Chapter Text
Part One (Cont'd)
“You know, when you think about it, this was all very logical.”
Sunek reclined on the bed and shouted in the direction of the bathroom, but he didn’t get an immediate answer. Not that he really cared, because himself talking was Sunek’s favourite part of just about any conversation anyway.
He was in a fairly unassuming hostel room, containing little more than the bed, a small replicator and dining table and a doorway leading off to the bathroom. But the way he was feeling, he may as well have been in an executive suite on Wrigley’s Pleasure Planet.
“I mean, you were right,” he continued, idly toying with a loose thread on his bathrobe, “We did the other marriage stuff. The blessings, the offerings, the creepy old priestess, but we never did any of the fun stuff. Logically, if we’re husband and wife, it’s only right that we get to do the fun stuff.”
The bathroom door opened and T’Len padded out, wearing a robe of her own. He looked over at her and smirked.
“And I really like the fun stuff. A lot.”
She grabbed a glass of water from the replicator and perched on the edge of the bed, as he smiled back at her.
“So many jokes,” she muttered eventually with a sigh, “You didn’t tell nearly as many when we were younger.”
He smiled and leaned over to her, suggestively wiggling his eyebrows for effect. “Hey, there’s a lot of things I didn’t do a lot of when I was younger—Wait, no, ignore that. All of that. Immediately. Please.”
His smirk disappeared in an instant as he leaned back in defeat, abandoning that particularly disastrous line of improvised flirting. T’Len stifled a slight chuckle as he shrank back, then grew more serious once again.
“I remember what you were like back then,” she mused, “I remember the man that spoke so passionately at our meetings at the institute in ShiKahr. The one that stood up for our emotions, when our elders looked down on us. The one who helped so many young Vulcans to embrace what they were feeling. That young man was so…inspiring.”
Sunek didn’t entirely hate this latest round of ego massage. But he still shifted uncomfortably on the bed. He didn’t tend to spend much time thinking of his life back then.
“Nah, I was an idiot,” he managed eventually, “All I was saying was a bunch of rebellious student politics mixed in with some cod philosophy. Anyone could’ve done it.”
“You really think that?”
“I dunno, T’Len,” he admitted, “I mean, everyone’s like that when they’re younger, right? We all think we know how to fix everything that’s wrong with the universe, even though we’ve barely started living in the real world, and then you just...grow out of it. You grow up.”
She looked over at him with an amused aside. “You’ve grown up?”
He glared at her for a moment, then leaned back, propping his head on his arm and staring at the ceiling. She leaned back and rested her head on his stomach. He felt another crackle of electricity. After a moment of silence, she continued.
“Have you ever been to the Voroth Sea?” she asked in a passive tone.
“On Vulcan?” he replied, slightly thrown by the non sequitur, “The one from that dumb old meditation technique?”
She turned to look up at him and nodded. It was the first meditation technique pretty much any Vulcan child learned, not exactly a stretch that he had known about it. But she continued. “In the meditation, you are told to picture a crystal clear reservoir of water, an island of calm. But the real Voroth Sea is nothing like that. It is a harsh, violent place. Ironic that such a famous pillar of Vulcan meditation is so illogical, don’t you think?”
“I guess I always thought that was weird, but—Hang on,” Sunek paused for a moment, looking back at her with confusion, “Are you preaching to me right now? Is this some new bit you’re trying out for your next V’tosh ka’tur meeting?”
She shook her head, not entirely happily. “No,” she replied, “Although I’m sure you could make it into quite a speech.”
He couldn’t help but raise an eyebrow as she circled the conversation back around to his past. Not a show of intrigue, but one of frustration. “Maybe,” he managed, “Still, I guess I just prefer my life now.”
“Making deliveries?”
It was said with innocence, and without malice, but Sunek could have sworn he detected a darker note in her tone. A sliver of derision, a slightly superior sneer. Even a touch of anger.
“Hey,” he chided with a smile, “That’s not fair—”
His smile disappeared in a moment of realisation.
“Crap, the fair,” he muttered, “I was supposed to be at that stupid trade fair thing! The others are gonna be so pissed…”
He slid off the bed, leaving her behind, and rushed over to the bathroom to grab a sonic shower. As he neared the door, she called out after him.
“Could I come with you?”
He stopped in his tracks and turned back around, a dopey smile forming on his face.
“You wanna go make some deliveries?” he couldn’t help but fire back.
“Well,” she replied, a suggestive twinkle in her eyes, “We do still have thirty years, six months and fourteen days of married life to catch up on.”
Had Sunek’s mind been more logically attuned, he might have spent some time weighing up this somewhat out of the blue suggestion. But while he could still operate with supremely Vulcan levels of concentration when he wanted to, right now his decidedly un-Vulcan libido passed an immediate resolution to ignore any more rational considerations on the matter. And his dopey smile grew wider.
“You know, I could definitely get used to married life,” he grinned as he walked on into the bathroom.
A second later, she heard the sonic shower start up. She reached over to a small rucksack that sat next to the bed and pulled out a stubby communicator. She clicked open the channel, knowing that they would be waiting for her transmission.
“It’s me,” she said, her voice hidden from Sunek by the sound of the shower, “Everything is proceeding as planned…”
* * * * *
The figure on the other end of the comms link sat in darkness.
After a brief discussion with T’Len, he allowed her to return to her mission, and tapped the controls on the desk in front of him to terminate the link before leaning back and closing his eyes, now seeing darkness upon darkness.
It comforted him.
After a moment, he opened his eyes and allowed them to adjust to the dank conditions inside his quarters. He could have asked the computer to turn up the lights, but he preferred it like this.
The vast expanse of the space around him was not built with comfort in mind. It may have been an elaborately large room, but it was utilitarian in design. The walls were a mix of dark green and rusty orange, the room almost bereft of furniture save for his desk and a dining table off to one side. It was also free of any sort of personal effects. He had little time for them these days.
Still, as he looked around at the blank slate in which he now resided, he allowed himself a smile of satisfaction. The final pieces of the jigsaw were beginning to slot into place.
He knew there was still plenty of work to do if they were going to be ready on time, and he also knew that he would have to oversee every last part of it to be truly satisfied that every eventuality had been covered and prepared for. But for the time being, he decided to allow himself a moment of indulgence.
Closing his eyes again, he focused on a familiar meditative scene. The Voroth Sea.
But not the fictional Voroth Sea that had been forced into his mind as a youth by his parents and his teachers. The real thing. The pure, unflinching truth behind the lies.
He stood on the deck of the sailing ship with great difficulty, as a harsh gale blew across the deck. The tumultuous, writhing surface of the sea churned around beneath him, crashing waves of murky silt-filled water up and over the bow. The wind picked up, even more aggressively, sending salty spray into his face and causing him to stumble slightly as he tried to maintain his footing on the slippery deck.
But he did hold his footing, because he was well versed in this meditative exercise. He saw the true face of the Voroth Sea, and he had conquered it after years of practice. It energised him, even as he sat peacefully at his desk in his quarters.
He stood head-on to the storm, and allowed it to feed his rage.