It was a day before Saavik talked to Spock. A day of slipping aboard her ship to her cabin and healing her injuries; of making sure the fight with Ajeya stayed quietly between the very few who saw it. She didn't know what the Romulans did to ensure it went no farther than Commander Diartr, but Seprix had been a problem. Finally, he listened to her explanation that this was best handled by her rather than escalate a personal situation to major trouble with the Arongotu, and between the Federation and the Empire. She reminded him of the current tensions following the loss of Enterprise at Narendra III. This appealed to his youth's sense of duty, to Vulcan and his betrothed's family.

It also helped that he had granted Speaker's request to talk with T'Pren, something against their guidelines, and leaving her without an escort, something forbidden. It made him want to serve his duty right this time.

Saavik had plenty to say to the escort as well.

Nachson had been easier: a shrug and a "As you say, Captain", he handed her a medical kit and off he went.

Spock was there for her talk with Seprix, staring at her significantly the whole time. They said nothing to each other.

All this had really happened last night. The day was for the Arongotu, hearing their accusations about finding green blood in one of the corridors and worrying a Romulan had been attacked. She assured them that no one in her crew instigated any assault against the Liusaidh crew.

She didn't need Spock's eyes boring into her to know the thin line she walked with those words. Her conscience was loud enough on its own during her meditations.

With the Arongotu slightly mollified, she sat again in the glowing white box she shared with her husband. Speaker was frowning, so to speak, on her beaming off the planet, even for short periods of time. She traded staying on the planet, unless an emergency required her to be on her ship, for his never again speaking with T'Pren alone, then leaving her in a corridor at the first sound of her mother's voice.

So she sat in the glowing room, her sense of right and wrong bandying words like betrayed, justness... and guilt.

She knew the danger of upsetting the situation here, and how close she had come to doing that. She vowed she wouldn't come that close again. She believed in the Federation's ideals. As an officer, she had bled for them and shed others' when absolutely necessary. That was part of her Starfleet oath, to be the front line so that all the others in the Federation could live peacefully in those ideals. She held fast to that oath, or she never would have taken the responsibility that came with her uniform.

She included her crew in that responsibility. No one serving under her would suffer for a personal struggle.

She held fast to another oath as well: Ajeya must pay for her crime. She had learned that as an infant when she had discovered the truth about her birth.

She saw no need to put away one oath for the other. Spock saw it differently. The only argument he conceded was the threat to their children.

Some in Starfleet and Vulcan believed as he did. The rest would unofficially agree with her. Officially, if she carried out her vow against Ajeya, Starfleet would abide by the principle that its officers must never put themselves above the law.

Vulcan... if it discovered she had done such an action, the High Council would act in the same way as Starfleet.

Through these thoughts came a surprising one.

Her father was Vulcan.

Such a trivial thing or so it seemed, but she had never known it before: her father was Vulcan. Her mother was a Romulan, the first Romulan figure in her life and the one who begat all the torture on Hellguard.

Moving as if against her will, she went to the mirror built inside the closet door. Illogical. I know my appearance. But she stood in front of the mirror and stared. She touched the healed gash Ajeya had opened next to her eye, and was pleased it had left no scar. The features weren't Ajeya's.

Were they her father's?

She turned away, and tried to put it from her mind. She didn't want to think about him. She didn't want to think about him because that led to thinking about what had happened to him. What Ajeya had done to him. What she had done that had conceived Saavik.

She glanced back at the mirror and set her mind. She did not necessarily look like her father. But this resulted in a more disturbing thought: she might look like someone else in Ajeya's family.

More illogic. I make assumptions based on no facts.

Spock entering their quarters was almost a relief. Except a Vulcan would not feel relief, but to be Vulcan was to be her father, whose death and shame centered on her. Although, what was her other choice?

She was either Ajeya or Ajeya's victim. Damn.

"Saavik."

She sat down heavily. Under the circumstances, she was not ready for this... debate.

"I would rather not talk, Spock."

"That is beneficial as I also prefer you not talk. I would rather you listen."

If the situation had been any different, they would have seen the warning signs they gave.

"Will you be apologizing for your concealing the truth about Ajeya? I do not intend to hear anything else."

"Heed me, Saavik. I am not a repentant consort that you can easily dismiss. I know you have reason to think as you do, but I did what I thought best. I will not be put aside for it, and I will not leave. You must deal with me, because I will not allow either of us any other option."

She recognized that tone. He meant what he said; he would stand there until they resolved this. She admitted, silently to herself, that she welcomed the chance to break down the barriers between them. She admitted it to him by answering.

"I do not require a lecture on the damage I potentially might have caused. I am well aware of it and have ensured it has not happened. The Arongotu are appeased, my ship and your diplomatic party remain uninvolved."

"And our daughter?"

T'Pren had watched her clean off the blood. She had looked the perfect Vulcan child, but she couldn't take her eyes off the bloodstains and had stayed nestled in the personal space between her parents.

"I spoke with T'Pren, as you heard since you were in the room. I also assisted her with her meditations."

Because the girl had trembled, a bare shiver but there, as her trying experience caught up to her.

"The fact she needed such assistance at her age speaks on the seriousness of what happened. She should not have been exposed to that situation."

"You are concerned for her, which is only right, so I will ignore the suggestion that I would ever want one of our children nearly killed! I have never wished them exposed to anything remotely associated with my past or its possible dangers. It is you who has insisted they learn what it means to be Romulan and it is that which put T'Pren in jeopardy. You can not have forgotten what she told Ajeya or her replies to my questions. Distraction, Spock! She put herself in danger because of your lessons on an unexpected action and the use of the correct words being as effective in opposing violence as defensive violence itself."

When Saavik had insisted T'Pren should not have been involved at all, nor should she have picked up that phaser, the same set expression came over the girl's face that Sarek had at his most immovable. But she still looked up at Saavik with wide eyes.

"I thought it my place to be with you."

"If you are so convinced," Spock said, "your position is correct, then why did it disturb you to have T'Pren see you as she did in that corridor? And why will you not discuss Ajeya with her?"

She had overheard her youngest child dictating a letter to her brother and sister, vaguely hinting, as it was unsecured, at her... discomfort over discovering who Ajeya was and what had happened afterward. Saavik had also overheard another part as well: "Mother and Father are so cold to one another."

She had walked in at that point, to see T'Pren to her meditations.

"As I said, Spock, I do not need your lectures."

He paused. "No, my wife, you do not." His voice trailed off. "Nor do I."

Their talking ground to a halt. She no longer looked at him, and finally spoke into the difficult silence.

"I was wrong to say what I did regarding T'Pren. You no more wanted her in that situation than I, and it was because of me that she was there."

She listened to his own apologies, but so much still caused between them. Most of it left unsaid; that had to change.

"Spock... you did not care to tell me something as important as Ajeya. We haven't shared enough, endured enough together, even then, for you to see what I had the right to know?"

Now his voice had life. "No, I cared enough not to tell you. I was selfish, but not in the manner you suggest."

She looked up from staring at her hands pressing hard together, surprised and confused.

"I did not want you lost to this desire to avenge yourself and your father."

She recoiled at the last word. It was one thing to think it, and so much more to hear it out loud from someone else.

"My wife, I have seen you build your life one year after the other, despite the handicap of those first ten years and your being a half-Romulan in the Federation, until you have all you do now including that which we build together. I did not want you to chose revenge at the cost of that life."

He drew up the other chair close to hers; their legs brushed together and she felt the welcomed jolt his touch always gave her. Except, this time, it flashed like lightning revealing a barren landscape, and she saw how deadened she had become.

His eyes went to every detail of her face before grabbing hers. "I do not want to lose my wife as Diartr has his."

"That is unfair! You cannot compare my actions to hers."

"True, I cannot. I refer more to how those actions caused her to change. I agree Ajeya has earned punishment for her crimes, but it is what those crimes and her continued vendetta has done to her honor and nobility that keeps Diartr away."

Would I lose you? Because it was the one cost she would not pay.

"It is one thing to defend yourself, Saavik, or fight a battle one must for the greater good."

"Both those categories constitute Ajeya's removal."

She knew him so well, every line and plane of that beloved face, every working of that mind that always drew her, even the subtleties in the deep voice. She saw he was as conflicted by all this as she was.

"Perhaps you're right. However, consider this. I have at last understood the full implications of a statement she made, one I did not tell you in full when we first discussed Commander Diartr. Saavik, do you realize Ajeya has never declared a feud against you? She said so herself when you spoke with her on the Armstrong."

"And you find this significant?"

"I do. It will mean ensuring your safety, as well as the children's, without further bloodshed."

"You speak as if I would hesitate to follow this suggestion."

"Because it will equally bind you as well. You will be unable to seek her out as you currently plan."

She could not have heard him correctly. "And allow her crimes to go unpunished? No!"

"You prefer violent revenge? Jeopardizing who you are with the risk of becoming her?"

Spock hung waiting for her reply, but she wasn't ready to give it. After a long moment, he pulled back, and after another, she saw him look from her to the open closet door diagonal to her chair.

"The answer to your question is yes," he said. When she glanced at him in question, he nodded his head to the mirror that he couldn't see, but knew was there. "Your appearance favors your father."

She jerked from her seat and slammed the closet door closed. She pressed a steadying hand to it and made her voice even. "Your talk with her continues to surprise me."

"I thought you preferred I not keep it from you."

She stiffened. "Do not be harsh."

She regretted the words the moment she said them. She had been harsh with him; she couldn't ask for any different.

Spock, however, gave her just that. He drew in a slow, deep breath, then drew closer until they almost touched. "You do not know how you appear, standing there as if I struck you. Or what it does to me to know I caused you to look that way. Let me ask you with no harshness. Do you want to know what I do?"

She gave the smallest nod after hesitating for a heartbeat.

"You favor him strongly, especially around the eyes. It was what made her suspect who you are."

"Did she tell you his name? No, do not tell me. I prefer not to know."

"You cannot know, because she does not. She refused to learn it and always refers to him as the Vulcan."

"To make him a nonentity." That stabbed at her, as much as Spock's comment about the mirror, although she didn't know why.

"That was my theory as well. And if she had told me his name, I would have gone to your Vulcan family, and told them how fortunate they are to have you as one of their own. So when you learned who they were, they dared not place the burden of his death on you."

Husband.

"How," she asked, even softer now, "did you know about Ajeya, since I do not look like her?"

"I had the benefit of being able to observe the two of you and saw, as you did, the absurdity of her risking what she did for the sake of retracted orders. Then there is the gesture you repeated deliberately in front of Commander Diartr."

"Was that all?"

"No. There is also this one." He cupped her cheek and straightened her head from how it leaned. "And other similarities. Do not draw back, my wife. The most striking resemblance is how you have the honor she lost. Hellguard, and her choices there, destroyed it in her. You survived it."

His hand would have slipped away, but she put hers into it so the back of it lay curved into his palm.

In the end, she spoke. "Never again keep such a thing from me. It is my right to know."

His voice was rough. "Agreed."

She touched his face, so he could feel the bubble of warmth breaking through. "Is it? Spock, you never asked the Klingons to change, in all your efforts to establish peace with them. Nor have you ever asked the humans close to you to not be human, even when their actions are something you would not do yourself. You accept who they are."

Her voice lowered in entreaty. "You have said you wished I would accept my Romulan tendencies, that I would see the strengths in them. This is part of it. How can you talk of Vulcan accepting the Sundered again when you can not accept this part of being Romulan? Ajeya is Romulan, Spock, and this is the judgment against her. Accept it for what it is, not for something you would do."

His eyes darted around, not in turning away from her, but in thinking over what she said. "You make a valid point. I might see this as a matter of difference in our natures, or in the cultural formative years, and accept it must be that way. If it were not for you embracing this. You set aside all reasons against this right of Challenge, and declare your actions justified for the benefit of our family. I do not doubt your desire to keep us safe. I only question your refusal to see no other way. It is how Ajeya was lost, and you welcome it."

So these were her choices after all. She saw their hands curled into each other, and knew she could have him, their children, Starfleet and Vulcan, or she could have the one thing she had sworn to do her entire life.

"Welcome it? My husband, I have embraced nothing, and I am not lost. I merely do what I must. I am in complete control."

He reached past her and opened the door to the mirror again. Her reflection was a blow. She was flushed deep olive, and her nostrils flared. Her eyes danced with something savage and ugly. Her body, where it did not touch him, stood balanced and in contained readiness to strike.

In control, yes, but not a Vulcan's control. It was not even a Romulan's whose soul was intact. It was what T'Pren had seen in that moment, and caused her to stare aghast at Saavik with the same expression Amanda once had.

She closed the door very slowly and stepped into him, feeling his other arm come around her, and pull her closer. She pressed their joined hands to her forehead, and he paired his first two fingers, and slipped them through her other hand so they touched hers.. His face touched hers, and his mouth lay just above her own. The touch of skin to skin tingled a current through them both.

"Would you end our marriage as Diartr did his?" She had to know.

His face touched hers, and his mouth lay just above her own. "This is a difficult time for us, and it has harmed us both. But your actions are not hers, and we are..." His voice dropped. "Always touching..."

Their marriage vows mixed with his actually touching her... "And touched."

And never parted. Never."

Those words made the tightness in her chest ease at last. It did not blind her, however. If she sought revenge, it would taint what they had together.

At least, there is the satisfaction of Ajeya being tortured knowing I am alive and well. It didn't feel satisfying.

But she had told Ajeya, right after her capture on the Armstrong, that her career brought her much, while the feud did not. More importantly, her family... she fought a different battle for them now: to keep them untainted and hold their respect.

In a matter of time, Ajeya's enemies will have her.

No! another part argued. She is a survivor; she will stay out of their reach. But what that voice really wanted was to destroy Ajeya herself.

She whispered. "What is this alternative you suggest?"