Chapter Text
Most people graduated college or academies with a dozen friends, a degree, and a big smile.
Pavel graduated with no friends, a guilt-ridden conscience, and the fake cheer he'd learned and perfected.
--
Pavel was terrified when he boarded the Enterprise to answer Vulcan's distress signal. He was seventeen, for God's sake! And he was supposed to navigate this thing? Oh, and of course the two men he admired and respected above all others were there on the bridge with him, Captain Pike directly over his shoulder and Commander Spock across the room. And the damn computer wouldn't take his accent or lisp.
Pavel was a bit grateful when the new guy, Sulu, screwed up first. It helped take the edge off.
"Well, that was embarrassing," Sulu muttered as they were en route.
Pavel smiled and said, "Don't vorry. It can't get much vorse, right?"
Of course it did. Pavel really should know not to trust his luck at all.
The man from the trial earlier that day, Kirk, burst onto the bridge with a doctor and communications officer, babbling about the lightning storm in space. Pavel made a mental note to look up Pike's dissertation on the U.S.S. Kelvin when the captain ordered shields up and red alert.
This, conversely, calmed Pavel down.
This was a crisis. This was a life-or-death situation. Hence, this was familiar.
They crashed through a ship graveyard and almost got blown up, and Pike offered to go on the enemy ship.
Pavel almost--almost--stood up when Pike asked for volunteers with advanced combat training. Pit fighting wasn't official training, but Pavel's success rate had gone up to 9 out of 10 fights over the last two years. That had to count for something. His butterfly knife was heavy in his pocket; he never left the dorm without it. He'd had to bring it out twice more on campus (once for each fresh wave of bullies) and a few times on the street. Most had ended...well, if not peacefully at least not bloodily. A couple had ended in corpses; one had ended up in the Bay as soon as Pavel's knife was out of his chest, since they'd been standing on a bridge, and the other had been a John Doe living on the streets and high as a kite.
Pavel was not adverse to violence, bloodshed, or combat. Pike knew that, even if he didn't know all of the details.
And the look Pike was giving Pavel told him that if he made so much as a peep, he was never going into space again.
So Sulu went instead. Spock became captain, which, after three years of calling him "Commander," was a bit difficult to get used to, and the drill was sabotaged. But something still got into Vulcan's core.
Pavel had to tell his mentor that his planet was about to be destroyed.
Spock took it...rather well.
And then Sulu and Kirk were falling and the crew couldn't beam them back...but Pavel could. Pavel could do that because he and Spock had talked about this last year right after midterms because all he had to do was calculate the gravitational pull on a falling object and voila! Sulu and Kirk landed on the pad, looking a little worse for wear, but still alive.
Sulu thanked Kirk.
"Clear the landing pad," Spock announced, stepping forward. "I'm going to the surface."
"The surface?" Kirk huffed. "The surface of what?"
Pavel was already punching in the coordinates Spock had given him. Kirk kept shouting.
"Energize," Spock ordered. Pavel obeyed.
"That idiot!" Kirk spat. "He's going to get himself killed!"
Pavel looked at Kirk and asked levelly: "If Earth vas being destroyed, vouldn't you vant to get your lowed ones out?"
Kirk paused, then ran a hand over his face. "Ack...God dammit. Where is he?"
Pavel kept track of Spock and the other Vulcans, fingers hovering over the energize button. Spock was barely done speaking into the communicator to order a beam-up when Pavel started bringing them back.
Then the rocks fell away. And the woman fell. And Pavel tried to save her, his fingers and brain working furiously, but it was too fast, too low of a drop, and she slipped away.
Pavel was responsible for Amanda Greyson's death.
--
Pavel kept his head down and his hands busy while Spock and Kirk figured out--well, argued over--a plan. When they realized that this was an alternate reality, that the Romulans had created an alternate timeline, Pavel couldn't help but wonder if there was another Pavel Chekov in the original universe. Had he gotten the family this Pavel didn't? Was that why Pavel was so screwed up, because all the blessings went to the original Pavel and there was nothing left for him?
The fight between Spock and Kirk--if you can even call it that, given how easily Spock took him down--jolted Pavel out of his thoughts. Kirk was taken off the ship, and Pavel found himself a little in awe of his mentor. He'd known, theoretically, that most Vulcans were taught nonviolent combat from a young age. But he'd never seen Spock do anything like that.
Pavel thought about asking him, after all of this was over and they'd all had time to gather their thoughts and get over the shock of it all, how to teach him some of that. Spock had already taught him so much about science, both in and out of the classroom. Why not some combat moves, too?
...no. That wasn't going to happen. Pavel had essentially killed his mother. He couldn't even ask forgiveness, never mind for combat lessons.
Any possibility of otherwise got shattered when Kirk came back on board.
--
A very, very small part of Pavel approved of Spock strangling Kirk. The man had beamed aboard a ship at warp speed and wasn't going to tell them how he did it? Pavel wanted to strangle the man himself!
But then Kirk goaded Spock into a fight, talking trash about his mother, and did the man have no sense of decency? Pavel was two seconds away from standing up and dragging Kirk out of the room by the ear when Spock attacked.
Kirk didn't even have a chance. Two hits and he was down and getting strangled. An old, familiar fear clutched Pavel's stomach, the same fear he had whenever Andrei started beating on him, when Spock didn't let up. And nobody was stopping it. Pavel couldn't get the plea for Spock to stop out of his throat, he was too shocked and terrified. His knife was out of his pocket before he knew was he was doing and he was going to target either the neck or the heart when--
"Spock!" Sarek barked.
Spock stopped.
He released Kirk and excused himself from the bridge.
Kirk became captain.
Pavel put the knife away before anyone could see, his hands shaking.
--
Pavel calculated the best way to get onto the ship, the science behind it complicated enough to take his mind off of things and psych himself up, even get him excited. So when Dr. McCoy asked, "Wait a minute, kid, how old are you?" Pavel wasn't as annoyed as he usually was.
"Sewenteen, sir!" he replied proudly. If he had a nickel for every time he was asked that, he wouldn't have to do any more pit fights and could probably take care of the other Sherman foster kids himself.
"Oh, great," McCoy grumbled, turning to Kirk, "He's seventeen."
Pavel's age didn't matter. If they asked any other physicist on this ship they would confirm that the science was right, no matter who was revealing it--Scotty had already confirmed it!--and Pavel was about to challenge McCoy to do just that when a physicist stepped into the room.
Unfortunately, it was Spock.
Pavel felt all of his defenses go up: muscles tensed, feet shoulder-length apart, right hand by his pocket for easy access to his knife...he didn't think Spock was going to attack again, either him or Kirk. The Vulcan was calm and level-headed now, and there were too many witnesses. Pavel's reaction was instinct. Good instinct that had kept him alive for seventeen years.
Fortunately, nobody noticed. Everyone's attention was on Kirk and Spock.
Pavel almost offered to go onto the enemy ship again, when Kirk told Spock in no uncertain terms that he was going. Pike was on that ship.
But Pavel didn't offer, because he knew he'd just be laughed at. The advantage to being the youngest and smallest person in the room was also the disadvantage: everyone underestimated you.
He stayed on the ship while Kirk and Spock left. The entire bridge crew watched on their computer screens while the pair got beamed over, then disappeared into the complex framework of the enemy ship.
Almost everyone on the bridge fidgeted or gave other tells to their nervousness as the wait began. Pavel wanted to take out his butterfly knife; flicking the blade and handle around always made things easier. But he was pretty sure unauthorized weapons weren't allowed on the bridge.
So he stayed still and calm, watching and waiting. It was no different than staying silent in his bedroom while Andrei grew drunker and angrier in the next room, or staying hidden in a tiny alley while the local police looked for any homeless people sleeping on the streets, or sitting at a lunch table an hour after he'd already eaten so the Academy bullies wouldn't have time to drag him away and beat him up before they had to get to class.
Wow. Pavel was more suited to Starfleet than he'd thought.
"I have them!" Uhura shouted. "Spock's on the smaller spacecraft!"
Pavel plugged in the coordinates and Sulu blasted the Enterprise to Earth.
--
Everyone on the ship seemed to collectively lose their minds after they got planet-side. Near death experiences and tragedies would do that to you: stoic officers broke down in sobs when they reached their loved ones, or went completely limp and catatonic when their feet hit the ground, or started laughing maniacally at someone else's bad joke.
Pavel went to his dorm to change, and then went to a local café. He was starving.
--
"This...can't be right, sir," Pavel said, staring at the black letters on his PADD.
Admiral Pike raised an eyebrow at him. "What's not right about it?"
"Um...shouldn't this position go to someone more...qualified?" he asked.
"Saving the Earth doesn't count as qualified?"
Pavel lowered his eyes. "That vasn't me, sir. That vas Kirk and Spock."
"That was the entire Enterprise crew," Pike corrected. "Including you. But if you want to completely disregard your contribution, then let me tell you something: Captain Kirk needs a navigator, and he specifically asked for you."
Pavel stared at him, uncomprehending.
"The youngest captain in Starfleet history asked for the youngest navigator," Pike added. "I'd say you two belong together."
Pavel looked back at the orders for him to stay on the Enterprise. Kirk had been right about the lightning storm in space, and how to stop Nero. Maybe he was right about Pavel. He nodded. "Okay."
"And Pavel," Pike called when he was at the door.
Pavel stopped and turned back. "Sir?"
"All Starfleet personnel are allowed to carry one weapon anywhere on their ship," Pike said. "Doesn't even have to be issued by Starfleet."
Pavel's hand immediately went to his pocket. His smile was more genuine than it'd been in days. "Thank you, sir. I'll keep that in mind."