Chapter Eleven

Kirk groaned as he slowly came to, feeling like the time when he and that Gorn captain had had a showdown on Cestus III. Well, technically it was the fault of the Metrons, but still (1)…

"So you're more resilient than I thought."

Kirk tried to sit up, but realized that he was strapped down to the main biobed of what appeared to be a dilapidated Medical Bay. It took a while for his head to shake off the haze that had settled over it after he'd been knocked out, but once it had cleared, he immediately realized that this was a very, very bad position to be in, in a very, very bad place.

In such a situation, Kirk thought, it was always best to make some sort of crack. And in this instance, he said, "What? No gorgeous nurses to attend to me? What sorta Med Bay are you running?"

"I'm afraid I work alone now. My nurses have all died on me. No fault of theirs, really; I made a mistake in the sequencing."

That did not sound the least bit pleasant to Kirk. After realizing his head wasn't strapped down, he angled his head up so that he could see who he was talking to. It was a man, that much he could tell, but beyond that, he knew nothing. "Who are you anyway?"

The dim figure he'd managed to see at the edge of his vision came closer, and Kirk found himself staring at a tall, gaunt man, with dark haunted eyes and a receding hairline, with whatever hair was left turned salt-and-pepper in color, though whether due to age or stress Kirk wasn't sure.

The man smiled, and though it was amiable enough, Kirk didn't miss the dark, fathomless look in his eyes: frightening eyes, cold eyes. For some odd reason, he thought of Spock when the Vulcan was being more emotionless that usual, but this was a Human, not a Vulcan, and the pure absence of any kind of emotion in this man's eyes was only made all the more frightening by that fact.

The man nodded at him. "I am Doctor Colin Cabral."

Oh, shit, Kirk thought. He was in big, big trouble now. After what he'd heard from Rebecca and especially McCoy, this was not the man he wanted to meet, not right now. But he chose to give no indication of his troubled thoughts, and instead, smiled. "Nice to meet you. Mind getting me out of here?"

Cabral shook his head. "I'm sorry, but I'm afraid I can't do that. I ran out of samples to test on, long ago, so I take what I can get. At the moment, since you are the only one who is awake and aware between you and your companion over there, I might as well start on you."

Kirk's eyes narrowed at that. "Companion?"

"The gentleman in the blue uniform. He had a medikit on him – I suppose he's a medical officer? Smart, for the captain to bring a medical officer with him on an Away Mission, though I wonder what you're doing on an Away Mission to begin with."

So Bones was nearby, which was good. Alive or dead, though, was the question. "Is he okay?"

"As okay as he will ever be. I think I knocked him out a little harder. After all, he was charging at me when I found you in the jungle, so I suppose he took a harder hit from my phaser than the rest of you did."

"And what about the others? What about my friends?"

"I left them in the brig. They'll stay there for a while. Your Vulcan friend, in particular, will have to wait. If the Al Rashid's computers had not been destroyed during the landing, I would not have taken so much time doing the sequencing of the Vulcan genome on my own, but such is life. We must make-do with what we have."

So that meant McCoy and Spock were accounted for. That left only two more people. "What of the other two? The women."

"One I left in the brig. She will serve to keep my erstwhile colleague, Sarn, occupied for a while – a distasteful situation, but vital, since something entirely unpleasant might happen if I did not leave her there for him. As for the other… Well, I tried injecting her with selected genomes from the Rigel X butterfly (2), but it wasn't quite as effective as I had hoped." He bowed his head slightly in what Kirk thought was regret, but it soon became clear that it was the regret of a scientist who had encountered a minor but completely unexpected failure. "And I wanted to give her wings. She would have looked beautiful with them."

Kirk's blood froze in his veins. Which woman was Cabral talking about: Ensign Davies or Rebecca? Well, either fate didn't sound very nice to him, but being in the brig sounded marginally better than getting shot full of alien insect genomes. And didn't he say he'd left Spock in the brig too? Kirk was entirely certain his First Officer was likely trying to figure a way out, which meant a rescue party should come through the door of the Medical Bay any minute now.

At least, he hoped so.

"…no such fate for you, I'm afraid," Cabral said, but his voice was distant, and Kirk realized that he had stepped out of Kirk's field of vision. However, Kirk did hear him moving around: the clatter of metal against metal as Cabral looked through something, but when Kirk heard the distinctive hiss and click of a hypospray vial loading, he prayed as hard as he could for the cavalry to come now.

Once again Cabral appeared in Kirk's field of vision, a hypospray visible in his hand, and while the hypospray itself was an innocuous thing, there was something about Cabral and the way he held the thing that gave it an air of menace. He paused next to the biobed, hovering over Kirk like the nightmare doctor in a bad horror novel. "The Cardassian vole (3) is a very hardy species, to be sure, albeit neglected and persecuted because of its looks. But its genetic sequence indicates some promising, indeed, invaluable traits, which, if introduced into the Human genome, might provide some interesting side-effects."

Kirk choked. "A Cardassian vole?" He might've been no exobiologist, but even he was familiar with the Cardassian vole: the ugliest, most disgusting creature in the entirety of the Alpha Quadrant. And as Cabral leaned down, the hypospray coming closer and closer to his neck (why was it always at the neck?), Kirk wanted the cavalry to show up soon, preferably right now, because if they didn't, he might end up with a face no person would love – or worse.

The hypospray had gone out of his field of vision, and he could just feel it against his skin. "This won't hurt a bit," Cabral whispered. "I promise."

Kirk heard the soft, normally inaudible click of the preliminary loading of the hypospray's vial, the sound as loud as the switch of a phaser from stun to kill. He squeezed his eyes shut, and in a flash of realization understood that there would be no rescue, that he would be left to die here – or worse, he would live, but with what, he did not know, and did not want to know.

But then, just before Cabral depressed the plunger, he heard the familiar sound of a door whooshing open, and when Cabral looked up, he was greeted by a phaser blast to the face, the hypospray flying out of his hand to land with a clatter elsewhere in the ruined Medical Bay. A few seconds later, Spock's face came into view, and Kirk could not recall a time when he had been more relieved than now to see the unsmiling, unemotional face of his First Officer.

"Where's Rebecca?" he asked as Spock undid the restraints that held him to the biobed. "Was she in the brig with you?"

"Yes, she was," Spock replied, "and right now she is seeing to Bones."

Kirk followed the quick glance that Spock shot over his shoulder, and when he turned to look he saw that Rebecca was currently removing McCoy's restraints, but not before she removed the gag over his mouth. This was followed by a stream of invectives so vile that Kirk couldn't help but smile at McCoy's inventiveness, but cringe as well, to a certain extent.

"Glad to see you're alive," Kirk remarked, getting back onto his feet and buckling the utility belt Spock handed to him around his hips.

But McCoy didn't respond: instead, he whipped out his hypospray, loaded the now-familiar tranquilizer vial, and jabbed it at Cabral's neck just as the man was getting up, dazed but relatively conscious after the stun blast. "There," McCoy muttered as Cabral went down again. "That should keep him out for a while."

"Perhaps it would be best if we had Scotty beam him up, and then have him placed in the brig," Spock suggested. "It will leave us with some time to discover what he did here, and collect evidence against him."

Kirk thought it was a decent suggestion, so he took out his communicator, and contacted Scotty, telling him to beam up the still-unconscious Cabral. "And make sure you search him when he gets up there before sticking him in the brig," Kirk added. "Don't want him to go into the brig with something he could use to get out of it."

"Right you are, Captain," Scotty said approvingly, and a moment later light danced and swirled around Cabral's form, followed by his quick dematerialization immediately after.

With Cabral gone, Kirk realized he managed to breathe a little easier, and he turned to Spock with a grateful grin on his face. "Took you guys long enough, but I'm glad you showed up anyway."

Spock nodded. "There were some difficulties in effecting our escape, but we managed it handily enough."

"Cabral mentioned that a Sarn was down there in the brig."

"Yes, we found him. Rebecca insisted on staying with him, but I convinced her not to do so."

Kirk frowned. "Why? If he was in some sort of trouble she might've been able to help him."

But the look on Spock's face told Kirk he wasn't going to get any answers soon, and he wondered at what had happened down in the brig. He also noticed that Rebecca seemed to avoid looking at Spock, choosing instead to focus on making sure McCoy was all right.

Deciding to test the waters again, to see if he would get some sort of reaction, Kirk added, "Cabral said he was leaving Rebecca there for him: mentioned something about 'keeping him occupied'."

This time, he did get a reaction from Spock: but like most reactions from the Vulcan, they were very subtle. In this case, it took the form of a slight twitch of the eyebrow, and a very quick darkening of the eye. And Kirk knew what all of those things meant. What Cabral had tried to do was very, very bad, and it was a good thing that Spock had gotten her out of there before anything worse could have happened.

Kirk's communicator beeped, and Kirk flipped it open. "Kirk here."

"Sir, we've the fellow you had beamed up safe and secure in the brig," Scotty answered. "Looks like the good doctor dosed him up well; he was asleep for the entire ride. At any rate, we did find some items of interest on his person, and I'm thinking Mr. Spock will want to have a look at them."

"Excellent work Scotty. Give us a bit more time down here, and we'll be beaming up in a bit."

"Aye, aye, Captain." There was a pause, and there was no denying the slight thickening in Scotty's accent when he asked, "And what of Ensign Davies?"

Kirk inhaled, and exhaled slowly. "Dead, by Cabral's own confession." He didn't go into detail – then again, he never had to. In the year since the Enterprise started her ongoing expedition, there had been a great many losses of life. Although they had come to expect it now, it was still hard to lose one of the crew.

There was sadness in Scotty's voice when he replied, "Aye. Sad to have lost her; she was a fine person, a fine crewmember." More silence, and then, a bit more briskly, "Well now, Captain, just give me the word when you wish to be beamed up, and it shall be so."

"Thank you, Scotty." Kirk glanced at Spock as he put his communicator back into its case on his belt. "Think you can figure out what the hell Cabral was doing around here?"

Spock glanced around the Medical Bay, perhaps trying to figure out any possible places where Cabral could have conducted his experiments or stored any of his research notes. At last, he replied, "I believe I can, given some time, but comprehension of his notes will require Bones' expertise, as well as the expertise of the other geneticists on the Enterprise."

"Oh my God!"

Pulling out his phaser more on instinct than necessity, Kirk whipped around to the source of the cry, but after a tense second he realized that it was just Rebecca reacting to something she had seen as she opened what looked like a laboratory, closed off to one side of the Medical Bay.

Whatever it was, though, it must have been ugly, because both she and McCoy looked a little green in the face, and that was saying something. Kirk had never known McCoy to bat an eyelash at anything, no matter how disgusting. Sure, he'd swear and complain and carry on, but look as if he was ready to puke? Not likely.

Which meant that whatever they had seen, it was not pretty – and Kirk was sure he did not want to see it. So instead, he stayed where he was, and asked, "What is it?"

"We just found Ensign Davies," McCoy replied, his throat moving visibly as he swallowed hard. He glanced at Spock, obviously looking for something else to do. "What's he doing?"

"Digging up Cabral's research," Kirk replied, gesturing to where Spock was seated in front of a console, attention focused on the screen in front of him, and barely paying them any mind as he scanned through directories and file systems.

McCoy snorted, his mouth twisting into a wry smirk. He strode over to a nearby cabinet, tried to open it, failed, and cussed out the thing while banging it a few times until it finally opened. Smiling triumphantly, he reached in, and brought out what appeared to be a stack of data pads.

"Found it," McCoy stated, putting down the stack he was holding onto the countertop and pulling out several more data pads. "Typical researcher: never rely on the main computer system to store your research, always making extra copies and hiding them away like a squirrel with a nut."

"I have also been able to access whatever data was left on the Al Rashid's computer database," Spock said then, turning to look at Kirk from the console. "I will recalibrate my tricorder to allow it to transfer the data to the Enterprise's computer, and from there we will be able to read any information that may have been left intact despite the damage. I am hoping, in particular, that the captain's logs will still be accessible."

"Good work, Spock." And Kirk really hoped that was the case; he wanted to know what the hell the captain had done during this whole crisis, or if something had happened to force the incident to happen.

He looked around him: at the damaged Medical Bay, at the now-closed door behind which lay Ensign Davies in all her gruesome fate, at the shelves and shelves of vials containing he knew not what. The glint of something metallic on the floor caught his eye, and when he went over to find out what it was, he realized it was the hypospray Cabral had been about to use on him. With a grim resolve, he removed the vial, and tossed it over to McCoy.

"I hope you got all the information you can find," he said, "because I want to find out what Cabral was doing here, and what happened to the rest of the crew."

There was a tone in his voice, he knew, that brooked no argument, and he also saw the acknowledgement on his Chief Medical Officer's face, as McCoy nodded slowly, and put the vial in a separate pouch on his utility belt. "You'll get your answers, Jim."

"What about Sarn?"

Kirk turned to Rebecca. "You mean the guy who was with you in the brig?"

She nodded. "He didn't look too good when Commander Spock and I left him there to get to you guys."

Kirk blinked. Commander Spock? He shot a quick glance at his First Officer, but the Vulcan was too focused on his work – or rather, seemed determined to ignore Rebecca. Now this really bugged him: Rebecca never called Spock by his title unless they were on the bridge, or on official business. Well, this Away Mission was official business, but it was just the four of them. And she hadn't been calling him "Commander Spock" when they started all this, had she?

But that was unimportant right now. What was important was that they had to get back up to the Enterprise, and, he decided, bring Sarn along with them. So he nodded at Rebecca, and said, "Bring him up here, then, so we can get Scotty to beam us all back up."

"No."

Kirk turned to Spock, who had gotten to his feet at the question. "Is something wrong, Mr. Spock?"

Spock's face was devoid of all emotion, as expected, but there was something in his gaze that told Kirk he would keep on arguing his point until Kirk gave in. "I do not think it necessary for Doctor Sanders to go and fetch Sarn herself. I will need to remain here to monitor the data transfer; as such, I will take Sarn up to the Enterprise myself when I am through."

And when Kirk saw the way Rebecca's jaw tightened at that, he knew something was wrong. But he also knew there was nothing to be gained from arguing with Spock, so he decided to just agree. "Very well then. Scotty, three to beam up."

Rebecca opened her mouth, eyes flashing as she prepared to argue, but Kirk just gave her one look, reminding her of her place. At this moment, he was her commanding officer, and he would not argue with her over this. In response, her mouth clamped shut, but he could tell, from the way she stomped over to join him and McCoy in preparation for beaming up, that he had only made her angrier.

Oh, he thought with a smirk as the tiny little firefly lights of his dematerializing self shimmered around him, he'd definitely have to find out what went down in the brig.

--+--

The last time McCoy had seen Rebecca really, really pissed about something was when he'd informed their group of friends that he and Nancy Cunningham had broken up. Now, he suspected Rebecca was the sort of woman who yelled and carried on and threw things when her temper got the better of her (she was a Kirk, after all), but right at that moment, she was sitting in front of her workstation, that aforementioned temper an almost-visible thundercloud around her as she pretended to read the medical journal open on her computer screen.

Either way, McCoy preferred this sort of brooding, as opposed to the other sort, the kind she did when she was obviously thinking about Gamble and trying not to show it.

"Well," he drawled as he walked up to her, "you look mad as a hellcat in the middle of a lightning storm." He smiled wryly. "What's gotten your dander up?"

"Nothing," Rebecca replied, not even looking up at him to acknowledge his presence.

"Sure it's nothing. I mean, I've seen you shoot bolts at Spock's back, and while I understand the sentiment – Lord knows I do it – I don't ever recall you doing that. And judging from the way you look right now, I'd have to say that whatever Spock's done, it's upset you a lot." McCoy leaned back, watching as Rebecca's shoulders drooped a little. "Tell me what happened in the brig."

Rebecca sighed, and turned her chair so that she was facing him. "We had an argument about whether or not I was to stay with Sarn." She smiled up at him then. "When you have someone who's a patient in front of you, you'd want to stay. You and I, we swore the Hippocratic Oath before we started our careers as doctors, and we swore to uphold it to the best of our abilities. I wanted to stay with Sarn, make sure he was alright, but Spock wouldn't let me."

"But that's not just it, is it?" McCoy sensed something was going on here, something that didn't quite fit in with the rest of the story. He understood Rebecca's sentiment, sure, but even he knew that rescuing the Captain if he was in trouble always took top priority. Moreover, based on her files Rebecca had never shown any disposition to this sort of behavior before. So: why now?

Her sideways glance away from him told him plenty. He frowned. "This have anything to do with Gamble?"

"Sort of," Rebecca replied, after a hesitant silence. "I didn't think I could find it in myself to get angry, not after what happened. And when I got angry at Spock, to feel it again…" She laughed quietly, embarrassed. "I wanted to hold onto it for as long as I could."

McCoy sighed, but smiled wryly. "Figures. You're a Kirk – naturally the first thing you'd find is your temper."

Rebecca's eyes twinkled a little with that mischief he remembered he'd seen before in her eyes, at the Academy, but which he had not seen since she first came to the Enterprise. "One thing that ties me and Jim together, I should think." Her gaze quickly turned solemn, and she looked down at her hands, which were lying, palm up, on her lap. "I guess I should apologize to Spock now."

"Nah," McCoy replied with a snort, "he's used to it. What'd he do anyway?"

When Rebecca explained to him what had happened, he raised an eyebrow. "So he pulled rank on you? That's new."

"Well, I wasn't any better," Rebecca said with a small shrug. "I insisted that my oath as a doctor was more important than saving you and Jim. I can see now why he'd pull rank."

"Maybe," McCoy muttered, but he wasn't so sure on that. While under Starfleet regulations Spock had every right to do what he did, there was something about the way he had gone right to rank-pulling – something he'd never done before – that bothered him. It was the fastest way to get Rebecca to leave Sarn, but it wasn't as if Spock needed her to get both him and Jim out of their sticky predicament with Cabral. Spock had managed to get them out of much worse before all by his lonesome.

This only meant there was some other reason behind what Spock had done. But what the hell could it be?

McCoy looked over his shoulder when he heard the door open. "Speak of the devil," he muttered, because Spock was coming towards them, stride purposeful.

The Vulcan nodded a greeting to them both, but afterwards, turned to look at McCoy. "Am I interrupting anything?"

McCoy glanced at Rebecca, checking with her to see if this was an encounter she wanted to escape – after all, there could only be one reason why the green-blooded hobgoblin had shown up at this time. Rebecca, for her part, was looking at Spock with a calm gaze, and in no way looked as if she wanted McCoy to give her a way out.

"No," he said at last, "you weren't interrupting anything." Sensing that Spock's next request would be to talk to Rebecca in private, he backed off, retreating to another workstation that was some distance away from the two to afford them some privacy, but not too far away that he couldn't keep an eye on them.

To the casual observer, the discussion between Spock and Rebecca would have seemed relatively normal: they could have been talking about a shift change, or the weather, for all anyone knew.

But McCoy was no casual observer, and never had been. These were two people he had known for a significant amount of time: Spock because they had worked on the same starship for a year and had been in close contact with one another during that year; and Rebecca because he'd known her at the Academy. So he did not miss the slight hesitation in Spock's stance, nor the way his gaze dropped ever so slightly to avoid her eyes. As for Rebecca's suddenly scarlet cheeks, well, that was something anyone with eyes could interpret.

McCoy was still working on how to read lips, but he could sure as hell read body language pretty well.

At length, the little discussion was concluded with awkward nods from both parties, and Spock turned and left the Medical Bay. But McCoy waited until he was gone, and Rebecca was back in her chair, before he emerged from where he had been watching them.

"Lemme guess," he said, trying for sarcasm even if he knew he looked and sounded worried. "He tried to upbraid you for insubordination."

He was somewhat surprised when Rebecca shook her head. "He wasn't telling me off for that," she murmured. "It was about something else entirely."

McCoy didn't say anything, merely watched her, expecting her to tell him what was wrong. But after several moments of awkward, heavy silence and she hadn't said anything, he asked, "Is it something you can't tell me?"

"Not really. It's just…very, very embarrassing."

That bothered McCoy somewhat, but he grinned, and shrugged. "We're doctors, Becky. You and I can talk about the most embarrassing things without being embarrassed." He tilted his head then. "But if you still can't find it in yourself to just talk, I can get us some Saurian brandy. Maybe that'll help."

She laughed, and shook her head. "No, don't bother. But I wouldn't say no to a drink later."

"Fair enough. So, what'd the two of you talk about?"

Rebecca seemed to hesitate a bit, and her response was clearly a delaying tactic on her part. "He asked me if Sarn touched my face."

McCoy blinked. That was weird. "What'd you tell him?"

"I said he hadn't. Sarn had touched me on the arm, sure, but aside from that we didn't touch each other."

"Did he say why it was so important?"

Rebecca hesitated, then sighed, and answered, "Apparently, if Sarn had managed to touch my face, no matter for how short a time, it would have initiated some sort of telepathic bond between the two of us."

"Telepathic bond?" McCoy asked. "You mean like a mind meld?" He had seen Spock perform a mind meld before, for various reasons and on various entities, but he hadn't heard anything about telepathic bonding.

"Sort of," Rebecca replied. "He said it was something like a marriage proposal, something accomplished by Vulcans prior to their mating rituals."

McCoy gaped at her. "Marriage proposal? Mating rituals?"

Color rose immediately to her cheeks, and she added hastily, "Spock said since I didn't seem to be mirroring any of Sarn's symptoms, he said I was likely safe, that Sarn hadn't been able to link to me telepathically."

"What sort of symptoms? And what the hell kind of mating ritual is he talking about?" McCoy knew he was practically bristling at all this talk about engagements and mating rituals, partly because of his own terrible experience with marriage; partly because Rebecca was involved, however indirect or accidental that involvement might have been; and partly because he had a pretty good idea what Spock was talking about.

Rebecca shook her head. "He wasn't very forthcoming about it. Either way, he said I likely wasn't linked to Sarn, so there was no need to explain it further."

"Screw forthcoming," McCoy snarled, and turned on his heel, heading for the turbolift. If his assumptions were correct, then it was a good thing the Vulcan had ordered Rebecca out of there. The only thing was, he had to make absolutely sure that no such telepathic link between Rebecca and Sarn existed, because if so much as a shred of the link was there, then it could only mean a whole pit of trouble.

The turbolift door opened on the bridge, and he strode in, ignoring everyone else except the one person he wanted to talk to.

Spock looked up at him as he approached, his face unperturbed. "Is something the matter, Doctor?"

"Yeah, there is." McCoy barely managed to keep himself from growling at the Vulcan. "You and me, we have to talk. Now."

Spock's head inclined slightly in curiosity, but he nodded. "Of course, Doctor. Please, lead the way."

McCoy nodded sharply, and the two of them got into the turbolift, heading towards McCoy's quarters. As soon as they were safely inside and out of earshot of anyone, McCoy turned on Spock, and demanded, "Where're you keeping Sarn?"

"He is staying in guest quarters given to him by Kirk for the duration of his stay aboard the ship." Spock paused, eyeing him. "What is this about?"

"You know damn well what this is about, you pointy-eared bastard." McCoy glared ferociously at Spock. "Answer me straight, Spock, and none of your Vulcan prevarications on the subject, either: will Rebecca in any way suffer as a result of Sarn's pon farr?"

That must have gotten Spock's attention, because the Vulcan went very, very still, as if he had not expected McCoy to say what he had said. McCoy smirked, and tilted his head. "The documents on the subject were hard to acquire, let me tell you, since you Vulcans are so secretive about it. But I know about it because I studied the medical logs of the NX-01 Enterprise, and there was a log of their Vulcan subcommander, T'Pol, undergoing pon farr while onboard (4)."

"I know the logs of which you speak," Spock said, "and I have read them myself."

"Then you know that the log's also very patchy, and it doesn't say anything about a telepathic bond being needed as part of the pon farr ritual. And that's what bothers me: as far as I could tell from what you told Rebecca, Sarn's pon farr might actually manifest in her, too."

Spock's eyes narrowed slightly. "How did you find out? I told her very little as it stood."

"It wasn't hard piecing the clues together, even if you left out a lot of things in your explanation to Rebecca." McCoy leveled his best glare at Spock. "Now, you understand my concern. I can't have my best trauma surgeon in heat, especially since it's got nothing to do with her."

"Pon farr is nothing like 'going into heat,' as you so put it," Spock stated, and McCoy was glad to note that he seemed a little miffed by the idea. "And regarding Rebecca, I can assure you right now that she and Sarn are not connected. As you have witnessed, a mind meld requires that the Vulcan performing it place his or her hand on the being they wish to meld with; in the case of most humanoid species, it means contact with the face. Since Sarn did not touch her on the face, I believe it logical to assume that there was no telepathic link established between the two of them, hence Rebecca being safe from Sarn's more…illogical urges."

"Uh huh," McCoy muttered, not quite convinced just yet. "And how sure are you that Sarn won't just up and look for her himself?"

"He has confined himself to his quarters, with the express request that no one disturb his solitude." There was tension in Spock's voice when he spoke, and McCoy wondered if it was from anger or from something else. "I must also request that you cease questioning me about this matter. It is not something we Vulcans enjoy talking about, and we make it a point not to discuss or interfere in the pon farr of another."

McCoy raised an eyebrow. "And yet you interfered with Sarn's. You got Rebecca the hell out of there."

"It was to protect her," Spock stated, voice going flat. "I knew she would be harmed by Sarn's pon farr, hence I took steps to ensure her safety. That cannot be considered interference."

McCoy nodded, finally allowing himself to relax. "Good," he muttered. "As long as Becky's safe."

There was silence for a while, and then Spock said, "If you will permit, might I ask a personal question?"

McCoy blinked, and looked up at the Vulcan, wondering what was going on in his head. When had the Vulcan wanted to know anything personal about anyone? "Shoot."

"Is there perhaps something behind your inquiries, some other reason underlining your concern for Rebecca?"

"What're you talking about?"

Spock inclined his head slightly, and replied: "I theorize that your concern stems from a romantic attraction to her."

McCoy choked on his own saliva at that statement, and stared, horrified, at Spock. While anyone could have easily said those exact same words, to hear them coming from the cold, rational Vulcan only made them seem more real, more solid.

It was the reality of those words – formerly ephemeral and thus easily dealt with – that caught McCoy completely by surprise.

"You're imagining things," he said roughly, trying to convince himself that every word he said was true. "Becky's a friend and a colleague." He wanted to say "nothing more," but that was too much of a lie for him to get through his teeth. "Why're you asking?"

"I have seen how emotionally you respond to her, and I had assumed that it was borne of some romantic connection, but your answer tells me that I was wrong. I only wished to prove my theory correct, or incorrect, as the case may be."

"Why're you interested anyway?" McCoy had tried to sound casual, but even he heard the heat in his words.

If Spock noted it, he didn't show it, and instead was calm and cool and matter-of-fact as he moved towards McCoy's door. "I was curious, that is all." He nodded his head. "Is there anything else you wish to speak to me about?"

"No… No, nothing. Thank you for coming, Commander."

McCoy waited until Spock was gone, but even when the door had shut, he didn't move. At length, though, he swallowed, tasting how bitter the lie was on the back of his tongue, and muttered a heartfelt "Damn it to hell and back" before exiting his quarters, and heading right back to Medical Bay.

NOTES:

1 - This is a reference to the episode "Arena" from the original series.

2 - A type of insect native to the planet Rigel X, bearing a striking resemblance to Terran butterflies, hence the name. They were featured in the Star Trek: Enterprise episode "Broken Bow."

3 - The Cardassian vole is a rodent-like mammal native to the planet of Cardassia Prime, home planet of the Cardassian species. It is almost hairless, has six legs, and has similar facial impressions as those seen on the Cardassians themselves. They breed like tribbles, and have a similar appetite, but are not nearly as adorable as tribbles – in fact, it might be said they are one of the ugliest creatures in the galaxy, if not the ugliest. It has been featured in one episode of Star Trek: Enterprise, and in a handful of episodes of Deep Space 9.

4 - As told in the Star Trek: Enterprise episode "Bounty." This happened during stardate 2153. The "telepathic link" requirement was mentioned in the Star Trek: Voyager episode "Blood Fever," which occurred during stardate 2373. Although the events in "Blood Fever" occur a hundred-plus years after the timeline being used for this story (in the same manner the events of "Bounty" occur a hundred-plus years before), I think it's safe to combine cultural details scattered across various series when discussing the customs and traditions of a particular race – in this case, the Vulcan race.