True Colors 

	For once in his life he had been the selfish one, and now he paid for it.  In the past he had been invited to join in when the others had their parties, had been asked to participate in the games and recreation, had been asked to dinner.  Sometimes he accepted, sometimes he declined as was his prerogative.  But since his return and the initial shock wore off he had been summarily forgotten.  It was the result of two and a half lost years, but he did not complain.  He used the solace to his advantage.  He kept the ship’s night cycle to avoid everyone altogether.  It made it easier than the awkwardness of unfulfilled expectation.  
	The rec rooms were usually empty at 0200 to the cleaning and maintenance crew time to work undisturbed.  Choosing his main meal of the day he went over to one of the smaller booths that had already been cleaned and was about to start on the noodle portion of the selection when a soft voice asked, “Mind if I sit here?”
	Christine Chapel stood with a cup of coffee and a book.  She was supposed to be off duty and presumably asleep at this time.  Spock hesitated so long that she took it as a no.  Without dropping the quiet smile she’d worn she bowed her head, “Sorry to disturb you.”
	She moved to another clean table closer to the star ports.  Spock considered and put the plates back on the tray and approached her, “Dr. Chapel I regret giving you the impression you were not welcome.  I can only say I was startled anyone else was awake.  I am usually alone here at this time.  May I join you?”
	She nodded at the chair.  “No use dirtying up two tables.  I’m not normally up at this time but some nights I just can’t sleep.  I can see why you prefer to eat now though.”
	“You can?” he asked curious as to her insight. 
	“The peace and quiet, supper is usually pretty boisterous.  I imagine 2 ½ years in seclusion makes you prefer the quiet.”
	Spock thought a moment, “At times.”  Once again he started on the noodles, and Chapel took up her book knowing that he preferred to eat without being disturbed.  It was the Vulcan way.  It was not long before he was done and taking up his tray and going to deposit it in the washing unit he refilled the tea and returned to find Chapel’s feet propped up in the chair he’d been sitting in.  She moved them, “Sorry, didn’t realize you’d be back.”
	It wasn’t the way she said it but the look in her eyes that gave Spock the impression that he’d just been slapped in the face, hard.  He considered leaving but something in him needed to know, “I do not understand.”
	“Huh?  You got up and left without saying anything.  I assumed you were done.  What’s there to understand?” she answered in a bit of an annoyed tone.  
	The Vulcan locked eyes with her.  For five years he’d seen an oddly pleased glint in them when she looked at him.  Now he saw… wariness as if she was trying to figure out what he really wanted and didn’t trust him.  “I want nothing,” he said suddenly.  
	“Spock, I think the lateness of the hour has me all screwed up.  I can’t make heads or tails of this conversation,” she sighed and shut the book.  “Good night.” 
	“Dr. Chapel, please, wait,” he called and went after her.  They walked partway around the deck eight saucer section.  Christine didn’t know where the hell he was going but she was going to bed.  At her door she came to an abrupt stop, “Thanks for the escort home but again, goodnight.”
	“Why do you run from me?” he asked noting they’d gone four hundred meters at a fast field march.  
	Her blue eyes were a smoky gray in the dim light, “You’re the one that ran Spock, not me.”
	Again the verbal slap across the face, she’d learned a lot from McCoy about the smiling insult.  
	“If you refer to the fact that I left 2 ½ years ago to pursue the Kohlinar that was my choice to make,” Spock stated.  
	“And the fact that no one knew why you left so everyone thought it was somehow their fault was also because of your choice,” Christine revealed sadly.  This was not a corridor suited topic and she offered, “Please come in if you wish to discuss this further.”
	Spock was right behind her.  Finally he found someone who could talk to him.  
	“Excuse me a minute,” she said and ducked into the bath.  It gave Spock a moment to think about what she’d said.  When she reappeared she’d changed clothes and taken down her hair.  “Drink?” she asked cordially and picked one of the large glass decanters that she used for ‘functional’ décor.  
	“No, thank you.  There was no one at fault for my decision,” he insisted and took the seat across from the desk.  
	“Really, could’ve fooled us.  Were your ears burning cause you were the main topic of conversation for months and when we didn’t talk about you we thought about you,” she said with a cold tone that he didn’t care for.  
	“Why would you consider my actions some fault of yours?  What did you think prompted it?”
	Chapel laughed a sad, wry laugh, “God what didn’t we think.  Admiral Kirk thought it was because of his promotion and not taking you with him.  Leonard swore up and down that he’d finally gone too far and driven you off the deep end.  Even Uhura had some silly notion about a half drunken pass she’d made at you at the farewell party.”
	Spock caught her eyes, held them, “And you, what did you think?”
	They were filled with tears, “Me, oh I knew better.  Sure I’d toy with the stupid idea that somehow I’d been important enough to create some type of change in your life even if it was to send you as far from your friends and emotions as you could get, but I knew better.  I knew I meant nothing to you that way.  I knew that you went because you damned well wanted to and that was all right.  Whatever made you happy or whatever…  But you did something that made me wonder why, and I don’t even think you realized or cared at the time what it was.” 
	Spock perched one eyebrow at her.
	With as calm a voice as she could manage she explained, “You nearly killed your mother when you left.  You could have explained it to her instead of making her feel as if you hated her so.  Even Sarek couldn’t help her, hell he was hurt too.”
	“How do you know this?” Spock asked stunned to hear her speak of his parents in such a familiar fashion. 
	“Amanda found out I was doing my internship, asked me to dinner one night.  The message arrived in the middle of it.  It was as if they’d gotten your death notice,” she relayed with some amount of ire in her tone.  “This is to inform you that Spock son of Sarek son of Skonn has entered the novitiate of the Kohlinar and will no longer be in contact.  Please delete…” here she had to stop the recitation because she was so upset.  
	She could tell Spock was moved by the details.  He sat very still with his eyes studying the carpet.  It had clearly never occurred to him how his parents would accept his decision.  
	Christine drank the glass dry and poured more, “I stayed with them for as long as I could stand the unknown.  I wracked my brain trying to find the answer until I finally gave up when the only one who could answer the question was forever out of reach.  You have told them you’re not there anymore haven’t you?”
	Spock shook his head, “No, I have not.  
	Well the news would surely have reached them by now.  Spock’s reappearance had had a significant impact with the Enterprise’s success in fighting off V’Ger.  Once again Amanda and Sarek would find out about Spock through a cold, heartless messenger.  “You’ve learned well on Gol.  They’ve taught you to be cold and cruel to the bone.  It wasn’t in you before.”
	Anger at the insult surged through Spock until his eyes blazed, “I did not do it to hurt them or you or anyone else!”
	“Then why?” she begged and for every time Amanda had wept into her shoulder she meant it, “Why?”
	Spock got to his feet, paced the small space, “I did it for the wrong reasons.  I could no longer tolerate the pain, the demands, the inability to express emotions without shame and guilt attached to it.”
	Coming to stand in front of her he grabbed her wrist, pulled her up to hold her tight against him, “I could not admit to feeling the pleasure of touch.”  He kissed her hard but not painfully. He released her, “Nor say to myself how beautiful you are without the belief that I was wrong, perverse, deviant in my upbringing.  Every day I tried but the mistakes became too great to overcome.”
	She was speechless.  He believed that interacting with Humans and warming to their ways had made him somehow dirty.  “So you go to try for a clean slate?  You couldn’t have told your mother that, told her you were so miserable you had to just get away from everything?  She could have accepted that.  She knows you are forced to deal with so much more than anyone understands,” Christine reasoned. 
	“She could have understood but I was in no position to tell her.  I could not even speak of it to myself.  That did not come for a year.  I sought something pure and simple, the simplicity of logic not the complexity of emotion,” Spock explained as well as he could.  
	Chapel felt so many mixed emotions she wasn’t sure if she could even think straight.  “Does the admiral know, Leonard, what you’ve just told me?”
	“No, I have not spoken to anyone but you on this matter.  It appears that no one else cares to even ask my reasons,” Spock replied the disappointment evident in his tone.  
	“Spock, my God I just told you that everyone thinks somehow they were at fault.  They’re scared shitless they’ll sneeze wrong and send you back at a gallop,” she revealed.  “You don’t intend to go back do you?”
	The Vulcan shook his head, “No.  My answer was never on Gol.  I realize now that it was a mistake to go.  However, it was an invaluable experience that will forever be part of me.” 
	She couldn’t help but feel for Spock.  He’d struggled to find his place in the world for so long and once again it appeared that he’d lost it.  “Can I ask you something?  It’s not very pretty.”
	Spock nodded, “Yes.”
	“If it hadn’t been for V’Ger would you have come back at all?”
	Spock thought.  He had been seconds away from ridding himself of all emotions, “No.”
	“And the only reason you came back here was the fact that the Enterprise just happened to be going the same direction you were?”
	“Yes.”  
	“So to you, the Admiral, McCoy and the rest of us are just fellow passengers on the ride, we don’t mean anything to you anymore?” she asked painfully but she had to know. 
	“I will admit that initially that would have been true.  I stepped aboard this ship as an alien among strangers.  I stayed as a lost soul among found companions,” he said.  “Now I find I am no longer welcome in their presence.”
	“Oh Spock, it’s not that you’re not welcome or wanted.  It’s just they don’t know what to do around you.  That’s why we were all so happy you were back.  They want to include you but don’t want to ask so they’ll get rebuffed like they did when you first got back.  I can only tell you that when you looked at me on the bridge it was like having an entire ocean of frigid water dumped on my head.  The Spock that we had loved and enjoyed being with was gone and this… imposter stood in his place.  You truly were dead to us then.”  
	Spock understood what she was trying to say and now he needed to work on how to get back to where he had been, or at least be able to eat dinner with people again.  “Do you have any suggestions, short of a formal written apology to everyone I may have slighted in the quadrant, as to how I can resolve this issue?”
	Chapel smiled a happy smile she’d been waiting to use since before the dinner party on Vulcan.  “I think that if you would just talk to people again, and let them know you’re not going anywhere, that’d be it.  Oh, and some type of disclaimer about how they weren’t any part of your decision might help.”  
	Spock took that in and regarded the former nurse in a way he would never have allowed himself to do before.  He had been in his right mind when he turned to her in sickbay after his meld with V’Ger.  Allowing a hand to caress her flushed cheek, he repeated, “Beauty.”
	If this was a pass she was too tired to catch it.  She chuckled, “You sure do jump around a lot.  First you’re all logic then whammo…”
	“As I said, the Kohlinar has changed my life forever.  If anything it has given me something I never had before.”
	“Oh?”
	“I had to lose emotions to be able to understand their purpose.  V’Ger had precisely what I thought I sought.  It was sterile, empty, only black and white in its thinking.  Now it has those emotions and understands the colors of life.  It has a higher purpose now.”
	Chapel grinned, “So you’re telling me you’ve finally learned what your mother’s been after you to learn for years?”
	“If you refer to her insistence that I learn to smile, I have explained that Humans smile far too easily,” he insisted.  But he allowed his lips to curl up on the ends in a fashion that reminded her of satisfied cat after it ate the canary.