A Case of You by snarkypants
She doesn't remember him leaving.
In her fever dreams he never left, but in her increasing and unfortunate spells of what doctors call lucidity, she learns that he is gone, and not just gone from the planet but gone and will come no more, never, never, never…
And she doesn't remember him leaving.
Nyota tells her that it was just a simple training cruise. That Spock hadn't even considered going until Christine was on the mend.
He hadn't been able to touch her, and she doesn't remember him leaving.
She had been quarantined, unconscious, behind three inches of glass, with machines manipulating her body temperature, feeding and re-hydrating her, processing her bodily waste. The worst of the crisis was past, though, and Enterprise must continue with her mission; one medical officer is easily substituted for another, and since Len had volunteered…
Even Spock had to see the logic.
It was—still is—Anchilles fever; Nyota tells her that, too. They say she is recovering now.
Scotty has been here, too, and so has Janice. Pavel has not; Nyota told her that his doctors hadn't wanted to risk exposing him to the fever so soon after cerebral cortex injury. This is confusing since the last Christine remembers Pavel was on Reliant; perhaps Nyota has explained his presence on Earth now, and perhaps it is just the fever dreams scrambling the past and the present, the unreal and the real. Christine is too tired to remember. She opens her eyes and sees another former crewmate.
"Hikaru," she says, and her voice is shattered with disuse.
His face brightens nevertheless. "Good to have you back among the li—among us," he says, wincing.
She knows what the grimace means. Spock is dead, and it's not part of the dreams.
When she closes her eyes Spock is sucking her fingertips, one by one.
"They said you were dead," she says, and her voice is clear and strong. His shaved chin rasps against her palm.
He looks up at her with such amusement in his eyes. "Did you believe them?"
"Sometimes I did." She pulls him to her simply by wanting it.
She opens her eyes again to find Sarek sitting at her bedside. "Your doctors tell me that you are responding in a more lucid fashion," he says. She can neither confirm nor deny this, so she waits.
"My son held you in high esteem," he says, and his use of the past tense hits her in the belly like a fist, forcing the air out of her lungs.
Breathe. She can't breathe. There are lights and buzzers and a sudden explosion of activity around her bed.
"—she's crashing—"
"—cart here stat!—"
"—I need 17 cc's—"
The small grey room shrinks before her eyes until it is the smallest imaginable pinprick of a grey dot.
"Ah, hen, you're awake again," Scotty says in his robust voice. After so many weeks of the susurrus of the quarantine room filters, of beeps and synthesized voices, of murmured sympathy, his voice is jarring in her sickroom, a forceful reminder of real life. For some reason everyone is trying to convince her that real life is better than the dreams.
She understands that real life is better. Doesn't mean she wants it, though.
She opens her eyes and can't summon up the strength to glare at him. "Go away," she croaks in a voice that isn't hers.
"Aye, I will, in a while." He accepts her rudeness without even the flicker of an eyebrow and settles back in the armchair. He's a pleasant companion; he reads quietly, he doesn't talk to her unless she talks to him and he lets her close her eyes without trying to bring her back. Hikaru tries to interact with her, Nyota tells her things, Janice hovers. Scotty waits.
She is in a bright, beautiful room with huge windows overlooking a jade-green ocean. She understands that Spock brought her here to recover from the fever. The room smells of his incense and the spicy lilies she loves and sea breezes fill the billowing white curtains like sails. The only sounds are the waves and the cries of gulls.
The room is empty, in the way that a haiku or an ikebana arrangement is empty: this emptiness has been chosen for its serenity and austere beauty. And he has chosen it for her.
"When do you return to duty?" she asks him.
He's reclining beside her on the bed, his arm behind his head. "I have resigned my commission," he says.
"You never did," she says, laughing. She can't remember the last time she laughed.
"I have." He closes his eyes, looking more relaxed than she has ever seen him. "It occurred to me that you became ill in the line of duty and I died in the line of duty; this duty is incompatible with our health."
She laughs again, and then stops. "You died in the line of duty?" she asks, and his eyes open.
"I beg your pardon?"
"You said you died in the line of duty."
His eyes narrow at her. "Has the fever returned? I will get the nurse."
He is out of the bed and gone before she can protest, and with him goes the beautiful room. She is back in her tiny room at Starfleet Medical with just a slice of the grey San Francisco sky visible through the minuscule window. The room smells of cold coffee and industrial disinfectant and electronics.
Scotty is gone. Nyota is here, but she's asleep in the armchair, her ageless face drawn with the strain of the past weeks.
"Stupid… stupid…" Christine mutters to herself. She can smell her body: stale sweat and rank armpits. They haven't bathed her for a day or two, she thinks. Her mouth tastes like the bottom of a birdcage might.
Spock sweeps back into the room. He is wearing the most beautiful robes, with exquisite embroidery. Vulcan males have the better end of the deal when it comes to clothing. The females get the stiff, corseted mono-boob look, and the hats and veils… don't get her started on those. The males have the most spectacular garments and they flow with their movements.
"Like a cardinal," she says.
"Is that a religious reference?" he asks. He considers her lack of spiritual discipline a failing, and encourages any stirrings of faith, but she's never been particularly interested.
"A bird reference. I was thinking you're like cardinals, with gorgeous plumage, while the poor females are drab by comparison."
He makes the small noise she knows indicates amusement. "You are not drab."
She doesn't bother explaining that she meant Vulcan females in general, not herself in particular. Now that he mentions it, though, she does feel a little bit dowdy.
"Christine." She hears Jim Kirk's voice, and she wonders if Spock told him about resigning. He looks terrible: pale and puffy and rumpled.
"He's not coming back, Admiral," she says, and she can't tell whether she said it in her wrecked voice or her clear voice.
"I know, Chris," he says. His voice breaks, and he clears his throat. "You must hate me."
"He's resigned, sir. He's staying with me." She hears it now, hears the rasp in her voice, and she sees Kirk recoil.
"He's taking it harder than I thought," she murmurs in an aside to Spock, who nods in agreement. "How was he when you went to Gol?"
"We were not in communication at that time," Spock says tightly, and she doesn't ask him about it any more.
"I'll leave you to it, then," she says, and goes to lie down in the beautifully empty room.
They wake her up with their discussion. To be more precise, Kirk wakes her up with his part of the discussion, and Spock's voice—no, it's Sulu's—is calm and reasonable, which seems to increase Kirk's volume.
"I was hoping she'd be doing better by now," Kirk says, and she wants to snap at him for talking about her as if she wasn't there.
"We'll have to keep Dr. McCoy stabilized without her, sir."
"What's wrong with Len?" she asks, and two pairs of eyes snap to her face as if they had forgotten she was in the room.
"We need you to get us access to some Lexorin, Chris," Kirk says.
"Lexorin… used to counteract symptoms of multiple personality disorder in humans who have experienced a Vulcan mind meld…" she says with the intonation of a computer output, while the tumblers inside of her head seem to spin and click into place. "Right. I'll need a prescription padd; with any luck they won't have locked out my access."
Sulu and Kirk blink and grin at this sudden appearance of the old Christine. The unaccustomed activity of sitting up, signing the padd and engaging in actual conversation leaves her exhausted, and she sleeps dreamlessly for what feels like days.
When word comes that Spock is alive, Christine doesn't know whether it's true or just the lasting effects of the fever.
Her grasp on time and reality is less sketchy when Sarek comes to visit her again. He's on Earth to plead for leniency on the part of her former crewmates, who are in exile on Vulcan awaiting court martial.
She is actually able to walk with him into the garden. Sarek mentions Spock in only the most oblique terms, by which she is given to understand that he has not mentioned her.
"You played a part in the return of my son's katra, Dr. Chapel, and for that I thank you."
"I was out of my head with fever, Ambassador," she corrects him, a twist to her lips.
"Of course," Sarek says agreeably. Federation Security may not be interested in her at the moment, but she could still be swept up into the court martial and Sarek knows it as well as she does. "My son is not yet himself; his caregivers believe that the re-integration of his katra may take some time yet." He pauses, and steeples his hands under his chin. "But what are your plans for the future, Doctor?"
Aha. Dismissed, she thinks. "I've been offered a light-duty position as a consultant to Emergency Ops. A desk job to tide me over until I'm well enough to return to full duty."
His dark eyes are sad, she thinks, and he unbends enough to take her hand in his for the briefest of touches. "I wish you peace and long life, Doctor."
"Live long and prosper, Ambassador," she says. "And please convey my regards to your wife and son."
After being assured that she is capable of doing so, Sarek leaves her to make her way back to her room. On her own.