Last chapter!

Considerably more at peace with himself and the world than he had been last night, Spock made his way straight to Sickbay as soon as the morning shift began. Dr. McCoy looked up at him in surprise as he walked in and half-rose from behind his desk.

"Mornin', Spock. What are you doin' here? I told you last night you didn't need another injection."

"I am well aware of that, Doctor," Spock said calmly, though his heart beat at an unreasonably quick pace. "I wish to speak with Nurse Chapel before I report to the bridge. If she is not available or is still confining herself to her cabin—"

He bristled—knowing good and well that he had absolutely no reason to—at the way the doctor's eyebrows shot up and the way his weathered face lit up in delighted relief.

"Well, I'll be darned," Dr. McCoy murmured.

Spock drew himself up to his full height. "Doctor, your euphemisms for human curses never cease to bewilder me—"

"Oh, go get yourself a sense of humor," McCoy retorted, but a chuckle softened his usual withering sarcasm. "She just came in, said she couldn't stand to go the whole duration of her sick leave. I've got her in the lab putting together some immunizations. Go right on in, make yourself at home, and for God's sake, Spock…"

Spock stopped, halfway to the laboratory door, and raised a questioning eyebrow. McCoy did not continue with his thought: he exhaled, smiled ruefully, and waved a hand.

"Never mind. Just don't say anything stupid."

Spock raised his other eyebrow. "It is never my intention to do so."

McCoy looked as if he wanted to argue on that point, but thought better of it. Spock strode into the laboratory without another word, too busy reminding himself of what Jim said to him last night to spar further with the doctor.

"I need you to let her know you don't think any the less of her. Her self-esteem where you're concerned isn't the strongest. Just a simple word from you would do wonders…"

Christine Chapel stood at one of the lab counters with her back to the door, loading a series of hypos. At the sound of the door opening she lifted her head and glanced over her shoulder. She almost dropped the hypo in her hand as she whirled to face him.

"Mr. Spock!" she gasped. Her deep voice sounded hoarse, most likely from the amount of crying he suspected she indulged in yesterday. Spock felt a twinge of something he couldn't identify at the thought and inclined his head respectfully.

"Nurse Chapel."

Christine swallowed, set the hypo aside, laced her fingers in front of her. "I suppose you want to discuss what happened yesterday, sir—and I want you to know that I am…so terribly, terribly sorry. Maybe if I'd done a better job of…of not thinking about us, they wouldn't have—"

"The fault was not yours, Nurse," Spock interrupted. "I do not blame you in the slightest. To do so would be wrong…even more so when one takes into account the fact that your thoughts were not the only ones being examined."

Christine looked as if all the breath had been knocked out of her lungs: her lips parted and she blinked rapidly before dropping her gaze altogether. Concerned that she might embarrass them both with an emotional release of tears, Spock decided it best to keep talking. He also took a few steps forward, closing the distance between them by two-point-four feet.

"I assure you, yesterday's events have not changed my deep respect for you. And I acknowledge that I wronged you by not addressing the situation with you more promptly."

Christine lifted her head in surprise. "Is that an apology, Mr. Spock?"

"It was meant as such."

She tried to laugh, but the sound disintegrated and she lowered her eyes again, hastily, to her clasped hands. He saw that her fingers were so tightly interwoven, her knuckles had whitened. He took another two steps forward.

"I find it most probable that the captain and Lieutenant Uhura have already resolved the issue to their mutual satisfaction. By inexcusable contrast, I was remiss as your superior officer and as your friend for not initiating proper communication within hours of our return to the Enterprise."

Christine said nothing for a moment. Her posture indicated she had more to say, but couldn't find the proper words. Spock waited patiently until she did find them, but when she spoke, they were not what he expected.

"We're not like them, are we?" she asked softly.

Spock frowned. "Who?"

"The captain and Ny—I mean, Lieutenant Uhura."

Spock raised his eyebrows, analyzing the statement. "They are far more similar than you and I are, that is certain. They have the advantage of both being human. Both possess intuitive and affectionate personalities—"

"And they love each other, Mr. Spock."

Spock froze. "Love?"

"Yes, Mr. Spock—love." Christine tilted her head to one side and smiled a sad, strangely sweet smile. "Haven't you ever seen the way they look at each other on the bridge? It didn't shock me at all that Parmen and Philana paired them—and it doesn't shock me if they've…how did you put it…'resolved the issue to their mutual satisfaction.' I'm quite sure they have, and it'll be beautiful to watch it unfold. You and I, though…you'll compartmentalize what happened into some little box in that wonderful, logical mind of yours, and I'll move on, pretending it didn't happen and forcing myself not to relive it every time I find myself lying awake at night."

She never raised her voice, never let even a trace of bitterness edge its way into her tone. For a moment he could think of no logical response. She knew him too well. He did tend to reduce emotionally-charged incidents down to bare, soulless elements. Often, it was the only way he knew how to process them without falling back on the human impulses still tracing through his Vulcan DNA.

But this is not like Deneva, where I could control and contain my own emotions without cont-aminating anyone else. In this case, my emotions are too interwoven with those of another thinking, feeling being. I cannot dismiss them outright…cannot suppress them…

Cannot act as though they do not exist.

"Pretending it did not happen," he began slowly, carefully, "is not the Vulcan way—nor, I believe, is it the right way. To borrow one of Dr. McCoy's metaphors, these wounds must not be allowed to fester. They must be tended to. If I have led you to believe that complete indifference is the Vulcan way, I again apologize."

"I thought pain doesn't exist for you."

"No…pain does exist. But we do not let it control us. Rather, we train our minds to control it. In the same way, you and I must train ourselves to take this experience and learn from it. We must not 'compartmentalize it,' as you say, but use it to our advantage."

Christine leaned against the edge of the counter and folded her arms over her chest. "How?"

To his everlasting horror, Spock felt his heart rate increase exponentially. This was not how he had expected this meeting to unfold—and yet here he was, about to go above and beyond Jim's advice from last night.

But it is the right thing to do. You are not dealing simply with her fragile emotions.

You are dealing with your own nature. Vulcan soul and human heart.

"I believe," he said, his voice sounding rough and unstable in his own ears, "that I should start by telling you that the experience forced me to acknowledge certain…strong emotions. Emotions I had refused to examine before, because I did not want to admit they existed."

Christine stared at him. "Emotions, Mr. Spock?"

"That was the word I chose."

She tilted her head incredulously. "You don't choose words like that lightly."

"No," he said, taking courage from the fact that he was, at least, being completely honest with her. "Nor would I acknowledge these feelings openly to anyone but the individual who inspired them."

Christine opened her mouth, shut it, opened it again. She turned very red. "Oh…"

Spock said nothing and let her compose herself in silence. She brought a hand to her face and then lowered it to her chest. She seemed to be trying to breathe normally. She turned away from him a little and gripped the edge of the counter.

"Somehow," she said, shakily, "I still don't think you're about to suggest that we follow the captain and Lieutenant Uhura's 'most probable' course of action."

Spock sighed and clasped his hands behind his back. "As I said, the captain and the lieutenant have considerable basis for a possible, albeit clandestine romance. As you said, they already…love each other. For them to take their relationship further would not be surprising to either their friends or to their culture. If you and I are to do the same, though…"

Christine looked sharply at him. Spock braced himself as his heart rate skyrocketed again.

"If you and I are to do the same," he repeated, slowly, "then you must be well-aware of what such an adjustment would require of you. My own mother will tell you that it is not easy to assimilate into the Vulcan culture, nor is it easy to…love a Vulcan."

"Oh, you're kidding."

Full-blooded Vulcans would have been horrified by the sudden twitch of Spock's mouth and the undeniably amused way in which he lifted one eyebrow. Christine's own deadpan expression shifted and crumbled as she pursed her lips together to keep back a smile of her own.

"Sorry," she said, waving her hand in front of her face. "I couldn't resist."

He shook his head. "I take no offense. Thanks to Dr. McCoy, I am familiar with the human penchant for wry humor."

She did smile at that. "You use it to pretty good effect yourself, you know." She sighed, grew serious again. "I'm not afraid of Vulcan culture or expectations, Mr. Spock. In fact, sometimes I like to think I'd fit right in—and maybe that's just some arrogant, over-emotional little voice in the back of my head, trying to convince me that I could adapt to any situation as long as…"

As long as you were there. She didn't say it outright, but Spock saw the rest of her sentence in the way her face flushed a deep rosy color and the way she stopped short and pulled her bottom lip between her teeth.

"But the last thing I want to do," she finally went on, "is to forget that you're as much a Vulcan are you are a human. If I could go back in time and change things so that you weren't so painfully aware of the way I've always felt about you, I would."

"And were you given that opportunity," Spock replied, "I would rather you did not take it."

For the third time since he entered the room, she stared at him like she didn't know who he was or what he had done with the Enterprise's First Officer. His throat felt very dry, and there was nothing to blame for that but an uncontrolled rush of human emotion he could barely control. But he took that final step forward, remembering Jim's pointed question from last night.

"It wouldn't be the end of the world if you admitted you…appreciate her. Don't you?"

He touched her hand very lightly. Christine's eyes widened and he heard her breath catch.

"You have not asked me to change my nature. I do not ask you to change yours." He paused, and then, with just a hint of a wry smile in his dark eyes, added in a low voice, "As I believe I told you once before, it would be illogical for us both to protest against our natures…don't you think?"

THE END

One reason this chapter went through so many re-writes is because it's really easy to throw Kirk and Uhura together in a joyous romantic scene, but Spock? Spock wouldn't go for that kind of stuff, and Christine wouldn't want him to. So I felt like it needed to be much more of an intellectual, über-controlled conversation, with just a hint at the end of the same kind of happiness I had in the last chapter. I always liked that line from Amok Time ("It would be illogical for us both to protest against our natures…don't you think?") because it was basically Spock admitting that he was attracted to Christine after all!

To the guest reviewer who asked about Alexander: I thought about including him in the story, but decided against it because I wanted to focus on these two couples. I like to think, though, that he became TOS's version of Keenser...but with McCoy. Perhaps he was so fascinated by the way McCoy and Spock figured out the mystery of the kironide, that he wanted to become a scientist. So he became McCoy's diminutive but highly intelligent, quick-learning sidekick. That's my headcanon, anyway.

Thanks again for all the kind reviews! They've given me the confidence boost I needed with my writing and I really appreciate every single one. .