Chapter 4

"T'Pring is her own. I'm not a slave owner, for all that T'Pau wished to make me one." He spits this out, arms crossed in front of him. It's a most disadvantageous starting position for any kind of physical altercation, but if he can get Spock to interact with him at all other than this cold detachment, even through blows, he'll take it.

Spock blinks, and Stonn continues before the other can speak.

"Did you think they sent us off planet because T'Pring challenged? In some sudden uncharacteristic realization that Old Vulcan Lore does not mesh so well with modern Federation law about instigating murder? No. No, T'Pau assigned us to a freighter with destination Andoria when I wouldn't go through with the chattel ceremony. And for all her philosophical interest in the old ceremonies and ways, T'Pring - the sane, normal T'Pring outside the Forge - is certainly not interested in being a slave."

Spock's eyes flicker. "I do not... "

"I told T'Pau to her face what she could do with her traditions, Spock."

He's both proud and terrified of that. Neither emotion is beneficial, but compared to the depths of despair he and his new mate have wrestled with the last months, he does not concern himself overmuch with the lapse.

"Would that you had become so stalwart and noble a day earlier, before I was driven to kill my captain," Spock says bluntly.

The warmth of the anger dies in Stonn's chest. It was always just a temporary respite from the guilt, anyway.

"Yes. Would that I had." Silence. "Spock… T'Pring… She wasn't rational."

Spock is taking the waterskin - Stonn only brought one - and pouring the calcite substance from the armband down into it with stiff movements.

"I agree," the Starfleet officer says, finally. He starts shaking the waterskin. "She was as trapped as I was, between the blood fever and T'Pau."

"Then you…"

"Logically, I can find no fault in her."

The implications are obvious, but Spock spells them out with relentless force:

"Of the three of us, you were the only one who was not affected by the plak tow - the only one rational enough to stop what happened."

Ah. The anger comes back, swirling in tandem with the guilt this time. He lets it sweep over him, because you cannot out-logic a Surakisi. He knows this from long experience.

"Stop it? You submit yourself to these barbaric Surakisi ceremonies, and then stand there and demand that I break them for you?"

"Unlike me you were there of your own free will, at our barbaric ceremony."

"Free will? If you think that, you truly understand nothing."

"I understand that you wanted to fight me. For possession of T'Pring. Where was your vaunted southern pragmatism, your modern ethics?"

Where were you?

He falters at that. "I… I tried to stand in the human's place, Spock…" Yes, he had tried that. But Spock zeroes in on the gap in his logic like a hawk.

"Was that what you did, Stonn? Tell me now that your motivation was to protect my captain, our alien visitors, and I will have nothing but praise for you."

It's a tantalizing offer. It could have been true, maybe. But no.

The truth is that at the time, with the drums and the incense and her scent in his nostrils, he wonders if he did not catch a bit of the blood fever himself. He remembers wanting to fight Spock. That T'Pring was his, that she had just said that she had chosen him. He remembers struggling with that feeling. He remembers a half-formed plan about a neck pinch, but also a deep-seated longing for blood. He remembers the sudden fury when T'Pring chose the human over him.

They are excuses. He should have found a way. He's always seen himself as free of the old ways. Independent and modern. But he just stood there, doing nothing, when the two Starfleet officers fought with sharpened lirpas, as the higher gravity brought the human lower and lower.

He'd only ever seen lirpas in a museum before that. And in the exercise rooms of Spock's and T¨Pring's parents' estates. They were never a part of his world. They never should have been.

Guilt and anger wrestle and embrace. He grabs a handful of dirt, lets it fall through his fingers. He should have recovered from the run by now, but it's still hard to breathe. Hard to think.

"There is nothing that I can say that can excuse it. Yes. Yes, a thousand times yes. I… I should have demanded that she stop the ceremony. I broke the fifth ethical tenet, and then crashed through the eighth and eleventh by the sheer force of my inactivity. Do you think I do not know that? We learnt those tenets side by side, Spock. All… three of us."

He is breathing hard, eyes desperate. This is what the masters always warn about, being gripped and controlled and tossed around by your emotions like a loose tent in a storm. He needs an anchor, but T'Pring is too wrapped up in her own storm and they have no one else.

"I ask your forgiveness." He wishes that he sounded more penitent. That he was more penitent. If shame was the only feeling in him right now, everything would be so much easier. "I'd kneel and beg for your forgiveness with a full tevyah ceremony, Spock, but right now I cannot for the life of me stomach another High Vulcan ritual, so ordinary words are all I have. I ask forgiveness."

Spock studies him.

"You do not sound repentant, Stonn. You sound furious."

ooo000ooo

Author's note: Thanks for the reviews and your reflections about the characters' motivations and Vulcan culture. The way I see it there has to be an overriding Federation law, and then local planetary laws. And then local planetary customs, which might not be the same as the laws but, as we all know from real life, can be just as important and life changing as any laws.

The observant Cobaltblue helped me find an inconsistency with metric / imperial measurements, so thanks!