They roamed the ship for about an hour, trying to access the research departments, starting with the biochemistry lab in the hope of finding out more about their condition. They abandoned the attempt after barely having managed to take the turbolift to the correct decks. Simply navigating the ship had become a nearly insurmountable task considering that the ship seemed blind to them. Motion sensors and anything needing visual or auditory identification did not detect them. Basically, everything that required an identity check did not work on them and they would not get security access anywhere.
And so, they returned to Spock's cabin and waited outside. For the moment, following someone around seemed their best course of action.
After a short while, McCoy and Spock approached, in the middle of a conversation.
"She should have died quick and painless," the doctor said.
"She should not have died at all," Spock answered curtly.
They entered his cabin, oblivious to Christine and Saavik slipping through the door after them.
"No one can cheat death," McCoy said and shuddered as he felt a draught of air. "But that's not what you meant, is it? She was the one person among your friends not allowed to die before you because she was Vulcan." He leant against the support beam as Spock sat at his desk, and continued in a gentler tone, "You always knew we humans would go before you, but never considered outliving her. It wasn't her time, and it doesn't seem right. Like a child dying before their parents."
Spock shook his head. "I have been her friend. I have been her teacher. And, at least for a time, I have been as close to a family as she ever had. When I found her, she was an uncivilised child, a thief."
"Hard to imagine, from how I knew her," the doctor mused.
"Since I rescued her, she has exceeded every little expectation the Romulans or Vulcans might have had," Spock said, raising an eyebrow at the doctor. "And she has fulfilled the highest expectations I had. More than that, she has found her own path."
"Would it hurt to admit you're proud of her?"
Spock sighed and straightened up in his chair, remaining silent otherwise.
"Well, that's an answer, too," McCoy grumbled. He fidgeted around for a moment and added softly, "There's something else." He procured a record tape and held it up. "It's from Christine. She recorded it when she had re-joined the crew after that mission to Sha Ka Ree."
Spock looked back at him and the tape but made no motion to accept it.
"It's for you, Spock."
The Vulcan pursed his lips, slowly taking the record tape from the doctor's outstretched hand.
Lingering only a moment to frown down at Spock, McCoy mumbled a quick, "See you at the service," and left the Vulcan alone.
Standing out of the way, unnoticed as always, Saavik and Christine exchanged a look. Slightly embarrassed from what they had overheard, Saavik tried to ignore Doctor Chapel's genuine smile. She knew she meant well, recognising Spock's words as high praise. But Saavik averted her eyes. Spock had never told her he was proud of her. Not directly, at any rate. She knew or was aware to some extent that he held her in high regard, but he had never explicitly told her. Having overheard him, she wished there would have been a time for such a word before she vanished. Before it had been too late for him to tell her. A moment later, she wished he would not be proud of her at all, now that she was gone. It would not help bring her back and could only lead to grief if he missed her.
By the time Saavik had mulled this all over, Spock had slipped the record tape into the according slot to watch Christine's recording.
Christine herself sat on Spock's desk to face him as she already knew the content of the message, while Saavik remained standing next to her so that she could watch both the monitor and Mr Spock.
Spock pressed play and the message began.
"Hello, Spock," the Christine Chapel in the video message said and smiled sombrely. "If you're watching this, something has happened to me and I've been pronounced dead or otherwise irrecoverably lost. I never would have thought that I'd find myself in a position to record a farewell message to you. But we've known each other for so long that it feels only right. Even if I can't seem to find the words to describe just how much you meant to me. Maybe you still understand, somehow. And if you don't, no matter, it doesn't take away from the affection I held for you." She sighed heavily before she smiled back into the camera and continued talking, slowly and intently. "As this message will be the last you'll ever hear of me, I want to wish you, in the spirit of your people, peace and long life. I have a feeling your future has much in store for you still. And that's my only regret concerning you: that I'll never know, that I can't be there to see what you get up to. It's a cruel twist of fate that your life expectancy means your human friends are destined to die well before you, that we can't go all the way with you. But what remains of us, in you, are the memories of the adventures we shared. The stories of our lives." She smiled softly, a tender gleam in her eyes, and Spock leaned forward as he listened. "Thank you for being a part of my story, Spock. Your wisdom, your loyalty, and the care and kindness with which you've treated me have meant more to me than I could ever say. I hope that, as I leave this world, my presence will have meant something to you, and, perhaps, made a small difference. Because this message is also my last request." She paused and Spock tilted his head. Almost in a whisper, Christine continued, "Remember me. In your long and prosperous life, think of Nurse Chapel once in a while. Think of Christine and the doctor she became. And if I had to choose one thing I want you to remember me by, I would say: remember my love. Remember my love for you, not only the love I declared that fateful day in sickbay, but the love I felt for my friend. Yes, don't raise your eyebrow like that." Taken aback, Spock lowered his eyebrow. On the monitor, Christine continued. "Remember my love, because it was, if I may say so, the best part of myself. I could never have given you a gift this pure and honest. It was in my nature. A long time ago, in your quarters on the old Enterprise, you brushed away my tears and told me that it would be illogical to protest against our natures. Well, it is my nature to love; I really did love you. And I think you knew." As if answering, Spock pursed his lips and nodded almost imperceptibly. "Farewell, Spock, and take care out there," the image of Christine murmured. She raised her hand in a familiar gesture and said, "Live long and prosper." She smiled one last time and whispered a soft, "Goodbye," as she leant forward to stop her recording. The message ended and Spock's monitor went blank, leaving him alone with only his reflection.
He pulled the record tape out and held it in his hand for a moment, tracing his thumb over the edge as he looked down at it.
Because the message had been recorded long ago, it did not reflect all the adventures and developments since then, but Spock found that it still expressed the core of their relationship. He allowed himself a moment of nostalgia as he thought back to a young, blonde nurse on another ship far away and long ago. And even though it was a much smaller fraction for a Vulcan, he suddenly felt that twenty years was a very long time.
"Goodbye, Christine," he whispered, and gently placed the tape aside.
He stood up and walked over to his dresser where he took his IDIC pin from a drawer and fastened it to his chest, right under the Starfleet insignia. With a last look into the mirror, he straightened out his uniform and left his quarters, sparing only a passing glance for the door that seemed to move more sluggishly than usual for some reason.
Christin and Saavik, naturally, followed, Christine more shaken up by her own goodbye message than she had thought, Saavik mildly curious.
"What is the purpose of such a message?" she asked as they walked after Spock.
"Well, closure, I suppose," Christine said. "Especially because dying in the course of duty can happen unexpectedly. It leaves a sudden void. And for the person leaving the message, it's a possibility to comfort those they leave behind." She shot Saavik an amused look as the Vulcan seemed to ponder this information.
"Interesting," Saavik said. "Very human."
Before their conversation could continue, Spock stopped in front of the captain's quarters and entered a second later.
The two women quickly followed before they could feel tempted to damage yet another door.
Spock came to stand next to Kirk, who sat at his desk, fixated on some data on the monitor.
"Jim?"
Kirk gestured towards the display. "The list of casualties of my legendary five-year mission, and the ones that followed." He frowned to himself. "Do you know how many men and women lost their lives under my command?"
Spock tilted his head and opened his mouth to answer but Jim sighed and stopped him with a gesture and a look. "Too many, Spock. Too many. And I've just added two new names to that ever-growing list."
The Vulcan tilted his head again. "They will not be forgotten," he murmured gently. In all their time together, Jim Kirk had always been hit hard by the death of crewmembers under his command. Even more so if it was a tragic accident.
Now, Jim sighed again. "No, of course not. I'm sorry, Spock, I didn't mean to insinuate you would." He paused before he continued. "I don't even know what I can say at the memorial service but empty rhetoric and platitudes. Even Christine. She was on my crew but I feel like I barely knew her." He looked up at Spock and shrugged. "How would she want to be remembered?"
Spock had a feeling this could count as a rhetorical question, as it was not normally the kind of question he was asked. Still, he said calmly, "She would want us to remember her love." After a pause during which Jim stared at him slightly astonished, he added with a raise of an eyebrow, "It was, after all, in her nature to love."
Jim smirked. "Feeling sentimental?" he asked.
Spock stiffened and said, matter-of-factly, "By no means, Jim. That is what she told me. On the tape which she left me."
Jim nodded and asked, in a softer tone, "Do you want to talk about it?"
"No," Spock said curtly.
Jim frowned again and looked back at the list. "And Lieutenant Saavik…whom we owe so much."
"I owe my life to her," Spock said, with the faintest touch of a sentimental notion. "To her and David."
"It shouldn't have happened."
"It was an accident."
"And that right before Christmas."
Spock frowned. "Jim, the time of year does not change the impact of their demise."
His friend smiled wryly up at him. "But it does, Spock. It makes it worse, harder to bear."
"I do not quite follow," The Vulcan said.
"The holidays, however you celebrate them, are an occasion for people to come together, to spend time in each other's company," Jim ventured to explain. "Christine and Saavik should be there with us, but they won't. Us gathering and their absence from the festivities will only serve as a reminder of their passing and the space they leave behind."
"I see," Spock said.
He was familiar with the principle Jim was describing but found it lacking in logic. Why should their friends' absence from an only yearly event spark more grief than their absence from the daily routine? Perhaps he would need to consult Jim some further on this apparent contradiction. But his human companions had instructed him that there was a time and a place for everything, and right now, Jim did not seem much motivated to talk about the intricacies of grief.
After spending some minutes constructing a speech on a data PADD, Jim stood up and shrugged at his first officer. "It'll have to do. Let's go and get this over with."
At the memorial service in the forward observation lounge, Christine listened intently as the Captain held his speech.
Leonard was crying. So was Nyota. Hikaru was frowning, his look fixed dead ahead. Pavel, Scotty, and Jim were all trying to put on a brave face. Spock's stony features seemed indecipherable.
The sadness of the occasion seemed only amplified by the contrasting holiday decorations throughout the room, glittering and sparkling in the corners and adorning the massive tree in the middle.
Standing next to Christine, apart from the group seated in the sofas, Saavik listened only half-heartedly. She cared more about what people said about her while they deemed her alive. But even so, she was not left unaffected.
The Captain's speech caught her attention as he began to talk about her. He mentioned his son, David, and the crucial events on the planet Genesis, events which were all too present in everyone's memory except for Doctor Chapel and perhaps Spock himself.
She approached her old mentor and crouched down in front of him. In the background, Kirk once again praised her role in the Genesis affair, and she ceased to listen again. How could she not have done everything she had done, after what Spock had done for her? Everything that she was, she was because of him, her friend and teacher. He had given her the ability to become more than the sum of her parts, more than a Vulcan-Romulan mongrel child, more than anyone had ever expected, except him.
She wondered if he missed her. Looking up into his eyes, she thought she could see a flicker of emotion pass through. And she remembered the assault of feelings she had experienced after his demise. Frustration, anger, fear, loneliness.
He seemed much calmer than she had felt. Calm but not devoid of emotion.
She raised a hand towards his face, letting it hover inches away from his cheek before she shook herself abruptly out of her reverie. It was inconsequential if he did.
But she did not drop her hand. Repositioning her fingers into the placement for a mind meld, she continued to hover, careful not to come into physical contact with him.
"Your mind to my mind," she murmured. "Your thoughts to my thoughts."
Nothing happened.
"Our minds are one," Saavik continued, directing her full mental attention at him.
Still, nothing happened and Saavik let her hand sink back into her lap, not entirely surprised. But it had been worth a try.
She jumped to her feet as Spock made to stand up for a toast, and joined Doctor Chapel at the perimeter of the group.
Christine had witnessed the young Vulcan's attempt and shot her a questioning but not entirely hopeful glance. Saavik shook her head and they returned to watching their friends in silence.
Just now, Spock turned to Doctor McCoy who sat next to him.
"We will need to find a replacement for Doctor Chapel," he said gently but matter-of-factly. "I will await your recommendations. If you have not already chosen someone."
McCoy turned away from the nostalgic conversations around them to frown at Spock. "Replacement? Can't that wait? At least longer than until right after the memorial?" He sighed and took a sip of the champagne Jim had opened for the toast. "No, Spock, I have not already chosen someone."
"Time could be of the essence."
"They've been dead for a mere couple of hours. And your main concern is to fill an empty position."
Spock seemed undeterred. "Yes. Doctor, as the first officer of this ship, the filling of an empty post is, and should be, a concern of mine." He raised an eyebrow. "To do so quickly is only logical." He hesitated, noticing that the doctor's mood had worsened considerably during their exchange, a remarkable feat when one considered the already sad occasion.
"What did she say?" McCoy hissed at him before he could continue. "What did she say in her recording, to make you want to forget her so fast?"
Spock straightened up in his seat. "Nothing of the sort," he said.
McCoy lowered his voice again but continued to glare at the Vulcan. "Come on, Spock. What did she say?"
"If you must know..." He let his look wander over their group of friends but no one seemed to have noticed their little spat yet. He tilted his head at the doctor and went on, "In essence, she said she had valued my presence and that…she loved me."
Leonard McCoy huffed and put the empty glass on the table with a little clang. "Yeah, that must have been a right shock for that cold heart of yours," he grumbled. "If she only knew just how easily you're replacing her." He looked up and met Spock's icy stare. Then, in a sudden outburst, he hit the armrest of the sofa with his fist. "Good God, man, do you feel nothing at all? I lost a good friend today and you just sit there, citing regulations!"
Spock held the doctor's gaze and his answer was dangerously calm. "I am acting in fulfilment of my duty. What I feel is irrelevant."
Leonard McCoy's anger evaporated in an instant. "No, Spock. No," he said softly. "I'm sorry." Spock pursed his lips and nodded curtly, and after a pause of awkward silence, McCoy asked, "Is after Christmas soon enough?"
Spock nodded again.
Unbeknownst to the bickering two, unbeknownst to the whole circle of friends, Christine drew a shaky breath as the full implications of what was happening hit her. There wasn't a question anymore of if their friends could save them. They would not look for them, and they would not save them.
She took some steps back as if by retreating from this scene she could somehow reverse it. She stopped when she almost walked into the adorned tree in the middle of the room.
"This is it, my own memorial," she murmured, aghast.
Lieutenant Saavik nodded as she followed her. "We have here a singular opportunity, Doctor," she said. "We are witnesses to the reactions our friends would have if we were deceased. You would not be able to replicate such an authentic response."
Christine frowned at Saavik's genuinely intrigued tone and huffed. "Yeah, right. Because to them, we really are dead." Her voice shook as she spoke. "Moving on, not even looking for us, is going to be the next authentic response. You heard what Spock said."
To that, Saavik had no answer.
Christine continued without waiting for one. "Maybe we are dead," she mumbled, wrapping her arms around herself, watching the small assembly as if through a fog. "Maybe we didn't make it and all of this is a fabrication of our dying selves." She swallowed heavily. "Or maybe we got lost in the transport process," she went on, her voice rising half an octave. "Maybe we're trapped in the matter stream in the ion storm for all eternity, and this is an illusion our atomised selves are fabricating to make sense of it all."
She turned to Saavik who had watched her calmly.
The young Vulcan raised an eyebrow. "Your imagination is worrisome."
Christine laughed, but it did not quite reach her eyes. "Now you sound like Spock," she said. "Imagination is one of the most important traits one can have, even as a scientist. Most great advances begin with fantasy, imagination."
Saavik raised her eyebrow again, at the possibility Doctor Chapel had just unknowingly presented. "Then our plan of action is clear," she said. "Do you believe in ghosts, Doctor?"
"What are you trying to say?" Christine asked, taken aback at this change of topic.
"We will have to…haunt them," Saavik said and quirked an eyebrow at her. "In your Earth literature, when a deceased person wants to establish contact with the living, they haunt them, do they not?"
Christine's face lit up at the possibility she was proposing. "Oh, you're right, Saavik!" she exclaimed and grabbed the young Vulcan's arm. "If we make our presence known somehow, they should be able to bring us back. What did you have in mind?"
They started collecting ideas then and there, at their own memorial, interrupted only by the event ending and them following Spock back to his cabin. Christine Chapel seemed a little more hopeful as they planned their haunt. With them generally being able to touch nonorganic matter, it should be possible to get their friends' attention somehow. At least that was Saavik's careful hypothesis.
When they settled down for the night that evening, huddled under Spock's desk for fear of being stepped on in the morning, they did so with a tentative but motivating plan.
Lieutenant Saavik sat cross-legged against the wall, watching the doctor trying to get comfortable on the hard floor.
Christine sighed and looked up at her. "Would you mind me resting my head on your legs?" she asked.
Saavik raised an eyebrow. "I would, yes," she said.
Doctor Chapel merely shrugged and folded her uniform jacket into a provisionary pillow, falling into a restless slumber a while later. Saavik, watching over her, took off her own jacket and draped it over the sleeping Doctor in place of a blanket. She wouldn't need it herself anyway, as she had no intention to sleep but to remain seated next to her compatriot for the duration of the night.
Thanks for reading, I hope you're enjoying this.
Now that Christine and Saavik have a plan, they should be able to get help, right? We'll see!