Holography

 

Volume 2

 

The Wedding Present

Or

The Starling’s Lament

 

By

 

Pat Foley

 

 

 

The sound of dawn birds woke Sarek.  When he stirred, Amanda, still deeply asleep, snuggled closer in unconscious protest. He looked down at her head pillowed on his shoulder, felt her breath warm against his throat.  One of his hands was tangled in her long hair that lay streaming across her back. Whereas she had one arm around his waist, one leg across and between his.  Always at the back of his mind when he woke like this, was the nagging thought that Vulcans did not sleep thus, so uncontrolled 

 

He had meant, early in his marriage,  to say something to her about this apparently human lack of control in sleep.  Perhaps to suggest some Vulcan disciplines.  But they had both been reeling from the myriad culture shocks such a union engendered, and it had hardly been an important issue.  And before he could even find an opportunity to raise it, he himself had become bowled over, lost, charmed by the absolute, unconscious show of trust and affection her sleeping behavior demonstrated.  He had never experienced anything like it.

 

Not that he had approached his marriage unprepared. They had made a conscious, logical decision to bond, even based on – at least on her part – motivations that had been as much emotional as rational.  As a Vulcan, he had expected his wife would honor and respect him. And yield to him – that was a given.   Nor did he have any difficulty in understanding, sharing and reciprocating her desire.  That was mutual between them.  He had even made an intense study of the emotion called love before they bonded, and felt he understood it as well as any Vulcan could, even if he didn’t expect to ever share it.

 

What he hadn’t expected, what he had somehow overlooked in his research was this – this unconscious, unstudied expression of affection and trust – outside of desire or love --- that she felt for him.  Her careless, thoughtless, spontaneous innocence continued long past the point where they could claim any innocence between them --  a behavior undeniably undisciplined and  childlike, by Vulcan standards -- even as she demonstrated in every other facet of her life that she was no child.  It had struck him to his Vulcan core.  And for the first time in his life, he had felt…envy.   Most surprisingly, envy of humans.  With the specter of Pon Far haunting him as it did every Vulcan male, Amanda’s absolute trust and her conviction that he was worthy of that trust was something no Vulcan wife would so easily feel for a Vulcan husband.  But apparently it was something common to Human marriage, and for that he felt himself wanting.  He had done nothing yet to ensure her safety in Pon Far; he felt undeserving of such convictions. Yet Amanda felt that for him.  He found that …amazing, given she had been well educated as to the nature of Vulcan biology.  And captivating.  He had become determined to earn that trust, even as he completely reversed his opinion on her sleeping habits. The idea of suggesting any alteration in that behavior was unthinkable. In fact, he would have opposed anyone or anything, Vulcan or human,  that suggested it. Deserved or not, deserving or not, he found his desire for it ran a close second to his desire for her.

 

Though it did have its disadvantages. Small wonder he could hardly keep his hands off his wife when awake, when he was so conditioned to have her in his arms when asleep.  But he would never trade a Vulcan marriage now for that as well. With that thought in mind, he shifted to draw her under him.  It was when  reaching for her hands saw the dark bruises on her arms.

 

For a moment, he stared at them, chilled, mentally berating himself for forgetting his own strength, inexcusable behavior, regardless of the cause – at least, outside the Time.  But then the  reasons for his loss of control came back to him, and he shuddered.   As far removed from his former chill as if he were suddenly bathed in icy water.

 

Spock…gone. 

 

He drew back from her as his thoughts congealed, and he tried to push the unpleasant topic away even as he withdrew from his wife’s embrace. He had resolved firmly not to think of his son until the boy repudiated his errant choice and returned to his father’s ways.

 

But still, the thoughts would come.  Sarek found himself returning again and again to the events of the past week, of the past eighteen standard years of his child’s life.  Sarek could not see where he had gone wrong.  His son’s every choice had been Vulcan.  Why would he abandon this choice now?

 

Spock’s childhood had, to Sarek, been difficult and dangerous sands to navigate. And yet, from his son’s Kahs-Wan to his bonding, to mastery of emotional control, of logic, of psi skills and basic educational requirements, to his final accomplishment of two advanced degrees at the Science Academy and an offer of research and teaching facilities, it had been a series of successes.  No small tribute, Sarek believed, to his own patient guidance, his stringent application of discipline -- necessary for the raising of a half Vulcan child as Vulcan in the same home as his human mother -- and his own example.  It would have been far too easy to relax his standards.  But as the sole Vulcan in his Vulcan home, Sarek had borne the entire responsibility to raise his child within them, as well as to fight long and hard for his son’s acceptance in Vulcan society.

 

Finally, with the Academy appointment and his son’s passage into an honorable profession, Sarek had looked forward to the thought of welcome relief from his long-held care and struggle. If Spock had failed, that would have been one reason why the child might have abandoned his Vulcan life.  But the boy had passed every test.  Why, when the pinnacle had finally been reached, when victory was assured, when the long awaited mastery had been achieved would the child …abandon …all of it?

 

He sat up abruptly, his disquieting thoughts making it impossible for him to remain any longer in bed.  Next to him Amanda sighed in her sleep and Sarek looked down at her, his expression dark, a mirror image of the tenderness with which he had regarded her only moments before.  He was painfully reminded that she had supported Spock in this, and that she was another riddle he could not solve.

 

For Amanda was motivated by love.  He did not, could not, would not love her. 

 

He tried to understand her human emotions, and he believed he had a fair understanding of them, but they were not his.  He knew she loved him. She said it, and he could feel it through their bond.  But while he appreciated her emotions on an intellectual level, he found love… painfully wanting.

 

Before he’d married Amanda, he’d done research on this emotion considered to be so necessary to the union with a human female.  That was only logical.  And he had not liked what he’d found.  Love as a motivation for marriage had been long empirically discovered, even by humans, to be lacking.  It was fickle; it could not be trusted.  But worst of all, it was not all encompassing. 

 

 As a Vulcan male, held for life, or for unimaginable death, in the grip of a potentially fatal mating drive, Sarek could not countenance anything less than a tie of marriage that was absolute.

 

But love was not.  Neither was love, according to all his research, single-minded, or selfish.  It implied a degree of self-sacrifice Sarek found incomprehensible.  It had seemed, based on his reading, that if he really loved his wife, as he understood it, he would be able to hold her desires, her needs, above his.  He would be able to have such reasonings stand above passion.  That was…unVulcan.  Reason had no place in passion, the two were antithetical.  In a Vulcan marriage, a Vulcan male’s passion must rule. Any other expectation could lead to death for both parties.

 

The thing that had horrified him most of all in his research, was discovering that if he really loved his wife, far from challenging for her, far from defending his right to her to the death, he would be expected to…just… let her go. When he had first read this philosophy, he had been sure it must be a mistake. Humans were so prone to them. But the theme was repeated again and again. Love implied the antithesis of possession.

 

Obviously, that was unworkable for a Vulcan male.  Unthinkable.  If that was love, then it must be impossible for him to feel.

 

Logically, based on his findings, he should have not pursued her.  But his desire for her was the one area of a Vulcan male’s life where passion should and must eclipse logic, and where reason had no place.  He had instead sought to explain to her the biology of a Vulcan male and how it factored in his culture. He had had others, Vulcan healers more qualified than he to teach such subjects, explain it to her. He had told them to spare her nothing.  She had been told of the blood fever, of the violent nature of a Vulcan male in his time…and out of it. 

 

And of the permanence of the union.  Dissolution was not an option.  There would be no letting go here.

 

True, some few rare Vulcan marriages ended in divorce.  Some were even dissolved without murder.  But it was exceedingly rare, and mostly in parentally arranged marriages where the parties involved had never been through a Time and agreed beforehand that they were unsuited, incompatible.  Sans desire and passion. 

 

That was not the case, had never been the case, with him in this.  He had made sure, before they took the virtually irrevocable step of bonding, that she had understood, as well as a human female could, the depth of the commitment they were to make. 

 

Her wife was not Vulcan.  But she was intelligent.  She was well able to extrapolate possibilities. 

 

As was he. 

 

That being so, the wise course of action would have been not to marry.  Amanda had understood, as had he himself, that based on the wide difference in their cultures this was one area in which Humans and Vulcans never could, perhaps never should,  meet. 

 

But he had desired her, and she had loved him and they had both put reason aside.  That was proper, logical, to do, as regards marriage. She had said yes.  It had been a profound relief to him that she had enough appreciation of Vulcan culture and biology to understand where even logic must dictate passion’s rule.  He had not been sure, even then, he could have survived her refusal.  And he had found it difficult to reason with his passion even enough to patiently see her instructed and informed before she made such a choice.

 

She had become his with her understanding that however much she might love him, this would be a Vulcan marriage. He was a Vulcan; she was his wife.  He agreed to try, to try very hard, as far as he could, to understand and respect her human needs.  But it was inherent in their agreement that she had no choice regarding his.

 

That was the one thing he could not, even remotely, countenance.  Even only months from a recent pon far, his mind could not accept the possibility.  As a Vulcan male in the prime of life, his … passions… ran high on this.  He was Vulcan and she was his wife, his bondmate.  She had no right, none, to even consider any desires other than his own. 

 

Not even her son’s. 

 

Not even her own. 

 

She was his.

 

Sarek forced his racing heart to slow, his sudden short breaths to calm.

 

Well, he had kept his side of their unlikely bargain.  He had promised to consider her needs, and when she had demanded her son’s freedom in payment for her own, he had granted it.  But it was a high and dear price.  No doubt, in Amanda’s human mind and emotions, she considered she had paid in kind.  He understood she was invoking some human ideal of self sacrifice, in her remaining, and that he almost could not bear.  It implied she was making a choice and in his mind, even the idea that she had such a choice invoked a kind of madness in him.  A barely suppressed wish to challenge against this unnamed foe.

 

She had no choice.

 

He refused to acknowledge the sense of purely Vulcan pain and betrayal he felt that a bondmate he had honored so many years and through so many Times still harbored such thoughts.

 

But, he reminded himself, she was only human.  Even as his Vulcan passion rose in fury at such a tacit betrayal, his reason held him barely in check.  She was human, not Vulcan.  She could not help a culture which had no biological or racial conception of an absolute biological need unto death.  She could not comprehend or offer, unknowing, what she did not understand.  No more than he could understand love. It was for him to make his demands plain in such a way that even a human female could understand them. 

 

Well he had, years ago, agreed to meet her as well as he could, halfway.  And he had let his son leave for Starfleet.  And he would see she kept her side of the bargain as well. Which did not imply any half measures.  He had lost all of his son, and he would keep all of his wife.  Past all letting go.

 

Fortunately for them both, Amanda was intelligent and honorable enough that when he succeeded in making her understand his requirements, she had never failed to yield to them.  Though he admitted to frustration, even occasional fury, that instruction was still sometimes required.

 

He rose jerkily, unable to stay still any longer, his thoughts too painful to contemplate.   His movements jostled Amanda, and she turned over and sat up.  Her eyes met his, and something of his thoughts must have showed on his face, must have communicated through the bond, even not touching.  The color of her blood rose in her face, washed pink across her bare limbs, and she swallowed hard, her gaze breaking from his, her breath catching in her throat as she stilled under his gaze.  His wife had spirit.  But, as he reminded himself yet again, she was only human, and female. The enormity of what she had agreed to quailed even her at times.  Sarek did not regret seeing that. 

 

It proved she understood her position.  Human and flawed as her humanity made her in this regard, she had yet made an agreement.  And was honorable enough, after her own fashion, to understand that and keep it.  He would see that she did.  Even if her love had moments when, as he had long ago expected, even predicted,  it might falter.  Well, his passion and logic had no such failures, and he would see she did not fail him.

 

The heavy curtain of her unbound hair had fallen forward, hiding her face from his, but he knew her body as well as his own, and he could see her stillness in her bare unmoving ribs, hear the absence of her respiration as she held her breath.  He drew the blond strands behind her round human ears, back from her face,  tipped her chin up with strong fingers so her eyes met his. His gaze raked her again from head to feet, possessive, demanding.  But then he stepped back. 

 

“You have a class to teach, do you not?  You had better get dressed.”

 

 

 

 

Amanda sat up slowly, drawing a deep breath, looking after her husband as he left the room, his broad shoulders uncompromisingly square.  She put her hand to her cheek, thinking of his barely leashed strength as he’d taken her face in his hand.

 

She sighed settling that same chin in her own hands, thinking about what that meant. 

 

So last  night had not quenched his anger.  Well she couldn’t suppose the perceived loss of an only son would fade so easily.  But Sarek’s anger was going to make her position uncomfortable until it did, particularly as he was no longer shunning her.  She sighed again as she thought of dealing with her husband’s formidable temper directly. There were times,  like now,  when caught unawares by it, she froze like a rabbit in a snare, abruptly reminded anew of why Vulcans strove so hard to control their emotions, and how dangerous they could be when that control slipped. Maybe it would have been easier to stay shunned.

 

Well, he usually worked through his anger quickly.  His swift leave-taking implied some of that.  He’d run through his Vulcan disciplines and get over it soon.

 

She hoped.

 

But he was right.  She had classes to teach.  Time to deal with Sarek’s misplaced sense of pride and anger later.

 

But later came and went, and the right time to reach Sarek didn’t seemed to come. Day after day they rose, worked, came home, shared a meal – though neither one of them were eating much – and neither one of them were saying much.  She couldn’t seem to find a way or a time to broach the topic. Sarek kept a distance between them – and no one could put up a wall like a Vulcan -- that she struggled to figure out how to broach without arousing his temper.  A temper still so barely leashed, and a veneer of self control so thin and hard won, that she didn’t dare force a confrontation.  And more, that wall, that distance, implied he was not ready.  She had expected he would need some time to reconcile himself.  But as Spock’s absence stretched into days, when it became obvious that he was not going to return home, and Sarek faced the reality of his loss in full, his anger seemed to grow, not lessen.  She grew confused about what to do. 

 

When she pushed too hard, Sarek would demand her attendance and take her to bed.  When she didn’t push too hard he would often do the same.  Even there, he kept the same distance between them, in spite of his persistent attentions.  He didn’t sleep until he was tired, which meant she didn’t sleep until she was exhausted.  And he never softened his cold, demanding stance.  She had never seen Sarek like this. Behind that wall of rigid control a terrible fury was barely leashed.   She was coming to realize Sarek wasn’t just going to get over his anger, that all the emotions he had repressed and walled up in his confrontation with his son were now falling onto her.

 

She wasn’t used to being the object of his displeasure.  Far rather the opposite, his regard for her had long been one of the cornerstones of her life, and it was unsettling to find it absent.   Dealing with her husband in this state made her realize some of what Spock had endured through his childhood.  But she wasn’t a child, but Sarek’s wife.  And only human.  While Sarek wasn’t…technically…hurting her, she was finding his attentions harder and harder to bear.  Even Pon Far was more personal than this.   She was starting to feel like a kidnap victim – or some kind of victim. She couldn’t say no, and he would not let her say, or even feel yes.  He was deliberately punishing her, both of them.  And she was beginning to wonder if it would last as long as Spock’s absence.

 

 

One day was marked by another message from Spock. It was exactly one Vulcan week since the last one, he was apparently taking her literally.  She wondered if he would switch to human weeks once he got settled, but rather hoped he didn’t, Vulcan weeks were shorter and she’d hear from him more often.   She hit the play button, grateful Sarek wasn’t home, and sat back.

 

“Greetings, mother.” He looked different already to her discerning eyes.  He was wearing a Starfleet cadet uniform, and his hair was a little shorter than she remembered, but other than that he looked physically the same, though seemingly puzzled and searching for words.  “I am … I supposed you would say settling in.  Classes have commenced.  The students are mostly Terran, but there are some humans from other colonies and a few non-humans.  My course of study is meant to be Sciences, but as I have passed out of many of the science courses for prior mastery, I am being prevailed upon to also take Command.  Apparently on starships, the sciences lead one to Command at the higher ranks.  As I wish to serve on a starship, such a combination is considered a logical course of study for me.  I have…” he hesitated.  “Agreed to try it.  I realize this decision may be considered even less acceptable to those in my family than what I had previously planned, since Command will also lead to decisions and actions contrary to Vulcan philosophy.”  His eyes lifted briefly, to meet hers directly as if he could actually see her, as if this were not a previously taped message transmitted by subspace.  “But,” he shrugged, “some of those concerns are perhaps not as relevant, given my acknowledged family is smaller now.  As my only parent, I would be interested in your opinion.”

 

Amanda snorted.  “If you could see how your father is storming around the house like a lematya with a sore paw since you left, you’d see the lie in that, regardless of what words your father has spoken.”

 

Spock paused and then went on, “I am in several peer groups.  There is a certain amount of illogical aggression from the students in the upperclasses.  It is not directly to me primarily as a Vulcan but appears a general wave of such against all new students.  This has yet to be a problem for me, as most of this occurs after lights out, and as I have excellent hearing, sleep little, compared to humans, and that lightly, I am never caught unawares.  And Vulcans are much stronger than humans, so what aggression I have encountered I have been able to answer without excessive force.  However, I would be interested in knowing if you have an opinion on how to handle this situation.  I am unsure of the correct cultural response.”

 

He paused again.  “Other than that, I find my classes satisfactory. The material is rather basic, but the mix of students and teachers from many worlds makes it more interesting.  I am learning to deal with Terra’s ambient temperatures – though it is very cold here.  San Francisco is grey and damp.  Even when it doesn’t rain, and mother,” she could hear the astonishment in his voice, poor child of a desert world, even as controlled as he could be,  “it rains very frequently --  but even when it does not, the air is frequently laden with a mist of water, called fog.  An interesting phenomenon.  But chilly.   However, when the sun shines, the bay is quite stunning.  One tends to overlook, given Terra’s name, how much of your world is covered by ocean.”  He was quiet for a moment.  “I suppose I must begin to start considering it my world as well.  Though that is still difficult.  He then added, “I trust you are well, Mother, and the same with such family as I can properly ask after.”  He looked up. “I am also well, and I bid you goodbye.”

 

Amanda froze the message, examining her son again with the keen eyes of a mother.  No, she didn’t see any marks on him, and he looked well.  Spock perhaps understood bullying and aggression better than most human children; he’d suffered from it on Vulcan, from Vulcans.  There his hands had been largely tied lest any retaliatory behavior mark him as human.  But those restrictions didn’t apply and wouldn’t work on Terra.  She doubted her son had any real comprehension with how to deal with Terran bullies, or understanding of military style hazing.  Not that she knew much of that herself, but she knew a darn sight more than her Vulcan son.  She hit the reply button.  After the preliminaries, she got down to business.

 

“One rule of dealing with bullies – don’t back down.  They are not interested in the search for peace, they are interested in the search for you -- for someone to dominate.  If you stand up to them, they’ll move on and find someone else.  That doesn’t mean you have to go after them.  But if they are going to come after you, and it sounds like that is happening, then you need to set up a scenario where this confrontation happens sooner rather than later … and on your terms.  Figure out who the ring leader is.  Then engineer the situation so that you get caught in a place where you can control the outcome.  You know how to defend yourself,” she added, for Spock had been taught defensive tactics for his Kahs Wan, and anything that would work against a lematya would work against a human.  “And make sure you get caught alone, that  this confrontation is private.  Bullies don’t like to be publicly humiliated.   Just… put them on the ground.  Once they see you can stand up for yourself, they’ll move on. It’s a form of …weeding out, Spock.”

 

“Another thing, if you treat them the next day as if nothing happened, you’ll probably end up with them being friends.  I know it’s illogical Spock, but often true.  Think of chakas – if you put a new one into the herd, the others will chase him.  If he always runs, they’ll always chase him.  And make his life miserable.  If he stands his ground and kicks out, they’ll soon leave him alone.  I’m afraid some Humans haven’t matured above animals in this regard.  Believe me, it won’t be a constant thing.  You won’t have to go after others in turn,  pursue anyone aggressively yourself,  as they are doing.  Just engineer a defense where you come out well ahead, and they’ll stop.  Humans are emotional at times, but they are not stupid. I have a feeling anyone who can stand up to T’Pau and Sarek won’t have any trouble, if you can bring yourself to get a little physical.”  She hesitated, thinking of Vulcan strength.  Even Sarek forgot his own strength, and being only a growing kid, her son had much less control. “Remember, a little physical, my son. No broken bones.”  But then she added maliciously, “but if you care to, you can give them an extra bruise from me.” 

 

She raised her head, hearing Sarek come into the front hall, and paused the message.  Best to finish it later.  Her husband’s temper wouldn’t countenance hearing her dictating a message to Spock at this time. 

 

 

 

 

Later that evening, Sarek would have concurred with his wife’s estimation, had he known it.  He was standing at his favorite sentry port, looking at the section of sky where the dim star Sol was, if it could be seen from Eridani.  But he was not at present thinking of his son.  He was thinking of his wife.

 

His behavior to her was bordering on the inexcusable.  And bordering only in the sense that 5000 Vulcan years ago, it might be considered partially acceptable.  But this was not Pre-Reform Vulcan, and further, his wife was human.  Behavior a Vulcan woman would excuse or ignore would not receive the same license from Amanda.  Already he could see it in her eyes, sense it in her manner. He was damaging their relationship – and to a closely bonded Vulcan male in the prime of life, who could expect regular frequent returns of Pon Far, that was the height of madness. 

 

This was not her fault.

 

If it was anyone’s, it was his own.  He had held sole responsibility for his son’s training for the past ten years.  And he had, so he thought, been a close and painstaking guardian of his child.  Every school, every instructor, every course of study, had been personally selected by him – and he had demanded regular private reports on his son’s progress, and made it clear to both instructor and student that this was no ordinary tuition.  That  he was setting the highest standards of Vulcan excellence, and would not tolerate anything less.   Every activity, every interest – or so he had thought – required pre-approval by him, and if not approved, such was stringently forbidden.   He had chosen suitable companions and disallowed unsuitable ones.  He had limited his son’s access – so far as he was able to in an information free society – to such materials and subjects as he felt were appropriate to the boy’s development.  He had set up the child for success, on a straight and narrow Vulcan path,  as no child surely could ever claim before – even to limiting the boy’s relationship with his mother.  Spock may have held half his mother’s genes, but to Sarek, Spock had been his creation.  Pure Vulcan in spite of his genetic heritage.  His son.  And the boy had …nearly…done it.  Even now Sarek was receiving interested queries regarding Spock’s last research dissertation that led to his mren-to in astrophysics.  In a few weeks, his son would have been a researcher and instructor at the Vulcan Science Academy, a proven and sealed clan heir,  his future life bonded to a Vulcan female.  Done.  Sarek had been looking forward, pleasurably, to the surcease from care that would have brought, and, eventually, the prospect of making his child’s acquaintance as he had not been able to while he held him under such strict standards.

 

Even when Spock had left, Sarek had not truly believed it.  The knowledge that his son had gone off planet was not yet circulated, nor had Sarek circulated it, not until he could be sure the child would not swiftly return.  He had honestly expected the boy to rethink his decision. When he left anyway, Sarek had expected him back on a return ship.

 

He had even done something ignoble to help ensure that.  As clan heir, Spock’s training had been painstaking and arduous, and as such compensation in property was part of his hereditary right. It had been granted him upon first being sealed as heir, and regularly since.  Thus the boy had extensive funds at his disposal, though he had never used any without Sarek’s permission.  But the funds were his, not his father’s.  And, when Sarek had known his son was leaving, he had blocked the boy’s access to that property with one communication.  His action was highly irregular, and would not stand up to a legal challenge, but Sarek had not expected Spock would be gone long enough that it would become an issue.  And yet it had been two weeks, and still Spock had not come home.  Nor had he touched or tried to use the funds Sarek had denied him.

 

He had discovered Spock had traveled to Starfleet on a standard deadhead policy that allowed Starfleet recruits basic transportation to the Academy and other required destinations.  And once he had enrolled, joined, Starfleet, Starfleet standard issue would cover his essential needs.  He essentially had no urgent need and no immediate or pressing use for the funds Sarek had blocked.  It had been a petty and useless gesture.  But Sarek did not regret it.  He’d had few weapons at his disposal to influence Spock, and he had used what was available. And it had to be daunting to the boy, who had not been off planet in years and never without the strict guardianship of his parents, to be alone in an alien society and completely without resources.  How could he not use such an advantage to dissuade his errant child?

 

But it had not worked.  And his son, whom he had had painstakingly raised and trained and nurtured and guarded was out there, with nothing but a few clothes to his name, and Starfleet—Starfleet! had assumed his guardianship, would feed and clothe him, educate his child and train him in unimaginable philosophies, choose for him companions such as Sarek would never had allowed, and instructors Sarek would not have seen set foot inside any educational institution.  After eighteen years of setting the most rigid Vulcan standards for his son, now humans would set him requirements. Humans, Starfleet Officers,  would dictate his actions, define his goals, evaluate his abilities.

 

For Sarek, this was unimaginable. 

 

He knew his son had gone to Starfleet willingly, but it was difficult not to feel that Starfleet had stolen his child.  His child.  The habits and thoughts of eighteen years were not easy to eradicate.  He’d had sole control of his son for too long to be able to easily comprehend that any other had a right to his association, much less his training.

 

He wanted Spock home.

 

Even now he did not understand how Spock had made it as far as he had in such an alien society.  And alien it had to be, in spite of Amanda.  Sarek had worked hard to keep his wife’s influence on their child necessarily small.  Other than family conversation, and even that Sarek had done his best to monitor, the only influence his wife had had in the last ten years had been to teach the boy piano.  And that had been, Sarek admitted, mostly because he enjoyed hearing her play and her Academy teaching duties had made those instances when she had chosen to do so vanishingly small.  But Spock was musically gifted, and he knew the lyre well, and Sarek had seen no logical reason why he should not learn another instrument, even if a Terran one.  And surely that small indulgence on Sarek’s part had played no part in Spock’s decision to embrace Starfleet.

 

He had kept the boy from his mother, had denied the mother much access to his child. Partly due to the necessary concentration on his son’s Vulcan training. But also, out of concern for his future.  Spock had to be bonded to a Vulcan female, even as Sarek had rejected that choice for himself. There was no sense torturing the boy with what he could never have.  Amanda loved him so much, as mother to child, that Sarek wondered how Spock would ever find contentment in a marriage that would offer him none of that.  It could not be helped.

 

But even as he denied Spock access to virtually everything regarding Terrans, fearing the effect of such contamination in Spock’s Vulcan training, his rigid control of so much of his son’s life meant that his son was less mature, in some respects, less experienced with choices, and diversity, than a Vulcan child of his age.  The boy had no experience with such on Vulcan, and his off planet experience was as nothing.  He had had no exposure to guile, to enmity, to violence.  He knew only his mother, nothing of the true range of Terran character.  He might well be as trusting of all Terrans as he was of her. Sarek had never thought to teach him anything else. And now his innocent child was off on his own, as ignorant and defenseless as Sarek had made him, in a Terran dominated Federation, on Terra itself, with all its license, self interest and evil, far outweighing any individual good.  Anything could happen.

 

Before his first Federation assignment, Sarek had been fully mature, well trained to evaluate and understand Terra’s dubious varieties of cultures and values, at least in so far as a Vulcan could.  He’d gone with advisors, counselors, an entire embassy staff, which had done its best to create a small Vulcan haven on Earth.   And even with a full Embassy team,  Sarek had found the experience …extremely difficult.  In fact, he had disliked it.  He did not regret the time he had spent there; it had availed him of his wife.   He had never chosen to return as Ambassador to Terra, even though it would take Amanda back to Earth, seen lesser, others assigned in that place.  He had taken the more difficult, more dangerous assignments as Federation ambassador when duty required.  But he had never returned to Terra to the relative ease of a regular undemanding stint there.  Amanda had never asked him to return either.  Perhaps she knew. 

 

And Spock was out there, alone.  Subject to the demands, disciplines and training of humans Starfleet officers who now had him in thrall and who knew nothing of Vulcans.

 

If someone had asked him to imagine the worst scenario he could, he would never have been able to conceive a horror such as Spock had chosen for himself.

 

And even as he shuddered for what Spock would endure, he still judged him.

 

How could he not now consider his son … incompetent… to have made such a flawed choice.  It was a bitter thought, but it had to be acknowledged.   As well as hopelessly immature and naïve.  It was a fact that skill in sciences did not necessarily imply wisdom in other areas.  His son might have achieved advanced degrees in computer science and astrophysics, but he was obviously backwards as regard life choices.  Some of this, Sarek admitted, was due to his own educational restrictions.  He had never allowed Spock to make them.  But even when Sarek subtracted the blame that was his own, the remainder that was his son’s responsibility was beyond all reason. 

 

Part of him simply wanted to welcome his child home, set some reasonable discipline (though Sarek could not imagine what that could be and was still struggling to conceive of one)  and say no more of it.  But there was still the undeniable fact that Spock had made this nightmarish decision based on what could only be considered seriously flawed logic. When he got the boy back, what could he do but rigorously remap his training, reassess his true abilities.  Re-educate him in true logical thinking.  Teach him never to stray so again.

 

But that was when, and it had to be said, if, the boy returned.  Sarek admitted to himself his stringent attempts to prevent Spock from leaving were an equal deterrent in bringing the child home again. 

 

And Spock had already been gone far longer than Sarek had anticipated.

 

What if the boy did not return?  It was inconceivable, but …what if?  His carefully trained heir would be redefined by the Starfleet Sarek abhorred.

 

Never.  No child he had so raised and trained would stay in Starfleet.  Sarek believed that firmly.  And while he had initially opposed Amanda’s lenient attitude toward Spock’s choice, now he could see she had a purpose to her actions.  When Spock encountered the true nature of Starfleet, and recoiled from it as he must, Amanda would provide the encouragement and mediation for him to return to his family and his people.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 Amanda closed the door of their private suite behind her, and deliberately relaxed.  Sarek was off meditating in his usual spot, and she hoped he’d finally find some sort of peace with Spock’s choice.  In the meantime, she would finish her message to Spock, and with luck, she’d have time to review tomorrow’s teaching before Sarek returned. 

 

She crossed to the sitting room she used as a study.  The suite was large, a residence in itself, meant to be so in the days when many had lived in this ancient fortress.  Beside the outer reception rooms and their bedroom, there was her sitting room and a private den for Sarek, though he never worked in it, keeping a more public office on the ground floor, where he received others.  She kept her office up here, because the Vulcan staff who maintained the building and grounds never entered their private suite. And she didn’t want Vulcan eyes raised askance at her things. She wasn’t messy by human standards, and Sarek never complained, though he sometimes picked up after her reflexively. More than once she had told him to leave her things alone, startling both of them, for she rarely raised her voice to him, and he did it largely unconsciously.  Vulcans were nothing but neat, neat, neat in their habits.  But he had seemed amused by her little flares of temper, as if she were nothing more than a kitten baring its claws before a lematya, and considering the huge difference between human emotions and what she had come to recognize of Vulcan passions, the analogy probably was a good one.  At least he had never seemed displeased or taken aback by her temper.  He only expected and demanded her obedience in one area, one dictated by Vulcan biology, and reinforced by Vulcan tradition.  And that she had been well warned of  before their marriage. The rest of the time, he was so indulgent with her she had to discipline herself not to end up absolutely spoiled.

 

At times like these, when he was in a temper, she reminded herself of that.  He’d defied his mother, the matriarch of his clan to marry her, had allowed her to bring anything she’d wanted to Vulcan with her, including priceless starship cargo space for her huge library of books, had, on his own,  expedited the import, long requested by the Terran delegations on Vulcan but now of personal interest to Sarek , of dozens of varieties of fruits, vegetables and grains that would be familiar to her – and had set up a Terran garden and greenhouse on the grounds of their home, terraforming the desert to do it and covering it to ensure a climate where such would thrive.  She had dozens of her own fruit trees now, oranges and lemons, limes and bananas, plums and peaches and even apples though it had been hard to find a variety that would grow well without a good cold snap.  Sarek found many Terran fruits too sweet, actually after years on Vulcan, she found many of them too sweet too. But he was actually rather fond of apples.  Vulcan gardeners now grew snow and sugar snap peas and lettuce for their table,  and a host of other vegetables, and what she and Sarek didn’t eat, and they didn’t eat a fraction of it,  was sold to Terran markets on Vulcan for what was probably a huge profit.  And he’d added flowers too.  She had breathtaking gardens, which she hardly had leisure to enjoy, including an acre of roses. Roses actually grew rather well here.  Her own enchanted bower.  On Vulcan.

 

After rumors of the gardens had spread, and he grew weary of refusing the constant requests for special visits, Sarek had finally relented on part of his carefully guarded privacy and allowed the staff to take well shepherded tour groups through it, one hour,  twice a week,  when he was sure not to be home.  She always wondered, with a trace of amusement,  if the guides realized they were showing off not just flowers and fruit, but an expression of devotion to their wide-eyed visitors, many of them Terran tourists:  Here are Amanda’s gardens.  See a living expression of Vulcan devotion.  Pick a rose.  Have a raspberry, a new hybrid we’re having particular luck with.  And while you’re nibbling on that, girls, eat your heart out. 

 

And don’t you wish you could be a fly on the wall of their bedroom.

 

She always avoided the gardens where the tourists were there.  It was too embarrassing. 

 

He’d done more than that, too. He’d fought to have her academic degrees and teaching credentials recognized on Vulcan. There had already been an active petition from Terrans to trade research and teachers from the Vulcan Science Academy with Federation universities, but it had been stalled from lack of interest on the Vulcan side. Sarek had pushed through such academic exchanges,  and quickly, so that by the time his assignment on Terra was over, not only was she able to teach at the VSA, she was neither the first nor the only human there.  He’d made sure she had a place on Vulcan for that part of her life.  And that too, he’d done without her prompting. 

 

She had never to ask for anything, indeed, she had to be careful to admire little, to regard everything with Vulcan restraint,  because anything she didn’t appear indifferent to was liable to end up in her possession.  She sometimes thought Sarek would have brought down the Terran moon to Vulcan, if he’d thought it would please her.  And he claimed he didn’t love her.  Well, perhaps it was just as well. If this was how he treated an unloved wife, heaven help her the day he decided that he did.

 

Well, given his current state of displeasure with her, there wasn’t much chance of that now, she thought.

 

She sat down at her desk, reminding herself she had to continue her message to Spock.  No wonder she had trusted Sarek so absolutely in the raising of their son, when he had been such an indulgent husband to her.  He gave her anything she might possibly want, all he asked of her was to meet his needs, needs that were an intrinsic fact of his biology.  Why wouldn’t she have trusted him with Spock?  How had it happened that Spock and his father had ended up so estranged?

 

She sighed and replayed Spock’s message and the reply she’d recorded up till now.  She sat back in her chair, drawing her knees up to her chin, sad and wishing things were otherwise.  Her husband was furious at her son, furious at her, and her son was off on Earth, being harassed by stupid thugs, when he could be home on Vulcan, a researcher and teacher himself, an honored and sealed clan heir.   “What I really want, honey, is you home right now,” she told the frozen image of her beloved son.  But she’d left the recording button off and he’d never hear that.

 

It isn’t what you want, it’s what he wants that matters.  Would you keep him tied to your apron strings forever?

 

I don’t even own an apron, she told herself crossly.

 

Oh give it up, Amanda.  Tell him you love him and miss him, and that his father does too, though he will never admit it.  And then say goodbye.  And whatever you do, you silly fool, don’t lose it.  He has enough to deal with.

 

She recorded the message, put it in the queue to be sent by subspace squirt, and began to review her lectures for the next day.  She had gotten through most of them when she heard the click of the door to their outer suite. After a moment, Sarek appeared at her door.

 

She sat back from her work smiling a tentative welcome and Sarek crossed to her. “You are working very late, my wife.”

 

“I’m pretty much done.”

 

“Indeed.”

 

“Did you meditations go well?”

 

“Perhaps.”

 

Amanda hoped that were true, and Sarek was being reconciled.  At that moment, the subspace queue activated and her message to Spock began to encode, feeding through the system, with a muted squeal.

 

And Sarek suddenly tipped his head. His eyes widened and his gaze locked on hers.

 

She blanched under the dawning realization that he could hear and decode subspace squirts.

 

“You are aware of my opposition to Starfleet and instead of facilitating his return you are counseling him on how to succeed within it? To use violence to do so? In opposition to all my teachings and that of the Vulcan heritage he has chosen?”

 

“Don’t take something you might have thought you heard out of context--”

 

“I heard everything, my wife.”

 

“Eavesdropping on private messages is hardly ethical behavior, my husband.”

 

Sarek drew himself up, well and truly caught by that.  His own culture revered privacy and he had, even if inadvertently,  just broached that precept inexcusably.  For a moment he stared at her, betrayal in his black eyes.

 

She lowered her head before that accusatory gaze.  “Sarek, I’m just trying--”

 

“No.”  He gestured sharply.  “I do not want to hear of it, Amanda.”

 

“You can listen to my message and judge me, but you won’t let me talk to you about it?”

 

“You have already dispensed your flawed advise without seeking my counsel before doing so. There is thus no point discussing it now.”

 

She drew a breath at the injustice of this. “Don’t blame me for that. What other choice do you leave me? You’re the one who told me I couldn’t speak to you of Spock!”

 

“And I don’t want to speak of him now.”

 

“It isn’t too late for you to counsel him yourself.  Please, Sarek..”  She held out her hands to him, but he drew back a pace, obdurate, intractable. She drew her own arms back, hugging herself in frustration. “I don’t understand.  Why can’t you stop this ridiculous silence of yours and just talk to him.”  She stared at him, furious.  “How can you refuse to do that?  You’re the adult in this equation.  He’s the child.  He misses you. He loves you, though he’ll never say it, because you won’t let him. But I know he does, that he’d do anything to please you, if you would just try to meet him half way.  How can you let him go, abandon him like this?”

 

“That is enough.”

 

“No, it’s not.  I refuse to let it be enough.  How can it be possible that someone revered for his negotiating skills throughout the Federation has such a reputation for intractability at home?”

 

“Kroykah!”

   

She froze at the sound of his raised voice, shocked as he took a furious step toward her before halting by main force of will.  For a moment, there was no sound in the small room but their ragged breathing.  Then, to her disbelief, Sarek extended a hand to her.

 

Oh, no!  Please don’t, please don’t, please…

 

“My wife, attend.”

 

There was no response possible to this but acquiescence.

 

Her silent litany froze in her mind and faded as Sarek crossed to her, offering her the two fingered touch of bondmates.  She joined her fingers to his, numb and disbelieving,  and followed him.

 

Why is he ending every argument like this?  Why are we even arguing like this? 

 

It took her real effort to take her hair down.  She ran her fingers through the unbound strands, putting off disrobing a few seconds more.  Across the room, Sarek was shedding his clothes, then pulled the covering off the bed, and tossed it on the floor with a complete disregard for the priceless antique that it was.  She couldn’t seem to move, and was amazed after all these times and all these  Times, that she was finding this so difficult.  You have no choice, you have no choice, ran through her mind, like a litany.  She had learned her Pon Far lessons, or thought she had.  What was wrong with her?

 

The difference was, she thought, that she wasn’t unwilling then.  Even though at those times Sarek was in the grip of the Fever, even when he sometimes forgot his own strength, and took her past her own, she wasn’t, at heart, unwilling.

 

At heart.

 

“Amanda.”

 

Sarek came up behind her.   She met his eyes in the mirror.  She realized she still hadn’t undone her dress.  She told herself, told her fingers to do it, but they still didn’t move. 

 

Frowning, Sarek reached over and taking a handful of material in each hand, simply shredded it in half.

 

She closed her eyes as the protesting shriek of the material seemed to echo her own internal one.  This wasn’t Sarek’s way.  He understood foreplay; he understood and shared in, the pleasurable tension of undoing garments slowly. 

 

Why is he doing this to me?  To us?

 

She stood silently as he tossed the remnants of the garment to the floor.  Another litany was beginning in her head, a litany dimly remembered from the worst of pon fars, a tiny thread in her mind

 

Just bear it,  bear it, bear

 

She tensed but didn’t resist when he picked her up, carried her to the bed, laid her on the sheets she had changed that morning.

 

I’ve made my bed and I must lie in it, she remembered herself telling T’Pau, and heard the old woman’s echoed, yes.   

 

Humans are infinitely adaptable, she reminded herself as Sarek covered her, the most adaptable species in the universe.  We can get used to anything.  But she drew breath in dismay as Sarek took her wrists in his hand.  And resistance.  She wanted that much at least.  She didn’t care about the rest of it, if he just would leave her at least the illusion of choice.  But she swallowed the protest as his grip tightened.

 

That was the worst of all of it, somehow.  Even worse than his callous use of her body.  He did not caress her, he would not let her touch him.  It somehow made it so much worse.

 

For the first time in her husband’s arms, the first time in eighteen years, he could not evoke a  response from her.

 

It took him a while to realize that. 

 

When they’d first married, he’d taken painstaking inventory of her body as they made love, her responses, her likes and dislikes. What made her sigh, what made her shiver, what made her clutch him closer.  He studied them, and her, and then he studied her again.  And again.  And then he started combining them and reinventing  them in ways that made her almost shy about appearing in public with him, sure the responses he could invoke in her must somehow show.  In the months after their marriage she’d been amazed and a little confused by her supposedly logical husband’s intense interest, fascination, near compulsion to explore her sexually. Thinking he was laboring under the typical misunderstanding that humans were the sexual rabbits of the known species in the universe, she tried to reassure him on that regard.  He’d merely looked at her, an impatient frown between his brows, unimpressed and uncomprehending.

 

“I would not hurt you, my wife.”

 

“You’re not.”

 

Sarek simply shrugged, and renewed his research efforts. It had taken a few Pon Fars before she really understood what he was after.  He’d needed to know all the methods and ways to evoke a response in her regardless of her physical or emotional condition. That covered a lot of ground.  And Sarek was nothing if not thorough.  He’d learned, and she’d learned, to return that response regardless of whether she was hungry or thirsty, tired or aching, frightened or in pain, furious or resistant.  It was the only way to guarantee she’d survive those Times.  And he’d learned how to do it too.  At times she felt he owned her body more than she did, commanding that response in spite of, or even against her will. He could play her like a lyre.  Sarek, of course, regarded this as logically necessary, and grew as casual about this ability, even smug if that could be said of a Vulcan,  as if the skill were little different. 

 

She, on the other hand, preferred not to think about it.  Odd that she accepted with relative equanimity so many other of the strangenesses of her Vulcan marriage: a mental bonding, a fatal mating compulsion, a marriage worked out in strange juxtaposition to the twin gods of logic and passion. But it was Sarek’s casual control of her responses past her own will, that if she had to think about it, gave her the most pause, more even than an alien mental bond or a culture that considered her an equal in some respects and little more than property in others. 

 

She loved her husband, and she was in love with him.  She welcomed showing that to him, but she had never much cared for having that response taken from her, however easily he could command it.  But that was something best left unspoken, unthought and unfelt. Sarek wouldn’t be able to handle it. And because it was logically necessary that he could do it, she suppressed her emotions about his casual assumption of those skills.

 

But now those skills were failing him.  Failing them both.  He tried every thing in his repertoire of tricks.  He unbent his indomitable disapproval to use all the touches, all the caresses, one handed, that he could.  But he kept her wrists always firmly pinned in one hand and he would not let her touch him.

 

That had never been a problem before.  Vulcans in pon far were interested in sex, not lovemaking, and Sarek typically pinned her then, and she’d never had trouble responding. But now she could not.  He looked at her, betrayal plain in his furious eyes, and then, for the first time,  he …left her behind.

 

Amazing how cold one could feel, even on Vulcan, even with her husband’s fever hot skin against her own.  Cold and empty.

 

 

 

 

She was thinking about that the next day in her office at the Academy, worrying about it, trying to puzzle her responses through, his responses through,  even though thinking about sex gave her a headache.  And she probably spent more time thinking about it than most of her married human friends, blissfully married to human men, who didn’t bring 5000 years of Vulcan hang-ups to bed with them as her husband did.  Too bad Sarek couldn’t just leave all that behind, instead of her.

 

She understood that Sarek was angry with his son.  She didn’t understand why his anger was causing this particular response.  It didn’t make sense to her, but as it kept happening, it had to be based in some sort of reason.  Though Sarek was so angry, beyond all reason, perhaps none of this made any sense.  At times like these, she felt lost, at sea, in an incomprehensible culture.  And with Sarek at the heart of her confusion, she had no one to ask.

 

She adored her husband when he wasn’t in a temper; he sometimes reminded her of the best of Jane Austen’s heroes combined. Behind all that strict Vulcan propriety he kept for the world, was a passion he kept only for her.  No matter what he said, she knew he loved her.  And as for her. Well.  He was handsome, charming when he wanted to be, devoted to her, ardent past all human standards.  She still could shiver at the sound of his voice, tremble at his touch.   All that and he loved and desired her with a  passion undimmed even by twenty years of marriage.  And rarely let a day or a night go by without showing it. And, he made her laugh too.  No one could be so mischievous in the rare times he unbent, though perhaps  he just seemed more so in contrast to his usual staid control.  They could and did have great fun  when he let his precious Vulcan traditions go for an hour.  She missed that in him now.

 

She didn’t even mind Pon Far – how could she?  Her husband was ill, desperate and she was just as desperate to do whatever she could for him.  She was his only help then.  It was a responsibility she took very seriously.

 

Even when he was in a temper, even now, god help her, he had a Heathcliff-like quality that she still found irresistible.  For in spite of all this prating about Vulcan controls, no one could fly into a temper, scowl – even sulk -- like Sarek..  And his possessive desire for her, even though it was a natural effect of a Vulcan bonding, was right out of a Bronte novel.  She loved him for that too, fool that she was.

 

You, Amanda Grayson, have a permanent case of arrested development.  Falling in love with eighteenth and nineteenth century romance characters is not sensible behavior for a 23rd century woman.  Remember, Cathy didn’t fare too well at Heathcliff’s hands, and he was human.

 

Though Heathcliff’s obsession was eerily Vulcan.  She sometimes wondered where the 19th century Emily Bronte had met her husband.

 

Though she had no fears of ending up like Cathy.  Sarek usually got over his temper quickly, and he had a saving sense of humor.  But that was absent now. And something was definitely different about his anger this time.  Sarek was undeniably stubborn, at times he could be unreasonable, often in a flattering conviction that she could do anything a Vulcan woman could.  He could be possessive and demanding and inflexible at times.  But his behavior lately went beyond all that and this flare of temper wasn’t subsiding.  And her behavior last night certainly had added fuel to it.

 

It was not Pon Far or the opposite of Pon Far – the times when they just made love -- that was the problem. It was all the times in between that she sometimes struggled with.  Her failure – she could only call it that – last night was bound to have repercussions. Sarek had still been furious this morning, and she was dreading what she would encounter this evening.  He was in a punitive mood and she was going to catch the worst of it.  Knowing Sarek, he would probably reinstitute all his Pon Far lessons from day one, with a vengeance. 

 

She rubbed her aching temples and wondered if Vulcan women had similar problems, and decided based on what Sarek told her,  probably not. No, once they learned their Pon Far lessons, they were set for life.  It was she who was in a class by herself.  The slow class.  And her husband could be a demanding, and at times inflexible teacher.

 

On the other hand, what did human men know of human women? There was no real reason why Vulcan men shouldn’t be as ignorant.

 

But it was hardly something she could ask Vulcan women, if she even had any friends with whom such confidences could be exchanged.  Though she sometimes watched Vulcan couples, she never saw males with quite the same demanding possessiveness Sarek showed to her. She had always assumed that her behavior, her lack of Vulcan control and ingrained submission, of equivalent psi skills, made him display in behavior what would otherwise be expressed, or would not need to be expressed, in the bond.

 

And as for human women, not only did they not have her problems but most of them apparently thought she lived in some kind of chaste sterile world where her husband never touched her but once in seven years.  And she never dissuaded them otherwise.  She was not into schoolgirl confidences. Let them find their own Vulcans if they wanted to know how blasted that myth was.

 

At times like these, such a myth had its moments.

 

The fact though, was that she had to get her act together, and fast. 

 

Everyone is entitled to one bad night.  You were tired and he was in a temper and

 

None of that is going to placate him.

 

Can you do anything to placate him?

 

The fact was, she admitted to herself, she was just not very good at those lessons.

 

Oh, face it, Amanda, you are lousy at them.

 

The Vulcan ideal for female sex was apparently a woman who was responsive but passive – a difficult combination to pull off, at least for her.  Except for cases where a male might be resisting Pon Far, needing his mate to do some gentle coercion, Vulcan women were apparently not supposed to be assertive in bed.  In Pon Far, a too assertive mate could escalate the male’s aggression, with fatal results. Current Vulcan thought was that the woman apparently should not joggle the male’s control at all, neither by rejection, of course, but also nor by too avid a response.   Never having had the problem of needing any coercion, Sarek didn’t care for it when she herself was too assertive.  To a Vulcan male it apparently reminded them of unpleasant possibilities and difficult Times.  Sarek, Vulcan to the core,  much preferred her responding to him.  Early in their marriage he had come to realize that human women were …different…from Vulcans in this regard.  And to give him credit, he accepted that, and gave her opportunities to participate, rather than merely respond, in lovemaking, though at times she felt rather like an indulged child than a woman by his treatment.  When he was in an indulgent mood, he gave her some free rein early in their encounters, but only to a point, one which never lasted for long.  When his passions reached a certain height,  when he trusted neither them nor her not to joggle his control, he pinned her down and that was that.  He did it, not to be cruel, but in the opposite motivation,  to ensure that he didn’t lose control and hurt her.  But sometimes even knowing the reason, she found it hard to bear. Only sometimes.  Of course, after years of marriage, sometimes added up.

 

The first couple of years, when they were still learning so much about each other, it hadn’t really been an issue, or yet a habit of her husbands, at least not enough to seriously bother her.  He needed to know what made her respond, he needed to know where and how she differed from her Vulcan sisters and what he had to do to accommodate that and he’d actually welcomed that she was undisciplined enough -- by Vulcan standards -- to make that very clear to him.  But after Sarek had gotten all her responses down, and they’d been through a couple of Pon Fars without major incident, he’d apparently decided he had learned enough and they had tempted fate long enough, and he had settled down to seriously teaching the fine points of her role as a Vulcan woman would play it.  Largely by nagging her to relax, relax, relax, even as he was doing all the things that definitely did not make any red blooded human woman lay passively.  She honestly had tried. And failed.  She was no Vulcan, and Sarek wasn’t the only one with biological imperatives. And in spite of what he told her, she found it hard to believe he actually wanted this from her.

 

But he seemed to.  And with the inestimable patience Vulcans could summon when they chose, Sarek simply persisted, night after night after frustrating (for her) night, praising her as long as she held the state he wanted, shaking his head in disapproval when she broke – and taking it up again the next time, the next lesson. He simply seemed to regard her behavior as one more example of flawed human control, one where practice would avail. Finally, one night she actually managed it – staying relaxed and passive even as Sarek made love to her with such consummate skill she felt as if she was burning unconsumed.  But she held it through all the touches and caresses and the first gentle and then passionate taking of her body until he finally climaxed and she could at last follow with her own surging convulsive response, taking her unawares she had resisted it so long,  so strong it was as much pain as pleasure, as if she were being turned inside out. 

 

Sarek had looked down at her and said, “That was excellent, Amanda, you finally did it.”

 

And she had looked up at him, still trembling like a tuning fork from the echoes of that climax and turning away  from him, had burst into tears.

 

And what a fiasco that had been.  She was in no state for an explanation, but Sarek wasn’t about to let her get away without one, so once again, he pinned her down, which only upset her more.  While he tried to figure out why his human wife had gone into emotional meltdown on him, something he might have understood if he had chastised her for failing but not when he had just praised her for finally succeeding,  she tried to first deny and then explain why she was upset in words he could understand.  And failing utterly, she broke down and told him the truth – how much she hated, absolutely hated,  what he’d been doing to her, and why she just couldn’t, wouldn’t, refused, to do it any more.

 

Ah, that forbidden no.  She had been warned.

 

Sarek had listened, wide eyed and astonished as she poured out her heart to him, clearly unable to be more surprised at what she was telling him.  But when she got to the no part,  a no she had never said before in these circumstances, he bridled under the one-two punch she was giving him, and in return gave the knee-jerk reaction his biology and culture dictated.  “My wife, that is not an option.  You must.”

 

She looked up at him, shocked in turn, he so rarely denied her anything.  “I don’t. We don’t need to. Why can’t we just go on as we did before?”

 

“That is not possible.  This is something you must and will master.”

 

“I can’t.”

 

“On the contrary, you have proven you can.  Even if it is difficult now, you will improve with further practice.”

 

She had stared at him, realizing he didn’t understand how she felt at all.  She turned away, crying herself to sleep, while Sarek watched, stunned and uncomprehending at this turn of events, at how his good intentions had gone so wrong.

 

And night after night, as if determined to prove to her she really could, he continued his lessons.  He wasn’t being cruel, by his lights.  His absolute faith in her would have been touching, in other circumstances.  But instead of relaxing, she now tensed, not deliberately, not intentionally but as if her body was resisting what her will was not allowed.  At first he was patient.  Then more than patient, he began treating her like a slow witted child, which certainly didn’t endear him to her.  But then, when she still didn’t relax, he grew frustrated. And when she began tensing before he took her to bed, showing clear reluctance, he grew positively wary, but kept on because he didn’t seem to know what else to do.   Nor did she, since she couldn’t say no and she couldn’t manage yes.

 

It had been her physician, Mark Abrams, who’d gotten her out of that one.  He’d come up beside her at an embassy party, touching her shoulder lightly to get her abstracted attention.  She been so tense she’d nearly jumped out of her skin in startlement, and then was so shaken and upset Mark took her to a quiet corner to get her composure back.  When she’d stopped crying all over his shoulder,  she’d told him  to find Sarek to take her home. He did, but he waylaid him first.

 

“What the hell are you doing to that girl, Sarek?”

 

“What makes you think I am doing anything?”

 

“Because of the two of you, I always felt Amanda had more sense,” Mark said bluntly.  “And when I see her like this, it makes me think the problem didn’t originate with her.”  He looked at Sarek’s wary countenance and said, “All right, you’re not talking.  So I gather there must be some Vulcan custom involved.  Am I right?”

 

For a moment, Sarek hesitated, then he said.  “Your deductions are not entirely false.”

 

“Well how about giving her a break?”

 

“A break?”

 

“Cutting her a little slack.”  Realizing Sarek wasn’t interpreting the colloquialisms, he said, “Oh for – just try to remember that she’s human, not Vulcan.”

 

“I am aware of that.  But I am Vulcan.”

 

“And I don’t see her imposing a lot of human standards on your behavior. Look whatever this is about, and it doesn’t take too much imagination to guess, just consider this.  She can’t stop being human any more than you can stop being Vulcan.  So if you’re insisting on some Vulcan discipline, consider that for every time you impose some Vulcan standard of behavior on her, you ought to give her at least equal time to be herself. That is, if you want her to stay herself.”

 

Sarek stared at him.

 

“What?”

 

“That is …logical, Doctor.”

 

“Just take her home. And for tonight, forget logic. Or at least, don’t make her life a living hell.  Let her be herself  for a change.”

 

Amanda had looked up when Sarek came to her.  “I’m sorry.”

 

“There is no need to apologize, my wife.  I am also fatigued and would go home.”

 

“Are you feeling all right?”

 

“I will be.”  Sarek said.

 

At home, Sarek considered his wife while she took down her hair, and brushed it out.  Seeing his gaze fixed on her, she looked at him nervously, and then as if steeling herself, she went to bed.  Sarek undressed as well and joined her.  He watched the muscles move in her throat as she swallowed, a telltale sign she was nervous.  He reached over and took her hand in his.  She looked down at that, bemused, for he was usually more direct.

 

“What would you like to do, my wife?”

 

“What do you mean?”

 

“Would you care to sleep, or something less…restful?  I understand if you are fatigued.”

 

For a moment, she didn’t answer, not quite believing he would relent on something he’d become so insistent on.

 

“Amanda?”

 

“I know I have a husband,” she said quietly daring, seeming to address his hand over hers, “but sometimes I don’t really feel that I do.”

 

“I don’t understand.”

 

“How would you like it, Sarek, if I told you I would sleep with you only in Pon Far, and never sleep or make love or even touch you otherwise?”

 

Sarek stiffened and looked down at her.  “What do you mean?”

 

“How would you like it?”

 

“You do not need to ask that.  You know I would not.  Amanda, you can’t--”

 

“But that’s all your biology requires, isn’t it?  Isn’t the rest just …emotional?”

 

 His whole body had tensed, he was holding himself together by main force. “That is not -- What are you saying, Amanda?”

 

“Look at your hand.”

 

He looked down, and unclenched his fingers from where he’d tightened them around hers.

 

“That’s how I’ve been feeling, since you started your latest ‘lessons’,” she said ruefully.  When he stared at her in astonishment, she added,  “I have emotions too, my husband.  I wish you’d give me half as much credit for mine as I try to do for yours.”

 

“Amanda--”  He drew a breath and unclenched the fingers that had involuntarily tightened again, part of him utterly relieved that her statements had been merely to make a point of argument, and part still reeling in horror.

 

“I know, I know.”  She sighed.  “I have to do it.”  She looked away and he watched while she swallowed hard again.  “Believe me, I have been trying.”

 

“Perhaps,” Sarek hesitated, considering,   vulnerable himself from her devastating method of making a point in argument,  and then sacrificed tradition to compromise once again in his marriage.  “Perhaps you do not have to…all the time.”

 

She looked at him. 

 

“As you say,  you have proved some mastery of the ability.  There is… no great need …to reinforce it daily.  I supposed it could be relegated to …perhaps… once a week.”

 

She flung her arms around his neck and hugged him, taking him completely by surprise.

 

“Amanda!”

 

“Thank you.”  She drew back, smiling.

 

He looked down at her, and half smiled in turn.  “You are very illogical, my wife.”

 

“I know.  And I love you anyway, my husband.”

 

Sacrificing tradition again, he took her hands in his, very gently this time, drawing them back around his neck where she had flung them, and leaned down for a kiss, murmuring,   “Then perhaps you might continue showing me how much…my wife.”

 

 

In the present, Amanda sighed.  In the past she and Sarek had worked out many of their differences through compromises on both sides. Surely they could do so again.  It wasn’t that Sarek was uncaring, or obtuse.  Sometimes, she just had to figure out how to reach him, past the huge culture gap that sometimes separated them.  If she could just figure out how.  She was thinking on that so deeply, she didn’t notice her friend until she touched her shoulder.

 

“Mandy?”

 

“What?”

 

“Are you all right?”

 

“Of course.”

 

“I’ve been knocking for five minutes while you sat there in a daze.”

 

Amanda shrugged.  “Just…a lot on my mind.”

 

“It seems a lot has been on your mind for a while.”  Renair crossed into the office.  “You’ve been teaching by rote.  You’ve posted yourself out for all your office hours even though you are still sitting in here all day.  And even though you’re here, you’re not here.  You don’t work, you don’t talk.”  She sank down across from her friend, worry plain on her face.  “It’s like you’re in shock.  What’s going on?”

 

Amanda pushed back a loose strand of hair.  “Nothing.”

 

“Nothing.”  Renair repeated.  “Mandy,”  She eyed the hand shaped bruises on her friends wrists, some new, some fading.  “Are you sure there’s nothing you want to tell me? I mean, I’ve been on Vulcan long enough to--” 

 

To know some essential facts about Vulcan biology, she meant.  And she knew Sarek had been through Pon Far a couple of months back, because nothing less would excuse a teacher taking a leave of absence for two weeks in the middle of a term, as Amanda recently had, an absence Vulcan authorities always granted without question.  So it wasn’t Pon Far. But what was it? 

 

Not that her friend’s husband didn’t occasionally forget his own strength, even outside of that syndrome.  She’d had prior evidence of that.  But there was something definitely unusual about seeing the sort of marks Amanda had been sporting day after day.  And her friend’s shell-shocked manner was definitely not typical.  “You’re not …pregnant, are you?”

 

Amanda colored to the roots of her hair.  “No, of course not.”

 

“Well,” Renair hesitated. “I know he can get possessive --”

 

“Reny, I love you dearly  and you are a friend,” Amanda said firmly, “but my private life is private.”

 

“Oh, Mandy!  Do you honestly think his feelings are some sort of secret?  Even if he so much as walks into the office to pick you up after work, he practically challenges anyone who even speaks to you.”

 

Amanda flushed.  “You have lived on Vulcan long enough to know Vulcans can at times be--”

 

“Amanda, I’ve known you for years.   How can you not see it?  He is like that all the time.”

 

“You’re attributing human emotions to Vulcan behavior.”

 

“I would no more dream of calling those human emotions than I’d compare a child’s firecracker to antimatter.  He’s not just serious about you, Mandy, he is scary.”

 

“You’re exaggerating.  That’s just Vulcan reserve.  It can make him seem intimidating.  Really, he’s not.”

 

“Right.  And last summer, at the Enclave Fair, when he thought you didn’t see that aircar coming, and of course you did,  is it an exaggeration to point out that when he yanked you back, he snapped your wrist like a twig?”

 

“Even Vulcans can startle momentarily.  He forgot his own strength.”

 

“He doesn’t strike me as forgetting much.”

 

“It was an accident.”

 

“Yeah, that’s what I mean.  He gets momentarily startled; you end up in Emergency, getting a bone laser fused.  That’s why I don’t like what I’m seeing.”

 

“Well, I won’t go walking into traffic today.”  Amanda turned back to her terminal, and then said, “Oh, damn! And I don’t need this today of all days!”

 

“What?”

 

“My mother-in-law wants to see me,”  Amanda said darkly, feeling pressured enough from all sources to finally vent some of her feelings.  “According to this, she wanted to see me an hour ago, and I didn’t--.  You think these Vulcans could learn to give at least a little notice!”

 

“Mandy, has something happened?  I mean, I didn’t think you were, well, on speaking terms with--.”

 

“I guess I’ve just gotten lucky,” Amanda said tensely, biting off each word as if to get control over her tongue. She bent to gather her things.

 

“Amanda, please. I’m worried.  Can’t you tell me what’s going on?”

 

“No.  Reny, please don’t ask.”

 

Her friend drew back in frustration.  “I honestly don’t know what you see in him.  I mean, yes, I can see what you see in him -- he’s a fox.  But how you can live with him, I don’t know.”

 

“I’m no walk in the park myself.”

 

“Uh, Amanda?” Renee glanced uneasily at the door.  “You’ve got… visitors.”

 

Amanda turned to see four Vulcans in full ceremonial garb of palace livery, complete with ceremonial weapons, flanking the doorway.  She drew a deep breath, and said.  “You may tell her I will come at once.”

 

Two guards left without comment, two remained, apparently ordered to escort her, folding their arms across their burly chests, ceremonial weapons as well as fully functioning phasers on their hips.  T’Pau had been subject to more than a few interstellar hostilities as Vulcan grew to prominence in the Federation and her ceremonial guard grew less ceremonial and more functional as time went on.  Amanda picked up her possessions, not pleased that her mother-in-law chose to underscore her point with such a heavy hand.  Well no one could be as subtle as T’Pau when she chose, and no one could be as blunt.  Apparently, with her human daughter-in-law, T’Pau chose the latter.

 

“What, do they think if they just leave one, we’re going to overpower him?” her friend muttered under her voice, though probably not under Vulcan hearing.  “I’ll hit him high, you’ll hit him low?  Very low.”

 

“Don’t make me laugh,”  Amanda said, smiling in spite of herself.

 

“I’m going to call you,” Reny called after her, watching worriedly as Amanda was escorted out by the guards.

 

 

Amanda paused on approaching the entourage surrounding T’Pau, one of whom blocked her path, outrage in her black eyes.  Amanda realized apparently T’Pau hadn’t bothered to inform her usual attendants that her long shunned daughter-in-law was no longer an outcast.  Still rankling at being sent for in such a presumptuous manner – surely four guards was excessive – her mood wasn’t improved by the evidence that she was unwelcome here, by T’Pau’s entourage if not by T’Pau herself.

 

The matriarch glanced up, eyes meeting hers,  and she brushed at the air.  “Leave us,” she told the group.

 

T’Pau’s chief attendant, T’Lean,  who was blocking Amanda’s way turned to T’Pau in shock.  “Matriarch?”

 

“She will wait on me.” 

 

Her usual attendants froze at this, glancing among themselves.

 

“Matriarch, should I not stay?”  T’Lean said.  “This-”

 

T’Pau did not give her a chance to get the pejorative out.  “Who better to wait on a mother than her daughter?”

 

If Amanda had been in a better frame of mind, she would have laughed at the astonished and horrified expression on the chief attendant’s face.

 

One by one, clearly reluctant, the Vulcans walked past Amanda, their accusing stares taking every notice of her humanity, her lack of formal dress, her casually arranged hair, and every detail and flaw in her person. 

 

“Daughter, attend.”  T’Pau held out a hand.

 

Amanda sighed in frustration, beginning to hate the sound of that command.

 

“There is a problem?”

 

“No, Mother.”  Amanda moved before T’Pau and offering her hands, dropped to her knees. T’Pau held her hands longer than was polite.  She felt her mother-in-law’s light touch, mind to mind and shielded against it. She sensed T’Pau’s surprise at the rejection, but the matriarch merely raised an eyebrow without seeming offended. Instead, she turned over the human hands in her own, eyeing the renewed marks on her wrists. 

 

Amanda pulled her hands back, smoldering at this breach of Vulcan manners. If she had done such a thing, every Vulcan around her would have blamed her humanity.   It was one thing to get pushed around by Sarek, but having T’Pau take notice of something so personal, and in violation of all Vulcan etiquette,  at this stressful time of her life and after 20 years of being diligently shunned, was more than she would tolerate.  Submitting to Sarek was one thing, rolling over for her mother-in-law was quite another.

 

Or perhaps today, she was just not in a rolling over mood.

 

“Sit.”

 

Amanda did, staring evenly into space, her resentment plain.  “How may I serve you, T’Pau?”

 

“Thee will start by addressing me properly, daughter,” T’Pau said pointedly.  “And in future, when I send for you, I expect thee to attend me willingly, on time, and with all due diligence.  I realize humans lack time sense, but I understand there are such things as clocks.”

 

Amanda jerked her chin up, glowering.  It was true, no matter how she resisted it, that as Sarek’s wife she was as surely under T’Pau’s authority as anyone in her husband’s clan.  And that authority was virtually all encompassing.   She would get nowhere trying to oppose T’Pau, not even Sarek could do that.  She forced herself to some semblance of calm, thinking perhaps she had misappreciated being shunned all these years. “I beg forgiveness, Mother.  Again, how may I serve?”

 

“I understand thee correspond with Spock.”

 

Amanda hesitated.  There was only one person who could have told the matriarch that. She damned Sarek for setting her up, but admitted, “Yes.”

 

The old woman nodded once.  “Thee will tell me of what he speaks.”

 

Amanda stared at T’Pau, shocked.  Vulcan was a large planet, but the circle in which T’Pau, Sarek, Spock moved was a small community, socially, politically, intellectually.  Sarek had not found it difficult to keep tabs on his son, an information network that she’d known had sometimes frustrated the boy, for seldom had he done anything of which Sarek was not immediately informed.  She knew from her last conversation with the matriarch that T’Pau had once had her own sources as well.  She must be frustrated, cut off as she presently was.

 

But not nearly as frustrated as Amanda was feeling.  “I have put up with a lot here, particularly lately, but what my son tells me is between my son and myself. I am not going to spy or inform on him for you.”

 

T’Pau’s eyes flashed.  “Spy? Inform?”

 

“I thought Vulcans respected privacy.”

 

“I do not ask you for anything private between yourself and your child.  You may tell him I ask of what he speaks,”  T’Pau said.  “Leave him to decide what I am to hear.”

 

Amanda drew herself up.  “Why don’t you correspond with him yourself then?”

 

The old woman raised her eyebrows.  “Thee consider assisting with a mother’s correspondence beneath a daughter’s duty?”

 

Amanda let out an exasperated breath and her shoulders dropped.  T’Pau as Matriarch was surrounded by courtiers and assistants.  Seldom did she deign to do anything herself.  Perhaps she’d had misinterpreted T’Pau’s statement.  Or perhaps T’Pau had been testing her.  The old woman was complicated and Amanda did not know her well enough to judge.

 

T’Pau flicked an eyebrow.  “Are thee satisfied?”

 

Amanda shrugged one shoulder, suddenly tired of fighting the current of Vulcan requirements that enveloped her life.  “I beg forgiveness for my hasty words.”

 

“Thee appear troubled, daughter.”

 

Amanda drew herself up.  “I’m fine.”

 

T'Pau picked up one of her hands and drew it over, palm up, to show again the dark marks around the paler skin of her wrist.  “This is fine?”

 

Amanda pulled her hand back, flushing, embarrassed and hurt that T’Pau would humiliate her so.  She’d been on Vulcan long enough to know that no Vulcan ever spoke of such things, or even chose to notice them.  “That is between my husband and myself.”

 

“Such aggression is appropriate only in the Time,”  T’Pau said disapprovingly. “Not  otherwise.”

 

“Perhaps I am a disobedient wife,” Amanda countered, deciding that if that was what T’Pau wanted, she’d plumb that shame to the depths.  Let T’Pau think that of her, that she refused her husband’s attentions.  Then the old woman would really have cause to despise her.

 

“And perhaps my son is yet angry.”  T’Pau persisted, clear black eyes unimpressed by her dissembling.

 

“Perhaps I give him reason,” Amanda threw back, throwing caution to the wind.

 

“And what reasons could these be?”  The matriarch questioned, her brows raised in skepticism.

 

Amanda lowered her head, a half dozen breaths from losing her composure in tears.  “I do not give permission for this invasion of my privacy, Mother.”

 

T’Pau hesitated, studying her so long that Amanda regained her hold on her traitorous emotions, but grew uneasy in another way.  She felt T’Pau had plumbed her to the depths, even not touching, and all her shielding to the contrary.  But perhaps that was just her impression.  Finally the matriarch sighed.  “Then speak to me of your child, T’Amanda,” the old woman said, settling back against her high backed chair.

 

Amanda sat back in turn.  “I have only heard from him twice.  He has arrived safely on Terra.  Entered Starfleet Academy.  He managed to prevent Starfleet from issuing a press conference on their first acceptance of a Vulcan, avoiding the political difficulties that would have caused his father.  He’s started taking classes.  He has been requested to take Command as well as Science courses, and he has been concerned at his father’s – and I suppose your – reaction to that.”

 

“Why should he not command?” T’Pau asked indifferently. “He is bred to it.  Is he well?”

 

Amanda hesitated.  T’Pau clearly wasn’t merely asking if he were physically well.   “I think he is a little homesick.   Terra is very strange to him, naturally.  But he seems to find the experience interesting, and he is otherwise well.”

 

“Thee are helping him.  To adjust.”

 

Amanda considered her mother-in-law measuringly.  “I hope so.  What little I can, from so far away.”

 

The matriarch nodded, satisfied.  “Thee will tell me if there is anything that can be required of me.”

 

Amanda gave T’Pau a startled look.

 

“Thee find this unusual?”

 

“Sarek is waiting for Spock to fail.”

 

“I do not choose to have Spock fail in Starfleet.”

 

“Why?”  Her eyes narrowed.  “Do you just want to ensure he stays gone?”

 

For a moment T’Pau drew a sharp breath, black eyes flashing.  But then in the next moment, she exhaled, and tilted her head, looking at Amanda almost calmly.  “Thee does not know me, T’Amanda.”

 

“That is not my fault.”

 

“No.  Thee have had injustices done to thee, in marrying my son.  Some may be said to be at my hand.  It is understandable that thee does not know where thy allies lie.  Be aware that I am one of them.”

 

“I would prefer that you were my son’s.”  Amanda said, unmoved.  After twenty years on Vulcan, she didn’t consider she had any pressing need for T’Pau as an ally for herself.  When she might have, her mother-in-law had been anything but. It was hard to overlook that entirely.  Spock was another matter however.

 

“Thee may take that as given.”

 

“Thank you.”

 

“Thee will tell Spock.”

 

“Yes.”

 

T’Pau nodded.  “Tell him that I ask of him.  Tell him I would hear of him.  If he has needs, these I will meet.”

 

Amanda drew up a little at all this. It was a little unsettling, given Sarek’s position. But she could only welcome such support for her far ranging child.  “Thank you.”

 

“It is my duty.  With Sarek’s position so unaltered, he is my child now.”

 

Amanda considered the possessiveness of that my, and wondered if Vulcans were aware of how much they revealed of their emotions even in the few words that they said.  Or if her son, considering himself renounced, virtually exiled in Starfleet, knew what a power play was going on at home over him.  T’Pau’s statement implied she and Sarek had had further words.  She could imagine how that had tested her husband’s temper. T’Pau’s possessive my had rankled her a little bit.

 

T’Pau sighed, taking her silence as an indication Amanda wished the interview over.  “Thee has nothing else for me?”  Her eyes roved over Amanda.  “Thee appear drawn, child. I would know if I can assist thee as well.”  She raised an eyebrow and added, as if in explanation for the uncharacteristic interference in what was normally private.  “My son seems to take little care of his family, and thus these duties fall to me.”

 

“There is nothing.”  Amanda met the matriarch’s eyes, her gaze unwavering.

 

T’Pau frowned at her.  “If thee will not speak to me, I can yet speak to my son.”

 

It was a tacit threat of sorts, a bigger shame than T’Pau’s notice of her bruises,  but Amanda refused to be cowed into confidences.  “I can hardly prevent you from such an action.   But it is my understanding that what passes between a husband and a wife stays within the marriage bond.”

 

“That is the usual course.”  T’Pau admitted.  She eyed her anew and shrugged.  “Very well, daughter.  Thee may go until thy next attendance.  Perhaps thee will mark thy calendar,” T’Pau said the Terran phrase with a certain relish, “since thee seems to have trouble remembering this is to be a regular duty.  I should not have to repeatedly command you.  And next time, daughter, remember to dress as such.  I am guilty of much indulgence to my children, but I insist on certain conventions.  Since my son seems to fail to supply thee with suitable garments, thee may expect to see such sent to thee.”

 

“Yes, mother.”  Amanda knelt for the formal leave-taking.

 

She went home, shaking her head at the thought of yet another duty.  And not at all sanguine about the idea of being under T’Pau’s close scrutiny on a regular basis.  She was grateful to T’Pau for any support for her son, but at present all she really wanted right now was to eschew even the thought of duties and go to bed early.  To sleep, she qualified, though her mind shied away at the thought of what she expected her demanding husband would actually require before she really could sleep.  She decided to try and fit in a quick nap before Sarek came home.  Unfortunately, she discovered Sarek was already home, closeted in his study. Well, she could only hope that whatever was occupying him would keep him busy to the usual end of his working day.  She could still fit in a nap.

 

First things first, she fulfilled the obligation T’Pau had laid on her, and sent Spock a message, informing her son that his grandmother had asked after him, wanted to hear from him, and stood ready to assist him as needed.  “And won’t that just make his day,” Amanda murmured, thinking of her son’s raised eyebrows at the news.  Such an unqualified statement from T’Pau was a virtual blank check on the future, and while she doubted her son would ask for anything, it had to ease at least some of the pain from his estrangement with Sarek to know his grandmother was thinking of him.   She felt a pang as she realized how fiercely she missed her child.  Spock’s lack of close associates his own age had forged a strong bond between them, in spite of the strict behavioral standards his father had imposed on him.  On them. They had never had to say much to understand each other, and seldom did. They had communicated so much through looks, through silence so rich it seemed filled with meaning, through the occasional rare touch, mostly on her part, but sometimes on his, a quasi accidental touch of her hand, usually.   It was very odd, that the only way they could communicate now was through words.  No wonder they were clumsy with them, with expressing themselves to each other through them. 

 

Her love and sense of loss for her son rose up in her, and it took her a few moments to work through the rush of emotion.  Before she could move on.

 

There were a bunch of professional messages which could wait till tomorrow, and a message from Renair, too, asking her what had gone on with T’Pau and if she was all right.  Amanda grimaced, hesitated only a moment, before leaving it unanswered.  She never got too close to her human friends since her marriage, certainly not close enough for confidences. 

 

It frustrated them, for to humans, friendship implied such trust. But during the brief media circus that had accompanied her marriage to Sarek she had learned caution. The press, or at least the less reputable of them, had done what they could to dig up anything on her.  They’d camped out on her doorstep, taken pictures of her everywhere, followed her like a pack of hounds.  Sarek as the Vulcan ambassador to Terra had escaped most of this, living under heavy security, and virtually unreachable as far as personal information went.  But for her, they didn’t stop at harassing her.   They had dug up friends, childhood acquaintances, old roommates, they even tried for old boyfriends.  In fact, they’d been particularly interested in that, and when determined searches had turned up no good pictures of her romantically involved with an old flame, and thank god what few childhood romances she’d had had been with boys too noble to talk, one scandal rag had dredged up a picture of her at fourteen – a playbill actually --  as Juliet in a school production, in a clinch with the erstwhile Romeo. Try that for embarrassment.  Fortunately Sarek had been amused, even wondering at all the fuss.

 

She’d learned there were people who’d say anything for money or a few minutes in the spotlight.  More than a few barely remembered acquaintances or so-called friends from her childhood had been induced to step in front of a camera for their ten minutes of fame and be interviewed about her.    She’d learned how embarrassing even the most innocuous incidents from one’s childhood could be, when broadcast to millions.  She’d learned then not to give anyone anything that could be used against her in future.  Even when she wasn’t front page news any more, Sarek often was.  There was enough Human/Vulcan animosity on some issues that she didn’t need some casually recorded remark or confidence of hers used to spread controversy at a critical moment.  She did not cut herself off from humans entirely, but she was now doubly cautious.  She kept what human friends she had at a distance, said little of a personal nature to those that she had, and that she said personally, not in written or recorded messages that could be dredged up later.  Whatever  she decided to tell Reny, she would do it in private and in person.

 

So with one message sent and one unanswered,  she rushed through dinner preparations, the thought of a nap beforehand still strong in her mind. Unfortunately, rushing and weariness didn’t mix too well.  She was chopping some freshly gathered vegetables when her hand slipped on the knife.

 

“Ow!” Amanda grimaced.  “Damn.”  She stared at the red blood spilling over the counter, wondering why these sort of cuts always bled so much, and fumbling for something with which to staunch it. She grabbed for a disposable cleaning wipe, and yelped in real pain, as the cleaning agent came in contact with her broken skin, stinging enough to bring tears to her eyes.  “Oh, that hurts!”  She put the cut to her mouth instead, and stood for a moment, waiting for the pain to fade. 

 

“What have you done?”  Sarek asked in his beautiful voice, coming up behind her, apparently attracted by her inadvertent – and very unbeautiful -- yelp, in spite of all the doors and corridors between them. 

 

“It’s nothing.” Amanda turned swiftly, damning Vulcan hearing, trying obscurely to hide her hands and the rest of the incriminating evidence behind her back, concealing the gash by covering it, not too successfully, with her other hand. 

 

Sarek was having none of that, turning her aside and prying the concealing fingers away.  She’d forgotten the wipe, and clutching it in her gashed hand made her wince again. He pulled it away,  drawing a sharp breath at the sight of her blood welling up from the slice.  Even as long as they had known, intellectually, the color of the other’s blood, it was always a fresh shock to each of them to see it spilled in all its ribald color, whether red or green.  He pinned her with a dark look.  “Wait here.”  Then came back with the first aid kit.  Amanda surrendered her hand, knowing better than to argue, and looked down at her husband’s bent head as he cleaned the cut with an appropriate agent, then  laser fused and sealed the slash. Even scowling and furious, he was handsome.  She almost didn’t regret trading a gashed finger and her hoped for nap for this evidence of his concern, exaggerated though it was.  Even when finishing, he used that beautiful voice to soundly criticize her.  “There are times when I believe you need a full time keeper, my wife.  How can you be so careless with your safety?”

 

“Anyone can have an accident.”

 

Sarek's dark visage obviously didn’t agree.  He straightened, still holding her hand,  and looked disapprovingly over the preparations on the counter.  “Why were you using a knife, instead of the food processors?”

 

“I was in a hurry.”

 

Sarek raised an eyebrow at the illogic of avoiding mechanical contrivances when one most needed them. “And what task requires you to hurry?”

 

“I thought--”  Amanda drew a breath, looking up at her husband, and shook her head.  “No reason.”

 

Sarek shook his head at this apparent evidence that his wife was as doubly illogical as well as dangerous.    Then looking down into her eyes, he took a step closer.  She backed up a little, but the counter was behind her, and she had nowhere to move as Sarek brought his mouth down on hers.  Even though he was frowning still, the kiss was surprisingly gentle.  She drew in a breath as the kiss deepened and lengthened, and feeling dizzy, she put up her uninjured hand to his chest, and then leaned against him, taking comfort from his solid strength.   She was so tired.  It was nice, after days of his impersonal attentions, to feel the blaze of his concern, and his arms around her at the same time.  He kissed her again, drawing her closer, and she wrapped her arms around him. Then he drew back and taking her hands, his eyes on hers said, “Amanda--”

 

The door chimes interrupted him.  Sarek turned his head, looking irritated at this invasion of his home’s privacy.  Unannounced visits were rare on Vulcan, and considered highly impolite. And whoever it was, if they had gotten through the security fields that surrounded the old fortress, they had to be someone who had known this. Over the years, after some unwelcome experiences with interstellar press, with the few rare but dangerous anti-Vulcan or anti-Federation crazies who made it on planet, and just out of sheer unwillingness to have his privacy violated,  the list of people whom Sarek allowed to get to his door unannounced had become vanishingly small.  And they were all Vulcans.  She had occasional friends over, but she had never set any up for automatic access.  Sarek’s regard for her human friends, not that she had ever pushed the issue,  could best be described as…well, questionable. And certainly wouldn’t extend to any violation of their privacy.  She could see his temper flare even now, at what had to be some legitimate visit,  and pitied whatever aide or assistant had forgotten or overlooked calling ahead.  When he was in this temper, they were sure to catch it.

 

Amanda leaned back against the counter, catching her breath as Sarek went to see who it was.  He returned carrying a large flat box, wrapped in paper decorated with the markings of their clan.  “This was delivered by T’Pau’s ceremonial guard.”  He dropped the box on a table. “But it is for you.”  He stared at her accusingly, his gentle mood from minutes ago vanished as if it had never been.  “I desire an explanation, my wife.”

 

Oh, god.  Even when they’re trying to be nice, mothers-in-law are trouble.  Now it is me who is going to catch it.  I don’t need you causing more between Sarek and me!  “She didn’t waste any time,”  Amanda commented, tossing the ruined, blood flecked vegetables into the recycler, and deciding on a pre-prepared meal instead.

 

Sarek was inexorable. “Amanda, what could T’Pau possibly be sending you?”

 

Amanda sighed.  Going over to the box, she opened it so Sarek could see what it was with his own disbelieving and suspicious eyes and then went back to her preparations.  “She sent me a dress.”

 

“The robe worn by her personal attendants.”  Sarek said in incredulity as he drew the covering paper aside.  He looked up, the finery draped across his hands.  “Since when does my mother even deign to recognize you, my wife, much less count you on her personal advisory staff?  As such a garment implies.”

 

Amanda finished cleaning her blood off the counter and tossed the disposable wipe into the recycler.  “Since when do you think?”

 

Sarek’s visage darkened at this sign of their collusion against him.  “I do not approve of this.”

 

“You don’t approve of the fact that your mother is no longer treating me like a human pariah?”

 

“I do not approve of why my mother is no longer treating you as such.”

 

“Well, what do you want me to do about it?”  Amanda folded her arms.  “I can no more prevent her from recognizing me any more than I could do anything about her ignoring me.  Sarek, you couldn’t prevent her from shunning me all these years.”  She ignored how he bridled at this.  “So when she orders me to attend her, what do you expect me to do?  Have a shoot out with her guards when they come to pick me up? I’m not armed, and they outnumber me.  I don’t have a choice.”

 

Sarek stared at her for so long, she grew uneasy.  “What?”

 

Sarek dropped the dress back into the box, and straightened. “You are correct, my wife.  You have no choice.”

 

Amanda drew a breath, mentally kicking herself.  Those words had another meaning and with him in this temper it could only mean--

 

“My wife, attend.”

 

Damn.

 

 

The door closed behind Sarek, and for a moment Amanda lay still, one arm thrown over her eyes, fighting back tears.  If she started crying over this, she would never stop, and so she was determined not to start.  She had known, been painstakingly told, before she ever got married, that there would be times in her marriage when Sarek would make demands on her and she would not be able to refuse.  She was no silly young girl besotted with romance.  She hadn’t been one even as a girl.  And she had known, even before she’d gotten married, that her husband-to-be had a temper and that he could lose it. In spite, or even because, of his being Vulcan.  No saint herself, she’d considered them well suited in that regard.  The prospect of a few arguments hadn’t cowed her, in fact, foolish girl as she’d been, she would have been bored at the prospect of a marriage without a few rocky shoals.  She had said yes anyway.  After nearly twenty years, it was far too late to start having second thoughts when what she had been warned might happen, and what she’d expected would happen, came to pass.  As Sarek had reminded her, she had chosen otherwise. 

 

And he was not going to let her forget it either. 

 

But it was disconcerting when they happened together.  The two had never dovetailed before like this. Until Spock had decided to defy Sarek and leave for Starfleet,  Sarek had never before chosen to vent his temper or his anger in bed.  She had no experience with him…punishing her…this way before. Nor was she used to him staying angry this long. It was, if she allowed herself to admit it, a little frightening.  And far from getting over it, he seemed just as furious, if not more so, as time went on. 

 

She sat up, glaring after Sarek.  But her weariness seemed to rise up to claim her, and in that vulnerable moment, she found herself awash in a new flood of grief.  She put her hands to her face, forcing back the tears.  She choked the sobs back and flung herself back face down, her throat aching with the effort of suppressing them. 

 

I will not cry, I will not cry, I will not let them make me cry!  How dare he kiss me as if he loves me one minute and then coldly order me into bed the next.  T’Pau’s gesture was not my doing.

 

Oh, why did she have to rub his nose in her sudden, oh-so-obvious recognition of me! 

 

Face it, you’ve been a point of contention between them for twenty years.  First she punishes him by refusing to accept me, and now that she’s angry with him, she’s punishing him by doing the opposite.

 

 I am tired of being used by that old witch to niggle her son.  Tired of being a pawn in these games. When they get like this,  I don’t matter at all except as leverage for them, one way or another..

 

But I do matter  to Spock.  And  how can I say no to her when she wants to help Spock?

 

Face it, no is not a word allowed in your vocabulary, Amanda.  And you had better get used to it, because neither one of them will let you forget it.

 

I will not cry!

 

She sat up, breathing heavily.  Got her legs under her and stepped out of the bed.  After a moment, she reached to strip it, moving automatically, trying not to think about what she was doing.  She had been putting their sheets on this bed, a bed she and Sarek had shared in love for years.  But she was finding it increasingly hard to not resent remaking it day after day so that Sarek could use it as a place to punish her anew.  There was something…more ignoble…in that action than in the punishment itself. 

 

She’d been trying not to categorize what Sarek had been doing as that. She could, after all, find a host of logical reasons why her oh-so-Vulcan husband would find it necessary to take his wife to bed without affection.  Or at least she had tried to tell herself that.

 

But it was time to face facts.

 

She took a water shower, needing to wash herself clean and then came out, a towel around her wet hair.  She drew a few deep breaths to calm herself, then pulled on some light clothes, combed the tangles out of her wet hair, and went downstairs.  One reason she was so lightheaded and tired lately was that she hadn’t been eating at all. Nor had Sarek been letting her get much sleep.  And it was time to start taking care of herself, before she really did fall apart.  She would eat something, hungry or not, and then she would try to get a good night’s sleep, for once.  Perhaps it was best Sarek had …taken… her now, he might spend the rest of the night in meditation. She’d vote for that.

 

She padded down the stairs, and paused, seeing light spilling out from her husband’s study. She had expected he’d be out at his favorite vantage point, playing the lord of all he surveyed. For a moment, she almost felt cowed, and she shook herself, surprised that Sarek’s attentions had already made such a mark on her personality.  She’d thought herself a relatively strong willed adult, but she found herself wondering how Spock had stood eighteen years as a child under that inescapable will and yet escaped, while she was finding it hard to face Sarek after only a short period of his displeasure.  And she was his wife, not a dependent child.  Well, she was going to have to get hold of herself, or she’d end up in a little puddle at Sarek’s feet.  And in his present mood, wouldn’t that please him.  She grimaced.  Well, at least,  for now, she didn’t have to see him.

 

She went into the kitchen, and sorted through refrigeration units and cabinets, searching listlessly for something to tempt her.  Cooking anything, even pre-prepared meals, seemed like too much effort.  She finally settled on a bowl of the coarsely chopped whole grain cereal she used to keep around for Spock  -- he liked it, but Sarek never touched the stuff. So no one would eat it now but she.   And it was so high in calories, she rarely had either.  And a glass of milk.  Yes, you could get almost anything on Vulcan now, even dairy products, though this was a synthesized construct she drank for the calcium.  In this gravity, she had to take care of her bones.  She’d been the one to teach Spock to pour it on cereal.  He still did, now and then, when he was particularly hungry, even though Sarek raised his eyebrows askance.  Well, at least Spock would have one near familiar thing to eat in Starfleet’s commissary, and he’d have no Sarek there to shame him for it.

 

I miss my son. 

 

And I miss my husband too.

 

She plowed through the bowl resolutely, considering each mouthful a success, even though her hand shook a little on the spoon.  And it was hard to force anything past the lump in her throat.  I really have to start eating again.  At least I don’t have to feel guilty about these calories.  This time, I need them. She was just reaching the bottom of the bowl and was thinking of blissful sleep when she heard a familiar footstep.  For a moment, she just felt his puzzled gaze on her back, like the echoes of a bad conscience.

 

“That’s hardly suitable fare for an evening meal, my wife.”

 

Amanda finished her last mouthful before answering and then picked up her dishes, striving for calm.  “I can make you something else, if you like. You didn’t eat, did you?”

 

He didn’t answer.  She felt his eyes on her.  Puzzled.  She felt, no knew, that he’d been honestly expecting she’d still be upstairs where he’d left her.  Suitably chastened.  As he’d intended.  

 

Think again. You can knock me down but I’m  not out.  Not yet anyway.

 

She turned, meeting his eyes evenly.  Determined to plumb this shame to the depths.  Let him know that she knew what he was doing to her and she was not cowed.  “Shall I?  Prepare you something?”

 

She saw the incomprehension in his eyes.  And the confusion.   He didn’t want to hurt her, and yet, obscurely, he had wanted her hurt.  But there was also resentment, as if he was disappointed in her.  If she would not cooperate, neither would he.  “I am not hungry.”

 

She tilted her head in the Vulcan equivalent of a shrug.  She didn’t believe him for one moment.  Sarek ate lightly at mid-meal, when he didn’t skip it entirely, and he was always hungry by this time.  But she didn’t care if he ate or not and she made her manner plain on that.   “Then I’m going to bed.  I’m tired.”

 

She had to walk past him to leave the room, and for a moment, she thought she was actually going to make it out the door.  But then he reached out and caught her.

 

She stilled, her heart in her throat, her pulse suddenly beating loud in her ears.  His hands went down her arms, slid behind her back, turned her to him.  Her long hair brushed his hands and he paused momentarily.  “Your hair is damp.”  His tone was disapproving.  Vulcans typically used Sonics, not water, and Sarek had never liked her hair wet.   He didn’t like her hair wet, he didn’t like her skin sunburned, he didn’t like it when she cut herself.  Oh, she knew all his likes and dislikes.  He was never shy about communicating them.  Particularly the dislikes.

 

“I took a shower.” 

 

He looked at her, and curled his fingers around the ends of her hair.  Coolly possessive.  It brought back a sharp memory from twenty years ago.

 

They’d been married only a few months, and she’d been brushing her hair before bed.  She’d looked at the ends, and said, “Darn, I’m going to have to find time to get this trimmed tomorrow, I’m seeing some split ends.”

 

Sarek had been undressing, and he’d raised his head.  “You will not.”

 

She’d looked at him.  “I’m not going to cut it off, just have a few inches trimmed.”

 

“Never the less.”

 

Blithe and amused, for they were still having problems in translation, she’d asked.  “What are you saying, Sarek?  That because we’re married, my hair belongs to you?”

 

Sarek came up behind her, took her shoulders so that they were both facing the mirror.  “I am saying that you” he let his grip tighten momentarily in emphasis on her shoulders, “are mine.”

 

She’d turned in his arms, and he’d let her, while she’d searched his eyes, finding utter confirmation in them of what he was saying.  “You’re not serious?”

 

He’d nodded once, Vulcan style.  “Completely.”  He let her go, and went back to undressing, satisfied that she understood him and the subject was closed.

 

She drew a breath.  “So what would happen if I just went ahead and did it?”

 

He looked over at her sharply, and frowned -- an expression that, this early in their marriage, she rarely saw when he looked at her.  “Obviously there would be nothing I could do at that point.  But if I found, as my wife, that you were so lacking in respect for the conventions of your role, then at least, on Vulcan, you would find fewer outlets for disregarding them.”

 

“We’re not going to Vulcan for another year.”

 

“There is a regular starship run every week,” Sarek said shortly.

 

“You’d take me to Vulcan for that?”

 

“You would have left me no choice, my wife.”

 

She had shaken her head, trying to reconcile what he was telling her.  She’d been told all about Pon Far and mating drives and why such biological imperatives required her eradicating the word no from her vocabulary as regards sex.  But she didn’t see what any of that had to do with the length of her hair.  “Sarek, that is the silliest thing I have ever heard.”

 

He looked over at her, only partially relieved.  “Indeed, and I trust, my wife, that you will not engage in such unconventional behavior.”

 

Not quite believing he’d so misunderstood her, she’d dropped the subject.  She hadn’t had her hair trimmed since, and it was down past her waist, a real nuisance to keep brushed and braided.  Which Sarek, with his neat, short hair, didn’t have to worry about.  But she had discovered that no Vulcan woman cut her hair, it was one of those things that was just not done.  Perhaps it was the old caveman thing, that Vulcan women left it long to make it easier for their husbands to drag them around. She didn’t know.  She had never really cared. It was a nuisance to care for, but she had enough to deal with of incomprehensible Vulcan disciplines that she couldn’t master to worry about one that required so little from her.

 

She only knew that there always had been things, usually little in practice but with deeper meaning, that Sarek’s Vulcan culture imposed on her as a result of her marriage.  Some of them very visible drawbacks, that her human friends noticed and commented on adversely.  How could she do this or put up with that.  And there was some of that in her relationship with Sarek. 

 

But there were compensations, some not even understood as such by Vulcans.  She hadn’t realized those when she’d been married either.  No one had ever thought to tell her about those.  They didn’t know enough about human culture, and they were blind to the givens in their own.

 

The biggest was that, even before they were married, but absolutely afterwards, she had become the only woman in the world, no in any world, as far as Sarek was concerned.  He didn’t see any other woman as anything other than imperfect shadows, annoyances,  scarecrows, nags, shrews, shams of women. She’d had plenty of evidence of that.  Her husband was a handsome, powerful exotic man, and he could attract women like bees to honey.  Over the years more than a few besotted females had vied for his interest, and his response was invariably a mixture of impatience and barely concealed disgust that sent them reeling back to human prospects and eyeing her with new respect.  It would have been quite a sop to her vanity, if she hadn’t understood the biology and psychology behind a Vulcan bonding.  Like something out of Romeo and Juliet, whose dialogue she still remembered, even after all these years,  she’d become the “snowy dove trooping with crows” as far as Sarek was concerned, the sole source of his interest.  And not just compared to other human women.  He was just as disinterested in Vulcan women.  Not just in love with her, completely disinterested in other women.  He hadn’t looked at another woman since their marriage.  Never noticed them, never saw them as such.  He was only, absolutely, interested in her. Once she realized how absolute the phenomenon, it was a heady feeling.  And Sarek didn’t even seem to understand or care that he was unusual as compared to human males in this respect.  He didn’t want other women, even to look at, or notice, or think about. She was everything to him.  And he was not just perfectly content with that, to him it was the most natural thing in the universe.  That was bonding.

 

But there were still more compensations.

 

She hadn’t realized that the first few weeks, or months of her marriage weren’t just a honeymoon phase to Sarek.  Learning all her responses, and mastering her body as easily as he’d mastered his own, didn’t lessen the experience for him.  Every night he took her to bed and every night she became, once more, the ultimate mystery to explore.  She was his pleasure, his amusement, his delight.  It was as if every night were Christmas morning, and she was the sole package to be unwrapped under the tree, forever new, forever desired, forever the ultimate fulfillment of his wishes. To the rest of the world, through the rest of his day, he was a logical Vulcan.  But when they retired behind the doors of their bedroom, logic ended,  playtime began, and she was his plaything, his possession, his ultimate toy, one he thoroughly enjoyed with the encompassing absorption only a Vulcan brought to his pursuits.  And he expected that she felt the same about him.  And far from considering this unusual, to Sarek it was utterly logical.  And utterly satisfying. That what bonding was.

 

It was…quite a compensation.

 

Still there was no doubt that Sarek had a certain …proprietary… attitude regarding her that didn’t sit well with independent human women – or independent anyone.  She understood the biology behind that too, at least as well as a human woman could.  But being a possession, a toy, even one dearly loved,  still meant being … a toy.  Even if she was only such to Sarek in private, a lot of her marriage was lived in private.  She had sometimes wondered if Vulcan women found it as difficult as she sometimes did between an independent equal entity in professional life, and being sometimes treated by her husband as a quasi possession in married life.  That it was only sometimes made it more confusing, to be accorded equal respect as an individual in some moments, and in others treated as …she hardly knew how to describe her many roles as a Vulcan wife, except to say that to a human woman more than a few would hardly be considered estimable.

 

She’d spent months, years in learning just where all her misconceptions lay regarding Sarek, Vulcan customs, Terran customs and herself.  It was as if she’d engaged in a lifelong xenocultural experiment, with herself and Sarek as  both the sole researchers and the sole subjects.  She had never had time to get too caught up in one or the other petty issue, because the next day would bring a new issue, a new surprise. 

 

So many of them she had just buried, left unresolved, hoping that in time she would understand.  To her they were roles she played.  Not herself.  And she didn’t think they were her to Sarek, either.  She knew Sarek, or thought she did. Though perhaps she’d been deceiving herself. 

 

As he fingered the damps ends of the hair she left long because he wanted it that way, she saw that he was struggling, and waging a mental war of his own.

 

She took a step out of his embrace.  “Sarek, I’m really tired and if you don’t want me to make you anything to eat, then I’m going to bed.”

 

He looked at her.  “You seem to have forgotten, my wife, that you do not tell me what you are going to do. I tell you what you are going to do.”

 

Oh brother.  She had miscalculated there, let her own weariness allow her to misjudge a critical moment.   She tried to bluster out of it.  “I asked you--”

 

“No.”  Sarek raised a finger to her lips.  “We have an agreement, Amanda, which I will not let you deny, or ignore, or evade.  You do not challenge me with impunity.  Any such act between a husband and wife forfeits her status, even her life, and you have done this twice now in our marriage, each time with regard to your son.  I am – perhaps regrettably – indulgent with you.  As a human you do not understand our ways. Still,  I am Vulcan, and there is a limit to my indulgence.  I gave you your son’s freedom.  But I do not grant you yours.  You are mine.  And you will learn this.”

 

For a moment she looked at him, gauging his will, his temper.  It was unlike Sarek to be this possessive so recently out of Pon Far.  A part of herself told her there was something wrong here, and she should back down.  But a part of her refused to keep being pushed around this way.  He wasn’t in Pon Far, he was another two years from even the possibility.  Even T’Pau had said there was no excuse for his behavior.  “And if I choose to leave?”

 

“That is not an option, my wife.  It has never been an option, regardless of your delusions to the contrary.  But if you continue to challenge me, I will not only teach you what being a true chattel entails, but I will bring your son back here, and strive anew to teach him the discipline and obedience so obviously lacking in you both.”

 

Her own temper was beginning to override her reason.  “Don’t threaten me, Sarek.  And particularly not with our son.  You leave him out of this.”

 

“Threats are illogical, my wife.  What I promise you will come to pass.”

 

She looked at him, disbelieving.  There was no emotion in his black eyes.   “Why are you doing this to me? To us?  I don’t want to fight with you; I love you. But you’re making it very hard for me.”

 

“Love is irrelevant.”

 

She drew up, wounded.  “Be careful what you wish for, Sarek. That may come to pass too.”  She knew she was crossing a line.  Even at the worst of their bad times, she had never once  threatened him with that.  Even when she threatened to leave him when Spock was eight.  Her love for him had always been a given, even if her love for Spock had overwhelmed it at times.  But if she was crossing a line, he had brought her to it, crossed it first.

 

Sarek took a step toward her, real threat in his stance, and she drew back, shocked herself at the violence of that near lunge.  Then he halted, visibly controlling himself.  “Go upstairs and wait for me.”  When she hesitated, equal parts rebellion and fear, he growled.  “Now, my wife!”

 

It was go or further antagonize him when she could see he was barely hanging onto what little control he had.  She fled.

 

 

Amanda closed the door to the bedroom behind her, wishing that Vulcans believed in locks, even as she wondered what was going on between them.  Sarek wasn’t in Pon Far.  What was happening to him?

 

She realized she had miscalculated again.  Yes, T’Pau had intimated that Sarek was out of line.  But she had  also warned her not to give Sarek a fight.  And yet she had done that very thing, challenged him even though she’d known his control was shaky and his temper was running high.  Now she knew she should have stayed upstairs.  Too late now.

 

And then she heard his step on the stairs.  He hadn’t waited long.  She’d been hoping, expecting he’d get some control of himself, meditate, and calm down.  But apparently he’d either chosen not to do that, or he’d lost his battle for control.  She’d never imagined that familiar footfall could cause such utter panic to rise in her breast.  She was really frightened, as she had never been even in Pon Far, realizing he was about to take that anger out on her.

 

She realized she was standing in front of the door, and moved to one side.  When Sarek came through, she saw he had barely leashed his anger.  She didn’t resist at all when he reached for her.  Some sane, sentient part of her recognized a berserk Vulcan, rationally assessed the threat level and immediately scaled down all her responses to zero, nada, nil.  She didn’t even try to run.  She was, quite literally, paralyzed with fear.  If ever she had seen a Vulcan male in madness, this was that time.

 

Later she realized that even as callous as Sarek had been before this, she had not truly understood the depths she could sink to.  Now he was not merely pinning her hands, and uncaring of her responses. That was the absence of affection.  This was fury.  This was rape, pure and simple.  She had never thought her husband capable of such an act, not the gentle, careful lover who’d tried so hard, with painstaking, almost intellectual curiosity,  to understand her body.  Perhaps he should have tried as hard to understand her feelings.  

 

She had thought she understood something of rape, she had been through myriad pon fars, had suffered her husband’s less than kind attentions, had an intellectual grasp of the crime.  Nothing compared to the stark horror of his violent use of her body now.  When Sarek pulled back from her, she was not the same woman she had been before he covered her.  He hadn’t merely violated her body, but also the deep core of trust and confidence she had always felt for him.  In one respect, the woman she had been died, and a new one was reborn.

 

Inches away, she heard the harsh pants of her husband’s breath, but he might as well have been light-years.

 

Nothing and no one can ever hurt me like this again, she thought, the relief profound,  her last conscious thought before her mind escaped the way her body could not.

 

 

“Amanda?”  Sarek touched fingers to her forehead, and drew a sharp breath.  She had fainted.  Though she had never done so before in her life, to his knowledge.  He drew back and stared at what he had done to her.  In a wash of revulsion, he slid out of bed, chuted the clothes he had not bothered to fully remove in his attack, and stepped into the shower.  Amanda had left it set to water, and he did not notice.  The shock of water at a temperature that might be warm to her, but icy to him, cleared his head of the madness completely.  He left it on, as a punishment for his behavior in kind. When his senses returned he turned up the temperature to relieve his shivering and finally turned it off, drawing a robe around himself.

 

He was behaving like a pre-Reform male in the height of plak-tow, ready to challenge anyone. Yet he was not in the blood fever.   And there was no one here to challenge him but his small human wife.  At more than twice her weight, and a dozen times her strength, he could not continue to abuse her this way.  Physically, she would not survive, and emotionally – he did not even try to convince himself that his final behavior had not been …perhaps…unforgivable.  He held out a small hope, that at least his emotions were not as foreign to her as the violence of his recent attentions.

 

He pulled on clothes, staring at his wife.  He had to get away, away before he hurt her again, and master this madness.  He would go to the desert,  meditate.  But he was reluctant to leave, not knowing what Amanda would do.  The image of Spock, going through the gate, leaving for the spaceport at Shikahr kept coming back to haunt him.  What if Amanda did the same? 

 

Slowly, reluctantly, he went to the house computer, and changed a few settings.  He would apologize when he came back, when she woke.  But she had to be here for that.  This would ensure that she was. 

 

 

Amanda woke slowly, her mind dull, her body aching.  She sat up, feeling as if she had been drugged.  Or beaten.  Then she remembered, and she straightened, looking around the corners of the darkened room. But Sarek was not here.  She rose, wincing.  Her neck hurt where Sarek had grabbed her around the throat, her head ached.  She felt a stabbing pain with each breath that spoke of cracked, if not broken ribs, and she didn’t need to feel the trickle of blood between her legs to know she had some internal injuries.

 

Far worse than the worst of pon fars.

 

Moving slowly, she got herself out of bed.  She took a few hesitant steps to the outer room of their suite.  Empty too.  She stood there, straining to hear over her own pain-labored breaths.  But she heard nothing either.

 

She went back to the bedroom and stood there, arms wrapped around her aching ribs,  not sure what to do. 

 

This is escalating beyond belief, Amanda.  Nothing you are doing warrants being treated this way.  And no matter what you are trying to do to alleviate it, isn’t helping.  You need to put some distance between you and Sarek. 

 

Get away.

 

Hell, get on a starship and get the hell out of there, a familiar, sane voice echoed to her across twenty years.  Remember the old call for help?  Mayday?  I’m giving you a Mayday of your own, Mandy. As a wedding present.  Just in case the wedding turns out to be a nightmare from which you need rescuing.

 

She had laughed at Thad, had never imagined it could come to that.  Until now.

 

More fool she.  He had been right.

 

Mayday.  Mai’dez.

 

Help me.

 

She shivered.  Warm as the room was, she was cold.  Shock.  She had to get out of here, and wherever Sarek might have gone, she didn’t want to wait for him to come back.  It came to her, with a new chill, that perhaps she was not coming back.

 

She thought that through, surprised that it seemed to cause her no grief, as if the ties of twenty years of marriage had been effectively divorced by one, even admittedly violent, act.  But what else could she do?  Wait around for him to rape her again, and  maybe kill her the next time? That’s where this was going.  She couldn’t reason with him, she couldn’t placate him, and she certainly couldn’t fight him.

 

With that in mind,  she went into her husband’s office.  A moment’s search of his logical files brought to light her Federation passport.  She looked at it, then resolutely took it in hand.  It was as well to have it.  She had better get dressed.

 

She dressed quickly, ignoring telltale pains that warned her she had better seek some sort of medical attention soon.  She took the passport and her other identification and credit certifications that she might need to back up her retina and palm prints – for humans were notorious about paperwork -- and went across the gardens to the hanger where her flyer was stored.  She’d stop at the Federation bank, pick up her ‘wedding present’, take it in certified funds.  No doubt it had accrued to a tidy sum after all these years.  That way she could book passage and jump on a starship shuttle without leaving a credit trail for Sarek to trace.  She had discarded the idea of just camping out somewhere safe, as her home no longer seemed to be, while she thought things through.  Sarek would find her quickly if she stayed on planet.  And, in this temper,  if he’d nearly killed her for verbally challenging him, he would kill her if he caught her running away.

 

Even the Terran Embassy would be no refuge for her.  She was a Vulcan citizen now, and Vulcan justice had a long arm. By the terms of its treaty with the Federation, Vulcan law superceded Federation law in most cases where they came in conflict.  Meaning her dual citizenship would do her no good if Sarek actually contested any Terran rights she might claim. And she doubted Terra would do her any favors anyway against Vulcan’s political clout, especially as she was generally seen by them to be in the enemy camp, advising her husband for Vulcan’s good against that of the human dominated Federation.  If she went there, they would simply turn her over to Sarek the instant he inquired for her, both probably for some subtle revenge – she’d refused more than a few overtures urging her to persuade Sarek to deliver Vulcan to Terra at Terra’s own terms -- and for what little good will it would gain them with Vulcan’s rulers – T’Pau’s clan.  That was no refuge at all.  No, best to seek the safety of distance and anonymity on a nice commercial starship where all they cared about was whether she paid for her passage.  That would give her room to maneuver.  Maybe distance would help Sarek gain back the perspective he seemed to have lost.

 

And if not?

 

He has two years before his next Pon Far, Amanda thought.  He’s in no danger.  Whereas you might not make it another week, the way he is going.  Get gone, Amanda, and worry about the rest later. 

 

She pushed her hand against the heavy metal gate that kept the desert predators out and the gardens safe.  It didn’t open.  She’d been moving so fast, she was knocked back by the unexpected barrier, stumbling and falling in the heavy gravity.

 

She cried out as the impact knocked her bruised and broken ribs, one stabbing into her like a knife,  the pain driving the breath from her lungs and making her see stars.  For long moments she just lay there, fighting to stay conscious.

 

When the mists cleared from her eyes, found herself staring up at the gate, ornately scrolled and higher from this angle, the red sky showing eerily through the convoluted patterns.  She was panting; stabbing pains worsening in her chest with every breath, finding it harder and harder to get oxygen in her lungs.  She painfully picked herself up, and put her hand to the gate again.  And it didn’t move.

 

She swallowed.  She’d lived in this house for nearly twenty years, and she’d never known that gate not to open instantly to her hand.  She clung to it, as the red sky reeled over her head.  It has to open.  I  have to get out of here.

 

Then she remembered.  Was it only a few days ago?  Sitting on the stone pilaster under the lematya carving and watching Spock go through that gate, wondering if Sarek was going to lock him in.  He hadn’t.  But had Sarek regretted that and determined not to make the same mistake with his wife?

 

Don’t be ridiculous, she told herself.  You are upset.  Making something out of nothing. Of course the gate will open.  You just didn’t try it right.  You’re not feeling well, your head is spinning, your ribs aching, you just didn’t push it hard enough.

 

But a third try yielded no better result.

 

It’s jammed, or broken, or something, she told herself.  But it wasn’t.

 

She looked around.  One of the disadvantages in living in an ancient fortress, was that it was designed as such.  Odd that she had never noticed, or considered or even had felt like this even applied to her as the remotest possibility of concern.  The walls that separated the gardens from the desert outside were smooth stone, and topped, as was the gate, with a force field respectable enough to keep the wild lematyas that roamed the hills behind from jumping over into the garden.  It would more than do to keep in one human.

 

I can’t get out, she thought, in utter shock and surprise.

 

And some insane academic human part of her, trying to cope,  followed with the phrase:   as the starling said.

 

Laurence Sterne: Sentimental Journey.  Jane Austen: Mansfield Park.

 

Amanda Grayson:  Unimaginable nightmare

 

Oh, no.

 

I can’t get out.

 

Mai’dez.

 

Help me.

 

But, like the starling, there was no help.

 

Her hands loosened on the metal grille of the gate as she fought to stay conscious.  She couldn’t seem to get any air in her lungs any more.  With every breath she took, the pain in her side increased and she seemed to take in less oxygen.  The two issues warred in her body for a moment, and then the pain began to recede behind a red mist before her eyes that matched the red sky reeling over her head, curling into black edges.  As the blackness spread across her field of vision, her eyes rolled up in her head.  She reached out one hand in a last desperate gesture, but she couldn’t seem to connect with anything.  Her lax fingers slipped off the gate and she slid down to fall in the sand at its base.

 

 

T’Pau’s chief counselor hesitated at the edge of the gardens where T’Pau most often held court.  The venerable woman sensed her presence and looked out.  “Thee have some issue for me, T’Lean?”

 

“There is concern regarding thy … thy family, Matriarch.”

 

T’Pau’s gaze narrowed.  The word family, not kin or clan, meant a very personal issue, that could involve only a few people.  “What is it?”

 

“The--” T’Lean choked on the word human, though she would have used it weeks ago, and in a pejorative tone.  Now apparently that was past, even as the human had apparently disgraced herself and perhaps her kin. “Thy daughter-in-marriage has not appeared at her duties for two days.  Sarek has not been seen at his duties for an equal time period.  No one answers at their residence.  Sarek…has recently been through a Time, it can not even be the rare incident of such a state taking a Vulcan unaware.  There is concern among the human’s—thy daughter-in-marriage’s -- …associates.  She is considered – by them – to be diligent in her duties, and unlikely to neglect them without some notice given. There is concern. They ask questions that cannot be answered.”

 

“Sarek is not to be found?”

 

“If he is home, he is not taking calls.  No one wishes to intrude on his privacy.  But the human’s--”

 

“Enough of that!  She is your clan leader’s wife, and my daughter.  You will speak of her respectfully,  with the titles that are her due, or find another’s service, T’Lean.”

 

For a moment the Vulcan woman froze.  Her position as chief attendant was not only long held, but hereditary.  At one point it had been considered that she would be wife to Sarek  -- her family and position made her a logical choice.  For many years she had cherished the thought, and held herself free from others, even as Sarek also delayed his choice, and remained unbonded.  And then he had chosen that human.  She had been surprised by the bitterness of her disappointment, unseemly for a Vulcan, but she had invested much of herself in the expectation, now forlorn. 

 

Even afterwards, she had held herself free, fully expecting that the human would not stay.  That Sarek would divorce the human, and turn to her as he was meant to.   But as the years passed, and Sarek showed himself to be well and truly bonded, she had finally bonded herself to another, a widower already leaning to frailty.  She had  borne a child and tried not to think of what might had been.  Even as she attended T’Pau in the palace that might some day have been hers, and crossed paths with the man she still regretted.  Who never saw her as other than his mother’s attendant. 

 

She even had looked at Spock with a jealous eye, the heir that should also have been hers.   She saw him when he came to visit his grandmother, traditional visits of duty.  He showed little obvious sign of his mother’s humanity.  Indeed the boy surpassed her own son in academic skills, and he bore his grandfather’s stamp of features.  A worthy boy, even from an unworthy mother.  If  the human should leave, she would eagerly choose his father as her champion.  Strong, virile and in the prime of life, Sarek would easily defeat the husband she had deliberately chosen with a view to a future divorce.  As wife in Sarek’s house, she vowed she would even raise his son as her own with never a mention given of his base heritage.  She had thought all this, watching the boy with his grandmother,.  Until T’Pau had dismissed him and he turned to leave.  His eyes had met hers and in an instant she felt sure he perceived the full scope of her thoughts.  Sarek was not a powerful telepath, but Spock was said to be so, and still young and hampered by his human heritage, his control was erratic. The boy’s eyes had narrowed under his silky bangs, his face had set as if masking disgust,  and he gave her a wide berth as he walked out, as if the very air around her shimmered with her ponderings.  And she reconsidered  -- not her hopes, but her thoughts as to Amanda’s son.  It was said, in whispers, that he loved his mother.  She had not thought that of him, he was too like his grandfather, too like Sarek, too obviously Vulcan for that to be true.  But after that incident, after the way the boy pointedly avoided her when he came to see T’Pau, or when required to deal with her, had barely masked his distaste,  she knew he had perceived her thoughts, her ambitions.  And that he would never accept her as stepmother, kneel to her in fealty and willingly be raised as her child.  What to do about Spock had worried her at times, the boy was accepted as T’Pau’s heir, sealed in council.  She could not easily get rid of him, even for a son of her own.  The human might try to take her son with her, but seeing the favor which T’Pau regarded him, she knew that would never be allowed to happen. Of course, he could be sent away to school, as he was when his parents traveled off planet.  More or less permanently. Perhaps Sarek would be relieved to be rid of the encumbrance.  A disconcerting child.

 

But it had become a moot point.  Years passed, Sarek waxed and waned in Pon Far, Spock grew to adolescence  and the human served Sarek still, and willingly, from all evidence.  No one had believed a human could ever withstand the madness of Pon Far, would stand up to the Fever, and submit to its demands.  

 

She herself had felt the distaste of the Time’s madness, the worse for being with one not of her choosing,  and begun living apart from her own bondmate, seeking to lengthen the periods between his Times.  But Sarek kept the human ever close to him, with the jealous possessiveness legendary in his clan, and his Times came at the minimum biology dictated.  All the more bitter a regret for her, that another received the passionate attentions she felt were due to her,  while she herself had none.  T’Lean found it difficult even to contemplate that the human still reigned in the house she considered hers,  supplanted her in the bed T’Lean believed was her own, and received the attentions of one she was not worthy even to serve as chattel, much less wife.  

 

That the matriarch would also hold this human’s honor above her own struck her dumb. And what her words implied was unthinkable. Though not of their clan except by marriage, Amanda’s position as wife and mother to the present clan heirs technically gave her higher status in the clan than any woman except T’Pau.  Technically. 

 

Practically speaking, the human had never been legally recognized as a daughter by T’Pau before the Council. So her status was as nothing.  Were T’Pau’s words an indication that she would?  For a moment, T’Lean resisted that thought before logic forced her to acceptance.  The matter was solely T’Pau’s to adjudicate.  And had she not days previously, and now again, called the human daughter before her advisors?  Not even daughter-in-marriage.  A daughter so acknowledged, even privately,  was a daughter; there were no shades to the title as it had been used. She met the old woman’s furious eyes, and after a moment, lowered her own gaze.  “I beg forgiveness, Matriarch.”

 

“Continue.”

 

T’Lean closed her own eyes a moment, in final resistance before giving the long shunned human the title that marked her as one of T’Pau’s heirs as surely as her husband and son, and in-line to succeed the old woman as matriarch. Surely T’Pau was not serious.  Not a human.  But when T’Pau waited still,  T’Lean bent her head and answered.   “My Lady T’Amanda’s associates are…. concerned.  Shall I send your guard to inquire?”

 

T’Pau rose from her chair.  “Yes.  But I will accompany them.”

 

It wasn’t far via aircar, and T’Pau’s flyer was soon settled on the sand by the hanger.  Two of her guards went ahead, while the remainder helped her exit the aircar and escort her to the entrance.  Before she crossed half the sand to the gate, she saw her guards gesturing to something on the ground.  When they stepped aside, she saw her daughter, face down in the sand next to the gate.

 

At times like these, she was grateful to be matriarch.  The gate opened to her hand, a few commands soon had Amanda flown back to the Terran medical center.  And then T’Pau herself searched the house for her son.  And found it empty. 

 

She stood last of all in the bedroom where she herself had conceived her own son.  The room was empty, but the furniture was largely the same, including the same wide bed.  She crossed to it, unwilling but compelled, and looked down with dismay and disgust at the sheets stained red with human blood.

 

“Fah!” she said.

 

 

Mark Abrams, the physician attached to the Terran Embassy had been looking after Amanda since her first days on Vulcan.  He’d seen her through a number of pon fars over the years and he was used to seeing her a little battered, but he looked shaken now, behind his professional calm.  This was not a crime that one saw in a civilized society, especially between husband and wife.  “She’ll recover, but she should stay quiet for the next few days.”

 

“She should not speak?”  T’Pau asked, frowning in puzzlement.  “How is this?”

 

“No, I meant she should stay in bed, resting quietly.”

 

T’Pau nodded. 

 

“We’re lucky it is winter,” Abrams added.  “She’d never have survived two days in summer under that sun.  She’d have died of heatstroke and dehydration.  She nearly did as it stands.”

 

“But she will not die,” T’Pau asked.

 

“No.  She’ll recover from all her injuries. In time.”  Abrams hesitated.  “Is Sarek here?”

 

“Why does thee wish him?”

 

“There are some things he needs to be told.”

 

“Thee can tell me.”

 

“I’d prefer to speak with Sarek.”

 

“Thee must speak with me.”

 

“This is between Sarek and his wife.”

 

“Whatever is to be said, thee must say it to me.”

 

Abrams hesitated, then spoke tersely, his disgust barely contained.  “She has two broken ribs, a pneumothorax –one of the ribs collapsed her lung,  internal injuries and she’s been violently raped …torn.  Plus a whole myriad of bruises from her neck to her thighs.  That wrist he broke last summer he broke again.”   He looked at T’Pau’s impassive face, shrugging when he got no reaction from her.  “I’ve surgically repaired the lung and reinflated it, lasered the broken bones, and patched up the rest.  But the internal injuries will take time to heal. A couple of weeks at least.  And until then, she can’t …suffer…any more of his attentions.”

 

“Thee are not her mate,”  T’Pau said,  “to make such a demand.”

 

“No, but I’m her doctor.  Do you want him to kill her? He could have this time.  If he doesn’t leave her alone until she heals, he will kill her.  You tell him that.”

 

“Are thee challenging for her, physician?”

 

Abrams stared at the matriarch. “My interests are solely as her physician.  And friend to both of them.  You can let Sarek know that too.”

 

T’Pau nodded. “Is she able to be moved?”

 

“I can’t send her home in this condition.  She needs fluids, antibiotics, monitoring…”

 

“This is not care that requires a hospital.”

 

“I can’t – I won’t – send her back to Sarek until I’ve spoken with him.”

 

“She will recover in my home.”

 

Abrams hesitated.   “I don’t see--”

 

“Physician,”  T’Pau met his eyes evenly. “She must recover in my palace.  I will speak to Sarek.  Thee could not.”

 

At that, Abrams backed down, hearing what she was saying.  There was no doubt that if he was dealing with a berserk Vulcan, which is what this all looked like, he couldn’t deal with Sarek.  And only T’Pau could.  It was her duty in such cases, little as he knew of them.  “All right,” he agreed. “I’ll have her prepared for transport.  And I’ll monitor her care there.  I can send a nurse.”

 

“My attendants will suffice.  I have many skilled in healing.”

 

Abrams sighed.  “Vulcan healing is not Terran nursing.”

 

“Vulcan has caused her injuries, and  it is our duty to mend them.  Thee are no longer required.”  When Abrams still hesitated, T’Pau looked at him imperiously.  “Thee has no claim on her.”

 

“Just… take care of her.”

 

“She is my daughter, physician.  I will see her well.”

 

Abrams looked after the matriarch as she swept from the hospital, while such staff as recognized the venerable leader gawped in surprise, some flattening against the walls as she swept past.

 

“I guess if you say it that way,  she doesn’t have a choice ,” he muttered.  Then he turned back to sign the orders releasing Amanda to T’Pau’s care.

 

 

T’Pau stood in her garden, listening to the fountain’s play of water, the singing of birds and all the while her heart was breaking.

 

The guard was searching for her son in his usual desert haunts.  She knew he was alive yet, her parental bond was thinned with the long spread of years since her son had grown to adulthood, but it was still there, a tendril that told him he was alive.  For now.

 

For now.

 

What she had feared all these many years since Sarek had taken the human to wife had come to pass.  She had not feared, even considered this.  But from her first inkling of her son’s passionate interest in this human female, she had feared, dreaded, expected, that one day, the incompatibilities of Vulcan and human would rise in some problem.  That the woman would reject him in Pon Far, that he would kill her, even unrejecting, that he would despair and die.  He was so closely bonded to her.  If he would not take another, even consider another, before he had bonded to her, what would be the outcome now, when so many years of bonding had made him even more resolute.

 

And it had come to pass, not as she had  expected, but close enough.  He had nearly killed his wife, and now his own life was forfeit. Not through the law, for what need was there of law when biology was its own law.

 

She had brought the girl here, from the hospital,  from her own people, in a last, desperate action.  And yet, what would it avail?  She could keep the girl here, for a time, but nothing could stop what was to come.  A Vulcan woman, after such an event at this, would choose challenge. There were Vulcan males who favored the old ways, professional challengers who would fight for a fee, for the reward involved in freeing a female from an unwanted marriage, to release her afterwards when the reward was paid.  A human, already so injured by a berserk spouse,  could not be expected to do more than a Vulcan.  Sarek was young and strong, but in such cases as his, when a male attacked a beloved wife, more than one Vulcan would suicide in Kah-li-fee, would leave himself open to the sword, lest he kill in truth.  Sarek might do this for her.  He might die anyway in challenge if he did not.  The challengers were skilled at their profession; they seldom lost.   If he still yet won, and he killed her in the madness that followed a challenge, he would no doubt die anyway, either by his own hand in despair or because he would not be able to take another. His chances were small, so small as to be infinitesimal.  T’Pau saw death all around her and no way out, save in the sifting breaths of a human, already half dead when she’d been found. She had known this was coming, from her first sight of the continued bruises on the girl’s wrists and arms, bruises Sarek would never inflict if he had been in his right mind.  She had seen it coming and she had done nothing.

 

Well, what could be done?  There was no remedy, no cure, for what she suspected of her son’s condition. Her son breathed still, somewhere, but death was all around. Only the girl could help him. That human girl…   

 

From the first day Sarek had told her of his passion for the human, when T’Pau had known a human held her cherished son’s life in her hands, T’Pau had been leery, waiting for the human’s betrayal that she felt sure was to come. Before she had even met her, sight unseen, she had…hated…the girl who she had felt would be the cause of her son’s eventual death.  She had refused to give her sanction to the marriage, to speak to Amanda, to even suffer her presence.  She would not look in the face of the one who would be his downfall.  She had dreaded the coming of Pon Far in her son, amazed when Sarek emerged each time so well served, the human alive – and still in love.

 

She had come to realize she had been wrong.  But then had come Spock. She had at first been as adamantly opposed to the idea of Amanda’s son as her heir as she had been to the idea of a human daughter.  And then Sarek had forced her hand, brought the boy before Council to be sealed as heir. And she had no choice but to meet him.  And she had been…lost.  Even at three, a baby, a toddler, there was something in that boy that had …conquered her.  It was not merely that he had, even then, her own bondmate’s cast of features.  He had his manner too, his aura --  her bondmate’s own true son, in the half human boy of a once hated human girl.  She had looked into those eyes, wise beyond his baby years, and it was as if she had recognized him instantly, known him to the depths of her soul.  And felt that he had recognized her.  All her previous objections had become as naught.  Indeed, though outwardly she was still the judgmental matriarch, inwardly she had become his champion,  determined that if he failed, it would not be through her lack of support. 

 

And though she had come to reconsider her treatment of Amanda, she had sacrificed her again in the face of Spock’s needs.   There was enough resistance to a half-human clan heir that it had served T’Pau best that she continue to leave her daughter shunned, out of the circle of clan politics until  Spock’s position was assured.   She had …sometimes…regretted not knowing her.  Her son, his son, held her in such regard, cherished her so much, that T’Pau at times felt almost jealous, bitter, not only in not having that acquaintance, even if it was at her own choice, but in being left out of the circle of family where she was entitled to be.  Not that T’Pau didn’t have her own circle.  There were two in their family, one of herself, Sarek and Spock, and one of Amanda, Sarek and Spock.  Two circles completely separate.  But it was not the same as one.  She had had no daughter. 

 

And now, when Spock was finally grown and she had decided she could allow the acquaintance, now had come this horror.  For horror it was, and would be.  For all in their family circle. She had nearly gained a daughter, now only to lose her son, and perhaps the girl as well. 

 

T’Pau had never expected, and quailed before, what had come to pass. And if she did, what could she expect of a human. No. The girl had seen much of Vulcan biology, and remained resolute, but that was normal, natural Vulcan biology, what she had been prepared for, and agreed to, and was apparently honorable enough to fulfill as her obligation.  There was no obligation bound on her to tolerate this.

 

Not even a Vulcan would tolerate this.

 

And yet she had taken the girl from her own people, from those who had been asking after her, concerned and justifiably so.  An illogical effort to stave off what could not be prevented.  She’d been unwilling to risk that the girl might leave, might be whisked off planet by her own people before she herself could think what to do.  And now she had her, ensconced in the suite that was hers by right of marriage.  And T’Pau had doubled the palace guards around her son’s fortress and her own palace, set a guard outside the girl’s very door, as if Amanda’s own people might still attempt to retrieve her, as if this were some pre-Reform prelude to war between clans.  It was illogical.  And yet, with the girl’s fragile life the only thing that stood between Sarek and death, T’Pau had been unable to stop herself from taking possession of her, virtually abducting her from the hospital, setting her guard, steeling herself in her own mind, if nowhere else,  to a near war footing for the first time in 5000 years.  An instinctive reaction, proving she was not far removed herself from the ancient ways.   And what would it all avail?   There was nothing to be done.

 

Human or Vulcan, this girl had rights.  This was not pre-Reform Vulcan.  There was the law, and T’Pau, as matriarch was the adjudicator in such cases as these.  Honor required her to serve all, unbiased.  She would have to speak to Amanda of her options.  Advise her.  Even as it sealed her own son’s fate.

 

How ironic, that fate required her, T’Pau herself, to advise her once hated daughter to reject her son.  What a judgment on the judgmental.

 

But T’Pau had little thought for the irony, swept in grief as she was.

 

Her son lived, and yet was dead.  What she had feared had come to pass, but not through the deception of a human, but through the inexorable demands of Vulcan biology, reaching forward 5000 years to claim her son’s life.  And T’Pau mourned him. Her eyes were dry, but inside she wept tears more copious than the fountains before her. 

 

 

T’Lean stood in the darkened room, watching the human breathe.  Such shallow breaths.  In.  Out.  So easy to …cease. A hand, a pillow.  A brief struggle, very brief, for a weak Terran female, already so depleted.  And the human would cease to breathe at all.  No one would wonder how it came to be, think her ceased from her injuries.  Nothing would come to Sarek, for a male in the fever, as he must be again to have done this,  was excused of the crime of murder if it occurred in the time, and against a wife, or rival.  And such a wife as this, who would even care?

 

So easy.  She drew closer.  And wondered anew what Sarek saw in this human.  She was so…Terran.  So obviously Terran.  There were Terrans with dark hair, decently black eyes, olive shaded skin.  But not this female.  Her skin,  her lips were flushed with the red of her blood, skin so fair T’Lean could see the blue veins tracing her bare limbs,   Her hair was the color of Sol, a paltry yellow star.  Her eyes blue again, like Earth’s sky. She was disgusting.  Slight, small, weak, fair…she seemed unfinished, unformed,  insubstantial.  A ghost woman – who would care if T’Lean moved her ghost presence from mere appearance to stark reality.  Let her be a ghost in fact.

 

T’Lean had not heard the circumstances of why Sarek had chosen this female but she had assumed what most had.  If Sarek had been caught in some way by the Time, and had chosen a Terran in desperation,  why not one outwardly Vulcan in appearance, at least, instead of one that embodied all that was the Terra that he had allegedly found so discomforting.  For he had never returned there after his first assignment, sent others in his stead. He brought only this female back.  A dubious, constant reminder of what he must despise. Would he not welcome her assistance in ridding him of her?

 

She moved even closer, hovering.  Leaning down over the human.  She raised a hand, brought it near to her face. And then Amanda stirred, limbs shifting, and T’Lean drew back, heart pounding at the thought that the human was waking.  She had the courage to snuff a fading life but not to look in those odd eyes and kill her outright. She turned swiftly and exited the room, to where a servant stood waiting.

 

“Tell the matriarch the human is awake.”

 

And when the woman had left, T’Lean leaned back against the wall and thought,  If only she had stayed quiet a little longer.

 

 

 

Amanda woke in an unfamiliar place. A flurry of movement, a presence sensed,  made her try to sit up, focus her eyes, but if there had been one, it was gone by the time she was fully aware.  Blinking, she looked around at the room, a Vulcan furnished bedroom designed with the spaciousness favored in a telepathic society, where personal space is a considered a necessity.  She could see other rooms in the suite, and a long balcony complete with floor to ceiling windows with a view of the Llangon mountains.  But no people.

 

Sitting up brought a sharp gasp from her, and the gasp made her ribs hurt so much she saw stars, and had to close her eyes.  She heard the click of a door and opened them to see T’Pau, of all people, enter.

 

“Where am I?”  She croaked.  And then coughed.  Her throat was sore, as if she’d been throttled.

 

T’Pau sat down on the edge of the bed, and offered her a glass of water.  Amanda took it gratefully, and didn’t look up till she downed half its contents. 

 

“Thank you.”

 

“Does thee not recognize thy own rooms?”

 

Amanda peered around the unfamiliar place, then realized T’Pau must mean Sarek’s suite, her family’s suite in the old palace.  She had never been here before, which certainly T’Pau must know and for some reason was choosing to overlook.  “How did I get here?”

 

“I had thee brought here. Thee were found very ill, daughter.”

 

“Sarek…”

 

“Yes.  Thy husband is also not well.”

 

Amanda met her mother-in-law’s eyes, hearing a tone in the last that made her steel herself for the worst. “What is wrong with him?”

 

A long silence, with the matriarch’s eyes on her.  “Thee are concerned?”  T’Pau finally questioned.

 

Amanda sat up, ignoring the various stabs of pain.  “How can you ask?  Where is he?  What is wrong with him?”

 

“Thy injuries are at thy husband’s hand.”

 

“If he is ill, he couldn’t help it.”

 

T’Pau simply sat there, studying her, as if reluctant to go on.

 

Amanda drew a sharp breath, ignoring the pain. “You can’t think that Sarek would deliberately hurt anyone.  Especially me.  I’m his wife.”  She looked at T’Pau’s unyielding face and said in disbelief.  “You are his mother!”

 

“And I see that thee are his wife.  I am relieved that my daughter honors her husband, even when his actions are less than honorable.”  And yet T’Pau still did not answer her.

 

“Tell me what is wrong with him, Mother.  Please.”

 

“Thee are aware of the Kal-I-fee?”

 

“Yes,” Amanda admitted guardedly.  It had been one of the things she’d been instructed about before she married Sarek.  That divorce on Vulcan generally implied a violent combat to the death.

 

“I believe Sarek considers himself in challenge—over you.”

 

“That’s ridiculous.”

 

“Thee have been in contention.”

 

“Yes, as you know, over Spock’s leaving for Starfleet.  And we have argued.  Had words. I won’t deny they’ve been heated.  And when Sarek told me he intended to deny Spock the right to ever come home,” she missed the faint pained expression on her mother-in-law’s face at this, “I told Sarek that if Spock was not welcome, neither would I stay.  But he backed down, and I did stay.”

 

“And he has been angry since.  The marks you have borne, these are the result of his violent possessions?”

 

Amanda flushed at such a question from T’Pau.  “Yes. He has been angry, such that I couldn’t alleviate it. I haven’t understood what is wrong.  Well, that is not true, but I haven’t known what to do. I thought… I kept hoping he would…get over it.”

 

“You thought he would …get over… such emotions as these?”  T’Pau sounded astonished.

 

Amanda colored again, lowering her head. T’Pau at times had the unwelcome capacity to make her feel like a child before her.  A stupid child.  “Humans do,” she said, her voice small but resentful.  She was so tired of these Vulcans making her feel like a fool. Tired of the never ending complexity of living as a sole human in a Vulcan world. Not that she was the only human on Vulcan, but she was the only one in this circle of Vulcans, the only one embroiled in T’Pau’s inner circle.   For the first time in twenty years she thought to herself, I want to go home.  And home meant Earth.  She was so surprised by the thought, she almost missed T’Pau’s next words.

 

The matriarch shook her head in unVulcan astonishment at such an assumption.  “Thee have not married a human, T’Amanda.   His passions are not human.  Why does thou think we have instituted such controls?”

 

“Sarek has always had a temper and he has lost it before.  Never like this, but how would I know otherwise?  And whose counsel could I take if I had questions?”

 

“Thee would take mine.  As I have tried to counsel thee when my suspicions were first aroused.”

 

Amanda looked at her, her resentment not small.  “After twenty years of rejection, you cannot believe that would be an option I would find easy to consider or pursue.”

 

T’Pau sighed.  “I see there are yet repercussions to my actions.  We have spoken before of this. I have tried to make it clear to thee.”

 

“Yes, you have.  But trust is not simply a matter of words for humans. It is also …emotional. I think that is true for Vulcans as well.”

 

“For some trusts, yes.  And for what must pass between us now, this needs be one of them.”

 

Amanda searched the matriarch’s unrevealing face.  “I don’t understand T’Pau.  What are you saying about Sarek?  What is wrong with him?”

 

“He perceives,” T’Pau struggled with how to explain this to a human,  “that you have challenged.”

 

 “But that’s ridiculous.  I haven’t asked for a divorce, or chosen a champion.  I have… yielded to him, Mother, every time.”

 

“I do not say that you did challenge, but that he perceives such.  Perhaps it could be said…that thy champion is thy son.  Seeing Amanda’s lack of comprehension she clarified. “Thee favored the child over the father.”

 

Amanda stared at T’Pau. “But Sarek and I have fought before about Spock, and while he has gotten angry, he has never behaved like this.”

 

“Your son declared his adulthood.  Defied his father.  And …you love your child.”

 

“He’s my son.”

 

“Yet your …emotions… are not common to a Vulcan woman.  Sarek is a Vulcan male in the prime of his life T’Amanda, and thee are his wife.  He will not …tolerate…any rivals to his mate’s attention.  Not even a grown child of his house.”

 

“T’Pau, I can’t stop loving my son.”

 

“T’Amanda, I believe thy husband is in plak vrie, the blood syndrome.”  The matriarch waited, but Amanda only looked puzzled, as if searching her memory.

 

“I have never heard of this.”

 

“It is not quite the  acute madness of the plak tow, but a chronic condition that can be as or even more dangerous.   He perceives that thee has challenged him, and his passions have been aroused.  Once aroused, such passions are not easily quieted.”

 

“So he is ill.”  Amanda sighed.  “I should have …I knew something was wrong.”

 

“Not ill.  He has no disease.  It is a condition, a factor, of his biology.  A syndrome.  Thee could not know of this.  It is very rare.”

 

“But you are saying he can’t help himself.”

 

“Thee are the only one who can offer him help.”

 

Amanda drew a deep breath.  “What must I do?”

 

T’Pau considered her, not quite believing the human’s response.  “Thee will not like it.”

 

“Just tell me.”

 

“T’Amanda, a female who challenges, becomes property of the victor.  She has no rights, no property, no status in society.  She has no voice.  She has no presence.”

 

“How long?”

 

“Forever.”

 

Amanda made a single, strangled sob, deep in her throat. 

 

“T’Amanda.  Thee has not challenged.  Legally, thee has done nothing wrong.  Even a Vulcan mother can protect her child.”

 

Amanda turned.  “But you are saying Sarek perceives that I have.”

 

“His blood burns.”

 

Amanda wiped her tears away.  “Is there no cure?”

 

T’Pau hesitated.  “He may come out of it in the natural course of time.”

 

Amanda looked up.  “Is that all you have to offer?  My God, when?  When he kills me?  When I am terrorized enough that I leave, and that kills him?  How bad does this have to get, before we do something?  There must be some recourse.”

 

T’Pau was quiet.  “I will not make light of this, T’Amanda. My son desires you fiercely.  His condition is serious, and dangerous.  If it is not attended to, it will worsen, rather than dissipate.”

 

She searched that emotionless face.  “He will die?”

 

T’Pau nodded.  “Undoubtedly not before he kills thee.”

 

Amanda closed her eyes in pain.  She shook her head.  “No.  I will not let him die because of me.”  She looked up.  “Did I really do this to him?”

 

“It has been suggested by the healers that because you are not Vulcan, his passions have no check.”  T’Pau looked at her human daughter’s crumpled face with compassion.  “But I do not believe this.  Nor should thee. Our line goes back to Surak. We  were once the greatest warriors.  We have the strongest passions. Our control has always been hard won.  My son has always been…headstrong.  From his first meetings with you, he desired you.  I did my best to dissuade him and he would have none of me.  Such a passion has been of deep concern to me since then… for it can be difficult to control, and can as easily spiral out of control. I would have wished he had never met you.  It requires the strictest attendance.”  She flicked an eyebrow. “You have done well to manage it these many years. I know my son has tried to follow our disciplines.  And you have honored them as well.”

 

Amanda looked back on twenty years of marriage, and saw all the times she had failed them herself, or worse,  tempted Sarek past them. How she had sometimes hated the lessons and controls Sarek had imposed on them. Thought them unnecessary.  And he had been right after all, and she had been wrong. Love didn’t save one from Vulcan biology. “Not completely, no.  Oh, this is my fault!”

 

“He is Vulcan.  We are warriors as well. Thee are only Human. Little more than a child.  Thee were only a child when he took thee to wife.   I do not agree with thy assessment.”

 

“By Vulcan standards, my age is little more than a child, but that is not so for humans. I take responsibility for my actions.  And my failings.”

 

“Vulcan or human, child or woman, thee are female.  It was for Sarek to control, and thee to yield. That is our way.”

 

Amanda lowered her head.  “I was not the most submissive of wives.”

 

“T’Amanda, I have also been a wife.  Does thee think submission easy even for Vulcan women?”

 

Amanda looked up, coloring, but also in disbelief that T’Pau should be the one Vulcan woman who would discuss this with her.

 

“Our practices have reasons, but they are no guarantee.  I tell thee that Sarek has always been headstrong and passionate.”  She eyed the human woman before her. “I did not think thee would survive five years, much less twenty.  In this circumstance, Spock’s disobedience and your defense of him and challenge came  too closely on the heels of Sarek’s last pon far.  The flames were not entirely extinguished before they were rekindled at this chronic level  It was … an unfortunate combination of events that created a catalyst for his condition. Not thee.”

 

“What can be done?  There must be something.  Some treatment?  Some hope?”

 

“The next acute phase may dissipate this situation.”

 

“But that’s two years away.  I can’t…” she hesitated.  “Mother, I do not think either of us can withstand Sarek’s anger for that long.  If it continues to escalate as it has begun, neither one of us will survive.”

 

“I concur.  Thee have only a few options, none estimable.”  T’Pau steeled herself to give the counsel she must to the girl.   It was her duty as matriarch, even when the life was her son’s.  “Thee can choose a proper champion and challenge--”

 

Amanda stared at her, stunned.  “What are you saying?”

 

“According to our customs, it is your best chance for life.  Custom does not require you to stay with a husband in such a dangerous state.  If the challenger you select defeats Sarek, you would be free of his violent passion.  Even if Sarek defeats him, the combat will likely spur him into a pon far, which you have survived successfully before.  He may kill you, but he may not.”

 

“No.  That’s impossible. There must be a better solution.”

 

T’Pau eyed her.  “Thee can continue your present course, hoping time will heal him.”

 

“That’s not working.”

 

“I agree.”  T’Pau considered her a moment, regretfully, but said the words that must be said..  “Thee are an outworlder.  Thee have an option that would not be considered by Vulcans.  Thee can leave.”

 

Amanda stared at her, stunned.  “You want me to leave?  Leave him like this?”

 

“I did not speak of want.”

 

Amanda frowned in confusion.  “Do you want me to leave because you have someone else you want him to bond with?”

 

T’Pau shook her head, eyes on Amanda.  “In his condition he would refuse any other. That is not an option.”

 

“So you expect me to leave him … to just let him die? For he would die if I did that, wouldn’t he?”

 

For a moment, the matriarch hesitated, then she nodded, no emotion on her face.  Amanda knew it was not for lack of them, but only from strict control practiced.  “In agony.”

 

Amanda drew a breath in horror.  “No.  T’Pau, I can’t.  How could you think it of me?  I may be only human, but I have absorbed something of Vulcan culture.  I will not leave my husband to such a death.”

 

“The alternative if thee refuses to challenge is to stay and face that he undoubtedly would cause yours.  Your chances, T’Amanda, are very small.”

 

“Smaller than his if I leave?”

 

T’Pau would not be drawn.  “Small.  And then he will die anyway. It is a forgone conclusion. Thee at least would live.”

 

Amanda blinked, tears spilling from her eyes.  “Is there no alternative of which you have not spoken?”

 

T’Pau hesitated.  “There is yet a final, rare option.  Less pleasant perhaps than the others, but…”

 

“Tell me!”

 

“ Just this.   A chattel cannot rouse the same anger as a bondmate in challenge.  A chattel is a possession only.”

 

“But you said--”

 

T’Pau was silent for a long moment.  “This syndrome is rare, but it has occurred in our line before,” she finally said, her gaze thoughtful, words slow.   “A wife who made peace with an enemy clan to prevent a devastating war.  Her bondmate was also recently post pon-far, and succumbed to the vrie.  Rather than raise challenge and divorce, flee or allow her husband to succumb, T’Ianye choose chattel status, hoping that would ease Surak’s flame.  She was successful.  And she was honored for that sacrifice.  Surak recovered,  returned her to bondmate status and acknowledged her role in pursuit of peace.”

 

“The wife of Surak?”

 

“As I said, it was in our direct line.”

 

“I had never heard of this.”

 

“It is rare. This is not a condition of which we take pride.”

 

Amanda drew a deep shuddering breath.  “So you believe that my choosing this would also curb Sarek’s aggressive spiral? Maybe cure him?”

 

“It should help to relieve the aggression. The chattel state is countenanced and practiced in our society for this reason, in cases where the alternative would invariably be death.   It may cure.  T’Amanda, this is millennia old legend.  A Vulcan woman in your position chooses challenge, always.  Logically, her chances are much greater.”

 

“Even as either her husband or her champion dies?”

 

“This is true. Her chances are greater then those who fight for her.  Her choice of challenge is thus a logical one.”

 

“I’m glad I’m not...logical, then.”  She hesitated. “Are you sure about this legend?  Is it really feasible?”

 

“There is no more immediate precedent for choosing chattel status.   I do not tell you what to do, for there are no absolute answers. No preferable answers.”

 

“But you think this is his best chance to live?”

 

T’Pau studied the girl, surprised anew at her determination.  She seemed to think nothing of herself. Perhaps she did not yet understand.  She was not lacking in intelligence, but intelligence came in all forms.  “It is his best chance to live. It is not your best chance to live.”

 

Amanda bridled. “I will not flee on a starship and leave my husband to certain death, nor will I hire some thug to attack him.  I married him, T’Pau, for better or for worse. If this is worse, then so be it.”  She looked at T’Pau. “Now that I know, now that there is a reason for what is happening, something I can address, perhaps, alleviate, it is my duty to stay.  Don’t you see that?”

 

“I see it, T’Amanda.  I did not think that you would.”

 

Amanda flushed.  “Because I am human.”

 

“Because such risk combined with such status offers no logical benefits to any Vulcan woman.  I would not expect anyone to freely choose it. I meant no insult to thee.  It has simply not been chosen in millennia.”

 

Amanda looked uncertain in turn.  “I don’t know anything about the history involved or of choosing such a status.  So little of your ancient culture. Sarek tries to explain it to me sometimes but I confess I have never been a very attentive pupil.  I did not …believe… the relevance, for us.  Do you have the text of this legend?”

 

“I will see you are provided with it, and a historian to interpret for thee.”

 

Amanda looked uneasy.  “As to the latter, please…don’t.  I would rather not discuss my marriage or my options with… strangers.”

 

“T’Amanda, our clan historian may be unknown to thee, but it is his function and role to attend in service to the clan rulers on such points as these.  It is his duty to thee as such.”

 

“I am not--”

 

“Thee are wife to Sarek.  The role is attendant.   He would perform it with honor…and honor thee in the execution of it.”

 

“Even so.”  Amanda sighed. “If I must discuss it with him, I’d prefer that you also be present.”

 

“I am honored.  This is wise.  Thee understand what might be relevant millennia ago will still need to be amended by thee for current society.”

 

Amanda put her head in her hands.  “How am I, as a Human, even with your aid, supposed to apply the circumstances of a 5000 year old Vulcan legend that I don’t even understand, to a rare almost unknown illness not even Vulcans are all that familiar with and extrapolate out a current solution?  I am not a Vulcan scholar or xenologist, or a Vulcan healer.  I am not qualified for this.  And it is my husband’s life at stake.  And my own.”

 

“It will be difficult, but as it is your husband and your life thee are the most qualified.”

 

“There are times, Mother, when I wish I had never heard of Vulcans.”

 

“Understandable.  But when such wishing is done, the problem still exists.  While it is daunting, certainly you will be given such council as you desire.  Then you need only consider the continuum of what can be done, T’Amanda,  and choose among it for your solutions.

 

Amanda nodded slowly.  T’Pau’s matter-of-fact recital of what needed to be done was calming.  “Very well.”

 

“I will have the text brought to thee.  When thee have reviewed it, we will conference.  We  believe Sarek has gone to the desert to meditate, but when he returns,  we will send thy husband to thee.”  T’Pau paused.  “Thy husband, T’Amanda.  Remember, that even if thee chooses chattel status, thee are still wife.  Thee has not challenged.”

 

“A difference which makes no difference is no difference,” Amanda said, numbly quoting a Harvard philosopher she had once studied as a student there.

 

T’Pau flicked an eyebrow.  “Logical.”  She rose and left the room.  Amanda waited until she had gone before saying softly to herself. “And there are times when I am sick to death of that, too.”

 

 

 

They did not find Sarek.  Rather he returned to his home, over the sheer rock walls that were a natural defense behind the old fortress.  When he was spotted, the guards posted there notified the Palace.  Sarek arrived still dusty from his desert trek, his control a thin mask.

 

“Where is she, Mother?”

 

“Sarek, wait--”

 

“How dare you take her from my home!  She is mine!”

 

“Kroykah!”  The ancient command halted Sarek as if it were a phaser stun.  “Thy concern is belated.  If I had not so taken her, she would have died from the injuries you inflicted upon her.”

 

Sarek froze, sheeted pain behind his eyes. “I did not--”

 

“Yes.  Thee did.”

 

Sarek took a shuddering breath, and T’Pau guided him to a chair.  “She will live.  Her injuries were serious, and lack of attention magnified them. But she is in no danger now.  Thee can rest easy on that score.”

 

Sarek raised his eyes to his mother.  “Your interest in my wife, Mother, is belated as well.  I would wish thee would leave us in peace.”

 

“Thee are not in peace.”

 

“By your interference.”

 

“Thee blames me?”

 

“I blame thee for using her as a pawn between us.”

 

T’Pau was silent a moment, not denying some truth in that. “What is past is past, my son.  It is your future of which I am concerned.”

 

“Leave her alone, and my future is secure.”

 

“Sarek, surely you realize thy actions were not …normal.”

 

“I…lost …control.  But I was provoked. It will not reoccur, particularly if thee will cease to pry into my personal affairs.   Thee cared nothing for my wife all these years, do not seek her attentions now.”

 

“Sarek, I believe thee are in plak vrie.  Thee must realize this is true.  Would my attentions to T’Amanda cause such a response were it not so?  Would thee so abuse a long cherished wife if it were not so?  Would thee reject a child--”

 

“That is enough!”

 

T’Pau subsided.  “If thee cares at all for thy wife, Sarek, then thee must let the healers determine thy condition.  Thee owe it to her.  Let it go unrecognized and next time, she will die.”

 

He lowered his head, a muscle in his jaw twitching.

 

“Thy fear is natural.  But whatever is to be found, thee need not fear.”

 

Sarek raised his head.  “You have spoken of this to her.”  It was not a question.  “How dare you!”

 

“I have told her of the possibility.  Sarek, it is her right to know.”

 

“Can you not even spare her this?”

 

“It is past sparing.  My duty to both of thee requires me to speak of this equally.  Thee has options.  She has options.”

 

“She is mine!”

 

“Sarek, you must let the healers examine you.  They can offer some help, even if only temporary. Enough to discuss this, at least.”

 

“Very well,” Sarek rose.  “I will do this now…for her.  But then,” he fixed T’Pau with a determined gaze. “Then I will see her, Mother.  And thee are not to interfere.”

 

“No.  I will not,”  T’Pau promised.  And as Sarek left, she raised her eyes to the rooms above where the human slept.  And waited.  And then she waited herself for the conclusion she knew was forgone.  Her son had never spoken so to her.  He was in vrie.  A madness not acute, but chronic, that could last not just for the few days of Pon Farr, but for weeks, months, seasons, years.  Unlike Pon Farr there were no rituals to get one through it, no hope that it would soon lift, no anticipated conclusion.  His rage could know no bounds,  have no ending.  He might pull himself out of it, he might not.  But there was no known cure.  And only one surcease.

 

His life now depended on a human willingly facing that, defenseless.

 

Even T’Pau quailed.

 

 

T’Pau came slowly, reluctantly to the rooms where her daughter recovered from her son’s first attack.  They had had several conversations in the time before and after Sarek returned, discussing possibilities.  She had been …amazed at the human’s fortitude before such prospects.  Amanda had listened to the clan historians recite the relevant legend, attended while they extrapolated modern equivalencies,  examined options, considered Sarek’s needs, her needs, and made hard decisions, standing ground on only a few minor points. She feared for her future, and that of her husband.  She cried tears, unashamed,  over her options before the impassive Vulcans surrounding her.  And yet, stood firm in spite of her tears, her fears. T’Pau had long associated emotion with weakness, she had never seen it demonstrate a point of strength, yet T’Amanda seemed undiminished by her tears, even the stronger for them.  T’Pau considered she just might survive.  And…her son as well.  If the girl could just steel herself to go through with it.  She had been resolute so far, but she yet had to face Sarek, and actually give up her past life.  T’Pau could not believe it, could not hope in the strength of a human, until that happened.  And that time had come.

 

She entered, and Amanda, not sleeping, rose a little.

 

“Sarek has been found and brought here.” 

 

Amanda looked up, her eyes full with both hope and dread.

 

“The healers have  examined him.  Experts have been brought and have confirmed.  His condition is as we suspected.”

 

Amanda lowered her gaze to her hands. “That’s it, then.”

 

T’Pau looked down at her.  “If thee are ready, I will send him to you.”

 

Amanda hesitated,  forestalled her.  “Is he…”

 

“He has been with the healers.  Their assistance has given him a…temporary level of control.  It will not last, but it should last until this is done.”

 

“All right.  I’m ready to see him.”

 

Sarek stepped into the room and paused just inside the door.  “Greetings, my wife.”

 

She swallowed hard at the sight of him, remembering their last encounter, and curled her hands more tightly around her knees. “Sarek.   Come in, please.”

 

He crossed over to her slowly.  There was no threat in his stance or his visage, but she still tensed when he moved to sit beside her on the bed.  “Amanda, I regret--”

 

“No.”  Amanda shook her head, forestalling him.  “Don’t apologize.  I don’t want to discuss …that.  Just -- can you bring me something to write on, Sarek?”

 

He hesitated, then he went to a table across the room, and came back with a pad and a stylus. 

 

Amanda rubbed the back of her hand across her eyes, and began to write.  “I have been thinking.  Do you remember Thaddeus Longworth, Sarek?”

 

One eyebrow winged upward.  “Your department chair at Harvard.  Your former thesis advisor.”

 

“Yes. He was an old friend.”  She looked up at her husband.  So familiar.  A faint line of puzzlement across his brow.  And so well loved, even now.   “He tried to talk me out of our marriage.”

 

Sarek stared at her mutely.

 

“But he gave me this wedding present.”  She tore off the top sheet, handed it to him, and began to write anew, making a list.  She had considered but not written this ahead of time.  She had not had the courage.  If she had, the sight of it, set down in black and white might have spurred her to flee in spite of her injuries and all of T’Pau’s less than ceremonial guards.

 

Sarek looked at what she had written and then looked back at her, watching as she continued her task.  “I do not understand, my wife.”

 

Amanda swallowed hard again, glancing at the sheet of paper in her husband’s hand, and then turned her pad over so that she would not have to look at the list in her own.  Coward, echoed faintly in her head. “He told me I was a fool, going to live on an alien planet, among people and customs I didn’t fully understand.  And he wanted to be sure I always had something of an escape route.  So he found out what Federation banks were on Vulcan, and he put funds for me in a coded passworded account.  Just in case.  I had laughed at him at the time.  More fool me, I guess.”  She smiled a bit at her once naiveté.  “And I forgot all about it, until last week.”

 

Sarek looked down at his sheet, comprehension dawning on his brow.

 

“I’ve given you the code and password for the account he set up for me.  The code is “Wedding Present”.  The password is Mayday.  Seeing his puzzlement at the latter, she clarified.  “An anglicized version of the French Mai’dez.  ‘Help me.’”  She folded her hands in her lap tightly.  “He thought I would remember that.  And I did.  And now I want you to go to that bank, take out those funds, and put them somewhere where I can never get at them.  Then I want you to come back here, and show me proof of it.  I want to see the bank records.  Do you understand me?  I want proof that those funds are out of my reach.”  She waited while he digested that, and nodded.  “You see, now it is my wedding present to you.  Not quite what he expected.  Well.  Who of us could have foreseen these circumstances?”

 

He stared at her without speaking.

 

“In retrospect, my understanding of Vulcan culture was little better than his, perhaps worse, even with all my training.   But it doesn’t matter. I have different motivations.”   She went back to her writing, finished her list and drawing a deep breath, tore the second sheet off the pad.  “Enough. After you finish at the bank, I want you do to everything on this list.  Every last thing, Sarek.” She handed the sheet to him.

 

He took it from her, and she watched him.  Watched him take the sheet in his hands, beautiful hands that had both delighted and terrorized her.  Watched him hold her life and freedom in that sheet of paper.  A life and freedom she was putting in his hands, as if it were no more than a sheet of paper.

 

Get over it, Amanda.  What’s done is done.  There’s no going back now.  You’ve made your choice.

 

Sarek scanned the list written in his wife’s delicate handwriting.  His brows rose after the first few items and he raised his head to stare at her. 

 

She met him, inexorable.  “And when you come back, I want you to have proof of all of it. Or demonstrate proof of it.  I need this to be…irrevocable… for me.  For you.  For both of us.  I don’t want either of us to have any ambiguity about it.  I want this understanding absolute between us.”

 

His eyes  returned to the sheet of paper in his hand, stopped half way down the list and he returned to hers. “You are not giving up teaching?”

 

“I’m taking a sabbatical.  For at least the next six months. All of this, Sarek.  Irrevocably set for at least six months.  We won’t speak of this again for that length of time.  Neither of us.  And after that, for as long as you decide.  I will never speak of this to you again, except at your request.  It can stay this way forever.  It will be up to you.”  She stared into his shocked eyes. “Go and do it, Sarek.  And come back when it’s done.  And remember, I’ll want proof.”  She turned away.

 

Sarek got slowly to his feet and then paused. She could feel his eyes on her.  “Are you sure of this, Amanda?  You understand…what this means.”

 

“I’m sure that this may be our only chance.”

 

“It is not what I would have wished…for you.”

 

She looked up at him. “Do you think I don’t know that, my husband?”  She shook her head. “Sometimes the fates are not kind.  But don’t doubt me, Sarek.  I will do this.  We will do this.  Whether we wish it or not.”

 

Sarek looked at her, nodded once, grimly, and left.

 

 

T’Pau  watched the door close behind her son, and waited, her body and mind still past all hoping, for her son’s return.  T’Amanda had seemed resolute.  But the thing was impossible, illogical, something no sane being would choose.  Now she would know if a human had courage that a Vulcan did not.  She looked out unseeing at the palace grounds, at the guards she had left posted still standing silent sentry, waiting, watching, for the kind of rescue raid that might have happened if this were millennia ago and Amanda were Vulcan. Wars had been fought over less than this, over the subjugation of an honored wife.  She was half expecting it herself, even though she knew humans had no such honor, no conception of what was happening to one of their clan, their kin.

 

She heard her son’s familiar footstep, and looked up, forcing herself to meet his gaze, whatever it portended.  She would know now if T’Amanda  had faced the  husband who had abused her so, and said the words in his presence, to his face, to commit herself to the life of chattel, perhaps forever.  Sarek’s life, for her freedom.  Even now, T’Pau could not believe or  hope, that she would actually follow through with the prospect.  To put herself back in the same hands that nearly had killed her, would have, without T’Pau’s intervention. And to do so past anyone’s intervention.

 

No, it was impossible.  No wonder T’Pau had reverted to Pre-Reform thinking in her posting of the guard, the thing itself was pre-Reform.  No logical modern Vulcan woman, no intelligent being would voluntarily agree to become the possession of a berserk Vulcan in the grip of vrie.

 

Sarek met her gaze, his set face no true mask for the raw pain it held, easy for a mother to see.  And T’Pau’s hope plummeted.  Challenge, then.  Or worse.  The human would leave, her son’s death then almost certain.

 

“She has chosen…chattel.”

 

And she saw his pain was not that of rejection, but of regret for the step that must be taken.  And hope returned to her, given back by a human who held her son’s life in her hands, and had given hers in return.

 

“It is…a great honor, an honor of legend, my son.  To you, and to her.”

 

Sarek  did not reply, and his eyes did not react to that, still set in unmasked pain.  “I have…tasks…to perform.”

 

“Go then. Thy chattel will be safe here, till thy return.” It was an ancient formula she spoke, meant to soothe, but Sarek’s shoulders tensed and he swung back to his mother.

 

“I will do this -- as it seems I must.  But do not refer to her so before me, Mother.  I will not have it.”  His control nearly broke, and he turned, nearly fleeing from the room.

 

And T’Pau felt her own iron control, held throughout the horror of these past days, when she had faced what her son had come to, finally break in return, in relief.  She put her face in her hands, and wept in abject gratitude for this chance for her beloved son’s life.

 

 

 

As one of T’Pau’s oldest attendants, T’Lean could not fail to be aware of what had come to pass.  The castle bustled with the footfalls of healers and clan historians, and there had been long conferences between T’Pau, Sarek, the human and these others.   She could hardly believe her good fortune, and could not help but believe fate had portended it. For though  part of her shuddered with horror that the human’s fate might have been hers had she  married Sarek as had planned, yet she had not.  And even if she had, if these events had come to pass for her,  she would have chosen challenge as any logical woman would. But the human was not logical.  She had, foolishly, not so chosen.  And with that came the thought that her former plans were meant to be, after all.  In fact, the prospect could not be better.

 

The human was fit for no more than chattel, at best.  And chattel she was to be.  No longer wife, no longer Daughter.  The specter of a human bearing such titles, the family and clan inheritance that would follow and fall inevitably onto her shoulders would now cease.   A chattel had no face or voice, no position in society.  She was as nothing.  As was fitting. That specter was now lifted.  And when and if Sarek worked through the vrie, he would be free as if he were unmarried.  He would have need of a true wife.  For he had a position to uphold, and a chattel had no place in society.  A position she could help him with.  She would be wife.  Of course, there was some attendant danger, with a Vulcan susceptible to vrie, but no doubt that was the human’s fault.  If she died, the danger would no doubt pass.  And if he didn’t kill the human, she would even countenance his keeping the human in her role.  It was, after all,  not unheard of, in ancient times for a Vulcan to have both chattel and wife.  Why not now?  Particularly in their clan, where passions ran high.  Oh yes, she would countenance Sarek maintaining the human thus, freeing herself from such concerns.   One woman for bed, and one for all else, for clan inheritance, for social position, for intellectual companionship.  The idea made sudden, blinding sense to T’Lean.  The human probably would die at Sarek’s hand, but even if she did not,  T’Lean could see now that it was preferable that Sarek keep her.  If the vrie should return, or even in regular Pon Fars, he would have his chattel.  And she would still serve as wife in all else that mattered. Let the human fulfill his base needs.  It was what she was fit for, all she was fit for.  T’Lean had no longer a pressing desire to sully herself in passion and emotion, not if it meant risking her own neck in the Time with a male so dangerous as Sarek had proven to be.  But with the human filling that role, all the other honored aspects of mate could be fulfilled by her.  And when and if Sarek came through the vrie,  when he had regained his logic, and could think clearly,  she would suggest such to him.  And be heard.  At last.

 

She was thinking on this pleasurably, when one of T’Pau’s household staff came to her with a tray.  “This is for the Lady T’Amanda.”

 

T’Lean bridled at hearing that title still being used for one such as she.  But the staff were not as well informed as she as to happenings. The truth would come out in the fullness of time. “Take it to her then, it is nothing to me.”

 

“Matriarch has directed you are to attend the Lady, as is proper.”

 

T’Lean drew  a breath. It was proper, for T’Pau’s First Attendant to serve the First Wife when she was in residence.  Amanda had never been in residence before, so the duty had never fallen.  But if Amanda had ever held that role, and T’Lean did not acknowledge it, that time was past. She grew heady with the thought that her own time was nigh, her long waiting come to fruition.

 

“Know you not that the human is to be nothing but chattel from this time forward?   She is no longer wife.” T’Lean considered this richly, thinking of the human someday kneeling to her, humbled,  supplanted in Sarek’s home by herself. 

 

“Chattel wait on themselves,” she dismissed.  “Chattel wait on others.  She will wait on me in the fullness of time, when she is not fulfilling her baser role  in my husband-to-be’s bed.  No doubt a human is too clumsy to serve anywhere but there.  But perhaps, with judicious beating, even a human might manage some simple tasks.  We no longer treat chattel thus, since the reforms, but a human being little better than an animal, and no doubt understanding nothing less,  an exception can be made…for her . That much service will I do his chattel,  the back of my hand when she displeases me. Take her the tray yourself.   I will not attend such as her.”

 

The servant froze and T’Lean almost smiled, so great was her pleasure in finally stating such  a cherished truth, anticipating the pleasure that was to come, even if it shocked.  But then she noticed the woman’s gaze was beyond her. She turned, to see that T’Pau had come in behind them.  And the matriarch wore an expression T’Lean had never seen.

 

“Matriarch, I--”

 

T’Pau crossed the room, raised her hand and  for all her age, slapped T’Lean with Vulcan strength full across the face,  knocking her to the floor.

 

“Thee are not fit to wait on her!”

 

T’Lean bent before that fury, hand to her cheek, eyes swimming with unVulcan tears from the stinging shame of what was, according to ancient tradition, the most ignoble of insults from a clan leader.  And delivered before a servant!  “Matriarch--”

 

T’Pau looked down on T’Lean, hand still raised, fingers curling as if  itching to strike again.  “Thee have been in my service many years, T’Lean, so I will give thee one chance more.  Thee will beg my pardon for the insult to my Daughter.  And if I ever find that thee addresses or refers to her with anything but the respect due to her as such, thee can not only  find another’s service, thee will live clanless.”

 

T’Lean spoke through her lip that was now swelling, through the  blood filling her mouth from where she had cut the inside of her cheek on her own teeth.  “I beg forgiveness, Matriarch.”

 

“And T’Lean.”  T’Pau waited until the woman raised fearful eyes to hers.  “My son would never take such as thee even to chattel, much less wife.”

 

T’Pau turned her back on T’Lean, and took the tray. “I will wait on her.”  She gave the cringing T’Lean a look of disgust.  “And consider myself honored to do so.”

 

And T’Lean put her hand to the spreading green flush on her cheek, which would bloom into a telling handprint, the mark of disfavor, and considered the loss of all her hopes.

 

 

 

Three hours later, Sarek returned to the palace, his errands and preparations completed.  He had regained some control.  Indeed, oddly enough, the preparations had soothed that part of him that strove to rage past his flawed control.  Only his sadness had increased, but that he controlled as well.  What must be, must be accepted.   He  paused at the door of their suite, drew a deep breath, remarshalling his control and entered.

 

She was laying back, an arm thrown over her eyes.  Sleeping perhaps, or lost in thought. He approached her, studying her body as if he had never seen her.  Nor had he ever seen her thus, as chattel.  His.