A/N: OK, I'm a glutton for punishment, starting yet another story when I have so many unfinished and waiting desperately for my attention. Still, the plot bunnies dictate and I am forced to dance. Plus djinn1 wrote me something beautiful and inspired me to write something...total evil. A Mirroverse Spock/Chapel story. It could even be considered a companion piece to my story "The Mirror Crack'd," although stylistically it's very different. Anyhoo, I hope you enjoy this first installment. Oh, and warnings for non-con and violence and swearing - this is the Mirrorverse, ya'll, so you must know what you're in for!

Christine Chapel is used to not getting what she wants – no, strike that; she needs to be honest with herself.

She's used to not getting who she wants.

Right now, she wants Spock, wants him desperately, wants him more than she wants two of her three secret goals in life. He is First Officer and Science Officer on the ship she has served on for the past four years, and nothing she has done has caught his attention in any way – positive, negative, or neutral.

To him, it's as if she doesn't even exist.

She is used to this, not getting who she wants, but this time she is determined to have things turn out differently than they have in the past. Which is probably a sign that she has finally gone insane – the classic definition of insanity being doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results – but the situation is different, so very different than anything she's gone through in the past, and so she nurtures hope, hides it away as best she can.

Which isn't always very well, she's the first to admit that. Nyota Uhura ridicules her "crush" on Spock every chance she gets, the bitch, and Pavel Chekov has offered numerous times to act as her "substitute Wulcan" any time she wants.

She ignores them and anyone else who tries to humiliate her; she's been damaged by better than them her entire life.

Like her younger, prettier – and, let's face it, more ruthless – sister. The one who stole every boy she ever fancied herself in love with from grade school through high school graduation, and probably would have cheerfully continued doing so during medical school if a jealous wife hadn't knifed her two days after her eighteenth birthday.

The memory doesn't sting, ten years later; hell, it hadn't stung much when her mother had sent the brief comm notification hours after it happened. She and the brat hadn't ever gotten on well, even putting aside all the boyfriend-stealing. Samantha was younger, blonder, prettier, smarter – although Christine was no slouch in three out of four of those areas (impossible to be younger, after all), Samantha had always outshone her. Resentment was the primary emotion between the two of them and she still feels it sometimes when she allows herself to reminisce, as she is doing now.

Her thoughts turn to her older sister. She, unlike the other two, had been a brunette like their mostly-absent father (a brilliant, cunning businessman but not much for the day-to-day tedium of married life and fatherhood), and had fled home for Starfleet as soon as she was old enough. She'd needed it, a place where her own talents – and face it, she was the most brilliant of the three, outshining even Samantha there, much to the younger girl's intense frustration – would be appreciated. Or so she put it in the hastily scribbled note she'd left behind for Christine on the eve of her own eighteenth birthday.

Five years later, Christine, the middle child, the one not as brilliant as the older, plainer (although, grudgingly admitted, still attractive enough when not being compared to her younger sisters) one, and not as dazzling to people (especially men, silly fools) as the younger sister, is the only one left alive.

And she is determined to keep it that way, to keep herself from falling into the same traps that took down her sisters. Samantha's death at such a young age was a tragedy, according to their parents (especially their father, who'd always favored her from the time she was born) and "Number One", as she'd taken to calling herself since her beloved Captain Pike stopped using her name for some obscure reason, had become collateral damage when Pike was assassinated – and she foolishly tried to put herself between him and a phaser set on "incinerate".

No, Christine Chapel might be unlucky in love, but she is no fool.

Or so she believes, right up to the minute she first lays eyes on Roger Korby.

He is her instructor in a class she's taken more out of idle curiosity than anything else – what use could someone who planned to stay on Earth and specialize in Human neurology have for a class in exobiology? Still, it sounds interesting, and she has a free slot during her fourth year (the year after "Number One" bites the dust, as the saying goes), so why the hell not?

Roger Korby is everything Christine ever coveted in a man; handsome, arrogant but not as cruelly cutting as many of his peers, taller than she is but not by enough to make her feel small, and intelligent. Incredibly intelligent; she feels he is wasting his life teaching at an Earthbound university and wastes no time in telling him so immediately after the first time they have sex.

Apparently he takes her words to heart; fast forward a year, and Christine is standing in front of a judge, wearing an archaic white lace dress and holding a dainty bunch of white Chrysanthemums and Baby's Breath in her hand.

Roger never shows up. When Christine returns to their shared apartment on the university campus a few hours after the judge impatiently tells her to give it up, she finds a note waiting for her.

In it, Roger expresses his need to "find himself," because "deep space is calling me", and more crap she doesn't bother reading before she balls the note up and tosses it down the disposal chute.

She wishes she could do as much with the electronic notification waiting for her when she pulls herself together enough to check to see if that stupid little hand-written note was all Roger left her. It is from University Housing, informing her that, as a student, with Dr. Korby no longer affiliated with the medical school, etc., etc.

The upshot is that she has lost her fiancée and her home at the same time. Roger must have known this would happen, but he didn't bother to try and set her up anywhere else.

The news that one of his teaching assistants has dropped out and vanished with him does nothing to help her temper. She is in the Campus Housing office the next morning, arguing with a bored official that she needs to stay somewhere, and can't she just stay at the apartment for a few more days? She loses that argument, but bumps into a fellow classmate on the way out.

Apparently her humiliation is all over the medical school, even though it has been less than twelve hours since her life was upended. The other student doesn't bother to hide her gleeful expression as she explains about the missing teaching assistant – a gorgeous blonde whose father is also a wealthy shipping magnate. "So she decided to just chuck it all and go with Roger when he asked her to," she says, and Christine fights the temptation to beat her to a pulp. She is only the messenger, no matter how much malicious enjoyment she is taking from the role.

So Christine just ignores her, walks away as she tries to relate more details, to sink her claws in deeper.

She returns to the apartment and packs up her things, arranging to have most of them sent to student storage until she is assigned a room in the overcrowded dorms. She shudders at the thought of returning to that crappy set of residences. She'd been so sure Roger was her ticket to the good life, that she'd be not only a bedmate but helpmeet as well, working alongside him in research since their fields were actually much more compatible than she'd believed at first…but no. Her "unlucky in love" curse has outlived both her sisters.

She finds herself in a bar that afternoon, drinking heavily and eyeing the available men to see which one might be worth going home with. At the very least she'll spare herself the cost of a hotel, which is probably where she will end up staying until a spot has been made for her on campus.

She shudders at the thought. Ugh. She isn't made for that sort of life, she has big plans and they don't include anything that might be viewed as backsliding. Which moving into the dorms definitely is.

Dimly she realizes she is saying all this aloud, pouring her frustrations out to a rather attractive dark-haired man – Human, although not everyone in this bar falls into that category – who is now sitting at her table. She takes in the fact of his attractiveness and decides that yes, if he wants to take her home, she will go with him. The quality of the booze she has been imbibing has certainly improved since he first offered to buy her a drink – when was that? At least a half-hour ago. And here she is rambling on like an idiot and falling in and out of a brooding daze, losing time when she knows better than to drink so heavily.

She is saying all this aloud as well, and he is agreeing with her even as he pours them both another stiff one – whisky shots now. She supposes he thinks he has to get her thoroughly lathered up in order to get her to go home with him. She is about to tell him it's OK, not to bother, she's already ready to grab her purse and go, when he asks her a question that makes her blink. "Wh – what?" she stutters, certain that her alcohol-soaked brain must be mishearing him.

"I said, have you ever considered a career in Starfleet? You'd be perfect, exactly the type they're looking for. Your future could be golden," he repeats patiently. Then he smiles at her and she finds herself smiling and nodding and agreeing that yes, Starfleet might be a nice change from the disaster the rest of her life has become. Certainly it would be a great way to track Roger down and get her revenge on him. Yes, she could certainly put the remainder of her education on hold for a few years and sign on as a nurse, why not? Nurses tend to have longer life expectancies than people in command – like her sister, for example. "Nurse Chapel" would easily survive a few years on a starship better than "Number One."

Five years have passed since then. She blinks as she continues to traverse memory lane. Really, only five years? Five years since she woke up with the worst hangover she'd ever suffered, to find herself signed up for a ten-year stint in Starfleet? Not the five-year term she vaguely remembers her good-looking recruiter mentioning, but those types are liars by nature. She hopes he was mugged after cashing in whatever bonus he received for dragging her drunken ass back to his office and getting her signature on the appropriate forms.

Mugged, and maybe killed. Because now her education has been put on permanent hold, and even though she is the one who got herself drunk, he is the one who took advantage of her and therefore he needs to suffer as much as she suspects she is going to.

Suspicions that prove correct soon after she finds herself aboard her new home, the I.S.S. Tomahawk. It is a light cruiser with a crew complement of fifty, of which she is now a member, and the captain is a complete and utter pig.

He takes a week to show how much of a pig he is. She expected to meet him well before now, but once the meeting takes place, she realizes that a week isn't nearly enough time for her to try and acclimate herself to her new life.

Where her supervisor, Dr. Sarah Davidson, is coldly efficient, Captain Nathaniel Bush is, in Christine's opinion, pure evil.

Not much different than her younger sister, come to think of it, but Samantha at least never wanted to have sex with her. All her boyfriends, yes; herself, no.

Captain Bush, on the other hand, wants to have sex with her about as often as he wants to breathe, and isn't above reminding Christine that there are far worse berths to be had in Starfleet than the one she's landed in.

She has an extra set of curses for her recruiter – whose name she doesn't even know – when the captain oh-so-casually lets it slip that he'd specifically requested a good-looking blonde for the vacant nurse's position on his ship, and had paid a handsome finder's fee when Christine arrived.

Knowing that, it seems a miracle that he's managed to hold off for an entire week before summoning her to his cabin and forcing her up against the wall, placing his sweaty hands all over her body and letting her know exactly what "duties" she is expected to perform when not in Sickbay.

She endures, although the unnamed recruiter rises to the top of her hate list, even above Roger Korby, for the entire year she finds herself on that hellish tour of duty.

It all comes to a head just before her anniversary. She is enduring a "performance review," which mostly involves her giving the captain a blow job and letting him come in her mouth, which she has always hated.

When he casually mentions, as he's re-fastening his pants, that he's not sure how good an evaluation he can actually forward to Starfleet Command, she snaps.

Grabbing up a decorative stiletto from his desk, she screams and stabs him right in the crotch, twisting the blade to do as much damage as possible, collapsing to the floor with him, pulling the blade out and thrusting it into him again and again until her screams – and his – finally alert his guards that something's gone wrong and they rush into the room and pull her off his bleeding body.

Kicking and screaming, covered in his blood, she is half-carried and half-dragged to the ship's tiny brig, thrown into the single cell, and left there for hours before anyone comes to get her.

By then she's calmed down; gone numb is more like it. She knows she has just sentenced herself to either an extended visit to the Agony Booth or, more likely, summary execution. She supposes it depends on whether the captain lives or dies, although she finds it impossible to care either way. She hadn't given him anything like a killing blow, had damaged no major organs in her frenzy, but her stabs had been numerous and there was an awful lot of blood…

The captain is lying in bed in Sickbay, Dr. Davison hovering over him like she actually cares about his recovery. He waves her away impatiently, and gestures for the two hulking guards to bring Christine over to him.

She knows she looks a sight; she is still bloody – hands and uniform and bared midriff, even some that has dried stiffly in her hair. Her hands are manacled in front of her and she has been stripped of her own dagger and mini-phaser and even the deadly hair pins she has tucked into her elaborate up-do.

That up-do is now a straggling, half-fallen mess, but in spite of all that she squares her shoulders and looks the captain in the eyes. Whatever comes next, she's ready for it.

Or so she believes. "I was wondering when you'd grow a backbone," he says, and she narrows her eyes in an expression of wary surprise. "Took you long enough. I think you're ready to face life on a real starship now, a bigger ship. What do you say, you ready to transfer off this bucket?"

She gapes at him as he jerks his head toward one of the guards, who grabs her and inserts the electronic key into the locking mechanism. The restraints drop away from her wrists and he catches them one handed before looking back at the Captain. Who nods, just once, curtly; the two goons step away from Christine and she risks a glance over her shoulder to see that they have taken up position on either side of the Sickbay doors.

"Well? Got an answer for me?"

Captain Bush is…offering her a transfer. "To what, a garbage scow?" she finds the courage to ask, sassing a superior officer not being considered a good career move. However, she's already tried to perform an unauthorized testiclectomy on him, and that's an even worse career move, which makes her already screwed several times over.

He shakes his head and leans back against the pile of pillows Dr. Davidson has provided for him. He raises his arms and thrusts them behind his head, continuing to regard Christine out of the sanest pair of eyes he's ever shown her. "No, to a top-of-the-line starship. Any one you want."

His eyes glitter with amusement as she opens and shuts her mouth several times, suffering from the worst case of massive confusion she's ever felt. "Even – even the Enterprise?" she dares to ask.

Top-of-the-line starship, indeed; ever since she found herself trapped in Starfleet, that has been a goal she's secretly harbored. To gain access to the man responsible for her elder sister's death, the only one of the two deceased Chapels she gives a damn about avenging. But a year in service on this claustrophobic cruiser has dampened her ambitions – or so she thinks until she feels them come roaring back to life. If Captain Bush isn't just taunting her, offering her a prize he's about to snatch away just to see her suffer a little more before she dies – and there is a very good possibility that that is exactly what he's doing – then she covets revenge against one James Tiberius Kirk almost as much as she wants to gut Roger for humiliating her on what was supposed to be their wedding day.

Something of this must show in her eyes, because the Captain breaks into a broad smile. "Someone on board that ship you want to find, eh? Yeah, I can make it happen."

Then he explains to her that his ship is something of a testing ground for new recruits, while Dr. Davidson nods confirmation of his words whenever Christine gives her a disbelieving look – which is often enough. She's been put through the worst humiliation of her life, forced to sleep with her commanding officer for a year…just so he can judge whether or not she's ready to swim in the big pool?!

It seems insane and she dares to tell him so. Once again he takes it in stride; the man she is seeing now is so very different from the man she thinks she's come to know that she takes a moment to wonder if he's been replaced by a duplicate from a kinder, gentler universe.

She shakes off the fanciful thought and listens, really listens, as he deigns to tell her why he does what he does. "The first year, it's make or break for even recruits who willingly sign on the dotted line," he says, an expression she's not familiar with but understands the gist of. "Starfleet invests a lot of money in them, and wants to make sure they don't cave under the pressure."

"Isn't that exactly what I did?" she asks, darting a glance at where his presumably recovering crotch is beneath the blankets covering him from toes to chest.

He follows her glance and laughs, actually laughs out loud. "No, actually, you did what I've been hoping you would do since day one – no, not stick a dagger into my testicles," he adds as her eyebrows raise themselves into disbelieving half circles. "You stood up for yourself, showed you had the backbone, the balls," he adds with another wicked grin, "to fight back. Starfleet doesn't allow pussies on board their best ships; you want on, you have to show you're willing to fight for it. And that's what you did. Finally."

This is happening too fast; she's almost dizzy with the sudden change in her circumstances, from prisoner to – what, exactly? "So you're willing to sign off on my transfer to the Enterprise," she says slowly, feeling her way carefully now that the time for impulsive action has apparently passed, "just because I finally said fuck you? Sir?" she adds after a beat.

He nods. "You got it. I have a new batch of recruits to weed through; you and the rest of your fellow newbies are getting kicked off this bucket no matter what. You just earned yourself a ticket to whatever ride you want; some of the others are going to end up on that garbage scow you mentioned, because frankly they're a bunch of fuck ups who wouldn't last a day on a Constitution class starship."

"But you think I will," she replies, still not quite daring to believe him, head still spinning although she's beginning to feel a bit more grounded.

"I said it, didn't I?" He sounds irritated now. "And before you ask, you won't be scrubbing in as a gurney-pusher; I happen to know that Enterprise is looking for a senior nurse, and since Sarah here says you're more than competent at your job, I've used my recuperation time this evening to put your name in." He gives the doctor a warm smile, and she smiles back at him just as warmly while Christine wonders if this inexplicable show of tenderness is one of the signs of the biblical apocalypse.

Captain Bush returns his attention to her as the smile fades into one of his scowls, an expression she's much more familiar with. "Now show a little gratitude, a kiss for old time's sake, and get your shit together. You leave for Starbase 12 at 1100 hours."

She moves forward, slowly, painfully, as if she's the one who's been stabbed in the nether regions, but manages to lean down and give him the kiss he's demanded. It's a softer kiss than any other he's forced on her, and even though she can't say she approves of his teaching methods, at least it helps to know she hasn't spent the past year as his sex toy out of simple sadism.

No, it's a more complex sadism that's brought her to this point; a Starfleet specialty in an Empire that has more types of sadism than it does "client-planets." AKA slave worlds.

So she allows Captain Bush his kiss, returning it for the first time with a sense of enjoyment, allowing his tongue entry into her mouth and waltzing it lazily with her own before he pulls away, somewhat out of breath and eyes frankly admiring. "Damn, girl, I wish I'd known you could kiss like that before."

Then he waves her away and turns his attention to Dr. Davidson. And the ice queen does something entirely unexpected; she reaches out and offers her hand to her subordinate – former subordinate – and wishes her luck.

She even sounds sincere. It really must be the apocalypse.

oOo

Christine makes her way to her quarters, ignoring the startled looks she receives; surely the scuttlebutt has already made its way through the small crew by now. Everyone must know that she attacked the captain, that it's his blood covering her, but she imagines its more that she's still alive and walking around free that catches the attention of those she passes.

When she reaches her tiny cabin she heads immediately for the 'fresher and scrubs the blood out of her hair and off of her skin under water as hot and intense as she can stand it. If she is leaving in an hour – less than that now – then she can use up her weekly ration and skip the sonics without worrying about it.

She is leaving this ship. She is going to a post on one of the most coveted starships in the Fleet.

She is going to have a chance to kill its captain, which thought brings her up short.

Is that really what she intends to do? If she does she knows she's signing her own death warrant, but she has learned how things work in the Fleet now, how little alliances are formed and broken among the crew all the time, how everyone is scheming and plotting and always with an eye toward advancement either personal or professional. So if she does intend to kill Kirk, she knows she'll have to wait until she sees how things work on his ship.

Unless, like now, she has the rug pulled out from under her and the universe turns on its end to show her that things weren't exactly as they seemed.

She considers the idea and rejects it. If this ship is the testing ground Captain Bush described – and she has no reason to doubt him, not unless her shuttle delivers her to a maximum security prison instead of Starbase 12 – then things will be different on board the Enterprise. Oh, the scheming and plotting and backstabbing – literal and figurative – will be the same, but she doubts that Kirk will turn out to be anything other than the man she's already heard so many rumors about.

She decides to stop worrying about it until she actually arrives on his ship. But she now has three goals, and acknowledges that they might be mutually exclusive: find Roger, kill Kirk, and stay alive until she can get out of Starfleet and back to her interrupted life.

Whether she meets any of these goals is up to fate. With that thought, she steps out of the shower and begins packing.