1.

In the aftermath, she wandered. She moved in silence, almost a ghost in the corridors, the flaming in her body subsiding to nothingness, the chaos in her head drifting to the bottom of her mind and leaving a void above. When a door slipped closed behind her it was only after some seconds of standing and staring, numb-eyed, at the room before her that she realised she had found her way back to her quarters, like an animal returning to its den.

She had been left cold. No, she was more than cold. She was – she almost laughed at herself for her romanticism – she was like a carcass lying on permafrost, the ribs arching up, empty, covering nothing but a shivering hollow. She remembered that feeling in her hands – that odd, insistent, itching in her skin, the same feeling she got from low-humidity, biting-cold winters back home. Except she had not felt dry. She had felt flushed, hot, over-hot and urgent. Her skin had tingled, her heart had been pounding in her ears. She had felt dizzy with the infection in her mind and in her pores. She had been able to do anything.

Do anything…

She had done just that – just that thing she had sworn to herself that she would never do. She had always promised herself, I will stay professional, I will never say a word… But somehow the infection had seeped into her, and she had left her dignity far behind, forgotten in a dusty corner.

That feeling in the core of her torso – that I can do anything feeling… That invasive heat that had made the surface of her body tingle, had made her aware that the only thing she needed to do was confess to him – confess, and make it all right…

I'm in love with you, Mr Spock.

Oh, it had been so easy to say…

You – the human Mr Spock, the Vulcan Mr Spock

That look in his eyes… That puzzlement, and the slow melting, the knowledge that something inside him was crumbling away as she held his hand. So hot, he was… His fingers were so warm against hers, dryer than hers, his skin a smooth and new feeling to her fingertips, different from everything she had imagined. She could feel electricity in those hands. Vulcan anatomy was different, she knew. She had forgotten – consciously forgotten, deliberately forgotten, perhaps – she was not sure… She had forgotten the nerve clusters in a Vulcan's hands, and what they did with those nerves in contact with another body, and what the touch between their fingers might mean…

She closed her eyes now, leaning against the wall in her room, still in that ridiculously short duty uniform, still with her hair tumbling artfully about her face, still with tears stinging at the back of her eyelids…

I am sorry, she heard him say again. Christine…

And that crumbling in him – it had not been his resolve slipping away so that he could fall into her. It had been a tumbling of I'm sorry, I am sorry, I am sorry… It had been a regret so sharp that it made her weep to think of it, to think of how it must be inside his mind.

She closed her arms around her own body, her skin ridiculously cold compared to his. She hugged herself, the only person who would do that for her.

She had felt his regret even after he had left, as if his mind was linked to hers by tenuous strands. It was like a torrent crashing through a sea wall, flooding the arid land and making chaotic what had once been ordered and calm. His emotions had reached through the walls, had brushed against her for a dozen minutes afterwards, whether because of their touch or simply because of the strength of his feeling she did not know. She felt nothing now. Nothing at all.

She found her desk chair, and sat. She wanted to crawl into her bed and pull the blanket up over herself and lie in the void of darkness. She thought of the void outside the ship, and how tempting it was to think of the drifting, airless silence and the absolute zero that would hold her mind and body safe and still.

She was moving her fingertips over the wood veneer of the desk. Good of the 'fleet… Yes, it was good of them to include these natural touches, to include small slivers of earth in these rooms so far from home… Good to remind her what she had come from, and what she would become again.

And then – 'Miss Chapel.'

Her surprise was electrifying. She had heard no buzzer, no swoosh of the door panel sliding into the wall. She had heard nothing until that deep, velvet voice, and she looked up to see him standing there, just inside the closed door, with a hesitant, deferential look on his face that she did not associate with his normal demeanour. His hands were behind his back, his head ever so slightly bowed.

She stood automatically, stepping out from behind the desk.

He took a step forward, saying, 'I buzzed for entry, but you did not respond. In the situation my override code – '

He broke off at the look in her eyes, at the slight widening as she asked, 'In the situation you thought it appropriate to force entry to my quarters?'

He moved back again at the crackle of anger in her voice, and she could read the surprise in his face. Damn it, she needed to learn when to use defensiveness to good effect, and when it was just a stupid, reflex reaction of her wary mind.

'I'm sorry,' she said, pushing her previous question aside with a tired wave of her hand. 'I'm sure you had a logical reason.'

There was the sarcasm again, heavy in the word logical. Damn it… She had not meant that at all.

'Do you wish me to leave?' Spock asked her, able to control the inflections in his voice far better than she.

'No,' she said tiredly, then corrected herself to, 'No, Commander.'

She could not quite bring herself to call him sir after all that had happened today. Looking up at him again she noticed the faintest shadow of a bruise on his cheek, and other instincts than her own self-preservation took over.

'Oh,' she began, stepping forward. 'Your cheek needs – '

He shook his head, dismissing her concern. 'It is nothing more than a bruise.'

How? she wondered. What happened?

A lot had happened that she had not been privy to – she knew that. God knows where he had gone when he left her, in that tumble of emotions that had begun to surge through him. God knows what had happened with half the crew in the last few days, with Joe Tormolen dying on the table, and everyone else going crazy... Even Spock. Even Spock had not been immune, and his emotions had unravelled from him like a ruined sweater.

'We have regressed in time seventy-one hours,' Spock said, stepping forward again.

She looked at him quizzically.

'We were compelled to ignite the engines from cold,' he explained. 'The force of the implosion sent us on a slingshot about this system's sun. We have regressed in time seventy-one hours.'

Her look of confusion did not go away.

'Did you come here just to tell me that, Mr Spock?' she asked him, trying so hard to keep the impatience from her voice.

She was tired, and she felt as if this virus had stripped her and left her naked, and here he was standing in her quarters when she felt at her most exposed, talking to her about implosions and slingshots and time travel. Surely time travel was impossible?

'No, Christine,' he said in a softer voice.

Christine… The word registered slowly in her mind. Spock said nothing that was not a deliberate choice.

'We have – three days to live again,' he said, coming closer still. 'Three days we have already had. They – are a bonus, perhaps.'

She could feel him now – she could feel the heat radiating from him against the chill of her quarters. Why is it cold? she wondered briefly. A lot had been crazy about the ship recently. Likely the heating systems had been tampered with, or perhaps power had been rerouted from them to aid the ship in its fight against the gravity of Psi 2000.

'Three days…' she murmured.

God, the last few days had been a splintered mirror, a raging chaos that had dragged her along in its path. She didn't want the last three days back again. Maintenance crews were scrubbing down the walls, fixing doors, repairing smashed consoles. Everyone was trying their best to erase what had happened, not relive it. She had heard rumours of Hikaru Sulu, half naked in the corridors with a rapier, of Andi Pargeter sunbathing nude in the botany lab… No, no one wanted to remember….

And Spock… Surely Spock would have most cause of all to want to forget something that had stripped his control from him and exposed him to her flailing emotions?

'Mr Spock, you did get the hypo, didn't you?' she asked suddenly, conscious of the slight stinging pain in her own arm from her shot. 'Dr McCoy gave you the cure for the virus?'

There was an odd movement in his face, as if he had suddenly caught sight of something he had forgotten. Then he said, 'I – controlled the virus by other means.'

She regarded him doubtfully. She was sure that he was capable of controlling the symptoms of a disease once he was confident of what they were, but that did not mean he could fight the disease itself.

'I told you,' he said. 'I am sorry. I meant that.'

'I – have no doubt that you mean everything that you say, Mr Spock,' she said rather drily.

He was closer still now, so close that she could see the trembling of his pulse in his neck, and feel the heat that he was radiating with greater force, and hear the almost inaudible ragged catch in his breath.

'It is too late,' he continued, his voice lowering, catching again. 'I – cannot explain. I cannot explain everything. But it is too late. I have been committed, from a very young age…'

There he trailed off, leaving her bewildered, breathing in the heat of his presence, conscious that he was echoing the scene of earlier by catching at her hands with his. Their fingertips were touching and her skin seemed to hum with electricity, conjuring an irresistible surge – an urge to run or fall or melt against him and breathe nothing, nothing but the scent of him that rose about him.

'You – need – the serum,' she said with great deliberation, forcing her words through the haze that seemed to be swirling about her.

He was stroking his fingertips upon hers and – how strange – she seemed to be falling, falling, losing her sense of herself and finding it blending with – another… His fingers were velvet, melting, his fingers, her fingers –

Abruptly she regained some sense of herself and jerked away, almost choking, her ears ringing, feeling as though she had been about to faint. She gasped in air, fresh air that did not taste of him, and her eyes cleared. She saw him standing there, shaking, his eyes glazed and his chest heaving like hers. Her fingertips felt as if they had been glued to his and had been wrenched away. If she had looked down and seen them torn and bleeding she would not have been surprised – but they were not. They were just as they had been. Just the same…

'You need the serum,' she repeated with great control. 'Will you come to the sickbay, or do I need to call Dr McCoy down here?'

That seemed to recall him to some kind of reality. He blinked, and then closed his eyes, a brief, deep look of pain shuddering through him.

'No,' he said, catching breath back into his lungs, tightening his fists at his sides. 'No, I will go to the sickbay.'

He opened his hand, reached out as if to touch her face – and then re-clenched his fist, briefly biting his lip into his mouth.

'I am sorry,' he said, and she smiled through tears. Those words seemed to have become a litany.

'Sickbay,' she said quietly, and she pushed herself through her wariness to put her hand to his arm, turning him toward the door.

He really was hot… She pressed her fingers a little harder against his arm, closing her hand more tightly upon him to feel his temperature through his sleeve. She had felt him before. She knew his precise temperature from medical examinations, but that was not the same as touching him. She knew that the heat shimmering from him now was greater than that she had felt in his hands all those hours ago in sickbay.

And her fingertips jerked, wrenched open unexpectedly as he slumped onto his knees and then spread onto the floor in a graceless heap.

''''''''''''''''''''''''''

Spock fell, spinning, into another place. His body felt like fire. Was this his Time, he wondered? And then another, more rational voice said, no, no, this is not how that comes about. The virus – the serum. You are ill…

The second that it took to fall seemed to last years, his ears screaming, his nose full of the scent of the woman beside him, his hearing catching the muffled sound of her voice speaking unintelligibly.

What was it, what was it?

Confusion battered at him as he slowly slipped downwards, his emotions tumbling like marbles about him.

Christine… Too late, too late…

Too late? But time had been looped and crinkled about them, it had rucked like a loose carpet. Three days… It was three days before too late…

Irrational, that cold, controlled voice said. You are ceasing to make sense. Delirium.

But three days… The clock had been turned back. He had unexpected time. Time out of time…

Irrational, the voice said again inside his head, sounding curiously like his father, or his Vulcan instructors, or a mixture of both. Irrational. Three days makes no difference. You are still pledged.

And something cold and still more rational struck him before he truly lost consciousness, the words coming telegraphically into his mind.

Three days. Oberon Sector. Anomaly…

''''''''''''''''''''''''''

Christine was kneeling beside him a split second after he fell, rolling him onto his back and lifting his eyelids with a thumb. There was an ooze of green blood beginning from a split in his forehead where he had hit the edge of – what was it? It must have been that plant pot she kept near the door. His skin was beginning to swell around it.

His top ripped with surprisingly little effort under her hands, until his chest was bared. He must have been warm, for he was wearing no undershirt. She pressed her hand to his side, and was rewarded by the slow thud of his heart beneath the supple arching of his ribs. And then he turned his head and muttered something incoherent, his eyes half opening and then slipping closed again.

'Spock,' she said sharply. 'Mr Spock!'

'Three days,' he murmured through almost closed lips. 'Three days… Course and speed… Christine…'

'I don't understand,' she said, bewildered. She started to move toward the intercom, but he caught her hand with surprising force.

'Seventy-one hours ago,' he murmured, 'on our current flight path… There was – '

And suddenly she remembered. It had been nothing more than news in passing, sub-space chatter. It didn't affect them, since they were at Psi 2000, not due to travel that route for three days. What had it been? Some kind of interstellar dust cloud or a dark matter cluster? Damn it, she couldn't remember. Something that had coalesced in that vicinity and then dispersed. There had been no ships passing that way, no one had discovered exactly what it was before it drifted away again. It was a scientific curiosity, but little more…

She reached out for the intercom again, intent this time on calling the bridge. Spock was evidently fevered but not in danger. McCoy could be her second call.

But as her fingers touched the button, everything about her died into silence and darkness.

She stood immobile for a moment, her fingers steady on the button which she had pressed only an instant before the lights went out. There was no faint hum of connection from the speaker. There was not even the faint vibration of the ship's engines in the deck plating beneath her feet. Evidently all power was dead.

She moved toward the door in the velvet darkness. That too was inert, the sensor not functioning as she moved into its range. She pressed her hand against the door, and exhaled slowly. Spock, perhaps, would be able to force it, if he was at peak physical fitness. But Spock was semi-unconscious on the floor, and she had no hope of forcing the panel to move herself.

She turned again, moving as if she were blind, pushing her feet along the floor without losing contact until her toe touched something soft. She knelt and touched him, her fingers finding his sleeve first and then moving across to his chest. She was momentarily surprised to feel the intimate sensation of his bare skin, and a light furring of hair – and then she remembered how she had torn his top apart. She sighed, laying her palm flat on his chest and sitting back on her heels. Despite the slow, rhythmic beat of his heart beneath her hand and the heat of him in the air around her, she felt curiously alone.

'Spock,' she said finally, in a low, hesitant voice.

He stirred a little, and then murmured, 'Christine? Nurse – '

'Yes,' she said. 'I'm still here,' she added unnecessarily.

'I can't see,' he said.

'The power's out,' she said, registering the faint uncertainty in his tone. 'What was it, Mr Spock? The – what was it, a cloud or a nebula – on our current flight path?'

She felt him stir again. Waves of heat were pouring from his skin.

'Class six anomaly,' he murmured. 'Negative energy. Unknown.'

'Oh…' she said slowly.

A person picked up plenty working on a starship, but still, she was a nurse, not an astrophysicist. She could not claim to have a clue what the definition of a Class Six Anomaly was – although she suspected it wouldn't matter even if she did.

'Well,' she said slowly. 'I think we've run in to it…'

He stirred again, and she felt a tension moving through his body, as if he were gathering deep internal reserves and bringing them to bear.

'I need – to get to the bridge,' he said with new force.

'You can't,' she said realistically. 'You're not capable of that.'

He slumped a little, acknowledging his incapability with a grunt.

'You need to get to the sick bay,' he said in a slow, deliberate voice.

She heard the catch in his breath, and touched her hand to his chest, feeling the steady beat of his heart and the unceasing heat from his skin. There was no rattle in his lungs.

'Mr Spock, are – you scared?' she asked him in a low voice, scared herself of the response.

He was silent for a long moment, and she felt a shiver run through him under the palm of her hand.

'You need to get to the sick bay,' he repeated. 'I – am finding it hard to control my – emotions, Christine. We both – '

And then she felt it too – the slight, insistent itch between her fingers, as if her skin had become too dry, and the little fist of panic clutching at her heart.

'You've re-infected me,' she said slowly. 'The virus – '

'Adapts,' Spock said. 'The virus adapts, and I have re-infected you. It – is imperative – '

She nodded, despite the fact that he would not see the movement in the darkness. It was imperative to eliminate the virus before it re-infected the entire ship.

'I can't open the door,' she said, her voice devoid of hope.

She felt him stir again, felt his muscles quiver under her hand.

'Together, perhaps,' he said. 'Together we can force it. And then you – '

'And then I'll get to sickbay and get the serum, and we'll both be fine,' she finished for him, trying to drive away the seeping, insidious loss of control that the disease was trying to spark in her body.

'You – must control yourself,' Spock said, his breath shuddering again. 'Your mind is – too close.'

She realised that she had clawed her fingernails into his chest, and she relaxed her hand.

'I don't understand,' she said.

He made a noise of impatience.

'Whenever you touch me I feel your thoughts. I feel them now. I feel the disease unravelling your own control. I cannot control for both of us.'

She caught her breath, snatching her hand away from him as if he had finally burnt her.

'All right,' she said, inducing calm with a great effort. 'All right. If you're going to help me open that door you need to get on your feet.'

'I am very aware of that,' Spock said, with a dark edge of impatience in his voice.

And he began to sit, shuddering with effort. She slipped her hands under his arms, biting back the beginnings of a reckless desire to laugh. They moved across the room in utter, silent darkness, until Spock slumped against the door, shuddering breath into his lungs. And then he seemed to conjure some final reserve of strength and determination, and the door began to creak under his hands.