A/N: This is a very special chapter, the first proper entirely original chapter. This is meant to come directly after the events of the last chapter, basically the day after the final scene. This chapter is also dedicated to faithful reader/reviewer, Vulcanlover12. I certainly hope you enjoy this chapter as much as the previous ones!

-C

Entire days off as a Starfleet officer were rare, and Spock did not partake of them as frequently as others. He did not need to. Vulcans did not rest in the way humans did. Still, regulations did require a certain minimum full days off every hundred days, and Spock stuck to the regulation reluctantly.

His fingertips tested the strain of his lute strings, feeling the tension before plucking them gently. The melody was one from his childhood, so ancient the name of it had been forgotten hundreds of years ago, and the children of Vulcan had renamed it so many things that it had no official name. It was melancholy and simply, but Spock's fingers always found it naturally when he picked up his lute.

Melancholy suited him for the moment. After all, one was supposed to be melancholy and contemplative after a brush with death. If he closed his eyes, Spock could place himself perfectly back in the Galileo. The smell of smoke and sweat as the shuttlecraft began to burn up, the anger and accusation of his companions seeing to strangle him as surely as the smoke, and Vivian Buckingham's small, trembling, sweaty hands in his. They would have died. Ironically, if not for Spock's illogical decision, they would have certainly died. The Enterprise was on its way to Makus Three.

For the most part, Spock's affairs were in order. Starfleet impressed upon everyone in its employ that they could die at any time, and having their affairs in order and keeping them in order was a wise way to proceed. Spock had a comprehensive will detail all of his possessions and material worth. He had discharged nearly all the promises he had made. All except…

He had promised the Counselor to talk with her about his youth, about what it had been like to grow up as a half-Vulcan, half-human child. Making the promise seemed a distant memory, her first days on board the Enterprise so long ago now. But he had yet to keep the promise, to do his part for science, and they had both nearly died without him fulfilling his word.

As it happened, the complete surviving crew of the Galileo had been given the full day off for mourning, recuperation, or whatever it was humans needed time off for in such situations. Vivian was not even allowed to see patients, and she had protested this fiercely. Perhaps he could pay her a visit. Perhaps he could pay back on that promise he had made.

Now was as good of a time as any, and they could be productive rather than simply passing the time they were forced to take off.

Captain's Log, stardate 2825.1. We are on schedule to make our rendezvous with the USS Lexington for a transfer of personnel and cargo. From there we go to examine a freshly formed star cluster. While in transit, I have ordered Mr. Spock, Mr. Scott, Doctor McCoy, Mr. Boma, and Counselor Buckingham to take personal days following their experience on the shuttlecraft Galileo.

Vivian crept out of her quarters, PADD in hand. She'd only been able to store the reports of a day's worth of sessions, and she would have to trade them out, maybe do another set of logs after lunch, when she knew the Captain would check the Sickbay to make sure she and Bones hadn't been sneaking in. She had only just gotten to the turbolift when she ran right into Mr. Spock, who was stepping out of it.

"Counselor," he said, frowning slightly at the PADD she tried unsuccessfully to hide behind her back. "I…I was just…coming to speak with you."

"Oh?" she said, attempting to sound as casual as possible.

"Yes," he said slowly. "I wanted to…to have a talk. If you are not…otherwise engaged."

He raised his eyebrows at her and Vivian could feel her cheeks going pink as she realized that he had deduced exactly what she had been up to. She cleared her throat.

"How about you wait for me in my quarters while I just…just take care of something quickly," she said nervously. He nodded, and she thought she saw the corners of his mouth twitch as he walked past her toward her quarters. She stepped into the turbolift, gave the order, and waited.

She tried to be nonchalant when as she went down the corridor to Sickbay, nervous that the delay would get her caught. And then she bumped into Bones just outside of Sickbay.

"You scared me," she said, a hand at her throat. "Here, if you're going in, give this to Christine, will you? She'll know where it goes."

"Got it," Bones muttered. "You're not grabbing more?"

"Don't want to risk it. And Spock's waiting for me, wants to talk about something." She shrugged. "I might drop by later. How much did you get done?"

"Just a day's worth," he grumbled, taking her PADD. "Ridiculous, barring us from work for a little thing like almost dying. I feel perfectly fine."

Vivian just laughed and shook her head, hurrying back up the corridor to the turbolift, following the familiar path back to her quarters. She paused at a comm panel near her quarters and pressed the transmission button.

"Buckingham to Chapel," she said, trying to sound calm.

"Chapel here," Christine said. "All clear, all done. Enjoy some rest, Counselor."

Vivian smiled.

"Thank you, Christine. I'll try."

She turned off the panel and hurried to her quarters, entering to find Spock looking around the room from a chair with a slight frown, obviously puzzled by something. Vivian raised an eyebrow, sitting across from him.

"Is something displeasing to you?" she asked, amused.

"Not at all, Vivian," he said softly, frowning at a small, ceremonial knife she had on a table in the corner. "You have…very little here."

She smiled, sitting down, smoothing her skirt.

"I travel light, Mr. Spock," she said, picking up the knife and turning it over in her hands. The cool metal of the blade was a familiar, pleasing feeling, and she handed it to Spock who turned it over as she had done.

"Well-balanced," he said. "Ancient."

"From an archaeological dig on Alpha Eridani II," she said, recalling the bustle of Heliopolis. "Conducted before colonization. This was given, as a gift, from the archaeologists to one of my ancestors. It was passed down to my uncle, and before he died he gave it to me."

She could still recall her small hands wrapping around the hilt for the first time. The blade felt comically light now, by comparison with how heavy it had seemed when it first became hers. She had never gone anywhere without it.

Spock carefully returned the knife to her hands. She set it down on the table again, brushing a bit of hair out of her face. When she turned back to him, Spock was examining a ship model she had made with her uncle and brother, before her uncle had done away on his last mission.

"J-Class," he said. "Hand-made?"

"Yes," she said, frowning slightly. "My brother always insisted on doing them by hand. His hands were always steadier than mine."

The nod of understanding from Spock did not bother her as much as she thought it would. She was glad she had very few things in her quarters, because it was only a matter of time before they got to what he'd actually wanted to speak about. He obviously hadn't sought her out to discuss her décor.

"I find this…fascinating," he said, frowning at the last piece of any possible interest: a metal sculpture her sister has made her when she was admitted to Starfleet Academy. Eva had an incredible gift for art, and the working of metal into fantastic shapes was no small part of her talent.

"Your work?" he asked. "The welding is incredibly fine."

"My sister's," Vivian said. "She's mostly given up on her art now, but at the time she did little else."

Spock nodded, and to her surprise, he stood, crossing the room for a closer look at the sculpture.

"It has elements suggesting mortality," he said. "This technique with the broken infinity symbols, repeating and coalescing. It hasn't been used in Earth art for half a century."

Vivian clenched her hands slightly and sighed.

"My sister is obsessed with death," she admitted. Spock turned to her with mild interest in his expression. "Or…she was. Maybe she still is. She made it when she learned I was applying for the Academy, and everyone in my family was convinced I would die if I left." A small smile twitched at the corners of her mouth, and the smile felt like a lie. Vivian took a deep breath and continued, "I think she wanted to remind me of impermanence."

Eva had certainly done a good job. Vivian could not look at the sculpture without thinking of her uncle, of her own mortality, of every time she had almost died, and what they would say to her parents when Startfleet finally had to return her possessions. It had almost happened this time. Captain Kirk had nearly had to give an order to collect the things in her quarters and ship them to Alpha Eridani II.

"Death is explored in the art of different races very differently," Spock said, crossing back to his chair and sitting down, eyes still on the sculpture. "The Klingons embrace an honorable death, in battle. The body to them is simply an empty shell."

Empty, meaningless shell, and yet for some reason, while it had life, it had so much meaning. Vivian had long wondered about Klingon beliefs on life, but as they had never managed to get along with the Klingons, little was known about how they lived. Rumors, of course, but rumors hardly ever did justice to a people.

"The ancients of Alpha Eridani II," Vivian said, "seemed to believe something similar about the body. The significance of a person vacated the body on death, and was placed in a clay jar. The archaeologists believe that significance was thought to be contained in the brain stem and the kidney, of all things. The automatic and the controlled."

Spock told her of a few races he had come in contact with, and how various the different views of life and death were. It was interesting, hearing about people she may never meet, learning some of the most intimate believes of their race. Much could be discerned about a race based on how they viewed life and death.

"What do you think?" Spock asked.

Vivian blinked, frowning slightly. She brushed hair out of her eyes and said, "You know, I think the natives of Alpha Eridani had something right. Perhaps not the kidney, but… I think the essence of what someone is, wherever it might be contained in their body, is in the choices they make. It's not how the body functions or what the body looks like, but what they choose to do and make with the gifts they are born with. And whatever happens to the rest of that person, when they die, the sum of those choices has to continue."

Spock frowned and said, "In what way?"

She laughed.

"I have no idea. But…but life is a measurable phenomenon of impulses and electrical signals rushing around a sack of cells. That's how life is defined." Vivian shrugged. "The very fact that we don't like to think of it that way, that we search for some more poetic meaning suggests that there must be something more, some further existence awaiting after the sack of cells no longer functions."

Spock glanced at the sculpture again and said, "Yes, something. Perhaps another plane of existence. I believe you are right, that striving to understand beyond what we can physically measure is perhaps a sign of instinctive knowledge that there is more. It comes dangerously close to superstition, but-"

"No," Vivian said abruptly, surprised at her own boldness. "No, superstition is systematic, specific belief in something particular that cannot be proven or disproven to explain that which is not understood otherwise. Simply stating that evidence suggests there is something more is not superstition. It is…practical."

"Because we know so little?" Spock asked, raising an eyebrow.

"Precisely."

The more they discussed, the more they realized that in spite of being raised in different places, in different societies, under entirely different teachings, Vivian and Spock had strikingly similar beliefs on a number of critical issues. The importance they placed on duty, on loyalty to a superior officer, was substantial. Their views on placing society before the family structure, while Vivian knew they were controversial views in human life, even today, were firm views. Vivian suspected that Spock's preference toward the good of society over family as a logical calculation, a staple of Vulcan belief in serving the good of everyone over self. Her own was simply a lack of extreme sentimentality.

"But you are an emotional being, as a human," Spock said after almost an hour of discussion. "I know you are sometimes moved by violent emotional and irrational reaction, like your fear."

Vivian dug her thumbnails into her palms hard.

Spock had seen her fear like no one but her psychological evaluator at the Academy. Twice now he had seen her come close to giving in to that fear entirely, and in the Galileo she had very nearly broken down at the end.

"I have human responses," Vivian reasoned. "But you also know that I have done much to school those responses. I meditate. I have learned physical and psychological methods for calming and clarity. They actually teach us quite a few methods in the Medical Academy." She grinned. "You'd never know it from Bones, but every single person had a class on crisis training that spent half the time on self-control. After all, if a patient is in crisis their doctor or counselor needs to be able to be as calm as humanly possible."

"But there is the issue," Spock said, nodding. "Humanly. You are, as you said, limited by human physiology. However, I do see your point. The application of your crisis techniques to all points in life is a very practical method. It is in this way, in fact, that Vulcans first began controlling their emotions. Someday, humans may yet learn to master theirs."

Captain's Log, supplemental. The Counselor's files appear to have been used so far today, but Nurse Chapel insists she hasn't seen either McCoy or Buckingham, as ordered. I have ordered a few crewmembers to check periodically on Sick Bay, just to be certain they're following orders.

Spock knew that he would have to bring the conversation closer to his purpose, in spite of the enjoyable pace of their conversation. Vivian's mind was more interesting than he had anticipated, even with reading her work. He would have to isolate her during meals, or discuss philosophy with her on the phaser training range.

Now, though, he needed to direct the conversation more.

"You have a brother and a sister," he said, glancing at the sculpture once more. Something about it, about the way it gleamed in the corner of the Spartan living space, continually drew his eye. "Is that all?"

"Yes," Vivian said, stretching out her legs slightly, crossing them again. "Eva and Dagan, both younger."

"Are they in Starfleet as well?" Spock asked.

"Dagan," Vivian sighed, "went to the Heliopolis Medical Academy, and he's at the Proxima Colony Hospital."

"A Counselor?"

"A Doctor," she said, smiling. "He specializes in neuro-disorders, though, and has a degree in psychiatry. Eva attended Starfleet, graduated, and spent a very short time as an Ensign before resigning her commission and taking a post in Exobiology at the Alpha III Science Academy."

Her parents were alone on Alpha Eridani II, then. He knew from her service record that her father was a professor of Psychology at the Heliopolis Medical Academy, where he had done his schooling, and his wife was a retired professor of Exobiology, at the same academy, where she also completed her schooling. Medicine, it seemed, was in the family.

Bryon Buckingham, her famous uncle, had been a scientist, but he had achieved honors in Exobiology and Chemistry at Starfleet Academy, so he was not fully separated from the world of medicine either.

"I suspect that you resemble your father," Spock said. "He is the psychologist, is he not?"

"Yes," Vivian said, giving him a puzzled look. "And my mother was a doctor." Suddenly, she smiled to herself and said, "I learned diagnosing from an early age. My siblings and I went around diagnosing our friends and acquaintances, until our parents told us that it wasn't exactly polite. So we did it when we were at home. You can find a mental disease for anyone if you look hard enough. You see disorders everywhere."

Spock had heard of such trends with people who had studied psychology and psychiatry, and Vivian had been immersed in such thinking virtually from birth. He was actually surprised to find that she was so levelheaded about her work, considering.

"And your uncle?"

She sucked in a deep breath, frowning once more, glancing over at the model ship.

"Uncle Bryon was a brilliant man," she said. The words sounded as though she had said them hundreds of times, to people who were interested in her uncle. It seemed that everyone in Starfleet was interested in her uncle. Spock wondered what it would have been like to meet the man. Was he really as great as his legacy suggested, or was he simply a man who died heroically and found himself remembered for greatness beyond his reality?

"Indeed," he said.

The word startled her out a reverie and she smiled, almost bitterly, and said, "Forgive me. Everyone wants to reminisce about my uncle. My siblings hardly remember him anymore. Sometimes…sometimes I forget his face. But he was a great man. At least…he was great in all the ways that matter to a twelve-year-old child." She sighed. "I seriously doubt that he would have made Captain, but…he always came home with stories of his adventures, of what it was like to be out among the stars, meeting new species and being the first humans to set foot on some distant planet. I envied him, right until the day he died."

"Yet you followed in his footsteps," Spock said, hoping they were getting close to the answers he was so curious about. "You could have worked at a Starbase or even on Earth easily with your credentials. There was no reason to risk your life."

"Living is a risk," Vivian said, her lips twitching with amusement. "I won't pretend I'm not afraid of dying, Spock, not with you. But I needed to see the stars, the planets, the other species. It would be hard to specialize in interspecies marriage if I never left Earth. Mankind doesn't become great by staying behind the safety glass. We become our best selves when we confront our fears, even when we are literally quaking in our boots."

Humans were strange in this assumption, but he did know from experience that humans often did behave at their best or worst when they were pushed by extremes. Fear was, perhaps, such an extreme.

"You joined the Academy on your uncle's example, then?" he asked.

"Of course," she said, gazing over at the ship again. "I joined the Academy at sixteen, worked so hard to keep on top of all my studies. There was a girl in my year, Petal, she nearly beat my out for the top of the year in psychology, and everything else she studied she topped. I think she still hasn't forgiven me for beating her out." She frowned thoughtfully and said, "She's a Counselor too, on the USS Truman the last I heard. But I think she was looking for a more stable position."

Spock watched her reminisce for a long moment before saying, "She was a friend of yours?"

"More or less," Vivian said wryly. "Not one of my closest friends. Vaughan and Kara-May, maybe Kristen were closer."

Spock quirked an eyebrow.

"Ah," she said, tracing her fingers on the arm of her chair. "Vaughan Chidlow was the top student in our year, a genius in Probability Mechanics. And I just barely outdid him in Tactical and Strategic Ops. You may have run into him. He's a Tactical Officer and Science Officer on the Lexington."

The name was familiar, but Spock had never met Chidlow. Vivian told him about Vaughan, what a good friend he was, how brilliant he was, and how he would almost certainly be the first in her year to make Captain. Spock had a strange, constricted feeling in his chest the longer she spoke about Vaughan, so he was slightly relieved when she began to tell him about her friend, Kara-May Thornley.

"Old Starfleet family," Vivian said. "She was a brilliant chemist, and she rivaled Vaughan at certain principles of Probability Mechanics. I honestly haven't kept track of her since I went to the Medical Academy. But she and Kristen and I did everything together. Kristen, Kristen Marley, she was at the Potemkin the last I heard…" Vivian laughed. "She has this squeaky voice, and she's very…staccato. And she moves so silently, she used to sneak up on professors she didn't like and terrify them by simply greeting them from behind. And Pennie, she would always tell us how cruel it was, but at seventeen it just seemed amusing, harmless." She snorted. "Until our Tactical trainer had a nervous breakdown."

Spock raised his eyebrows.

"Pennie?"

"Pennie Berger," Vivian said, her smile brighter than he had ever seen it. "She's Counselor over at the Entente. She wasn't the best at anything she did, but she was so thorough, so dedicated. It would be hard to ask for a better psychiatrist. She was always willing to give people the benefit of the doubt. And she has this beautiful, curly red hair. I always wanted to have her hair, just for a day."

Spock suspected that Vivian would look a bit absurd with curly red hair, and he thought that her honey-blonde hair rather suited her, but he knew that humans frequently wanted what they did not have.

He cleared his throat slightly and said, "The Excalibur was your first assignment, was it not?"

"Yes, straight out of Medical," she said, wistfully. "Captain Harris and I didn't see eye to eye at first, but several missions and one crewman with a terrible case of space sickness later and we became incredibly close. He was disappointed when I was transferred, you know."

Spock could understand. She had already proven a very valuable resource on the Enterprise, and having such a high level of tactical and strategic skill on top of her abilities as a highly competent counselor made her a valuable resource on any starship.

"It was different on the Excalibur," she said thoughtfully. "People were more…formal. Apart from Captain Harris, I can't say that I made much in the way of friends. It was work, but it didn't ever feel like home, not like the Enterprise does. I've felt more at home here than I did in my years onboard the Excalibur."

While Spock did not think he would ever put it in quite those terms, as Vulcan would always be his home, he understood the sentiment of belonging that she was expressing. It was a comfort and familiarity with people and place, a sense of purpose and support in one package. So he simply nodded to show he understood what she was attempting to convey.

Captain's Log, supplemental. Transfer with the USS Lexington proceeded as planned, with the minor setback of a crewmember refusing to use the transporter. A shuttlecraft was used to transport this crewmember, and so we are leaving the rendezvous point slightly behind schedule, but we should be able to make it to the star cluster as planned by travelling at warp three.

Vivian could hardly believe her good fortune as she readied her notes to begin to document the long-awaited story: the history of Spock's parents and his own childhood. He had promised so long ago that she had expected to have to pry the information from him somehow with a great deal of effort. Yet here they were, him approaching her, sitting in her quarters, ready to delve into the whole affair.

"Where would you like to start?" Spock asked, watching her flick away pencil shavings before pressing the graphite tip to paper.

"The beginning is usually a good place," she said, smiling. "Tell me about your parents, who they are, how they met."

Spock began with his father, easily the older of the two. He explained that his father, Sarek son of Skon (from a long line of ambassadors and diplomats, so famous that she actually knew the names) paid a visit to earth years ago.

"Amanda Grayson," he said in his smooth, deep, level voice, "was a schoolteacher, not yet thirty years old when they met. She was young, vibrant, and eager to seek out new ideas and philosophies."

"And she was taken with Vulcan beliefs," Vivian said, understanding. She could easily see how Vulcan lifestyle and philosophy would be attractive to a human, even if her companions on the Enterprise didn't all see it. A place where no one lied, where everything was stated as a fact rather than a speculation, where you always knew where you stood with others…. And peace.

"Yes, she did," Spock said. "That, and I believe she found my father in particular to be…fascinating. I do not know what he thought of her; he has never discussed their courtship with me. But I do know that by the time she moved to Vulcan more than thirty years ago, she was very much in love with my father."

Vivian nodded, scribbling all this information down in shorthand. She didn't want to miss anything, particularly dates and places, which could give her a key to where to find records if she ever did have the green light to publish any of this material.

"Vulcans, they have emotions like humans, don't they?" she asked. "At least, that was the understanding I had from study I did in the Medical Academy. Vulcans have emotions, but they have learned to control and repress them."

Spock nodded and said, "That is partially true. Vulcans do have emotions that are controlled, contained if you will. But they are not like human emotions. From all the studies I have seen on the subject, Vulcan feelings are violent, far stronger than their human counterparts."

If this was the case, Vivian understood how the race had come to decide that logic was a preferable alternative to emotion.

"Then it is possible that your father loved your mother as well."

With some hesitation, Spock said, "Yes, it is a possibility. However, there is no way to say that it is true. I do know that he has a great deal of respect and esteem for her."

Vivian asked what their life was like on Vulcan, as a married couple. Spock explained how Amanda Grayson was treated in her new life. While she would never be a fully integrated member of Vulcan society, because of the importance of her husband she was treated with great respect. She was referred to on Vulcan as the Lady Amanda, and she had continued her life as a schoolteacher at her home, although on a more limited capacity.

"I do not think," Spock said, "that she has ever regretted her decision. She considers herself to be very lucky, and I have no doubt that if she were asked to make the choice all over again that she would."

"Is she fully assimilated into Vulcan culture, or does she retain human habits or behaviors?" Vivian asked.

Spock said softly, "She carries through with all Vulcan belief systems and behaviors, but she does often tend to the illogical. I do not believe she can help herself, nor do I believe that she always wants to help herself. She has been known, at times, to have emotional outbursts. It is only human of her, perhaps."

Vivian suspected that this may have been a source of…embarrassment for him, growing up, but if she was right he certainly gave no indication of this in his face or tone of voice.

"And they had you," Vivian prompted. "I imagine your childhood was a very…particular one."

Spock picked up on the hint. He told her of his older half-brother, Sybok, who was one of the most brilliant and promising minds Vulcan had seen for some time.

"I don't know the name," she said, frowning. "What happened to him?"

Vivian envisioned some sort of accident or illness to bring on an untimely death, but when Spock explained in the most vague possible terms that his brother had turned his back on Vulcan discipline for emotion and some sort hyper-spiritual quest, Vivian decided it was better not to pry into that. While fascinating, it had little to do with Spock's childhood experience, which was the subject of her interest, after all.

"Did you feel," Vivian asked, "that you were forced to choose between cultural identities, or that you had access to both?"

Spock was silent for a long moment, staring at the sculpture in the corner. Finally, he said, "While I did feel the need to choose, I do not think that a choice of any real equality was ever presented to me. While my mother gave me lessons on Earth and humanity, I had never experienced either outside of her."

Vivian knew that the experience of the mother was often enough to shape children their whole lives, but she said nothing as he continued.

"My surroundings also never gave me much option for being either hybrid or human. I had to be Vulcan, as Vulcan as possible. You see, Counselor, there are many things a Vulcan can do as a child to prove value and worth, both on an academic level and a physical one. Vulcan martial arts as a way of focusing the mind are a sophisticated practice begun in childhood. You have seen the neck pinch." Vivian nodded. "It is one of hundreds of moves. While I was always near the top of my class in academic pursuits, I fell behind in physical pursuits, and as a child I had emotional outbursts I found it difficult to control."

As Spock described the bullying and teasing of his peers, Vivian tried not to react. He would not appreciate pity, and sympathy hardly seemed applicable. Vivian had never been bullied.

After he seemed to run out of tales Vivian whispered, "I would have imagined that Vulcan children would not partake of such…barbarous behavior."

"Children are children on any world," Spock said softly. "And the cruelty of children is nothing to that of adults."

She did not have to ask. Children learned their prejudices from adults, and while Vulcan adults would not taunt or tease a child, things a Vulcan adult might say as a fact – and probably believe as a fact – could be devastating to a child like Spock, already seen as something different and lesser. Vivian had not seen this sort of prejudice in her own childhood, but it was common to the subjects she had studied for her research.

"Let's do a quick exercise," Vivian said, stretching her fingers, which were beginning to cramp around her pencil. "Obviously, I didn't grow up on Earth, but we've both spent a fair amount of time there, particularly in the Academy. Let's think about what your childhood might have looked like if you had been raised on earth instead of Vulcan."

Spock quirked an eyebrow and said, "An interesting consideration. My father, of course, would have been the stranger on Earth, the conspicuous person."

"In many ways," Vivian said, "he would have been more acceptable on Earth than your mother on Vulcan. After all, the Vulcan obsession with logic, while alien to human culture, isn't typically offensive."

"I agree," Spock said. "Emotion would have been encouraged by my surroundings. In the same way that my surroundings precluded my choice to live as a Vulcan, being raised on Earth may have made up my mind in the other direction, and I might have chosen feeling over logic."

"Somehow," Vivian said with a small, wry grin, "I can't quite picture that. Perhaps you would have been especially logical for a human, but you may have valued certain emotional things more highly than you do now…like…" She struggled to think of an example and felt slightly ashamed, knowing that Doctor McCoy would have come up with dozens on the spot.

"Intuition, perhaps," Spock said levelly. "Yes, I do suppose that is a fair point. And perhaps I would have been more suited to command as someone raised among humans."

Vivian paused in her quick scribbling to look up at Spock, who was watching her write with a chillingly level expression. How could he be so calm after the horrible experience they had all had in the Galileo?

But then, he didn't feel horror.

"So your life would have been different had you been raised on Earth," she said. "I think we can both agree on that. Would you give credit to the suggestion that it might have been easier?"

Spock's eyes narrowed slightly as he gazed at the sculpture in thought, perhaps imagining that life, that childhood, where he would be today had his parents chosen that path instead of moving to Vulcan. Obviously it was silly to indulge in, in a way, but she was curious for her work, how it might have been different for him had he been raised in a different environment.

"In a way," he said slowly, "I do believe it would have been easier. Dependent on where I had been raised, naturally. There are still many places on Earth or inhabited by humans with their share of prejudice, but there are certainly places progressive enough where it would have been much easier." Vivian nodded and wrote this down.

"However," he continued, "I do not think I would have preferred it."

She looked up at him, mildly surprised, and asked why he felt that way.

Spock continued in that same slow, measured voice, "Had I been raised on Earth, I would live not with human emotions, but Vulcan emotions. To be at the control of those passions would be a struggle all its own, and without the tempering of a Vulcan upbringing, I do not believe I would have emerged successfully from adolescence as I did from the upbringing I have."

Vivian had so many things she wanted to ask, but she felt they would be too personal, too prying, and not strictly scientific enough to justify. So she nodded, asking if he had any particular stories from his interactions with his parents to add to the record for fleshing out the ideas they had covered. After a long wait, Spock began to tell her about dinnertime discussions from his youth.

Captain's Log, supplemental. Counselor Buckingham, at the least, seems to be obeying my order not to work today. Doctor McCoy was caught smuggling his log entries in and out of Sick Bay. I had half a mind to put him in the Brig to rest, but he assured me it would not be necessary. We will be arriving at the star cluster early, just before the night shift begins.

Spock had not given much thought to passage of time as they spoke, but he was reminded of just how long they had been talking when Vivian's stomach made a loud gurgling sound that was a sign of human hunger. Many humans, especially females, that Spock had met were embarrassed by such sounds, so he did not change his expression or mention the sound, but he was surprised when she began to laugh.

"I suppose it's dinnertime, isn't it?" she said, her lips twitching into a smile. "Would you mind if I had food brought here while we talk?"

He did not mind, so she called Yeoman Barrows to bring them food from their individual diet cards. Barrows arrived with a tray not too long after, carrying a Vulcan soup and water for Spock, and some sort of salad and water for the Counselor.

"Thank you," Vivian said, taking the tray from the Yeoman, bringing it to a table, where Spock joined her. "There you go, Mr. Spock. I'm not sure what it is, but it smells delicious."

"Have you had Vulcan food before, Counselor?" he asked.

"I confess, I haven't," she said, smiling. "There were no Vulcans on my previous ship and Alpha Eridani II didn't have many opportunities to sample it. I will have to try some."

"I will make some recommendations too your diet cards," he said, watching her carefully arrange the ingredients in her salad so that they were more evenly dispersed than the replicator had placed them. "I have not seen that particular salad."

"I created the diet card myself," Vivian said, smiling. "My mother's recipe. It's a variation on the Earth classic, Cobb salad. But these greens are native to Alpha Eridani II, a sampling of the local produce. The eggs are Earth chicken eggs, though. Nothing native to my home colony has eggs that taste anywhere near edible to the human palate, so we've been importing chickens and chicken eggs since the beginning of the colony."

Spock watched as she loaded each forkful with just the same amount of greens and toppings, so that every bite was exactly the same. He was interested in this, as it was similar to his own method of eating soup, carefully gathering even spoonfuls of roughly equal proportions. Soup was more difficult to eat with such exactitude, but he had the impression that if Vivian were eating soup instead of salad, she would find a way.

Her method of eating suited her, he decided. The mouthfuls were slightly larger than most humans he knew would typically consider polite, but not so large that she struggled to eat gracefully. She paused after every swallow for a drink of water and spent a considerable amount of time chewing, which he had found was fairly typical of those raised in medical families or studying in medical fields.

And while the thought struck him as an odd one, he found that he rather enjoyed watching her eat.

Not knowing quite what to do with this thought, Spock pushed it aside and instead ran through their conversation with mild curiosity. Vivian seemed to think that there was something valuable to be gained by living as a human, something she seemed to delight in human relationships and interactions. Had his parents been human, perhaps he could have understood such things, but he did not see any special importance in the fact that his father may or may not love his mother. Vivian seemed to think it so important, though, to discern that it was at least a possibility.

When they were down to only their water, Spock found he still could not puzzle out the mystery of human relationships, and fascinating as they were, he would need the point of view of a human.

"Counselor," he said, "I have been contemplating the fascinating interactions of humans." She smiled slightly, nodding him on. "I do not believe that I understand human attraction."

To his surprise, she laughed out loud, setting down her water, which she had nearly spilled on herself.

"I'm sorry," she said quickly, brown eyes sparkling, "but it's just that you only are talking about the most difficult things in humanity to explain, except perhaps death and the meaning of life."

Spock had not thought that he had asked her anything so complicated, but then, humans were more complicated creatures than he had expected as a child. Living among them had shown nuances he could not have anticipated with only his mother as a human contact.

"Well," she said, sighing and cocking her head slightly, "I suppose that human relationships tend to have a few different components. Nearly all human relationships involve people who have things in common, even if they are as simple as living in the same neighborhood or working in the same office. Some sort of basic commonalities. Beyond that, relationships grow on trust, respect, and liking the person." She paused when he raised his eyebrows. "Wanting to be around each other," she corrected, obviously trying to make her explanations as clinical as possible for his benefit. "Humans have all sorts of emotions that can make this a matter of the unexplainable, of intuition. Emotional closeness, which can result from all sorts of things, or nothing at all."

"And attraction?"

Spock found himself leaning forward as she continued, "Yes, well, that is similar. Often there are similar components such as things in common, familiarity, and liking to be around each other, but the sensation of attraction is a difficult one to explain." She paused, and Spock thought he saw her skin flush slightly. "The body has chemical changes, of course, but you know about those. What causes those changes is a bit of a mystery. I don't know that I believe in the theories of true love, but there are many who would champion that there is someone for everyone." She smirked. "The notion is an old-fashioned one, and with all the humans spreading out into the galaxy and all we've discovered it seems a bit…crazy to me." She picked up her water again. "Well, your parents are proof enough of that."

Spock nodded, not entirely sure that he understood these things any better. But his mind was drawn to strange emotional stirrings he sometimes had around the Counselor, things he could not explain that seemed to have no particular reason.

A strange notion crossed his mind that perhaps these stirrings, that he had felt even a few times that day, might possibly be something like human attraction.

He quickly suppressed and pushed aside the idea.

As they had spent the whole day exchanging information, sharing the same sort of information from their own backgrounds, he did have a brief thought to explain pon farr to Vivian. After all, it was a very important part of understanding the Vulcan mind, and Vulcan relations. However, in light of his emotional moments, these stirrings he could not explain, he decided better of it. To share something so private with her would be illogical, and possibly counterproductive to his efforts to quell these strange emotional stirrings.

"No doubt you would like to enjoy some of your time off in peace," Spock said standing, "before we begin our survey in the morning. I will leave you now."

"You don't have to go," Vivian said, standing as well, but he shook his head, cutting her off.

"I have stayed most of the day," he said. "You will need rest. Sleep well, Counselor."

"Good night," she whispered as he left.

Spock walked back to his own quarters in full confidence that he had kept his promise to Vivian to discuss his childhood, thereby satisfying them both. Perhaps the next time he had time off, he would be able to concentrate his mind on his music.