Welcome back and thanks to everyone who's reviewed so far.

Let's find out what Spock has in mind. Do you think his plan will work?

On the evening they returned to the ship, Spock took Christine aside while the two others were chatting to Scotty.

"I propose we begin tomorrow."

It took Christine a moment to see what he was referring to.

"Sure," she said. "What do you have in mind?"

"We might succeed by distancing ourselves for some days, perhaps a week. As closeness evoked this…bond…" He broke off and threw a cautious look towards their shipmates. "As closeness evoked this bond, the distance could break it as long as it's fresh. And in the future, we can be more…careful."

"Alright, can't hurt to try, before we take more drastic action."

"Indeed."

"You already have something more drastic in mind, in case this doesn't work."

It hadn't been a question. Spock had agreed unusually emphatically as if he knew exactly what 'drastic action' could entail and wanted to do his best to avoid it.

"I might. There could be another way still, something more extreme," he said, then shook his head. "But if our initial plan succeeds, it will be of no concern."

"Yeah, let's try it the easy way first."

They tried for one week, quickly realising that this approach was less easy than they had thought.

As the first day dawned, Christine was halfway to sickbay before the full extent of her circumstances hit her. She was bonded. To Spock. Well, not for long if their plan worked.

And it seemed to work well at first. She began her shift in sickbay as usual, and nothing seemed to indicate this bond. She hadn't noticed anything out of the ordinary, not before the Vulcans had declared their union, and not now. And she had no idea what to look for.

It must be some telepathic or empathetic connection. Perhaps she should consult the database later in the day to glean as much information as she could about the subject. How could she recognise the absence, or presence of the bond if she didn't know what exactly it entailed?

She was almost glad when she could divert her attention to the treatment of a crewman who had sprained her ankle while rock-climbing on the planet below. Pondering on the matter of their bond without additional data was unhelpful, not to say illogical.

"Are you feeling alright?" Leonard asked when she had discharged her patient.

"Oh, yes. I'm fine. Why do you ask?"

"You seemed a bit lost in thought for the past couple of hours."

Hours? Surely her attention hadn't wandered for that long. A quick look at the chronometer told her that he was right, though. Her shift would be over already in an hour, and she could barely remember what she had done during the rest of it.

"Don't worry, my dear, it happens to the best of us," Leonard said as he noticed her astonished glance. "As long as you don't operate in that state."
"Oh, I wouldn't. I don't know what came over me…" She trailed off as she got a fairly good idea of what had come over her.

On the bridge, Spock seemed to fare better. Inwardly, though, he was pondering the bond as well. He hadn't noticed it until now, but if he concentrated and focussed his attention on Christine, he could sense her hovering on the edge of his consciousness, one thought away. He resisted the temptation to test out the strength of the bond. Any telepathic activity would only strengthen the connection.

On the second day, Christine didn't allow the matter to invade her conscious thoughts as much and she finished her early shift without incident. She hurried to the officers' mess to have lunch, wondering who of her friends would be there as well. Lately, she had often met Spock there around this time, sometimes sharing a meal with him. But considering their goal, that would be out of the question now. Leonard wouldn't be there, as she had left him in sickbay. The Captain would be there, but he would be eating with Spock.

The first thing she saw when she entered the dining area was his pointy ears. Of course, he was already there.

He nodded at her curtly and resumed eating without so much as a second glance. Jim waved at her jovially. She waved back and after getting her lunch, sat down at the other end of the long table, where she was quickly joined by Uhura. At least she didn't have to eat alone.

"Is there a problem, Chris?"

"No, why?"

"Well, you've been sitting with Spock lately. But today, you're suddenly as far away as possible."

"Oh no, there's no problem," Christine said, with a wave of her hand.

"Ok, good. Let's join them then," Uhura said. "The Captain is waving us over."
Christine sighed and capitulated.

Over at the other end of the table, Jim had reacted to the minimal acknowledgement between Spock and Christine with amusement at first.

"Something wrong, Spock?"

"Not at all, Jim."
"Are you sure nothing's wrong? It's been a while since you avoided each other. Is there a conflict I should be aware of?", Jim asked, noticing how Spock was avoiding eye contact with him.

"There isn't."

"Then why is she sitting there all alone?"

"She is not alone, Commander Uhura is with her," Spock said with a fleeting glance at the far side of the room.

"Why is she not eating with us, Spock?" Jim hissed. Slowly but surely, he was losing his patience with this unbelievable stubbornness.

"We are not eating together."

Jim stared at him in disbelief. Of course, they were not eating together this very moment, but if Spock had meant their usual activity, it was a blatant lie. Jim had seen them sit and eat together regularly.

"Alright. There's no problem you say?"

"None at all, Jim."

"If that is the case…Hey! Come here, sit with us!"

Jim waved the two women over. Spock showed no reaction. Uhura rolled her eyes at Jim. She appeared to have been subjected to similar behaviour.

Christine shrugged at Spock in a gesture of helpless acceptance. She was secretly glad the Captain had momentarily foiled their plan. It had felt awkward to distance herself so deliberately.

Spock only quirked his brow at her as an answer. There was no way of protesting without having to explain their entire situation. He realised that avoiding each other had become significantly harder now that they were both high-ranking officers.

Jim watched them while they ate, and if there was something wrong, he couldn't see it, which made their earlier behaviour even more puzzling.

They didn't see each other for most of the third day. This was not too surprising as they did not see much of each other during a standard workday anyway, what with Spock being on the bridge, and Christine in sickbay.

Other than on what had been normal workdays before the Vulcan message, however, both found themselves thinking of the other more frequently now.

Spock was idly pressing a button here and there, immersed in his daily routine at the science station. It was not a busy shift, and even if it had been, his familiarity with every switch and display meant that he did not need full concentration for working with high efficiency, especially while the ship was in standard orbit. And so, his thoughts wandered.

They did more than wander; they jumped. They instantly jumped to one topic, and one alone: Commander Christine Chapel, MD. Realising that this was the bond he was feeling, he wondered if she was noticing it as well. Not being telepathically trained, she would undoubtedly need more time to recognise it as what it was, but she would feel it already. If their plan worked, she would not experience the full extent of the bond before they broke it up. They could not have explored it before now, as they had not been aware of it. Now that they were aware, it seemed to grow in intensity, as if reacting to their unwitting attention.

Spock felt something at the thought that they would never explore the bond further. Was it regret? For her, or for him? They were ending something that for Christine would have meant entering a realm of intimacy and togetherness that very few humans ever had the honour to experience. And it would have been a lie to say he was against being bonded. The bond was a piece of Vulcan life and tradition, a privilege of telepathy, a promise of loyalty.

He felt a short burst of satisfaction. Even if they broke the bond, now he knew that a bond was possible for him, that his human heritage did not prevent him from attaining even another aspect of Vulcan identity.

Christine did feel the bond, even if she wasn't yet fully aware that she did. Her realisation of one week ago was coupled with a certain awareness now. She was aware of Spock thinking about her. Or was that simply instinct? Or vanity, even?

No, it couldn't be that. Even in her past infatuation, she had never been vain enough to believe Spock was paying her as much attention as she wished for, or more. She knew he was thinking about her because she knew him, simple as that. That man fixated on a problem until he had solved it. To his credit, he usually did, but Christine was sure that the matter of their inadvertent coupling persisted to puzzle him.

She couldn't help but feel curious about this bond. Her research on it had been inconclusive, an unsurprising fact considering Vulcan privacy. But the little she had learned implied that this bond, in its extreme, was well above the human capacity of intimacy and understanding.

If she concentrated on the thought of Spock, she could feel closer to him, as if some part of him was attached to her by an invisible anchor. Or was that merely her mental image of him she was conjuring, and not the connection of the bond? How could she recognise it if she didn't know the signs?

After entertaining these thoughts for a while, she reminded herself that it wasn't their mission to find out how far they could take this bond but how they could break it. Quite apart from her soft spot for Spock, her scientific interest mourned the loss of this possibility of exploration.

And it wasn't as if she was thinking exclusively of Spock. She had other things to consider as well: routine physicals, staff recommendations, inventory upgrades, biomedical experiments, and the like.

She was just walking back to her quarters after her shift, immersed in thoughts on artificial protein biosynthesis when the pointy-eared object of her musings entered her mind again. He felt close, his presence in her mind too clear for being a random thought.

She turned a corner too quickly and bumped into something solid.

"Captain!" she exclaimed.

"Hello, Doctor," he greeted her. Then, he sighed. "Hello, Christine."

"Hello, Spock." She smiled up at him. "How are you?"

"I am fine." He raised both his eyebrows, surprised at her question. "I trust you are as well?"

She nodded. "I am, thanks. Just a bit overwhelmed by everything that's going on."

"That is understandable. You will feel less overwhelmed when we have managed to break the bond."

Christine did not have the time to correct him that she wasn't referring to the bond but the mass of work in general, as he wished her goodnight and left.

To be continued...

Do you think it's working? We'll find out soon! Feel free to review if you liked it, but no pressure.