Chekov was torn from his body screaming. He flew across the landscape of the planet, across decrepit roads and ruined skyscrapers. He flew fast, breathless, with no weight in his body, hands or feet, with no control over where his soul was pulled.
They were visiting a world that was deserted, where there were legends that death did not exist. Yet somehow Ensign Chekov died.
In his death Chekov, a man of science, did not succumb to terror. He paid close attention to the wateriness of his hands, the way wind whistled through his body. He would remember thinking Mister Spock will find this very interesting.
Shortly after, he awoke on the ground in a cold, rocky world. The only light came from a sun that was perpetually just beneath the horizon. The sky was blotted with clouds and the land was barren and brown, punctuated now and then by small gnarled trees.
Chekov sat and shivered, remembering what had happened, and realized he was dead. With nothing else to do, he started to walk.
Eventually he came upon a gnarled tree slightly larger than the others, and in its branches nestled a gigantic bird. In the back of his mind the word Gamayun whispered, some half-remembered part of a childhood story or song. The bird had the head of a woman, and wore a red Starfleet uniform top, the sleeves cut away to accommodate wings.
The Gamayun told him to go towards Paradise, a blue dot on the horizon. He walked for what could have been hours, days or weeks, occasionally seeing the Gamayun heave herself into the air and alight on another twisted tree. He asked her if Hikaru would be in Paradise. The Gamayun replied that she didn't know who that was; each mortal's Paradise was tailored specifically to them.
His Paradise was his own. It was a cosmopolitan city full of life and language and culture. The sky was clear and full of stars and the streets were bathed in a blue light – the same calming, deep blue of his mama's winter sun lamp, the one they would sit in front of together on dark mornings. It was a blue light of contentment and love.
There was snow on the ground, hot cocoa and delicious apple sharlotka, swingsets, great libraries and planetariums. But there were also deep shadows lurking everywhere on the edge of his vision, swallowing up the pretty blue light.
Despite the snow and dark, there were plants and flowers growing and blooming everywhere, climbing up the sides of buildings and hanging down from street lights. iHikaru would love this/i, Chekov thought. But no matter where he looked or who he asked, he couldn't find the other man.
He asked the Gamayun what he was supposed to do. She said to him: You must stop thinking of those you knew in life. Life is for the living and you must leave them behind.
The Gamayun told him to capture the Sirin, another half-remembered story from childhood. When he was ready to move on, only then would he would be able to catch her. He saw glimpses of the Sirin, another great feathered bird, with the head and breasts of a beautiful woman. Chekov saw her sitting atop high walls, blue light spilling around her. He tried half-heartedly to catch her, but her face was just enough like Hikaru's that a stab of wretchedness would consume him and the Sirin would fly away.
Where was he? Chekov finally allowed himself to wonder, sitting on the steps outside the ballet, eating sharlotka. The taste was flat without Hikaru there.
Perhaps Hikaru was not dead, and was mourning somewhere without Chekov to comfort him.
The other option was that Hikaru was in his own Paradise, a Paradise that did not include Chekov, and was happy without him. When this occurred to Chekov, he cried for the first time since his death, crying for what felt like years. The shadows encroached closer upon him.
This was not Paradise at all, if he had to forget the person he loved the most. It could never be Paradise without Hikaru. The living would go on living, but what was he to do?
To never again hear Hikaru's laugh, or taste his lips. He would waste away here in his Hell, with laughing friends and ice cream cones and no lover to curl up beside him. There was everything that could possibly make him happy, but no gentle kisses on his eyelids, or the comfortable stroking of fingers on his face, no familiar weight of a lover's arm on his shoulders.
All the little things he never noticed before.
Once he accepted that he was in Hell, he fashioned a trap out of copper wiring and set it up near the Sirin's favourite perch. In short, he cheated. He refused to languish in Hell without Hikaru.
She struggled when he caught her, her claws scratching and her wings flapping. They struggled for an eternity, until he felt a deep, searing pain in his chest, and succumbed to death for a second time.
--
Chekov woke up in a glass capsule, choking on his feeding tube, his naked body emaciated.
Sulu stood over him, face bruised and lined with worry and lacerations.
"Where-" Chekov choked after Sulu removed his feeding tube.
"Shh, shh," Sulu said, pulling sticky monitor leads off Chekov's torso, gently unplugging him. "We figured out why there were no people on this planet, and what the old legends meant by 'no death'. They're all plugged into this thing, they're kept asleep by these... shadow people. They feed on their bodies."
Chekov blinked sleepily. "I was --" but his voice failed.
"They got you," Sulu said, stroking Chekov's cheek. "The Shadows. They got you, and they put you in here with the rest. They put you in Paradise."
Chekov caught Sulu's fingers in his hand. "It wasn't Paradise. It is now."