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anghraine · 17 days ago

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It's genuinely kind of baffling to me that Leila Kalomi so regularly is the Spock "love interest" invoked as proof that Spock can't possibly be gay he had an ex-girlfriend didn't you see the episode with his girlfriend he could be straight or maybe bi but definitely definitely couldn't be gay.

Anyway, this is Leila's description of their previous relationship in "This Side of Paradise":

ELIAS: Did you love him? LEILA: If I did, it was important only to myself. ELIAS: How did he feel? LEILA: Mr. Spock's feelings were never expressed to me.

LEILA: Come back to the planet [with the docility sex pollen spores] with me. You can belong again. Come back with me, please. SPOCK: I can't. LEILA: I love you. I said that six years ago, and I can't seem to stop repeating myself. On Earth, you couldn't give anything of yourself. You couldn't even put your arms around me. We couldn't have anything together there. We couldn't have anything together any place else.

Like. Leila herself acknowledges that Spock would never willingly enter any kind of relationship with her unless drugged into it, even as little as taking her in his arms. And Spock, uniquely among the many people exposed to the spores, experiences physical pain in the transition to artificial happiness/belonging/"love":

SPOCK: No. LEILA: It shouldn't hurt. SPOCK: No, I can't. Please, don't! LEILA: Not like this. It didn't hurt us. SPOCK: I am not like you!

Early in the episode, she is very clear about how much she cares about what Spock would choose while fully functional:

ELIAS: Would you like him to stay with us now, to be as one of us? LEILA: There is no choice, Elias. He will stay.

Spock specifically asks her questions that would reveal the spore effect and allow him to make an autonomous choice. Leila refuses to answer until the spores painfully take him over. And even once she herself is freed of the spores' effects, her approach to Spock and his autonomy doesn't significantly change; it isn't really something she values about him.

Compare this to someone like Eve McMahon even in as terrible an episode as "Mudd's Women," in which Kirk is the one affected by the aphrodisiac and Spock is immune. Eve is strongly implied to be interested in Kirk, and she knows he's being affected by the drug that nobody has explained to the Enterprise crew; he asks her not to come into his bedroom, and she ignores that for a moment to carry out the seduction, but she knows it's wrong and is so horrified that she breaks it off and leaves. The even more ethically ambiguous Helen Noel in "Dagger of the Mind" also has an arc that leads to her insisting "This isn't right" when Kirk's autonomy is compromised, and reminding him of what's real. Chapel ultimately accepts in "Plato's Stepchildren" that Spock's no always meant no and could never be otherwise without some violation of consent that she finds horrifying. Leila is not uniquely terrible (Deela in "Wink of an Eye" is a lot more unambiguously chilling), but this isn't just how all women in TOS behave, either.

There's also an intriguing thread of very distinct mutual hostility and incomprehension between Leila and Kirk throughout the episode, in which neither comes off looking great, but Leila plainly cares quite a lot less about Spock's autonomy. A lot of this is mostly conveyed by performance (Shatner very convincingly bleeds jealousy as Kirk here), but Leila definitely doesn't get the nature of Spock's and Kirk's relationship even as it exists in S1:

SPOCK: Emotions are alien to me. I'm a scientist. LEILA: Someone else might believe that. Your shipmates, your captain, but not me.

Kirk very much does not believe that, just to be clear. I feel it's worth mentioning that this episode was aired directly after the one that concluded with this—

—and right before the one in which Spock insists he's acting based on logic and probability and of course wouldn't leap into danger. Kirk's response is just this:

That is also the one in which Spock torpedoes all his scientific principles in pure panic over Kirk:

SPOCK: Captain, are you all right? Jim? Jim!

SPOCK: Kill it, captain, quickly! KIRK: It's not making any threatening moves, Spock. SPOCK: You don't dare take the chance, captain. Kill it. KIRK: I thought you were the one who wanted it kept alive, captured if possible. SPOCK: Jim, your life is in danger. You can't take the risk. KIRK: It seems to be waiting. SPOCK: I remind you it's a proven killer. I'm on my way.

Anyway, Kirk is immediately jealous and resentful of Leila and regards her as the problem. He doesn't know much of anything about Spock and Leila's previous relationship and certainly doesn't seem to know how ephemeral it was (Leila's descriptions of how limited it was both occur in scenes where Kirk is not present and she pretty obviously tries to suggest it was a real romance when he is there). So Leila doesn't know what the relationship between Spock and Kirk actually is like and how bizarre Spock's spore-influenced behavior is going to seem, and Kirk doesn't know what Spock's relationship with Leila really was like, so we just end up with this wild uncomprehending mutual resentment between them.

Even before Kirk knows what's going on with Spock, he seems to think removing Leila from the picture would fix things. While it's not quite true, when he does figure out how to break the spore haze, his first priority is getting Spock away from Leila and back at his side. Spock makes it extremely clear what drives his refusal to return to Leila and the artificial happiness of the spores, as powerful as it was for him:

LEILA: I can't lose you now, Mister Spock. I can't. SPOCK: I have a responsibility to this ship, to that man on the bridge. I am what I am, Leila, and if there are self-made purgatories, then we all have to live in them.

Like, this whole situation is so fucked-up and puts such an emphasis on Kirk's oblivious jealousy of Leila, her lol what consent possessiveness around Spock (combined with the repeated revelations about how extremely minimal their relationship was and remains without literally drugging him), and the spores affecting everyone in basically the same pleasant but unhealthy way (rather than the highly idiosyncratic and physically painless effects of losing inhibitions in "The Naked Time") apart from it being specifically painful for Spock as he begs for it to stop. The whole interest of the episode turns on the essential melancholy of Spock's position: his only options are a) artificially- and painfully-induced contentment that is his sole experience of happiness but foreign to him or b) the fundamental self-inflicted purgatory of life at Kirk's side that is nevertheless truer to what he really is (I am what I am). It is not remotely difficult to read all this in repressed gay terms rather than proof!!! of Spock's attraction to women.

The thing is, of all the obligatory Spock "love" interests in TOS, there are multiple other ones that you could make an argument for. The most obvious is the Romulan commander; he's in his right mind, she's not the source of the dubcon, they have fantastic chemistry even if Spock's manner is deliberately ambiguous, she's super cool and hot and his age, and he definitely respects her. I guess there's Droxine, too; their interactions aren't even dubcon, just strange and bad and don't go anywhere. Even Zarabeth is only mildly sketchy compared to Leila and has a much better motive. But for some reason, the "well akshually" responses to gay Spock posts always seem obsessed with But His Canon Girlfriend Leila in particular.

#anyway. they'll never take tos gay spock from us <3 #anghraine babbles #long post #anghraine rants #star peace #st fanwank #leila kalomi critical #gif #spock #c: i object to intellect without discipline #c: who do i have to be #otp: closer than anyone in the universe #lgbtqia stuff #tos: s1 #anghraine's meta #tos: this side of paradise #tos: dagger of the mind #tos: mudd's women #cw dubcon

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fearhims3lf · 9 months ago

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TIMING: Current

PARTIES: @amonstrousdream @fearhims3lf

SUMMARY: Late at night, Mateo runs into Leila and decides to cause a little trouble. Little does he know that what he's poking is a fresh wound.

WARNINGS: Car Accident (mention), Child Death (mention), Sibling Death (mention)

There was always something ethereal about visiting the astral. One moment at home, and the next, you're some amorphous being in the middle of sparkling night until you conjure the will necessary to become tangible. Mateo always enjoyed that travel, the moments of silence as he hunted for his food, only occasionally being interrupted by a fellow mare.

It was rare that Mateo ever bothered to exchange pleasantries, mostly offering an acknowledging grunt, but he spotted someone familiar and couldn't help himself. The woman–Leila, he recalled– who had threatened him all those months ago. A smile painted on his face and he slinked his way to her.

He wondered if he could instigate a petty squabble, hoping to make himself feel just a little better than he had the last few weeks. Maybe it was pathetic and unfair, but breakups sucked. Sue him. “Oh hey, ma.” Mateo greeted Leila with a mischievous smile. “Haven't seen you around here in a while.”

The astral had lost its wonder.

Once, Leila had thought there to be something strangely beautiful about the place between waking and dreaming. One could simply become a part of the universe- a mote of night and stardust that floated through the cosmos. It was quiet, and beautiful, and rare. Rare to be a part of something so vast, rare to be able to see the world as it truly was: a structure of thoughts and memories grafted upon physical constructs.

It was grief that ripped the wonderment away from the astral. Worry for the living that dimmed the stars, fear of more death that turned the beauty of that other world to ashes. Now it was a place with a purpose: Leila would find the nightmares that happened without the interference of a mare to try to dispel them, and to create nightmares when she absolutely needed- solely for survival, solely on those who caused pain in the waking world. There wasn’t much time for the latter, though. Not between her endless worrying for Metzli, Ariadne, Eleanor, and every other person in the godforsaken town who had wound their way into her heart like ivy.

She had been scanning the seemingly endless horizon of dark, muted purples and blues, looking for the shimmer of a dream already laced with fear, when she heard an unfortunately familiar voice. Hey, ma. The simple greeting was enough to set her teeth on edge. Of all the mares left in Wicked’s Rest, why did it have to be Mateo to find her in the astral? At best, it was a needlessly irritating interaction. At worst, it reminded the mare of what she lost. Of who she lost.

Leila didn’t even deign to look in his direction as she spoke. “What do you want, Mateo?”

A knowing smirk weaved its way onto his face, the tinge of irritation in Leila's voice already filling him with a sense of victory. He was only two sentences in, and she was already done with him. It was becoming a common theme in Mateo's life, but at least it came with humor that time around.

“Bet you react that way to all the cool guys.” He chuckled, sauntering a bit closer. “Didn't really feel like being a blob tonight. How is it my fault that you had the same idea?” Mateo arched a brow, deciding to poke the bear a little further. What was she gonna do anyway? He could dodge away and disappear in an instant before she even fully reacted. The opportunity was staring him in the face, and Mateo was nothing if not impulsive.

“Maybe I should go bug that rock girl again. As a treat.” Not that he'd actually act on it, but Leila didn't have to know that. She just needed to react for his satisfaction.

It was so strange to feel so hollowed out by a few words.

Once, the mention of Cass from the other mare’s mouth would have turned her into the monster she was supposed to be, furious in a way she could never get a hold of. Leila would have stood vigil for a lifetime to keep Mateo from lurking in the girl’s dreams. But Cass was gone now. Her little body was buried beneath the dirt in a greedy cave, cased in a tomb of igneous rock and cave formations, too close to the man who had taught her love was something you had to suffer for, that you only but never, ever deserved in return.

His words were an unintentional blow to the gut. The air felt as if it was sucked right out of her lungs. The dark, star-dulled space of the astral felt like it was pressing in on her. As if she, too, should be buried alive. Payment for her failure.

Leila opened her mouth to say something, anything, but none came out. Rather, a low, mournful whimper rose in her chest.

There was supposed to be anger, explosive and dangerous, and all around too powerful to stand against. Mateo was fully prepared for that outcome, readying his stance to leap back home, but nothing came. Nothing but a pitiful, yet earth-shattering sound. It caught in Leila’s throat like barbs, entangling itself inside with a violent sorrow.

“Shit.” Mateo hissed, taking a step back. He knew that look too well. “I…” The words wouldn’t come out. He knew he had fucked up. Royally. But it was his mess, and he wasn’t going to just leave it there now. Mateo was many things, but he wasn’t a monster. Not like that anyway. Not when his softer nature tended to make itself known at a time like that.

“I’m sorry. Is she…” Dead? He wanted to ask, but thought better of it. “I’m sorry.” He said again, head falling shamefully. “That wasn’t fair.”

The astral was a strange place to feel like you were falling apart.

The grief came like a riptide, pulling Leila down into the undertow until down was up and up was down, until there was nothing but the hollow, aching, horrible feeling of guilt without end. Of loss without relief. It wasn’t Mateo’s fault- after all, how could he have known what had become of Cass? But the resulting sorrow did not change. If she were not in that place between the waking and dreaming world, the mare might have curled in on herself, might have sunk to the ground while her heart broke and broke and broke again. But there, in the astral, she simply wished to close her eyes and disappear. If she were some bit of nothing lost in the endless astral, then she couldn’t fail those she loved. If she were nothing, then maybe everything wouldn’t hurt so much.

The words seemed to come from another, far away world. I’m sorry. A strangled sob wracked her body as the mare tried to keep it all in and tucked away. But Mateo wasn’t someone she needed to stay strong for. So Leila crumbled. “She’s gone…” The words were hardly audible, as if saying them hurt just as much. Not as if. It did hurt just as much. Maybe more. The truth always hurt more…

“She’s dead.”

He could see Nancy and Veronica so clearly in place of Leila. Mothers without children to care for after a horrible tragedy, faces marred with the consequences of another’s actions. It was likely to plant deeply. Rooting itself so far down until its soil festered with the poison of grief, never to host another harvest. Mateo had seen that look before, more than once, and he still faltered in that moment. He still struggled to do more than just stand there dumbly and repeat himself over and over again.

“I’m sorry.”

It was like he was 20 again, attending a funeral for cousins that would always be that age and that he would never see again. Only Mateo didn’t know Cass the same way he knew his relatives. He was just a man that didn’t know how to offer anything more than a few words that wouldn’t bring Leila’s loved one back. She was gone, and she’d stay that way. Mateo wondered how much guilt the other mare had. Not only was she alive, but she would far outlive any life Cass would have had. He couldn’t imagine the pain she must feel as a mother. Parents weren’t supposed to bury their young.

“How long ago was this?”

“August- um… August seventeenth?” She knew the date. It wasn’t a question- it was a fact carved in stone, an end date for a life that should have gone on far after it. But Leila hadn’t really let herself get washed away in the tide of that pain before. For over a month she had forced herself to stay as sturdy as stone. For the sake of Metzli and Ariadne and all others in her life who had loved the girl who was now lost to them, she had remained (as best she could) a shelter. But wind and rain made even the strongest mountains erode away. She had known the cracks were there, but she had not known to the extent they had grown…

She disgusted herself, if she was being truly honest.

The fact of the matter was that Leila could have done more. Tried more. She could have gone every day to the entrance of the cave and called for Cass. She could have done more than bring comics and food- like those would have done any good in battling the monster of a man who had wormed his way into that girl’s brain. She could have tried harder. It was true! But she had mildly, sheepishly, stupidly done as Cass had requested: she had given her space. She had left her alone. But in doing that, she left the girl alone with the monster that ultimately killed her. She should have done more.

The man's shoulders slumped down with the weight of Leila's voice. Her wounds were still so fresh, and Mateo came barging in with a grief of his own that was miniscule in comparison. Time would pass and he'd be able to let go, but for Leila, she may very well become a prisoner of her loss, unable to move. Mateo felt horrible for what he'd done, and there wasn't much else to do but sit with her in between her tears. It wasn't like he had any experience with being a parent. Much less one who'd lost their child.

“Um,” Awkwardly, Mateo stepped a little closer and laid a careful hand on Leila's shoulder. His thumb brushed over it in what he thought to be a soothing pattern, though he guessed he'd find out if it was if Leila didn't react poorly. “I don't know much–well anything at all about this stuff, but…” He shrugged and inhaled deeply, “My cousins lost their boys in a wreck. My cousin–he was a brother to one of them–he, uh, he was driving and they had smoked pot like they usually did together. He lost control of the car.” The memory stung the corner of Mateo's eyes and he sniffled, recalling the moment his cousin Diana called him to tell him the news. It was his birthday, and he had been expecting her to call him to sing as she usually did.

Obviously, that wasn't the case.

“He killed his brother and his cousin that night, and nobody blamed him. Maybe at first, when the news struck, but like, it was raining, you know? They hydroplaned and he got seriously hurt too. I don't know…I-I…” Mateo sighed, squeezing Leila's shoulder before retreating his hand. “I guess what I'm trying to say is, if you feel guilty at all, I hope it goes away. ‘Cause I mean, you didn't kill her. You didn't cause it. And if no one can blame my cousin, then I don't think anyone can blame you.”

Some people said that memories were a gift. Others, that the time spent with a person was a treasure once that person had gone. Still others that the one that had been lost would not want those they loved to mourn them. These sentiments were concocted for the living, by the living, when the discomfort grief caused was too much for some to bear. Grief had become a constant, painful companion for Leila, but it was one that she quietly shouldered. It dug its claws and teeth into her, marring every thought of Cass that fluttered through her mind with the reminder that she was dead and gone and buried and would not come home, and that those who loved her were now doomed to an eternity without. But what good would her pain do for those who had, seemingly, suffered more? Metzli and Ariadne, who had been there at the cave and watched it crumble in on the girl, who had lost a daughter and a sister respectively. Van, who she did not know as well, but the mare knew cared deeply for Cass, too. She was responsible for holding herself together and caring for those who survived. She had not been there. It was atonement for her own failure.

It was strange, then, to have a man she hardly knew and (for a time) had greatly disliked because he had fed upon the mind of a girl she considered her own… rest a gentle hand on her shoulder and offer soft words that did not wish to dissipate her pain, but rather to make the pain feel less isolating. He didn’t tell her not to feel guilty. He didn’t tell her not to feel sad. Simply that he hoped the pain eased.

A breath rattled by tears shook her frame as she looked up at Mateo. “I could have done more,” She should have done more. “She told me to leave her alone, I should have-” The words caught in her throat, a broken silence filling in infinite blanks of the end of that sentence. “How… how are things like us supposed to move on forever when it means losing the people you love?”’

Mateo rolled his shoulders and considered what Leila said for a few beats. Doing more and doing enough weren't exactly the same, but loss had a way of muddling a person's mind too much to think clearly. As a person from the outside, looking in, it was easier for Mateo to come up with an unbiased take. He didn't care enough about Leila to lie.

"You did what any good parent would do. You listened. You heard what they said and actually listened.” Which was more than what Mateo could say about his own parents. They still wouldn't shut up about his mistakes and how he abandoned the family to pursue selfishness. Not once had they considered that it would make Mateo happy, and they never asked how he felt. In his book, Leila did the right thing, and her only mistake was loving too hard. And that couldn't really be a mistake, could it?

“Death is inevitable, even for us. We just have more chances than others.” Living that long was a terrifying concept when Junior first told Mateo, but the chance to be more intrigued him too much to really think about it. Wyatt and Xóchitl would never live as long as him, but he made his decision and had to live with it. There were things that made it easier, though. Especially when Mateo felt an existential crisis on the horizon. “You go on loving them as hard and long as you can. So when it's their time, they never have to question if they were loved. Seems to me that Cass probably didn't.”

You go on loving them.

It seemed so simple an answer. Too simple, perhaps. The tears kept coming with no abandon, finally finding release after keeping them locked inside for someone else’s perceived benefit. You go on loving them. Why wouldn’t she love them? Why would the pain make her stop loving? Leila whimpered, swallowing hard as she tried to collect herself. Loss was inevitable, she realized. The life of a creature who could outrun death was punctuated by the loss of the ones who could not run forever, who would be taken by the hand by death and led somewhere her soul might never see.

She wasn’t thinking when she reached out for the other mare’s hand. Wasn’t thinking as she squeezed it tight in her own, as if he had become the only life raft she could hold on to. To go on loving was all Leila knew how to do. It was a fatal flaw- she loved and loved and loved, and somehow it never felt like she had done enough. It felt as if she had failed a little, somehow, every day. But to stop loving was to accept failure… Cass had called her her mother in that last letter. Did she know? The mare wondered. Did she know how loved she was, how loved she still was?

The mare was silent for a time, the only sounds escaping her shaky breaths and quiet sobs. Eventually, her shoulders stilled in their heaving, her breathing steadied slightly. Leila lifted her gaze to Mateo. There was still pain there. So much pain. But gratitude as well. A little relief.

“Thank you…”

Leila's touch came as a surprise, the sensation desperate and full of mourning. It left an icy weight in Mateo, growing heavier with the intensity of her squeeze. As awkward and uncomfortable as he felt though, Mateo didn't let go. He stood there, listening to the way Cass's death echoed in Leila's lungs, and didn't dare move until she was ready. Stable enough to keep from falling apart completely.

When the storm finally settled, and the havoc met the man's gaze, a little bit of rain of Mateo's own had misted over his expression. He couldn't help it. He never could. His brothers always said he was wuss for always tearing up when his mother did, but he never cared. And he still didn't. Because Mateo never wanted to be a person that believed sympathy to be a weakness. It took a lot of strength to allow someone else's pain to seep into you, even if it was a fraction of the original size.

“No problem, ma. No problem.” His voice was a soft whisper, only a slight tremble lying beneath it. “Why don't we go get a shake or a drink or something? On me. The least I can do.” Squeezing Leila's hand gently, Mateo offered a warm smile and softly tugged her toward him in an attempt to nudge her into a decision. “I'm not taking no for an answer.”

She hadn’t expected Mateo to care. Frankly, Leila would have thought that after their initial encounter, the other mare would have left her to her tears. It’s probably what she would have deserved, too, for punching him like she had. Not that she would have changed what she did. She would do- would have done- anything for Cass. Which was perhaps what made the pain of her absence all the more potent… Leila had done what Cass wanted her to do, and it didn’t matter in the end because her daughter was still gone. But Mateo stayed. He stayed. He didn’t pull away from her grasp while she fell apart at the seams in a way she hadn’t in months.

It was a kindness she did not believe she could have ever deserved.

His voice was soft as he coaxed her away from the place she sat, fixed in her grief. The storm had passed for the moment. A shaky hand smeared away luminescent tears that stubbornly rolled down her cheeks, and a weak, half-hearted laugh barked out of her as Mateo tugged at her arm like an eager child. “Alright… alright. A shake or a drink…”

Yes, that ancient voice in her mind sighed as she followed her fellow mare along through that dim-starred world. It was certainly a kindness she did not deserve.

#wickedswriting #writings #nightmarescapes #long long time #c: leila #leila and mateo #car accident tw #child death tw #sibling death tw

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