The Tiger
by
Pat Foley
Chapter 2
warning, this chapter contains explicit violence
Very early the next morning, Spock shook himself awake, his heart racing, his respiration rapid. But no outside force had woken him, no tread of booted feet on the paving stones outside his dorm. Instead a far older nemesis had disturbed his sleep: the ghost of Surak raging through his dreams like the warrior he had once been, turning on Spock, his many descendants' heir, for having forsaken the Vulcan way and disgraced his heritage. But as always in these particular nightmares, the legendary Surak wore his father's - Sarek's - face. Making the nightmare somehow all the more real, and far worse.
Spock sat up shivering in the pre-dawn darkness of this alien world, for he had lost his coverlets in his sleep-tossed dreaming. For a moment he looked blindly out at his prosaic Academy dorm room, seeing instead the battle armor of his ancestor, the clash of arms dropping on the field of battle as Surak turned his back on war for a future of peace and logic, his clan army disarming in turn, and the opposing army in the field, all following in his stead. Except for the lone person in Spock, still clad in warrior's guise, standing unmoving, while the army all stared disapprovingly back at him, passing him, leaving him behind in the dust. To a place where he could not, did not, choose to follow.
Except that, behind him, beside him, shoulder to shoulder with him, looking after them, a le-matya, the symbol of his clan, came up from the mountain hills, roared and coughed a challenge after the departing army, who trudged on, disregarding it. In that forsaken moment, it butted him with its huge head.
We are not of them, you and I, it told him, purring deep in its throat.
No! Spock denied. I am Vulcan as well.
But what sort of Vulcan? The le-matya asked him. You're not one of them, are you? All logic and non-emotion. You're of me.
And Spock had no answer.
Spock blinked awake, having fallen back into dream, still sitting up. Then, really chilled, he sank back down in bed, turned on his side, and drew his blanket up over his shoulders, seeking warmth. He wasn't surprised by the dream. His mythic ancestor generally made an appearance when he was particularly troubled over some perceived non-Vulcan behavior. He'd been expecting something of the sort. A reproof, even from an icon millennia past.
It was not the first time for him. For this conundrum.
He'd been viciously, violently bullied in his youth. Coached to excel in school well ahead of his age group, manifesting odd human mannerisms inadvertently learned from his mother in his infancy, and bearing the hard legacy of Surak, who might be a Vulcan legend but whose clan symbols carried some of the resentment that all overachievers garnered, Spock had been a natural target for those who bore all of Vulcan's aggressive past without having yet learned the disciplines to rise above it. In spite of guards escorting him to and from school - Federation politics being what they were, kidnapping for ransom was a very real threat - in spite of the illustrious, historied and expensive educational institutions he attended, in spite of tacit credence given to logic and non-emotion among all concerned, Spock had begun to be bullied from five standard years for nearly another five years, when he had finally managed to put an end to it.
He had turned the tables on his worst tormentor. And not by a bloody nose or a blackened eye. Not a passing violent act made out of the fire of emotions, but a coldly planned and delivered lesson in turn worthy of his violent warrior ancestors.
And even though he had never spoken of it, even though his tormentor had never reported it to anyone in authority, even though they had never spoken to each other again, Spock had walked free of abuse from that day. Had never been touched in all his years since. In another few years, he and his companions were past being influenced by childish emotions anyway, more securely bound to the disciplines of logic. But there had been several years between where that would not have been the case. But word had traveled. It had indeed.
Leave him alone, the whispers came to his sensitive ears in the wake of his passage among them. He's dangerous.
For a while he hadn't been taunted with the word half-breed. He'd been called Le-matya. One who toys with his prey. And even more characteristic, throw-back: one who has returned to the old ways. But those had not been fighting words, labels to him. Not at first. Wrong as his actions had been, by modern Vulcan philosophies, he'd taken an odd sort of pride in freeing himself once and for all. In walking through a crowd of his peers at last unmolested. And by his own volition. Because for all his father's vaunted logic and authority, in spite of all his mentors' teachings, Sarek and they had been unable to save him from his tormentors. They had been impotent to stop them. Spock had been forced to save himself. He had never come to regret those actions, even now, years later. When he had mastered logic. When he should know better.
No, he did not regret it. Still. It was wrong and unVulcan.
But sometimes a bully required a bloody nose.
No doubt this was a serious character fault in him to still believe this in spite of his Vulcan indoctrination. A flaw. Perhaps why he was here in Starfleet. For he had come to this same crossroads, again. What had been in the past, best never revisited. But here the same conundrum rose, yet again.
Still, he was a le-matya. It was in his blood, Vulcan blood. And when the beast was stirred in him, it rose, past all logic. He could do this thing. He didn't want to. Would resist it with all his might, until his hand was forced. But he could.
If he was a le-matya, a throwback to the past, it was only under the right complex of circumstances. And sometimes, Spock had thought, then and even now, the beast was necessary. The galaxy wasn't entirely a peaceful place. And even Surak, after all, had waited to put violence aside until after he had conquered all the clans of Vulcan through one guise or another. Easy enough for his mythic ancestor, once he was in power, to espouse and enforce peace to his former enemies through new philosophies, philosophies they were quick to embrace, with the recent memory of Surak's military predations.
Nor did Vulcans hesitate to defend their sectors of space.
Spock had grown up with the past and the present conflicting within and without him. He'd been trained in desert-survival and warfare before the philosophies of Surak. He'd grown up inside the walls of an ancient fortress, weapons and banners of war covering the walls, and been educated in the most modern of academic institutions. All those seeming contradictions were part and parcel of being Vulcan. Perhaps his humanity came in the guise of his noting and questioning that seeming disparity. Not that it gained him any credit with Sarek or his Vulcan teachers. In the end, Spock had found it impossible to live with the contradictions. And he had made himself an outcast for that. Himself, still a le-matya, now on the prowl, still Vulcan, ancient and modern, both combined even if he strove to keep the former buried deep in Vulcan discipline. The beast was caged. But that didn't mean it wasn't still there within him.
Le-matya.
But if he was, he was also a Vulcan youth. And at the moment, in his present circumstances, facing what was before him, one very homesick for Vulcan's ochre skies.
If he wasn't so very much a Vulcan, he could almost cry with the frustration of it all.
Years of living with his inherent contradictions didn't make them any more easier to deal with. And when he was unsure of his immediate course, he felt the pain more keenly. Longed even more for some surcease and peace.
By Vulcan standards of aging, with a lifespan of more than three centuries before him, Spock was more of a youth than his fellow cadets. His physiology and mindset were largely Vulcan too. Lying in his Starfleet bed, he still wanted nothing more in the aching aftermath of that disturbing dream, than to reach out with his mind, across the empty void of firmament that lay between Terra and Vulcan, through the near shattered remnants of his parental bond, and seek his father's reassurance that all would be well.
But of course, that was impossible. Nothing was well in the relationship between himself and his father. It had been fatally severed. And if he sought Sarek's guidance and reassurance, if his father was lenient enough to accept him again, he'd still have to pay dearly for that concession, by taking Sarek's guidance to heart. Nothing less would appease the elder Vulcan. Sarek had made that plain to him. And Spock understood what the terms of his surrender would be.
In times of trial, that thought was a double-edge sword to Spock. The poison in the honey. He could leave all this uncertainty behind him. Follow in his father's footsteps, at his direction. Take the position at the Vulcan Science Academy. Live in his father's house, until he came to marry. Bend his will to Sarek's directives. But that reassurance, that comfort, came at the cost of his own self. And that was the one thing Spock knew he could not give.
And, he reminded himself, Sarek, even Surak, and all the peace and discipline of logic they espoused had not been able to save him from the torments of oppression before. Sometimes, at least for him, Vulcans' ways simply didn't work.
As a hybrid, he'd come to realize he had to choose his own path, take his own counsel. In spite of all the pain of uncertainty, of forging into a new culture, incompletely tutored, which that path garnered. Sarek offered only one way, with no detours or side investigations. Comforting in some ways as such a linear directive could be, he knew he could not travel it.
Spock sighed and turned on his back, staring up at the ceiling, unVulcanly frustrated. He had already chosen his path. He was in Starfleet, and determined to make a success of himself here. Dreams and nightmares were childish lapses in discipline, ones he had to strive to overcome. He drew a few calming breaths, ordering his system, and then rose lightly. He made his bed with practiced care, though he was two years past the inspection of his quarters for such basic Fleet disciplines. And after dressing in standard uniform, again an odd comfort, his badge of belonging here, he headed out to breakfast.
He was Vulcan enough to take reassurance even in minor disciplines. But no Kohlinar disciple, he was also young enough to find solace in creature comforts - a room and a bed of his own, his own particular belonging place, clothing that marked him as one of Starfleet's own, the promise of food to assuage hunger. Being cared for. It was, after all, a very large and empty galaxy to live in entirely alone. Even for a Vulcan.
Even for a le-matya.
Starfleet, the wider Federation, was his home now. His belonging place. And if there were serpents in this garden, bullies here, well, perhaps it was his task, as a member of the community, to help rout them.
Perhaps it was.
x x x
When Finnegan arrived in the corridor of his dorm room later that week, he was frustrated. Like any junky, he missed the thrill of pursuing his prey, the sharp adrenaline rush when a prank came off. For several days his main quarry had been in the medical bay, being treated for concussion, outside of his scope or reach.
So just as Spock had calculated, he was by now spoiling for a similar distraction when he came across the planned scene. By the time that Garrison, serving as lookout, had reported Finnegan returning from an afternoon class, the two serving as bait quickly got into their bonds.
"Hurry up, Jose," Garrison said, as he finished tying the ropes around Spock's wrists. The Vulcan was sitting on the dorm floor, knees drawn up to his chin, a stick cross-wise behind his knees, the ends protruding over his arms, preventing him from bringing his bound wrists up over his legs. Tyler got down in the same position, and held his arms out for the same bounds.
"Ruffle Spock's hair, Gar, if you want Finnegan to believe we've been cockfighting," Tyler said.
"Right." Garrison mussed Spock's perfect ebony silk into something more convincing of a tussle, and kneed Spock over on his side. "Rub your face against the carpet, and give yourself some brush burns. And you'll have to beg and cry, Spock, to make it convincing."
"Understood," Spock muttered back, sotto voce, and then, "I hear him on the floor now. Begin." And incredibly, he moaned and struggled against his bounds, and cried out, "Release me, you -" and he substituted a strange, presumably idiomatic appellation in his own language. "I can't bear it." And sobbed loudly in helpless grief.
"Give it to him, Jose," Garrison urged his friend, waving a pugel stick he'd picked up to encourage both of them. "Come on, kick him again! Roll him. You're not half trying, you coward!"
"I've had enough," Spock said. Tears now marked his face.
"No you haven't, you blasted Vulcan," Garrison stormed, only momentarily astonished at Spock's transformation. "We've had enough of you throwing the grading curve in every class - your blasted perfect scores. Not to mention your interference in a few gentle japes. Now you'll see what it's like on the other side. Go for him, Jose! And fight, you freak! Or I'll kick you myself, rules or no. Fight, Jose!"
"You said you were going to cock-fight too, Garrison," Tyler swore, from his position, equally trussed and helpless, on the floor.
"More fool, you," Garrison retorted. "Fight!"
Tyler kicked out at Spock, who didn't retaliate, knocking him sideways into the desk. Spock moaned and cried out again. Hearing Finnegan's tread approaching the room, Garrison whacked both trussed fighters with the end of the stick, to their combined cries.
"Boy-os, what's going on? You're making quite the row."
"What's it to you, Finnegan?" Garrison asked, turning, foot raised as if having made to kick both of his fighters to greater efforts, the stick still in his hands. "Butt out. This is our private affair."
"You've left the door cracked open and all," Finnegan pointed out. "Forgot to close it in the heat of fury, did you? And it's senior to junior, I am. So talk."
"Just trying out a little cock-fighting." Garrison said squarely, man to man, waving his stick at the two trussed opponents. "Nothing in the regs against a simple game of sport."
"I'm not one to rat on a bit of sport," Finnegan said, his eyes gleaming as he took in the scene.
"Except so far, there's not much sport to it. I can't get Jose to go for Spock properly," Garrison complained. "He's barely put a bruise on the green-blooded freak."
"I'd like to see anyone do it better. This bloody hurts. Even Finnegan, there, senior as he is, couldn't manage to wound him," Tyler complained. "I'd like to see him try. He'd funk it too."
"Oh, I'll wager I could," Finnegan said, his pride pricked. "I'd love to have a go at the Vulcan, boyos. We have a bit of a score to settle, he and I. And this'll do for a start. Then I have a few other ideas."
"We owe him too." Garrison argued. "Senior you may be, but I'm not inclined to give away our japes to you. Not when for once we have finally got him where we want him."
"Sure and he can't get the drop on anyone now, can he, with his blasted nerve pinch?" Finnegan nodded approvingly. "But how'd you get the bugger trussed up? So far, no one's ever been able to catch him."
"That's our secret," Garrison argued.
"Show us some of yours, in cockfighting him," Jose said, "and maybe we'll tell." He kicked Spock without much enthusiasm, even though the Vulcan moaned in response. "I'm no use at this now. The ropes are too tight for me and I've gone numb."
"All right, since Jose is funking it, show us your tricks," Garrison agreed tiredly to Finnegan, as if making a great concession. "Then maybe we'll tell you ours. I'll wager you'd like to hear how even a Vulcan has weaknesses. Catch him every time, we can now."
"I'm your man," Finnegan said, eyes gleaming. "I know quite a few who'd pay for the privilege of hearing that."
"Go on, Jose, get up from there," Garrison said, loosening his friend's bonds. "I want to watch a real man demonstrate this sport."
"No!" Spock said, feigning alarm. "I've had enough, I tell you!"
"Oh, I won't hurt you, you Vulcan freak," Finnegan said. "Not much, anyway." He laughed and got down on the dorm floor and assumed the position. Garrison swiftly moved to tie his wrists and shove the stick behind his knees immobilizing him.
"Now, you'll see some real cock-fighting," Finnegan promised. But even before he'd shifted to land the first kick, Spock had snapped the ropes binding his wrists with one movement. Before Finnegan's astonished gaze, he rose to his feet, his face moving from tear-streaked anxiety to the cool mask that was its usual form.
"And that's all right," Spock said, with studied tonelessness.
Behind him, Spock's two accomplices moved to close and lock the door.
"What the hell?" Finnegan said, the grin fading from his face. "What the bloody hell is this game?"
"Vulcans don't play games, Mr. Finnegan," Spock said. He shook his head slightly, so that his hair settled back from its tousled ruffles into smooth perfect silk. He checked Finnegan's bonds, then added the ropes from his own hands to bind the senior more tightly. Then he settled back into Tyler's desk chair across from Finnegan, raising an ironic brow at the other's position. A person trussed for cock-fighting is perhaps the most helpless creature in the world.
"Care to cry for assistance?" Spock asked him. "At present, that is your only option. Though I am at pains to advise you, that while the soundproofing in Starfleet dorms is hardly geared to Vulcan hearing, it is more than adequate for human ears. A fact you have also taken advantage of in the past, I believe, with your various nefarious activities. So cry if you will. No one will hear you."
"You bastard Vulcan," Finnegan said, the turned tables just beginning to sink in. "It'll be you that cries out for mercy. I will get you for this, I swear. I'll bloody kill you, if it's the last thing I do."
"I'm aware of some of the last things you have done," Spock said heavily. "That is what this is about. As well as some rudimentary, purely scientific curiosity on my part as to your practices and motives in those actions. I am, after all, on this planet to learn."
"You'll regret what I have to teach you, I promise you that!"
"Perhaps," Spock said. "But tell me, apropos of that, why do you bully? Kirk, for example. Not just him, of course, though you recently put him in the hospital with concussion. I was the one who found him, you know. The one from whom you ran on the stairs that night. But why bully any of your victims? We are, after all, of the same association."
"I'm none of your associates you freak."
"Why do you bully?" Spock asked again, his voice hardening.
"None of your dammed business."
"Actually, I have now made it my business." Spock said. "Given that I was the one who found your last, I have made it my business to ensure that it will be your last. I am wholly committed to that endeavor, I assure you. So, again, why did you bully Cadet Kirk?"
"Because I jolly well chose too."
"You regard the mere circumstance of opportunity as granting license, then?" Spock asked, raising his brows in mock surprise. "A strange moral code for a prospective StarFleet officer. Well, now given I have opportunity, by your own laws I now have the same license. You would grant that to me, would you not? I am merely adopting your own moral code."
"Bull. Everyone knows you don't have the stomach for it, Vulcan," Finnegan threatened.
"False assumptions are dangerous, for a future StarFleet Officer," Spock warned. "Merely because I generally eschew such action, do you consider me incapable of it? While the tiger is often a lethargic beast, who stirs only to hunt, 'the bleating of the kid excites the tiger'."
"You're daft, Vulcan." Finnegan said, beginning to regard Spock uneasily.
"Hardly. Did you know that the le-matya, Vulcan's closest equivalent of Earth's tiger, is my clan's legend?"
"I don't, nor do I give a shite. Let me up." A bully for years, Finnegan seemed yet to realize the tide had gone out.
"In due course, Mr. Finnegan. But first, I see you and I both have much to learn from each other."
"You'll pay for this, I promise."
"I don't believe so," Spock said, rising to stand over him judiciously. His leaned down and his voice lowered to a conspiratorial whisper. "Do you know, I believe that once you are broken, weeping and ashamed, you'll promise me anything. Anything at all. I have prior experience of that."
"Are you going to let him do this?" Finnegan appealed to the others, shuddering back and appalled from Spock's barely veiled threat. "This alien freak against a fellow human?"
"You are begging rather quickly," Spock noted. "But then, bullies like you have no more courage than honor."
"Courage is it? I'll kill you!" Finnegan threatened, striving against his bonds.
"You can try. I promise I won't kill you. Not quite," Spock echoed Finnegan in turn. "But I am still curious as to what you did to your victims, when you caught them. I have made something of a scientific investigation into the general practices. But supreme bully as you are, I am even more interested in your methods. And time is pressing. So, for a start, did you give them Head-Knuckles?"
Finnegan spat at Spock, who lazily stepped out of range of the spittle and asked again. "Did you give them Head-Knuckles?" He lazily began to spin the captive.
After the thirtieth bland repetition of the question, dizzy and gasping from being spun and the even, remorseless, persistent voice outside of his whirled vision, Finnegan could stand it no longer and gasped, "I did!"
"Then you'll be head-knuckled," Spock pronounced and proceeded to deliver the torture. It was no trifle. At the end of it, Spock sat back and allowed Finnegan to catch his breath and stop moaning. Then he asked, almost conversationally, "Did you give them Brush-drill?"
Finnegan answered more quickly this time, and Spock obliged in turn. He delivered Brush-drill for precisely five minutes. Finnegan could not even writhe in his bonds. No brush is employed in Brush-drill.
"Did you give your victims the Key?" Spock asked perfunctorily. He was not even breathing hard.
"No, I didn't. I swear, I didn't," Finnegan gasped beginning to understand.
"Then, since this is meant to be a true information sharing experience between us, I am pleased to offer that, so you can see what it would have been like if you had," Spock replied.
"Oh, god!" Finnegan groaned loudly. "Let me up. I swear I'll make it pax if you do."
"I grow weary of these exclamations. Vulcan hearing is so sensitive," Spock said coldly, and gagged Finnegan before delivering several minutes of the Key. No actual key is employed in the Key, which is excessively painful.
He removed the gag only to facilitate the answer to his next question. "Did you administer to your victims the Cork-Screw?"
"Yes, curse you! Yes!"
"Then I would not wish you to miss the experience," Spock said, and proceeded. The torture of the Cork-Screw, in which no actual corkscrew is employed, is keener than the torture of the Key.
Spock's methodical, unemotional manner, his habit of conducting an almost scientific series of questions and answers, his complete lack of reaction to his victim's cries, was getting to Finnegan. Although unbroken still, his eyes were wild, and his nerves were fraying.
"Can't you do something to stop him?" Finnegan appealed to the silent Garrison and Tyler, watching from behind Spock.
"Did you relent when you own victims begged?" Tyler, who had been abducted twice from his dorm room for hazing sessions before Spock had shifted his preventative actions from his floor to his entire dorm, asked coldly. He remembered hours of similar painful experiments from seniors, only ending just before dawn, when morning reveille required everyone assemble in the quad.
"You mustn't attempt to suborn the experiment," Spock chided Finnegan. "I am interested only in true results. Now, were these the only things you did to your victims?" he asked, while applying a certain pressure to Finnegan's hand, in a technique called Milking the Rat, that had his victim soon giving out little high pitched screams.
"Yes, it was," he shrieked. "I swear it was. You're killing me."
"So loud," Spock murmured. "And you are far from dying, Mr. Finnegan. Quite far. While I'm sure your victims made such outrageous claims to you, they were wrong. As you are wrong. You must learn, sir. Preferably in silence." He gagged his victim again. "I am disappointed that you seem to know so little about the art that you claim profession in, and to which you have devoted so much time. Fortunately, I have made a thorough study, in preparation for this experiment. I am well motivated to teach you all I have learned."
"No! NO!" Finnegan mouthed through the gag.
"Perhaps I shall teach you what real pain is," Spock said, moving closer, spreading his fingers in preparation. "Do you honestly believe you can teach a Vulcan - or anyone else on this campus - anything about bullying? With your pitiful knowledge?" Spock had moved to another nerve locus, on either side of Finnegan's bound arms. The human, his eyes bulging, was screaming, again through the gag.
"Do you really know anything at all?" Spock asked.
"No." Finnegan gasped, slumping in his bonds when Spock let him go. "I don't!"
"You are learning something. He says he doesn't know anything about bullying," Spock said, to his companions. "But should we accept his statement at face value? Should we believe him without further evidence in kind?"
"I don't know," Garrison said coldly. He had been hazed by Finnegan himself. "Is he broke?"
"He doesn't seem entirely repentant," Spock agreed. "Why did you bully Cadet Kirk, Mr. Finnegan?"
"I don't know!"
Spock flicked a brow. "He says he doesn't know," he explained to his companions. "As regretful as I find the instruction, I believe he must learn."
"I don't. I can't take any more. Please don't-"
"'The bleating of the kid excites the tiger,'" Spock said coolly. "A pertinent point in all of this. I'm afraid I must continue. Perhaps a little Rocking to Sleep, will clear your mind for the true answer." He reapplied the gag and borrowed Garrison's boxing gloves. It normally requires two assistants, each gloved, to Rock a victim, but Spock had exceptional timing, and managed quite well on his own.
"I think I am going to be sick!" Finnegan gasped, when Spock ungagged him.
"I wouldn't want you discommoded," Spock said. "I will give you time to recover. And when you have, you can answer the question at hand: Why did you bully Kirk?"
The answer was lurid, but Spock didn't betray a hint of chartreuse in his cheeks. He seemed rather wearied by it.
"Epithets are so unoriginal," was Spock's only comment. "Perhaps a different persuasion will bring the answer forthwith to your mind. Some Ag-Ag may be recommended."
And Ag-Ag'd he was. "Why did you bully Kirk?" Spock asked, when he was done.
No answer came back. Spock sighed, and reached for the gag again.
And then it came. Finnegan broke down in scalding tears. "No more. I'm done for, I swear. I'll never touch another. I'm out of it all for good! I won't touch Kirk, or anyone else. Or even you. I'll let you off the licking I promised you all. I swear!"
"Humph," Spock said, and still trailing the gag from his hand, settled back in the chair, regarding the tear-streaked Finnegan, his sobs and shaking shoulders as the latter continued to make unconditional surrender, promising never touch another all his days.
"You do seem repentant, Mr. Finnegan. But I know so little of human emotions, I can hardly trust them. Perhaps a little catechism, to be quite sure." He looked at his companions. "If you would oblige, gentlemen?"
Tyler and Garrison toppled Finnegan on his knees before Spock, and each picked up a pugel stick. Spock, seated before the kneeling Finnegan, leaned forward over his steepled fingers. His conspirators moved behind their victim and applied the flat end of the sticks in sequence to his raised posterior.
Are you truly repentant, Mr. Finnegan?" Spock asked mildly, to the regular crack of the applied sticks.
"Yes, yes! I swear I am!"
"And you are broken?"
Finnegan rubbed his streaming eyes and nose on his knees, tied just under his chin. "Yes, damn you! Oh, god, stop!"
Spock raised a brow in surprise and sighed, sitting back, while the pair behind him continued with methodical strokes. "Careful, Mr. Finnegan. Language. It leads me to believe you have not been humbled by this experience. Are you quite humble?"
"Yes," Finnegan said, still sniffling into his knees. "Yes!"
"Look at me," Spock suddenly snapped. Everyone in the room flinched. The beaters momentarily stopped. Finnegan looked up at Spock, a new wary look in his eyes as he looked into the blazing Vulcan ones.
"Yes, I'm humble. You bastard."
Spock flicked a finger, and the beaters continued. "I warned you, Mr. Finnegan. The bleating of the kid excites the tiger. Do not trifle with me."
"Yes. Yes! I'm humbled."
Are you permanently so? No danger of a relapse?"
"Yes!"
"So you don't plan to continue your bullying ways?"
"No," he said weakly. But his voice lacked conviction and Spock sat forward abruptly, causing the upperclassman to jerk his head back. "No!"
"Indeed. That is gratifying. But," Spock flicked a skeptical brow, "What about the revenge you have sworn against me and my companions?"
"I won't. I swear I call Pax."
"Pax, indeed," Spock said, his even tone betrayed by a hint of scorn. Spock's companions resumed their regular applications of the pugel sticks. "Do you esteem yourself to know anything about bullying? You have folded soon enough."
"No. No, I don't!"
"We've taught you a great deal, have we not?" Finnegan howled with another blow. "We're taking great pains to educate you, are we not?"
"Yes! Yes you have!"
"And I so seldom care to make these efforts. Are you appreciative of the time and effort we've expended on your behalf?" Spock asked. " I would dislike to be required to continue them if you prove not to be."
"Yes, I'm grateful!" Finnegan said. "Oh, god, please stop."
Spock raised a brow, and stood. "Indeed. He says he is grateful," he said to his companions, as if that settled that. Finnegan slumped hopefully, as the beaters stopped. But then, as if recollecting an important point, Spock turned. "However, you have yet to answer the material point. Why did you bully Kirk? As well as the others?"
When he didn't reply, Spock nodded again to the Garrison and Tyler, but they barely got a pair of blows off. Finnegan flinched when Spock approached, and collapsed into a fresh spate of weeping. "Because I was a bully. That's what you want me to say, isn't it? I confess. I apologize. I'm sorry! I'll never do it again, I swear. Kirk, and you and everyone are safe from me." He broke down in fresh tears again, even more abject than before, his shoulders shaking.
"On your honor and your word, as a possible Starfleet Officer?" Spock asked. "However little I might regard such a claim of honor given your past actions."
"Yes. Yes! I surrender. I'll never touch another, or you, or these two. I promise, I give my word of honor."
"I suppose I must accept a sincere surrender," Spock said. He looked back at his companions. "Mustn't I? If it is sincere."
"I swear, you can work me over a dozen times more if I lift a finger again." Finnegan broke into sobs again, of pain, fear, wounded pride and utter humiliation.
"I suppose he has surrendered," Garrison agreed. "Though I'm a little disappointed," he said, mock feigning a willingness to engage. "That I didn't get much of a crack at him myself." He waved his pugel stick handily.
"You took my pledge. You took it," Finnegan insisted.
"Yes, but it is incumbent on you to make good on it," Spock said, severely. "And to appreciate how lenient I have been. I could have brought all your victims in to watch this, Mr. Finnegan. All the freshman class that you have abused, to watch you cry and snivel. I could even have recorded it. In fact, you don't know that I haven't. But if you forswear such actions going forward, then this altercation will be as if it never happened. Except that you will reform."
"I will, I swear," Finnegan promised, looking uneasily at the three surrounding him. "I'll go softly all the days of my life. I promise."
"Except for one last thing," Spock said. "Having conceded, surrendered, as it were, you must sing odes. In honor of conquerors, you understand. That is the tradition for these encounters. I believe the Academy anthem will suffice."
Finnegan looked from Garrison to Taylor to Spock, well aware that after a long hazing session, the plebes were made to sing that same song, for that same reason. After a long hopeless moment, he struck up the same song. Spock closed his eyes, and moved as if to put hands over his ears. "Quite, quite vile, Mr. Finnegan. I should teach your further until you learn to sing in tune, for I believe that hurt my hearing far more than your lesson did you. But I will let you off. Talent, unlike character, is perhaps outside of one's conscious control." He moved to undo the other's bonds. After a telltale flinch, Finnegan held still, then rose slowly and uncertainly to his feet, looking uneasily from one to the other. "I can go now, right?"
"So long as you remember," Spock said coldly. "You will not speak of this. You will not speak to any of your victims - except when necessary in the performance of legitimate StarFleet duties - ever again. If you violate that agreement, I can bring you up on charges for Kirk's assault. And I will, for I witnessed it. You will spent years in confinement, and forfeit any hope of a commission. Do you understand?"
"I do. I promise. I never will."
After Finnegan made his shaky way out of the dorm room down the corridor to his own, leaving behind an acrid odor and a stain on the carpet where he'd been sitting, Spock drew a deep breath and settled into a chair. Now that Finnegan was gone, he looked almost as shaky as the recently exited human. "I won't trouble you for much longer," he said to his companions.
"Not at all," they said, looking at him in wonder.
"I had no idea you had that in you, Spock" Garrison said. "You were-" he hesitated to characterize what he'd just witnessed.
"Neither did I," said Tyler.
"'The bleating of the kid excites the tiger,'" Spock said, shaking his head. "That was dangerous."
"So are you," Garrison said, looking at the Vulcan with new eyes. "I had no idea Vulcans-"
"Vulcans especially." Spock drew a steadying breath, and looked from one to the other. "Why do you think we control so stringently?"
"Right," Tyler said.
"Can we get you some water?" Garrison asked. "Or -"
"Negative." Spock rose to his feet. "If you'll excuse me, I must meditate."
"Sure," Garrison said, but went the Vulcan put hand to the door, he called him back. "Spock?"
The Vulcan turned.
"Don't worry. Finnegan will never talk. And as far as we're concerned, this never happened. Never."
Spock looked from Garrison to Tyler, seeing the respect, but also a trace of fear in the humans' eyes.
"Yes," he corrected gently. "It most certainly did. But it never shall again."
He slipped out the door.
"That's some tiger," Garrison said to Tyler.
"Who knew what was buried under that Vulcan calm, when he gets riled?" Tyler asked. "I'm not sure I'd want to serve on his ship."
"I'm sure I would," Garrison said. "You benefited from being in his dorm, didn't you? Imagine being on the same side in a battle."
"Imagine being on the opposite side," Tyler countered.
"No, thanks. There must be a lot Vulcans hide under the surface that could benefit us, even unknown. I'd serve with him, happily. In spite of, or maybe because of, both his sides."
"Maybe I would too," Tyler agreed. "Maybe, if we're lucky, we will."
And later, on the Enterprise with Christopher Pike, they both would.
x x x
Two weeks later, Spock had experienced no overt repercussions. But he was being given rather a hard time of it, himself, from the senior instructor holding the afternoon's hand-to-hand tactics class. Spock had stepped up for his turn, against his paling opponent - being this was Spock's third year at the Academy, all of them, including the instructor, were well aware of Vulcan strength. Most of the time, his participation was purely perfunctory. With two scientifically calculated blows, Spock had put his opponent into the dirt. He was about to return to the circle of students, when Gabby Nichols, the instructor, motioned him to remain in the center, and called in, not one, but two opponents to challenge him.
Spock gave him a wary look, but didn't have time to argue, before the first attempted blow. But within three minutes, they joined the first on the dirt.
"Stay there, Cadet," Nichols ordered him, and called up three against him, and with a great lazy show, pulled out his watch.
This time it took Spock nearly five minutes and he was breathing a trace hard at the end of them, his hair ruffled, and his clothes and face smeared with the mud of the proving ground. Gabby pointed to the five students remaining and said, "Take him."
There was finally a rumble of muttered protest at this. Spock was not exactly a buddy for any of the cadets, but he was scrupulously honest, never lorded his physical strengths over anyone, willingly lent aid on tough problems in hyperspace physics or interdimensional maths, so long as it was before and not actually during an examination, and gave away all his desserts to anyone who wanted them at table, not possessing taste buds that favored sweets. In the close society of Starfleet Academy, these virtues were held high. But an order was an order, and they had no choice.
They swarmed over him like puppies on a shoe, doing their best to bring him low. This time Spock was outnumbered enough that he did have to work for the win, and he was well past five minutes, with only two of his attackers unconscious in the dirt, and three more circling warily, when a more prescient cadet in the circle of cheering shouting cadets piped "Officer on deck".
Everyone braced to attention except for the fighters, who, absent of an order to desist, labored on.
"Can I help you, Captain Pike?" Nichols asked.
"I'll have Cadet Spock," Pike nodded at the Vulcan, "when you're done with him."
"Yes, sir," Nichols said, a faint line between his brows, uncertain if there was a hidden meaning there. Nichols was good at physical work, but larger problems taxed him. Nor did he have any particular animosity toward Spock. It was mere vague comments about Vulcan prowess, not anything he could get a hand on, that had made him think vaguely guiltily that he hadn't been challenging the Vulcan cadet enough. But it was unnecessary for him to labor long in the mire of his thoughts. Spock's opponents were flummoxed enough by the audience that their attention wavered, and Spock knocked one unconscious to the dirt with one blow, and nerve pinched the two remaining. He shook his tousled bangs out of his eyes, blinking away the green blood flowing from where 'Parsley' Purslane had caught him with a blow on the temple, and straightened his tunic. "Yes, sir?" Spock asked Captain Pike.
"You always pit five to one, Nichols?" Pike asked mildly.
"Not often, sir," Nichols said, undrawn. "But it's never much of a challenge for Cadet Spock unless there's at least three."
"Never know what you're going to be up against in space," Pike said non-committal. "Never know whom, either. But I think Cadet Spock has proven himself for this day. Unless you're not done with him?"
"Fall out, Cadet," Nichols said, glad to be rid of the Vulcan, and reminded that he had some powerful friends.
"You may need a laser seam there," Pike offered, offering Spock an ice pack after the cadet returned from a sonic shower, having shed both dirt and the worst of the blood.
"I have the bleeding stopped sir," Spock said, giving the ice pack a brief look of horror before stolidly ignoring it.
Pike shrugged and tossed it in a recycler. "Suit yourself. Nichols giving you a hard time?"
"Not usually, sir." Spock went to his locker and began to dress.
"Probably good to have you sweat a bit," Pike commented.
"As you say, sir," Spock said.
"Walk out with me," Pike said and they went out of the locker room into the cooler air. The cries from the hand-to-hand class, still in progress, wafted over to them on the breeze. "I came to tell you that I'm pleased with my Tenth Legion. James Kirk not only turned in a stunning performance in tactical reconnaissance -"
"He would have done that in any event," Spock said coolly, looking back at his classmates still drubbing each other into the dirt, and thinking that at least he'd been spared another boring hour of that drill.
"But he was smiling as he did it. He's no longer grim."
"Humans smile with so little provocation," Spock said, dismissing that.
"What's wrong?" Pike asked, his own grin fading. He stopped under a large tree, and Spock turned to face him.
"What I did," Spock said pensively, "was wrong. It was wrong, of course, on the face of it. But even taking in the inherent result, still wrong."
Pike raised both brows in surprise. "I saw Finnegan for a teacher's conference yesterday. He was perfectly fine. Himself, except for being unusually polite, and sans his usual manic, swaggering grin. If you don't like smiles, that should please you."
"Vulcans abhor violence," Spock insisted doggedly.
"Let's walk on," Pike said, and took the Vulcan's arm to turn him. Spock came a bit stiff-legged, unwilling to be coerced, even in argument. "I know you do. Your stature on that, your control, and your efforts to save your fellow cadets from similar fates were reasons why I felt comfortable coming to you with this."
"I'm only a student here."
"You're an officer in training. Never forget that. Soon you might be in control of almost unlimited power."
Spock frowned at that, but didn't argue.
"You might not like it," Pike went on, "but I consider this part of your training, dealing with bullies. They're not only in the Academy. There's plenty of them out there in the galaxy, too," he said, waving an arm at the sky.
"But the administration should be charged with dispensing justice here."
Pike shrugged. "And if it did come out all officially, as you suggest, the Academy would be embroiled in a hell of a scandal."
"Perhaps it should," Spock flared.
Pike hesitated for a long moment, and gestured Spock to a bench. "I don't necessarily disagree. I and others are trying to get the policy on hazing changed. But as I explained, it is a long standing tradition at military academies, and change comes slowly. But change does come, and it will on this, I believe. Your quieter methods toward dealing with it, and the discretion you have used, have not gone disregarded. Things are going to change. And you've been part of bringing it about. Take some comfort in that."
"But why did they not act with Finnegan?" Spock asked, settling across from him.
"That was a different matter. It's hard to penalize the seniors, when those officers over them practiced it on them when they were cadets. They've lost some of that moral authority with that circumstance. That's the pervasive nature of it. Moral authority sometimes has to come from an individual who holds it."
"But I betrayed that, in myself," Spock said and then put a hand to his brow, when a drop of blood fell into his eyes.
"Here, take this," Pike said and handed him a handkerchief. "Why do kids never carry a wipe?"
"I don't- I can control-"
"Take it."
Spock held the cloth to his head for a moment, glowering silently, until he regained control of both his emotions and the bleeding.
"You put a spoke in that cycle of violence," Pike explained, when they both had cooled down some. "You meted out a justice that wasn't tainted by hypocrisy. Now there's rumblings of making it permanent. "Sometimes the school educates the student," Pike pointed to Spock. "Sometimes it is the student who educates the school. You've done a little of that. Hard not to, given you've brought a unique perspective to what used to be a pretty human institution."
Spock frowned at that. "Nevertheless, I am Vulcan. It's dangerous to stir those tendencies in a Vulcan."
"But you did deal with them. And you regulated them. To do a specific necessary service and no more. And in that, you've learned a valuable lesson too. Justice, out in the field, is not always black and white, Spock. It can be a very muddy gray. I can see you don't like that. And you're right to distrust it. If you weren't struggling with your conscience, I'd know you hadn't one. Those who don't are the officers Fleet absolutely has to weed out."
Spock was silent a moment. "Finnegan nearly killed James Kirk."
"But he won't bully again. If you didn't give him a conscience, you at least put the fear of God in him. Or of the random authority of fate, in the person of one Vulcan. He's learned that much."
"And what have I learned of myself?" Spock asked darkly.
"You've learned to summon up the ability to be ruthless when necessary - and for a Starship Captain that can come, there's no getting away from it, - but with the requisite qualms of conscience afterward, questioning yourself. That's what I like to see in a future officer."
"So this was yet another test," Spock said slowly.
"Life is a test, Spock."
Spock considered this for a moment in pained puzzlement. "I am not sure I am up for these sorts of trials."
"I'm sure you are," Pike said. "Come on. Isn't this all, Starfleet and everything, settling just a few of those demons you've got buried within you? You were bullied as a child. You longed to take revenge, I'm sure, deep in your heart. Longed for it, and feared it. Perhaps you have."
Spock said nothing.
"But look at you now. When given that license, here in an Academy where you could have taken it freely against vulnerable underclassmen with Vulcan power, you not only refused to participate, you saved others from the threat. When tasked to take that license, you did what was necessary and no more. And didn't like it much. That's a pass, Spock, not a fail. You don't need to fear that violence in you - a violence which is in all of us since we crawled up out of the dirt. It's a tool you may sometimes necessarily need to use. But one ruled by a higher conscience."
Spock sighed softly, heartsick but willing to believe. "If you say so, sir."
"I do. And I might have space for a commissioned officer with that combination of laudable traits."
"Laudable," Spock muttered, shaking his head.
"Spock, I came to tell you that I'm proud of you."
Spock looked up at Pike in wonder, the ghosts of Surak, of Sarek, hidden deep in the shadows at the back of his eyes. On the field of battle, even this battlefield, wearing the uniform of a Starfleet undergraduate, he still considered himself forsaken by all but the le-matya. And he still feared that part of himself. And the aloneness of it.
"What? No one's ever said that to you before?" PIke asked, puzzled by Spock's pole-axed expression. "Hey, watch out, you're bleeding again."
"Pride is a human emotion," Spock immediately countered, holding the cloth back to his brow, blinking green blood out of his eyelashes.
"Isn't humanity part of what you came here to find?"
"In part, I've also found the Vulcan is within me as well," Spock said, frowning down at the bloody handkerchief clutched in his stained hand.
"We need both from you Spock," Captain Pike assured him. "We very much will need both."
It was the first time anyone in authority over him had ever said that to him. And in that instance of overall acceptance of his formerly divided halves, Captain Christopher Pike earned Cadet Spock's unwavering esteem. With that, the young cadet was willing to follow him, or in later years, take him, almost anywhere. Regulations, or no.
He might not have mastered all of living with his dual nature. But he had learned that much.
x x x
But in spite of years of dealing with that conundrum, Spock had never quite reconciled with that particular incident in his past. He'd striven to put the disturbing events of it far from his mind. At the Academy, Finnegan had scuttled from any encounter. Spock had seen him only rarely from a distance. He and Garrison and Tyler met and served together on the Enterprise with Christopher Pike. But they never spoke of that afternoon's events. And Spock had never thought of James Kirk again until the orders came giving Kirk command of the Enterprise from Christopher Pike. Nor seen him until the day that Captain Kirk, new braid gleaming on his sleeve, beamed to the transporter room of the Enterprise. When Spock warily introduced himself, the new captain's eyes had met his new officer without recognition or guile.
And Spock knew he was safe from that unceremonious past, at least.
And he had reaped the benefit of his actions, if indeed his actions had had any bearing on Kirk's illustrious career. He took some flawed comfort from his ignoble behavior in that consequence.
He mused on flawed comforts and characters, as he hurried to attend the scheduled meeting, standing silently behind his captain. It was only simple issues of patrol routes and concerns the base commander preferred to discuss in person, now that the Enterprise was close by in a parking orbit.
But as the two Enterprise officers were walking back out into the mezzanine, Captain Kirk surreptitiously rubbed two fingers over one brow.
"Are you unwell, Captain?" Spock asked solicitously, remembering anew, years ago, the blood flowing from a bruise in that exact spot. The waxy pale of Kirk's face, the gleam of ivory bone under the red flap of skin.
"Just a bit of headache," Kirk said, brushing away Spock's concern with a gesture. "Nothing to do with Commodore Vogel or the meeting."
"Indeed," Spock said slowly."It was somewhat tiresome, but-"
"Probably just the change in pressure, from Enterprise to the Base. Between you and me," Kirk confided, "I had a bit of a accident in my cadet days, that led to a concussion. Since then, sometimes an abrupt change in atmospheric pressure takes me funny. It's nothing, really."
"Nevertheless, you should see Dr. McCoy," Spock insisted.
"If it doesn't clear up with a little aspirin, I will," Kirk promised. "Don't fuss, Spock. And don't go telling on me, either."
"Me, sir?" Spock said, raising his brows in surprise. "Vulcans are known for their discretion."
"I don't know about Vulcans, Mr. Spock," Kirk said, with a faint smile. "But I know about you."
"You do, sir?" Spock asked absently, and then abruptly stopped, pole-axed at the thought. "You do?" He belatedly wondered whether Kirk really had drawn a completely tidy blank over the events of that night, as he had always assumed. Or if he had recognized and remembered him. And drawn any conclusions from the subsequent consequences. Spock went pale at the thought. If Kirk ever had, he'd given no sign, been as discrete as a Vulcan. Upon consideration, Spock was even more sure that he had done just that.
"You're looking a little green around the gills yourself," Kirk noted.
"I would prefer to return to the Enterprise," Spock said, longing to leave all thoughts of this behind. One thing he had learned about his Captain. In spite of, perhaps because of, Kirk's encounters with the gray areas of injustice, he was quicker to understand, deal with, and even forgive them when he encountered them. Whereas, after more than a dozen years, Spock still preferred to shun the necessity of all of it.
He knew Kirk could dance in the gray areas, make deals with the devil, if not without a few qualms of conscience, then at least with an understanding of the balancing acts the galaxy often required, beyond the simple black and white, predator or prey that Spock preferred. The clear binary machine code of right or wrong that was Vulcan ethics. Spock recognized the tiger within him. He lived with it. But he still hadn't learned to accept it, much less easily incorporate it alongside his more modern, Vulcan moral codes. In his case, he chose to keep the tiger forever caged within his control. And feared the lapses when in losing that control, he let it slip past the bars. As he had grown, he knew he was capable of delivering more than a bloody nose, should he let it loose.
"I would have thought, meeting up with your old shipmates, you'd be a little cheered," Kirk ventured. "They were friends, weren't they?"
"Associates," Spock said, and then conceded. "But friends, too, of a sort."
"Well?" Kirk asked.
"Not all pasts are pleasant to recall." Spock explained.
"Then come along, Commander," Kirk said, turning back to regard his First Officer. "We do have a store to mind. We'll proceed to pleasanter futures."
"Yes, sir," Spock answered, regarding Kirk almost expectantly. Hopeful of some explanation. But his Captain merely smiled, no guile and no demands. As they walked on back to the transporter room, leaving even the hints of their Academy past long behind, Spock sneaked a surreptitious glance at Kirk's serenely smiling face, now caught up in some private, uncommunicated reflection. And Spock suddenly longed to know, to ask.
Within him, the le-matya roared. Begging for recognition. Acknowledgment. Acceptance.
But bound by his own promises, Spock silenced it, and himself. It was better so.
And as if Kirk recognized that, he never said a word either. Ever.
Fini ~
review, review, review...
The Tiger
by
Pat Foley
May, 2014
part of the Holography series
Author's notes:
I know this will be a controversial story (though perhaps not quite as much as Holo 2) because it indicates that Kirk was both hazed at the Academy but that he never settled the issue himself - though there's evidence in canon for that. Kirk didn't start out as a legend, however, but as a grim bookworm, fighting to make his mark. But even more controversially, this story purports that Spock would return bullying for bullying. There's evidence in canon that as a young child, he certainly retaliated against his oppressors, but this takes it a step farther. One can only remember the Mirror Spock and his agonizer, though, to realize that apple didn't have to fall far from that particular tree and that Spock had that in him, however leashed he generally keeps it in this universe. As Kirk said, he always regarded Spock as something of a pirate. Regardless, the wonder of storyland is that there's always a "what if" for an author to explore.
Note too, that the Academy in TOS is not the Academy in the sequels and movies. In later iterations, Starfleet and the Academy became far more multicultural and modern. I dislike that political revisioning, whether of Starfleet officers' maligning Vulcans, or of Vulcans doing the maligning in turn, as with Sarek's disparaging remarks regarding Earthmen. Because when we fudge up the disparate depths from where our characters legitimately began in the series canon, it makes the strides they did make coming together in their service on the Enterprise, forging their various friendships, that much less remarkable. Particularly for Spock, who came a very long way to find acceptance, never fully realizing what else he might stumble across of himself along the way, whether he chooses to acknowledge those truths or not. And the good friends who watch him struggle with those truths, concealing a smile, allow him that pass.
In the end, it's all good.
References - And very good recommended reads!
Stalky and Co, or (preferred) The Complete Stalky and Co., "The Moral Reformers", Kipling, Rudyard (Beetle, a.k.a Gigger) 1899
Schooldays with Kipling, The True Inner History of Stalky and Co. , Beresford, G. C, ( M'Turk himself), 1936
Stalky's Reminiscences, a.k.a. Stalky's Adventures, Dunsterville, Major-General L.C. (Stalky himself), 1928