Chapter Text
Saavik and Amanda watched the horizon long after the Klingon bird of prey disappeared. Saavik thought that it would be a long time before she could see a shifting heat mirage out of the corner of her eye and not look twice, thinking that perhaps they had brought the battle from the Genesis planet to T’Khasi. That she had brought the battle from there to here.
Finally Amanda touched her shoulder–gently, with fabric intervening. Amanda was well-versed in leaving turbulent minds a little privacy. “We should return to Shi’Kahr for the night.”
Saavik sighed. “I should speak to the healers about–”
She stopped mid-sentence. She didn’t even dare speak his name for fear of invisible Klingons.
“They will tell you if his condition changes. It is illogical to exhaust yourself.”
Saavik felt the corner of her mouth lift, almost imperceptibly. From her grandfather that comment would have felt like criticism, but from Amanda it was…friendship, perhaps.
***
Sarek left for Earth at first light the next morning. He had embassy business, including, of course, testimony in the court martial of the Enterprise crew.
Amanda had made scones with pla-savas and fresh squeezed gespar juice, even though Sarek didn't stay long enough to eat. While she and Saavik ate, she also made conversation, so cheerily that Saavik found herself thinking of a succession of soap bubbles, iridescent and fragile.
Normally Saavik would have been faced with the dilemma of whether she wanted to take second helpings of breakfast and risk a disapproving look (from Sarek, who was of course not present to take the role) or an indulgent look (from Amanda), the latter of which was worse. It was much easier to carry on being illogical out of spite than it was to carry on being illogical in the face of someone who thought it was good exercise to give in to one's appetites every now and then.
This time, however, Saavik found herself barely able to make headway on her first helping. The bread seemed too thick and heavy in her mouth and her throat tightened whenever she tried to swallow. Halfway through, she was forced to wait until Amanda wasn't looking and discreetly spit some of the scone back into her napkin because she simply could not bring herself to choke it down.
“Thank you for breakfast, Amanda,” Saavik said, collecting her utensils and carefully not making eye contact.
“Oh but you've hardly eaten! I think maybe the fruit was a little past its prime. You'll have to come with me next time I go shopping and help me sniff out the really good stuff.”
“No, it was excellent as usual, I just…I'm not hungry.”
“Are you feeling all right?” Amanda asked. “You do look awfully pale.”
“I'm…adequate. The mind healers did say that the fal-tor-pan can have lingering side effects, so undoubtedly that explains it.”
***
It should not have been possible. Scholars would no doubt debate for a millennium or two whether humans had a katra at all, even if he lived.
But she had had nothing else to lose, in that desperate moment when his life was bleeding out, hot and red like fire, onto the fertile earth of the Genesis planet.
Perhaps it would not have worked anywhere else. Perhaps she wouldn’t have tried it anywhere else, or in any other moment than the one after she saw Spock’s body brought back from a far more devastating death, one that had destroyed him on a cellular level.
Or perhaps it was only because David had just saved her life.
***
Saavik and one of the junior mind-healers were walking in a small succulent garden, the hardy plants interspersed with decorative spirals of rock. The place was meant to be calming, but Saavik felt so anxious that her head pounded and her stomach rolled.
“He remains agitated,” the mind-healer said. “With his memories incomplete, it is impossible to reassure him that we mean no harm and are not imprisoning him for some nefarious purpose.”
“How goes the process of restoring his memories?” Saavik asked, once the silence had stretched long enough for her question to not seem desperate.
“It goes…slowly,” the mind healer said. “It is unknown whether this is because he is not a Vulcan or because we do not have the things we need here to facilitate his memories being regained.”
“My grandfather is traveling to Earth as we speak,” Saavik said. “He has already scheduled a meeting regarding Dr. Carol Marcus – David’s mother. As you know, she has been in protective custody while the Federation ensures the security of the Genesis project.”
“I remember, yes. That too would be easier if he were Vulcan – everyone would understand that it is most logical for her to be sent here, that we will keep her as secure as any Federation facility. But they must engage in their procedures, regardless of what is most logical.”
Saavik did not see the benefit of responding to that, even to agree. She was a Vulcan among Vulcans, but she was also a United Earth citizen and a Starfleet officer, and things said in private were not always kept thus.
“I wish I could go to him,” she said instead as they began their second circuit of the garden.
“T’Lar has told you that this would not be to his benefit.”
“Yes, I said I wish it because I know I cannot do it.”
“That is illogical, Saavik.”
“To desire to be of use to a person who died to save my life is illogical? To desire that his memories should be restored more easily is illogical?” Even as she spoke she could hear the pitch of her voice rising and knew that her argument would not be compelling.
“To allow those desires to supersede that which you know to be true is illogical. He does not remember you. To go to him would only cause you pain, and potentially have an effect opposite to that which you desire. Things cannot be other than what they are.”
I don’t believe in no-win scenarios, Saavik thought.
But of course citing Jim Kirk would not help her case. A proper Vulcan would never have a human as one of their role models and closest associates. A proper Vulcan would have meekly accepted the parameters of the Kobayashi Maru. A proper Vulcan, if they did do anything so flagrantly illogical as attempting to bring a human back from the dead, would react to the slowness of his recovery with equanimity.
Saavik was not a proper Vulcan.
She wanted to scream. She wanted to dig her fingernails into her arms until blood welled up and dripped down her robes. She wanted to rip up every carefully placed succulent in this horrible garden and throw them directly in the face of the mind healer.
She hadn't felt that way since she had first gone to live with Spock and Jim. She wished they were here now, so she could rage at them until she had no rage left and then…she didn't know what she would do after that. She vaguely recalled a great deal of sobbing, back in the early days. She had been so terribly afraid that if she started sobbing she would never stop.
She was still so terribly afraid.
Notes:
Vulcan glossary!
T'Khasi: what Vulcans call their home planet
Shi'Khar: largest city on T'Khasi; Sarek and Amanda Grayson live on the outskirts
pla-savas: a small, dark-colored fruit like a blueberry
gespar: a sour fruit; used to make food, drink, and even cosmetics
katra: a soul (of a Vulcan or other sapient being)
fal-tor-pan: "the refusion", a ritual for restoring someone's katra to their body
Chapter 2: I imagine death so much it feels more like a memory
Notes:
Content note: Brief mention of past non-consensual mind meld that is deliberately written to parallel child sexual abuse. SORRY.
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
Given the option, Saavik would have preferred to submit to a mind meld with a wild le’matya rather than T'Lar. The high priestess had the same sort of coiled stillness as a wildcat - her mind only ever at rest in the same way a set trap can be called unmoving. The fact that T’Lar had been a mind healer for far longer than Saavik had been alive and had yet to unsheathe her claws didn't make her any less dangerous.
For David, though, she would have faced worse. So she came when T’Lar summoned her, reminding herself all the way to be the perfect, compliant student of logic rather than a half-tamed wildcat herself.
Saavik's mind is a city ravaged by war – houses looted, aqueducts shattered, gardens half uprooted and half overgrown.
T’Lar has been here before and found paths through the devastation. New paths have appeared since, the inhabitant of the city slowly putting it back in order again.
She finds a garden near the city walls, wades through earth churned up as though by a massive battle. Finds a vine with golden flowers that manages to cling to the soil in spite of everything. It spirals up a makeshift trellis, then grows through a crack in the outer wall of the city and disappears.
“When you took his katra, it was not neatly done,” T’Lar said, a note of reproach in her voice. “A connection remains between your mind and his.”
But he is alive, Saavik thought. Surely that is better than death, even not neatly done . Then she dropped her eyes, hoping T’Lar couldn't still sense her thoughts.
“Your mind is powerful, Saavik, but you are untrained. To use these powers without guidance is dangerous.”
Saavik thought of her father. She wondered if that was what T’Lar wanted her to think of. Becoming so enamored of her own power that she thought she deserved to wield it to control others. Becoming, after a terrifyingly short interval, so enamored of her own power that she had to be cut off from others for their safety.
“What is done, is done,” Saavik said quietly, keeping her eyes downcast. “Can anything be done now to remedy the mistake?”
“Perhaps. But it would be painful for both of you, and the human does not have a strong mind.”
Saavik allowed a frisson of anger to pass over and through her. It was not helpful, now, to tell T'Lar that she had seen David's mind and knew it was welcoming and beautiful and resilient. Right now, in this moment, his mind’s survival was balanced on the edge of a knife. Because of her.
“What if the bond is allowed to remain until he is stronger?”
T’Lar looked disapproving. “To call it a bond suggests that it is reciprocal. His mind is in such disarray that even if it were possible for him to consent to a bond, it would be unethical to attempt to form one. Yet if it were only a temporary link caused by a mind meld, it would have faded by now. I do not know why it has not, but you cannot presume it is because he desires it to remain. Therefore I must continue to advise you to meditate upon your own attachment and strive to release any hold you might still have upon him. And I must continue to advise that you do not see each other until it can be made certain that he is free from any influence that might affect his ability to reclaim his own mind.”
“I understand,” Saavik said, even as another part of her brain insisted that it was never, ever going to let David go.
***
On the train ride back to Shi’Khar, Saavik found herself wishing that she could talk to Spock. He had been the first person to whom she had confided the crimes that her father had committed, invading her mind against her will, manipulating her memories and emotions. Spock had taught her how to shield herself from mental attacks, but more importantly he had taught her what kind of attacks she might have to face if she ever encountered another v’tosh ka’tur. That sort of knowledge wasn’t exactly forbidden among Vulcans, but it was discouraged. Spock had always told her that it was better to discuss these things frankly, even with children. Especially with children. Otherwise she never would have known that what happened to her was a crime rather than something a father had a right to do to his child.
Spock had always said that it was difficult to enter someone's mind without their consent and even more difficult to do so without their realizing what you had done. Even her father (who had had extraordinarily high telepathic aptitude scores as a boy) also used non-telepathic methods to inspire loyalty in his cultists, or else his hold on their minds would have been far too difficult to maintain.
Still, Saavik worried. Spock had taught her how to defend her mind using the full range of her own telepathic abilities. There was no reason to teach her methods that would be applicable to the psi null.
Then again, before she met Spock and had the benefit of training, she had defended herself very effectively with methods such as biting anyone who tried to meld with her. That method, at least, was surely available to the psi null!
On a third hand, a person couldn't exactly bite in self defense when they had been fatally stabbed, or when they were comatose. And someone who couldn't remember their life before their mind had been wiped clean might not realize that something was amiss.
Given that she didn't even have three hands, Saavik clearly needed another person to help figure out whether her desire to remain connected to David was the first step on the path to becoming a cult leader. But Spock was barely able to look after his own mind right now. It seemed selfish to burden him with her anxieties so soon after everything else he had been through.
Jim probably knew something about mental shielding, especially as a human partner to a powerful telepath. He had very low esper scores so he could not be said to be exceptional in that regard. If he had been in no danger of being manipulated when he was initially becoming friends with Spock, David wouldn’t be in any danger now. (She wondered if David had ever had his esper scores tested. It was standard in Starfleet, but of course David wasn’t in Starfleet.)
But obviously she couldn’t talk to Jim about David. Everything and everyone else in the universe, yes. But not David.
(Would it be more impossible to say I might be accidentally mind controlling your son or I might be accidentally falling in love with him? )
She could, perhaps, have asked Amanda or Sarek for advice. She had known them long enough by now to know Amanda was certainly not brainwashed into obedience. In public she wore the role of demure ambassador's wife like a second skin, but in private she had no trouble telling her husband what she thought of his choices, often with colorful human metaphors about what he could do with his logic.
But Sarek wasn't Spock. He probably believed the same as most Vulcans did – that it was better not to speak of crimes such as mind rape lest it seem like approval or encouragement. He might have taught Amanda how to protect herself without telling her what she was protecting herself from.
She could bear Sarek thinking less of her for David’s sake, but the chance of success was so low it hardly seemed worth the attempt. Perhaps she could bring up the topic more obliquely and see if she could collect enough information to make a more precise estimate of the success rate.
The train’s intercom quietly announced that they had arrived at her usual stop, which was the first indication Saavik had that she had completely lost track of time in her useless ruminations. She sighed heavily before collecting her bag and getting off the train to walk the rest of the way home.
***
Saavik had discovered some time ago that there was a human-oriented curio shop a short walk from the Terran embassy. She had bought things there before for Jim or Amanda and the (human) proprietor had learned to recognize her, a development that she initially found annoying. She had changed her mind when this recognition had led to scoring a rare edition of Sherlock Holmes for Amanda's collection because the shop owner had sent her an email before he put the book out for other patrons.
She had mentioned several weeks ago that she had a human friend who had moved to the area with almost no possessions due to an unfortunate space travel related accident, all of which was perfectly true. The curio shop owner seemed to think that Saavik actually had a boyfriend (or perhaps girlfriend). That was a common human pastime; if they didn't know enough people engaging in courtship rituals they would seek to “play matchmaker” until the quota was reached.
Saavik allowed the shopkeeper to fabricate whatever information he wished rather than reveal more than was necessary about David's personal life or their history together. She was, of course, obliged to reveal some things so that she could be first on the list for whatever rare item might spark a breakthrough in the restoration of his memories.
On this occasion, Saavik awoke to an email from the proprietor saying that he had recently purchased several boxes of games and things from a family at the embassy whose child had recently left for Starfleet Academy. There was at least one set of playing cards, and she had been looking for a complete and undamaged set for a while.
Immediately after breakfast, Saavik took the subway to the embassy and then walked to the curio shop. She ignored the “closed” sign in the window and walked right in, a bell over the door chiming to signal her arrival.
“Hello there, Miss Saavik!” the proprietor said, his bald head popping up between shelves. “You can go right on through the back, just holler if you need anything!”
“Thank you,” Saavik replied, then did as instructed.
The back room was a sort of organized chaos that Saavik only understood after repeated visits. She found the stacks of new, unsorted items easily enough and started sorting them.
There were three sets of playing cards, none of which were complete. However, there were enough cards to make two complete sets, plus extras. She put them all in her bag.
She was momentarily intrigued by a box marked “Chemistry Set for Boys” (despite its unnecessary gendering) but upon closer inspection of its contents found that it was missing all of the consumable ingredients required to do the experiments.
The next several items were unremarkable. Saavik set aside a few books to go with the cards, but discarded most of the other items.
Then she found a large cloth bag that clinked when she picked it up. She opened it to find an assortment of the sort of small plastic bricks that snap together to build various things.
Her first year on the Enterprise, she had gotten a little set of blocks like this from some of the crew for Hanukkah. (The set made a model of a space shuttle from 20th century Earth.) She had assembled, disassembled, and reassembled it on an almost daily basis for weeks. At one point, Jim had suggested that she could use the blocks to get creative, make something other than what the instructions dictated. She had politely declined. (Though in hindsight, her tone had probably been dripping with the kind of contempt characteristic of a child who was convinced that her elders were too ignorant to be worth correcting.)
That memory brought with it a torrent of others – holidays and birthdays and even more trivial occasions when Spock and Jim had made her feel more loved in one casual instant than her father had in ten years of trying to compel her to love him. Saavik had to take a moment then to just breathe through her emotions, right there in the dusty backroom of a curio shop.
Spock was alive. Someday, the three of them would make new memories.
But she still felt haunted by the version of herself from a timeline where they hadn't been able to bring him back. More than two months later, there were still moments like this where she felt as though she had been briefly replaced by that other Saavik, whose grief was endless and all-consuming, like a never-ending freefall into the heart of a dying star.
Notes:
Shoutout to Android_And_Ale for a 2-hour infodump about city planning that resulted in my changing one (1) word of this chapter. 😂
Vulcan glossary!
le-matya: a large predatory feline native to Vulcan
v'tosh ka'tur: lit. "Vulcans without logic"; in actual use refers to Vulcans who have been banished for serious crimes
Chapter Text
Jim had told Saavik once about the old sailor's superstition of the “Jonah” – a person whose presence on a ship brought bad luck that could only be stopped by casting the offending person overboard. The original Jonah had been bad luck because he was disobeying an order from God, but over time superstitious sailors had forgotten that element of the story and assigned “Jonah” status to their fellows for a variety of reasons – including being the only survivor of a shipwreck. One might think that surviving bad circumstances would be evidence of good luck, but such was apparently not the case. Perhaps this was simply because it was impossible to shun the dead, so superstitious crew members chose the nearest associate.
It was illogical for humans (or anyone) to engage in such social dynamics, but it was eminently logical to be aware of them – both as a member of a minority species and as a command track officer.
So really, it was only good sense for Saavik to think that relatively few captains would be eager to take on the only officer to survive the destruction of the Grissom.
Saavik told herself that she was waiting until the early summer to worry about her Starfleet career. It was far more likely for a position to open up in the usual shuffle around Academy graduation.
That was why she hadn't seriously considered going with Sarek when he went back to San Francisco. She hadn't been asked to report to Starfleet headquarters and probably wouldn't be for some time. She also hadn't been asked to offer testimony at the court martial for Jim and the others who had stolen the Enterprise, as much as she might like to serve as a character witness for her adoptive father and several of her dearest friends.
It was only in the privacy of meditation that Saavik allowed herself to acknowledge other reasons. She wasn't sure she could bear to spend unoccupied time in a city so full of ghosts. After Spock died, she had taken her final exams and gone to her graduation and done all of the expected things in a haze of grief, trying not to notice that he was gone, trying to imagine that he had simply been called away on urgent business. And then she'd stayed with Jim for a month, between graduation and when she'd shipped out. For the last decade, that cozy little apartment in San Francisco had always felt like home no matter how long she went between visits. But this time…Jim had still been flayed raw by grief and she didn't know if her emotional disequilibrium had been her own or secondhand. Probably both.
Regardless, she had felt intensely relieved when it was time to say goodbye, and then felt guilty for her relief.
Spock was alive again, but the emotional disequilibrium remained. She would definitely return to San Francisco someday, but…not now. Later, when the court martial was over and they could be together like they used to be and create new memories to paper over the sad ones.
Saavik had almost convinced herself that she was correct and that she wouldn't have to think about anything Starfleet related for months.
And then one day she got a subspace message from Starfleet. The USS Lovell had an opening for a junior science officer and she was the captain’s first choice out of all the qualified personnel not currently assigned to another ship.
(Surely that list wasn't so large that it was any great compliment to be at the top of it.)
Six months ago, her only consideration would have been whether she wanted to hold out for a position more in the command track rather than settling for the science department.
Now…it felt like a trap. Her first assignment had been an unmitigated disaster. The fact that almost everything about it was classified would give her no room to justify her actions, but perhaps that was better. Explaining her thought process in those final days might just make her sound crazy.
Maybe the captain of the Lovell didn't know, had only skimmed the listings of available officers. Even if he did know, even if he was determined to give her a second chance – would she be able to prove herself to the rest of the crew fast enough to compensate for the factors that would make them dislike her?
Spock would probably tell her that it didn't matter, that the only person whose respect you needed was yourself.
Spock didn't know how hard self-respect was to maintain in the face of failure.
Saavik had two weeks to respond to the job offer, so she went about her usual routine – hoping, perhaps, that a decision would simply appear fully formed in her mind at some point.
That evening, she was on her way home from Mount Selaya when several people’s pockets and bags started buzzing. Curiosity was one of the few emotions Vulcans were encouraged to indulge, and several train passengers who weren’t receiving messages pulled out PADDs and comms to see if there was any breaking news.
Saavik was still debating whether she would indulge her own curiosity when her pocket started buzzing.
Are you on your way home? The text was from Amanda.
Yes. Is everything all right?
A long pause before the reply came. I am fine. You should check the news.
That didn’t do anything at all to reassure Saavik. Then again, if someone had died, it wouldn’t be on the news – not yet. Someone from the Embassy or from Starfleet’s Shi’Khar base would visit in person, or at the very least comm them privately.
She didn’t have to wonder which news source Amanda had meant. They were all running the same story. A mysterious attack on the Sol system had knocked out communications for the entirety of Earth and many of the starships in the vicinity. Just before the grid failed, the President of the Federation had sent out a broadcast.
The transmissions of an orbiting probe are causing critical damage to this planet. It has almost totally ionized our atmosphere. All power sources have failed. All Earth-orbiting starships are powerless. The probe is vaporizing our oceans. We cannot survive unless a way can be found to respond to the probe.
In the related videos were clips from a million different personal cameras showing torrential rain, howling winds, and all manner of accompanying destruction. Saavik tabbed through only a few of these before she realized that her emotional equilibrium was becoming dangerously fragile.
She had not wanted to go back to San Francisco because it was a city full of ghosts. But the idea of never going to San Francisco again because an alien aggressor wiped it off the face of the planet was far, far worse.
Then, suddenly, a part of her brain that had been running calculations informed her that Sarek was supposed to have arrived in San Francisco the previous afternoon. That Kirk and Spock and everyone else aboard the Bounty were supposed to be arriving sometime that evening. And the delicate hold she had on emotional equilibrium was lost entirely.
When Saavik arrived home, she found Amanda in the kitchen, where there was a small viewscreen she often used to watch the news while preparing dinner. Now, it was playing an endless loop of videos from Earth, while Amanda sat hunched over on a barstool, staring fixedly at the screen. She had already chewed one of her thumbnails so badly that it was bleeding and was starting on the other.
Saavik gently took Amanda's hands and held them until the older woman turned away from the screen and looked up at her with haunted eyes.
“You will know if anything happens,” Saavik said softly. “It doesn't help them for you to be afraid.”
Amanda looked down at their joined hands. “I know. I just…I can't seem to stop.”
Saavik turned off the viewscreen and filled the kettle with water for tea. Once it was heating, she found a first aid kit and applied antiseptic ointment and an adhesive bandage to Amanda's bleeding thumb. Then she gave it a brief human kiss before releasing it. (Amanda had always insisted that this helped despite having no logical basis for such an assertion.)
Amanda laughed a little at that – a fragile, desperate sound, but still an improvement over her terrified silence.
“I'm sorry,” Amanda said shakily as Saavik took the kettle off the stove and started preparing tea. “Usually I can cope better when Sarek is away, but I just keep remembering when we got the news about Spock…”
“The cause is sufficient,” Saavik said. She did not explain that she herself would have been having a breakdown without the immediate task of keeping Amanda calm. “There is no need to apologize.”
The tea was ready, so they sat across from each other and drank.
“Would it help you to discuss your feelings, or would you prefer to be distracted?” Saavik asked after a moment of silence during which Amanda almost started chewing her thumbnail again.
Amanda laughed, still a little shakily. “A distraction, I think.”
“Find something to occupy your hands and I'll find something to occupy your mind.”
Amanda got out her embroidery and settled down in one of the comfortable chairs in the library while Saavik browsed the shelves. The action was mostly a formality; of course she was going to select the red-bound book she'd given Amanda on her last birthday.
“Ooh, that is very distracting,” Amanda said, glancing up from her embroidery as Saavik sat down in another chair.
Amanda was, of course, already extremely familiar with The Hound of the Baskervilles. So was Saavik, for that matter. Nonetheless, they managed to pass hours occupied by the adventures of Sherlock and Watson rather than preoccupied with their own worries.
There were Vulcans, Saavik knew, who found reading fiction vaguely suspicious, though few outright disapproved. If one was in the habit of curtailing emotions, why would one wish to engage with a narrative that existed almost entirely to elicit them?
Saavik preferred to think of stories as opportunities to practice emotional control. The fear of a fictional beast rampaging across the moors was a fear that couldn't grow past the confines of the page. It was a fear that could be conquered by the final chapter, with the help of a little detective work.
Real fear was so rarely like that.
“You should sleep,” Saavik said finally.
Amanda looked as though she was thinking about arguing, but apparently fatigue won out. “Would it be hopelessly illogical if I asked you to come sit with me for a while?” she said instead.
“It would not.”
They both prepared for bed and then Saavik went to Amanda's room and sat lotus-style on the floor while Amanda tucked herself in and said her bedtime prayers. Saavik recited along with her. People often thought that religion was at odds with the way of logic, but Saavik couldn't think of anything more logical than expressing the wish that she and Amanda could rest without anxieties or bad dreams and rise up in the morning to peace.
Vulcans rarely dream, being in the habit of processing their emotions and ordering their thoughts via meditation instead.
But that night, Saavik dreamed. She dreamed that she was swimming through an endless ocean, drinking in refracted starlight, but she was alone. She was calling and calling for someone she knew was out there, but they weren't answering. An ocean whose waves moved to the melodies of a thousand songs had gone silent.
The silence and stillness pressed in on her, a feeling like drowning, for so long that she was sure she would die.
And then someone answered. A single lifeline, stretching across a boundless ocean.
But it was enough.
Notes:
1. The USS Lovell is not meant to be a canon ship; it is named after Jim Lovell, the commander of the Apollo 13 mission. 😂
2. I spent a disproportionate amount of time googling "Jewish bedtime prayers" and related terms and then just paraphrased. 😂 Apologies if I have somehow irredeemably fucked up the concept of Judaism.
Chapter 4: What's in a name
Notes:
The Vulcan mourning ritual mentioned in this chapter was invented by Moreta1848 for The recitation of names and used again to absolutely devastating effect in Grief as a four-dimensional figure. So it's canon to me now.
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
Five days later, Dr. Carol Marcus arrived in Shi'Kahr.
Saavik very deliberately arranged her schedule so that the two of them need not meet. She told herself, during her nightly meditations, that it was because she did not want Dr. Marcus to be forced to remain polite when she would undoubtedly be experiencing the human urge to lash out at anyone to whom blame could possibly be assigned – whether reasonably or unreasonably. The fact that she was compelled to meditate on her feelings of dread every night suggested that perhaps that answer was incomplete.
It was less than a week after Dr. Marcus' arrival when a knock came at the door. Saavik and Amanda had been preparing dinner together; when Saavik froze like a prey animal Amanda took pity on her and answered the door herself.
Saavik continued chopping vegetables while trying not to listen to the rise and fall of human voices from the front hall. Far too soon, Amanda reentered the kitchen and said, “Dr. Marcus – Dr. Carol Marcus – wants to see you. If you want.”
It was just like Amanda to leave Saavik that little bit of room to escape. But it was illogical to avoid the elder Dr. Marcus forever. Illogical to be afraid of a middle-aged human woman who had never shown an inclination towards violence and whose only potentially threatening trait was the possession of human feelings.
Saavik allowed herself a single steadying breath and then set down the knife and washed her hands and went into the living room. Dr. Marcus was perched on the sofa as though she might have to leap off it and run away at any moment.
“Dr. Marcus. May I offer you some tea?”
“No thank you. And you can call me Carol, if you’d like. It might be confusing otherwise.”
Saavik did not point out that David was not present and therefore the risk of confusion was minimal. She sat down in one of the chairs opposite the sofa, also perched on the edge, spine ramrod-straight. She wished Dr. Marcus had asked for tea so she had something to do with her hands.
“How have you been?” Dr. Marcus asked, fidgeting with the hem of her blouse.
It was almost laughable, the degree to which small talk was inadequate to this situation. “I have been adequate. How are you?”
A pause, one two three heartbeats, and they were out of the realm of polite small talk with rote answers.
“It has been,” Dr. Marcus said slowly, “the worst six months of my entire life.” Her body sagged just a little, not relaxed, more…exhausted. Saavik felt a pang of sympathy.
Dr. Marcus looked at one of the tapestries hanging on the wall instead of at Saavik. “David and I were the only survivors of the Genesis project, and at first I thought…I don’t know what I thought. I was licking my wounds, I suppose. I had the idea that when he got back from the Grissom we could go through the lab together and it would be easier, with a little bit of time. And…he didn’t come back. You know. And the Federation sent Starfleet personnel to clear out the lab and everything on Regula. Truly everything. The Genesis cave is just rock now.”
Saavik would not have expected to have an emotional reaction to that, but she remembered David handing her a piece of fruit and introducing himself to her and saying her name for the first time like he liked the way it tasted on his tongue. That moment would exist forever, but the beautiful place where it had happened was gone. Just like the Grissom. Just like the Genesis planet. Just like the Enterprise.
“And I was the only one left,” Dr. Marcus said, voice breaking, “so I had to watch. I had to watch everything I’ve worked on for years get bagged up as evidence, and think about every single person who died to make it happen, and think of David…”
She was openly weeping now. Saavik cast about for something to say.
“There is a Vulcan tradition,” she managed finally, “called ahmaya, the recitation of names. When David and I were serving on the Grissom, he told me the names of all the people who died on Regula and we recited them together. I still do, during my nightly meditations.”
More recently, she had also added the personnel roster for the Grissom. It was a long, long list to recite. Far too many ghosts to carry. Yet she felt an obligation to carry them.
“Thank you,” Dr. Marcus said, through her tears. She took a slow, steadying breath. “And thank you for…for helping David. Knowing that he was alive, even when I couldn’t see him…I can’t tell you how much that means to me.”
“He means a great deal to me as well,” Saavik said. Perhaps she would not have said it if the conversation hadn’t torn down the fragile walls she’d build around her own grief.
Dr. Marcus met her eyes then, and that was Saavik’s undoing. Her next indrawn breath turned into a ragged sob and in a moment Carol had crossed the room and squeezed onto the chair with Saavik and was holding her in her arms.
“Shh, shh, I know,” she murmured nonsensically. Saavik had been waiting for months for someone to tell her that it was all her fault. That she had failed. That she didn’t deserve David. And now here was his mother, her human emotions pouring out unshielded, and there was no anger there at all. Grief, and loneliness, and a desperate desire for connection, and above all love love love.
All this time, the only person who blamed Saavik was Saavik.
The Vulcan thing to do would have been to stand up, to put the correct amount of distance between them, to maintain composure.
What Saavik did was weep.
Saavik came back from washing her face in the bathroom to find Carol and Amanda setting the table and talking as if they’d known each other for years.
“I need to thank him,” Carol was saying, “but I have no idea what the etiquette is. Is there a flower arrangement that says, ‘Thank you for making sure my son didn't come back from the dead just to spend the rest of his life in solitary confinement’?”
Saavik, standing in the doorway, could hear the conversation, but she was the only one who could see Sarek come through the front door at just that moment and look stricken. Perhaps someone who didn’t know him wouldn’t have even noticed the feeling cross his face like a stormcloud, but Saavik did.
Sarek schooled his features into something resembling composure and then strode into the dining room. “Dr. Marcus. I could not help but overhear, and I fear you have mistaken me. There is no debt. My son was restored to me, in part because of the actions of yours. The debt was entirely mine.”
Carol smiled, but with a bit of sadness in her face. “Consider your debt repaid, then.”
Dinner was one of Amanda's fusion meals, falafel (served with pitas and a variety of fresh vegetables as toppings) but made from the same Vulcan legume used in barkaya marak.
Vulcans tended to eat in silence, but on this occasion Amanda broke that tradition almost immediately.
“So, Carol, how has David been doing?”
“Apparently he's been much better since I arrived, which is a little horrifying to think,” Carol replied, her voice cheerful but little lines of worry forming around her eyes. “He's clearly still unwell and he gets tired so easily and he's so thin. I keep just making him food and sitting with him while he eats and the people up at the monastery act like I'm a wizard or something because apparently they hadn't been able to get him to eat much at all.”
“Oh yes, they had Saavik ask me about that several times,” Amanda said sympathetically. “‘Lady Amanda, what do humans like to eat??’ as though there's one definitive answer to that. I sent them a bunch of our replicator programs and a few of my own recipes – it's hard to get a lot of ingredients here but I've worked out some tricks over the years – but I think he just had so much going on mentally his body wasn't able to recover as well, you know?”
Carol nodded soberly. “Dinner is excellent, by the way, so I definitely don't think it was a problem with your cooking.”
Amanda laughed brightly. “Thank you!”
“We actually talked about Mr. Spock today,” Carol added after a moment.
“Oh really?” Amanda said, leaning forward a little to signify interest.
“Yes! There was this one time, it must have been…seventeen or eighteen years ago? Jim had been captain of the Enterprise for a couple of years and when he came to see us on shore leave, Mr. Spock came with him. Which seemed strange at the time but of course in hindsight you realize why they were thick as thieves from the beginning. David was – it was his eighth birthday that week, and Jim had actually made the effort to come, but of course it was a disaster. The thing you have to realize about Jim is, he can talk to alien life forms no problem but you present him with a single human child and he just freezes. I can laugh about it now but at the time it was incredibly frustrating! He and David actually have a lot in common, and did even then, but Jim had this idea in his head of what an ideal boyhood looked like and he just couldn't get out of that mindset even when the actual boy in front of him wanted something different. They went camping once, I think, and didn't even last the night before they came back sunburnt and covered in mosquito bites and David absolutely refused to do anything with him for the rest of the week. But he spent hours with Mr. Spock and a new microscope I’d gotten him for his birthday. So the two of them had a grand time while Jim and I were in the next room fighting like cats.”
Carol sighed, but she didn't actually seem upset. Apparently “seventeen or eighteen years” was the answer to how long it took to become fond of even difficult memories, because they involved the people you loved.
Saavik wondered how many years it would take for her to look back fondly on any of this.
Notes:
I am intentionally breaking with canon re: Jim and David's relationship because even deadbeat dads have a higher bar to clear now than they did 40 years ago! 😂
Vulcan glossary!
barkaya marak: a soup that tastes like cream of spinach but is made with a peanut-like legume native to Vulcan
Chapter 5: Soulmates are stupid, I love you on purpose
Notes:
(See the end of the chapter for notes.)
Chapter Text
The mind healers living in the monastery at Mount Selaya specifically avoided having technology that enabled contact with the outside world. That was part of the reason Saavik kept visiting – talking in person was more efficient than sending paper letters back and forth. She had other, less logical reasons too, of course, but those didn't merit thinking about.
Carol, of course, was not under technology restrictions. So it wasn’t terribly surprising that Saavik received a message from her one evening.
All it said was he was asking about you today .
Saavik had to spend a lot of time in mediation after that.
The next morning, one of the junior mind healers met her in one of the small meditation gardens, as usual. Saavik hardly dared to imagine that she might be allowed to see David, but perhaps her body language broadcast her thoughts, because the junior mind healer did not waste time on pleasantries.
“T’Lar wishes you to go see David today.”
Saavik couldn’t speak, so she didn’t, just dashed through the door the junior mind healer opened for her into the large central courtyard.
The last time Saavik had seen David, he had been lying on a stretcher, healed from his wounds but still unconscious, like a wax statue of a man.
That last image had haunted her for nearly three months.
Finally, she was back at Mount Selaya, walking through the courtyard garden between the apartments where the mind-healers and their patients lived.
And she saw him. He looked so incredibly alive. He had definitely lost weight and muscle, and he looked older and tireder in some undefinable way, but his soul was there again, animating his thin frame with a golden light that she would have recognized anywhere.
David was wearing a plain linen tunic with short sleeves and was in animated conversation with an older Vulcan wearing a canvas apron and gloves over his own tunic and leaning on the handle of his tool (she couldn't see the bottom of the tool to know if it was a rake or a hoe or something else.) Saavik caught snatches of atrociously accented vuhlkansu, punctuated by David's expressive hand gestures. A Vulcan would never draw attention to their hands so flagrantly. The sight made a smile tease at the corners of Saavik's mouth.
David's eyes flicked in her direction, back to the gardener, then back to her with a sudden dawning recognition.
“Saavik!” His whole body lit up (she had never understood the human idiom before now), as though he wasn't already dazzling enough. He closed the distance between them in a few quick strides and wrapped his arms around her in a hug so enthusiastic that her feet lifted a little off the ground.
She had meant to hold back. She really did. But the moment he touched her that resolve vanished like dewdrops in the desert. She was dressed in a long-sleeved tunic, so his bare arms – wrapped around her back and shoulders – didn't actually touch skin, but his face was buried in her neck and she could smell gespar soap on his hair and when she hugged him in return (necessary to steady herself!) her left hand pressed against the back of his neck. The feeling of the soft short curls at the nape of his neck and his sun-warmed skin was immediately seared indelibly into her mind.
The hug only actually lasted for a few seconds before David set her down and quickly stepped back, wiping his hands on the edge of his tunic.
“Sorry, sorry, I know Vulcans don't like to be touched, I just…”
“There can be no offense where none is taken,” Saavik said, hardly even knowing what she said.
They were escorted to T’Lar's chambers and invited to sit down on a pair of low stools. T’Lar herself entered a moment later and spoke to David in heavily accented Standard.
“I wish to examine both of your minds at once, so that we may determine whether there is…an unhealthy attachment. Do you agree?”
“Sure, yes,” David said, glancing sidelong at Saavik.
Without further conversation, T’Lar stood between them and reached out one hand to each of their faces.
This mind is easy to slip inside. Indeed, it doesn't seem to have an outside. Most beings imagine their mental world as curving downwards from the center point, but the human David Marcus imagines everything curving upwards. Before and behind and to each side are green, green, green, and above is nothing but light.
When T'Lar first entered this mind, it was nothing but the flat black of a night sky without stars, so of course she is satisfied to see it so much improved. But there is still something niggling at her, like a loose thread on an inner seam of one's garments.
She finds it. It is a flower, of course, but it is also tongues of fire, licking at a curved seam between panels of what might be a floor or a wall. Everything around this place is greener and brighter than everywhere else, but the riotous plants part easily before her, as though inviting her to draw closer to the fire-flower. As though urging her to behold it.
She tries to find out where the roots of the plant lead and keeps finding herself turned in the wrong direction. Once, twice. The third time she tries, the meld breaks.
“Your mind is growing stronger,” T'Lar said, though her expression was so severe it was hard to say if she approved or disapproved. “May I ask the nature of the memory you do not wish me to see?”
“It involves…classified information.” This was not a lie, but the fact that David was blushing so hard the tips of his ears were pink made it clear it was not entirely the truth.
“He and I engaged in sexual intercourse,” Saavik interjected. She hoped David would forgive her forthrightness, since the alternatives seemed more embarrassing.
T'Lar’s face took on the carefully blank expression of someone having a private battle with their emotions. “Did you also engage in a mind meld during this…interaction?”
Now it was Saavik's turn to feel heat rushing to the tips of her ears. “Yes.”
“This information would have been useful to know during our previous discussions of the bond between you.”
“I was given to understand that a…permanent…bond” (she had almost said marriage ) “is very difficult to contract inadvertently,” Saavik said, keeping her eyes respectfully downcast.
“This is true,” T'Lar conceded. “Connecting with a person's mind in such an intimate fashion is, however, a first step down that path, if your minds find each other compatible.”
Neither Saavik nor David responded to that. Saavik kept her eyes on her lap, so she could only guess what David might be thinking.
“I think I could sever the link,” T'Lar said finally, “but I do not think it would matter.”
“Why’s that?” David managed after another moment of awkward silence.
T'Lar’s expression softened just a little. “Because, my child, your minds will seek each other out again if they are parted. That, I know I do not have the power to stop. I do not think such a power exists.”
They ended up in a little sunken circle around a firepit. Instead of chairs, there were traditional mats and cushions scattered around the circle. David sprawled unselfconsciously among these. Saavik sat lotus-style and ramrod straight on a different mat, far enough away that there was no risk of touching accidentally. Not quite far enough away that he couldn't have reached out and touched her if he wanted.
“How have you been?” David asked, propping his head up on one hand and looking at her with an intensity that made her stomach flip.
“I have been…adequate.”
David smiled with far more warmth than her chilly response merited. “That's good?”
Saavik wasn't sure how to answer without lying.
Fortunately, David didn't seem to mind carrying the entire conversation. “You know that awful feeling when you're sure you've forgotten something important but you don't know what it is?”
“Vulcans have eidetic memory,” Saavik said, which wasn't a lie. It would also not have been a lie to say yes, she knew what it was to have your memories unmoored from your mind, to reach out and find only emptiness.
“Lucky. I kept having this awful jolt of, you need to do something, something bad is going to happen, someone is in danger, and I couldn't remember . And then I remembered you, but I couldn't remember if you were okay.” His voice went thick. “And I was so scared that the reason you hadn't visited this whole time was because you couldn't.”
Saavik came dangerously close to reaching out and touching him, reassuring him that she was here and would always be here. “I wanted to,” she said quickly, clasping her hands together in her lap. “T'Lar advised against it.”
“What was she saying about our minds being…connected? I’m completely out of my depth when it comes to mind melds and telepathy and all that, unfortunately.”
Saavik took a deep breath. I am in control of my emotions. “When I – when a Vulcan – mind melds with someone, it can cause a temporary link to form between their minds. Usually this link fades fairly quickly, but in our case it – it did not.”
“Why's that, do you think?”
“T'Lar was worried that when I took your katra – your soul, I suppose is how you'd say it in Standard? – that I wasn't careful. That I created a link between our minds.”
“But didn't you just say that's what usually happens?”
Saavik sighed, just a little. “It's difficult to explain without – without context. There is a difference between a link that happens incidentally and one that is on purpose. One can – place an anchor, if you will, in someone else's mind.”
“Is that bad?”
“No, not – not exactly. It can be used in harmful ways, and can lead to – to more intrusive actions. So Vulcans learn from childhood not to create a link without the other person's consent, unless it is a matter of life and death.”
“Well, I did die.”
Saavik almost laughed at David's matter-of-fact tone. “It is also more complicated because you are human. A Vulcan would know if someone was affecting their mind and be trained in how to break a link if they did not wish for it to exist. As far as I know, most humans cannot do that even with training. So there was – there was good reason to be cautious, to take time to make sure I was not controlling you. Especially because you were so vulnerable, with your mind – with it having been so disrupted.”
“So what – what did she find out today?”
Saavik felt herself blushing. “I guess it was clear when she examined the link between us that you – you wanted it to exist. It was not – I was not the one keeping it anchored in your mind.”
David smiled. If he kept doing that she was going to grab hold of him and never let go. “So, my mind wants you around? Even when I can't remember you?”
She hoped he wasn’t paying attention to his much she was blushing. “Essentially, yes.”
“Does that…mean anything?”
Saavik very carefully did not meet his eyes. “It doesn't necessarily.”
A long pause. Long enough for her resolve to keep her eyes forward to break. When she glanced at David, he was quietly studying her with a little line between his eyebrows. She wanted to kiss it away. It was rude how beautiful he was.
“Do you want it to mean anything?” David finally asked, his voice quiet and earnest.
Eyes forward. I am in control of my emotions. “I want you to be free to choose whatever you want. I don't want you to feel like you owe me something just because I saved your life.”
Another long pause. “Why did you save me, then?”
“It's logical. To preserve life where it can be preserved.”
“Right. Totally logical.”
When she glanced at him again he looked like he was about to laugh. Once again, incredibly rude of him to be so beautiful.
She should have listened to T’Lar.
If she had resolved firmly to remain detached, if she had told herself she was not in any circumstances allowed to touch him…
It was already too late now, like a flight simulation where you find yourself in a decaying orbit without enough fuel for another burn.
How long had she been falling and not noticed? Maybe this end had always been inevitable, since that first moment she had pushed him down when he tried to go up unarmed against a Starfleet officer with a phaser. (She still wasn't entirely sure if she had been trying to protect Captain Terrell or David.) Her hand had gripped the bare skin of his arm for just a moment, but a moment that was seared into her memory. She had seen his mind and learned that it was even more beautiful and vibrant than the paradise he had recreated in the depths of a barren planetoid.
Maybe it was then that his gravity had captured her irrevocably.
Notes:
David's mind palace is based on the interior of a Stanford torus because he grew up on space stations.
Chapter Text
When Saavik returned the next day, David was in a very different mood (humans!) – sitting on his bed, head hanging, eyes red-rimmed as though he had been weeping.
She sat down next to him and tentatively put a hand on his back. Humans often found physical touch comforting, but the rule was far from universal.
David didn't shy away from her touch, but on the other hand he didn't seem much comforted.
“The time has come for total truth between us,” he said finally, and she remembered. Of course she remembered.
“You were right, Saavik. It was all my fault. Regula I. The Grissom. Everyone who died –” He made an awful choking sound and buried his head in his hands.
Saavik wished desperately for someone more human to handle this.
“Do you remember the Kobayashi Maru?” she asked finally.
“That Starfleet Academy test?”
“Yes. I said…I said then that you had done what your father had done. When faced with failure, you changed the rules. I spoke…too hastily. In anger.”
“You were right.”
“Was I? Do you remember how you died?”
“I remember he–that Klingon–was going to kill you, and I–I was so afraid. And then you were telling me to stay, and then…I was here.”
“You saved my life. You acted bravely.”
“I didn't feel brave.”
“I too was afraid, you know. In that situation, how could I not be? But I knew that I must act as I did or else they would kill you, or Spock. And you – you knew that too. Faced with your own failure, faced with death – you chose to be brave. You passed the test.”
David didn't answer for a long time, and then asked, with apparently genuine anguish, “Seriously, why did you save me? Why not just decide that it was logical for me to be the one to die? What's so great about me ?”
Saavik drew her hand back, as though he'd be able to sense her innermost thoughts through the thin fabric of his tunic.
“Is it not logical? To preserve life –”
“ Don’t. ” David cut her off, his tone switching rapidly between despair and frustration. “For once in your life don't hide behind made up justifications and actually tell me the truth.”
Saavik didn't answer for a moment, and that was long enough for David to switch moods again, sighing and putting his head in his hands. “I'm sorry. That was uncalled for, especially considering…everything.”
“There can be no offense where none is taken,” Saavik replied rotely.
He was right, anyway. She needed to be honest with him. Needed to tell him, I have fallen in love with you. If you do not – cannot – love me back, I will respect that and never speak of it again. But I cannot go on pretending I feel only friendship for you.
But Saavik was not brave, and eventually David changed the subject.
That evening, Saavik's meditation was filled with memories of David.
On the Grissom, there had been moments – he would stand so close to her, find excuses to touch her for a moment here and there, tease her about her Vulcan ways in a way that was different from the usual cutting comments from other junior officers.
But she knew his father, knew Jim’s easy familiarity with virtually every sapient being he encountered. (Even some of the non-sapients–he was universally loved by dogs and horses at the very least.) She assumed David was cut from the same cloth and that his little intimacies meant nothing.
At any rate, he was only supposed to be on the Grissom for a few months before he would return to his research elsewhere. So whatever existed between them could be, should be, just a temporary source of pleasant companionship. Nothing more.
But then they had been on the planet, just the two of them. They had stopped for a rest in the midst of their hike because they were both ravenously hungry and eaten Starfleet nutrient bars with more relish than she would have thought possible. And then she had looked at him, glowing golden in the sunlight like some ancient god, and had said, “Among my people it is customary to rest after the midday meal.” He had understood her immediately, lying down beside her in the soft grass. She had reached for him, hand framing his face.
He had slipped into her mind so easily, like dapples of golden sunlight dancing over shadows, and slipped into her body just as easily, and for a single perfect moment they had been naked and unashamed in the midst of that newborn world.
But there were always other memories. David in the snow, slumped over with elbows on knees, his face mottled red and purple with bruises.
David lying on his back amid the underbrush, his face blue-white and terribly still, as the world crumbled around them.
David in the Bounty’s sick bay, his features blurring as tears filled her eyes. (Bones’ voice in the background, “I'm a doctor, Jim, not a miracle worker.”)
She didn't know how to stop seeing those versions of his face every time she looked at him.
Saavik went downstairs to see if perhaps a cup of calming tea would help. She found that her grandfather was already in the kitchen and almost reversed course – but Sarek looked up and met her eyes so she followed through on her original intention.
There was already a pot of tea in the process of brewing. And two mugs waiting next to the stove. Saavik resigned herself to the situation and sat down on a barstool while Sarek poured tea and then handed her a steaming mug.
“You seem troubled, my child,” Sarek said.
Saavik sipped her tea. It was too hot and burnt her mouth. She set it down on the kitchen island to cool.
“You are married to a human,” she said.
“I am given to understand that this is the case.”
“And you believe this to have been the logical choice?”
“I do,” Sarek said, with more warmth in his voice than she was used to hearing.
“Despite the fact that humans are…impulsive, and fragile, and even if all goes well you will outlive them by a hundred years?”
Sarek sipped his tea for a moment. “The asal-kin is not less beautiful for its fleeting nature. And to fear for its passing does nothing to extend its life.”
Ah yes, fear. The first thing one was supposed to overcome in the pursuit of logic. Saavik sipped her own tea. “But regarding the beauty of a flower is not the same as choosing a life partner. And its passing does not…” does not cause so much pain.
“It is a logical concern,” Sarek said after a moment, “especially for Vulcans, for whom the marriage bond has a physiological effect. Yet…life is never without risk. Surak tells us that two minds, joined together, are more than the sum of their parts. And he tells us that diversity, in its infinite combinations, is the foundation of…everything. Of who we are as Vulcans. To say it is illogical to join one's mind and one's life with a sapient being who is not a Vulcan…it does not follow from these foundational principles.”
Saavik didn't disagree with any of that. And yet…
They both sat sipping their tea in silence for a while.
It was yet another no-win scenario, Saavik thought. She had been acting as though the choice was to refrain from loving David or not, but in reality she was long past the opportunity to make that choice. Now, it was only a matter of whether she preferred the grief of rejecting him now or the grief of losing him in some other way later.
And then she remembered, Why did you save me?
She had already been faced with the no-win scenario. She had chosen to prolong the agony of losing him by giving herself hope that he might be restored to her.
Not because she had logically determined that it was better for him to be alive than dead. Because she had desperately wanted more time with him.
And she did not regret it.
Perhaps the answer to his question and to her dilemma were, in the end, the same.
Finally, Sarek finished his tea, held out a hand for her empty mug, and took both to the sink.
“Moreover,” Sarek said over the sounds of washing up, “you are a Starfleet officer. A life you chose knowing the risks, knowing what my son and Captain Kirk face on each of their missions.” A pause. “If one were to do a statistical analysis, one might find that my son is the greater offender in frequency of encountering near-death situations, despite the superior logic and physiological advantages afforded by his Vulcan ancestry.”
If Saavik gave free rein to her feelings on that topic, she wasn't sure if she'd start laughing or weeping. “One must also take into account the fact that he has literally died, whereas I believe Captain Kirk has avoided that thus far.”
“Yes.” Sarek turned away from the sink, sighing deeply. “I meditate on this often.”
The next day she found David walking in the gardens again.
“Hello,” he said when he saw her. Friendly, but guarded. It hurt her more than she would have thought possible.
“I owe you an apology.”
He laughed a little. “What on earth for?”
“I did not practice total honesty.”
“Yeah?” He looked amused, but still guarded.
“I saved your life. Not because it was the logical thing to do. Because…I wanted it. I wanted you. I needed…I need you.”
“Yeah?” The smile was bigger now, reaching all the way up to his eyes.
“Yes.”
At first she was worried what the mind healers might think, whether the garden afforded enough privacy from prying eyes or minds.
But then she decided that if they wanted to shield their minds, they could see to it themselves.
Notes:
1. Vulcan glossary!
asal-kin: lit. “morning gold,” a desert ephemeral I made up for the purpose of this chapter
2. This was one of the first chapters I wrote and I initally planned to have Amanda be the one giving Saavik relationship advice. But the scene just wasn't gelling until I made Sarek do it instead. 😂 Is there a deeper reason for this or do I just love Putting That Old Man In Situations?
Chapter 7: Not to me, not if it’s you
Chapter Text
One day Saavik arrived to find David and his mother still eating their midday meal, deep in conversation.
“Come join us, Saavik,” David said, smiling even more broadly when he saw her, “and tell my mother she's being ridiculous.”
“I'm being no such thing,” Carol replied, emphatically but without rancor.
Saavik sat down at the low table and waited for an explanation.
“She got this offer, you see –” David began enthusiastically. “Wait, I should go back. You know about the humpback whales, right?”
“Of course.”
“Well, apparently they came with their own personal marine biologist – from the twentieth century, can you imagine? – and she's starting a cetacean institute in San Francisco and trying to recruit scientists and of course she wants one of the greatest minds in evolutionary biology.” David gestured towards his mother, just in case the referent wasn't obvious.
“All right,” Carol said, laughing. “Flattery will get you nowhere.”
“But you'd like the job, don't say you wouldn't. Not to mention the possibility of seeing a baby whale up close.”
“But it's not as though I need to be back to work right away. Anyway, how am I supposed to work without my favorite lab assistant?” Carol asked, reaching up to ruffle David's hair.
“ Mother . I have a doctorate. ”
Saavik had to strive valiantly not to laugh at their antics. “I take it you are not in favor of accepting the offer?”
Carol sighed. “It's not that it's a bad offer, just…I'm not sure the timing is right.” She glanced at David as she said it, her face wearing an expression that Saavik's heart recognized.
“I'm all right now,” David said gently. “Besides, it's probably good for your career to have some new publications that don't have my name on them. Considering everything.”
“We have the same name, mister. Anyway, I was in charge of that station so whether I knew about the protomatter or not, I'm responsible.”
David sighed and turned to Saavik. “You see my problem?”
“I believe,” Saavik said, “that your problem might be more emotional than logistical in nature, and therefore I am uniquely ill-qualified to advise you.”
“See?” David said teasingly, turning back to Carol, “she says you should listen to me. ”
Carol laughed. “That's definitely not what she said.”
“You should listen to him,” Saavik interjected, earning her a grin from David.
Carol put up her hands in mock surrender. “Okay, okay, I can tell when I'm outnumbered!”
“You've been through a lot lately,” David said. Saavik had a feeling this was an argument he'd already made.
“ You've been through a lot –”
“ Because of me, ” David continued, talking over her. “Because of my own stupid mistakes. What kind of son would I be if I said that after six months of cleaning up the disaster I left behind, you had to spend more time following me around waiting on me?”
“You're right, it's rotten work,” Carol said, and somehow she was teasing and sad at the same time.
“You deserve to do some less rotten work,” David continued. “Maybe even have a little fun. Plus, the lady in charge here said I can have a comm now, since I'm not a monk or whatever, so I can call you if I need you to come back.”
Carol sighed and glanced at Saavik as though hoping for a last minute rescue.
“I can also contact you if anything changes,” Saavik offered.
“All right,” Carol said finally, throwing up her hands again. “I guess I can give it a try at least.”
When Carol finished eating and announced she was going to leave, David got up too to “walk her out,” according to the usual human custom. At the gate, Carol pulled David down so she could plant a kiss on his forehead.
“Take good care of her. She's special,” Carol whispered. She probably assumed Saavik couldn't hear her. Humans often underestimated Vulcan auditory acuity.
David smiled, slow and sweet. “I know,” he whispered back.
Some time later, David and Saavik were lying intertwined in his narrow monastery bed. Saavik was meditating on the dangers of emotional entanglement inherent in resting your head on someone's shoulder and listening to their heartbeat – while gathering additional data to meditate on later, of course.
“So do you think I can stay with you, once I'm done with everything here?” David asked, his lips brushing her hair.
“You don't have to stay with me if you don't want to,” Saavik said. “If you would prefer to go study whales with your mother…” She realized after she said it that it was probably the wrong thing to say. Her brain had apparently slowed to match the rhythm of his human heart.
David sighed gustily. “Saavik. Do you – do you know that I love you?”
Saavik's rapid Vulcan heartbeat kicked into an even faster rhythm as she tried to imagine what she could say to that .
“ Why ?” she asked finally.
He didn't answer for a moment. Long enough that Saavik wondered if she could distract him by initiating more sexual activities. Then she wouldn't need to worry about saying the wrong thing again.
“I don't even know where to start,” David said finally. “Because you're…you? Why wouldn't I love you?”
She could think of far too many answers to that. “I will be too much for you –”
“You won't.”
“ – or not enough, or just wrong. I'm not Vulcan enough, I'm not human enough, I don't know how to say or do the right things –”
“Even if you mess up!” David interrupted. “You really think it's that hard to love you? I've messed up catastrophically, apocalyptically , and you still love me!”
He froze suddenly, frissons of panic radiating off his skin as he realized what he'd just said.
Well. “I do,” Saavik whispered. “I love you. Always.”
That, as it turned out, was exactly the right thing to say.
“Are you sure you don't want to come on the Enterprise-A?” Jim asked, his face and voice a second or two out of sync even on Sarek's top tier ambassador comm channel. “Sulu’s leaving soon to take command of the Excelsior, so I'll be short a helm officer.”
Saavik shifted in her chair. She had clearly been spending too much time squeezed in David's narrow bed lately because there was a knot of pain in her lower back that she hadn't been able to loosen during her morning calisthenics. “I'm sure,” she said, speaking slowly so the connection could keep up. “I do not want anyone to believe that I am an object of favoritism.”
“It's not favoritism if you're the best in the fleet,” Jim replied, grinning.
Saavik allowed herself a small smile in return. “How is Captain Spock?” she asked after a moment, feeling they had discussed her life enough.
“He’s good, actually,” Jim said warmly. “Really good.”
“That is gratifying to hear.”
“I can drag him over here sometime if you want to talk.”
“That will not be necessary,” Saavik replied. “I know how much he dislikes social calls.”
“Oh, speaking of! I was talking to Amanda yesterday and she mentioned that David is going to come stay with you all pretty soon?”
“That is the plan, yes.”
Jim paused then, uncharacteristic of him. Perhaps he was having connection issues.
Then: “I asked her if she was going to put him in the funny little basement room since he’s human and she changed the subject.”
Oh. “He will be staying in my room,” Saavik said, her casual tone very much at odds with her feelings.
“I thought it might be something like that,” Jim replied. There was another pause. “I would tell you not to break his heart, but that doesn’t seem your style anyway.”
“It is not.” She was pretty sure Jim was teasing, but not entirely sure.
“Maybe I should tell him not to break yours. Unless Sarek has already given him the shovel talk, in which case his balls are well and truly shrivelled.”
That was definitely teasing. “I will pass along your warning,” Saavik teased back. “Though I believe his code of honor is already very similar to yours. For example, at one point on the Grissom an ensign made an indecent suggestion to me in David’s presence and they both ended up in sick bay.”
“Oh?”
“The offending ensign only had a black eye, but David broke two bones in his hand.”
Jim chuckled. “That does sound like something I would do. Of course, if he’d let you defend your own honor, you’d have thrown a better punch.”
“If necessary,” Saavik said primly.
Jim’s grin shifted into a more serious expression. “Seriously, though, if you ever have…questions, or concerns, or something doesn't feel right…I want you to know you can come to me, okay? Same as if it were any other guy. Or a girl. Or, you know, whatever.”
“I don't want to compromise your relationship…”
“Hey. I did that all by myself, long before you showed up in my life. And yeah, I want to try to fix that, you know I do, but what kind of man would I be if I said that it was okay to sacrifice you to have a relationship with him? What kind of man would I be teaching him to be? I'm his father but I'm your dad, and that isn't going to change.”
“It's logical to prefer biological offspring.”
“Don't even start,” Jim said, grinning again. “You think I'm going to fall for that as though you're the first Vulcan I've talked into letting me love them?”
Saavik couldn't stop herself from smiling back, just a little.
“I should stop taking up the connection,” she said after a moment.
“Sure. Talk to you later.”
“Ashau nash-veh tu.”
“I love you too, sweetheart.”
Chapter 8: More than one (1) daily shoulder pat
Notes:
In the spirit of AO3 excuses, I feel compelled to note that this chapter is late because I had an endometrial ablation last week and apparently I'm old now and general anesthesia knocks me on my ass for like 3 days. But it went well so hopefully my ongoing anemia issues will be a thing of the past soon!
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
That weekend, Amanda was speaking at a linguistics conference in Gol, far enough away that she would be staying two nights in a hotel, so Sarek and Saavik were doing what Amanda called “baching it.”
This was not appreciably different from their usual routine, except that they ate dinner in silence. Sarek had prepared a salad with in-season vegetables purchased that very morning. It was really quite good, but Saavik was having one of those days where food changed from “delicious” to “cannot possibly choke this down” in the space of time it took to swallow each bite.
She ate as much as she could manage and started to silently collect her utensils.
“You did not finish your meal,” Sarek pointed out. The commentary was so unexpected that it took a moment for Saavik to formulate a response.
“Surely it is illogical to continue eating when I am no longer hungry?”
“You have lost weight since you came here,” Sarek continued, undeterred. “If you are not depriving yourself, you are ill. I cannot believe it is because the food available is significantly worse than that provided by Starfleet replicators.”
“I am not a child,” Saavik pointed out. “I can manage my own health.”
“You are not a child, but I am still the head of your household,” Sarek said. He would have denied that his tone of voice was growing frustrated. “Therefore you are my responsibility.”
“I am beginning to realize why so many members of your household have left, ” Saavik replied tartly, before suiting the action to the word by going upstairs.
Meditation that evening was difficult. Saavik identified a feeling of anger quickly, of course, but detaching from it took significantly more time.
After that there was…fear. Even after all these years, it still felt like her place in the family was provisional, that Sarek could revoke it at any time. Defying him felt dangerous. Logically, she knew that he was unlikely to punish her for talking back and that even if he did she had many other supportive relationships to fall back on. That didn't change the emotions.
Saavik sat with the fear. She meditated on the fact that Vulcans were extremely social creatures, that for most of their evolutionary history survival had depended on clan cohesion. Of course they still retained an aversion to displeasing members of their social group.
She meditated on her early childhood, when survival and safety had depended on being able to predict the actions of the adults around her and deflect their anger when it was directed towards her. Or if she couldn't deflect it, to run away or hide or fight, all things she wanted to do right now.
In her mind’s eye, she could now picture the fear as something that existed outside herself. Thank you for your service, she told it, and then she let it go.
It would be back, no doubt. But the path of logic started with such incremental steps.
After the emotions were dealt with, Saavik still didn't feel calm. Her heart kept beating too fast. Even for a Vulcan heart, which was supposed to be fast.
She pressed a hand lightly against her lower ribs, half anticipating that she'd be able to feel her heart trying to hammer its way out. (She could not.)
It had been far too long since she'd bothered with kohlan ak'shem-glashaya. Since before Genesis, probably. There was simply too much else to deal with. She had occasionally noticed problems, of course – headaches and food aversions and so on – but had refused to really pay attention to them. Because that would have meant acknowledging the possibility that they might actually be problems she had to address rather than ignoring them until they went away on their own.
That was probably part of the reason she had gotten so defensive with Sarek. Now she almost felt guilty for snapping at her grandfather. He hadn't been out of line, not really. He had just been worried about things that she was still steadfastly in denial about.
Saavik sighed. Guilt was another emotion, useful only when it was the impetus for changed behavior. So instead of letting that emotion take over, she settled back into meditation pose and started noticing her body.
The first thing she noticed was that her head hurt. It was, as a matter of fact, quite difficult to notice anything else. The mind healers had explained that headaches were by far the least concerning possible side effects of the fal-tor-pan, but at this point it had been three months and the pain seemed to be getting worse, pounding behind her eyes in time to her racing pulse.
Saavik tried slowing her heart rate to see if that would help, but it only made things worse. She felt lightheaded and panicky, like she wasn't taking in enough air.
So. Her heart was clearly trying to compensate for something, but what? She wasn't ill (not really), not injured, certainly not overexerting herself…
She sank deeper into meditation, becoming aware of all the autonomic processes that she normally didn't think about, trying to tease out which one of them might be amiss.
None of them were, but there was something. Low in her belly, cocooned so well amidst everything else that it wouldn't have been noticeable outside of meditation.
Saavik focused on that nebulous something and abruptly became aware of a tiny echo of her own racing heart, beating steadily away in secret.
Oh.
She experienced more emotions than one mind should be able to hold, a multiverse of emotions. What if David had died and this was all I had left of him layered on top of what will David think, this is too much, he will not want this interwoven with how could I not have known have I already done irreparable harm how can we even know it's viable given the protomatter…
Saavik came out of meditation so quickly it was like a slap to the face. She stood up from her mat and then the world inverted itself and she was lying on the cool stone floor, looking up at the ceiling.
When she was a child, Jim had put glow in the dark stars on the ceiling of her room, in the apartment in San Francisco. She had criticized it as an emotional indulgence, but if anyone had tried to take the stars down she would probably have tried to kill them with her teeth.
There was the sound of footsteps, the door opening, a swish of robes as Sarek knelt beside her. He brushed his fingers gently against the side of her face, not even a meld, just a telepathic how are you .
“I'm all right,” she said, even as she heard his breath hitch.
“You are hurt,” he replied. “Do not move.”
He got up in another flurry of robes. Saavik really wanted to defy his order, but her head was spinning so badly that the most she could do was roll onto her side, curling into a ball as though that could protect her from having to deal with…any of this.
Then Sarek was back with a portable communicator glowing in the darkness.
“I did not injure myself,” Saavik said, “I merely had a headache and felt momentarily lightheaded.”
“You require medical attention,” Sarek insisted.
Saavik wanted to continue arguing, but it took all of her concentration not to offer a counterpoint of vomiting on her grandfather's robe – an argument he would not have found at all convincing.
The paramedics were quiet and efficient, like everything in Shi’Kahr. And they gave her analgesic medication almost immediately, enough to make her drowsy and unfocused.
“She is dehydrated and has moderate anemia,” a paramedic told Sarek. “I recommend allowing us to transport her to the hospital for intravenous rehydration and a copper infusion.”
“That seems prudent.”
“Otherwise she and the fetus are both in good health, so there should not be long term complications, but she should schedule a follow-up with her usual physician.”
“Of course,” Sarek said. Saavik envied him his perfect calm, feeling as though her own world was still flipping itself upside down.
The sun was well up by the time she and Sarek returned from the hospital and he led her carefully from the hired car to her bedroom.
“I have cancelled my obligations for today and will remain at home,” Sarek said. “If you need anything, I will provide it for you. Please attempt to rest.”
“Wait, please.” Saavik could already feel herself drifting off to sleep, but she willed herself to concentrate.
Sarek sat on the side of her bed. “What is it?”
“I didn't know. That I was – am – pregnant.”
“It is your business. I did not plan to inquire.”
“Even though you are the head of my house and therefore responsible for me?” She was clearly delirious with exhaustion, to be teasing Sarek of all people.
“No.” A hesitant shoulder pat. “My wife and I will support you regardless. With whatever you might need.”
Oh. Amanda. “Can you tell her?”
“If you wish.”
“Yes, thank you.”
Another hesitant shoulder pat. “Now rest.” He stood up, walked to the doorway, and paused. “She will be pleased. My wife.”
Saavik allowed herself a small smile as she drifted off to sleep.
Notes:
1. Once again Putting That Old Man Into Situations! 😂
2. Vulcan glossary!
kohlan ak'shem-glashaya = lit. "meditation body-scanning," a phrase I invented with lots of help from Moreta1848. Inventing whole new concepts in Vulcan is apparently important enrichment for my habitat.
Also, "body scan meditation" is a real thing in real life (though a little less cool than the Vulcan version) so I might need to tell my therapist that her ideas have merit after all, oopsie doodle.
Chapter 9: Emotional support human (do not pet)
Notes:
Content note: thoughts that accidentally resemble an eating disorder, oops. Sometimes you just write characters having totally normal reactions to circumstances and then you read it back and you gave them orthorexia. Happens all the time.
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
When she returned from her conference, Amanda scheduled an appointment for Saavik with a doctor in Shi’Kahr who was board certified in both obstetrics and xenobiology. His name was Stork, a fact that Amanda seemed to find intensely amusing, though she didn't explain the joke to Saavik.
On the appointed day, Amanda accompanied Saavik to the hospital complex at her request. Dr. Stork's waiting room was bright and clean and perfectly calibrated to be calming. Saavik hated it immediately.
Then Saavik was taken back to an exam room that was just as bright and clean and calming. A nurse took a preliminary set of tricorder readings and drew some of Saavik's blood for analysis. She explained every step of what she was doing but didn't engage in unnecessary chitchat. Saavik found herself, contrary to all good sense, wishing for Bones and his acerbic bedside manner.
“It is standard for all patients to speak to them alone as part of the intake process,” the nurse said when she was done taking vitals.
“I am not being abused,” Saavik replied. On Earth, that would have been an extraordinarily suspicious thing to say, but here on Vulcan it could be taken at face value.
“That is gratifying to know.”
The nurse went on to ask Saavik about her living situation and whether she required any of Vulcan’s public services to obtain adequate resources, taking notes in her PADD as she went. Since Saavik found her current living situation entirely adequate, the conversation was short. Then the nurse left and Amanda was permitted to join Saavik once again.
After an interval that was not burdensome, a Vulcan man of perhaps 50 years entered the room.
“Hello, Saavik, I am Dr. Stork,” he said. “I hope you find my office satisfactory thus far.”
“Yes.”
Dr. Stork turned his attention to Amanda. “Are you Saavik's…partner?” he asked. He was probably more confused by the fact that Amanda was elderly rather than the fact that she was human. Or perhaps he noticed that she looked exceptionally similar to Ambassador Sarek’s wife.
Amanda laughed. “No, I'm just here for emotional support.”
Dr. Stork raised an eyebrow at that. “I see.”
Dr. Stork did his own examination and then sat down at a computer terminal.
“If you will excuse me for a moment while I review your test results…”
“Of course,” Saavik said. Amanda touched her hand, just for a moment, the slightest hint of You're going to be okay, I am here for you.
“Fascinating,” Dr. Stork said after a moment. “May I ask if the other parent is also Vulcan?”
“The other parent is human,” Saavik said tersely.
Dr. Stork glanced from her to Amanda again. “There is no cause for concern,” he added quickly. “Only some genetic elements that I have not previously seen. Have you consulted with any other physicians during the pregnancy? Or prior to conception?”
“No.”
“Then allow me to thank you for entrusting me with your care,” he said, his eyes crinkling in something like a smile. Were Dr. Stork not a Vulcan, Saavik might have accused him of being excited at the prospect of having a hybrid patient. Undoubtedly he was merely expressing a calm scientific interest in the novel event.
Dr. Stork turned back to the computer terminal. “Of course, since mixed ancestry is rare, we should monitor you and the fetus closely, moving forward. Fortunately, you both have T-positive blood type, which I believe will make things a great deal simpler. The hybrid case study with which I am most familiar involved a human mother and required the fetus to receive trans-placental copper infusions to ensure he was not anemic while avoiding toxicity in the mother.”
“I see.” Saavik looked at Amanda, who was grinning mischievously.
“Do you have any questions?” Dr. Stork asked.
Saavik found herself speechless – not due to a lack of questions, but due to far too many.
“Can I ask a question or two to get us started?” Amanda suggested after a moment of uncomfortable silence.
“Yes, by all means,” Saavik said. “I have so many questions I hardly know where to begin.”
Amanda touched her hand lightly again and then turned to Dr. Stork. “When do you expect the baby to be born? I know there's a difference between human and Vulcan pregnancy but I'm more familiar with the human side, personally.”
“Oh, that is a good question!” Dr. Stork checked his computer terminal again. “Based on the estimated date of conception and the fetus’ current size, it has been about thirteen weeks from conception, which would put the due date at…the third of Sahriv. Let's not forget that human pregnancy is much shorter, though, only about forty weeks.”
“Thirty-eight weeks if you count from conception,” Amanda said.
“Ah, yes, you are correct. A most confusing convention.” A few taps at the keyboard and Dr. Stork turned back to Saavik, making an obvious effort to include her in the conversation. “Comparing our measurements to the human pregnancy database gets us approximately the same gestational age, thirteen weeks from conception. In which case you could give birth as early as the beginning of Kastkaya, I believe? When we get close to that earlier date we can monitor the placental function and so on to determine if it might be necessary to induce labor or if we can allow it to begin spontaneously.”
“Close monitoring seems wise,” Saavik said, for want of anything better to say.
There was another lull in the conversation before Amanda said, “That reminds me, is it typical for Vulcans to have food aversions and loss of appetite during pregnancy?”
“That is very common, yes.”
“Is there a point at which we should be concerned? My husband and I have both noticed that Saavik has lost weight, and she didn't really have much to spare to begin with.”
“I think that you can bring up an area of concern whenever it becomes so,” Dr. Stork said, leaning forward a little and making earnest eye contact. No wonder he was an expert in xenobiology. “However, given Saavik's body condition score and the fact that she visited the hospital recently, I do think we should monitor her nutrition to ensure there are no problems.” Once again, he turned to Saavik to include her in the conversation. “Do you have a replicator at home?” Dr. Stork asked.
“We do,” Saavik said.
“Excellent. I will write you a prescription for a micronutrient supplement. You can also fill it at the pharmacy here if necessary. I think we will start with the Vulcan standard supplement and adjust as necessary when we recheck your levels.”
“That seems logical.”
“Meanwhile, I recommend having several small meals if possible. Do not confine yourself to scheduled times, and if you have a craving for a specific food, indulge it. Barring anything toxic or inedible, of course.”
“Of course,” Saavik said coolly.
Dr. Stork’s gaze was far too perceptive. “I often see, particularly in patients who are first time mothers, a desire to only consume food that is optimally healthy. I commend this desire, but my experience suggests that it is ultimately far more logical to adjust your micronutrient supplements rather than, for example, admitting you to the hospital because you are unable to maintain adequate caloric intake.”
“I understand,” Saavik said. She couldn't stop her tone from sounding chilly, but she was fairly certain that it was actually more properly Vulcan than this gentle solicitude.
Dr. Stork turned back to his computer terminal and typed for a moment. Saavik wondered if he had sensed her discomfort and backed off a little. She wondered if that made everything worse.
Amanda brushed Saavik's pinky finger with her own. “Did you have any questions, Saavikam? I think I've been monopolizing the conversation a bit.”
“You have not,” Saavik said, letting the diminutive go unremarked upon this once.
“If you have any questions before our next appointment,” Dr. Stork interjected, “there is a messaging function on the patient portal. There are also links to sources of additional information on pregnancy in general, though of course not all the general information will apply to your situation.”
“I imagine that is true even when one is not an exceptional case,” Saavik replied, earning her an amused eye crinkle from the doctor.
“That is certainly true.” A few taps at the keyboard. “You will also be able to access your examination results, including the fetus' genetic profile. Is it possible to ask the other parent to provide a genetic sample so we can compare?”
“That should be possible, yes,” Saavik said. “He is a geneticist, so I predict he will consent enthusiastically.”
“Oh, excellent! I look forward to meeting him, perhaps?”
“That should be possible in the future, yes.” Unless he panicked at the prospect of impending fatherhood and fled.
“Bear in mind,” Dr. Stork added, “that humans sometimes wish to be ‘surprised’ in certain phenotypical matters and that the genetic information will be…highly suggestive.”
Saavik glanced at Amanda.
“He means whether the baby is a boy or a girl,” Amanda explained.
“Oh. But one doesn't actually know that until the child is old enough to decide, so the potential for surprise remains.”
“Well, no one has ever accused humans of being logical.”
Dr. Stork made a muffled sound that might have been a hastily suppressed laugh.
“How are you doing, kan-bu?” Amanda asked as they walked to the subway station afterwards.
“Are you speaking to me or to the actual kan-bu?” Saavik teased.
Amanda laughed softly. “You've been quiet, I was just wondering if maybe you felt a bit…overwhelmed, maybe.”
“I am Vulcan.”
A teasing smile. “Of course.”
Saavik decided it was time for a subject change away from her feelings or lack thereof.
“Does Dr. Stork know that you also have a hybrid child?” she asked as they descended the stairs to the subway station.
“Oh, absolutely,” Amanda replied, browsing a wall of vending machines. “Do you want some dim sum if I'm getting some?”
“You are trying to get me to eat outside of mealtime.”
“Yes I am. How about sesame?”
“Anyway, yes,” Amanda said once they were sitting down with their food. “He’s a third cousin or something and only a few years younger than Spock. But of course he has to pretend that research subjects are anonymous even if there's only one person it could possibly be. And I've lived on Vulcan too long and developed a taste for being a little old lady who enjoys watching young people squirm under unspoken social expectations.”
Saavik almost choked on a dumpling trying not to laugh.
That evening, Saavik began her daily meditation with a “bedtime snack” resting uneasily in her stomach. Jim had given her an extensive education in the value of snacking, of course, but in times of stress she reflexively reverted to what he would have called a “diet” – heavy on fruits and vegetables and regimented in terms of timing and portion size.
Perhaps the truly logical reaction to stressful circumstances would have been to consume things with more readily available calories, but she could never bring herself to take that approach. It reminded her too much of being nine years old and arguing with her father about how he should modify the supply shipments in order to provide optimal nutrition for everyone at the compound. He had accused her of being “too logical” (a common complaint in their last year together) and said that people were happier when they could simply eat whatever and whenever they liked.
She had realized since then, of course, that he was lying, but habits formed in response to a threat to one’s survival were very difficult to break. The idea that other people noticed made it even worse. Sarek and Amanda had evidently been discussing her weight loss between themselves for some time. Her doctor was prepared to admit her to the hospital if she did not eat more. These were not actually threatening behaviors, but she instinctively perceived them as such and experienced all the associated emotions.
She was still wrestling with those emotions when she heard a gentle knock on the door.
“Enter.”
Amanda padded in, dressed for sleep but evidently not sleeping. “Sorry to disturb you.”
“No offense is taken.”
“I couldn’t sleep because I kept remembering articles I wanted to look up and send to you,” Amanda continued. “May I sit down?”
“Of course.”
Amanda sat down at Saavik’s desk and set up her PADD. “Please do tell me if I’m overstepping. But maybe it will help, to have something to research?”
Saavik did not ask help with what because she wasn’t sure she could convincingly argue that she wasn’t experiencing e.g. anxiety. Instead she stood up (slowly and carefully) from her meditation pose and joined Amanda at the desk.
“Having VSA clearance is so fun,” Amanda added, busily typing away. “When I was pregnant with Spock, Sarek had to go down to the library by himself and memorize things to write down for me later because they were so secretive about everything they wouldn’t even give him clearance to read things if I was there with him.”
“That seems…illogical.”
“That’s what I said! I mean, clearly the horse was out of the barn in terms of my exposure to Vulcan secrets.”
“And clearly you were motivated by personal relevance rather than simply intrusive curiosity.”
“That too! Oh here’s a good one, Epigenetic effects of in-vitro fertilization on Terran-Vulcan hybridization by Phlox et al. David should read that one, I’m sure he’d understand it better than I would.”
As Amanda continued in this manner, Saavik felt her heart rate slow to a more relaxed rhythm.
Everything that had happened in the last few days had been so completely outside her experience and expectations that she had been knocked off her feet. (Both literally and metaphorically.) But this she understood. Seeing a scientific curiosity and analyzing it from every possible angle and brainstorming an experimental approach. This was something she had done hundreds and hundreds of times.
As for synthesizing Vulcan and human approaches to solving problems? Well, she was clearly going to get a lot of practice with that particular kind of synthesis.
Notes:
1. Today we are Putting That Old Woman In Situations, finally!
2. Vulcan glossary!
Sahriv: literally "storm," referring to a month on the Vulcan calendar. Can also be sahriv-farr if the reference is unclear.
Kastkaya: literally "planting," another month. Can also be kastkaya-farr.
Credit to Android_and_Ale and Moreta1848 for most of the calendar-related ideas; these are not the offical Vulcan months because I decided I don't like those.
3. Shoutout to Marlinspirkhall on Tumblr, hopefully they don't mind me making Stork an ob/gyn today instead of a social worker!
Chapter 10: Life (uh) finds a way
Chapter Text
Saavik didn’t visit David for a few days, partly because of being busy with appointments and partly because there was a firestorm in one of the provinces near Mount Seleya and the air quality was poor enough that unnecessary travel was discouraged. In the end, it was five days between visits, which felt like an unbearably long time.
She probably should have sought permission from the mind healers to share the news of her pregnancy with David, but she could not overcome the conviction that he ought to be the first to know. (Besides her grandfather, and Amanda, and assorted medical personnel.)
The air quality was relatively good up on the mountaintop, but they still met inside, in the same room David had been eating in with Carol the previous week. Instead of sitting at the low table, David sat cross-legged on the floor, leaning on a cushion he had propped against the wall. Saavik sat next to him, sitting upright, but close enough that their arms nearly touched.
“How have you been?” David asked tenderly, brushing her arm with his fingertips in a way that no doubt didn't seem utterly electrifying from a human perspective. “The ambassador sent a message saying you were sick?”
“I was…unwell, yes. I have received treatment.”
“So you're feeling better?” he prodded, a teasing smile playing with the corners of his mouth.
“Yes, I am feeling better,” she said, letting him see the traces of a smile on her own face.
“I hope next time you aren't feeling well I'll be able to be there to take care of you.”
“It's not necessary.”
“I don't want to do it because it's necessary ,” David replied cheerfully. “I want to do it because I love you.”
David had very quickly lost any sense of embarrassment over saying that to her, but Saavik still felt like she had to be radiating panic every time. Having him admit to loving her felt obscene , like an embarrassing and slightly unhygienic habit one should only be discussing with one's doctor.
(Ironically, having sex with him never felt like that. She hoped he understood that sometimes her hands could speak more eloquently than her mouth.)
“I've been asking the mind healers if I can get out of here pretty soon,” David continued, unphased as usual by her awkward silences. “I feel good. It's great here but –” he looked sidelong at her – “there are some disadvantages.”
“And what do they say?”
“Soon. Always soon but never now .” He huffed out a sigh.
“It is unwise to leave your mind's healing incomplete.” Saavik ignored the hypocrisy of this statement, coming from herself.
“That's what they tell me. Is your grandfather still willing to put me up when I do get out?”
“Do you wish to be a guest of Ambassador Sarek, or of someone else?” she teased.
“A man can want two things,” he teased back.
Saavik did not wish to disrupt this playful banter, but the house of Surak was not known for cowardice and she did not wish to begin a new tradition. “I have some news to share with you.”
“Do I have to fight another guy to the death? I'm all for cultural sensitivity but I'm not much for hand-to-hand combat–”
Saavik choked back a laugh. “No. That was an exceptional circumstance.”
“So what's the news?” David asked, making a visible effort to be serious.
“I am pregnant.”
“Oh.” His face cycled through several emotions before settling on shock. “Okay. Wow. And it's…mine?”
“Unless I fundamentally misunderstand the process of reproduction.”
“No, yeah, sorry, I just…” He raked a hand through his hair (it was getting very long; she wondered if he'd gotten a haircut at all in the last three months) and huffed out a breath. “Okay. Are you okay? Is that why you've been sick?”
“Most likely.”
“Do Vulcans get sick like humans do?”
“Not quite. Though it is uncommon for a Vulcan female to become pregnant via a human male, so the course of the pregnancy might be unpredictable.”
“Right.” Another deep breath. “Are you okay?”
“I am receiving competent medical treatment.”
“But how do you feel?”
“Is that relevant?”
“It is to me. I don't want you to do anything you don't want to do.”
Ah. “You mean carry the pregnancy to term.”
“Yeah, that’s a big one. I was raised by a single mom, okay, I know all about how it's not just like, pop the kid out and go on your way. If you don't want–”
Saavik made sure to think and arrange her words before she answered. “I had not thought of it in terms of what I want ,” she said slowly, “but I have been operating under the assumption that I will at least attempt to carry the pregnancy to term. With the caveat that I will reevaluate if additional information suggests it will be harmful to my health to continue.”
“Fair. Just…let me know how I can help, I guess?”
“I will.”
Another sigh, another assault on the orderliness of his hair. “Now I really gotta get my brain working before…oh god. How long are Vulcans even pregnant? It's not one of those crazy overnight things, is it?”
“I believe it is slightly longer than human gestation. However, conception occurred more than three months ago.”
“Oh. Oh. Um. So that was…before? When we…?”
“I assume so.”
“Okay.” Deep breath. “So we have…six months?”
“Perhaps as long as seven, if all goes well.”
“How long have you known?”
“Only a few days. I would have told you sooner had I known.”
“I'd have figured they told you not to. But I'm glad you weren't dealing with that by yourself on top of…everything else.”
Saavik couldn't help but notice the immediacy with which David began speaking in the first person plural. We have six months…
But it was unwise to assume that a single pronoun was evidence of a desire for a lifelong commitment.
“If you do not…if you aren't ready…” she began.
“Oh no, we're not doing that again,” David said, mock stern. He put one arm around her shoulders and pulled her close. “You're stuck with me now.”
Saavik thought briefly of making a clever reply to that, but the feeling of being held, of being able to lean on him (both literally and figuratively) overcame her and she allowed herself to relax into him.
“Can I tell my mom?” David asked after a moment of comfortable silence. “She'll be…well, she'll probably ask me if I need a refresher on different methods of birth control but then she'll be supportive.”
“I have no objection. My grandfather and Amanda already know, because it was impossible to conceal from them, so it is not exactly a secret.” After a moment she added, “They have expressed their support, in both material and…emotional…matters.”
“That’s good. Have you told Jim and Spock?”
“I have not. It seemed important to tell you before anyone else learned of it.”
“I appreciate that. Do you want to…? I know Jim's my dad and all but we're not…you know, close.”
She sensed uncertainty radiating off David. He was anxious to impress his father, make him proud, and worried that the announcement of an unplanned pregnancy would compromise their tentative reconciliation.
Saavik had witnessed Jim's grief when David had been thought dead and suspected that nothing the younger man could do would lead to another estrangement, but sometimes human feelings were not rational.
“I have no objection. Shall I also send them your love? I believe this is the standard protocol for human families.”
David smiled, just a little. “Sure.”
After a few more moments of comfortable silence, it occurred to Saavik that perhaps she could take steps to alleviate some of David's anxiety.
“You can also tell your mother that this was not due to carelessness on your part,” she said. “Vulcans generally have predictable cycles of fertility. I did not expect…I did not think it would be possible, not for quite some time. So I was not looking for signs.”
“Yeah, same. I mean, not being Vulcan or…just, I'm pretty sure I was keeping up with my shots.” He shrugged. “I guess I'm already living proof that life finds a way, even in the twenty-third century.”
“I would hope that I am not as illogical as the average human when it comes to unprotected intercourse.”
She realized belatedly that this could be seen as specific criticism of David's parents rather than a commentary on species average impulse control. Fortunately David seemed unphased.
“You're not dealing with the average idiot human, you're dealing with the son of Jim Kirk. It probably cancels out Vulcan logic.”
It was improper to laugh at that, but she did anyway.
Chapter 11: Home is just another word for you
Notes:
Get your toothbrushes ready because this is PURE FLUFF
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
A few days later, T’Lar announced that David was as mentally healthy as it was in her power to make him and that he could leave Mount Selaya whenever he wished.
David passed the news along to Saavik and Saavik in turn passed it along to Sarek and Amanda.
Sarek made arrangements to rent a hover car so they would not have to carry all David’s baggage on the train. The journey would also be briefer and less potentially overstimulating that way. According to the monks, David's brain might need some time to adjust to the world at large. Saavik wondered privately if Vulcan monks were perhaps not the best judge of the human desire for novelty and stimulation.
David greeted Sarek with an appropriately solemn “Ambassador,” and his best ta’al. When he turned to Amanda, however, he immediately switched on the full wattage of his Kirk smile.
“Dr. Grayson, it's a pleasure,” he said, taking her hand in both of his. “I'm a huge fan of your work.”
“Amanda, please, and thank you. I didn't know you were interested in xenolinguistics!”
“Well, I wasn't, but I've been working in the gardens here and the online VLD is really short on botany – oh, you should come see what I’ve been working on, it’s much easier to explain that way…”
The two humans walked towards the gardens, both talking full speed. Sarek shared a long-suffering look with Saavik.
“I believe we will have a considerable time to tour the grounds before our assistance is needed with packing,” he said drily.
They ended up staying for the midday meal at the monastery – a simple affair primarily involving lightly fried plomeek cakes. This was traditional in poorer regions; one allowed the leftovers from breakfast to soak in their own juices until they were the consistency of a savory pudding and then sliced off pieces and reheated them.
Saavik noticed that David dutifully tried a single bite of plomeek cake with each of the sauces and condiments (except the ones he was told not to consume because of their copper content) but otherwise seemed thoroughly uninterested in his meal. She wondered if this was due to not liking plomeek (it did tend to be an acquired taste for humans) or whether he was still struggling to eat enough when his mother wasn't around to make him.
It would probably be hypocritical of her to appoint herself his personal food monitor, but that didn't mean she wasn't going to do it.
Finally, everything was packed up and they were all buckled into the hovercar. Once they were under way, Sarek raised the soundproof glass between the front and back seats.
“I think we are being given the opportunity for private conversation,” Saavik said with amusement.
David yawned. “Well, joke’s on them because I don't have any secrets. My mom says congratulations on the baby, by the way.”
“I do not see the logic in congratulations for an autonomic process of which I was unaware, but please tell her I said thank you.”
David smiled lazily and reached across the seat to take her hand. “She was even happier to hear I'm staying at an ambassador's house for a while, I think. She and Jim both commed me to say that I'm an adult and can make my own choices but also I should consider choosing not to leave Vulcan until I can get a Starfleet escort. You get stabbed one time. ”
“Their concern is likely excessive, but understandable considering recent events. I am also glad you are not leaving.”
Another lazy smile and a frisson of pleasure across their joined hands that made her want to kiss him senseless. “Admitting to a feeling there, Saavik?”
“Perhaps.”
David fell asleep on the ride back, his face squashed up against the window, but woke up as soon as the hovercar powered down.
“Are we home?” he asked, sitting up and making a visible effort to orient himself.
“We are at the home of Sarek and the Lady Amanda, yes.”
“I should help with…the stuff.”
David didn't wait for an answer before he unbuckled himself and clambered out of the car, so Saavik simply followed suit.
“You really don't need to help, you've already put yourselves out so much,” David was saying as Amanda lifted a small box of books out of the trunk.
“It's no trouble,” Amanda replied cheerfully, walking briskly to the front door as Sarek unlocked it.
David sighed and glanced at Saavik, who had taken advantage of the distraction to sling the largest bag (containing mostly clothing) over her shoulder.
“Hey.” He put his hands on his hips and scowled in a way that was at least fifty percent teasing.
Saavik allowed herself a small grin. “It's logical to help one another.”
“I'm going to remind you of that next time you're being stubborn,” David replied, grabbing a smaller bag.
“The dining room is through here,” Saavik told David once everything was unloaded. “And the kitchen just beyond that. There's a replicator if you don't want to bother with cooking. The interface has a Standard option, at least, though I don't know how many of the things you like might be on there.”
“I think I'll be able to figure it out,” David said, looking through the bags that had amassed in the front hall.
“Do you want to come upstairs and see your – my – the bedroom?” Saavik asked awkwardly. David grinned at her and she blushed.
“Yes, let's go see the bedroom.” He apparently found whichever bag he had been looking for and slung it over his shoulder.
Once they were in her (their) room, Saavik felt even more awkward. How does one say, “Here is the bed, we may have sex on there if you wish”?
She opted instead for “Feel free to put your things wherever you like. I can make room if you need it.”
David set his bag down near the door and went to Saavik's desk, studying the framed pictures on the wall above it.
“I know a lot of these people!” he said jokingly, looking over pictures of her with Jim and Spock and other members of the Enterprise crew. “Oh, and there's the Lady Svai, hello!” He touched a fingertip to the smallest of the pictures, a professional headshot of a Vulcan woman with large dark eyes and straight black hair cut in a sensible bob.
Saavik had told him the woman's name once, because he had asked (she had had a different copy of the same picture in her quarters on the Grissom). She had told him, once, that Svai was her mother and that she had died quite some time ago. She hadn't offered any other details or brought up the topic again after that first time. But David had remembered.
Fortunately, Saavik was spared from having too many feelings about that by David's continued commentary.
“Oh, and here's Mr. Mos!” David picked up the little stuffed sehlat and waved his front paws around playfully for a moment before setting him carefully back down.
“That Mr. Mos is an imposter,” Saavik said. “The original was…lost…so Amanda made me another one. I haven't decided yet if I am willing to form an attachment.”
David patted Mr. Mos on the head. “Well, I think he's cute.”
Saavik sat on the edge of her desk while David continued to putter around.
“Is this a closet? No, it’s a bathroom.” A pause while David disappeared into the bathroom. A minute or two later, he reappeared excitedly. “Saavik! You have a water shower .”
“Yes.”
“Can I use it?”
“Of course. There are fresh towels in the cupboard on the right hand side of the door.”
David disappeared again and soon there was the sound of water running. Saavik did not at all understand the human desire to pour water on their heads as often as possible, but she was gratified that David was apparently enjoying himself.
While David showered, Saavik changed out of her own dusty clothes and then brought the rest of his bags and boxes upstairs and made some effort to arrange them sensibly (clothes next to the wardrobe, books next to the bookshelf, etc) without taking the liberty of unpacking for him. That done, she sat lotus-style on the floor and slipped into light meditation because otherwise she was going to work herself into some kind of emotion.
Finally David emerged from the bathroom, his skin even pinker than usual. He traded the towel wrapped around his waist for a Vulcan style undershirt – loose fitting and long enough to extend almost to his knees. After hanging up his discarded towel, he surveyed the rest of his belongings.
“Would it be terribly rude for me to save the rest of my unpacking for later?”
“Not at all,” Saavik replied. “You are supposed to be resting as much as possible.”
“Yeah, unfortunately I seem to have gotten in the habit of taking a siesta,” he said. “Can I…sleep in your bed?”
Saavik made a very undignified snorting sound in the process of suppressing a laugh. “I believe that was the point of having you bring your things here instead of into one of the guest rooms.”
David chuckled. “Fair enough.” A pause. “Were you planning to take a nap…?”
“I had not made specific plans,” Saavik replied.
A few moments later, she was playing the role of “little spoon.” David wrapped one arm around her and found her hand so he could interlace his fingers with hers. She could feel contentment coming off of him in waves.
David nuzzled up against the back of her neck. “This is so nice. It's good to be home.”
“You have never been here before in your life.”
“But you're here.”
She couldn't argue with that, so she didn't.
Notes:
1. Saavik's mother Svai is an entirely original character created in collaboration with Moreta1848. I got to pick her name, which means "flower."
2. I forgot to mention!! that Mr. Mos the stuffed sehlat was created by schn-tgai-saavik/purple-iris on Tumblr!
Chapter 12: I survived a bad day and all I got was the rest of my life
Notes:
Content note: brief mention of (unintentional) weight loss.
Apparently everyone in this fic is way too skinny (and has poor orthostatic tolerance). Good thing they have a Jewish Grandma™️ already locked and loaded.
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
The next day, Saavik woke before David and went outside to do her morning calisthenics. She came inside afterwards to find that David was awake and in the kitchen but not eating breakfast. Instead, he was sitting shirtless in a chair that had been moved to the middle of the kitchen floor and Amanda was cutting his hair.
Saavik had to take a moment to analyze the emotion that punched through her lungs at the sight. It was something like jealousy, but not quite. She did not especially wish to be either of the parties in the interaction, but it was still something to witness how casual humans could be with showing skin and touching and smiling at each other. It made the gulf between her and them painfully obvious, that Amanda could know Saavik for twelve years and David for a single day and still have so much more in common with him.
Then David spotted her and his smile became even more dazzling. “Good morning, beautiful.”
“Your assessment is extremely subjective.”
Instead of taking that bait, David held out his hand and she obeyed the wordless summons. When she was close enough to touch, he pulled her into his lap and started kissing her.
“It would be unwise to abort your haircut at this juncture,” she said when he let her up for air, “unless your goal is to appear ridiculous.”
“Now who's being subjective?” David teased, but he did let her get up and retreat out of arm's reach to sit on a barstool.
“Have you had breakfast?” Saavik asked.
“Yes. I was deeply embarrassed to learn that your replicator is already programmed for Sugar Smacks because those are apparently also Jim's guilty pleasure.”
“It's a universal human experience,” Amanda said, combing through the remains of David's overgrown curls. “You either die a hero or live long enough to hear your parents’ voices coming out of your mouth and wonder where you went wrong.”
“Why not both?” David said, in that way he had where he was obviously joking but the smile didn't reach his eyes.
After a conversationally appropriate pause, Saavik said, “I'm not sure that actually qualifies as eating breakfast.”
“You only say that because you don't have the taste receptors to appreciate a food that's fifty percent corn syrup by weight.”
“Speaking of,” Amanda interjected, “please do let me know if you want anything more…Earth-like. The market closest to us caters pretty exclusively to Vulcans but it’s just a short subway ride to plenty of other places to shop.”
David looked briefly embarrassed. “Would it be too much to get some different clothes?” he managed after a moment. “The robes are very nice, don’t get me wrong, but it feels like being at a dress-up party all the time”
Amanda chuckled. “No one will be offended, trust me. I’m fairly sure there are shops down by the Embassy. Saavik might know.”
David raised his eyebrows at Saavik. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you wearing human clothes, unless you count the Starfleet uniform.”
“I usually do not,” Saavik replied. “I go to the human shops mostly for gifts for others. I am aware, however, of a few different clothing shops.”
After a few final snips with her scissors, Amanda brushed the last bits of hair off David’s shoulders and then retrieved a broom. As soon as David saw her start to sweep, he stood up and held out a hand. “Let me do that.”
“I don’t mind,” Amanda said mildly.
“I didn’t say you did. But I mind.”
“All right,” Amanda said, smiling and handing over the broom so David could sweep up his own hairs.
“So will you take me shopping?” David asked Saavik.
“Aren’t you supposed to be resting?”
“I rested! I slept for like twelve hours! We can go out and then I can rest for the whole afternoon!”
Saavik looked at Amanda in mute appeal.
“Don’t look at me,” Amanda said, leafing through her tea collection. “I can’t stop a seven-year-old from spending a week alone in the desert.”
“That's incredibly specific,” David said, momentarily distracted.
Amanda laughed. “I'll tell you all about it when you get back from your shopping trip.”
Saavik sighed resignedly. “I'll go get changed. Please put a shirt on.”
“Yes, ma'am.”
David had never been to Shi'Kahr before and moreover had been confined to a monastery with very few visitors for the last three months, so his attitude towards the subway ride reminded Saavik of her much younger tomasular who had not yet begun to rein in their relentless curiosity. Even though she knew that David was theoretically a responsible adult, Saavik still caught herself watching him like a hawk to make sure he didn’t wander off until they were finally seated on the train.
David had scanned several different informational codes while waiting at the station and was now scrolling through a site about the subway system on his comm.
“Do we need to switch trains at any point?” he asked after a moment.
“We will be transferring to the yellow line near the end of our trip. I will tell you when that’s coming up.”
“What’s ‘yellow’ in Vulcan?”
“Kin-kur.”
“Oh, I know that one! Like gold, right?”
“Yes.”
David went back to scrolling through the informational site. “I love subway maps. They’re so sexy,” he said, as if to himself.
Saavik raised a single eyebrow.
“That is a very normal kink to have, shut up.”
At that point the subway stopped to let on additional passengers, so Saavik made a note to explore that topic further another time.
“Did you know there’s an entire pre-Surakian underground city?” David asked when they crossed into the older part of the city and the subway lived up to its name by going into a tunnel.
“I did.”
“Have you seen it?”
“Not specifically. However, we pass through portions of it in the process of travelling to the embassy. You might find yourself disappointed if you are expecting ancient ruins; most of it is quite modern by Terran standards.”
David continued reading. “Have you ever been to Japan?”
“I have not.”
“I think you’d like it. Very organized. Anyway they’ve got all their big shopping malls and things underground to save space.” A pause. “You might not like the big shopping mall aspect. I liked it because until then I’d spent probably ninety-five percent of my life on space stations and being outside under the sky kind of freaked me out. Kept thinking the gravity was going to fail and I’d just float away.”
“I've had zero-g training, I would catch you.” It was a ridiculous thing to say, here in the embrace of T’Khasi’s unearthly and immutable gravity.
But David smiled and brushed his fingers against hers, so she couldn't regret being ridiculous. “I'll keep that in mind.”
They switched to the yellow line and subsequently arrived at the Terran embassy without incident.
“It would normally be improper to hold hands in public,” Saavik said as they left the subway station, “but you may do so now so you don't get lost.”
“I'm not actually a baby,” David replied, but he still looped his first two fingers around hers in a gesture that she quickly decided was the best possible synthesis of their two cultures.
By the time they walked the 0.8 kilometers to their destination, David was noticeably winded. Saavik's sidelong glance must not have been as subtle as she intended, because he said, self-deprecatingly, “Don't know why I'm so out of shape. It's not like I was in a coma and lost thirty pounds or anything.”
“In that case, your current condition must be due to a moral failing on your part,” Saavik replied, which had the intended effect of making David laugh (albeit a bit breathlessly).
They entered a shop that offered mostly second-hand clothes, though there was also a display of assorted souvenirs and tchotchkes near the register. Saavik sat down on a couch near the changing rooms while David explored the racks of clothing and then brought things back to try on.
Saavik quickly discovered that she had no particular opinion on human-style shorts up to a certain point (that point being at least halfway up David's thigh).
“How about these?” David asked, admiring himself in the full-length mirror just outside the changing booths while wearing the shortest pair of shorts yet.
Saavik looked up from her book on 20th-century polar explorers and raised a single eyebrow disapprovingly.
David grinned. “Definitely a yes, then.” Instead of changing, he pulled off the tag and put it in his pile of chosen purchases and kept wearing the shorts while browsing through the shirt section.
“Aww look at this,” David said, holding up a shirt that read INFINITE DIVERSITY IN INFINITE COMBINATIONS in Standard. Each word had a different color gradient which Saavik understood to correspond to that of a particular pride flag.
(Her first summer on Earth, Jim had hosted a cookout and worn a chef's apron emblazoned with “Pansexual: I love pans” in magenta, yellow, and cyan. So she was very familiar with the human concept of pride even if she did not feel especially compelled to participate.)
“That is tasteful,” Saavik conceded.
“High praise!” David replied, hanging the shirt in the changing booth.
His other selections were…less tasteful.
A shirt with a Krog on the Rocks logo: “Why would you serve as an advertisement without being paid?”
A silhouette of apparently generic mountains overlaid with the words VULCAN'S FORGE: “Those are the entirely wrong shape to be the L-Langon range.”
I Came To Shi’Kahr For Logic But All I Got Was This T-Shirt: “Can you please find something without words on it?"
David put the last shirt back on the rack and then browsed for a while before delightedly reappearing with an armful of extremely colorful button-downs.
“Look at these, I love these,” he said.
Saavik looked. “Is that even a real bird?”
“Yes, it’s a flamingo! They’re actually incredible animals. They can survive just about anywhere – high altitude, low oxygen, freezing temperatures, boiling temperatures. They have a special gland that allows them to filter out salt so they can drink seawater. Also they’re pink because they eat brine shrimp.” A pause. “Sorry, you probably didn’t want to know all that.”
“No, I’m just trying to decide if this is one of those stories humans make up as a joke.”
“It’s real, scout’s honor.”
“You were never a boy scout.”
David laughed. “Fair enough. I’m gonna go try these on.”
When David tired of trying on clothes himself, he tried to convince Saavik to take a turn.
To appease him, Saavik grabbed the first thing she saw in dark red (a color that she knew complemented her complexion) and retreated to the changing booth.
When she stepped back out to consider herself in the mirror, Saavik was not at all sure what to think. The dress (dark red with cream colored flowers dotted upon it) had only thin straps, otherwise leaving her shoulders bare, and the neckline was cut low enough that it made her breasts much more noticeable than usual.
Below the fitted bust, the dress fell more loosely. Its hem was high enough to leave the greater portion of her thighs also bare, making her legs look extremely long (debatable) and muscular (undeniably true).
“What do you think?” she asked David – who was staring at her in a way she wasn't sure how to interpret.
David swallowed hard before speaking. “I think that if you wear that in public, a great many Vulcans will find themselves struggling to remain logical.”
“...but do you like it?”
“God yes.”
Saavik changed back into her usual clothing (though she did put the dress in the pile with David's planned purchases) and gathered up her bag.
“Okay, that was fun,” David said.
He stood up and then murmured “whoa” under his breath and gripped the back of the chair he'd been sitting on with one hand. His face had gone rather alarmingly pale.
Saavik was at his side immediately, fingers brushing his wrist.
“I'm okay, I think I did just overdo it a little,” David said in response to her unspoken question.
“You should sit down and allow me to bring you some refreshment. It's likely that you're mildly dehydrated given you aren't used to being outdoors in Vulcan temperatures.”
“I'm seriously okay,” David protested, but he did sit back down.
Saavik went to a neighboring shop and returned shortly with a bottle of lemonade and a bag of potato chips.
“Potatoes contain significant quantities of magnesium and potassium,” Saavik explained while David opened the lemonade. “Furthermore, this snack food is seasoned with sodium chloride, another important human electrolyte.”
“Very scientific,” David said, but his tone was teasing.
Saavik kept her own expression stern. “I am familiar with humans who require reminders to care for their bodily needs properly.”
“Oh, I see,” David replied, grinning. “So what I need to do is memorize the electrolytes Vulcans need so I can help out when they don't take care of themselves properly?”
“I suppose that would prove useful if you ever met any such Vulcans.”
David laughed.
Notes:
NOTES:
1. Sugar Smacks are a real cereal. LOOK AT THIS.
2. I have not thought through how “I am sexually aroused by subway maps” would work in a roleplay scenario so if you have let me know. For purely scientific reasons.
3. A lot of David's fashion choices are deliberately meant to harken back to the 80s, in honor of these two originally coming into existence in 1982. Men's shorts were seriously SO short 🤣 Saavik in a sundress is just shameless fan service though. (It's me, I'm the fan.)
4. Vulcan glossary!
Tomasular: plural of tomasu, kinsman. Moreta assures me that this is gender neutral and she's never wrong.
Chapter 13: Let me help
Notes:
Content note: vomiting, having to go to the hospital, nightmares involving corpses. But also (according to Moreta) "hardcore porn for the comfort kinksters." Sometimes I write scifi (aliens etc) and sometimes I write fantasy (people take care of you even when you're a prickly bastard). It's called range. 😂
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
A few days later, Saavik found herself kneeling in front of the toilet, fervently hoping she was done vomiting up her breakfast but not daring to move just in case.
David sat down next to her on the bathroom floor and gently rubbed her back. “Hey.”
“Hey,” Saavik replied, then groaned as her stomach twisted painfully. She dry heaved for a minute or two, tasting bile in the back of her throat but not actually bringing anything up.
Afterwards, she seriously considered disregarding germ theory and laying her head down on the toilet seat for a little nap.
Instead she asked, “Can I lean on you for a minute?”
“You can lean on me for the rest of your life,” David replied, entirely earnest.
Saavik found herself smiling as she rested her head on his chest. Despite having human clothes now, he still liked wearing Vulcan undershirts to bed. He also claimed that gespar soap had led to the longest eczema-free period of his life and was thus still using it.
Despite this, having him hold her still felt very human. Perhaps it was the slow pace of his heartbeat, or the way he radiated warmth, or just the emotions she could sense zipping along under his skin when he stroked her hair.
“If you're feeling up to it, it might be a good idea to go back to bed,” David said finally. “My ass is falling asleep.”
Saavik almost laughed. “That does seem logical.”
She levered herself up off the floor with some difficulty. Her pelvic joints had been expanding lately, apparently, and it was an annoyingly painful process. Especially when her sciatic nerve got pinched and sent shooting pain down her leg.
David clambered to his feet while she washed her hands and face and rinsed out her mouth, shaking his legs to restore sensation.
“How are you feeling?”
Saavik really did not want to ponder the answer to that question. “Sore. My back hurts. I wish I could do calisthenics.”
“Are you feeling dizzy?”
“Yes,” Saavik admitted grudgingly.
“Probably best to wait until you feel a little better, then.”
She gave him a sidelong glance in the mirror.
“Hey, humans can be logical too sometimes!”
“If you lie on your stomach I can give you a back massage,” David suggested once they were back in bed.
“I can't.”
“Really?”
She could practically hear him mentally revising his list of Vulcan Facts so she hastened to clarify, “My uterus has moved above my pubic bone. Lying prone feels similar to lying on top of a large lump in the mattress. I could do it, but it is uncomfortable and therefore antithetical to the goal of a massage.”
“Ohh, I see.” He settled down next to her, both of them lying on their sides. “Well, I can still rub your back if you want.” He slid one hand under her nightshirt and ran his fingers along her spine.
“If you wish,” she said, which made him laugh.
Even at a slightly awkward angle, having his fingers kneading gently but firmly at her sore muscles felt extremely pleasant. She didn't usually like to be touched, partly because humans were so full of emotions, but David always had this undercurrent of something solid and warm and good underneath the passing flickers of his feelings.
Somewhere in the liminal space between asleep and awake, Saavik heard David's voice.
“Is it normal for her to be this sick?”
“It really isn't,” Amanda replied. “But you know how Vulcans are about asking for help. Once Sarek hid a serious heart condition from me for weeks because he ‘didn’t want to worry me.’”
“Well that just makes me more worried.”
“That’s what I said! Now I'm going to be worried all the time because I can't assume no news is good news!”
She spent the rest of the morning drifting in and out of sleep. Sometimes David was there, sometimes he was not. Once, he was sitting at her desk eating a sandwich and watching her sleep.
“How are you feeling?” David asked, climbing back into bed after lunch.
“Cold,” Saavik replied honestly.
David obligingly snuggled close to her, wrapping one arm around her waist. “Better?”
She still felt cold, down to her bones, but his presence was so (illogically) comforting that it wasn't a lie when she said “yes.”
Saavik somehow managed to fall asleep again, but when she woke up it was all she could do not to cry out in pain. Something was badly wrong with her lower back, or some other part of her body near there, but she couldn't think enough to narrow it down, she could barely even breathe, because everything hurt so much.
David was already rolling over and wrapping an arm around her. “Are you okay?” he mumbled sleepily, and then his hand brushed her arm and he said in a very different tone, “ Fuck. I'll be right back.”
Saavik tried to follow his line of thinking, but concentrating proved very, very difficult.
Then Amanda was there, saying, “With Vulcans you don't have to worry unless it's over 40 degrees” for some reason. There was an urgent beep, and then Amanda said, “Oh fuck.”
Saavik managed to conclude that her body temperature was probably over 40 degrees, and then she decided thinking was too hard and she wasn't going to do it anymore.
“Are there any other symptoms that may be relevant?” the ER nurse asked.
“She's in a lot of pain,” David said.
Saavik wanted to protest, but she was too busy taking little panting breaths so she didn't scream.
“Is the pain localized to any part of her body?”
“Lower back mostly.”
“Is it dull or sharp? What is the severity?”
“Dull I guess? And…pretty severe. I'd say slightly less painful than being stabbed,” David said, only partially joking.
The nurse raised an eyebrow but only said, “I will report to the doctor on call and return shortly.”
After a great deal of testing and scanning (and IV fluids and analgesic medications), an Andorian woman in a doctor's uniform entered the room.
“Hello, Saavik, I'm Dr. Lirith, a colleague of Dr. Stork's.”
“Hello,” Saavik managed. She attempted to marshal her thoughts enough to perhaps ask a question, but that proved difficult.
“And you are?” Dr. Lirith asked politely, turning to David.
“David Marcus. Saavik's…partner?”
“Bondmate,” Saavik said, because it was true. “He’s a doctor too.”
“Not that kind of doctor,” David clarified, sounding a bit embarrassed.
“What did you study?” Dr. Lirith asked, politely interested.
“Microbiology and genetics. But in a PhD program.”
“That's still quite impressive!” Dr. Lirith looked at her PADD. “Anyway. Saavik. The bad news is that you have a pretty nasty kidney infection, but the good news is that we can get you some antibiotics and get you feeling a lot better in a day or two. The doctors here pulled me in from xeno just in case there were any special considerations with the fetus, but the antibiotics they suggested shouldn't cause any issues.” She scrolled through her PADD for a moment. “Unfortunately I do want to admit you for a day or two, just to make sure the antibiotics are working and get you a bit more stable. I know staying in the hospital is never fun, but hopefully this will prevent more poking and prodding in the long run.”
Saavik wanted to say that she didn't evaluate a proposed course of action based on whether or not it would be fun, but she was still having trouble forming sentences, so she just said, “That is acceptable.”
Saavik was transferred shortly thereafter to a larger room in a different section of the hospital. In short order, they were visited by a nurse (to make sure Saavik was getting the appropriate medications and check on her and the baby’s vitals), a cafeteria worker (to ask what they wanted for dinner) and a hospital support worker (to ask if they needed anything else after their dinner).
Saavik got a warmed blanket and David got a cup of coffee after an embarrassingly long wait because it had to be retrieved from another wing of the hospital.
“Thanks,” David said when the support worker gingerly offered him a lightly steaming to-go cup. “Sorry you had to go to all that trouble.”
“No apologies are necessary,” the support worker replied. “Is there anything else you need?”
David looked at Saavik, who shook her head. “I don't think so.”
“If you do, please just push this button and someone will assist you shortly.”
After she left the room, David took a sip of his coffee and grimaced. “Well. At least we know it's caffeinated, considering.”
His comm buzzed and he took it out of his pocket. “Amanda says she’s glad they figured out what was wrong and that she can come visit in the morning and bring anything we need from home, or just keep us company. Also she sends ‘hugs and kisses but only if you want to be touched right now’.”
Saavik smiled, just a little. “You should go home, get some sleep,” she suggested, snuggling deeper under her pile of blankets.
“There's a pullout bed here. I already waited three months to be able to be with you, that's enough.”
“You weren't waiting for this ,” Saavik replied.
David put down his coffee and took her hand. “Yes I was . Good days, bad days, having you take care of me, being able to take care of you. I want to be with you for all of it.”
She could feel his sincerity over the bond, but of course that was just a feeling, not a logical argument. “I still don't understand why .”
David interlaced their fingers. “Because I love you.” A small, tender smile. “Because it's so easy . Even on the bad days. It's the easiest thing in the world. I hate that anyone ever made you think it's hard.”
“I hope pain is something you enjoy,” the Klingon commander says, his knife at Saavik's throat.
You want to reason with him – plead with him – but you cannot speak, cannot move.
Then the knife is in your hand. You embrace her. “I’m sorry. This isn’t what I wanted.”
And then she screams as you sink the knife into her back.
There is so much screaming.
You hoped that you could compensate for the instability, that no one would notice.
But everyone notices. Everyone is watching, hanging from the ceiling with their unblinking, lifeless eyes.
By the time you go back, someone has cut them down and closed their eyes, but you can still feel them staring into you, like a knife through the heart.
You put a hand to your chest and it comes away stained red with blood.
You know the blood is not yours because you are still alive.
Saavik woke up. A moment later, there was the sound of movement from the pullout bed on the other side of the room. David sat up, sighed, and put his head in his hands, rubbing at his face as though to rub away the afterimages of the nightmare.
“You dream about Genesis,” Saavik said, too drowsy to pull her punches. “About failing.”
“Yeah,” David said, looking down at his clasped hands. “I do.”
“You still feel guilty.”
A long pause. “Yeah.”
“Why?”
David sighed and raked a hand through his hair. “I read something once – ‘She could never be a saint, but she thought she could be a martyr if they killed her quick.’ Maybe I was never a hero. Maybe deep down I knew that dying was the only way to not be the villain. Because I would have broken immediately. Especially – especially if they'd hurt you. And then even more people would have died.”
Saavik had a lot of thoughts on that – on how empathy was hardly a sin, for example, or how even people trained to resist torture always broke eventually – but what she said was, “I think you hold yourself to a higher standard than you hold anyone else.”
David laughed then, and it almost sounded genuine. “I'm going to remind you that you said that, later. I'm sure it will become relevant.”
Notes:
1. I invented Lirith all by myself! (Okay, I did google "Andorian dictionary" lol.) Lirith is her first name, so it doesn't have the usual Andorian gender prefix they use with their surnames.
2. The quote David references is from "Wise Blood" by Flannery O'Connor. Note if you decide to google it: the "FOC write a story that doesn't include outdated words for people of color" challenge is apparently level impossible.
3. Purple iris made FANART for this fic! I am so flattered and excited I cannot even describe it! Anyone who reads this who hasn't already seen the art should go shower her with compliments!!
Chapter 14: I made myself kind
Notes:
Content note: discussion of past non-consensual use of telepathy, again, SORRY
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
A large package from the elder Dr. Marcus had (coincidentally) arrived while Saavik was in the hospital, so as soon as they got home David settled down cross-legged on the rug to open it while Saavik watched from bed, propped up on pillows. Since her fever had broken, she really didn’t feel like she needed to be lying around quite so much, but now that she was at home she had David and Amanda hovering over her like a pair of mother hens.
It amused her to see how meticulous David was about opening his package. Instead of just tearing into things randomly, he sorted the smaller packages contained within the large outer box into piles. Most of them were wrapped in festive red and green paper. A few smaller ones were wrapped in plain paper; he dealt with those first by stuffing them in one of his drawers before turning back to the more colorful offerings.
“This one is for you,” he said, handing Saavik a relatively large, flat package before sitting back down amid his piles.
“Why?”
“Because my mother likes you for some reason,” David teased.
Saavik fake-scowled at him before turning her attention to the package. It was wrapped in red striped paper and then in a green ribbon with a small card attached.
To Saavik
Merry Christmas
Love,
Carol
Saavik started meticulously untying the ribbon while David started peeling the paper off one of his almost as meticulously.
Saavik's package contained a book of full-color photographs of California beaches, including several close studies of tide pools. She had told Carol once about visiting the beach with Jim and Spock, and of course they had discussed her affection for paper books. The fact that Carol knew so little about her and still managed to get something relevant to her interests was…a curious phenomenon.
Just then, a knock sounded on the door.
David (who was now wearing a Daystrom Institute hoodie in addition to what he'd been already wearing) glanced at Saavik and then said, “Come in!”
Amanda entered a moment later. “I was just coming to see if you wanted me to bring up some dinner.”
“I don't think I'm such an invalid that I can't go downstairs to eat,” Saavik replied.
Amanda smiled indulgently and then looked curiously at David's pile of presents. “You know, it did not even occur to me to ask if you celebrate Christmas! I will have to remember that for next year.”
David laughed. “Please, don't worry about it. When I was growing up my mother was usually the one saying I didn't need half as many presents as I got.”
Amanda laughed too. “Is that so?”
“Because you see,” David continued, “My Grandma Kirk would send Hanukkah presents first, so then my other grandmother would take it as a personal challenge to send more and better things for Christmas. Apparently my mother had to sit them down at one point and explain that passing on cultural heritage to the next generation does not require getting into a nuclear arms race over giving a toddler more stuff than he could ever need.”
Amanda laughed even harder. “So you don't want three grandmothers all attempting to upstage each other?”
“That sounds dangerous,” David replied teasingly. “Probably best to not.”
After dinner, Saavik was going to program the replicator to dispense her updated prescriptions from Dr. Lirith (a slightly modified micronutrient supplement, plus a medication that was supposed to help with appetite) but found the replicator card was not where she had left it.
“Amanda, do you – ?”
“Oh, sorry, I meant to mention that. Sarek stopped by to pick up some files and then went back to the embassy, but while he was here he programmed the replicator for you. The card is in the drawer with the others if you want to double check.”
“I see,” Saavik said.
Programming a replicator was not an excessively burdensome task, especially when one owned a state of the art model with the latest and best user interface. However, it was also not something one could do in passing while they waited for their tea to brew.
Saavik might have asked why , but she suspected that even with more than 50 years of experience, Amanda also didn't always know the answer to that question.
The next morning, Saavik woke up only a little later than her usual time and decided to do some calisthenics after breakfast. David eventually joined her in the garden with a bowl of his questionably edible cereal.
“I don't require adult supervision,” Saavik said without breaking out of the pose she was holding. She had felt a little lightheaded during a position that involved bending deeply at the waist, but there was no need to mention that since it was undoubtedly merely the result of her expanding uterus.
“Maybe I just like watching you,” David said, not entirely like he was teasing.
After she finished her exercise and returned indoors, Saavik encountered Sarek briefly in the hallway as he put on his outer robes before work.
“Thank you for entering the replicator programs for me, sa-mekh’al,” she said casually.
“Thanks are unnecessary, ko-fu’il,” he said stiffly. Then, as she was about to go up the stairs: “I am gratified that you are well again.”
Her back was turned, so he couldn't see a small smile steal across her face.
“When you were in the ER,” David said that evening, “and I introduced myself as your partner…”
“Oh,” Saavik said, remembering.
“You said I was your bondmate. And I just want to make sure I know what that means for you before I go around using it.”
“You don't have to. ‘Partner’ is acceptable.”
David sighed. “That's not – I'm not – I want to know what you meant.”
Saavik closed her eyes and took a moment to remind herself that she was in control of her emotions. “It is…technically true…that we share a bond. That this bond is…romantic in nature. However, to say bondmate suggests that there is a…permanent commitment. It is not the usual way for Vulcans to bond first and become committed to one another later.”
“So…people would think that we were married, basically?”
Saavik very much did not want to reply to that. “Yes.”
“Is that…bad?”
“Just because it is unusual for Vulcans doesn't mean it is shameful. Besides, you are human, so it would be unreasonable to expect you to commit to someone first and only bond with them afterwards.”
“And what if I wanted to be committed to you?”
Saavik sternly told her heart not to beat faster at that. “It's not necessary. I find our current relationship satisfactory.”
David laughed and brushed two fingers over the back of her hand, sending shivers up and down her spine. “‘Satisfactory’ is certainly one word for it.”
The next morning, David came out to the garden with his bowl of cereal just as he had before. This time, Saavik paused her calisthenics and sat down on her mat, looking a little upwards to meet his eyes while he sat on a nearby bench.
“When I was meditating this morning,” she began, “I realized that there was a factor I had forgotten to mention when we were speaking last night about our being bonded.”
“Yeah? What factor is that?”
Instead of answering directly, Saavik made what must have seemed to David to be a rather abrupt change in topic. “You know that my mother died when I was very young. And you know that I left my father's care when I was ten years old and ultimately spent the remainder of my childhood with Spock and Jim.”
“I had that general idea, yeah.”
“I think…before you decide whether or not you want to be with me…you should know why .”
“I can't imagine it will change my mind, but shoot.”
Saavik allowed herself a single deep breath, for composure, and then began speaking. “My father, Sybok, was the son of Sarek and a Vulcan woman, making him Spock's half-brother. But he is not counted among the family now. By Vulcan law, Sarek has only one son and Spock has no brother.”
“What Vulcan law is that?” David asked.
“He is v’tosh ka’tur. It means…a Vulcan without logic, but it is…more than that. It is not what a human would think when they hear that term.”
During her first year at the Academy, there had been a cultural sensitivity class – covering the four founding members of the Federation – which had touched very briefly on the topic and did nothing to convey cultural sensitivity. Her classmates had, in fact, used the term to tease her with the possibility of exile every time she showed the barest hint of emotion. They could not have known of the intimacy of her acquaintance with the concept, of course, but…they would never know, after that.
“He is…someone who broke so fundamentally with the ideals of Vulcan society that he could not be reconciled to it. He was exiled as a young man, when other means of addressing his crimes had failed. My mother, his bondmate, chose to leave with him. I don't know if she shared his beliefs or if she merely pitied him.” I wish I knew, Saavik thought, but if she said that she was never going to be able to finish explaining her father's crimes.
“Since his exile, my father has amassed a following. He uses his telepathic abilities to take away emotional pain. This is something that many Vulcans – not all, not most, but many – can do, but there are meant to be restrictions on the practice. Boundaries. He does not follow those restrictions, because he wishes the people he – he would say the people he ‘helps’ – to be devoted to and dependent on him.”
“But you don't believe in that.”
Saavik shook her head, momentarily speechless. “He did it to me. When my mother died. He took away all my memories of her so that I couldn't feel the pain of losing her.”
David's only response to that was a sharply indrawn breath. Saavik didn't look at him, didn't try to read his emotions through their bond.
“I don't know why I was eventually able to resist and break free of his control. Perhaps because I was Vulcan, and most of his victims were not. I have learned a great deal about how to control my mind since then, but I am not an adept, there is still so much I don't know, and I am…I am so afraid.”
Saavik stopped there, not because she thought she had explained the topic thoroughly, but because she could not continue speaking.
David waited a few moments in patient silence.
“That doesn't change anything, though,” he said gently. “Not for me. If you need me to do things differently, take it slow, for you to feel safe…”
Saavik made a sound that might have been a laugh or a sob as she realized just how drastically he had misunderstood. “It's not you . It's me. You shouldn't trust me. ”
“Why not? Because you were a victim of something terrible?”
“My father had me because he wanted someone like himself. Everyone who knew him sees at once how alike we are. And I am…I have very high potential, telepathically. Not all Vulcans do. I could…I could become like him.”
“You won't,” David said immediately, sincerely.
“How can you possibly know that?”
“I've been inside your mind,” David said, smiling gently. “You carried my soul , Saavik.”
“What if you only trust me because of that? Because of our minds having been intermingled?”
“They specifically checked that back at the monastery, I remember you explaining that to me. And even if you think they're wrong…it's a simple fact that I liked you and trusted you before everything that happened on Genesis.”
Saavik felt herself blush, remembering how gently he had made himself indispensable to her, but continued arguing anyway. “I touched you. When I – when Captain Terrell was infected with the creature and tried to – I remember I touched your arm. So we cannot rule out that I influenced you in some way.”
“With a single touch?” David laughed. “That's some pretty strong telepathy.”
“I'm serious.”
David sighed and lowered himself off the bench so he was sitting directly in front of her on the paving stones. His gaze went unfocused as he thought for a few minutes, and then he said, “Why do people follow my father? Do what he tells him to do? Believe in him even when the odds are stacked against him?”
“Are you asking that sincerely or rhetorically?”
David chuckled. “My mother admitted once, she didn't want me to grow up around Starfleet because she'd seen the way people would live and die for Jim Kirk the minute he so much as said hello to them. And I didn't understand that, because obviously I wasn't going to do that. I wasn't going to fall under some kind of spell and follow him to the other side of the galaxy on an ill-fated adventure.” He chuckled again. “But apparently my mother had me figured out because I met you and then I understood – I don't think I'd known you five minutes before I had decided I was going to follow you anywhere. That's not Vulcan mind control. I don't know what it is. But it's something humans have recognized for thousands of years.”
“I'm not very like him, though. I am…cold, and prickly, and…”
“You are fiercely protective,” David interrupted, “not only of the people you love but of random strangers you don't have any particular reason to like. When there's a problem you don't know how to solve you keep chewing on it until you do. You talk a big game about being unemotional but you cry when you think nobody's watching. When you see something that fascinates you your eyes light up like you can't believe you're lucky enough to live in a universe with things to discover in it. You never, ever give up. And somehow despite being the strongest person I've ever met, you're also the gentlest.”
He touched her hand then, and she got a flash of memory – herself, viewed from the outside, finding a crying child in the snow and reaching out, somehow making him recognize instantly that he would be safe with her.
“Your father wanted someone like him,” David continued, quietly. “You made yourself someone like nobody else in the universe.”
Notes:
1. The Daystrom Institute hoodie has the tagline “ALMOST NONE OF OUR GRADUATES COMMIT WAR CRIMES PLEASE STOP TALKING ABOUT IT” (lol jk, unless…)
2. Sarek is playing the role of “dad who said he didn't want a cat but then you catch him building a customized heated bed for the cat like it's NBD”
3. I imagine TOS-era replicators having a sort of retrofuturistic vibe where they can print anything you want (as long as it's Food Cubes) but you have to type in the dot exe commands because GUIs didn't exist in the 1980s. Partly because that fits the story I'm trying to tell and partly just because it's funny.
4. Vulcan glossary!
Sah-mekh'al: “grandfather”
Ko-fu’il: “granddaughter,” a slightly speculative construction based on the fact that ko-fu means “girl” or “daughter,” ko-mekh means “mother,” and “koh-mekh’il” means “grandmother.”
The VLD is not consistent with punctuation across the various family terms so I went off Vibes.
Chapter 15: A part of the main
Notes:
(See the end of the chapter for notes.)
Chapter Text
The night before Saavik's second prenatal appointment, David sat at her desk studying the patient portal like he was going to be required to take a test on its contents. Saavik, meanwhile, was reclining in bed looking through her ocean life book.
“Saavik?” David said after several minutes of focused silence.
“Yes?”
“How do Vulcan sex chromosomes work?”
“Very well,” she replied, which had the intended effect of making David laugh.
“Okay fair. But I remember you telling me once that it's not as simple as humans and I admit I don't really remember the details of that.”
“Vulcans don't, strictly speaking, have sex chromosomes,” Saavik began, setting aside her book. “There are at least seven genes distributed across multiple chromosomes that influence primary sex characteristics and a far greater number that have at least some influence on secondary sex characteristics.”
“To be fair, humans have some of those too. Like I have a gene somewhere for how large my breasts would be if I had them but it will never get expressed because I also have genes that turn on masculinizing hormones.”
Saavik was momentarily distracted thinking about David as a woman. With breasts. She quickly redirected her mind to other things.
“Vulcans' phenotypical gender is also much more malleable than it is in humans, as far as I know,” Saavik added.
“Yeah, I do remember you saying that.”
In hindsight she probably should have figured out that she was romantically interested in him a lot sooner than she had. One did not normally share fun facts about alien genitalia with one's casual friends.
“But you still have the concept of male and female?” David asked, interrupting her train of thought. “I mean, in a social way and not just a purely reproductive way.”
Saavik suddenly put two and two together. “You want to know what to call the baby.”
“I mean, it would be nice to not just call it the baby.” He paused as if replaying the sentence in his mind. “Even better to not have to call it ‘it.’”
“It's easier in Vuhlkansu; everything is just ish-veh. When I was very small I had a hard time remembering that it matters in Standard.”
David chuckled. “Unfortunately I am still working on my Vuhlkansu.”
Saavik was already very much aware of that whenever David attempted to speak her native tongue, but politely refrained from mentioning this. “You can call the baby ‘he,’ I think. If he prefers something else later, he can tell us.”
David smiled. “Sounds like a plan.”
Dr. Stork greeted David by shaking his hand and saying, “It's a pleasure to meet you,” which seemed frankly excessive to Saavik.
Then Saavik lay back on the biobed and Dr. Stork started his usual scanning. David sat next to her and watched the monitors intently.
“That’s the baby’s heartbeat?” he asked as an extra bar appeared on the screen showing Saavik’s vitals.
“It is,” Dr. Stork said. “Don’t worry if it’s showing as outside the normal range; there isn’t an established norm for hybrids.”
David nodded without looking away from the screen, a small smile tugging at the corner of his mouth. It hadn’t occurred to Saavik until this moment that David couldn’t hear the baby’s heartbeat just by meditating deeply and she found herself picking up on a bit of his awe at this new experience.
Dr. Stork adjusted the settings on his tricorder and the screen switched to a blurry grayscale of apparently random shapes. After a moment of scanning, a few dark blobs appeared in the middle of the screen, pulsing rapidly.
“That is the heart itself,” he explained. Lines and numbers appeared and disappeared too rapidly even for Saavik’s Vulcan brain to follow as he took measurements. The heart went out of focus and other shapes swam into view. They spent some time on the crescent-moon curve of what was obviously a skull, and later she thought she noticed a pointy little elbow, but for the most part the screen might as well have been showing radio static.
She glanced at David instead and found him staring like he was witnessing the most amazing scientific discovery of his life. He must have sensed her eyes on him because he looked away from the screen for a moment to grin at her.
“We made that,” he whispered.
“I definitely think my contribution merits leading authorship on any publications,” Saavik replied.
David laughed, but not so enthusiastically that he had to look away.
“The fetus appears to be growing well,” Dr. Stork said once his examination was complete. “Meanwhile, how have you been doing?”
Saavik felt her face heat as he looked at her with a combination of Vulcan focus and unfamiliar compassion. “I believe I am doing well,” she said. “My appetite has been much better.”
“That is highly gratifying news. Have you been taking the medications Dr. Lirith prescribed?”
“Yes.”
“Have you noticed any side effects?”
“I don't believe so.”
“Excellent. It could be coincidence, since it's common for symptoms to lessen at the beginning of the second trimester, but given your overall health I think we should continue the vonkastazine for a while longer.”
“That seems logical.”
“Prior to your next appointment, I recommend you have a more detailed scan. In human obstetrics, there are a great many health markers that are based on the size and development of the fetus at approximately 18 weeks. I will put a note in your file so that when you speak to the scheduling department they will arrange for the scan to be immediately before your next appointment with me.”
“Very well,” Saavik said.
“Do you have any other questions?” Dr. Stork's gaze encompassed David as well.
David glanced at Saavik to see if she was about to speak and then said, “What about genetic testing? I was under the impression that you wanted information from my side of the family as well. My parents are on Earth currently so if we needed anything from them…”
“Oh yes!” Dr. Stork sat down and leaned forward eagerly. “If you are willing and able, it would be immensely helpful for you to undergo genetic typing so we can compare your genome to that of the fetus. I don't believe it will be necessary to ask any extended family members to do the same, but if you are aware of any illnesses in the family that may have a genetic component…”
“My father's side is prone to allergies, I think,” David said.
Dr. Stork waved a hand dismissively. “That is relatively minor. I was referring more to disorders that might require intensive treatments before or shortly after birth.”
“Ah, none of those, no. My father's side is also Jewish so I've had routine screenings and I'm not a carrier for anything in that line.”
Dr. Stork nodded and spent a minute typing on his terminal. “The genetic typing does require a blood test, but the phlebotomy department here is excellent and can make any accomodations you require.”
“Needles don't bother me,” David said. “And anyway I'm not the one who has to be sick and tired and so on for ten months. I think getting a blood draw is really the least I can do.”
“It's hardly all that you do,” Saavik said, and then blushed when they both looked at her.
Saavik would have liked to say that her hospitalization inspired her to use pure willpower and a sense of maternal duty to overcome her food aversions and start taking care of herself.
What actually happened was that it suddenly became easy. She didn't know whether it was the new medication regimen or entering the second trimester or having David hanging around constantly eating high protein snacks (because he wanted to build muscle mass himself, not because he wanted to trick her into eating more), but she knew it wasn't anything that required effort on her part.
The upside, of course, was that she stopped constantly feeling exhausted and headachy and dizzy. The downside was that her newfound energy allowed her the opportunity to get bored. So it was serendipitous when, in the second week of January by the Earth calendar, she received a message from Starfleet command. Due to an unexpected vacancy, she would be teaching 3 classes for Starfleet Academy, splitting her time between the Starfleet office in Shi'Kahr and the Vulcan Science Academy, which lent out classroom space for more science-oriented classes. She would also be contributing to a joint VSA-Starfleet research project on supernovae.
“I suspect that the Shi’Kahr campus has lower expectations for their professor's interpersonal skills,” Saavik told Jim on a subspace call later that day.
Jim chuckled. “Don't sell yourself short, ko-fu. I did some time at the Academy when I was an El Tee myself and I definitely wasn't the charming fellow I am today.”
Off-camera, another voice said, “I recall one of your old friends describing you as a ‘stack of books with legs’.”
Jim turned his head to the side and grinned. “Yeah and that caught your attention, didn't it?” he asked flirtatiously.
“Indeed not. My attention was on you from the moment you became Captain, as was proper.”
Jim kept looking offscreen for another moment (no doubt with an extremely sentimental expression) and then turned his attention back to Saavik. “How's David been?”
“He's well. He's currently out shopping with Amanda, but I will tell him you called.”
“How's he been doing living off rabbit food?” Jim asked teasingly.
“He regards his unfortunate fate with more equanimity than you display in similar circumstances,” Saavik replied.
Jim laughed.
A few days later, Saavik evaluated herself in the bathroom mirror. The space between her hips and ribs was now slightly curved rather than being a flat plane, so she had requisitioned new, slightly larger uniforms. Even though she felt absolutely massive, she had to admit that a casual observer would probably not even notice anything unusual about her size and shape.
David came into the bathroom still in his sleep shirt and leaned his head on her shoulder while wrapping his arms around her waist. “You look perfect,” he said, kissing the side of her neck.
“You are biased.”
“But I'm right.”
She allowed herself a moment to close her eyes and lean back against his chest. Then: “I must finish getting ready so I'm not late.”
“Okay,” David said, just a little wistfully. “Oh by the way, I have an errand to run in the city later today. Maybe I could stop by Starfleet and bring you lunch?”
“What kind of errand?”
David grinned teasingly. “Just picking up a special order. I promise not to wander around the city by myself or anything.”
Saavik rolled her eyes at him and started pinning up her hair. “Very well. I will send you a text message when I know where my office will be.”
Over their salads, David actually had some useful insights on her CMD 101 predecessor’s extremely disorganized notes. (The previous professor had, of course, been human.) Saavik almost felt ready to teach CMD 102 when her comm beeped to remind her she needed to start walking to the classroom.
David walked with her and kissed her (briefly, but not chastely) just outside the door.
“People will see ,” she protested, though without much enthusiasm.
“Good,” he said, smiling, and kissed her again.
“You are here because you are the best of the best,” Saavik said. “You probably think you can beat any scenario I can throw at you. And you're right… almost all of the time.”
She came around her desk and sat on the edge, making brief eye contact with a few of the students.
“Someday, you are going to fail. It might be at the Academy. It might be out there, in space, when real people's lives are on the line and you can't go to your professor and ask for a chance to try again. When that happens – when you face the limits of your own abilities – what are you going to do?”
She stood back up, clasping and unclasping her hands and then finally settling for putting them in her pockets.
“When you fail – not if but when – the thing that will save you is your crew. They'll call you out when you're wrong. They'll put their own lives on the line to save yours. And in your bleakest moments, when you did the best you could and still failed, they'll be there to carry you until you can get back on your feet.”
A human student in the front row raised her hand – much to Saavik's relief, since she had no idea how to end that little speech.
“Cadet Mensah.”
The student lowered her hand. “What if you don't naturally fit in with other people? How do you find a crew that actually helps you instead of slacking off or stabbing you in the back?”
Saavik took a steadying breath as memories flashed through her mind.
By the transitive property you're my family, right?
Even if you were not my blood, I would not turn away a child who required my help.
Good days, bad days, having you take care of me, being able to take care of you. I want to be with you for all of it.
“There are billions upon billions of sapient beings in the universe,” she said. “I am confident you will find the ones who are meant to be part of your life, and when you find them you will know. Because they will refuse to leave.”
This answer earned a smile from Cadet Mensah and a smattering of laughter from other human students.
That pause allowed Saavik a moment to think, Oh.
Notes:
Notes:
1. Vonkastazine: a medication I made up, combining the Vulcan words avon (hunger) and kastoran (stimulant) with a Human language suffix commonly used for anti-nausea medications. No I'm not a giant nerd shut up.2. Mensah is the most common surname in Ghana, definitely not a reference to anything else. 😂 Incidentally, I think Uhura would have loved taking a language intensive at the Shi’Kahr campus.
Chapter 16: You're my moon
Notes:
(See the end of the chapter for notes.)
Chapter Text
After a few days of Saavik's new schedule, David suggested that they set aside time to spend together via the human tradition of “date night.” Saavik had no objection to that, so David arranged to have exclusive use of the living room after dinner on Saturday. He planned to use the larger viewscreen to show Saavik one of his favorite movies, a vintage classic called “Jurassic Park.”
“This popcorn has red pepper, lime, garlic, and nutritional yeast,” David explained, setting Amanda's largest mixing bowl on the coffee table. It was so full of popcorn that a few pieces tumbled out. David promptly ate them. “I wonder why nutritional yeast is called that. It is nutritional but not more so than other kinds of yeast. It's the same species used in bread making or beer and…you probably don't need a microbiology lecture with your popcorn.”
“No, but it's cute when you get excited about explaining something.”
David laughed. “Do you want a drink?”
“I have one,” Saavik said, indicating the water bottle she'd been dutifully toting around in an effort to stave off dehydration headaches. “Would you be terribly offended if I asked for a bowl and some chopsticks?”
David laughed again. “ Fine , but only if you promise to let me lick your fingers later anyway.”
Saavik blushed. “That can be arranged.”
“You are thinking very loudly,” David said, tossing a handful of popcorn into the air and not very successfully catching it in his mouth.
“Why don't the raptors have feathers ,” Saavik whispered.
“Because at the time they hadn't found any fossils complete enough to show soft tissue,” David explained, unperturbed. “Did you know that there's a scale replica of the Rexy animatronic in San Francisco?”
“I did not.”
“My mother took me there once when I was a kid. It was great. I wanted to make one of my own and she just let me run with it until I realized the logistical challenges of having something that size on a space station. I learned a lot about robotics though. And went through a slightly unhinged quantity of modeling clay.”
“Oh man I forgot what a bisexual awakening this movie is.”
“A what?”
David looked briefly embarrassed, then soldiered onwards. “You know. When you've watched a movie a hundred times and then one day puberty kicks in and you're like oh, oh no , and you spend an embarrassing amount of time in the shower thinking about women in short shorts and men with their shirts falling off and historically inaccurate dinosaurs.”
“Fascinating.”
David grinned and licked nutritional yeast off his fingers without breaking eye contact. “If you keep doing that thing with your eyebrow we are definitely not making it to the end of the movie.”
Some time later, Saavik was doing more field research on the psychological effects of listening to your lover’s heartbeat when David said, apropos of nothing, “Don't Vulcans usually get married as kids?”
Saavik propped herself up on one elbow so she could look at his face, even though obviously she could already tell what he was feeling.
“It is complicated. The kun-ut-la generally takes place in childhood, but it is not what a human would consider a marriage. The closest translation is usually ‘betrothal,’ but that is also an incomplete understanding.”
David bit his lip. She wanted to bite it too, just there, but resisted the impulse. “Are you…”
“No. I did not even visit Vulcan until I was well past the usual age, and I am not considered a particularly desirable prospect for most of the traditional families anyway.”
“That's stupid.”
Saavik did let herself bite him then. It rather interrupted the conversation.
The following weekend, Sarek and Amanda had a diplomatic dinner to attend, so David announced that he would be in charge of cooking dinner for himself and Saavik. After consulting with her about her willingness to try human foods (she rejected cheese on the grounds that she couldn’t get past the way it smelled and mushrooms on the grounds that they were literally not even a vegetable) he went shopping on his own while she was at work and subsequently cordoned off sections of the fridge and pantry with colorful sticky notes designating his shopping haul as romantic dinner food .
After Sarek and Amanda left, David pulled up a recipe on his PADD and started pulling out ingredients. Saavik watched, making sure to stand just a little out of the way.
“Apparently the first thing I do is heat olive oil in a pan,” David said, “but then I have to add minced shallots and garlic. I know that much about cooking, you have to read ahead because they try to trick you with things like that.”
Saavik suppressed her amusement. “I can mince things.”
David seemed to consider whether he wanted to insist she didn’t help and then gestured at the assembled vegetables with a spatula. “The garlic is white and the shallots are…kind of purplish. I spent way too long staring at oniony things yesterday. I have no idea what the difference is but we are trusting the process.”
Saavik got out a cutting board and a knife. “I thought you knew all about botany,” she teased.
“I know about creating ecosystems. You cannot tell me that those guys are fulfilling different ecological niches. They’re basically the same thing.”
They settled into a pleasant rhythm where Saavik chopped everything that needed to be chopped and David took care of combining ingredients and minding the stove.
“This actually smells really good,” David said when the aromatics had been cooking for a while.
“You sound surprised,” Saavik teased.
David laughed. “The first time I lived on my own I managed to burn water, so I think we're making progress here.”
Saavik raised an eyebrow but didn't ask.
“I put it on the stove and then forgot,” David clarified. “And the smell of hot metal didn't even tip me off, my first clue was my roommate coming back and throwing pillows at me until I took my headphones off.”
Saavik resisted the urge to laugh. “How did you not notice the smell?”
“Look, you live in student housing with a bunch of 18-year-old boys for a semester and then tell me you don't start ignoring weird smells.”
Saavik had lived off-campus during her time at Starfleet Academy, but she had nonetheless become far too familiar with the grooming habits of adolescent human males. “Fair point.”
Eventually Saavik ran out of things to do and (having been told that David required no additional assistance) retreated to the island to sit eating extra cucumber slices and reading through some recent scientific publications on her own PADD.
David spent what seemed like a very long time frowning at his sauce and poking at it with a whisk, but finally he presented Saavik with a plate.
“It doesn't look like much the picture,” he said uncertainly.
“I am reasonably certain the illustrations for recipes are modified from actual photographs,” Saavik said, which earned her a slightly strained smile from David.
She started eating in silence. The vegetables were a bit unevenly roasted but not bad. The sauce, though, was thin (sliding off the pasta and pooling on her plate) and unexpectedly bland with the exception of an unpleasant smoky aftertaste.
David kept a carefully neutral expression for his first few bites but finally grimaced and set his fork down. “Okay that's not – you don't have to keep eating it, I know it's bad.”
Saavik wasn't sure if she was supposed to agree with him or lie in this situation. She did stop eating.
“At least it wasn't –” David started to say, then pinched the bridge of his nose and sighed. “Please excuse me for a minute,” he said with the same brittle cheerfulness. “I need to…go have an emotion.”
He got up and left the kitchen without waiting for a response. Saavik put her dinner in the matter recycler and then started making a cold pasta salad with leftover ingredients.
After a few minutes, David came back, his face looking especially pink. He stood next to Saavik and said, “Can you pause for a minute and I can just –”
Instead of finishing the sentence, he turned her to face him and then flopped his head onto her shoulder and sighed deeply.
“I'm sorry,” he said, muffled.
“There is no apology necessary for simply being inexperienced. The first time I tried to cook something, Jim ultimately had to call Mr. Scott to repair the oven because it was beyond even his and Spock's combined skill to remedy my mistakes.”
David laughed, his breath hot on her neck, and then sighed. “I know. But knowing it's not a big deal just makes it worse when I can't cope.”
Saavik could have kept debating him, but instead she just rubbed his back and let his chaotic feelings wash over them both.
“It fascinates me,” she said finally, “that you can be raised entirely without shame and still be so deeply afraid of failure.”
David sighed again. “Well you see, I had never done it before.”
She didn't have to ask before what. Instead, she pushed his head off her shoulder and kissed him.
“I love you,” she said. “Even when you fail apocalyptically.”
He made a sound that might have been a laugh or a sob. “I know.”
They managed to make a backup dinner. Saavik teased David about his habit of drenching fresh vegetables in ranch dressing (a topic on which he could laugh at himself) and he teased her for her inability to appreciate the beauty of human condiments.
After they finished eating, David suggested, “Let's go sit outside for a while.”
They sat on the stone bench near the little courtyard where Saavik did her morning calisthenics and looked up at the Milky Way. T’Khut hadn't yet risen and the stars were blazing brightly in the clear sky.
The moment seemed custom made for some kind of romantic declaration, and Saavik found herself speaking without consciously intending to do so.
“Humans often speak of love as ‘falling’,” she said, “and I never understood the appeal of that. Falling in love seemed to me like being trapped in a decaying orbit without enough fuel for another burn.”
David chuckled. “Another one of those no-win scenarios?”
Saavik was tempted to explain the finer nuances of training scenario designs but stuck to her original intention of being romantic. “It doesn't feel like that anymore, with you.”
“Yeah?”
“It feels like…being part of a binary system. We're both falling, always, but it's stable. We don't fail the scenario. We balance each other perfectly.”
David leaned a little closer and kissed her hair. “I like that.”
There was a moment of expectant silence, and then he said, “I read a book once that had an extended metaphor about Earth and its moon. Someone once calculated the gravitational force exerted on different satellites by their planets and by the Sun, and it turns out the moon is the only one where the sun's pull is stronger – quite a bit stronger. The moon is always falling towards the sun, but somehow it and the Earth keep coming together as well. And I think maybe love can be like that too, sometimes. Even when you have something bigger pulling on you, that doesn't mean you're destined to drift apart.”
He let out a slow sigh and slipped his fingers over hers, just a little. “I know this isn't the Vulcan way to ask, and maybe it isn't even the human way, but…Saavik, will you marry me?”
Oh.
In the end, it was (as a very smart man had once said) the easiest thing in the world.
“Yes.”
“Wait, really?” David turned toward her, grinning.
Saavik couldn't help smiling back. “Yes.”
“I was all set to explain how I actually want this and…okay. Can I kiss you now?”
“Yes.”
They kissed for quite a while, with both lips and fingers. Then David pulled away just enough to speak.
“By the way, I got this for you.”
He reached into one of his pockets and pulled out a small drawstring bag, then poured its contents into his hand and held it up for her to see.
On a long chain hung a pendant that reminded her of an armillary sphere, with two outer rings set with gemstones and then a central globe that was a hollow glass bead with fine dark dust in it.
“The red gemstone,” David said, showing her one of the outer rings, “is a garnet from an old piece of jewelry my mother sent to me. I think she got it from her grandmother. Garnet is a silicate mineral but the red ones have tiny amounts of iron. And this greenish gemstone has a name I absolutely cannot pronounce. Amanda says it used to belong to the fellow who shook Zefram Cochrane's hand back in the day, which makes my thing sound much less interesting. Anyway, its color comes from copper. It seemed … symbolic … to use the elements in our blood, and stones from each of our planets.” He shrugged.
“It's lovely,” Saavik said, and meant it.
“The bead in the middle,” he added, “has a tiny bit of regolith in it, left over from one of my earliest Genesis experiments. Nothing about that whole project worked out the way I wanted or hoped it would, but…it's what brought us together. And I think – I hope – that you and I can build something beautiful out of it.”
Notes:
1. When you imagine Saavik saying she doesn't like the smell of cheese, I need you to imagine, like, mild cheddar. Not actual stinky cheeses. She's Vulcan and pregnant, we'll humor her and assume that maybe she can smell the bacteria.
2. For the extended moon metaphor I'm indebted to Diane Duane, Isaac Asimov, and Wikipedia. Try not to break your brain imagining that David has read Spock's World. 😂
Chapter 17: K'war'ma'khon
Notes:
(See the end of the chapter for notes.)
Chapter Text
“Congratulations,” Jim said, with only the slightest shade of hesitation in his voice.
“You don't seem surprised,” Saavik noted.
Jim chuckled. “I may have been warned in confidence that a certain person inherited my tendency to make impulsive decisions and also my stubbornness. And it is true that if I had been making a stupid decision at that age, telling me it was stupid would have only made me more determined to go through with it.”
“Fortunately, no one is making stupid decisions.”
Jim's smile softened. “I certainly don't blame him for meeting you and deciding he'd never find anyone better.”
Saavik's face heated.
“Anyway,” Jim added. “My own husband reminded me that there's no logic in refusing to make any decisions or commitments just because there's an off chance you're making the wrong one, so…”
“Kaiidth,” Saavik said, almost laughing.
“Indeed.”
“That went better than I thought it would,” David said, having joined the end of the call for a brief exchange of pleasantries as usual.
“I'm fairly certain your mother told Jim,” Saavik said.
David sagged against Sarek's desk, dissolving into helpless laughter.
“Of course,” he said when he could catch his breath again. “To be fair, she at least knows me well enough that I’m willing to let her cross-examine me about my motivations.” More laughter, presumably as he realized that had likely been his mother's exact thought process. “God, I miss when they weren't on speaking terms.”
Having vacated Sarek's office, Saavik and David took the opportunity to enjoy the garden before the heat of the day set in.
“So how does getting married work here? Legally, officially?” David asked.
“I believe the only requirements are a valid marriage contract and officiant.”
“How do we get those?”
“The contract has been largely standardized in modern times. You will need to hire a notary to witness it on your behalf, and they cannot be associated with the S'chn T'Gai clan, obviously.”
“Obviously,” David teased.
Saavik allowed herself a small smile. “I believe the intention is to avoid bias – if both witnesses are from my clan, it could be argued that you were taken advantage of because both would wish for the greatest advantage to their own clan.”
“I guess that does make sense if you're actually negotiating things.” Then he added, “‘Ravishing the captive you defeated in battle’ roleplay: only appropriate in unofficial contexts.”
Saavik only raised one eyebrow at that, which caused David to dissolve into helpless laughter again. It was some time before he was able to regain control of his emotions.
“So what about the officiant?” David asked when he had managed to compose himself again.
“Clan matriarchs and priestesses can all officiate. It is traditional to request that the matriarch of one's own clan does so, even if she obviously cannot. If she refuses to officiate – not just due to inconvenience but for some substantial reason – it would be a massive insult for a different matriarch to perform the ceremony.”
“Ah well good thing your clan matriarch isn't universally described as terrifying, then.”
Saavik bit her lip to stop herself from laughing. “She will almost certainly wish to meld with you. She is impatient with verbal communication and frequently complains that Standard fails to capture the nuances of what she wishes to say anyway.”
“Oh that’s not a big deal then. I would be much more worried if she wanted me to give all my qualifications in Old High Golic or something.”
Saavik had to look at his face to make sure he wasn't teasing again. Humans were so strange sometimes.
As Saavik expected, their third “date night” was superseded by T'Pau’s summons for David to meet her in person.
“Don't think she doesn't like you just because she's critical,” Amanda said over lunch. “It’s just the Vulcan way; the real snub would be indifference. Also she's very old and doesn't get out much, so giving youngsters a hard time is basically enrichment for her.”
“I'll keep that in mind,” David said, relentlessly cheerful.
In the late afternoon, they took the subway to Shi’Kahr’s city center and then boarded an elevated train that took them out of the city, eastward towards the highlands. Saavik graciously allowed David to take the window seat so he could stare openly at the various landmarks that flew by. The other passengers, despite all being Vulcan, took no notice of this behavior, which was good because Saavik would probably have bitten them if they had.
She had hardly had time to worry about meeting with T’Pau, between medical appointments and her work, and of course as a Vulcan she didn't worry anyway. But she did want to make sure David wasn't worrying.
“Do you have any questions about today’s errand?” she asked.
David tore his attention away from the mountains long enough to smile reassuringly at her. “Should I have? You already told me that it’s rude as hell to not drink water if it’s offered.”
Saavik allowed herself a small smile. “That is the main thing, but it’s always difficult to know what is and isn’t common knowledge between different species.”
“Fair enough.” David looked out the window again as the train passed over a cluster of buildings. “Tell me about this place we’re going. I’m honestly not sure if it’s a big country house or a small city or…?”
“It’s not quite one or the other,” Saavik said. “Before the reform, pretty much every clan had a fortress of their own, usually built around a natural well of some kind. And every member of the clan lived in that fortress, sharing everything in common, helping raise each other’s children, everything. Nowadays only a very small percentage of the population still lives in a clan setting, but our clan is very old and T’Pau is…old fashioned.”
“So what about this famous T'Pau? Tell me about her.”
Saavik thought for a moment. “She has very high standards, and she does not hesitate to criticize when she believes it to be warranted. She will not ‘sugarcoat’ her opinions. But she is fair, I think. She will not expect you to be other than what you are. And she has no patience for empty posturing, so if you wish to gain her good opinion it is better to simply be yourself, complete with any shortcomings, rather than putting on a show of false confidence.”
“Oh, okay,” David said, unphased. “So she's like you but old.”
“No,” Saavik said, appalled.
Saavik took her PADD out of her bag and started reading through some downloaded messages while David went back to staring out the window.
“Very well, maybe there is a slight resemblance,” Saavik admitted finally.
David laughed.
When the train went around the final curve, Saavik tapped David's arm so he could look at the fortress as they approached. It clung to the side of a mountain, terraced rows of stone and brick all covered in whitewash that glowed red-gold in the light of the afternoon sun.
“Oh wow,” David said quietly.
The train switched to a track that angled downwards from the main elevated rail and entered into a false twilight in the shadow of the mountains they had just come between, then slid smoothly to a stop just outside the main gate of the fortress.
They disembarked, Saavik explained their purpose to the gatekeeper, and they were of course admitted without difficulty. Once they were inside, a member of the guard indicated he would escort them to T’Pau and they began to wind their way through the fortress via a maze of open alleyways and corridors with arched ceilings.
“If you get tired, we can rest,” Saavik said quietly. “An endurance test is not part of today's proceedings.”
“Good to know.”
It was Saavik herself who stumbled some time later while ascending a short flight of stairs. David put a steadying hand on her arm and the guard stopped and looked back briefly before standing to one side of the path and pretending to polish the already gleaming blade of his lirpa.
“I think I need to catch my breath now,” David announced. “Can I sit on this bench here?”
“Yes,” Saavik said, amusement distracting her briefly from her aching back.
“Do you need anything?” David asked more quietly once they were sitting together on the pleasantly shaded stone bench.
“Tell your son to move off my sciatic nerve,” Saavik said.
David chuckled. Then, more seriously, “Wait, is that actually possible?”
Saavik crossed her ankle over the opposite knee and leaned into the stretch. “No. The telepathic centers of the brain are among the last to develop. Besides which, aptitude varies even among full Vulcans.”
“And I'm about as telepathic as a box of rocks,” David added without embarrassment.
He rummaged around in his pockets while Saavik was stretching and ultimately handed her a foil packet.
“What is this?” Saavik asked, even though she could obviously read the label that proclaimed it to be pickled mene-savas. The gelatinous pieces of melon even came on a tiny skewer so one didn't have to use one's bare hands.
“I said I was going to research Vulcan electrolytes, didn't I?” David replied.
Saavik looked sidelong at him but ate the pickles.
When they arrived at their destination – a large open courtyard set into a gentle slope – there were three young people hanging about. Two were about ten or twelve and the third was perhaps seventeen, distinguished from his peers by the copper helmet he wore. The guard spoke to the eldest in Vuhlkansu, sending him to inform T’Pau that her guests had arrived. The other two looked wide-eyed at Saavik and David and then dashed off in a different direction.
Saavik sat down on one of the many low stone terraces, in the shade of a small tree, while David wandered around nearby looking at various plants that grew here and there.
After a few minutes, David suddenly strode back to her side and put a hand on her shoulder protectively. Saavik followed his gaze and found that the children had returned with a troop of others, and last of all a sehlat, a massive black and white creature of a breed historically used for search-and-rescue and nowadays often used as a companion for children.
“It’s perfectly tame,” Saavik whispered reassuringly, and then the sehlat settled down for a nap under another tree and the children descended on her.
Saavik hadn't seen any of these children in at least a year and a half, but apparently the tale of their Starfleet cousin had grown significantly in the telling while she was away. Within a few minutes, she had a couple of toddlers in her lap, a child of five or six hanging over her shoulders showing her a drawing he had made, and a dozen others of various ages crowded around all talking a mile a minute.
Then Saavik felt a tug on her sleeve and looked down to see a little girl about three years old with a wispy black topknot. The little girl, having gotten Saavik's attention, pointed at David. (He was standing a little ways away from the commotion watching with apparent amusement.)
“Kugalsu t’nash-veh,” Saavik explained.
The little girl shook her head and beckoned with one dimpled hand. Saavik held out her own hand and the little cousin headbutted it, her thoughts scampering readily across the physical connection.
“Oh!” Saavik laughed.
“What's she saying?” David asked.
“She wants to touch your hair,” Saavik said.
She was going to say he didn't have to allow it, but he was already squatting down so he was of a height with the little cousin and she was already toddling over and solemnly patting his blond head.
When she discovered his ears, she gave a little exclamation of surprise and started tugging and poking intently. David just laughed, which was good because Saavik was far too entangled to come to his rescue.
Finally the young attendant returned and rattled his harp loudly. “All right, you lot, clear out!” he said in Vuhlkansu with the kind of condescension unique to a young person with a tiny bit of authority speaking to people only a few years younger than himself.
The children cleared out, with the exception of David’s new friend, who clung to his leg and cried. David just stood there looking down at her and seeming at a loss about what to do.
Saavik started to get up and come to his rescue, but the black and white sehlat was already awake and had started trundling over. The sehlat picked up the little cousin in its mouth and carried her away like a cat with a kitten in its mouth, if a cat was nearly the height of a man and at least twice his weight.
David had to take a moment to collect himself after that. “Now I know why Vulcans aren’t scared of anything,” he murmured as he and Saavik fell into step behind the attendant.
T’Pau was in a small courtyard, sitting on a bench carved from the living rock and lined with cushions and blankets. When Saavik and David entered, she had her eyes closed and her weathered face turned up towards the sunlight. A moment later, however, she fixed her dark eyes on them and beckoned them over impatiently.
They entered the little circular stone patio in front of her bench. Mats and cushions were scattered around the perimeter; in the middle a fire pit burned low, smelling of fragrant herbs.
David (who had been afraid of a giant teddy bear a few moments before) walked a little ahead of Saavik and stood in front of T’Pau with no apparent fear.
“Dif-tor heh smusma,” he said with really quite passable pronunciation, offering a ta’al.
“Sochya eh dif,” T’Pau replied. Then, without preamble, “May I have your thoughts?”
David nodded and stepped closer. He was very tall and T’Pau was not, especially when she was sitting down, so it was natural for him to kneel down so she could reach his face. Saavik still hated how vulnerable it made him look. One of these days she had to teach him not to be so trusting, not to so readily surrender himself to having his mind touched.
T’Pau was perfectly still, her gnarled fingers splayed across David's face. His eyes moved under their closed lids as though he were dreaming.
And then it was done, just like that. T’Pau adjusted her sleeves and then said, “Saavik, some water.”
There was a hammered copper pitcher conveniently already present near T’Pau’s couch. Saavik took it and walked to the little torrent of water that burbled down from the cliff face on the far side of the garden.
It was such a small thing, but for a moment she was hit with the weight of history, the generations that had lived and died for a trickle not even as tall as she was.
It was that weight that filled the pitcher even more than the water she collected. She returned to T’Pau and David and poured water for the three of them. Then they all drank together.
“I noticed you have naric trees here,” David said after a suitable period of silence.
“Yes,” T’Pau answered, and then the young attendant appeared as though she had called for him. (Saavik suspected that she had.) “Salvir, tell our guest about the trees.”
Salvir stared wide-eyed at David for a moment and then said in lightly accented Standard, “Of course. Please come with me.”
“I admit I did not expect you to approve so readily,” Saavik said in Vuhlkansu once the other two were some distance away, looking at trees.
T’Pau shrugged one bony shoulder. “You were not going to find a mate who was your equal. This one regards you with the proper degree of devotion, so he is acceptable. Better him than someone who would hold you back out of wounded pride.”
Saavik wanted to argue with that assessment, but she knew T'Pau loathed what she saw as false modesty almost as much as she did boasting, so she merely said, “Thank you.”
They took their evening meal with T’Pau and then took a train back to Shi’Kahr under the light of the earliest stars.
Back in their bedroom, Saavik lay down next to David and said, “You are troubled.”
“Nah,” he said, snuggling up against her back. Then: “Do you think I'm going to be a good dad?”
“Yes.”
David seemed slightly taken aback by that answer, as though her certainty made it any less sincere. “...because I never had one, and…”
“You have an excellent relationship with your mother.”
“That's different.”
“Other than possibly the ability to lactate, it doesn't seem so to me.”
David didn't say anything, but he still radiated uncertainty.
Saavik took his hand where it was wrapped around her waist. “Children need someone who will care for them. They need someone who can learn about their individual strengths and weaknesses and adapt their caregiving strategy to accommodate those. You are – you have always been – compassionate and intelligent and willing to adapt to changing circumstances. Therefore it is only logical to conclude that you will be, as you say, a good dad.”
“Well,” David said thickly. “Can't argue with Vulcan logic.”
Notes:
1. I could seriously have made this chapter twice as long. I might need to write a whole ’nother fic about everyday life in a Vulcan clan.
2. The sehlat is based on Landseer Newfoundlands, because it's my fic and I can do what I want. 😂
3. I feel compelled to note that I know 3yos typically know how to talk (the trick is getting them to stop!) and deliberately wrote Saavik's baby cousin to be less verbal than a human child of the same age. I could also write a whole fic about my many theories and headcanons about Vulcan child development!
5. Vulcan glossary!
k'war'ma'khon: “extended family”, also “the vibration of extended family”, used to describe the mental links between Vulcans
kaiidth: “what is, is”, a sort of mantra used by Vulcans. It does not convey resignation or fatalism but rather a philosophy of focusing on the present moment as that which is within one's control – *I am dragged offstage by a comically large shepherd's crook*
mene-savas: “life-fruit”, something like a cross between a watermelon and a cucumber. Invented by me and named by Moreta.
kugalsu t’nash-veh: "my fiancé", literally committed-person belonging-to-this-one
Chapter 18: A valediction forbidding mourning
Notes:
OKAY FIRST ORDER OF BUSINESS: Go to tumblr RIGHT NOW and feast your eyes on this art by Moreta1848. Everyone go tell her she is amazing and talented and brilliant and so forth.
SECOND ORDER OF BUSINESS: I apologize to anyone who was waiting on this chapter, because it took FOREVER for me to get it into some kind of coherent shape. On the plus side, it's twice as long as usual?
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
Vulcans tended to have either very long or very short engagements – Spock, for example, had had one last thirty years and another last a fortnight.
Saavik, having decided that she wanted to get married, saw no reason not to get on with it as soon as possible. Meanwhile, David's only non-negotiable was that his mother be able to attend, something that was easy to arrange given Sarek's access to diplomatic courier vessels that could make the journey from Earth to Vulcan quickly and comfortably.
Getting most of the senior officers from the Enterprise there was a bit harder, but belonging to one of the most powerful clans on Vulcan had its uses there too and after a few rounds of messages everything was arranged for the ship to stop over in the Eridani system in a few weeks and allow the crew a day of shore leave.
When Carol arrived, several days in advance, Saavik and David both went to collect her from the shuttleport.
David folded her into a hug the moment she disembarked and stayed like that for several seconds.
“Oh, I missed you,” Carol said when they finally pulled apart.
“I missed you too,” David said. “Is this your bag?”
“Yes but I can –”
Carol apparently gave up on convincing David not to carry her luggage and turned to Saavik. “May I give you a hug?”
“You may.”
Saavik gave permission as a favor to her soon-to-be mother-in-law, of course; not because she deeply enjoyed the feeling of being surrounded by unshielded maternal affection.
When Carol pulled away, Saavik briefly met David's eyes and found herself blushing at the knowing way he was looking at her.
Perhaps she was not quite as adept at hiding her emotions as she thought.
The appointed day arrived sunny and clear, as was generally the case on Vulcan.
Saavik was impressed and a little intimidated by how quickly they (mostly Amanda) had managed to pull together her wedding attire. The dress was newly made, though it reminded her a great deal of the one she'd worn to Jim and Spock's wedding many years ago, being man-kastik silk in a deep wine red. The gold lace overlay that decorated parts of it, however, had been recycled from one of Amanda's old gowns, and the jewelry was borrowed from the clan in general. Though perhaps “borrowed” was not quite the right word when T’Pau had all but ordered her to wear the pieces.
“I am going to look ridiculous,” Saavik said while Amanda packed everything up for the trip to the ceremonial grounds.
“You will not,” Amanda said, even though she herself was wearing an understated dove gray ensemble and only the most basic of jewelry.
Some time later, Amanda stopped fussing with Saavik's hair and added a tiara – gold wrought to look like twining vines and leaves, red gemstones arranged into floral motifs – and stepped back with a satisfied little sigh.
“See, you don't look ridiculous,” she said. “You look like a princess of Vulcan.”
Saavik regarded herself in the mirror. Amanda was right. She looked – formidable, perhaps. A throwback to the days when warriors would have battled to the death for the right to her bed. But not at all ridiculous.
“Given that I am a ‘princess’,” Saavik said, pronouncing the quotation marks, “would I not look like one in whatever I was wearing?”
“Exactly,” Amanda replied, repositioning a single dark curl. “Now you are getting the idea.”
When Saavik had last seen Spock, she had been fresh off the trauma of the Genesis planet. He, meanwhile, had still been adjusting to being alive again and wasn't quite himself yet in many ways. She had given him what might have seemed like a cold farewell so she didn't have an emotional breakdown right there on the bridge of the bird of prey.
So it was logical, really, to be a little apprehensive about seeing him again.
Especially as the minutes ticked closer and closer to the time he was supposed to arrive.
Saavik was considering sabotaging her hair so Amanda would have to redo it just to have something to do when a knock sounded on the door.
“Enter,” Saavik called.
And then Spock was there, wearing a twilight blue robe over black uniform pants, looking – right. Looking like the man she remembered from before everything had gone wrong.
He held out his hand and she interlaced her fingers briefly with his in the eru'esta. For a moment afterwards he simply stood and looked at her, his face softening in a way she hadn't seen in a long time.
“You are beautiful, Saavikam,” he said finally.
“An opinion,” Saavik countered.
“A logical conclusion based on available evidence,” Spock replied, and just like that everything was okay again.
The sound of a gong summoned them onto the ceremonial grounds. David was, of course, standing with his mother to one side of the appointed place. Saavik and Spock stood opposite, while Jim stood near T’Pau on her dais. The rest of the guests arrayed themselves as they wished a slight distance away.
David met Saavik's eyes and smiled, just enough for her to see. Any remaining nervousness she felt evaporated in the face of that smile.
“What thee are about to see comes down from the time of the beginning without change,” T’Pau intoned. “This is the Vulcan heart. This is the Vulcan soul. This is our way.”
Saavik had assumed this would be something of a formality. They were bonded already, but it did still mean something to stand on the sacred sands with their families watching and do it on purpose.
As soon as T’Pau's mind touched hers she realized how much she still had to learn. It felt like having her soul set alight by a fire that had been kindled thousands of years ago. It felt like carrying the weight of hundreds of ancient minds inside her own head.
And then David was also there, and his smile burned brighter than an unquenchable fire and his love was strong enough to bear a hundred lifetimes.
She had believed, for a long time, that being Vulcan meant learning how to survive on less. How to deliver oneself from the desire to be loved. You took the tiny trickle that life gave you and you walled it up and you guarded it and you never, ever let anyone else in.
She had asked David once about the name Genesis, and he had explained that he was not particularly religious but had found himself compelled by the idea of the primordial garden – the idea that there had once existed a place where your needs could be met without qualification. That he had wanted to create a world where the necessities of life could be simply given – not earned, and certainly not rationed.
The thing that never ceased to amaze her was that he really did believe that was possible. He loved like that, unstintingly, as though it had never occurred to him that there could be conditions.
Being loved by him felt like rain in the desert – unpredictable, unasked-for, impossible to begrudge. And like the desert, Saavik had found that she needed it far more than she would have thought. That being loved by him felt like waking up, like blooming, like finding out she was alive after years of believing she was dead.
Perhaps that was what it really meant to be Vulcan. Not to bury yourself like a corpse, but to bury yourself like a seed, and wait.
Five months ago, or perhaps several lifetimes ago, she had stood in David's mind as it crumbled around them and said Do you trust me? because there was no time to say anything else.
He had. Unstintingly, unconditionally, the same way he did everything. He had put his whole life into her hands without hesitation.
Now he stood before her, and T’Pau, and everything that T’Pau represented.
He said, with that little smile, Do you trust me?
And she did. She put her hands in his and allowed everything that she was to flow between them.
You are a solemn, solitary child who wants to be just like your mother when you grow up and you don't understand why adults always laugh when you ask them questions. (Your mother never laughs.)
You are a solemn, solitary child and your mother is dead, your mother never existed , and you are alone in the universe.
You are a boy, old enough to be the smartest in the room (and know that you are) but not yet old enough to be wise, and you have discovered what a heady experience it is to have people actually listen. You still love your mother, but you fight sometimes because she wants you to slow down and why would you ever do that.
You are a girl and so hungry for love that you show up on the doorstep of a stranger to demand it. So hungry you are afraid you might devour the entire universe if you were allowed. You try to be perfect so that perhaps you can deserve enough – not to be satisfied, but to survive.
You are a young man desperately afraid of being the smartest in the room. Desperately hoping that you're still smart enough to hide how badly you've gone wrong. (Especially from your mother.)
You are a young woman and you are so afraid that if anyone loves you they will notice how hard you are trying not to want it.
You lay out your whole self, and the other half of yourself takes it up as though it is unbearably precious, as though they can see all of what you are and still love it. It is impossible. It is inevitable.
“As it was in the dawn of our days, as it is today, as it will be for all tomorrows, I make my choice. This one.”
When the meld was done, Jim said a few words as well. Saavik hardly heard them, the intensity of the meld having left her feeling like her soul was sublimating out of her body. Then he said, with laughter in his voice, “You may kiss.”
David looked at her first, just to check, and then he took one hand out of hers to bury his fingers in her hair and kissed her.
Afterwards, most of the guests retired to Sarek and Amanda's house for a reception of sorts. The Vulcan guests mostly gathered inside and talked, whereas Jim managed to rig a device to play music and had most of the human guests engaging in various dances out in the garden.
Saavik was chatting about humpback whale language with Uhura and Carol when the music switched to a slightly slower song and Jim approached.
“Dance with me.”
“Vulcans do not dance.”
“I know.” He held out his hand anyway and she took it and allowed herself to be led to an open area of the garden and then led through rhythmic movements that matched the tempo of the music.
“Before humanity had the printing press,” Jim said while they danced, “they would encode their traditional knowledge in song, dance, even patterns of tapestries and such. The pattern aids in memorization, and so you can pass down what you need to know from one generation…to the next.”
Saavik was touching him the entire time, one hand and then the other, so she knew that the knowledge this particular pattern conveyed was I love you and I am proud of you.
A pause in the music, and then an even slower song began while David made his way over from where Scotty was fiddling with the radio to where Jim and Saavik were standing.
“May I cut in?” he asked.
“Be my guest,” Jim said with a little bow. He was smiling but with his eyes a little misty and Saavik thought that David did not need to be telepathic to know what Jim was feeling at this moment.
David pulled her close and swayed gently back and forth. “I don't actually know how to dance,” he confessed into her hair.
“It is a simple mathematical equation.”
He laughed softly, the sound more a vibration through his chest than anything audible. “Then maybe you can walk me through it.”
Later still, most of the humans had left so they could sleep. Bones (slightly drunk) was attempting to teach some kind of group dance to a handful of Vulcan children (extremely sober).
Saavik, walking near the rear gate of the garden, noticed a tall figure silhouetted against a ridge a short distance away. She slipped through the gate and up the path. Spock did not turn when she approached, but she sensed his welcome.
“Are you well, sa-kuk?” she asked, leaning into his side. He wrapped an arm around her shoulders. The desert night was growing just cold enough to make sharing the heat of each other's bodies welcome.
“I am,” he said. “Are you?”
She took just a moment to consider her interior landscape and realize that she was, in fact, perfectly happy. “Yes.”
After a few moments of silence, Spock pulled something from the folds of his robe and handed it to Saavik. It was a slim book with a well-worn cover, embossed with the words Metaphysical Poets . When she flipped through it, she saw that the pages were already filled with notes in several different colors of ink.
“Oh! Thank you!” She ran a hand over one page, the paper buttery soft from use. To anyone else, a book might seem like an insignificant gift, but Saavik understood immediately that this was not just a book. It was a record of two people building a bridge over the light-years-wide gap between two planets, two cultures. (Despite Spock's mixed genetic heritage, he was in many ways more Vulcan than Saavik would ever be.) It was – or could be – a guide for two people faced with constructing a similar marvel of engineering.
“I ensured that this is not one of the ones to which Jim added…illustrations,” Spock said levelly.
Saavik sighed. “I will imagine that I do not know such books exist among your collection.”
Jim's handwriting was well-formed and would have been eminently legible if not for his habit of crowding notes haphazardly in any available space. Not to mention his habit of underlining for emphasis. She had told him once that underlining an entire work did nothing to emphasize one part over another, but he persisted.
Spock's handwriting, meanwhile, looked from a distance as though it had been applied to the page with the help of a set of rulers. Upon closer inspection, however, each letter looked as though it had a life and personality – which it was using to attempt to slide out of line and become a different kind of letter entirely, perhaps one oriented along a vertical axis.
The book, held open, naturally showed a page with a poem from Donne. Saavik's eyes fell to a passage that had been underlined not once but twice.
Our two souls therefore, which are one,
Though I must go, endure not yet
A breach, but an expansion…
“Oh…” she breathed. She wondered if Jim had read this poem when Spock died. She wondered if, now that she and David were fully bonded, she would be able to survive such an expansion of the soul.
Spock did not ask directly what she was thinking about, but he seemed to know, because he said slowly, “When last we saw each other, my mind was still…in great disarray. I realized that I did not thank you, or David, for saving my life. Not only finding me on the Genesis planet, but risking your own lives for mine when the Klingons captured us.”
“I could not have done otherwise.”
“ Could not, Saavikam?”
She suddenly felt the full weight of those months of grief as though she were living through them again. Instead of answering in words, she took his hand and let him feel it – a measure of it, at least.
“Oh, my child.”
“It is illogical to still feel this grief when you are alive.”
“Remember what I have taught you. Do not apply moral weight to your feelings. Allow this grief to exist in four-dimensional space, and allow yourself to exist outside of it. It is a real thing, just as your present joy is real, but it need not consume you.”
As he said this, he kept holding her hand. Feeling his mind was comforting, certainly, but feeling him warm and alive was an even more profound source of comfort.
The newlyweds left shortly thereafter for their honeymoon. They were only spending a couple of nights in a hotel in Shi'Kahr, but it did not take much to improve upon the prospect of celebrating their wedding night in the same house as several of their parents and grandparents.
They didn't make it very far into the room before Saavik pushed David up against the wall and started kissing him, savoring the way it felt like they were blurring together at the edges.
She tasted the slow hum of his pulse in his throat and the slight cats-tongue roughness of his jaw and the warm salt on his cheeks –
“Why are you crying, ashayam?”
He kissed her back, slowly, and then said, “You know you'll never have to be alone again, right?”
Even if she couldn't taste her own memories on his lips, she would have known what he meant. The aching void of being alone in her own mind for so much of her childhood was not something she could easily forget.
She thought of do you trust me and allow yourself to exist outside of your grief, and she said, “I know.”
Notes:
1. The chapter title and general motif are courtesy of Moreta (and John Donne I guess), who understands poetry much better than I do.
2. The “I make my choice” quote is taken from Amok Time – T’Pring says it when she appoints Kirk as her champion. But it sounds really romantic out of context, doesn't it? So we are recycling it!
3. The reception (dancing with Jim, the conversation with Spock) was one of the first things I wrote for this fic, whereas the rest is all new. If you notice a bit of a tone shift, no you don't. 😂
4. One of my theories about Vulcan child rearing is that telepathic connections are essential for their well-being, so Saavik not having that during her childhood would have really hindered her ability to thrive. Not that you really need the telepathic element to understand why it's traumatic to be a child without any safe attachment figures!
5. Vulcan glossary!
man-kastik: a Vulcan plant that Moreta decided previously is used to make a silk-like fabric.
eru'esta: “hand embrace,” used as a hug-like gesture between family members. Not to be confused with ozh’esta, which Saavik and Spock do not do together because they're not into each other like that, canon be damned. 😂
sa-kuk: “uncle”
ashayam: “beloved”
Chapter 19: The fish and the bird
Notes:
Real life has been kicking my ass lately and will probably continute to do so for a while. Let's just hope my writing hasn't declined in quality as much as it has in quantity!
Content notes for this chapter: brief discussion/memories of parental death, discussion of non-consensual telepathic contact.
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
David managed to push away from the wall and Saavik let him guide her to the bed. He trailed kisses along her neck and down her cleavage and then stopped and dropped to his knees on the carpet. He unlaced her boots and helped her step out of them, then started sliding his hands up her legs.
He paused abruptly and said, “Is the garter knife another clan thing or is it just for fun?”
“It is a traditional element of a complete set of jewelry, yes. It is so well-balanced, however, that I'm contemplating asking if it would be possible to have a replica made.”
David had to take a moment then to lean against her knees and allow himself to be overcome by laughter. “Do you know I love you a lot?” he asked finally.
“I do.”
Saavik slept much later than usual the next morning, but still had time to eat a light breakfast and do her morning calisthenics on the adjoining balcony before she felt David's mind reaching out sleepily for hers.
She eased herself into a kneeling position in time for David to appear in the doorway to the balcony, hastily wrapping a bathrobe around himself.
When she met his eyes, his half awake squint turned into a smile. “Good morning, aduna.”
“Good morning, husband”
“Did I say that right?”
“You did.”
Saavik stood up as gracefully as she could, given that her hip joints were increasingly wobbly these days, and stepped forward for a kiss.
“Have you had breakfast?” David asked after a minute or two.
“Yes.”
“Would you like more breakfast?”
Saavik made an effort not to laugh. “Yes.”
The hotel they had chosen catered to human tourists, so David enjoyed a wide variety of pastries that were much too sweet for the average Vulcan palate. Saavik had had a selection of fresh fruit for her first breakfast and sampled a bagel for her second breakfast.
“When we visit San Francisco,” she said, side-eyeing her partially eaten bagel, “I need to take you to a deli just down the street from Jim and Spock's apartment.”
“I assume from context that they have bagels that are much better than that one.”
“Indeed.”
“How do you feel about swimming?”
“I obtained perfect scores in all my Academy water safety classes.”
David smiled teasingly. “Because you like swimming or because you hate it so much you didn't want to have to do it twice?”
“Perhaps I sought only to excel in my duty.”
“Right,” David said laughingly. “Well, if I go swim for a bit will you go with me?”
“I will at least accompany you to the pool area, yes.”
Saavik had not been at all sure of her earlier decision to buy a two-piece swimsuit, considering she was unlikely to wear it more than once or twice, but David's obvious appreciation more than justified the purchase. After he had admired it sufficiently, Saavik donned a lightweight robe and collected a book to occupy herself poolside.
Saavik took one look at David in swim trunks and demanded that he wait while she went to the front desk to borrow a dermal regenerator.
“Oh noooo,” David said while she tilted up his chin so she could go over the skin of his throat. “People are going to know that my smoking hot wife can't keep her mouth off me.”
Saavik felt her face flush. “It's not shameful , it's merely private. ”
David grinned while she moved on to a rather painful looking bite mark on his shoulder. “Speaking of privacy, maybe we should invest in some nice decorative wall hangings for our room back home.”
Saavik raised an eyebrow. “The noise muffling properties of such decorations would, of course, be entirely incidental.”
“Of course.”
The pool was nominally outdoors, but Saavik noticed immediately that there was a force field surrounding the area – wise, given that humans would not actually enjoy spending time outdoors if they were subjected to the ambient heat and radiation.
As a concession to interspecies relations, she sat on the edge of the pool and allowed her feet to dangle into the water while David swam laps – somewhat casually, given that there were other people in the pool.
After some time, he pushed himself up on the stone border and sat next to her. Saavik watched the way his muscles moved with water sheeting off of them and wished she'd left just a few bite marks so everyone would know he belonged to her.
David sighed, not unhappily. “I am so out of shape.”
Saavik looked him over again. “I find your current shape aesthetically pleasing.”
David laughed and slid his fingers through hers. His skin was soft from water exposure. “Same to you.”
As enjoyable as it was to simply spend time together in their room, Saavik did suggest various activities they could do in this part of the city.
“I've focused primarily on indoor activities, given that you aren't particularly adapted to the Vulcan outdoors,” she explained, showing David a list on her PADD.
“I'm not particularly adapted to anywhere outdoors,” David replied cheerfully, scrolling through the list. “Ooh they have fossils here?”
“Of course,” Saavik replied primly. “Vulcans were engaging in archaeology while humans were still swinging about in trees.”
“And you were attempting to usher in nuclear Armageddon before humans had worked out how to forge steel,” David replied, “so, you know, some highs and lows there.”
They ultimately agreed to spend the rest of the morning at the natural history museum. By the time they made the short subway ride there, it was already as busy as anything ever got among Vulcans. School groups rotated through the exhibits like flocks of dark birds, marching neatly among little clusters of families and tourists.
David loved the fossils, as expected, but his favorite exhibit seemed to be the diorama depicting life sized replicas of dzharelar doing nothing in particular – just standing around and browsing on scrubby desert plants and things like that.
“You have unicorns ?” David asked, enchanted.
“Had. They became extinct around the beginning of the industrial era.”
David studied the plaques surrounding the display intently.
“Yes, there are preserved specimens,” Saavik said before he spoke. “No, you may not genetically engineer a unicorn.”
“You're no fun,” David said without rancor.
They returned to the hotel for their midday meal and to wait out the heat of the day.
Once the temperature started to drop, David suggested he'd very much like to visit the aviation museum. Saavik suspected this was a lie, but found it difficult to resist the combined appeal of her own desires and her husband's persuasive abilities.
“Hey look, it's your ancestor guy,” David said when they arrived at the First Contact exhibit. There was a holo that showed Solkar descending from his ship and offering the ta’al, surrounded by cases displaying various related artifacts.
“Is it true that their shaking hands was super scandalous at the time?” David asked, having undoubtedly noticed that the holo cut off sooner than similar ones shown in human museums.
“I believe the official statement by the Vulcan Expeditionary Force was that Solkar was merely adapting to local customs and moreover had excellent telepathic control and thus would not have been affected by the handshake.”
David grinned. “Is there an unofficial story?”
“Several.”
Just beyond the exhibit was an interactive replica of the Phoenix. A group of Vulcan schoolchildren were exiting as they approached. Most of them looked either solemn or slightly unnerved, but Saavik noticed one child lingering a little behind the others, looking back at the ship with their eyes big and bright with barely suppressed excitement. She wished her tiny compatriot good luck, given that longing for the stars tended to be an incurable affliction.
“I suppose you want to,” David said, interrupting her thoughts, “‘experience the first flight of the Phoenix, in which Zefram Cochran disregarded risks to his life and bodily integrity to –’? Oh wait, maybe not.”
Saavik followed his gaze. The sign he was reading included a description of the simulation in multiple languages, eclipsed by a long list of various warnings and restrictions on who could partake of the experience. Much to Saavik's annoyance, these restrictions included pregnancy (among other related medical states, such as “infected with a sapient parasite” and “experiencing reproductive budding”).
“It is illogical to have so many restrictions on something that undoubtedly produces negligible accelerational forces,” Saavik said while David hooked his fingers around hers and led her towards another exhibit. “I am qualified to pilot a starship, I have no doubts about my ability to handle an interactive exhibit aimed at schoolchildren.”
“Starfleet doesn't have restrictions on stuff like that?” David asked, momentarily distracted from the story of the Haleksu brothers’ first powered flight.
“Starfleet regulations state that reproductive status is a protected class,” Saavik explained,
“and cannot be used as a factor in the assignment of duties unless the crew member is not physiologically able to perform the duty in question, in which case they are to be assigned to the least restrictive environment commensurate with their training and other qualifications.”
David waited a moment to make sure she was done speaking, then said, “How about this, we can come back for our anniversary and I'll carry the baby and you can do all the simulations.”
Saavik found herself contemplating a vivid mental image of David with a curly-haired, pointy-eared baby snuggled up in a sling and was hit with a wave of emotion so powerful she had to stop walking for a moment to process it.
“That would be acceptable.”
Saavik woke in the middle of the night to the sensation of the baby kicking her directly on the bladder, a feeling of half-remembered wisps of dreams, and an empty bed.
After availing herself of the restroom, she found David easily enough, sitting on the small balcony adjoining their room with a spare blanket wrapped around his shoulders and a cup of coffee in his hands. She suspected the coffee was more for warmth – or just something to hold in his hands – rather than caffeine, given the hour.
“Hey,” he said without looking up.
“Hey,” Saavik replied.
“I hope I didn't wake you.”
“You did not.”
She sat down next to him on the bench and he wrapped one arm around her, pulling the blanket over her shoulders as he went.
“One of my earliest memories,” he said after a moment, “my mother and I were on Earth and I was horrified by the sky. I kept trying to show her that it was wrong. I don't think I knew how to talk very well yet, or maybe I just thought it would be obvious, but the fact that she didn't understand just made it worse. And then next thing I remember it was nighttime and I looked out the window and saw the sky and needed to show her. I think I probably woke her up. As an adult now I'm amazed she didn't pitch me out the window – your kid is screaming all day and then drags you out of bed in the middle of the night?” He chuckled. “But she just took me outside and we looked at the stars and I've always remembered that feeling. Of everything just being right and safe.”
“I do not think you are awake at this hour because of such a pleasant memory,” Saavik guessed.
“I had a dream,” David said quietly, “that I was little again and sleeping with my mother – except I'm not sure I was actually me or it was actually my mother – and then I woke up because I could feel her…fading away. And it hurt . I'm a little scared to go back to bed in case I have that one again.”
“Sorry,” Saavik said reflexively.
David sighed. “So that's a real one, then.”
“I should have anticipated that deepening our bond might have –”
“ Saavik. I'm not upset that I have that in my brain. Okay, I am a little, but I'm much, much more upset that you've had to carry that alone for twenty years.”
“Technically I couldn't access that memory for a significant percentage of those years.”
David pinched the bridge of his nose. “You do understand that that's worse, right? Your father should have been the first person to help you and he was so fundamentally unable to deal with it that he assaulted you and stole everything you had left of her and –” He sighed again. “I'm sorry, I'm telling you what you definitely already know, but I just cannot imagine seeing my child in pain and doing any of that.”
“And yet you worry you don't understand how to be a father,” Saavik replied, glossing over…everything else…entirely.
David huffed out a humorless laugh. “The bar is apparently in hell.”
He fell back into a thoughtful silence. Saavik was considering suggesting that they return to bed when he spoke again.
“Can I ask a question?”
“Besides the one you have just asked?”
That earned her a ghost of a smile. “What happened to your father?”
“What do you mean?”
“After…you left? You ran away? And you told Spock, I'm pretty sure, I think I remember that, which is a hell of an experience.”
“Oh. Nothing.”
“Excuse me?”
“Nothing happened to him. That I know of. I haven't stayed in touch.”
“But he – he did –” David made an inarticulate sound of frustration. “Well, you know what he did.”
“I do,” Saavik said dryly.
David took a sip of his coffee. “I don't think of myself as a violent person but if I ever meet him I'm going to kill him.”
“Please don't.”
David grinned fleetingly. “Is that because of your pacifist ideals or because you don't want to have to save my ass?”
“Two things can be true at the same time.”
They gazed out over the sleeping city for a few moments before David spoke again.
“Have you…talked to anyone? About what happened to you?”
“I disclosed the principal crime to Spock shortly after I came into his care. If it were necessary to testify to any authorities regarding my father's crimes, I would do so, but the need has not arisen.”
“I don't mean like that. I mean talking about how you…how you feel about what happened. Processing it.”
“I process emotions as they arise. I don't see a need to do so for emotions that I experienced in the distant past.”
“If you showed Spock your memories. And said the way you feel about what your father did doesn't matter because it happened a long time ago. Do you think he would agree with you?”
Saavik felt her chest tighten with something like panic. “I don't want people in my mind . I think I have excellent reasons for not wanting that.”
David sighed and wrapped one arm around her. “Hey,” he said gently. “I'm on your side, okay? I just…I don't want you to think you have to carry everything alone forever.”
“I'm not alone. I have you.”
He kissed the top of her head. “You do. Always.”
Notes:
1. The garter knife is inspired by this fanzine illustration by Monica Miller.
2. This chapter in general owes a great deal to Regulatory Relations by indeedcaptain, a fic which so fundamentally altered my brain chemistry that I am now unable to imagine honeymoons without immediately thinking of natural history museums.
3. One of my earliest memories is getting chicken pox and thinking it was a super fun time because I got to sleep with my mom in the big bed, so I have repurposed that for one of Saavik's early memories. (BTW this is a pro-varicella-vaccine space, I'm just old.)
4. Vulcan glossary!
- aduna: "wife"
- dzharelar: plural of dzharel, which the VLD describes as a "horned equine." Obviously that means they're ✨magical unicorns✨.
- haleksu: "cyclist." A little "this author grew up in southwest Ohio" easter egg for y'all. (When you grow up in Ohio, the main thing to be proud of is how many people tried so very very hard to leave as fast as possible. 😂)
Chapter 20: Pride month/hiatus
Chapter Text
Real life continues to kick my ass and I think instead of feeling guilty about that I'm going to take a lil break until, say, late August/early September? And then attempt to resume weekly posting. As the kids say, smash that subscribe button if you want to get notified when a new chapter drops.
Also, since it is June, I just wanna say: I write David as a Bisexual Disaster™️ but Merritt Butrick was, to my knowledge, a gay man who died of AIDS in 1989 (when he was only 29 years old) at a time when the powers that were did absolutely nothing to search for treatment/a cure because they preferred to use the epidemic to scapegoat an already vulnerable group of people.
Let's not go back to that. Let's boldly go to a future where we can appreciate infinite diversity.
Also, if you are queer and struggling, please live. We already lost way too many people who would have been amazing middle aged weirdos, I don't want us to lose any more.
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