Under Pressure
Patricia had awakened earlier that morning and made certain she had T'Zanne up and ready to attend the school in the city. She knew her daughter was excited about being admitted to the school, though the little proper thing would never state it as such. She had been rigorously examined by the administrators despite the assurances of T'Niye that the child was developing quite normally. And the administrators themselves remarked that the little girl showed 'amazingly precise understanding of proper behavior despite the disadvantage of her Terran half'. Patricia had the sensation of wanting to put a fist through the eye of the administrator that had said that, but she instead smiled graciously and thanked them as she ushered her daughter out and assured them of her early arrival the next day for school.
She wondered why it was that Spock and Dana's boys seemed to have anger problems. At first she was glad, and proud, that her daughter knew how to behave instinctively. Then she became worried that her daughter, so like a Terran female, had learned early to hide her true feelings behind a mask of compliance. Seeing it from that point of view she didn't like that one bit, but neither of the girl's cultures was tolerant of misbehavior in females. Boys could do as they liked, but not the girls.
They were still on Vulcan and she was trying to decide if, for the sake of T'Zanne's education, they should remain there for good. She knew with the way things were going politically it was seen as correct that she was endeavoring to raise her half Terran child solely as not just a Vulcan, but as a Syrranite.
She also knew that Zurel's estate, where Mariana had begged her to remain, was impenetrable. The man definitely had a gift for security.
After taking T'Zanne to school and then journeying back home to the estate, she was so off guard that when she went to open her messages her eyes opened wide to see one waiting for her… from her husband.
Looking at his face on her PADD waiting to have the message accessed, she just sat there and stared. She couldn't help but still love him. They had spent years together and made a child. From his appearance, she knew he had apparently truly gotten himself together. But she shook her head as she realized that on the heels of that love she felt for him came the sensation of a wrenching knot in her stomach. It turned and grew tighter and tighter still with each passing second. That slight thrill of love mingled with the unmistakable stirrings of fear and uncertainty was being shadowed by some other emotion, one she couldn't identify. Whatever it was, it wasn't pleasant. She forced herself to 'press the damn start logo already' and listened to what he had to say.
"Wife," he addressed her coolly, "I am aware that you may not wish to see or speak with me at this time or any other. I wish to inform you that I am now acutely aware of the error of my ways. I am aware that due to the fact that I did not seek and maintain proper mental health, I did not treat she whom was supposed to be most cherished by me with utmost care and due diligence or respect. But I must inform you that I approach my Time quickly. You have not severed our bond and I therefore must conclude that you wish to proceed at some point in the future to begin anew. Can it not be now, at this time, that we enter my Time with the express purpose of reconciling our family? My daughter is in need of her father and you are in need of your husband as I am in need of she who is my wife. Patricia, your presence is needed, as a result you must attend me."
The message ended then and she felt an even larger lump in her throat. This was the man she had married. But she could also detect something more beneath the surface. She knew it wasn't out of the ordinary for a male during his time to be demanding. But even that small amount of demanding during his Time made bile rise into her throat.
"You okay?" asked a voice from seemingly nowhere.
Patricia jumped and almost screamed before she realized that it was just Mariana. She sat down with a relieved huff and exhaled heavily, her heart still beating crazily from the sudden excitation.
"Oh man, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to scare you like that!" Mariana said as she sat down next to her friend. "What happened to you?"
The redhead sighed tiredly. "I just got a message from Soryn."
"So it's started already?"
She nodded. "Yep. And of course I'm being told I have to attend him."
Mariana really didn't want to make her decision for her. She remembered what Dana had said and realized that she was right. Patricia had to live this and had to do this for herself. "What did you decide?"
She shrugged. "I at first thought 'okay, maybe we can work it out', you know? Now I'm not too sure about that at all. I mean, you see a message from a guy-" she faltered. "It was just a message, he's not even standing in front of me and I got a little sick on the inside from seeing him and hearing his voice." She swallowed. "I might have an anxiety disorder if I have to start seeing him every single day again! I have to go see Zymak."
"So you're going to kal-i-fee?" she asked, trying not to sound hopeful.
Patricia, however, didn't answer.
###
Amanda barely ventured outside since everything had happened with the unpledged V'Tosh Ka'tur being sent up to the space station. Sarek could read her from the inside. She was truly fearful of being apprehended on the streets and carted off along with their son. He could detect shadings of what life was like for her before on Terra Prime. And now, this second home for her was tainted. She now felt nothing but fear here.
He had explained to her that since she was not a Vulcan she was not required to become a convert of Surak, nor would she ever be required to do so.
"Yeah, well what about Maya?" Amanda said, a little bit angry.
"What of my ward?" he asked.
She swallowed back tears. "T'Pau had her picked up for 'examination'. Whatever the hell that means!"
A weight of dread plunked into his stomach. "When was this?"
"She told me yesterday that she had to go today."
"She was already a student of T'Niye. She had already pledged to learn the ways of Surak and emotional control. She is liable under the new law to be examined."
"And that's all right with you?" she snapped.
He knew she was under a great deal of pressure. She truly thought that at any moment she would be apprehended from her home. Though things had, in his opinion, gotten out of hand concerning the V'Tosh Ka'tur, he knew T'Pau wouldn't touch Amanda. It was Spock that had him concerned. But to tell her that, he knew, would raise her anxiety level to a point that could truly make her ill. "My wife, perhaps you should take rest for now-"
"I don't need rest! I need things around me to start making sense again. What the hell happened here?" she asked, honestly crestfallen.
"Things have normalized for the time being," he tried to hedge.
"Yes, and the space station has emotional Vulcans popping out of the windows, there's such a lack of space up there. Oh and by the way, a ship is on its way to pick them up and deposit them who the hell knows where! And Sokam's entire immediate family has been nuked to ashes! He's still over there now treating victims in an enviro suit. People are still dropping like flies, the ones with radiation poisoning that they couldn't get to in time. Maybe to expedite matters your government should just kill all of them now and get it over with? Wouldn't it be more logical to just get it over with? That sounds like something your new government would do! But, you know, life just goes on as usual, right?"
It occurred to him then that Amanda had not cried since the bomb had gone off. She had gone silent and her emotions had bottled up, at first. Like the pressure cookers used on many worlds, she was finally beginning to blow.
Sarek thought, at first, her non-reaction was commendable. He realized, then, that it wasn't good for her to not react. It meant something was very wrong and what happened was having trouble processing. How had it taken this long into their marriage for him to realize these things? "Amanda, I am truly sorry things have come to pass as they have," he said with all sincerity while looking into her eyes. "My people are not perfect, that you know."
Hearing him say those words took the wind out of her and she just shook her head, a lot of her anger dissipating. But her sadness was overwhelming. "I thought I found someplace sane. You know? But this place is infected by the Empire, too. I don't know why, but I just expected more here." She thought then she should have known better. The fact that when she'd first arrived on the planet the council had been sanctioning the use of Terran females in such a terrible way- "I should have realized before that no place is immune, no place that they've touched with their dirty blood-soaked hands. But I didn't see it. I didn't." She took a clarifying breath and exhaled on a sigh. "I see it now. I just hope Maya comes out okay in all this. She's with T'Pau now."
He nodded. "As do I."
Sarek knew having his wife branded a V'Tosh Ka'tur and shipped off-planet could be the final straw for Sokam. The young man was very telepathically gifted and he feared for anyone caught in his path.
###
"There's someone here to see you," said the young trainee to Zymak. The nearly red haired agent turned and saw the Terran female Patricia. He knew why she was there.
He beckoned her over. "You may come to my office."
They walked into his office. The door closed behind them and he sat behind his desk. Patricia remained standing as she looked out of the window of the high rise. "Thank you for seeing me on such short notice," she said while not looking at him.
"You have decided to reconcile with your husband," he said.
She laughed. He obviously had kept his talents out of her mind. "Thanks for respecting my privacy and not taking the answer out of my head yourself," she said sincerely as she folded her arms. She sighed heavily. "At first, I was going to go back to him. And then I wasn't. And then I was. And up until yesterday I had kind of talked myself back into getting back with him. I told myself all sorts of things and I had all kinds of excuses."
"And these excuses were?"
She turned and looked over at him. "My daughter has a right to a home with two parents, right? And being married is a promise you should keep. All of these other extra excuses I won't even get into while I'm here."
"But you have changed your mind yet again."
She shook her head. "I'm so stupid. I thought I could get back with him after all that had happened between us."
The agent steepled his fingers. "Lady, if you are in need of my services to be your champion-"
"There's just so much stuff swirling in my head. And once again, I've got to tell you the complete truth. I'm broken. There's something in here that is broken," she said as she pointed first to her chest and then her head. "I don't think I should be with you or anyone else for a very long time. I need to be okay with myself before I want to be okay with anyone else. And if I can't do that, then I'm just opening myself up for more problems. I see it now. I didn't before, but I see it now."
He knew what that meant. He would not obtain her as a wife, after all. He forced himself not to dwell on that. "I shall release you, if that is what you wish. However, there are formalities that must be attended to ahead of time if you decide not to reconcile with he who is your husband and if you also decide not to allow me to be your protector. If you wish to retain custody of your daughter, you must have a clan backing you."
She nodded. "Okay. I'll take care of that."
"Lady, you know that should you change your mind-"
"I know," she said. "I know. But I don't want to feel indebted to another man because he saved me. That's what happened with Soryn. He saved me from life in jail from a Thought Crime. And then the bond is something that is so all-encompassing," she said as she remembered how it felt in those first days after waking up in the hospital, post-Pon Farr. "As a Vulcan, you must take it for granted. But as a Terran-" she looked out of the window again as tears sprang to her eyes, "-oh my goodness. There's this feeling, this thing, always there, holding you close from the inside."
She wiped her tears quickly. "I've had months to think about this. I realized why I was so vulnerable to it and why I fell so hard. My parents didn't- my father wasn't interested in me. He was there, in the house, he could just care less that I was in the home with him, too. And my mother was always so eager to please him she didn't care what her children needed. And it made me so hungry to be loved. So I'm walking around with, basically, a hole in myself, with an empty heart. And it should have been filled by me somehow. But instead I spent my time when I was on Terra Prime, hopping from guy to guy. And it was never enough. And then, bang, I'm here. A person like that? You get a dose of Vulcan love." She shook her head again.
"It was like a drug addict stumbling across the pure product after years of substandard street junk. You know the pure stuff can kill you, but you just keep going back for more. And even as you're sitting there, knowing it isn't healthy, you just let the current take you and one day you wake up and you're drowning. And it's your fault. And you know it's your fault. And it takes something extreme to wake you up and stop yourself from drowning. You can be my lifeline, Zymak, but once I hit the shore, I have to go home alone."
"You do not have to!" he insisted as he forced himself to remain seated. "It is not necessary. It is not our way," he said, eyes finally pleading.
"I'm not saying 'never' to you. I'm saying 'not now'." She struggled to find the words. "You need to understand Terran women better before you enter into anything with me. Just because you can look directly into my head doesn't mean you 'get' me and what makes me 'me'. I finally understand something about the Vulcan male. And what I understand is that from the beginning I have to be firm and right now, that's not me. Not with a man I like or I'm attracted to. And you'll wind up walking all over me and I'll let you and things will go to hell for me again. No. Not again. I'm not putting my daughter through this again. Doing the same thing over and over and hoping for the best doesn't work."
He saw what she was trying to say. "Lady, you are attempting to learn logic."
Despite her tears, she was then laughing. "I think I've been insulted and complimented at the same time."
"I did not mean to offend."
"I'm joking," she smiled sadly. "The definition of insanity is doing something over and over and expecting a different result. Going back to him would be insane. So I'm stepping away for good from him. And I'm walking away alone, no husband, no relationship more than just friends, not right now. Can you accept that?"
"I do not wish to, but I do wish to heed your wishes and respect your decisions, therefore I must accept it."
She nodded. "Then it's done. When I'm called to him, how do I get in contact with you?"
