Always in Mourning

K/S Fanfiction
Title:	Always in Mourning
Author(s):	Carole Turner
Date(s):	1996
Length:
Genre:	slash
Fandom:	Star Trek: The Original Series
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Always in Mourning is a Kirk/Spock story by Carole Turner.

It was published in the print zine Beside Myself #4.

Summary

"A/U: Awakened by the arrival of Terrans to his planet, Spock finds that, during his long sleep as a vampire, all life on Vulcan has died and that his only hope is the young, fair-haired member of the expedition."

Reactions and Reviews

Spock as an awakened vampire. Beautiful, haunting poetic language abounds— "My eyes grasp the dark eyed gaze watching from the silver glass. I see a man of eons past blended with a ghost from a cloudy future."

Oh god I love Spock the vampire in this riveting, imaginative story. This is in first-person Spock. With reference to my previous comments about first-person. I realize I have absolutely no problem with first-person under A/U circumstances. If s just when they're the Starfleet officers we know, that I can't quite believe the first' person perspective, as far as under what circumstances they might be telling the story.

What a very compelling tale. Everything was plotted out perfectly believably, except for one minor detail: In Spock's thoughts we learn that he's been in cryogenic suspension, on Vulcan, since the year 1997. Of course this is a Terran calendar date; but this is okay because probably if the author had Spock think of the date in Vulcan terms, that Vulcan year would have had to be translated for us somehow, thus hanging us up on a petty detail unnecessarily.

When he wakes up, 250 years later, his world has drastically changed, and he's in danger of having no life to feed on, oh no. I love the angst; I love the subtleties of his particular vampiric personality. And much sensuality in this character too. His meeting up with Kirk is just wonderful. Kirk is with a Terran group studying the planet's demise. I love how Spock is observing Kirk, as the first alien he's ever seen. What a gorgeous, tragic character is Spock; and throughout all this, fighting his blood-hunger, while Kirk is working on a way to help him by trying different formulas for him to feed on. Beautiful hurt/comfort, and then divine sex.

Intense, poignant, it was a page-turner, yet at the same time I wanted to take it slow, to savor. An extremely dramatic ending, I won't say.