Work Text:
It had been ten hours since Sybok had gone missing. Ten hours. He did not return from his after-school lessons and his communicator was shut off. While I was quick to alert the authorities, positive that something would be done right away, I was informed that any child younger than sixteen could only be reported missing after twenty-four hours. So, true to Vulcan style, they couldn’t do anything unless he hadn’t been seen in twenty-four hours.
“The authorities patrol the city area constantly, Amanda.” explained Sarek. “If he is seen, they will alert us, and bring him home.”
While that calmed my nerves slightly for about three hours. We were going on ten and a half hours, and I could do nothing, but I continued to pace the length of my living room alternating between biting my nails and rubbing my aching temples while my husband sat on the sofa, watching me pace as if I were some immersive documentary on the Teachings of Surak.
I sighed in frustration, glancing at the clock beside me above the lit fireplace.
“It’s going on ten and a half hours now, Sarek. We should call the police again.”
“The authorities have already stated that nothing can be done until Sybok has not returned for twenty-four hours. Again, my wife, I have explained that they patrol the area continuously. You need not worry yourself sick about Sybok.”
The calm in his voice was enough to make me want to throw something. How on earth could be so calm? Our son is missing! I rolled my eyes, continuing to pace,
“The police really do pick their times to do something involving missing children. With Michael they acted so quickly, but with Sybok… oh no not until twenty-four hours.”
“Michael’s circumstances were different from Sybok’s.”
“I’m fully aware of that Sarek,” I sighed, the tips of my fingers digging circles into my temples, “but it doesn’t help my frustration… or my fear. Are you sure you didn’t see him in the city when you looked?”
“I have checked many places he may be considering his actions during the last year, and he was unseen.”
“Brothels?” the word fell from my mouth like vomit. I bit down at the last bit of white nail on my thumb.
“I was unaware he was-“
“I’m surprised you haven’t smelled it given your heightened senses. Those women always wear the strongest of perfume.” I said, adding the last sentence with a whisper.
The sound of a lock halted my thoughts. Lifting the bottom of my robe, I ran through the corridor, sighing in relief as Sybok opened the door falling to his knees, laughing.
Smelling the inhibitors, the closer I got it didn’t take a rocket scientist to realize he was drunk, and high. I wanted to scream, I wanted to yell. I could feel the anger swelled in my chest.
I walked over to him and wrapped my arms around his shoulder, just in time to save him from falling flat onto his face as I simultaneously swallowed the bile down my throat when I got a riff of just how horrible he smelled. Sugar, alcohol, and drugs, sweat, and perfume.
“Mannndy!” he slurred in a sing-song way, wrapping his arms around my shoulders. “You’re here… I missed you.”
“I see that you are once again under the influence of multiple inhibitors.” I turned my head to see Sarek at my side, he hooked an arm under Sybok’s arm and helped me lift him off his knees and onto his feet.
“Of course, I’m here.” I told the boy full of annoyance, “I live here. Now, where have you been? What have you taken and with whom have you been?” I asked, as he tried to focus on my eyes. “We were worried sick. Michael was beside herself for hours worried where you might be!”
“That’s all you ever do, worry, worry, worry. Do you ever stop?” His head bobbing side to side made him off balance again. I grabbed his arm to stable him while Sarek grabbed his other arm and together we walked through the corridor and to the sitting room.
“Answer your mother, Sybok.” Sarek demanded. While his voice was calm and flat, I could feel the annoyance through our bond.
“It’s called drugs.” Sybok slurred, dragging his feet he stopped as we reached half-way down the corridor. He turned to his father and smiled, “You could try it, loosen up.”
“Don’t talk to your father like that!” I snapped, and with a push urged us to walk on. Reaching the sitting room, I plopped him down onto the sofa. “And no one needs that shit to ‘loosen up’. It’s called therapy, and now that I have your attention perhaps you should try it.”
When he simply chuckled, I realized I wasn’t going to get anywhere with it now, so I continued with, “Now, I refer back to my previous question, where have you been and what have you taken, and with whom have you been?”
“Why do you suddenly you care?” He leaned his head back and looked up at the ceiling.
A question that caused me to swallow the biggest scoff a person could produce.
“Suddenly?” The word filled with the most silent and controlled anger I had felt in years.
“Your father had been out looking for you for three hours, while I finally managed to get Michael to sleep after she spent the last five hours crying at your absence and I’ve been trying to talk to you for months about what could possibly be causing you to go down this horrific path, but you refuse to speak to me.”
“Speak? Speak?” He scoffed loudly “You don’t want to speak; you just want to send me away. You and Sarek.”
I crossed my arms and stood in front of him next to the sofa, “Sybok, you coming home intoxicated and high is not good influence for Spock and Michael, and since you won’t talk about it, what do you expect us to do? A rehabilitation centre will know how to help you. Not to mention if the Paparazzi find you out like this and take pictures-“
“Sarek’s reputation, oh yes. The thing that matters most!” His words were slurred but nonetheless clear.
“Sybok-“ Sarek chimed,
I held up my hand in protest, “I got this.” I turned back to the boy on the sofa and took in a breath to calm myself, “It is not about your father’s reputation, Sybok; it is about our safety. Spock, Michael, and you. Paparazzi finding this out, the picture leaking, this would give the extremists-”
“And since when have you or Sarek cared about my safety? It’s always Spock and Michael, but what about me? You only now just mention me. ”
“We’ve never stopped caring about your safety.” Sarek said.
“Ha!” his laugh so loud it made me jump, from both the sound and the suddenness “That’s a joke if I ever heard one.”
“It is not a joke.” claimed Sarek.
“Yea, sure…well if that’s all it is I’m going to bed.”
“No, you’re not!” I intercepted him, running into my hand as he stood up forced him back down. “You’re staying right here.”
“No, I’m not.” He protested.
“Yes, you are.” I insisted, “Besides if you stood up at this point you’d fall flat on your face.”
“You will be going to a rehabilitation centre in Gol.” Sarek said suddenly.
I whipped around; and shot him a sharp look. Are you kidding me?! You blurt it out like that!?
“I knew it!” He stood, but when he got his feet, he started to stumble. I reached out and steadied him, grabbing his arm and pulling him back to center him. “Sending me away again. The bastard, the problem.”
“You are not the problem. You are troubled.” remarked Sarek.
“I am not!” He bolted off the sofa.
“You are.”
He was going to snap, Sybok was getting closer and closer to Sarek. He was going to strike him if I didn’t do something. I stepped between them, taking my hand, I placed it gently on Sybok’s chest and pushed him gently away from his father. “Sy, Sy, calm down.” I said, my voice low. “Go upstairs and cool down… please.”
His hands bawled into fists; his eyes focused intensely on his fathers. “Go upstairs.” I told him again attempting to break him out of his violent trance, “Go upstairs and cool down.”
“No.” was all he said.
“Yes, Sy.” I said more firmly, “Go upstairs.”
“Don’t tell me what to do!” He swiped my hands off his chest.
“Sy, please. Go-“
“Don’t tell me what to do! YOU ARE NOT MY MOTHER!”
The words stung, like a dagger to the chest. Right where it hurt. I’d been in his life since he was three, I can still see his baby face in his now almost formed man face, a face that deeply resembled his mother. He was her twin.
“Sybok, I believe you should le-“
I held my hand up, a gesture that immediately silenced my husband.
“You’re right.” I muttered; my voice shaky with tears “I’m not your mother… she’s dead.” My deadpan tone made even my husband raise his brow in confusion, I heard him call my name, before I continued,
“I’m sorry she can’t be here with you and I’m sorry I’m not her.”
The child’s face dropped, little by little, I could see his layers peeling away like an onion cut for Plomeek soup. Onion, I permitted him to help me cut when he was younger with a child-safe knife.
“And even though you say you have no family, that your father disowns you or that your grandmothers distant and cold-“
“She is.” He interjected, his voice shaking with tears and anger. Tears and anger I knew and understood all too well.
“-I am here.” I continued, “I will always be here, and I will NEVER leave no matter how hard you try to push me away. I’m the best you’ve got, Sy and I love you more than anything in this world and I’ll be damned If I’m going to sit and watch you destroy your life with inhibitors, drugs, and prostitutes.”
In one stride I was inches away from him, and even though he reeked of sugar, sweat, perfume, and other drugs which threatened to make me hurl, I didn’t stop. I couldn’t stop. I arched my neck and stared into the eyes of the almost fully grown man in front of me. He was well taller than me and could overpower me but contrast to what I thought I would feel, I wasn’t scared. I was angry.
“If you won’t fight for yourself,” I said, my voice calm and collected “and continue to go down this path of destruction then I will fight for you… as your guardian, caregiver, next of kin, and mother.”
I watched a single tear fall down his cheek, the silence threatened to spur on my own tears.
“What will you do?” He asked, his voice still shaky with tears. I could tell he was trying to hold it together just like the first time I met him, age three.
“There will be two options: You will either go to the Temple of Gol, where you will undergo nine months of intensive meditation and logic training under the guidance of a qualified medical doctor and priestess. You will be unable to see Spock and Michael for the duration of your stay and I will visit only when you are deemed stable by your healers.”
“So, you will send me away.”
“You need help, Sybok and I can’t give it to you here. I am not a professional, and you need professional help. You’re not being thrown away; I can assure you. You trust me, don’t you?”
“And option two?” his voice low in a whisper.
“You will go to Earth and attend a juvenile rehabilitation center. No logic, no meditation, no as you phrase it, Vulcan shit. We will visit you once a month.“
“What about Spock and Michael?”
“We will all visit you once a month.” Sarek chimed in. “Detox will be painful without the help of meditation and logic-
“I do not want logic… or meditation.” Replied Sybok.
“I know.” I interjected, “So, you have two options. Rehabilitation centre in Gol, or Earth.” He was silent for several seconds; truth be told it seemed like minutes until I broke the silence with “Which one do you choose?”
And with that, he broke. Just like the three-year-old I met years prior when he begged for my attention wanting to show me his work with the rubix cube. He grabbed my hand, but just as I was about too full away in defense he fell to his knees and wrapped his arms around me.
“I’m sorry” he cried. “I’m so sorry.”
I froze. Too stunned for words. I glanced at my husband, whose disappointment was loud and clear through our bond, while his face remained stoic and emotionless. I wrapped my arms around the boy’s head and held him as he cried uncontrollably.
We lingered there for a good five minutes, until the drugs caught up with his emotions and we moved him to the bathroom where more crying, apologies, and now vomiting happened where I could do nothing but support his forehead with one hand to protect his head from the violent heaving, and my other arm wrapped around him to provide some sort of protection.
“It’s okay.” I whispered to him. Even though I knew deep down it wasn’t. “It’s okay. ”
After two hours, I placed a pillow under his head as he lay on his side in the ensuite bathroom. Tucking the blue fleeced blanket under his sides and slowly leave the room back into the living room where my husband was sitting on the sofa.
“This doesn’t change anything.” I announced, “I still love Sybok.”
“I do not doubt your feelings towards the boy.” He replied flatly.
“He’s staying here when he returns.” I continued, “You’re not sending him back to Gol.”
“He is an addict, Amanda. This is his sixth time in the last two months returning home in such a condition.”
“I am not insinuating he’s not going to rehab. I’m saying that when he is released and better, he is returning here.”
“His behavior has caused much destruction-”
“I don’t care!” the words blurted so fast from my mouth even I was momentarily shocked.
“I’m sorry?”
“You heard me, Sarek, I said I don’t care. I don’t care what he’s done. He’s our son and he needs support during this time, thus he’s staying under this roof until he’s of age.”
He opened his mouth to speak but I held my hand up and said: “I will hear nothing else of it. Leave if you wish and find somewhere else to stay for the next four years, but OUR son is staying here until he’s of age.”
There was a moment of silent, I watched his eyes drop. A sense of calm run through our bond, and with a small but audible inhale he said; “Very well.”
~End~