Disclaimer: I still don't own Star Trek. If I did, I'm sure all of this would be much easier to write.

"Excuse me, Lieutenant?" came Spock's unusually perplexed reply.

Christine was staring down at her bruised knuckle, with her back still turned to the Vulcan captain. It was not until he said this that she realized that she had been thinking aloud. She turned around to face him.

"It's nothing. Well…" she bit her lip for a moment in contemplation, deciding whether or not to go through with this and tell her commanding officer about her situation. "Sir, have you ever heard of Doctor Roger Korby?"

"He is an accomplished medical archeologist, is he not? Yes, he was in my graduating class at the Academy. His duel credit in both medicine and military duties was quite unheard-of. I believe he went on to instruct at the adjoining medical school."

She sighed. "Yes, he did. When I was in my third year at medical school, he taught my Advanced Xenophysiology class. Unfortunately for me, I found something endearing in him and it wasn't long until we were…" she gulped, knowing that sharing personal information with her captain was not usually permitted. "Together."

"It is logical to assume that your companionship did not outlast your admittance onto the Enterprise," concluded Spock, eyeing her.

Christine nodded and continued. "We were a couple for about a year when he decided we should get married. Against my mother's sound judgment, I accepted the proposal and thought that everything would be…perfect." Her mouth twitched at the final word. "It was six or seven months from my graduation at the medical academy that I happened to walk in on Roger and his assistant, together." Though Christine did not go into explicit detail, she could tell Spock knew what she was implying, that Roger and his assistant were not meeting up to play a game of Chinese checkers.

"After that, I broke off the engagement and after my graduation, I chose to join a starship that was going away on a long-distanced mission so that I could escape my former life and the mistakes that I had made. For some reason, it felt like I had to seek redemption, from my family at least. They knew that Roger was not good for me, that he would cause problems, but I didn't listen. And after ignoring them, I come face-to-face with the monster that they had seen all along. That's why I'm here, I suppose, on this Five Year Mission. To prove to my family that I can overcome what he did to me. After you dismissed me for leave today, I ran into Roger. As it turns out, he's stationed here. We had a little…altercation." Spock's expression immediately turned concerned. "It's fine, he knows I don't like to be grabbed at, and he paid the price."

She didn't elaborate and he didn't question her any further.

After a moment of silence, he said, "You know that you do not have to redeem yourself to your family, Lieutenant. I think that you feel that you must prove your worth to yourself instead of to those around you. You know that you are a proficiently skilled officer, and I see that everyday on the bridge. After Doctor Korby's duplicity, you condemned yourself. You did not deserve his betrayal, but you won't allow yourself to realize that," Spock explained.

And a moment later, the piece that seemed to be missing in the back of Christine's mind connected itself, allowing her to finally understand that what she had been fighting all along was, in fact, herself.

"Lieutenant? Are you well?" Spock asked, staring down at her mixed expression of disbelief and resolution.

She smiled, realizing that he was speaking to her. She looked up at him. "You know, you would make an unbelievably excellent psychologist."

Spock looked at her confoundedly, unaware that his input had triggered an epiphany in Christine.

"It would be inappropriate for a member of the Vulcan race to sort out the emotional dealings of Humans, Lieutenant. My scholarly focus at the Academy was computer programming." If she didn't know that he was being completely serious, Christine would have laughed. She had to admit that Spock was rather amusing, even though it was not in his Vulcan nature to be so.

"Er, Chapel, are we interrupting anything?" Came McCoy's confused voice from the sickbay entrance, just behind Spock. Standing next to McCoy was Tonia, who was carrying a shopping bag from the small convenience store that every starbase housed.

Just before Christine was about to answer, Spock quickly replied, "No, Doctor, I was just assisting Lieutenant Chapel. Excuse me," he then walked past McCoy and exited the sickbay.

"What the hell was all that about?" asked McCoy as he watched the automatic door close behind Spock. He then looked down at her bruised hand. "And what the hell happened to your hand? How much more shenanigans can ya get into in a week, Chapel?"

Christine sighed. "It's nothing, I just…" she quickly thought up an excuse. "Tripped."

"Well, you're a horrible liar, but I'll let it go. You should get up to the bridge, Chapel, it's gettin' close to departure."

"Sure," she said, immediately throwing all the discarded medical supplies on the examination table back into the footlocker, not caring much for once if it was unorganized; McCoy would just have to deal with it late, she supposed. "You're out of hydroquinone syrup, by the way," she noted as she snapped the box shut and kicked it underneath the table.

"Good to know," he acknowledged uninterestedly, still staring at Christine with a puzzled look in his eye.

Just before the door closed behind Christine as she walked out of sickbay, she could have sworn she heard McCoy say to Tonia, "I swear, there's something goin' on between them two. Who the hell hangs around a sickbay when they're on leave?"

Christine stared at the ceiling of her quarters. It was nearing midnight and yet she had no desire to sleep. It was the second day after the Enterprise had departed from the starbase and she had a very serious dilemma on her hands -- she was charged with a court martial after word reached the flag officer's ears about her little run-in with Roger. She was now being charged with assault after breaking his cheekbone and dislocating his nose, rendering him incapable from service for the next few weeks, perhaps even a full month.

She was due to appear for her hearing at Starbase 154 in a week. She knew that she would be found guilty; the odds were definitely against her and Roger did have a lot of friends high places. She had spent the entire evening contemplating her fate. Would she be demoted? Or even expelled from Starfleet? The former thought was definitely much more welcomed than the latter.

When Spock had called her into the conference room connected to the bridge to give her the news earlier that day, she sensed a sort of apprehension in his tone, but dismissed it as disappointment. She remembered his hands were tightly pinned behind his back, his shoulders hunched forward, making her rather nervous herself. His lack of eye contact was alarming. She knew he was not happy with her actions.

She remembered that she did not explicitly tell Spock how Roger paid the price for grabbing her. He probably just assumed that she had pushed him, or even slapped him at the most.

Christine ran her left hand through her hair, distraught.

She suddenly yearned to disappear.

Spock opened his eyes. He was lying in his quarters in the early hours of the morning, in absolute darkness, save for the holoclock that displayed the time.

For some unimaginable reason, he was sweltering. It was a strange feeling and he immediately rejected it, pushing himself from his bed and headed towards the temperature device near his door. He then did something he never imagined ever doing -- he turned up the air conditioning, making the room cooler with every passing second, freezing even. The feeling of assurance was welcoming to Spock, making him much more comfortable, but it did not cease another issue.

Why was he shaking? His hands were uncontrollable, as if they were experiencing a constant jolting that was not due to conclude in the near future.

He had not eaten in past two days, since they had left the starbase, but he had just contributed it to a normal occasional lack of appetite. And, for some reason, he had a strange feeling lingering in the back of his mind, something he hated to admit, but was not unlike that of anxiety, a Human emotion.

Suddenly, his mind turned to the obvious conclusion, which revolted him.

No, he thought to himself. He must be spared from this.

It was a quiet morning, allowing Christine to doze off in her seat without anyone else noticing. She barely gained any sort of sleep from the night before, her mind much too busy to even think about rest. Spock seemed certainly preoccupied, so he did not turn to her for any sort of second opinion.

Just as she closed her eyes, hoping to sneak in a few minutes of sleep before lunch, a yeoman tapped her on the shoulder, handing her a PADD that Christine needed to proofread and sign before handing it to the captain.

"Thanks," she grumbled, and quickly read through the memo, nodding her head every few seconds. She then scribbled her signature and got up, using her chair to steady herself due to her immense fatigue.

She approached the captain's chair, where a contemplating Spock sat, his chin clenched tightly as it sat upon his propped hand. "Sir?" She had to repeat herself before he turned around to find her standing with the digital memo in her hand. She handed it to him and he quickly took it from her and signed, not even bothering to read through it like she had done. This action alerted Christine; she knew that Spock practically memorized every memo before signing it, looking for any sort of reason to upstage her judgment. He then practically threw the PADD back at her and swiftly turned back to the main view of the bridge.

Something was wrong with him, she thought. There had to be.

She handed the PADD back to the yeoman and sat down, glaring at Spock's turned head.

A few minutes later, the midday meal buzzer rang over the intercom, and the assigned ensigns immediately entered the bridge to take the places of the official bridge officers.

"Anything been happening?" asked her replacement.

"No," Christine said, barely acknowledging the ensign as she stared at the disgruntled Spock. He seemed to be having a slight disagreement with his temporary substitute. "Nothing at all."

Just as she headed for the elevator lift, Spock seemed to nudge her rather aggressively out of the way. He entered the lift and the automatic door closed quickly. Christine waited a few more moments until the lift came back up. She was very irritated with her commanding officer's actions and as soon as she exited the lift, she walked quickly, hoping to catch up with him.

Finally, she spotted him, taking a turn that was opposite of the direction of the mess hall. She stood and watched him for a moment, while the other officers made their way to lunch.

"Captain!" she called after him in a tone that was filled with exasperation.

He did not slow down nor acknowledge her calling after him, so she swiftly followed him, determined to catch up with him. She finally did so and as soon as she was neck-to-neck with him, she repeated herself.

"What is it, Lieutenant?" He asked, staring blankly ahead.

"Permission to speak freely sir?"

He nodded stiffly, not looking at her.

"Alright, forgive me, but…What the hell is wrong with you?"

A/N: Yes, I watched Amok Time this morning and decided to actually go through with this.