ST: Moments At Gol: Amanda

by *Aconitum-Napellus who has given permission for it to be archived on the S&A story site.

Rating: G

Series: TOS

Summary: Amanda visits Spock after the fal-tor-pan.


Moments At Gol

Amanda.

It was Amanda's seventh visit to Spock at Gol. Each time so far she had found him sitting in that featureless room, his hands arranged before him as a focus, apparently trying to find something within himself. As she entered the room today he was sitting again in the same position, in the same chair, with his hands in a classic meditation position. He appeared to be staring intently at his fingertips, but his eyes were focussed far beyond them.

'Spock,' she said.

After a moment he looked at her.

'Yes, Mother,' he said in that steady, strange voice, evincing no surprise or joy or displeasure at her unexpected arrival.

She smiled tolerantly. Was he calling her mother because he knew her to be the woman who had bore him and nurtured him and cherished him through the most difficult years of his life, or because he had been told that she was his mother? Vulcans, it seemed, had an inbuilt love of correct processes, regardless of training or memory. Spock showed the same yearning desire to be *correct* now as he had as a two year old, when he had lined up objects in order with small, soft hands, and insisted on the correct bedtime procedure and always wanted his keev'la juice in the small blue cup.

He was looking at her still, with polite, confused enquiry in his eyes. How long would it be, she wondered, before he lost that air of always being confused? Her own mother had had that look in her final years, but it had grown worse, not better. Spock, at least, knew her a little better each time she visited, instead of slipping away by degrees.

'I wanted to see you, Spock,' she began. 'I should have let you know I was coming, but – '

'Is there something you wished to discuss?' he asked, staring unblinkingly at her face.

'No, Spock,' she said patiently. 'I wanted to see you because I'm your mother, and you're my son.'

'Ahh.'

'Spock, it's a beautiful, clear day outside,' she told him, gesturing to the door. 'Would you come for a walk with me?'

His forehead furrowed. 'The adepts do not advise it,' he said, turning his head back and lifting his hands into the meditation posture again.

'Damn the adepts!' she snapped, grasping his hand in hers, her long-learnt patience slipping for a moment. 'Your mother advises it.'

Spock looked first at his hand, held in her smaller, more aged fingers, as if he was very consciously connecting the sight of those hands with the sensations in his skin. If there was any mental connection in the touch she was unaware of it, but he looked up at her again with a new degree of recognition in his eyes. He let her hold on for a few more seconds, then very deliberately removed his hand from her grasp, and got to his feet.

'I am ready,' he said, gesturing towards the door.

She almost laughed at the absurdly self-evident statement. Almost all that Spock owned in this room was the white robe he wore. There was no finding of coats or searching for shoes as there would be on any normal, any human, expedition. His robe and his bare feet were all that he needed.

The transition from the shaded rock-hewn chambers to the brilliance of outside was as abrupt as it ever was on Vulcan. Even *Spock's* eyes took a few moments to adjust to the change in light. He gave the area a cursory glance, then turned his attention back to his mother.

'Where do you wish to go?' he asked.

'Oh – anywhere,' she shrugged.

Spock looked at her, but did not give voice to the perplexity that was evident on his face. So much of life perplexed him at the moment. He could not possibly question everything, particularly those odd vagaries of his human companions. He began to follow his mother's lead along one of the flat, well-worn paths of Gol.

She glanced up at him, and saw his flat acceptance slowly piquing into a general fascination. Spock undoubtedly held layers of information about his surroundings buried in his mind, ranging from personal experience, through cultural and religious history and a myriad varied branches of scientific knowledge. The longer they walked, the more she could see focus and intrigue crystallising in his eyes, and the more firmly she believed that she was correct to bring him outside, despite what the Vulcan adepts might say to her later.

'This place is familiar,' he said finally, scanning his eyes over the vast panorama of rock that was tinted in all shades of orange and brown. 'I – have lived here.'

She looked at him. He had chosen to push aside every scientific, detached observation that he could possibly make on the place, and raise the one subject that she had been praying for him to forget.

'You spent a long time here once, Spock,' she told him honestly, after a moment of deliberation.

Spock looked directly at her. 'I don't remember specifics,' he said.

'Well,' she said slowly.

She had never liked to talk about that time, even after Spock had renounced kolinahr. She had never felt so distant from her son even when he was travelling the farthest stars as she had when he had cloistered himself in Gol, giving a reason to no one for his choice.

He was staring at her still, with an intelligent perception that survived despite his memory loss.

'There is something you do not wish to say – about the time I spent at Gol,' he said.

'You – decided to take the kolinahr,' she said after a moment of hesitation, looking down at her own clasped hands. 'You never told me why. I – can't tell you anything about your time here, Spock. You never told me yourself.'

Spock blinked as an eddy of hot wind blew dust across his face, and then turned slowly, taking in the contours and strata of the rocks as if he was trying to coax memory from them.

'Kolinahr – is emptiness,' he said slowly. 'Perhaps I have achieved it now.'

She held tears back just a millimetre from the surface, and took his hand in hers. She stroked her thumb over the back of his hand, remembering how soft and trusting those hands had been once, clutching at hers as if she was the only thing between him and the unknown danger of the world.

'You – have not achieved emptiness, Spock,' she said with effort, looking up into his dark eyes. 'You are not empty. Everything that you were is there, in your mind. You're trying to find it this time, not to parcel it away like so much unwanted goods.'

He caught the bitterness that had edged into her voice, despite her effort to hide it.

'Mother,' he said, and she heard in his voice that tone that he had always used when her humanness had bewildered and distressed him. It was a wonderful thing to hear, and she smiled brilliantly through the starting tears.

'Spock, you are going to come back to me,' she said firmly, holding both of his hands in hers. 'Your father and I will help you find yourself.'

'That may take some considerable time,' Spock warned her seriously, looking down at her, still with that air of hesitancy in his face.

'I have that time,' she promised. 'I will always have that time.'