Nobis ✴︎ Pavel Chekov

Chapter Twenty Six - You Have To Be Kidding

Sulu comes back to the room and finds Pavel staring blankly at his PADD, unfocused and anxious.

"You finally messaging her?"

"I just read what she sent me.... I've really messed up, haven't I?"

"Yep." Sulu says popping the p. He doesn't have a remote hint of hesitation in his voice and Pavel swallows. "She said she doesn't want to speak to you again. I think she means permanently."

"Ah I did not think this through at all. Fuck, what am I doing?"

"You need to apologise to her, whether or not she'll accept it is another thing but you need to make sure you at least try and set things straight. She's probably still in a lot of pain but the sooner the better, you know?"

"Thank you, you're right. I'll message her."

It takes Pavel a while to figure out what he's going to say. He has an idea but getting the wording right in such a delicate situation is very important. He starts by apologising, then he moves on to trying to explain what was going through his head when they were in Russia. Then he apologises again for going up onto the Enterprise without even contacting her. He presses send shakily and sighs heavily afterwards. He had no idea messaging Emory could ever be so hard but he feels cold as soon as his finger hits the button. Now all he has to do is wait.

Waiting is harder than Pavel expected. Two hours pass and she still hasn't read the message. Another two hours pass and still nothing. Pavel goes to bed hoping that when he wakes up she'll reply but she doesn't. Sulu doesn't seem remotely surprised, deep down he's pretty certain that Pavel won't hear from Emory again.

Two whole weeks pass and there's nothing from Emory. Pavel concludes that they're over, permanently. He's fixed things with Scotty and he tells him about it, getting little input from the Scotsman.

"Pavel, I hate to say this lad but I really can't blame her for not talking to you. If someone did that to me I wouldn't be in any hurry to respond."

"Ah I know but I just want something back from her. Even if she tells me she hates me, that's better than nothing."

Scotty gets him to help fix a wall panel in a science lab as they keep talking. Pavel's at a loss of what to do, he knows all he can really do is try and move on until he has the chance to see her again but he knows she's going to be on his mind for a while. He sighs and passes a scanner probe to Scotty. He wonders if Emory will just move on, find someone better and not so emotionally turbulent. Scotty looks across at the Russian's tight-lipped frown and goes back to scanning. He doesn't want to say much about the issue, it'll just cause more tension between him and Pavel.

Everything falls into a cycle. Navigating, eating, engineering, sleeping. Pavel doesn't leave any time for himself to just relax. Relaxing means thinking and Pavel finds that his thoughts can be quite toxic, especially in large doses. He makes himself so tired that collapses in bed rather than staying up and thinking about what could have been with Emory. He checks the messages he sent her every now and then; she still hasn't read them.

Deep space is a little terrifying. It's quiet and silent but also dark and mysterious. McCoy stays on the bridge sometimes just to remind everyone of that. He points out that they're in uncharted territory and the Captain has to stop him before he goes into too deep of a rant about the danger they're in. Sulu gives Pavel the same exasperated glance every time and the predictability of every day starts getting to him.

Pavel gets restless one day and walks a few laps around the ship, trying to clear his head. Every day is the same and though he doesn't want anything bad to happen, any sort of change from the dark view screen would be a nice change. He looks out one of the windows as he walks and sighs. Scotty messages him and tells him to come down to engineering. He doesn't bother to reply, just sighing and finding the nearest turbolift.

"You won't like this," Scotty starts, walking towards the shuttle bay and urging Pavel to keep u[ with a vague wave of his hand. "We have transfers from another ship."

"Emory?" He asks, trying his hardest not to sound hopeful. His heart feels like it's actually beating for the first time in ages and Scotty gives him a weak frown.

"Not Emory. Someone else. You won't like it..."

"Just tell me Scotty," he mutters, rolling his eyes.

They walk into the shuttle bay and Scotty gestures to a few people gathered around a shuttle.

"No. You've got to be kidding me."

(Author's Note)

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