Archived fic rec - Corrupted

[sakura_no_miko]

Title: Corrupted

Author: Littlevera

Fandom: Star Trek (film, 2009)

Rating: PG-13

Pairing: Past Kirk/Spock Prime and Kirk Prime/Spock Prime

Warnings: manipulation, intimate partner betrayal, angst

Other notes: alternate universe, episode based

Length: 6k

Summary: Love corrupts.

 

And here we have the flip side of yesterday’s A Gilded Hook.

I read this way, way back when the reboot fandom started, but the livejournal post had long since been deleted, so I thought it was lost to me. Luckily I decided to give the AO3 search a shot, and I found it again.

I always remembered the ending twist, which I found quite brilliant at the time. For some reason, I have a thing for alternate Gary Mitchell stories, like Twice Upon a Time. Even wrote one of my own a long time ago. There’s just something fascinating about this idea of having a character suddenly go mad with power–and, most importantly, having it be someone close to the main characters (or even a main character themself), and watching the agony in the main characters as they realize they’ll have to deal with them.

Here, we see a younger Kirk who goes mad with his love for Spock Prime. People play out Kirk and Spock Prime in so many ways–everything from Kirk being all, “ew, my other self did what with who?” to him desperately trying to convince Spock Prime that his love isn’t an echo or an influence, but a genuine connection. (I adore Reviving Methuselah in this regard.) Here, we have a story where Spock Prime and Kirk apparently got together but had a falling out, and it’s Kirk who can’t let go of things.

The fascinating thing, to me, is how this reads in relation to TOS–TOS Kirk had a recurring thing for destroying illusions, whether it was an alien masquerading as a god (i.e. Apollo, Trelane), a computer trying to enforce a perfect society (i.e. Landru, Nomad, Vaal), humans gone mad (too many to list), and so forth. Even when it was something that seemed relatively harmless, like the happy spores planet or the shore leave planet, Kirk was very much, ‘we need to find out the truth and give these people free will, even if reality is much more horrible and challenging.’

And here… well, here, I like to read it as the influence of the corruption. With Gary Mitchell, we didn’t get to see much of him before he went power-mad, but Kirk seemed to trust in him, so we can assume he was at least nominally a decent person. But he became corrupted. This Kirk, I like to think, shows part of his corruption by doing something so against his nature–by becoming the very sort of person he always sought to topple.

Of course, reboot Kirk is a different guy, and I can sort of buy him as someone who might be a bit clingy–a guy who doesn’t believe in good things like love coming to him, so he’d try and hold on to it desperately.

Geez, look how far down I am, and I haven’t even touched on the world-building, the excellent Spock Prime angst…

Sign of a great story, yeah? Enough given to let your imagination run wild.

 

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Originally posted on tumblr on 05/22/13