#'chris you need to come down here...' bc spock will certainly be emotionally shutting down oop.

[comdrspock]

True Blue

It wasn’t unheard of for Amanda to receive a message from her son Spock, though he was most often stationed far away in a different quadrant of the galaxy. He did his best to stay in touch in spite of his often unpredictable schedule, and she appreciated his efforts a great deal. Sometimes, however, she selfishly wished he would do a poorer job. It was one thing to be aware of how dangerous his Starfleet career could be and quite another to hear a detailed account of his most recent brush with death. That Spock always recounted these adventures as drily and matter-of-factly as possible was, if anything, worse for Amanda’s nerves than learning the gory details.

This call was out of the ordinary in part because it had nothing to do with any of Spock’s most recent missions. He inquired about her experiences as a human woman on Vulcan and even, to her great surprise, about her courtship with his father. The two of them usually danced around the subject of Sarek, with whom Spock had barely been on speaking terms since he left Vulcan to attend Starfleet Academy years ago. Though he posed them with his usual impersonal, academic curiosity, the questions themselves raised Amanda’s suspicions.

She knew, of course, about the fractured engagement between Spock and T’Pring. Arranging a marriage for her son at such a tender age had always made her uncomfortable, but as in so many things in her marriage, she hadn’t protested Sarek’s insistence on following his tradition. As the human wife of a very stubborn Vulcan man, she had to pick her battles. She and Sarek had been away on a diplomatic mission and therefore unable to return home for what should have been Spock’s wedding, which was probably for the best. Her husband had been furious at what he perceived to be an insult to his house and his son. Only time and distance had cooled his head.

At the time, she’d been hurt for Spock, too—who could ask for a better husband than her son? But her romantic heart had whispered that now he was free. 

She hadn’t thought much about the matter since then. When she did hear from Spock about his work, he mentioned his close colleagues only in passing, so that she knew the captain’s name, but no one else’s. He had certainly never talked about any women. Yet now...now, she wondered. Why these questions, and why now?

“Spock,” she asked, wishing she could reach across the unfathomable distance that separated them and touch his dear face, “is there a reason you’re asking me all this?”

Though she had no telepathic abilities and though he’d carefully trained in all those Vulcan mental disciplines, Amanda knew him better than almost anyone in the galaxy. She’d given birth to this boy, raised him, and knew his tells. As she watched him glance away from the screen and watched the corner of his mouth twitch, she had to keep herself from laughing out loud. 

He looked back at the screen and, after a moment’s silence, he said, “You will certainly be the first to know if there is, Mother.”

When the call ended, Amanda was on cloud nine. Her head was full of thoughts of weddings and grandchildren and a thousand questions about the woman who had brought that softness into Spock’s face. Amanda loved her already, whoever she was, whatever she looked like, whichever position she held aboard the Enterprise. 

*     *     *

Spock felt better after talking to his mother. He was more sure of himself and of his plans and more confident about asking Christine to bind herself to a him despite his alien ways. After all, if his mother could live with Sarek on Vulcan with few qualms, surely it was logical to think that Christine could find contentment with him on a starship or even a colony somewhere. Though their future after this mission was still hazy, he doubted that either of them would leave Starfleet, and he had no intention of returning to Vulcan permanently with or without a human wife.

He now had to consider a proposal and balancing Christine’s human expectations with his own more reserved nature. They had discussed the ways in which Vulcan marriage went beyond the human notion of matrimony only briefly. His mother had reassured him that she found her own mental bond with Sarek, while it had taken some “getting used to,” wonderful. He only hoped that Christine, medical professional that she was, would not be intimidated by the idea.

But this morning there were other matters at hand. The Enterprise had picked up a message from a nearby Class M planet that had, it seemed, very recently developed the technology necessary to contact potential life beyond their planet. Their society was reminiscent of that on Earth several centuries earlier, and the captain assembled a small landing party that included Spock, Uhura, and one of the ship’s anthropologists to beam down.

“Their energy clearly comes from a non-renewable and toxic source such as coal, captain,” Spock remarked with distaste as soon as they materialized on the surface. The acrid smell of smog that hung in the air made his tricorder readings completely unnecessary to back up that particular observation.

@multirptrash