Chapter Text
The door opened too suddenly, revealing Nurse Chapel, hair loose and damp, face free of cosmetics. “Mr. Spock. Right on time of course. Come in.”
Her general appearance confused him. Fresh from the shower. Pink drawstring pants and a baggy t-shirt. Seeming too at ease and dressed too casually for the nature of the discussion he presumed they would be having. Perhaps she was still convalescing. He’d researched the effects of the specific medications prescribed. The entire process took less than 48 hours. The worst of the physical symptoms would have been over by now.
“Are you…” Bitter? Angry? Resentful? Repulsed? “…sufficiently recovered?”
A brief humorless chuckle as she turned away from the door and moved deeper into her quarters. “Nooo. Not at all.”
“I – forgive me. I had assumed since you asked to speak with me that you were well enough to—” He paused. To what?
“I’m not pregnant anymore if that’s what you’re wondering. Hope you’re not disappointed.”
The tone in her voice was singsong bright – a telling contrast to the subject matter. Sarcasm then. He found it oddly comforting. Nevertheless, pertinent information was missing. “It is doubtful a fetus would have been viable after 120 days in any case. My own gestation required a great deal of medical intervention and oversight.”
“I know Spock. Hence, my surprise you managed to knock me up.”
It was going to be a sarcasm-heavy evening. “I had assumed I was sterile.”
“Based on what?”
“I am a hybrid. Hybrids are usually sterile.”
Her gaze assessed him coolly for a moment. “Okay. We’ll table that for later.”
With one leg curled beneath her, she sat in the only comfortable chair, and picked up a mug from the little stand beside it. Steam wafted gently over the lip of the mug. He could smell peppermint.
He’d not been in her quarters – not these quarters – since she’d returned to Starfleet as a member, searching for that fiancé she hadn’t had when she left. This cabin was not as large and yet somehow more personal. Back then she’d always had one foot out the door.
She took a sip, gazed up at him from over the rim. “Gosh. Look at me. So impolite. Would you like a cup of tea?”
“No thank you.” His response appeared both a relief and an annoyance.
“I have a few questions for you.”
“I cannot guarantee answers, though I will try.”
A non-committal hum, then, “I’d be more comfortable asking them if you weren’t looming over me.”
He pulled out the chair at her desk and turned it around to face her. “I regret that this experience has caused you to be apprehensive of me.”
“I’m not. That’s part of the problem. I’ve never had a proper sense of self-preservation when it comes to you.” Her keen eye caught some micro-expression he’d let slip. “Oof. That one cut close to the bone.”
He’d thought himself prepared for sharp edges. He’d forgotten how sharp they could be. He closed his eyes briefly, centered himself again.
“Sorry about that,” she said sounding not sorry at all. “Dr. McCoy says you don’t remember what happened either.”
A statement requiring corroboration. “That is correct. I was not technically present when the…incidents occurred.”
“More than one you think? That tracks, I suppose.” She sucked in a breath, blew out a sigh. “Part of me is grateful I can’t remember. Another part of me wishes I could so I’d have a focus for this rage.”
This did not look like rage to him. And still, not a question. “I am the most appropriate target for it.”
“Are you? I would think Henoch the most likely target. Or perhaps the captain since he made the call.”
“It was not an order,” he said, quickly. “All parties involved agreed to host the entities."
She sighed in weary exasperation. “Relax. I’m not going to ruin his career. Or yours. I’m pretty sure criminal charges wouldn’t go anywhere so what purpose would it serve?”
“You could pursue a civil lawsuit.”
“That doesn’t seem fair to you either.”
“This is not about me, Christine.”
Her features softened in fleeting vulnerability before she returned to the current acerbic default. “You must be feeling guilty. You haven’t called me by my name in a long while.”
True. He took care to address her in a professional manner whenever it was necessary to address her, otherwise he rarely thought of her at all. He’d spent a great deal of time in meditation several years ago making sure of it. Her assertion of his guilt was accurate. The other statement required no response.
She carefully unclenched her fingers from around the mug of tea, placed it on the small table next to her. “Look. Something happened that I can’t remember. And because I can’t remember, my imagination has filled in all the blanks with horrors. It could have been perfectly nice sex for all I know.”
“Doubtful. From my experience of Henoch, he would have wanted you terrified and aware of how powerless you were in the moment. Nothing about it would have been nice.”
“Right. Right.” She peered into the mug on the table as if it had just said the very same thing. “It must have been awful for you too.”
“I don’t remember specifics…” Only feelings, he almost said, but swiveled quickly. “I appreciate your attempts to absolve me of responsibility—”
She barked a laugh. “Is that what you think I’m doing? Dear god, no. I’m just trying to be fair.”
“You seem surprisingly tolerant of an intolerable situation.”
“Like I said. I’m trying to be fair here. Logical. Henoch appropriated your body and used your specific biology as a weapon against the others. I can’t blame you for that. You didn’t choose it. It wasn’t your fault.” Her gaze shot up. He tensed inexplicably. “The fact that I got pregnant is your fault.”
Insult and embarrassment wrestled for supremacy a moment. Only years of training prevented the resulting shame from showing on his face.
“Why don’t you use the available contraception, Mr. Spock? You were engaged to be married. Did the subject of children never come up?” She gave him no opportunity to answer. “And I know you’ve had other sexual encounters besides. It’s irresponsible of you not to at least make certain—”
“Again, past evidence suggested I was sterile."
“Well, the fact that no one has sued you for child support leads me to an entirely different interpretation of past evidence.”
He started to remind her about his own complicated gestation, but realized he’d merely be clothing his shame in pedantic exactitude. Obviously, previous sexual partners had wisely protected themselves. As would she have been if circumstances had not delayed a routine injection.
“I am, of course, inoculated against all known sexually transmitted diseases,” he offered.
“Because you can’t get out of them! It’s required.” Her fists balled up as she growled in frustration and then, suddenly, she'd launched herself out of the chair – at him he presumed, but her foot caught the edge of the seat cushion and off-balance, she went down, knee hitting the deck hard, landing at his feet in an unwelcome pose of genuflection.
Her cry was more outrage than pain as he leaned down to assist her. But she scuttled back in panic, spun away, half crawling then stumbling upright into a run. Three steps, four, before reason stopped her. Breathing hard, she moved to keep the chair a barrier between them, hands clutching the back of it like she was hanging from a cliff.
Her body remembered what her mind could not. She was afraid. Of him.
“If you hadn’t gotten me pregnant,” she rasped out, “I would never have known what happened. I could have gone on with my life blissfully unaware.”
“Dr. McCoy said your sleep had been disturbed for several weeks prior to this discovery. Subconsciously you knew something was amiss—"
“That man has no respect for doctor-patient confidentiality.”
“I understand your desire to remain ignorant under the circumstances—”
She scoffed. “No, you don’t."
“Believe me. I do.”
Skepticism turned to disdain. “Spock, you hate not knowing. You need answers. You love solving puzzles that make everyone else uncomfortable.” Love. Hate. Words intended to insult him.
He couldn’t bring himself to tell her how he’d avoided looking for answers himself. Of the troubling evidence he’d seen and said nothing about to anyone.
She waved a hand like she was clearing a fog, then began to pace, arms wrapped tight across her chest, the chair still safely between them. “Okay. Fine. Not blissful ignorance. Maybe just a state of vague unease that would have faded over time. Instead, I’ve been forced to think about it. I can’t stop thinking about it. All these awful awful scenarios crawling around in my head. All the things Henoch might have done to me wearing your body! And now, every nice memory I’ve been clinging to all these years, however deluded, is destroyed! Crushed. Smashed. Torn to bits—” Her hands acted out the words with an implied violence that alarmed him. “So yeah, I’m angry and— and I’m sad. I’m so sad I can’t breathe sometimes. Nothing I’d hoped for when I came back, when I officially signed on as a member of Starfleet, none of that has come to pass. I feel like I’m disappearing, a nondescript marker in a series of increasingly bizarre events.”
Openly crying now, she slapped furiously at tears spilling over the ledges of cheekbones and into the corners of her mouth.
Her fear was irrational. But there was no good in saying so. “You’re not disappearing, Christine. I see you.”
She laughed unpleasantly. “You go out of your way to avoid me. You don’t even like me—”
Anymore. The word hung in the air without her voicing it aloud.
“I endeavor not to think of you at all.”
Another laugh, soggier this time. “Wow. That’s even worse.”
“You misunderstand me.” He glanced at her, then down again, noting with trepidation the slight tremor in his hands. “It is a practiced habit not to think of you, cultivated over the course of years. But you are significant in my memories. I fear it is why Henoch targeted you.”
Her silence at his confession felt interminable – a trick of time played on conscious awareness. But when he looked to judge her reaction, she seemed merely lost in thought, head tilted, frowning softly. Then, to his surprise, instead of justifiable and righteous condemnation, she snorted.
“Spock, sweetie, I’m the head nurse. I have a PhD in biochemical engineering. I was a tool ideally placed for Henoch to use. And he was a sociopath. And hadn’t been corporeal for eons. Your memories would not have motivated him. He didn’t rape me to hurt you. I’m pretty sure he didn’t think of you. At all.”
She was right of course. It was hubris to consider otherwise.
But she’d said it out loud now. That plain, ugly little word they’d been avoiding. Rape.
“I do not know how to make this right, Christine. I want to but I don’t know how.”
“Because you know you can’t. You have to let me feel what I feel and trust it's probably not forever.”
“Probably?”
She shrugged, picked up the mug from the table - the start of a tidying-up routine that signaled his dismissal. He nodded, mostly to himself, and stood to leave. But there was something missing, a sense of unrecoverable loss, or perhaps, merely unfinished business—
“You once put your arms around me when I was suffering.”
She’d been rinsing out the mug – a personal item that didn’t go into the reclamation unit – and now looked at him warily. “That was so long ago.” Lifetimes, her tone implied.
“May I offer you the same comfort now?”
“I—” She cut off a gut response, made a little humming sound instead. Met his eyes then looked away. “Can I – can I have a rain check on that?”
“Of course.”
“And Spock, when I take you up on it – and I will – you’d better not hesitate.”
He nodded his acknowledgment, and left her cabin, and went to his own, and wept, and meditated, and slept without dreams for the first time in weeks.