With each incoming report tensions increased on the bridge of the USS Dresden; the science officers searched the databases for profiles on the Algeans, muttering about their weak points though the fight was spread out enough for this information to be useless. Ten minutes after the Algeans began to fire on Reynard's house they were finally unarmed and subdued. Sarek waited sliently by the captain's chair for a final report from the ground.
"Three dead." One of the officers informed.
"Who?" Asked Edwards. He leaned forward towards the viewscreen though the voice came from the comm built into the armrest.
"One Algean, a Vulcan, and an older man; we aren't sure who yet but the target seemed pretty upset. They just beamed her up to Transporter Room 3." Edwards messaged his temples with a sigh.
"Can you please you a different term? And stop watching those old Earth movies." The officer acknowledged with an embarrassed stutter. To properly assess Perrin's condition, Sarek headed towards the transporters, but Edwards stopped him and waved to his second officer to escort Sarek down.
Sarek noted the red alert was still active as he and the officer stepped out of the turbo lift. A logical precaution, he noted. Every crewmember out in the halls rushed to their destinations and pulled them along in their urgency; They reached the transporter room soon after Perrin was beamed up, still being examined for wounds.
"I was not injured, I am fine." Sarek heard her say after he and the officer entered; they stood apart from the group surrounding Perrin. A nurse was leaning over her, weaving a tricorder around Perrin's body. His black eyes hinted to Sarek that he was betazoid. The nurse crouched down and looked at her with a frown after the tricorder confirmed she wasn't hurt.
"I was informed by this gentleman here that you had appeared to be upset. I sense now that you are not well." Perrin stood up in response and held her head high.
"And I know a great deal more about my own state of mind than you; I say I am fine. That will be the end of it." Sarek watched the nurse eye her suspiciously but ultimately decline to challenge her. The second officer started forward but Sarek raised his hand.
"I will speak with Ms. Perrin alone." Everyone looked to him uncertainly but left. Sarek stayed, studying Perrin whose face wilted to complete despondence when the others had all finally gone. The doors closed with a swish and Sarek moved towards her to which Perrin looked up, her gaze falling quickly back to the floor. He paused. Noting the corners of her lips were turned down severly, he was unsure what to say.
She began to turn away but Sarek stepped with her movement her as she did.
He forced a diplomatically solemn tone, "Perrin; I grieve with thee."
"Sarek." She responded faintly. She brought her hands up as though to push him away. Waiting for her act, Sarek did not move as her hands hovered closer to his chest, balled tightly. Finally moving around him, Perrin exited the room. He picked up from her a short, shuttered breath as she continued away.
Three days after his death, Reynard's funeral was attended by Sarek, Perrin, and a local minister; Sarek's aides had remained behind on Vulcan to assist Kavik with the fallout from the final Algean attack and Perrin's guards had been recalled to a new assignment with all the attackers detained and awaiting trial. And from the small church of piled stone to the graveyard boarded by it where Reynard's family had been laid to rest for generations, no one minded them beyond a brief degree of acknowledgement of the casket leading along, held up on Sarek's shoulder with no other pallbearers to take the weight.
He strode in first to the mausoleum at the center of the cemetery. Wide and constructed with a smooth gray marble, Sarek noted the traditional Christian motifs remained though Reynard had admitted to him once that his family had long since ceased to follow any religion like most humans. He gently slid the coffin below a niche engraved: Françoise Landover, Qui craint de souffrir, il souffre déjà de ce qu'il craint. As he stepped back, the angel recesses cut out of the marble of the walls appeared to lean nearer to the coffin. Their intended effect, Sarek mused solemnly as the shadows also darkened the edges of their noses like tears.
The ceremony was brief; he and Perrin stood through it without reaction. At the end, Sarek walled off the coffin with a slab of granite laying to the side. Reynard Landover, Petit à petit, l'oiseau fait son nid. Sarek read his old associate's epitaph engraved into it with mute agreement.
There was a small coin sitting outside the mausoleum that Sarek had not seen going in. He picked it up and noted a chocolate scent coming from it. Turning it over did not show any bits of food on it, but there was a seam along the edge that Sarek picked under. His peeling it off as Perrin and the minister went around him and talked reverently about her father revealed that it was solid chocolate. He brought the uncovered coin up to his face and noticed someone move between the tombs and headstones.
They tripped and turned back slightly so Sarek could see their face; it was Tim Valor. Holding a trembled finger to his lips, Valor disappeared where he was. Sarek looked up as though he might be able to see the ship that Valor had transported onto. Attempting to retain a lost clarity, he searched the sky for the location of a man he was not certain he'd ever known. He tossed the coin into the mausoleum and then shut its doors, latching it with a chain that had been taken off earlier; Sarek turned away from markers of two humans he was no closer to understanding.
The minister left them halfway back to Perrin's childhood home. With him gone and the path mostly empty, Perrin kept a little closer to Sarek than when they had carried her father's body to rest. He felt her brush absently against him several times.
She seemed to close in on herself as they came to the château he'd partly seen in one of the photo's Reynard had kept on his fireplace mantle. Covered in ivy, the doors and windows were the only things kept clear of the crawling plants. From the small gate to the door took longer to get to than that morning as she slowed her pace.
"Ms. Perrin." She did not answer; he elected to stay quiet as they went in.
Sarek lingered in the foyer; Perrin ascended the wide staircase to the second floor. He watched her struggle to hold onto the rail as she dragged her feet along the steps. And even a Vulcan's hearing could scarcely pick up the squeak of the hinges as she softly went into her room with the silent force of lethargy. Sarek debated following. He did not hear the door close behind her; he did hear her sob quietly, the sound floating through the house and increasing as it vibrated between the beams that held up the château. He went up.
Perrin was sitting in a chair that faced out the window in a way that had the shadows fanning through the room, and the walls receding like a cavern. He stepped over the sheets falling off at the end of her bed; he recalled her neat loft in Paris. Sarek kneeled in front of her and after a short while she looked at him.
"Ms. Perrin." He repeated in the same tone from their walk back.
Her response was dry, "I'm not sure what to do Sarek." She picked at the fabric of her dress. He waited in response.
"I—" she choked over her words, "I let someone else die again. I thought that I was improving, that trusting people would be enough but I just cannot do the only thing I really ever have wanted to do; protect—help people."
Sarek considered deeply what he wanted to say.
"You have helped me Perrin." He replied, daring to speak so she could hear. She did not react.
"My father; my grandmother, the whole reason I wanted to become a doctor; Tatk, my guard that died protecting me; Safik; and they are all gone without me being able to help them. Some of them dead because of me."
"What could have been done for them?"
"More." She gazed back out the window, tears now rolling down her face.
"Someone other than me could have done more by the virtue of not being me. Sarek, I simply don't know what to do."
He reached out and grazed his fingers along her arm, resting them over her hand. She looked at him with vacant surprise.
"She who was my wife was to meet with her family after many years without seeing them when she died. It would be illogical of me to place blame in myself for this. She had had chances to see them; she was not confined to Vulcan. It would be illogical." He whispered. Perrin stared into his eyes and he looked away, acknowledging a hidden part of him he'd allowed her to see.
He turned to the window to see what it viewed.
Out onto the horizon, unimpeded, an expanse of wildflowers mixed with the tall field grass beyond a short patio and well kept lawn. Framed by the window, the view gave the appearance of a snapshot into a place. Sarek presumed for Perrin it was into a time. A table was visible when he moved closer to the window. Three chairs surrounded it though the heavy coating of rust on each suggested their use was hazardous. And in the whole of the house he had seen while staying there since the previous day in a small attic guest room, that effect of disuse was present. Like Amanda's apartment from her teaching days that she had never sold, the château just was, gathering dust. Like his villa had when he left for Excalbia; its occupants didn't need it.
He was aware of Perrin's hand hovering over his shoulder.
"Sarek. Normally I can do something about these feelings but now I just don't know what to do." Perrin said, searching him for something.
"There is a Vulcan meditation technique that might assist you. It is often the first thing a Vulcan will teach their child when beginning their journey to logic." He replied.
Sarek kneeled back down by her chair, keeping a short distance this time and his hands crossed. He began to guide her through the process.
"Close your eyes." Wiping away her tears, she did so.
"Imagine yourself in an ocean. It is most unsettled. The waves are crashing on you. But you—" he paused to examine her; Perrin bit her lip as she concentrated, "have control over this ocean. As you calm, it calms with you. It knows your thoughts; it conforms to them. To your will. The waves will stop; the water will smoothen."
He allowed her to focus and rolled back onto his feet when his knees began to ache slightly even in the lower gravity of Earth. As he started to stand, she grabbed his hand and opened her eyes.
"Sarek; I don't feel-."
"Yes, you will Perrin. I will aide you; give me your thoughts." Reaching out, Sarek touched his fingers to the melding points on her head. He did not grasp for the whole of her mind; only extending far enough to touch Perrin's emotions, to imbue them with his discipline. He waited for her shut her eyes again. He could feel the storm of grief, loss, guilt, sorrow, and despairing rage that had struck down her attempts to tame them; they did not seem strange to his mind, but familiar. To quiet all of it he pushed further than intended and forced himself into the vision of the raging waters Perrin held to. Calm your mind, he thought to her as the vision of herself struggled to stay above the waves. He was next to her in the water now, soaked through the heavy robes he wore though, as the ocean was an exercise in control, it did not pull him deeper. Perrin struggled and choked on the water. Calm your mind, he repeated.
The waters remained turbulent. He sent out more of his will, forcing the currents around him to steady.
The calm spread out, first from him then from Perrin to form ripples that parted the waters onto an unseen point and left the still of a mirror behind.
Still holding onto her mind as they both rose out of the image and back to her room, he felt flushed when Perrin looked up at him with a heavy glance. Her eyes pulled him closer and he touched the heat rising from her thoughts, separate from the emotions they had pushed back. As Perrin bent towards him he paused but she continued.
Sarek closed his eyes and retreated into himself; pulling into his mind as though he could do nothing to stop Perrin, and she came so close the only distance was imagined. Her lips dragged across his to the side of his face, around to the tips of his ear, they traced across his cheeks to do the same on the other side, and slid back down to his jaw. To try to retreat further into his thoughts, Sarek found that impossible as her lips held to that point between his face and neck. Perrin had pulled him out into the room with her again. He grabbed her lips between his and nearly moved to pull in the rest of her closer, but that much he could hold himself back from, Perrin's body still against the chair as he allowed her to dictate his actions, not his discipline.
