A/N: Here we go. Enjoy. Not my characters, unfortunately.
He caught up with her in the hallway. "Why did you not want Dr McCoy to accompany you, Lt?" He asked as he fell into step alongside her.
She didn't answer for a moment, simply readjusted the large volume of paper in her arms. "Because if he did, I'd never let him leave my side. I wouldn't stop worrying about him, and it would make it hard to concentrate on what needs to be done."
"You brother mentioned that this is how you behave whenever a ghost is involved. And that it will eventually come after you, using either himself or Leonard."
"As a meatsuit, yeah." She stopped, and Spock saw her drop her walls completely for a moment. Tears came to her eyes as she spoke next, leaning against the wall behind her. "You have any idea what it's like to watch someone you love get taken over by something, and there's nothing you can do about it?"
Spock realised that she was talking about her father. "No."
"Do you know what it feels like to not have control of your actions? To have something else control you, and not be able to fight back in any way?"
"No, I do not, Lt." he was standing in a loose attention stance, hands clasped lightly behind his back. He dipped his head as a thought came to him, and he prayed he was wrong. "Has that happened to you, Samanthea?" He chose the use of her first name to convey his worry, and that he would help.
"A few times. Same with Dean. We at least know to expect it when we come up against something like this. Leon? You, the others? I wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy." He could hear her struggling.
"You have distanced yourself from us in an effort to make it choose one of you." Logically it made sense. Give it limited choices as to who it would hurt her the most, and it would only be able to go after the other Hunters, her brother being the ideal choice.
She pushed herself off the wall and continued on, her voice steady and distant once more. "That's the plan. Don't tell anyone else. The rest of us know it, but I don't want the Captain and the others to know."
"Might I enquire as to the reason?" Rationally, the 'us' were the other Hunters.
"You're Vulcan, you can hide your emotions better than everyone else. I may not have been raised like you, but I can put on quite the mask. I may seem cold, but it's the best way." She reached an office that, as far as he knew, wasn't in use. It seemed she had commandeered it at some point.
When the door opened, a sight greeted him that would be forever etched in his memory. It was filled with books, papers, and an assortment the likes he had never seen. What he had seen in the trunk of the car barely scratched the surface of what had been crammed in the room.
"This thing was so focused on trying to attack when it showed in the mess hall that it wouldn't have seen us together. Since then, the only person I've shown any affection for has been Dean."
Spock reasoned that the Hunters had set up the area as a place they could use to pass information to each other and to collect things without having to go down to the car all the time. As she spoke, he paced around the room, looking at everything in awe. While everything seemed scattered and chaotic, there was one wall that seemed to be dedicated to a collection of fictional works and personal journals. He read some of the titles; Wendigo, Route 666, Ghostfacers; over a hundred books filled the shelf, the last being Swan Song. After that were journals, many with similar and repetitive dates on them, in two different sets of handwriting. He went to pick up the first one after the fiction books, only for her to call out,
"As good as your shields may be, I doubt you can shield against the emotions they carry. Gloves are hanging next to them." He looked over and saw that she placed the plans on the table and set about laying them out so others could access them as needed.
"Your ancestor's?" He asked as he donned them and pulled one from the shelf. He flipped to the last page and saw the date at the top, May 17, 2010. The handwriting was hard to read due to the shaking of the hand that wrote it.
Sam's gone, and I've kept my promise to him. To have an apple pie life. Lisa and Ben have been kind enough to let me in … … (the ink had been blurred by what he suspected was a teardrop) o do, I miss him so much.
He closed it and placed it back on the shelf. Removing the gloves, he touched the spine for the barest of moments. He snapped his hand back; sorrow that overwhelmed his own at the loss of his mother, made him step back.
"Told you." Winchester was standing next to him, running her fingers across the journals. Spock saw her face, flinching as the emotions from the books entered her. She turned from them and headed back to the table.
"I've noticed the Captain has been treating me as a member of the crew, as have you. As such, he will find all this easier to accept. Scotty sees me as a close friend, someone he can talk to about anything he wants, and knows that I can keep up with and challenge him if I see things differently. McCoy, …" She paused, leaning on the table with her hands, "Leon's …" She paused, dropping her head as she struggled with emotion before she took a breath and centred herself.
"He's trying to find Sam, his lover, and not seeing Winchester, the Hunter. I've been doing this my whole life, this is what I know." She swept a hand across the room, "Relationships that don't include Dean or other Hunters, I've got no clue how to deal with." As she went to another table and set about unloading the bag she had been carrying, she continued.
"I've lost Hunters, friends, innocents. One thing I've learnt, when the supernatural comes into play, the best way to lessen the hurt, is distance. I thought that it was just me, with the amount it hurt, but since you've been teaching me,"
"Vulcan's feel things on a far deeper level than humans." He finished. "Our attachment to those we care for, love, is far stronger, and as such, we feel that loss far more. I understand." And he did. The loss of Vulcan, and especially of his mother, was still as strong today as it was when it happened, even though it had been nearly eight years.
They spent the remainder of the night patrolling the ship, clearing it section by section. Spock had enquired as to the shot guns that they had all been carrying, and once told the shells contained rock salt and iron filings, asked if the rest of the crew might be able to carry one.
"What you see is what we have, it was hard enough to sneak Baby on board, let alone enough weaponry to arm the ship. Besides, the ship is tasked with first contact. Can't have that much artillery showing up on the scans of races that can detect them. They might not like it."
"Logical." Had been the only response to that.
SuperTrek: SuperTrek: SuperTrek: SuperTrek: SuperTrek: SuperTrek: SuperTrek: SuperTrek: SuperTrek: SuperTrek:
It was early the next morning, when Spock saw just how strong her mask was. Dr McCoy had come in while she was having breakfast with the some of the other Hunters, Spock joining Jim before heading to bed. He was talking to him while he watched as the Dr went over to her and asked if she was ok. Whatever she had said, it was enough to make him step back from her, a look of hurt in his eyes. She had turned back to finish getting their reports and issuing orders to the day shift without a backwards glance. The other Hunters didn't even bat an eyelid at the exchange. McCoy sat at a table on his own after that, shunning LtC Scott and Uhuru when they tried to join him.
Knowing of the half-formed plan, he understood the reason, but for the Georgian, he knew that she was going to have a hard time making it up to him. Seeing her head in their direction, he knew that Jim would try and get information about what she had said.
"Jim, please refrain from questioning the Lt about what just happened. Despite her indifference, she is struggling to keep her emotions in place." He placed a hand on his arm, something he rarely did, to convey the importance. He was glad when his friend nodded and simply asked what had happened overnight.
"Nothing we could find. I expected as much. Ghosts need time to regain their energy, and the draining spell from the doorway and the iron would have wiped out a good portion of it. Depending on the age and anger of the spirit, it could be today, or tomorrow when it will show up again." After finishing with the areas that had been covered, she informed them she was heading to bed.
"She sounds so different." Jim said as she left. "Nothing like the Lt from a couple of days ago."
"She sounds as you do, Captain, when faced with something that could kill us all. I first heard it during the incident with Nero. I saw it … when you realigned the core. When you fought Krall." He looked at his friend. "She is a leader of her people and she will do whatever it takes to protect us. She told me that the only way she can focus on the job at hand, is to distance herself from us. Put her feelings behind a wall, otherwise, the emotions she has for us, Leonard in particular, could overwhelm her."
"You've been teaching her Vulcan techniques for blocking emotions?"
"No, Captain, she taught herself; from a very young age, if I interpreted her words and actions from last night correctly. While not the manner I use, it works for her, even if it means she has sacrificed the bond she has formed with Leonard." He let Jim ponder over that as he headed to bed.