A/N: i made her recollections a little choppy on purpose. because who really remembers every moment of an experience like this? i'm willing to bet it either all blurs together or ever little detail sticks out. i went with the blur-together option because that's my style.

"Don't worry," said K'Vada, looking down at Celyn as she trembled uncontrollably in the grip of armed Klingon soldiers. "You will not be treated barbarically on my ship."

What about when I'm not on this ship anymore?

They took her to a holding cell on the Warbird, locking her away. The Ambassador himself would sometimes bring her simple meals, sliding it in a slot so that she felt even more like a caged bird.

Singing her lullaby hardly helped, and after a while she found herself actually forgetting the tune.

She tried to hold onto the hope that the Enterprise would return for her, that somehow she would be rescued. She thought of Leonard when she felt most like crying, and when she felt cold, she thought that thinking of her captain would help. He was still someone she admired, so it should work, shouldn't it?

Instead, she thought of the rare curving of Spock's mouth, when it curled up just on one side when he was immersed in a chess game, the closest thing in the universe to a Vulcan smile. Her cheeks bloomed with heat and, no longer cold, she ripped her thoughts away from him and back to Leonard.

She didn't know how long she was present aboard the Warbird, but when she was transported to the planet's surface, the ambassador gave her an oddly sympathetic look—one which she didn't fully understand until she was taken to her new prison cell to await her fate. Before locking the door, three Klingon prison guards, who spoke words in their guttural native tongue, entered her cell and beat her.

"You will not be treated barbarically on my ship."

But I will be here. Here, I am nothing.

They left her with a blackened eye, numerous bruises and cuts, and what she felt sure was a broken rib. She curled in on herself to cry, knowing now it would only get worse.

"How could you just let her go, Jim? What the hell were you thinking?"

Jim stared at his Chief Medical Officer and best friend in shock—he had never seen the other man so angry. McCoy was pacing, his face breaking out in harsh red blotches, and his voice was loud and hoarse with rage.

"Why do I seem to be the only one who cares that you just let Celyn volunteer herself for death?"

Jim had gone to the sick bay to talk with his friend because he felt an intense guilt over letting the young Lieutenant be taken by the Klingon ambassador, but McCoy's anger allowed no room for sympathy to the captain.

"There was no other option, Doctor." The half-Vulcan first officer was here as well, upon requesting that Uhura be briefly looked over, even though she protested that she was in a fine mental state. He had assured her it was 'merely protocol', and so the sick bay consisted of cool Spock, flustered Jim, silent Uhura, and screaming McCoy.

"No other option?" McCoy repeated incredulously.

Jim glanced briefly at Spock. The words were what Jim had expected from the half-Vulcan, but something in his tone was slightly…off.

"I believe," continued the doctor in a dangerous tone, "the other option is standing right next to you, you damned hobgoblin!"

"Are you suggesting, Dr. McCoy, that we should have allowed Lieutenant Uhura to be taken in place of Lieutenant Mercy?"

"I'm suggesting we should have planned better or tried to negotiate first—"

"I suggested negotiation, Doctor, but Lieutenant Mercy refused."

"—without letting Celyn go off and try to be a hero by saving someone who hates her!"

At this statement, two pairs of eyebrows raised, and two sets of eyes swiveled to look at Uhura. The dark-haired woman fidgeted uncomfortably before snapping, "Alright, I don't really like her, sue me. She's just spineless and—and—"

"And she saved your ungrateful life," snapped McCoy. "Some people would call that nice!"

"It's not like I'm not grateful—"

"Certainly sounds that way to me!"

"Bones," interjected Jim cautiously, "I know you're upset, but that's not really fair."

"Fair?" His voice went up four notches in volume. "Fair? Oh, wow, I am so sorry that I'm not being fair."

"She made the choice that was best for the ship." Uhura's voice betrayed only the slight guilt she felt at letting the other girl take her place. After all, she was still human. "I'm…a higher ranking officer, more experienced and overall better for the ship—"

"Celyn always makes choices for others, never once for herself. She wanted to be better," snapped McCoy. "That's why she chose to go. She thought it would improve everyone's opinion of her. You think she didn't know what people thought of her?"

"Bones, just calm down, we're going to save her—"

"We can't save her, Jim, without starting a war. The time to save her has passed. She's gone."

She could feel all the strength she had gathered being leeched away every time those guards came to her cell. She lost track of time, of how long she was really in captivity, but it felt like months. She had learned what got her hurt the worst.

They got more violent when she stuttered or begged or cried. When she questioned them, they kicked her. When she was obedient, she was only backhanded.

It hadn't taken long to break her spirit—she had nothing to keep her strong. Her friendship with Leonard wasn't strong enough to help her after her third beating, and thinking of her captain—not her captain, never her captain, just the captain—only made her cry.

She tried sleeping, tried eating, but she did only enough of both to stay alive. They stopped visiting her for a while, and once a doctor even came to look at her. She was immediately reminded of Leonard.

They stayed away while she healed. They took their sweet, precious time, and waited until she felt almost healthy again, and then they returned.

The same three. Always the same three. Always most violent the first time, always the most pain the last.

Always.

It took a while, but she finally realized why they were doing this.

Because she meant nothing. She was nothing. She served no purpose other to be in the way. Her life was forfeit.

Then once after a beating, while darkness encroached on her vision as it always did so that she could escape from the damned pain, she heard an authoritative voice say, "That's enough. She's ready."

The guards left, and a different hand, with less force than the others, grabbed her hair and lifted her head. Her vision was blurry, and she couldn't make out a face. "You're lucky the K'Vada takes pity on you. Are you ready for your fate, human wench?"

When she awoke next, her hands were bound in front of her with rope. Her clothing had been removed, her skin thick with grime, and though her face burned with embarrassment and humiliation, she knew that this to them was mercy, and if she did anything wrong, they would kill her.

She stood atop a large wooden platform, a crowd gathering around, staring at her with scrutinizing, cruel eyes. As a Klingon began to shout in his native tongue, she realized that this was eerily similar to slave auctions hundreds of years ago on Earth. When the crowd reacted and the Klingon on the platform with her forced her head up so she could be examined further, she knew that was exactly what it was: she was being auctioned off as a slave.

She had wished at first that they would just kill her. Now, she had no preference. She felt nothing. It's what they wanted; to break her.

She couldn't follow the bidding—the auctioneer cracked a spiked whip, and she dropped her head hurriedly. He hadn't hit her with it, after all they wanted her in peak physical condition to get the best price, but she didn't want to invoke his anger.

In the end, she was sold to a hooded figure. She avoided looking up, staring at the ground like a proper slave as the figure grabbed her wrist in a vice-like grip and towed her through the dusty market.

She knew how she should act. It had been beaten into her.

When he—she assumed it to be a he—shoved her into a small room until she fell forwards onto a bed, however, she started panicking.

"Please." Her voice was raw and cracked. "Don't."

There was a blur, and she flinched, sure he was going to hit her. Instead, a pile of clothes flew onto her lap.

"Put those on," the figure commanded.

"Yes, Master…" It was unbelievably humiliating, but if she didn't—

"You need not address me as such, Lieutenant."

Her heart nearly stopped. Lieutenant. How long had it been since she was called anything other than 'wench'?

Then the hood dropped, revealing the last person she had ever expected to see again.

"Commander Spock," she breathed. "You…You're the one who bought me?"

"Put those clothes on, Lieutenant. I'm taking you back to the Enterprise."

He replaced the hood when they left the little room—apparently it was some kind of Klingon motel?—and she followed him through the market, nearly losing him more than once. When he realized she was having a harder time than him weaving through the busy street, he reached back and wrapped his fingers around her wrist, over the sleeve of her shirt so that their skin wasn't touching.

He led her back to a shuttlecraft, and once within it she exhaled a slow breath and suddenly said, "Take me back."

His head snapped up to her, dark brown eyes staring with what she thought could be surprise. "This is no time for stupidity, Lieutenant."

"If they find out I was rescued, won't it just start a war?"

"At the current rate, a war with the Klingon Empire is all but expected, but it will not be because of you. You were not rescued, Lieutenant. McCoy was right, it was too late to save you. I bought you. The measures of Ambassador K'Vada's demands have been met. There is nothing they can do to harm you now."

He stared at her with a steady expression, and she felt as if in that look he was absorbing everything she had gone through. It was as if he knew what had happened, how she had changed, and he repeated, "It was too late to save you, Lieutenant, and for that I apologize."

She said nothing in response for a while. Once the shuttle was off the ground, she asked, "How long was I gone?"

"Two weeks."

Two weeks. Felt longer.

Spock put a hand inside the pocket of his robe and withdrew a book she recognized.

"That's…"

"Doctor McCoy entrusted me with it."

She frowned as she slowly took her diary from his hands. "That's supposed to be sent to Elysia when I die."

"You haven't died yet, Lieutenant."

Celyn didn't blink, staring at him just as steadily as he had at her, but then she dropped her head. "I had assumed, since I'd been gone so long…"

"We did not report your absence or our interaction with the Ambassador."

Why?

He seemed to sense her thoughts and said, "They would have kept a rescue team from being deployed. This isn't an official mission. I put in a request for shore leave so that I could conduct a search for you."

She felt oddly…flattered. Was that normal? "Why you?"

"It would be suspicious for the captain to take a shore leave now, and Doctor McCoy is too emotional to make the rational decisions necessary to ensure that you would not be pursued by the Klingon once you had been found."

The rest of the shuttle flight was quiet. Once she saw the Enterprise, that large beautiful ship hovering there in space, she felt like it didn't need her anymore. Like she would only taint it now.

"The rest of the crew, those who were not on the bridge, do not know that you've been taken. McCoy has been saying, to those who asked, that you're ill and must be confined to your quarters."

"Thank you." The gratitude was forced and hollow.

"Your stutter is gone," he commented. "I assume through…conditioning."

If that's what you want to call it. She swallowed thickly. "I was…too weak."

"On the contrary," said Spock in a quiet voice. "A weaker individual would have been consumed."

"You said it was too late for me to be rescued." Her voice broke pitifully, and she felt like a child.

"That does not mean it is too late for you to be salvaged." His deep eyes bored into hers, and the trembling in her hands returned. She flinched instinctively. When she had shaken before, they had kicked harder.

I won't be treated like that anymore, she assured herself. That's over now.

"You are not unchanged by your experience, Mercy, but that doesn't mean you have to be defeated by it."

She felt defeated. She had never felt anything but defeated from the moment they hurt her.

Spock took her to sick bay first. He had meant for her to be looked over and taken care of medically, but when McCoy saw her he wrapped her in a hug and whispered into her hair while she began to cry. For a moment or two, she wondered if this was what it would've been like to have a father who loved her.

McCoy was rambling off questions, asking if she was okay as he gave her a thorough checkup. Two barely-healed ribs, a badly set broken wrist, and several bruises were the final diagnoses. Spock waited, to both her surprise and chagrin, until McCoy reset her wrist and gave her a few hyposprays, and then he led her back to her quarters.

"I'm sure you're exhausted, Lieutenant. Don't worry, your shifts on the bridge have been altered accordingly."

She looked down at her hands, inhaled, and then said, "I don't want to be on this ship anymore."

"I don't understand."

"I'm weak, and useless, and all I do is cause trouble for Leonard, the captain, and…and you." Inhale, exhale. "I don't want to fight, I don't want to play chess, I don't want to be on the Enterprise—"

He held up a hand to stop her and commanded, "Look at me, Lieutenant." She obeyed. "Do you recall asking me once if I thought highly of you?"

"Yes." She licked her dry lips.

"Do you then also recall my response?"

"Yes. You said I was…undeserving of my promotion."

"You went to extraordinary lengths at that point, Lieutenant Mercy, to try and change my opinion. Why is it that you have now chosen to accept it?" He didn't wait for an answer, instead opting to back her gently into her room. "Think on this, Lieutenant. Do not let one misfortune undo everything you've worked for."

His hand lifted, and if it had been anyone else, she would have been sure that he was about to touch her face. Then his hand dropped, and the door slid closed.

As she stared at the cold metal and touched her fingers to her cheek, she realized how much his opinion meant to her.

Aside from the lack of stuttering and the inability to look anyone in the eye—plus the occasional burst of mindless obedience when ordered by the captain or Spock—to others Celyn was for the most part unchanged.

Kirk hardly noticed a difference, as her attitude now seemed to be largely the same as it was after her rejection. Spock noticed purely for the fact that chess no longer held any interest for her, and McCoy…Well, McCoy was essentially her best friend. Of course he was going to notice.

"C'mere, kid, just one more hypo, then you're good to go." He prepared the injection while Celyn sighed.

"Really, Leonard, my wrist has been out of the cast for nearly three whole days. You can stop worrying so much now." Contrary to her words, her face held a slight smile that showed she liked knowing just how much he cared.

"Has Uhura apologized yet?"

Here, Celyn winced. "Before she even approached me, I told her she didn't need to feel obligated to. She turned right on her heel and left without a word."

"You just must rub her the wrong way, kid. Now, hold still."

She rubbed the injection spot lightly after he was done. "What was in this one? More pain medication?"

"Just your every day inoculations," he said. "Just double checking that you didn't catch any crazy alien diseases. God knows those Klingon prisons can't be the cleanest places in the world."

She gave a half-hearted chuckle at his humor and hopped off the cot. After promising lunch in the mess after her shift, she left, and McCoy watched her retreating back leave his sick bay.

He had lied. It wasn't an inoculation.

Celyn was feeling…the way someone in her position would feel, he supposed. It killed him to see her, already so fragile and small, feel so smothered and ruined. He wasn't blind, deaf, or stupid—he knew she'd told Spock about her desire to leave the ship and her job as lieutenant. He knew that the pre-Klingon Celyn would kick herself if the thought of leaving ever occurred to her, but post-Klingon Celyn seemed to have a few wires crossed.

So he had just taken a few measures to get her feeling back like herself again. Some good company, some encouragement, a few doses of anti-depressant, and she'd be right back to normal…though hopefully still without the stuttering.

"Here. It is my sincere hope that this assist you."

Celyn blinked at the little wooden box in Spock's hand. "Assist me in…what?"

"Healing, Lieutenant. Open it."

She looked at the box he held, tracing her fingers lightly over the ornate carvings on the lid. The lid swung up on delicate hinges, and once upright, a soothing sound began to play.

"A music box?" she asked.

"Listen closely. Do you not recognize the tune?"

It was her—her grandmother's—Spock's—lullaby. The lullaby.

"You're playing it, aren't you?" The sound was identical to the sound Spock's Vulcan lute had made in his quarters when she had sung with him.

"I had purchased the box a while back, planning to give it to my mother." Her eyes flashed with sympathy—his mother had died with his home planet. "It took little work to convert it into a music box using a recording of myself playing the lullaby. I knew you were in need of comfort following your traumatic experience."

Her heart fluttered for no real reason. She nearly frowned at herself, but instead gave Spock a small, genuinely thankful smile. "Did Leonard tell you?"

"I merely observed, Lieutenant."

"And you want me at peak mental health on the bridge, I assume?"

Spock seemed confused at her question when he answered, "Affirmative, Lieutenant, but that is not the reason I present you with this box. I am simply aware you are going through a trying time and have little support. If I may be so bold, I also volunteer myself for counsel should you ever need it." He straightened his shoulders. "Uhura tells me I'm quite a good listener. Also, I'm familiar with the Terran concept of present-giving, and you will be happy to know that this should suffice in return since you presented me with the chess set."

"Thank you, Commander." She took the box from him gently, her fingers brushing his.

I don't want your pity. Oh God, how pathetic must I be to warrant your pity. Please, Spock, oh please, do anything, anything—just don't pity me.

Just as she walked away, she swore she thought she heard him say: "I would never pity you, Celyn."

It must have been her imagination. After all, Spock had never said her first name.

"That's…actually, that's a bit out of character." McCoy blinked in surprise as he watched Celyn gaze with a rather starry-eyed look at the music box. "It's un-hobgoblin-like."

"It's nice, though, isn't it?" She sounded unsure, as if she needed his approval before she could appreciate the gift. Who knows, in her current state she probably felt like she did.

"Yes, Celyn, it's nice. Do you feel better now?"

She put her chin in her hand and lifted the lid of her music box. As the music filtered out, she gave a small smile. "Yes. I do."

He wondered briefly if it was from Spock's present or the anti-depressants, but he decided it was better not to try and guess. "Feel like lunch, kid?"

She nodded and followed him to the mess. For a few minutes, she actually went so far as to laugh at one of his jokes. Then, however, they passed Uhura, who was muttering to a female Yeoman…

"…thinks she's special just because she's got McCoy wrapped around her finger…"

The Yeoman responded with, "I heard she thinks she actually has a chance with the captain…"

The two woman caught Celyn's eye, and Uhura lifted her chin while the Yeoman giggled. Celyn's face burned hotly as she dropped her face and gravitated unconsciously closer to McCoy. He hadn't noticed the gossip, but he didn't need to hear what they'd said to see the way her shoulders slumped.

Damn…

A/N: so basically she was beaten to obedience. and now she doesn't want to try, doesn't want to be on the ship, and Uhura is being catty. uh oh.

review to find out if it's Spock, McCoy, Jim, or herself who convinces Celyn to stay. or if she gets convinced at all.