Take Home this Traveled Heart
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| K/S Fanfiction | |
|---|---|
| Title: | Take Home this Traveled Heart |
| Author(s): | Judi |
| Date(s): | 1987 |
| Length: | |
| Genre: | slash |
| Fandom: | Star Trek: The Original Series |
| External Links: | |
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Take Home this Traveled Heart is a Kirk/Spock story by Judi.
It was published in the print zine Way of the Warrior #1.
Summary
"A/U Shipwrecked on a primitive planet, Kirk is found and nursed back to health by a wandering Vulcan warrior."
Reactions and Reviews
I'd like to see more stories like this — a pre-reform Vulcan story with no slavery. I really lived this one. Judi's poetic descriptions of a weary warrior, Spock, traversing the desert and finding a crashed shuttle containing Kirk (and no, he does NOT enslave him) was electrifying. Please write more! [1]
This heartbreaker of an a/u story is stylistically beautiful, and I am glad to see a pre-Reform story without slavery, but it definitely brings to mind why there are so many slave stories in a pre-Reform context. When you have a situation, such as exists in this story, where Spock is culturally rooted to a society without space travel, and Kirk is a Starfleet officer, it is hellishly hard for K/S to work. Slavery may be a bad way to bind Kirk and Spock together, but the conflict of interest in this story made the ending sheer agony for me. I was still weeping for them when I read the closing poem, so my reaction to it was tinged by my reaction to the story. When Spock suggests that Kirk come fly with him in the poem, I remember saying sadly, "You can't fly high enough, Spock." The poem accentuates the ambivalence of the story's ending situation, and is thus quite effective. The intensity of my feelings and my extreme identification with both Kirk and Spock throughout the tale, is a great testimony to Judi's skill as a writer. [2]
For me this was the best story in the whole zine, as well as being satisfyingly long, it also depicts the characters of Kirk and Spock (McCoy is not in this one) very well. In actual fact, Kirk and Spock are the only characters in the whole story but that does not detract from its enjoyability at all. This particular author also manages to create a very realistic picture of Vulcan in pre-reformation days, and the story contains some lovely and somewhat unexpected descriptions of the Vulcan landscape which add much to the general atmosphere of the story.Although no attempt is made to explain why Spock is, for all intents and purposes, living rough in such a remote part of Vulcan all alone, this in no way causes a problem, the lack of background in fact only adds to the mystique of the tale which deals with Spock’s developing relationship with Kirk after his shuttlecraft crashes in a remote area on the edge of Vulcan’s only ocean and he is rescued by Spock, the only survivor of the crash.
The rest of the story deals with their struggle to survive both the elements and various predators and how they find themselves gradually growing closer and closer. Spock’s struggles to deny his feelings for this stranger he has rescued are very well described as are the ferocious storms they have to deal with and the old crumbling temple where they finally take shelter. All in all, this particular story has all the elements which I like to find in a K/S story, with excellent characterisation and a realistically described setting and enough emotional intensity and action to keep me interested all the way through, not to mention a completely unexpected twist at the end! [3]
‘Take Home that Traveled Heart’ is a lengthy AU where the lonely, self-isolated warrior Spock comes upon an injured Kirk, the only survivor of a shuttle crash. This piece told mostly in narrative and isn’t the most interesting to read, but the reader gets a good feel for time and place, and the author presents an excellent insight into Spock’s character. The ending is rather dry and sudden, but I thought the story was intriguing, and it’s the best A/U tale I’ve read in some time. [4]
'Take Home This Traveled Heart" by Judi was awfully good. I love her imagery and her descriptions of Vulcan. Spock finds a crashed ship with Kirk the sole survivor and nurses him while Kirk heals Spock's psychological wounds. I didn't at first like the uncompromising ending, but the logic of the story almost forces you to accept it. Judi's poem "Mercenaries" shows the same ability to conjure with words. [5]