Shadows (Star Trek: TOS story by Rosemarie Heaton)

K/S Fanfiction
Title:	Shadows
Author(s):	Rosemarie Heaton
Date(s):	1999
Length:
Genre:	slash
Fandom:	Star Trek: The Original Series
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Shadows is a Kirk/Spock story by Rosemarie Heaton.

It was published in the print zine Singing in the Wilderness.

Summary

"Past and present cast long shadows."

Reactions and Reviews

Kirk, Spock and McCoy are at a country house on a shore leave. Kirk and Spock have been arguing a lot and McCoy tries to help.

Something mysterious is happening with McCoy, as well as in the house itself. Kirk sits downstairs in a sitting room and dozes off. He wakes up to see a young couple arguing and the man shooting a gun. Suddenly Spock falls down the stairs as though he’d been the one shot.

No one knows what it was that Kirk saw, but Spock hadn’t been shot.

They later discover that these were ghostly visitations and it tied in with a murder 170 years ago. But it was unclear about McCoy’s illness except that it had to do with the illness he has (“xenopolycythemia”) when he wants to stay with Natira. I wish this had been expanded further. It was a very good idea.

I loved it when McCoy watches Kirk and Spock from a window as they walk together in the garden. And the idea of the murder and the ghosts tying in with Kirk and Spock’s relationship was a good one.

Shadows is an intriguing and unusual story. There’s a lot that happens, that’s packed into only ten pages.

Kirk and Spock are apparently on leave together in a big, deserted, rambling house with a history. But they’re fighting, Spock has stomped out for a “walk” and Kirk is fuming and depressed. The karma of their normal relationship has certainly been disrupted. (My only real complaint with the story occurs here: I assumed for some reason that they already had a sexual relationship, and it was only on re-reading it that I realized such was not the case.) McCoy arrives, recovering from a bout of the Martian flu and not feeling very well at all. I don’t want to give out the rest of the story, but what follows that night and the next day is atmospheric, moody and nicely understated. It also incorporates what I now understand upon second reading is the initiation of the K/S relationship. Interesting that I could mis-interpret this the first time around as a reconciliation, and still found that the story worked.

I have greatly enjoyed much of the recent work of Rosemarie Heaton. It’s obvious that she likes McCoy, because he’s often found to prominent effect in her stories, and though I never like it when he is part of a sexual relationship with one of the fellows, in this story he is sympathetic, crusty, and adds considerable interest to the goings-on. And he’s just a friend!