"Leo."

Bones looked up in annoyance. "What? I'm trying to get this report done, even though no one else cares about its due date, Jim included." He slammed his tablet down onto the desk. "Can't anyone on this ship adhere to protocol? I get there's a time and a place for rule-breaking, but not when it comes to filing and recording." He huffed and leaned back in his chair moodily.

Dr. Greenberg frowned and leaned against Dr. McCoy's door frame. Her bright red lips looked like a slice across her face as she pursed her lips. "Easy, chief."

"Not you," he snapped. "I know your report's already done." He ran a hand through his hair. "Sorry. Did you need something?"

"No, just thought I'd check in." Cat strolled in and perched on the edge of the older doctor's desk. "You've been more of a bear than usual lately. And not in the I'm so tough so you better listen to me sort of way. What's going on?"

McCoy regarded his partner with interest. When did she start dressing all fancy again? How did I not notice her snap out of her depression? He'd noticed her signature red lipstick, but suddenly her non-regulation high heels, intricate hair braid, and bright red nails caught his attention. "What's going on?" he repeated. "Oh, nothing. You know. The usual."

"You might be able to fool your friends, but I'm a doctor. I think you're having a really hard time with your grief, Leo."

Bones' eyebrows shot upward. "My grief?"

"Yes." Cat absent-mindedly rolled and unrolled the hem of her uniform jacket. "Seems like I found myself just as you got lost." She clapped Leo on the shoulder. "You don't have to trudge through alone. If anyone on this ship does, I know exactly how you feel."

Sighing, the doctor folded his hands and leaned upon his knees, his head hanging low. "No, Dr. Greenberg, you don't. You're all just kids. None of you should be dying." The face of his daughter, only a few years younger than the Chekov twins, filled his mind. "Joanna, my girl? She graduated the Academy – medical. She's on a starship right now. She's a nurse. Some stupid thing could happen to her. Explosion, ship malfunction, virus." He looked up at Cat, thankful to be staving off the waterworks. "Hell, you're not much older than them."

"I'm thirty. Anya Chekova is twenty-seven. We're not kids, Leo."

"You're still a kid," McCoy growled. "Half the time it feels like you're all my kids. My responsibility. I'm proud when you figure things out and disappointed when you shoot yourself in the foot. Metaphorically or literally," he added.

Cat chuckled. Bones didn't.

He continued, very uncertain of where these words were coming from. He'd ignored the feelings. He'd pushed the fear and sorrow deep down. He was a doctor, damn it, not a grieving parent. So why did he feel like it? "Anya Chekova is smart and every bit as fun to be around as her brother. When her vitals crashed in here last week – I thought another kid was going to die without me being able to do anything about it. I thought I'd have to take another trip with Jim back to Russia. You've delivered news of the fatalities – you know it's the family's expressions that stick in your mind. Not the crew member's body. It's those left behind. Why am I even here if I can't save these kids?" His fist crashed down onto the top of the desk, rattling his monitors.

Cat didn't jump. She simply shifted her weight and got more comfortable on her spot on the desktop. "Remember Mr. Scott's third-degree burn after that reactor accident?"

McCoy's lip curled and he shook his head at her in disinterest. "Yeah, so?"

"You saved him. Remember Pavel's concussion during that gravity system failure?" Cat held out her hand and began to count on her fingers. "Or every time Captain Kirk came back with severe lacerations. There was Lieutenant Uhura's ebola, Mr. Sulu's tonsillitis that turned into a brain infection-"

"Yes, so?" Bones interrupted.

"We save people – you save people every day. This crew would be a lot worse off without you." She tilted her head slightly. "Pavel -my Pavel died. He was going to die there. That's just what was going to happen. If you had been with him, you couldn't have saved him. If I was there, I couldn't have done anything. You have to let it go. You know that there's no suit, no armor, no technology that could have saved him from the heat of that blast. He didn't suffer. He probably didn't even know what was happening. You heard his last transmissions. He was so happy to have disarmed the bomb and to have saved all those people." She carefully wiped a tear from her eye. "I was going to marry that man, but even I let it go."

"How can you be okay? It isn't natural. You can't just forget him. I can't just let him go."

"No, no, no, not him," Cat corrected softly. "Keep him. You keep Pavel. Remember him and talk about him and laugh when you think of the stupid stuff he did. Keep Pavel. Let his death go."


"Captain, to risk so many lives to avenge Mr. Chekov's death is illogical." Spock spoke passionately. "What proof do you have that the device was placed on that planet by the Klingons?"

"You heard Scotty. It was a Klingon device. Chekov even confirmed it as he disarmed it. It was a Klingon device! Klingons don't play nice. Who would they give that type of technology to? It was the Klingons." Jim's voice had swollen to a shout. He glanced over his shoulder to make sure no one was listening in. He'd been teaching Spock card games in a common area, starting with Blackjack.

"While that's likely, it is unwise to-"

"It was unwise of them to kill my navigator," Jim barked. "I've reached out to a few other captains. They say there's a Klingon outpost on a planet not far from here. There's a band of loners – they're not affiliated with Klingon itself, but they're likely the perpetrators." He shuffled the cards ferociously. "They're going to get what's coming to them."

"We cannot fire on a Klingon outpost! That would be an act of war." Spock tapped the table.

Jim flipped over a card.

"This game is hardly fun at all," Spock commented. "Calculating the likelihood of the next card is too easy."

"Cheater," Jim muttered.

"I would advise you to reconsider this vendetta, Captain," Spock continued. "If we did find those Klingons to be the ones who intended to blow up that planet, they would likely have technology capable of obliterating the entire Enterprise and its crew."

Jim frowned. "It won't hurt to send an away team to the planet, just to check things out."

"Under what ruse?"

"What?"

Spock sighed and looked up from the cards. "You don't intend to tell the crew that we're hunting down a rogue band of Klingons in order to avenge Mr. Chekov's death, do you?"

Jim shrugged. "It's not like we'd get any blowback. We need to. We need to."

Spock sighed and tapped the table again, his cards now totaling twenty-one. "I won't tell you the likelihood of failure and complete decimation."

Captain Kirk grinned in spite of Spock's negativity. "Thanks, Spock. Always a team player."


2:49 A.M..

That night, Jim woke up at 2:49 from a slight variation of the usual nightmare. This time he had Pavel's singed, brutally burned body in his arms, but when he beamed back to the Enterprise, Pavel had disappeared. As much as he screamed and pleaded to be beamed back, no one would listen. They went on with their duties, ignoring him completely.

He sighed, stretched, and wondered if Anya was awake. The notion already made the late hour seem a little better. With his chess set under his arm and slippers on his feet, Captain Kirk left his cabin for the nearby break room. When he turned the corner and found the room empty, Jim's face fell. She's been sick. She needs her sleep. He set the game on the table and turned to make a pot of coffee.

After his first cup, Jim leaned back in the uncomfortable chairs and stretched his back. He wondered how long he'd have the nightmare. How many hours of sleep would he lose? How many cups of coffee would he drink alone at this ungodly hour? "I should see Bones," he grumbled out loud as he rubbed his eyes.

"What for?"

Jim jumped. "Anya."

There she was. The navigator was clad in her standard Starfleet sweats and a pair of bright furry slippers. Her curly hair was piled and pinned on top of her head. The woman never wore much makeup, but even completely without, she seemed to glow. "Keptain," she greeted him, sitting at the table as if she was joining a friend during lunch. "I'm not sure eef I should say I'm sorry or happy to see you here."

"Same," Jim replied.

"Enough time to drink a cup of coffee but not enough time to set up ze board?" she joked. "Eet's not like you had anything else to do!"

Like Pavel, Anya's accent got exponentially thicker when she wasn't thinking about it. In the middle of the night, when she was drinking, or when she was angry or excited, her accent became nearly impossible to understand. Words danced and lilted their way into sentences and phrases. An occasional Russian expression would pop in between English sentences, completely unbeknownst to the speaker. The trend hadn't escaped Jim's notice. He'd come to love her accent. It was cheerful. It disappointed him when she carefully tried, not matter how unsuccessfully, to conceal her accent on the bridge. There were enough people who sounded the same. Her vastly different way of speaking was part of what made him adore her.

Anya poured herself a cup of coffee and added in cream and sugar. "I used to dreenk eet black, but ze Americans haff ruined me!" She stirred and licked the spoon. "Perheps I'd be able to sleep eef I didn't haff zis." Sitting back down at the table, she shrugged. "But zen I couldn't wipe ze board with you."

"That's a lot of smack talk from someone who missed the last week's worth of Chess Club," Jim mock-scolded her.

"Ze space wirus was just a ploy so I could rest up and come back with renewed wigor." Anya spun the chess board so the brown pieces faced her. "You haff been here ewery night?"

"Every other," Jim confessed. "It was just like the good old days – nightmares and then the blaring silence until work." He shook his head. "Nightmares still come, but at least with you I can forget." He froze, his body stiff and expression horrified. "Not forget Pavel," he corrected himself, a hint of fright in his voice. "That's not what I meant. Not forget him. Forget the nightmares."

"I know exactly what you mean," Anya replied, nonplussed as she made her first move. A knight galloped out in front of the other pieces.

Jim moved a pawn and cleared his throat. "Listen. I don't usually do this, but I want to know how you feel about something."

"What do you mean you don't usually do zat? You ask how I feel about lots of theengs." Anya moved a pawn.

Jim's bishop slid out to the edge of the board. "Not a personal thing. A mission thing."

Anya moved another pawn. "Okay. My nawigation skeels are at your command, Keptain." She looked up when Jim didn't reach out to move a piece. His serious expression startled her. "Keptain? Zis seems heavy for three A.M. chess club."

He leaned forward slightly. "I want to go after the assholes who murdered Chekov."