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Spock ignited the device and held it on the candle wick, he kept his grip steady until the flame began to take hold. It would burn without his assistance now.
The young Vulcan surveyed his quarters, counting no less than 45 candles scattered around the perimeter. The burning smoky tendrils reached his nose, and he inhaled deeply. The effect was instantly calming, bringing forth memories of Vulcan rituals and ceremonies. His mind might finally be ready.
Spock made his way into the centre of the living space, settling down to kneel on one of the dark cushions he used for meditation. His hands fell to rest against his knees whilst he took in a further calming breath to steady his mind. The hourglass remained toppled on the floor near the entrance to his bed-chamber, a testament to the outburst he had only just managed to contain. Peace had eluded him for 31 hours and 21 minutes. It would elude him no longer.
He regulated his breathing into a standard pattern, focusing on the spices burning in the air, spices from Vulcan - from home. It was not often that Spock had to utilise all of his grounding techniques to achieve a deep meditative state, he could blame the hectic past few weeks for his lack of emotional control but that would be counter-productive. No matter the reason, he had to seek the ever-illusive balance. Spock closed his eyes, leaving behind the darkened quarters to enter his mind.
Breathe in, breathe out.
Chimes twinkled around his head, soft strings plucking atop each other. The faint music in the background started to pick up, a piece recorded over 2 centuries ago in the great hall on Vulcan, a grandiose structure which still stood to this day.
His heart rate slowed enough for Spock to feel himself drifting, halfway between this world and his mind. Where he could banish these emotions for good. He could not afford to feel so… human.
Ding
The chime sliced through the melody wrenching Spock out of his inner-most space. The sound was so foreign and shocking against the peaceful mediation he was beginning to achieve. He imagined it would be like being transported from the dry heat of a Vulcan summer, and being thrown into the freezing winds of Andor.
Ding
Spock’s eyes flew open as he emerged fully from the fugue state. There was no mistaking what that sound was and what was expected of him as a senior officer; one was never really off duty. The young Vulcan unfolded his long limbs and gracefully rose to his feet, pushing down the annoying feeling this interruption sparked. He wasn’t anywhere close to being finished with his mediation.
“Come.”
The door to his quarters swished open and a blonde-haired figure crossed the threshold, bright blue eyes taking in the darkness of his quarters and fixating on the many candles he had set up in the living space. Nurse Chapel turned her dazzling smile his way and some of that annoyance dissolved beneath its brilliance.
He had expected to see the Captain enter or possibly Number One, but his prediction had been incorrect, he’d missed something in his thought process. Yet another reason why he needed to return to meditation to regain his balance.
“There you are.” She strode into his personal quarters without so much as blinking, eyes fixed on his face. “I’ve been looking for you all over.”
Spock tilted his head a little, a smile tugged at his lips against his wishes. “I did not realise I was being hunted." Why did he find himself so at ease with this human?
Against all possibility, Christine’s grin brightened. Dressed in white as she was, with her platinum blond hair against the backdrop of his darkened quarters, Spock could see how a human could describe her as a visiting angel. Not him of course, but another could have.
"Careful Spock, don't tempt me."
There was that pang in his chest, her words seemed to reach a part of him that he was unaware of. It was unsettling, how much her teasing affected him.
Christine seemed charmed by his silence, she glided into his space and took a better look around his quarters, all the Vulcan trinkets and artefacts, the many candles and his mediation space. Spock watched quietly as her gaze wandered from one thing to the next, her eyes gleaming with new knowledge. He felt a little awkward just standing there, so clearly being the object of her attention. Spock folded his hands behind his back and strove for peace, falling back on the faint hum of music in the background.
Nurse Chapel spotted his lyre. She headed over to the wall, intrigued smile on her face. Her delicate fingers reached out to pluck the strings, turning his way with the look of somebody who had just discovered a great secret.
"I didn't know you play."
"I do not play in public." Was his explanation.
Christine frowned a little at that, her fingers going over the instrument, taking in all its curves and edges. "You should."
Spock did not usually resort to being so abrupt but he couldn't just stand there whilst Christine rifled through his world. He needed to return to his mind.
"Was there something you need of me?"
The nurse dropped her fingers from the instrument and walked over to where he was standing, a knowing grin fixed upon him. "I'm not interrupting anything am I?"
"Yes."
Spock realised his error a moment too late, his fellow crewmates did not respond well to such honesty.
Christine just laughed at his response, testing his behaviour model for the second time that evening. "I love our conversations, Spock, you're the only one not too scared to be honest with me."
"Why would I fear you?"
Her grin turned predatory, and he noticed her fingers dance over the hypospray at her belt. "Because I'm one hell of a shot with this."
Her response was perplexing, but he didn't have the chance to point out just how nonsensical that sentence had been, because suddenly Christine was sitting herself down on one of his mediation cushions in a flurry of motion.
He stood there for a moment, frozen until she gestured for him to sit opposite her. The irony of the situation was not lost on him, Nurse Chapel was more in control in his quarters than he was.
"Sorry to barge into your personal time Spock but I need someone to talk to."
Spock folded himself onto the cushion opposite hers, mirroring her seated position subconsciously. "Majalis?"
Christine squinted at him suspiciously, her head tilted. "Are you sure you're not psychic?"
"Hardly," Spock replied calmly, settling into the cross-legged position better. "It is simply the logical conclusion based on recent events."
"Hmm," Christine replied, gaze going distant as she looked at something over his shoulder.
Spock refused the urge to find out what she was looking at.
She dropped her gaze to the cushion, shaking her head. "He was a really good kid, smart you know?"
Spock did know, he'd been having trouble getting the first servant out of his thoughts. Such a bright young mind lost, it was as humans would describe - tragic.
"He impressed me too."
Christine flicked her eyes up to his, something warmer there. "High praise from the flagship's Chief Science Officer."
Spock said nothing, and Nurse Chapel declined to comment further leading to a strained silence. He wasn't exactly comfortable giving advice when his own mind was unbalanced but Christine had come to him for assistance; according to Cadet Uhura, his pep talks needed practice.
"There is no need to feel guilt, we were only doing what was asked of us, offering aid to those in need."
Christine chuckled darkly. "If only it were that simple." She leaned forward on her cushion, bright blue eyes piercing into him. "We delivered that child to them on a platter Spock, hell we even killed his rescuers."
"They were not rescuers at the time, they were in fact behaving as kidnappers. If only they had communicated with-"
"With the big ship that was intent on delivering the first servant to his sacrifice ceremony?" Christine interrupted, sarcasm emerging in spades. "Come on Spock, we were on the wrong side of this one from the beginning."
There was no reason for her to be feeling any guilt; she had simply treated the child. "Being unaware of the 'sides' does not constitute guilt, you were not responsible nor culpable for any of the events that transpired."
Christine looked him dead in the eye, purging her expression of emotion that rivalled his control. "Neither were you."
Spock blinked rapidly and leaned away from her intense gaze, catching himself at the last minute before he revealed just how unsettled her words had made him. "We are not talking about me."
"Aren't we?"
He replayed their encounter back in his mind at full speed, brain ticking over behind his eyes. Spock saw it at once - the ruse. Nurse Chapel was not here to ask for his advice, she was here to pry. It was a clever strategy, to hide her intentions behind a plea from a friend. He felt his cheeks flush a light green, how easily she had fooled him. "I hold no guilt over the encounter."
Liar.
Spock ruthlessly quashed the thought before it was allowed to manifest in his mind, this was not the time for a mutiny. Chapel held nothing back.
"Oh, is that why you haven't slept in 32 hours?"
At his questioning look, Chapel pointed to her tricorder. "I got an alert."
Spock felt the temperature begin to rise in the room, yet he had not adjusted the environmental controls. "That seems like an invasion of privacy."
"You don't deny it then?"
Spock could see now that this wasn't his friend Christine visiting him, but the formidable Nurse Chapel who had seemingly found a patient to target. He was not going to be that patient.
"I was meditating, it is a Vulcan custom."
She smiled, but it didn't reach her eyes like before. "It sounds a lot like running away to me, from things such as sleep and sustenance. You know, the basics of keeping us humans alive. I hear Vulcans require that too."
Spock didn't miss the emphasis on the distinction between them, how he had instigated it and she had replied in kind. It had been petty of him, a defence mechanism to stop her prying too deeply.
"I apologise, I did not mean offence." He looked uncertainly around the room, at the many home comforts that were witness to his weakness. Spock did not intend to tell Christine about his troubles meditating but he couldn't find it within himself to keep this from her.
"I find myself more troubled than usual..." He began quietly, gaze locked on one of the flames of the candle, focusing on a single stimulus to help ground his racing mind. "I..." He gulped and finally forced his head to face Christine. "Meditation is my method of dealing with such things."
Christine's features relaxed, rearing back the attack after hearing his apology. "You were the one to find the boy after he had been transported away." She confirmed, not unkindly.
Spock felt a familiar feeling in his chest, a clenching of sorts that was wholly uncomfortable. Guilt.
"I did."
Christine shrugged helplessly. "He was sending out a distress signal, he was asking for help."
"I sent him to his death."
There they were, the words that he had not been able to say even when it had just been him to hear them. How Christine had coaxed them from his soul... That was a mystery which had no place in the world of logic.
Chapel sighed heavily, and then very slowly so as to not spook him, reached out to grip his hand. Spock stared down at her delicate fingers, sending pulses of warmth through his skin. Her tug had him staring back into those all-seeing eyes.
"No, you didn't Spock. The Majalans did that all by themselves."
Perhaps Spock had needed to hear those words from an outsider, from somebody who would not lie to him simply to make him feel better. Whatever the reason, he suddenly felt something loosen in his mind, which was wholly illogical. Why had meditation not performed this function as it should have?
Christine took his silence as a good sign and drove the point home. "There was nothing more any of us could have done, and beating yourself up over it isn't going to change that."
"I was not beating myself up." Spock quipped back hotly, steadfastly refusing such claims.
There was that infernal smile again, the one which suggested an omnipotent level of knowledge. "Whatever you say, Spock."
Before he could contest the comment, Chapel had released her grip on his hand and had smoothly risen to her feet. Spock wordlessly copied her, struggling to keep up with the twists and turns of this conversation. She took out her hypospray and tilted her head to the side, a wicked grin appearing once again.
"You have two choices, either you submit to eating some food and getting 8 hours of straight sleep or I'll sedate your ass and hook you up to some grub the old-fashioned way."
Spock had taken a minute step back once the hypo had appeared and he had been wise to do so, Nurse Chapel was unpredictable and he may only have seconds before her goodwill vanished. He did not want to know what the old-fashioned way entailed, not even for curiosity's sake.
"Assault will not be necessary." He eyed the woman before him cautiously, reassessing his threat level of the Nurse. "I will heed your advice."
Christine scrutinised him for a few moments before becoming a flurry of movement. She re-holstered her hypospray and threw him a charming grin. "I always knew you were smart."
Spock watched, bemused, as the force of nature swept out of his quarters just as quickly as she had swept in. Not without a final parting warning of course.
"You've got 30 minutes to hit the sack, Spock." She called out over her shoulder, right before the doors to his quarters slid closed. "I'll be watching."
Spock watched the doors clang shut. He stood in silence in his darkened quarters, still trying to process the abrupt turns of that conversation. He was going to have to devote more of his efforts to keeping up with Nurse Chapel.
He snapped out of the stupor pretty quickly, calculating that he'd already wasted 2 precious minutes. Spock did not doubt that Christine would be back if he did not follow her medical advice, and he detested sedatives.
The young Vulcan made his way to the food replicator and programmed in some simple soup, his stomach was not up for much despite the lengthy time he had fasted. At least Christine would see that he was following orders. Spock settled down to sip at the steaming bowl. He thought about stopping the Vulcan music or putting out the candles but decided against it. He was finally in a calmer state of mind and he would need all of his grounding techniques to sleep peacefully as ordered.
As Spock contemplated the encounter he realised that his emotional state had partly stabilised. A 5-minute talk with Christine had soothed his inner battle far more than 31 hours of deep mediation had achieved.
Fascinating.