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“All shuttles, the main hub is under attack, return to your ships at once! I repeat, return to your ships at once!”
“Shuttle One to Hub Command, we can’t lift off!”
“WE NEED BACK-UP OVER HERE!”
“SOMEONE HELP US!”
“Enterprise, ve have a diplomatic emergency, please respond!” Lieutenant Pavel Chekov yelped down the radio lines, as his captain fired at the nearest hostile officer. “Spock here. Mr Chekov, where is the captain?” Commander Spock’s voice filtered through, though barely, being heavily clouded by a great deal of interference.“I’m here, Spock, I’m here!” Captain James T. Kirk called over. “Got a bit of a situation here!”
“We surmised that from the emergency beacons sent up by Mairan High Command. Are you able to take off?”
“Yes, sir, but ve are under heavy fire,” Chekov explained fretfully, hands flying across the shuttlecraft’s controls even as another went down some hundred feet in front of them both.“I was going to try and evacuate some of the officials, but either they’re hiding, or they’re dead!” the captain yelled, and abruptly shoved himself back as a stun blast struck the doorframe. “Shit! Get us outta here, Chekov!” “Aye-aye, keptin!” Honestly, it was a miracle they even got off the ground, but then again, Pavel Chekov was not the teenager he’d been when he’d run away from his homeland and joined Starfleet, even if said teenager had aced all of his navigation and helm classes, and Jim Kirk was most definitely not the total idiot who’d joined Starfleet on a dare.Unfortunately, even as they cleared the warzone that was the shuttleport and crossed towards the starry night sky, that was nowhere near the end of their problems.“Spock, we’re still under attack, what the hell is going on down there?” Kirk nearly swore, as Chekov deftly manipulated the craft’s controls again and narrowly avoided a large energy beam (what kind didn’t really matter to them, just that it wanted them dead).
“What appears to be a full-scale revolution. It seems that Starfleet is caught up entirely by accident.”
“Any advice on, y’know, getting out of here?”
“Only to continue your current avoidance strategy.”
There was the horrible whining of another beam, and this time even Chekov’s deft reflexes couldn’t throw them out of the way in time. FYOOO— KRASH! The craft tipped like a shoved coffee cup, and, even without looking at the warnings now spewing from the controls, both officers knew that they weren’t coming back from that blast. Still, Chekov panickedly reported not a second later,“Ve’ve lost ze port nacelle, and ze starboard nacelle is failing!” “We’re going down, Spock! Get us out of here!” “Captain,” the voice of Commander Montgomery ‘Scotty’ Scott interrupted, “We cannae get a lock on your signals! You’re gonna have to crash-land!” “And how far will that put us from a beam-up point?!”
“I wish I could say ‘one click’, but it’s more like ‘one hundred’.”
Kirk winced at the vague number, and then swallowed as the ground drew closer way too quickly for his or Chekov’s liking.“Guess we’re crashing then,” he said gravely. “Chekov, get ready to brace!” The crash was… not pretty. It didn’t kill them, thanks to the advent of hundreds of years of safety improvements, but it certainly hurt, even as the shuttlecraft, very unfortunately named Galileo like the doomed shuttlecraft of the so-called 'Prime' timeline, ground to a stop on very uneven ground, flipped, and, finally, crashed into a ditch.It left the outside aflame (mostly from friction and electricity), the inside full of smoke… and its two passengers hanging upside down from their seats, strapped in by the best seatbelts in the goddamn galaxy.Jim awoke to the sounds of a dying, very unhappy computer, just as his ears stopped ringing and his vision swam back into existence.“Chekov…?” he croaked. There was no answer, though, just faintly, Jim could see the figure of his navigator hanging limply. “Chekov!” he tried again, louder this time, and regretting it as he started to cough. When there was no reply again, though, he resorted to yelling. “Pavel!” The young navigator heaved what sounded like a very painful gasp and started coughing as his body was thrown back into action.Eventually, a voice that sounded far too young for him, even with him being just twenty-four, whispered,“Keptin…?”“I’m here, Pavel. I’ll get you down, okay?”“Okay. I’ll… I guess I’ll ‘hang around’, heh.”If Jim wasn’t so relieved at seeing one of his favourite crewmen alive, he might’ve jokingly grounded the young Russian. Right now, though, his focus was on getting them both down… and then out of the Galileo. It was actually incredibly difficult getting down at first, what with his seatbelt (despite all the safety improvements) suffering one of the constant problems with seatbelts and getting stuck, but, after some harsh words (and some adorable Russian giggling from the probably delirious navigator), the seatbelt gave way, and just about catching himself in time, Jim successfully flipped himself the right way up and landed on the ‘floor’ of the Galileo, dress boots (because they’d been in the middle of a diplomatic party) banging against the heavily dented roof. Climbing his way over to where Pavel was hanging, he held out his arms, calling up to his navigator,“You can let go now, I’ll catch you.”“Vhat, like how you caught Ensign Kiera?” Pavel grinned stupidly, looking almost exactly like the teenager he’d been now seven years ago.“Hey, that was one time, and it ended well!”“Tell zhat to her broken leg!”“Ugh, just drop down already, or else I’m leaving you up there.”The navigator flipped the bird at him, but, after an even briefer struggle with his seatbelt, Pavel was free, and effectively crashed down into Jim’s arms, the captain just barely managing to hold them both up.“Zhank you, keptin,” Pavel chirped happily, though the grimace in his eyes told of well-hidden pain.“You’re welcome, Pavel,” Jim sighed. “C’mon, let’s get outta here before the shuttle blows up around us.” Starship shuttlecraft weren’t exactly designed for evacuations anymore, not like they’d been on the Kelvin (and even that had been a stretch), but a long history of trial and error had not only taught Starfleet that starships needed enough shuttles for everyone on board, but also that, in case the Kelvin pods were unusable or if they were evacuating civilians, the shuttles would have survival gear inside them.“And here I vas hope I’d never [pronounced with a ‘w’ sound] have to see zhese suits again,” Pavel complained, as he shrugged off his dress uniform and pulled on the survival suits. “At least zhis time is without traps.” “That’s the hope, yeah,” Jim chuckled, pulling his own suit on without a fuss. “Is it weird I kinda prefer this to the normal uniform?”“Keptin, you wore it for a solid month off-duty. I know you like ze survival suits. At least zis one doesn’t have blood on it.”“Alright, alright, I get the point.” Ignoring Pavel’s amused eyeroll, Jim managed to kick the door open (though it took a few tries, and eventually required Pavel’s help), allowing them both to climb out of the ditch they’d created… and onto a very quiet plain.Even as they stood up on the ridge, staring off at the distant capital, it felt like they’d crashed on an entirely new world.“Keptin… vhere are ve?” “I don’t know, Pavel. I don’t know.”
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
Quite wisely, both of them chose to get further away from the Galileo than just the top of the ridge, though both of them had loudly complaining injuries, and so it was about a hundred or so feet away from the craft that Jim began trying to hail the Enterprise with his communicator, while Pavel went rummaging in their survival packs for a medical tricorder, wincing at what was likely a cracked rib or three.“Kirk to Enterprise, come in, Enterprise." The communicator hissed with static, and, much to the captain’s disappointment, refused to answer him. “This is Captain James T. Kirk, calling any nearby ships, do you read me?” Again, there was no answer. Finally, mostly as a last resort, Jim tried his hand at raising the High Command within the capital, despite the smoke both of them could see faintly on the horizon. And, once again, he got no answer. “Damn it! Either we’re out of range, or the communicator’s broken.”“Pass it ower,” Pavel sighed, reaching out for the communicator. Jim gave it to him without question, knowing that his navigator dedicated his spare time to fucking around with electronics (often, prior to getting his own quarters, to his prior roommates’ ire). The brunette slid open the backing on the small device, and frowned at what he found. “Transmitter’s smashed.”“Crash must’ve done it. Have you got a working communicator?”Pavel shook his head and held up a crushed device.“I might be able to remake it vith parts from both, but it vould take some time.”“Let’s make sure neither of us are internally bleeding first, I really don’t want to see Bones’ disappointed face again.”“Vhat, you mean ze face he alvays gives you?” Pavel smirked, green eyes tinkling.“Shaddup, Chekov,” Jim groaned, pinching his nose.“Aye-aye, sir!” Thankfully, with the medical tricorder also came some of the various tools Jim had long seen Bones using both in Sickbay and out in the field. Also thankfully, all of them were clearly labelled and came with an instruction booklet, made of actual paper, in case nobody on the shuttle was a doctor.It also clearly stated that they should only be used by non-medical personnel in an emergency. This qualified as one.“Okay, so you’ve got a few cracked ribs, a weird break in your arm, and a whole lot of bruising. That’s… the bone regenerator. Can’t really do anything for the bruising, I don’t think,” Jim sighed.“I can live vith bruising,” Pavel shrugged, and, to distract himself from the rather uncomfortable sensations of having his bones repaired from inside his body, started scanning his captain. “Looks like— ngth— you didn’t suffer any major injuries.”“Excellent, because if I had, I’d be worried about why I couldn’t feel them.”“You have bruises, though.”“Oh no, I definitely feel those. Got a map in that pack?” Pavel quickly handed over the electronic map, which thankfully was surprisingly durable (figures, since they were probably the second-most useful item in any kit), and soon Jim had the landscape around them displayed, albeit rudimentarily. “Sheesh, Scotty wasn’t kidding when he said it was a long walk. One hundred and seventy clicks to the nearest beam-up point. That’s, what…” Jim went silent, brain already trying to remember the conversion between miles and kilometres. “Y’know, I should really know this shit by now.’“Zhat’s roughly a hundred and five miles,” Pavel offered. “Ve can probably walk zhat in, vhat, a couple of days? I’ve hiked zhat before, in ze middle of winter!”Jim gave his navigator a weary look.“Was it Russian winter?”
“Da!”
“You Russians really are built different, huh.”Pavel just beamed a mischievous grin, and, oddly enough, a warm feeling bloomed in Jim’s chest, even as he ruffled the brunette’s curls and laughed.It almost felt like… he was talking to a son, not just his navigator.
Why did it feel like that...?
It took them a few more minutes to pack up again, Jim deciding to ignore that warm feeling in his chest to focus on plotting out a vague map (and hoping there was nothing in the way) towards the beam-up point, which would take them uncomfortably close to the capital again, though there was nothing they could do about it.“Luckily for us, this is a pretty flat area,” he explained, displaying the map. “You’re the navigator, anything wrong with this trip?”“Yes, keptin, you’ve forgotten to include detours around some of ze water spouts in ze area,” Pavel groaned, rolling his eyes and grinning as he corrected the course slightly. “Not much of a detour, but a detour, regardless.”“Oh. Oh yeah, I forgot about those.”“Zhey’re not marked on ze map, to be fair. I memorised ze surroundings of ze capital vhen ve arrived.”“That’s why you’re my navigator,” Jim grinned. “I failed at least one of my navigation courses because I kept forgetting to look at the maps properly!”Pavel just barked out a laugh and offered his captain a hand up. They had a long way to go, and the darkness of night didn’t help things, but it was too close to sunrise for them to sleep now. It was oddly quiet, walking out here in the moonlight. Mairan III had three moons, all of varying sizes, and its largest, Kiralu, which translated roughly to Queen of the Skies (and was apparently one of the planet’s main goddesses), loomed up high, casting a bright glow on the landscape next to the comparatively dim Mitali (Daughter of the Queen). The third moon of the three, Hishino (Son of the Queen), was hidden by the forest they were walking alongside.For a while, as the two got further and further away from the Galileo wreck, and the stars glistened surprisingly brightly next to Kiralu, Jim glanced up and, oddly enough, began muttering things about which stars he could recognise, having glanced at a Mairan III star chart out of interest before the party.“We visited ehhhhh Poirot last week, right?” he muttered, not really directing the question at his navigator. “Before it went supernova.”“Aye, keptin,” Pavel chirped, startling Jim out of his muttering. “Ve are currently sixty-two lightyears from Poirot, so it vill take roughly sixty-two years, give or take, for astronomers here to see ze explosion.”“And by then the explosion will have petered out and they won’t have anything to worry about,” Jim grinned. “We, on the other hand, got out of there by the skin of our teeth!”“Literally! Ve lost sensors for a veek!” Both of them burst into laughter over what had been a terrifying incident but was now just kind of funny (they had a camera on the new Enterprise bridge, and all of them had made very funny expressions at the height of the drama), and soon Pavel (who was also guilty of looking at that same star chart) pointed out another star they’d charted (this one, thankfully, hadn’t exploded), along with the alien civilisation that lived on one of the planets orbiting it, and from there they just spent that first night talking about stars and planets, culminating in a very excited realisation that both of them could see one of the stars that Earth could see.It felt good to share that joy with Pavel, Jim realised, once they lapsed back into a comfortable silence and kept walking. It was a kind of joy he hadn’t really felt with anyone since his mom, and that … that had been before Tarsus IV, and just before Frank. Before things had gone even more horribly wrong.He shook off the memories of his childhood with a shiver, one that could easily be attributed to the cold night air (and the fact that they'd lost their one phaser in the crash), and kept walking. He couldn’t worry Pavel, not as a captain… or as a fatherly figure. ... “Commander’s log, supplemental. It has been six hours since the shuttlecraft Galileo, carrying Captain Kirk and Lieutenant Chekov, crashed in the distant plains surrounding Mairan III’s capital. We are unfortunately unable to take a closer look at the surface than the rough area where the Galileo crashed, due to the ongoing civil war and various 'high-ranking' Mairan persons threatening to fire upon the Enterprise, but it is my personal belief — along with the rest of the crew — that both the captain and Lieutenant Chekov survived the crash.” Doctor Leonard ‘Bones’ McCoy wasn’t surprised in the slightest to find Spock still up at such a late hour, and even less surprised to know that he was making a log. What did surprise him was the weariness in the half-Vulcan’s eyes. He hadn’t seen anything close to it since the destruction of Vulcan, and the loss of Spock’s mother.Gently, once the log was completed, and Spock had filed it away into the computer, Bones knocked on the door to the ready room. Spock glanced up from the computer. If he’d been fully human, he probably would've been startled, but while the doctor could recognise slight changes in the commander’s features by now, even half-Vulcans had extraordinary grasps on their emotions. Either way, he wasn’t surprised, judging by the single raised eyebrow.“Can I come in?” Bones chuckled, stepping through the door.“You already have,” Spock deadpanned.“So I have, heh.”“You are up late, Leonard,” the half-Vulcan continued, even as Bones went and sat down in one of the nearby chairs. “I believe it was you who created mandatory sleep breaks for any crewmember who was caught pulling overly long shifts.”“Yeah, yeah, I know,” Bones waved off. “Couldn’t sleep.”“Because of the captain and Lieutenant Chekov?”“Yeah. Jim and Pavel are capable survivors, but…”“I am also worried about them.”In their first year serving together, Bones would’ve been shocked to hear Spock admit that so freely. Now, though?“Yeah, I don’t blame you,” he sighed. “I think everyone’s worried about them. I’ve never seen that many people sparring in the gym before, apart from, y’know, the three big traumatic events in the past near-decade.”“They will be fine, doctor.”“I know, I know. I just hope their communicators are broken, that’s all.”That was definitely not the primary reason why either of them worried, but neither man made a comment about it. No, now was just the time to sit in each other’s presence and worry.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
Sunrise actually came a little quicker than expected, and soon enough the two officers took their first break just to watch it rise, choosing to climb up and sit on a large, flat rock, which were quite common on the plains. Mairan III was near the outer edge of the Goldilocks Zone surrounding its home star, so the sun wouldn’t necessarily give them much warmth, but it was still a stunning sunrise regardless.And, with the sun rising above the horizon, painting the skies in red, orange and gold, came the sounds of daytime animals, mostly from the forest a few hundred feet behind them. While they watched the sunrise, Pavel took the brief opportunity to record the noises they could both hear, using a normal tricorder he procured from their pack.“Starfleet vasn’t allowed outside ze capital, right?” he asked, propping up the tricorder in recording mode. “So ve haven’t been able to inwestigate ze native flora as much as normal.”“Yeah, I was kinda miffed about that,” Jim chuckled. “I think that’s gotta be one of my favourite parts about field missions — I may know absolute jackshit about how to exactly classify everything around me, or even how to handle some of the plants, but man, I love meeting new creatures!”“I know, you almost had your hand bitten off last year vhen you tried to pat an alien cat.” Jim levelled a glare at the unrepentant brunette, who had another smirk on his lips. “Vhat? I’m just stating facts, keptin!”“Okay, firstly, you’re the one that almost got eaten three missions ago.”“Don’t remind me, zhat uniform still hasn't recovered…”“Secondly… y’know you don’t have to call me captain right now, right? We’re miles away from anything, and you’re a member of my senior crew, and one of my friends. You’re allowed to call me Jim, or James, or even Jimothy if you want to be funny.”Pavel blinked at him slowly, as if processing that.“Vhat?”It was the surprise in his voice that told Jim exactly what he needed to know, and he sighed with a sad smile.“You’re still trying to prove yourself to me, aren’t you?” When that got a nod, he kept going. “Pavel, you proved yourself to me when you managed to pull me and Hikaru out of mid-air while Vulcan was beginning to disintegrate. You wouldn’t have been assigned Chief Navigator, or even Chief Engineer, if I didn’t think you weren’t up to the task.” A smile crossed Jim’s face. “If anything, I think you deserve better than Lieutenant, but I’m still convincing Starfleet about that.” That got a giggle from the Russian, and Jim’s smile grew. “Pavel, what I’m saying is, you don’t have to try to prove yourself to me anymore. You’re my Chief Navigator, and someone I have long since chosen to designate as a friend of mine.”The brunette, shy as ever, gave him a small smile in return, and turned back to the sunset. Unfortunately, it soon diminished, and his eyes misted over with what would soon turn out to be memories.“My parents vere wery strict growing up. I vas diagnosed vith autism when I vas, hmm, three? I vas a genius from birth partially because of it, though obwiously I studied my ass off, and so my parents vere wery keen on me becoming ze…” He paused, blanked on the word, and turned to Jim. “Someone who makes money for family?”“Breadwinner,” Jim supplied.“Da. Zhey veren’t abusive … but I couldn’t stay. Too much pressure.”“So you ran away to Starfleet.” The Russian nodded. “And then, because you were too used to being held to high standards, assumed it for literally everyone you met.”“I know you considered Admiral Pike a fazher figure, but he vas… hard.”“Yeah, he had a tendency to do that,” Jim grimaced. “God, I wish he was still around, though. He’d be proud of us.”“He vould.” Both of them stared at the still-rising sun for a little longer. “You ran avay too, didn’t you, kept— Jim?” Jim just nodded, continuing to stare ahead at the sun. “Vhat happened?”“I should spare you my life story, it’s pretty shit.”“No, tell me, please.”Pavel’s green eyes weren’t quite doing the whole ‘puppy eyes’ thing that he’d seen kids do, though they were pretty close. This look was full of empathy, and a great deal of compassion and understanding.So, taking a deep breath, Jim began to tell his story, of which Pavel had only known a little, that being of his birth on the Kelvin. By the time he finished, tears pouring down both of their faces from the emotional agony it put Jim through to tell of Tarsus IV, of Frank (though leaving out the details), and of losing his one paternal figure right in front of him, the sun was much higher than it had been before.And yet the Russian asked no questions, just wrapping his captain— his friend in a tight hug. And Jim accepted it, even if both of them kind of stank after a night of walking. It… it felt good to hug someone apart from Bones again. The next few hours of their walk were silent, both out of emotional exhaustion and out of physical exhaustion. They weren’t spent awkwardly, though — not in the slightest. Pavel took great pleasure in using his tricorder to record everything he could about the plains they walked down, and got a real kick when he managed to get a photo of one of the native rodents of the planet — something the Mairans called lishi, which, quite literally, and incredibly hilariously, translated to ‘little shit’. “Zhey’re cute, but zhey are also responsible for seventy-nine percent of ze planet’s ecological problems,” he explained gleefully, adding, sheepishly, “Hikaru made me study zhem.”“They almost look like mice,” Jim laughed, taking the tricorder from Pavel so he could look at the rodent a little closer. “Maybe they need some Mairan cats to come round ‘em up.”“Oh, zhey tried zhat already! It ended in ze vorst ecological disaster in ze planet’s history!”“Oops! All cats!”That got another round of laughter from both of them, and they were still laughing over it ten minutes later, when a movement caught Jim’s eye.“Wait, stop, look up there!” he exclaimed breathlessly, pointing up into one of the taller trees.Pavel made a surprised sound in Russian, too quick for Jim to pick up, but soon picked out what he was looking at.“An owl!” he exclaimed, aiming his tricorder towards the probably sleeping owl. “Mairan III has statues of zhem all over ze capital!”“Yeah, wasn’t Nyota saying that they’re of some big significance or something?”“Da! Zhey’re huge!” As if to acknowledge that very word, the owl stretched in that instant… and both officers went horrifically silent as big, golden eyes opened… and narrowed in on the Starfleet officers, whose blue survival uniforms probably made them look very attractive as potential prey.“Shit.”“Ve should run.”
“Yep!”
It was a miracle that the bird was smart enough to not pursue them into the forest, instead flapping its wings and heading south towards where the Galileo had by now exploded, but, unfortunately for their trip, neither officer was willing to stay anywhere near the bird. They were, in short, hopelessly lost by the time they finally stopped running, having blindly fled as deep into the green and oddly blue forest as they could. To make matters worse, as Pavel opened up the map to check where they were, it couldn’t figure out where they were either.“Ve’re fucked,” he said, once he got his breath back, simple and depressingly blunt.“We’re not fucked,” Jim groaned. “We’d be dying here if we were fucked.”“Jim, I have no idea vhere here is, and ve’re so off course zhat even if we found our way back to ze path—”“Pavel,” Jim says sharply, and immediately regrets it when the navigator flinches, voice silenced. “Fuck, sorry. I know we’re lost, but if we give up hope now, we’ll never get back to the Enterprise, and either we’ll live out here for the next ten years here and get discovered as the best captain and navigator in the fleet who survived no less than three major catastrophes and then somehow got lost in a goddamn forest, or I’ll die and you’ll have to eat me to survive.” “Ewww!” Pavel whined, recoiling in disgust at the mere concept. “I am not eating you!”“Exactly! So let’s keep going north and see if we can find a tree that gets above the canopy. We might be able to get a better signal there. You’re good at climbing, right?”That got a smile, if a weak one, from the Russian. “Da, Hikaru showed me.”“Excellent. I think I knew that, why did I even ask—” That got a giggle from Pavel, and Jim felt his heart go soft with a strange sense of fatherly adoration, like that of a parent towards their child when they did something cute. It was definitely a fatherly kind of adoration, it felt too different to be anything else. “Sorry I snapped at you,” he quickly apologised, realising that he'd forgotten to do so.“I vas panicking,” Pavel shrugged. “Zhank you for snapping me out of it.”Jim offered him a warm, relieved grin.“You’re welcome, Pavel. Let’s go climb a tree.”“Is zhat how ze Mary Poppins song goes? Let’s go climb a tree!” “How the fuck did you confuse kite with tree?!” “Ve are built different, bitch!”
“OH YOU ARE SO DEAD, YOUNG MAN!”
Pavel would feel pretty humiliated at calling his commanding officer a bitch later, but for now, as they took off into the forest again, they were managing to have fun again.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
The time it took them to find a tall enough tree and climb it was, unfortunately, just enough time for most of the day to go by, and by the time both of them found their way to the top, finding a little nook that would otherwise be used by a bird or mammal for their children in Mairan’s spring, it was already sunset, bathing the land in pinks, purples and deep blues.Luckily, it also gave them an unobstructed view of the forest around them, even in the fading light.“Yes!” Pavel cheered, as the map finally pinpointed where they were from lack of interference. “Ve’re way off target for ze capital’s beam-up point, but zhere is a newer one zhat vay,” he pointed, gesturing roughly northwest in direction. “Ve’ll have to go through ze forest, but predators are rare here, especially in vinter.”“Let’s hope so,” Jim chuckled. “I don’t want to be an owl’s lunch. Good work, Pav.”“Zhank you, Jim.”The thought of food, however… Jim honestly wondered if the Enterprise, provided she was still up in orbit, could hear his stomach growl, along with Pavel’s.They hadn’t eaten since breakfast, and even that had been somewhat pathetic, consisting of a granola bar and some nuts, the latter of which Jim hadn’t even been able to eat due to his allergies.“I saw a couple of MREs in the packs. I’ll start a fire, you’ll get them ready to cook?” he suggested.“Aye, Jim,” Pavel beamed. “I practically lived off zhem vhen I stayed vith my uncle for a month! He was in a military group.”“Good to know that one of us knows how to cook ‘em. I always burn ‘em.”Pavel just laughed at him long and hard, which was honestly well-deserved. Soon, though, making use of a fireproof cover found deep in the pack, they had a small fire going, a metal cover for boiling water going over the top so it wouldn’t send sparks into the tree leaves above them.“Ze plants here are dry, so if zhey caught fire…”Jim didn’t need Pavel to finish to know exactly what he was going to say.“Boom, biggest forest fire of the decade,” he grimaced.“Aye,” the Russian nodded. “Happened back home many times.”“Again, good thing you’re cooking, and not me. I know how to cook s’mores, but that’s it.” As they started preparing the MREs, which hadn’t actually changed all that much in the last few hundred years, Pavel gave him an odd look. “What?”“Vhat are s’mores?” Jim’s mouth dropped open in horror.“You don’t know what s’mores are?!” he gasped.“No,” Pavel admitted sheepishly. “I’ve heard of zhem, but I never thought to, vell, look zhem up. I just assumed zhey vere American inwention.”“My god. Pavel, Pasha, how could you do this to me?” Jim declared dramatically, enough that he knew Pavel would understand it as a joke. “I think of you like a son!”“I didn’t know!” Pavel cried equally dramatically. “I em Russian! Ve drink borscht and cause at least one var [war]— vait, did ve cause ze third one?”“If you think I gave more than a little shit about the twentieth and twenty-first century beyond its music and culture, you are sorely mistaken. But still! The moment we get back to the ship, I’m making s’mores for you, for everyone else in the crew, and for any random aliens we run into along the way.”“But vhat are s’mores?”“Graham crackers, chocolate, and marshmallows, traditionally cooked in aluminum foil over a fire. Best thing you’ll ever have, I promise,” Jim chuckled. “If I had the stuff with me, I’d make one for you now, actually.”“I must try ze hallowed s’mores,” Pavel gasped, eyes lighting up at the mention of chocolate and marshmallows.Jim just felt a fond smile grace his lips.“You look like a kid again when you do that, y’know.”“Really? I didn’t know!”He probably did know, but Jim didn't bother pointing that out. Dinner, which consisted of ready-to-eat ravioli for Jim and an apparent attempt at curry for Pavel, was finished quite quickly, and soon, as the moons rose again and near-silence began to fall across the forest again, the two officers were eating around a dying fire. Both were, understandably, exhausted. They’d already been running on nearly a day without sleep, and the added exhaustion from bolting into the forest and climbing up the tall tree had completely drained them both. Enough that they almost didn’t complain about the sleeping arrangements.Key word being almost. “Zhese sleeping bags are vorse zhan ze beds at ze Academy,” Pavel complained from Jim’s right, as he shoved off his boots and pulled the sleeping bag over his legs. “At least ze beds had mattresses.”“Yeah, I don’t like them either, but this isn’t exactly the height of luxury,” the older man chuckled, gesturing to the forest around them.“You sound much more avake zhan I am.”“Yeah, I’m still running on slight alert. Made me double-check the pack. Check out what I found.”Pavel raised an interested eyebrow at the item Jim raised into the moonlight.“A harmonica?” he chuckled. “Ve have harmonicas in ze packs?”“Apparently so,” Jim grinned. “Before my brother ran away from home, he taught me how to play. Pity I’m better at guitar and trumpet.”“Oh yes, ve performed at ze Intergalactic Talent Show.” Pavel was actually referring to the Fiftieth Annual Intergalactic Celebration of Music and Arts, but its secondary name was better known. “Vhy did we do the fanfare from ze 2000 Sydney Olympics Opening Ceremony, again?”“Fuck if I know, Captain Oxford of the Machquatre was in charge of that one.” Captain Lily Oxford was currently one of the very few captains sharing a command with her husband, Captain Rex Racer. Both had been in the Laurentian system during the Vulcan crisis. Both still harboured a lot of guilt over it. “Sure glad she put me on trumpet, though, I killed James Morrison’s part!”“Honestly, I’m just glad I didn’t mess up my saxophone,” Pavel chuckled. “Play a song! Play a song!”“On harmonica?! Pavel, I just told you I suck at harmonica!”“Do it anyvay! Pleeeease? I have to do some vork on zis communicator, anyway.”Okay, those were definitely puppy eyes now… and Jim Kirk was very susceptible to puppy eyes. Call it the curse of knowing how to do the same thing — you became unable to resist them from anyone else!“Okay, fine!” “Yay!” ... “You haven’t touched your sandwich, Uhura,” Scotty noted, as he sat down next to Lieutenant-Commander Nyota Uhura. “Somethin’s got ya worried.”“Am I that easy to read, Scotty?” Nyota chuckled, though her eyes were practically dripping with a terrible sadness in them.“Considering the rest of the crew is worried about Jim and Pasha, I’m not surprised,” came the voice of Commander Hikaru Sulu, as he also sat nearby. “Starfleet wants us to leave and escape the civil war, but I don’t think Spock’s gonna budge.”“He cares too much about Jim,” Nyota agreed. “I love him, but sometimes I wonder if he’s ever going to realise he loves the captain like he loved me... Even if he doesn't realise that now, though, he’s not leaving until he’s got his captain back.”“Not ta mention Pavel’s down there, too,” Scotty added. “We cannae afford to lose either of them.”“Pasha’s my best friend,” Hikaru agreed. “There’s no way in hell I’m leaving him behind, Starfleet be damned.”The boatswain’s whistle, the one that signalled someone was trying to reach someone across the ship, went off, and a younger woman’s voice called,
“Bridge to Lieutenant-Commander Uhura.”
Ensign Jennifer Louise, one of Nyota’s secondaries.“Go ahead, Louise,” Nyota answered. “Commander, I’m picking up something odd among the various chatter from the planet. You might want to come up and give it a listen.” “And it’s not a transmission?” Nyota confirmed about five minutes later, sitting down at her usual post to listen to whatever her ensign had picked up.“Yes, ma’am,” Louise nodded. “It sounded like music. But who would be playing music at this hour? Especially down there?” “Looks like it’s not coming from the capital,” Hikaru noted. “It looks like it’s coming… from one of the forests near the capital, just beyond the Outer City Plains.”“How are we even receiving this?” Scotty pondered. “Are we meant to be listening in for somethin’?”“Aye, Spock made sure we were listening out for all attempts at communication. The plains were vibrating with too much interference from the city shields and the Galileo's explosion, but the forests… They’re pretty much… empty…” Nyota snapped into focus as she caught hold of the sound Louise had heard, and, quickly, transferred it onto the main screen. “There we are.”It sounded like someone playing the harmonica, and not well.“Wow, whoever’s playing that is shit,” Hikaru chuckled. “Keptin, your harmonica skills… leave much to be desired,” came a familiar, accented voice, all crackly due to interference the Enterprise had to fight through. “Wow, that bad, huh?” And there was another one, practically all-American (though technically North America wasn’t really a thing anymore), laughing.There was no doubt who the two voices were.“Nyota calling Spock,” Nyota grinned, pressing the button that would connect her directly to the half-Vulcan.
“Spock here.”
“Captain Kirk and Lieutenant Chekov are alive and well! Nowhere near beaming up, but we’ve got audio!” ... “Okay, so I’m pretty bad at most songs, but I think I’ve got one song I can play,” Jim chuckled, as Pavel continued tinkering with the communicators.“Is it as bad as ze last one?” the Russian chuckled.“Hey, don’t assume I played badly by accident.”“Keptin, your harmonica skills are similar to Hikaru’s skills at Not Eating Shit vhen he tries fencing vith a lance.” Jim snorted at that. “Vhat? It’s true!”“I know, I know,” the captain waved off. “And I told you to call me Jim.”“Oops, completely slipped my mind…”“Tell you what, I’ve got this last song. Do you know the classic Piano Man?” “Da! One of my roommates vas obsessed vith Billy Joel. I used to annoy ze shit out of zhem by claiming he vas Russian.” “Ah, so you are doing it as a joke!” Jim declared triumphantly. “I’ve been trying to figure that out for three years, and it turns out it’s a joke!” “Not entirely!” Pavel complained. “Play ze damn song already.”“Alright, alright.” ... The Enterprise was, consistently and quite beautifully, both a ship of multitudes and yet a ship of one. Unity was their greatest strength, after all.
And yet, in all the time the ship, both her predecessor and current incarnation, had been flying through space, never had there been a time where that rang more true.
Across the ship, after Spock authorised the audio to be transmitted across all decks, in order to raise crew morale, every officer, enlisted or not, raised their voice. Not in anger, or in concentration like it often was, but in song.
Singing along with their captain and navigator, to an old Terran tune that, even all these centuries later, was still ingrained into the human soul.
...
“Sing us the song, you're the piano man… Sing us a song tonight… Well, we're all in the mood for a melody… And you've got us feelin' alright…”
... Pavel’s accent lingered on the lyrics, and sure both Jim’s playing and singing were out of tune… but the crew didn’t care.Though he would remain ignorant of it until he got back to the ship, the crew was singing for their captain, their combined hope renewed for his and Pavel’s survival.“Jim, ve’ll get back to ze crew, right?” the brunette asked, as they gazed up at the night sky, and weariness finally began to take its toll.Jim just smiled fondly, completely unaware that the crew was listening to them.“We will. Among them are the finest people I’ve ever had the pleasure of working with. I’ve also got the best navigator in the fleet by my side. I don’t think I ever would’ve made it this far without you next to me, Pasha.”Pavel clearly hadn’t noticed the nickname earlier, but he certainly noticed it now. Still, his surprise at the nickname was quickly covered up by his spluttering of,“All I did vas make a few detours ve didn’t even get to!”“Maybe… but you’ve been a companion, a friend, too. I’d rather have that any day. Well, okay, except when we’re about five minutes from crashing into a starbase and we need to get the fuck out of the way.”“Zhat vas not my fault!”“I wasn’t saying it was! That was… fuck, who’s the idiot I assigned when all the helmsmen got sick with the Edwardos Flu…”“Mikael?”“Oh my god, am I glad Hikaru punched him before I could become the first captain in, what, a hundred years to kill a crewmate.”Pavel just laughed again, and soon Jim joined him again.“I’m just glad ve didn’t crash,” the Russian eventually smiled. “I like being on ze Enterprise.”“I think we all do, Pasha.”“Vhere did you hear zhat nickname, keptin?”“Oh, just from Hikaru,” Jim waved off. “Heard him calling you that a few times over the past few years. It’s cute. Like passionfruit, but short.”“James Tiberius Kirk, if you start calling me passionfruit, I vill not hesitate to mutiny and take over ze Enterprise.” Jim knew he was being serious, he really did, but he couldn’t help but burst into wheezing laughter again.“Ah, yes,” he declared, “The new captain of the Enterprise — Pavel ‘Passionfruit’ Chekov, who killed his captain over a nickname!”That cracked Pavel up all over again, and that was where Nyota chose to stop broadcasting, though she continued recording. It was in this recording, privately listened to by the senior crew, that they all heard Kirk utter the next few words.
“You’re a good kid, Pasha.”
It shouldn’t have held much significance. But Bones knew its significance. Pavel didn’t, though, and simply replied,“Zhank you, Jim. You are a good keptin.” That garnered a smile from the blonde. “Goodnight, Jim.”“G’night, Pavel. Sleep tight. Don’t let the bed bugs bite.”
“Keptin…”
“Sorry, sorry. Sleep well, Pasha.”
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
Something was buzzing. Pavel had always prided himself on having a good ear — something he needed just as much as Nyota did, even if he was a navigator and not a comms officer — and right now it was picking up something.
Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzrrrrrrrrr…
It almost sounded like a swarm of bees… but Pavel had never heard of metallic bees before. And, once again, he was right.A few hundred feet away from them, something cruised high above the trees, a figure sticking out the back like they were riding a glider. The machine they were using looked very much like something straight out of an anime film Hikaru had shown him.“Jim,” he hissed, shoving the older man as more of the ‘gliders’ appeared out of nowhere. “Jim!” When all he got was a groan, Pavel switched to Russian, shoving his captain harder and hissing, just a touch louder, “Wake up!!” Jim sat up with a hiss of his own, rubbing his arm.“Jesus, Pavel, are you crazy?” he growled, evidently wishing he was still asleep.“I’m wery sorry, Jim, but ve have a situation.”Jim glanced where Pavel was pointing, and, as his eyes tracked the now-several flying machines, his eyes widened.“Holy shit. Like those gliders in that old Terran anime Nausicaä.”“Aye, keptin. And loaded vith potential hostiles.”“Then we’d better get out of this tree, keep heading towards the beam-up point. I’m not interested in being shot today.” It was definitely a good thing both of them were in survival suits, because had they still been in their green and gold dress uniforms, they would’ve been shot on sight. They didn’t know this, and wouldn’t know until later, but the planet was now in serious turmoil.And, to make matters worse, Starfleet officers were classed as ‘shoot to kill’, regardless of rank, and regardless of whether they were simply trying to get home or not. Anyone who’d survived a shuttlecraft crash was also a top priority, because it meant they’d seen that first battle at the capital, and thus could tell someone what was happening and stop the war in its tracks.With their successful escape down the tree and into the dense forest, however, the gliders didn’t see the two officers fleeing. If they’d investigated the tree hollow, they might’ve found the remains of a campfire, but, as it were, the Mairans were terrible climbers.At least until the metallic buzzing of the gliders faded into the distance, probably heading back to base, Jim and Pavel’s first few hours of walking were thus spent in silence. Even after the sounds of the day replaced the gliders’ buzzing, though, they stayed quiet, now on high alert for any potential attackers.Eventually, at around midday, Pavel spoke up with decent conversation for the first time since that morning.“Ve might be nearing a river in the next few hours,” he commented, as he forced their map to mostly cooperate with him, despite it losing its lock on their location. “I know it’s a slight detour, but ze beam-up point is only, vhat, anozher day or two avay?”“You just want to get clean, don’t you?” Jim teased.“I em caked in sweat!” the Russian wailed, wincing at the echo he produced. “Yes, I vant to get clean!” he added, a lot quieter this time.“Good news is, so do I. How far off is the detour?”“An hour or two? Not long.”“Let’s take it. We can set up camp there for the night and push tomorrow.” There really wasn’t much to note about their walking apart from that conversation. Unlike the joviality of the previous day, both men were just too high-strung and worried about being spotted to really do anything but walk, as well as eat. Thankfully, the arrival at the river raised both their spirits.“It’s pure,” Pavel marvelled, as he took scans of the water with his tricorder. “I haven’t seen water zis naturally pure in years.” “Aye, they have to do it by hand back home,” Jim agreed. “And the Enterprise filters all our water for us so nobody on board reacts to it.”“I vouldn’t be surprised if you reacted to ze unpurified vater.”“Hey! I’m not that allergic to stuff!” Pavel gave him a pointed look. Jim unfortunately knew exactly what it meant. “That was one time — one since I became captain!”“It vas terrifying seeing our new keptin break out into hives, but ze look on Doctor McCoy’s face vas hilarious!” Pavel giggled.“Admittedly, that incident did save us from a diplomatic incident. They were trying to poison Ambassador Lashoi, mixed up the dishes, and it just so happens that I was allergic to the otherwise human-safe poison,” Jim reluctantly grinned, reminiscing on the many news reports that had popped up as a result. “They gave me a medal for it. Now, are you gonna ‘shower’ first, or do you want to put up the tent?” Pavel, quite wisely, chose to wander downstream, out of sight of his captain and friend, and bathe down there. Satisfied with the choice, Jim got to work erecting something they hadn’t had the opportunity to use the previous night — the survival tent.Utilising old Terran camouflage in lieu of the electronic camouflage most Starfleet ships had at their disposal, the tent was perfectly hidden from anyone who might come nearby. Now that they knew that the Mairans were on the warpath, the tent’s bonus feature of heat shielding was coming in handy.“I think that might be the only bet I’ve won against Gary,” he mused sadly, recalling the tragic demise of one of his oldest friends. “Pity he’s not alive to see it.”The bet had been really stupid, and also really old, having come from his and Gary Mitchell’s Academy days, before he’d even sat in a true captain’s chair. The bet had been that the heat shielding on the then-new tents was useful, and Jim had chosen to bet on the side of the tents. He’d won, and now he had to forget about it, because Gary was dead, and there was no use thinking of dead—
VRRRRRNYYYYYYOOOO
OOOOOOOOOOO!!
Pavel had always been a quick bather, and so he wasn’t caught out completely naked when he heard the telltale sounds of someone’s engine in trouble. Still, being only in your undershirt and boxers was… probably not the best way to be caught by anyone.Not that the owner of the glider that came crashing through the foliage, which was still dense enough to obscure part of the waterway, was exactly able to do so. As the glider snagged on a huge bed of vines just above Pavel’s head, and something shot off it to the other side of the river, the pilot was thrown into the water, and dragged under in an instant.They were gone before Pavel’s mind could even entertain the idea of diving in to rescue them. Grimacing at the unfortunate death, the Russian’s mind turned to the glider— and it was a damn good thing his instincts were still on red alert, because had he moved just a second too late, just a tad slower, he would’ve been crushed by the falling machine, the weight too heavy for the vines that had stopped it in the first place. While the machine was by no means the heaviest thing in the universe, its impact with the ground, and Pavel’s panicked yelling, was enough to bring Jim running. “Pavel!” Almost instinctively, he grabbed whatever he could think of — the medkit and a stick, in lieu of a phaser (the Galileo was meant to be an ambassadorial shuttlecraft, after all, not a battle one, and he'd long since lost his own) — and soon the Captain of the Enterprise was streaming through the woods, searching for his potentially injured crewmate—
Friend—
Son—
Where the fuck did that come from— Pavel was okay. He must’ve dodged perfectly, because while he was breathing hard and shaking, just a little, he was uninjured, muttering the same phrase in Russian to himself, over and over, eyes glazed over just slightly.Okay, maybe he was injured, albeit in the mental, rather than physical sense.“Hey, Pasha, look at me,” Jim muttered, kneeling down and gently grabbing Pavel’s hand. “Pavel, it’s me. You’re okay. You’re okay.”Pavel took in a few more frazzled breaths, took one deep one… and let out a ragged wheeze of relief.“Jim?” he whispered.“Looks like you got the scare of your life,” Jim sighed with a slight chuckle. “You okay?”“Yeah. Glider fell right in front of me. Vould’ve crushed me if I hadn’t moved. Pilot got thrown into ze river.”Jim grimaced at that, and, somewhat reluctantly, turned to look at the glider. It looked exactly like Nausicaä’s glider, straps and all.He turned back to Pavel with a grin on his face.“Pavel, if you can fix that communicator, and I can fix this glider, I think we’ll be home a lot faster than if we go by foot.”“Whoo-hooooo!” Pavel cheered.“I’m gonna need your help dragging this back to camp, but, uh… maybe put some pants on, first.”Pavel immediately swore in annoyed Russian, and Jim barked out yet another laugh. It was quickly, and somewhat unfortunately, realised that Pavel had actually managed to lose his boots to the crash (they would later be found quite a ways downstream by tiny alien mice, and then used as homes for said mice), so the priority for the night became ever the clearer: Fix the comms, and fix the glider.So, after eating dinner (which turned out to be stew for both of them, and not very appetising stew at that) and rigging up some lights hidden under some spare tent material (the tents could be adjusted for occupancy), both got to work on their separate projects.It was quite interesting, really. Pavel was more adept with smaller technology and with tasks requiring pinpoint accuracy, while Jim had grown up fixing cars and the occasional hoverboard his brother brought home, before he ran away to another corner of the galaxy.And yet, as they quietly worked, and both kept an ear out for other other gliders, or perhaps something worse, there came times where both of them could offer help to the other.It was something that Jim realised he’d missed, as he found a missing piece in one of the broken communicators that was necessary to fix the other, and Pavel’s slender hands made quick work of grabbing several small objects from inside the glider that Jim otherwise couldn't get.But missing from what? He’d never had something like this, never had a father to teach him and fix things with him— Oh. He was the father. “Jim? James… Keptin Kirk!” He hadn’t technically ‘fallen asleep’, but the jolt to Jim’s systems felt like ice-cold water had been poured down his back. “Jim, you vere staring into nozhing, are you okay?” Pavel asked in a frantic, heavily accented tone.“I’m okay, Pasha,” Jim waved off, wheezing out of surprise. “I guess my mind wandered off.”“Vell, you managed to get somezhing vorking in ze glider. It’s glowing!” Indeed, much to Jim’s surprise and Pavel’s delight, the glider was whirring into life, and in fact started hovering off the ground—
POOOF! THUNK.
Their shelter immediately filled with smoke, and both officers burst into coughing fits as it filtered out, flailing to speed up the process when it didn't filter quick enough.“Well, whatever I did, it didn’t work for long,” Jim frowned. Glancing inside, he quickly figured out why. “Damn, I’ve got a panel missing. Might be wrong, but it looks like that panel redirects heat from the engine. Pav, did you see any panels fly off?” “Da,” Pavel nodded quickly. “It landed on ze ozher side of ze river. I’ll get.”“I could probably make a replacement out of our miscellaneous shit, might need a cooling—” There was the pap-pap-pap of bare feet outside, and Jim became horribly aware that Pavel had left the tent. “PAVEL!”
The Kaiilii River is the primary river that flows through the Mairan III Forests. It is notable as the only part of the forest with a name, for which the forest has gained a terrible reputation…
It is known as the River of Death. Pavel was a strong swimmer. You had to be on the Enterprise, where you could be assigned to an underwater away team at any moment, or where the occasional large station had a pool to swim in. Even before that, he’d been a strong swimmer, though.
Not strong enough for the current.
Jim didn’t have to see the Russian’s head go under to know that Pavel wouldn’t survive swimming across the rapids.
He didn’t even wait for the first cry for help, begged in helpless, terrified Russian.
He just dove, a rope tied tightly to him and a tree, and swam with every single bit of energy in his body.
He hasn’t seen Pavel’s eyes this terrified in years.
It hurts his soul so much that he hopes he never sees it again.
He grabs Pavel with both hands, unknowingly mimicking all those years ago when the temporary Chief Engineer had caught both him and Scotty as they’d almost fallen to their deaths.
He doesn’t notice that, somehow, Pavel’s caught something too.
All he does, using the rope and his own adrenaline-fuelled strength, is swim. It was rare that the river gave up those who wandered too far into her depths. But, then again, as the two officers burst out of the water with a horrid gasp and, just barely, pulled themselves onto the safety of the nearby shore, the river had never met Jim Kirk.Jim’s head spun a little in protest from being thrown about, even with the rope, but he snapped into focus when Pavel began to heave next to him. Still cradling something to his chest, Pavel trembled, his lungs threatening to give way to something terrible, heaved once, twice— Jim grimaced as Pavel began to throw up. It was mostly water, which wasn’t exactly good, but at least Jim could fix that, but, once that was gone, poor Pavel threw up properly, coughed hoarsely, and then, meeting Jim’s panicked gaze with wide eyes of his own, tears all too obvious, the poor navigator crumbled into a mess of tears and terror.While the captain of a ship was authorised to give minor comfort to their crew, most preferred to not get too close physically, out of a fear of being seen as, well, vulnerable.Jim had stopped caring about that part, but he didn’t exactly give away hugs to anyone but his friends, either.This hug now, wrapped tightly around a sobbing Pavel, was neither of those.It was one Jim had gotten from Pike a few times, a few times too little in his opinion.It was the kind of hug that Sam, with what little memory of their father he had, recalled George Kirk giving him.It was the hug of a frightened parent trying to comfort a scared child.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
Jim ended up having to carry Pavel back to the campsite, the younger man on the dangerous verge of a terrible meltdown (something Jim recalled very heartbreakingly from another autistic crewmember) and pretty much too fragile to get himself moving.Once they were close enough to retrieve supplies, he wrapped the younger man in a towel and a shock blanket (these packs were well-stocked) after carefully prying whatever he’d caught underwater from his hands, laid him down in the tent under his sleeping bag to sleep or at least decompress, and, closing the tent off, quietly began to tinker with the glider again near the fire.Pavel, mercifully, managed to avoid the meltdown. The pressure from the towel, shock blanket and sleeping bag were enough to calm him down, and while the rush of the river made him shudder, the sounds of Jim working on the glider grounded him — enough that, about an hour and a half after he’d been laid down, he emerged, still soaking wet but in significantly better shape than before.Jim didn’t acknowledge Pavel’s emergence verbally, just nodding to the brunette as he sat down, and continuing to work on the glider.All was quiet for a moment.“Zhat panel is ze cooling panel,” Pavel eventually pointed out, voice still hoarse from being sick on the side of the river.“Oh. Really?”“Mmhmm.” Quiet swept them again, if only briefly. “I’m sorry you had to see me like zhat, Jim.” Jim raised an eyebrow, and turned his eyes towards the navigator. “I… I know ve’re friends, but…”“You feel kinda stupid for jumping into a river?” Jim suggested. Pavel flinched, burying himself in his shock blanket, and Jim flinched in turn. He recovered faster, though. “Hey, you were on a mission. I probably would’ve done the exact same thing.”“But I shouldn’t have done it,” Pavel muttered, voice muffled but oh so clearly full of shame. “I should’ve known better.”“Pavel—”“I saw someone drown in zhat river, but vhat did I do? I stupidly jumped in, zhinking I could outswim ze current!”
“Pavel—”
“Vhat kind of nawigator am I if I forget ze basics of fucking surwiving?!” “PAVEL!” Both of them flinched at the volume of Jim’s yell, even though Pavel’s voice had been gradually rising as it had grown more and more panicked. “God, sorry.”Pavel just looked at him with heart-wrenching sadness, and turned back to the fire. “I should be sorry,” he eventually said, some minutes later. “I’m ze one you had to rescue from a river of death vhen I should’ve known better.”“Maybe, but I would’ve rescued you even if you’d been able to get back to shore,” Jim replied, a kind smile on his face. It was one he’d mastered over the years, as he’d gotten to know his crew, and as he’d lost and gained crewmembers. “Couldn’t let you drown after all we’ve been through.”“You’d rescue any of ze crew, keptin.”“Yeah… but you’re more than just a crewmember to me.” Pavel actually sat up, staring at his captain. “Excuse me?”“Pavel, you’re a crewman, yes, but you’re also a friend, and…” Jim trailed off, debating mentally for a few seconds what he was going to say, before, eventually, he finished, “The closest thing I have to a son.”Pavel’s eyes widened, and he sat up properly, as if shocked into proper posture.“Jim…” It was almost the same kind of pause Spock — both versions of him — had mastered, but there was a childishness to it.“I know it’s maybe a little patronising of me, and quite frankly you’re more than old enough to not be treated like this… but I don’t think I’ve ever been able to shake the memory of you when you were just seventeen and fresh on a starship bridge for the first time. Sure, I fucked it up later by making you Chief Engineer, but I decided the moment you saved my ass that I would try to be at least fatherly. Young me wasn’t, uh, very good at it…”“No, no you veren’t,” Pavel giggled. “You vere… an idiot.”“I deserve much worse than idiot, but yeah, I was stupid as fuck. When we got stuck on this godforsaken planet, though, I slowly started coming to terms with the fact that, well, if not for the fact that obviously I didn’t tell you… I wanted you to actually be my son.” Pavel’s eyes widened again. “I know that’s weird as shit, like what kind of captain wants to adopt a senior member of their crew, but… that’s why I didn’t hesitate to jump in. I was terrified that I was going to lose you… and there’s no way in hell I would’ve let that happen. Not to any member of my crew, but especially not to someone I considered my son.”Silence descended, not even the sounds of the river penetrating the quiet. Jim’s silence was mostly out of his own shame. Pavel’s face was unreadable. And yet, even as his face remained unreadable, something undeniable was rising to the top. And, soon enough, Pavel was speaking again, a gentle smile on his face.“I zhink, if you adopted me, you vould’ve earned ze right a long time ago.” Jim blinked in surprise at Pavel’s words, but the Russian didn’t give him a chance to digest that, rambling slightly as he continued, “I told you about my parents! Zhey vanted me to vork and live in luxury because of a condition I vas born vith! I never felt truly loved by zhem.” He paused, and beamed a grin at Jim. “And zhen, after a few bumpy years, ze five year mission started.”“What about it?” Jim murmured.“Vhile assigning your nawigator as Chief Engineer and zhen slightly berating him ze entire time vasn’t exactly nice—”
“Sorry…”
“You matured after… vell…” Both knew what he was referring to. Jim’s death. “And suddenly it felt like I’d gotten back somezhing I vas missing. I felt… truly at home, and zhat I vas loved. You, somevhat accidentally, became ze closest thing I’ve ever had to a… to a dad.” Tears bubbled in Pavel’s eyes, and as he reached to wipe them away, Jim wasn’t surprised to feel his own. “If you… if you really vant to adopt me…” And Pavel’s eyes lit up even more, tears beginning to slip down his face all over again. “I could not imagine a better father.”Jim couldn’t stop the tears pouring down his face. He didn’t want to stop them either. All he wanted to do was wrap his navigator— friend — son in the tightest hug he could manage.And that’s exactly what he did, heart soaring as Pavel hugged him back just as tightly, tears streaming down their faces as they both began to sob, not out of sadness or fear but out of joy. They stayed like that for what felt like an eternity, even as their overjoyed sobbing died down and the hug loosened.“I think I’m gonna have to fight your parents about custody,” Jim eventually muttered with a chuckle, laughing when Pavel made an unhappy noise, “But even if I don’t get custody, you’re still my son now.”“I’m still calling you ‘Keptin’ on ze bridge,” Pavel giggled, muffled by Jim’s jacket. “It vould not do for an officer to acknowledge zheir parent on duty.”“Oh yeah, the Admiralty will have a fit if they see anything less than ‘professional captain and crew’." Jim rolled his eyes as he sarcastically parroted, recalling another conversation where that had been a big topic, and got another giggle out of Pavel. "Guess that’s the other reason why Spock stayed quiet about dating Nyota.”“Apart from being Wulcan?”“Yeah, apart from that!” Both of them snickered about the thought of the very logical, very stoic half-Vulcan being afraid of the Admiralty, separating from the hug as they did so. “Seriously, though, I’m gonna be the best worst dad in the entire Federation,” Jim declared, perhaps a little self-deprecatingly, “Just you wait—” “Just you vait!” Pavel sang, and Jim could only grin, because he was singing to Hamilton, a musical that both of them were evidently familiar with.“Guess we’re both musical theatre nerds,” he laughed.“Perhaps ve are!”“Excellent! How good are you at Philip’s part?”“You do realise zhat vould make me John Laurens too, right?” the Russian grinned cheekily, eyes glinting with mirth.“God damn it,” Jim groaned, and his navigator/son giggled again.“Almost makes me vish I had a proper recorder, zhen ve could make a two-man musi—” Pavel mused… and froze mid-sentence. “Vait.”Leaping to his feet, Pavel scrambled back inside the tent, leaving his newfound dad confused but intrigued. He came back with the two broken communicators, his tricorder and the bag of tools he’d fashioned from different pieces of miscellaneous crap.“I completely forgot about ze recorder in ze communicator!” he chirped excitedly, laying out his tools in the little light they had. “No vonder I couldn’t get it to vork, ze recorder is broken in both!” “But there’s a recording mechanism in the tricorder, it’s one of the fundamental parts of any electronic device in the galaxy—” Jim started, sparks of excitement popping into crazed existence in his eyes.“And zhey’re all cross-compatible—”
“Which means that if we change over the recorders—”
“VE/WE CAN CONTACT ZHE/THE SHIP!” they both finished with a cheer.“Pavel Andreievich Chekov, you are a genius!” Jim grinned, wrapping Pavel in yet another, though far briefer, hug and ruffling his curls.“Aiyiyi, I already knew zhat,” Pavel complained, before grinning and adding, “Besides, it’s Chekov-Kirk now, right?”“Hey, I haven’t actually adopted you yet! C’mon, let’s get this shit fixed so I can go yell at your parents and Starfleet Command!”“Aye, dad, let's fix zhis shit!"As Pavel leapt into his work, Jim found he had to take a moment to process what he’d just been called. Pavel, oh so easily, had called him dad.Maybe he wouldn’t always call him that — they were still friends and crewmen as well as, well, family now (okay, they’d already basically been family, this was just a case of adoption) — but being called dad… it felt right. Man, he couldn’t wait to see how the crew reacted. That was gonna be funny.“Hikaru’s gonna kill me.”“He von’t, I’ll make sure of it.”
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
Quite relievingly, the glider’s final piece worked like a charm, exciting both of them all over again as it hovered a foot or two off the ground. While they didn’t try to take it far — they needed the light of day to find the beam-up point, and they wanted to sleep and clean up camp to preserve the nature around them — a few tests revealed that the glider could carry them both at the same time without any trouble.Effectively, whenever they left tomorrow, Pavel would ride on his dad’s back and direct him, while Jim would fly the actual glider.But the excitement over the glider was nothing compared to the anticipation as, ever so delicately, Pavel began to piece together the final parts of the amalgamated communicator, so hyper-focused that, if Jim even so much as squeaked his boots, he would be met with furious green eyes glaring at him for daring to make a noise, followed by a softened look of apology, before his son got back to work.And yet, about forty-five minutes after they’d tested the glider, at maybe two or three o’clock in the morning (neither of them had checked the chronometer in a while), Pavel put down his tools, slid the back of the communicator into place, closed up the shell, and, ever so cautiously, as if he was handling a baby, or perhaps a bomb, handed it to Jim.Likewise, Jim handled it equally cautiously, using only the necessary force to flip it open. The beep it made was promising, as it meant the communicator was functioning, but they would need to hear an actual response from the ship if they wanted to know whether the repairs had worked or not.“U.S.S. Enterprise-A, NCC-1701-A, this is an emergency signal, if someone can hear my voice aboard, please respond,” Jim muttered into the device.If the Enterprise was still up there, then it would probably be Ensign Edward Jackson in charge of comms — Jim rarely worked with Jackson, so he couldn’t count on him to recognise his voice.Indeed, at least at first, though it was of no small relief to the captain and to the navigator, Jackson’s voice, though heavily distorted, slowly filtered in. “This is the Enterprise, please gzzzzzzzzzztdentity and numbzzzzzz.” Jim winced at the signal and adjusted the controls slightly.“Repeat, please,” he said, louder than before. “This is the Enterprise, please give—” There was a scuffle on the other side, with what sounded like annoyed Andorian swearing (Jackson — he’d been raised by Andorian parents), distant cheering, and a very familiar voice muttering in Swahili pouring in amongst the slight interference.A brief silence, marked only by static, followed.Then, much to their joy, the voice of Nyota Uhura cut through. “JAMES TIBERIUS KIRK, WHERE THE FUCK HAVE YOU BEEN?!” The news that Captain Kirk and Lieutenant Chekov had finally managed to contact the Enterprise spread like wildfire, and, within minutes of the call being detected, the entire senior crew had been roused from bed and were all on the bridge, relieved and utterly ecstatic to hear the two officer’s voices again.Hilariously, nobody embodied that relief better than Spock, who, even before Bones could ask the question, cut in and asked, quite frantically for his usual Vulcan nature,“Are you two both alright?”Nyota and Bones both exchanged an amused glance. “We’re fine, Spock,” came Jim’s laugh. “We sustained some injuries in the crash, but it was nothing the medkits couldn’t fix.” “I’ll believe it when I hear Pavel, how’s my idiot bisexual doing?” Hikaru laughed. “Hey! I em NOT an idiot!” came the Russian’s complaint, but it was only a brief one, because he soon added, “I may have nearly drowned.” “Goddamnit, I knew I should’ve come with you,” Bones groaned. “Please tell me you got the water out of your lungs.” “I used the scanner on him, don’t worry,” Jim waved off. “Scared the shit out of both of us, though. It’s a miracle we got back on track and fixed up the comm and the glider.” “I’m sorry, captain…” “Did you say glider?!” Scotty exclaimed. “What the hell is a glider on this planet?! And why the hell do you even have one in the first place?!” “Y’all remember when we watched Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind?” Jim grinned. “It looks exactly like the one Nausicaä has.”“Ve tested it earlier, and it can carry us both vithout trouble,” Pavel added with a grin of his own. “Ve’re not sure of its top speed, but it vill be more zhan enough to speed up our journey time!”“It is gonna be awesome,” Jim finished. “Man, I’m jealous of you assholes now,” Hikaru complained. “How come you guys get to have all the fun, while we’re stuck in orbit, ignoring the capital’s threats?” “Well, I guess not everyone can have fun here.” In the middle of giving a cheeky wink to his son, Jim processed Hikaru’s words, and stopped in his tracks. “Wait, the capital’s threatening you?!” “Legally and technology-wise, they are unable to actively attack the Enterprise,” Spock explained. “However, they have threatened to kill both of you on sight, should you be seen during a patrol. You were witnesses to the civil uprising, and thus you are now considered enemies of whoever is now in control down there.” “Shit…” Pavel whispered, eyes wide and abruptly terrified.Jim just swallowed, suppressing a shiver from the sudden rush of ice that flushed through his blood.“You guys better be ready to beam us up tomorrow, then,” he said, a dire seriousness to his voice. “Otherwise all this walking, and everything that’s happened in the past few days, will be in vain, and you’ll have two corpses beaming up instead of your captain and navigator.” It was difficult to sleep after that. Of course it was, with that newly realised threat hanging over their heads. And yet, somehow, Pavel fell asleep a lot easier than Jim did. It took Jim half an hour to figure out that the younger man trusted his father and captain’s abilities a lot more than Jim sometimes did. After all, the name of Captain James T. Kirk came with a reputation for coming out of seemingly unwinnable scenarios. No wonder Pavel trusted him with being his father.And yet, as Pavel slept, Jim could only feel anxiety gnawing at his stomach. It was rare he felt it anymore, what with how long he’d been captain and with how many dangerous situations he’d encountered, but he no longer just had a navigator to protect.Said navigator was now both a friend… and his son.He’d caught a glimpse of his son with Carol Marcus from the other timeline, another who’d already been an adult when they’d finally met. The Jim of that timeline had lost him quickly, after only getting a chance to know him for a short while.Jim knew he’d never forgive himself if he lost Pavel here. It was a sentiment he shared with his whole senior crew, with this timeline’s Carol, with Bones' Chief Nurse Chapel, and now with Jaylah, too.And yet, because Pavel was now his son, it was amplified, more now than ever.Getting no sleep wasn’t on the agenda, though, and so, as four o’clock passed by, Jim called upon an old tactic he’d been using for a while now to sleep.It was one he’d learned after his resurrection, for when the nightmares of being unable to stop the Enterprise from falling down to Earth had refused to let him sleep.The power of song.
“Kiss me and smile for me… Tell me that you'll wait for me… Hold me like you'll never let me go… But, I'm leavin' on a jet plane… Don't know when I'll be back again… Oh babe, I hate to go…”
Pavel was almost completely asleep when Jim started singing, his mournful quiet tones floating through the night air like the cry of the giant owls who hunted their prey now. If he’d been more awake, he would’ve recognised the song as John Denver’s ‘Leaving on a Jet Plane’. If he’d been fully awake, he might’ve sung it with him.
But, with how he was practically asleep, he merely let it lull him into full sleep.
Tomorrow was another day, after all. They'd get out of here. They had to.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
The next day dawned way too early for the both of them, the chronometer sounding off an alarm this time at eight-thirty in the morning, but, as camp was packed up, both would become very grateful for the early wake-up.As the last of the pack contents were gathered up, and the fire they’d built was destroyed, there came the sounds of buzzing.Gliders.
Lots of them.
“Shit, they tracked us!” Jim swore, firing up the glider as the buzzing grew closer. “Pavel, have you got that map ready?”“Ready and waiting, dad!” Pavel saluted, swinging the pack onto his back. A weight test the previous day had confirmed that the extra pack weight wouldn’t slow them down. Jim could only hope that the slight increase with the tent inside wouldn’t change things, no matter how much Starfleet had succeeded in compartmentalising everything in existence.“Put these on, I’m gonna need you to be able to see.”Pavel put the proffered goggles on and grabbed the map and communicator, while Jim strapped himself to the actual glider, before the navigator strapped himself on top, the awkward standing position they had to take while the glider wasn’t in motion being outweighed by both fear and a strange sense of excitement.This was it. Provided all went well, they’d outfly their pursuers, and be beamed back up to the Enterprise without injury. If it went wrong, they’d die, but at least they would’ve tried.When the gliders finally found them, it wasn’t at the site.It was high in the air.And father and son were both ready for them.
“Ewasive manoeuvres, dad, zhey’re gaining on us!”
“I know, Pavel, I know!” For being nearly completely unfamiliar with gliders apart from seeing them in Nausicaä and their test flights, Jim was very good at flying them. If they weren’t being shot at by angry Mairans who wanted desperately to kill them, he might’ve even enjoyed his first flight.Unfortunately, as the glider dove and both of them basically screamed the whole time as Jim narrowly dodged phaser blasts and even the occasional bullet, this flight was very much not peaceful, and very much not enjoyable. “How far are we from the beam-up point?!” Jim screeched over the sounds of the blasts and the wind. “Not far!” Pavel yelled back. “Maybe fifty kilometres, ve should be zhere in a matter of minutes!”
“Then you better get ready to flip that comm open, I don’t want to stay here any longer than I have to!”
“Neizher do I, dad, neizher do I!” … “I’m picking up a gunfight going on down there!” Ensign Henrietta Lopez exclaimed, as the navigator’s console lit up with new information. “Looks like someone’s pissed off the Mairans!”“Mister Sulu, do we have permission to zoom in on the planet?” Spock asked, keeping his voice level, though everyone could hear the strain that was coming through.“Nope, but I’m doing it anyway,” Hikaru replied, and soon, as the ship’s scanners picked up movement amongst the gunfire, a blown-up, somewhat blurry image popped up on the main screen.Though they couldn’t enhance it anymore, the ship’s sensors identified the dark blue blur in an instant. “Captain James T. Kirk. Lieutenant Pavel A. Chekov,” the ship’s computer intoned.“They’ve got the glider going!” someone cheered.“Commander Scott, report immediately to the transport room. Doctor McCoy and Commander Sulu, prepare for emergency transporting. Commander Uhura, you have the conn,” Spock ordered, a little more hurriedly than usual.Nyota just saluted and slid into the captain’s chair as Spock and Hikaru both sprinted out of the room. Across the ship, Bones and Scotty did the exact same.They couldn’t afford to mess up now. Not with Jim and Pavel at stake. … “Zhere it is!” Pavel exclaimed, after what felt like an eternity, but in fact was just shy of ten minutes. “Zhere’s ze beam-up point!” “I see it!” Jim laughed. “I see it!” Never had either of them been quite so happy to see a designated Starfleet beam-up point, but then again, neither of them had exactly ever been stuck on a hostile planet alone before. Altamid didn’t count here, because the rest of the crew had been stuck on that horrible planet, and without a ship to rely on, let alone a Starfleet-built beam-up point.Here, on Mairan III, though?The sight of a shattered, but still-lit-up Starfleet delta, encircled by a broken circle, indicating exactly where a ship was permitted to break through the planet’s beam-resistant interference, instilled not only relief, but hope into their systems. Jim was so focused on reaching it that he just barely noticed Pavel flipping open the communicator.“Enterprise, prepare to beam two back up as soon as ve’re in range!” the Russian called over the frequencies. “Roger that, Pavel, we got wind of you evading those Mairans, and we’re ready to beam you both back,” came Hikaru’s voice. “You’re cutting it close, they’re closing in on you.” “Yeah, blast these batteries!” Jim groused. “I don’t think they’re designed for this!” Turns out they wouldn’t need to worry about the batteries running out. Not when a phaser blast struck the glider and, in a horrible instant, the machine gave out… and began to dive. They were now in a head-on collision with the ground.
“SCOTTY, GET US OUT OF HERE!!”
… “NOW, SCOTT, NOW!” It was rare to hear Spock even slightly raise his voice. To hear it frightened put the fear of every deity they’d learned about — and every other one they hadn’t — into everyone’s hearts. Scotty, in tandem with Hikaru, quickly locked onto the two men’s signatures, swore as they briefly lost contact— …
Pavel had already dropped the map, it having shattered (despite its heavy-duty nature) thanks to a near-miss, and now just clung tightly to his dad for dear life.
Jim just did his best to angle the glider up, hoped that the crash wouldn’t hurt too much, that if the beam-up didn’t work, they’d die on impact—
…
“I’VE GOT THEM!”
The transporter whirred, fighting through ridiculously heavy interference, fighting through the planet’s very efforts to keep its prisoners captive, to keep their captain and navigator—
“DUCK!”
Everyone in the room threw themselves to the ground the moment Bones yelled that, and, as something materialised and shot off out of the transporter room and into the hall, crashing and scraping at the floor as it crashed, it proved to be a good call.It didn’t stop from Spock managing to catch the two figures that beamed in (albeit badly) though. Unfortunately, like with the now-smoking glider that had torn the hallway apart, there was still a lot of kinetic energy, even as the glider straps snapped and unceremoniously dumped her pilots, and so at least a few bones were broken as Jim and Pavel both barrelled into Spock and knocked him to the ground.“Captain! Pavel!” both Hikaru and Scotty exclaimed, kneeling down next to the pile of people and, slowly, shifting a dazed Pavel off the top, up against a wall.“Ow… vhat happened?” Pavel groaned, as Bones knelt down and began scanning him with his usual mediscanner.“You’re back on the Enterprise, kid,” Bones managed to smile, though he grimaced as he noted, “Could’ve done without having to reknit your goddamn arm, though.”“Doctor, the captain has broken something too,” came Spock’s wheeze, before he froze and realised, “I also appear to be injured.”“Oh god-fucking-damn it!” “Wait… we’re okay?” Jim whispered, a deep relief evident in his voice, as Scotty pulled him safely off Spock and over to the side. “It’s— ow… it’s…”"Ower?” Pavel finished, sounding just as relieved as Jim.“Aye, captain,” Hikaru grinned. “In the nick of time, too. Kinda wish I’d gone down to the planet myself, though — Pavel’s calculations would’ve been mighty helpful up here.”“Thank god…” was all Jim sighed, utter relief now dripping from his voice as he sagged against the wall he was lying against. “Let’s get the fuck out of here, before the planet tries to claim my son and I as prisoners and Starfleet has to yell at them for five months.”“Yes sir—”Everyone stopped dead in their tracks, and a silence, only punctured by the hissing of the crashed glider, fell over them all.“I’m sorry, captain—” Spock started.“Didja just say—” Scotty continued. “Adopted?” Hikaru finished, a confused look and yet an intrigued grin on his face.Both Jim and Pavel smiled sheepishly.“Surprise?” they both tried, before Jim declared,“Kirks… away!!” and managed to scramble into the hallway, closely followed by his son as he leapt over the glider… and equally closely followed by Bones and the rest of the crew.“GET YOUR ASS BACK HERE, JIM— WHAT THE FUCK DO YOU MEAN YOU ADOPTED PAVEL, GODDAMN IT JIM— YOU’RE INJURED!!”It took Bones ten minutes to catch the two very unrepentant officers and throw them into sickbay, and in that ten minutes, practically the entire ship, mostly by way of Bones yelling at his patients, found out about the effective adoption.It took even less time for them to immediately accept it, and to begin scheming how to throw both officers a celebration party.They were the crew of the Enterprise, after all. The senior crew was so tightly knit that it really didn’t surprise anyone that Lieutenant Chekov had become the captain’s son in the space of a few days.Considering that Commander Spock had been able to remain professional on the bridge during his relationship to Lieutenant-Commander Uhura, Kirk and Chekov would probably be able to do the same.Even if they weren’t, though… Well, let’s just say they were ready to fight the Admiralty over it.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
Much to everyone's surprise, though, everything to do with the actual adoption went quite smoothly. As it turned out, Starfleet’s Child Protective Services had had a case open against the Chekov family for quite some time, having been called out more than once before Pavel had run away from home. So, once they heard the justification behind Jim’s wish to adopt Pavel, the final pieces of the puzzle were slotted into place. By the end of the fortnight, with much insistence on expedition of an already open-shut case by a certain Commodore Winona Kirk, Pavel was legally a member of the Kirk family, though he kept his last name for a number of reasons, mostly to do with the fact that it made him feel weird to be called Kirk when that name belonged to his dad.The party held by the crew just after hearing the news also went smoothly. Held on the newly completed starbase Xanadu during a brief shore leave, it culminated in the giving of a lot of gifts to the new father and son duo (including, quite hilariously, a set of matching jumpers from Ben Sulu, much to his husband's entertainment), and also most people getting wildly drunk.Probably the only sober people there were Spock and Commodore Kirk, who flew all the way out from Earth the moment she found out the news, and it was a good thing they were sober, because it meant that Spock was able to speak with her about something important, and Winona was able to listen. Finally, a month after the incident on Mairan III, shore leave was declared again, though as part of a diplomatic exchange on a planet known to the native population as Warula, but officially known as Arkoon IV.Known primarily as a species that prided itself on its outdoor nature, they’d recently become warp-capable, and had invited several starships to explore its beautiful lands.Jim had taken up the offer immediately, left most of his crew free to explore the planet while the Enterprise sat in the new spacedock over the planet, and dragged his senior crew mess of a family — both found and legal — off on a camping trip, citing Pavel’s lack of experience with s’mores and the general desire to just go camping with them. “Fascinating,” Spock mused, as he scanned the s’more Jim was preparing to bake in the campfire. “There is not a single molecule of any necessary vitamins in this… ‘dish’.”“Spock, you really gotta remember that we humans are an illogical bunch, and that sometimes we make food for fun,” Jim grinned. “Don’t worry, I’m not gonna let Pasha eat all of them.”“Vhat?” Pavel complained, mid-devouring his third s’more. “Zhey’re delicious! Reminds me of Russian dessert.”“Which one?”
“All of zhem!”
There was a round of laughter from the other humans, while Spock merely raised an amused eyebrow and ate a sugar cookie, since his Vulcan side would cause him to get very drunk if he tried eating the s’mores.Soon, everyone had yet another s’more, Pavel was vibrating with sugary energy, and Bones and Scotty were already slightly drunk (because of course they were, and it was a good thing Bones was, because otherwise he would’ve lectured all of them on how many s’mores they were eating).Eventually, though, Bones cleared his throat, tapped against his bottle with a branch he’d been using earlier to cook marshmallows, and announced,“I’d like to make a toast.” Everyone went quiet, and Bones aimed his toast towards Jim. “To our captain, our friend, and the new father of a Russian whiz kid, something that might actually help him settle down for once.”“To Jim,” everyone echoed, in varying tones, while Pavel’s sounded like a hyperactive mix between Jim and dad and something distinctly Russian.“And to that whiz kid himself,” Hikaru chimed in. “Navigator, friend, and finally with a dad who actually cares about him.”“Hear ye,” Jim wheezed with laughter.“Ah yes, a mutuawwy fulfiwwing relationship,” Pavel deadpanned, in a perfect imitation of Spock (though heavily accented as usual), before cracking up and bursting into giggles.“Shaddup, before I demote you to last name basis only.”“You vouldn’t dare!” “Yep, that sounds like every adult parent and child I’ve ever known,” Scotty snorted.“Oh yeah, that reminds me — I obtained literally every photo on the internet of you,” Jim grinned.“Noooooooooo!” Pavel wailed. “Not ze baby photos!” “It is too late! I have the Ultimate Power!”The humans all burst into laughter again, and Spock allowed himself a small, amused smile this time around. As the humans laughed, though, he noticed something.“Jim, we are running low on firewood,” he pointed out.“Oops, I forgot about that,” Jim winced. “C’mon, I need help carrying it.”“Don’t get lost, you morons,” Bones groaned, as the captain and first officer stood and headed into the forest. “I’m not looking for you if you wind up in Vancouver!”“Doctor, Vancouver’s on earth,” Hikaru snorted, fully aware that the doctor was joking.“Don’t care, I’m still not looking for them.” Once the two men were out of earshot, and once Bones had stopped going on and on about the various dangers of getting lost in the woods, though, a new conversation started. One that had been going on for a few months now.One that Pavel had been extra instrumental in leading ever since his adoption.“Zhey’re down bad,” he sighed, matter-of-factly. “Dad doesn’t zhink I hear him, but sometimes I hear him making a personal log and lamenting about being unable to tell Commander Spock how he feels.”“And Spock’s been making his own logs about having feelings that he very much Does Not Want so soon after we broke up,” Nyota chuckled. “I love him, but god he’s stupid.”“They both are,” Scotty grinned. “But that’s the fun of it! It’ll eventually work out, one way or another, we just gotta wait and see!”“Personally I think we should just shove them in a closet. It’s how Ben and I figured it out,” Hikaru shrugged.“I second you on that,” Bones agreed. “I am sick of hearing Jim whine about it.”“Third,” Nyota added.“Fourth,” Scotty chuckled.“What about you, Pasha?” Hikaru asked. “How do you feel about this whole kitten caboodle?” Pavel just glanced off towards the woods, where his dad and commander had gone for that firewood. “I zhink zhat, wery soon, I vill have two dads,” he smiled. “Nyota, how do I say ‘dad’ in Wulcan?”“Hopeful bastard,” Nyota smiled. “It’s sa’mekh.”“Sa’me— sa’mech—” “We’re gonna be here a while,” Bones groaned, and got yet another round of laughter from the others. Deep in the woods, where he and Jim were gathering firewood, Spock really shouldn’t have been able to hear the conversation of his friends back at the fire. And yet, because Vulcan hearing was significantly better than human hearing, he could hear the conversation they were having. He could also hear Pavel’s attempts at pronouncing sa’mekh . In all his life, he’d never expected to be a father. By all counts, he was probably sterile as a hybrid of two species, and quite frankly, even with Nyota, he’d never considered actually fathering or adopting a child. His career and work had been simply too difficult to ignore, along with the potential for becoming an ambassador like his alternate self.And yet, with Jim adopting Pavel, and with the young man attempting to learn sa’mekh for when the two of them stopped circling each other like wounded animals and finally actually talked about this…He was having an emotion. A good emotion.One that felt all too inexplicably like joy. So they stayed out a little longer than they should’ve. Long enough that Bones got worried and Hikaru started a betting ring on whether or not they were actually finally talking. Pavel, willing to play devil’s advocate, said they weren’t.He’d lose the moment his dad— dads came back, but then the bet wouldn’t matter.Because, all of a sudden, he’d have not just the father he’d always wanted, but one who would guide him in ways that Jim never could.And Jim finally would finally get the man he’d been pining for ever since they’d met at the former’s academic inquiry, and the family he may well have been craving ever since his life had gone oh so horrifically wrong.