The BLTS Archive- Surrogate
Ninth in the Trefoil series
by EmGee (mgtrek@altavista.com)

---

Warnings:  Post character death, major angst.  Maybe not the thing to
read if you're depressed.

Archive: ASCEM, others please ask

Comments: In terms of sequence, this story fits into the middle of my
Trefoil story "Home From the Hill."

Feedback: Honest and thoughtful criticism always appreciated, whether
delivered publicly or privately.

Disclaimer:  Claire Kendall is my own creation.  The other characters
are the property of Paramount.  I'm just borrowing them so Claire will
have someone to play with.  Paramount can have 'em back when they're
done, safe and sound.

---

Claire clutched her pillow, rested her forehead on her crossed arms,
and tried not to think about the pain.  Spock had never before failed
to ask permission for this most intimate of invasions -- permission
that she always had given willingly.  The few times in the past that
they had performed this particular act, he had always been gentle with
her, caressing and stretching until she was ready to accept him
without discomfort.  This time, he had simply turned her onto her
stomach and taken her, with no warning or preparation.  The
carelessness of it, the obliviousness to her needs, was completely
unlike him.  His breath was harsh as he thrust insistently into her.
Her anus throbbed and burned, and she wondered distantly if she was
torn, if she bled.

Then, in the midst of it, with no warning, his erection simply wilted
and he pulled out of her and turned over onto his back without a word,
staring up at the ceiling with a stony gaze.

Claire slipped out of bed and went to the bathroom to clean up.  She
turned the water in the shower to hot and stepped in, letting the
steam engulf her.  She stood, the spray pounding on her back and neck
as she leaned against the shower wall, and thought that what had just
happened was in some strange way a fitting end to a day that had been
horrible from first to last -- the day of Jim's funeral.

She had found it very nearly unbearable.  If Sulu had not taken charge
and found a quiet room for them, away from the Starfleet brass and
Federation dignitaries and newscams and assorted hangers-on, she
didn't know what she would have done.  Sulu had quietly and
efficiently emptied the small chapel, ushered them all inside, and
snagged a loitering lieutenant to stand guard, with warnings of dire
consequences should anyone breach the fortifications.  So there they
gathered, she and Spock and their various family members, and McCoy,
Sulu, Uhura and Chekov too (Scotty and Chapel having been unable to
leave their postings to attend), and held the simple service that Jim
had wanted all along.  And then they went out and sat through the
official ceremonies.

Afterwards, family and friends had returned to the house, and they'd
had a meal together and spent some time in pockets of quiet
conversation before, one by one, they departed.  And she and Spock
were alone in the house, for the first time since before Jim's death.

Spock had gone to the garden to meditate, and she had wandered about,
cleaning up glasses and plates left by their guests, plumping pillows,
picking dying blooms out of the vases of cut flowers.  The rituals of
death hadn't changed much in the last three hundred years, she had
thought.  People still brought food, sent flowers.  They still said
"I'm so sorry" in hushed tones.  They stayed close in an attempt to
stave off the grief.  But eventually they had to return to their own
lives.  Eventually, those who mourned had to confront their loss.

Through it all, Spock had been . . .  Spock.  Calm.  Controlled.
Gracious, if cool, with the many people who had insisted on expressing
their condolences.  She had seen no outward sign of grief, nor of the
rage that she had glimpsed in him the night of Jim's death.  It was
very Vulcan of him, she supposed, in a public setting at least.  Was
she being made now to pay the price of that control?

They had both been tired, and had gone to bed early.  And then
sometime in the middle of the night, she'd awakened to Spock's hands
on her body.  She had welcomed the intimacy -- it had been a long time
-- but it quickly had become apparent that Spock was not himself.  And
so she had found herself face down on the bed, trying not to think of
what was happening to her as a violation.

Claire toweled off and slipped into an old shirt that had been hanging
on a hook beside the bathroom door.  Jim's shirt, one of his
favorites, the soft fawn-colored flannel nearly worn through in
places.  It still smelled faintly of his soap and his own distinctive
male scent.  She wrapped it closely around her and buried her face in
the fabric, inhaling deeply and letting the memories wash over her.
*Oh, Jim. If you were here, you'd know what to do. You'd know how to
help us.* She recognized immediately the absurdity of her wish.  If
Jim were here, they would not need any help.

She brought a warm, damp cloth back to the bedroom and washed Spock
gently.  He took no outward notice of her ministrations.  She climbed
back into bed beside him.  He was rigid and silent beside her.

"I don't understand what went on just now," she said.

She couldn't see his face, which he had turned away from her, but
shame was written in each line of his body.

"I hurt you."

Not a time to lie.  "Yes."

"I ask forgiveness."

"Of course I forgive you, Spock.  You didn't mean to hurt me.  I'm all
right now."

She spoke automatically, without any real warmth, saying what she
thought she should.  Perhaps that was why her words did not seem to
afford him any comfort.  "I have behaved unpardonably.  I have used
you . . .  as if you were he."

He spoke with a careful formality that he had not shown her in years. 
Time to be equally careful with her own words now.  Strip them of the
emotional content, maintain a certain distance, just as he had.  "We
have engaged in that particular practice before.  Were those other
times unpardonable?"

"No."

Holding her away with his actions and his tone, but in that one
neutral word, so much emotion creeping in, unbidden -- the wrong kind
of emotion for Spock.  It hinted of a world of misery underneath.

"Did I ask you to stop?"

"No."

"Would you have stopped, if I had asked you to?"

"Yes."

Not that, then.  Not that he felt out of control.  So if it wasn't the
act itself . . .  he had said, 'I have used you as if you were he.'

Maybe--?

"Spock, were you thinking of Jim?"

He flinched, and in a rush, she understood.  'I have used you as if
you were he.'  The words echoed in her head.  He was not just thinking
of Jim, but treating her and her body as a surrogate for his, shunning
the female in favor of a part of her that he could pretend was Jim's.

She struggled to grasp the implications.

"You miss him.  Your body misses him."

"Yes," he whispered.  "Very much."  And a feeling of inadequacy
overwhelmed her.  How could she hope to give him what he wanted?  She
hadn't the right equipment, after all.  Would he ever again want her
for what she *could* provide?

He didn't move, but she felt him pull even further away.  It would
have been unbearable if she did not believe that his rejection was not
of her, but of the comfort he didn't believe he deserved.  By his
standards he'd wronged her, and her feeble insistence that he had done
nothing wrong would not likely make him change his mind.  She couldn't
let him withdraw.  She wouldn't let him build those Vulcan walls now,
especially not now.

"There's nothing wrong with fantasizing about Jim when you make love
to me."  She did her best to speak with conviction.

In his silence, a spurning of her absolution.

"I understand what you might need to do, the ways you might need to
touch me, to make my body feel more like his.  If that's what you need
-- whatever you need, Spock -- I offer it freely to you."

"Why?"

"Because I love you."  Love you enough to do even that.

And as if that declaration was too much for him to hear, as if he felt
undeserving of it, he rolled away from her, began to get up.

Desperation made Claire harsh.  "Don't run away, Spock.  It's
cowardly."

He sagged back, still turned away from her, and suddenly Claire was
angry.  "I love you, damnit, and I love him, and all those months -
those *years* - I spent here by myself, all those nights of dinners
for one and empty beds, and I never felt as alone and -- useless -- as
I do this minute."  She swiped furiously at her eyes.  "I love you,
and I love him, and I loved the two of you together.  You're - you
*were* - a different person with him, and he was a different person
with you.  It's like there was Jim, and there was Spock, and there was
Jim-and-Spock.  A third entity.  And Jim-and-Spock is gone.  I miss
Jim-and-Spock.  And I know it's nothing compared to the way you must
miss it."

"I also miss Jim-and-Claire," Spock said softly.

She had not expected that, and hearing it, she wasn't angry any more. 
"Yes," she said sadly.  "I know."  Because there was no denying it --
she was a different person with Jim too.  And though she was afraid of
the answer, she asked the question.  "Is Spock-and- Claire gone too?"

The silence went on so long that she thought she would scream.  "It
would be illogical to think that there will be no changes," he said
finally, and she felt an icy numbness.  *So that's it.  We're
finished.*

Then he reached a hand back to her, and she felt a tiny spark of hope. 
She put her hand in his, and he drew it along his side, over his
heart, as if to bind that organ within his body.  "I am afraid," he
said, very softly.

"Oh, Spock."  And through their link she could feel that it was so. 
"What is it that you fear?"

"I do not know . . . if what we have will be enough."

It was her deepest fear as well.  They had built their lives as three. 
There was a particular strength and balance in that, though most
people would have considered it impossibly complicated.  As three,
they had been complete.  Could she and Spock learn to be complete as
two?  Could she ever fill the void, in even the smallest way, that
Jim's death had left in their lives?

They lay together like that for a long time, his words hanging heavy
over them, and Claire thought about everything they both would be
missing, without Jim.  And because that subject seemed much too vast
for her to comprehend at this moment -- and since, after all, they
were in bed, and naked -- she considered the ways in which his death
would affect their sex life.

There was no getting around it, she realized.  With Jim's death, Spock
had lost something that she had not -- the opportunity to express his
sexuality with a member of his own gender.  To be taken, penetrated,
dominated.  Not always, but sometimes, to play the submissive role. 
She couldn't hope to match Jim's strength, and it was not really in
her nature to try to dominate, but maybe this once --

She moved her arm then and grasped Spock's limp organ firmly at the
root, trying to replicate Jim's firmer touch.  He murmured in quiet
protest and tried to move away.  She held him fast and he didn't fight
her but he was unyielding, wary.

With her free hand she reached behind her to the bedside table for the
lubricant.  She did not want to release Spock, so one-handedly she
flipped the top off the tube, squeezed a large quantity onto the sheet
and then rolled her hand in it.

She had never penetrated Spock before.  It had always been Jim who had
pleasured him in this way.  But she had watched them often enough, and
she knew what to do.  She stroked down his length and rubbed her palm
over his glans as with her other hand she massaged his perineum and
anus and then dipped two slick fingers into him.

He gasped, and trembled, and was instantly hard.  "No," he said in a
strangled voice tinged with panic.

She stilled both her hands, but did not withdraw.  "Please let me. I'm
not Jim.  I can't be what he was.  I can't do everything he did. But I
can do this.  Please, Spock, I want to."  I want to do it because you
need it, she added silently.  "Think of him," she said.  "It's all
right.  Tell him what you want."

Spock was panting as hard as if he had run a marathon.  Claire began
rubbing again, gently, as she probed deeper into him.  Spock took a
deep, shuddering breath and dug both hands into the mattress, taking
up two fistfuls of sheet and holding on tightly.  Then, slowly,
tentatively, he began to move, forward into her hand and back against
her fingers.  "More," he said.

She added a third finger, and he moaned and pressed backwards. 
"More," he said again, raising his upper leg and moving her hand away
from his swollen organ onto the heavy sac beneath.

Her hand was small and slender.  Not much bigger or longer than Jim's
cock, she thought, as she carefully and slowly eased all five digits
into him.  As she met resistance, she withdrew slightly and then
pushed forward, as she had seen Jim do with his cock, simultaneously
firm and gentle, and presently she was encased to her wrist.

Spock groaned, and Claire raised her head to look over his shoulder at
his face.  His eyes were closed tightly and his face reflected mental
agony and physical ecstasy in equal measure, asceticism and hedonism
at war within him.  She felt his core heat, and the involuntary,
rhythmic contractions of his bowels, and the voluntary squeeze and
release of his sphincters.  She withdrew her hand halfway, slowly,
then returned it, once, twice, Spock groaning each time.

"Again," he said.  "Please, again," the words forced from him
unwillingly, even as he tried to control the reactions of his body.
She turned her hand slightly, feeling a knuckle brush against a harder
spot in the soft tissue, and he let out a sharp cry and squirmed
against her.  But still he resisted, every muscle rock-hard, still
ashamed of his need.

It reminded her of the early stages of pon farr, when Spock would
still be aware enough to fear his loss of control.  She and Jim had
learned to hold him closely then, to swaddle him with their bodies as
one would swaddle an infant with a blanket, restraining him gently but
insistently.  In that close confinement, he felt safe and could yield
to the demands of the fever.

Remembering that, she brought her leg around his hip, pinning him to
the bed.  With his superior strength, he could fling her off in an
instant, but she knew he wouldn't.  She brought her free arm around
his biceps and chest and held him hard.  "Let it go," Claire
whispered.  "It's all right.  We've got you.  Let it go."

A long moment, in which neither of them drew breath.  And then, all at
once, she felt him yield.  She moved her hand within him once more,
and he was coming, crying out Jim's name.

And with the physical release came the emotional one.  Claire had
known that Vulcans can cry, do cry in situations of extreme distress. 
She knew that Spock had cried before -- Jim had told her about the
quiet tears he had shed for Vejur.  But nothing could have prepared
her for the harsh, dry sobs that shook him now.  They frightened her
with their intensity.

It was said that Klingons howled their sorrow upon the death of a
mate.  Well, the Klingons had nothing on Vulcans for expressions of
grief, she thought, as Spock's shields crumbled and she tumbled into
the maelstrom of his loss.  Vulcan control is like a dam, she thought. 
When it bursts, there's destruction all around.

Spock turned onto his stomach, his forehead pressed to the pillow
beneath him, his shoulders heaving.  She carefully eased her hand out
of him and wiped it clean with the damp cloth she had used earlier on
Spock, then wrapped herself as tightly around him as she could.  She
held him as he shook, listening to him make sounds that she had never
heard before and hoped desperately never to hear again.  His
desolation was fathomless, and he had so little experience with this
kind of grief.

Slowly, slowly, he wound down, until finally there was silence.  He
pulled his tattered shields back together and settled them gently in
place, not to shut her out but to give them both the comfort of a
little mental distance.  Claire dared then to ease her body to one
side and pull the blankets around them.  She pulled him back into her
arms and he came willingly, his body trembling with exhaustion.

"I am sorry," he whispered, his cheek laid on the soft fabric of Jim's
shirt, the soft pillow of her breast.

"Nothing to be sorry about," she said, her own cheek resting on his
head.  "It was a long time coming.  I didn't know . . . "

"Know what?"

"If you ever would.  If you ever could."

"Cry for him?"

"Yes."

"It was something I did not know myself."

"It's an important part of healing.  For humans, anyway."

"For Vulcans too, I think."

"Remember where we are.  Anything goes here, in this bed.  That's
always been our rule."

"Yes," he said, gently stroking her flank.  "It has always worked well
for us."

"Spock."

"Yes."

"I love you.  And I know it changes nothing.  What we have might still
not be enough for you.  Or for me."

"If it is not, then it is not.  However, I prefer to believe in a
positive outcome."

Her heart surged.  "Do you know the meaning of the word 'faith,'
Spock?"

"Of course.  Faith is belief that does not rest on logical proof or
material evidence."

"You've just said that you have faith.  In us."

"Yes.  It is something that you taught me."

"I did?"

"Yes."  He was silent for a moment.  "There is something I have not
said, something that is important for me to say."  He shifted his
position to look into her eyes.  "I love you, Claire.  Whatever
happens, I do not want you to doubt that."

"I've never doubted it, my love."  And their eyes met as they both
remembered the last time she had said those words -- to Jim, on the
night of his death.  Her own tears came then, and it was Spock's turn
to hold her, comforting her with the warmth of his body and his
caresses.

And though they both were exhausted, or perhaps because of it, they
made love with a rare tenderness and passion, each wanting only the
other.  When they were finished, they settled back together in a
cocoon of blankets, in the bed where, somehow, the universe always
seemed to right itself.

Then they slept, a deep and restful sleep, and did not dream.

---

The End