He felt the warm press of her mouth on his and for approximately three seconds, did nothing to pull away. Then his mind connected with the present reality and he jerked backward more forcefully than he'd intended. Her face wore a mask of disbelief. Her eyes were wide and darting over the various features of his face and he could see her pupils were rapidly dilating.
"That was…" she gasped. "I'm really... I- I-"
She began to cry again, though clearly she was making an attempt to conceal it. She struggled to get to her feet.
"I would not advise attempting to walk on your floor, given its present condition," he said, looking at the sharp pieces of porcelain scattered everywhere. She closed her eyes and nodded.
He examined the scene and started picking up the larger bits of debris. As so often had happened in her presence lately, his thoughts began racing. He reviewed the last moments in his mind, unsure of why he had kissed her. He wasn't even certain that he had kissed her – she seemed convinced she was the culprit. In retrospect it had likely been mutual, but he felt a biting shame that he would exploit her in such an indecent way, especially while she was in such an emotionally compromised state. He had neither explanation nor excuse for his conduct.
He opened his mouth to apologize for his part in the kiss when she asked in a muffled voice, "There's a hand vacuum in the pantry behind you; will you hand it to me?"
He complied with her request and she swept up the smaller porcelain fragments without saying a word. Her face was flushed and wet and bits of her hair were caught in the moisture. She sniffed and wiped her face with her newly laser-stitched hand, which smeared residual blood across her left cheek.
He recalled the first time he witnessed such an open effusion of human grief. 12 years ago he attended a funeral for the leader of a joint asteroid mining expedition who had died saving his human and Vulcan crew when an ice shelf had collapsed. The man's widow had sobbed through the entire service and he remembered wondering why her family had allowed her to suffer so publicly when they could have taken her somewhere more private.
Humans had few reservations about public grief and though he had come to understand this well, it was nevertheless very difficult to ignore certain Vulcan taboos. Humans preferred comfort, Vulcans preferred privacy. He felt ill equipped to console her and it was evident she didn't want whatever consolation he could provide.
She completed sweeping the remains of the teacup into the automated disposal unit and retrieved the two blood soaked towels from the floor and started on the process of packing up her medical kit. He knelt to help her and watched her figure stiffen as he approached. He saw fresh tears well in the corners of her eyes; she ducked her head down in an obvious and poor attempt to disguise them.
His presence was obviously adding to her misery. He carefully backed away from her and stood.
"I should go," he said.
"Ok," she said in quick succession.
Right as he began to say, "I apologize for-," she said, "I'm so extremely sorry that I-"
They looked at each other and though he tried to meet her eyes, they were cast slightly down and looked more lifeless than he had ever remembered seeing them.
"No, it is I who should apologize for intruding upon you at this time," he said. "I hope that you can forgive me for taking advantage of you."
He turned on his heel and as he reached the door of her apartment, she said, "Live long and prosper, Ambassador Sarek."
He could not discern what she intended to imply from the neutrality of her tone, whether it was finality, anger, or nothing at all. He turned to see her standing in the threshold of her breakfast nook, both hands clutching the handle of her small vacuum device. The whites of her eyes were stained red but despite this he still considered her a handsome woman. It occurred to him in that moment that he had never consciously thought of her as being beautiful before. She just was, in an effortless and unaffected sort of way.
"Peace and long life, Amanda Grayson," he responded before turning and retreating through the door.
The car from the consulate was still waiting on the street level to take him to his office. He seated himself in the back and breathed deeply. He struggled to both process and suppress the emotions coursing through him at that moment. His hands still had her blood on them and his lips still carried the salt from her tears.
Why had he even come to her home? To offer condolences for her father's likely death, which he had failed to do. Why had he not thought she might not want visitors? He had promised to contact her upon the conclusion of his trip to Vulcan, yet she wasn't expecting him for another four days. Why had he not thought of that? The questions flowed more freely than the answers.
Why did she occupy his mind in the quieter moments while he was meditating or preparing for sleep? Why was there a bond forming between them? Was a meaningful bond possible between their species?
First there had been the brief finger touching before his departure to Vulcan. Then just minutes ago, he had been acutely aware that the instant she'd injured herself, he'd registered a very subtle, barely noticeable, subdued sort of pain. When he'd left his perch on the chair and entered the kitchen to assess the extent of the damage, she had begun crying and he'd found it… distressing.
Was she crying from her injuries? From the loss of her father? From the destruction of the cup? From his presence? There was no logical way to determine.
The vehicle pulled up to the Vulcan consulate and he did his best to shed his mind of those confusing thoughts. For as much as he desired some resolution in his current situation with Miss Grayson, it was clear that none would be forthcoming in the next several minutes if it had not come over the course of the last several days.
With a degree of effort, he transitioned her out of his thoughts entirely by concentrating on the task ahead of him. It was only a temporary fix, but it would have to do.
The Vulcan High Council requested to speak with him and they were due to be in their chambers in 24 minutes. The embassy complex was quiet, which was not unusual for a Sunday. He stopped in the lavatory to wash his hands of Amanda's red, human blood and forced himself to ignore thinking of her further. When he arrived at the staff offices on the third floor, he found Mr. Marcus and Voris, along with a handful of other junior personnel.
The two members of his senior staff followed him into his office and shut the door.
"Mr. Marcus says Starfleet has had no success in decrypting the Klingon message," Voris began, glancing sidelong at Giles.
"I admit it's very strange," Giles explained. "I worked in xenolinguistics and decryption for 15 years. It never took us this long to decode anything. Either the Klingons have discovered their brilliance for decryption or Starfleet isn't what it used to be."
"I trust you will continue to act as liaison in this matter and keep me informed of any developments?" Sarek asked his human secretary.
"Yes, of course," he replied.
"Thank you Mr. Marcus," finished Sarek. "I don't believe I shall need anything else for today, if you'd like to return home."
As he left, Sarek turned to Voris who spoke once the door was securely closed. "The Vulcan High Council has decrypted the message," Voris explained, eyeing the top-secret console on his superior's desk. "I was informed of it an hour ago. They would not release the information to me without a secure channel."
"I see," Sarek answered as he turned on the computer. "What are your thoughts?"
"Mr. Marcus knows more about decryption strategies than I do and neither of us have seen the message. However, in my research, Starfleet has proven just as capable as any Vulcan agency at subspace decryption in recent decades."
"It is logical to infer that if the High Council has chosen to pass along the information as soon as it became available to them," Sarek mused. "As I'm sure Starfleet will."
"Ambassador, I do not wish to 'jump to conclusions' as our human counterparts say, but I think we should accept there is at least a possibility that Starfleet isn't working on it as diligently as they could, or that they aren't sharing the available information they have," Voris said.
"What gives you cause to think so?" Sarek asked, recalling his conversation hours ago with Admiral Bentham.
"The amount of mistrust between our peoples has lessened as the Federation has grown stronger, but I have observed that the leaders at Starfleet still have the illogical desire for competition with Vulcan organizations."
"If there is indeed a competition, is it not reasonable to believe Vulcans simply performed better on this occasion?"
"Certainly, and your argument is the most logical of all evident conclusions. Yet I would not dismiss the possibility that Starfleet is concealing something."
"We cannot speculate what motivations they would have for deliberately violating the Federation charter and withholding valuable intelligence information if they were in possession of it," Sarek countered.
"One does not have to have a precise picture of the purpose to theorize as to the action. Mr. Marcus thinks something is amiss," Voris argued.
"Mr. Marcus is human," Sarek said, checking the time.
He motioned for his security advisor to sit and turned the console screen at an angle and dialed the secure communication link.
The secretary to Councilwoman T'Lona answered his call and immediately turned the call over to her supervisor.
"Your line is secured?" the elderly Vulcan woman asked without any formal introduction.
"It is," he replied.
"The High Council has been in discussions throughout the night. Issue an advisory to all Vulcans residing on Earth that they should be prepared to leave the planet if the Terran government decides to leave the Federation in the near future. You and your staff will also be recalled."
"I understand," Sarek said.
"As you are attending tomorrow's emergency session, the Ministry of Defense believed you were entitled to pertinent information regarding recent events. Has Starfleet communicated anything of note?"
"No," he answered, looking over to Voris who confirmed.
"Understood. The Klingon message was decrypted six hours ago. It is unclear for whom the message was intended specifically, but it is an order to remove a test facility from a planetoid orbiting Iota Eridani. We have made casual inquiries with the Suliban and the Nausicaans, and neither of them are aware of any such facility."
"And you are unable to confirm the accuracy of their claims with Starfleet because you have not yet informed Starfleet," Sarek added.
"Correct. Let me remind you that the Federation charter stipulates that we have forty-eight Federation standard hours to inform Starfleet intelligence of our findings. We are well within that regulation. Moreover, we have other reasons to believe the testimony of the Suliban and the Nausicaans, which I cannot disclose to you at this time."
"Tell me then, do you have any idea if this test facility exists and to whom it belongs if it does?"
"Two probes were launched to that system that moment the message was decoded to obtain that information. I am authorized to tell you that the Vulcan Security Ministry believes that if it does exist, it belongs to the Earth Autonomy Movement, based on previous intelligence."
"Intelligence that has been shared with Starfleet?" he asked.
"Information that came from Starfleet," she explained.
"Forgive my curiosity, Councilwoman, but if Vulcan has reason to mistrust Starfleet, why would the Council consider this intelligence credible?"
"It is based on older information before certain personnel changes were made within the organization," she clarified. "I can elucidate no further on the matter at this time."
"Is there anything else, Councilwoman T'Lona?"
"One other matter that is perhaps even more significant. The preliminary investigation of the Comstock destruction shows forensic inconsistencies based on the layout of the ship and the debris pattern found in orbit of Ivor. The ship's last known location was relayed to a supply ship bound for the new Memory Alpha library. That ship logged the Comstock's heading in the opposite direction of Ivor."
"You are implying the Comstock was damaged or destroyed somewhere else and some of the wreckage was relocated to Ivor?"
"That is a possible explanation," agreed T'Lona.
"Does the Vulcan Security Ministry still believe the Romulans are involved?"
"There is insufficient evidence to determine that at this time," she assented.
"If the Comstock was bearing away from Ivor, have the Tellarites or Saurians confirmed any information regarding the Comstock's last location?"
"I understand mineral surveying is a competitive and secretive business. Captains of these ships rarely voluntarily transmit information about their location unless it is directly requested."
"You must have some purpose in giving me such detailed intelligence on this investigation," Sarek answered, unable to determine his role in the conversation.
"The Council is aware you are not an intelligence officer, nor are you an investigator, but we request your assistance by shedding light on this formal investigation through informal means," T'Lona explained.
"Explain," he insisted.
"Three of your formal reports and two of your logs make mention of a schoolteacher named Amanda Grayson."
"Yes," replied Sarek, aware both Voris and Councilwoman T'Lona were observing him carefully. "We know each other by association."
"She was coincidentally the only child of the Comstock's captain and according to logs registered for previous years, she was the only person he has contacted on Earth in the past four years. He communicated with her regularly. The Council requests you speak with her, informally, and ask if she had contact with her father in the days before the Comstock's disappearance."
"What information are you specifically seeking?"
"The vessel's last known location, future plans, and his activities leading up to his disappearance."
"I shall speak with her," Sarek answered. "She will likely want to know if there has any evidence showing negligence on behalf of either Vulcan or Andoria in properly responding to the Comstock's distress calls"
"No, there has not been, and you are free to tell her that when you speak with her," replied Councilwoman T'Lona. "It will be formally issued in a report to Starfleet within the hour."
"Is there anything else?"
"The Council is requesting whatever information you can provide before the start of Earth's emergency secession meeting tomorrow."
"I understand."
"Live long and prosper, Ambassador Sarek, Secretary Voris," she said.
"Peace and long life," he and Voris said in unison as he terminated the communication link on the secure console.
They sat quietly for a few brief seconds, each considering the information they'd just been given. Voris excused himself to review older Starfleet memos, and Sarek reclined in his chair in a lazy fashion similar to posture he often witnessed in humans.
He did not wish to approach Miss Grayson while she was in her present emotional state. Though he disliked the disingenuous habit of requiring some pretense to speak with a person, it occurred to him that the purpose of his earlier morning visit had been to offer condolences for her father and he had not done so. No, he had made her cry instead.
He began to feel a paradoxical irritation with himself over his recent illogical behavior. The harder he tried to subdue his emotions, the more he failed to do so, and the more he failed, the more frustrated he became. He could not recollect being this emotionally unbalanced since his early childhood, which fueled feelings of embarrassment, which was merely another emotion he could barely control.
He reached for his PADD and forced himself to write out a short message to Amanda, apologizing for his conduct and requesting to meet with her later that day.
Amanda was curled on her couch in the fetal position, stroking her cat and feeling understandably sorry for herself. There was so safe place for her mind to turn that didn't remind her of her father or Sarek. She gave up on translating more of the Teachings of Surak because ironically, reading about a philosophy forged in the concept being emotionless made her emotional. She tried to find something to watch on the holographic projector, but the news was full of the Comstock disaster and the entertainment channels seemed to exclusively feature films about romance or tragedy.
She had even briefly dozed off, only to be awoken by a dream in which her father was trying to talk to her but she couldn't hear him over the sound of his ship exploding. Her mother had called twice and eventually she turned her PADD off because she wasn't in the mood to talk.
20 minutes after that she changed her mind and decided she did want to talk, but rather than flip her PADD back on and return her mother's call, she'd gone upstairs to see Vera, but she wasn't home, which was unusual for a late Sunday morning. So she sat wallowing on her couch in sadness, loneliness, and embarrassment.
She'd been granted an open-ended leave of absence from the school on Friday, but she was seriously considering quitting and moving to… wherever. Having to teach at the diplomatic school meant being at the embassies, and Ambassador Sarek worked at the embassies, and she couldn't avoid him forever.
She couldn't believe she'd been so forward as to make a move on him when he was trying to help her. She absentmindedly traced the light, pinkish scar on her left hand that was leftover from his work with the dermal regenerator.
The logical part of her brain tried to make it better by convincing her that she'd been a mess of hormones and tears and she'd made the silly blunder of mistaking his kindness for romantic attraction. But he probably wouldn't understand that. She wasn't even sure Vulcans showed affection by kissing, though she reasoned if he'd served on Earth for as long as he had then he must be aware of it's function in human relationships. So there was no mistake: she kissed him and he ran away.
She wanted to talk to someone. Then she remembered talking to her father following her breakup with John and how reassuring he'd been and she felt the sting of fresh tears pricking her eyes. As if on cue, moments later there was a knock at her door and she set Euclid on her coffee table and trudged to the door.
Her brain took a second to recognize the person standing there and when she did she did a double take. It was Vera and she looked so… normal. She had dyed her longish, bright red hair a deep chocolate color, almost the same shade as Amanda's. She had removed her facial piercings and skipped the ostentatious makeup and was wearing a pair of red slacks with a professional, billowy pink top. Amanda had never noticed under the shock value, but seeing her friend this way, she realized they could probably pass for sisters.
"You look so… nice," Amanda beamed, before hastily adding, "I mean different. You were always beautiful, but… wow. What prompted the change?"
"Well, I figured it was time to get a real job," she said, stepping inside Amanda's apartment.
"Did you have a job before?" Amanda asked, poking at the edge of anonymity Vera had always seemed to bask in.
"Yeah, I used to bartend down at Mudsucker's. Last night this guy came in and made a casual reference to Bertrand's theorem, and before you know it, we went down the rabbit hole of prime numbers and binomial coefficients and he offered me a job."
"Huh?" uttered Amanda, completely confused.
"Well, my dad's been saying I need to put my degree to use, and I always thought I would… someday."
"Your degree?"
"Yeah, I have a doctorate in mathematics from CalTech."
"Wait, what?" Amanda said in disbelief.
"What?" Vera replied innocently.
"What?" Amanda insisted. Vera shrugged and smiled halfheartedly. "Why did you never mention any of that, Dr. Vera? I also just realized I don't know your last name."
"It never came up. Besides, you don't need calculus to mix drinks for a bunch of Starfleet cadets and middle-aged men who wish they were 15 years younger."
Amanda started laughing. Laughter felt good.
"You look really amazing," she managed to say.
"You… don't," Vera frowned. "I came by to check on you and see if you wanted to go to lunch or something. You know, put on real clothes and get out of the apartment."
"That would be really nice," Amanda said.
"Is that blood on your face?"
Amanda took a few steps over to the hallway mirror and saw the disaster that was her appearance. Her dirty, tousled hair was half falling out of the ponytail and she had dried blood smeared across her cheek.
She recounted that morning's events to Vera and started crying again when she got to the part about kissing Ambassador Sarek as he tended to her wounds on her kitchen floor. Vera remained uncharacteristically silent as she unloaded all of her frustrations and when she was done wailing, she stood there hiccupping and feeling like an idiot. Vera simply hugged her.
"It's probably not as bad as you think, and no, I don't think you need to move to a frontier colony and change your name," Vera said, patting her head.
"I just- what was I thinking?"
"You weren't thinking, but given the circumstances, that's not so crazy," Vera soothed. "I used to think human men sending mixed signals was bad, but I can't imagine trying to go off of no signals from a Vulcan guy. Though you did say he gave you that book…"
Amanda looked to her miserably for some answer or advice.
"Look, you're hurting and lonely and he was here and he swooped in like a very dark and no doubt fatalistic Prince Charming and patched you up. I might have kissed him too if I had been in your shoes. Maybe you just got your signals crossed, but I doubt he hates you."
"Both times he's come over here I've felt like a complete fool," she sighed in frustration.
"Why did he come by this morning?"
Amanda considered her friend's question and realized she wasn't sure and said, "I don't know; we didn't get that far. I was too busy destroying my kitchen and punching holes in my body to ask."
"Well, maybe you should think about it," Vera mused.
"All I can think is that I was really falling for him," Amanda hiccupped. "But then my dad died-"
"You don't know that," Vera interrupted. "For all you know-"
"I think I do," Amanda interjected. "I think I do know he's dead. I just feel it. We weren't as close as some fathers and daughters, but he was still my dad."
Vera hugged her again and said, "Go shower. Put on something nice. I'll wait for you. I'm going to make you smile if it kills me."
Amanda complied and retreated to her bedroom where she undressed. She took her time in the shower, going so far as to shave her legs and exfoliate her face. She was afraid to stop caring for too long, and hoped that she could find a way to fake feeling better until she actually did.
When she exited the small shower stall she realized she lacked a clean towel so she tiptoed naked across her bedroom and pulled down one of the small, prettily embroidered bath towels her mother bought for her when she moved in. They were impractically fancy and small and this was the first time she'd ever used one of them. She wiped the excess moisture from her skin and then wrapped it around herself, disappointed that it barely covered the things it was supposed to.
Since she was already in her closet, she started looking through her clothes and decided she wanted to wear her blue sundress but remembered it was still hanging in the laundry compartment just off her kitchen because she'd been too lazy to put it away for several weeks. As she opened her bedroom door she could hear noise from her holo projector and assumed Vera was watching a program. She padded down the short hallway in bare feet and saw Vera standing at her front door talking to someone. Vera's eyes widened and she frantically motioned for her to go away, and Amanda quickly saw why.
"Ah!" Amanda yelped, walking backward down the hall until she walked into her bedroom door.
Standing just inside the threshold of her front door had been Ambassador Sarek. He had followed Vera's hand signals until he saw her, standing in a towel so small that it left little to the imagination. His eyebrows flicked upward and he quickly averted his eyes and stepped back onto the stoop.
"I should go," he said, though she wasn't sure he was speaking to her or Vera.
"No!" she pleaded. "No, please don't go. Please stay."
She wasn't sure why he had come or what she wanted to say to him. Just a few hours ago she thought she'd irrevocably destroyed any chance of seeing him again.
"Let me get dressed, ok?" she called, wondering if he was still there.
"Very well," she heard him say.
She tore into her bedroom and dressed in record time, pulling on the only other dress she owned, a loose off-white and pastel pink dress. She wrung as much water out of her hair as she could and hurried back down the hallway. He was talking with Vera but he was still standing on her front porch.
"I'll leave you two to it," Vera announced, walking cautiously through the door while Sarek moved to let her depart. "It was nice to meet you."
"Yes," he said, nodding subtly in Vera's direction.
Amanda stood there nervously wringing her hands and cognizant of the fact that her skin was still a bit sticky from her recent shower.
"Would you like to come in?" she asked for the second time that day.
He assented without speaking and walked through the door and gently closed it behind him.
"Look," she said, unclasping her hands and holding them in front of her awkwardly. "I'm sorry, both for this morning and for just now."
"Depending on your method of accounting, your tally of illogical apologies is either now at 12 or 15."
"Last I stopped counting, we were at eight," she laughed. "What were nine through 15?"
"You apologized for the outbreak of a riot, you apologized twice for your erroneous belief that my presence at that riot was your fault, you apologized for what you mistakenly believed to be static electricity when we touched, you apologized twice for the events of this morning, and you apologized for being caught unawares… when I arrived just now."
She blushed and prayed the impossibly small towel had kept everything covered. She couldn't help but notice a mild unease about the way he trailed off. It didn't suit him.
"I don't know if it's possible for me to embarrass myself even more in one day," she admitted.
"Embarrassment is illogical. However, given it is a subjective emotion, the amount to which one may be embarrassed is a question of individual degree, therefore I cannot say whether it is possible or not," he explained.
She looked at him with an incredulous look, which turned into bemusement, which in turn became a smile.
"Please don't think I'm rude for asking, but why are you here?" she asked. "I mean, I thought you were still supposed to be on Vulcan…"
"Recent events have caused me to alter my itinerary," he remarked, catching her eyes for the first time since his arrival.
"You didn't fully answer my question though," she replied, more boldly than she intended. "I mean, why are you here? It's just that you seemed- well, I just didn't think, and then the way I behaved this morning and-"
"I believe you invited me to dinner upon my return," he said, interrupting her rambling. "It is my hope that you have not rescinded the invitation."