To Boldly Go (an AOS!spirk soulmate au fanfiction)

Chapter 1

Disclaimer: Not Gene Roddenberry, J. J. Abrams, or Justin Lin.

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Spock had always been, and would always be, a child of two worlds.

His cognitive and physical abilities were that of a Vulcan, but with human blood coursing through his veins and his human emotional needs boiling like that of a child from his early life, it didn't take Spock long to realize he was not like any other Vulcan child. He blended well in his school, and on the surface, Spock was physically and academically no different than any other Vulcan students, but there was an aching emptiness that he couldn't resolve as he was restricted from physical contact with his mother, as he was strictly prohibited against any display of childish emotion at the tender age of four years old, and the ever-haunting confusion at the fact that he couldn't relate with any of his fellow Vulcan peers who seemed undisturbed with having to grow up without ever hugging their parents.

And his Soulpoetry; his Soulpoetry was human, Spock knew it.

Soulpoetries were a galactic-wide phenomenon and was a compulsory object in standard Vulcan education, so Spock knew how Vulcans usually received their Soulpoetries at six years old, usually a cursive handwriting in Vulcan across the length of their backs, and how humans usually received theirs at ten years old, usually written across the length of the inside of their arm.

Spock received his at age of eight.

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Jim Kirk was truly an exceptional child, and Winona always made sure her son was aware of that fact.

Aside from the fact that it would always be the curse of mothers to think of their children as special, Jim Kirk was truly a child with remarkable display of intelligent, even from early age. Several things he liked to do include trying to beat his brother at chess, reading about extraterrestrial cultures, staring at her late husband's old PX70 that concerned Winona a lot, and stargazing.

Winona liked to accompany her son to gaze at the starlit Iowa sky after dinner; just her and Jim, since his brother Sam was more interested in living things rather than distant stars, sometimes even until hours late enough at nights for an eight years old boy. At first, Jim liked to point at a random direction and asked what star it was. It's Antares, Winona would say, it's the red star in the middle of Scorpio. But as time rolled by, Winona realized how quickly Jim had committed all the details to memory.

"I wanna go there, Mom, I wanna go to the stars like Dad," Jim said one day as he pointed his finger at the edge of Milky Way, illuminating the sky with stardust and clouds of billion other suns. Winona turned her head to face her son, unaware of how her eyes had just caught the moist and began watering, at the sight of Jim, grinning as he imagined himself on a starship, exploring the skies.

He looked just like George.

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Growing up as a social outcast, Spock didn't make meaningful relationships in school.

Vulcans didn't usually have the form of friendships that humans would have in their early years; bands, gangs, cliques. Instead, they would usually associate themselves around other Vulcans with compatible minds and common goals, associations that transcended the relationships that humans would usually have, one that relied more on emotional compatibility.

Not one of his peers was compatible with Spock.

At first it was due to the fact that Spock was... not quite Vulcan. Not yet a mature adult Vulcan, there were still a lot of traces of human emotions in his Vulcan katra, but then by the time Spock had learned to fully govern his thoughts and actions to honor the Vulcan way, the whole school had already known of his heritage. At the age of eight, not one of his peers felt like they would be compatible to form a friendship with Spock. More often than not, his human heritage was not something that got in the way of him connecting with his fellow Vulcan peers anymore, but something they found curious.