Nobis ✴︎ Pavel Chekov

Chapter Fifty Seven - Notes and Blanks

Pavel wakes up screaming. Sulu is leaning beside his bed trying to wake him up. He tries to stop screaming but breaks into breathless tears instead. He doesn't know where he is, he doesn't know how he got here but this time he can remember the dream he had. He asks Sulu to pass him a notepad and he keeps on his bedside table and he scribbles some notes out in furious Russian before he can forget. He's still hyperventilating. Sulu tries to get him to calm down.

"Pavel, what happened? It was just a dream, you're fine now."

"I'm not fine!" He gasps, standing up and rubbing his face. "I am everything but fine, oh my God what the actual fuck just happened to me?"

"What do you mean?"

"Did you see me come into my room? Did I walk in here, how did I get in?"

"I don't know, I only just got back. A few minutes ago, you started screaming like you were being murdered and I couldn't wake you up."

He swears in Russian, trying to piece together what is happening to him. There's holes in his memory. The dream he had is becoming less and less clear and he picks up the notepad again, turning the page and adding as much to it as he can remember.

"It's slipping away from me," he admits. "My dream. It's already fading. I... I'm going to medbay, this is freaking me out."

"Can I take you? After watching that I really don't want you walking around alone."

"Please," he mutters, stuffing the notepad in his pocket.

Medbay is quiet. McCoy and Irina look at each other as soon as they see Pavel come in. He takes a few steps towards them and his vision goes black and he collapses on the floor.

Pavel wakes up in medbay. He remembers nothing, he doesn't know how he got there. Irina and McCoy look concerned. Sulu tells him to check his notepad. Pavel has no idea what he means. He keeps a notepad by his bed but he doesn't know why it would help him now. Sulu points to his pocket and he touches his side gently, wondering how it got there.

"You took notes on what happened. You said your dream was fading as soon as you woke up..."

"Dream?"

Sulu nods and tells him what happened. The notepad, him waking up hysterical, walking to medbay and him collapsing. He opens the notepad, flicking through it until he finds a page in almost illegible speed written handwriting. The first page only has a few words

Light

Emory

Space Darkness Screaming

DrowningFallingSuffocating

Awake

He frowns at the weird spacing, reading the words aloud and wondering what was running through his head. He doesn't know what light indicates and he doesn't remember seeing Emory.

"Can you page Emory for me?" McCoy mutters to Sulu, a look of concern evident on his face.

"There's more on the next page," Irina mutters, moving close to him so she can read over his shoulder.

It goes into detail about the space dream, where he just opened his eyes and was flailing helplessly. He was shaking, he's starting to remember that. He noted that he couldn't breathe or scream. The lack of space between drowning, falling and suffocating makes sense now, as he felt like they were all happening at the same time. Before he can look at the next page Emory comes in, standing next to Sulu.

It occurs to Pavel then.

Irina and Emory are in the same room.

He swallows and Emory asks if he's alright. He nods.

"What happened when we were in the mess? I can't remember anything from there onwards..."

"Oh," she says softly. She's worried about him, he's not normally one to forget anything, especially not something that happened such a short time ago. "Just as we were leaving the mess you grabbed me and pulled me away from where I was standing. I had no idea what you were doing but just as you did, the light panel fell exactly where I would have been standing... You said you had no idea that it was going to fall, that you just pulled me. After that we just went to one of the rec rooms and you were really sleepy... You had lain your head back and closed your eyes and I had my hand in your hair but when I moved my hand off you sort of jolted back awake... You said you felt a little strange and I said you should probably go back to sleep and you went back to your room. That was maybe an hour ago now..."

"As soon as your hands left my hair that's when I woke up in space... This, this is weird," he mutters, rubbing his eyes.

"Psychotic break?" Irina suggests quietly, looking at McCoy.

"Best cast scenario. I think we both have a hunch it's something else."

"What?" Pavel asks, frowning at them. A psychotic break sounds bad enough.

"The transport incident," Irina answers for McCoy. "I mean, we don't know how but you've been a little off ever since coming back. Remember the dizziness after that vaccination? No one else has gotten that. Then when you woke up shaken and you couldn't even remember why..."

"Could it not just be stress or something? Maybe it's nothing, just a rough few weeks."

"Chekov," McCoy says firmly, "this isn't one of those things you can just sweep under the rug. This is something we have to monitor and be serious about. If you black out at the controls of the ship... I think I'm going to have to-"

"Don't," Pavel warns, tensing up. "Don't take my work away from me. I've only blacked out once and it was when I was falling asleep anyway. That's barely reason to take me off."

"Two days leave and we'll go from there. You're staying in medbay for the next twelve hours though. That's protocol for something like this. If you need to take more time off you can work on your transporter theory anyway. It's not like you'll be bored."

"Aye," he says weakly, rolling his eyes. McCoy and Irina move away and Sulu leaves him with Emory. She sits down beside his bed and stays quiet, not having much to say.

Emory opens her mouth to say something and closes it, Pavel urging her to continue anyway. "She's beautiful."

"Sorry?"

"Irina. She's stunning."

"So are you though," he says softly. "I don't know how I've managed to attract such beautiful girls." He finishes his sentence with a weak laugh and Emory just smiles at him weakly. He doesn't know what to do with himself for the next twelve hours. Emory has a shift soon, he knows that much. She stays with him until then, telling him about how she videocalled Karson not that long ago and told him that he had come back. He cried, Emory has no problem telling Pavel that. He felt a lot of guilt knowing that if Pavel hadn't stepped in, it would have been him. Pavel's eyes get a little watery at the thought. She places a kiss on his cheek before she leaves and tells him to get better. He tells her he'll try.

Irina sees Emory kiss him just as she leaves. She has to go back to McCoy and ask him to go instead. He doesn't question it, seeing the broken expression on her face. He puts an IV cuff on Pavel and checks his vitals, telling him to take it easy. Irina hangs just out of view of Pavel and checks the time, counting the minutes until she can leave.