Family
Part Three
"No apologies, Gregor," Chekov said when Pasha told him he would be leaving with Greg, and Greg started to say he was sorry for taking his son away for even a few hours when he just got him back.
"No apologies," Chekov said, like it was no big deal.
But when the shuttle showed up to take them back to the transport station, Pasha got on and Chekov held Greg back for a moment.
"You have kept him safe when I couldn't," he said to Greg seriously as the shuttle hovered beside them. "But Pavel Andreievich is strong. You should let him take care of you in return, now and then, when you must do unhappy things."
Greg wasn't so surprised by the second kiss on the cheek – Russian guys did that, apparently, and it didn't mean anything weird – and he grinned his thanks as he got on the shuttle after Pasha.
"We will see you both in the morning!" Chekov waved as the shuttle started moving.
Greg held on to those words hard. He repeated them over and over on the ride to the transport station. As his stomach started doing cartwheels and his heart began drumming harder in his chest, he held on to those words.
No matter how bad this went, tomorrow it'd be done and over with. Tomorrow they'd be back in the cold, back with the laughing men and their apple drinks and Chekov and Pasha's mom smiling in his pictures, and it would be done.
Maybe if he could keep that in mind it would be easier to get through today.
Pavel took a look around the outside of the shuttleport in Hubert, South Dakota, and had one strange thought – he had no idea there was so much space in America.
He had only ever explored San Fransisco, though he had been to New York and Atlanta for conferences while at the Academy. Every city seemed crowded and crammed with things, no empty space to be seen.
Hubert, though, seemed to stretch in front of them. A wide, flat plain of yellow wheat, endless fields of it. There were no hills or mountains dotting the horizons, not near enough that his eyes could see them. It was vast and open and endless.
Hot, as well. Arid, so dry that even breathing made Pavel feel thirsty.
There was no one in sight, no one but the shuttle operators and a bored-looking cab driver who was watching them in vague interest. Pavel knew Greg hadn't told his family when he was arriving, but he might have thought someone would have had a general idea. Someone might have waited.
He looked over at Greg, wondering if he would somehow look at home with the endless yellow stretched out around him.
Greg was squinting at the wide blue expanse of the sky, his face tilted up like he was trying to catch the sunlight. But he didn't seem at home. He seemed tense, and ill, like he had been for hours.
He looked over suddenly, as if he could feel Pavel's eyes on him, and blinked down at him. He flashed a look that seemed like it was trying to be a smile but didn't manage to make it all the way.
Then he looked around, spotting the cab driver. "Come on, may as well go."
Pavel followed, looking back at the fields absently.
"Hey, you got the time?"
"'round noon," the cab driver answered, his voice even flatter than Greg's, the midwestern dialect pressing his vowels and dropping consonants. Pavel almost smiled – it was the first time he had ever thought about Greg as having a distinct accent, and only because he had this man's to compare it to.
Greg nodded over at the cab, and the driver sighed and pushed a button on a key fob that opened his trunk. He didn't say anything as he slipped into the driver's seat of the cab, and Greg didn't say anything as he shoved the one duffel with their two changes of clothes into the trunk and slammed it shut.
Pavel waited, unsure, as Greg opened the door to the back seat and climbed in, grimacing. "Shit. Fucking summer."
Pavel realized what he meant when he went to sit in the car and found a solid, broiling mass of heat waiting inside the vehicle. It took his breath for a moment, but the engine rumbled to life and there was a blast of warm air from the front of the car that started to cool almost at once.
He shut the door, shut them in to the spinning mass of cooling air, and shifted awkwardly against the uncomfortably hot fabric of the seat.
"Where we goin'?" asked the driver, staring back at Pavel through the rear view mirror.
"The Janssens still got that hotel in town?"
"Yep." The driver's eyes switched to Greg in curiosity. He put the car into motion without another word, but spoke again after a minute. "You from around here?"
"Yeah." Greg didn't offer anything more.
The driver didn't ask, though Pavel could see his eyes going to Greg frequently as he drove them.
There wasn't much to look at on the drive. More fields, more wheat. Wooden posts with wire stretched along them seemed to block out the fields, and there were occasionally over things in the fields. Wrapped bundles of hay, rusting equipment for irrigation. Some of the blocks of fields were clear-cut, housing cows and horses.
Pavel didn't see anything in the way of people, though. The equipment all sat silent, and the animals were left to their own devices. Too hot, he supposed, for mid-day work when the sun was its strongest.
The fields stretched out in the distance, but the nearer ones thinned and pushed back the further they went, until a small, dusty town seemed to begin almost arbitrarily along the road.
It was impossible to tell the age of most of the buildings – brick and cement, most of them – but they were in good condition. Everything seemed dingy, but Pavel thought it was more due to constant wind coating everything with dust than any sort of neglect.
There were people there, in the town. Sitting outside store fronts with drinks in hand, looking like they were as permanent a part of the landscape as the buildings themselves. Most eyes followed the cab as it passed, Pavel saw, and tried not to be too disconcerted by it.
Would his own Ishevsk seem so strange and unwelcoming if he were a solitary stranger passing through? He wasn't sure. He knew every face in his village, and they all knew each other, but they didn't often see strangers and perhaps they would watch passing cars carrying strange people with this same sort of suspicious curiosity.
They passed a white-walled building with a sign in the front and a cross on the roof, and a long black car parked outside. There were a few cars parked behind it, a few people gathering in sight of the road, dressed in dark suits.
Pavel frowned, looking over at Greg.
Greg watched the building pass by and didn't look back at it. He looked away from the window altogether, sitting as stiff as if he was on duty.
Pavel heard the driver breathe in suddenly, like he had seen their reactions and it was the last piece of some puzzle.
"You're Jake Harris's youngest," he said, voice casual though his eyes were wide in the mirror.
Greg's eyes flickered over to him, but he nodded.
"Sorry about your brother."
Greg snorted. "Yeah?"
The car fell into silence. Pavel watched the driver's eyes go back to the road and stay there.
Greg's head dropped back against the hot upholstery. He didn't look over, though he had to feel Pavel watching him.
They stopped not too far from the church, and Greg got out without a word and went around to get their bag out of the back.
Pavel left the now-chilled car and got hit again with the thin heat of the air outside, and he wondered how the people around them didn't make themselves constantly ill moving from hot to cold that way.
There was a table set up outside the building with the 'Hotel/Bar' sign tacked over the door. A couple of men sat there, beer bottles in front of them, silent and not bothering to hide that they were staring at the cab and watching who came out of it.
The silence was unnerving, but Greg came around the car before Pavel could go after him.
Greg leaned in to the front of the cab and handed off some credits to the driver, and the cab took off with a roar that kicked up enough dust that Pavel just barely managed not to cough.
Greg didn't even look at the men sitting by the door. He went in, silent, tension thrumming through him. Pavel followed quickly.
"Mrs. Janssen?"
The woman behind the counter could have been sixty or ninety or anywhere in between. Her hair was still mostly brown but her face was lines and more lines, like she'd lived in the sun her entire life.
But she smiled when they came in, and just that alone made Pavel like her almost instantly. He had never seen so many faces without a single smile before.
Greg approached the counter, and as he got closer the woman's face changed. Her smile faded, her eyes squinted.
And something came over her, something that looked strangely like fear.
"Greg," she said, her voice thin and flat like the cab driver's. "Greg Harris. Figured you for dead."
"Not yet." Greg either didn't notice the fear or was ignoring it. "Just need a room for a few hours, if you've got one. Won't be in town long."
"You here for your brother?"
"Yeah. Probably won't even stay the whole night, though."
The woman looked behind her, like she was hoping someone else was there, but after a moment she pushed a padd and stylus across the counter. "Fill it out."
Greg set the duffel down at his feet and glanced back at Pavel, just long enough to find him with his eyes. He leaned in and started filling out the padd screen.
"So how's Anna doing?" he asked after a moment, startling Pavel and the woman both.
The woman looked at him hard, though Greg was looking at the padd and didn't notice. "Married. Didn't hear about that?"
"Don't get much news where I am," Greg answered. "Good for her, though. Got kids?"
"One, and one on the way." The woman got more tense by the second.
Greg slipped the padd back across the counter. "I probably won't see her while I'm here, so...tell her hey. I went to school with her daughter," he threw back to Pavel, nodding at the woman.
Pavel didn't miss the way the woman backed up, the way she looked behind her one more time before she grabbed an entry card and all but shoved it across the counter.
Greg took the card with another nod and picked up the duffel.
Pavel followed him, looking back at the woman and trying not to feel too uncomfortable by the fact that she had a phone in her hand and was dialing before they even reached the narrow staircase.
The room was small, two narrow beds and a tiny, twenty-year-old vid display on the wall. Pavel only gave it a cursory look, though, before his attention went back to Greg.
He was getting worse every passing minute, practically. Even his voice when he spoke was flatter, stilted. His shoulders were squared, his spine stiff, and his movements jerky as he set the duffel on one of the beds and pushed the zipper open.
"I figure we can walk down to the church," he said, unaware of Pavel's silent study. "Then walk back when it's done, crash for a few hours, and get a cab back to the transport and get out of here."
Pavel had wanted to come – he had all but demanded it, in fact – but he found himself already in agreement. The faster they left this strange, silent place with its staring eyes, the better.
Greg cracked the closest thing to a smile he had in hours when he pulled Pavel's dress uniform out from among his things.
"You just happened to bring this from the ship, huh?"
Pavel shrugged, smiling just to see the small sign of life in Greg's face. "I'm an optimist, I suppose. I hoped I might need it."
The smile was short-lived.
They dressed in silence, and once they went through the instinctual process of straightening seams and polishing buttons, Greg spoke more tersely than ever.
"Stay quiet. Don't go drawing anyone's attention. No one's gonna mess with you, don't worry about that, but..."
Pavel nodded. "No fight is a good fight. I remember."
"I told you already, I probably won't tell them about us."
"I know. It's alright."
"It's not..." Greg shook his head, going to the dingy mirror in the tiny bathroom of the room and dusting off his spotless jacket. "Well, it is what it is. Anyway, stay quiet and if shit gets bad, just...I'll handle it. Okay?"
"Okay." Pavel watched him for a moment before he moved into the small bathroom to join him.
"Greg."
Greg turned, looking pale and nervous and unhappy.
Pavel met his eyes and smiled, small and sincere. "I love you. I'm proud of you. Will it help you to keep that in mind, whatever happens?"
Greg blinked, but he locked gazes with Pavel and after a moment he smiled. "Yeah. That helps. Thanks."
Pavel reached out to straighten one of Greg's citation pins. "I could go on, if you like. I could tell you just how sexy you are in this uniform, how strong you look in it. How it makes me wish we had more formal events on the ship just so I could see it more often."
Greg grinned, rolling his eyes and turning back to the mirror. There was color in his face, at least, even if the tension hadn't entirely dissipated.
"Tell you what, save that for later. I'll let you tell me all about how hot I am once we're out of here."
Pavel laughed and leaned up on his toes to press a quick kiss to his jaw, relieved that his Greg was still in there. "Deal."
It did help, though, Pavel could see that easily. When they left that room there was no trace of nervous, ill Greg. Instead he was every inch the Lieutenant Commander he was on a duty shift on the Enterprise. He moved sharply, he radiated strength.
He looked, in Pavel's opinion, like a walking recruitment poster for Starfleet, especially surrounded by such a blank, dingy world. Maybe Pavel was a bit fanciful in thinking so, but it was something positive to hold on to during the next few hours, so being fanciful didn't bother him.
The woman behind the counter – still there, still on the phone as they came down – gaped at Greg in his uniform like he was instantly a stranger again.
Greg walked past her without a word. Pavel didn't know if his imagination was working overtime, but he thought that the woman's blatant fear seemed to fade a little as she watched him leave, and her words into the phone got a little less urgent.
He knew he wasn't imagining the shock on her face.
Pavel drew in a breath before he followed Greg out the door into the thin, hot air.
"I think some people here don't know that you went into Starfleet," he said, almost amused by the gawking woman at the counter.
Greg shrugged, setting into motion down the dusty side of the empty road. "I don't figure anyone does. Don't think they'd care all that much." He glanced back towards the hotel. "Just as well they figure me for dead."
Pavel frowned at the road ahead. Dusty and quiet and strange, yes, but a small town with staring eyes, and he had no doubt that everyone working along that road knew everyone else.
"Your family doesn't talk to people? Your parents don't..." Pavel trailed off, wondering if he seemed hopelessly naïve. He knew Greg didn't get along with them, but... "Aren't they proud?"
"Nothing to be proud of, if you ask them."
Pavel shook his head, brow furrowing. "I don't..."
Greg drew in a breath, looking back up into the sky like he was drawing some kind of warmth or comfort from the feel of the sun. It was strong, glaring down at them and the town and just adding to the thin yellow cast everything seemed to take on, thanks to the wheat and the dust.
Pavel didn't say anything, though he wanted to prod at this strange town, he wanted to understand what made his Grischa who he was. He had a feeling this would be his only chance.
"Okay." Greg spoke up just as Pavel began to think they would finish the walk in silence. He didn't look at Pavel, just talked into the dusty breeze.
"So a few years back these Fleeters came into town once. That's what we call 'em here. Fleeters. Not meaning it to be nice or anything. Anyway, I got four brothers, and they were drinking one night, talking about these Fleeters walking around town like they're somebody."
Pavel watched Greg's profile, his eyes squinting up at the sky and his shoulders squared as if he expected a blow to the back at any moment.
"My brothers don't take too well to strangers walking around this town like they're somebody, so when they got enough beer in 'em they decided to go hunt these Fleet fuckers down and teach them a lesson."
Pavel had a strangely strong flash of memory suddenly, randomly. Matt Lepinski and his glowering friends, mocking Pavel for his youth and his accented Standard and his smaller size. Asking who he thought he was coming to their school and showing them up.
"I used to do shit like that with them," Greg said suddenly, looking over at Pavel with shadowed eyes. "You should know that. When I was younger...well. Shit. Anyway, I didn't do it when I got old enough to sort my own self out apart from them, you know? So I wasn't there that night. But next day my dad goes to Marcus, all pissed off. I guess they put one of the Fleeters in the hospital, and talk around town said Starfleet was sending people to investigate. Could've meant deep shit for all of them. My dad says this Fleeter in the hospital needs to get his mouth shut for him before he can go telling anybody who put him there."
Pavel blinked. "Get his mouth shut for him?"
"Yep. Means just what you think it does, too. They'd've tried to threaten him into keeping his trap shut, and if that didn't work they'd fuck him up so bad he wouldn't ever be a threat to them."
Pavel slowed down unconsciously, looking out in front of them towards the church in the distance, the figures gathering in their black clothes.
"So my dumb ass, I figure it's not right what they're planning. I get over to the hospital, find out where the Fleeter's room is, and hang out around the hallway waiting. My brothers show up after a while, all pissed and drunk, and I get in their way. For a minute they talked like I was there to join them. When they figured out I wasn't gonna let them in that room..."
He hesitated, a humorless smile flitting over his face. He glanced over at Pavel.
"I was family. Family doesn't turn on family, period. They'd've killed me if they could, pissed off as they were. As it was they fucked me up pretty bad, and all these doctors and visitors and shit standing around watching and asking each other if someone ought to call security or something. And nobody did a fucking thing until that Fleeter's CO and the investigating officers showed up. They didn't stop to ask questions, just broke things up."
Pavel looked out ahead of them at the yellowed horizon, feeling strange and aching. He wanted to stop. Wanted to turn and go back to the hotel and offer Greg whatever absolutions he could for never seeing any of those horrible people ever again.
But Greg kept moving.
"Anyway. I got kept in the hospital overnight, and the guy's CO came in to talk to me about what happened and why I did what I did, not like I could give him any decent answer. But I was thinking about it all night, thinking about how everything went down. And it hit me that when those Fleeters walked up on that fight and waded right in without asking any questions, saving my stupid ass when half the fucking town stood there watching...I realized those guys were the first people I ever met that I wanted to be like."
He drew in a breath, looking ahead towards the approaching church. "I didn't go home, didn't even call. Didn't want to. I left the hospital with the Fleeters, and took their transport all the way to California to sign up for the Academy. The Fleeter and his CO even helped me out.
"Wrote my folks once I was there and they let me in and I knew it was for real. Didn't hear back until my second year there. My dad, writing me to say Marcus was going to jail for a year for what he did to that Fleeter. He figured Marcus taking the fall for all of them made him real family, and I wasn't nothing but another fucking Fleeter queer, and I wasn't welcome back anymore."
His second year. One year before he met Pavel, picked him up off the ground after wading into a fight without asking any questions.
Pavel wondered if he had made the right choice, pressing Greg about going home. About bringing him along.
He wondered if maybe he knew enough just hearing that story. Maybe there were nothing else to be learned in actually meeting the people Greg talked about. The people who had thrown him away. Pavel wanted Greg to meet his papa, to see his home, because so much of Pavel was there. Because he felt Greg wouldn't know him entirely unless he knew that part of him. But Greg...
Greg wasn't there. He wasn't in that hot air or in those wheat fields or in town with its staring eyes. Greg was at the Academy, pulling Matt Lepinski off of Pavel without even caring why the fight had started.
Ishevsk was part of Pavel; Hubert was what Greg had to cast away before he could really grow into himself.
The difference was shocking, though perhaps that was naivety again, Pavel assuming that his own type of deep roots were common.
Shocking, yes, but there was something else to it. Something that made Pavel regard that white-walled church and decide that he didn't want to drag Greg back to the hotel unseen. He wanted to go, to stand with Greg while he said his goodbye to his dead brother, and goodbye to the living remnants of the family he was born into. He wanted to be at his side, proud and strong, and show everyone there just what they threw away in Greg.
Greg didn't say anything else as they went, and Pavel kept his eyes forward and his shoulders back as they approached the church and a few of the people waiting outside noticed them coming.
They weren't even close enough to make out the murmurs of the group when a man suddenly came through the side door where the crowd stood and looked right out at them as if he'd been warned.
One of Greg's brothers, Pavel could tell right away. Taller than Greg, which was saying something, and broader in the shoulders. But there wasn't much resemblance beyond that. He looked like he might have once been solid like Greg, strong and fit, but he'd given up working for it years ago. His hair was shaggy and overgrown, dark brown where Greg's was buzzed short.
There was none of the warmth on this man's face that Pavel knew Greg had inside of him.
"What the fuck are you doing here?" the man all but spit as he charged up to them. He gave Pavel one scowling look, but his anger seemed to be stuck on Greg.
Greg didn't stop moving. "What do you think?"
"Fuck you." When Greg kept going the man grabbed for his arm.
Greg knocked him away, fast and sharp with all the instinct his job in security had built in to him. He turned a look on his brother that Pavel could imagine him turning on a pack of Klingons.
"Keep your hands off me, Dan. I won't be here long."
Pavel stood there, strangely calm, simply gazing at Greg's brother. He turned when Greg turned, and moved at his side towards the gathered group. He didn't even look back at the man they left behind, since Greg didn't.
Greg moved past the hushed group and into the side door Dan had come out of. He managed to ignore the sickly change from hot air to gusty and cold, keeping his focus on Greg instead.
He spotted Greg's other brothers easily – they were near carbon copies of the one who met them outside, and there weren't enough other people in that church to make them hard to find.
There was a platform set up for a coffin but it was gone – no doubt on its way to that long car in the front, to be taken for burial. People were standing, talking quietly as they waited to leave, and Pavel couldn't find it in him to feel guilty that they came too late for the service, especially when he doubted they would make it to the grave site.
"Hey, mom."
He heard Greg's quiet voice and turned instantly, focusing his attention back where it belonged.
The woman Greg had gone up to was as unlike him as a person could get. She was tall but slight – almost alarmingly thin, really, with sunken eyes and jagged cheekbones. She wasn't old, Pavel thought, but her mouth was creased with lines. A smoker, maybe, or else just a woman who spent a large amount of time scowling at people. Her hair was long, straight dirty blond and grey, dull and dry. Malnourished, he thought.
She looked like a woman who hadn't eaten regular meals in a long time.
If Pavel thought perhaps his mother would greet him with at least some fondness, he was disavowed of the idea fast.
"Well, lookit you." There was a sneer in her voice, and Pavel didn't understand it. How could any mother fail to be proud of the man that stood there?
It became a little clearer to him when she took a step towards him and stumbled, swaying for just a moment before pulling up straight again.
Drunk, Pavel realized even as Greg's face went red and his gaze dropped. He didn't reach for her, Pavel saw. Didn't even try to help.
This wasn't a surprise to Greg. This wasn't anything unusual at all.
"Guess you think you're some kinda hotshot in that outfit. Guess you done made something of yourself, huh?" She laughed, a dry, crackling sound. "You don't call us no more, don't write. Sure as hell don't send any money home, do you?"
"Mom..."
Pavel moved up a step, hearing the strength seeping out of Greg's voice. The doubt, the tension, was taking its place again.
His mother looked at Pavel as he moved up, but her eyes never focused exactly on him. She didn't ask or seem to care who he was, she just waved her hand towards Greg gracelessly.
"Dumbest one of the lot, everybody said. Could barely teach him to read, and look at him. Wearing that costume like he's some hotshot."
Pavel's eyes were drawn by Dan, the brother from outside the church, moving behind Greg's mother and approaching his two lookalikes. They barely spoke, but their hard-eyed gazes went to Greg and stayed there.
Greg wasn't looking at them, or his mother. He didn't lift his eyes until another man approached from behind his mother, coming up to her side and facing Greg.
Shorter than his sons, but just as broad. Thick neck and thick arms, tanned deep brown from working in the sun.
"You best get out of here before you get thrown out."
Greg looked up, his determined strength melting away without a trace. "I just came to say goodbye," he said.
"Said that a few years back," the man answered, terse. "Nobody asked you to come here. Burying my son today, don't need no Fleeter piece of shit showing his face around. You got nothing to do with this, Greg."
Greg's mother laughed, distant. "Fleeter, in that uniform like some kind of-"
"Shut the fuck up," Greg's dad barked out, grabbing the woman by the arm and shoving her back behind him.
She stumbled hard. Her legs hit the back of a pew and she fell onto the bench with a thud.
Nobody made any move towards her.
Greg's dad didn't even look back. His cold eyes stayed fixed on Greg. "You get out. And you don't come back. You hear me?"
Greg nodded, his throat working.
"You show your face here again, I'm gonna let my boys do you like they been talking about for years. Now get out."
Greg turned without a pause, without a word. He headed for the side door of the church, still standing open with a few gawking faces peering in watching the argument.
Pavel turned with him.
He kept his mouth shut, didn't draw attention to himself, just as Greg instructed. He didn't even think about standing up for Greg – anything he said would be wasted, that was clear enough. These people didn't want to know how many lives Greg had saved, or how he was the best security officer on the best ship in the entire Fleet.
They didn't want to hear it. They wouldn't have cared, even if they had let him talk. The words didn't mean a thing to this family. Pavel doubted that anything that happed outside the borders of this parched city was meaningful to them. They would have laughed him off, or come at him swinging, and it wouldn't have done a thing to help.
So Pavel didn't bother trying.
He just wanted Greg out of there, wanted him safe in the Chekov home in Ishevsk, with his papa laughing and telling stories, or gathering the village for a party. That was the only thing in the entire world that he wanted at that moment.
"Greg."
Something about his father's voice made Pavel want to push Greg on, to steer him right out the door without pausing.
But Greg stopped moving.
He didn't turn back, just stood there and waited. Almost like he knew what was coming.
His father's voice was too loud. Too punched. He spoke because he wanted everyone to hear him, not because he had something that needed to be said.
"First thing I thought when the cops told me about Marcus...if I had to lose a son why couldn't it have been you."
Greg's shoulders twitched: the blow he had been waiting for that entire visit had just landed.
Pavel turned around.
He was, in everything he did, a learned man. He retained almost everything he had ever learned, and he had learned about everything he could think of. Since he was a child his mind was constantly in action, looking for things to know.
His mind hushed, though, in that moment. A brain that couldn't look at an object without sifting through the encyclopedia of facts he had accrued about that object...suddenly it went very quiet.
Still, Pavel Chekov was a genius, and what he learned he used.
His mind didn't have to consciously remind him how to form a fist in the proper way, so that he wouldn't break his own fingers throwing a punch. His hand formed that proper, textbook fist without being guided.
He could hear his own voice from a distance, could see the too-slow gaze of Greg's father turning to him as he charged, as if just noticing him there.
It hurt, Greg was right. It hurt to hit someone. But when Greg's father was stumbling back against the same pew he had pushed his wife into, and Greg's brothers were just starting to stir from their shock, his brain woke back up.
Well done, it said. He didn't break any fingers.
Well done, then, and no fight was a good fight, but Pavel would never for a moment regret what he just did.
Greg's father recovered quickly, though, and his brothers were already setting into motion, and Pavel remembered the instruction he had willed himself to forget – 'don't go drawing anyone's attention.'
His hands formed two more perfectly curled fists, and he faced them.
But Greg, like he always did, moved fast to defend when he himself wasn't the target. He was suddenly there, suddenly at Pavel's side and then stepping in front of him, between Pavel and his brothers.
"Touch him," Greg said, the first clear thing Pavel had heard since his father's last words. His voice was as firm and strong as Pavel had ever heard. "Just try it."
A dare. Pavel squared his shoulders and stared out at Greg's brothers, and his father as he dropped his hand from a lip that was satisfyingly staining with red.
One of Greg's brothers stepped up to his father, glowering at Greg and Pavel. There was an outraged anger in his eyes that was strangely, entirely satisfying for Pavel.
"You're gonna stand with that Fleeter against your own family?"
"You're not my family," Greg answered, his voice flat.
"Damn right." The brother from outside, Dan, moved in to his dad's other side. "Fucking faggot. We kicked your ass once."
"Years ago." Greg hardly moved. "I've learned some things since then."
Pavel looked over, drawn by the power humming through Greg's voice.
There, there was the Greg Pavel first met years ago. There was the man who would wade into a pile of bullies to help a pathetic Russian child he didn't know. This Greg wore his uniform proudly. He taught people to defend themselves. He would stand against four over-sized brothers in defense of a stranger in a hospital bed.
It showed in Greg's face as he faced down his family. It flashed behind his brown eyes, showed in the set of his jaw. In the almost casual way he spoke, flat but matter-of-fact. Pavel had a feeling that if he were seeing Greg for the first time at that very moment, he would not doubt that this was a man who could and had bested a dozen Klingons in battle.
This Greg wasn't scared of anything, much less a pack of thick, small-minded farm boys or their father.
Perhaps they weren't entirely idiots, because the men facing Greg and Pavel seemed to understand what showed on Greg's face. They didn't move, just stood there glaring as if their anger alone could hurt him.
Maybe it could, but not at that moment. Greg waited until it was more than clear that it was their move and they weren't taking it. Then he glanced over at Pavel and nodded over at the door.
"Fuck 'em, let's go."
Pavel shot the men a disdainful look (and took a last satisfied look at their father's split lip) and followed Greg back to the door.
The unashamedly gaping spectators in their wrinkled black suits and skirts backed up when Greg led the way through the door.
When Greg walked right past the narrow doorway into Hotel/Bar, Pavel didn't ask him why. He let himself be carried in Greg's wake, though his hand was aching and he really wanted to leave the dry outdoor air behind, even if the whirling blast of air conditioning was the only other option.
Greg moved with more determination than he had done anything since arriving in that town, and so Pavel kept his mouth shut and followed.
The silence seemed to nip at him, though. It gave him far too much time to replay the last hour, to hear a father speak unforgivable words, and to see Greg's shoulders jerk like he'd been dealt a blow to the back.
Pavel had never in his life thrown a punch at someone who wasn't attacking him first. He had never been the type to express anger with violence. He wasn't sure yet if he had hit Greg's father because he realized that violence was the only thing any of those animals would understand, or if...if he just really wanted to hurt him.
God. He hit Greg's father.
Greg had jumped to his defense, the way he always did, but maybe Greg was furious with him. Maybe Pavel had gone too far, had acted just the wrong way. How could he think that reacting with violence to Greg's violent family was acceptable?
He could have done other things. He could have told them, the way he first wanted to, exactly who Greg Harris was. He could have told them about how many people he helped. About the Klingons, Matt Lepinski, Rachel Faraday on the Enterprise, who Greg was spending extra hours helping because she had been beaten by an old boyfriend, and Greg couldn't stand abuse like that.
But no. He could have told them that, if they had let him talk, but it wouldn't have mattered to them in the slightest. Greg's brothers were Matt Lepinski. Greg's father threw around his thin, haggard wife.
Everything Greg fought against was back there in that church.
Greg led them down the same straight, dusty road, not speaking, not worried anymore about who saw him. Still in his uniform, still determined and upright and...if not proud, something close to it. He was on a mission, Pavel could tell, and so Pavel followed him silently even as his thoughts grew less and less settled.
"Greg?"
It was a woman's voice, high and surprised and coming up behind them, and Pavel turned fast, on edge and ready to step in to protect his lover from any other unpleasantness.
She looked to be about Greg's age, maybe a little younger, with a pale, open, surprised face and a rounded belly that spoke to a pregnancy at or nearing the third trimester. She was moving fast despite her belly.
"Greg, hang on!"
Pavel looked back at Greg, wary.
Greg didn't tense when he saw her, though. He almost smiled, stopping and moving back past Pavel to meet her. "Anna. Hey."
"Jesus, Greg! I can't believe it's really..." The woman, Anna, stopped in front of him, wide-eyed on his uniform.
Greg's smile was awkward. "I saw your mom earlier."
"She called me."
Pavel had a flash of memory, the woman at the hotel grabbing the telephone the moment Greg turned his back. They talked about her daughter, who Greg used to know.
"You look great, Greg," the woman said, and Pavel had to wonder with a flash of tension just how well they used to know each other. "Rumor around here was you were dead. There was a bunch of talk about some fight with your brothers, and then you were just gone. Cops even went out to the farm to talk to your folks, but nothing ever happened."
"Yeah?" Greg's smile looked almost more painfully false then. "Guess they'd rather let people think I was dead than tell them what I really was."
She laughed, but it was uneven. She had to know it was true, and that it was a pretty awful thing. "Never would've guessed you went Starfleet, though. Mom said...well. You look great. What do you do up there, anyway?"
"Security." Pavel was surprised to hear himself answering, and he took a step closer to Greg unconsciously. "He is a Lieutenant Commander on the USS Enterprise. With me."
She seemed impressed, but didn't say anything. She looked from Greg to Pavel and back again, and shifted awkwardly. "Well. Um. Where you headed? Aren't you staying at the hotel?"
Greg nodded back down the road. "Wanted to see Doc Miller, see if he was in." He glanced over at Pavel. "Wanted to introduce him."
"Oh, hell." She frowned, reaching for Greg's arm but stopped, dropping her hand with a glance at Pavel. "Doc's been dead a couple of years, Greg. A guy from Sioux City got brought in to run the clinic a while back, he's the only one there now."
Greg looked back at her, his face falling. His throat worked. "Oh."
Pavel was disturbed to watch him, to see that this was the most obvious he had been about being crushed by something since he arrived in that town.
Anna seemed to realize it, too, and after another minute or two of awkward catching-up, she said something about getting off her feet and wandered off.
Greg stood for a minute as if unsure where to go or what to do, but before Pavel could speak up he got his bearings and turned. Silently they walked back the way they came, back towards the hotel.
"Who was Doc Miller?" Pavel asked after a moment.
Greg didn't answer for a moment. He walked on trudging feet, looking bent by the heat or the situation. "Nobody. Just..."
"Greg." Pavel couldn't walk any closer, not in that street with those staring eyes, but he spoke softly and kept pace with Greg's heavy steps. "Please."
"He ran the clinic here when I was growing up." Greg kept his eyes straight ahead. "He'd patch us up all the time, me and my brothers and my mom. He was..." Greg hesitated, his throat working again. He cleared his throat. "He told me...he was the one who said I should get out. Everyone else figured I was just another dumbass Harris kid, but...he said..."
He glanced over at Pavel, smiling painfully under wet eyes. "He would've been proud, I think. I wanted you to see...he was the only one who saw something..."
Pavel saw the hotel coming up. He squeezed Greg's arm, quick, and nodded him forward. "Come on."
They passed the woman behind the counter, and a couple of onlookers sitting further back in the 'bar' part of Hotel/Bar, without a word or a glance.
He didn't know about Greg, but Pavel for one had already left this place and these people far behind.
"I wanted you to know," Greg said the moment the door to their rented room shut behind them, "that somebody thought I was worth a shit."
Pavel hesitated in answering. There was far too much swirling around in his head, way too many things he wanted to say in response to that. There were far too many arguments to make, if Greg really thought that Pavel's view of him might change because his family thought he was worthless.
Too many words, and they all piled up over themselves in his head and left him mute.
Finally he sighed. "We should change. It's too hot for these uniforms."
But he saw Greg's shoulder's slump as he nodded, and he plucked off his own uniform with distracted speed, knowing he couldn't leave it at that.
Greg had brought him here because Greg realized how important family was to Pavel. No doubt he feared that Pavel would judge him in some way because of how his family treated him. No doubt he had a lot of fears in his head that were entirely absurd.
No doubt there were a dozen things weighing him down on top of all that, things that didn't have a thing to do with Pavel.
By the time Pavel was down to his undershirt and had pulled on the civvie jeans he had arrived in that morning, Greg had only gotten his dress jacket off.
Pavel spotted him in the bathroom, face dripping with water from the sink and his eyes locked on his own reflection in the mirror, stark.
Pavel swallowed, hoping he was up to this sort of responsibility.
He moved in behind Greg, stopping in the bathroom doorway.
"I'm sorry," he said after a moment.
"You?" Greg snorted softly. "Sorry for what?"
"I'm sorry that they are the ones you're forced to call family."
Greg's eyes lowered for a moment. "I don't care." He looked back at Pavel through the glass. "I mean, about them. I hate them. Always have, at least since I was old enough to realize what was what. Why the fuck should I care what they think when I hate them?"
Pavel moved in slowly. "Because they're your family," he answered, "and that gives them a claim over you that you can't will away."
Greg's fingers curled around the edge of the sink. "That's not fair."
"But it's true. I know that you hate them. But you care, and it would only hurt you later to try to pretend that you don't."
Greg shuddered, looking away from the mirror altogether. "I shouldn't have brought you here."
"I'm glad you did."
"Why?" Greg turned to him, the pain on his face solid and deep. "How are you ever gonna be able to look at me and not see this fucking place?"
Something in Pavel's chest cracked, ached with the hurt radiating from Greg. He moved in, slipping his hands to the fastening at the collar of Greg's uniform shirt.
"My father," he said slowly, watching his own hands as he carefully undressed Greg. "He calls me a miracle child. He has since I was born. Sometimes...and in this I can understand how you feel, because I would wonder after my mother died how he could call me that. How could he look at me and not see the thing that weakened his wife until she died?"
Greg breathed in raggedly.
Pavel hesitated, but peeled his shirt over his broad shoulders and moved around him to tug it free from him. Greg didn't move, just stood there waiting, listening.
Pavel folded his shirt absently. "Still, that's not my point. My point is, my father calls me this thing, miracle. Because I shouldn't have survived to be born, and because of this brain of mine that he says could not have come from he or my mother. Do you know what I think?"
Greg didn't answer.
Pavel went out into the outer room, laying Greg's shirt over the chair he had dropped his dress jacket on. He spoke as he picked up the crumpled jacket and draped it carefully so it wouldn't wrinkle.
"What I think is that there is nothing miraculous about me. A child who grows up with adoring parents, who is encouraged to learn all he can, who is never doubtful of his security...there is nothing special about that child becoming a capable adult."
He turned back to the bathroom.
Greg had moved into the doorway but stood there still, watching Pavel.
Pavel came up to him, holding his hand out. He smiled, frail but real, when Greg took his hand and let Pavel pull him into the room, to the bed.
"I think," he said, nudging Greg to sit and crouching down to unfasten his heavy boots, "that since the day I met you, when you were so brave and kind to help a person you didn't know, I have never stopped thinking of you as good. A truly good man, which in itself is rare enough."
He hesitated, using Greg's boots as an excuse. He pulled them off, one after the other, and straightened.
Thinking about those days, their Academy days getting to know each other, he thought about how Greg had always blushed from the smallest compliments. Always he was surprised by them. He was so quick to speak badly of himself, so dismissive of everything he did, as if it couldn't matter if it came from him.
A lot of that remained in Greg, and it hurt Pavel to realize that. He was still dismissive of himself. Still he jumped to anyone's defense, but let himself be hurt without making a move to protect himself.
He never let himself be around other people when he was truly angry. He never drank enough alcohol to really feel it. Not once the entire time Pavel had known him.
Funny how much that all made sense now. Funny, and horrible, and Pavel shook his head in amazement at it all.
He stepped up to the bed, stood between Greg's legs as he sat there. He slipped a hand over Greg's hair, sifting through cropped dark hair gently.
"You are a good man," he said softly. "You were raised by monsters, raised to be a monster, but you are a good man instead. That is a real miracle. That's what I'll see in you now, thanks to this place."
Greg leaned in to him, his arms closing around Pavel's waist. He buried his head in Pavel's shirt, breathing harshly and fast.
Acceptance, Pavel thought, could be just as painful as rejection, if a person didn't believe they deserved it.
He stroked Greg's hair, soothing, and looked down at him through blurring eyes. "Moyo chudo," he murmured without thinking. "Moj ljubimyj...ty ne odin."
He could feel the damp warmth of tears soaking through his thin undershirt. He wasn't surprised by it, but was surprised by the rush of anger that rose up in him in response.
Pavel was not a violent man, but if he laid eyes on Greg's father or any of his brothers again, he would hit first and talk second. He wanted to shout at every person who had sat back staring at them from the moment they drove into that town. He wanted to know who they were, how much they saw. How they could let this brutish family try so hard to destroy a man who was so truly decent.
How many eyes had stared while Greg was being beaten by his brothers in that hospital he had told Pavel about? How man had watched him through his life and done nothing to show him any kindness at all?
He wished that the doctor Greg had mentioned was still alive. Whatever he had done to get through to Greg, whatever he said to him that told Greg he was someone worth saving, Pavel wanted to know it. He wanted to thank him for it.
"I love you, moyo chudo," he said softly. "Nothing I've seen here has changed that. It's only made it stronger."
Greg's hands clenched in his shirt. He stilled, breathing raggedly as his shudders slowed to a stop. "Pasha..."
"What is it, my Grischa?"
"Why do I care so much?" Greg spoke hoarsely, pained. "When I knew what it'd be like, why does it still hurt so fucking much?"
Pavel swallowed. "They were the only family you had, and you are too good a man to not care about that. But now...you have me. I am your family. My papa will treat you like a son whether you want it or not...let him. He can be your family. And Hikaru, and Kirk and McCoy, and Nyota and Scotty and Spock, and all the people I think of as my family, who call me family. They will be yours, too. And you'll never come back here, not ever, not for weddings or funerals or anything else, because from now on these are only the people who tried to raise you. Nothing more."
Greg looked up at him, which must have been hard for him - the tracks of tears were still visible on his face, and Greg was a man who always wanted to seem strong, even when he wasn't. Still, he looked at Pavel and drew in a deep breath, and nodded.