Briar Abney is, perhaps, the most aggravating and infuriating person Montgomery Scott ever met. She's loud, has a thick Geordie accent, can down four shots of Jameson's in about six seconds and will go to her grave to prove Scotty wrong.
Scotty wishes he could say she was bad at her job and that she was a shitty engineer but she was far from that. Certainly, she didn't rival him. Did she come up with the transwarp beaming equation? Absolutely fucking not. But, on occasion when there's something wrong with the ship, she may get to the solution a few minutes before he does. And it bothers Scotty to no end.
Right now, she is sitting on a bench, a padd in her hand. Its 0400 hours, and most of the engineering crew are on their sleeping shift. Only a few stray, tired engineers are still up which include Scotty and Abney. Her long blonde hair is half-heartedly tied up, with a few strands falling in front of her pale eyes. She is glaring at the padd and swiping angrily, clearly not finding whatever answer she is looking for. Her grey engineering jumpsuit is only done up halfway, with the sleeves tied around her waist, and she's in her white undershirt, and she looks like the most dishevelled mess of an engineer he's ever seen.
Scotty smirks and saunters over, a grin plastered on his smug face and his hands tied behind his back. He leans against a control board when he reaches her.
"Anythin' ye need 'elp wit, Abney?" he asks.
She sighs and rolls her eyes, not even looking at him. "Nee, obviously," her accent is so thick that Scotty practically shudders. "I can do it," she grumbles as she glares at the padd. He snorts and leans over her shoulder, and before she can cover the padd he sees the problem.
"Somethin' wrong with one of the phaser arrays?" he asks as he reaches for the padd, grabbing it before she can swat his hand away.
"Give it back! Me mam could fix it faster than you would!" she snaps and tries to grab it but Scotty holds her arm away and looks at her notes.
"Haud yer weesht! Learn to speak properly first, then I'll give it back to ye." He responds, not looking at her while he reads the notes. Eventually he looks at her with another smirk. "Did ye check the emitters?" he asks.
"Wey aye, man!" She exclaims throwing her arms up. He's realized that her response means yes. "Course I did." She grumbles as she grabs the padd back.
"Naw, check again…" he says, gesturing to the padd. She looks down at the scan of the phaser array and to her horror, realizes she missed one- which must have been disabled when a small chunk of debris that was floating around the Alpha Centauri system and, of course, it crashed against the side of their beloved ship.
"Swore I checked 'em an' all," she sighs before looking around for the tools to fix the problem.
"Are ye going to say thenk ye?" he asks as he watches the grumpy girl stomp over to her toolbox.
"Nee, got a propa mess on me hands. Can't focus on you," she says and turns to him, flashing a dazzling smile before jaunting away.
Scotty stares after the defiant girl. She makes his blood boil, makes him want to rip his hair out and wants to eject her out of dorsal airlock. But, at the same time, the blonde girl challenges him and keeps him on his toes.
He hears a noise and looks up, past the brilliant white surfaces of the controls and the bustling engineers and sees Briar pulling on a pair of glasses and snapping at poor little Chekov to get out of the way as she prepares to fix the phaser array.
There have been a few times when Scotty and Briar didn't completely hate each other. The most recent one was during Khan's attack.
Briar is thrown over a metal railing as the Enterprise loses control its control and then starts hurdling towards Earth. She has a scream and looks up, seeing some poor girl dangling off a thin piece of metal. The metal gives way and the girl goes flying down, no doubt crashing to her death. Briar desperately throws her hand out, but the girl is too far away and flies past her. She doesn't have time to regain her balance before a former piece of control board comes tumbling down and crashes into the rail that's holding her up, and a second later she's falling. It's such a bizarre feeling, falling so quickly, and everything seems to blur. She's falling backside down, and maybe that's a blessing because she won't see whatever she'll crash into. All she sees is the light of the damaged ship lights and broken metal and hanging wires. Some of the wires have her dead crewmates dangling on them.
But then she feels someone harshly grab her leg, and she's pulled suddenly to a stop, and she comes swinging under a bridge and smashes her head on a metal. She screams and clutches her forehead and immediately feels blood starting to seep into her hair. With one yank, she's hauled up and placed on top of the railing. Black spots have exploded across her vision and she blindly tries to hit away whoever is touching her. Not being able to see I her worst fear, being in the dark forever frightens her.
"Awrite, hey. It's me, lass, it's me." He says and she recognises the accent.
"I- I can't see," she stutters and blinks rapidly, trying to make the black spots disappear.
"Scotty, we have to go!" she hears her Captain yell. She also hears Chekov say something unrecognizable in Russian. All around them, screams of their crewmates fill the air. She prays her vision will return so she can get to them. She knows Scotty and Kirk have a plan, so she knows she has to let Scotty go.
"Get outta 'ere. I'll be fine. Go!" she screams and looks blindly for his face. She only feels his hands on the side of her face, she hears him mumble stay safe before he's gone. They didn't hate each other then.
Afterwards, when he eventually found her again in the medical center on Earth where the injured crew were sent, they still didn't hate each other. Her vision had come back, but whilst she was crawling over to try and reach her friend, Mala, who was lying dangerously close to several exposed wires. She tried to reach her, but in that moment a piece of the wall had come tumbling and a large chunk of heavy material came falling and she only had time to roll away to keep it from crushing her torso, but her leg wasn't so lucky. The crushed and mangled flesh makes Scotty's stomach churn.
The girl's eyes are squeezed shut, most likely because they gave her a heavy sedative to help the pain. Her arms are draped over the side of the metal cot, and he reaches down and gently pushes them back. Suddenly, her weak hand takes his and she grips it, without opening her eyes. He leans against the wall but doesn't take her hand out of his.
They certainly didn't hate each other then.
After she woke up, and he left, it wasn't mentioned and they returned to their usual banter.