Note: Based on a prompt from Yeah Write! over on tumblr. This is my first ever Star Trek fic, so I'm kinda nervous. e.e Especially since it's TOS. I don't even know why, but attempting to work with TOS makes me super-nervous. Especially since it's Spock who is probably my favorite character ever and I would not want to mess up his character. :( Ever. Word count is 1,541, for those who care. :) My special thanks go out to Staehli, Will, AJ, and James for fabulous crit, plus Zoe, Art, and Adam for reading it. 3 You guys are awesome and indulge me way too much.
Disclaimer: I own nothing! Also for the record, I picked the Starship name "Hamilton" off a random list of Starship names, I don't know the first thing about any significance it does or doesn't have.
I
Amanda liked to stay in contact, and Spock was only too willing to oblige her. There was no hassle in anything that brought her peace of mind, though he was loathe to reveal that he kept such regular contact with his mother - not for shame, but reluctance to hand McCoy anything with which to needle him. Of course, the doctor was hardly the only human who enjoyed teasing him.
Teasing. What an odd human thing.
Amanda enjoyed teasing him as well, though not in the heckling way McCoy favored. Her brand was more gentle, prodding - very suited to her nature. Once she told Spock he was her favorite pen pal; he had replied that the comparison was somewhat ill-suited. She then informed him that it was just a little tease, that she only meant she enjoyed hearing from him. And though simple text communications prove difficult to attempt to interpret with the myriad of meanings or intentions a human might have, he thought this time he could almost hear amusement seeping through the typed lines, or correctly imagine the smile she might have worn as she wrote it.
Yes, staying in contact ("keeping in touch," as Amanda would say) was preferable. Spock did not see his parents often, his father communicated with him infrequently, but when he did see them...
Each time, he couldn't help noticing how greyer she looked than the last, how much more frail. It was only natural, he told himself. Humans were not as strong nor as long-lived as Vulcans. Logic knew this: that he would long outlive his mother, that she would grow old before his own life was half over.
He knew all this, and yet each change Spock saw in her caused him much disturbance. His strong reaction was equally disturbing; something so simple and natural as aging and death was illogical to fear or fight against, yet he could not help himself. His mind set everything in logic - his heart spiraled in discontent as he watched his mother grow older. Seeing her at his father's side never helped, either. Vulcans didn't age so quickly as humans, leaving Sarek a near constant while his mother's progression in age asserted itself. Had he confessed to these thoughts or feelings, Amanda might have called him silly. Or she might have understood perfectly.
II
Eventually, Spock learned to ignore it with the same discipline which surpressed his emotions. He would shove the disquiet down, put the disturbing thoughts in the back of his mind, and go about his duties. They would only prick a little when he received her correspondance, and those shields would come crashing down the next time he saw her, and the next. He would always have to beat it back, force it into the designated corner of his mind, or it would suck him in with the force of a black hole. This became a cycle that he endured for the Enterprise's entire five-year mission and beyond. He was certain some of the crew had picked up on the cycle - he knew for a fact that Jim had, for how could he not with the conversations they shared? - but no one commented upon it. For that, he was grateful.
On Earth, he was able to see his parents more. Though they resided on Vulcan, Sarek was often on Earth for his diplomatic duties, which put him near Spock, who lived on Earth in his continued service to Starfleet. In a way, this helped ease some of the distress that persisted like a low undertone, a background frequency for his life. In seeing Amanda more often, it was less a shock between visits to see her changed appearance in the gap. Her mind was as sharp as ever, her wit and humor and vivacity of life, her irrational love of so many small things - Spock could not fathom why her physical aging would cause him so much discontent. But what was, was, and he had to live with it.
Until one day, an urgent message came in for him.
III
Thankfully, he had been spending leisure time in his home; he did not like the idea of the message having to go through at least ten Starfleet channels attempting to reach him on duty. Spock half-expected to see Kirk, perhaps even McCoy, but he was totally unprepared to activate the viewscreen and come face to face with a Vulcan.
A feeling of trepidation pooled in his stomach that he forced away, and his lips formed a grim line even as he responded with the Vulcan salute.
From the beginning, he knew. He was sure of it. Something had happened, at the very least, for a priority message for him from Vulcan. But it was reported as personal, not an official matter. In his very bones he knew, but his heart rejected it and his mind demanded the message's completion before he did something so illogical as - as jump to conclusions, as Jim or McCoy would put it.
The uncharacteristic hesitation in the messanger's delivery was further proof for the irrational conclusion stirring in him, but Spock waited patiently to the very end of the transmission, his expression neutral as though his blood weren't boiled with unchecked passions.
His parents had been traveling back to Vulcan on the U.S.S. Hamilton - until the starship was called away on an emergency. The crew took them as close to Vulcan as manageable, then let Sarek and Amanda take one of their shuttlecraft to complete the rest of the journey.
Upon re-entry into the atmosphere, the shuttlecraft malfunctioned and crash-landed on the planet's surface. His father, Spock was assured, bore extensive injuries, but expected to recover with no issues.
His mother died on impact. Nothing could have been done for her.
Spock was unsure if the conversation seemed unreal delivered and received with customary Vulcan detachment, or if it was exactly that which made it hit home. He had thanked the Vulcan woman for the information - perhaps an illogical action, but she spoke nothing of it. But his mind had been nowhere near the present.
IV
Such a simple conversation changed everything. Spock attempted to ease himself into meditation, and yet his thoughts centered on his mother - and as always, when he thought of his mother, it was hard to control his emotions. A terrible grief threatened to engulf him - perhaps already had, and he was unable to see it. Slowly, he had begun to accept his mother's aging; it still affected him in an inexplicable way, but he had made it a part of his life. His folly had been the assumption that he would see his mother die of natural causes. Old age. To have a freak accident claim her life, and try to double the outcome with his father... he was unprepared for the shock.
In the end, he sought Jim out. Spock had known that he would eventually; he knew that the Admiral had to know of his mother's death by now, but perhaps out of respect for Spock, he had never approached the topic. Perhaps he had also known that Spock would come to him when he was ready and needed to. Whatever the circumstance, there was no surprise to either of them that Spock called upon Kirk's office, or that he sat and spent ten minutes gazing intently at him, the way he always did before he started a difficult discussion.
Spock was unsure what this could accomplish. There was the norm, his talks with Jim in which he managed to discuss his feelings without really acknowledging that they existed. Then there was his current situation, in which he felt emotional control too taxing a thing, logic a little shaky. But for either, he knew Jim Kirk was the only one - he doubted if any other being understood him so well or could listen to him in the same way.
Would he feel better if he discussed this? Would anything make him feel better? The human need to talk through things was foreign to him, yet he knew nothing else to do. That he could not answer these questions, nor had a basis off which to conjecture, was off-putting. He felt as though he were standing at the tip of a precipice, and he had not one idea if this single step would bring the metaphorical fall, or if it would be enough to let him see the horizon with that much more clarity.
How could he reconcile the gulf of grief opened in him? He had taken on the discipline of logic, chosen to follow his Vulcan blood, and he had kept strictly to it for the entirety of his life; he could not simply give over and become slave to his passions because of an inevitable occurance.
But he felt sure that now, he would try to do what his mother had always encouraged him to do: talk about his feelings. Not just those that her death had engendered, but the other things tucked safely behind his sheilds. Though it was too late to tell her things he'd longed to, there were others... he felt maybe he could find a way.