McCoy put down his fork on his empty plate. “Permission to leave the table, commander?”
“Granted,” Spock said, from above her salad. She appeared to have captured a cherry tomato with her chopsticks and was examining it with a critical eye.
“It’s not going to eat you,” McCoy said, amused.
“Most probably not,” Spock replied absently, “but it would be intriguing if it did.” She popped it into her mouth.
McCoy grinned. “That sounded suspiciously like whimsy.”
“You will have to forgive me, doctor,” Spock said, “a momentary lapse of reason.” But her tone was light.
Crossing to the window, McCoy looked out over the Maiwar. Night had fallen, a remarkably clear one, and the city core was rising to meet it. The incoming nightlife, clubgoers and restaurant patrons and leisure seekers of all sorts, were mingling with the outward traffic of government workers, researchers, and the more sedate of Meanjin’s students and cadets. Transit lights, of all hues but mostly white and gold, swirled and eddied around the glass and steel towers, giving the impression that Meanjin was suffused with a mist of Silmarils, or inside a high-speed camera view of a firework. Their reflection in the dark, tranquil surface of the Maiwar gave the water a dizzying illusion of depth, as if the fire was captured in the river itself.
There was still a question hanging on McCoy’s lips, but he had chosen not to ask. Having seen how Spock’s face had frozen for just a moment when he had come near it, he’d thought it best to tactfully delay it until a more convenient hour.
She beat him to it. “You made an observation earlier,” her voice came. “’It isn’t Vulcan’.”
In the reflection in the window, McCoy could see Spock had finished at the table and was perched on the armchair that faced the window – “perched on” because it was a particularly plush and shapeless number and she was sitting on it with legs crossed, arms placed in the exact centre of the armrests, refusing to lean against the backrest. It was a posture for a command chair, paired with a ludicrously unfitting piece of furniture.
As one commanded, he turned, leaning against the edge of the window frame in a posture of (very) assumed relaxation. “Well,” he said evasively. “It isn’t.”
“Trivially true,” Spock agreed amiably. “But because it is trivial, I will take the liberty of inferring that its being true is not why you said it.”
McCoy made an ambiguous noise.
“I think,” Spock continued, “that you intended to ask why I did not go to Vulcan.”
“I had wondered,” McCoy admitted. “More advanced, surely …”
“In some respects, more technologically advanced, certainly,” Spock said. “But technological advancement is not the only kind. I will answer your implied question with an explicit one, doctor. What do you think my reasons were?”
Pinned, McCoy hesitated. “Ah …” A simple answer had come to mind – in fact, immediately – but it seemed as if it must, surely, be crossing a line. Finally, he said with great awkwardness, “Permission to speak freely?”
Stiffly, McCoy said, “Sarek.”
“Indeed?” Spock said. She did not seem offended, but one of her eyebrows inched upward fractionally, and McCoy, acutely unwilling to commit to this particular potential faux pas, retreated before it.
“Well,” he hedged, “it’s been known. It often went that way, I understand. Still does, in some places. And I know things between you are …”
He stopped as Spock held up a hand. “You need not fear, doctor. It is a logical hypothesis.”
“Oh,” McCoy said, surprised. “It was a hunch. I don’t try to use logic on people’s feelings.”
“Or otherwise, usually,” Spock said with mild amusement. “It is true that the interpretation of human feelings is an art. Alternatively, I could say that a claim on how such things usually go is anthropology, which is a science. But at any rate, your hypothesis is sound, to a point.”
“Is it?” McCoy said tentatively.
“Yes. For example, I suspect you noted that we have not mentioned my father’s name all afternoon.”
Having indeed noted that, McCoy relaxed slightly. “And we did talk about your mother,” he replied.
“Of whom I spoke warmly. And it is true that reconciliation with my father will be,” Spock thought for a moment, “an ongoing process.”
Conscious that to speak further was to push his luck, McCoy nonetheless decided to speak frankly, and to push. “Well, that. And also, ah … T’Pring.”
“It is true,” Spock said, more quietly, “that my career has diverged, in many ways, from what my father might have expected. Or hoped.”
“It’s a lot of water to fit under the one bridge, Spock,” McCoy said, sympathetically. “I wouldn’t blame you.”
After a pause, Spock looked directly at him, meeting his eye. “It is true,” she said simply. “I do feel … trepidation about this, and about Sarek. But not Sarek qua Sarek. And not only him.”
McCoy frowned. “How d’you mean?”
“I am a,” Spock halted momentarily, then continued as if nothing had happened, “child of two worlds. My father does not share that quality. In his own right, Sarek is a most eminent Vulcan, and one to whom Vulcan owes a great debt. However …” She hesitated, her face inscrutable, but her posture seeming to emanate discomfort.
“However?” McCoy prompted, tentatively.
“Sarek remains a Vulcan.”
[Notes:]
— The reason McCoy is asking Spock for permission to do stuff is partly because she outranks him (Spock is a full commander, McCoy is a lieutenant commander on a medical commission a la Hawkeye Pierce), and partly as a friend, because she is in an uncomfortable position and he wants to place her firmly in control of the situation.
— Spock is canonically vegetarian, so the salad isn't intended to be like a feminising element of characterisation or anything.
— I used the phrase "a momentary lapse of reason" because it felt appropriate. I hope it doesn't seem out of place.
— The "fire in the river' thing is kind of an oblique reference to Brisbane fireworks festival RiverFire, but I would have wanted to put the scene the exact same way even if I hadn't been referring to RiverFire.
— The canonical placement of this fic is solidifying as taking place in the four-year gap between the end of THE ORIGINAL SERIES (2269 CE) and the beginning of THE MOTION PICTURE (c. 2273 CE).
— "Reconciliation with" Sarek is in the context of TOS: "Journey to Babel" Prior to which Spock and Sarek had not spoken for eighteen years.
— The mention of T'Pring is a reference to TOS: "Amok Time", which was based on Spock being betrothed to T'Pring from childhood, implicitly most likely by Sarek.
— Qua means "in the capacity of being".
— Spock halts before "child" because internalised transphobia is still preventing her from saying "daughter," which McCoy will comprehend in the next section.
—
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