Sarek had gone to Paris to discuss his findings with the President, able to deduce from the delegation that had attacked him a clear alliance for the attackers at the San Francisco debates that began the investigation; an alliance to whom, Perrin did not know. But the smile she'd been holding loosely to her lips since he'd informed her faded when the artificial oak tree rustled, catching her attention, and she went back to watching the water boil on the stove. What he had found out did not change as much as it might have once for her. I will have to stay on Vulcan a little longer even if this is the end of the investigation, she thought.

Hearing the timer, she brought over the tea to her father, tossing the steeped mint out of the window as she went; there was not much of a scent to this part of Vulcan that teetered by the center of a wide desert, so the cool wafts of mint kept her calm as Perrin helped with her father's care.

At all times a tremor rattled his body since meeting at the Fire Plains. She had uploaded a copy of Degenerative Diseases to her PADD though it would say nothing that could help her with her father. For her grandmother, she'd memorized the book many years ago but she'd only acquired knowing her grandmother would die painfully, not preventing it.

Perrin set his mug down on a stool next to his wheelchair and reached for a hypospray. He woke up as she did and pocketed it.

"No, no. Let me hear you play. Plenty of time to play doctor later. I already know you're good at it." Her father offered a smile that wearily limped on his face. "You know I'm right." He added. She turned to push the tea back from the edge of the stool in reaction, not hardened by a week of no seeing redemption from his pain.

"Perhaps. I am protective; I don't apologize for that ever." She said. To balance herself, still unnerved after his earlier exhaustion, Perrin smiled teasingly and went over to the guesthouse, where she had had her guards leave her things when she'd arrived to stay, to grab her violin.

She looked blankly down at the violin case after dragging it from under her bed, brushing off a few books and a crumbled flyer. Undoing the locks, she felt as though they were glued stuck. She paused again when she finally pulled out her violin. There are no schemes to fix him this time, nothing I could know would make a difference she thought, leaning against the bedpost, these consuming ideas rushed past her defenses. Chapter 24- Degenerative Diseases than can Affect Hybrids; Darnay's disease, she recalled, was listed there and explained to be without a cure. If I had stayed at Starfleet medical—she cut off the thought and picked herself up to head back into the main house.

She played through a set of Classical Earth songs: La Mer, Time After Time, When You Wish Upon a Star. She had pulled them up from a folder on her PADD marked for a children's hospital concert she'd been called in to do when the previous performer had died suddenly. It had been at Elizabeth Tucker's Children's Hospital; she'd gotten a chance to walk along one of the nearby beaches afterwards. Perrin adjusted the strings slightly and recalled she was alone then, and had watched the other performers dance at an appreciation luau across from her. Her father started to look concerned so Perrin rolled in her thoughts. She let her bow bounce off the strings happily as she went through the songs. Once Perrin finished it had become dark; she got up and went to turn on all the lights to keep the mood cheerful and continued, running through some of the other music she had stored. She brought up a recent file and genuinely laughed, opening it to play.

"Why are you laugh—laughing?" Her father stuttered through his own laughter. His voice was rasped which Perrin heard clearly. She leaned over and spooned out some of his tea to wet his throat.

"Oh it's something I played for Sarek the first time we met without realizing." She answered.

"I'm surprised you didn't notice him; he's hard to miss."

"Well it was dark. I was—" She tried to remember it exactly, "down in this space station's kitchen, a real one like at home."

"Wowee ma choupinette. A rare sight."

"Yes; it's why I went down. It was dark, I simply didn't assume anyone would be there, and so I practiced this particular song for the conference. Then he appeared, asking me…" she tried to recall what he said; she could recall how he looked in the darkness, her heart racing in embarrassment at intruding on a legend whom she admired as a result of her father's work.

"You are intruding on my meditations?" her father offered when she didn't answer. Perrin flashed him an amused glance.

"No. It was 'Your performance was quite satisfactory.'"

"Sounds right."

"Yes." She agreed.

"I'm very thankful to him; does he know?"

"Yes." Her answer was certain. And a thought that had kept coming into her mind that past week, especially when she avoided thinking about her father's illness, returned: Sarek taking back her scarf.

With pointed heat, his fingers had brushed lightly through her hair to put the scarf back around her head. She couldn't mistake their path along the base of her skull as he had done so, doubly aware with the contrast of his seising her like a vise the only other time he'd deliberately touched her. I am thinking too much of the gesture, she thought. But she had also spent most of her life reading people's actions after Valor had deceived her. She couldn't turn from feeling he could have tied her hair up faster, that he didn't even need to do it at all. But he did. She blushed; Perrin had an idea why he had and one she knew wasn't logical; she didn't doubt her ability to read people though. Do I want it to be true, of him—and me, she asked herself, her memory of walking alone on that beach in Florida, watching the others together snuck into her mind again as she mentally went through the piece to escape a thought she knew couldn't amount to anything.

She put the PADD down and played "None but the Lonely Heart" for her father as the sky grew dark, which had lightened with T'khut's approach when he finally stopped her to be taken upstairs to sleep. Perrin rested the violin on her lap and looked at T'khut taking over the sky for the apex of the night. She found the dot Sarek had told her was Earth in Vulcan's crowded sky and hoped he would find the time to get what she'd asked him to.


Of the row of townhouses facing him, Sarek went to the one on the end that looked down at a row of juniper trees stretching onto a small café that was still crowded and that sat across from the corner door entering into Perrin's townhouse. He pushed in the code Perrin had messaged him and went up the stairs to the top floor. He reached the landing that led to Perrin's loft where she'd asked him to retrieve the small porcelain music box she had sent a picture of before he'd left Vulcan. The unlocked keypad flashed with a few notices when he entered; messages from Darrin Port and Mia Rue along with an alert about a Palais Garner deadline; the last's importance he could not determine.

In the unformed space he stepped into, Perrin had created rooms with the furniture, and a raised platform near a wide bay window that showcased an ornate wardrobe and bed served as the bedroom he would need to search. The sheets on the bed were slicked into place without a wrinkle, the tightly pulled lines crawling across it towards a dining chair with a marble box on it. He picked it up after a quick comparison to the photo Perrin had sent.

Cradling the box in the crook of his arm, Sarek started back out, surveying for problems; there were none. No dishes in the sink and only a stained shirt crumpled in the corner to challenge order. But in a small recess near a bookcase—a few pictures of her family stacked against the spines of the books, all medical—he noted a small mint plant looking withered. It was shriveled like the leaves he'd seen Perrin use for her tea at his niece's apartment when he would stay late listening to her preform. She was drinking mint tea at the medical lab he'd seen her at the previous week after their final meeting in regards to her testimony, he noted, reminded by the textbooks in her loft. Then she had sipped the tea deeply, half turned towards the street when she'd spoken to Doctor Stoka, who managed the lab and had served as an transcriber for him briefly 78.4 years ago. Sarek had not asked either what is was in regards to after she left with a few books and a Vulcan Medical College admission's flyer; he had guided the Klingon generals he had been speaking with about their perceived slights on their honor to another gagh bistro, which was opposite the direction where Perrin had walked off in. I could have done no less to preserve her privacy, Sarek thought, remembering what Perrin had done for him when he had lost all self control. He allowed himself the sensation of gratitude.

Sarek rested the box by the door to go over to the plant. A small lamp over it was damaged: the sealed reservoir connected to the lamp half full with water as a light blinked at the base. Moving to the kitchen, he pooled some water in his hands and poured it over the plant. He started taking apart the lamp. However, he paused.

Perrin will be returning within the next few days, Sarek noted. His meeting with the President had ended with assurances that the Algeans would not be allowed into Federation space following the President's meeting with the Federation Senate. Perhaps it would be logical to simply set it on the chair by her bed, he mused. The angle of the windows and height of the opposing buildings on her street would offer the plant true sunlight that would nullify the risk of leaving it where it was.

He pulled out the motherboard to get a better look.

Within 3.4 minutes, the lamp rebooted after Sarek removed a pocket of water interfering with the electric current. Draining it and using a dehumidifier under Perrin's sink to further dry it, Sarek decided to also fill up the reservoir as well.

That was without purpose, he noted while walking back through the street to his ship idling in a small park. But he remembered something Spock had told him about his associates. His friends, Sarek corrected with a measure of reluctance; he did not feel the term as apt but could think of nothing else to apply to Perrin.

He pulled his cloak tighter around him, too tired from his journey to Earth and earlier meeting to attempt to raise his internal temperature so that the mild night, a few humans from the café wandered out in shorts, would feel less cool. A breeze caught him that caused him to feel even colder. Sarek retreated to an alley between the townhouses and a tailor's shop to watch the juniper trees until they stopped shivering with the wind. When he was young he could stand the cold air and acclimated to it easily as Vulcan's ambassador to Earth, he recalled as he waited.

But I forfeited that skill to learn and to understand Surak's words with more clarity, and to understand their logic Sarek thought. To that end he had come to understand the unreasonableness of attempting to live alone on Excalibia in a way he could not have as a young diplomat, and the illogical nature of his and Perrin's choice to ignore their pasts, to allow illogical impulses to sway his mind.

He thought about Amanda; he thought about Perrin's plant. Perhaps I should have cut off a few leaves for her tea, he mused.