Pavel did his best not to flinch as the captain passed. Despite the fact that it could be the cruelest and most hurtful thing imaginable, you weren't supposed to respond to what people didn't say.
The captain was his friend, and as such, he would do for him what he did for all his friends and forgive him for what he didn't say and move on. It wasn't like the captain was normally like this. Things had been stressful lately, and his and Sulu's recent antics hadn't helped matters any...
"Good morning Keptin." he said to the captain's retreating back before making his own way to the turbolift, determinedly ignoring the man's mental comment on exactly where he could shove his "Good morning".
They should have been dead.
That had been their first thought when they'd woken in the hospital and discovered that they were a John and Jane Doe in an era where every human should be easily identified. They hadn't needed a history book to know that there would be no going home, they'd known that from the minute they'd first been told the date, a date that should have been roughly fifty years in their future.
A couple of months later, they had new names and a home in a place where they would never have to look over their shoulder for black uniforms and bronze and copper badges. Since they were familiar with the local language from their years on the run, settling in wasn't as difficult as it might have been. The only problems they really had were with quieting that part of their minds that kept them looking over their shoulder for pursuers that would never come.
Eventually, they settled in almost as well as if they'd been living there all their lives, and in due time they had a son.
For the first year after Andrei and Irena Chekov's son was born, all they could think in regards to the boy was "He looks just like Stee".