Bones

Dr. Leonard McCoy was no stranger to being unable to save everyone. He'd almost gotten used to that one by now. He'd certainly lost people in his line of work. He'd lost young people before. Hell, he'd even lost kids before.

Bones also wasn't a stranger to the dangers of space, and what that meant for him and his friends. This crew, though he was begrudging to admit it, had become like his family. All of them. But he'd always known that one day, space would demand that one of them give their lives. Whether it be on this mission, or twenty years from now when they'd all gone their separate ways. And he'd known that, as the doctor, he'd be the one to make the official death pronouncement. He'd be the one to pull the sheet up over their face and fill out their death certificate. So he'd tried to prepare himself for it as best as possible.

But this was one thing he hadn't been prepared for. He'd even begun to believe that Jim's encounter with Khan had fulfilled the inevitable brush with premature death for this senior staff.

He wasn't prepared to lose this one.

This time, space had asked far too much.

Bones hesitated in covering up Lieutenant Pavel Chekov's face for the final time. He'd had no issue obscuring the kid's body from view. But his face was the one part that still looked just as it had in life, not battered, not broken. Just normal. Just Chekov.

Before he could think too hard on that topic, the sound of someone clearing their throat behind him made him turn. Grateful for the distraction, Bones turned to find his youngest nurse standing there, holding out the official paperwork that it was his duty to fill out any time a crew member lost their life in the line of duty.

Against his will, Bones couldn't help but thinking that this girl was about Chekov's age. He'd seen the Russian flirting with her on occasion. Shaking his head, Bones thought about what a ladies' man Chekov had become in the short time he'd known him. From his observation, the girl hadn't necessarily encouraged the attention, even if she hadn't really minded it, either.

Judging from the expression on her face as she stared at the still, rigid form on the biobed, she was wondering if maybe she should have.

"Thank you, Nurse Wilson," he told her, in hopes of maybe breaking her out of the state of shock the entire crew had been reeling from. "See to your other patients."

Her blue eyes turned to penetrate him, and he was glad he wasn't prone to squirming. She bought none of the crap he'd just thrown at her. The gruff quality his voice was sporting had her less than fooled. She knew just how broken up about this he was.

But currently, her own emotions were overpowering her insight, and she blinked a couple of times, looking back at Chekov's body.

"It's not fair," she said, her voice barely above a whisper.

Bones sighed, shaking his head, and put a hand on her shoulder. "No. It's not."

She steeled herself, looked him in the eyes once more, then nodded, returning to her duties.

Bones stared at the screen in front of him, but couldn't bring himself to begin filling it out. Not quite yet. He set it on the edge of the biobed and stood there, his arms folded, unable to take his eyes off of his friend's unmoving face.

It had been that morning. Just that morning, the last time he'd seen Chekov alive. He'd seen the away team off, Jim as usual pushing aside his warnings of impending doom. Damn it, he wished the man would have listened to him. But he knew, after the fiasco down on the planet, after the transporter malfunction, after…Chekov, that no one wished that more than James T. Kirk himself.

Jim hadn't been by yet, which was strange. Normally he came to pay his respects to his deceased crew members in private – or as privately as possible, since Bones was legally required to be there. No way was he on the bridge right now. Bones turned to his computer.

"Locate the captain," he told it. Jim was in his quarters. Bones imagined he was probably nursing the remains of that Romulan ale they'd stolen from Chekov a few months ago. That is, if he wasn't too numb to do anything at all.

Jim could wait. Bones turned back to Chekov, knowing that it was time to cover his face, even if it was only until Jim got here. It was only respectful.

But as he went to do so, Bones once again against his will entertained the thought that Chekov looked as though he were just sleeping. Bones almost wished he could pretend he were. Then all he'd need to do was give the back of Chekov's head a whack and question how the hell he'd managed to get promoted when he fell asleep on the job.

But there was no tell-tale rise and fall of the chest, no soft hiss of breath from the nostrils. Chekov wasn't sleeping this time. He was gone.

Something inside of Bones broke as he remembered the first words he ever said to Chekov, and as he fell into a chair by the biobed, his eyes filling with tears, he growled them out again.

"Dammit, kid, how old are you?"

There was no answer, of course. No "sewenteen, sir," or, more accurately for the current date, "twenty-two." Bones could remember being twenty-two. That was before life had beaten him down. He'd seen enough of life to know that there was a lot of it to live after twenty-two. He gritted his teeth. In his opinion, no one should have to die before they saw fifty, but certainly not before thirty.

Bones leaned up against the biobed, letting his emotions flow, for once manifesting themselves in grief rather than anger. The last time this had happened was when Jim had sacrificed himself in the warp core, but there had been a difference then. Then there was a cryo tube. There was super blood. There was a way around death that time.

Bones' head knocked Chekov's arm out from under the sheet, and, forcing himself to look anywhere but at the now-disfigured hand, Bones focused on the lieutenant's stripes on the sleeve.

One of many things Chekov was too young for – promotion. Yet the kid had managed it somehow. He'd earned lieutenant a few weeks before the encounter with Krall. Bones remembered the pride practically pouring off of all the senior crew members when they'd celebrated in the rec room. Uhura had gotten visibly choked up, and even Spock had seemed less than his stoic Vulcan self. Sulu had been off to the side, grinning like he'd just won the lottery, and Scotty had claimed that in honor of the occasion, he'd be weaning Chekov off of his "milk diet" and introducing him to "a man's drink" in the form of Scotch. The young Russian had been disdainful at first of anything other than his beloved "wodka," but judging by how quickly he started claiming Scotch was "inwented in Russia," he'd taken to it just fine.

Bones wished for the life of him he could get that accent out of his head, as it just served to remind him that he wouldn't be hearing it ever again. But he knew that the day would come when he would long to remember it, exactly as he was now.

His mind went back to that day in the rec room, and he knew that as much as everyone else was proud of the kid Jim had affectionately dubbed "their Russian," no one was more proud than Jim himself. He may not have been the most verbal about it, but Bones knew Jim looked at Chekov like a younger brother, a bond only solidified by their time locked in a battle for survival together with Krall.

Bones knew he should probably check on Jim. Make sure the man wasn't lying in a drunken coma on the floor somewhere. But he had his job here to do first. Steeling himself, he grabbed Chekov's arm to shove back under the sheet. He paused, staring at the lieutenant's stripes again.

"You had your whole life ahead of you," he growled, his grief once again manifesting itself in anger. "It wasn't supposed to stop here. Hell, kid, you were going to make a damned fine captain one day. Maybe even an admiral. You were supposed to get old and bald and completely lose anything that might have made you the irritating little Casanova you were turning out to be. So why the hell did you have to insist on staying on the planet with Jim? You noble little bastard. Didn't you know how much we'd miss you?"

I knew ze risks, Doctor, he seemed to hear Chekov saying, as he knew he would have were he here. I vouldn't have wolunteered to stay behind if I vasn't ready.

"We weren't ready," Bones found himself muttering to the air. "Dammit, Pavel, did you stop to think that maybe we're not ready?"

Yes, Bones had prepared himself, he realized. He'd prepared himself for the loss of any of the rest of his friends. But never in his wildest nightmares would he have imagined they'd lose Chekov.

The med bay doors slid open and Jim stood there in the doorway. Bones stared at him. Normally, Bones was the tough one. The sage one. The one who was there for Jim. But as the two friends tried to keep up the façade of being immovable objects, it became apparent: Neither of them were about to be the strong one. Not this time.

Bones once again flashed back to that day five years ago.

Wait a minute, kid. How old are you?

Sewenteen, sir.

Oh. Oh, good.

"He was twenty-two, Jim."

Jim nodded curtly, apparently not trusting himself to speak. Bones didn't give a damn whether he sounded like a blubbering baby, however.

"I wasn't ready, Jim," he said, looking back at Chekov's face. "I wasn't ready to lose this one."

Jim moved to stand by him, putting one hand on Bones' shoulder and reaching down with the other to where Chekov's hand still hung off the bed.

"I wasn't either, Bones," he said. "I wasn't, either."