Author's Note:

Greetings everyone. I'm back with a fairly heavy chapter for you. Thank you for your support of this story and I must admit it's been harder to write than my other stories but challenge is good. I hope you enjoy this chapter.

As always I own nothing.

Speech through the Door

The rest of the day passed by and worry permeated the entire apartment.

After she had unpacked Winona had begun to make breakfast despite Nyota's protests. It was still early in the day and the younger woman had looked so tired Winona felt that Nyota needed a break; it was obvious she had been the one looking after everyone else the last few days. Scotty woke up as soon as he smelt food and joined them at the table when it was ready but Nyota couldn't convince Pavel to come and eat as well. The meal largely went by in silence except for Scotty asking how Winona got back to Earth so quickly.

Afterwards Scotty made to leave saying, "I should get back tae the Enterprise, there's still a lot of repairs that need done."

Nyota quickly tried to stop him, "No Scotty, you've been working on her the last three days and nights with hardly any breaks. You need to rest more."

"But I'm fine now."

"Scotty you collapsed as soon as you got here early this morning. You haven't slept in three days!"

"There's so much that needs doing, I haven't got time tae sleep!" Scotty was starting to sound angry.

Nyota's voice started to rise, "If you keep on like this you're going to make yourself ill! The engineers can handle it without you for a day or two!"

"I have tae be there!" Scotty was almost shouting now, "What if they do something wrong? I'm no leaving the ship alone for too long again!"

Nyota was about to reply when Winona cut in, "Enough you two!"

They both looked at her and she continued, "Look at you both fighting. How is this helping anything?" She looked at Scotty, "Montgomery, she has a point. If you don't rest properly then you'll end up ill and then you'll be no use to anyone." Scotty looked a bit shame-faced and Winona turned to Nyota, "But you should also be resting. It's obvious that you haven't been sleeping properly either and if you end up ill who'll look after Pavel?" Nyota looked down at the table top as Winona finished, "You both have obviously not been looking after yourselves as well as you should have so I expect you to start from today. That way you'll both ready for when Jim wakes up. How do you think he would feel if he woke just to find out that his friends had been fighting with each other because they weren't sleeping properly?"

Seeing that they both were getting her point Winona said one last thing, "Now I think we should all get some sleep. I know I'm tired having been up all night and so are you two. The breakfast dishes can be sorted later lets just go and sleep."

She received muted nods from both of them and she got up from the table and headed for her son's room. She briefly paused at Pavel's door again but decided that in her present tired state it would not be best to speak to him just yet and headed for bed.

Pavel had heard what had happened and felt even worse.

Not only were Scotty and Nyota fighting but Winona was here as well. Jim's mother was here! There was no way he could face her when his failure was the reason for Jim being in a coma, he wouldn't be able to even look at his Papa's mother now. When he heard her stop outside his door he desperately hoped that she wouldn't knock or worse come in but she thankfully moved on into Jim's room.

The apartment went quiet except for the distant snores of Scotty and remained that way well into the afternoon as Pavel just lay on his bed and stared at the ceiling. He lost himself in his thoughts until he heard movement from the next door room and looked at his clock to see that it was almost 3pm. Slowly people began to move about again though any conversation was muted and sparse. Pavel was left pretty much alone except for Nyota knocking on the door trying to get him to eat and he refused to do so.

He heard Spock come in later and surprisingly enough he had McCoy with him. Pavel assumed that Winona must have returned to the hospital at some point and bullied the doctor into coming home to sleep while she was there. There was some quiet discussion then there were footsteps coming towards his room and then a quiet knocking. "Pavel, you there?" McCoy's voice came through the door.

Pavel didn't answer but the doctor continued anyway, "I thought you might like to know that Jim has been improving greatly. He's not off life-support yet but it should only be a couple of days till he is. He'll be up and about and annoying us all again in no time, you'll see."

There was a silence as McCoy waited for a response, then, realising that one wasn't coming, footsteps as he returned to the living area.

As night came around everyone eventually turned in for the night.

Pavel could again hear Scotty snoring in the living room though this time he was joined by McCoy who had proberly been forced to stay and sleep by Winona, who had returned from the hospital, and Nyota. There was a new noise and Pavel dimly registered that it was Hikaru returning from the crash site of the Vengeance, There was a very gentle knock on his door and Hikaru spoke, "Hey Pav, I hope I'm not waking you?" there was silence then he spoke again, "It's been a lot of work in the city, there's so much wreckage but at least we've saved all the injured." There was a soft thump and Pavel guessed that the other man had sat on the floor with his back against the door, "I've been mostly shifting debris about, obviously there are a host of machines helping but there's so much that there are plenty of people helping shift it by hand." Another pause, "Nyota managed to let me know that Winona would be here. I'm guessing she's the one who convinced McCoy to come home and sleep, I think him and Scotty are trying to out snore each other in the living room." He gave a soft laugh and there was a long silence before he spoke again, "Pavel, I know you think it's your fault and I know that we've all told you it isn't but we really mean it. You're not to blame for any of it and I promise you that it is true. We're all scared for you Pav, we're scared that we're going to wake up and found that you've left because of guilt. It's not your guilt to bear and we don't want to lose you because of it." There was another silence and then Hikaru spoke once more, "Pav, please don't do this by yourself. We're here and we want to help so please at least talk to one of us, I know we're not Jim but please let us try and be there for you." He sighed, "You're my little brother and I want to help you Pav."

Pavel heard him get up and return to the living room as lay on his bed with tears silently pouring down his face.

PS-There we have it and I hope you liked that. I gave Hikaru a nice long speech since I think I haven't delved much into his big brother relationship with Pavel. I know this story is a bit depressing at the moment but do not fear the fluff will appear. I can't find it in me to keep Pavel so sad and lonely for long.