It started to rain on their first day back. The drops started to fall in the early afternoon, after the morning manoeuvres and after most people had finished their assigned duties for the day. There seemed to be no end to the downpour, and by the early evening, the sump—the drainage channel—was overflowing, spilling the sewage over the duckboards and transforming the trenches into a positive cesspit. Every inch of the boardwalk had become a slipping hazard, and the smell was soon becoming inescapable. There was water coming from the sky and water rising from the ground. April had become May during their time in the rear area, and yet it might as well be the middle of autumn.
From evening on, the soldiers spent every possible moment in dugouts, only venturing outside for the evening manoeuvres. They could barely hear the commands to fix the bayonets, step forward, and stand ready over the thrumming of rain on their helmets and after standing and waiting for what seemed like a small eternity, scurried back into the dugouts, leaving only the unfortunate lookouts at the very front.
McCoy followed a bunch of soldiers into the bunker. It was packed with men sheltering from what seemed to have become a positive thunderstorm. In a corner, Leonard found his friends and squeezed himself in between Spock and Christine.
"Be careful, Chris," he said, taking in her soaked state. "We don't want you getting sick again."
"I'm trying," she grumbled and shivered slightly. "I could tell all of you the same."
He only grunted displeased as he looked around. She was right. Though everyone was wearing a trench coat, the water had seeped under their collars, and there was not a single dry uniform to be seen, and the smell of wet wool was spreading through the dugout. Most soldiers' hair was dry, thanks to the helmets, but that was about the only dry thing in sight.
"How are you doing?" Leonard murmured, turning to his other side where Spock, Jim, and Pavel were sitting.
"Wet," Spock answered curtly. If he hadn't been Vulcan, Leonard could have sworn he looked positively miserable.
Jim and Pavel only shrugged. There was not much to say when their state was as obvious.
After a while, some of the soldiers dispersed to fulfil their assigned duties for the night. This included poor Pavel who sighed deeply as he looked outside.
"Well, see you later. If I do not drown."
"You can swim, can't you?" Jim answered sarcastically and smiled wryly back at him.
Pavel answered this with another sigh and self-pitying shrug and followed the other soldiers outside.
"Well, at least we don't have to fight in this climate," McCoy grunted.
He had said this louder than intended and around the bunker, many nodded in grim agreement.
"That's the spirit, Bones," Jim chuckled. "Always the optimist."
"Do you think we'll have to?" Christine asked suddenly. "Fight in this weather, I mean."
It was Spock who answered. "I do not doubt that we will have to fight again soon. Rain or no rain."
"Great." She sighed and leaned back against the wall. "I wish we wouldn't have to, not ever again."
"You'll manage, Chris," Leonard grumbled benevolently. "You've managed so far. You're strong. You're a fighter if you need to be."
"But I don't want to," she murmured. "I'm a doctor, not a warrior. I'm sick of the killing. The killing I'm a part of."
Leonard nodded. "Amen to that. Not a day goes by that I don't think about the kind of orders given in battle and what orders we may get that either condemn us or the others to a horrible end."
"That's just the thing," Chris said. "The orders. All I have to do is just follow orders. Why doesn't it feel as easy as it sounds?"
Despite himself, McCoy smiled at her. "Because it isn't and it shouldn't. If it becomes too easy to follow orders without thinking about their implications, we're getting dangerously close to 'just following orders' becoming an excuse for heinous crimes."
"Still, I've found myself wishing it was easy."
"But that's not who you are."
"What do you mean?"
"To just follow orders goes against what you believe in, it goes against the essence of your being," he said and smiled fondly. "I remember you telling me once, long ago, that you were a nurse first and a member of the crew of the Enterprise second." He shook his head as she waited for him to continue. "You don't believe in following orders to follow orders. You believe in following orders to achieve the best possible outcome for everyone."
"Well, yes." Christine bit her lip, torn between her own morals and their terrible situation. "It's just a bummer that nowadays, not following orders will result in getting killed." She looked up at him and knitted her brows in an imploring question. "I don't really have a choice, do I?"
Leonard averted his gaze, looking over the soldiers huddled together throughout the bunker. Thankfully, no one seemed to have been witness to their conversation. Turning back to Chris, he answered feebly, "I…well…that's not a question I can answer for you." He shrugged and added, "Maybe our resident philosopher has something to say to that. Eh, Spock?"
Spock did not react. One place further, Jim turned his head and noticed Spock wasn't reacting but looking placidly around the bunker. He wasn't ignoring McCoy; it was obvious he hadn't heard him.
"Is it that bad?" Jim asked him. He had the advantage of sitting on the side of Spock's good ear. Still, it seemed to take him a moment to realise that his friend was talking to him.
"What are you referring to?" he asked, uncharacteristically loudly.
"Your hearing, Spock." Jim tried to keep the worry out of his voice, but he could not help but be concerned about the quality or rather the lack thereof of the Vulcan's hearing. "The doctor was asking you for your opinion."
"I seem to have missed it, then, I apologise." He turned to the other side and asked, "Which one of you wanted my opinion?" If it wasn't sad that he did not even know who had talked to him, it would have been comical.
"Me, but it doesn't matter right now," McCoy said. "Since when is your hearing this bad?"
Spock made a gesture that looked like a Vulcan equivalent of a helpless shrug. "Unclear. The quality of my hearing varies. While it is safe to say I can hear nothing on my right side, the hearing in my left ear fluctuates and seems to be influenced by the presence of background noise or other disturbances in the environment."
"Yeah, I can see that," McCoy grumbled and frowned back at Spock.
The background noises in this case were the conversations between soldiers in the shelter, not particularly loud individually but a constant murmur filling the cramped space, interrupted by a laugh here and there or a sneeze or loud exclamation. No wonder Spock had problems. The ambient noise was the very reason they could talk undisturbed without fearing for their disguise.
"Why didn't you say anything?" Jim asked.
Spock pursed his lips. "Suffering openly would not change the circumstance."
"No, but it would help us adapt the external circumstances as far as possible, you know?" Chris remarked indignantly.
To that, Spock said nothing, which was an answer in itself, and she exchanged a triumphant smirk with Jim. Being right about something was a small comfort considering everything that was going on but a comfort nonetheless.
During their first day back in the trenches, they had quietly reconciled themselves with the reality of their situation. By now, none of them doubted that the reason for their being here was time travel and not some sort of illusion. The library they had been exploring before this, with its sophisticated computers and telepathic access control must have catapulted them back in time, to events that lay recorded in the library. It would be interesting to find out, at some point in the future, why an alien library lightyears away from Earth held records of Terran history, but that was something that would have to wait until they had returned to the present. In any case, if their assumption was right, it would not have been the first time a library sent some of them into the past. But this time, they had been stuck far longer than the last time, and other than back then, there seemed to be no way of exiting. All that remained for them was to wait and play along while they hoped that either their shipmates would come to their rescue or a spontaneous opportunity of escape would open up by itself.
There was still the matter of other people not appearing to notice their decidedly non-British accents. It was the only circumstance speaking against them having travelled back in time. There were, however, many more things speaking for it, and they had other things to do, such as surviving the trenches, than to rack their brains over one contradiction. It would not get them out of here, anyway.
It had not been any specific event that made them quietly accept the fact and favour it over their initial hypothesis of a simulation but the way everything simply fit together. Everything seemed normal for this era, nothing out of place. They were aware that, in theory, a simulation could replicate those things, but still, they could not help but believe. It was the everyday lives they bore witness to that ultimately made them believe. The childhood stories of their fellow soldiers, the subdued laughter between them as they huddled from the rain, the friendly teasing of each other, and every detail that would, in the grand scheme of things, be tragically unimportant, down to the way Franklin smiled at his younger brother, Henry rolled his eyes at Williams poetry, and Elliot's wide-eyed, innocent face lit up when he was laughing at a joke, were what made them believe. It was the mundanity of human existence in an era where nothing was mundane anymore that wiped away the last glimmer of doubt that this was all real.
In the bunker, McCoy huddled closer to Chris and sighed. "God bless Thomas Burberry for the invention of the trench coat," he grunted and patted his coat. Though it had not prevented the rain from soaking his trousers from below and soaking parts of the battle dress tunic from above by running under the collar, he would be a lot wetter without it.
Spock raised an eyebrow. "I was not aware of your knowledge concerning the history of trench coats."
"I've still got it in me to surprise you then. Even at our age." Leonard smirked up at him. "And don't get your hopes up. All I know is that in 1856, Thomas Burberry invented the trench coat."
"Ah." Spock nodded. "I see. You are mistaken, however."
"What?" McCoy frowned indignantly, much to the amusement of Chris and Jim.
"Thomas Burberry is credited with inventing a breathable and waterproof coat in 1856 but not the trench coat. We are, strictly speaking, watching the development of the trench coat as it will be known, as the classic trench coat was developed to meet the needs of British soldiers in the First World War." He gestured around. "Why do you think they are called trench coats? Because of the trenches."
Leonard McCoy groaned with frustration and rolled his eyes at the Vulcan. "And there I thought I knew something you didn't know better." He shrugged. "But still, God bless Thomas Burberry. He did invent the waterproof coat." He looked suspiciously at Spock. "Didn't he?"
Very slowly, Spock's eyebrow rose again. "No," he said calmly, watching as McCoy's frown deepened. "That would be Charles Macintosh, a century ago from our current point of view. He invented a coat that was waterproof but not breathable." He tilted his head and shot McCoy a smug look. "Burberry is credited with achieving the latter by developing a garment where individual fibre strands instead of the entire coat were coated."
"That's why some people call a raincoat a mac, didn't you know?" Chris teased.
"No, I didn't!" Leonard burst out. "How could I? Who even knows that? Next, you'll be telling me that rubber boots are called that because of some guy called Rubbertson."
"I am unfamiliar with that name," Spock said, and a shadow of a smirk played around his lips that made McCoy sigh pre-emptively in expectation of what was to come. "But you will be interested to know that the British equivalent, the Wellington boot, is named after the famous Commander-in-Chief of the British Army and British prime minister Arthur Wellesley, Duke of Wellington, who fought and defeated Napoleon at the Battle of Waterloo in 1815."
"Thanks, Spock," Leonard grumbled. "I could not imagine ever having lived without that knowledge."
Spock raised his brow at the sarcasm but did not say anything.
"Now, just tell me one thing," McCoy continued. "Why do you know all of that? It's not really a requirement for being a Starfleet officer."
"That may be right, but in my case, entering Starfleet is the reason behind my knowledge." He looked around at his friends and, noticing that their eyes were trained on him in an inescapable demand to explain, he sighed. "As I was preparing to leave Vulcan for Earth to attend Starfleet Academy, my mother was worried I would be unprepared for the climate. She frequently told me to prepare for cold and rainy weather and mentioned the sensibility of acquiring such things as a duffle coat, a trench coat, a raincoat, a down jacket, and several kinds of wool sweaters, additionally to almost as many variants of footwear. Naturally, I did my research and came upon the history of the individual pieces of clothing."
"But, Spock," Jim said, smiling at the thought of Amanda fussing over her son's well-being, "Starfleet Academy is in California."
Spock nodded gravely. "Yes, indeed. I did realise. My mother's worries proved to be mostly unfounded, considering California's weather. Although the new clothes I acquired did help against the incessant fog in San Francisco."
"God bless Amanda Grayson," McCoy murmured and patted Spock's arm affectionately.
They fell silent, and their looks turned towards the exit of the bunker. The rain was pouring down in curtains, still, and McCoy wondered what Amanda would say if she knew her beloved son was sitting in a damp and muddy shelter underground, on the verge of being shot any day. But he held onto the hope that they would be rescued long before any of their relatives had any time to worry.
The next day as well was spent mainly in dugouts. A wise decision considering the outside had transformed into a nice representation of the Georgia swamps.
When McCoy had muttered as much to Spock as they returned from sentry duty, the Vulcan had regarded him with an expression of mock disapproval and had retorted that it was no wonder, then, that the doctor had turned out this curmudgeonly if his home state looked this apocalyptic.
"Well, it doesn't, and you know that!" McCoy had growled back. "It's much greener there, more beautiful in general. It's just that the swamps and marshes there are pretty wet."
"Ah, of course." Spock's eyebrow had risen to a record high. "It must have escaped my notice that the wet nature of those zones is in the definition."
"It bloody well didn't! You were there when we went to my family farm. I showed you around." Then, McCoy had noticed Spock's look. "You're an idiot," he had muttered and had shot him a signature glare before he had ducked to scramble into the bunker.
Some hours later, they were still there, in that glorified hole in the ground, each busy with their individual activities. Jim was busy playing cards with Lieutenant Thompson in one corner, with Leonard trying his best to nap on the ground next to him. Spock was sitting on a crate on the other side, watching other people write letters. A couple of steps to his right, a group of young soldiers that had come with the latest reinforcements were huddled over a single piece of paper, the discussion appearing to revolve around some cousin at home who had become entangled with a brother of someone else who was in love with the sister of yet another of the group. Spock had quickly lost track of the conversation, almost as fast as he had lost interest. He knew Christine would have been intrigued to find out more. But at this moment, she was much too busy peering over Pavel's shoulder to see what he was writing to Marie-Claire. Pavel was crouching on a crate between the two others, scribbling away at the letter on his knee. From what Spock could see, he was trying his hand at poetry.
"What rhymes with 'smiled'?" he asked suddenly, confirming Spock's suspicion. "I have 'died', but it is only a near rhyme."
Spock leant over his shoulder to take a look, mirroring Christine's posture on the young Russian's other side. "Beguiled," he said, "filed, mild, piled, child."
Pavel shrugged. "Well, but they do not fit the rest of the line. I will have to leave it at 'died'." He sighed. "Can't you write it for me?" he asked half-jokingly. "This feels so clumsy to me."
"I cannot," Spock answered immediately. "Even though I could perhaps write a poem that felt less clumsy to you it would defeat the purpose entirely. If you wish to express your feelings, Mr Chekov, you cannot have someone else do it. To express yourself, you have to put everything of yourself into the poem. However clumsy that might feel, because that, too, is part of what makes it yours alone." As he paused, a small smile played around his lips. "Now, if I wrote a poem, or if we took a poem by a known author, Marie-Claire might appreciate the rhymes and rhythm, the metre and the structure, but she will never truly see the essence of your feelings in it because you would not have put your soul in it." He shook his head softly. "Your poem is good as it is, Pavel. She will like it."
"Why, eh, thank you, Mr Spock," he stammered, looking at him incredulously, then back at his sheet of paper.
"Why don't you read it to us?" Chris asked.
"I don't even know if I will send it," Pavel protested.
"Well, you can still read to us and decide then."
"But why?"
"Because I am asking you." Christine put on one of her sweetest smiles. "Please, Pavel. Do it for me. We don't have a lot of nice things around here."
"And you think my poetry is one of them?"
"Why, yes. I'd like to hear it. Please."
Pavel shrugged in mock surrender. "Don't say I didn't warn you." He cleared his throat as Spock and Christine waited for him to begin. "All right, here it is:
My beautiful, my dearest Marie-Claire,
How do I miss your golden hair,
Your ocean eyes, the way you smiled,
Their merry shine that never died
But when I went away.
As I looked out to No Man's Land,
I wished I could hold tight your hand
And tell you in quick, whispered words
How much I like you, how it hurts
To be apart from you.
Atop us men, larks singing flew.
I wish they'd take my song to you,
A song of love and longing sweet,
Of hope that we shall gladly meet
When I come back to you."
He raised his head and blushed when he noticed the silence that had fallen around them. Some soldiers in the vicinity who had interrupted their activities to listen even applauded, causing Pavel to smile bashfully.
"See?" Chris said. "Can't be that bad."
Pavel only rolled his eyes and returned to writing, to finish his letter.
This interaction was silently watched by Spock. The intricacies of paying generous compliments through light teasing still baffled him at times, though he liked to think that by now he had a pretty good grasp of it, practised as he had with McCoy.
"Oh, Chris," Pavel piped up again, a mischievous smirk on his face, "Marie-Claire's sister is visiting."
Spock noticed that he was speaking louder than usual, so loud that some of the soldiers nearby, including Eli Jones and Thomas Cooper who were sitting closest to them, might overhear. But Spock's warning looks seemed to go unnoticed. Or—worse but more likely—Pavel was ignoring them.
"And?" Christine asked.
Pavel shrugged innocently. "Well, she thought you might like to get to know her."
"Why would she think that?" Christine frowned. "What have you done?"
"I have done nothing. Yet. This is Marie-Claire's doing. She thought you could take a liking to her. And I agree."
"You agree? Why?" she hissed. "And for heaven's sake, lower your voice. People are staring."
"Marie-Claire says her sister, Joséphine, is somewhat of a prude but that she has a good heart," Pavel said, ignoring Christine's reproach. "And she's a nurse, Chris. She's on holiday for a few weeks, and I think you'd get along very well."
"Have you forgotten my circumstances?" Christine groaned through gritted teeth. She looked around, noticed Eli and Thomas were watching them with unabashed curiosity and sighed with exasperation, as she noticed she was too late to save this situation.
"You could go out with her," Pavel continued cheerfully. "You seem to have a thing for prudes."
"A thing for prudes?" Spock, who had watched their exchange with mild curiosity, asked. "Should I take offence to that?"
Pavel shrugged. "If you ask, yes. Probably."
Christine shook his head at Spock to tell him to be quiet. He might mean well, but especially with the other soldiers' attention on them, he wasn't helping.
Spock misunderstood her look, though, and, being half deaf, seemed to have miscalculated the volume of his voice. "I doubt Christine would be pleased with that arrangement, considering the situation."
"Well, if it wasn't for the disguise, I wouldn't say no. If you catch my drift." Christine chuckled wistfully, not even noticing that Spock had just called her by her given name in front of the other soldiers. They were not calling themselves by their chosen names in private as much after all. Usually, it was harmless. This time, it would almost prove fatal.
"That was the point I was trying to make," Spock returned, likewise ignorant of his blunder.
Meaning well, Eli Jones scooted closer with his crate, followed by Cooper, and asked, "Who's Christine? Is she your sweetheart, Chris?"
"And what disguise are you talking about?" Cooper added.
"Come now, let the boy have some secrets," a deep voice interrupted their prodding. Lieutenant Thompson had come over with Jim and Leonard and was looming over them.
"We're only making conversation, Lieutenant, sir," Thomas protested.
"Conversation, huh? Sounds to me like you're being nosy. A man's private life is his own, boys. And if Chris here doesn't want to talk, let him be silent." He pulled over a crate and lowered himself onto it across from the others while Jim and Leonard sat next to Spock and Chris respectively and watched the proceedings apprehensively.
"Then, again, I can't deny being curious myself," Thompson said after a few moments of expectant and apprehensive silence. "Who is Christine, my boy? Your sweetheart?"
Christine rolled her eyes but opted for going along with yet another lie. "Yes," she sighed in mock surrender.
"Well, there's no shame in it," the Lieutenant chuckled. "Hm. Christopher and Christine. Has a nice ring to it."
"Eh, yes." She shared a mortified look with Leonard.
"Well, why'd you never tell us?" Thomas continued. "Is she ugly?"
"No!" Christine exclaimed, then realised by the looks of her shipmates that were half amused, half cautious, that she would have fared better had she said yes. "No, that's not the reason," she said awkwardly.
"Well, what, then?" If England could have won the war by merely asking questions, it would have won it already through Thomas Cooper alone.
Chris lowered her head in what she hoped would be perceived as regret. "Well, she's not my sweetheart anymore. She left me for another."
"Now, don't look so dejected," Thompson said as he stood up. "You can still rekindle the romance if you still feel for her and she is still free." He shrugged and smiled benevolently. "It worked like that with my wife, after all, my dear Mary."
"Wife?" Chris asked, trying to change the topic. "You're married?"
Thompson scoffed. "Yes, I am. You could know that." He shook his head in disbelief as he looked at the group of them, sitting in a row on the crates. "You're a queer bunch. You don't talk about yourselves, and you don't ask questions." Shaking his head once more, he bade them goodbye then and left into the torrent outside, to return to his duties.
"What about you, Jack?" Eli asked after the Lieutenant had left.
"What about me?"
"Do you have no one to write to?"
"That is correct," Spock said stiffly, conscious of the fact that Christine's momentary misfortune had been almost entirely his fault.
"No sweetheart at home?" Thomas asked. "Is it because of the ears?"
"I would not say that, no. My ears have seldom been a problem."
"Oh, so you had a sweetheart or two." As Thomas said this, Spock was vaguely aware of McCoy rolling his eyes. If at him or Cooper, he was unsure. "Tell me about it. Give me some names," Thomas prodded.
"There was…" Spock faltered for a moment. He looked over at Christine who frowned abruptly and shook her head. He swallowed and pursed his lips. He doubted the name T'Pring sounded very British. "Tiffany was one," he said, hoping for the best.
"Huh. Tiffany," Thomas said with a grin. "See, was it this hard to talk about your personal life?"
"Yes," Spock answered drily, evoking a hearty chuckle from the two young soldiers.
"Tell me about Tiffany, then."
Spock was seriously tempted to roll his eyes at Cooper at this point. But Eli's and Thomas's eyes were trained on him with rapt attention, and his shipmates seemed eager to see what he would come up with. And Spock had to admit, after all, that conversation about their lives and stories from home constituted an integral part of life in the trenches and would serve well to build trust. Telling the complete truth would be no good. Considering the circumstances, he would have to modify it, a fact that would amuse particularly Jim and McCoy to an inappropriate amount.
"Tiffany and I were betrothed when we were very young," he began hesitantly. Next to him, Jim shot him an encouraging, if amused look. "She was my sweetheart, so to say, for some years. Certain circumstances did not allow me to stay home for long. I spent more time away from home than there with her. When our time came to marry, she had another."
Thomas's smile had vanished, and he was looking at him not without compassion. "So, you broke it off?"
Spock nodded. "One might say so. She left me at the altar."
"Good Lord," Thomas whispered. "Now I'm sorry for asking. Were you happy, at least?"
"Excuse me?"
"Were you happy? When you were together?"
Spock raised an eyebrow. "I do not know."
"Well, there's your lesson, Cooper," McCoy grumbled. "Don't ask this one after his private life. He'll either tell you something so boring you fall asleep, or he'll spoil your mood with his family trauma."
Spock shot him a disapproving look, but he recognised that the main reason behind McCoy's teasing was to lighten the mood and to try to draw the attention away from him, as he must have noticed he was getting more and more uncomfortable.
Eli was more overtly compassionate, if misguided. "You don't need a woman to be happy, Jack," he said gently.
"But it does help to have someone," Thomas said. "You're not interested in getting to know someone, I take it? Didn't Paul here mention someone in the village? A sister of Marie-Claire? Some Joséphine?" So he and Eli had indeed overheard Pavel earlier. How unfortunate.
"He did mention her," Spock said grimly. "And I am definitely not interested in any kind of courtship."
"Why?" Thomas grinned again. "What's holding you back?"
"I am sure that you remember what happened with Marie-Claire."
"Oh, I remember." Thomas was still grinning, joined to Spock's chagrin by Jim and Leonard. "Well, maybe we want to spare that family any more misfortune."
"What about you, Chris?" Eli asked then, "Didn't Paul ask if you wanted to get to know Marie-Claire's sister?"
"Oh, well. He did, yes."
"And?"
"And what?"
"What do you say?"
"I, well, certain things are standing in my way." She realised she could have just said she did not want to, but that would not have discouraged Thomas. And it wouldn't even be the truth. She felt herself blush.
"Such as your former sweetheart," Spock supplied helpfully, shooting her an intent look.
"Yes," Christine said quickly. "My old sweetheart. Christine. She may not like me getting involved so shortly after we split. There was jealousy in play."
Thomas shrugged. "Oh, I know."
"You know? Oh."
"Well, you were talking about her minutes ago. And of course, we listen when it concerns getting our Chris a woman."
"Stop it, Thomas," Eli said. "You're making Chris uncomfortable."
"I know." Thomas shrugged, and his grin morphed into a benevolent smile. "But you've got to hear some uncomfortable truths if you want to be happy. So, you and that Christine were madly in love and split up. But you have got to move on. I heard all I needed to hear." He nodded at Chris's astonished look. "Yes, I did. You said something about a disguise. You hid things from her or she from you or both of you from each other. In any case, you weren't honest with each other about your true feelings or certain activities on the side. And you are blaming yourself for how it ended. Isn't that true?"
Chris nodded, seeing no reason to disagree. "Why, yes."
"It was a very nasty split," Jim added, and Pavel and Leonard nodded while Spock just continued to watch how the situation unravelled.
"But in spite of how it ended," Thomas said softly, "you are still pining after her."
Chris nodded emphatically, seeing her chance to get out of this. "Yes! I can't just go after another woman now."
"Chris. Chris, no." Thomas Cooper shook his head in disbelief and exasperated pity. "Chris, after how it ended? I don't need to know the details to know there's no going back to that. I can see that you might never try to meet someone new if we don't help it along." He pointed at himself and Eli.
"Eh, why don't we leave Chris alone?" Jim interrupted. "If Chris has reasons for not wanting to see someone, we should respect that."
"He did say he wouldn't be disinterested if it wasn't for his situation," Thomas retorted.
Jim exchanged an awkward glance with Chris. Thomas Cooper's ability to listen when he wasn't supposed to was outrageously well-developed.
Cooper leant forward on his box and patted her knee. "So, Chris, get over your old sweetheart Christine, and put yourself out there."
"Don't be shy," Eli added. "You're handsome and intelligent, you're all women want."
Thomas snorted. "I don't know about your Sarah, but there's a bit more to it than that, Eli." He shrugged once more. "Anyway, Chris might just be what Joséphine likes." His eyes narrowed for a moment as he looked at her. "I don't quite know if Joséphine is what Chris likes, but that's not an issue I can solve."
Chris stared back at him and swallowed hard. "There isn't an issue," she said quickly and turned to Pavel. "Paul. Brother, dear. Write back to Marie-Claire that I want to meet her sister."
"That's my boy!" Thomas exclaimed.
Pavel bent over his letter and added a few lines. Over his shoulders, Chris met Spock's raised eyebrow and shrugged at him. If she was lucky, people would forget. If she wasn't lucky, the worst that could happen was that she'd find herself entangled in yet another lie. Spock pursed his lips and nodded back, agreeing nonverbally. Pavel at least had the decency to look apologetic as he wrote the fateful lines, aware that he had gotten her into this, while Jim and Leonard who had not been there for the earlier part of the conversation looked at her with a mixture of confusion and amusement.