The Language of Grief: STXI fanfiction, Chekov-centric, PG
Title: The Language of Grief
Summary: "If he doesn’t say it now, he never will, because space only gives a man one chance to make things right." Chekov deals with death.
Author: rosenskimmer
Rating: PG (but beware of angst)
Spoilers: all of STXI
Notes: Done for the STXI fic request meme. Chekov's feelings right after he beams Spock and the Elders from Vulcan onto the ship. Later he tries to apologize to Spock for failing to fix on Amanda as she falls. Spock is too numb to respond. Hope this is what you were looking for.
Pavel Chekov has never seen himself as a child. Possessing a superior intellect at an early age, paired with a thirst for knowledge and understanding, he’s often felt disconnected from the strange, youthful body he inhabits. He’s all bony arms and legs at seventeen, but he’s vowed to never let his apparent age hold him back. He’s received top marks in every course he’s taken at the Academy, to the joy of his instructors and the chagrin of his classmates. It’s never bothered him before, what the other cadets thought of him-he chose to ignore their insults rather than waste time setting his tormentors straight. His own happiness was far too important to sacrifice by allowing the opinions of others to sully it. Thus, he was renowned for his surprising intellect and his infectious exuberance, as well.
For a seventeen-year-old, Chekov has all the answers. He can look into Captain Pike’s eyes and keep himself from laughing when he’s called the “Russian whiz-kid.” He’s seen that look a million times before and not once has he been unable to erase it. Sure, he may only need to shave once a week or so, but he can out-think almost anyone in Star Fleet.
--
He’s been told that running a transporter is a thankless job, one of the worst in the Fleet. Now, when he keeps repeating, “I lost her,” over and over again, like a fish out of water, gasping on the banks of the Moskva river, he knows what they meant. She was just a colored dot on his console, one of five. And now she’s gone.
It was easy to slip away, amidst all the activity-easy to disappear to his quarters for a little while. Chekov looks up her file, bypassing security protocols to locate her information. He’s known how to cheat the system for some time, as his Academy studies had very little to teach him. So, he taught himself to seek out holes in the programming. It was his intention to turn his findings in to Star Fleet command once he’d finished, but now he’s glad he hesitated.
But glad isn’t the right word, not when his hands are shaking, fingertips faltering in their effortless glide across the computer’s touch screen.
“Computer, read profile of Amanda Grayson.”
Although he knows she’s not real, Chekov has often imagined the woman behind the voice of the computer, perhaps his closest friend in Star Fleet: tall, with long black hair and clear blue eyes, impassive yet knowing in her unblinking stare. But, as the computer lists the details of Amanda Grayson’s life: wife of Ambassador Sarek, mother of First Officer Spock-Chekov imagines the woman behind the computer is weeping, even though her measured voice never wavers.
The brief is short, too short, and it’s several seconds before Chekov realizes that he’s the one crying, tears leaving wet tracks on his cheeks before he wipes them away on the sleeves of his too-new uniform. He finds no answer in the computer’s vast memory banks to ease the lump stuck in his throat, thick like swirls of rushing desert sand, laced with the coppery taste of blood spattered against tumbling rocks.
--
All Russians are poets. And all Russians are a little in love with death. This is what Pavel Chekov’s father will say when his ten-year-old son asks him what it means to be Russian. Chekov has always had a strong love for poetry, and his love affair with death was more than enough to brave the wild reaches of space as a seventeen-year-old. This definition had never failed him before.
But everything seems frayed at the edges now, strained and fading under his intense scrutiny and just sitting in his quarters, running circles around and around in his mind, repeating those last few moments again and again, makes him want to jump out of his skin.
“Computer, locate Commander-I mean, Captain Spock,” he says.
“Captain Spock is in the Medical Lab-” the computer replies, but Chekov is already moving toward the door, her voice calling out to no one.
--
He doesn’t think of what he might say or what he might do once he reaches Spock; it’s all he can do to keep his feet moving, to keep his eyes ahead. When he catches sight of Spock leaving Medlab, it’s all he can do not to cry out.
“Captain Spock,” he says. He doesn’t stutter, but his voice cracks on the last syllable of the Vulcan’s name and he winces. He’s not a child, but he knows even a Russian whiz-kid is still not good enough in the eyes of his commanding officers.
As Spock turns toward him, where Chekov expects to see a comfortable control, a Vulcan sensibility of logic, a benediction of knowledge from the one who seems to have forgotten more than Chekov can ever know, there is nothing. And all the tactical strategies he’s learned, all the technical manuals he’s memorized, all the sonnets and monologues and songs he can recite, they’re useless here, in this pivotal moment. The language of grief is something Star Fleet cannot teach him.
In Spock, there are no answers waiting for Chekov. His eyes are at once blank and limitless, as if his mind were a ship suddenly unmoored in oppressive doldrums, adrift with no wind in its sails and no stars for a guide.
He takes a sharp breath as if Spock has struck him between the ribs rather than just looked at him with those empty eyes, and that bloody, thickening taste starts to choke him again. If he doesn’t say it now, he never will, because space only gives a man one chance to make things right.
“I-I’m sorry, Captain Spock. I lost her.” It comes out too loud, too strained and a passing crewmember stares before she hurries out of the corridor.
Chekov searches his face for something, anything resembling a reaction: a twitch of an eyebrow, a twisting of his lips-but there’s nothing and that sick choking is still rising and he can feel his words pushing up from that aching place in his chest, pushing up and out, tumbling over his lips without any sense at all: “She was there, I know she was-I had her and everything was okay, despite the interference of the drill but something happened and I lost her-I tried so hard, I did everything I could but I lost her, I lost her-”
He’s struggling to breathe as the Medlab doors slide open, and Spock’s still just staring at him and it hurts because there should be something there, something angry and vicious, because he lost her, because he had her and now she’s gone and there’s nothing anyone can do about it.
Strong hands grab his shoulders just as the edges of his vision begin to blacken, just as he feels the Enterprise start to sway in time with the waves of the Caspian Sea.
“What are you doing out here, kid?” McCoy says, eyes wide but firmly moored to the present. He looks up at Spock, who hasn’t even moved (as far as Chekov can tell) through the exchange. “Is everything all right?”
Chekov feels bitter laughter bubble up in his slowly congealing throat and he fights it back down.
“Mister Chekov seems to be experiencing strong emotions due to what occurred on the transporter pad. See to it that he is helped-when you are finished, he will be needed on the bridge.” Spock hasn’t changed an iota of his usual behavior and yet it seems so radically different that is weighs upon Chekov like an anchor, dragging him to impossible depths.
“I’m sorry,” he says. “I’m so sorry.” An insufficient litany for what he’s done, and he feels something scrambling underneath his skin, begging for a release from his inadequacies. “If I had been faster, maybe Wulcan…ah, Vulcan-” And he burns with embarrassment when even the name of the planet eludes him.
“It wasn’t your fault,” McCoy says, hands tightening on Chekov’s shoulders. “Isn’t that right, Spock? There was nothing he could do. He did everything he could.”
McCoy’s words are such a contradiction in terms that only a child could agree with them, so Chekov isn’t surprised when Spock says nothing, just turns away from them to walk down the corridor. But the finality of what his silence implies forces Chekov into action.
He slips out of McCoy’s grasp and lunges forward, seizing Spock’s wrist and yanking him around.
It was, Chekov will muse later, both the right and wrong thing to do to a touch telepath. Recognition returns to the Vulcan’s eyes, but what they say to him, the image flowing from Spock’s mind to his own, makes Chekov sharply draw back his hand.
He sees her face, Amanda Grayson, leaning over him with outstretched hands, eyes filled with tears, and Chekov feels like a child for the first time in his life.
“Please, I need-I need you to forgive me.” And there it is, voiced in a childlike tremor: the truth of the matter. It hangs between them, sinking slowly, driving Chekov deeper into his newfound darkness.
“I have no forgiveness to give, Ensign. There is nothing I can do for you.”
This time, when Spock turns away, Chekov lets him go, rubbing his burning hand, feeling that choking sensation take over completely. The anchor has reached bottom, pinned to the depths of the darkest ocean; he knows there is nothing more he can say.
--
Spock’s face appears when Chekov closes his eyes. His arm outstretched, long fingers reaching for the ghost of a pattern of a woman he will swear he loves when Kirk challenges him.
It will surprise Chekov, then, that no one knew. Because he knew, in that instant, that the loss of his mother was the part for the whole, synecdoche in action: no matter how much the loss of six billion Vulcans will logically be greater, Spock will forever see his mother’s face in his dreams.
Summary: "If he doesn’t say it now, he never will, because space only gives a man one chance to make things right." Chekov deals with death.
Author: rosenskimmer
Rating: PG (but beware of angst)
Spoilers: all of STXI
Notes: Done for the STXI fic request meme. Chekov's feelings right after he beams Spock and the Elders from Vulcan onto the ship. Later he tries to apologize to Spock for failing to fix on Amanda as she falls. Spock is too numb to respond. Hope this is what you were looking for.
Pavel Chekov has never seen himself as a child. Possessing a superior intellect at an early age, paired with a thirst for knowledge and understanding, he’s often felt disconnected from the strange, youthful body he inhabits. He’s all bony arms and legs at seventeen, but he’s vowed to never let his apparent age hold him back. He’s received top marks in every course he’s taken at the Academy, to the joy of his instructors and the chagrin of his classmates. It’s never bothered him before, what the other cadets thought of him-he chose to ignore their insults rather than waste time setting his tormentors straight. His own happiness was far too important to sacrifice by allowing the opinions of others to sully it. Thus, he was renowned for his surprising intellect and his infectious exuberance, as well.
For a seventeen-year-old, Chekov has all the answers. He can look into Captain Pike’s eyes and keep himself from laughing when he’s called the “Russian whiz-kid.” He’s seen that look a million times before and not once has he been unable to erase it. Sure, he may only need to shave once a week or so, but he can out-think almost anyone in Star Fleet.
--
He’s been told that running a transporter is a thankless job, one of the worst in the Fleet. Now, when he keeps repeating, “I lost her,” over and over again, like a fish out of water, gasping on the banks of the Moskva river, he knows what they meant. She was just a colored dot on his console, one of five. And now she’s gone.
It was easy to slip away, amidst all the activity-easy to disappear to his quarters for a little while. Chekov looks up her file, bypassing security protocols to locate her information. He’s known how to cheat the system for some time, as his Academy studies had very little to teach him. So, he taught himself to seek out holes in the programming. It was his intention to turn his findings in to Star Fleet command once he’d finished, but now he’s glad he hesitated.
But glad isn’t the right word, not when his hands are shaking, fingertips faltering in their effortless glide across the computer’s touch screen.
“Computer, read profile of Amanda Grayson.”
Although he knows she’s not real, Chekov has often imagined the woman behind the voice of the computer, perhaps his closest friend in Star Fleet: tall, with long black hair and clear blue eyes, impassive yet knowing in her unblinking stare. But, as the computer lists the details of Amanda Grayson’s life: wife of Ambassador Sarek, mother of First Officer Spock-Chekov imagines the woman behind the computer is weeping, even though her measured voice never wavers.
The brief is short, too short, and it’s several seconds before Chekov realizes that he’s the one crying, tears leaving wet tracks on his cheeks before he wipes them away on the sleeves of his too-new uniform. He finds no answer in the computer’s vast memory banks to ease the lump stuck in his throat, thick like swirls of rushing desert sand, laced with the coppery taste of blood spattered against tumbling rocks.
--
All Russians are poets. And all Russians are a little in love with death. This is what Pavel Chekov’s father will say when his ten-year-old son asks him what it means to be Russian. Chekov has always had a strong love for poetry, and his love affair with death was more than enough to brave the wild reaches of space as a seventeen-year-old. This definition had never failed him before.
But everything seems frayed at the edges now, strained and fading under his intense scrutiny and just sitting in his quarters, running circles around and around in his mind, repeating those last few moments again and again, makes him want to jump out of his skin.
“Computer, locate Commander-I mean, Captain Spock,” he says.
“Captain Spock is in the Medical Lab-” the computer replies, but Chekov is already moving toward the door, her voice calling out to no one.
--
He doesn’t think of what he might say or what he might do once he reaches Spock; it’s all he can do to keep his feet moving, to keep his eyes ahead. When he catches sight of Spock leaving Medlab, it’s all he can do not to cry out.
“Captain Spock,” he says. He doesn’t stutter, but his voice cracks on the last syllable of the Vulcan’s name and he winces. He’s not a child, but he knows even a Russian whiz-kid is still not good enough in the eyes of his commanding officers.
As Spock turns toward him, where Chekov expects to see a comfortable control, a Vulcan sensibility of logic, a benediction of knowledge from the one who seems to have forgotten more than Chekov can ever know, there is nothing. And all the tactical strategies he’s learned, all the technical manuals he’s memorized, all the sonnets and monologues and songs he can recite, they’re useless here, in this pivotal moment. The language of grief is something Star Fleet cannot teach him.
In Spock, there are no answers waiting for Chekov. His eyes are at once blank and limitless, as if his mind were a ship suddenly unmoored in oppressive doldrums, adrift with no wind in its sails and no stars for a guide.
He takes a sharp breath as if Spock has struck him between the ribs rather than just looked at him with those empty eyes, and that bloody, thickening taste starts to choke him again. If he doesn’t say it now, he never will, because space only gives a man one chance to make things right.
“I-I’m sorry, Captain Spock. I lost her.” It comes out too loud, too strained and a passing crewmember stares before she hurries out of the corridor.
Chekov searches his face for something, anything resembling a reaction: a twitch of an eyebrow, a twisting of his lips-but there’s nothing and that sick choking is still rising and he can feel his words pushing up from that aching place in his chest, pushing up and out, tumbling over his lips without any sense at all: “She was there, I know she was-I had her and everything was okay, despite the interference of the drill but something happened and I lost her-I tried so hard, I did everything I could but I lost her, I lost her-”
He’s struggling to breathe as the Medlab doors slide open, and Spock’s still just staring at him and it hurts because there should be something there, something angry and vicious, because he lost her, because he had her and now she’s gone and there’s nothing anyone can do about it.
Strong hands grab his shoulders just as the edges of his vision begin to blacken, just as he feels the Enterprise start to sway in time with the waves of the Caspian Sea.
“What are you doing out here, kid?” McCoy says, eyes wide but firmly moored to the present. He looks up at Spock, who hasn’t even moved (as far as Chekov can tell) through the exchange. “Is everything all right?”
Chekov feels bitter laughter bubble up in his slowly congealing throat and he fights it back down.
“Mister Chekov seems to be experiencing strong emotions due to what occurred on the transporter pad. See to it that he is helped-when you are finished, he will be needed on the bridge.” Spock hasn’t changed an iota of his usual behavior and yet it seems so radically different that is weighs upon Chekov like an anchor, dragging him to impossible depths.
“I’m sorry,” he says. “I’m so sorry.” An insufficient litany for what he’s done, and he feels something scrambling underneath his skin, begging for a release from his inadequacies. “If I had been faster, maybe Wulcan…ah, Vulcan-” And he burns with embarrassment when even the name of the planet eludes him.
“It wasn’t your fault,” McCoy says, hands tightening on Chekov’s shoulders. “Isn’t that right, Spock? There was nothing he could do. He did everything he could.”
McCoy’s words are such a contradiction in terms that only a child could agree with them, so Chekov isn’t surprised when Spock says nothing, just turns away from them to walk down the corridor. But the finality of what his silence implies forces Chekov into action.
He slips out of McCoy’s grasp and lunges forward, seizing Spock’s wrist and yanking him around.
It was, Chekov will muse later, both the right and wrong thing to do to a touch telepath. Recognition returns to the Vulcan’s eyes, but what they say to him, the image flowing from Spock’s mind to his own, makes Chekov sharply draw back his hand.
He sees her face, Amanda Grayson, leaning over him with outstretched hands, eyes filled with tears, and Chekov feels like a child for the first time in his life.
“Please, I need-I need you to forgive me.” And there it is, voiced in a childlike tremor: the truth of the matter. It hangs between them, sinking slowly, driving Chekov deeper into his newfound darkness.
“I have no forgiveness to give, Ensign. There is nothing I can do for you.”
This time, when Spock turns away, Chekov lets him go, rubbing his burning hand, feeling that choking sensation take over completely. The anchor has reached bottom, pinned to the depths of the darkest ocean; he knows there is nothing more he can say.
--
Spock’s face appears when Chekov closes his eyes. His arm outstretched, long fingers reaching for the ghost of a pattern of a woman he will swear he loves when Kirk challenges him.
It will surprise Chekov, then, that no one knew. Because he knew, in that instant, that the loss of his mother was the part for the whole, synecdoche in action: no matter how much the loss of six billion Vulcans will logically be greater, Spock will forever see his mother’s face in his dreams.