Amanda! You should have been with me—here on Vulcan. I should not have let you go; I felt agony when you left to go to Earth; but I could not, cannot allow feelings to tell me how to act. I could not voice my irrational fears. Happy to see your family after so long, so long. I know—value of family I denied you yours—no, NO! Amanda—did not have to stay with me. She chose to follow, support me. But the guilt, shame. Spock, do you hate me? Do you—I am forgetting your mother? Spock, my son, Spock, Spock, SPOCK—
Deep in meditation, the banging and shouts outside of where he sat surfaced his consciousness, still experiencing the extremes of emotion he'd yet to reason with. Sarek felt tears rolling down his cheeks as he replayed the memory of watching the security logs for Tau Ceti; watching Amanda get in the shuttle and seeing it drift before exploding into dust. He muttered her last words aloud. Anguish, grief, sorrow hollowed his mind; those feelings he'd kept checked through the two years he'd spent in isolation on Excalibia. Being home again, seeing Spock, seeing her books unread and to remain so, what he felt was unequaled by the passing of Skon or Michael. Sarek's reason had teared from his efforts against burning the house to the ground to stop the onslaught of despair. He looked around him but saw things and places from his memories.
In his life there was something now eternally missing.
My Amanda, my Spock; their names looped around in his head and stole away his logic. Sarek was now lost in the emotions he'd kept at bay for over two years, barely moved by the knocking that stopped without his notice. I love you, Sarek. Will you be fine without me?
Suddenly, he could smell mint and see Perrin kneeling next to him. Like a cold breeze she was insubstantial, but the sensation riveted him. He had to tell her, explain his pain to somebody.
"Spock; I could never meld with him; I worried he might hate me. Hate me for bringing him into a life of never belonging anywhere, a life devoid of love like my Amanda. She's gone. Gone." He whispered as if he were expelling the news to a street of onlookers each needing repeating as he came closer so they could hear. And the onlookers were the years he had Amanda so that they could know and be tinged with grief forever. Patched with sorrow.
"Ambassador!" Now Perrin grabbed him by the shoulders and shook him and he couldn't push her away. He did not want to; he wanted to wrap his hands in hers, to feel them caress his lips as Amanda had done in the early morning as he'd pretended to sleep. You knew didn't you Amanda, he screamed in his head, begging her memory to reply yes. But she'd never admitted to it in life and so he could never know now whether she noticed his eyes slightly opened to watch her do so. He missed her touch, any touch. The closeness that he pretended to tolerate, Sarek dived into the sensation of it from Perrin. He pulled it in closer, the sensation, and held it forcefully. Held it and felt it cool his body. He poured out his grief. Now she pounded on his back.
"Ambassador, do you need assistance?" The voice of Kavik rose him up somewhat from his emotions; he realized he was clutching Perrin against him, the front of her shirt completely wet with his tears. Sarek felt engulfed in shame. How could I act so despicably in front of this human, came the torturing thought that had drove him away from acts of kindness towards his wife.
Perrin was the one who answered.
"It wasn't the Ambassador; it was me. I—" Perrin stuttered over her words for a moment. Sarek realized what she was doing.
"I simply became overwhelmed thinking what if they find me; the Algeans?"
"That is unlikely. You should not keep disturbing the Ambassador, I will enter and take you to your residence." Replied Kavik.
"No." Sarek managed to keep his warring emotions out of his voice. His shame increased at the lie.
"Ambassador?" asked Kavik.
"I wish to assuage her doubts. Allow me to continue talking to her."
"Ambassador." He could hear Kavik walk off and he listened until there was nothing to hear. Perrin started to push against him again.
Carefully, he unwrapped himself from Perrin and she crawled back against the wall, breathing heavily.
"Did I—"Sarek choked, "hurt you?" He looked away from her face as she smiled in response. It was distant, forced and her hands had reached down to her waist to cradle it as she leaned against the wall.
"Do I frighten you like this?" Sarek feared himself; the depth of what he could feel. Fight it, he thought; fight it back, be logical, be rational, be Vulcan.
"No. I'm worried for you Sarek." Perrin replied. He could see it in her eyes, darting over his shivering body as his mind now struggled to find calm. But he could not if he did not resume meditation.
"I thank you, for allowing me to keep my dignity." Perrin's face softened but she did not approach him.
"Ambassador." The formality grated on him. No, NO! I hate it, too distant, he thought with agony.
"Sarek; please." Sarek whispered.
"Sarek. Sarek, I grew up learning about you, a great unifier. I can't bear to have you seen as any less than that. I do not," she emphasized "see you as any less than that."
He could not help a final tear, from the feelings of gratitude that welled up in him at her words.
"You will leave me, I must be alone."
She looked reluctant, but left, holding the door as it slid back so that the opening was only as wide as needed for her to leave. She doesn't want anyone being able to look in at me here, Sarek thought, moved again by her actions. He listened as she stood for a moment on the other side of the door and noted her labored breathing. A mix of emotions overtook him briefly before he calmed himself enough to face the effigy of Surak, father of modern Vulcan. To face it was to face his failure. I have not acted in accordance with logic, he thought; since Amanda's death I have failed to truly control my grief, I've hidden from it in my work. Like Reynard.
He would do so no longer.
"My husband, do you not wish me to go?" Amanda asked with a coy smile he was accustomed to. Since leaving Vulcan she had been in a good mood, happy to see some of her family again.
"It would not be logical to deny you. Family holds a place of honor among Vulcans." In response, Amanda moved over to him and held out two fingers, a gesture he returned without the hesitation he once might have shown when they first courted.
"I love you, Sarek. Will you be fine without me?" He wished he'd known the finality of those words then.
"My wife." He hesitated. "My Amanda, I will be as you left me. There is no reason I should not be." She searched his eyes for something, as she did on occasion, and found it with a small smile he knew did not show the depth of her love for and happiness with him. He acknowledged it in his mind but would not note it. He then saw her walk across the tarmac, guided by her pilot newly from Starfleet Academy. He watched through the viewport as the engines struggled to maintain a stable subspace field and eventually overloaded. He calculated the likelihood of what he then saw being a spatial anomaly. 0.0002%. Amanda was dead.
Sarek's gaze fell onto Kavik's as he left the meditation chamber. His chief of staff bore no sign of an opinion or curiosity as to why Sarek had informed him to hold any messages that came while he was alone. He only stood staring directly at the door about the height of Sarek's eyes and focused his sights to Sarek's when he appeared after the hours of meditation it took to calm his mind. There was a veneer of detail now clearer to Sarek that showed the changes from the time since Amanda's death.
"Perrin has been returned to my niece's apartment?" Sarek inquired.
"Yes Ambassador, shall I return home as well?"
"That would be acceptable." Kavik left.
Observations of the rooms and halls of his home as he passed them in contemplation showed that his aides had left too. Everywhere was dark. But Sarek did not call for the computer to turn on the artificial illumination; he walked and remembered his way to a balcony where he and Amanda had watched Spock together with I-Chaya walking the length of Amanda's garden as his son recited Surak's teachings to Vulcan itself.
To it and its creatures.
Access to the balcony was reached crossing their bedroom and both he and she, together or separately, took advantage of this to look at T'khut—Vulcan's sister planet. Though not alone in the sky, it was overwhelming in its disproportionate presence among the dust of stars. Sarek turned his eyes to the Nirak constellation, knowing he would have to wait until almost sunrise to see it fully. The ceiling of his bedroom could project a hologram of Vulcan's night sky and reveal every constellation fully; of Vulcan's and Earth's. His wife had enjoyed the view since a skylight would allow in the muted glow of T'khut to keep her up all night. Over their marriage she had learned the names of every star and their constellations, even if she could not pronounce them. He recalled them to himself now.
"It is not logical to isolate oneself." Sarek whispered. He stood outside for a little while longer, by then turned away from T'khut's lonely proximity.
