Epilogue:

Chapel fought for breath and tried to block out the feeling of Sarek in her mind. His time was soon, his need increasing every hour.

She was old. She was too old and too weak to do this again. She hadn't been sure she'd recover from the last time.

"Christine?" Her caregiver, Perrin, moved quickly into the room, her moves graceful in a way Chapel had only ever hoped to be. She picked up the hypo and held it to Chapel's neck.

Ah, so blissful the emptiness that filled her. She could feel a moment of Sarek's frustration at being cut off from her by the meds and then nothing.

"Is there anything I can do?" Perrin took her hand.

So pretty, so warm, so...willing and earnest. Chapel smiled at her. "You're a comfort, my dear."

"I try to be. I don't know if I've ever said thank you for taking me in. For giving me all of this." She motioned around the room, but Chapel knew she meant Vulcan, not just the house. The girl thrived here. She loved everything about Vulcan.

Including its greatest son. Chapel closed her eyes for a moment as Perrin stroked her hair back. She'd never regretted hiring the girl, even if she suspected Perrin was more interested in getting close to Sarek than Chapel. She took excellent care of her no matter what her motivation.

"I need to leave Vulcan for a while," she said softly.

"All right. I'll get our bags ready. Where are we going?"

"No, my dear. Not we." She saw the confusion on Perrin's face—she always accompanied Chapel when she travelled. "I need to ask something of you."

"Anything."

"Don't tell Sarek I'm leaving."

The girl's expression changed and Chapel knew immediately where her loyalty lay. "But I can't lie to him—he's...Sarek."

"Yes. And I know you've noticed he's been acting a bit erratic."

Perrin looked down—no doubt she didn't want to say anything that might be taken as critical.

"I also know you study all things Vulcans. Language, food, culture—biological imperatives."

Perrin turned a charming shade of red.

For a moment, Chapel imagined Amanda standing behind the girl. Laughing at them both.

"I'll speak plainly, Perrin. I'm too weak to withstand the burning. Sarek will have options here: all Vulcan males do. But only once I'm out of reach. If I tell you where I'm going, he could read that from a meld and find me. I don't think I'll survive the encounter."

"But you don't know for sure. To just leave him when he needs you..."

Chapel closed her eyes. Fine, if this girl wanted to only think of Sarek, let the cost be framed in ways that would matter to her more than Chapel's possible death obviously did. "If he were to hurt me—or God forbid, kill me—during the Pon Farr, he would never forgive himself. He would—well, I don't know what he might do. Do you understand?"

Perrin nodded, wide eyed and a bit frantic.

"You will help me leave. You will find someone to go with me. And then you will tell my husband what has transpired once I am safely gone. Do you understand?"

Perrin nodded. By the shine in her eyes, Chapel didn't think it would take much to push her from admirer of Sarek to lover.

Sarek would be drawn to her devotion. Especially once his bondmate had abandoned him.

Again.

Now you understand, Chapel imagined Amanda saying.

Yes, now she understood.

Chapel ceded Vulcan—and the love of her life—to her nurse the next day. She thought it made it worse that the surrender was a temporary one. Somehow it would be easier if she were never going to see either of them again.

She could feel Sarek's need battering at her and asked her temporary caregiver for some meds. Her husband disappeared from her awareness with a hiss of a hypo.

When she woke later, she clenched her fists and rode out what she was feeling—what Amanda must have been feeling, too—as her husband gave himself to another.

She didn't cry until she was safely in her hotel suite on Luna.

FIN