Two Blind Mice (Star Trek: TOS story by Lois Welling)

Fanfiction
Title:	Two Blind Mice
Author(s):	Lois Welling
Date(s):	1991
Length:
Genre(s):	slash
Fandom(s):	Star Trek: TOS
Relationship(s):	Kirk/Spock
External Links:	at AO3
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Two Blind Mice is a Kirk/Spock story by Lois Welling.

It was published in Nome #12.

Reactions and Reviews

1991

I have two major problems with this story. First, the author implies that T'Bkla is put into considerable danger by servicing Spock during pon farr when he is already bonded to Kirk, even if that bonding is unacknowledged. The Vulcan I know would never, never jeopardize another being through his actions, even if it meant that he would have to talk to Kirk about their situation. (Which they do later on in the story, anyway.) Second, as a friend of mine has asked, since when did rape solve anything? Yet that is basically what Spock does in the end of the story when he forces himself physically upon Kirk. The fact that their tussle turns into something sexual seemed like a cheat to me. And I especially disliked the way Kirk fantasized about Spock and T'Bkla to bring himself to completion. That sort of ambivalence does not bode well for any relationship, and is inconsistent with Kirk's seeming acceptance of their situation at the very end of the story.

However, despite my objections, I thought other parts of the story were very well-written and held my interest. I thought the character of T'Blaka was an interesting one and I'd like to hear more about the Free Traders.

1992

This story is Lois Welling's first hand (perhaps only) venture into K/S. It demonstrates Ms. Welling's great gift as a writer: her ability to take a conventional theme in fan fiction and, by the realism and sincerity of her writing, give it a new and fresh interpretation. Here, Ms. Welling does this with a stock situation in K/S, the pon farr/involuntary bonding scenario. Though the theme may be familiar, the treatment is unique. The story takes place about a year after "Amok Time." Spock is in pon farr again, and through his family, an arrangement is made for a Vulcan woman to serve as his partner, The woman, T'Eckla, is a Free Trader, and Kirk, Spock and McCoy take a shuttlecraft to rendezvous with her vessel, where she and Spock are to spend the time together. The two vessels are fired on by an unknown assailant; McCoy is injured and Kirk and the shuttlecraft are forced to remain behind to defend the ship. McCoy is out of commission for most of the next several days and Kirk, with little to occupy his time, finds himself unaccountably obsessed with thoughts, dreams and fantasies about Spock and sex in general. His tension grows to the point where it threatens to disrupt T'Eckla's efforts to help Spock survive the pon farr. After it is over, Kirk learns from T'Eckla that he and Spock are bonded. Back on the ship. Kirk and Spock must decide where their relationship will go from here. The resolution is a satisfying one for all concerned, including, of course, the reader. Ms. Welling's execution is spirited and highly original. In addition to the K/S plot, the story is also about demythologizing Vulcan culture—specifically, about the gap between Kirk's monolithic stereotype of Vulcan and the way things are in "real life." Throughout the story, Kirk's understanding of the complexity of Vulcan marital and sexual relationships grows. First, he reads some classified material on Vulcan history: next, he plies T'Eckla with questions about the contemporary reality of sex and marriage on Vulcan during the breaks from her activities with Spock. This information is engrossing in itself: however, it is not presented didactically but unfolds throughout the course of the story and is integrated dramatically into the plot by Kirk's palpable need to understand his friend's experience. The picture of Vulcan that emerges in this story is complex, many-sided and far more realistic than the one-dimensional Otherness portrayed so often in fan fiction...

T'Bckla herself is a counter-stereotype, and yet I felt she was Vulcan at her core. She carries off her role as "she who serves" with effortless dignity. Above all, she is a person who knows and accepts who she is. Spock and McCoy are solidly in character, but this is really Kirk's story. His strong feelings for Spock, which are not at all sexual until late in the story, and his need to come to terms with Spock's Vulcanness supply the dramatic movement and tension of the story just as much as the "bonding" theme does. I believe that Ms. Welling writes Kirk from the distinctive point of view of a fan who loves Spock and understands why Spock loves Kirk. I found her Kirk to be very much in character—strong, active, energetic, "a man of deep feelings," as Spock says in The Voyage Home. His caged energy in the scenes when he is cooped up on the Free Trader vessel, and his efforts to maintain control over the situation by organizing his time, were portrayed very well. This is a fine example of Ms. Welling's ability to bring her characters to life with vivid scenes of everyday activities like cooking and doing laundry. The scene after both men have returned to the ship, when Kirk explodes with all the pent-up stress and anger he feels toward Spock and their unresolved situation, is especially powerful. I greatly enjoyed the historical background on the development of Vulcan bonding. I like the idea that Vulcan society was matriarchal in pre-Reform times, and that Surak's reforms and male-female bonding in its present form may have been instituted by males intent on overthrowing the matriarchy. in its deepest sense this is a story about how we deal with the Alien, with Otherness. At the beginning of the story, Kirk is still deeply disturbed by the trauma of Spock's first pon farr—not just the shock of near-death at Spock's hands but the jolt of confronting Spock's "essential alienness," so easy to overlook because of his easy assimilation on board the Enterprise. Yet he still does not understand Spock's Vulcanness and still finds himself tending to humanize Spock's behavior. By the end of the story, Kirk has abandoned his stereotypes about Vuicans, yet paradoxically, his understanding of Spock's essential alienness has also grown. The story shows that learning to understand how others are like us and learning to accept and honor their differences from us are not contradictory but, in fact, two facets of the same process. There were a few matters I would have liked to see resolved in this story. In the historical narrative. I wondered what resources enabled Vulcan men to gain power against the matriarchy. A new division of labor, a new technology perhaps? How did the men take power? Later in the story T'Eckla refers to the "emancipation" of women as a recent development on Vulcan: still later, she tells Kirk that women and property were considered "one and the same" in ancient times. I wanted badly to know how women came to be considered property, why it took so long for them to become "emancipated," and what exactly their "emancipation" means in the legal sense. The historical narrative ended with Surak, and I was eager to hear "the rest of the story"! ...

At the end of the pon farr. T'Eckla states that she has "fulfilled my portion of the contract." This suggests that there was a quid pro quo for T'Eckla's service to Spock: it made me wonder what if anything she received as part of the bargain, No quid pro quo was mentioned elsewhere in the story. I feel ambivalent about the idea in this story that in "Amok Time," Kirk's "desperate need to get [Spock] to Vulcan" was driven by the bonding, not Kirk's free will. I consider Kirk's announcement in "Amok Time" that he will take Spock to Vulcan, even at the cost of his career, one of the most moving scenes in aired Trek. I would hate to think that this decision of Kirk's—which demonstrates the depth of his love for Spock because Kirk's career is more important to him than anything else except Spock--was anything but freely chosen. On the other hand Kirk's actions in "Amok Time" unquestionably support this story's theory of the bonding. When the pon farr is over, T'Eckla is angry, and rightly so, because she was not told that a bonding already existed between Kirk and Spock, thus exposing her to risk. She is surprised to learn that Kirk did not know that he and Spock were bonded. This is a powerful dramatic moment in the story. Yet it must have been obvious to T'Eckla, in her earlier conversations with Kirk, that Kirk knew nothing about Vulcan male-male bondings. Surely, he could not have been so ignorant if he knew he were bonded to Spock. These few quibbles aside, I thoroughly enjoyed this story and wish it could be only the first of many K/S stories by this excellent author. I recommend it highly to fans of good, realistic K/S fiction.