Let Fortune Turn Her Wheel (3/3)
Dr. Parsi is humane enough to let Chekov sit, alone and undisturbed, for as long as he needs to. Indeed, it’s about twenty minutes before Chekov rubs at his eyes, as if trying to get himself out of a trance, and rises.
He wanders out to where Parsi, Yates and T’Pronn are waiting. Chekov hears himself babbling at them, a rambling mess of thanks and praise and promises of every grant and commendation he can think of. He’s so numb that he’s not fully sure whether he’s speaking Fed Standard or Russian, but the doctors all nod at him and smile like it makes sense. Parsi offers to walk him home, but Chekov says no.
The same shellshock carries Chekov out of the building and to the transporter pad, and then along the familiar streets and up the hill to his home. It carries him in through the front door, and follows him as he wanders around the house, cleaning dishes and folding up blankets that still smell faintly of Hikaru and watering the plants that are now back in his care.
It’s the Sylfidian rose that finally breaks Chekov out of his stupor.
He claps a hand over his mouth and cries out as soon as he sees it: the green stalk is squirming and bulging, the golden tendrils so long they’re pressing against the glass like spider legs. For all Chekov’s ineptitude with plants, even he can tell this is due to bloom within the day. Sulu’s missed it again, he’s lost his second and final chance, and his decades and decades of work really will be for nothing-
He’s tempted to throw this goddamn thing into the disposal unit, just like he’d wanted to do six years ago, and then drink and drink until he blots out how unfair everything is. But instead, Chekov finds himself hurrying back down the stairs as fast as his old legs will carry him. There should be shame, and hesitation, as he slaps his fingers down on his computer console, but he’s lost all heed.
As the screen flickers on, some small self-aware part of his brain thinks he must make a rather frightening sight.
“Pavel?” Admiral Kirk greets him in abject shock.
Kirk’s eight years older than Chekov, but by now he looks younger, his eyes still that flame-blue, his white hair cropped close and his shoulders still trim.
“Jim,” Chekov cries - and it’s so unnatural, because for six years he hasn’t addressed this man with anything other than a frosty Admiral Kirk - “Jim, please, do you have any time today?”
Kirk has every right to tell Chekov to fuck off, after years of scorn and rejection and icy silence. Indeed, for a few moments, he appears to consider doing exactly this.
“Yeah, I have some time,” he says. “What’s going on?”
“You must - you must come to my home.” Chekov’s on the verge of tears. “Please. Something has happened.”
“What?” Kirk puts down the pen sharply. “Pavel, what’s the matter?”
“Please, just - come and I will tell you. I cannot say it like this.”
***
Chekov knows Kirk has always felt guilty for his role in Hikaru’s death, and he has no doubt it’s guilt that now speeds Kirk’s steps along, that brings him to Chekov’s doorstep in little more than twenty minutes. But Kirk only hints at such feelings when he arrives, his gaze skipping around the messy house and his lips drawing together; otherwise his hands are on his hips, pushing back his black jacket with his perpetual, instinctive authority.
“So what is this about, Pavel?”
“Hikaru’s Sylfidian rose is about to bloom,” Chekov blurts out. He’s brought it downstairs, carefully, clearing space on the coffee table. Now he ushers Kirk toward the couch. “It only does this once every one hundred years, and I can’t watch this by myself.”
“Are you...” Kirk blinks. “Are you screwing with me?”
“No!” Chekov says. “No, please, I must tell you-”
And it’s like something has shaken loose inside of him, because the last five days come pouring out- Hikaru’s reappearance, and his cooking, and the wharf, and their shouting match, and the memory wipe- and he even replays one of Dr. Parsi’s messages to prove it-
“Jesus Christ,” Kirk breathes, sinking down on the couch, his eyes moving back and forth between Chekov and the squirming flower. “Hikaru... he was here?”
Chekov nods. “I had him back,” he says. “For a few days. They, ah, took him back this morning. I am sorry you did not know, but they were trying not to contaminate him, and it happened so fast...”
Kirk stares at the flower for a few minutes, struggling to process this. “It’s okay. God, Pavel, it’s okay,” he finally says. “Are you okay?”
“Yes. Jim, I-” Chekov’s voice sticks in his throat, threatens to come out as a sob, but he gets control of himself. He settles beside Kirk on the couch, face set in an open plea. “I apologize for the way I’ve acted toward you. For the last six years, everything. I can’t make up for it with a few simple words, but... I am sorry.”
Kirk turns such an astounded look toward him that Chekov wonders if he’d accidentally slipped into Russian. “Are you serious?”
“Yes,” Chekov says. “Yes. And I had to tell you this in person. After everything, to apologize over a comm would be wrong.”
“My God.” Kirk grunts out a laugh. “What in hell did he say to you?”
“It was nothing so direct. Although he did talk about you,” Chekov says. “I... I did realize that maybe you had a connection to him that I overlooked. Because I was too caught up in my own feelings. Or because I never liked to think about it at all, even when he was alive.”
“You were married to him forever,” Kirk says quietly. “You’re kind of allowed to get caught up in feelings.”
“But I was not fair to you,” Chekov presses. “I blamed you, I shouted at you, I said things to you that were unforgiveable.”
“Hey, Spock strangled me, and we’re still best friends…”
Chekov exhales a frustrated noise. “I wish you would not be so reasonable,” he says. “It only makes me feel worse about how I have treated you.”
“Don’t,” Kirk admonishes him. “Pavel. You had every right to be angry with me, and you still do.”
“No, I don’t,” Chekov says. “I know the mission was not even very dangerous, and what happened to him could not reasonably have been anticipated-”
“Yes, but.” Kirk’s turned thoughtful, staring down at his knotted fingers. He breaks into a rueful smile. “God, I can’t believe this. I’ve needed to talk to you about this for six years, and now I don’t know where to start.”
“You can start anywhere,” Chekov says.
“Then maybe I-” Kirk stops himself. “All right, look. You know my situation. My mom was messed up by what happened to my father - my real father - until the day she died. And Frank knew it. He tried to pretend he was okay with it, but deep down they ended up resenting each other. That’s why, honestly, Pavel, I was almost glad you were so angry at me. I’d rather you blast me openly than let it fester in secret like they did.”
Chekov’s shoulders sink. “I see.”
“And I’m not telling you this for sympathy,” Kirk barrels on, even though Chekov hasn’t yet offered any. “That was years ago, and I’m a grown up. I’m just telling you where I’m coming from. For a long time I was absolutely sure that marriage was for fools. That anyone delusional enough to try it was in for a rude awakening, and that I knew better. And then there you two were, going along year after year, like a pair of damn ducks or something. I could always tell myself that Spock and Uhura have stayed together all these years because of some crazy Vulcan bonding shit, but you two - you two drove me crazy.”
“I...” Chekov’s stomach is starting to flip. “I don’t understand.”
“I’m saying that sometimes I hated being friends with you, you and him, because it made me feel so fucking cheated,” Kirk admits. “And I’m saying that maybe I knew perfectly well I was causing problems between you and Hikaru, and I didn’t really care, because hey - the sooner you two woke up to reality, the better.” His lip curls. “And I’m also saying I never had that many constant things in my life, and maybe every now and then I liked to check and make sure Sulu was still one of them.” He runs a hand over his face, and for the first time in all the decades that Chekov’s known him, Kirk looks beaten and old. “Guess I screwed that one up too.”
Chekov falls back slowly in his seat, letting out a long breath while he absorbs this. Mere days ago, Kirk’s confession would have set him off in a screaming rage: You sabotaged our marriage on purpose, you knew how the drill affected Hikaru and you used it to drag him to his death, you destroyed my life because yours was miserable, you soulless monster - The same litany runs through Chekov’s mind now, but there’s no fire behind it, just an incredible sort of heaviness.
“Did Hikaru know this?” he asks, muted. “Any of it?”
“I don’t know,” Kirk answers. “Maybe I told him enough that he could piece some of it together. But if he did, he figured it out before me. I didn’t realize a lot of this myself until after he got killed.”
He’s flicking wary eyes over Chekov, over and over, as if he still can’t believe the explosion isn’t coming. But Chekov has instead grown pensive, watching the flower writhe and toss.
“You know the temporal mechanics department received a lot of attention and resources after what Nero did to Vulcan,” Chekov says absently. “But perhaps they were too late for us.”
Kirk squints at him. “What?”
“Nero killed your father, yes?” Chekov says. “This changed you. And he put down the drill, and this changed Hikaru, and I did not realize how much until yesterday. Neither of you would be the same if it were not for Nero, and neither would I. Maybe Hikaru and I would never have married, or maybe we never would have stayed married, if we had not been brought together under those precise circumstances. It is like... Nero sealed all of our fates the minute he appeared.” Chekov laughs at himself. “Or maybe I need a drink.”
“No...” Kirk says, grim. “No, you’re making sense. He came after Spock. The rest of us are collateral damage.”
“Damage, yes,” Chekov agrees. “But I have realized I had the luck to get something very good out of it. Although perhaps it is selfish to say this, since other people lost so much.”
“It’s not selfish, and it wasn’t luck, either. You found a good thing and made it happen,” Kirk says. “I don’t know how much stock I put in fate anyway.”
“Perhaps. Either way, I am not angry at you anymore. And I really never should have been.” Chekov shrugs, still puzzling out his own thoughts. “You know, Jim, you didn’t have anything constant in your life. But perhaps my problem was the opposite. My parents were constant. Hikaru was constant. It may seem very romantic to marry your first love, but I had no experience to prepare me for what it felt like when he died. It hurt so much I didn’t know what to do with myself. So I... I turned it all against you.”
Kirk’s lips spasm; it isn’t quite a smile, it isn’t quite tears. “It’s okay, Pavel.”
“No, it wasn’t.” His eyes prick again. “I’ve been a horrible person, these last years, and I don’t deserve your friendship now.”
“Cut that out,” Kirk says, so commandingly he might as well have tacked Ensign onto the end of it. He grabs Chekov around the shoulders, shaking him a little. “I’ll be the one who decides that, okay? And I say you’re still a good kid. All I care about is that you’re back.”
“I’m in my seventies. You can’t still call me a kid,” Chekov complains, but he’s laughing as he pushes a few stray tears off his face. After a moment, he gestures toward the flower. “We should have had this kind of conversation sooner. I - I always hated to think that you and Hikaru were important to each other. It made me so jealous I couldn’t stand it. But now I’m glad, because there is someone else here to see this with me.”
Kirk’s bent his head. “It means a lot that you think I deserve to be here.”
“Yes, well.” Chekov hauls himself up from the couch. “You also deserve better hospitality. I have forgotten to offer you a drink.”
“Pavel, I’m serious,” Kirk says, as Chekov goes to the cabinet where he keeps his vodka. “Look, do you want to know something? There’s nothing you’ve said to me in the last six years that was worse than seeing you at his funeral. You looked like - like you had completely malfunctioned.”
Chekov stares down into the glass he’s pouring, glad he’s facing away. “That sounds accurate,” he murmurs. “I cannot remember much of it.”
His overriding memory is of Hikaru’s waxy, dead face, and he sort of recalls Uhura saying nice, coaxing things to him and pulling him around by the arm. Chekov turns back to Kirk with stiff cheer and a glass in each hand. “We can think of this as a happier second chance.”
“Like the wake we should have had?” Kirk says, accepting the drink.
“Or perhaps a christening. You don’t know how Hikaru was about this flower.”
“Oh yes I do,” Kirk answers, chuckling. “You forget, I was leading the mission where he earned it. Jesus, I’ll never forget that trip back on the shuttlecraft. Four hours, Pavel. I think I know more about this thing than most real botanists do.”
Chekov bursts into laughter. “This Hikaru from the past, he was very excited when he discovered I had one.” He sighs. “Jim, you should have seen him. He was only twenty-three. We were all so young, I cannot believe they let any of us near a starship. Let alone one like the Enterprise.”
Kirk lifts an amused eyebrow. “We did all right for ourselves, though.”
“Yes,” Chekov agrees.
“Twenty-three, huh,” Kirk says, with a wolfish grin. “Hikaru was pretty good looking back then.”
“Hmph! He was always good looking.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Kirk says, rolling his eyes. “You know where I’m trying to go with this, right?”
“Yes, I do.” Chekov regards him archly. “And just because we are friends again, does not mean that is any of your business.”
“Oh, you so did.” Kirk whoops a laugh. “Way to go, Professor Chekov.”
“Oh yes. Having sex with my husband. What an incredible Casanova I am.”
They chatter well into the evening while the flower tosses back and forth, and fall into reverent quiet when it spirals open in a fireworks-burst of petals and tendrils and soft glowing dust. Speckles of light dance over the two men’s faces, a graceful mosaic of shadows rippling across the ceiling. Kirk is the first to raise his glass, Chekov’s clinking against it not long afterward. And a warm epiphany spreads through Chekov, that Hikaru’s decades and decades of work had not come to nothing after all.
***
Fifty-six years earlier, Ensign Pavel Chekov prepares to conduct an unauthorized transporter experiment, while a dubious Dr. McCoy looks on.
“I don’t know, kid. If even Jim thought it was too risky...”
“With proper respect to the Keptin, he did not understand my revised calculations.” Chekov furrows his brow, checking over the controls one last time. “But that is why you are here, Doctor, in case it hurts him again.”
“I’m only here because you threatened to do it without me,” McCoy grumbles. “And let me tell you something else, Ensign, your life is going to get a lot harder once you grow out of those Bambi eyes.”
“What is a Bam-bee?”
“Oh dear God. You are hopeless...”
Chekov draws himself up. “Perhaps you should wait until after the experiment to say that.”
“See, I don’t like that word. Experiment. You’re not even asking our poor pilot whether or not he wants to get suctioned across four dimensions by this damned beam, which I might add, isn’t the most reliably proven means of transportation to begin with...”
McCoy’s muttering trails off when the transporter engages. A flare of light coalesces into a male human form, lying flat on his back, that they both recognize as Sulu. Chekov’s already racing out from behind the console, McCoy following with his tricorder lifted.
“I-” Chekov takes in the sight of Sulu sprawled and unconscious, and he whitens. “I have hurt him again?”
“Relax, Ensign. He’s just asleep.” McCoy slings his tricorder to the side and pulls a hypospray out of his medkit. “He’s got a strong sedative in his system. But this’ll wake him up, and then he ought to be right back to normal.”
Chekov chokes out a thankful noise, dropping down to his knees beside Sulu. He’s so beside himself with relief that McCoy doesn’t have the heart to tell him to quit getting in his way so he can actually apply the damned hypo. Instead the doctor does his best to maneuver around Chekov, who’s running eager fingers over Sulu’s face and hair, as if desperate to confirm the pilot’s real, living presence for himself. McCoy settles for lifting Sulu’s shirt and pressing the hypospray to his belly.
It’s not long before Sulu moans, and begins rolling his head back and forth.
“Sulu. Sulu, wake up!” Chekov urges, shaking his shoulder.
“Wh… what’s going on?” Sulu mumbles, squinting against the bright lights, and frowning when he sees McCoy and Chekov peering down at him. “What are you guys doing? ...Are we in the transporter room?”
“How much of the last five days do you remember, lieutenant?” McCoy asks.
“Five days?” Sulu says, his voice still a drowsy rasp. He sits up, and rubs at the side of his head with a wince. “What are you talking about?”
McCoy exchanges a glance with Chekov.
“You were missing,” Chekov says. “You were taken out of your quarters, and there was evidence that you time traveled. We have finally retrieved you.”
“What?” Sulu cries. “Is this some kind of joke?”
Chekov goes bright red. “If you consider the last five days of everyone worrying themselves sick about you to be a joke!”
“All right, all right. Mr. Sulu, no, it’s not a joke,” McCoy cuts in. Lifting a distressed eyebrow, he reaches under Sulu’s collar and plucks out some kind of metal blinking object. “Does this look familiar to you?”
“No,” Sulu cries, pulling back from it in alarm. “What the hell is that?”
“Yes, what is it?” Chekov demands. “What were they doing to him?”
“Damned if I know,” McCoy answers, shaking his head. “I don’t recognize it as any kind of medical device, and my tricorder can’t make sense of it. This looks like something you or Spock might want to take apart, Ensign.”
“I don’t understand,” Sulu says. “Who put that on me? How did I get back?”
“We’ve got no idea about the first part,” McCoy says, “but you can thank Ensign Chekov’s willful abuse of the transporter for the fact that you’re here now.”
“I-” Sulu blinks at Chekov, a little smile dawning. “Really?”
“Well.” Chekov blushes, and tosses his head. “The theory was very simple, you know. But Sulu! Are you saying you do not remember anything at all?”
“The last thing I remember is getting into bed a couple of hours ago,” he says. He rubs at his temple, giving a mild groan. “I do have a headache...”
“Yes, that’s consistent with the readings I’m getting,” McCoy puts in, concentrating on his tricorder. “You’re showing a pattern of low-level brain damage-”
Chekov’s eyes pop. “They damaged his brain?”
“-consistent with a memory wipe,” McCoy finishes. “It shouldn’t affect your cognitive abilities, lieutenant, and I’m not detecting any other significant physical damage. Just a bit of DNA...” The doctor trails off, his eyebrows lifting. Oh, now that’s mighty interesting.
“Yes?” Sulu prompts.
“On your clothes,” McCoy lies. “If you wouldn’t mind giving them to me when we get back to sickbay, so I can perform a few tests. Maybe it’ll give us a clue to what’s happened.”
“Okay.” Sulu gets to his feet, his eyes on Chekov. “Did you really beam me out of trouble again?”
“Of course I did! You vanished into nowhere, it was terrible!”
“I still can’t believe it. But are you sure you’re okay? You look tired.”
“Bah, I am fine. You have not even returned for five minutes and you are already babying me…”
They trail behind McCoy, who leads them out of the transporter room and down the hall to sickbay. He’s still got a perplexed glare fixed on his tricorder. The DNA is in a rather telling place inside Sulu’s body, and it matches Ensign Chekov, and McCoy can already see a very creatively-worded medical report resulting from all this. Not to mention a hell of a conversation with Jim.
McCoy swings a questioning look back over his shoulder, where the two of them have fallen into stride. Sulu’s barefoot and still groggy from the sedative, and Chekov’s slowed to keep pace, but that doesn’t stop the kid from chattering a mile a minute about all the modifications he’d made and all the calculations he’d done and re-done, and Lord almighty, most people in the galaxy would tell him to shut up already. But then McCoy’s gaze drifts over to Sulu, who’s trying his sleepy best to hang on every word, like this nonstop Russian-accented theoretical mumbo jumbo is the sweetest song he’s ever heard in his life.
They’re too caught up in each other to notice McCoy smirking to himself, or to hear the dry chuckle under his breath.
-end-