Enterprise, 2258

She wasn't sulking.

After her arguments with Spock and McCoy, it seemed like the safest thing to do would be to disappear into the belly of the ship, away from everyone. Hoping to take her mind off things, she'd settled down to fix some blown sensors, fuses that had burned out during the first fight with Nero. It was mindless, numbing work, just what she needed to distract herself from the fury bubbling just beneath her skin.

They were so... stubborn. The both of them, totally unable to look past their regulations and see that Jim might be right. Sophie-Anne knew better than anyone; James Kirk was a royal pain in the ass. But his insincts were usually correct, and she hated to think of what could happen to him, marooned on some ice planet.

She worked in silence for a while, glad to have something to occupy her hands and mind, but after a few minutes there was a loud crack, followed by a shout.

"Mr. Scott?" a voice asked, and Sophie-Anne jumped. Now her mind was really playing tricks on her, because the voice sounded like Kirk's. A moment later there was a pounding sound and the water turbines engaged, causing more shouting and the drumming of footsteps as someone ran by. They almost knocked her over, barely skidding to a stop before rounding the corner.

"JT?" Sophie-Anne's mouth dropped open, PADD falling from her hand and clattering to the floor. Kirk looked a little worse for wear than when she'd seen him last, dressed in full winter gear, but when he realized it was her his face lit up.

"Fi! Just the nerd I wanted to see..." he said, grabbing her hand and dragging her along the turbines. When they reached the holding tank he let go, pounding on the keys of a nearby panel. "Can you get him out of there?"

"Him who? How did you get back on the ship? We're at warp, that's imposs-" Sophie-Anne began, but was interrupted by a face swimming past and she screamed, "There's a guy in there!"

Kirk practically growled, throwing his hands up and struggling to unlatch the top. "Keep up, please! Do you know how to shut this thing off?"

Frowning, Sophie-Anne pulled down the display, "It's not like turning off a TV, the cool down valves are automatic and the manual override is way up in the-" She was cut off by the sound of bending metal and sparks flying as Kirk appeared at her shoulder with a hammer, swinging it with force and all but detaching the pulley system. The top fell away, and together they pulled Scotty free, Sophie-Anne frowning at the demolished piece of machinery. "Or you could just break everything..."

Her scowl deepened as Kirk helped Scotty to his feet. "Are you actually pouting right now?" Kirk asked, incredulous "There will be plenty of time to fix it later, once we stop Nero and rescue Captain Pike and, you know, save the Earth."

Alarms howled overhead, but Sophie-Anne was too busy scooping debris into her pockets. "James Kirk, always using a sledgehammer when he should be using a wrench..." she grumbled, only stopping when Kirk and Scotty turned to run. "Hey wait, how did you get here? And how did you end up in the tank?"

"You two'll have loads to talk about, I'm sure, but right now we've got bigger problems. Time to pick a side, Fi," he called back, not waiting for her answer, and a moment later she chased after them. The thought of choosing sides against Spock made her stomach bunch and burn, but she'd just have to figure that part out later...

XXX

"Under penalty of court marshall, I order you to explain to me how you were able to beam aboard this ship while moving at warp," Spock demanded, once Kirk, Sophie-Anne, and a dripping wet Scotty had been captured and marched up to the bridge. In all honestly, Sophie-Anne was just as flummoxed and was dying to hear Scotty's explanation, but she couldn't take her eyes off of Spock. She'd never seen him that way, his absolute rage only thinly buried by a razor thin veneer of calm.

Their connection, the one forged on Illyria-4, was sending those waves of anger and betrayal toward her relentlessly, like a radio turned up too loud, and she found herself sagging against the railing. Whether he was willing to admit it or not, the death of his mother had shaken him deeply. And it was clear that Kirk knew it.

"It must not even compute for you... you never loved her!" Kirk had been pushing, harder and harder against that calm facade, and with that final blow the whole thing bowed and cracked, causing Spock to scream and swing a fist. It was a primal sound, sending a shiver up Sophie-Anne's spine.

She could feel it there, as the two fought. It was the most gutteral emotion she'd ever experienced, and she wanted Kirk dead for saying those things. No, not her. Spock. Spock wanted to kill Kirk, she realized dimly, her fingers gripping the rail as she struggled to stay upright. Thankfully no one noticed her, too busy staring at the spectacle going on below. Please, she thought, doing her best to send the thought across whatever tethered them together, please don't kill him.

XXX

"Spock!" In the end it was the voice of his father that stopped Spock in his tracks, hands positively vibrating as he seemed to realize what he was doing. When he pulled back, his gaze drifted toward Uhura. The look she gave him; shock, concern, and most surprisingly of all, fear. It made his breath catch in his throat. Over on the deck, he saw Sophie-Anne wobble to Kirk's side, clumsily helping him up.

"He wrecked you," he heard her whisper, earning the tinest smirk from Kirk. Not knowing what else to do, Spock turned, pausing by doctor McCoy to relinquish his command, and took off for the transporter room.

With each step he took, he found it mattered less and less what was happening behind him. Kirk would assume command, he was sure that had been the plan all along, but did he truly care? His homeworld was gone, his mother dead, and Spock found when he reached the deserted transporter room that all he had left was illicit fury.

"Hey." He'd been expecting his father, or maybe Uhura if she'd gotten over her fear, but he certainly wasn't expecting Sophie-Anne to have followed him. She'd been brushing the dirt off Kirk when he'd left the bridge, and he was expecting her to stay behind and revel in her victory. Instead she was standing in the doorway, one hand tugging nervously at the end of her braid. "Are you okay?"

He simply stared at her, eyes conveying a thousand different thoughts without speaking a word, and her lips pressed together. "Sorry, stupid question. Of course you're not okay," she rambled, taking three cautious steps toward him. He fell back on his heels, turning his back as best he could. She sighed, stepping lightly around so he was facing her again.

If the look on her face had been anything other than genuine concern he might have turned away, but instead he allowed her to reach around and slide two fingers along his wrist, unhooking his hands from where they had been clasped behind his back.

"I have never felt such... anger," he began, watching as she took one of his hands in hers. Skin to skin contact was incredibly intimate for his people, not something to be entered into lightly. The possibility of telepathic connections or an accidental mind meld were real concerns, but at that moment he could not have forced himself to pull away. "Not even in my youth, I find I cannot control it."

"For what it's worth, I wanted to punch him too," she said, somehow managing to keep a serious look on her face. Somewhere, buried deep under all of his anger and sorrow, Spock could feel a flicker of something else. He wasn't especially emotionally intelligent, years of controlling his every impulse hadn't left much room for introspection, but that glimmer felt important somehow.

"Sophie-Anne, I do not know the proper way to convey this. Recent events have shown me that it is unwise to leave certain things unsaid, and if something were to happen to you..."

She didn't let him finish, winding her arms around his waist and tucking her face into his chest. He could feel the way her heart was hammering, and she seemed to be struggling to breathe. "You're one of my best friends, Spock."

When she pulled back her expression was stuck somewhere between panic and regret, and in that instant he decided not to push forward. A moment later his father appeared in the doorway of the transporter room, and Sophie-Anne stepped away hastily.

"I'll leave you two alone," she said, practically disappearing. Spock watched her go, that buried flicker of emotion twisting in the pit of his stomach like a tiny flame. Something was changing.