Disclaimer: I do not own Star Trek or Spock, but that did not stop me from locking him in my basement. Don't worry I will feed him. If I remember. (Please don't sue)
Tightrope
Spock turned into his room, arms laden with an assortment of bags and quietly closed the door, sighing in relief as the noisy outside world was effectively blocked out. Walking over to the small desk in the corner of his room, he unloaded the bags in his arms and crossed the room to glace out the window. The red desert sky was slowly darkening. Pale points of white light were appearing in the twilight. His father would be returning tomorrow from his diplomatic mission and Spock would be thrust back into the whirlwind of lessons, disciplines, and strict Vulcan control.
Normally, when his father was away on a mission, his schooling would continue uninterrupted, but the unusual hot weather this winter had placed his schooling on hold. A week ago, temperatures had reached an all time high, causing reason for concern. Usually winter on Vulcan lead to cooler temperatures and an occasional rainfall that would cause the desert to turn a startling color of green practically overnight as desert plants popped up in small collections of water. However, this winter had been alarmingly warm and the rains had yet to come. Populations of desert creatures, which depended on these periodic rains, were beginning to suffer from starvation. With their pray becoming scarce, predators like the lymar became increasingly daring in their desperation for food. After three attacks within a day of small school age children heading to their classes, lessons were officially cancelled until some safe means of travel could be arranged.
Spock had secretly been pleased that this cancellation had occurred during one of his father's long missions. Had his father been home, he would have insisted on Spock's lessons being sent to the house and would have arranged for a tutor or, if one was unavailable, taught the boy himself. No matter how far ahead in his schooling Spock managed to get, his father still insisted that Spock spend the majority of his free time studying and perfecting his lessons.
However, his father was not present at the moment and Amanda, having a rare opportunity to spend some quality time with her son away from the towering influence of his father, jumped on the opportunity. Merely hours after the announcement was made, arrangements for a trip to the nearest starbase were underway. The reason, a traveling band of circus performers.
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The trip would take the better part of a day. Once at the starbase, they would get a room for the night and catch the morning show so they would be back by nightfall the next day, well before Serek's return. As they traveled, his mother told him stories of the different circuses that she had been to as a child. Spock listened respectfully though he did not see the logic in this trip. The acts that his mother was describing hardly sounded very interesting. Trained dogs and horses, gymnastics and juggling, nothing worth paying the sum of money his mother had. Nevertheless, his mother assured him that he would be "astounded" by the things he saw. After all, these performers were, as she put it, "the real deal" not "the amateurs she saw in the county fair".
When they arrived at the starbase, his mother saw to their lodgings. Spock, in the meantime, paused to examine posters lining the bulkheads advertising the circus's acts. One in particular caught Spock's attention. It was a picture of a women dressed in a rather flashy and tight outfit. In her hands, the women held a long and thin looking pole horizontally in front of her chest. For a moment, Spock was confused until he realized that the women seemed to be making her way across what looked like an extremely thin and frail rope. Spock was trying to determine exactly what this girl was doing and how she was doing it when he heard soft familiar footsteps behind him.
"Oh, they have a tightrope act in their show. I haven't seen one of those since I went to that show in New York when I was a little girl." Amanda said excited. "I wonder if they do it without a net."
Spock's brow furrowed at this. "A net?" He asked in confusion. Though he was not sure what this woman in the poster was trying to accomplish, he was positive that a net would only complicate the task. "Mother, why would they need a net?"
"In case she falls, Spock." Amanda explained, leaning down to talk to her son. Seeing the confused look on the boys face, Amanda decided to elaborate. "She is a tightrope walker, Spock. The performers set her up a rope hundreds of feet in the air and she uses this pole for balance as she makes her way across a narrow rope to the other side of the room. Some acts permit a safety net in case the performer loses her balance while others do not."
Spock gazed, wide eyed at the poster. Hundreds of feet in the air without a safety net. "What if she falls? Why would they risk the performer's life?"
"It makes the act more exciting. The more exciting the act, the more people who attend, and the more profitable the show." Amanda explained, examining the poster in closer detail. "Of course, the performer must practice for years before they risk the act without a net. Only after the performer perfects her art will they set aside the safety precautions."
"She still might fall despite her experience." Spock pointed out.
Amanda sighed. "Yes this is true, I guess, but it is a risk both the troupe and the performer are willing to take." Glancing at her watch Amanda turned away from the poster and gave her son's tunic a slight tug. "Come on hon, let's go put our things in our room. Its late and we will be getting up early tomorrow to catch the show."
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They started out for the show very early in the morning in hopes to, as his mother said, "Snatch the good seats" near the front. The room was relatively large with the stage located exactly in the center and the seats fanning out on all sides elevated in steps much like a large outdoor stadium. Spock and his mother spent several minutes trying to determine the best place to sit that would provide both a good view and the smallest chance that they would be showered with food from behind them or blocked by the seats in front.
Shortly after they had found their seats, the room began to fill. Spock discovered quickly that he did not like this room. As it filled, the sound volume swelled to the point of causing pain to his sensitive Vulcan ears. The seats were closely packed together causing some people to bump and jostle him as they tried to get to their seats and densely packed populations of unguarded minds rubbed against his relatively fragile barriers. All this sensory overload was quickly giving him a headache.
After what seemed like ages, the music began and the audience quieted blissfully as their eyes trained on center stage. Spock watched the acts with mild fascination. Some acts managed to catch his attention more than others. One particular act in which two motorcyclist rode around in a small metal globe, passing within inches of each other, impressed him with the amount of precision and carefully applied skill it required. He reminded himself absentmindedly to ask his mother about the physics and calculations required to do this act latter.
The juggling act also caught his interests merely because his father could juggle with an impressive amount of skill and had recently set about teaching Spock the skill as well. Juggling improved hand eye coordination and therefore was one of the few pastimes deemed "logical" for a child. Spock watched the flaming torches arch skillfully by the juggler's careful hand and be plucked back out of the air with ease. Other then these two, the rest of the show held little interest.
Slowly, the circus began to wind down much to Spock's secret relief. As the show had progressed, the crowd he was a part of became increasingly rowdy. After the third time that some form of snack food hit the back of his head, he was anticipating the end of this fiasco. Only one act left. The lights dimmed as the ringmaster announced the final act. The tightrope walker.
Amanda grabbed her son's tunic and gave it a tug, pointing upwards as a spotlight climbed the walls of the starbase to nearly the ceiling before reveling a women standing on a small platform hundreds of feet up. Spock felt a stab of shock penetrate through his interior barriers as he looked up, eyes as large as saucers, at the girl perched precariously on the small platform. The girl showed no sign of fear as she stood waving at the audience below before approaching the thin rope. The audience waited with baited breath as she took her first step onto the rope. She swayed slightly before finding her balance and took the first step off the platform and onto the perilous path ahead.
Spock found himself, like the rest of the audience, transfixed on the small girl. One slight breath of wind, one tiny distraction, one small mistake, and the girl would fall. She would tumble towards the ground and to her certain death. Spock realized his heart was racing, without really knowing the reason for it. The girl began to inch across the rope. One small step at a time. With each step, Spock was aware of the crowd growing increasing tense. Every sway of her body, every adjustment of that balancing pole, pulled gasps from the crowd. The crowd was leaning forward in their seats. Like one single entity, together they simultaneously willed the girl to succeed and at the same time to fail, to cross, and to fall. The girl stopped in the middle of the rope and smiled coyly at the crowd. Lifting one leg from the rope she leaned forward poised like a ballerina as she stared down at the audience below on one foot. The crowd jumped to their feet in shock and surprise. Mummers of worry and sadistic joy at her precarious position rose around him. The girl simply smirked at her audience before righting herself and continuing on to the platform. Within a few minutes, she was safely across and received a thunderous applause from her spectators.
Amanda laughed and clapped, "Well that was exhausting wasn't it. Definitely better without the net." Had she looked at her son at that moment, she would have noticed the boy was trembling. If she had been looking, she might have been worried at her son's pale face and the look of horror burning in his eyes.
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Sitting at his desk now, Spock wondered idly the reason he had reacted so strongly to such a simple act. The tightrope act was after all not the most dangerous act of the show. In fact, if what his mother had said was true, the tightrope act was the safest, being practiced diligently and the performer skilled. Still when he had looked upon that girl balanced so tediously, he had felt fear for her. Very illogical. It must have been the crowd. So many untrained minds all feeling the same emotion at once. The strength of the emotion must have pierced his shields and swamped his mind. Had his shields been fully developed or had the crowd been smaller, he would have been unaffected. It wasn't his fault. Satisfied with this explanation, young Spock rose from his desk and begin to strip off the travel worn clothes he was wearing and slip into his night clothing. After stowing the souvenirs his mother insisted on purchasing somewhere safe from his father's eyes, Spock slipped beneath the thin blanket on his bed and snapped off the lights. Within minutes, he drifted off to sleep.
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The first thing that Spock was aware of was that it was getting increasingly hard to breath. The air hung heavily with mist and the damp water vapor in the air was filling up his lung until he felt as if he was drowning in it. The second thing he realized is that he was lost. The strange fernlike plants swaying around him were like nothing he had ever seen throughout the varied experience that his father's missions had provided him with. The sky, a hue that Spock did not have a name for, was dark and threatening. Spock did not know what it was but he could sense that something was watching him and that something was not kind. He could sense its menacing stare through the mist as he made his way, in no set direction, through the fauna.
Spock called out weakly, hoping that someone was out there that knew where he was and how he got here. Someone who could hopefully send him home and back to the safety of his warm bed. There was no answer. But Spock could sense the thing out there was closer now, attracted by the sound of his voice. His hair stood up and he knew he was being hunted. Whatever this thing was, it was coming to devourer him. Spock quickened his pace glancing back behind him in hopes of identifying the creature and finding someway to escape it. But all he could see was darkness. An encroaching darkness.
Suddenly, Spock realized that something was very wrong. This darkness was not the absents of light. It was moving, spreading and swelling without any noticeable pattern or logical design. No, there was no creature lurking in the darkness seeking to devour him. The darkness itself was chasing him. Darkness itself was trying to smother his soul. "Put out the light and put out thy light" (A.N don't ask me where that came from. I think its Shakespeare.) . Spock almost gasped. Instinct taking over, Spock broke into a run. Without direction the young boy ran with everything, he had in him. Fleeing blindly from the undefeatable, immortal advisory, the darkness.
His sensitive ears picked up a sound. A sound that was both foreign and familiar. It was the sound of running water, slightly morphed by the strange atmosphere around him. Instinctively, he turned towards it, something long buried and savage in him telling him that water meant guards, fortresses and possible allies. If anything, water gave him something to follow and something to slow down his pursuer. He ran towards it desperately. He began to see the foliage become less dense. He was getting close. Finally, he burst through the fernlike plant.
His heart stopped when he took in the scene in front of him. He had made a terrible mistake. Instead of soft riverbeds, he found himself on the edge of an immense cliff. And to make things worst it was not water that flowed in between the two towering precipices, but something that stopped Spock in his track with fear and fascination. For between the two rocky buffs, two different rivers slammed into each other churning together like the fires of hell. One was a river of fire. Hot and searing, the fierce inferno blazed, its light blinding, its flames dancing hypnotically, calling out to all the irrational maddening fragments of Spock's mind. As Spock stared into it blazing depths, he felt as if the flames were filling his young body and consuming his very soul in fierce agony.
Meeting the blaze with equal ferocity, a second river slammed into the first. This one as different to its predecessor as night is from day for this great river was made of ice. This great torrent was both frozen and not. It flowed, moving with the ease of water, but it was so cold, so chilling, it seemed to tear away from Spock all reasoning and identity. One glance into its depths and Spock felt his very soul freeze. He forgot his name, his family, and his own sense of self. He was alive but he was nothing. He was merely a thing. A single insignificant part in the universe that would glow briefly and then fade away into nothingness. His existence would pass unmarked and his fading would pass unnoticed. He was nothing, he felt nothing. Nothing but the cold beating through his limbs with every pulsing of his heart as if his very blood was replaced with liquid nitrogen, freezing him from within.
Both these sensations overtook him at once stopping him in his tracks. The hesitation was merely a moment but it was a moment that left the young boy shaking and weary, filled with wisdom beyond his years. Coming back to reality, the boy glanced behind him, Spock could see the darkness, the thing that wanted to consume him, creeping steadily closer. That's when he saw it, a shining thing bridging the gap above the meeting of the two rivers. Desperate, he ran to what might be his only chance of salvation.
Once again, he was disappointed. When he reached this shinning bit of salvation, he realized it was nothing but an extremely thin length of what looked like some kind of strange metal. Thin and frail looking, he doubted it could hold his weight. Glancing back, Spock almost moaned, all control momentarily lost as he saw the thing merely feet away, soon to overcome him. He had no choice. Steeling his reserve, the young child took a step out onto the metal tightrope and screamed. Shock reverberated through his body almost causing the boy to tumble into the abyss as the metal wire sliced cleanly through the flesh of his feet like a hot knife through butter. The boy whimpered as he felt his blood, hot and emerald, flow from the soles of his feet and across the wretched blade. Breathing heavily he looked down on the turbulence below where the fire met ice. He glanced behind him at the approaching darkness.
He took another step and cried out, as his other foot was sliced clean sending anther wave of agony through him. But he did not pause this time. He knew he had to move forward. Move forward or die. This was it. The turning point. Pain or death. Step by tormenting step, the young boy forced himself to move. To feel the biting blade flay his flesh with every uncertain step. Half way across, Spock felt his footing slip and he sway sharply to the side. He screamed as he felt the metal slice sideways into his foot cutting to the bone.
A wave of dizziness rocked him. He heard voices. Familiar voices calling to him from those to two twin rivers, completely different yet sweetly compelling. Icy fingers seemed to lick at his bloody feet, calling him to let go, to fall into their chilly depths. To feel nothing, no pain, no joy, nothing but sweet oblivion. To become like the void, empty and meaningless.
On the other side, the flaming depths called to him, telling him to let go, to fall into the consuming flames. To feel the swirling chaos of passion and pain. To feel them mix until pain and pleasure become so intertwined, like two lovers, that he would no longer be able to distinguish the two. To let his young soul be devoured by something that he was two young to understand but not to young to sense. Pain, happiness, joy, hate, all at once yet all separate, swallowing him up until he would forget. Forget everything but pure instinct and emotion. And while these two rivers sang to him in their eternal seductive song, that horrible black thing came closer, inch-by-inch, closing the gap. Spock tried to take another step. To continue to that safe place at the other side of this turmoil but his vision was blurred from tears of agony, his ears filled with confusing words. His balance faltered and he was falling. Falling toward his death, ripped apart by the raging rivers below.
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Spock awoke with a muffled cry as he instinctively threw a hand over his mouth before he even realized he was screaming. Drawing a shuttering breath the youth tossed in the sweat soaked blankets, burying his face into his pillow as he fought to reclaim the comforting Vulcan control. Faintly he heard voices outside his door.
"Amanda, you shouldn't have wasted two days on this senseless trip. You not only wasted money on the tickets, but you wasted a day that Spock should have spent on his studies." Spock blinked in confusion. His father was back early?
"He's already levels above everyone else his age. How far ahead will he have to be before you stop damning him for being my son?" His mother hissed in anger. Spock was surprised. He had never heard anything but carefully concealed loving words from his mother to his father.
"You are turning this into a personal issue. Your emotions are getting the best of you. We will discuss this farther when you have calmed down." His father's icy voice replied.
"NO! I don't want to discuss this when I calmed down. He deserves to take some time out to have some fun once and awhile."
"He finds his lessons satisfying and challenging. This is the proper kind of stimulation his young mind…"
"You'll never let up on him, will you? You won't leave him alone until he is a cold heartless drone like you are!!" He heard his mother accuse in a broken voice, clearly on the edge of tears.
"That's enough. You're being irrational. This discussion is closed. Stop before you say something you will regret later." Spock did not want to hear anymore. Cringing, the young boy clutched the pillows over his ears, hoping this would overcome the sound of their quarrel.
Spock felt his stomach churn and he moaned when the sound of the blood rushing in his ears became the sound of a raging river. Suddenly he realized why the voices in his nightmare sounded familiar. Shaking, the boy silently prayed that the darkness, the darkness that had inspired such fear in his nightmare, would really rise to consume him. Better that then fight the biting sword that makes up the tightrope of his life. Better that then to be torn in two by the raging and quarreling rivers underneath him. Better that then to feel the numbing nothingness or the consuming pain swallow his soul. Because somehow he knew he would never make it across that tightrope to the platform to the other side. To the platform of his true self.
(A.N. Ok that was kind of depressing, not to mention as dramatic as kirk's monologs, but this was my first star trek fan fiction and I wanted to start with a clear and resounding bang. Umm. . . Tada? I tried to stay in character as much as possible, taking into account that Spock is still young and not in complete control of himself yet. Besides, even if he was old enough to be in control of himself a dream like that would make even a grown man want to scream. Ok, now is the time for you to go down to that nice little button and tell me what to think. Be kind for this is my first attempt but don't let that stop you for giving any constructive criticism or pointing out any mistakes. Like spelling (the bane of my existence.) And those of you who liked my work maybe you can help me chose my next one. Listed below are four choices. Let me know what you want to hear.
Vulcan's don't have snooze buttons. - I am in college and my roommate has a habit of playing the game of hitting the snooze button for an hour and a half. This story is going to be my interpretation of what Spock would do if he were in my situation. Humor obviously.
Generation songfic- A reflection of Spock's relationship with his father. Perfect song to do it. Angst and maybe some hurt and comfort in there two.
Angels on the moon songfic- Spock's thoughts as he dies. Another perfect song. Again angst.
50 Star trek stories in less then ten words- Um. . Titles kind of self-explanatory. I will attempt to write 50 star trek stories that have ten words or less. Usually starts out serious but as I run out of ideas get more and more random. If you want an idea of what I am talking about check out my anime story 50 Inuyasha stories in ten words or less. Posted it mere days ago so it still has that new story smell. Again, notice at the bottom of it has that shine button that says review. Push the button.
That's all folks review.