Tumblr crosspost (31 January 2025)
Apr. 30th, 2025 12:38 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
anghraine…
Okay, look, I swear I’m doing other things than this fic. I also wrote original fiction yesterday, and spent time with friends, and I’m going to re-certify my repayment plan today, and you know, anyway, here’s a prequel snippet to the one about femslash Spirk emotions after “Conscience of the King.” This is set earlier, as S'paak hunts down the clues about Kirk’s motives during the plot of the episode.
Okay, look, I swear I’m doing other things than this fic. I also wrote original fiction yesterday, and spent time with friends, and I’m going to re-certify my repayment plan today, and you know, anyway, here’s a prequel snippet to the one about femslash Spirk emotions after “Conscience of the King.” This is set earlier, as S'paak hunts down the clues about Kirk’s motives during the plot of the episode.
S’paak had been puzzled in her youth at the tales of her barbaric ancestors—the Vulcan ones, not the human ones. They had been a people of unrestrained passions of all kinds, prone to anger, violence, war, irrational attachments, even to hunting animals that presented no danger to them. They had been willing to incinerate their planet before forgetting a wrong to themselves or their clans. Only later had Vulcans found another path, the path of peace and reason to which she had long committed herself. It felt so natural to her that she often found this history of her people difficult to believe, difficult to even imagine, and yet it was so.
It took her until the first year of the Enterprise’s deep-space expedition to understand.
The inexorable activity of her mind had linked the captain’s uncharacteristic abruptness to the murder of Dr. Leighton. S’paak had not forgotten Kirk’s private inquiries about his professional reputation, and this left her all the more intrigued by the captain’s sudden demotion of a blameless Lieutenant Riley, as well as suspicious of their new guests. It was an easy enough task to order the nearest ship computer to correlate all known data on the individuals she thought concerned—Thomas Leighton, Jessica Kirk, Kevin Riley, Anton Karidian—but less easy to hear the results.
S’paak had not known the details of the starvation of the Tarsus IV colony twenty years earlier, nor of the eugenicist policies of its governor in determining who would receive the remaining rations, nor of the scale of slaughter that had taken place as thousands were marched into converted anti-matter chambers. She had certainly not known that Dr. Leighton, Kevin Riley, and Jessica Kirk—Jess, her friend—were among the witnesses and survivors. In addition, these three were on record as having seen the notoriously reclusive governor with their own eyes.
Nine survivors of the massacre had received that dubious honor. After Leighton’s murder, only two of the nine remained alive, Kirk and Riley. Leighton, older than both, might well have recalled Kodos’s face clearly, and now he lay dead. Riley had been a small boy. Jess, though, had been thirteen. Still a child, but old enough to remember. Old enough to be dangerous to the guilty.
It took her until the first year of the Enterprise’s deep-space expedition to understand.
The inexorable activity of her mind had linked the captain’s uncharacteristic abruptness to the murder of Dr. Leighton. S’paak had not forgotten Kirk’s private inquiries about his professional reputation, and this left her all the more intrigued by the captain’s sudden demotion of a blameless Lieutenant Riley, as well as suspicious of their new guests. It was an easy enough task to order the nearest ship computer to correlate all known data on the individuals she thought concerned—Thomas Leighton, Jessica Kirk, Kevin Riley, Anton Karidian—but less easy to hear the results.
S’paak had not known the details of the starvation of the Tarsus IV colony twenty years earlier, nor of the eugenicist policies of its governor in determining who would receive the remaining rations, nor of the scale of slaughter that had taken place as thousands were marched into converted anti-matter chambers. She had certainly not known that Dr. Leighton, Kevin Riley, and Jessica Kirk—Jess, her friend—were among the witnesses and survivors. In addition, these three were on record as having seen the notoriously reclusive governor with their own eyes.
Nine survivors of the massacre had received that dubious honor. After Leighton’s murder, only two of the nine remained alive, Kirk and Riley. Leighton, older than both, might well have recalled Kodos’s face clearly, and now he lay dead. Riley had been a small boy. Jess, though, had been thirteen. Still a child, but old enough to remember. Old enough to be dangerous to the guilty.
Moreover, the computer helpfully added, the Federation’s decision to identify a body burned beyond all recognition as Kodos’s had not been uncontroversial.
S’paak sat alone on the bridge, her fingers steepled, and listened without a word. As she did, she only became more certain that Anton Karidian—the lead actor on their ship at that moment, picked up at Captain Kirk’s command—was Kodos, the architect of this atrocity. What was the captain planning for him? For herself? If she felt convinced of his identity as Kodos, would she not have turned him over to the Federation, confined him in some way? And if not, then—
S’paak thought of Jess as a malnourished girl of thirteen, and of the Captain Kirk she knew. She thought, too, of Kirk sometimes showing up to their chess games with something edible for both of them, usually a salad or pair of caloric beverages. Once, Kirk had chatted lightly about how she bullied the replicator into producing vegetables indigenous to Vulcan, even though it wasn’t programmed for Vulcan flora. S’paak, though touched, had simply thanked her and asked about the technical details, repressing a smile as Kirk assured her that it was less trouble than reprogramming the Kobayashi Maru, which she had also done.
S’paak wanted to kill Kodos.
She did not merely wish him dead, to remove a threat to the captain, the crew, the ship, perhaps any number of other dangers. Instead, she could almost wish him on the bridge before her, providing some excuse for her to snap the life out of him with her bare hands. In that moment, the vendettas of ancient Vulcan that had gone on for centuries were remarkably clear to her.
She was still herself. She had not, of course, tracked down Kodos and broken his body in the way of her forefathers, or even ended his life more mercifully than deserved with the tal-shaya. Instead, she consulted Dr. McCoy. He did not wish to see the truth, and was impervious to reason until she forced him to listen to her describe the slaughter on Tarsus IV, but at least he joined her in confronting Kirk later.
“What if you decide he is Kodos?” McCoy demanded, his voice rising.
Kirk’s front of indignation had evaporated, and she now listened with almost Vulcan composure. Illogically, S’paak did not like it.
“What then?” McCoy went on. “Do you play God, carry his head through the corridors in triumph? That won’t bring back the dead, Jess.”
S’paak understood that his fear was undoubtedly for Jess herself, for what she would feel later. But she, S’paak, did not care. Kodos was a risk, most of all to Kirk and Riley: an intolerable risk. It was ethical and reasonable for Kirk to ascertain his identity with the caution she was evidently taking, and proper for her to then act as she judged fit. She was the captain, and she was—it was her right.
“No,” Jess said at last, “but they may rest easier.”
-
Tagged: #s'paak deserves to snap a war criminal in half. as a treat. #meanwhile the best episodes tend to involve kirk going through it so jessica is unexpectedly evolving towards maximal iron woobie status
S’paak sat alone on the bridge, her fingers steepled, and listened without a word. As she did, she only became more certain that Anton Karidian—the lead actor on their ship at that moment, picked up at Captain Kirk’s command—was Kodos, the architect of this atrocity. What was the captain planning for him? For herself? If she felt convinced of his identity as Kodos, would she not have turned him over to the Federation, confined him in some way? And if not, then—
S’paak thought of Jess as a malnourished girl of thirteen, and of the Captain Kirk she knew. She thought, too, of Kirk sometimes showing up to their chess games with something edible for both of them, usually a salad or pair of caloric beverages. Once, Kirk had chatted lightly about how she bullied the replicator into producing vegetables indigenous to Vulcan, even though it wasn’t programmed for Vulcan flora. S’paak, though touched, had simply thanked her and asked about the technical details, repressing a smile as Kirk assured her that it was less trouble than reprogramming the Kobayashi Maru, which she had also done.
S’paak wanted to kill Kodos.
She did not merely wish him dead, to remove a threat to the captain, the crew, the ship, perhaps any number of other dangers. Instead, she could almost wish him on the bridge before her, providing some excuse for her to snap the life out of him with her bare hands. In that moment, the vendettas of ancient Vulcan that had gone on for centuries were remarkably clear to her.
She was still herself. She had not, of course, tracked down Kodos and broken his body in the way of her forefathers, or even ended his life more mercifully than deserved with the tal-shaya. Instead, she consulted Dr. McCoy. He did not wish to see the truth, and was impervious to reason until she forced him to listen to her describe the slaughter on Tarsus IV, but at least he joined her in confronting Kirk later.
“What if you decide he is Kodos?” McCoy demanded, his voice rising.
Kirk’s front of indignation had evaporated, and she now listened with almost Vulcan composure. Illogically, S’paak did not like it.
“What then?” McCoy went on. “Do you play God, carry his head through the corridors in triumph? That won’t bring back the dead, Jess.”
S’paak understood that his fear was undoubtedly for Jess herself, for what she would feel later. But she, S’paak, did not care. Kodos was a risk, most of all to Kirk and Riley: an intolerable risk. It was ethical and reasonable for Kirk to ascertain his identity with the caution she was evidently taking, and proper for her to then act as she judged fit. She was the captain, and she was—it was her right.
“No,” Jess said at last, “but they may rest easier.”
-
Tagged: #s'paak deserves to snap a war criminal in half. as a treat. #meanwhile the best episodes tend to involve kirk going through it so jessica is unexpectedly evolving towards maximal iron woobie status