Chapter Text
Vulcan doctors do not announce “it's a boy” or “it's a girl” when a baby is born. The traditional announcement is “alive and breathing,” unless the baby isn't, in which case they are too busy trying to make it breathe to say anything.
But Amanda did not need the usual Terran announcement anyway. She and Sarek knew what they were having and had already chosen the name. With their child hand-crafted in a dish, the sex had been theirs to choose.
Originally, they had both wanted a large family and Amanda had wanted a girl first. But after the first four failures, they had revised their hopes downward. One child, alive and breathing. That would be enough, Amanda promised the universe. Just one.
Sarek had requested a boy to carry on the name of his house, because his sister had already had a girl to be T’Pau’s heir. Amanda had agreed, and as they slowly slipped by the dates that prior pregnancies had failed, she became brave enough to talk to and about him as her son.
“Alive and breathing,” said the Vulcan obstetrician, placing him on her belly to stay warm while his human colleague delivered the placenta. Tears stood in Amanda's eyes, making her baby look rippled and blurry, but she had been on Vulcan too long to let them fall. She took her baby in her arms, carefully avoiding his still-attached cord, and whispered, “Hi, Spock. I'm your mom.”
“He favors your side,” said Sarek, having learned by now the art of the charitable lie. The baby looked all Vulcan, long ears bruised a little from his passage, faint eyebrows sloping upward. Amanda checked him over, counting ten little fingers, ten tiny toes. It felt like luck beyond believing, that he had lived, that he had come out so perfect. The doctors would know more when they checked him over, but he was well enough to look all right, at least.
The baby kicked out, exposing a gaping green genital slit. Both humans and Vulcans were born with swollen genitals, which was handy for identification purposes, but she couldn't make out Spock's. “Sarek,” she asked slowly, holding the tiny leg out to the side, “what am I seeing?”
Sarek looked. “I suppose she rejected the Q chromosome for some reason. We shall have to think of a new name.”
“Are you sure?”
Sarek leaned in slightly. “No, I am not. Doctor?”
The Vulcan pediatrician rushed forward, trailed by the human one, just in case.
The cord fell free, leaking a few drops of red blood and a few of green from the cut end, and the baby was free to be passed to the doctor for his—or her—exam.
Amanda pulled her gown back over her chest, hiding her breasts from the crowd of doctors, and endured the painful ministrations of the obstetrician. For a brief moment while she held her baby, nothing had hurt at all, and now she was back in her body and feeling everything.
“They are alive, in any event,” Sarek reminded her, “and breathing.”
“I know,” she said. She did know. She knew it was silly to care about such a small thing when the baby had been breathing and blinking and squirming, all the signs of good health.
But what if it was the only visible sign of a much more serious condition? What if, after all this, she lost another baby after all?
“Your baby appears healthy,” said the doctor. The baby was clean and swaddled now, just a sweet smashed-looking face in a blanket burrito. “Phenotype primarily Vulcan. Blood type T negative, with human factors. Response scores ten out of ten. Respiration and pulse oxygenation optimal.”
Amanda held out her arms, and the doctor placed the little bundle in them. The baby looked like any other Vulcan child, wrapped up like this.
“But doctor,” she asked, feeling as always like a troublesome human patient, asking too many questions, “is it a boy or a girl?”
The doctor showed no expression. “There is no . . . straightforward answer to that question.”
The baby's first few days were strange. They got to have the bassinet in their hospital room; Amanda was able to breastfeed with the addition of vitamin drops; they both learned how to change a diaper. All was well, everything they had been afraid to expect. They had been prepared for beeping monitors and all-night vigils, and now their baby was in perfect health after all.
But they didn't know what to call the baby, that was the thing. Couldn't name them without a sex, not by Vulcan standards. Amanda threw out suggestions for human names that could go either way: Morgan, Lindsay, Ash. Sarek obdurately insisted the child should have a Vulcan name, if they had to wait a year. So she called the baby kan-bu and waited.
Every day more doctors showed up to give their opinions. Which was all that was available, opinion. The facts were testable, but the prognosis was anybody's guess. Some of the advice was, in Amanda's opinion, barbaric. Some was plain unhelpful. Amanda frankly did not care that her unusual baby would be of interest to science.
But in the end, it really came down to a decision. Raise the baby as a boy or as a girl, knowing that whatever they chose, they would not fit perfectly into the standards for either, and that there was a chance the child would grow up wanting to be the other. Refusing to decide would lead to all of Vulcan society knowing something was wrong, and Amanda was fully aware of how unforgiving Vulcan society could be of divergence from the norm.
“I would not mind a daughter,” Sarek said tentatively. “I desired a son, but most people do not have the chance to decide, and I would have gladly taken whatever nature gave us. And they can make her look perfectly female. No one would ever know.”
“It doesn't feel right to change his body,” Amanda argued. “What if he grows up to want to be a man? We could hardly give him his fra’als back. And without his chenesi, he would have to take hormones all his life.”
“Even if he wants to be a man,” Sarek said, shifting pronouns, “he will know himself to be an imperfect male.”
“He will know himself to be special and unique ,” Amanda insisted. “If we teach him to see himself that way.”
“As a man, I think I am in a position to say I would not wish to be without my sa-lok.”
It was surreal, thinking of their tiny baby someday married and having sex, guessing at what equipment they would want for it. But Amanda had begun to feel quite certain, whatever her child's gender might be, there could be no altering a single perfect piece of their body. “But wouldn't you feel just as bad without your fra’als?”
Sarek accepted this logic with an incline of his head.
“It seems to me,” said Amanda, “that with male chromosomes and chenesi, odds are good that he'll grow up thinking of himself as a boy. He'll go through puberty naturally and develop as other boys do. And by then, who knows what surgeons will be able to give him? That Dr. Tevin was optimistic about it.”
“As always,” said Sarek, “your logic is inescapable, my wife.”
Announcements went out proclaiming the birth of their son, Spock, and no one was the wiser.
By four years old, both human and Vulcan children know the difference between boys and girls. Children with siblings have had a chance to compare. Parents have explained: boys have a penis, girls have a vulva. It is that simple at four.
It was not so simple for Spock, and his mother didn't have the heart to tell him that child's simplification. By four, Spock had figured out that boys’ and girls’ names had different letters in them, and quietly assumed that everybody's genitals looked the same as his.
That lasted until he was playing with a neighbor boy one afternoon. “I need to pee,” said the boy, Korin.
“I will wait here for you,” said Spock obligingly.
“No, I'm not going home. I bet that tree needs a drink,” he said. And then, to Spock's round and wondering eyes, he pulled down his pants a little, parted his genital slit, and pulled out a thing like a green finger, which spouted a thin stream onto the roots of the tree.
Spock was flabbergasted. Had he been hiding that their entire friendship? How had he gotten a thing like that attached to his body? Was it tied on or what?
Korin tucked the green thing back in, pulled his pants up, and glanced over to see Spock staring. “It's rude to stare at my sa-lok,” he said.
“Is that what that is?”
“You don’t have one?” Korin asked, incredulous.
“Of course not.”
“You lied. You told me you were a boy.”
“I am a boy!”
“No, boys have a sa-lok, people who don't are girls.”
“That's not true,” said Spock.
“You're not only a girl, then, but a very stupid one,” said Korin. “Play by yourself.” He ran off without another word.
Spock ran home to his mother, more confused than upset. “Korin peed on a tree with a long green thing and he says I am a girl and also stupid,” he poured out in a single breath. “He's wrong, right? Boys don't all have those?”
Amanda took a deep breath, rinsed the vegetable scraps off her hands, and dried them on a fresh blue dish towel. “Boys don't all have those,” she confirmed. “Most of them do, and that's why Korin thought that.”
“Can you get me one?” Spock asked.
Amanda’s face got very red for a minute, and she put her hand over her mouth. For a moment Spock worried she was upset, but after a moment she said, “Sorry, kan-bu. They're a body part. They grow there.”
“Oh.” A thoughtful pause. “How does the body know it's going to be a boy and grow a sa-lok to pee on trees with? Also, I need to know why boys need them and not girls. Girls also need to pee. I think everyone should have one.”
Amanda stared at the ceiling for a moment, but the answer was not written there. Spock checked to be sure. Finally she said, “This is one of those things that has a simple answer, a medium answer, and a complicated answer. Korin knows the simple answer, but you can probably handle the medium answer at least.”
“The complicated one, please,” said Spock. He always hated when things were dumbed down.
An hour later, Spock had the four-year-old version of a gender studies degree and a secret agreement with himself that this was the kind of thing nobody should ever know. Korin didn't know about chromosomes, or gender transitions, or nonbinary identities, or phalloplasties, or any of it. He might say those were imaginary things that only a human mother would dream up.
So the next day, he told Korin that he'd been confused yesterday, that he definitely had a sa-lok, and it was huge.
Korin believed him, because Korin was a Vulcan and did not lie.
But Spock was only half Vulcan, and he lied.
Sixteen, and he had an excruciating crush on his wife.
T’Pring was beautiful, poised. She walked like a queen. Her fingers against his at the bonding had been soft as silk. But since then, she had had her own friends, and noticed Spock only when their parents were visiting each other, and then only politely.
Spock was painfully shy, emotionally controlled enough to escape teasing at last, but when T’Pring was in the room he turned into a scarecrow of knees and elbows, forgot how to speak. He wanted to kiss her feet, bury his face in her hair.
If she knew his secret, she never referred to it. Spock hoped she knew, so that she would not be surprised when they came together. But he hoped she didn't, because then she might reject him for it.
He could still satisfy her, he was certain. Women had wives, and they still had sex. He could please her with his fingers and his mouth, as a wife might. He wondered if T’Pring wanted that, would be content with it. But he could not help but feel he could not compete with her friend Stonn, his broad shoulders and his surely massive lok. He couldn't stop imagining them together, even though it made him sick. Even though he had no proof they had been together at all.
One day, when she was at his house with her parents, Spock left his hand casually next to hers on the couch. After a few minutes he carefully extended his pinkie and laid it on top of hers. She didn't take her hand away. He sat very still and felt how delicate her finger was under his, the indistinguishable murmuring of her mind behind her shields. He wanted to rub all his fingers against hers, but he was afraid to push his luck.
“My mother does not think I will actually marry you,” said T’Pring abruptly. “She thinks I will change my mind when I am older. I do not know why.”
“Perhaps she thinks you would rather have Stonn.”
“We are too young to commit to one another entirely,” she said reasonably. “And Stonn is pleasant company. But it does not mean I do not intend to complete the marriage at the appointed time. It would be illogical to do otherwise.”
Boldly, he moved his finger, stroking hers lightly toward the tip. “Is logic the only reason?”
She turned her large, dark eyes toward him. “I am certainly looking forward to it. The little I have heard of . . . how marriage begins . . . is very appealing to me.”
Spock's breath caught, thinking about it. He would be out of his mind with lust, but that didn't seem so different from how he felt now. She would be affected by it, want him just as much, and he would know that she wanted him as their bond activated, expanded. They would be together for hours, even days possibly, satisfying one another again and again until the fever burned out.
He forced his blood to circulate normally, his breathing to remain steady, but her finger moved under his and he thought perhaps she felt his desire anyway.
“I . . . to me also,” he managed. “I hope it is soon.”
“As do I,” she said. “I intend to wait for it, but it is . . . a challenge.”
He supposed it would be, with the ever-solicitous Stonn always dogging her steps, offering everything he couldn't.
“If you find your patience is running out,” he ventured, terrifying himself with his boldness, “I hope you come to me.”
She tossed her head, that beautiful sleek hair trailing behind. “Perhaps.”
Every year of his life, he had to sit up on the exam table, put his feet in the stirrups, and let himself be looked at. Use should have desensitized him to it, and yet it only seemed worse every time. He dedicated himself to his meditation so that he could absent himself entirely. They could prod at his body while his mind was far away, not hearing any of the things they said. At least now he was old enough to leave his mother in the waiting room. Having her there made it worse.
But he could not meditate through the part where Dr. Tevin insisted on talking to him and asking him questions. Did he masturbate? Did he ever become erect? Had his fra’als ever everted?
Of course not. First of all, it was not permitted; it was an illogical behavior that demonstrated poor control, and his control had been excellent since he was a child. It had had to be, to get the other children to leave him alone.
And second of all, he did not want to touch himself. He wanted to touch T’Pring. He paid as little attention to his own body as he could. It felt at times that it belonged to the doctors, not to himself at all. But T’Pring would one day belong to him, and he to her. And then everything would be permitted.
“Do you experience sexual feelings?” the doctor asked, his eyes on his padd.
The lack of eye contact made it a little easier. “Yes,” he whispered.
“For whom?”
“My wife.”
Dr. Tevin looked pitying. “I doubt you will need a wife, Spock. Your sexual function is non-existent now, and it would have matured by now if it were going to.”
“So you do not think that I will reach . . . my Time?” He flushed even saying the euphemism.
“No. You should consider yourself fortunate to be spared.”
“But T’Pring . . .”
“You should tell her not to wait for you. She would be waiting forever. It would be selfish to keep your bond on such a low chance you would ever be able to consummate it.”
Spock's face was completely blank as he emerged from the office. His mother looked up, but he did not stop, only walked directly out the door and into the flitter.
She hurried out of the waiting room and got in beside him. “Are you all right, kan-bu?”
No, not at all. “Yes, Mother.”
“Should I have come in with you?”
“No,” he said quickly. He could not have survived those questions in front of her.
“If you don't like that doctor—”
“I do not care which doctor I see.” They were all the same, they had always all been the same. No doctor could change the facts of his existence.
She studied him a moment, but eventually turned the flitter on and guided it into the sky.
He did not tell T’Pring not to wait for him. He did not speak to her again at all. When he saw her walking in the city with Stonn, fingers just brushing, he averted his eyes.
There had seemed no reason to say no to participating in Dr. Tevin’s study, when the research could help others, when he was perfectly capable of meditating deeply enough that he would experience none of it.
But now that he was in the sterile, bland exam room, he wished he hadn't. He had forgotten about how much there was before and after the part he was able to miss. Undressing and putting on the terrible yellow gown. The hateful stirrups, already pulled out for him, though he kept his legs together for now.
T’Shuhn, Dr. Tevin’s wife and assistant, came in with a clipboard and a pen. “You will need to sign this consent form.”
He read the first paragraph and gave up, ears burning. It was several pages long and full of embarrassing detail. “Will I be able to meditate through most of it?” he asked.
“It is probably best if you meditate through all of it,” she said. “That way you will keep still.”
“So there won't be any questions?”
“No. We have your records, so when you release them for use in the study, there will be no need to repeat what we have already asked.”
He flipped to the final page and signed. At least there would be no questions.
Dr. Tevin came in. As usual, he did not waste time with small talk. “Put your feet in the stirrups and lie back.”
Spock did so, trying to keep his gown over his thighs so he didn't feel so exposed to the open air. “You are blocking the light,” said Dr. Tevin, and pushed it back.
“You should begin your meditation now,” said T’Shuhn.
It was difficult to enter the trance under these circumstances. Proper Vulcans could do it in a bustling operating theater, putting themselves under deeply enough they could undergo surgery without the risks of anesthesia. But for Spock it was difficult to do even this much.
The door opened and shut—Dr. Tevin’s graduate assistants. “Fascinating,” said one of them. “A true hermaphrodite. And the hybridization process caused the defect?”
And then, finally, Spock steadied his breath and their voices faded out. He awoke only once, to see if it was over, but quickly submerged himself again when he felt cold metal and knew that it was not.
When he awoke the second time, he was alone in the room. Still in the stirrups. It would have meant so much, he thought, if they had only rearranged him before he woke up, so he could have had at least the illusion of privacy.
But illusions were illogical. It would have been un-Vulcan to ask for such a thing.
He folded up the gown, put on his clothes, and walked out. He would not spare any of this a second thought. He was grown now. He would not have to do this ever again. He was going to Starfleet and his future was bright. On his application, they had not even had a blank for sex. It was not required to disclose it. Starfleet only cared about merit, and Spock knew he had that in spades, at least.
In sophomore xenobiology, they were assigned a project on a topic of their choice. Spock was profoundly uninterested in hybridization, so he chose a broad comparative study of blood types, their usual incompatibility across species, the rare exceptions to that rule.
Around that time he started spending time with Leila. She was in his class; she had always been polite. But she asked him to lunch one day and listened with rapt attention to everything he said. And then dinner a few days later, in a nice restaurant.
It would have been leaping to conclusions to assume her interest was romantic. But, as they continued to spend time together, she was surprisingly physical, often touching his arm or his elbow, standing very close.
He should have put a stop to it, but he did not. First, because he had few friends, none close, and her warm attention was not something he could easily put aside. And second, because what if it was romantic? Was that so bad? Perhaps he could not bring the relationship to the conclusion she expected, but humans were notoriously flexible in their tastes. Perhaps they could negotiate something agreeable to both of them.
In any event, there was no harm in following along to see how it went. When she invited him inside her apartment after a movie together, he agreed.
“So nice to be out of the rain,” she said, hanging up her coat and reaching out a hand for Spock's. “Can I get you coffee?”
“No, thank you.” He held out his coat, and she brushed his hand as she took it. He sensed her desire.
She had to know he would feel it. They were both studying xenobiology this term. It was on purpose.
She led him to the couch, sitting close against him. He felt warm. He was not entirely certain he was attracted to Leila, but he thought he might be. There was no harm in leaning close to her, letting her brush his fingers a second time, more deliberately.
His eyes fell on the coffee table. There were a number of books on xenobiology, some of which he recognized. “You have been working on your class project,” he said. “What is your topic?”
She blushed, which showed up prettily on her warm complexion. “Hybridization,” she said. “Specifically, with humans. We're famous for playing well with other species, we've crossed with dozens of races, but our genes tend to be recessive compared to those of other species. I'm going to go into each species and describe what the children have been like, and what new traits have arisen that aren't strictly the same as either parent.”
“I see,” he said numbly. He could not react to this information now, with his first instinctive response. He needed to meditate on it and decide what a logical reaction would be. It was not a crime to write a paper. In fact they were required to write one.
“You're not offended, are you? Since you're half Vulcan?”
“It would be illogical to take offense from science,” he said. To disguise his discomfort, he stacked up the books on the coffee table more neatly, putting the bound volumes on the bottom and the spiral-bound journals on top. He lifted A Survey of Cross-Species Offspring in the Second Generation to add it to the stack. His eye fell on the bound journal article beneath it.
Hermaphroditism in the Vulcan-Human Hybrid: A Case Study, read the title.
Beneath, Tevin, et al.
He set it atop the stack with, he thought, enough smoothness that she would not notice he had been disturbed by it.
“Leila, I apologize,” he said tonelessly, rising to his feet. “I have remembered an important engagement tonight which I cannot miss.”
His control was insufficient, because she stood up as well. “What's wrong?”
“Nothing is wrong.”
“Spock, wait!” But he had already left. It took him several blocks before he realized he had left his coat behind.
He kept walking.
He knew then that he would have to read the paper after all. He had to know what it was that Leila knew about him. He scheduled an entire Saturday, reading a little and then meditating until he was ready to read more.
He was aghast. It had not occurred to him it would be so detailed. He had thought it would focus on the genetic pathways of his condition, which were admittedly interesting and useful for scientists to know. Instead, it was full of full-color photos of himself splayed out like a gutted fish, retractors holding him open to show more of himself than he had ever seen. In one, an electrode had been placed to force out his waving fra’als.
He did not want to look, but he could not look away. This was him. His body. And he did not recognize it at all.
With an act of will, he flipped past the last picture to a page that was only text.
Despite having traits of both sexes, the subject is essentially sexless. He reported that he had never experienced a sexual response, and we were unable to produce an orgasm with electrostimulation.
He read the last clause several times. While he had been lost inside his head, they had been trying to—
Trying and failing to—
He sat in complete stillness for some time, his hands covering his face. They had tried to take his first orgasm from him, and they had not even been able to, because there was nothing there. He was unsure which of these things was worse.
He had never been touched by T’Pring, or by Leila, or any other lover, but he had been touched by a cold electrode. That was the kind of touch a person like him could expect to receive. Surely no one else would attempt it now.
This was his own fault. He had been so embarrassed, so ashamed, that he had not read the details of the consent form before he signed. And so afraid he had absented himself from the experience so he had not been able to refuse. He had not even known it had happened to him until this moment.
He meditated for the rest of the afternoon, but it did not help.
After class, Leila accosted him, walked beside him so he could not escape. “It isn’t like you think,” she said.
Spock kept his eyes front. “What do you think I think?”
“I’m not studying any of that because of you,” she said. “I didn’t even really know you before I started. I didn’t, like, look you up or anything.”
“You would not have been able to,” he said. “My name is not attached.”
“And I don’t think it’s some kind of horrible, shameful secret,” she added. “I think it’s cool.”
“Cool,” he repeated.
“You’re completely unique in the universe!” she said. “And I’ve always found gender fluid people really attractive.”
“I am not gender fluid,” he said. “I am a man.”
“I know, but isn’t it kind of the same? You're a little bit of each. When I read the paper I thought it was the coolest thing, and I should get to know you.”
“You pursued me,” he said slowly, “because you were curious about my genitals.”
“You don't have to say it like that,” she objected. “And isn't it better for someone to like you because of it, than in spite of it? You know I wouldn't be shy about figuring out what you like in bed.”
He stopped dead, forcing her to stop also. “You did not read to the end.”
“No, I didn’t get much past the pictures,” she said blithely. “I know they’re very clinical, but still. There’s something beautiful about them.”
For a moment Spock was too angry to breathe. Too angry to even try to control it. “Read to the end,” he snapped, before striding away too quickly for her to keep up. It was that or strike her across the face.
Leila did not speak to him again for the rest of the term. Spock was uncertain if it was because he had so thoroughly demonstrated his dislike of her approach, or because she had, indeed, read to the end.