It was still more sleep than they had gotten in the trenches, and they all looked and felt just a little bit better in the morning, especially after they had washed and put on clean clothing. They had scrubbed extensively, trying to rid themselves of the dirt of the trenches and the stench that seemed to linger in their noses.
Despite all this, Christine still felt ill. Her throat and chest hurt when breathing, and she felt uncomfortably warm, though it was not a particularly hot day. It seemed like a typical spring day, pleasant but not hot.
"Are you all right, Chris?" Pavel asked as they followed the others down the stairs.
"Fine," she lied. "I think I'm coming down with something, but I'm fine."
"If you are not well, better lie down," Pavel persisted.
"Yes, yes," she rolled her eyes at Pavel who only shrugged back. "I will, maybe. But I want breakfast first. Surely, you're not against that."
Pavel smiled and shook his head. "Permission granted."
When they came down into the inn's public room which was used by the soldiers of their platoon to eat, Lieutenant Thompson approached them.
"Hold on, boys," he said as they were passing him. "Chapel, you might want to go to a barber later." He gestured at the strands of hair sticking out from under her cap in somewhat of a disordered fashion. "You, too, Grayson, before you try cutting it yourself. You see what that did with Chapel." And he walked away, leaving them standing in the hallway.
"I was not planning to have my hair cut at all," Spock said.
"Yes, but bowl cuts aren't in fashion yet," McCoy snickered. "Come on, let's eat."
The public room was filled with soldiers having their breakfast, the innkeeper, his wife, and who turned out to be their eldest daughter. She came over to them when they had finished eating and were only sitting there to drink their beer. They hadn't questioned the choice of beverage. Alcohol for breakfast seemed not atypical for this time.
"Hello, I am Marie-Claire Delacroix," the woman said with a noticeable accent and smiled brightly at them. "You are new around here, are you not?"
"We are," Spock said. "Are you familiar with this place?"
"Familiar?" She laughed. "I live here. Do you want me to show you around?"
Spock nodded. "That would be most agreeable."
Marie-Claire slipped onto the bench next to Spock. "What are you most interested in? I can show you the library and my favourite places around the village. We can talk about music, art, philosophy."
Spock looked around at the others. He seemed to have missed the memo that she did not want to show all of them around but was interested in him alone. Jim shook his head to warn him, but Spock seemed to only understand that the others were not coming.
"Again, it sounds most agreeable," he told Marie-Claire.
"Well, then, let me just take my leave from my parents and fetch my hat." She smiled at him again as she gestured at her bare blonde curls. Two steps away, she turned around. "You have not told me your name."
"My name is Jack," Spock said. "Jack Grayson."
Marie-Claire left and talked to the man and woman behind the bar for a moment. She pointed towards him as she did so, then vanished upstairs.
At their table, Spock remained ignorant to the puzzled glances thrown his way.
"Spock," Jim hissed. "What are you doing with her?"
Spock raised an eyebrow. "Following our mission. Exploring strange new worlds. I find her most stimulating."
Next to him, Christine snorted with laughter. "What?" she exclaimed, coughing violently, as she had almost choked on her drink. "Stimulating?"
"Yes," Spock answered calmly as Christine continued coughing, and Leonard thumped her on the back, inexplicably to Spock laughing as well. "By interacting with the locals, we can glean valuable information for our mission."
At this moment, Marie-Claire came back down the stairs, wearing a simple chequered blue dress with a straw hat, and Spock stood up to join her, nodding his goodbye to his shipmates.
"Not sure the two of you have the same mission, buddy," McCoy called after Spock, but he did not seem to hear him.
The two of them left the building, under the suspicious eye of Marie-Claire's parents. They did not seem too happy with her choice, but Jim got the impression that they begrudgingly accepted it. If his hunch was right, Marie-Claire Delacroix was a bit older than the customary age of marriage at the time, and they had rather have her marry a soldier than no one at all.
"Makes you realise how good that Vulcan hearing of his usually was, now that it's gone," McCoy mumbled, referring to his words of parting having fallen on deaf ears.
"Well, he'll find out soon enough himself that she's not just interested in showing him the village," Jim mumbled.
"He'll be fine," Christine murmured and sighed as she leaned back on the bench. "It's not his first rodeo."
"And you?" Pavel touched her arm gently. "Think of what I said."
"I've been ordered to the barber, I can't go lie down," she mumbled and shuddered slightly. Why was it cold now when she had felt so warm in the morning?
Leonard bent forward to touch her forehead. "You can, and you should," he said. "You don't look well at all, and you have a temperature."
Christine shrugged. "Well, you're probably right. I feel pretty weak and ill. I guess I'll head up now." With another sigh, she stood up and slowly made her way upstairs, back to bed. If there were any questions, the others would surely handle them.
In the public room, the others spent some time waiting for Spock to come back, but when the room had emptied and it seemed like he would need a while longer, they went on their way, exploring the village without him.
In the meantime, Spock and Marie-Claire had already visited the library and were on their way to one of her favourite spots. She was talking vivaciously most of the time, about her siblings, her parents, the books she preferred to read, and the history of the village but also listened with rapt interest to any questions or opinions Spock expressed. It was most stimulating, indeed.
Marie-Claire's favourite spot was a dilapidated wall near an orchard on the outskirts of the village. As they sat down on it, with their faces towards the thoroughfare, she told him how the orchard that bore its first fragile flowers around this time was full of apples in the autumn, and she used to climb the trees with her brothers when they were little.
"Where are your brothers now?"
"Where do you think?" Marie-Claire asked and shook her head at what she perceived as either ignorance or tactlessness.
"Please forgive me," Spock said. "I am merely interested in the life people lead around here."
"I am people," she said and slid a bit closer on the wall.
He noticed but was too busy watching their surroundings and gathering information to think anything of it. "Do you get many visitors?" he asked.
"Since 1914, yes, of course. The village has been full of visitors ever since."
"I mean, were there any people who seemed different? Someone who caught your eye?"
"Oh!" She laughed and blushed inexplicably. "You are asking if I am seeing someone. Well, I am not. Why are you interested?"
"I am interested in anything that might help my mission," he said and tilted his head, slightly confused. She had not answered his question at all but seemed certain her answer was what he had wanted to hear.
"Oh?" She wrung her hands in her lap, making Spock wonder what this woman could be nervous about apart from the war. She smirked up at him. "Well, what is your mission?"
He raised an eyebrow. "To explore."
To his bewilderment, she blushed again. He would have to ask his shipmates about it later. Humans blushed for so many different reasons.
Though if all of this was a simulation and they had not been sent back in time, she was part of that simulation's programming, and so was her behaviour, down to the blushing, the way she twirled her hair, and the little dimples that appeared when she smirked. Of these two possibilities, Spock favoured the one of time travel. For a simulation or hallucination, this seemed remarkably complex. Not impossible, but exceedingly unlikely. Still, maybe he could explore that possibility with the help of his new acquaintance.
"What is it you are thinking so very deeply about?" she asked with that by now familiar smirk.
"I am wondering," he began, seeing his chance to investigate, "if you sometimes have the feeling that you are part of something bigger than yourself. More concretely, do you believe you have a destiny?"
She averted her eyes for a moment and bit her lip. "I do," she said when she looked back up again. "Let us walk more, and I can tell you what I think about destiny."
"Gladly." He hopped off the wall and waited as she carefully slid down.
They turned towards the fields outside the village, and she linked her arm in his as they walked, which was quite understandable considering these precipitous cobblestones.
"I believe we all are part of something bigger," she said after a while. "I have to. Otherwise, what reason does this war have, and what meaning lies behind the daily sacrifices? But still…" She dwindled off and glanced up at him with a hesitating expression.
"Go on," he said. "Whatever you want to say, it will not demoralise me."
She sighed and tightened her hand on his arm. "Still, I do not want to believe that that is all there is to it. If there is a higher reason behind everything that happens, it means every soldier's death was his final destiny. It would mean there is nothing we can do to save the ones we love because they were always meant to die."
"So you believe we can escape our destiny?" Spock asked.
"I believe we can choose our destiny," Marie-Claire said and winked up at him. "I believe that not everything is written. I believe that there is a broad destiny to how the world works, some pattern of how everything happens, but I do not believe that every single one of us has his whole life carved out and only follows that one path. I believe we have a choice in which paths we choose and even make those choices unwittingly, in our normal, daily life." She tugged at his arm. "What do you believe?"
He nodded. "I concur. Some underlying processes we may not be aware of or have the power to change, but we still have a choice." He tilted his head. "We may not be able to change the paths, but we can choose them wisely."
"Yes, that is exactly what I mean! I have seldom met a person that understands. Have you always been this wise?"
Spock briefly nodded at a group of soldiers as they passed each other. "I have not," he said to Marie-Claire. "I am wiser now than I ever was and hope to be wiser still when I am old."
"I can't imagine you becoming even cleverer!" Marie-Claire burst out and started laughing.
"The paradox of progress," Spock murmured. Although this discussion was highly stimulating, her answers had given no strong indication if this was a simulation or not. "We cannot imagine change but always strive to be better than what we were. The driving force of progress is a fixed principle."
"You are doing it again," Marie-Claire mumbled and waved her hand in front of his face.
"What do you mean?"
"There is something on your mind again. Something bigger than you. Are you pondering your destiny, Jack Grayson?"
He sighed. "Perhaps."
She pulled him around a corner into another street with the fields on one side and some stables on the other. "Why don't you ponder it with me, then?" she asked.
He nodded. "Why not?" He let his eyes wander over the barren fields. At this time of year, it wasn't even clear what was expected to grow on it later. His eyes returned to Marie-Claire, looking up at him expectantly. "Marie-Claire, do you ever feel as if the world is not real? As if it is all a dream?"
She laughed again, and it became a mirthless laugh. "Of course I do. These last two years seem unreal. But if it is a dream, then surely a nightmare." She paused and sighed as a soft breeze ruffled her hair. "But no, I think all of this is real. I do not think that I could invent a man like you. Not in my wildest dreams."
He quirked his eyebrow at her, the closest to a smirk. "No, I doubt it."
For a while, they walked along the road that circled back to the village quietly, without talking. For all her chattering, Marie-Claire seemed to have nothing against silence. And Spock found that for the moment, he did not know how to get more conclusive information without directly violating the Prime Directive. True, he was already involved in a manner that General Order One would prohibit, but this did not excuse taking it any further, for the sake of the Prime Directive and the safety of him and his shipmates. He doubted Marie-Claire Delacroix or any person of this time would believe him if he revealed more than necessary about his true origin, but that did not mean it would be safe. For the moment, he decided, he would continue to watch his surroundings and Marie-Claire carefully and continue to collect information.
"I have a question, too, Jack," she said when they were back on the wider village streets.
"What is that?"
"Your ears. What happened?"
He sighed and told her the involuntarily made-up story about the shelling, which seemed to satisfy her curiosity, although she wondered where such a good surgeon existed that could restore ears without visible scars but could not make them round again.
Around noon, they returned to the inn. As the others were nowhere to be seen, Spock readily agreed to help Marie-Claire with some work around the house. First, he carried some firewood inside, and then he joined her in wiping the tables in the public room.
When he approached the last table with a damp rag in his hand, Marie-Claire moved into his way and perched herself on the edge of the table. "I like a man who does not shy away from housework," she said softly and smirked up at him.
Spock raised an eyebrow. "Why should I shy away from that?"
She shrugged "Because it is women's work."
"I disagree." He pursed his lips and shook his head as he looked down at her. "Now, if you would move aside, I can clean this table as well."
Marie-Claire, still smirking up at him in a way he did not know how to interpret, moved aside slowly and left the table to him.
When he had finished cleaning the table and turned around, her mother was standing at the bar.
"You might not be handsome, but you're useful," she said, her fists on her hips.
Spock decided to remain silent and only raised an eyebrow at receiving an insult and a compliment in one.
"Maman!" Marie-Claire exclaimed and said something to her mother in rapid French to which she laughed and replied something else in French, pointing outside. "Come on, Jack, let us go," Marie-Claire said to him and tugged at his arm.
He followed her around the house, into the courtyard. One horse stood tethered in front of the stables, and they approached it.
"Maman told me he needs to be combed down. Do you want to help?"
Spock looked up suspiciously into one big eye looming above him and nodded.
"Do you ride?" Marie-Claire said after a while of grooming.
"Not usually, no," he said. "I cannot ride very well."
Marie-Claire stopped her brushing motion for a moment and smiled up at him. "It is all in the hips. I can show you if you want. We can share a horse in the beginning."
Spock looked up into the face of the animal again and shook his head. "I do not think that would be safe."
"Oh, Pierre has never thrown me off!" she said, gesturing at the horse.
"I am not sure that Pierre would show the same care for me," Spock said, trying to evade the horse's snout, as Pierre had taken it upon himself to snap at his cap and tug at his sleeves.
After taking care of Pierre, Marie-Claire and Spock decided to take another walk before dinner. Spock thought that maybe he would meet his shipmates somewhere. And if not, he could explore their surroundings without them and report back to them in the evening.
Marie-Claire stumbled as they left the courtyard and grasped his hand to catch herself. He pulled her up and waited for her to steady herself. As they walked on, she continued to hold his hand, and he let her, thinking that maybe she just felt she needed support on the bumpy street or felt insecure.
They rounded the corner to the main road of the village, and she let go of his hand when they saw Thompson, standing at the entrance of the inn.
"Grayson," he said, with a delighted twinkle in his eyes as he recognised him. "Treating your girl to a nice evening?"
Spock shook his head. "She is not 'my girl'. I do not possess her."
The language of the day was filled with quaint expressions. He was somewhat familiar with some but still bewildered by habits to express possession of something one could not possess. And if Thompson wanted to insinuate a romantic getaway, he would have rectified that misconception by saying she was not his girl. At least that was what he thought.
"He is quite a gentleman, is he not?" Marie-Claire gushed and looked expectantly at Thompson.
"Hm, yes, quite," he mumbled, looked back and forth between them a few times, then said goodbye and walked away, shaking his head to himself.
Spock and Marie-Claire took a smaller walk through the village. She showed him where he could find the barber, a tailor, a hatter, and many other shops and amenities. Sometimes she took his hand to pull him around some corner or to pass the street, but he did not think anything of it.
He looked through the windows as they passed the barber, thinking he could find Christine there. Thompson had ordered her to get a haircut, after all. Little did he know that Christine had gone back to bed shortly after he had left with Marie-Claire. And little did he know that most of his shipmates had been at the inn when the two of them had cleaned the public room. They had been upstairs, sitting at Christine's bedside.
When Marie-Claire and Spock returned to the inn in the early evening, Jim, Pavel, and McCoy were already sitting at a table, ready to have dinner, and he promptly joined them while Marie-Claire went into the kitchen to help her parents.
"Where is Christine?" Spock asked as he sat down.
McCoy frowned. "Oh, now you're asking. I saw you from the window, frolicking with your new friend."
"Bones, not now." Jim shook his head and waited until they all had a portion of root vegetables before he went on. "Upstairs in bed, Spock. Hasn't been feeling well the whole day."
"Not that you'd know," McCoy continued.
"That is right," Spock said. "I did not know as I was not here."
"And a great help you would've been if you had."
"Bones, that's enough!" Jim threw McCoy a stern look, while Pavel poked awkwardly at his potatoes, trying to ignore the raised voices of his superiors.
McCoy sighed. "We missed you today, Spock. What in God's name were you doing all this time?"
He raised an eyebrow. "I was exploring."
McCoy frowned again, but this time it was accompanied by a smirk. "So that's what you call it."
No one seemed willing to explain what exactly he meant, and Spock decided to let the matter rest for now.
After finishing their dinner in silence, they made their way up to their quarters. At the foot of the stairs, they were stopped by Marie-Claire.
"My room is down the hallway from yours," she said to Spock, much to his puzzlement, and left again without another word.
"Spock. They found you," came a weak murmur, followed by a cough, from one corner of the room when they entered. Christine was lying in bed, the covers pulled all the way up to her chin. Her hair dishevelled and her face flushed, it was all too obvious she was not well. And it was a wonder he had even heard her with his hearing impairment.
"They did not," he said as he put aside her uniform and flannel shirt to sit on the chair between the table and her bed as the others sat wherever they could find a spot. "I came to dinner."
"Had a nice day?"
"I had, thank you." He did not ask her in return, because from the looks of her, it was obvious she hadn't.
"That's something, at least," she mumbled and closed her eyes. She meant it, but part of her would have liked him to have been there for her as well. But she knew she could lay no claim to him. And he probably hadn't even known she was this ill. If he had, maybe, just maybe, he would have stayed.
"You just sleep, Chris," Leonard mumbled from the foot of her bed and patted her leg. "It'll all look better in the morning."
She had almost succeeded in falling asleep when a soft but insistent knocking on the door got her attention.
"Come in," Jim said, and the door opened to Marie-Claire.
She did not have eyes for Jim and Pavel sitting on the latter's bed nor for Leonard and Chris on the other. She just had eyes for Spock. With a demure smile and a twinkle in her eyes, she walked straight in his direction, her hands straightening her dress over her hips as she walked with a slight swaying motion, her eyes never losing sight of her target. Christine knew that walk from experience. This was a woman on a mission.
Spock did not seem to think anything of it, though, and everyone else was too transfixed or surprised to do anything.
"I could not wait, mon cher," Marie-Claire whispered and put one hand on Spock's shoulder. "Do you want to come to my room?"
"I see no reason to leave," Spock answered, perplexed.
She didn't pay the others any mind and shrugged. "Well, so be it," she whispered, raised the hem of her skirt, and sat down on his lap, one leg on either side.
This was the moment Spock realised he and Marie-Claire had spent the day with totally different objectives in mind. But before he could utter a single word, she breached the distance and kissed him, with a feather-light touch that quickly became more emphatic, more passionate as she leaned into him. He gasped as he felt her lips on his, kissing him with all the gentle fervour of her being. Her fingers grasped the hairs at the nape of his neck. Somewhat regaining his senses, Spock opened his mouth to say something, anything. It was not that it was unpleasant, but to be kissed in front of his crewmates like this, without warning, and have the kiss be grounded in a misunderstanding, would not do. He opened his mouth, and Marie-Claire, naturally assuming a different motive, leant even closer and pushed her tongue into his mouth. He gasped with surprise and raised his hand to gently put a stop to this. And Marie-Claire caught his hand mid-air and pressed it onto her breast so that he could feel her soft flesh through the fabric of her clothing. Spock felt the heat rise to his cheeks and decided that he would have to put an end to this less elegantly if he did not want to feed the Enterprise's rumour mill for years to come. And just when he had made that decision, Marie-Claire dislodged her lips from his with a small smacking sound. She drew back and smiled down at him, breathing hard.
"I will see you in the morning," she whispered, tracing the curve of one of his ears with a finger. She pressed a chaste kiss to his cheek, stood up and left, throwing him a small wave as she closed the door.
Spock blinked slowly, then looked around, meeting four pairs of eyes staring back at him. To his mortification, he did not even know how long they had been kissing.
Leonard McCoy was the first to find his voice. "What the hell just happened?"
Christine met Spock's look, took in his uncharacteristically flushed face and smirked. "I think the penny just dropped," she mumbled.
Spock only found it in him to nod. It had dropped, indeed. Spectacularly. And even he could acknowledge the irony, even now, of being French-kissed by a French woman, although he would not even consider admitting it. Not now.
The other two had not said a word yet. Pavel Chekov was looking at him as if he didn't quite believe what he had witnessed, and Jim was doing a very bad job of hiding his amusement.
Spock swallowed and took what felt like the first deep breath in some minutes. "Jim?"
Jim smiled innocently. "Yes?"
"You could have told me."
"We tried."
Spock tilted his head reproachfully. "Barely."
"Sorry, Spock." The innocent look vanished from Jim's face, as he noticed Spock was serious. "I thought you'd realise."
"I did not. I was merely trying to get information." He paused to purse his lips. His embarrassment was one thing, what he had unwittingly pulled Marie-Claire into quite another. "Meanwhile, she must have interpreted the situation entirely differently."
McCoy leant forward on the edge of Christine's bed. "Why? Did you make any move on her?"
Spock sighed. "Who knows? I am not aware of doing so, but there is no saying what action of mine could be misconstrued." He averted his eyes from the doctor's inquisitive gaze. "I did let her hold my hand."
Christine's eyes widened abruptly. "Really, Spock? Holding hands? As a Vulcan, too." It was unclear to him if her tone was reproachful or merely surprised. "And that didn't ring any bells? What would you think if I held your hand?"
"I do not know. That is not a scenario I tend to think about regularly," he said and raised an eyebrow at her. "As such, I cannot say what I would think. What motivation would you have for holding my hand?"
Tired and ill though she was, she smirked back, and he knew the answer then and once more realised his foolishness.
He pursed his lips again and simply nodded.
She shook her head fondly. "Oh, Spock."
Jim cleared his throat to interrupt whatever this was becoming. "I assume you didn't find out anything that'll help us get back to the ship?"
Spock shook his head. "In hindsight, I regret to say I did not. If only we could remember how we found ourselves in the First World War, I would have more of an idea of how to escape. But other than reaffirming the complexity of our situation and deciding that at least Marie-Claire feels very real, I made no advances."
McCoy grinned and said, between chuckles, "Marie-Claire would disagree. If you asked her, you made a couple of advances."
"Yes," Spock said curtly. "That is an issue I had not anticipated."
"It's only an issue if you want to do something about it," Christine murmured and smiled up at him. "You could just go with it. See where it leads." She almost laughed at his scandalised expression, but it threatened to become another coughing attack, and she stifled her laughter.
"Please," Spock protested, "you know that such a spontaneity would be out of character for me."
"That's why it's funny to imagine." Christine chuckled. "And Marie-Claire would disagree."
Jim exchanged a perplexed look with Pavel, who only shrugged back. The two of them seemed to be the only ones still willing to discuss the mission and not Spock's unwitting adventures in romance.
"But that is what we all have to do, is it not?" Chekov asked. "See where this leads?"
Jim nodded. "As long as we don't know how to get us out of this, my order stands to play along and survive." He smirked at Spock. "As for your little problem, I'd have a couple of ideas, but I'll better leave it up to you."
"I should hope so." Spock returned dryly. "For all the good it did me last time."
This time, Christine could not contain herself and burst out into laughter. She burst into violent coughs not a second later, sat up in bed, held onto Leonard, and buried her face in the crook of her arm, coughing until tears were streaming from her eyes.
"Don't do that again," she rasped as she let herself fall back into her pillow, narrowing her eyes up at Spock.
"How?" He raised an eyebrow, and his eyes twinkled. "You are amused so easily."
She closed her eyes and sighed heavily. "Count yourself lucky, Spock. Count yourself lucky." Her speech was slurred by exhaustion. "Now, go away, and let me sleep."
"Very well. Good night." He got up and stepped aside to make space for McCoy.
Leonard bent down and pulled the covers higher around her. "Good night, Chris," he murmured and pressed a kiss to her forehead. She might have already been asleep, but the corners of her mouth lifted in a small smile as he did so.
Before he, Jim, and Spock left, McCoy took Chekov aside. "If you think she needs medical attention in the night, don't hesitate to wake one of us." Christine had been holding up well but had been drowsing off in-between sentences as they were talking before and looked pretty unwell in general.
Pavel threw the sleeping woman a concerned glance. "I think she might need medical attention now."
"I know. I'm sorry to put this on you," Leonard said and sighed deeply, cursing the place and time they had found themselves in. "We can't take her to a doctor because that'd expose us. And I'm not even sure it'd do her good."
Chekov nodded. "It's no problem for me," he said and put on a smile for Doctor McCoy.
When the three others had left, he took care to get ready for bed quietly and even tried to rustle not too much as he slipped between his covers, even though Christine appeared to be fast asleep for the moment. Pavel Chekov yawned as he threw her a last glance before closing his eyes, and he drifted off to sleep almost as quickly as she had.