"The worst pain in the world goes beyond the physical. Even further beyond any other emotional pain one can feel. It is the betrayal of a friend." - Heather Brewer

"Sa-mekh!" Spock screamed. Sarek's mouth was still moving as his head rolled across the floor. There was blood coating Spock's hair, his mouth, his skin, blood in his nostrils…

There were dead bodies everywhere and he could not breath. He could not-

"Again?" Kirk protested sleepily.

Spock was still screaming as he awoke - breathing harsh and eyes haunted. Kirk put out one broad, callused hand to stroke through dark, messy hair and then pulled the Vulcan towards him until he was pressed against Spock's bony back.

"You're getting too skinny, I swear..."

The Vulcan made a distressed noise in the back of his throat and Kirk sighed.

"Shhh…..I've got you, sweetheart," he said. "No more dreams."

His voice was soothing and cold. The warm breath against his neck made Spock shiver, as made Kirk's hands, which were roaming lazily and possessively over his body. Every fibre of his being screamed in protest of that unwanted touch.

"Do not."

Spock tried to pull free of Kirk's unforgiving grip, but inhuman strength prevented him from doing so. Even since Khan's blood was pumping through the human's veins, no one was able to beat him in a fight. His strength had increased with the same intensity his mind was slowly losing itself in insanity.

"Shh…gorgeous, calm down…"

The Vulcan could feel their bond pulsing between them - a hot, ever-present, burning link. Spock lowered his head in submission and tried to regulate his breathing. Kirk chuckled at this open display of vulnerability and pressed a tender kiss against Spock's pulse point. He arranged them comfortably until their limps were intertwined tightly in a mockery of a lover's embrace. There was no space left between their naked bodies.

"The old pre-reform Surakian texts say a bond could even 'tame a wild bird to hand'," Kirk mused and the Vulcan could feel the human's smile against his skin. "It seems they were right."

The more the human was touching him, the more relaxed and lethargic Spock felt. He felt like being underwater - Kirk's voice a dull, distant noise. Spock shuddered against him, the breath still harsh in his throat.

"Why?"

"Why what?"

"Why did you forcefully bond with me?" Spock whispered. He would have come willingly back them. He would have. When Kirk's smile was still genuine and his heart was pure and kind.

"You couldn't have... Spock, we worked together for years. I knew you. You never would've agreed to my vision of a better world. A world without preconceptions, murder and crime. You would've turned against me, and I would have been forced to kill you. You couldn't have lived like this, with me, without our bond." Spock hardly could remember his past life - a life beyond the walls of these room. It seemed so far away, like a distant dream. He turned around in Kirk's arms and stared at the man, he once loved.

"A better world is not a world where people are punished for making their own choices."

The moonlight was streaming into the bare room, which Spock now called home, panting strange shapes on Kirk's tan skin. The human was, watching him with pale, unreadable eyes.

"Sometimes people make wrong choices. Sometimes they need some guidance. Would you rather live in a world, where people like Marcus are allowed to do what they want? Where corrupt leaders rule under the pretence of a democracy? A world of injustice and inequality."

Kirk leaned in to kiss him, but Spock weakly turned his head so the human kissed a pale, gaunt cheek instead.

"They do not make the choices, you want them to make. So you are taking away their freewill? You are not better than Nero, than Dionysus, than Stalin, than Tse-tung, than Khan. You are not better than Kodos. You are not a leader, you are a tyrant."

"I'm nothing like them. I want my people to be safe, I want them to be happy but sometimes a strong hand is needed for those who can't understand."

"Of all tyrannies a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive."

"Enough now!" The human slapped him hard across the ashen face. Spock's head jolted to the side with an audible snap but his expression hardly flinched.

"Hush, now..," Kirk said, his tone softening in seconds and similar to the first night, the human had claimed him, he pressed him down - not into rough sand but into dark sheets. Whiteout waiting for Spock's consent, he spread the Vulcan's legs with tender, skilled movements and settled his strong, muscled body between them.

"I cannot…please, James…"

"Will it be easier for you if I tie you down or drug you?" Kirk asked. "It's going to happen – you know that - and you have no recourse, no hope of rescue. Will you acknowledge that or must I use violence?"

Spock's heart was beating rabidly in his side, and sudden nausea made his head spin. He wanted to get away from this man, wanted to escape, but the bond drew him even closer. The Vulcan felt paralyzed by the dull panic of what was about to happen and whatever sound he wanted to make was suffocated by Kirk's kisses.

"You're a creature of the sun," Kirk said, admiring the Vulcan laid out under him, "But Earth's moonlight becomes you as well."

Spock looked at him, every fibre of his being screaming in fear. He did not want this.

"You're still as beautiful as the first time, I took you. As the first time I made you mine..." Kirk said quietly, caressing Spock's white skin, arranging long, trembling legs until they were wrapped around his waist.

The Vulcan looked into Kirk's eyes – they were strangely earnest and still so very young, so different from the icy gaze, Spock was used to these days. He seemed to be caught in a memory. "Surak said it had to be done in the dark of the night, when your lover burned, for the first time.." suddenly Kirk's voice fell into the cadence of a quote, "with her blood and your semen still damp on her thighs, and the cooling sand under her feverish body; then if you have the will and the strength, join your minds and she will come to your hand as a mah-tor-pahlah to the lure, still beautiful in light, but always returning to you, her world bound always and only in you."

Spock felt... betrayed, by Kirk…by his body…his mind. He had always feared the time when his mating drive would take over but he hadn't... he hadn't imagined that his very mind and katra would have been twisted.

"You're doing so well, beautiful," Kirk said, as he slowly reached between the Vulcan's legs to prepare him. He sobbed at the intimate touch and flinched as he felt Kirk's arousal pressing against his thigh.

"What…w-what happened to her…?" Spock said, his voice dead and his body quacking.

"Whom?"

"Surak's mate. In the text, you quoted …he..spoke about his own mate?"

"He did and she died….in an accident. A le-matya tore her body apart."

Spock never had heard this version of Surak's story.

"The texts were vague though, and my Vulcan isn't the best. There were some hints ….that she died…. on a broken spirit. Surak undertook Kolinahr afterwards, began with his teachings about logic and never took another mate."

Kirk looked away, his mouth losing its shape as he bit at his lower lip. "But you won't die." He looked back down at Spock with something of defiance and despair in his face. "I won't let you. Not you! Never you!"

Spock remained silent but didn't fight Kirk anymore.

"You won't leave me..."

However when Kirk finally took him with sure, gentle movements – invaded his body like the first time, in the red sand of new Vulcan's desert - Spock's vision was blurred with tears.

The End

* A mah-tor-pahlah was an avian lifeform native to Vulcan. Like the Canadian geese of Earth and the flanarian birds of Betazed, mah-tor-pahlahs mated for life.