He met her at exactly 0400 hours. It was a time in which he had begun to entertain the possibility that all was lost, when hope failed him and love was but a whisper-thin thread of drawn memory.
His Irina had already left him in spirit, her body the only relic remaining of the woman he'd once known; her last breath had been drawn and rendered cold by the sterilized air around her stiffening body. Two nurses had come by much earlier with a hygienic coverlet to conceal her, as if to ward off the authenticity of her death. But he knew she was gone because her hand was hard and motionless, tucked gently into his. He couldn't escape the verity, not with all the thin sheets in the world.
Complications, Mr. Chekov. Breach birth. I couldn't do a thing for her. Not even with my technology, I couldn't have saved her. Irina was too young and too small and the baby had inflicted serious damage…you understand the complications of a breach birth, don't you?
The doctor had already gone, but the simulated resonation of his voice was still echoing in Pavel's numbed head.
But at 0400 hours, a nurse approached him with a bundle nestled into her arms. His heart began beating erratically as he saw not a sign of life within the folds of the blankets…no chubby arms, no flailing legs. Not even the newborn shriek, a sound Chekov had always thought of as the cry of the siren, was coming toward him.
His hope was beginning to fade from him again; the abhorrent cruelty was that he was only a boy who, in the few days prior, had barely begun to carefully graze the borders of sixteen and was coping with the burdening title of father; now, as he strayed into a shock-induced stupor, he was a boy of sixteen who was expected to bury his young family – his Irina and his baby.
"Mr. Chekov," came a mild voice, and he looked up from his scuffed shoes to see the nurse with the unmoving bundle. She did not look disquieted, and Pavel took this as a good sign. "Your daughter…she's going to make it alright."
"What?" Pavel's eyes widened, and the half-ghosts of wearied sorrow for the loss were chased away from the fervent blue. "But she…she is not moving-"
"She is, only very weakly. We managed to stabilize her shortly after the delivery. The doctor, he thinks she'll make it…a few days in the infant ward and she can go home with you."
"If she must stay, then…why have you brought her to me?" He peered nervously over the softly rustling blankets.
She smiled, a sort of fatigued gesture of relief. "I thought you might like to meet your daughter, Mr. Chekov."
Mr. Chekov…Ha ha ha…what a joke! I have not even grown stubble yet, and now I am Mr. Chekov? Please, woman…you make me laugh.
But when she offered the little one to him, her arms outstretching to transfer her carefully into the young man's uncertain hands, he realized she was serious. He could feel himself trembling; unfortunately for him, it was more noticeable as he reached for the baby. What if I drop her? She's all I've got left of Irina...oy gevalt, she is tiny!
Pavel shook his head, arms retreating limply to their post at his sides. "No, no…I will drop her, I know it!"
"Nonsense. I'll be right here, promise…if you look like you can't handle it, I'll stage an intervention."
He looked up at her, a half-hearted smile unraveling over his lethargic features. "Miss, a Russian can handle anything."
She returned the grin and successfully handed the young man his little girl, who began to croon faintly as she stirred from her sleep. Pavel stared down at her, taut with that same irrational fear that he would somehow lose control of his limbs and let go of the fleece blanket. It was such a slow-moving dread, crawling through his arms and making him so very stiff. But the baby seemed unfazed by his rigidity; on the contrary, she was much too taken with the sight before her, large eyes as wide and gleaming as gray marbles, to heed her father's unease.
"Look at you," said the nurse. "You're a natural father, Mr. Chekov."
"Am I?"
"Yes, I think so. And I am nearly never wrong."
"It doesn't feel that way," he sighed, tucking his daughter closer to his chest. "But I suppose I will get used to it, da?"
The nurse said nothing while found herself stepping aside as spectator to an unfurling moment between the newly acquainted family.
The boy had become suddenly ensnared by an observation, his vivacious eyes simply glowing in the wake of such a crucial discovery. "My! Doesn't she have such large eyes for a little one as she…you would think she could not wear them with such a small body. I suppose, though, that we know where such a trait comes from," he paused, looking up at her sheepishly, then returned with unconscious ease to the baby in his gentle embrace. "And yet it fits her somehow…as if it wouldn't be right any other way. As if she would not be beautiful without them."
She dared not break the magic of such a moment, but the nurse could not help but marvel at the boy's innocence and undying sense of wonder; even in the face of death, when it had stretched out its cold, black hand from its intangible realm, stealing over that which he loved most and wrenching it from his grasp. It seemed that it was a part of him, something that couldn't be vanquished, though his countenance had taken the full force of the loss – shadows painted beneath his eyes, his young face made gaunt somehow in its unyielding languor. Almost was as if he were lost in some misplaced sense of denial, a dream-like trance which cast a haze over his cognitive mind.
The nurse had begun to swoon, caught up in the tangent of her thoughts, when she found herself again. Waking from her rumination, her unsteady vision settled on the familiar sight before her – the boy and his new daughter. She closely watched the brave, small hand, venturing out of the cocooning warmth of the blanket and stretched to take the boy's long, pale finger when he had offered it to her.
She spoke so suddenly, startling him from what seemed to be somewhat like an engaging conversation between the two. "What will you name her, Mr. Chekov?"
His large eyes drifted over her blankly, the soft blue in them beginning to shift and churn in the intermittent flares of light which caught their gray-tinged hue. "Call her…I have to give her a name…"
"Yes, it is a sort of protocol, to name children." The nurse quipped lightly.
He ignored her chiding banter for a moment before the gaze slid back into their determined, yet exhausted focus. "Sonya. Yes, Sonya is beautiful…just like her," he decided, and looked at her once more. "You know, it means wisdom in our Russia."
"A wise choice."
He did not seem to catch her joke and the woman sighed, unaccustomed to such endearing innocence and slightly melancholy as she came to an understanding...that same charming naiveté had been tarnished somehow. She could see the flitting shadows in his eyes where laughter and child-like wistfulness had been before. However would it be restored? She could never know…when the days had passed and little Sonya would be free from her miniature biobed, he would be gone forever.
"Well, it's past Sonya's bedtime," she announced, and with some difficulty, she pried the infant from the eager father's hands. Pavel looked down at the appendages, the sensation of uselessness coursing through him as the warmth from Sonya's tiny body already began to fade around its fragile edges.
The nurse looked expectantly at him. "You should get some rest too…enjoy your last three days of freedom, sir. After this, you'll be experiencing the joys of three a.m. feedings and the dread of colic."
He watched as the woman walked away with his Sonya, not exempted from the pain of separation that he now found himself prey to in light of Irina's sudden death. Sonya was all he had left of her dead mother, and without her, Pavel felt the dreadful burden of losing them both.
Because Pavel had experienced such unprecedented release with the baby in his arms…as if Irina had never left. As if she was there, sitting beside him and breathing his air. Weary from the difficult birth, but nonetheless...alive.
Irina…I promise you. I will not let her go so easily as I lost you.
The last light at the end of the hall had been flickering all night. Pavel lingered, watching until the nurse with his baby had disappeared entirely from view while the glaring light overhead wavered dangerously into dormancy.
The young man turned away, his scuffed shoes dragging lazily across the burnished floor; at last, the light was extinguished altogether and the figure was draped in folds of broken darkness.
AN: This is a short story; it's only five chapters. And just as a warning, all of the chapters are really long, so forgive me. This is a gen!fic based on the one shot I wrote called Weight of the World, so there will be no OC's or pairings or anything like that with the exception of some brief mentions of Irina in the course of the piece. This is also somewhat of a story about growing up for our darling little navigator.
Anyway, I hope you'll enjoy it. Thanks for reading!
Disclaimer - I don't own Star Trek. It belongs to Gene Roddenberry and JJ Abrams.