Thanks to the people who reviewed! And on we go to the second day of "mental cohabitation"!
Spock awoke with a strange sensation: his body did not wake up with him. Then, remembering yesterday's events, he realised this wasn't his body at all. It was Christine's and she was still asleep. He observed her sleeping mind for a while and tried his best to stay passive, heedful of not startling her. But some minutes later, he felt her wake up slowly, either prompted by his presence or her circadian rhythm.
She opened her eyes and stretched languidly. "Good morning, Spock.", she said into the room, stifling a yawn.
"Good morning, Christine.", he thought.
Christine swung her legs out of bed and made her way to the bathroom. In her groggy state, she had trotted halfway before becoming aware of their next organisational challenge, and some privacy she wasn't willing to share.
Spock realised her hesitation and the matter of her concern immediately.
"I will not disturb your privacy. Just tell me when you're finished."
He entered some kind of half-meditative state, or so it seemed to Christine. Either way, he diverted his attention from the outside world and left Christine as much alone as he could.
Even just the sonic shower felt heavenly, as old skin flakes and the grime of a day fell away from her. Days like these technically called for a hot water shower, but sometimes she just could not be bothered with drying off and restyling her hair afterwards.
"You can look again", she thought soon afterwards, as she pulled her favourite sweater over her head and arranged the loose neckline around her collarbones and tugged the hem into her uniform pants.
She sighed as she contemplated her reflection in the mirror. Ready to tackle the day, she had no idea what she and Spock could do. The routine of Starfleet duty often left officers awkwardly adrift when there was no work to be done. Add to that the complications of sharing a body, and there really wasn't too much left they could sensibly spend their day with.
Before they could dwell too much on it, though, the doorbell chimed.
"Come!"
McCoy bustled in, immediately depositing a tray with food on the table and a black garment that Christine recognised as Spock's meditation robe on the bed.
"Well, how are we today?", he drawled.
He seemed a lot more relaxed than yesterday as he sat down at the table, gesturing for them to do the same. But that did not mean anything. Leonard McCoy's moods were often unpredictable.
"We're fine, I guess.", Christine said.
"Hrm. Spock?"
"We're both fine, Doctor."
"You're both irresponsible, is what you are. Did you eat yesterday, after your accident?", he asked, fixing them with a very McCoy-ish glare. "I might have thought so.", he added after their guilty silence. "Eat." He shoved the tray over to them.
Spock stabbed the salad with the fork. Christine had expressed her disgust at the cilantro in it quite vehemently, at least mentally. And while Spock had reminded her that she would still taste it even if he undertook the physical act, she refused, saying he could eat the salad if she could have the sandwich.
Spock capitulated before the impressive display of illogic and started eating. The salad seemed meant for him anyway, however illogical this division of food might be nowadays. Humans often built their identity around liking or disliking certain things, and if Christine constructed hers around disliking cilantro, he saw no harm in humouring her. He took the whole division of their breakfast into two small meals as a well-meant gesture of McCoy not neglecting their usual individual tastes.
"There's a lot more to my identity than not liking cilantro, Mister!"
"Is there? I never would have thought."
"I actually like a lot of food. Salad, too, usually. Cilantro is just not my favourite. What do you like best, Spock?"
"I do not have a favourite."
He had either shocked her into silence or missed her answer because, at that moment, he became distracted by McCoy adjusting the cortical monitor.
"Is everything alright?"
"So far, so good. As far as I can judge. Of course, the neurocortical monitor says your neurological activity is off the charts, so I reprogrammed it to recognise your current mental state as normal conditions. It's the best estimate we can get at the time.", McCoy said, looming over him.
Then, he sat down in the opposite seat again and furrowed his brow. "I don't think there's a lot I can measure at this moment. We know your cortical readings are unusual, but of course, that's to be expected. Still, my advice is to get busy. Do something and don't just sit around. You're not on bed rest, you're just relieved from duty for the time being."
"What if it becomes permanent?"
McCoy wasn't sure who had asked this time.
"It won't, don't ya worry. They're repairing the machine as we speak."
"While I'm inclined to agree with your optimism, it is only logical to prepare for the eventuality."
Of course, Spock had been the one to ask.
"Don't concern yourself with that. It's not a problem right now. And if it becomes a problem, we can think about it then. And if it does – which, again, I don't believe – we'll find a solution. We can probably fly to Vulcan again, and they can suck you out of there. You know the drill, Spock."
Spock sighed and Christine sensed his uneasiness regarding the fact that he did not know if this situation was equivalent with his and Leonard's some years back, and that he could do nothing at the moment to help.
"I know you'll be alright.", Leonard insisted as he smiled encouragingly. "If you have any concern, physical or mental, I want you to come by sickbay at once, understood?"
He left after getting an agreement out of both of them and left them to the almost finished salad and what turned out to be a tuna and sweetcorn sandwich.
Spock was very happy to leave the latter to Christine, getting a new understanding of her reticence to take part in the physical act of eating although it may not make a difference in the end.
"We can go to the lab if you want. We can look if there's something to do around there that we'd both enjoy.", she suggested.
"Very well, I'm looking forward to it."
They had barely finished their breakfast when the door chime sounded again. This time, it was the Captain who stepped into their shared cabin.
"I hope I wasn't intruding.", he said, indicating their plates.
"Oh no, you're not, we've just finished.", Christine reassured him. "Are there some news already?"
Jim smiled at the impatience in her voice. This was a character trait she shared with his second-in-command, even if Spock would not easily admit to such an emotion.
"Scotty's making steady progress with the machine.", he told her. "We've found out what went so wrong when you triggered its activation. Apparently, one side of the circuit that undertakes the switch of consciousnesses wasn't active, which left the switch incomplete and only transferred one of you. Now, Scotty's trying to restore the machine to that half-broken state so that we can switch you, Spock, back and you, Christine, remain in your body. We're lucky we found the schematics for that machine, mind-swap machines are not exactly Scotty's area of expertise, miracle worker or not."
He smirked in an attempt to lighten up the mood but sobered at Spock's question.
"How long does Mr Scott think it will take him?"
"It could take the rest of the day, probably until tomorrow."
He took a step towards them and reached out to touch Christine's shoulder in a comforting gesture, but then he stopped. That was something he would not hesitate with if only Spock were concerned, but he did not want to make Christine any more uncomfortable than she was bound to be already and he let his hand fall back to his side.
"You're not making me uncomfortable."
Christine looked up at him with a mischievous glint in her eyes, despite her otherwise unusually tired appearance, and Jim returned the glance confusedly.
"I didn't know you could read minds now."
"I can't, and I wouldn't. But Spock knows you well enough to recognise your uncertainty."
"Of course.", Jim laughed uneasily. He found it increasingly hard to see past Christine and still recognise Spock. He wanted to say he missed him, but he wasn't even gone. Was his image of his best friend so fixated on his physical way of being that he had trouble seeing him now?
"Don't dwell too much on it, Jim."
Jim looked back into Christine's face, turned towards him with unwonted familiarity.
"We are dealing with existential problems no one ever thought they had to deal with, literally going where no one has gone before. Jim, it is only human to be uncomfortable with the situation. You said so yourself."
"For 'boldly going where no one has gone before', it's remarkable that the same, improbable things always happen to us!", Jim exclaimed. "It's your third time in another body than yours, Christine's second time carrying your consciousness, and the second time we're encountering a machine that can swap minds. The details of every time may have varied, but I've yet to see a single report of another vessel that its second-in-command got…misplaced."
"You forgot the time someone stole his brain.", Christine piped up.
"Yes, that, too! Honestly, I'm astonished we've survived all that."
"But we did survive, Jim. And we will.", Spock said.
"Hope, Spock?", Jim asked, his smile returned to his face.
"I prefer to call it empirical optimism."
"Hm, alright, maybe there's something to it. But I'll leave you empirical optimists to it for now, I've got to get on the bridge. I'll stop by later today."
"That was kind of you, Spock. Cheering him up.", Christine thought after the door had closed behind the Captain.
"It's the truth, Christine. We've survived worse."
"Yes, Spock, but that doesn't mean it's not hard this time around. For us and others. I can feel that you're tired and vulnerable, and I know I am."
"Yes, it's not an ideal situation, although you're not the worst person to share a body with. In any case, people around us are probably more confused than we are. Christine?"
To Spock's astonishment, Christine had started crying at some point during his answer.
"Christine, have I said something wrong?"
"No, don't worry, it's a perfectly normal human response to stress. I'll be alright."
Christine's calm inner voice stood in strong contrast to her sobs, and the tears running down her face.
Spock felt a flush of frustration that he couldn't wipe them away, or comfort her more than only by hovering around her mind. But he felt a quick notion of gratitude from Christine, as he had unwittingly shared his wish to help her, and he continued hovering, trying his best to be a calming presence.
"Thanks, Spock.", Christine thought when she had calmed down again.
"I didn't do anything."
"You said I was not the worst person to share a body with."
"I merely said the truth."
"Exactly, Spock. That makes it more valuable, not less."
Spock had to agree but made a mental note to be a little less direct if it could prompt Christine to cry again. Feeling the body he inhabited cry and being stripped of all control over it was something he preferred not to repeat.
"I'm sorry, Spock. I did not mean to make you uncomfortable."
"There's nothing to be sorry for. As you said: it was a normal human response to stress. We will have to cope with these unforeseen occurrences. And it did help, didn't it?"
"Yes, it did. But it made you uncomfortable. You're a Vulcan, you react differently to emotions. I don't want to hurt you."
"I am also half-Human. In any case, I will manage. I don't think anyone is particularly comfortable witnessing a person cry. You'd have a reason for concern if I was."
Christine had to agree with that. She could imagine a lot of people who would have handled the whole situation far worse than Spock so far.
"Well. Now that that's settled, shall we go to the lab? We can't sit around and cry all day."
Spock was about to proclaim that it hadn't been his plan to 'sit around and cry' anyway when he caught the hint of sarcasm.
He remained silent while Christine dried off her face and then continued to be silent while they walked to the research department.
"You do know you're not really being silent, right?", she thought as they entered the empty science lab.
"I did not say anything."
"You didn't. But you thought you were silent, while you were practically swirling with thoughts, so it didn't feel silent. There was something about the chess match yesterday, about the optimization of the dilithium reaction, if Pavel has taken over from you on the bridge, how long Jim's shift is today, what there will be for lunch, whether Leonard is taking care of your body adequately, what to get him for his birthday, and that you have a buzzing in your ear. Swirling with thoughts, as I said. And the buzzing is mine, by the way. It's my tinnitus."
"Is that not normal? I was merely having thoughts."
"Oh, I suppose it is, I just never saw it happen like that before!"
"Hm, yes, I suppose you didn't. Since when do you have tinnitus?", Spock asked.
"Oh, since that probe tried vaporising Earth's oceans, and at least since that panorama window at Starfleet Ops burst. It was just before you flew that Bird-of-Prey into the Bay."
"Do you always hear it?"
"Oh, no. I barely notice it under normal circumstances."
"But these are not normal circumstances."
"Exactly."
For a moment, they kept standing in the entrance area of the lab, not sure what to occupy themselves with. Usually, the ship seemed busy like a buzzing beehive, but off duty, they were struggling to find anything to do.
"What were you last working on, Spock?"
"I was studying the effects of the vacuum of space on elastic materials. Our environmental suits are still relatively bulky and impede movement. Higher elasticity could give a greater range of movement, but it is also subject to faster wear and tear. I have been subjecting different materials to a zero-g environment, and am trying to see how these materials hold up when subjected to constant movement."
He motioned towards a transparent container on a table nearby. A thin piece of fabric was stretched between two clamps, one on each side. At a second glance, Christine saw that the clamps were slowly stretching the material.
"This is it.", Spock continued. "At this moment, I am keeping it depressurized to see the long-term effects of zero-g. In the next phase, I will pressurize and depressurize it periodically to see the effects of a constant change of environment. But apart from waiting, there is little we could do at this point. I am recording the interior of the container, so even should the fabric rip in my absence, its time of failure will be recorded by the nanosecond."
Christine sighed audibly while thinking her answer: "Well, I'd love to talk to you about this, but I agree. Waiting here is not my ideal plan to spend the day. Shall we head to the mess hall? It's nearly lunchtime and Leonard would be furious if we skipped a meal again."
Spock agreed, and they left the lab almost as soon as they had arrived.
What do you think? Will everything continue to work relatively well? You're in for a treat in the next chapter. Stay tuned! Reviews are always appreciated.