Full Circle (Sepeth story)

[Starfleet Academy Headquarters, San Francisco, CA, USA]
[Room 2042 Cochrane Hall, Officer Trainee Dormitory]
[22 May 2369 CE]
[1230 Hours]

"Tonight? ...Yeah. ...Yeah, I'll be there. ...Are you kidding? I wouldn't miss this for the stars. After four years I think we've all damn well earned a celebration! ...Yeah, sure thing. ...All right, sounds good. ...You got it. ...Hey, congratulations to you too, Mr. Fancy-Pants Lieutenant. ...Haha, right. ...Okay, see you tonight then!"

Standing alone in his room, Sepeth terminated the audio link, still grinning in anticipation of the party that his graduating class had planned for the evening. Before that, though, he had to pack his belongings for the shuttle that would be coming to pick him up the next morning.

He collected his personal electronic devices and placed them carefully in his suitcase. From a shelf he retrieved a framed picture of himself and his siblings, taken when all but his sister were still in their teens. He peered at the image of himself in the picture, hardly recognizing the stoic, self-assured young Vulcan that looked back at him. For one thing, in the photo he still had straight black hair on his head, which he had since started shaving clean. For another, he could barely remember a time when the four of them had all been so close.

Stepping around his desk and taking a seat in the swiveling chair, Sepeth pressed the button to activate the recessed computer terminal. When the viewscreen had clicked into place, he typed in a commlink address and awaited a response. A minute later a young woman's cool, smooth voice issued from the terminal.

"Hello, Sepeth."

"Hello, T'Lora," he replied with a friendly smile.

"Your subspace communication was unexpected, brother," she said. "It has been quite a long time."

"Too long," he agreed, the smile fading. "How are things at home?"

The pretty young Vulcan woman paused briefly before responding. "The conditions here are immaterial. You have contacted me. What is it you wish to discuss?"

Sepeth winced internally, but he managed to suppress it. He knew that his relationship with his family had been strained for the past few years, but he had hoped that his little sister would be the first one to forgive and forget. With just a hint of satisfaction in his voice, he answered, "Preliminaries aside, I wished to tell you and the rest of our family that I have completed my officer training at Starfleet Academy. As of this morning I now bear the rank of Lieutenant, junior grade."

His sister showed no reaction to the news. "Is that all?" she asked. "We will likely receive the official notice of your graduation tomorrow. That would have been sufficient to inform us of the situation. For what reason have you requested a face-to-face conversation?"

The new Lieutenant felt heat rise in his cheeks. "Today's events mark a significant milestone in the advancement of my career. The occasion merits more conversation than a silent certificate to be displayed in our house.

T'Lora's reply was cold. "You assume a great deal, brother. I do not believe that father will wish to display your achievements in a place of honour beside those of our brothers."

"Sister, we have discussed this at length in the past. You and I are both possessed of a mixed heritage. Denying expression of our human characteristics is illogical."

"Your reasoning is flawed, brother. One cannot simultaneously follow two paths that lead in different directions. As father has implored you on multiple occasions, you must choose one road or the other, and follow it to its destination. The ill-conceived mating choices of our forebears is irrelevant; you are either a Vulcan or a Human."

Sepeth's fingers curled into tight fists beneath the desk, out of view of his sister. She spoke with her own voice, but through it he heard their father's disappointed words. His own voice became more fervent. "Ill-conceived mating choices? You would speak of our grandparents with such coarse language? I am outraged at your lack of respect for our grandmother!"

The young woman remained still and waited for Sepeth to finish. "You have spent too much time around humans, brother. You forget what it means to be Vulcan."

The engineering graduate had felt the anger bubbling up inside, but until now he had managed to keep it relatively subdued. Unable to contain it any longer, it boiled over in a spiteful outburst. "You go too far, sister! If we are to be fully Vulcan, then we must ignore a significant part of our being! Reason dictates that we use all of the tools at our disposal, yet father expects me to reject a part of myself that is just as legitimate as the rest! And to think, I had actually expected you to commend me on my achievement, and instead I've been met with the same crass, callous attitude that divided us in the first place!"

His chest rose and fell rapidly in response to the stress hormones coursing through his veins. The image of his sister on the viewscreen raised an eyebrow and shook her head in disbelief.

"Let us dispense with all manner of pretense and be perfectly honest, brother. You received a commendation today and were consumed with pride, a dangerous emotion that you had naively hoped we would share upon hearing the news. Your willpower has always been weak. You have always allowed emotion to guide your actions, conveniently disregarding the laws of reason and logic whenever it suits your purposes. Your behaviour has brought naught but disgrace upon our house, and I see that your self-control has deteriorated further since last we spoke."

Her smoothly-delivered words cut Sepeth like a dagger. He felt his resolve breaking, and as he stared into the eyes that had once belonged to a beautiful little girl with a heart full of love and joy, his vision blurred slightly. As a single tiny teardrop rolled down his face his sister looked away from the monitor--perhaps in disgust, or perhaps in sympathy. Ashamed of himself, Sepeth wiped his face on his shirt sleeve and nearly succeeded in clearing his throat. Before he could beg his sister to forgive him for his weakness, she spoke again.

"Sepeth, Grandmother is dying."

((to be continued))

[Raal Provincial Infirmary, Allospecies Ward, Planet Vulcan]
[25 May 2369 CE]
[0845 Hours]

"...My good-for-nothing husband had to go and leave me all alone. One by one, they've all gone and left me alone! Was I a worthless piece of trash to be discarded when you all had better things to do? Yet now here you are! Now that time is short and there's inheritance to be doled out. Put out your hands, all of you! See what you get! Nothing! I go to my grave and I give you nothing!--just as you had nought to offer when I was suffering, in pain, alone. Why, the whole lot of you are no better than squirming rats crowding around their mother's teat!"

The Vulcan nurse who was monitoring the elderly human woman paused briefly at her outburst, then weaved her way between the assembled family members to return to her station. At first it had seemed to Sepeth that she was mostly angry with his grandfather Sophet, who was off-planet attending to his duties as subcommander of the Vulcan science vessel T'lek. As patriarch in the room, Sepeth's father Selket had been the target of the tirade, but by the end none of them had been spared her wrath.

Sepeth clearly didn't fit in with his family. The rest of them were gathered to his grandmother's right, standing or sitting by her hospital bed here in the wing dedicated to non-Vulcan patients. He stood on her left; shorter and stockier than his brothers, and since his mother was at home tending to the house, he was the only visitor in the room without straight black hair. His mother's hair was dark brown, as she was half-human, and when her mother--the exasperated human in the bed--had been a young woman, she had a full head of rich brown curls that were now sparse, wispy, and white. Sepeth ran his hand over his shaved head, feeling the roughness of the stubble that had grown since he had heard the news of his grandmother's failing health.

"We are not here to discuss inheritance, mother," Sepeth's father said, calmly and evenly. "Your life will soon come to a close, and we are here to visit you, to pay our respects, and to offer support in this, your hour of need."

Sepeth winced. He knew that his father was trying his best, but flatly telling a dying human that she was indeed dying was most definitely not the way to comfort her.

"You ungrateful swine!" she hollered. "When your darling wife was just a baby, I would sit awake with her for nights on end whenever she was ill, without regard for lack of sleep or my own health. You disappear for ten years and now that I have one foot in the grave you suddenly show up and say such crass things to me, as though my impending death is as inconsequential as a setting sun?" Her face was pale with sickness, but her cheeks were flushed red with her boiling anger. Before she could continue browbeating her son-in-law, a violent coughing fit overcame her and she had to grab for the edge of the bed to stabilize herself.

The youngest one in the room, T'Lora, spoke up. "It is as I told you, father. She has lost all emotional control. Our presence is unappreciated and unnecessary. W..."

A noise like a whip-crack resounded through the room and down the hall. T'Lora's eyes became as wide as saucers, and a red mark in the shape of her grandmother's hand slowly appeared on her cheek like an ancient photograph being developed in a darkroom. For a few moments she was six years old, and as tears of pain involuntarily welled up in her eyes, "Gammah!" was all she could whimper, and she ran from the room.

Sepeth had had enough. "Grandmother!" he chastised. "You've made your point. You feel abandoned, you feel unloved. But know this: when T'Lora told me that you were sick, I dropped everything and came on the fastest transport I could find. I wish that I'd known earlier, for I would have come earlier to be here with you, to accompany you, to laugh and sing and cry with you. Remember the many years of memories we share, and remember that we are your flesh and blood, your legacy in the universe. Don't direct your anger toward the ones who care for you. And although the rest of you are unwilling to say such things," he said, looking from face to face in the room, "I don't give a damn what anybody thinks: I love you, and I'm here to let you know that I love you, that I'll cherish the time we've had together as long as I live, and I'll never forget the many lessons that you've taught me." His blood, the blood he shared with everyone in the room, was pounding in his long ears. His father and younger brother seemed to disapprove of his little speech, but his older brother seemed ashamed that he couldn't tell Sepeth how much he agreed.

The old woman in the bed pressed her lips together and knitted her brows. Slowly the color drained from her cheeks, and she lay back against the raised head of the bed. "You're right, Sepeth, I shouldn't take my frustration out on you. If you weren't here now then I'd still be alone." She hung her head in sadness. "You see? This is what your people have always tried to teach you. Emotional expression is dangerous. In the course of our lives we feel joy, pride, happiness, contentment, and those feelings improve our existence. But I am old, Sepeth. I don't recognize myself anymore. The happy memories of my youth seem like a nearly-forgotten dream. Even joy is painful to me, because I regret that the dear friends I once had are all dead or gone, and I can't share it with them." She stared down at the bedsheets and tears began to run down her face, and her chin quivered. "I miss my parents... I miss the Earth... I miss taking long walks along the canals of my hometown..." She looked back at Sepeth. "Forget what I've taught you, my child. Follow the path of your people, and abandon emotion. It may serve you well now, but the future holds nought but suffering and anguish."

Sepeth opened his mouth to argue but an alarm on the bedside computer began to sound, and the nurse rushed back into the room, medical tricorder in hand. She pressed a button on the wallcomm and called for assistance, and then quickly shuffled the family out of the room so the arriving doctors could do their job.

They sat in silence outside the ward, staring into space. A short while later T'Lora emerged from the turbolift and sat down next to her brothers, her face stinging and her eyes red from the salt of her tears. Sepeth took hold of her hand and squeezed it gently. As their bodies came into contact, he experienced a shallow glimmer of her mind, and though his intention was simply to soothe her pain, he unwittingly absorbed some of it into himself. Shutting his eyes and swallowing hard, he fought down the urge to burst into tears.

---

Though it seemed like days, it was all over forty-five minutes later. One by one, the medical team walked out of the room with the slow step that announced that urgency was no longer required. T'Lora looked from the doctors back at her brother. Sepeth's eyes were open, and his face was blank. Quietly he rose to his feet, as did the other Vulcan men. A few moments passed, and the silence was broken.

"It is done," said Sepeth coolly. "The sun sets on one life, and tomorrow a new sun will rise." He turned to his father, his face impassive. "Your hospitality has been quite generous, father. Unfortunately, I must return to Starfleet immediately." Taking a step back and looking into the tensed faces of his bereaved family, Sepeth swallowed again, and then raised his hand in the Vulcan salute.

"Peace, and long life," he said.

His sister sat back down and stared at her hands folded in her lap. The rest of his family mirrored his salute, and his father intoned, "Live long, and prosper."

Without another word, Sepeth turned on his heel and marched out of the room.