I stand at the view screen, pondering while looking at New Vulcan. I wondered if my husband was the man they called Mr. Spock. "Ma'am, a penny for your thoughts."

I look at James Kirk with glassy eyes. "I'm walking away from the only person here who was mostly right. Everyone I know is gone. Those of you who I was close to are all wrong," I lament.

"You know, I honestly like the old Spock more than mine. He melded with me to explain everything to me. I saw glimpses of you, but he was focusing on the kinship of himself and his James Kirk," he explains.

I hate that this 'old Spock,' as they call him, focused on himself and James T. Kirk. Logically, I realize there would be no other path, but when have emotion and logic ever gone together? "How would you know it was me?"

"I saw a flash of his mother's funeral. You and your son were there."

"Ben," I whisper. "Oh, Ben!" I think of my son and everything I missed! The idea scares me that the odds of him ever existing here are too low to calculate, even for a Vulcan.

"If you need a shoulder to cry on, I'm here for you." Kirk smiles at me.

"I actually like you more than my Kirk," I admit.

"Oh? Why is that?" he asks.

"I often felt that Jim meant more to Spock than I did, and at the worst point in my life it was mostly Jim and his actions that kept us apart." That and Spock's unwillingness to take offence to Jim's actions.

"I would love to hear your stories. You don't like my counterpart; yet you came with me so easily."

I smile. "That's because Jim Kirk had a way about him to cheat death. He cheated on Kobayashi Maru."

He smirks. "I did too. Spock was so pissed!" He laughs. "That was the start of him and I. I hated him at the time."

I smile at him.

"You know, StarFleet is still recovering from huge losses. I could see about getting you in."

"Perhaps at some point. If I'm going to live here, I need to figure out who I am now that I don't have the very things and people who defined me for so long."

The com went off. "Captain Kirk to the bridge."

"I have to run, but hey; McCoy has a thing for you. Let him down easy."

I wander the ship for a while, then head back to my quarters. I'm going to make some plans; perhaps visit a few people I lost before their time. My grandmother should still be alive. How many times have I wished I could see her again. I might not be able to tell her who I am, but it still would be nice to have a talk with her. And if Sarek was mostly the same, then so should my grandmother. I just sat down at the computer when the door signal went off. I rise and walk over to disengage the lock, allowing the door to open. Standing at the door is the old Spock.

"Christine," he says as if breathing for the first time in a long time. His voice is raspier than I expected it to be. This Spock came for his wife.

I don't know what to say. I can't doubt that he is Spock, but is he my Spock? I hear my own breath catching, I then slowly let out a breath.

In his eyes, there is the same look that had always caused me to go a little weak in the knees. I feel him reach out to me through the bond, almost as if he was saying 'My wife, please allow me to speak to you.'

"Am I really your wife or do I just have the same face?" I ask. Honestly, I'm scared to even hope.

"What do you mean?" There is a tenderness in the tone he uses.

"Can you be sure that the bond would only work with your Christine and not any timeline's Christine Chapel?" I ask.

His eyebrow rises, as if I said something he never considered. "I don't know for sure, but I do not have a bond with this timeline's Christine Chapel."

"Perhaps because she's not at the age that the bond was formed." I move further from him.

"I can understand your concern, but did you feel the bond with this Sarek?" he questions. His hands are clasped behind his back.

"No, but I never bonded with him." I am torn; when he died, I wanted him back and would have given anything for him to not be dead. When he was alive again, I held my breath waiting for him. When he was able to stand in front of me and not recall me or our life together, it crushed me, but I still held on to some hope. When I heard that Ben caused him to recall our family but he didn't come to see me, it would have broken me had it not been for the rest of my family.

"But she did, and you have already been the age that it was formed," he points out the flaw in my logic. He takes a step closer.

"I have spent my time here thinking about timelines, and if every decision can form a new timeline, then perhaps the bond would be felt only by the parties who formed the bond in their own timeline. Meaning that every Christine who bonded to Spock in each timeline from that point on could experience it."

"Your argument has merit. However, I spoke to James T Kirk. He told me he asked the Guardian to take him to the planet you died on from the same timeline that I was from."

This logic makes perfect sense, and the man in front of me is my husband! I sit down, feeling I'm too heavy to carry my own weight. "We were done. I don't understand why I was your biggest regret."

I can see that he has continued to soften over the years. He takes a seat in the chair across from me. "The last time we spoke, I was still angry, and I thought…" he starts.

"I know, trust me. I remember," I interject.

"I spent time after that questioning why I jumped to the wrong conclusion. You said you would choose the challenge and you would make T'pring's way of doing it look like a raving lunatic. That told me you would not choose one of my friends, so who would hurt me the most? My logic was clouded at the time, and I realized part of the reason was because the idea of you with anyone else was too much to bear."

I shake my head. "Spock, so much happened."

"It did, and long before that I made mistakes. Closing our bond was the biggest one. I had a very long time to understand how that affected everything. The closed off bond is likely the very reason it was so hard for me to recall you." He reaches for my hand, but I pull back. "I arrived hours after you died. I was already en route to see you."

"So we could fight again?" I ask. I can't keep the bitterness out of my voice.

"No, to get you back." We both sit quiet, absorbing our thoughts.

I want to believe him, but I'm scared of getting hurt again. Spock has always had such power over me. "Why did you become friends with her, the younger me?" A part of me is scared that I won't like the answer.

He nods. "At first, it was because she was you; your eyes, your smile, even your temper. But she is not you. I care for her as a friend, but you, Christine, are mine," he assures me.

"Spock, I have considered going back to the Guardian to return to where I belong," I admit.

"To die?" he whispers. I can hear the disappointment in his voice.

"I thought it might be possible to not die."

"There never would have been time to get off of the planet. There was a window of two minutes between the last beam out and your death," he explains.

Hearing that going back is probable certain death means the end of so many possibilities. "What happened to Ben?"

He smiles. "Your death causes him to be willing to rebuild our relationship. He was the chief surgeon of the organization that you and your father worked for. He married a woman you would have loved. She was a preschool teacher and they had four children. The oldest was a boy; they named him Chris, for you."

I feel a sob building. I know I missed so much. I try to control myself. "How did you end up here?" I ask.

"The first years after your death were difficult. I honestly considered bonding again. She was Vulcan; therefore, she would not be ruled by her heart, as you were. I found she was deceiving me. It made it clearer no one could ever compare to you. After that, I focused on my work."

"StarFleet and Jim," I whisper.

"Not for long. Four years after your death, Jim died. I had, in less than five years, lost three of the people who accepted me for who I was. It was a difficult time for me. I worked as an ambassador…" He spends time telling me the rest of his story. "I watched Vulcan be destroyed. I found myself recalling your death, seeing the imploding footage of the planet that you died on. Nero killed an entire world, and the pain that I felt because I was the reason for their deaths still could not compare to how I felt about your death."

"Wow, that's a lot to unpack!" I want to believe him, but I'm scared.

"I could understand Nero; I have felt what he suffered," Spock admits.

I look at him, not knowing what to say.

"You reached out to me when you first arrived here, didn't you?" he asks. There's a hopefulness in his tone.

I nod. "I did," I whisper.

"Why did you pull back then?"

"Because I wasn't sure about the bond." I pause, "You seem rather unsure of yourself, Spock."

He nods. "I am. I am not the same as I was the last time we saw each other. You, on the other hand, are." He looks at me for a long while. "Is there a chance for us to move past the mistakes of our past?"

I look into his eyes. "The last time we were a functioning couple was before your death," I explain. "I had so much pain over your death. I felt so abandoned; not just by you, but by your friends. Those that I had believed till then were our friends." My lips feel dry, so I lick them. "And after you returned, not only did you not seek me out, not even via the bond, but you also seemed to hold the very people who shut me out, who pretended I never existed, very close. And it wasn't just me, but Ben as well. How was it so simple to cut us out of your life?"

"I did not plan to 'cut you out.' When I finally remembered you, us, our family, you were gone to Telfox 4. I did not know how to ask for forgiveness for something that had hurt you so badly."

My chin quivers. "You left me without any thought of me or Ben. I saw the recording of your last minutes before you died. It was all about Jim."

He closes his eyes. "If I had allowed myself to think of you, then everyone would have been killed. I never thought that they would not be there for you."

"I can't hold you accountable for the actions of others," I admit, "But you remained with them."

He nods. "That is one of my mistakes. Why didn't you come to Vulcan after?"

I look down, realizing that I, too, had made mistakes. I took Sarek's guidance without question. He spent so much of his life making mistakes with Spock, and I didn't even think that he might be wrong. "I had already lost you once; I didn't want to mess things up in your recovery. Sarek guided me. When you weren't there for me, he was. Then Amanda was gone, and he understood my pain. Your parents were the only people who supported us and tried to protect us when we needed it."

"My father always thought very highly of you."

I give a little chuckle. "Apparently so. For this Sarek, marrying her couldn't have been easy for you."

"It was a good thing she was so young; it serves as a reminder that she is not you. But you are avoiding my question, Christine," he points out.

"You noticed, huh?"

"I did." His eyes bore into my soul; those eyes that I love so much.

"I don't know if we would still work. I can't just forget everything," I confess.

"Then I can spend the time making it up to you," he offers.

"Do you know why this hurt me so bad?" I ask him.

"I admit to being confused at times."

I reach out for his hand. "It hurt so much because I love you. Only someone you love can hurt you. I may have been mad enough to hate you, but hate is passion; whereas indifference is the opposite of love. I have never been indifferent to you."

I had just told him I love him, and he still looks unsure.

"Do you know why I didn't come down to New Vulcan?" I ask him.

"Because you did not want to see myself."

I shake my head. "No, no, because I feared it would be like things were on the Enterprise before Von. I couldn't bear the idea of you being indifferent to me." I feel a tear trailing down my cheek.

He gets up and moves to sit close to me. He reaches up and cups my face in his one hand. "I was never indifferent to you. I have been scared of my own feelings, and weaknesses that you caused in me, but no matter what you saw outwardly, I was always very moved by you. Do you recall, when we arrived at Exo III, asking me if I had ever been engaged?" I nod. "My first thought was that sadly I was, and it was the reason I could never allow you to know that I wish I could have acted when you told me that you loved me."

"I never stopped loving you," I admit. "Do you really want me in your life?" I hate that I sound pathetic.

"I do, Christine. I have wished that you were still in my life for nearly one hundred years."

I hear a sad little laugh from myself. "You're not going to tell me exactly how long to the third decimal point?"

He shakes his head. "Time travel confuses the issue greatly." He takes both my hands in his; the familiar warmth is beyond comforting. "Can you accept me as I am now?"

I nod. "I used to worry how you would feel as I aged. From my point of view, this puts us on equal footing for the first time." I pause, "Spock, why are we only now saying these things?"

"I don't know, but perhaps had we said these things before, most of this could have been avoided. However, Christine, I must admit the fact that you are here with me now is emotionally overwhelming." He smiles.

My eyes burn with tears that beg to fall. "I love you, Spock."

He reaches out and cups my face with his hand. "You might not believe it, but you cannot comprehend how much more I love you, T'hy'la."