Holography 2

By

Pat Foley

Chapter 21

The next morning, Amanda woke slowly, aware that something was not as usual. Sarek was not beside her in bed. She sat up, blinking, as he came through the door, carrying the clothes she had banished six months ago. She watched as he hung them in the closet, picked up a folder and came over to her. Sitting down beside her on the edge of the bed, he wordlessly put in her hands, one by one, the legal documents which showed her reinstated on their financial records, the computer printouts showing her reauthorized access to the house security programs, the comm. channels, the computer nets, the sub space links. Her Federation passport, her credit authorizations, her teaching credentials at the Academy, the combination code to her aircar…

As wordlessly, she took each document from him, feeling a little dizzy as one by one they - and he - redefined her life. Her home was no longer a prison. She could walk out the gate, go to lunch with a friend, converse with a colleague, teach in front of a class. She could get into her aircar, fly to the spaceport at Shikahr, buy a ticket and walk on to a starship shuttle with her Federation passport in her hand. Free.

No. With all this, that was still not a freedom she could choose. There was a still a tie, past all documents, that bound her.

"Amanda." Sarek had picked up the frame from her bedtable, and sat beside her, his voice muted. "Do you want your wedding present back?"

"What?" She blinked, looking up from the dozens of talismans of freedom filling her arms.

"Your wedding present," Sarek asked patiently. "Do you want it back into a new account? I did not transfer it, because it is best done by you, since you would have to …to… choose a new code and password… of course…for it to be… truly …effective." He said the last with the barest trace of reluctance.

She closed her eyes, and shook her head, not trusting herself to speak..

"Very well, my wife." He turned the frame over in his hands and then handed it to her. "I believe that is all of it."

She looked at it, the page of notes in her handwriting, written a long, horrible six months ago. She swallowed hard.

"Are you sure?"

Sarek looked at her. "I have you, my wife. I have a part of you more closely than I have ever had before. And for a time, it was enough."

"But no longer?"

Sarek shook his head. "I am losing you. Every day, every smile, every gesture is taking you further away from me, somewhere where I can not reach. Your mind is within mine, your person is confined to this place, your body yields to me." His eyes searched hers. "And yet you leave me a little more every day."

She looked down at her hands unable to meet that gaze. "I am not uncontent." She looked up at him almost defiantly. "I have done the best I could, Sarek."

"You have done, magnificently. But I am well now. And you are not happy."

She looked away quickly, as if he had struck her. "Does it matter? It's just a human emotion. And this is your life."

"You have given that back to me, and now I must give back yours. If I were human, I would have you happy and gone." Sarek admitted. "Rather than subject you further. I am not human. But do you think any of this," he waved a hand at the flotsam and jetsam in her lap. "Matters to me in the face of what is happening to you? This is killing you."

"No." But her voice was breathless.

He shook his head. "You do not see yourself. I see it. T'Pau sees it." He hesitated. "It is killing me as well. I cannot bear to see you thus."

She looked at him, a quick evaluative look. "I'm sorry I disappoint you."

"You do not disappoint me."

She shook her head at the sadness of his tone. "If I could help how I feel, I would."

"Amanda," he took her hand in his. "Can you not be happy again, and yet stay? Can we not, somehow…go back?"

She was silent, still, for so long, she frightened him. "Amanda?"

She looked at him. "Would you think me a coward for being scared?"

He breathed out a little. Grateful if it was only that. "No. I gave you more than sufficient reason."

"That's not true. I don't blame you for your biology. That would be rather foolish of me, after having married a Vulcan, wouldn't it?" She looked up at him, and he was grateful, again, that she could. And would. He had seen very little of her lately. "You've always been very kind, when you could be."

Sarek turned his face away. "I have tried. But I have also been tempted. And succumbed. Do you remember the night I caught you reading?"

"Yes."

"You were frightened then, my wife. I had not intended to frighten you. I woke and you were gone, and I …panicked… and spoke harshly. I could see your heart beating through your ribs, your pulse in your temple. And in the anger of my fear, part of me considered how much I had already taken away from you, and how much more I could, piece by piece. For a moment, I enjoyed that thought. Your fear. And there was part of me that relished the prospect for the future."

"That was not you," She said it dismissively.

"Yes. It was. There is that in me which would savor it… even now. But there is a greater part that wants much more. And I cannot have both." He covered her hand with both of his. "I am sorry that this, that I, frighten you Amanda."

"I am sure that I have frightened you at times, without meaning to."

"You terrify me. No more so than now."

She looked down at the papers in her lap. "How long would your control last, under those conditions? If that's true, I shouldn't take mine back." She looked up. "Sarek, I won't say this experience hasn't been …difficult for me. It was…very hard. But it isn't… as difficult…for me …as for you. At least, I have no biological imperatives in that regard."

"No. For you they are of the spirit."

"I gave this decision to you, Sarek. I will not make it for you. If you are not ready, then I can't."

"I am ready."

She looked at him, evaluating him as she had not in months, doubt in her eyes. Then her gaze lowered. "I'm not sure."

"I am. Amanda. Please." He shook his head, staring at her, appalled that she even hesitated.

She looked up at him. "You don't understand. All this time, I've been teaching myself not to want …anything. I knew it could be for life. I had to accept that. I taught myself, not to think, not to feel-"

"Do you think I did not see that? At first, it was what I needed. For a short time it became something I even wanted. But then.. then it became something I could not bear. Even as you showed you could, day by day, I found it more intolerable."

Amanda closed her eyes. "There's a part of me that…dared…dream of this. But its something I've buried down very deep."

"Are you saying you can't…want this…now?"

She looked at him. "Sarek, I taught myself even not to hope. Even today. Especially today. T'Pau asked me yesterday what you would do and I almost threw her out forever. I've built up a fortress against my own feelings. It's not like I have a lock, a key that will open it as easily as your computers can bar or release the gates against me. You spent some time in teaching me that role. Painstakingly, as we both recall. I spent as much time learning it, with every breath, every movement… and hardest of all, every thought. You demanded that of me. You needed it for your survival. And so I needed it for mine. That's a part of me now."

Sarek was silent a moment. "You have said humans are most adaptable."

She sighed. "I didn't say that part of me is gone entirely. But it will take me time to… reconnect… with it. And you would have to help me unlearn …what I have learned. I can't just… get out of bed this morning and go back six months to what I once was."

"I understand."

"Do you really? You would need to be patient with me. I've learned…not to challenge you. How dangerous it is, not just for me, but for you. It's your life, Sarek. You have to be concerned. And I'm still not sure if all of this means that you want that part of me back. I'm not sure you're asked yourself that question either. And it's an important one, one we have to talk about."

Sarek was quiet for a moment. "You are asking me if the syndrome can …will…return."

She hadn't thought through the conclusion to her question, past the immediate issues spread across her lap, but she realized now that was what she had been asking. "I suppose I am."

Sarek considered it reluctantly, like looking on a future death. "It… is… possible. I have proven to be susceptible to it, and it is in my family line." He turned his gaze to her, considering. "I believe it is unlikely, given what we both have learned in the last few months."

"What we have learned… Meaning that you don't want that part of me back that might trigger it."

"I want all of you back, Amanda. Whatever that engenders."

"And what if it lands me right back here?" She raised her hands as if to emphasize her state.

He took them in his. "You have proven you can survive it. If it is necessary, you would again."

She gasped sharply, drawing back, her eyes wide. "Sarek you don't know what you are asking of me."

"Yes, Amanda. I do."

She stared into his eyes, shocked at his conviction. She trembled even at the possibility. "What do you think I am?"

"You are most honorable woman in the universe to me. My T'Ianye."

She looked down, embarrassed and moved. And still unsure. "I'm not a Vulcan legend. That's an awful specter to hang over me. It would be very hard for me to bear it."

"It hangs over us. I know you have suffered. But I have suffered with you, whether you believe it or not. I would not willingly embrace that again, for either of us. I do not think it will happen. Or if it should, I would understand it, and know how to deal with it, hopefully without such drastic measures. I will be on guard for such." He took her hands again. "Just ….try, Amanda. Please?"

She stared at her hands, forcing herself to consider choices. She was out of practice. The last six months she had given up much, including, once she had made the final decision to accept, no to fully embrace chattel status, the responsibility of further choice. An odd freedom, freedom from choice, but one of the few she had had. In a way, she had almost cherished it. When she felt she could not bear one more day of captivity, when her acceptance had worn thin, worn out, she had hugged her lack of choice to her like a security blanket. It was a major factor in her adopted serenity. The thought of choice was …frightening. Now she turned her mind to the necessity of choices again, wondering why they were always so hard, and so flawed.

For even as resigned as she had become, she shivered at the thought of remaining as she was. But she also was …if she admitted it honestly…not sure she could just … return… to the person that she had been. It had been a wrench to relinquish that person. But now she wasn't at all confident she could just walk back into that life. She had changed. Grown in many ways, in spite of her curtailed existence. Shrunk in others.

A part of her realized she was not merely frightened of choice, she was frightened of freedom itself.

There had been some terrible times during the horrible waking nightmare of her confinement - ones that she had refused to admit even to herself in fear that such recognition would drive her mad. She thought of the times she had been drawn to Sarek's favorite meditation point, not to meditate, but simply to ponder the ultimate escape it offered - a step too far, and a drop to the desert hundreds of feet below would offer freedom of a sort. She did not think she had been seriously tempted, but the intellectual awareness was always there – if the confinement grew past her ability to bear. And there were myriad other escapes that Sarek had not thought of, that lay around the house in sharp edges and cunning loops. Even from the depths of her serenity she had sometimes eyed those too, seeing forms of escape everywhere, even within the locked tight doors of her house now prison. Perhaps the very fact of being locked up in one way had highlighted for her those other…escapes. Humans were infinitely adaptable, and ingenious. She had thought Vulcans must be very different, that chattels never took advantage of them. Because, as well as Sarek had trapped the house, if he knew how she considered them, he would have addressed those.

She was not the victim type. Suicide had never been a serious temptation and knowing it would most surely also cause her husband's death had made it even more undesirable. But during the worst of those times, she had hugged her freedom from choice to her. It had saved her from that too. She had found her escape in other ways, in submission, in acceptance, in what she had chosen, freely, and now must endure in captivity. But she had been enough aware of those escapes that until she had mastered submission she felt a terrible temptation. And with choice returned, that horror whispered with her first glimpse of freedom that she should break and run, snatching for what might be her sole chance.

Board a starship, head out for Earth, and live the rest of her life in circumstances less fraught with pain and conflict.

Free.

Telling herself that if Sarek could let her go, he must surely be able to live without her. Was perhaps letting her go for that reason.

Licking the wounds the last year had brought her and finding out who she was apart from this bonding that seemed to claim so much of her, and so often leave her less of herself.

And yet, she could not deny, sometimes more.

As Sarek watched, she put her face in her hands, torn in two, in three, again with the weight of these choices.

And yet… she had said yes, years ago. Said it with the understanding that it could not be unsaid. After all this, she believed, now more than ever, in the terrible strength of bonding, and how much he needed her. And she had done it for Sarek, but she was no more a saint than her husband. She had done it for herself too. She had loved him. She loved him still. Long ago, she had chosen her path, and she seemed only able to hurry along it, sometimes looking back, sometimes peering forward, often worried about whether she was on the right one, but well, there she was.

It seemed even with choices, one really had only the illusion of choice.

I cannot get out, the starling said. And yet, if it had, the door opened, would it fly free for a moment, and then return? Would she? Were choices, once made, truly irrevocable? Or could it be better said that consequences were? Well, she had paid dearly for her choices, and the consequences for her and Sarek had nearly broken them both. But she was alive, and Sarek was alive. And she had freedom…of a sort…in her grasp. If she was willing to risk it. To choose it.

She looked at Sarek, who was watching her, doubt and hope combined in his eyes. "Once done, this can't be easily undone. I am not that flexible to be reconfined in a week if you are not sure. I couldn't bear it. So I must ask you a last time."

"I am well, my wife."

Still, she seemed doubtful. "You're not going to well…lose it… the first time I give you a hard time about something?"

He would have smiled at the characteristic phrasing of her question, if the question itself had not been so serious. And if she had not looked so worried. "I will endeavor not to," Sarek replied gravely, taking her hand in tacit promise. "And if I do, you must remind me, my wife."

She looked down at her hand captured in his. "It would be the reminding that would worry me. You have quite a temper, my husband."

For a moment he flushed, not in anger but in shame, an expression she seldom saw on him. But perhaps appropriate when having his human wife call him on his delinquent Vulcan control. But he regained control and met her eyes with a touch of irony. "You have managed to do so rather effectively before."

"I am …out of practice…standing up to it, and you." Her voice was grave. "And it has brought us to this. I don't want to challenge you as my unVulcan behavior has done before. To hurt you. I don't want you to hurt me."

He hesitated, feeling unsure again. "Amanda, do you wish to live in fear of the past, or the future?"

"I don't want to live in fear at all. Certainly not fear of you. Nor for you. And yet, part of me is afraid. Afraid to stay as I am. Afraid to try to go back to what I was or forward to it again. Afraid I'll make a mistake, and hurt you, risk your life. Afraid I will bring all this crashing down on me, on us, again.

"Afraid of me?"

She hesitated long enough for him to feel the truth of it.

"That too. A little, certainly. You can be …very intimidating," her gaze dropped further, lashes against her cheek like a child. "I'm just…not… sure."

So he had made her afraid of him. Not just a momentary fear at a loss of his temper, but fear of him even when he was in full control. He had honestly not believed it, not of her. Not of what it implied of himself, and at that moment, he hated himself thoroughly. He had taken this beautiful brilliant girl, with the indomitable courage that had allowed her to pledge her life to an unknown, with the innocent trust she had given him from the first day of their marriage, with the love she had dowered him with, and he had made her fear him. He looked at her, and it was as if his heart, confined so long, far longer than she had been confined, broke within him. Even understanding what he was asking of her, he had not thought she would hesitate this long to embrace freedom, would not be so hurt by what he had done, would not consider him so wanting that she would not choose him …again. But if she did not… he damned never and spoke the words, yielded to a possibility he had once sworn he never would consider. "Amanda, if you want to go, I will take you to a starship myself."

She looked up at him.

"I will," he promised. "Ask me, and I will."

She looked down at her hand in his, her long hair concealing her face. He could not see her expression, and she was shielding her thoughts from him.

And then he felt the drop of a tear on his hand covering hers. She reached out and rubbed at her eyes one handed, a childish gesture that made him love her all the more. He forced himself to find his voice. "I will call the spaceport." He started to let go of her hand.

"No."

He turned back, hardly daring to hope.

She shook her head, the gesture making her unbound hair fall forward in waves. "No."

"Amanda?" He realized she would not push it back and he did so, baring her face to his.

She looked up at him, tears on her cheeks. "I am an awful coward, my husband."

"You are not."

She nodded gravely. "There is one subject you have not mentioned, something we need to talk about. And you have not. And I don't want to hurt you, but I must speak of it. And I confess, I am a little afraid to do so."

Sarek froze, and looked down at her. "Spock."

She nodded, head down.

"You want to know if I am reconciled?"

"Yes."

Sarek drew a breath and told the truth. "I am not."

Her shoulders dropped. "Then nothing has really changed."

Sarek closed his eyes tightly a moment. "Amanda, is that your ultimatum?"

She looked up at him. "I am not holding anything over you, my husband. I swore that six months ago. It is you who has that power over me."

He sat down beside her, and took her hand. "My opposition to Starfleet is unchanged. My conviction that he belongs here is unchanged. My displeasure with him has not changed. What has changed is that I do not hold you responsible or in any way complicit with his decision."

Her eyes searched his. "Can you accept that I love you both, without feeling…challenged by it?"

Sarek sighed. "I do not know. I hope so. But I would prefer not to …test my newly regained control…by speaking of him. Or to him. At least for now. I prefer not to discuss him. Please do not ask this of me. It is…too soon."

She looked at him, eyes daring to hope. "Are you saying you might be reconciled in future?"

"I do not know."

She sighed softly. "It is not what I had hoped for. But that is a great change from never, my husband."

"I have learned the flaw and fallacy of never, my wife. At your instruction."

"It was not a lesson I planned to teach," she said softly.

"Amanda. Can you be reconciled to that in me? Would you choose to stay under those conditions?"

She looked at him with her eyes the color of earth's skies, and looked away again. He saw the muscles in her throat move as she swallowed and he steeled himself for the worst. "Amanda?"

"Do you know, my husband, there are people who think our marriage has been some sort of fairy tale?" Seeing his confusion, she added, "In my culture, that is something of a legend. An archetypal truth. Sometimes I used to think of our marriage that way myself. I suppose every wife does at some time, at least every human one. It is part of our culture, you see. I'm not held as much by my culture as you are by yours, but it is there in me. And in fairy tales, there are witches and ogres and terrible trials, and they vary from tale to tale. But regardless of those, the ending to the fairy tale is always the same: one must live happily ever after."

He stared at her mutely.

"Part of me wants that happy ending. Demands it, insists on it. To live happily ever after, that's how the story is supposed to end, and if it doesn't, you haven't lived or told a very good story, have you?

"If that happens you have only a few options. You can settle for what you have, you can keep reading and hope the ending can change, or you can look for a new story." She looked down at his hand over hers. "I know it isn't logical. Life isn't a fairy tale. But the ending we hope for is the same, regardless." She looked up at him. "And when you settle, the world is very harsh. How can you live with this or put up with that? It wants a happy ending too, and when you cheat it of one, it is judgmental.

"You have given me a choice, that no matter what I choose, I betray something, or someone. Even if it is myself. Maybe all the choices betray myself in some way. They are like mirrors, that reflect me, each one slightly off, and none of them are who I want to see. But all of them are me. And all of them are not. It makes it hard to choose any one."

"I would not choose to deny you anything," Sarek said.

"Do you think I don't know that, my husband? Do you think I don't know that if this were not tearing you up inside, that you would hesitate an instant? You who have given me so much?"

"The last six months I have taken nearly everything from you."

"Yes. In a desperate attempt to hold on. But before that, you spoiled me shamelessly."

His eyes were puzzled, anxious. "Spoil is to ruin. I know I have …hurt you-"

She laughed without mirth. "I meant spoiled in the sense of indulged. You have taught me to expect happy endings. So that I grew reluctant to accept any other." She grew pensive. "In a way that helped me these last six months. It perhaps kept me from making a more drastic choice."

"I don't understand."

"I don't want you to." She looked at him. "At one point in my life, I would have said, no, I will not accept this. That my life must be perfect, that you must be perfect, that my fairy tale must be complete with happy ending, and if not, like the indulged wife I had become, that I would leave you and make a life anew. I have threatened you with that choice more than once these last years."

"Twice," Sarek said, the word clipped.

"Now I am …not spoiled. I want my husband and son reconciled. I want to be able to speak freely of him to you, and you to him. I want not to live in fear of displeasing you, and being confined again. I don't want you to live in fear either. And I know I can have none of these things. And that I must choose to live with those restrictions, those fears, or I must leave for good and all. There is a Terran saying, Sarek.. The third time is the charm." She hesitated. "I won't …deny…that these last six months have been very hard for me. I've been afraid, of you, of my circumstances, of becoming so desperate that I …well, I have been afraid. And that I feel tempted, very tempted, to take the freedom you offer and run away. Even choosing at all frightens me." She looked up at him. "I haven't had the freedom of choice, and like any freedom now, it unsettles me. You see, I am a coward. But the only thing that frightens me more than making this choice is choosing to live without you. I never have blamed you for what has happened to us, it was my fault as much as yours. I love you. I have never stopped. And I have missed you, very much. I miss us. I would like our life back again. If we can find our way back to it."

"So you choose to stay."

She drew a breath, trembling visibly, and bit her lip. After a moment, she nodded. Then she looked up at him, swallowing hard and said. "Yes." Tears spilled on her cheeks and she said. "That was much harder than the first time, my husband."

He didn't pretend to misunderstand. "For me as well."

"At least this time, I think your mother will be pleased."

Sarek looked vexed, and then shook his head. "I could have throttled her a number of times these past months. But I know I owe her much."

"As do I. She's been very kind to me." She looked at him, "I never thought I would ever say that."

"If you knew then what you know now, would you still have said yes twenty years ago?"

She looked at him and then nodded again, still crying. "Yes."

He brought her hand to his lips and kissed it.

She looked up at him, bemused, even through her tears. "That's a pretty gesture. Where did you learn it?"

"I have my sources," he said, which made her raise an eyebrow of her own, wondering what that meant. He bent his head down, and kissed the tears from her cheeks and then kissed her. She returned it… cautiously, the first time she had done more than passively accept his attentions in months. At the back of his mind was the memory of a Sarek, who had spent years trying to train strict passivity in such things into his human wife. More fool, he. After the kiss was over she stayed in his arms, and he held her until she stopped trembling, the first of a series of tentative steps back to their former life.

Drawing back finally, he studied her a moment. She lay against him, quiet and as if she were perfectly content to stay there. And he felt, of all things right now, that was not a good reaction. "Amanda, there is something I would like to do today. An errand, of sorts. I think it will help us both."

Amanda drew a deep breath, trembling a little still, but feeling surprisingly calm, in spite of her suddenly changed circumstances, ones she still had trouble believing. Still, life went on. "Go ahead," she assured him. "I will be all right."

"I meant …us."

She looked up at him uncertainly, a question in her blue eyes.

"Us." Sarek repeated.

"You mean," she hesitated to even ask, "you want me to go… out?"

to be continued…

copyright Pat Foley 2005