Chapter Nine: Family
Disclaimer: I do not profit from writing about these characters. Alas.
"Here's another one," Spock hears Nyota call from the living room. "That makes three."
With a silicone pad to protect his hand, he lifts the hot top of the red clay tagine, and after looking around fruitlessly for a trivet, hesitates and sets it on the kitchen counter. His apartment kitchen is small and poorly stocked—a handicap he hasn't noticed until now that he's trying to cook a meal.
He takes most of his meals on the fly—a carton of yogurt or a piece of fruit eaten at his desk while he works. Lately he and Nyota have started getting lunch several times a week in the Academy cafeteria or at the deli near the faculty apartments—nothing more elaborate than wraps or salads, eaten quickly.
An actual cooked dinner is rare. An evening meal shared with anyone is rarer still.
Tonight, however, he and Nyota are in his apartment grading first year xenolinguistics exams before the midterm, and rather than stopping their work, he has cobbled together some sliced vegetables and herbs and cooked them in the red tagine his mother gave him when he first came to the Academy.
If he had planned ahead more carefully, he could have gathered all the necessary ingredients for one of the Vulcan specialties his mother prefers. As it is, however, he's had to make do with week-old cauliflower and a bruised eggplant.
Being caught unprepared this way makes him uncomfortable, makes him question himself. If he weren't so distracted—
Repressing a sigh, he thinks about his asenoi in the corner of his bedroom, pictures lighting it and sitting cross-legged on the floor, allowing himself to sink through several layers of consciousness until he is able to find a measure of equilibrium.
And even as he does, he knows this won't happen tonight.
He pulls out two plates from an overhead cabinet and spoons some of the vegetables from the tagine on each. As he carries them into the living room, Nyota looks up from the sofa where she sits sideways, surrounded by PADDs, a stylus in her hand.
"Did you hear me?" she asks, and he tilts his head and sets the plates on the end table between the sofa and a large stuffed chair. "Three students missed the second question because they gave alternate definitions for k'rotcke. I think your rubric is too narrow."
"Explain," he says, settling into the chair and steepling his fingers under his chin, something Nyota calls his "thinking professor" pose.
"Well," she says, angling her body toward him while holding up a student PADD to the light, "your rubric says the students must translate k'rotcke as clan or family, but one student wrote tribe, one said line, and another said unit. Those are all perfectly good synonyms for clan or family, but I'm having to mark them wrong."
"Because they are wrong," Spock says. "The Yasen-ar recognize no relationships other than genetic ones. In their language, k'rotcke can mean your closest genetic relatives—your family—or your distant ones—your clan. It cannot mean your tribe, because tribal members are not always blood kin. Likewise, the word line suggests only direct ancestors and descendants but would not include the other genetic relatives recognized by the Yasen-ar, such as siblings or cousins. And unit—that is far too generic a term, even for most Standard speakers."
While he speaks he gazes over her head—to keep his focus on his words and not on…her.
Even so, maintaining his poise is a struggle. Against his will, he recalls seeing Nyota sitting in the same spot a week ago, toweling her hair dry after being caught in a sudden downpour outside the nearby deli.
Watching her stand up to leave that night, he had felt a sort of desperation that took him by surprise, that propelled him toward her, his hand outstretched.
"You are shaking," he said.
Although she laughed and dismissed it as being cold, he knew it wasn't true. He allowed his fingers to drift to her arm, allowed his thoughts to slip across uncensored—and he showed her his longing…and the longed for resolution.
"We could be censured if we continue," he said when she stepped into his embrace, and she nodded even as she lifted her face to his.
Their lovemaking had been urgent and swift, months of barely acknowledged fantasies distilled into something so rushed and intense that they were both astonished. An irrevocable line crossed, certainly, but if Spock had imagined that sexual intimacy would lessen the grinding, persistent need he feels for Nyota, he was disappointed.
If anything, he is more distracted than ever, more hyper-vigilant when he is with her, more miserable when they are apart.
And now, layered over everything, is the worry that they could be caught.
Be careful what you wish for.
His mother's words haunting him again.
"If you are going to be that literal minded," Nyota says, putting the PADD on the sofa beside her, "then even the words family and clan are too imprecise."
"Explain," Spock says, his tone exactly as before. He sees Nyota dart him a glance to show that she knows he's mocking her.
"This is being translated into Standard, right?"
He raises an eyebrow in agreement.
"Then the listener's understanding of family and clan figure into the translation."
"Your point?"
She reaches to the end table and picks up the plate of vegetables.
"I can't attest to all speakers of Standard," she says, spearing a slice of eggplant with her fork, "but when humans say that someone is family, they don't just mean blood kin. Your great aunt Matilda's husband would be part of your family, even if you have never met him."
"I do not have a great aunt Matilda."
"I'm being hypothetical," Nyota says, chewing and frowning in equal measure. With a swallow, she adds, "If you did have a great aunt Matilda, her husband would be your family."
"It would depend," Spock says, picking up his own plate. "If he were human, then he would be my family. If great aunt Matilda were Vulcan, however, he would merely be part of the clan."
"What's the difference?"
"By Vulcan law, only siblings, parents, and grandparents are family. All other genetic relatives or relatives by marriage are members of the clan."
"Okay," Nyota says, "forget those. Human families include people who aren't even legally related. Really good friends, neighbors we grow up with, people we depend on for emotional support—we call them family."
"Rendering the term meaningless."
"My point," Nyota says, waving her fork for emphasis, "is that a Standard speaker would have a much broader understanding of what a family or a clan is than the original Yasen-ar speaker—that a really accurate translation of k'rotcke would say something like blood kin or gene-sharer. If you are going to take off points when a student translates it as tribe, then you aren't being fair, since tribe or line or unit are really as imprecise as family and clan as far as the Yasen-ar are concerned."
"Since family and clan can include non-blood relatives, at least in human parlance."
With a triumphant sweep of her fork, Nyota says, "Exactly!"
"Then," Spock says, "I must amend the rubric. Please go back and mark family and clan as incorrect answers as well."
"Wait a minute!" Nyota splutters, and he waits to see how long it takes her to realize that he is joking.
Four seconds. That's all it takes before her brows unknit and she laughs.
Not so long ago she would have thought what most people thought—that Vulcans have no sense of humor, no sense of playfulness.
Now, however—
She sets the plate back on the end table and crosses the distance between the sofa and the chair in two steps, startling him when she bends her knees and straddles his lap.
Sliding her hands up his chest and resting her palms against the side of his face, she leans forward and whispers, "Do you really want all your students to fail? Because that's what will happen."
One summer Spock and his cousin Chris had built and deliberately shorted out a number of small engines to test the strength of various types of tensile materials to carry an electric current. Sometimes the failures were spectacular—loud explosive shut downs accompanied by smoke and flame.
Other times the engines simply fizzled or sparked and then stopped dead.
Nyota lets one hand drift up to his ear and he knows that his brain is about to short out—though with a spectacular explosion or with a quiet shutdown, he isn't certain.
He darts his hand and catches her wrist.
"Nyota—"
She lets out a little gasp and he hurriedly lets go.
"Too much?" she says, and he takes a breath.
Including that first time after the rain storm, they've ended up in bed twice before, and both times Spock has asked himself if he is prepared to go back to being less, to step away from the intimacy that could—if they are found out—cost them their careers in Starfleet.
Having her here tonight to help grade the exams is a test of sorts, not just of his own control but of his resolve.
A single transgression—even two—could conceivably be explained away. An ongoing sexual relationship, on the other hand—
As if she senses his sudden seriousness, she leans back and lowers her hands from his face.
To his relief, he's able to think more clearly.
"I've been thinking," she says, and he feels his heart speed up. If she suggests that they stop what they have started, he's prepared to agree that it is the logical choice. He's even prepared to suffer the particular purgatory of knowing the feel and smell and taste of her without ever reaching for her again.
But he isn't prepared to maintain any façade of equanimity if he does.
He also isn't prepared for what she says next.
"I need to change my birth control."
His eyebrows fly up but before he can reply she says, "I know my antigen shots are probably enough, but just to be safe, I want to switch to an anovulant. That way there won't be any question—"
There it is again, an attendant sorrow that dogs him when he considers his genetic heritage.
He's always known that his very existence is the result of medical intervention, that Vulcans and humans, however similar in appearance, spawned in different genetic oceans and his parents required help to bridge that gap. And while doctors have assured him that he himself is not infertile, the odds are high that any partner—Vulcan or human—would have difficulty conceiving a child from his hybrid genes.
He starts to tell Nyota that her worry is moot, that her normal antigen shots that make her immune to human gametes are probably not even necessary.
But he falters. Saying anything feels like a prediction of a barren future—in more ways than one.
Instead, he tells her that when he has time, he will visit the infirmary as well to begin his own antigen shots.
"So there won't be any questions," he says, not because he has any doubts, but because she does, and he can lift them from her with that simple action.
She slides her hands back to his face and says, "Then I guess the smart thing to do until then is…well, not this."
As she lowers her hands and stands up, he is oddly bereft, as if he's lost something unexpectedly—which is when he realizes that for all his brave thoughts earlier about stepping back, he's been quietly anticipating getting her into his bed before she goes back to her dorm tonight.
He picks up their plates and heads into the kitchen, and when he returns, she has moved the student PADDs from the sofa and parked herself on the arm near the end table.
"Come here," she says when he heads to the chair, and he detours and sits at the other end of the sofa, teasing her.
"So that's how it's going to be," she says, laughing. She scoots toward him and says, "I didn't mean to put a damper on the evening."
He knows she means the pragmatic talk of birth control but he pretends otherwise.
"My xenolinguistics students will have you to thank for their low marks on this exam," he says as she lifts his left arm and drapes it over her shoulders, pressing her back against his chest.
"You aren't really going to count that question wrong, are you? You ought to throw it out!"
"The question is not faulty," he says, letting his gaze drift downward to where her hair tickles his hand. Following his eyes, she reaches up and tugs on the hairband that holds up her ponytail. With a flick of her wrist, she lets her hair cascade down, and then shooting him a decidedly mischievous look, she says, "But your rubric is faulty. You shouldn't be so narrow-minded about what constitutes a family."
For a moment he debates arguing that her concern about birth control is misplaced—that their caution right now is unnecessary. That they should forego grading the rest of the exams and—
At once the thought feels intrusive and selfish and he sets it aside.
"My mother would agree with you," he says, pulling her closer, feeling her slip one arm across his waist.
"Tell me about it," she says, and he permits himself a moment to enjoy the sensation of the weight of her in his arms before he begins his story.
X X X X
The hired flitter bobbed and wove, and Amanda thought seriously about asking Sarek to stop long enough to let her stomach settle. They were already running behind schedule, however, and she knew how much he disliked being late.
Swallowing, she beat back a wave of nausea. To her left in the pilot's seat, Sarek turned to her as if he sensed her uneasiness. Which he should, she thought. She'd been talking about it for several days.
Even before the flitter ride her stomach had been upset. She was keyed up and tired both—mostly from not sleeping on the shuttle flight from Earth to Vulcan but also wearied by the heat and gravity. The only other time she had been to Vulcan she had tagged along while her sister Cecilia attended a medical conference two years ago, and she didn't recall feeling so tired on that visit. Adrenaline, probably—the excitement of finally visiting a planet she had grown up hearing about.
Amanda hadn't known any Vulcans personally then, had seen them as unapproachable, exotic, remote.
A lot had happened in a couple of years.
Once the flitter passed the outskirts of Shi'Kahr, the desert landscape stretched out ahead of them, stark and foreboding—and also, Amanda thought, strangely compelling.
Rather like the Vulcans themselves.
"There," Sarek said, pointing through the wind screen, "just over that rise to the left of the mountain. That's my clan's homeplace."
Amanda visored her eyes with her hand. Despite the heat, she shivered.
For the first time since she and Sarek had started discussing a possible future together, she was here on Vulcan to meet his family.
Or at least to meet his mother. Sarek's father rarely saw company—not since his Bendii's Syndrome symptoms became obvious. A degenerative disorder, Bendii's stripped Vulcans of their emotional control—a deeply shaming condition that most sufferers dealt with by remaining secluded. Skon was no exception.
At least as important as meeting Sarek's mother was seeing the actual homeplace. Sarek had told Amanda that members of the S'chn T'gai clan had been bonded and married in the place for koon-ut-kal-if-fee for at least two millennia and probably longer. Older members, such as Sarek's parents, lived in nearby homes built centuries ago.
Such casual references to time this way still caught Amanda by surprise. In chronological years Sarek was more than twice as old as she was, yet by Vulcan standards he was an adult in his prime, a discrepancy that she took some time getting used to.
"Your family will accuse me of robbing the cradle," he had teased once, obviously proud of employing a human idiom.
It was no coincidence that she had introduced him to her family before meeting his own. Seattle was an easy hop from either San Francisco or New York where Sarek split his time between embassies. By the time Cecilia met him, Amanda had already told her so much that her sister worried that he would feel awkward around her, as if she had been an eavesdropper in their relationship.
But Cecilia and Sarek had gotten along from the start, both more reserved than Amanda, both finding her vivacity a welcome counterpoint to their own quietude.
Amanda's mother, on the other hand, had been less gracious. Not that she had ever said anything untoward or rude to Sarek directly. Nor even to Amanda.
But her disapproval was clear by what she didn't say.
"She's just disappointed that we aren't planning a big wedding," Amanda had told Sarek. It wasn't exactly a lie, but it wasn't the truth, either. Sarek, however, seemed unaware of Irene Grayson's unspoken skepticism about him and took Amanda's words at face value.
"Then perhaps we should," he said, "if that is the human custom."
Amanda shook her head.
"That would be a nightmare! So much planning and expense, and Mother insisting we invite all her friends we don't even know. We could avoid all that if we schedule our wedding on Vulcan."
"Vulcan weddings are not scheduled," Sarek said, his face a mask. "Couples do not marry until—"
"Oh," Amanda said, blushing for them both. "Well."
"The bonding ceremony," Sarek said, "can be scheduled. Unless you are still unsure."
Of course she was unsure.
As much as she relished the moments when she and Sarek were linked telepathically, his intellect as bright and sharp as crystal, his amusement and humor a revelation, she had trouble imagining being permanently in his mind—and more so, having him in hers. The loss of privacy was daunting, the way such openness laid bare any pretense.
She was ready to marry Sarek on a moment's notice—understood that his necessity then would be overpowering and even frightening. Was prepared to live with him beforehand as his companion and lover—adapting to his culture, making a home on Vulcan.
But dwelling together in each other's thoughts—the idea gave her pause.
This trip to Vulcan, then, was to give her time to consider the idea. Marriage, Sarek had told her, was not an option without being bonded first.
The flitter landed in a cloud of red dust. In the distance Amanda could see several low buildings made of adobe or something similar. Any trees or gardens were hidden from view. Instead, large angular boulders dominated the foreground, though further off Amanda noticed a mountain range, purple and blue in the haze.
Two liveried attendants opened the flitter doors before she had a chance to release the latch herself. Neither looked at her directly nor offered her a hand—their deference reminding her of footmen in old stories of royalty. She remarked on it softly as she and Sarek followed them to the closest building.
"Vulcan has no word for royalty," Sarek said, "in the way that humans mean it. Some clans, however, are accorded a certain status that to outsiders might be construed that way."
"You never told me you were a prince!" Amanda said, and Sarek cocked one eyebrow to let her know he recognized he was being chaffed.
"Not my clan," he said. "Though Sybok's mother was from such a clan. At least, that is what they claim."
Sarek was so rarely angry or judgmental that his last words crashed in Amanda's ears. She turned to look at him closely but his face revealed nothing of the upset of his words.
Whenever Sarek spoke of his son, Amanda sensed not only his anger but his genuine distress at being kept out of his life.
"Because Sybok's mother and I never married," Sarek told her once, "when she died, custody was awarded to his maternal grandparents. By law, they control how often I see him."
"But why don't they—" Amanda had started to ask, but Sarek's expression clouded over so quickly that she shook her head and fell silent.
She'd pressed for few details since then—such as why Sarek had not married Sybok's mother, or why she had died. Such restraint on Amanda's part was unusual—she herself recognized that—but she didn't want to add to his pain by prying. When he was ready, he would tell her.
An elderly woman wearing a heavy green robe met them in the entrance hall.
"It is pleasing to see you again, T'Ola," Sarek said formally, and the elderly woman inclined her head a fraction in acknowledgment. "May I present to you Amanda Grayson of Earth."
Amanda nodded and said, "Lady T'Ola, the honor is mine."
On the flitter ride Sarek had told her that T'Ola had been with his family since before he was born, and though she was unmarried and therefore rated no specific honorific with her name, offering one would win Amanda favor.
Lifting her hooded eyes to Amanda, T'Ola said, "You honor us with your presence, Miss Grayson."
Amanda saw the older woman make eye contact with Sarek and some look crossed between them. Approval of his choice? She made a note to ask him later.
"I will inform your mother that you are here," T'Ola said, ushering them into the sitting room before she turned and left.
Sarek stood for a moment longer before joining Amanda on the sofa.
"My father," he said slowly, deliberately, "requires my mother's control. When she's with him, he has some measure of comfort. He doesn't mean to, but he projects his emotions to those close by. It is…draining…to be in close proximity of someone with Bendii's. "
"Because they are bonded."
"For anyone," Sarek said. "But, yes, bondmates suffer most. My mother…feels…what my father feels."
He looked up quickly and Amanda knew with a certain intuitive leap that he was intentionally showing her the worse aspects of being bonded before she made any decision. Looking around quickly to make sure they were alone, she slipped her fingers across his palm.
At the sound of a faint shuffle down the hall, she pulled her hand back.
"My mother," Sarek said, standing up. Amanda got to her feet and faced the doorway.
Whatever she expected, she didn't expect the woman who stood there. Tiny, almost wizened, Sarek's mother was shorter than Amanda, partly because she was stooped over, as if she carried a weight on her shoulders.
Her hair was wispy and so pale that it looked luminescent in the dim light. She wore a thin blue cloak that seemed to glide along the floor as she made her way slowly forward.
Only her eyes resembled her son's—and there the resemblance was remarkable. Both had the same dark eyes, the same steady gaze.
For the second time that day, Amanda shivered in the heat.
"Mother—" Sarek began, but she silenced him with a motion of her hand.
"Please forgive my haste, Miss Grayson," she said, reaching out to brace herself on Sarek's arm as she lowered herself to the sofa. "And please sit. I can only stay away for a few moments."
As Amanda sat down, she caught a glimpse of Sarek, his tension palpable, his brow furrowed.
The close proximity to someone with Bendii's? Or because he was upset at seeing his mother this way? It was frustrating not to be able to reach out and touch him, to access what he was feeling right now.
A shout in the distance startled her. Almost immediately, T'Ola was at the doorway.
"Lady T'Aara," she said, and Sarek's mother lifted her hand to indicate that she had heard her. T'Ola disappeared back down the hall.
"We must talk," she said to Sarek, "but your father suffers when I leave him. Even T'Ola grows impatient with him. He refuses to let anyone else sit with him."
"Tell him I am here," Sarek said, leaning forward, and Amanda watched as his mother grew still and seemed to pull inward. In another moment she shook her head.
"He refuses to see you," she said.
Another sound echoed from the hall and once again T'Ola was at the doorway.
"I must go," T'Aara said, not bothering to hide her weariness.
Her face crumpled as she lowered her hands to the sofa, preparing to rise.
With a sudden impulse, Amanda said, "Tell him I'm here. Tell him…I need to meet him. That…I'm…used to emotional outbursts. That I have had a few myself."
I'm sorry! she thought, wishing Sarek could hear her words, giving him an apologetic shrug. His face was unreadable.
A moment lapsed, then two.
She must have crossed some unforgivable line in Vulcan etiquette. Folding her hands, she looked down.
"Go," T'Aara said so softly that at first Amanda wasn't sure she had spoken. "While I talk to my son."
She needed no more prodding. Following T'Ola down the hall, Amanda tried to notice everything—a niche in the wall where a large ceremonial-looking weapon was mounted, a small table with purple flowers arranged in a rough clay bowl, a patterned rug at the threshold of the room at the end, all contributing to a sense of age and purpose in the house.
The room itself was starkly bare—the walls dark gray, the lighting recessed and faint. In the center of the room was a raised dais with a narrow bed. A thin man in a white shift lay prone, uncovered, writhing in obvious pain. Without intending to, Amanda gasped—and the man's motions stopped.
Stepping closer to the bed, Amanda saw him turn his face toward her, his dark eyes unfocused and blinking.
"Sarek?" he called, and she stepped up until she was next to his bed.
"It's Amanda," she said. "Amanda Grayson. Sarek's…friend."
"Sarek's friend?"
"Yes," she said. Skon's hand rose and trembled in the air and Amanda slipped her fingers around his, steadying him. His palm was unnaturally cool and dry but she felt the familiar buzz of a Vulcan touch.
Touching Sarek this way meant seeing what he saw, hearing what he heard, knowing what he knew—his organized world laid out like a grid before her.
Skon's thoughts, by contrast, were so chaotic that Amanda felt like someone on an old-fashioned ferris wheel, whirled up and over, tumbled and almost dizzy.
"Sarek's friend?" Skon said again, and she tried to send him a collage of images of her with Sarek—walking down a street in San Francisco, eating at their favorite Moroccan restaurant near the Vulcan embassy, sharing a quiet conversation—ordinary, mundane actions that she thought might explain her relationship with his son.
She felt Skon's thoughts sift and sort and settle into something more orderly.
"You are here to help him with Sybok?"
The question startled her and she frowned. Skon frowned, too.
"No," she said, trying to soothe him. "Sybok isn't here. We are here to see you. And T'Aara. Sarek has been away for some time—"
"You must help him," Skon said, squeezing her hand with a jolt. "A father should know his son."
To her shock, Amanda felt tears spring to her eyes.
"Yes," Skon said, "you know how sad it is. You know. No one else knows, but you know. Help him."
Skon closed his eyes and took a shuddering breath, his hand going limp. Carefully Amanda lowered his hand to his chest and listened as his breathing evened out.
"He will sleep now," T'Ola said from behind her, and Amanda looked up to see Sarek and his mother standing in the doorway.
"He was confused," Amanda said as she stepped out into the hall. "He thought Sybok was here."
"He is," T'Aara said, and Amanda felt more than saw Sarek watching her.
"But I thought—" she said, and Sarek took her elbow and said, "A short visit only, because my father's health has deteriorated. An attendant brought him here this morning and takes him back tomorrow."
Immediately Amanda's heart began to hammer so hard that she felt it in her throat. Sarek's son! A part of his world she had never thought she would see!
He shepherded her back to the sitting room, his mother leading the way. Someone had already set out a teapot on the side table, and Sarek poured his mother a cup before offering one to Amanda.
"I can't," she said, willing him to understand why she was nervous.
A look of mild bewilderment flashed across his face. Where was telepathy when you needed it?
Suddenly a tall young man entered the room and Sarek became uncharacteristically fidgety.
Trailing the young man was a small Vulcan boy the size of a human six or seven year old—Sybok, obviously, his dark hair cut straight across his brow accenting his rounded face; his arms and legs sturdy, almost stocky. His chin was tucked down but he surveyed everyone in the room carefully with his warm, brown eyes.
When he made eye contact with Amanda, he paused and blinked. For a moment she was sure he was going to speak, but instead he tipped his head to the side and looked away.
"Sybok," T'Aara said, and he took several steps closer to her. "Speak to your father."
Without looking up, Sybok said, "Father," his voice so plaintive that Amanda's throat tightened.
The young man—the attendant who had escorted Sybok there—hovered in the background while Sarek asked Sybok a series of questions.
What was he learning in school? What special interests did he have? Did he still have the pet sehlat Sarek had given him?
The entire conversation spoken in a monotone—Sarek formal and awkward, Sybok answering in reluctant monosyllables.
Soon enough they fell silent.
"This is Amanda," Sarek said abruptly, and Sybok turned his gaze on her.
"Come here," she beckoned, not expecting him to move, but to her surprise he came to her right away and stood so close that she could have reached out and touched him if she had dared.
"Your father says you are a good student," she said, cutting her eyes at Sarek, hoping he wouldn't contradict her. He hadn't, in fact, told her anything about Sybok's personal life, but she saw Sybok's eyes light up and she felt justified.
This little boy needs the lie, she thought.
"Do you know that I am a teacher?" she said, and Sybok shook his head so solemnly that Amanda had to stifle a smile. "I am," she said. "And some of my students are about your age. Do you know what they have been learning about recently?"
Again Sybok shook his head, but this time his expression was less cautious.
"You. All about you—or rather, about Vulcan. They want to know everything about your world—what it looks like, what people do here, what games the children play. When I told them I was coming for a visit, they made me promise to record some images to show them. Would you like to send them a message? Tell them some things you like to do?"
She pulled her comm from her pocket and held it out. Sybok's eyes followed it and she was convinced she saw the ghost of a smile at the corner of his mouth. For a moment she was sure he was going to reach for the comm.
But then he glanced up at the attendant at the door and his face fell.
"No," he said softly. "Maybe later."
The attendant signaled to Sybok to retire with him then, and Amanda was surprised to find the fingers of her left hand pressed firmly against her chest, as if to keep her heart from leaping away.
Skon woke shortly afterwards and T'Aara excused herself, leaving Sarek pacing around the sitting room, Amanda pouring herself a cup of tea at last.
"You have to do something," she said when she sat down, teacup in hand.
"Explain," Sarek said, stopping his pacing and turning toward her.
"He's such an unhappy little boy," she said. "He's lost so much already. It doesn't seem fair that he has to lose you, too."
"I have no options," Sarek said, sitting on the other end of the sofa from her. "The law is clear in this matter."
"Then the law is wrong!" Amanda said. "He needs you. You're his family. You wouldn't even have seen him at all if we hadn't come on this visit. It's just a coincidence that you are both here at the same time."
Sarek ran his hand over his brow—an action so unlike him that Amanda set her cup down and moved to his side.
"Sybok's grandmother," Sarek began, "is rightly concerned that he has a stable home. His mother was not…we were not…together…"
He stumbled to a stop and Amanda put her hand on his arm.
"You didn't live together?"
"No," he said, as if the word cost him something to say it. "She…was unwilling. After Sybok was born, I thought she might change her mind, but…she died soon afterward."
"What happened?" Amanda said, but Sarek shook his head.
"I have my suspicions, but I have not been told," he said, his eyes cast down. "She was unhappy, Amanda. I didn't know that for a long time, but she was."
"You mean she was depressed?"
"Vulcans do not get depressed."
"Apparently they do," Amanda said. "There's no shame in it."
But even as she said it, she knew that for Vulcans there would be shame. What Vulcan would ever admit to suffering from depression—from any mental illness—as proud and committed as they were to logic, to rational thought? She felt her face grow hot with anger.
They sat in silence for a minute, Sarek visibly trying to regain his composure.
"What can I do to help?" Amanda said, and Sarek sat up and said, "There is nothing to be done as long as Sybok's grandmother remains his guardian."
"Then we have to convince her that he needs to be with you," Amanda said, and sensing that Sarek was about to argue with her, she hurried on. "You said his grandmother wants him to live in a stable home. Then let's make one for him. You and me."
"We have no guarantee that his grandmother will agree," Sarek said.
Running her fingers up his arm, Amanda said, "That's not the only reason I want to make a home with you."
"I thought you were uncertain about being bonded," Sarek said, and Amanda cocked her head and considered.
She had been uncertain—was, if she was honest—still unsure about what it meant—what it would mean—to be bonded.
But more than that, she was certain that she wanted to find out.
X X X X X
Before he finishes the story, Spock feels Nyota fall asleep, her breathing deepening and becoming regular. He shifts his shoulder a fraction so that her cheek rests on his chest instead of on the bony knob of his arm.
From this angle he has trouble seeing her face. Her body, on the other hand, is stretched out in full view, her uniform rucked up around her hips, one foot tucked neatly on the sofa, the other partway off the cushion.
He lets his vision slide up the curve of her calf and around her knee and on to where her thigh meets the hem of her jumper.
A mistake.
He shifts uncomfortably and tries to will away his growing arousal.
The student exams. He's still hours away from finishing them, even if he does eliminate the second question.
Which, in retrospect, may not have been the best-constructed exam question he's ever written.
He distracts himself by rethinking the question in its entirety. Instead of using the Yasen-ar language, he should have found one with fewer cultural similarities to Standard. A'Opli, for instance, would have been both harder and more precise for his students. He makes a mental note to add a question about A'Opli on the final exam in two months.
Nyota lets out a sigh and draws one knee up over his leg.
Misery.
The exam. He was thinking about the final exam.
Last semester his final exam was so difficult that his failure rate caught the attention of the dean. Not that Spock was scolded, but he was cautioned about it.
Perhaps A'Opli is more advanced than first year xenolinguistics students can handle. Nyota will have a better idea about that.
He dips his head toward hers and catches a whiff of her shampoo—something with fruity overtones, much more heavily scented that what she usually uses.
Something a smell-seeking Orion would prefer. The roommate's, then. Nyota must be out of her own brand.
Feeling a measure of satisfaction at his deduction, Spock takes another whiff, and another.
With a start, he realizes that he is gripping her more tightly. When he relaxes his arms, she sighs again and slides her hand across his chest and lets it rest near her chin.
He has trouble breathing.
Numbers have always been a refuge, but tonight they betray him.
He's lain here with her in his arms 54.35 minutes, the last 12.4 minutes so uncomfortably excited that it's all he can do not to wake her and communicate his desire directly.
Which he has agreed not to do because of a .01376 chance that her current birth control might not be protection enough.
Infinitesimal odds, actually. Almost so small as to be incalculable.
But not quite.
His mother's miscarriage when he was seven...he recalls that frightening night with unwanted clarity. A planned pregnancy? He's never asked. He needs to.
He takes a breath so deep that Nyota stirs and wakes.
"I must have fallen asleep," she says unnecessarily. "What are you doing?"
She cranes her neck up to look at him and he says, "Thinking."
"What about?" she says, the sleepiness in her voice making her sound so sultry that he feels a little hitch in his throat.
If he asks her, she will say yes, will unzip and unbuckle and slip over him right here, without leaving this sofa, until they are both so unwound that all they can do is lie tangled, exhausted, on the cushions.
If he asks her.
So he doesn't.
"I was thinking about what you said earlier," he says, nudging a loose lock of hair chastely from her cheek, "about families and clans. How humans decide who they are."
"Rendering the term meaningless, you said," she reminds him, and he quirks one eyebrow and says, "I've had time to reconsider. I may have been mistaken."
A/N: This chapter happens between "The Word You Mean" and "People Will Say."
If you are still out there reading, let me know! Your support means more than you can know!