I will not trouble you further. Live long and prosper." He saluted Sarek then Perrin, absently offering a hand to her. She was surprised but shook it.
When the office was empty and Perrin took a seat at Sarek's desk, she found it to be disappointing to look at. She tried to avoid the comparison, but she was reminded of her father's desk; it had been full of photos of her, her mother, and his parents sitting together at a café. A row of paper dolls she had made and a clay human heart from her fourth grade art class boarded the edge of the desk facing where guest would sit. Sarek's had nothing on it but a monitor and candle.
"I do not do much of my work here." Sarek said in explanation. She smiled and felt the same sensation with his words as when they came into Vulcan. Perrin was beginning to realize as the anger and pain she had felt from seeing Valor faded the more time she spent even just sitting across from her, that it was comfort. The feeling came from his eyes saying nothing beyond an idea she had that they were searching her for the right words. A diplomat's eyes; she knew them well. She looked back into them, seeing where his eyes went over her face. They stopped over hers, and then Sarek looked back at his desk. His left hand was spread out on it. After a while he slid it over to her and brought up his hand to show a small picture. Perrin snatched it up with recognition.
"Where did you get this?" she asked with shock.
"Your father's residence here on Vulcan. It seemed the least likely to be noted missing of his photos of you." Sarek replied.
She looked greedily back to the photo. Less vanity, she combed it for details. Are there creases, knobbed corners, stains, fading; she looked over it for those things. There were none. She pushed back tears. From traveling with orchestras and Darrin's quartet, she how hard it was to keep things nice. And Perrin always traveled with what meant the most to her. Her bow was a replacement, the original that went with her mother's old violin tucked in splintered pieces beneath the lining of her case.
"Is there something you want me to say, ambassador?"
"It is my observation that keeping photos of someone is a sign of favor. You should meet with your father; family is important."
"Then where are their photos?" Perrin countered. Sarek looked confused to her, gazing around the office for a moment before speaking.
"You speak of the human tendency to keep memory aides of relatives and favored associates. I know the faces of my son and my wife quite well; I have no need for such aides."
"Memory fades." The knowledge and her experiences proving it rose and saddened her. Was her father's hair red or brown; was her mother's eyes blue or hazel like the rolling hills of her home, Perrin wondered.
"Vulcan memory is far superior to human. I remember…" he looked at her "them."
There was silence for a while. It was so encompassing that she had nothing to distract her from noticing a mite of emotion from Sarek. A slight tightening of his lips that pulled them down the tiniest bit with him scrunching up, folding his hands and pulling them tightly against his stomach, as though he were cold; she felt it was the closest she would get to a blunt display of emotionalism. He seemed burdened.
"That is painful for you." She quickly regretted the remark. He shut his eyes.
"It is a fact of my existence and as such should logically bare no pain; it only is."
"But you have used an observation about my office to avoid remarking on my earlier statement about your father." He continued, driving the conversation back to Perrin. She did not try to divert it this time. She respected him too much to dig at old wounds.
"My father likes to keep things, even useless things; things he doesn't like." Perrin did not like voicing that particular fear. It came from Valor using her against her father. She thought he cared then.
"The original placement of that photo in his residence would suggest a place of honor."
"You are not human Ambassador."
"I was married to one for many years."
"That is not enough. I am human, his daughter. I avoid him to protect him." She retorted.
"You have not seen your father in many years; in the recent events of his life I have better footing."
"Ambassador, it is enough to see Valor strutting around the building wearing a title he got disgracing my father; I will not add knowing he hates me too!" she said in a rising voice. Her past came a little closer then from its hidden corner in her mind. She hid her eyes from Sarek.
He then circled the desk and stood very close to her: she could feel strains of her hair sticking to the fabric of his clothes from a slight static charge. She slowly calmed again as he stood there without words.
"You cannot allow your emotions to deny your father and yourself, Ms Perrin, the chance to speak again. Such chances are dwindling." He studied her.
"We will speak of what I intended to speak of here at my home. There Valor will not interrupt us." Perrin could have sworn it was almost an apology. Perhaps Father told him what happened, she wondered.