Bondage (Star Trek: TOS story)

Fanfiction
Title:	Bondage
Author(s):	Kathy Resch
Date(s):	1988
Length:
Genre(s):	slash
Fandom(s):	Star Trek: TOS
Relationship(s):	Kirk/Spock
External Links:
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Bondage is a K/S story by Kathy Resch.

It was first published in the print zine KSX #2.

title page

art by Gayle F

Reactions and Reviews

1989

This is the best story I have read on what Alexis Fegan Black calls "metaphysical" topics. It deals in a sophisticated manner with reincarnation and karma. By consulting temple priests, this AU Kirk understands his karmic responsibility and is able to progress through that knowledge. He also begins to grow into love. I was impressed with the Kirk/Spock/Uhura menage concept in this story as well. I found it both original and convincing.

No, despite its title, this is NOT a slave or S/M story. It a very imaginative tale set mostly in the "Mirror" universe. The story starts out with a rather shallow James Kirk, in the incarnation past the one he lived in the "Mirror" universe. It shows him rich and powerful, yet rendered powerless. Desperately, he searches for the answer, coming across a mysterious, dark-skinned priestess. Uhura leads him on a tour of his former life, showing how he betrayed the ones he had loved. This "Mirror" Kirk is chilling—not the invincible Captain, but a man with grave weaknesses behind the shining facade, a man with many painful lessons to learn. Besides the many-faceted depictions of Kirk and Spock, the depiction of Uhura was very moving; I like it when the TREK women are portrayed as strong characters in their own right. I also liked the close, caring three-way relationship.

The incarnate Kirk carried over many of the traits of our more familiar character, impatience and arrogance most notably. The incarnate Uhura is as we only ever get to see her in fan stories, more's the pity. The idea of either Kirk or Spock with Uhura has always intrigued me, so all three of them together tripled the effect. I wasn't disappointed. Very believable, set in the mirror universe, that Kirk would turn out to be the weak link that sentenced them to live and relive lives together and apart.

1994

Beautiful, expressive, powerful language, but also obscure at times. I love head-trips, but this can also feel inaccessible. Parts of it are like an LSD trip, into Mirror past/future lives. But I wonder if you would have had to been there to get it.

The obscureness is not the language itself necessarily. There is very, very much language which is beautifully uncommon and noj inaccessible. The style mixes poetry and prose. I like this, but this is partly where the reader can get lost. I think it's ok to be lost in this way; I think what might not be ok is to be ok is to be lost in images we can't see

Some very brilliant, insightful lines. Such as: "Silence as absolute as the pause after a dying breath." "He was residing now at time's heart." "Perfection-impossible to hold, impossible to escape." (This last, the penultimate moment of inevitability of orgasm. Gorgeous.)

Kirk in this life is a cruel, capacious nobleman, lost and empty inside. He goes to the temple, searching for meaning. Uhura, the priestess, who points out how despicable he is, brings him to one who believes him worthy of salvation. They eat a root-very psychedelic, and come through crystal impossibilities to Spock. In reviewing the previous life, he realizes in all other lives but this one he always had Spock, and wants him again. And we get the fascinating tale of their Mirror past lives, where Kirk, Spock and Uhura were lovers, and Janis Lester caused the deaths of all three of them.

So in this current life now, the three are reunited. A perfect threesome, in my opinion. Beautiful sex-very, very, very. Kirk leaves the temple healed, to renew himself in this lifetime so they can all be together again in the next.

Quite a strange and fascinating story.