The Usual Disclaimer Applies!

What Is Left Of My Heart

He needed a new bond-mate, in fact, he would need one soon, within the next year or so. Sarek knew he should take an active role in the process, but his heart was not in it. You see, his heart had a missing piece.

When he had joined with Amanda , he had bonded for love. Sarek loved Amanda, though it was years before he could say it out loud. The first time he told her, they had just brought Spock home for the first time. The pregnancy had been difficult and dangerous. She had suffered so much, been ill much of the time. She had endured all of this just to bear their child, his child. She deserved to hear the words, now matter how difficult they were for him to say. So, he had gathered her in his arms, kissed her and simply said "I love you." She cried, telling him they were happy tears.

To the onlooker, Sarek was your typical stoic, impassive Vulcan. However, nearly thirty years of marriage to a human had changed him, especially a human as warm and loving as Amanda had been. She had influenced him in a thousand small ways.

Before Amanda, Sarek had never stopped to appreciate the colors in a sunrise, the songs of birds, or the arrangement of stars in a constellation. Left to his own devices, he would not have gazed up at the California sky and compared the shapes of clouds to animals. Amanda had seen the joy and beauty in everything, including Sarek. Sarek had a fierce beauty, sharp and taut, like the desert landscape of his home. He had a quiet joy. She saw it when he played his harp, worked in his wood shop, and in the way he had held his infant son.

She had been gone for months now, but the pain of the severed bond was fresh. Even now, when he listened to music, looked at artwork, or walked in a garden, he would try to reach out to her through a link that no longer existed. Then he would remember that his heart had a missing piece.

T'Sela could fill her days with teaching and mentoring, her evenings with lesson plans and assignments to be graded. The nights were much harder to fill. She now lived in a dormitory with other unbonded females. T'Sela was not actively looking. She intended to do her duty for her race, to marry and bear more children. However, she simply could not be bothered with the process. The Elders had said a suitable candidate would be found. Let them deliver him to her. It would not matter who they selected, for it could not be Skel.

Skel and T'Sela had been bond-mates for over fifty years, and had known each other since childhood. She had seen him nearly everyday of her life, until the Genocide took him and their three children. Skel was a professor of Architecture and Building Design at the Shi'Kahr Engineering and Technologies Institute. Skel saw the beauty in minutiae, the elegance in the mundane. He could become totally engrossed in the pattern of bricks on a building. Thus he understood T'Sela and her love of art history, of the wondrous things that made up Vulcan culture. Both saw the logic in making the things of everyday life beautiful.

Now when she tried to express such things to a friend or a colleague, they simply did not comprehend her. They could not grasp her concepts. The lack of a kindred spirit was what pained her the most. T'Sela had once heard a Human colleague refer to her husband as her other half. That was exactly what T'Sela was missing, half of her heart.

T'Pau was becoming frustrated with her son, though she would not have admitted to this emotion. As an important diplomat and a leader among his people, not to mention the fact that he possessed considerable wealth, he could most likely have his choice of bond-mates. However, he had not acted, and the pool of available candidates was becoming smaller.

If Sarek would not find himself a bond-mate, T'Pau would do it for him.

T'Leda was old, too old to bear children, too old to be interested in another bond-mate. She would spend the rest of her days as a teacher, educating the young. She lived in a dormitory with other single females, many in the same situation as she, too old to bear children. However, there was one who was still young, still aesthetically pleasing. T'Sela had been the daughter of a privileged family and a professor of Art History. Such a refined female would have much to offer a potential mate. Yet T'Sela seemed in no hurry to be bonded. Perhaps she needed a little prodding, before all the truly superior candidates were gone.

T'Leda's late husband Tavosh had always said that she had a talent for prodding.

In the heat of the day, two elderly Vulcan women sat in the shade. They knitted and drank kasa juice. Finally, one spoke.

"T'Pau, how does it go with you? Has your son found a bond-mate yet?"

"He has not, and he must do so soon. I have actually begun seeking a mate for him."

"I see. I have a similar situation. There is a teacher in my dormitory, un-bonded of child-bearing age. She is a little younger than your son. She seems a bit reluctant to seek a mate, as well."

"Tell me of her."

The knitting stops, as the two women compare notes. T'Pau arranges to meet T'Sela.

T'Sela has been invited to T'Pau's cottage for honey cakes and tea. T'Pau asks many questions about T'Sela's life, her family, and her ambitions. Many of them are quite personal, but it would be disrespectful to not answer an Elder. T'Pau also asks her what she is seeking in a mate. T'Sela considers carefully. "I seek one who sees the wonder in the everyday." T'Pau thinks it a strange answer, but one that somehow reminds her of her son.

"I may have a match for thee. I shall arrange a meeting."

"I thank thee, Elder T'Pau." Parting greetings are exchanged and T'Sela leaves.

T'Pau contacts Sarek at the Embassy on Terra. "Thee must return to New Vulcan, for I may have found thy bond-mate."

"I shall return in one week's time."

A/N:

Please read and review, so's I can feel the love or the flames!