Head in the Stars
Disclaimer: Don't own Star Trek.
Warning: Author is incredibly ignorant of Russian culture and language. Author knows only enough to scrap together a stalkerish account of Chekov's fictional life. Do not physically harm author, who is speaking in third person in fear of being bashed. However, author would like to emphasize that if anyone has any advice, it would be MUCH appreciated.
Chapter One
Olenka Chekov survived the freak explosion that killed her husband. So did her unborn child.
"Pregnant?" It was the first word any doctor had managed to pry from her since she'd been forced to identify her husband's remains.
"It would appear so," the doctor answered without so much as looking up from his PADD.
She held a hand to her chest in disbelief. Her two daughters were old enough that they had already moved on to the city. She was nearing forty herself, ready to settle into a quiet country life with her husband, at least until her grandchildren were born.
"That's impossible," she muttered faintly, but the doctor had already left the room. She touched her stomach, and this time the tears that rolled down her face were not for herself, but for the accidental child growing inside of her.
He was born too early, in the dead of winter, and he was exceptionally small. Olenka was too afraid to look at him when they placed him in her arms. It wasn't until her eldest daughter Dostya exclaimed, "Look at his eyes!" that she lowered her head and saw him for the first time.
Dostya was right. His eyes were intense and captivating, unfitting of such a tiny child. He stared at her uninhibitedly, his gaze solemn and sure, just like his father's.
"What are we going to name him?" Irina asked, cooing at him.
"Pavel," said Olenka, without missing a beat. It meant "little." She remembered it from twenty years ago, when she and Andrei had pored through baby name books at a time when having babies was normal and right.
"Pavel," Irina repeated, and when she gently took him from her arms, Olenka couldn't help the relief that rushed through her, or the lingering guilt that soon followed.
The baby never cried. Olenka wished he would, because then she could justify her irritation with him, the anger brimming just under the surface every time she saw his curious eyes searching her face. He had burst into her life in a time she meant to spend grieving for her dead husband. He was a constant, unrelenting reminder that Andrei was dead and never coming back.
By the time he was almost a year old he was tiny as ever, but up on his feet and toddling. He mimicked Olenka—he watched the way she turned doorknobs and opened drawers of the old house and then he would do it too, smiling up at her toothlessly and waiting for approval she would never give.
The house was eerily quiet in those first few months she spent with him. She barely ever spoke to him, but he didn't seem to mind. His adoration of her was so clear and open that she resented him more, because she had done nothing to deserve it.
Dostya stayed with them for a week in October, and he was just as smitten with her. It was a welcome relief to have him occupied with his older sister. She played with him and sang to him and for the first time in his short span of life, Olenka heard him laugh out loud, his smile wider than she'd ever seen it. Over a simple game of peek-a-boo. He giggled so easily, and Olenka felt worse for not having bothered to play with him herself.
When Dostya left, she kissed his nose and bid him good-bye. He whimpered when the front door shut behind her, and tried to work the door knob, but his little hands were too weak.
Olenka left him at the door to make dinner, and when she came back to collect him he was still standing there, his little eyebrows furrowed at the door in concentration. She took pity on him and opened it, hoping that it would make him understand that Dostya was gone. He stood in the open doorway for a moment, scanning the field in front of him. Then he walked forward, barefoot in the cold.
"Come inside," Olenka chided him softly, and for the first time he ignored her.
Instead he reached his skinny arms up at the night sky, his little fists clenching and unclenching like he was trying to catch something in his palm.
"What are you doing?"
His face was thoughtful. "Stars," he said, and the word was unmistakable.
"Stars?" Olenka had never heard him utter a single word. She was so shocked by the sound of his high, tinny voice that for a moment she could only gape at him.
"Da!" he exclaimed, his arms flying up like a bird.
On a whim she swept him into her arms and pressed him against her so that she could feel the giggle in his chest. "Say 'mama,'" she whispered to him.
He stared at her uncomprehendingly, and she felt tears pricking at the corners of her eyes. "Say 'mama,'" she pleaded with him again.
He reached out to touch her face, pressing his hand against the tear on her cheek, but he didn't say it. She held him there in the bitter cold for a few minutes, waiting, and when she felt a violent shiver run up his body she relented and took him inside. She set him down on the hardwood floor and crouched down to his level.
"Say it. Say 'mama'."
She hadn't meant to sound angry, but he flinched away from her, his lower lip trembling. Ashamed with herself, she stood up and motioned for him to follow her into the kitchen.
"Mama."
He said it so tremulously that she halted mid-step, feeling her heart wrench. "That's right," she said with a hollow smile. He looked up at her warily.
She took a shuddering breath, collecting herself. "I'm so sorry," she said. "For everything."
Of course he didn't understand. He just followed her to the dinner table, cooperative as ever, and didn't speak for the rest of the night.
After that week with Dostya, Olenka let him watch the television. At first he wasn't very interested by it, and then she turned up the volume and he was absolutely transfixed. Whenever she turned on the screen he would stand in front of it in rapt attention, and when she turned it off he abandoned it without a fuss.
As it turned out, it was the catalyst he needed. Within a week he was speaking in chopped sentences, and within a month he could hold rudimentary conversation with her. He would talk to himself before he fell asleep at night, and talk to himself when Olenka decided not to respond. His words were alarmingly coherent. He was barely a year old, and she knew from past experience how abnormal his progress was. It was the first time she understood that he was different from other children—more intelligent, more independent. She felt further from him than ever, because she couldn't understand.
One day at breakfast he asked, "Do I have a father?"
She had expected him to ask eventually, but the question still came as an affront. "He's dead," she said tersely. Her eyes flickered up from the article she was reading to gage his reaction. She wasn't sure if he knew what "dead" even meant, but apparently he did, because he nodded somberly in acceptance.
Olenka softened. "He had curls like yours."
The one-year-old touched the topple of hair on his head. "Do you have a . . ." His nose scrunched in thought.
"Picture?"
"Picture," he echoed.
"Yes, I have pictures."
She recognized the question in his eyes. "Some other day," she said softly, because she didn't think she could bear looking at pictures of Andrei when she already has this miniature version of him sitting across from her at the kitchen table.
The questions all started after that. He was particularly intrigued with letters and numbers. He would grab boxes of food or laundry detergent and ask what was written on the back, guiding his finger along the words as she impatiently recited them for him.
When he was not yet two years old, Irina and Dostya visited for the holidays, and were shocked when he read a news headline out loud in front of them.
"He's reading already?" Irina marveled, and he blushed when she ruffled his hair. "But he's still so little!"
Dostya shook her head, grinning. "Imagine that. Our little Pavel's a whiz kid."
His face twisted. "Pavel?" he repeated imploringly, looking up at his sisters.
Olenka felt as though she had swallowed acid when she realized the root of his confusion. She never addressed him by his name—of course he didn't know. She was the only one he interacted with.
"Yes. Pavel," she emphasized, the name almost foreign on her tongue. "You are quite intelligent for your age."
She recognized the comprehension on his face. He pressed a hand to his chest. "Pavel," he repeated under his breath, lowly enough that Irina and Dostya did not notice. They enthusiastically pulled up new headlines on the PADD, shocked and delighted as he sounded the words out, so enthralled that they did not see the paleness of Olenka's skin or the expression of self-loathing that crossed her face.
By two and a half years old he was more than capable of maneuvering around the house by himself. He and Olenka fell into a routine of sorts. He would wake and nestle on the other side of her bed, so that she woke to his wide, blue eyes every morning. She would make breakfast, and he would wander around outside or watch television or read until lunch, then disappear again until dinner, and then go to sleep at eight o'clock without being told.
Olenka never worried about him because he seemed so confident. Sometimes she forgot he was barely a toddler. He seemed perfectly content and this was enough for her to almost forgive herself for leaving him to his own devices.
Then one day he was late to dinner. Olenka sat by herself for a good ten minutes, not touching any of the food. Usually the boy would arrive promptly on schedule—Olenka could foresee some sort of military future for him, the way he regimented himself. She stood from the table.
"Dinner," she called, and when he didn't answer she figured he must be outside. She opened the front door and called again.
Nobody answered. The sun was starting to fall in the sky. Surely he knew it was time to come inside. A foreboding dread dropped in the pit of her stomach, and she walked outside, scanning the open field for any sign of him.
"Where are you?" she called. There was nobody else around for at least a mile, and the main road was a long way off from the house, but she couldn't help wondering if someone had pulled up and snatched him. Pushing the horrible thought aside, she trudged to the side of the house, near the little pond out back.
When there was still no sign of him she felt her heart seize with outright panic. How could she be so stupid? He was only two years old. What the hell was she thinking, letting him run around on his own all day? He could have wandered off or been kidnapped or worse, because she was careless and inattentive and she never stopped to think of the consequences.
Olenka was running now, circling around the house in search of him. It was like running through a dream, as if she couldn't control her breath hitching and her feet thudding against the grass. If something terrible had happened to him, she would never forgive herself.
She would also know that she deserved it.
"Don't punish him, not because of me," she gasped, coming to a stop in front of the house. There was nobody to hear her desperate pleas, but she couldn't stop herself. "Please, please, let him be okay."
When she wiped the moisture from her eyes, she saw the curly head pressed into the grass, unmoving. "Oh, God," she cried. Her legs pushed forward of their own volition, and the distance between them seemed to go on forever. She reached him and collapsed to her knees.
It was him. Lying under the tree, his face peaceful and white as a ghost, save for the streak of red dripping from his forehead.
"Wake up." Her voice cracked. For a stark moment she would never forget, she thought he was dead, and that her world had just ended. She thought of how ashamed Andrei would be to see how she had neglected their son. She thought of waking up in the morning to an empty bed. She thought of life without his bright eyes and questions and joy.
She sucked in a breath and shook him. "Wake up," she begged. "Please—"
His eyes flew open in alarm. He winced immediately, disoriented until his eyes locked on hers and she saw her own sheer terror reflecting in him.
"Pavel," she breathed, drawing him close to her.
He gasped, and for the first time since he was born he wailed outright, and she thought she might never have heard a sweeter sound in her whole life. Great, gulping sobs escaped him, and she clung to him, sobbing just as hard, mindlessly chanting, "Pavel, Pavel, it's okay, I'm here, shhhh, it's okay."
His arms curled around her and she clung to him so fiercely she thought she might never let him go.
Thanks for reading :)
Expect an update in the next few days!