Part 2
Nurse Chapel stared pensively into her bedroom mirror. She had been due for dinner in the Mess at least ten minutes ago but had found herself rooted to the spot, staring at the reflection that, no matter how hard she analysed it, refused to make sense.
She looked perfectly ordinary. No make-up, pale blue eyes, boring brown hair. It really shouldn't be happening this way, she thought to herself morosely, tugging a few disobedient strands of hair back into their proper places.
In her youth, Chapel hadn't been hugely enthusiastic about the fact she had been born a brunette. To her way of thinking, it was the blondes who always had more fun, who received the most attention, who looked the most attractive. There seemed to be so many more glamorous options with blonde hair. Not like her thick mass of boring brown locks that seemed to leech all the light from out of a room instead of dazzling the eyes of appreciative onlookers.
She'd experimented with various shades of blonde over the years, everything from the palest silvered platinum to the darkest honey tones. In the end, she had settled for a sunny golden shade that seemed to bring out the best in her eyes and made men sit up and take notice.
Looking back at those days with the hindsight that came from age and experience, she suspected now that it had not really been the blonde hair that had attracted men, it had been her confidence. Changing the colour had made her more outgoing, more self-assured in social situations. She could have found those qualities within herself as a brunette but at the time she had been young, naive and shy.
And what are you now, Christine? she asked herself silently, watching the blue eyes flash mockingly from the mirror, as she contemplated the past three months.
They had been forcibly dressed in ridiculous garb while confined on Platonius but it had not been until they had returned to the Enterprise that she'd had the chance to really see the changes the Platonians had wrought on her physical appearance.
The painted Vulcan face that had stared at her from this very mirror still had the power to make her sleep restive.
Her initial confusion at being summoned to Platonius had been washed away in a sea of fear, pain and rage as humiliation after humiliation had unfolded without end. She had worked out very quickly that they were there because Captain Kirk and Commander Spock had not been co-operating with Parmen's demands. It had been too cruel of them to use her love for the Vulcan in an attempt to break through his defences, to see if he would beg for it all to end.
It had made sense to her at the time. The Platonians had quickly learned so much about them that they must have realised that Spock was a touch telepath. In such close physical proximity with one who loved him so completely, he would have been overwhelmed by her emotions, unable to block against them, forced to experience them in every minute detail, forced even to act upon them. It had been a double-edged assault on the Vulcan - a breach of privacy his cultural upbringing would have abhorred as well as an uncontrolled torrent of emotion that his intensive schooling had disciplined him to resist at all costs.
In one fell blow, the Platonians had uncovered a weapon that would attack him on every level at once - physically, mentally, emotionally and even telepathically.
She wouldn't blame the Vulcan if he never wanted to be near her ever again.
Once the shock of her visual appearance had worn off, she had scrubbed and scoured herself back into the Human race - physically, if not emotionally. Then she had tried to understand why exactly the Platonians had felt the need to make her look Vulcan at all. At first, she had thought that it must have been to emphasise to Spock just how Vulcan she wasn't. After all, what greater psychological impact could they have than to place in his arms something that looked Vulcan but which did not behave Vulcan?
Then, at the most painful and awkward briefing she had ever had the misfortune to attend, Doctor McCoy had admitted he had been asking Alexander some of these very questions.
According to Alexander, the fact she had been chosen had been because of things the Platonians had dug up in Spock's mind. The fact she had appeared as a Vulcan woman had been her fault, not Spock's.
She shivered at the memory of that revelation. The way that the First Officer's dark eyes had, for the first time in the entire briefing, snapped up from a careful study of his gracefully steepled fingers, to burn her with an intense, unwavering stare. Even now, she couldn't fathom what the expression had meant. She guessed part of it was that, until then, Spock had suspected her appearance had also come from his mind. That fact meant that her suspicion about him had always been true - a Human woman had no place in his life. He was waiting for the day when it would be appropriate for him to take a Vulcan wife.
Aside from that single realisation, she hadn't found any way to explain the look in his eyes and she had resigned herself to accepting that she never would know what he had been thinking at that moment. Unless she asked him.
She had absolutely no intention of asking him.
Once she had returned to her quarters from the briefing room, she had dived into the shower again, the second time in as many hours, and scrubbed her skin until it glowed red from the friction. She couldn't quite reach her soul to cleanse that but at least the pinkish bruising proved her blood was not, and never would be, green.
She had found a measure of comfort in that.
But in light of the epiphany she'd had in the briefing, she'd also found herself thinking of something that had occurred during the first year of the mission. Another embarrassing emotional roller coaster but this time a terrible scientific accident that had driven all sense of responsibility and propriety out of the minds of the entire crew.
Omicron Ceti III and those accursed spores.
She had also found herself thinking of that occasion, just a short few months later, when Spock's prodigious mental disciplines had been ravaged by a biological imperative that had almost cost Captain Kirk his life - would have, in fact, if not for Doctor McCoy's quick thinking and mistrustful preparations.
After analysing the two events in her mind for a while, the nurse had come to an obvious conclusion. What Spock wanted and needed were two entirely different things. Want had driven him into the arms of a pretty blonde Human and made him reject the beautiful Vulcan brunette. Need, however, dictated a Vulcan wife was something he was destined to end up with, no matter how fiercely he was currently resisting the fact.
Of course, it made a certain logical sense that he'd be drawn to blondes, she had speculated. It was such a rare colour on Vulcan, and men of many species were often drawn to the exotic. Devotion to a logical philosophy aside, there was no reason to think that Vulcans were immune to that male trend.
Parmen must have realised that. In Spock's mind, he had found a weakness for blondes, found the memories of her fevered declaration of love towards the beginning of the five-year mission, and found, in her, the perfect combination of passion and colouring to... what? Mock him? Mock his memories of Leila? Mock his dedication to his Vulcan heritage?
Chapel suspected the answer to all of these questions was an affirmative and her own long-held suspicions that his ultimate rejection of Leila Kalomi had been proof of his commitment to Vulcan marital demands had just been the icing on the cake. Through her, Parmen had revealed, ever so publicly, what Spock's perfect woman really was.
A blonde Vulcan.
The nurse hadn't been able change her hair's colour back to brown fast enough. Anything to ensure she stayed out of Spock's mind, out of his thoughts.
Out of his life.
That was something she had determined quickly. Although she had known, and accepted, that she would never be a part of his personal life, she had been a close professional colleague. They had developed a good working relationship over the years and, with the exception of a few key events, there had been nothing to disturb the status quo. Yes, her feelings may have bubbled over into his conscious thoughts during inevitable physical encounters when he had been a patient in Sickbay but even that had not been the fault of either of them. Touch telepathy wasn't that easy an issue to side-step and even Vulcans could not deny emotions existed - even if they were trying very hard to do exactly that.
He had never derided her emotions, she had never used them against him and, despite the odds stacked against it, they had come to make a very good research team. One of the Enterprise's best, if not the best.
Chapel was under absolutely no illusion as to her scientific talent. The one thing she had never lacked was confidence in her professional abilities. Certainly, her unofficial psychological evaluation of Spock had proven accurate - she had received ample evidence of that since Platonius.
It had not been her intention to overhear the conversations between McCoy and Kirk in the CMO's office but when assigned to help M'Benga with emergency equipment recalibration before a young ensign went into major surgery, both she and the ACMO had been unable to avoid detecting the hushed voices. The worries about Spock's behaviour since Platonius - the uncharacteristic attitude on Stratos and again on the recently departed planet, Sarpeidon. So, quite by accident, she had heard about Droxine and Zarabeth.
In the quiet of the labs outside McCoy's office, she had met M'Benga's gentle gaze. "That man really needs to learn to shut his damn door," the xenological expert had grumbled; both his offer of support for what he knew she would feel at that news and genuine irritation at McCoy's professional lapse.
"Yes, Doctor," had been her calm response, and she had returned to completing her duties without another word.
Leila - blonde; Droxine - blonde; Zarabeth - blonde. The rejected Vulcan wife - brunette.
Quod erat demonstrandum.
The decision to return to her natural brunette shade had been correct. Spock would forget she had ever existed, and no one would ever be able to use them in this fashion ever again.
If someone's going to abuse our memories, Christine, a mere change of hair colour won't stop them. You're being illogical.
She was also starting to sound like a Vulcan. Any minute now, she was certain points would begin sprouting out of her ears.
This is ridiculous. Platonius was three months ago. Get over it.
Part of her mind refused to obey.
The trouble was, she now had a new problem, one she didn't know how to handle. She had made her appearance as drab as possible since Platonius, a concerted effort to fade into the background and pretend she had never worn all that make-up, had never been put on display in a way that was too much even for her little inner glamour-model. Had never had to play the part of a Vulcan's secret fantasy.
The plan had been to become as inconspicuous as possible but the plan did not seem to be working. Since she had dyed her hair brown, she had been inundated by three offers for dinner, two dates to the arboretum, one for the observation deck and a request to spend an evening watching old holovids.
She'd received more requests for dates in the past three months than she'd received in the past three years.
Admittedly, during the first year, she had been officially engaged, then officially grieving. In the second year, her reputation had suffered for a while due to her violent confrontation with Spock in an embarrassingly busy corridor outside his quarters. Fortunately, that time had seen him behave aggressively and unreasonably towards a number of the crew so her reputation had recovered. Still, given that misunderstanding and their close working relationship in Life Sciences, for the rest of the year there had been just enough speculation surrounding her relationship with the First Officer to keep most of the men on the ship at a cautious distance.
Apparently, the gossip network had finally decided she was on the market after all.
Why?
Because she had suddenly dyed her hair?
What cosmic joke was this that the very time she wanted to avoid male attention she couldn't fight it off?
It really shouldn't have been happening this way.
Chapel looked at the chronometer and patted her hair back into place. She was twenty minutes late - Uhura and Rand were going to skin her alive. With a deep sigh, she left her quarters and began the journey to the Mess.
Dinner with friends, she didn't mind. She just hoped she wouldn't receive any more dinner invitations while she was there.
