"Jim. This is a mess."
There's a thrum of barely concealed anger stiffening Jim's shoulders, but he buries his fists under the table and out of range of the viewscreen, and squeezes hard enough to hurt.
His expression stays calm. "I realize that. But you-"
"You realize that we're already facing damage control based on the original landing part infecting an entire planet of aliens."
Jim shoots a dark look over at Spock, but turns back to the viewscreen. "I'm aware of the situation that brought us here."
Pike raises his eyebrows over the screen, looking almost sardonic except for the grimness in his eyes. "But you're still asking the Federation to put its weight behind you and threaten the leadership of this planet into returning your men to you."
Jim sits back, calm, with Spock on one side and Sulu on the other (where Bones should, of course, be). Confident, he shakes the anger from his shoulders and answers smoothly.
"There's one important thing you don't seem to be taking into account here, Chris."
"What's that, Jim?"
"We're talking about my officers. I'm the only Federation vessel within days of here. You're asking me to use patience and restraint enough to wait for a shipload of diplomats to get here and save my crew for me, and in case I haven't brought the point home enough...it's me."
"Captain."
He ignores Spock after just a quick glance shows him the first officer is wearing the exact same look of disapproval on his face as the admiral on the viewer.
"Look, Chris. There's a reason I'm talking to you about this and not Barnett. You're still new enough to the job that you remember how to be an officer." He leans in, serious. "If the only alternative Starfleet is giving me is 'wait for the bureaucrats to work this out', you've got to know that's not good enough."
Pike hesitates long enough that Jim knows his point is made. "Tell me something, Jim. Is there an alternative you can offer me that isn't 'threaten them with interplanetary war until they give me what I want'?"
Jim's little bubble of confidence sags a bit.
"You're too smart for this, Jim. Drop the ultimatums and run through the details one more time."
Jim waves his hand towards Spock. He doesn't have the patience for details right now - he can't seem to shut off the voice in his head reminding him that he abandoned his best friend on a strange planet.
Spock takes up the narrative without hesitating. "One week into their two week assignment, the landing party consisting of Doctor McCoy, Ensign Chekov and Lieutenant Desmarais failed to complete their scheduled check-in at twenty-hundred standard hours. The Enterprise cut short its secondary assignment and returned to the Maalox planet approximately ten hours after the missed check-in. We were informed by the Speaker of the Empress, the main diplomatic contact for the Maalox, that the landing party has committed an unnamed offense and has been taken into custody. The Maalox refuse to release them to our custody and have even made the demand that we supply them a replacement doctor to continue the research that has been interrupted."
Jim finds himself glaring at the table, remembering that first tense comm call with the Speaker even as Spock recounts the details.
"Our attempts to uncover more details regarding the location and condition of our landing party or the offense they have been accused of have proven futile. Our knowledge of the culture is too limited to make an educated guess, and the lack of cooperation from the Speaker has been counterproductive at best."
A hand on Jim's arm managed to pry Jim's glare from the table, and he glances over to find Hikaru regarding him.
Hikaru's a good friend, a strong officer. Jim is used to having Spock and Bones at either side during strategy sessions, but Hikaru is solid enough that even if Jim feels Bones' absence acutely he doesn't feel crippled by it.
Hikaru simply looks at him for a moment, eyes serious, mouth set. Intent, though, enough to remind Jim to get into the game and stop letting his anger and an endless cloud of unknowns hold him back.
"The planet is not a part of the Federation,/i" Pike is saying as Jim tunes back in. "iAny actions taken by us will be seen as on behalf of the Federation. It will be seen as an act of war."
Jim clears his throat, drawing all eyes back to him. "I get it: force is ineffective in this situation. They're not scared of my ship if I go at them alone, and if the whole Federation gets behind me it looks like we're kicking this planet when they're already down. Which you won't risk, because it's a bunch of idiots in Starfleet that brought them down in the first place.
Spock nods. "We have no idea where they are holding our crewmen, and however the Maalox are blocking our signals they aren't doing it unintentionally. If you were to threaten them they would likely call your bluff, and our cause would not be improved. As long as our aim is to recover our missing three crewmen unharmed, there is no use in force."
Bland and emotionless as always, but Jim knows better. He can hear the clipped quality in Spock's words that means his emotions are closer to the surface than he'd like.
One consequence to Spock and Bones being Jim's right hand men - they have gotten to know each other better than they otherwise would have. Spock considers few people to be friends. He feels the loss of any one of them.
There's a lot about his first officer that is still enigma to Jim, but he knows that much.
"Okay, Jim. I appreciate your coming to me instead of Barnett, but in this case the officer in me agrees with the admiral." Pike surveys Jim and Spock and Sulu in turn in short, intent bursts. "Your men haven't been kidnapped by hostiles. They're being held by a government who if not allied to the Federation are at least not enemies. We'll bargain for their return. In that you've got the whole of Starfleet behind you."
Wait for the bureaucrats. That's the final answer, then.
Jim draws in a breath but doesn't react aside from that. He frowns solemnly as Pike goes on.
"We're coming, Jim. Admiral Barnett is the one pitching a fit about treating the Maalox with kid gloves, I'll drag his ass there myself if I have to, get the whole party of Fleet diplomats up there. We're coming, so hang tight and don't do anything stupid."
Jim nods tersely. "Understood, Admiral. We'll wait for your arrival."
Pike reaches out as if to press the control to sever the connection, but hesitates. He sends his old familiar no-bullshit look Jim's way and lowers his voice a little.
"I know you, kid. You're not waiting for anything. Whatever you do, just be subtle. If you can't even find them, you sure as hell can't recover them. Don't burn any bridges, that's all I'm asking."
Jim's frown eases and he nods. "I'll do my best, Chris." He owes Pike that much, at least. And if it was anyone but Bones down there, he'd try to offer even more.
Pike flashes a quick, thin smile, like he's reading Jim's mind through subspace, and then he reaches out again and the screen goes blank.
Jim draws in a breath and turns to Hikaru and Spock. "Okay, you heard him. We've got until a ship full of bureaucrats get here to try to resolve this ourselves. Spock, get with Scotty, get a team together, and find out what the hell these primitive shits are using to fool our computers. Sulu, get with Uhura and go through every report they sent up, every check-in, every data packet Bones sent to his lab here. We need any indicator about where they were, any comments about landmarks, any background noises. Tear everything apart."
Spock is already rising from his chair as Jim finishes. Hikaru hesitates a few moments longer, long enough for Jim to meet his eyes again.
Hikaru gives him a quick, appreciative nod, and there's gratitude in his eyes as he pushes away from the table and follows Spock out of the meeting room.
Jim can't help but think, as he takes a few moments in the silence to work out alternate plans to put others to work on, that maybe he ought to bring Hikaru into these sessions more often. For some reason he's good for Jim's focus.
For some reason, he's a pretty damned comfortingly presence.
"So? What'll it be?"
Len ignores the brightness in Christine's voice. He knows her too well, has worked with her for too long. A good doctor always knows his nurse's Game Face, and that's what she's wearing right now.
She isn't gonna grimace and fret and talk to him like he's about to get wheeled into his own funeral. She's a pro.
Besides, she stands as good a chance as M'Benga to get the CMO job if it should happen to come available. It's not all dark days for her, is it?
Which, okay, isn't fair. But fuck it. He doesn't want to be fair right now.
"Leonard. We're wasting daylight here."
He rolls his eyes but draws his focus back to her and her two hypos. "We're in orbit over a planet, we can follow the daylight for the next fucking century if we have to."
"That's no excuse to take centuries making a pathetically easy decision, you grouch." She holds out the hypos.
It's probably an easier decision than he's making it out to be, but it's not as simple as she suggests.
Local anesthetic or a coma in a can. Those are his two choices. He can lay there limp and snoring while his life's decided for him, or he can stay awake from the shoulders in and listen to every terse word, every breath, every whisper of clothes at every movement. Lay there and hear it all as they work to build his trashed hands back up from the ulnar nerves down.
He doesn't know which drug is in which hypo, but his eyes move back and forth between the two as if he can somehow tell.
"Take 'em both, Doc. Sometimes a little oblivion can be a good thing."
Len blinks at the new, familiar voice, and looks past Christine at the doorway.
Surprise makes him sit up a little straighter. "Admiral?"
Sure enough, Chris Pike looks exactly the same as first time Len ever saw him at the academy, giving a lecture about the Prime Directive that Len had mostly ignored (he wasn't command and never will be, but the classes were required). The lectures were ignorable but the visiting lecturer wasn't.
Even now, rolling himself in in his wheelchair, gray spread thicker through his hair and eyes squinting more at the corners when he flashes that smirk of his, he still looks like the same guy.
Pike always did command from the eyes. Something like spinal injury and a permanent seat in a wheelchair won't ever diminish that.
Len wants to return that familiar smirk but even then it's hard. "What are you doing here, sir?"
Pike grins and waves Christine and her hypos away from the bed, pushing in to her place. "Drop the 'sir' crap, McCoy. I'm taking a break."
"A break?" Len stares at him. "You figure jaunting to this godforsaken corner of the universe is a nice vacation from earth?"
Pike smirks, sitting back and surveying Len with a critical air. "A break from the diplomatic shitstorm I volunteered to be part of."
Diplomatic...
"Jesus." It hits Len for the first time that he hasn't spared a single thought to what's happening on the fucking planet the ship's doing endless lazy circles around.
The Empress is dead. The Maalox can't possibly have found a way to get away with their treatment of Len and Pavel. The Federation's come in to play politics.
It should piss him off. Diplomacy means that the odds they're going to level the entire planet are slim, and Len would have enjoyed a good light show.
But he puffs out a surprised burst of air and sits back against the wall and shakes his head. Anger doesn't come.
Not right now, anyway.
"Oh, it's fun," Chris agrees. "And Jim's favorite new hobby of transmitting daily reports about the recovery of his two wounded officers is sure as hell smoothing things over for us, let me tell you." Chris regards Len, the smirk fading into something a little more serious. "Also means I couldn't help hearing about this operation of yours today."
Yeah, that's why he can't get angry. He's too full of other emotions, anger won't fit. Len can't help but look down at his hands, shivering in their bandages.
Christine is still in the doorway - she's got drugs to administer, one kind or the other, and even an admiral wanting to chat up an old pal isn't going to stop her - and beyond her is a surgical table somewhere, sterile and empty and just waiting for him.
"I hope you don't think I'm being condescending when I say I've got a good idea about how you're feeling right now."
Len looks back at Chris. At the wheelchair, the source and cause of Chris's loss of his ship. He gained a promotion, yeah, but guys like Chris Pike or Jim Kirk would never see earthbound desk duty as a move upward, no matter how much better the rank.
Ironic, maybe. Len's the one who couldn't save Chris's legs. Len's no martyr about his job - it was Nero who ruined Chris's body. Len did his job and did it well, repaired some damage other doctors wouldn't have been able to repair. He just didn't manage to perform a miracle when it was needed.
Still, he can't help but wonder if something about this is a little bit gratifying for Chris.
He nods, silent, since petty thoughts like those aren't worth voicing. "Yeah, I guess you do."
Chris smiles tightly. "Here's the part where I'm supposed to provide platitudes about how no matter what it won't be the end of your life, even if it feels like it will. I'm gonna skip that, if it's all the same to you."
"Appreciated."
"Here's what I will tell you." Chris leans in, lowering his voice. "You're a doctor, Len. Not because that's the assignment you got or the job you took, but because that's what you are. And I don't care if they end up chopping your hands off at the wrists, you're too fucking stubborn to ever be anything but a doctor." He glances down at himself and grins, wry but sincere. "I found a way to keep myself in the game. It's not a captaincy, it's not a starship, but those are details. I'm still doing what I love, and I'm still damned good at it. I don't expect anything less from you."
Len's eyes drop to his shivering hands again, and he knows the words aren't empty platitudes but it's hard to make himself feel anything like hope.
"So you want my advice?" Chris speaks lightly again, voice back to normal volume. "Take both hypos and sleep right through this, because it's not nearly as important as you think it's going to be. It's just one more step you've got to take."
Len smiles, small and tight. "Maybe you're right."
"Admiral Pike."
The tightness slips from Len's smile and he turns his head instantly, seeking out Pavel as he comes in around Christine.
"I didn't know you would be here, sir," Pavel says to Pike, but his eyes find Len and stay there, warm and green. "Hikaru insisted on a couple of runs through the simulators or I would have been here when you woke up. Is it almost time?"
"Apparently." Len nods back towards Christine. "The vultures are circling."
She rolls her eyes at him.
Pavel smiles. He reaches out, lays his fingers feather-light over Len's arm. His eyes go to Pike.
Pike flashes that old familiar smirk, but there's something strained in it. "Ensign wunderkind."
For a moment Len sees Pavel as Pike must see him. He's still unnaturally thin - apparently no one's found a good way to make him eat regular meals yet - and thanks to that thinness there's no way to mask the patches of dark shadows under his eyes. Not sleeping well, either.
Len's fault. The kid spends so much time talking him to sleep and fending off visitors and ignoring nurses that he can't get in a solid eight-hours.
But Len doesn't feel guilty about it. He only needs Pavel around just as much as Pavel needs to be around. The not sleeping and not eating would be worse otherwise. He knows it, and it seems Sulu and Jim and the rest of the clucking crew around them have figured it out too.
Anyway, seeing him just for the too-sharp cheekbones and shadowed eyes is missing the bigger picture. Pavel isn't bent under shadows, he's the same hopeful genius he's always been.
He's practically glowing as he smiles at Pike. It's his innocent, wide-eyed sewenteen smile, the one he puts on to play the role of the Enterprise infant. Len's learned by now that there's usually not much innocence behind those eyes.
"If you have time while on board, admiral, perhaps we could play a game of chess."
Pike scowls at the kid. "Smart ass."
Pavel blinks innocently.
Len laughs: even Spock doesn't readily volunteer to play Pavel at chess. Pavel told him a couple of stories about chess games with Pike - back in Russia when Pike came down as part of the team looking to recruit him from the Conservatory, and then on earth after the Narada mission during the strange vacuum of time before the ship was refit and Pike was an admiral.
Chris Pike can recover from the loss of his legs and his ship, but apparently getting his king in check puts the man in a high fury.
"It seems silly, perhaps, in hindsight," Pavel said one endless night in their cell, filling the suffocating silence as he did so often, "but it's one reason I chose Starfleet over the iVoskhod/i research program or any of the grant projects I was looking at. The fact that this smiling American captain lost so passionately to a child like me and returned the next day to lose again, thinking he had figured out a flaw in my game. Russians are bad losers - we enjoy our suffering too much. I liked the way this American officer lost."
Len grins over at Chris, wondering if he knows the inspirational role he played in Pavel's career path.
Before he can say anything, Christine pushes away from the doorway and breaks her patient silence. "Leonard. We're going to get behind schedule."
Pavel doesn't miss a beat, his hand tightening gently on Len's arm. "If Doctor M'Benga is anything like Len, he won't abide being off-schedule. We'd better go."
Len's smile vanishes. He watches Christine, the two hypos she still holds. He can feel his hands shivering against the sheets pooled in his lap. He can feel the twitch of muscle against Pavel's hand.
He can't do this. Not yet. Another couple of days in limbo, that's what he needs.
"Len?"
He swallows against a tightening throat.
Pavel smiles at him, soft and easy. "We'd better go," he says again, his eyes steady and familiar.
Len hesitates. "You're coming in?"
That easy smile stays on Pavel's face, but there's a catch in his voice that's barely noticeable. "Unless they are prepared to fall much further behind schedule than we already are."
Len can't help a smile at that, and the nerves making him nauseated seem to ease into a warmer twist. Yeah, he can't help but think. Pavel will fight if they tried to keep him away. Pavel will always fight.
He doesn't say anything, but Pavel nods his agreement nonetheless. "Besides, I was thinking about another old fairy tale my grandmother used to tell me, and I want you to hear it. I need you a captive audience for it so you can't mock me too much."
Len's eyebrow arches up. "Yeah? I can still decide to be comatose through the whole thing."
Pavel shrugs. "I will tell you the story either way."
"Of course." Len chuckles. He looks over as Christine's impatience brings her up alongside Pavel. He flashes her a quick smile. "Better give me the local. If I sleep during the kid's story he'll just tell it all over again later."
Christine returns the smile, but it's strangely small and formal. She slips past Pavel long enough to administer the hypo, a careful shot in each arm.
Len knows her too well. He knows that the smile isn't a happy one. He knows when she shoots Pike a look over his body as she's giving him the second shot it's not a friendly look. It's knowing, and it's serious.
It's a 'see, told you' look. Christine's given him that same look before, when some diagnosis she gave is confirmed, when something he was still up in the air about comes down on her side.
Except now the look's directed at Pike, who returns it with something less solemn but just as intent.
It's gonna start pissing Len off pretty soon, all this whispering and sternness and disapproval. It's the same thing that's got Jim staring at Len like he's a stranger, and it's more than a little annoying.
They don't fucking know. That's what it all boils down to. Starfleet gives its officers entire manuals on how to properly recover from beatings and imprisonment. A couple of people don't recover in some by-the-book, neat way, and everyone thinks they can fucking judge them for it.
Pavel takes his arm as he sinks back to lay down and let the drugs kick in. Len looks over, wondering if the kid sees those looks. If they bother him at all.
But Pavel doesn't appear to see anything at all but Len. He smiles without shadows, leaning in to straighten the sheets around him.
Pike leaves first, and Len hears him saying something but he doesn't catch the words. Something loud and cheerful sounding, some last good luck or something. Christine and another nurse bustle around his bed for a few minutes as his arms slowly start to go numb, fingers first until the heavy, foreign feeling is threading up his elbows.
They roll him out of the room and down the wide corridor to an operating theatre.
Maybe it's the drugs making everything seem distant - even locals can get into the bloodstream and muddy up the mind.
Whatever it is, he blinks and he's suddenly in the middle of a spotlight, a ridiculous thin little curtain positioned across his chest as his dead arms are moved into positions and the bass of M'Benga's voice rumbles underneath it all.
Pavel sits beside his bed, leaning in with cheerful eyes, and the rest of the world is a distant muddle but he is sharp and clear. His voice is clear. The words...they seem to slip into Len's head and right out again, but it's the best kind of music.
He finds himself smiling absently, listening to the music of those unintelligible words.
"You might laugh when you hear this, Len – or probably just assume it's a lie – but I never have regarded myself as being particularly ambitious."
Len doesn't laugh. Len barely holds his eyes open as he lays there, breathing with loud, painful liquid sounds.
Pavel clears his throat and tries not to focus too much. He has taken to running his fingers through Len's hair, almost like a parent stroking a sick child's forehead. The touch seems to be some kind of comfort for Len, and his head is one of the few places it still seems safe to touch.
The Maalox aren't letting him sleep. They aren't giving him time to recover. They have taken him out five different times now, and Pavel has almost managed to find a routine in it. When Len's gone he sits or strands or lays, jogs in place now and then before he gets too dizzy and has to sit again.
When Len's here he sits with him, makes sure he eats. And he talks.
He has no idea what else he should be doing.
"Anyway," he says, watching Len's chest moving up and down unevenly. "You said once that I seek validation, that people like me always do. But I don't. You didn't believe me when I argued it, but I really am being honest with you. I don't care if my name ends up in history books. I don't care that by now the Observatory may have let in someone even younger than me, and that someday a fifteen or sixteen year old who is smarter and stronger will replace me as the youngest officer ever in Starfleet. Those things will happen or they won't – my life doesn't change at all from day to day because of it."
His eyes catch the dark green of limp vegetables. Of course, he's got to make sure Len eats. Sleep deprivation and physical trauma are already enough to deal with without adding malnutrition.
He reaches for today's offering of soggy greenery and sets the platter on Len's stomach. He reaches for Len's arm and brings his hand to the edge of the plate.
Len's eyes shift a little bit, but he makes no move to take hold of the platter or grasp for the food.
Pavel frowns. It may be that Len just isn't hungry – Pavel doesn't seem to be at all lately, and though it's impossible to tell the passage of time in this room with no windows, it seems like it's been many more days than anyone should go without eating.
Still. He watches Len's face, trying to decide if he's even aware enough to recognize the food.
And he talks through it all, needing to fill the silence.
"There is an old fairy tale my grandmother would tell me," he says, stroking Len's hair slowly and soothingly. "She would tell me dozens of them, of course; 'fairy' tale is a misleading nomenclature, since none of the stories I was ever told contained actual fairies. But Russians do enjoy their fables."
He shuts his eyes for a moment, trying to picture his old bedroom, the creak of the bed as his grandmama sat beside him in the dark to talk him to sleep.
"One in particular had quite an impact on me as a child, and it still directs my actions more than any sort of ambition does." He hesitates, eying the plate. "Can you eat a little bit?"
Len stirs at the question. He doesn't answer, doesn't even really move except to look more towards Pavel, but it's enough to let Pavel know that he's listening.
Pavel has no idea how to properly care for someone who has been hurt so badly, for so prolonged a time. If there are procedures in place for tending to a wounded fellow prisoner, he doesn't know them. He has to trust his instincts, limited as they are in this situation.
His instincts say that Len needs to eat, and that he is probably too tired and in too much pain to make the attempt.
Pavel keeps talking, though in the back of his mind he's going through his options.
"This one story," he says, regarding the platter of food as it rises and falls with Len's breaths, "was about a man who married a beautiful woman. Of course the king of his land wanted this woman for his own. The king would issue commands to the husband, sending him on absurd adventures for impossible things so that the wife would be on her own and the king could pursue her."
He reaches for the platter and pinches a leaf in his fingers. His stomach gives a dry gurgling sound, but his eyes stay on Len. He brings the food to Len's mouth.
After a few seconds Len's lips part and he accepts the offering, chewing slowly.
Pavel smiles to himself. "The king makes up a few of these absurd missions to send the man on, but the man succeeds in each one of them. He brings the king everything he asks for and then goes home to his faithful wife. The king plots for a while on a way to outsmart the man, and finally comes up with the answer."
He reaches for another leaf as soon as Len's throat works to swallow the first one.
"The king summons the man and says simply, 'You are to go I know not whither, and fetch I know not what.' The man is, naturally, confused. But trust me, it doesn't pay for a man to question his king, especially in a fairy tale. So the man goes home to his wife, despondent, and gets ready for the trip. He has brought the king exotic treasures, fierce animals, rare fruits, but this is something different. There is no way to complete this task, and of course no way to complete it quickly. So he leaves his home and his wife and sets out on a long, fruitless journey to satisfy the whim of the king."
He falls silent while Len finishes the second offering of food, swallowing with a pained gasp of air. He pulls another small leaf from the platter silently.
"So what happens?" Len asks, his voice little more than a rasp of sound.
"Well." Pavel shrugs. "It's a fairy tale: the man's wife turns out to be a bird, she sends two genies to help him, and eventually he just convinces the local citizens to overthrow the cossack. It's Russian - our stories tend to run on predictable courses."
Len snorts faintly and accepts another leaf.
"But it isn't the ending that stuck with me as a child, it was the premise of the story. This is a good, strong man living an honorable life, and what undoes him – or would have undone him if not for his magical bird wife – is that he is set out to achieve a goal that wasn't defined. He did brave, wonderful things when he set out knowing what he sought. When he simply set out without a destination in mind, he drifted."
Len reaches up and nudges Pavel's arm away when he tries to offer another leaf. He shuts his eyes, breathing in soft, rattling breaths. "So that's how a kid turns into an ambitious child genius."
Pavel smiles. He sets the rejected leaf back on the plate and lets his hand rest on Len's arm. He's still no better at the protocol of dealing with injured superior officers, or injured recipients of youthful crushes, but if he can't feed Len than he has to offer him some other sort of help, and his options are fairly limited.
Besides, it feels right.
"Perhaps it made me ambitious, but I'm fairly certain that I was born a genius." He grins, tight, at Len's soft snort. "I told myself to always have a destination in mind. To always know what it is I'm searching for. Whether or not I can reach whatever goals I seek, that's up to fate. But setting out or wandering aimlessly with no goal in mind? That fault would lay entirely with me."
"So. Starfleet?"
"The stars." Pavel sits back and looks across at the far wall, letting his mind drift back. "I wanted the stars. The Conservatory and the Academy, the lessons I mastered and the awards won for doing so much so young, those were footnotes. They were unlooked-for victories. They were never my goal, and so I think they hardly matter. Starfleet was simply the path I took. Being young and intelligent simply helped me make the trip faster."
"And look where it's led you. Lucky guy." Len speaks more quietly with each word, his breath starting to smooth out a bit.
Pavel tries to laugh, but air comes out without sound. "My goal in coming down to this planet was much less grand than 'the stars', actually."
"Mmm?"
No doubt it's absurd to say anything, but Pavel is nothing if not unfailingly honest. "Hikaru says that I'm in love with you."
Len's eyes open, unfocused but trying to look up at him.
Pavel doesn't look away. He smiles. "I argue with him, but it's possible that particular argument lacks heat. Anyway, whatever it is that brought me here, it doesn't matter anymore. We have new goals now. We must survive this and return to the ship, that must be our goal."
Len's head drops to the side, his cheek resting on Pavel's thigh. He lets out a shaky breath. "Then what?"
Pavel smooths his hair and smiles to himself. "Then I suppose we just have to get over it. Find the next goal."
Len's mouth thins, but he doesn't answer. He leans into Pavel's touch. It seems to put him at ease when Pavel speaks, so without much thought towards what he's saying, he goes on with the next Russian fable he can remember.
