Chapter Text
Disclaimer: Not Gene Roddenberry, J. J. Abrams, or Justin Lin.
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Spock had always been, and would always be, a child of two worlds.
His cognitive and physical abilities were that of a Vulcan, but with human blood coursing through his veins and his human emotional needs boiling like that of a child from his early life, it didn’t take Spock long to realize he was not like any other Vulcan child. He blended well in his school, and on the surface, Spock was physically and academically no different than any other Vulcan students, but there was an aching emptiness that he couldn’t resolve as he was restricted from physical contact with his mother, as he was strictly prohibited against any display of childish emotion at the tender age of four years old, and the ever-haunting confusion at the fact that he couldn’t relate with any of his fellow Vulcan peers who seemed undisturbed with having to grow up without ever hugging their parents.
And his Soulpoetry; his Soulpoetry was human, Spock knew it.
Soulpoetries were a galactic-wide phenomenon and was a compulsory object in standard Vulcan education, so Spock knew how Vulcans usually received their Soulpoetries at six years old, usually a cursive handwriting in Vulcan across the length of their backs, and how humans usually received theirs at ten years old, usually written across the length of the inside of their arm.
Spock received his at age of eight.
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Jim Kirk was truly an exceptional child, and Winona always made sure her son was aware of that fact.
Aside from the fact that it would always be the curse of mothers to think of their children as special, Jim Kirk was truly a child with remarkable display of intelligent, even from early age. Several things he liked to do include trying to beat his brother at chess, reading about extraterrestrial cultures, staring at her late husband’s old PX70 that concerned Winona a lot, and stargazing.
Winona liked to accompany her son to gaze at the starlit Iowa sky after dinner; just her and Jim, since his brother Sam was more interested in living things rather than distant stars, sometimes even until hours late enough at nights for an eight years old boy. At first, Jim liked to point at a random direction and asked what star it was. It’s Antares, Winona would say, it’s the red star in the middle of Scorpio. But as time rolled by, Winona realized how quickly Jim had committed all the details to memory.
“I wanna go there, Mom, I wanna go to the stars like Dad,” Jim said one day as he pointed his finger at the edge of Milky Way, illuminating the sky with stardust and clouds of billion other suns. Winona turned her head to face her son, unaware of how her eyes had just caught the moist and began watering, at the sight of Jim, grinning as he imagined himself on a starship, exploring the skies.
He looked just like George.
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Growing up as a social outcast, Spock didn’t make meaningful relationships in school.
Vulcans didn’t usually have the form of friendships that humans would have in their early years; bands, gangs, cliques. Instead, they would usually associate themselves around other Vulcans with compatible minds and common goals, associations that transcended the relationships that humans would usually have, one that relied more on emotional compatibility.
Not one of his peers was compatible with Spock.
At first it was due to the fact that Spock was… not quite Vulcan. Not yet a mature adult Vulcan, there were still a lot of traces of human emotions in his Vulcan katra, but then by the time Spock had learned to fully govern his thoughts and actions to honor the Vulcan way, the whole school had already known of his heritage. At the age of eight, not one of his peers felt like they would be compatible to form a friendship with Spock. More often than not, his human heritage was not something that got in the way of him connecting with his fellow Vulcan peers anymore, but something they found curious.
And so began the attempts to illicit an emotional response from him.
At first it was merely mild bullying, minor inconveniences that Spock could easily overcome. Getting called a half-breed as he walked through the corridors, having no partners in school projects, having to deal with rumors spread across the campus that he was not a Vulcan and would not even graduate primary school.
And then came the physical abuse. Harsh brush on the shoulder as other Vulcans walked past him, tripping him up just to see if he would cry when he hit the ground, accidental spill of hot dishes onto his robe. Small pushing and kicking, sharp pulling at his ears because they were curious to see if they were real Vulcan ears. One time one of them tried to punch him square in the face, but Spock incapacitated him first in one swift sweep on his footings.
But only when they dragged his parents into it that Spock truly lost control.
“He’s traitor, you know? Your father, for marrying her. That human whore.”
He snapped.
Vulcan combat involved the need to use their energy in a very directed way, choose their movements wisely, spend their energy efficiently, but Spock—the way he screamed and thrashed wildly like an animal, the way his breath came out short and ragged from his mouth, the way every single part of his body seemed to move uncoordinatedly on its own accord, seizing every chance to hurt his opponent without so much of a thought, the way his face crunched up in fury—when Spock finally snapped, he fought his opponent like a human, with anger blazing ugly, intense, and bright.
Because no more, no more– he had made it clear from their very first assault that they didn’t have the right to insult his family, that it was unwise of them to belittle that which they did not understand, that he would not let them be satisfied, but they would not listen to him. He had advised them as a Vulcan, now he would make his point clear as a human.
Later that day, as he waited on the Headmaster’s room for his father, he realized the inside of his right arm was burning not because of his fight, but because of an inscription, now inking his flesh underneath the green-hued bruises that were decorating his arms. His Soulpoetry, in a human language, in a human location, emerging on a human age. He rolled his right arm to see what it said and gasped.
To Boldly Go.
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Jim shook awake at the gentle caress of cool morning Iowan breeze against his cheeks. On the far side of the horizon, the sky had a slight pinkish tint against the deep dark blue sky, signaling the breaking of dawn. Yawning as he clumsily tumbled out of sleep, Jim put his arm and pushed his body against the sandy earth to a sitting position. He had fallen asleep on his backyard again.
Last night had been the longest Perseids shower that Jim had ever experienced, so long that he must’ve fallen asleep there and then against the gently sloping opening in his backyard; a perfect place to go back to stargazing after his mother had told him to go to sleep, safe from view.
The meteor shower was so beautiful that he found himself gazing upward towards the sky once more, imagining little stars falling through the sky even though it was nearing morning. There had been so many of them he lost count after 57th star, or he might have fallen asleep then. If he could make a wish for every single one of them...
I want to get out of this city. I want a small motorbike. I want to have Mom’s special chicken curry every day. I want Sam to stop dissecting frogs on the dining table.
I want to go to the stars.
Something burned on the inside of Jim’s forearm, prompting him to wince. Pulling his arms to his stomach, he turned the side upward to see if he had accidentally slept with his arm catching a thorn by his side but found something more magnificent engraved on his flesh.
An inscription, in an almost otherworldly penmanship.
Where No One Has Gone Before.
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“They called you a traitor,” Spock mumbled in a low voice, his lips swelling from where he received the punch. He avoided Sarek’s eyes, knowing his father was scrutinizing him, but unbeknownst to the Vulcan child, Sarek was not judging him.
Sarek was looking down from above his right shoulder, where he ripped the sleeve of his right arm. He knew Spock was trying to hide it from the way he kept angling it at an uncomfortable position to hide the inside of his forearm from Sarek, but the older Vulcan could see it. He couldn’t read it properly, but he knew it was in human Latin letters, located in the most mundane location for human Soulpoetry, and emerged when Spock was eight years old.
Sarek sighed, and dared he say it if he wasn’t a faithful subscriber of Surak’s teachings, in fondness.
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A/N: Okay, so that’s the first chapter of To Boldly Go, covering up Spock and Kirk’s childhood prior to their meetings in Starfleet! Also, as much as I’d like to write TOS! Spirk, I’d like to clarify that this one is AOS, so (sadly *sighing heavily*) we don’t have Michael Burnham, Spock suffering from L’tak Terai, Tarsus IV, Spock’s conflict with Sarek about going to Starfleet, or even I-chaya. I haven’t watched a lot of TOS so I’m afraid I won’t do the characters justice if I try to write it in TOS. I’m treating Sam Kirk and Uncle Frank (as Winona’s brother) as AOS canon because they are originally in Star Trek 2009 before J. J. Abrams cut them from the final director cut. (Also, we all know how AOS!Kirk is mostly depicted as a bad boy extraordinaire, but argh, forgive me but rewatching The Search for Spock and the Voyage Home for numerous times may or may not have instilled a permanent image of Jim Kirk as a space golden retriever in my head). But enough of me blabbering, what do you guys think? :D
Coming up next is Jim and Spock on their years as young adolescents, including the famous “Long Live and Prosper (heavily implied bitch.)”