This is a new story that I've been working on little by little, trying to flesh out an angsty piece surrounding Spock, Jim and Winona Kirk.

I hope you enjoy and I'd love to see the feedback you guys have. :)

Warnings: Depressing. This is a sad story, but nothing too much in this chapter.

A piece of Jim had known that this was the worst idea he's ever gone through with. Home had never been the two story farm house in Iowa but something in him, maybe that masochistic side, the one Bones kept blaming Jim's injuries from away missions on, wanted to face up to the shadows of his childhood and prove he wasn't afraid of the past .

So when the Enterprise was given the orders to dock at home for a few new upgrades and two weeks' worth of shore leave, Jim had suggested that Spock come say with him in his old home. He should have taken Spock's slightly crinkled brow as a sign of worry but had simply smiled wide and reassured his Vulcan that everything would be ok.

Things were not ok.

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There was the soft, sharp sound of a sigh and then a curse, Jim running a hand over his weathered face, eye brows pinched down, forehead crinkled, mouth set in a disgusted line as he swallowed his thoughts and turned back to Spock, shame flushing up in him in hot, sickened waves.

"Go wait in the car." He didn't look up from his dirt crusted farm boots as he gave the dry order, his hand massaging at his aching neck as he tried to hide the embarrassment acridly eating him. But Spock, who had categorized all of Jim's movements and facial expressions, caught the signs and grabbed for him, ducking his head to try and catch a look at his eyes just to make sure.

"Jim, is everything-"

"Just go back to car, I need to-" His explanation was over shadowed by a crash of fragile shattering, most likely glass from the high pitched, glittery sound, followed by a rough, shaken woman's voice calling out, almost as if in delirious fatigue.

Calling weakly for Jim.

He turned without trepidation then, flying though the old screened door, answering with soft exasperation, almost like a child who had grown too quickly, "Mama, its ok, I'm here."

Outside, Spock felt absolutely alone again, the miles and miles of empty farm land barren and vast, the dusk wind cooling as the sun sat tired and heavy on the edge of the horizon. He wanted to climb the three steps up to the porch and breech the house, to near his bond mate as he told Winona Kirk that everything was ok, but Spock felt an awkward press of social protocol prod at his chest. On one hand, his Captain and mate had told him to retreat and go to the car and wait, but on the other, Spock couldn't ignore the tirade of sudden emotions flooding him as Jim's shield cracked under its neglect. Jim felt hurt and broken, was disgusted and angry, but saddened and almost guilty. And it was with a slight, silent morbid curiosity that Spock gathered enough courage to do the difficult thing and broached the empty chasm that was Jim's life, his real life, the one he had on Earth, the one that made him, him.

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Her hands were shaking a bit as she clutched at Jim's strong forearms, legs buckling beneath her as if she was an old rag-doll, her stuffing all falling out, eyes dazed, glassy like marbles as she groaned in pain and gave all her weight to the floor. But Jim was there, hoisting her up again and shouldering her softly as he managed to get her up the stairs and into the room at the end of the hall.

But the wood floors creaked just as they always had, so loud that he could barely make out Winona's voice sounding hoarse and exhausted, snuffled in his shoulder. But he knew she was whispering his name over and over, her fingers digging into his arm as if she could hold onto her peace of mind with the feeling of his creased flannel shirt sleeve. She groaned in pain, a sorrowful sound that dejectedly sapped her strength as she toppled and let go of him all together, drunkenly falling to the floor with little grace.

Jim reached for her and tried to let her down slowly onto the rug in her bedroom, face angrily crumpled in frustration and a myriad of other emotions as he looked down at his mother's hazy, half-mast and closing eyes, her sleep shadowed skin making her look much, much older than Jim remembered her being.

'What has the world done to you?' He wondered as he curled his fingers tightly and tried to will away the acid burn of confusion, resentment, sympathy, and utter pity tearing his innards to shreds. He bowed his head and closed his eyes so he wouldn't have to look at the face of the woman who had left him, had looked right through him his entire life, and caught his tears with a gruff sob as he bit his lip, and jumped, startled and ready to fight as a hand tentatively brushed his shoulder.

Jim's tense, locked muscles smoothed a bit as he caught the sight of Spock standing tall and somewhat out of place with himself, eyes a bit wide as he calculated all the ways to diffuse Jim in his anger with the least amount of damage, eye brows showing that he was caught off guard as well.

"Jim?" He inquired softly, picking his way through the palpable emotions hedging around his mate in trenches and barbed wire as his Captain tried to protect himself with a paled attempt of shielding his hurt, wrapping his shame around the pieces of his conscious, eyes hardened, face questioning but genially closed off as if he was about to bargain with the brass about being caught red handed.

"I thought I told you to wait in the car." He started halfheartedly, somewhat biting in his tone, interrupted by his First Officer's gentle hand on his cheek, thumb wiping at a tear, eyes warmly opaque. "Go, I have to…" his lips trembled as he took in a gulp of air to distract him from Spock's ever probing look, feeling more bare to his mate now than ever before.

Because in his mind, Jim could lock away and bury a few of the skeletons in his closet and Spock was kind enough not to push for answers. But here, with his old childhood home creaking and settling around them like the ruins of a twister, his mother a drunken mess at his feet, and worst of all, every raw emotion he had ever felt shredding up all his wounds like fresh cut stitches. Here, Jim was stripped of his pride, his accomplishments, and power, leaving the remnants of an abused, fatherless child.

"Let me help you get her to bed." Was all Spock said, with all his Vulcan coolness and logic glazing his ruffled features well as Jim nodded in understanding and gently grabbed for his Mother's sleeping form and let Spock tend to her once she was settled in bed with a cool wash cloth on her forehead and a glass of water on the side-table.

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Spock could tell that she was once very beautiful from the way her cheeks were rounded with the gentle curves of laugh lines, her blond hair graying softly at the roots and shimmering in the low lamp light, and by the kind fashion her eyes creased when she smiled. He remembers seeing flashes of her in Jim's mind when they melded and portraits of her at Starfleet's headquarters, her red engineer's uniform pressed and starched to perfection, eyes distant behind her curls, hair the same sun washed gold as Jim's.

But Winona Kirk had taken a devastating blow with the death of her husband, her eyes shadowed now, heavy lidded, graying and vacant as she stared off into the distance, the blank expression haunting on her gaunt features.

Her hair was frazzled, limp and waved like dusty feathers ripped from wings of fallen angels, making a halo messily about her thin slumped shoulders. She looked sick with the alcohol, lips cracked, trembling as she breathed in slow and uneven. Sometimes Spock wondered if she was even alive from how still she'd go, the lights drained from her eyes, but then she would shift bonily and give a shuddering cough into her thin hands. Her makeup-less face was pale and wrinkled just a bit at her eyes and mouth, almost like paper stretched and stitched across the sharp angles of her skeleton.

And as she sat huddled in on herself as if to hold together her aching joints, Winona choked in a sudden breath, her head snapping around as she glanced frightened, eyes accusing as she caught Spock spying from the door way.

But her features then softened, losing the ghost edge to her vision and she turned back to the empty space, shoulders falling in as she collected her breath and wet her lips to speak a small dismembered voice.

"Oh, it's just you."

Spock tilted his head with gentle curiousness to hear her soft whisper and held himself back from releasing its neutral façade.

Winona's hand then moved slowly, almost as if to draw no attention, fingers uncurling stiffly as she gestured to the open bed beside her. But as he moved, he saw her hand jerk at his footsteps and she coughed again, unrelenting it seemed, as if he was the contagion in the room draining her life.

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Jim's hesitancy in melding with Spock in the early, tender days of their relationship had ties in his childhood but Spock had been patient, constantly hovering on the edge of asking questions and keeping a distance so as not to open old wounds. It had been a staggering surprise when Jim had nonchalantly brought up going home for their shore leave, one that Spock took well in stride and accepted, wondering for a moment if maybe this was Jim's way of reconciliation with his mother or maybe some human custom that Jim needed to complete in order to move forward.

Either way, Spock had looked forward to the visit with a twisted sort of curiosity, the kind that he was sure was highlighted by human tendencies, but he also felt that experiencing Jim's home life would strengthen their relationship, finally pulling back the curtains that shadowed Kirk's mind and showing Spock everything.

But now that Spock had pulled at the ties and seen what lay behind the closed doors, he felt the inky ribbons of something sickening him, churning his stomach.

Something much like fear.

As he stroked the thread of their mental bond and was answered with the click of a lock, Spock felt the cold coil in him, and as the wind flitted by the windows in a song of a cold, rainy storm coming, the feeling frozen in him, biting.

He was scared that Jim felt lonely and inadequate. He was scared of how this visit home would roughen and harden the man he had sworn to protect.

What scared him the most though, which he noticed as he sat slowly beside her, cross-legged, back ramrod straight, was that if he just glanced in his peripheral, he'd see Jim in the line of her nose, in the softness of her cheeks, the tender, tired skin under her eyes.

And he was at a loss of comfort, caught between putting a hand on her slender shoulder or, maybe, pulling her close to him to stop her from trembling so badly. His own mother had taught him that humans occasionally needed physical stimulus to calm the brute torrent of their psyches and he knew from immense experience that Jim always felt calmer when Spock held him.

But to come in contact with something so intricate as a foreign, broken soul, one which was so elaborately mottled as a dejected and clinically depressed human being, would no doubt cause her emotions to crash into him like a tidal wave, her mind leeching and desperate to hold onto something stable to fill the gaping wound of martyrdom, the black hole that her children, her job, the addictions, not even the entire universe of exploration could fill.

Spock began to wonder if this is what Jim would be like if he ever perished out in the black.

"I know Jim's mad at me…I deserve this…all his anger and avoidance…" She said after a soft sigh, as if she was burdened with such a simple, thoughtless function as forming her fears into words. "I just thought…" There was another pause, and within the silence, Spock began to wonder if she was ever going to finish her sentence, if she knew just how eclipsing this entire situation was. He let her sift through the hazy, roiling web of her emotions, trying to school his face to seem softer, friendlier. "I don't know what I thought." Winona finished wistfully, her head dropping with the weight of her statement, her still back shuddering silently as she bit her lip.

"I do not understand." Spock confessed in a hardened yet small voice, his eye brows drawn slightly, innocently. The woman in front of him was the main cause of Jim's distress, she left her children to fend from themselves with an abusive stepfather and she shirked her duties as a mother when she was planet side. He had never seen her smile in Jim's memories but now, looking at this withered shell of Winona Kirk, Spock couldn't find an ounce of anger toward her.

Instead, he felt a cold wash of something blooming in his chest.

Jim would have called it pity.

"I don't expect you to. Vulcans don't operate on extremes until they've bonded. Once you love someone to that level, you'll know what being truly lonely means." The tremble in her voice and the subtle way she pursed her lips into the twisted, small frown were the only indications of the hurt she was keeping swallowed back.

"As I am bonded to your son, I can truly say that I understand loneliness. On many levels." The truth thickened his voice as he stared her down, waiting for her human surprise to light her features as they lit Jim's. Instead though, she only scoffed, and broke their gaze, eyes now on the ceiling as she tipped her head heavily on the thin column of her neck. "I have felt the absence of my own mother, the alienation of my father, and the hostility of my peers. But never have I felt lonelier than when I was experiencing Jim's emotions towards his past."

His dark eyes reflected a pain that Winona had seen in her own mirror, and as his voice continued, its timbre cadenced and sharp, she felt stripped bare to the bone at his sincerity and seriousness.

"Because unlike myself who was full and then emptied over and over again in a sense, Jim was always empty. I may meditate and remember the warmth of my mother's voice as she read to me or the feeling of my father's secret pride at my accomplishments against all odds, but Jim truly has nothing. He represses his past, tries to cloak his memories in the shrouds of uncaring and detachment but they are there like a scar. And I know them, have seen them, have felt them, and have spent every moment I can trying to dissuade them, break them from him. So do not try and tell me that I do not understand or that I do not feel. For I know my own loneliness and I know Jim's much more than you do, madam."

There was a silence then that gathered around them like back, electric storm clouds, Spock's eyes leveling his Mother-in-Law with a penetrating challenge that the older woman couldn't ignore.

But before either could say a word, the rustic creak of the door joint echoed up the stairs, followed by Jim's golden voice asking, "Hey, Spock, mind helpin' me with getting the groceries from the trunk?"

The Vulcan stood then, elegant and composed as ever as if he hadn't just bore his soul to her, and didn't spare a glance back as he made his way to his mate, sweeping own the stairs hurriedly so he could catch the man at the door way in an embrace.

There will be more to come. :)

I mostly wanted t delve deeply into a few things, such as the relationship between Spock and Jim, as well as the complications with going home and the character of Winona Kirk. I know I painted her as sort of a washed up, drunken, feeble woman but that's not the entire picture of her and I will be expanding her character in the next chapters as well as exploring her relationship with Jim (both past and present) and her new knowledge of her son being bonded with a Vulcan!

I hope ya'll enjoyed enough to leave a review and tell me what you want to see or happen in the next chapters to come. :) Stick around!

You're loyal writer and humble author,

Castion and Clockwork