Learning

by C. DeCoudres

Chekov sighed and leaned against his makeshift bed. He was extremely uncomfortable, but grateful nonetheless to Sulu for propping him up as best he could. He closed his eyes, trying to figure out how long it would be until a rescue team came for them. Their runabout had been pulled into the atmosphere of this planet several hours ago due to an unforeseeable computer malfunction. There was nothing either of them could have done to prevent it; a maintenance crew would have to answer for overlooking the flaw. Chekov decided to push the technicalities of the accident out of his mind for the time being; his head was troubled as it was, his thoughts cloudy and ominous of a powerful headache.

Sulu ventured near Chekov with the newly-recovered medical kit of the Sojourner. He bent over Chekov with concern, fidgeting with several dials on the medical tricorder and frowning.

"Chekov, does your head hurt much?"

"No...not yet."

"I have a hypospray that will help that, but..." he trailed of, then finished decisively, "I'm not going to give it to you."

"What? Why won't you give me the painkiller?" His head throbbed slightly at his surprise. "I need that painkiller! I'm going to need it even more as time passes. I think I'm still in shock from the impact a bit, Sulu. The pain is bad, but it hasn't really set in yet. If you don' mind, I'd like to spend the remainder of my time here in a drug-induced stupor..."

"I know, I know. I understand and I'm sorry-"

"You're sorry?"

"-but I need to know if the pain in your head gets worse. I need to know if you get really serious."

Chekov sighed again. "Is there anything you could do if I had a brain hemorrhage? No, you're not a doctor, Sulu. If that happens I'd just as well not realize it."

Sulu just shook his head apologetically.

"Sulu, there's no local anaesthetic? Or just something to dull the pain?"

"It's just an emergency kit..an older one at that. It's not very well equipped."

Chekov attempted to snatch the hypospray from Sulu, but was a moment too late. He winced as tremors of dulled agony claimed his head.

Sulu sat next to Chekov, tucking the painkiller back in the med kit. He felt terrible; it was obvious that Chekov was desperate for some relief. His basic Starfleet medical training had taught him, however, that sedating someone with head injuries could allow them to easily slip away in their sleep. He just prayed that there was no real threat and that the initial pain didn't foreshadow a greater evil. He just had to keep Chekov awake for a few hours. Awake and talking.

"I promise, Pavel, I'll make this pass as quickly as I can. I'm not that bad of a nurse. Of course, I'm sure you'd rather have Nurse Chapel or your mother-"

Chekov broke off Sulu's comment with a snicker. "My mother...no, believe me...I'm sure you've a better bedside manner than my mother."

"Why? What do you mean?"

"Oh, she is a beautiful, beautiful woman. Very loving, very close to my heart. But..." Chekov's tired face broke into a smile, " a very terrible nurse. Once, when I was about eight or nine, I got very ill. You know, fever and chills and all that. She took four days off work to sit with me at home. And Sulu, she wouldn't leave me alone! I don't think she ever realized that the sick need rest, or...or sleep! She was always bringing broth for me to drink, or reading to me, or talking to me, or asking me where it hurt, and how, and how often..."

Sulu couldn't help but smile at his friend's fond memory. If he could keep Chekov talking like this, their time waiting on aid from the Enterprise would be much easier for him.

"Surely your mother gave you some peace..."

"I think she wanted to let me rest, but she was just afraid to leave me alone. She even set up a cot in my room so she could sleep next to me at night."

"That sounds a bit over-protective..."

"Oh, it was...I fully realize that it was. It's just that, I was kind of all she had, after my father left..." His voice trailed off, sounding very tired again.

"Oh, Chekov, I'm sorry. Maybe I shouldn't have-"

"No, really, it's all right. I don't talk about it enough. I never could, especially not to her. My counselor told me not to bottle it up, but... Oh, yes, you see my school set me up with a counselor when I was twelve or thirteen because I seemed to keep picking fights with kids twice my size."

"Now that I can imagine. Perhaps you should continue these meetings with the ship's counselor." Sulu patted Chekov's head playfully. He was pleased to see Chekov smile again at this.

"Yes, I guess that's a habit that remains with me today. I was, you know, angry at him. At my father. For leaving. For hurting my mother."

"For hurting you?"

A pause.

"Yes, but..." the answer came slowly, as if each word took time to gather meaning before it came out. "But he didn't hurt me by leaving. I hated him before he left. She didn't."

Sulu asked timidly, "What did he do to hurt you?"

Chekov didn't pause this time. "Well, I've been thinking, and that ties in to the fight-picking. I, well, you know, was trying to prove myself. Like I was trying to show that I was a man. That I was strong. A winner. That's what I could never be for him..."

"So he was hard to please."

"Very."

"Was he rough with you? Did he get angry?"

"Sometimes...very rarely. He wasn't abusive, Sulu. He was indifferent. He was very focused on his work and on himself. My mother had to struggle for what little time she could get with him. She was never very effective. My mother's a lover, not a fighter. I tried to spend time with him too, at first, but then..."

"Then what, Pavel?"

"That's when he would get angry. Could you get me some water or something? I could use it."

Sulu was a bit startled at the abruptness of the request. He was intent on Chekov's story. Hurriedly he fetched some water from the shuttlecraft's emergency food supply and brought it to his friend, who drank it slowly. Sulu rested his hand beneath Chekov's bangs, feeling for any sign of fever. He detected one, but just a slight one, which he judged to be harmless.

"So..." he began again, determined that Chekov would continue,"what was your father's anger?"

"It was...it was...do you really want to hear this? I feel foolish."

"I promise, Pavel, I want to hear this."

Chekov dove into his next speech, as if he'd been waiting for Sulu's permission to sort out his childhood.

"It was making verbal all the things I gathered from his actions. He was brutal in the calmest way. He never physically hurt me, not really. I mean, for instance...well, you see once I was going to run...in a track meet for my school...I was very excited, you know, to have made the team as a first year student, so I wanted him to come see me. I tried so hard to be good at everything...tried so hard to be perfect. You understand? If being good at something couldn't get his attention, being good at everything might...it just might..."

At his pause, Sulu placed a reassuring hand on Chekov's shoulder. It all made perfect sense to him. Chekov had always been so eager to please, always been so thrilled by positive responses from his superior officers. Especially Kirk, who, Sulu realized, must be the closest thing to a father figure in Chekov's life. Chekov continued.

"So, anyway, for days I'd been begging him to come. I had told him how hard it is to make the team, how important this meet was. He'd always brushed me off...said he was busy at work or something. It was like we weren't even living in the same house, I saw him so little. So the day before the meet, I found him in his study, and I asked him if he was going to see me. He was reading something, and just mumbled, 'No, probably not.' I got angry, then. I said,'Father, please stop reading for a second and listen to me!' I must have said it pretty loudly, because he stopped. But not to listen. He was angry as well. I'll never forget it, Sulu, I'll never forget it. That was the day that I started hating my father. He stood up, a good foot and a half taller than me, and said,'You arrogant little bastard. I can rarely find two minutes peace in this household, and then I have you nagging me so that I wish I hadn't come home at all. Do you actually think that I have time to go watch you play games? You are so ungrateful to me...if we had the money, I would have sent you away to school!' I started to cry, Sulu. I couldn't help it. Then he slapped me, hard, across the face. I was so shocked I couldn't breathe. He told me I wasn't to bother him any more with my childishness. Told me I was worse than my mother. I just avoided him after that."

"Just like that?"

"No, not just like that."

"Then how?"

"I quit talking to him, but I couldn't let go of the rest. I kept hoping that something I did would make him actually be a father to me. And I felt so foolish for what had happened in his study. So I felt as if I had to redeem myself for that as well. It was a very...lonely time for me."

Sulu sat back momentarily. Hadn't Chekov had friends? Or other family members? He looked over Chekov's virtually unmoving body. Perhaps he should talk about something else. He didn't want to burden Chekov with haunting memories; he simply wanted to occupy him and keep him conscious. But he really wanted to hear this, and Chekov wasn't one to open up on a daily basis. Besides, what if this was empowering or something? Suddenly Sulu wished that he had stayed awake during his Starfleet Basic Psych class.

"I just wasted so much of my life trying to do something that just couldn't be done." Chekov's comment startled Sulu out of his trance. He continued, "But, Sulu, the sick thing is, if I saw him today...I would just snap back into the way things were. I would forget how wrong he is...I would lose my disgust and even my anger to this infinite hope...this hope, Sulu, that lets him win every time. It kills me, it really does, to hang on to it this way. It hurts even worse, though, to remember that I have a father who never loved me."

Now Sulu was beginning to feel sick himself. He had no idea what it must be like living a childhood with such rejection from one's own father. And, he noted, living a young adulthood still suffering from that loss. What could he say? What could he possibly say that would be right at this moment?

"Chekov, I...I don't...so, so eventually...he...just left?"

Inwardly, Sulu slapped himself. Oh, brilliant comment. That just lifted the clouds away.

Chekov sighed. "Yes, he left around my fifteenth birthday. I was more disappointed than relieved, though. But I was more angry than anything. My mother was depressed for weeks. Just sobbing and all. But I already told you...she's such a lover, in the most literal sense. She loves people and things in a way that makes it near impossible for her to let go."

"You are very lucky, then. To have enjoyed such a love from her."

"Yes, but it's a shame about that, Sulu. I didn't enjoy all the love from her until he left. His very presence overshadowed all the good from her. And it drained her, too, worrying over the both of us so. But after he left, and after she recovered from that, I think she learned to love herself a little more. It was good to see her love herself some."

"Sounds to me like you're finally learning to love yourself, too." Sulu smiled as he said this. What a brave kid. He was beginning to understand so much more the idiosyncrasies that so vividly marked Chekov's character.

"Yes...yes, I guess I am." He snickered. "And it took nothing short of crashing into an uninhabited moon and sustaining a head injury to bring me to it." He paused. "And a good friend."

Sulu grinned widely at this. "Surely you have some good childhood stories to share with me."

"Of course I do! I managed a bit of happiness, believe it or not. Once I was at this fair in Vladivstock..."

The hours shrank to minutes as the two friends exchanged stories, erupting the once silent air into moments of pure and carefree laughter.

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