CHAPTER SIX

Jo ended up going to Jim and her father's apartment. Her father had insisted, saying she was in no state to go to her apartment and meet with Chekov. She finally agreed, and so she had slept on the couch. Jim had tried to give her his bed, but she had insisted. It was just for a night. Besides, the couch seemed perfect for her mood.

Uncomfortable, and a bit miserable.

The next day, when she woke up, her father was making her breakfast. "Scrambled?" He called from the tiny kitchen. Jo could smell the cooking bacon and smiled.

"Yes, please." She hesitated. "With cheese on top?" She added hopefully. Her father rolled his eyes and got out the grater. "Thanks, Daddy." Jo said softly. McCoy simply nodded, but Jo could see the emotion in his eyes.

As she ate, her father and Uncle Jim both tried to convince her to stay another night. "C'mon, JoJo, I know you're not okay." Jim argued. "Hell, even Bones knows you're not okay!"

'Bones' looked affronted. "I feel I would know my daughter's emotions better than you, thank ya very much! Judgin' by the fact that she is my daughter."

"Oh, please." Jim scoffed. "Since when have you been in tune with the emotions of others?"

Her father looked like he'd been slapped. When he finally spoke, it was in a low growl. "Ya think you're the only one who can tell what Spock's really feeling? Ya think that just because I snarl and don't pretty up my bedside manner, I'm insensitive? I'm a doctor, goddammit! My job is to understand people!"

Jim held up his hands in surrender. "Hey, hey, sorry, I didn't mean to offend!"

Jo sighed and stood up. The two continued arguing, the real heat of the argument gone and the banter becoming more false with every word, and they didn't even look up when Jo shouted at them from the door. "Dad, Uncle Jim, I'm goin' home!"

When Jo stepped through the door of her apartment she was relieved to find that Pavel was not there waiting for her. But as soon as she saw the look on Tara's face, that relief dissolved into worry.

"What is it?" She asked.

Tara swallowed. "So when I came home last night I was going to chew him out— you know, for abandoning you. But he was locked in his room, and he wouldn't open it up! He yelled at me in RUSSIAN, Jo! He's never done that before. And then he told me to go away, to let him cry, and I heard all sorts of crashes... Jo, I'm afraid he's hurting himself."

"Shit." Jo said in a breathy whisper, before running to Pavel's room. She knew of nothing that could make him be this way. "Pavel." She said to the locked door. "It's Jo. C'mon, let me in!"

Silence.

She huffed. "Pav, I forgive ya for not comin' to graduation."

Silence.

"Pavel... Tara's worried. I'm worried. I don't know what happened, but I can help. Please, Pav, let me in. I'm tryin' to help."

Silence. Then...

A muffled voice, choked with tears. "Go away. I can deal."

Jo hesitated. He had spoken in Russian. Pav had taught her quite a bit of Russian, but she couldn't quite get the hang of it. Still, she decided to reply in his native tongue. "Pavel, I am here. I forgive you. And I will not leave you alone."

Silence.

Then footsteps, slow and doubtful, trying to decide whether to leave her out there. Then the sound of a lock clicking as its mechanisms retreated into the bowels of the door, and it opened to reveal Pavel Andreivich Chekov.

His face was pale and streaked with tears. There were bruise-like shadows under his eyes from not sleeping all night. He looked miserable. "Your Russian ees terrible." He said in his usual thick accented English. He retreated back into his room, and Jo entered.

Joanna gasped. She couldn't help herself.

The room was trashed, everything able to be broken shattered or torn and thrown around the room. Even his pillows and sheets had been destroyed. The walls, along with the white sheets, were stained with something that looked like—

"Blood?" Jo said quietly, fear and disappointment having equal hold in her tone. "Pavel, let me see your hands."

They were swollen and obviously painful. All of his knuckles had split open, leaving open wounds that bled and probably stung like the devil. A few of his fingers were broken, their crooked and limp forms making her wince.

"Pav..."

And he snapped. "Vhy cen't you leave me alone? Can't you let me accept the fact that my fazher's dying in a month on my own?"

Jo opened her mouth and closed it, like a fish out of water. Oh. Pavel always had been close to his family. But, now that she though about it, wasn't it his father that had abused him, like Jocelyn and Clay had done to her? Why was Pav forgiving Andrei after what he'd done to the then thirteen year old?

"He came to see me." Pavel began to explain. "He told me zhat he vas proud of me, zhat I deserved to be here, zhat I vas destined to be een Star Fleet. He said zhat he loved me. End he told me zhat he vas dying. One month, he said. I von't be able to go to my father's funeral!" He punched the wall, and hissed as the blood began flowing again and a bone cracked.

Before he could punch again, Jo grabbed his hands. "Pavel, listen to me. I know it hurts. I know that you're angry and confused, and I know you're torn between accepting his apology and still hating him. But this—" she gestured to the torn apart room. "—this way of dealing with your grief, won't do anything for helpin' ya. Believe me, I know."

Pavel stared at her, unconvinced. "How could you posseebly know? Your mozher ees dying, but you hate her."

Jo shook her head. "It's not my mother I'm talkin' about. As far as I'm concerned, that bitch can die alone and painfully. She's nothing to me. I know ya know what it's like to only have one parent truly love ya— your mother, of course. But at least ya got thirteen years with her. As far as I'm concerned, I only got six years with my father as a girl. He loved me and cared for me, and then he was ripped away. I could never see him again, my mother said. I was devastated. So I went to the only other person in Georgia who gave a damn get my well-bein'."

Pavel's eyes lit for a second as he realized who she meant. "Your grandmozher."

"Grandma McCoy." Joanna agreed. "I almost never left her house. When I was seven, she told me she was dying. Can you imagine it? Knowing that when she was gone you would be abandoned for at least ten years with a woman and her bastard of a boyfriend— soon to be husband— who didn't care less if ya lived or died or began to self-harm?"

Pavel stayed quiet. He had had a way out immediately, if he'd wanted to. But he had stayed in his newly abusive home after his mother's death in the hopes that his father would begin to love him. Yes, he'd been only thirteen, but he had been gifted with a way to escape. It was his own fault for not getting out sooner.

"I destroyed so many things that year, got sent to the principal's office so many times... Eventually the school counselor had to talk to me. He told me that hurtin' things would only hurt me, and that would only hurt Grandma more. I cried myself to sleep instead, every night until she finally died. And ya know what happened after that." She sounded so bitter, even after all these years.

Pavel stayed silent. Somehow she had made him feel better by letting him know that she understood. That she wasn't going to let him self-destruct. That she CARED, without ever actually letting the words pass her lips.

"Zhank you, Jo." He said. She smiled, and said nothing. Then he paused, becoming aware for the first time of the blood pouring from his knuckles and the pain in his hand. "Cen you feex my hends now?"

She laughed, and ran to get a med kit.

It turned out that Pavel had split all of his knuckles and broken five fingers, three in his right hand, two in his left. Luckily, the dermal and bone regenerators fixed them up before the final check-ups Chekov was to perform on his station before take off.

Jo fixed him up herself, with the regenerators she had built out of pieces of broken ones herself. It was agreed not to tell Jim, McCoy, or the others about the incident. They didn't want to worry anyone. If Spock deduced it on his own, they would simply beg him not to tell the Captain or the CMO.

Pavel, of course, apologized profusely for days. "I promeesed to be at your graduation." He said. "I broke zhat promeese."

"Ya had no choice!" Jo said. "You were goin' to meet your father!"

"Eet ees no excuse." He said firmly.

Of course, Jo had forgiven him as soon as she learned that Pavel was locked in his room potentially hurting himself. But the young man took loyalty and honesty very seriously, and he hated the fact that he'd betrayed his best friend, made her sob and have to spend the night at Jim's and Bones' apartment. She told him every time he apologized that she forgave him days ago.

His last apology was the day they all were sent to the shuttles to board the Enterprise.

Jo was absolutely terrified. She hadn't had to board a shuttle since that asshole Thomas Maxwell had tried to murder her and almost succeeded. The fear was worse than her father's, which had begun to lessen over the years, as she still occasionally had the nightmares of dying inside the simulation shuttle, the realization that she would never see her father or Jim or Pavel ever again.

She hadn't entered a shuttle since her last test to make sure she could potentially fly one in a crisis. She had succeeded only because she was flying a REAL shuttle, and she didn't want to die. As soon as they'd landed safely, Jo had thrown up and burst into tears. That was two years ago.

Her father held her hand reassuringly, sensing her fear. "Daddy, do I have to?" She whispered. "Can't I just be beamed on board?"

He sighed. "Yes, Joey, you have to. I promise I won't let it hurt ya." The fact that he stated something going wrong as inevitable, not 'nothing's going to happen, Joanna Grace', made her somehow feel less fearful. Leonard McCoy would die before willingly letting a shuttle accident harm her.

She nodded and walked on board. Jo plopped into an empty seat, her father beside her, both of them breathing calmly in and out to stop from hyperventilating or throwing up.

Jim sat down in the open seat beside McCoy, a twinkle in his eye. "How's the airsickness, Bones?" He asked.

Her father narrowed his eyes. "Ya know perfectly well I'm fine until we take off, asshole. Now fuck off. I'm helpin' Jo calm down."

Jo roared with laughter as Jim spluttered something about 'rude' and 'language.' "Yeah, Dad, language! He's just teasin'."

Her father smirked. "Oh, I know. But it's fun to see him squirm when I swear at him. He's not used to being sworn at by someone who's not an angry but beautiful girl who he left behind."

He and Jo laughed again, their shuttle fears completely lost. Jim scowled and turned to strike up an impromptu conversation with Spock, who had sat down between the captain and Uhura, and who quickly began to look extremely annoyed (in a Vulcan way, of course).

"Jo?" It was Pavel, who had sat down on the other side of her while she was laughing. Tara was on the other side of him, looking bored.

She spun around and saw him. Her face slipped from laughter into exasperation. "Don't tell me you're goin' to apologize again." When she saw his serious face, she sighed. "Listen, Pavel. Ya need to stop apologizing. I've forgiven ya, it's not healthy to keep on worryin' about it! 'Sides, I would've done the same thing!"

Her father looked interested. "YOU would've missed your best friend's graduation without telling them the reason?"

Instantly, both their faces froze. She looked sideways at Chekov, as though asking for permission. Slowly, he nodded. Jo smiled reassuringly before speaking to McCoy, who had become a bit worried by this short exchange.

"Pavel didn't come to my graduation because he was forced to see his father." His father? So? McCoy thought. She noticed his look and continued. "His father was a lot like Jocelyn, only without the puppet to control."

He felt his face turn an odd blotchy color. "Your father—"

The kid nodded stiffly. "He started after my mozher died. Not as bad as Jo, but zhe day I left for ze Academy..."

"And ya went to MEET HIM?!" McCoy hissed.

The kid nodded again. "He threatened me."

"Jesus..." Bones (dammit, Jim now he thought of himself as Bones) groaned. "Did he hurt you?"

Chekov shook his head. "Nyet. He said zhat he had forgiwen me end zhat he vas dying."

McCoy dug his palms into his eyes. No wonder Jo got along so well with the damn kid (who wasn't really a kid anymore, at twenty seven), they were two peas in a pod. "God. Anything else ya want to tell me?"

He looked sheepish. "Vhen I got home I destroyed ewerything een my room end punched ze vall so many times I broke five fingers end spleet all my knuckles."

"WHAT?!" This was Jim, who obviously had been listening in. "How did I not know about this?"

Jo cleared her throat. "I had dermal and osteo regenerators in my room that I'd built from scratch. He didn't want anyone to know at that point, so I didn't take him to you or the Med Bay."

McCoy and Jim frowned in synch. "Ya built your own regenerators?" Jim said. "How—"

She shrugged. "I took bits and pieces here and there and remembered the blueprints I'd memorized. I have a photographic memory, ya know."

Bones spluttered. "Do you have them here?"

Joanna nodded, pulled the small devices out of the pockets in her jean jacket. They were small, smaller than normal, but as he examined him McCoy realized that his daughter had not only made her own versions, she'd made them faster and more efficient. Damn, he thought. Joey could've been an Engineer!

Suddenly, Jo and McCoy both realized that the shuttle was, in fact, landing. Landing? It hadn't even taken off yet! Tara noticed their confusion and laughed. "Pavel apologized again to distract you from the take-off."

His daughter spun to the young man, looking a bit betrayed. "Bastard." She said with a hint of amusement.

The cocky kid just smirked. Jo's expression changed, to one of affection.

Privately, McCoy wondered if something was going to happen between the two. They were very similar, and they knew each other better than themselves, but Chekov WAS seven years older...

"Bones!" Dammit, Jim, he was thinking. "You coming? Uncharted space is waiting!"

Bones grimaced and stood, ready to leave the shuttle and get into the Enterprise, where he would finally get to watch over his daughter when she was in danger. Where she'd never be alone again.

Hey, Author here!

So apparently people (at least two) like this story!

:O YYAAAAYYY

But yeah. Here's chapter six. Their relationship is beginning to change, and people are starting to notice. Just not Jo and Pavel themselves...:/ I made them ignorant idiots, what can I say.

Anyway, I have up to the eleventh chapter written with an estimate of 20-25 total, sooooo I still have a while to go before the end. It's pretty boring right now, and I'm sorry for the lame short chapter, but things WILL get more interesting next chapter.

I PROMISE.

(there may or may not be klingons involved sshhhh)

Trellya