Everyone was talking at once when they made it to the bridge. Kirk's face was red, the veins in his neck making an appearance, which Sophie-Anne knew meant he was approaching his boiling point.
"Running back to the rest of the fleet for a... a confab is a massive waste of time," Kirk started to say, before Spock cut in and began to talk over him.
"Dammit, Jim," Sophie-Anne heard McCoy mutter as they both stopped next to the Captain's chair. The two men were yelling at each other, and Sophie-Anne noticed that Spock was a little more agitated than usual. JT really pushes his buttons, Sophie-Anne decided, rolling her eyes. Not that I blame him...
"JT, you're not helping," she said, remembering the last time she'd seem him so agitated. She'd had to bribe the convenience store clerk to keep him from calling the cops, after a stranger grabbed her butt and Kirk had broken the guy's nose. She tried to step forward, diffuse the situation somehow, but Uhura's hand stopped her.
"Don't bother, Soph, they're not listening to each other, much less innocent bystanders," she whispered, and the girls shared a commiserating look. A moment later Kirk was throwing a punch at one of the security guys, sending him toppling backwards.
She barely had time to step out of the way as the man dropped by her feet, Kirk swinging around to punch the other man in the face. Uhura fell backward, shocked, but Sophie-Anne could feel her body kicking into high gear without her permission. It was like she checked out for a split second, eyesight blurring, and when she realized what she was doing she was already clinging to the back of one of the security officers.
It was bedlam. Chekov's astonished face flew by as the officer tried to spin her off, and a moment later arms were locked around her waist yanking her free. Without turning around she did the first thing that came to mind, which happened to be sinking her teeth into the person's exposed wrist. McCoy called out in alarm, nearly dropping her, but he managed to yank her away as Spock stepped forward and applied a nerve pinch to Kirk's neck. The younger man fell to the floor, and Spock's expression didn't betray any of the shock or uncertainty Sophie-Anne could feel pouring off him.
"Get him off this ship," he commanded, catching her eye as McCoy dragged her off into the corridor. When she finally stopped struggling he let her go, watching as she shook herself off.
"Ouch! When did you become so violent?" he asked, rubbing the spot where he teeth had left a mark. She scowled at him, trying to sort out her thoughts. All she'd known was that Kirk was in trouble, which was enough to activate her auto-pilot.
"How could you let them do that to him?" she asked, genuinely shocked. Kirk had always talked about what a good friend "Bones" was, how the man always had his back. McCoy frowned, still staring at the bite mark.
"You bit me!" he cried, finally looking up at her. "With Pike gone, Spock is the Captain. Jim can't act like a child and expect to get away with it!"
Sophie-Anne could still feel the adrenaline surging through her, watching as the two security officers carried Kirk's motionless body down the hallway. "What if Captain Spock told you to blow up a planet, Len? Would you do it, just because he's the Captain and he said so?"
McCoy practically growled, running a frustrated hand over his hair. "First of all I'm a doctor, so I very much doubt that they're going to leave any kind of explosion in my hands, but this isn't genocide. You're overreacting. Do I think he's making the right decision? No, but he's the Captain!"
At that very moment Spock stepped out into the hall, raising a single curious eyebrow at the scene in front of him. Unable to stop herself, Sophie-Anne marched up to him.
"What are you going to do with him?" she demanded, nearly reaching out and touching his wrist to get a better read on him. Their connection, whatever it was, usually worked both ways, but she also knew there would be no going back if she forced his hand. He almost seemed to know what she was thinking, avoiding eye contact entirely.
"Cadet Kirk will be spending some time on Delta Vega, in order to cool his temperament," Spock sad, and if she wasn't so mad she would have realized he'd nearly made a joke. Instead she stepped to the left, into his line of sight, and hoped her persuasiveness would work on him, just once.
"You can't do that. You know you can't, it's a direct violation..."
"I assure you Cadet Caldwell," he interrupted, "As acting Captain I can and will do what is necessary to preserve order on this ship."
Helplessness was staring to fill her chest, and she could feel her chin setting into a determined line. "I won't let you leave him," she warned, a challenge in the tension of her shoulders. His expression actually cooled, if that was even possible, and McCoy stepped forward.
"She doesn't mean that," he said, trying to pull her away again, but she held fast in place.
"Yes, she does," Spock assured him, staring her down with defiance. "Cadet Caldwell is not in the habit of saying things she does not mean. You are prepared to accompany Cadet Kirk to Delta Vega?"
XXX
He was calling her bluff. At least, he hoped he was. The idea of leaving her behind on an alien planet filled him with a strange and unwelcome feeling of dread, and he was glad when McCoy started dragging her away down the corridor again.
"Sophie-Anne, they need you down in engineering, your PADD's been beeping for five minutes. Jim will be fine, let's go," he pleaded, and Spock hoped very much that she would allow herself to be persuaded. Finally she yanked free, storming off toward the engine room, and McCoy trudged after her with a sigh.
"You're making a mistake," she called, just before stepping onto the lift. The look she gave him was so cold and furious it actually made him pause, and he was glad when the door slid shut and hid her from sight.
Spock had argued with Sophie-Anne before, her nature was sometimes contrary to his logical nature. She felt without limits or reason, and it had caused them to have a good number of disagreements. Still, he'd always felt like he could count on her. Like she was on his side, willing to stand by him through anything, but after seeing the look on her face he knew he was very alone, the most isolated he'd been since the destruction of his planet hours earlier.
Her anger was like a storm cloud, still building in strength, and he could feel it dancing at the edges of his attention. Their connection, the one forged on Illyria-4, was a tether between them, and just then it was pulled a little too tight. He wondered vaguely if she could feel it too. If she'd ever been able to feel it. He certainly had, from that first moment when he'd allowed their minds to unite. From the moment he let her in.
XXX
Illyria-4, 2254
The days had flown by, just the two of them waiting for some sign that Starfleet was looking for them. It should have been easy enough, picking out two life forms on a relatively small planet, but Illyria-4 featured a very curious quirk. A magnetic field, one that prevented most directional units from functioning properly. That was why they'd been sent down on a shuttle to begin with, and that was what was surely making it difficult for Starfleet to locate them.
"It is only a matter of time before a rescue team comes to collect us, Sophie-Anne," Spock said one day nearly a week later, upon finding Sophie-Anne staring listlessly at the cave wall. She'd finally convinced him to drop the Cadet Caldwell nonsense, mostly because she was fairly convinced by then they were going to die together in the woods and it seemed like it would be nice to be on a first name basis.
"I know," she muttered, tossing a pebble through the opening and into the twilit forest. Sunsets on Illyria-4 were stunning, but it was hard to enjoy them when it seemed like the whole planet wanted your head on a stick. "I just think if they were coming, they'd have been here by now."
Spock agreed that it had been an awfully long time since they'd arrived without any sign of a recovery effort, but knew admitting as much would only frighten her, an emotion that would only impede their progress. Instead he walked out and into the woods. She rarely followed him out on his daily trip to inspect the Teldosian camp, but this time she quickly caught up with him.
When they reached the edge of the forest he paused, dropping to one knee and looking down over the camp. It looked just the same as it did every day he checked, children racing around while the adults cooked and laughed, but none of them seemed to acknowledge the bodies still staked out by the edge.
"Why... why do you think they did that?" Sophie-Anne asked in a tentative whisper, moving in to crouch shoulder the shoulder on the ridge. They were hidden from sight by a large boulder, barely able to see the settlement below through the trees. She had avoided the topic since the first day, not wanting him to get any ideas about recovering the bodies, but the longer they were there the less being polite seemed to matter. Spock didn't speak for a long moment before capturing her in the edge of his vision.
"Before finding the peace that accompanies the purging of emotion, the Vulcans were a war-like people. This planet's proximity to Vulcan guarantees it shares a distant, bloody past that the Teldosians have likely not forgotten," he said, sitting back on his heels.
"We can't stay here forever," she told him, dropping down to sit cross-legged and giving him a searching expression. "The communicator has to be down there somewhere, if we could get it back..."
"I agree it would be unwise to remain here longer, but I do not believe the two of us with a single phaser will be able to recover the communicator."
She actually smiled at that, a blinding expression that made him pause. "Men always want to do things the hard way. We wouldn't be able to fight them, but we could probably sneak in without them noticing. If we could get the communicator back I could easily boost the signal and we could contact Starfleet."
It was fairly sound, as plans went, and logically he knew that it was a smart thing to do... but he found himself strangely resistant. The human edge of his brain was helpfully supplying an image of what getting caught would look like, and just then it looked like Sophie-Anne's shiny hair coated with blood as they staked her out on the lawn with the Vulcans. Shaking the thought away he nodded, finger flicking over the settings on his phaser.
"Your plan is adequate, but I will be going on my own," he told her, watching the villagers move in and out of their huts. He would wait until it got dark, and then...
"Like hell you are!" Her voice was a little too loud, and he had to stand and pull her away from the edge and back into the trees. "You're not going down there without me."
"There is no reason both of us should be caught," he started to say, but she simply held up a hand.
"I've got more experience sneaking around than you do. I have an overprotective father and know how to get around quietly. Don't even think about leaving me up here."
It almost seemed as though she didn't want to be alone, but he could tell by the determined look in her eyes she wasn't going to budge. Finally he nodded. "At nightfall we will sneak in and recover the communicator," he said, earning a satisfied nod from Sophie-Anne as they settled in to wait. How could he have ever thought her mild mannered?
XXX
a/n - short one to get me back in the swing of things, hopefully there's more to come!