Undaa, Hakar, Senes Stardate 2281.72
Losha froze, staring at the information on the padd at the jail processing desk. His father had paid his release fee.
"The man who paid my release fee, is he here? Or did he pay it remotely?" He looked at the clerk questioningly.
"Your father, right? He's waiting outside." The clerk took the padd and turned back to the monitor on his desk.
"Thanks." He walked slowly past the desk and down the short hallway that led to the small waiting area at the front of the building. Each step seemed to take a great deal of effort. It was the same feeling he had when he was a child and he would stand pressing his arms in a door frame until they felt so light they lifted up of their own accord. Only now the feeling was in his legs.
For years after his mother's death, he had been desperate for his father to return. He remembered lying in the bed at that first shelter with Kadren, believing that despite the travel embargo, his father would find a way to get to him. He began to lose hope after Kadren died, and by the time he was fourteen, more than three years after he had last seen Sybok, he no longer thought about it. At that point it seemed that the war would never end, so hope only seemed like a way to ensure misery. When the war had ended, he had thought about it briefly, but from a much more emotionally distant place than when he was younger.
The tiny waiting area was packed with people waiting to register to visit an inmate or pay a release fee. There was no room to wait there. His father must be outside. He made his way past the crowd and pushed the door, which opened onto a narrow street. Sybok was standing in front of the building opposite the door, his face set in a wide smile. He looked exactly as Losha remembered him.
"Velekh!" He held his hands out in the Vulcan custom. Losha approached him slowly, his legs still unsteady. He laid his hands on top of Sybok's to return the gesture. After a moment, Sybok stepped back, studying him.
"You weren't sure that I would come back for you." There was a pensive look on his face.
Losha stood there, unable to move, as if frozen to the spot. It was strange to hear Vulkansu after all this time. Sybok stepped closer to him and touched his hand to Losha's temple. And then Losha understood that Sybok had been looking for him. He had never been far, and when he learned that the travel embargo to Senes had been lifted, he had made his way there from Aaamazzara. He had spent the last few months searching for his son.
Sybok smiled and embraced him. He returned the embrace, still at a loss for words.
"We have much to talk about." Sybok stepped out of the embrace.
"Yes," was all Losha could manage to say.
"Where would you like to go?"
"I don't have a place to live anymore. My friend is storing my things." His room at the public housing unit had been reassigned after both he and Joa had been arrested.
"You have a place to live now. It's in the second district. Shall we retrieve your things from your friend?"
And so he contacted Malar and they made their way to where she was living with Lesara. She had been shocked to see Losha free and even more shocked to see his father. But she was happy for him.
"Your friend is very concerned about you, Velekh," Sybok said when they had made their way back to the apartment he was renting in the second district. Their conversation thus far had been superficial. Sybok had wanted to hear what Losha had been doing, how he was feeling, but Losha did not want to discuss things so personal out in the street. Not that anyone would likely understand Vulkansu - there were just some things one did not speak of in public. "I am too," Sybok continued. "I know things have been difficult for you here."
"Yes." They sat across from each other at a low wooden table in the living room of the apartment.
"You never used to be so quiet." He had a sad, yet reassuring expression on his face. "You have lost your senses."
"Yes."
"I have felt for some time that there was something different about you, but I didn't know what it was until I saw you. I don't know that there is anything I can do." He shook his head slowly.
"I didn't think there was. I am used to it this way now." It was the truth.
"I am sorry. I will do whatever's possible." He paused, then caught Losha's eyes. "It has affected you in other ways too. You are disconnected from your own emotions."
"Yes." His father's gaze held him in a trance.
"It was necessary for you to survive. I understand. When your mother died, I wanted to be there for you, to comfort you. It pained me that I couldn't. But you need no longer be disconnected. You need to heal."
"I have healed. I accepted her death a long time ago." It wasn't entirely true. He accepted it because he did not allow himself to think of her.
"Is one who is healed so self destructive?" When Losha did not reply, Sybok continued. "I know what you have done. I saw your records at the jail. But I didn't need to see them. I already knew."
"Don't read my thoughts. I'm not a child anymore." He knew that Sybok must have seen his records, but he didn't want him knowing the details. He had once felt that he was beyond feeling shame, and when it came to other people, he was. But it was different with his father.
"I can sense these things without reading your thoughts, Velekh." Sybok turned his head up, a slight look of surprise on his face. "You go by another name now."
"You said you weren't reading my thoughts."
"I'm not. When I said your name, I felt a very strong reaction." He looked at Losha closely again. "You feel that Velekh is dead. I don't need to read your thoughts to know this. You don't understand because you have lost your ability to sense me and others. Do you remember when we lived on Rhaandar VI?"
"Yes." It was the last place they had lived before moving to Senes.
"Your mother did not want to tell me that she was tired of moving. I was frustrated with her because she couldn't let go of some of her Vulcan disciplines. She still felt that certain emotions should be suppressed. And you sensed that I was frustrated. Do you remember what you said to me?"
"Yes." It had been so long since Losha had thought of Rhaandar VI, but he remembered. "I told you that you were doing the same thing. You were suppressing your frustrations."
"You told me the feeling was so strong, you couldn't ignore it."
"Yes, it was so strong that it made me frustrated." His father's frustration had been so palpable that he'd been unable to shake it off.
"And so it is the same now. Your feelings are that strong." Losha had to concede that he had had a strong reaction to hearing his name again, now used several times by his father. "Velekh is not dead. We all change. We all become different people as we learn and grow. You might not be the person you are if we had never come here, but you still wouldn't be the same Velekh you were eleven years ago. Even I am not the same father you once knew." Sybok stood up and moved over to the small couch where Losha was sitting. Once again, he touched his hand to his temple.
Losha began to see how Sybok had changed. He had despaired when he felt the bond he shared with T'Amar severed, and knew she was dead. He instantly regretted that he had not been there with her, and was angry that he had left her and Velekh alone. He felt he had been foolish for not anticipating the political unrest in Hakar would lead to war. He was desperate to get back to his son and had attempted to get to Senes, despite the travel embargo. The embargo had been a source of extreme frustration and anger for him. Eventually, he realized he had to accept the situation. He had to let go of his anger and move past it. This had taken several years. Now he realized that the pain had been necessary for him to understand himself more deeply.
Sybok had faced the pain of his own mother's death and had grown from that experience. He had not wanted Velekh to experience the same pain, and that fueled his desperation to get back to him. But he now understood that Velekh must learn from his own experience. Anyone could know happiness, or contentedness, but one could not truly know oneself until he had faced great sorrow and pain. This was what Sybok now believed.
His father's emotions were overwhelming. When Sybok removed his hand from his face, Losha realized it was wet with tears. It was the first time he had cried like this in years.
"I don't want to feel these things," he choked out. "I prefer to feel nothing."
"It's too much for you right now. I am sorry." Sybok stood up and walked toward the kitchen. "I'll make us something to eat and when can talk of other things."
He must have understood how much Losha hated crying in front of other people. It didn't take long to replicate food, but he left him alone for some time. They ate dinner in silence, a Vulcan custom his parents had maintained even in their exile. It was not Seenan custom, but it suited Losha that night. He feared if he opened his mouth, he wouldn't be able to stop from crying. Later, over tea, he found he was feeling better and he managed to speak with his father for a several hours without feeling overwhelmed.
But the emotions came back later that night when he went to the bedroom that was now his. Most of what he owned was in two large suitcases sitting unopened on the floor. There were a few more boxes he had left with Malar - things he did not need immediately and could retrieve later.
The apartment, like the one they had lived in in the ninth district before his mother had died, had come pre-furnished. And like the furnishings there, these were sturdy, older, and wooden. The rug on the floor was even similar to the ones in the old apartment. It was so different from the shelters and public housing units he had been living in for the past eleven years. Those all contained minimal, modern furnishings. They never felt like a real home. He hadn't thought he minded, but now the memories of the apartment on Alseren Street were coming back to him. The building he had lived in had long since been demolished. He knew this only from Joa as he had carefully avoided the street since the explosion that had killed T'Amar.
His emotions began to overwhelm him again. He was tired of crying, and being in this place that seemed so much like the last place his entire family had been together was not something he felt he could cope with right now. He waited until he was certain his father was asleep and then he quietly left. The apartment was just north of an area known as The Triangle, a place he had spent a great deal of time. He knew plenty of people who would be hanging around there this time of night who would be happy to share some kenal with an old acquaintance recently released from jail.