Chapter 13: Thankfulness
Disclaimer: I'm just visiting and recording for free what I observe.
"Do you need to answer that?" Amanda asks. She is poised to begin telling what she calls the end of the story when Spock's comm chimes. Nyota, assuredly. No one else calls him. He shakes his head, letting the call go to his voice queue.
For a moment his mother looks at him closely, the way she used to when he was young and she suspected him of hiding something from her—which was often the case.
A jar of poisonous insects under his bed, for instance, kept there to observe their dormant cycle—his mother's surprising disapproval when she discovered them one day during routine cleaning.
The persistent bullying at school he never mentioned—his conviction that her interference would only ratchet up the violence.
Too often, however, a look like the one she is giving him now foreshadowed her eventually finding out the truth.
"Your father and I aren't trying to tell you what to do," she says, such a patently false statement that Spock merely tilts his head and gives his mother a wry look in turn. "I don't mind giving advice," she goes on, "but I know full well that you are going to make your own decisions. You always have."
The frown on her face is at odds with the exasperated pride in her voice. Part of her has always secretly applauded Spock's self-determination, even when he alarmed her by it: leaving early for his kahs-wan, for instance. Turning down the VSA. If his father found his unpredictable choices baffling, his mother was more accepting.
"It's just that sometimes," she says, and instantly Spock is on guard, "you need someone to offer an alternate point of view. Someone you trust to show you another perspective, even when you are about to make an error. Especially when you are about to make an error."
He's not fooled. Her oblique references to someone you trust are about Nyota.
Spock thinks of the last time he and Nyota spoke, a rendezvous arranged through a cryptic email. The lab hours are from 0900 until 1530 on Wednesday, she wrote, and he had been waiting at the bottom of the stairwell at 1531 when she exited the language building.
What followed was a short walk together across the commons in the direction of the student cafeteria, side-by-side yet so far apart that he had to strain to hear her when they spoke, their words short and clipped, and angry too—not just hers, which didn't surprise him, but his as well, which did. His anger at their inability to share a private moment—the desolation he felt as the deadline for the disciplinary hearing moved inexorably forward—made him regret trying to see her at all.
"Have you talked to the lawyers?" Nyota had asked, eyes forward, narrowed, as he said, "There is no need."
"You've made up your mind?"
"I may hear the evidence first," he said uneasily as a small group of students overtook them and passed them. "But resignation seems the most logical option."
She sped up a beat then, and he had to lengthen his stride to stay abreast.
"You know I think that's a bad idea," she said, darting a glance at him. "You ought to at least enter a plea."
They've been through this already. If he pleads not guilty, she will be called to testify, and while he knows she wouldn't perjure herself, her testimony might have unforeseen negative consequences for her later.
Pleading guilty, of course, is out of the question. Then he would ruin not only his career but hers as well.
As he said, resignation is the logical option.
The afternoon sky was cloudless, the temperature uncharacteristically balmy for this time of year, but Spock was chilled as they walked like strangers down the paved walkway. From the corner of his eye he saw her clutching her PADD and several old-fashioned bound notebooks to her chest like someone wearing armor into battle.
That simile came to him easily—a result, no doubt, of the time he and Nyota dwell in each other's minds—intimate moments when her more lyrical way of seeing the world both delights him and reorients him in a new direction, the way a compass sways to the electromagnetic forces on Earth.
Ahead of them the pathway split, one part going forward to the cafeteria, one branch heading toward the part of the campus that includes the computer science classrooms. Nyota was walking less than three feet away but it might as well have been kilometers, so distant did he feel.
"I'm going to Riverside tomorrow," he said quietly as they reached the diverging paths. "I will call when I return. Perhaps we can—"
No one was around to overhear them, but he let his words drift off in an open-ended speculation—something so unlike him that he almost sighed.
She had started on toward the cafeteria without a word, and for a heartbeat he stood and watched her. At the last minute before he headed in the other direction, he heard her say, "Okay," with such resignation that the image has haunted him ever since.
Haunts him now, as his mother peers at him across the distance of space.
"Will you do something for me?" she says, and he blinks but doesn't answer. She adds, "At least talk out your options before the hearing," she says. "With a lawyer, with—"
She doesn't say your assistant, but he hears the words in her silence. "After all," Amanda says, "your decision affects other people, too."
Before he can protest, his mother says, "That's what your father did. And it worked for him."
X X X X X X
She knew about the resignation before he told her.
"You can't," Amanda said when Sarek was finally home, his travel bag unpacked, the cup of tea she brought to his study cooling, untouched, on his desk.
"I already have," he said, not meeting her gaze.
She stood in front of his desk rubbing one wrist with her other hand, something she did when she was anxious. On the floor nearby, Spock sat fingering a small building block, part of a set Amanda's sister Cecilia had sent from Earth.
"I understand that you are upset," Amanda said, feeling Sarek bite back the impulse to correct her. He was upset—but that wasn't the reason he had resigned. He told her so.
"I don't believe you," she said, crossing her arms. "You can't argue that resigning is the logical thing to do."
"Amanda," he said, meeting her eyes, "I failed in my duty. I am not competent to remain in my post at the embassy."
With a sigh, Amanda uncrossed her arms and sat down in a chair at the side of Sarek's desk.
"You did not fail—" she began, but Sarek interrupted her brusquely.
"Three Vulcans died. So did seventeen Alcorans, including the people who asked us to come there."
"You were asked to come there by people who claimed they had been disenfranchised," Amanda said, "and you found evidence that corroborated what they said. You didn't fail."
"At what cost? How can that information help them now?"
"The quadrant trade consortium will place sanctions against the Alcorans. Their charter requires free and equal elections among members—"
"Sanctions will seem a small price to pay for ridding themselves of a troublesome dissident group, Amanda. And my participation is the reason they were able to do so."
"You couldn't have known that the dissidents would take hostages. Or that the military would be sent in. You're blaming yourself, punishing yourself. I understand that you feel guilty—"
"It is not that simple," Sarek said, running his fingers across his brow. The unexpected motion caught the attention of Spock, who paused in his examination of the block pincered between his thumb and forefinger and looked up at his father.
"Then explain it to me," Amanda said, reaching across the desk and resting her fingers on Sarek's arm. "Help me understand how what you are doing is logical."
She slid the fingers of her right hand to his palm.
"Tell me."
Suddenly she was in his mind, his anger alarming her, the darkness of his thoughts causing her to pull back briefly before pressing onward.
And then she arrived at last to what he had not yet articulated to himself, not in his quietest moments or in his deepest thoughts, but only in the barest, most honest interludes between one heartbeat and another, when his clarity of purpose and vision of himself were at their best and truest.
A place he had never shown to any one—not even to her, not even as intimate, as unguarded, as they were with each other.
He took a breath and she knew he was considering how to begin.
"I have to resign," he said slowly, "not because of what I did, and not because of what I did not do, but because of what I would have done."
For a second she wasn't sure she had heard him right.
"I'm not following you."
He sat up and closed his eyes for a moment.
"When we arrived at Alcora," he said, opening his eyes and looking at Amanda carefully, "I stayed behind to call you."
Amanda nodded and knit her brows.
"Go on," she said, and he said, "The…others…went on ahead without me."
"And you feel guilty that you weren't with them," Amanda finished for him.
"No," he said, shaking his head. "There was no way I could have known what the dissidents were planning to do."
"Then what—"
"As soon as I knew that the hostages had been taken," he said, "my first thoughts were not about them, not about their safety. Instead, I felt a…relief…that you and Spock were not with them. If you had been on Alcora—"
"You would have been taken hostage, too."
"And you. And Spock."
He glanced down at his hands, the only sounds in the room Amanda's thready breathing, the click of the little block as Spock tapped it on the floor.
"But," Amanda said with a sudden breath, "it didn't happen that way. You're beating yourself up over what might have happened."
"No," Sarek said, and Amanda tilted her head and gave him a quizzical look. "That is not what concerns me. What I came to realize on the way back from Alcora is what I would have done if you had been taken hostage with the others, if Spock were there with you. I made it clear to the Alcorans that we would not negotiate with hostage takers..."
The source of Sarek's guilt jumped into relief. If she had been there—if she had been one of the hostages—he would have been helpless to protect her—would have had his hands tied against his will by the strict Vulcan protocols. She slipped her other hand across the desk.
"Sarek," she said, "You must never feel guilty for doing your duty. I wouldn't want you to do anything else. If that's why you think you have to resign—"
"No, Amanda," Sarek said, "you misunderstand me."
"Then what—" she began, but she faltered as his words tumbled simultaneously into her mind and through the air.
"I resigned because I would not have done my duty."
She blinked hard and looked away for a moment, unsure what to say.
"If you had been there, I would have negotiated for your release. I would have gone to the dissidents personally, violated every protocol if I thought it would have kept you and Spock from harm."
The confession was large and terrible, like some unwanted intruder in his life. His guilt—his shameful admission to loving her and Spock so fiercely that he would have dropped everything to protect them—made her heart ache.
Her upwelling gratitude confused him.
What is there to be grateful for? he asked, and she showed him an image of himself as he had been yesterday morning when he left for Alcora, lifting Spock from her arms before saying goodbye, his own contentment and possessiveness connecting them like an electric current—
"That's why you are resigning, because you would put your family before your duty?" she asked, and Sarek inclined his head. Her words, she could tell, sounded to him like something brittle, accusatory. She hurried on. "No one would expect you to do otherwise. It's a natural reaction to protect your family."
"A natural tendency," Sarek corrected her, "but a Vulcan would not give in to it."
"You don't know that," she said. This time the look he gave her was jaundiced. "Well, you don't! You're holding yourself to a standard that might be impossible."
"Nevertheless," he said, beginning to tire of the argument, "it is my decision."
Amanda pulled her hands back across the desk and said, "So that's it. You're just going to abandon your colleagues."
The staccato of her voice was surprising, even to her. She saw a flicker of anger in Sarek's expression.
"Don't look at me like that," she went on. "You know what I mean. Who else at the embassy has your experience and expertise? No one. When T'Ania retired you were shorthanded until she agreed to come back. She knew how important her service was, how necessary. And now? You've lost three valuable members of your staff. What's going to happen to all the work that needs to get done?"
At that he started. She saw him react and she went on.
"And Stanar? Are you going to tell T'Nia that he was wrong to believe that what the embassy does is worth the risk he took? The sacrifice he made? As his daughter grows up, you want her to hear that her father's last efforts came to nothing?"
"Amanda," Sarek said, the anger draining away. In its place was a weariness that weighed her down, too, and blackened the edges of her consciousness like a heavy blanket.
He was asking her to stop, but she shook her head and leaned back.
"No," she said, "you need to listen. If you resign, who will pick up where you left off on Alcora? Do you even know for certain that the dissidents were responsible for the attack? From what you told me, the government had a lot to lose when you started poking around their election practices. They could have staged the attack themselves as a way to get rid of the dissidents. Have you thought of that?"
She could see by the look on his face that he had not—and through their bond she felt his disgust at the idea of such duplicity.
"Oh, yes," she said in response. "A Vulcan wouldn't be suspicious, but a human would. Who else besides you will have access to that kind of insight if you resign? None."
He looked away then, and Amanda paused to take a breath.
"And what about the other people on Alcora who disagree with the government? What about other dissident groups? What will happen to them? If the government officials are guilty of the attack, you are letting them get away with murder. Won't they feel emboldened to do it again?
"It seems to me," she said, standing up and leaning over to pick up Spock, "that no one ever really knows what they will do in a crisis until they face it. Not even you. Maybe you would have bargained for my life and maybe you wouldn't. You didn't have to. You might not ever have to. But in the meantime there's a lot of good you could be doing as the ambassador from Vulcan. And moping about what you might have done is keeping you from it."
At that she scooped Spock from the floor and left the study, pulling the door to behind her.
She carried Spock into his room, intending to set him into his crib, but she didn't want to lose contact with him yet—not just the physical touch of his soft cheek against her own but the light prickle of their bond, flowing back and forth when he grabbed her fingers or she stroked his hair.
She took him with her into her own bedroom instead, lying down on her bed and curling around him like a comma while he lay quietly in the half-light, taking in the details of the room with his wide-open gaze.
By the time she heard Sarek entering the room, she was starting to doze. Without opening her eyes, she felt the mattress shift as Sarek picked up his son.
Carefully, she peeked and saw Spock perched in the crook of his arm, knew that Sarek was noting, as he often did, how similar Spock's eyes were to hers.
That same deluge of possessiveness washed over him again—and spilled over to her.
No one ever really knows what they will do in a crisis until they face it, she had said, and it was true. No matter how much he might plan or anticipate or rationalize what he should do, he could not say with certainty what he might do at any given moment. No one could. No one with free will. It was foolish to pretend otherwise.
Would he agree? She hoped so.
But she wasn't sure.
Still holding Spock, he headed down the hallway to his study and she heard him pulling out the chair behind his desk, heard the squeak as he sat down.
And then she knew that he had heeded her—had needed her, she amended—and she fell asleep knowing that he was contacting the High Council again, this time to rescind his resignation.
X X X X X X
Samuel T. Cogley paces the length of the small room as if he is measuring it for new carpet—the heel of one shoe almost touching the toe of the other as he makes his way slowly past the chair where Spock tries to sit motionless. An observer would be struck at what a contrast they are—Cogley not bothering to hide his nervousness, Spock apparently completely at ease.
An irony, Spock knows, considering what is at stake. An hour from now Cogley might be on a shuttle to his law practice on Starbase Eleven, hardly inconvenienced by spending several days on Earth. Spock has more to lose. His good name. His teaching career. His future in Starfleet.
Maybe even his relationship with Nyota.
He approaches that idea like someone at the scene of a horrific traffic accident—both repelled by the violence and compelled to look.
At the end of the room, Cogley swivels around and begins pacing back in the other direction. Short and balding, he walks with his hands clasped behind his back, his eyes cast down, like someone about to be chastised.
From his chair in the corner, Spock watches him, remembering how unprepossessing the lawyer had appeared when he met him, Cogley arriving unannounced at Riverside Shipyard, telling Spock that Christopher Pike would have both their heads if this hearing went badly.
The evidence, Cogley argued then, might be so insubstantial it would be dismissed. After all, Spock didn't know who had accused him. A student disgruntled by a bad grade? The board would be skeptical of testimony from someone who had what Cogley called an axe to grind.
And if the evidence was substantial? Spock told Cogley he would resign. Indeed, until Cogley pressed him for an answer about his plans, he wasn't certain what he would do.
The board would interpret a resignation as an admission of guilt, Cogley said. Of fraternization—showing either favoritism or coercion in his relationship with Cadet Uhura. Either way, her reputation would suffer.
That idea had almost driven Spock to lose control. He had entertained himself briefly with a fantasy of throttling the lawyer into silence.
He could plead his innocence—after all, he had shown neither favoritism nor coerced Nyota, though he knows that in the broader view, he is certainly guilty of violating the spirit of the regulations.
In the end, Spock agreed to let Cogley represent him—something he almost regrets as he watches him pace the room where they wait to be called to the hearing.
Tentatively he searches for his parents' presence and feels an undercurrent of their concern.
"Are you sure you don't want us there?" his mother had asked at the end of their conversation the other day, and he had felt such a flush of panic that she frowned into the console screen and said, "If you change your mind—"
"If I do," Spock said, "I will let you know."
He had reached forward to cut the transmission but his mother had stopped him.
"Spock," she said, one hand upraised as if she could reach across the distance to him, "whatever you decide to do—whatever happens—you know that your father and I support you."
Of course he did. Sarek's initial disappointment when Spock chose Starfleet over the Vulcan Science Academy was short-lived. Indeed, when Spock won the Brodhead teaching award recently, his father sent him a congratulatory note that startled him with its intensity.
"Don't try to decide right now what you should do," his mother said, her expression serious. "Oh, I know how much you and your father love to plan ahead. It's not in your nature to play anything by ear—"
She laughed softly then, the tiny lines around her eyes crinkling.
"There's still so much good you can do where you are. Make sure you get some help. Don't face this alone," she said right before telling him goodbye, her comment an enigma he's puzzled over since.
"Commander?"
A rustle at the door—a lieutenant with a PADD in her arms.
Spock looks up as Cogley stops pacing.
"It's time," she says, and from the end of the corridor, Spock hears footfalls growing louder, the nine board members heading past to the hearing room. With a wave of her arm, the lieutenant motions for him to fall in step behind the admirals in dress uniforms, the lone civilian member in a dark suit, like people going to a funeral.
This simile, too, comes easily to him—and falling into step behind them, Spock has a thoroughly irrational moment when he worries that it might prove true.
At the end of the corridor is a double door leading into the room where the hearing will be. Taller than most of the board members, Spock watches as they disappear, one by one, ahead of him into the room.
When his turn comes, he narrows his gaze, avoiding the front of the room where the board members are settling into their chairs on one side of a long table.
He lowers his eyes and limits his field of vision to the strip of floor leading to the seats waiting for him and Samuel Cogley.
As visually blinkered as he is, he still can't block the noises in the room—an intake of breath from one of the admirals as she accidentally brushes too close to the microphone at her seat and sends a feedback squeal through the sound system; an overhead air exchanger switching off; someone in the audience trying to muffle a cough.
And Nyota among the observers, the creak of her chair as she shifts her posture familiar to him from months of working in the same room, parsing the meaning of every sound she makes until he can distinguish which rustles, which breaths, are hers. He looks up and meets her eyes.
Gratitude—that she is here, that he is not alone.
And suddenly he understands that part of his mother's story—the upwelling of gratitude she felt at Sarek's unspoken confession of love.
Don't face this by yourself, his mother had told him, and not for the first time in his life—nor, he is certain, for the last—he feels gratitude for her words.
A/N: This chapter ends right at the point where Chapter 13 of "People Will Say" picks up. Chapters 13 and 14 of "People Will Say" tell the story of the disciplinary hearing in detail, so I won't retell it here.
Instead, this story will jump a few months into the future of the little timeline where I eavesdrop on these characters. After "People Will Say," the story of Spock and Nyota in the aftermath of the disciplinary hearing is told in "Crossing the Equator," and "My Mother, the Ambassador" will fill in a few gaps there.
I hope that's not too confusing! Let me know if you are still onboard! Your words keep me going!