Chapter 8 - K'war'ma'khon
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"I don't believe it! You let me hit on your own sister just to get back at me for hacking your Kobayashi Maru program!?" Kirk cried.
"Excuse me," she said, "But am I to understand that you are chastising my brother for not protecting me from your advances?"
"Yes!" He looked at her face. "I mean, No!...that is, he –"
"Oh, no you don't." Uhura rounded on him. "I don't know exactly what happened before I got here – although I sure hope someone has video – but you do not get to be angry at Spock because you were idiot enough to use your pathetic pick up lines on a Vulcan!"
"How was I supposed to know she's a Vulcan? She looks totally human!" The look on Uhura's face stopped him. He looked over. Her face remained stoic, but her spine was stiff. Damn. He knew that posture. Kirk took out his imaginary baseball bat and smacked himself in the head again. If Spock had taken crap just for having his mother's eyes, what kind of shit had his sister had to deal with? "Er, sorry. I mean, I'm human, so I didn't mean that in a bad way." Kirk looked imploringly to his usually wingman, only to see Bones grinning ear to ear. "Bones..."
"Jim, I haven't seen you this flummoxed since that Andoran dancer turned out to be a cross-dresser." McCoy declared, "Forgive him, ma'am, if he were thinking straight, he would have said that we couldn't believe anyone so beautiful could be so closely related to Spock here."
Spock raised his eyebrows. "Indeed? Doctor, do you really think insulting me is the best way to ingratiate yourself with my kinswoman?"
"On the contrary, brother, the next you decide you want to watch one of your crewmates approach me in bar," she nodded toward McCoy, "you should send him." .
McCoy smiled triumphantly at Jim, who considered that the situation was going from bad to worse. He turned back to Spock. "So you did set this up. Okay, maybe I deserved it, but what kind of a brother uses his own sister as bait?"
Spock appeared to studying something on the ceiling and his ears were a bit greener than usual. "May I tell him?" he asked.
"I believe he has been sufficiently chastised. It is your game to call."
Spock looked down for a moment. "In fairness, Captain, she is only my 'sister' in the sense of k'war'ma'khon – those who become as family to you."
"Apologies, Mr. Kirk," she said. "There was no set up. Spock merely knows my patterns of response too well and seems to have finally grasped Capt. Pike's advice about seizing opportunity."
"But you played it so perfectly, how did you know he wanted to get back at me?"
"He did not want to get back at you. He merely knew that after enduring your pick attempt, I would." She arched an eyebrow, but now a slight, but clear smile showed on her face.
"So that's what you meant when you worried that she was going to do something embarrassing." McCoy observed.
"Did I embarrass you 'brother'?" she asked. Spock returned to studying the ceiling. "Good."
"In all honesty, neither he nor I knew that the other would be on this station." she explained, and facing Spock and put her hands on he hips to add, "Although that need not have been the case, had you bothered to occasionally transmit a message. Honestly, I would have thought that given the position of your ashayam, you might use the ship's communication system a bit more often."
McCoy, Uhura and Kirk couldn't help laughing. "I like her, Spock!" McCoy exclaimed. "How does someone like you manage associate with such high quality women?"
"So," Kirk said, "if I order him to write at least once a week, can I buy you that drink, Miss…?"
"A deal." she said. "And It's Selina."
"Forgive me," Spock stated. "I have been remiss in supplying introductions. Captain, Dr. McCoy, Lt. Uhura, may I present Selina Spencer Chandri, who to the best of my knowledge is most closely related to me by blood as an 8th cousin, 3 times removed – on my mother's side, of course."
"Delighted." McCoy said, kissing her hand in his best Southern gentleman manner, and simultaneously insinuating himself between her and the Captain, so that he could lead her back to their table and pull out a chair for her.
"Very pleased to meet you, sister." Nyota said as they took their seats. She chuckled, "So you wouldn't give Jim your name either?"
"He isn't very good at this." Selina replied. "You should really have Spock give him some pointers." She said it so matter-of-factly that both Uhura and McCoy couldn't help but laugh.
"Spock? Give me pointers?!" Kirk was aghast. "She's brutal Spock. How did you ever acquire such a vicious non-sister?"
"Selina's mother was attached to the Earth embassy on Vulcan. Given my father's position and my mother's occasional need for human interaction, we encountered each other periodically during our childhoods."
Nyota was about to call him on such an obviously insufficient explanation, when she saw the glance they exchanged and how they both became a bit still. She realized that Selina had also lost a world when Vulcan was destroyed. Had she lost a mother too? She could almost sense the moment of shared grief between them and decided that she would wait until later to press him on why he had never told her about Selina.
"Spock mentioned that you had spent part of your childhood on Vulcan." McCoy said. "I must say, you certainly learned to do a remarkable imitation of Vulcans. Do you always repel unwanted advances that way?"
"It is useful in that regard, but it is not only an imitation."
"Selina, like her mother, is a telepath." Spock explained. "Because her mother recognized her abilities at an early stage, she received training on Vulcan from an early age."
"Okay, I understand Vulcans are touch telepaths and so could help train you to use your telepathy, but surely that didn't have to include Surakian discipline?" McCoy queried.
"For most telepaths, the need is not to develop the ability to use telepathy, but to learn how not to." she explained. "The challenge is to block out everyone else's thoughts and emotions. In my case, that included also learning not to also transmit my own, for which Vulcan discipline was essential."
"But you're not exactly a disciple of Surak." Uhura noted shrewdly. "No Vulcan would have pulled that prank on the Captain."
"Except my almost-brother" she replied with a wink.
"For the record," Spock protested, "I did not engage in a prank. I merely allowed it to unfold unhindered and took the opportunity to observe the Captain's reactions."
"R-i-i-ight. You were just an innocent bystander." snarked Kirk. "Now about that almost-brother thing, do you really think we're going to buy that you two practically adopted each other based on just childhood acquaintance?"
"Selina began her studies at Stanford shortly after I entered the Academy, so we became reacquainted at that time. Naturally, having somewhat unique shared perspectives, we became closer during those years."
"That doesn't exactly explain you knowing her 'patterns of response' to someone trying to pick her up in a bar. Spill." Kirk demanded. "That's an order."
Spock was considering how to respond when Selina cut in. "Would it surprise you to learn that your first officer once spent part of a summer tending bar?" she asked.
To be continued…
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Okay, clearly I've decided to add on to this story. Thanks to everyone for the input.
That telepaths trained on Vulcan to learn how to block out others' thoughts is based on TOS, "Is There No Truth in Beauty?"
The idea that Spock would have interacted with some human children is based on two things. One, that Vulcan as a founding member of the Federation would hardly have been an isolated backwater. Earth would at a minimum have had a diplomatic presence there (and a human telepath would be a natural candidate for a position at an embassy on a world of telepaths). The second is my own experience as half of an intermarried couple. No matter how much I love my dh and his 'world', there are times when I really appreciate spending time with folks who share my background. That's not too difficult for me, but I imagine Amanda would have looked for opportunities to visit the earth compound on Vulcan when she could. (Or, since TOS says she was an English teacher, maybe she taught at the school for children of embassy staff at some point?)
