The Soul Inside

Fanfiction
Title:	The Soul Inside
Author(s):	Elise Madrid
Date(s):	2003
Length:
Genre(s):	slash
Fandom(s):	Star Trek: TOS
Relationship(s):	Kirk/Spock
External Links:	online here
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The Soul Inside is a Kirk/Spock story by Elise Madrid.

It was published in the print zine Starry Knights #1.

Summary

"A/U: The slave Kirk and the Vulcan prince Spock are tricked into becoming bondmates."

Reactions and Reviews

[from the author]: My first real story...and it shows (there was another before it but we don't talk about that one.) I tried not to get carried away in fixing it, but it has been re-edited for punctuation, POV, and the like. Written after devouring all the Duets, Way of the Warrior and Scattered Stars zines (and, of course, The Prize,) I came away with the notion that one was honor bound to write a pre-reform Vulcan story. This is mine.

"The Soul Inside" by Elise Madrid is one of the four stories that makes up STARRY KNIGHTS, and it's a little over 40 pages long.

The very first sentence contains an English error, and that is something that plagues the entire story—errors in spelling, punctuation, paragraphing and other miscellaneous English errors. This story definitely needed better editing, but I do understand how these things happen since it's happened to at least one of my stories in another fandom with another editor/publisher. But it is something that mars the story and will drive anyone that is a true nitpicker totally up the wall. This story has many of the basics of K/S. Here we have a het Kirk who learns to love Spock-not an idea that I personally like (the Kirk is not really gay but makes an exception for Spock convention) but one that is common. Their joining is because of pon farr-always a convenient plot convention for homosexual activity. The idea of a warrior caste with male bondmates being commonplace on Vulcan is another basic K/S idea that is in this story. I personally LOVE slave/master stories and am really into h/c. This story fills that double bill really nicely. The story is set on Vulcan where humans are slaves. We have Kirk who is a slave along with his brother Sam. Spock, of course, becomes Kirk's master and bondmate when he enters pon farr, and T'Pring is delayed. (T'Pring is not the evil bitch she sometimes is in this story.) There is an evil villain, a Vulcan named Lord Hadus. And there is a very nice Vulcan who is a true friend to Spock and then both Spock and Kirk called K'iron. This isn't really important, but some of the names in the story bothered me. Hadus is just too close to hades and K'iron reminds me of Kirk. It's just too pat. However having the villain named K'iron and the really nice guy being named Hadus would have been no problem for me at all. The other name that bothered me was Maggie. And I'll have to apologize to all Maggies everywhere. I even have one good friend named that. It just struck me wrong the same way it would have had the woman been named Susie, Tawny, or Mary Sue. I guess I wanted a name that sounded more unusual. Or perhaps it would have been nice to have had it be one of Kirk's actual girl friends from the series? Maybe Ruth or Janice or Helen-- if my memory serves. In general the Vulcans in the story are not very nice people to non-pure Vulcans and humans. They are amazingly really crappy, if I must be blunt. These Vulcans are not very intelligent sophisticated people as portrayed since I consider bad manners, cruelty, and prejudice to be indicative of stupidity. Both Spock and Kirk have their problems. There is also a surprise villain in the story whom I will not reveal. Besides the surprise villain, there is also a surprise hero who helps to save the day for Kirk and Spock at one point in the story. Because this is not a FIRST TIME zine which dictates a happy ending every time, there is a lot of suspense in the story because the reader doesn't know how the story is going to end. I was very swept up by the story and found it quite interesting as I kept on reading wondering if it would end happy or sad or bittersweet. If this story had been in FIRST TIME with a predictable ending, I wouldn't have been as interested in the story.

I recommend the story-despite the English and writing flaws which are definitely forgivable. I tend to be hard to please when it comes to K/S and this story was a pleasant read. It did keep my attention.