Awareness of Spock was probably the one thing strong enough to rouse Daphne from the sedative-induced sleep that had claimed her hours before. She had dreamed of him, with a desperate, passionate longing.
She had never longed for anyone before, or for anything, the way she did for this one man.
Her eyes drifted open slowly to find him by the bed, bent over and pulling one his black thermal undershirts from the recycling drawer on the wall. He was naked from the waist up. His sleek bronze skin was damp, gleaming in the dim reddish light, sleek and strong and firm - and marred by dozens of barely healed cuts and gashes.
Everything else in the room seemed out of focus to her. Only Spock was sharp and clear. Perfect. Composed. As beautiful as the Thracian gods. In the fire-tinged half-light a prince of darkness moving silently. His eyes flickered with shadow and flame. Daphne felt transported from the reality of her world on board a starship. It was as if she gazed upon a man who was both very young, in terms of his natural life – and very old, as if he bore the burden of millennia upon his gashed shoulders.
Power, masculinity and the hot desert winds of Vulcan had swept into the room with him.
His hair was tousled and also damp and she realized he must have taken a shower with actual water; which meant he had either felt the need to be very clean or he was dehydrated. She wanted to run her fingers through the silky strands and hold him close to her.
He had saved her life and so she could only lay there and continue to gaze at him in wonder. A shadow slid lovingly over his shoulders and back as he stood.
He flexed his shoulders experimentally and muscles rippled.
He would burn his life out one day, protecting this ship and her crew. The premonition sent a chill spider-crawling down her spine.
"Spock?" she said, finally.
He turned to her, his eyes dark and hooded. "Did I wake you?"
Her hearing was still recovering from the explosion but his voice sounded like music to her.
"It doesn't matter," she answered, "I've never been so glad to be able to open my eyes and see someone."
She paused, shifted slightly beneath the red coverlet on his bed. Meeting his hooded gaze she said, "You're here AMA, aren't you?"
He sat down on the bed beside her, the shirt clenched in his hands.
"You could say that," he admitted, "You could also say that I am here in spite of the fact that McCoy is 'spitting mad' about it."
She smiled. "You are going to give him a heart attack someday."
"You'd think he would be used to me by now," he replied.
She reached up with her first two fingers extended and he paired his with hers. Understanding flashed between them. If anyone understood, it was Daphne. An explosion had nearly taken everything Spock held dear, everything he now considered "family", even above his Vulcan kith and clan. He would not rest until he found out what had caused it and saw justice done.
Of all the humans in his life, only Daphne knew his secret. Spock didn't control his human emotions. He fought every day to control the raging green fire that was his Vulcan blood. An attack on the Enterprise gave him a crushing and immediate intimacy with that rage. He had burst into internal flame like an oil soaked rag and she knew it. She also knew that he must take action. It was the only possible solution for the black desire for vengeance that stalked him, that which could not be released and could not be endured.
She slid to the far side of the bed and pushed back the covers in invitation to join her. Her hair was a spill of molten gold, thick as lava, across the deep red sheets. Her manner was easy and relaxed, welcoming and gentle, though at the moment the fire of passion and desire were carefully banked in her gaze.
He left the black shirt abandoned on the dresser and laid down beside her. His entire being earned for her suddenly. He gathered her into his arms, pressed one chaste kiss against the jagged wound on her temple and then rested his head on the top of hers. Closing his eyes he sought to negate his solitary, self-reliance in the brilliance that was this one alien woman. Jim was denied to him. McCoy was furious with him.
But, freed of her Starfleet uniform, wearing nothing but the clinging mist of her shift, freed of constraints laid upon them by rules and regulations and the protocols that existed beyond the closed doors, Daphne waited for him.
He had to act. But he did not have to act alone.
Her body shaped itself to his like the soft spring breezes of San Francisco Bay, cooling him. Her hair flowed over his arm, soft against deep cuts still healing. The thin shift she wore was made of a soft, shimmery pale blue-gray material that clung to every curve, emphasizing her long waist and the heavy swell of her breasts.
The explosion, the noise, the pain, the blood, the horror all seemed to fade for the moment. All was nothing for the space of a few breaths, just because he held her warm and alive in his arms.
He stroked two fingers down her spine, back up her arm to her wrist, resting on her pulse – human slow but strong and steady. He paused, suspending his thoughts, lost in the strange, exotic alien nature of the rhythm.
"There is an eternity between your heartbeats," he observed, low and husky.
She tilted her head back to look up into warm fire lit eyes. His fingers were strong, male… Vulcan; and it was hot were his flesh met hers. She was a trained Star Fleet officer and yet Spock's hands had the power to dissolve her at the core into a puddle of fragile femininity.
"Not when you touch me," she answered. Then she kissed him and it was full of gratitude and tenderness, as soft as the caress of moonlight on water.
Her lips still close to his, she sighed lightly and said, "You need me to tell you what I remember."
It was true. She was the last one he had to question.
Daphne turned her hand so that the paired fingers lying against her wrist came to join hers. Her other two fingers clasped his so their palms were tight together. The mental link he craved as Vulcans craved water came alive between them. She felt the shimmer of his presence in her thoughts, in her body and in her blood.
"We were seated at the table by the door," she began, looking inward, "I felt you suddenly become tense, as if you heard something?" Pausing she waited for him to nod in confirmation, "You got up, very quickly, grabbed something that was on the table against the wall behind us, ran out into the hall and put it in the waste receptacle on the wall. Then you came back in, yelling for everyone to get down, Jim had flipped over a table and was yelling for me to get behind it, but you grabbed me, threw me against a wall…." She paused, blocking the thought and the memory of having four broken ribs and a broken collar bone from hitting that wall and the strength of his arm around her. Spock had saved her life. If the cost had been broken bones and bruises it was worth it. "Then the explosion, noise, horrific noise, pain. I must have blacked out because the next thing I remember is Scott pulling me free from you. I couldn't hear. Everything hurt. I saw you with McCoy and there was so much blood…. You were covered in it- yours and mine."
She paused and pressed her forehead against his chest, feeling as fragile suddenly as dandelion fluff. Spock felt her shiver. He encouraged her with silence to continue.
"I woke up in sickbay. That young doctor, one of the newly assigned crew that we picked up at K7 last month…. Levine. Dr. Levine. He had taken care of me, released me to go back to my quarters. I wanted to stay, because of you and Jim but sickbay was in an uproar. I think you can imagine. So I went to my quarters but I couldn't rest at all, so I came here, to yours."
Not quite able to express it in words she gave him her thoughts. Her quarters were small, industrial, Star Fleet standard issue. She had done little to personalize them beyond her small collection of artifacts and reproductions. Spock had recreated Vulcan in his – the planet they both called home.
"I waited here… it seemed forever, until Chapel contacted me to say you were out of surgery and they were waiting for you to assume the healing trance." She paused again and looked up to give him a rueful smile,"I didn't tell them not to bother waiting. Then after another eternity, Dr. Levine came to find me and told me Jim was out of surgery as well, stable but still critical. He gave me something to help me sleep and that is all I remember until I woke up and found you here."
Daphne studied his face in the subdued lighting. Perhaps it was her imagination but his normal bronze color seemed paler, tinted with lime-green. The skin between his elegantly slanted brows was furrowed. In pain or concentration she did not know. The shadows of his eyelids looked like bruises.
"You need to rest," she said.
"I am resting," he replied, but he rolled onto his back and closed his eyes. She watched the ripple of muscle along his jaw line and the slight crinkling of his eyes at the corner that told her he was struggling against pain. Tremors ran along the muscles of his bare arms. Along their fragile, slender mental bond, she felt nothing.
But she was just as guilty of blocking him, so she let it go.
Daphne slid her hand across the flat hard muscles of his stomach and let it rest over the quiet thunder of his heart.
"You are lying down," she said, "That isn't exactly resting for a Vulcan. I know you've questioned everyone, driven McCoy to the edge of his sanity, most likely you have hounded Mr. Scott for every last detail of his investigation. You've had a shower and now you are lying down. Have you eaten?"
"No. I am not certain I should."
"Let me bring you something liquid then, something hot."
He watched her slide from the bed, sensually, like a sunning lioness disturbed by the arrival of a lion. He started to tell her that she should not wait on a man who is not hers and stopped. They had spoken no formal vows, never said a word to each other of being exclusive.
But he was hers.
The last time he had come to his quarters and found her asleep in his bed they had barely exchanged two words, unless one were to count "oh gods, Spock.". His memory of what had transpired between them was of something more than a little physical. Her reaction had made him wonder just how sound proof the bulkheads actually were. She had fallen asleep again almost immediately afterwards, wrapped securely in his arms; and while Spock rarely slept it had given him a profound sense of peace to watch her do so.
He was hers. He belonged body and soul to a woman with delicate shell-shaped ears and honey-gold hair, whose wit and intelligence and confidence matched her charm and courage; whose passion and vulnerability were real; who stood by his side and backed him because she understood and sometimes even when she didn't understand. Her frank gaze was often like an interrogation. She was honest and open with him and could actually answer a direct question with a direct answer.
Vulcans would say he had found the other half of his soul. Humans would say he was in love.
Either way he was hers.
She returned to the bed and perched on the edge, holding a heavy mug with steam coming from the top in one hand. The skin on her hand was pale, stretched tight over the delicate bone beneath. She was more stressed than she was letting on.
He sat up and let her arrange some pillows behind him, mostly because she needed to.
Pain. His entire body throbbed with it. Cruel fingers of pain twisted him to incoherence and mocked his repeated, mental insistence that pain did not exist. It pounded him without mercy. His eyes were dark with his body's reflexive need to heal. His dominant Vulcan genetic makeup warred with him over surrendering to the healing trance or continuing the relentless pursuit of those who would harm his shipmates. He placed the fingers of his left hand over his own temple, closed his eyes and breathed deeply.
He won the war. This time. There would be no stopping for the healing trance and there would be no violence, no concession to the need to destroy. But when he opened his eyes, anxiety was blazing forth from Daphne's like the midday sun. Light from his meditation flame flickered across her frozen features, but her eyes spoke to him of fear.
He laced long fingers into her blond hair, spun gold heavy and silky against his palm. He ran his hands through the strands, separating them, letting the flow of liquid satin glide through his fingers. He stroked his thumb gently down the ragged cut on her cheek.
"Pthak svi'zherka ,dan-karik heh dan-khrashik," he murmured softly, the words coming easier to him his native language.
"No, Spock," she answered just as softly, "It is not fear that is the strongest emotion, or the most violent. It is love."
Her body molded to his as he pulled her forward to rest lightly against him, separated only by the thin fabric of her shift. Her head fit into the curve of his shoulder and for a moment they sat in silence. He felt alive suddenly, in spite of the pain, and filled with tenderness so acute that even his scorching need for action must wait in the face of it.
"Let me help you with the pain," she begged him, in a voice so low even Vulcan ears barely heard it.
As an empath, Spock knew his lover had the ability to take some of the pain from him. But then she would know the true extent of his agony and he wouldn't allow that.
He shook his head slowly. "No. I have control now. We should not do anything to disrupt that control."
She leaned forward and gave him a light kiss on the corner of his mouth. "Is that what I do to you? Disrupt your control?"
One eyebrow lifted minutely. "Relentlessly," he answered.
She gave him the cup then with a slight smile and the single caution, "Be careful. It's hot."
He tried it experimentally and discovered it was hot chocolate – a beverage favored on Earth, the planet they shared but had spent little time on. He finished it in a few long swallows. It burned on the way down and spread warmth throughout his insides. The caffeine and sugar in it would boost his metabolism. She must have known that.
She pulled her legs up and curled up next to him on the bed, sitting up, still facing him.
"Tell me about the investigation?" she prompted.
"I intended to," he answered, settling his abused back against the pillows, "I want you to check my logic."
Her eyebrows disappeared beneath her fringe of bangs in astonishment. "You want me to check your logic? How bad was that blow to your head?"
"It was bad enough," Spock admitted, "But has nothing to do with my request. My logic may be …compromised by the circumstances and people involved."
He was forced to pause as the rush of hot blood and ancient war drums thundered in him again. The images of his bridge crew lying in their beds in sickbay would haunt him, had always haunted him in one form or another for years. The almost reality of their deaths shook the idea that Vulcans were now bred to peace. In Spock's eyes Daphne saw every bit of his savage heritage – 5000 years repressed but 5 million years deep in his genetic code. His breathing, his color, the surge of impressions along their bond link betrayed him. He thought of the crew of the Enterprise as his clan, and Daphne as his bond mate. Jim and McCoy were his t'hyla – brother/friend. The need to defend, to protect was strong in him.
With a small chill Daphne realized Spock was now in command of a starship, with the power to destroy the population of a planet. Deliberately she refused to look at the display of weapons on the wall. She knew they were not decorative. Spock had taught her to use many of them, though their mastery was many practice hours away. She was good with the ahn-woon. She couldn't even lift the lirpa. Spock handled it has if it were made of down feathers.
She reached out, drawing him back with her touch, running her fingers through soft night-dark hair, still uncharacteristically tousled, and then along the edge of one fine upswept ear. Something in Spock's stone-carved expression changed, though it was difficult to say just what the change was. Along the gossamer thread of their mind link, she took the violence and anger into herself and let it dissipate. and she drew him back.
"Spock," she elongated the word, giving it the proper Vulcan inflection. Spaahk. "Logic has many forms. There is the form in which – if A then B and if not A then not B. That I think is the form you are the most comfortable with," she paused, watching his face for the subtle flickers of expression that betrayed his thoughts. "Then there is the form of logic that makes a full Vulcan Ambassador choose an Earth woman half his age as his wife. Both are legitimate forms,"
All she saw in the dark depths of his eyes was the reflection of his meditation flame. His face had gone from being nearly bronze earlier, to translucent with a lime-green tint. Now she watched a fine, clear olive flush spread over his chest and rise up his throat to his jaw, over his high cheekbones and into his forehead. She reached for his wrist and laid her hand on it. He was already hot. A human would be raving. But it seemed to her that he was warmer than usual. Feverish and not much McCoy could give him that wouldn't make him nauseous on top of everything else.
She suppressed her anxiety, drew a long silent breath and let it out slowly.
"Tell me what you heard, in the Mess that made you act? What was on the table behind us that you put in the waste receptacle?"
"A tool box, from Engineering. I heard something click, as if it was setting itself, then noises that no tool box should be making."
"So it was bomb disguised as a common tool box?"
"Yes, though none are missing from the tool lockers, no one has signed any out and the Officer's Mess was not scheduled for maintenance or repairs."
"My impression is that the explosion was short, loud and fast. That would involve a high explosive or combination of high explosives, in concentrated amounts to fit in a container that small," she observed. "The Surveillance systems? Did they reveal anything?"
"They have been rigged to appear functional, but nothing has been recorded in that room for the last seventy two hours," he leaned his head back and gazed at the ceiling, deliberately silent for a moment, ignoring the rolling agony and desperate desire to lay down, "Consider, k'diwa, there is no one on board the Enterprise who is not Star Fleet cleared. With the exception of the nine personnel who joined the ship at K7 thirty nine days ago, and twenty seven others we lost to normal reassignments, this crew has been together as a cohesive unit for three point seven five years. Yet a deliberate attack has been made on the senior bridge crew. There is no doubt this was meant to kill as many of us as possible."
He looked at her again, "It is possible I am being paranoid, but I do not think so. I suspect something far deeper at work here than a simple assassination attempt. There is no logic in it. There is nothing any individual can gain from the deaths of Alpha shift, individually or as a group. If it was not one of the nine new assignees, then it had to have been a longtime member of this crew. If that is true, then this is either something that has been planned over a considerable amount of time; or someone or something has negatively influenced a member of this crew to the point of inciting mutiny and murder."
The reality hit her hard. It had not been an accident. Someone had tried to kill her brother, her lover and her closest friends. He watched the play of emotions in her golden brown eyes and waited as she worked through denial, rage and helplessness until at last arriving at resignation. She met his gaze. There was a fire to match his burning in the tawny depths of her eyes now. The lioness was no longer sunning. She was alert, her senses heightened, on the hunt.
"There are other possibilities,'" she said, holding her voice steady, "Insanity. Alien influence. A paid assassin. One of our crew members has been replaced somehow. I am sure you already calculated the odds against those?"
He nodded slowly. "Yes. Those possibilities surely exist but not as probabilities."
He fell silent, contemplating. The fact that he didn't instantly start quoting the odds for each possibility was disturbing.
"There is only a single flaw in your logic," Daphne said, finally, causing his eyebrow to lift infinitesimally, "You are seeking a logical reason for someone to want to kill one or more of us. You want to know what can be gained by are deaths. For some humans, and species like Romulans or Klingons, the reason for such an act would BE the death."
Her eyes demanded honesty. He knew about vengeance. He may be 5000 years bred to peace, but he knew the desire for revenge.
His hand came up to lie gently along the side of her face. His beautiful, long-fingered, masculine hand … one of the things she loved most about his body. She closed her eyes and rubbed her cheek against it, trying to ignore how blisteringly hot he felt. She knew Spock. She knew his heartbeat and his breathing and just how warm he normally felt.
She also knew that loving him meant letting him do what had to be done for the sake of his Vulcan soul.
"Yes," he said, softly, "I can acknowledge that there may not be a recognizable logical reason for the act."
Daphne opened her eyes and took a long, deep breath. She gave him a look that laid her open heart in his hands.
"Could we please get dressed and continue this investigation, so that you can heal?"
"I…believe," he spoke very slowly and deliberately,"that can be arranged."