Magnificent Obsession Anthology

By KayCee1951 (Earthdate: 2021)

"Once you find the way, you'll be bound. It will obsess you. But believe me, it will be a magnificent obsession."

Magnificent Obsession (1)

A/N: The following was previously posted in nine chapters. The following has been revised and re-posted (revised and enhanced) for continuity and chronological reference in the Magnificent Obsession Series.

Part Three: The Vow

"We build too many walls and not enough bridges."

Isaac Newton

Earth, San Francisco - 2284

Chosen for its ambiance and privacy more than a proximal location to Starfleet Headquarters, Christine Chapel's bungalow was situated on the Corte Madera Channel shoreline just north of San Francisco Bay. To say the place was remote would be stretching it. However, the location did offer a modicum of privacy and a ubiquitous pier, which was frequently in need of repair. Christine had spent her childhood and much of her youth in a historically registered house that fit the same general maintenance requirements.

Add to that a view from her kitchen window of the pier pointing like an arrow to Mount Tam across the bay, and her living quarters were nearly perfect. The only place she would rather be tonight was the cramped, metal box quarters on the Ruby G., but if not her, any other ship of the fleet going back to the frontier.

Since the lab accident fourteen months earlier, which required complete reconstruction of both her lungs and much of her supporting respiratory system, she was chained to terra firma for at least another sixteen months. Exile on Earth, to assure a full recovery, came with a two-year assignment to Starfleet Medical as Director of Emergency Operations; and, most recently, a stint as an instructor at the academy in Field Triage, a subject near and dear to her heart. Her years serving on the Ruby G. provided her with a wealth of experience. Also, she had developed a sense of what needed updating in cadet training. New challenges were presenting themselves every month on the frontier.

Since she moved into the bungalow, it had become her habit to have a cup of tea before settling in to read medical journals or some obscure nineteenth-century mystery novel she had located. She preferred sassafras and noted that her stores were running low. Her next trip to visit her parents in Vacherie, in southern Louisiana, would have to include a trip to the old New Orleans market. Since a blight in the last century had rendered the sassafras trees extinct in other regions, the sapling roots were protected and distributed on a marginal basis in the areas where the tree could still be cultivated.

She was filling the tea kettle when she saw a figure standing at the end of the pier. The stream of water from the tap had overflowed the kettle before she allowed herself to believe she had been staring at a familiar silhouette. She turned the water off and set the pot on the pad. Taking as deep a breath as she could manage, she let it out slowly, then watched him for at least five more minutes. He was still rooted to the same spot, watching the twilight slowly fade across the channel. Unless he had made a hundred and eighty-degree change in his habits, he wouldn't choose a place like the end of her pier to meditate.

Christine surveyed her attire and found it lacking for receiving a guest. But he had seen her in less dignified garments than the nightgown she was wearing tonight. Still, she grabbed a shawl off the armchair in the reading nook and threw it around her shoulders.

He must have heard her approach because he turned and immediately raised his left eyebrow. Her feet were bare, and her wrap had dropped off one shoulder. She drew the corners of it across her chest against the chill in the air.

"It must be quite cold out here for you. I was about to prepare some tea if you would like to join me."

When he nodded and took a step forward, she smiled at him and turned toward the soft light coming from the cottage.

Gunmetal gray had become a signature civies attire for Spock. When not in uniform, he always looked more the Vulcan than just the stoic expression, sallow skin color, upturned eyebrows, and ear shape would suggest – as if that was not enough. This night, he had opted for something less…severe.

Christine bumped up the heat before leading her guest to the small sitting area in front of the fireplace. They had shared tea often while serving on Enterprise. Like Sado, in purpose, if not entirely in the procedure, the sharing had become a carefully managed ceremonial closeness. They would not speak until the tea was poured.

They had not even been in the same sector of space in nine years. Earlier that day was the first time she had seen him since he became an instructor at the Academy two months ago. In the middle of her lecture, he had strode silently in and sat in the lecture hall's upper level. Unnoticed by the medical students, he had remained in the shadows, presumably so that he would not cause any interruption to the flow of her lecture and interaction with her students. He exited as quietly as he entered before the class was over. And now she was sitting toe to toe with him, sipping tea.

After a lengthy separation, first words can be awkward, even human to human.

"Did you have a specific reason for attending my lecture this afternoon, or were you just passing by?"

She knew the answer, of course. Unless being acted upon by some force outside his control, Spock rarely did anything without a direct purpose.

He took the last sip of his tea and turned the bowl upside down on its saucer. "I have two cadets who might benefit from your tutelage."

"In what way?"

"I have consulted with several of their other instructors. We have agreed that both are subject to a certain propensity to overestimate their ability to maintain control in command scenarios. I believe the term is 'swagger.'"

Christine nearly choked on her last sip of tea. She fell back against the wingback, and a short, half-suppressed laugh escaped.

"You do see the irony in that?" she asked, quickly recovering her composure and putting down her tea bowl. After all, the very definition of Spock's closest friend was swagger.

"I do."

"I am not certain how much assistance my class will be, but I trust your judgment. Call my office tomorrow, and we will send them the material I've covered to date so they can get up to speed."

"I have already made arrangements with your yeoman."

She smiled. "I'm a little out of practice. I suppose I should have anticipated that. "

"Your class enrollment is not why I am here this evening."

She felt it, an acute vibration in the slender strand of connection they shared – in the millisecond before Spock dropped to his knees in front of her. He bowed his head over her lap and clasped both her hands in his.

"Christine."

He had spoken her name softly but with an urgency that she recognized. She began to hyperventilate. Escaping his grasp and her chair, as soon as she could catch her first decent breath, she braced herself against the nearest piece of furniture.

Spock rose, distress evident in his voice and posture. "Forgive me. You are unwell. It was my understanding that you had recovered sufficiently––"

"I am not unwell." Still relying on the credenza for support, she bit on her bottom lip to return herself to some clarity. How is this happening? It's not only illogical; it's impossible.

"Forgive me. I will take my leave––?"

"No," she exclaimed and turned to face him. "You cannot pull the floor out from under me and then just leave."

Christine frantically ran the math and timing in her head, weighed the possibility that the therapy had simply delayed the onset of his 'curse' after the first application of the treatment, and mentally recalculated the level of hormonal imbalance to the threshold of tolerance. Had he chosen this path instead?

The thought made her at once frightened for his safety and furious that he had not consulted her. All the while, she watched him move closer without the resolve to stop him or even put up a protest. When he reached for her hand, she took his pulse. It was normal – for him. She looked for other signs of distress associated with that particular hormonal imbalance, the pon farr.

"I am also quite well, Christine. I assure you."

She managed to shake her head slowly, conditioned to believe something must be wrong with him.

"Would you like to run a medical scanner?"

"No," she said breathlessly, "that won't be necessary. I accept that you may not be…physically impaired."

"I am also not impaired in any other way." He had taken her hand and was stroking the back of it with two fingers.

She pulled away and separated herself from him slowly, suddenly struck by that irony. "What are you doing?"

"I should think it obvious." He knitted his brow. "If I must explain, perhaps I am doing it incorrectly."

He had not been able to fluster her in more than twelve years. She was having trouble finding her words.

"Maybe," she managed, "You could have worked up to," she waved nervously at the spot where he had knelt, "that…a little more slowly."

Christine had fully recovered her wits now and was confident she could maintain that status as long as she remained a respectable distance away from him.

"I should have thought that my being here at all would have given you some idea of my purpose."

"Where you are concerned, I don't trust myself to make objective observations. I trained myself to mistrust anything and everything about you that does not reek of logic. This behavior is neither typical nor logical."

He reflected on her statement for a moment, then clasped his hands behind his back and walked to the window. The night was completely black now, save the starlight on the horizon. "Then, I have simply chosen the wrong approach. May I begin again, from a logical perspective?"

"Do you have a logical perspective?" she asked, incredulously, still wondering if he had been exposed to some weird virus or if someone had slipped something into his Altair water.

"I do. However, perhaps it is better termed a…theoretical construct."

"Then, I'm listening." When she saw him make a move toward her, she put out her hand. "As long as you stay there."

"As you wish."

Spock assumed a less formal position, in the same spot to which she had relegated him, and canted an eyebrow. As he considered his answer, Christine waited, arms crossed over her chest and moderately relaxed against the back of the vintage davenport.

"You and I shared a…connection. Would you not agree?"

"In the past," she said. "An artificial byproduct of our encounter with Sargon. And we will never know if it was intentional or simply a karmic side effect. Or lasting."

"Perhaps. The existence of any vestigial link was never tested by the scientific method. However, we have…experienced some affinity. Therefore, let us assume, for our hypothesis, that there were residual effects. Neither of us requires the other for sustenance or survival."

"I'm still listening."

"And our affinity is symbiotic, specifically mutualistic in nature, regardless of the source."

"The logic seems a smidge rough around the edges, but I'll agree to that assertion, for now. And I said, 'in the past.' You're using the present tense as if there has not been a nine-year separation between us."

"This evening, did we not settle into the same pattern that had been established long ago?"

She looked at the upturned tea bowls. "I suppose I will have to concede that."

"Therefore, this symbiotic relationship has become part of our nature?"

"And it would be illogical for us to protest against our natures…nice segue. It still sounds like confirmation bias, but you made a nice presentation."

"Thank you. I was working with limited empirical evidence."

"At least, I know you are not under duress by any…primal nature."

"The therapy you developed was a success. Twice."

McCoy had folded at Spock's first demand for him to acknowledge the source of the research. Nay, he had simply demanded that McCoy confirm it. And Leonard had never agreed to lie to him. She and Spock had co-authored two scientific studies together; he had recognized her organizational style.

Like a holographic image, so vulnerable to interference, so delicate that a soft breeze could rip it asunder, there was a connection – once upon a time. She had not imagined it out of some false hope. And she had felt it strengthening. Anonymity, however temporary, was a delaying tactic – to take herself out of the equation. He had to make a choice without a crutch or easy alternative.

Spock could read the question in her eyes. "Have we been apart so long that you believe I am here out of gratitude?"

"I'm still finding it difficult to process the fact that you are here at all. Are you?"

"If that were the case, I would have sought you out immediately upon the success of the first treatment."

"Gratitude delayed is still gratitude."

"It is not gratitude that compels me." He stiffened slightly. "I had prepared for our meeting to be awkward but had not anticipated this level of difficulty in stating my purpose. Christine. Do you not want this?"

Unless being acted upon by some force outside his control, Spock rarely did anything without a direct purpose. And he was not prone to spontaneity. She found it – disquieting.

However, there was no mistaking what 'this' was. It was apparent with no need to be defined. Perhaps she had trained herself too well. This very situation had been the dichotomy of their relationship, reading the same book but rarely on the same page.

As much as she loved him, she had grown accustomed to believing that, although he was not uncaring, there could never be an expectation of more – at least in Human terms. But, then, her feelings for him had never been in strictly Human terms. She loved the Vulcan Mr. Spock, no matter how much he went to war with the Human Mr. Spock; having witnessed the turmoil that often ravaged him, she favored the Vulcan side to win.

Though the degradation forced upon them by Parmen had been mortifying for Christine – it had been more so for Spock. Of all the women on the Enterprise the Platonians could have chosen for Spock's humiliation, they chose her.

Why?

Was it because of Sargon's endowment? Did they search his mind and find thoughts of her? Had he wondered the same?

She did not know.

For Spock, as deeply troubled as he had been by his failure to protect her, he had been more troubled by the possibility that he had been the conduit – their newfound connection, however tenuous, providing fodder for the feast. The memory was painful for Christine, even now. Before the Platonians interfered, she had only begun to perceive that something might have remained from Spock's mind being placed protectively within hers by Sargon.

Another bell that could never be un-rung.

Telepathic signals from V'ger halted the final ritual for kolinahr, the purging of all emotion, something Spock perceived at the time as a failure on his part. But V'ger had changed his perspective on many things, allowing them a more relaxed interaction over the three and a half years that followed. Christine had fully expected that rapport to end upon leaving the Enterprise. She had prepared for it, made peace with it.

"Perhaps we have been apart for too long," Spock lamented. He had not moved from his appointed spot. "I had not considered that your sensibilities might have changed." His brow was furrowed by working out, in emotional terms, how he could have been mistaken.

"No, Spock, my sensibilities toward you are the same. Time and distance will never change that." There was no sadness in her voice or even the hint of it. There may be a great many things she could deny, but loving him was not one of them.

"For me as well."

Her resistance crumbled, and she graced him with one of her most endearing smiles.

"Maybe you should have led with that."

Returning from the small kitchen with another tea for Spock and a Scotch neat in a whiskey snifter for herself, Christine handed him the bowl and saucer, then settled herself back into the wingback.

"I take it you didn't discuss any of this with Jim before…coming here?"

"I did not. That would have required a good deal of explanation, and I did not wish to reveal certain aspects of our relationship that might violate your privacy."

"I do appreciate that." Sometimes Spock could be so endearing, she forgot that, although his body may be half-human, his mind, spirit, and philosophy were primarily Vulcan. She had come to know that she did not love the Human Mr. Spock quite as much as she loved the Vulcan Mr. Spock.

"So you were winging it?"

Sitting in the chair across from her, Spock hiked a single brow. "All things considered, perhaps that might be the colloquial equivalent…I suppose I must take some responsibility for your current reluctance to accept…"

"Being propositioned?" She wanted to call it what it was before he attached some bullshit euphemism to it.

"Mutually beneficial arrangement."

And he did it anyway. Just can't help himself, like an addiction. Always sounds good, though.

"And why would you take responsibility?" she asked, smiling for a reason he would never legitimize.

"Doctor McCoy has, on more than one occasion, accused me of keeping you at arm's length; far enough away to avoid the appearance of covenant yet close enough to reap the benefits of same."

Although Christine imagined McCoy expressing himself in a somewhat less selective vocabulary, it sounded like him.

"You're listening to Leonard, now?"

"Recently, I have entertained the remote possibility that he might be correct in his evaluation of my past deportment where you are concerned."

She chuckled and then sighed. "Don't ever tell him that. He might have an aneurism."

"For the record, I have no plans to give him that kind of satisfaction."

"That's more like it. I was about to whip out the medical scanner. And, for the record, he's full of it. He can't be objective where either one of us is concerned."

Spock put down his half-consumed tea on the hearth, careful not to make any moves that would signal he was about to repeat his earlier attempt at declaration.

"Christine, are you are delaying your response because you are trying to devise a way to reject my…proposition?" He reasoned that the word had an alternate connotation than the one she had suggested.

"No. But I do need some time to think about it," she murmured. For a moment, she entertained the thought of reaching out to touch Spock's hand to demonstrate how sincere she was in that statement. This was not the time to let down her guard.

"Please," he entreated. "Take the time you need."

Had Spock proposed this kind of arrangement to her eighteen years ago, her reaction would have been vastly different. She would have jumped at the chance to be in a physical relationship with him – no questions asked, no reservations, no terms but his, had it even been possible.

Christine and Spock had a history. Neither of them was possessed of the same perspective they had so long ago – it seemed eons instead of years since she had walked into his office on the Enterprise for the first time.

If she agreed, what would that make her – lover, convenience, educational tool?

However labeled, she wanted to come out of it without losing the delicately balanced, closely guarded, and mutually protected accord they had been able to construct. It had apparently survived nine years of separation. Would it, then, survive sixteen months of experimentation? Where did the clinical scientist end, and the woman, who, at her core, was as Human as it gets, begin? Would she be able to let go?

Who was she kidding? Of course, she agreed - but with a critical caveat.

One: He would respect her desire for privacy and anonymity. He would guard her privacy and not discuss their relationship, former or current, with anyone, even James T. Kirk.

Two: No touching of minds, short or long term, in any form, beyond that which already existed.

When she presented these seemingly simple terms, he promised, without reservation, to comply.

"No, I don't want your promise," she declared. "Promises can be broken. Vows are forever."

He gave her his solemn vow. These were, after all, the simplest of terms.

Arriving at the front door of the bungalow, he found that Christine had abandoned the comfortable, utilitarian nightgown for a sheer, iridescent peignoir precariously tied at the waist that clung to every curve and female feature she possessed.

Tea had been prepared for him, a glass of white wine had been poured for her. She apparently no longer required the kind of artificial fortitude provided by Scotch this evening. Making an effort to be spontaneous, he asked if he could join her in a glass of wine. While she went to the kitchen to retrieve another long-stemmed glass, Spock abandoned the over garment and tunic he had needed to stay the chill coming off the bay.

Striding back into the living room, she was again struck by the contrast of Spock out of both Starfleet and Vulcan uniform. Without the accoutrement, and the ears, he could have been coming home from work at the hall of records instead of the legend he already was.

He took the glass of wine and sipped slowly without taking his eyes off hers. They were communing without words. Christine had missed the peacefulness and serenity that came with the harmony Sargon had left them. Perhaps, in his own Vulcan way, Spock had as well.

When they abandoned their empty glasses, she raised her hand to meet his, palms and fingertips touching. He stroked the back of her hand with two fingers, confident she would not pull away. She caressed his face and softly kissed him for the first time since the Platonians had forced them together so many years ago. Once assured those painful memories would not intervene, they abandoned themselves to their shared connection and shed, like an outgrown protective shell, the years that had gone before.

And so began a new chapter in their relationship.

References:

(1) The quote is from the 1954 Universal International Pictures movie, Magnificent Obsession, is based on a book of the same name by Lloyd C. Douglas, published in 1929. Screenplay by Robert Blees and Wells Root, Produced by Ross Hunter, Directed by Douglas Sirk. (Source: Wikipedia)