VII.

Spock hesitated just down the corridor from Christine Chapel's quarters. He had been haunting that portion of the corridor for days, it seemed, his emotions in regard to the nurse and their experiences on Platonius winding and unwinding like a clock spring. If he had been observed, perhaps the crew of the Enterprise would have come to the conclusion that he was stalking her. But he was not observed. He took special care to only approach her quarters at times when domestic areas of the ship were particularly quiet. If someone approached, he swiftly feigned a task in the vicinity, or strode off to another area.

So far he had failed to touch the buzzer at her door on fifteen separate occasions. The waste of time and energy was most illogical. His inability to raise his hand and touch a finger to a button was most illogical. The tight, tense knot that sat heavy and unmoveable in his stomach was most illogical.

This time, however, the fates decided for him, at least to a point. She had not left her quarters for many days. This he had confirmed with his own investigations. Today, however, was the exception to the rule. Whether it was for an appointment in sickbay, or a necessary excursion, or simply a whim, Christine Chapel had evidently, eventually, left her room. When Spock heard footsteps he moved swiftly into an access alcove and busied himself with a panel there. She certainly did not recognise him. But he, with senses heightened by nervousness and a greater awareness of her body taught ruthlessly to him on Platonius, caught an awareness of her as she moved past him. He turned to see her walking briskly towards her own door, her arms folded about her body as if she was still trying to protect herself from an indefinable threat.

Spock could not have described what impulse forced him to follow. It certainly was not a logical instruction from rational mind to body. Perhaps it was an unrealised desperation spurring him into action when no other more conscious part of his mind would allow it. But he followed her all the same, silent as only a Vulcan could be. He slipped in after her as the door shut without so much as speaking to her, let alone asking permission.

Feeling his presence behind her, Christine turned with a small, instinctive cry, tightening her arms across her chest. Her lips parted, but she couldn't think of what to say in response to the Vulcan's sudden, uncharacteristic intrusion into her private quarters.

'Kiss me,' Spock said raggedly, stepping forward towards her.

She stared at him, momentarily bewildered. She had thought that he would never want to look at her again, let alone engage in any acts of intimacy. Her rooms suddenly seemed half the size that they had before.

He looked haunted. He looked as if he had not slept in years. He looked like she felt.

'Kiss me,' he repeated. 'I need – something – to erase that other kiss.'

That other kiss had been a doll's kiss, had been rubber pressing against rubber, lips forced against lips by another's will. It had been the most terrible moment of her life.

No.

That was not true. It had been the beginning of the most terrible moment of her life. It had, by all accounts, been the continuation of the worst day that Spock had ever suffered.

'I – don't know if – ' she stammered. 'I mean, for either of us, it would be – '

A moment of rage flickered in Spock's eyes, before he clamped down ruthlessly on that particular emotion.

'I need – to see you as something other than Parmen's automaton,' he said in a low, controlled voice. 'I need to know that you, at least, are free of his control.'

He took a step forward, and she took a stumbling step back, unable to control the sudden fear that burst in her chest.

'Please,' she faltered, holding up her hands in front of herself in a useless gesture of self-defence.

Spock turned away abruptly, something in him appearing to deflate. If he had seemed tired before, now he looked utterly exhausted.

'How can you forgive me?' he asked, turning back to her.

His face looked – curiously naked. He had dropped all defence, all attempt at dignity.

'Spock,' she said softly.

She put her hand to the back of his neck, deliberately mimicking her action – *Parmen's* action – on Platonius. But this time her fingers were soft and relaxed. Her fingertips brushed his skin with the lightest of touches, coaxing him, not dragging him to her. Her lips touched his in a rose-petal kiss, the kiss of an intimate friend imparting a gentle reassurance of love, not the pornographic clinch that had been forced on them before. After the tiniest of hesitations, his lips moved under hers, returning that smallest, most gentle of kisses.

She drew away, her eyes closed. When she opened them she was startled to see that he was still standing there with his eyelids shut. A tear was garnering momentum at the corner of one eye, gathering the strength to fall.

'Spock,' she said again, touching her fingertips to his cheek, drawing the wetness away in an echo of an action he had once performed on her. 'It's all right. I know that it was all Parmen. It wasn't you. It wasn't your fault.'

He opened his eyes.

'We can get over it,' she said, suddenly finding her own pain easier to manage in the face of his. 'And whatever he did to you before I was beamed down – '

'He raped me,' Spock said starkly, the words coming from somewhere beyond his conscious control. 'Parmen – raped me…'

The words seemed to echo in his ears. They sounded cold and hateful and without pity, just as the act itself had been. In her mind she saw a flash of him pinned by that sadistic man, without the power to resist, without the hope of mercy, Parmen's face set in grim, determined triumph.

'Oh, Spock…' she said, pouring her own empathy onto the coldness of his words.

A valve seemed to have opened somewhere inside of him, letting deeper, more fluid emotions pour through and over the hot, dry anger that had been consuming him. Christine put her arms about his neck, drawing him to her, holding him steadily and firmly as he shook.

'I didn't know…' she said finally.

'Only those present knew,' he answered, with his eyes closed and his face against the side of her head. *Those present…* He shuddered. Kirk, McCoy, Alexander, Philana, all standing there, all watching as he knelt there…

'You've had treatment?' she asked, her medical instincts coming to the fore.

He nodded, and with that nod she knew a little, now, of who had witnessed the event.

'Christine, I am sorry,' he said in a low voice. 'I know what you suffered…'

'*No!*' she said fiercely. 'No, Spock. You didn't rape me. You shielded me from them, you sheltered me. You were gentle and – and – You stopped *them* from getting into my mind,' she faltered.

'You have been locked away ever since we returned,' Spock began.

'I thought that you must hate me,' she said, tears beginning to come into her own eyes. 'I thought – the only reason why they brought me down was because of my feelings for you, and those feelings betrayed you. They – *used* me to hurt you…'

'Christine,' Spock said in a startled voice, drawing away from her so that he could look into her eyes. 'Have you asked yourself *why,* of all of the female complement of the Enterprise, the Platonians chose to bring down *you,* for me, and Lieutenant Uhura, for Captain Kirk?'

She shook her head in bewilderment. 'I just thought – because of how I felt…'

'I suspected from the start that there was some element of telepathy caught up in the Platonians' telekinesis. Not strong telepathy, Christine. Not the type of telepathy that could scan over four hundred minds on the Enterprise and pick out one person on board who had feelings for me – but the kind of telepathy that could seek and pick through *one* mind, very close, under their complete control, to find the person who would cause greatest consternation as a choice of partner.'

'Greatest consternation,' she echoed. 'That isn't exactly a compliment, Mr Spock.'

Spock's eyebrow rose.

'Do you believe that they sought in the captain's mind, and chose Nyota Uhura as the woman he most despised, the woman towards whom he had least inclination? Or do you believe that they chose her as one of his close workplace companions, one towards whom he harbours a latent attraction – an attraction that he cannot act on because of that close working relationship?'

His eyes rested on her, boring into hers, relentlessly awaiting an answer. She blinked, and looked away. Few humans could sustain Vulcan eye contact.

'Why do you believe they chose *you* from my mind?' he asked, touching his fingers to her jaw, turning her head gently back to him. 'Why do you believe that you were in my mind to be chosen? Is it possible that the Platonians are better judges of the thoughts and impulses in my mind than I am myself?'

She writhed almost imperceptibly, bothered by the idea of crediting the Platonians with anything of benefit.

'Christine,' he continued. 'Dr McCoy believed that I was avoiding talking of what happened between you and me. That I was focussing exclusively on my rape by Parmen in order to – shut out – the later incident. He suggested that I come to you, and talk to you, for the health and sanity of both of us. Do you believe that he was correct?'

She turned slightly, looking towards the low couch at the side of her room.

'Maybe we should find out,' she said.

******

After a long time of sitting in silence, Spock said quietly, 'Does this really fit the good doctor's definition of talking?'

Christine flashed him a wan smile.

'Do you know what to say?' she asked.

Spock opened his mouth briefly, then shook his head.

'No,' he admitted. 'No, I have no frame of reference for such a conversation. I have no frame of reference for anything that happened to us on Platonius. For anything of – Parmen's doing.'

His voice trembled as he mentioned the man's name, and Christine looked at him.

'The thought of him makes you angry,' she said.

Spock clenched and unclenched his hands on his knees, staring straight ahead of him at the partition between this room and Christine's bedroom, letting the mathematical certainty of the octagons in the grille soothe his mind. There, at least, was something dependable. Symmetry, angles that could not alter, proportions that would always stay the same…

'Yes,' he said eventually. 'The thought of him makes me angry. The thought of him sitting at the centre of his small kingdom, unpunished…'

She looked at him curiously.

'How would you punish him?' she asked, certain that Spock's solution to Parmen would have little to do with revered Vulcan methods of logic in justice. 'What would you do to him if he was there in front of you, completely within your power?'

Spock's eyes narrowed, his fingers flexing, imagining tightening his hands around Parmen's throat until blood leaked from his eyes. Tal shaya would be too swift for him. Too merciful. He could feel him again, in him, over his body, controlling every muscle. He could feel Parmen's naked flesh slapping against his buttocks, his thin fingers clawing into his hips, thrusting into him without mercy…

He moaned, pressing his hands over his face, desperately trying to shut out the feelings of what had happened, and the overwhelming urge to forget everything he had ever learnt and kill Parmen slowly and with great pain.

Christine's hand on his shoulder brought him back to reality.

'You can't let it destroy you,' she said softly. 'You can't let what he did to you destroy everything that you are. This isn't you…'

After a long moment of silence she continued, 'What would they tell you to do, on Vulcan? How would they tell you to deal with this?'

Spock closed his eyes.

'Rape is almost unprecedented on Vulcan. It is barely spoken of. When it occurs, it is usually as a result of an unbonded male, in the throes of – his time. It happens to females. It is not inflicted upon males, by males…'

'Never?' she asked incredulously. 'Male rape *never* happens?'

Spock shook his head bleakly. He had always been unique on Vulcan, but he had not expected this to become another facet of his uniqueness.

'I – have never heard of an instance… I had never imagined…'

She stared at him. 'You didn't know it could happen?' she asked him.

'I knew,' he said in a low voice. 'But – not to me…'

'No,' she said slowly. 'Things like that… You never imagine them happening to you…'

He looked at her suddenly.

'I am sorry, Christine,' he said, with as much feeling as he could allow. 'I am truly sorry.'

She smiled a sad smile again, opening her arms to embrace him as he sat on the sofa. Spock didn't resist the invitation to touch – in fact he seemed glad of the offered reassurance, and leant forward into her arms.

'Mr Spock,' she said softly into his ear. 'I can't pretend that anything that happened on Platonius was good – but I rather a thousand times that I would be forced with you than forced with *him*.'

'That – is a compliment?' Spock asked uncertainly.

She smiled. 'In a way,' she said. 'You – made it easy for me, Spock. You protected me from them. You made me feel as if you were the only other person in that room. It's – not how I would have chosen for something like that to happen between us – but it could have been a thousand times worse…'

Spock nodded.

'I thought them to be cruel in the extreme when they placed me together with you for their charade,' he said. 'But I cannot think of another female on the ship that could have responded with your grace and dignity, Christine. I can look into your face with only a margin of – shame.'

'You don't need to feel any shame,' she promised him, stroking a hand over his dark hair. 'There was nothing you could have done. When I look at you, all I feel is pride in your strength and your courage.'

Spock exhaled. 'When I look at myself, all I can think of is what Parmen did…'

'Spock,' she said softly, drawing back from the embrace just far enough so that she could stare into his eyes. '*You* are not what Parmen did. He didn't make you anew with that act. And if he did,' she said, staring into his eyes and refusing to flinch from the pain there, 'let me remake you.'