Hey there! Thank you so very much for your reviews! I am ecstatic if I made you laugh. This chapter is a bit shorter than the previous ones because the muse came, and then went, and now I am left with Dr. Pepper and sore fingers XD.

Also, please give some credit to Lov2Catnap as I schemed up this idea with her at one point. Also, who felt that Amanda Grayson never got enough face time? I mean she was a pivotal character, and she was on screen in the series for all of two episodes and in the movie for 15 minutes. Seriously, she is the woman who gave birth to Spock and that position demands respect. Also, if she seems OOC, I never bought the whole idea that she was the perfect woman personified. Bah! No one is perfect!

I own nothing, Rated M, and yes, Spock is a sexy, sexy man.

OoOoOo

The first sensation Jim became aware of, was an overwhelming sense of panic. The murky depths of her mind warred with awareness that caused her very tempest o throb. However, it was the pain that led her to the understanding that her fight of flight response was still kicked into high gear. Dimly, as though stuck in some twentieth Century cliché horror film, she replayed the events of her time on the T'Maiti and then on Vulcan.
God-Damnit, she knew, she just freaking knew she should have asked more questions. Although, as she pondered Captain Spock's, her mind simply refused to call him husband, responses, she was left even more confused on how she had missed the whole 'I want to marry you' part of their little chat. Really, had that even been mentioned so much as once? No. She didn't think so either.

Her eyes snapped open in a light room painted with warm colors, and the white fabric that was draped over the nearest window. Cautiously, she tried to look around the room without moving, just in case there was someone in here with her. Jim peeked, but could find nothing except some sort of odd shaped couch thing, and what appeared to be an armoire.

The fabric under her was that same scratchy Vulcan-wool stuff, and Jim could not stop the scowl that etched onto her features. What, did they live and breathe the uncomfortable material? It was also, without fail, already at degree just slightly above boiling. Even the 'breeze' on Vulcan was fucking hot, as it rippled through the open window.

She hated this place… and oh yeah, it was time to get the hell out of here.

Her blonde hair tumbled as she shifted to a seated position quickly. Jim fastened her eyes onto the source of her fascination, and salvation. They had left the window open! Her legs cramped slightly as she moved to stand. Her balance was not the best as she stumbled clumsily into the wall with a slight hiss of pain.

"Fucking walls," she muttered angrily, "Fucking Klingons. Fucking Romulans. Fucking Vulcans!"

Skittishly, because she was very unsure of what would greet her, Jim took a gander outside the window. To her extreme relief, and surprise, she was on ground level. 'Oh thank God,' she thought fervently. She felt her back crack as she straightened her posture. Jim could feel the dried sweat, and who knew what else, that clung to her skin. She wrinkled her nose as she caught her own scent with distaste.

Then it occurred to her that she still really, really, really, needed to pee.

Swearing under her breath, with enough words to make one Dr. McCoy blush, Jim glanced around the room. Didn't Vulcans have bathrooms? 'They must have something…,' she thought sluggishly. And, even though she was exceedingly tempted to go off in search of something to relive her bladder, Jim couldn't help but feel that her energy would be better served by getting the heck out of here like it was going out of style.

Not, that anything could be out of style if she was involved… of course.

She turned back toward the window with determination written in every line of her face. She slipped one leg over the ledge of the window when the tell-tale sound of a pressurized hiss caused her heart to nearly stop. Jim turned wide eyes toward the door in a similar fashion of a deer caught in bright lights.

The graceful face of her 'mother-in-law', she assumed that Vulcans had the equivalent anyway, greeted her. And, if Jim wasn't mistaken, there was a look of amusement decorating the older features.

"Um…," Jim started eloquently.

"Let me guess," The older woman said pleasantly, "'its' not what it looks like?'"

Blue eyes blinked owlishly at the other terran for a single heartbeat.

"Well, honestly, that depends… what does it look like?"

"It looks like you are about to jump out the window and head for the hills," Amanda stated bluntly with her eyes sparkling with some yet-unknown emotion.

Jim looked down at her leg, stretched over the windowsill, then outside at the desert landscape, and finally back at Amanda.

"Yeah… I've got nothing," Jim admitted sheepishly, with her cheeks flushing hotly.

"Hm," the other commented unhelpfully.

Jim flashed a charming, and disarming smile. "Look… Amanda, may I call you Amanda?"

The other woman neither moved nor spoke.

"Okay… Amanda, I don't know how to say this but-,"

"You had no idea you were marrying a Vulcan, and now you are going to run back to your spaceship and try to put this whole 'thing' behind you."

Somehow, Jim found the use of her quotation marks insulting. But, past that, she was flabbergasted that the woman had guessed it all in one go. She really shouldn't have been surprised; after all, the woman lived with Vulcans. Hell she'd married one.

But then again, so had Jim… technically.

"Um," Jim stated eloquently for the second time during their conversation.

To her shock, Amanda burst out laughing. The other woman continued to laugh so hard, that she was forced to clutch her sides. Sapphire eyes took a confused and suspicious look around. What was going on here?

Amanda wiped a few stray tears from her eyes as the last of her laughter died on her lips. A large, but condescending smile painted her lips. "Oh come now," she stated after seeing Jim's expression, "you don't think you're the first human to accidently marry a Vulcan, do you?"

Well, when you put it like that… it had crossed her mind.

Sort of.

Jim narrowed her eyes out of hurt pride for the grievous misunderstanding that all this actually was. It was not as if she could simply call up Starfleet and explain what had happened. Although it was different from her Klingon fiancé, this was infinitely worse because the Federation was allied with the Vulcans. Oh yeah, and she was actually married to one of them. And yet, the most mysterious part of this equation was the woman in front of her.

'As Spock's mother, shouldn't she be trying to claw my eyes out?' That thought caused Jim to turn her now worried blue eyes toward the desert once more. How bad was it to die of dehydration again? Like, on a scale of one to ten it was only about an eight right? That wasn't terrible.

The Engineer glanced at her 'mother-in-law' with ill-disguised mistrust. "Not exactly," she bit out somewhat testily.

Amanda grinned at her with the warmth and understanding only a mother could possess. "I'm afraid that spot has already been taken."

"By who?" Jim asked while her face showed her curiosity, in spite of herself, plainly.

"Why, by me of course."

Oh… of course. Then Jim let the words register and her head snapped up with enough force to make terminal velocity jealous. Her blonde hair swished in the remnants of its ponytail at her movements. She blinked out of sheer shock as her mouth fell slightly open.

"Wait, what?"

"I'm going to venture that my son explained his intentions to you… in a way that might have been slightly misleading," Amanda conjectured with a tilt of her head.

"Misleading is a term for it, I suppose," Jim reported as politely as possible, given the circumstances.

Amanda nodded her head sagely. "Then it is a Vulcan trait to poorly explain such things to terrans," she paused for a moment, "or anyone for that matter that isn't a Vulcan."

Though she felt a touch foolish, Jim raised her hand to shake the other woman out of her thought process. "Sorry, I do still not understand what this has to do with you seeming to be alright with me trying to escape out a window."

Amanda's eyes narrowed for a second, and Jim had the impression that she might have… just might have awakened the momma bear staring at her with the most frightening eyes in existence. She felt her knees tremble, and with good reason, as she faced the only person in the galaxy that looked more terrifying than Bones when they were upset.

Okay, now there were two rules. Rule number one: Don't piss of the Engineer. Rule number two: Don't mess with Amanda. Jim made sure it was duly noted as she tried to appear as innocent, and non-killable, as possible. She let out a nervous laugh, followed by a tense gulp.

"Ma'am," Jim amended quickly, as she attempted to use a placation technique she had seen Bones use on several occasions.

It worked.

"I was once in your shoes," Amanda commented softly as she leaned against the door frame, "My Adun and I were married for eight months before I even knew what had happened."

Jim felt flabbergasted. "Eight months?" She questioned in disbelief.

Amanda leaned forward, as if to whisper conspiratorially to Jim a grand secret. "Vulcans are weird."

Well, no shit.

"I was an intern," the other woman continued on as if it were nothing, "for a pro-human political group of all things, trying to strong-arm Vulcans into giving more of their investments into Earth stocks and companies." A sour look over took the woman's face for a brief moment. "It didn't go well. A few of us, myself included, decided to hold protests by doing as many things un-Vulcan as we could. For example, we would show up all holding hands, we would spout as many nonsensical statements as possible-for a while there it made a great game-, and I personally made a great show of eating hamburgers every day in their Embassy offices."

A small laugh of nostalgia left the woman and Jim tried not to snicker as she pictured the blank looks of horror that only a Vulcan could pull off.

Jim looked around for a moment and then back at Amanda. "But how did you…?" She made a gesture with her left ring finger.

Amanda made a dismissive gesture. "Oh that, well, to make a long story short. Sarek started to take his meals with me while I ate meat. He had read up on terran courting rituals, because that was part of his job… to understand us confusing humans. To him, logically, I was seeking a mate. And, he… well I honestly don't know why he thought I wanted him, but eventually we ended up in a confrontation between him and one of the people I worked for. By Vulcan society, he had fought for me, and that meant I was his."

Jim watched in abject astonishment as the woman had the gall to shrug about the whole thing.

"However, take some advice from a woman who has been in your shoes," Amanda said sweetly while piercing her with a look that promised maternal retribution, "If you leave, Spock will only come after you."

Jim couldn't stop the shiver that racked her frame. The words were both foreboding and kind of a turn on. However, one really didn't want to get all hot-and-bothered in front of their mother-in-law. That was just plain weird. Or, at least, to kinky for even James T. Kirk.

"Look, Amanda," Jim stated with a pearly smile, "I belong on the USS Enterprise. I don't know if Spock told you, but I am the foremost authority on warp core drives in the Federation." She hated the tone of desperation that leavened her words, making them seem slightly hysterical. She wasn't meant to be tied down!

Unless you were talking about actually tying her down, and then she was more than happy to picture a certain discipline Vulcan. She shook herself mentally from the direction of her thoughts. The lingering sense of panic still flooded her for the most part. This was nine levels of messed up that she could think of. And, Uhura was never going to let her live it down! Ever!

The other woman paused for a moment and looked at the floor. It seemed to Jim, that she was weighing the options carefully. There were a few awkward heartbeats of silence.

"Do you care for my son? Even just a little?"

Sapphire eyes widened at the personal question, which hit just a little too close to home. Okay, so she had a tiny crush on the Vulcan Captain. And, sure, she bet that someday he would make a great husband for someone that was not her. Alright, maybe tiny wasn't the best word. She did feel an incredibly strong attraction for Spock. He was endearingly literal, and had proved to care about her… if the impromptu wedding was any indication. However, Jim still had dreams and aspirations. She was so close to her perfect warp core schematics, and had she been given just a few more moments, her prototype on the T'Maiti would have blown the technology as it was out of the water.

"Well-, I mean-, the thing is-," Jim fumbled unsurely, "It's complicated."

A small smile decorated the attractive features of Amanda, and her artfully coifed hair tilted in Jim's direction. "I see," she stated calmly, showing an excellent portrayal of her Vulcan Husband with the quiet placidity. "Well, you are better than T'Pring if nothing else."

Being female, Jim knew that the words 'I see' and 'fine' could be a landmine of good or bad things. The Engineer drummed her fingers on the side of the windowsill as she sat perched between accepting her fate calmly, or running like the wind back to where, she was fairly certain, her crewmates were. Also, she was a damn sight better than that Vulcan witch, thank you so very much.

Jim ran a hand through her already tussled hair, causing the hair tie to fall to the ground uselessly. "It's not that I don't like your son. It's just that this is a big step, and I… have a hard time with the idea of staying in one place. Space travel, warp cores, and engines… those are my life."

"Then it would interest you to know that the Federation has already come to pick up your other crew members. My son received confirmation of their safe retrieval about two hours ago."

Jim stared without comprehension at the only other human in this forsaken desert.

Amanda turned slightly, her back left Jim feeling slightly rebuked considering the heart-to-heart they had been having.

"If you were to get to a local transport station… say right outside the Terran Embassy," the tone of less than subtle prompting caused Jim to grin, "you just might be able to catch up with them."

"So… you are just going to let me go?" Jim tried to suppress the rise of hope that swelled in her chest.

"Oh no," Amanda said as she walked outside the room, "I'm giving you a thirty minute head start before I tell my son."

Jim blinked as the doors shut behind the enigmatic woman.

"Thirty minutes? I'll take it," she stated with a quirk of her lips in the now unoccupied room as she slung her other leg over.

Her feet barley made a sound as she landed on the sand. Already, Jim could feel the extreme desert heat sink in through the material of her shoes. And, she also felt more sweat start to bead on her fore head, which she quickly swiped away in irritation. Her Blue eyes narrowed as she tried to gain her surroundings despite the marked disadvantage, being that she didn't have the first clue what she was doing or where she was.

Jim paused at the low roar of an unknown animal echoed in the distance. How far of a distance she couldn't say. Her blonde hair fell in a curtain of heat around her face, and Jim began her journey off this rock of a planet with one foot in front of the other. Her head swam with concerns about how long she could last in the blistering sun and baking sands. Also, she felt a growing sense of apprehension that Spock would most likely be hot on her heels, so to speak because if her heels were actually any hotter they would melt into the ground, and it felt like an eerily rendition of Maelrok all over again.

Only with someone less crazy, and had she mentioned incredibly attractive?

She tried to press her hopes toward finding this Embassy that Amanda spoke of; which, in retrospect, she should have asked directions to. And, she attempted to distract herself from the discomfort of the elements by thinking of how to decrease the warm-up time of her prototype. Then her thoughts drifted to what she would do if she did actually achieve the 'perfect' warp core and her shared power grid. Would her mind change regarding her 'husband'? She shook her head from the traitorous thoughts. When that failed to alleviated all of the outside unpleasantness, Jim switched to the beautiful image of smashing that Vulcan hussy's face into a stone pillar.

After fifteen minutes, Jim realized one very important thing.

She still really had to pee.

OoOoOo

Translation-

Adun: Husband.