Chapter Text
Spock could feel the rumble of the ship surrounding him, he knew none of the others on the ship other than his father could feel it as it was far too soft for their senses. He revelled in it secretly, an emotion that he considered safe. He hoarded it in his mind along with other, less safe emotions such as the warmth that blossoms through his chest when his mother smiles at him or the crackling anger he cannot help but feel when his father admonishes him for allowing his human side to show through. Spock can never understand how his mother doesn’t take his father’s words as an insult against her very nature, he takes it as such and he is only half human.
In fact the very reason that he is stood in the observation deck is because of his father.
“I would not have agreed to this transfer to Earth if I had known how it would affect you,” his father said, utterly detached as always.
“Explain,” Spock heard his voice as if it was coming from another, it mirrored his father’s tone perfectly and yet…
“You are a child caught between two worlds...I have endeavoured to educate you in Vulcan techniques of emotional control and balance, I have hired the best tutors to instruct you and the best mind healers to assess your progression and yet you continue to fail at every turn.”
Spock felt his entire world lurch at his father’s words. He had known his father had been disappointed in him, in his progress but to hear that fact laid bare had only served to compromise him further, “You feel that taking me to Earth will only make me more emotionally unstable.”
It was not a question.
“I do but it is too late now. Besides, I am beginning to think that true Vulcan control will always be beyond you.”
“Sarek!” His mother chastised him. She had remained quiet until then but apparently, that was too much. Spock knew his father was correct, however. While his psi abilities were advanced even for a full-blooded Vulcan his emotional control lacked which made him a liability, dangerous. The mind healer that had studied him his entire life had mentioned Kolinahr more than once and his father saw the merits in it but his mother was adamant that Kolinahr was something that he could do if he chose, not something to be forced on him.
“No, mother...he is correct. I will never be a true Vulcan or human. I will always be different. I don’t know why, in his wisdom, my father decided to have me. He must have known what sort of abomination would result,” Spock spat the words at his mother like venom who gasped, eyes shining with tears but it was his father that he wanted to hurt. Spock whipped around to look at him but as always his face gave nothing away. Before he knew it he had left the room and was running, he had no idea where he was going.
Spock sighed, looking at the stars around him, caught between the need to catalogue and categorise them and the desire to just look on, entranced. That dichotomy summed his entire life up, he couldn’t help but think. He tried to be a good Vulcan, to meditate and learn and control but they all saw through him: his father, his schoolmates, his mind healer. They all knew what his mother would never admit, that he was flawed, a mistake.
“Spock?” He turned around to see his mother standing at the entrance, how had he not heard her footsteps?
“Yes, mother?”
She walked over to him and placed a hand on his shoulder, he flinched and he could feel a wave of sadness from her at the wordless rejection. Yet another way he wouldn’t ever be good enough. Not Vulcan enough for his father, not human enough for his mother.
“Your father was out of line today, he often doesn’t realise that saying what he thinks isn’t the best course of action.”
“He was correct, was he not? I am not meeting expectations.”
“They have no right to place those expectations onto you!” Another wave of emotion, this time anger and indignation. Spock basked in his mother’s love like a Terran lizard in the sun, “Before you were born I asked him a question not dissimilar to the one you implied today: why do you want to have a child with me when it will be half human? Do you know what he said?”
“No, you never told me. In fact, you have never mentioned this incident before just now,” he replied and she chuckled.
“Just a humanism, my love. Anyway, he said ‘I love you because you are human, not in spite of it and any child we have will be even better because of it’ and I believe that he still thinks that. When his fellow ambassadors questioned his decision to have you he defended you tooth and nail, he told them of all your achievements with pride shining in his eyes and you know how rare any emotional display is for him. He is proud of you and all you have accomplished, I swear.”
“I find that assertion difficult to believe. He has never displayed anything close to resembling pride in his son,” he said bitterly.
“Ah, that is a lesson us humans need to learn, Spock,” she said conspiratorially, taking her hand from his shoulder and nudging him instead, “We crave affection and love. Vulcans do too, of course, don’t think that your need for your father’s love comes purely from my side of things. However, Vulcans are better at picking up on small cues and inferring things from that. You’ve read the papers on the subject.”
“Indeed. Vulcans, when compared to humans, are 56.34% better at picking up on microexpressions,” Spock didn’t need to list out the percentage as it didn’t noticeably add to his point but he did it because it made his mother laugh.
“When you add to that their psychic abilities that gives them a very unfair advantage in knowing how people feel without it being said, don’t you think? Sarek and I have had lots of arguments in our time, most of them because I felt unloved. I know how Vulcans are, of course, but as a human I need concessions to be made for me and it took a long time for him to understand that.”
“I don’t understand what your point is,” He furrowed his eyebrows, turning from her to look out onto the stars again, finding their distant pinpricks of light easier to deal with than his mother’s blatant display of emotion. He sometimes felt like she was taunting him with it, she could express her feelings in a way he never could.
“My point, my little sehlat, is that he does not make such concessions for you when he should. Now I understand why that is, Pon Farr is a serious business and an emotionally compromised Vulcan is a dangerous being, indeed. However you are not emotionally compromised, you control yourself admirably. You shield yourself properly, you don’t as a general rule show anger. For me, that is enough but for Sarek...he is scared.”
“Scared?”
“I have never told you this but when you were very young - no more than four - your parental bond to him began to deteriorate and no one could figure out why. Mind healers looked at it and no one could see what was wrong. You would cry and cry and cry, nothing could console you. I would hold you and rock you which usually helped but not this time. I could see how much pain you were in and it killed me to know I couldn’t help, it also killed me to see how seemingly unaffected Sarek was,” Spock nodded, turning to look back at her, “One day I snapped and told him that if this bond couldn’t be fixed you would die, how could he just watch his son dying? I was furious, tears were streaming down my face but I soon realised I wasn’t the only one crying.”
“What?” Spock gasped, he couldn’t even imagine such a thing. Though given how good his mother was at telling stories he could almost see it. He felt like a child again, being tucked in and told a bedtime story.
“Yes, my Sarek, your father, Vulcan ambassador to Earth and utterly controlled being was crying because he didn’t want you to die. I could see him trying to gain back control but he just couldn’t, we cried together for hours until suddenly he straightened up and looked at me and without a word he left the room. I didn’t follow but eventually, my curiosity won out..”
“Human,” Spock added, almost snorting.
“Exactly,” she winked, “Anyway, I looked for him only to find him in your room holding you with his hands on your meld points. You weren’t crying, you were sleeping and though it could have been a trick of the light...I swear Sarek was smiling.”
Spock didn’t know how to feel, not an hour ago he’d been absolutely irate with his father and now...he didn’t know what he felt. If he had been much, much younger he would have cried but now that was not a possibility. He was about to speak when his mother spoke again.
“Sarek always wanted you to thrive on Vulcan and he knew that in order for that to happen you needed to learn to control yourself so your emotions didn’t eat you from the inside out. That is something I have never truly understood, the Vulcan need to hide emotions away, but I have seen Sarek’s mind and I know that if he didn’t keep his emotions in check he would be no more than a wild animal but you...I’m not so sure. I often wonder if you’d have been brought up on Earth if you wouldn’t be so sad…”
“I’m not sad, mother. Vulcans don’t feel sadness,” he regurgitated the words of his father.
“No use lying to me, my sehlat, I know better. I’m bonded to a Vulcan, after all. When I tell you that Vulcans feel more intensely than humans do, I’m telling you the truth, I would know after all. You’re a combination of the best things from both of us,” she reached up, running a hand over his cheek and as her fingers brushed over his meld points he wished he was six again and learning how to meld so that he could luxuriate in her love again, “you will be a great man and you will find your own way.”
“You can’t know that,” he protested.
“Maybe not, but a mother has a certain intuition about her son…” He wanted to ask what she meant but didn’t, he wasn’t sure he could handle her reply, “I can see I’ve given you a lot to think about, so I’ll leave you to yourself. I wish I could say to you that your father will apologise to you but that isn’t something I can promise so I won’t.”
“I will come back to our quarters when I’m less...distressed.”
“Of course, take all the time you need.”
Now he was left to his own devices again. It wasn’t particularly late but he knew that given that they were to arrive on Earth tomorrow and that there would be a lot to do that day he needed approximately 4.5 hours sleep to function optimally. He found himself not caring about optimal function at the moment, however, as the thought of returning to his quarters seemed unconscionable at the moment. He pressed a finger against a calming trigger point in his wrist to calm him down, it was a technique that most Vulcans grew out of needing by five but not him.
“Sixteen years old and still needing childish calming techniques,” he hissed, “and talking to myself...utterly illogical.”
Spock leaned against the railings in front of the window as he looked out onto the stars again. He had familiarised himself with the stars neighbouring Earth long ago but as he was coming at them from the opposite angle that they were usually displayed in it made them look utterly unfamiliar. Just like the place he was going. Spock wished he felt a calling to Earth but he didn’t, he felt no pull, no kinship to the humans that resided there. In fact he felt utterly non-human, whenever his mother referred to him as human it felt odd to him in a way that being referred to as Vulcan never did which was illogical as he was equal part human and Vulcan. It seemed that his time on Earth would be more difficult than he would have liked without even taking into account that fact that San Francisco, where they were going to be stationed, was practically an arctic tundra compared to Vulcan. Spock sighed again, feeling lost as always.