ACID

by

Diane Randle

“Hey, you awake?”  Sulu whispered.  Of course you could never whisper quietly enough not to be heard by the Enterprise’s Captain...so,
thank goodness he wasn’t on the bridge just now.

Chekov didn’t respond to him so Sulu tapped his left arm, “Hey.”

Chekov jumped, “Pardon?”

“Are you awake?”  Sulu whispered again, even though it seemed a bit futile now since Chekov had spoken aloud and caught the attention of
Spock already.  But, the Vulcan turned back to his work at the science station, obviously deciding that they were having a private discussion
and as much as he regretted the loss of focus on work, he understood humans seemed to need these diversions to stay fresh.

“Yes...no...”  He laughed a little and checked his board again, or ‘bored’ as he had come to think of it today...although, after last night,
boredom certainly held more than a small attraction.  It was just that today he was so tired that boring work - there was a time he couldn’t
imagine anything that occurred on the bridge of a starship as boring - made it doubly difficult for him to stay awake.

“I saw you last night.”  Sulu said quietly with a certain tone in his voice.

Chekov turned to look at him and was distressed to see a big grin on the helmsman’s face...great...on top of everything else Sulu knew about
him and Maria.  ‘That’s all I need.’ Chekov thought miserably, some ridiculous teasing. He was such an easy target, he wished they would all
move on to someone a little less obvious.

“Yes?”  Chekov said carefully.

“She’s quite uhm...voluptuous...isn’t she?”  Sulu had to admit he’d had more than a twinge of envy when his helm partner caught the eye of
Maria Seto, a civilian lab assistant for Dr. Bernard Skinner, currently transiting the Algoran Z System courtesy the Enterprise.  Sulu thought it
was quite a waste of starship energy when he heard they were transporting the physicist and his assistant but then he hadn’t actually seen
Maria then...

When she’d walked into the rec room the place stopped, literally.  She was curvy, boy was she curvy and she manipulated every curve in
some mysterious way when she moved, it wasn’t exactly walking...Sulu’s mind had run through a thesaurus of words to describe what she did
when she moved and decided that the word just didn’t exist.

Maria hesitated the briefest moment in the entrance to the rec room, obviously she was used to causing this kind of stir.  She moved across
the floor toward them and Sulu had an impression of black, wavy hair cascading down her back and falling down her face into her blue, (were
they blue or green?) eyes. Those eyes were, well, they weren’t huge, they were normal sized but what pulled you in was that when you looked
into them they were just so damned deep, speaking of unnamed, unimagined dimensions.    

The helmsman couldn’t remember ever having been so affected by a woman, or by anything for that matter.  As the room came to life around
him again he suddenly realized that this unbelievable creature was moving right toward him and his breath caught and he wasn’t sure if it was
going to start again and he worried about oxygen deprivation for a moment but then she just passed right on by him, so close he could feel
her heat and he watched as her bronze coloured hand reached out and settled on Pavel Chekov’s arm and her voice wrapped around him as
she spoke, “I may sit with you?”

“Hey, wake up!”  Chekov hissed at Sulu.  Sulu jumped now, embarrassed to be caught daydreaming.  “What do you mean, you saw me?”  
Chekov asked him again.

“I saw you later, near your quarters...with Maria...”  Sulu raised an eyebrow at him. “Well?”

“Well, what?”

“You’re not going to say anything are you?”

Pavel turned away from him. “It’s rude.”

But, when Sulu mumbled, “Always the gentleman.” the Russian turned back to him, a flash of fire lighting his dark eyes.  “Sulu?”

“Yes?”

“Shut the fuck up.”

Sulu stared at his friend,  shocked by the anger in the younger man’s face.  “Hey, I’m sorry, ok?  Really.”  Sulu, past being surprised and
through with his apology now asked with concern, “You okay?”

Chekov merely nodded and prayed that the next four hours of the shift would go by faster than the first eternal four.

~~~~~~~

When Lieutenant’s Sulu and Uhura walked into the mess in the morning and found Pavel Chekov already there they knew immediately that
something was up.
It wasn’t that he was never there before them, in fact he was usually there before them.  It was the fact that his brooding mood was a tangible
physical presence that permeated the entire room.

And, neither Lieutenant had seen him the night before but Sulu had related his altercation with the navigator on the bridge to the
communications officer.  Uhura had wanted to go looking for him but Sulu had reminded her that they had agreed amongst themselves, and
Scotty, too, that they had to stop treating Pavel Chekov like a little brother.

They knew it was grating on the excitable Russian’s nerves and they also knew that the time had long since passed when their protectiveness
was looked upon by Chekov with affection.  Oh, he had always complained about it, but both Lieutenants knew that Pavel Chekov, the only
child, had secretly liked having bossy, nosy ‘siblings’ for awhile.  But, now their relationship had changed, as it does with all families, and the
two older officers had resolved to begin treating him more as an equal.   

After all, the Ensign had been through quite a lot since signing aboard the Enterprise, he had more than proved himself many times over and
he was turning twenty-four in a couple of weeks.   It was just that, Uhura thought, it was really hard not to be big sister when he had a face on
him like the one he wore this morning.

The two officers hesitated, looked at each other and shrugged.  Should they go over or leave him alone?  Uhura looked annoyed, which
amused Sulu until she caught the look on his face.  He put on a suitably serious expression, but was still smiling inside because he knew it
was killing her not to rush over to find out what was troubling the navigator and, more importantly, what she could do about it.

Obviously, she couldn’t stand it anymore because she made a move toward the table.  Pavel didn’t look up as they approached.  Uhura
touched his arm and the Ensign flinched.  He drew in a breath and put his hand to his heart, looking up at them out of a face haggard with
exhaustion.  

“Oh, honey, I’m sorry I....you look terrible.”

Sulu sat down across from him, Chekov glanced at him and looked away.  “Are you sick?”  Sulu asked him.

“No, I’m...”  the words cracked with fatigue and trailed away as he stared down into his coffee cup.  He sighed, leaning on his elbows and
brought his clasped hands up to his forehead and closed his eyes as if willing the universe to go away.  

Since that didn’t work, he put his hands down, took a big breath and said, “I need your help.”

Sulu and Uhura tried to keep the shock out of their faces, but the Russian saw it  and where normally he would have given them one of his
sheepish smiles, he only acknowledged the unusual circumstance of asking them for help and continued, “I don’t know what to do.”

Uhura put an arm around his shoulder, she could feel him trembling ever so slightly, she looked across to Sulu before she whispered to
Chekov,  “What is it?”

Chekov buried his face in his hands again and muttered a muffled,   “I’ve made a....terrible...mistake....”

“What!” Sulu’s hyper nature couldn’t tolerate much more of this even when his outburst earned him one of Uhura’s most scathing looks.

Chekov pulled his hands down again, “I...oh, shit...”  He put his hand across his mouth like he was going to be sick.

“Jesus Christ, Pavel, you’re starting to scare us!”  Sulu didn’t care if Uhura got mad at him.

“Lad, what’s all the ruckus?  And before breakfast, too!”  They hadn’t seen the engineer approach and nobody answered Scotty now as the
good natured officer stood beside the table, they just waited for Pavel to continue his story.

“Obsession.” was the only word the Russian said, very, very softly.

“Maria?”  Sulu asked and when Pavel nodded, the helmsman repressed his grin when he asked, “You’re obsessed with Maria Seto?”

“No, stupid, other way around!”  Chekov snapped.

“Well, lad, lots of lasses have been that way about you!”  Scotty grinned, then when Pavel looked up at him, and the Scotsman saw the look in
his eye he merely said, “Oh.”  and sat down quietly.

Uhura, anger steeling her voice demanded that, “If you two gentlemen want to continue this I suggest you stop acting like high school boys.”

“Yes, Ma’am.”

“Sorry, lass.  Sorry Mr. Chekov.”


Satisfied, Uhura turned her attention back to Pavel, “What happened, Ensign?”  she asked, an officer commanding an underling for an
answer.

Chekov looked at her gratefully, it would be easier to talk about it this way.  He straightened himself and reported to his superior officer.  “We
met three days ago.  We were intimate, once.  I didn’t mean for it to be once, I don’t like one night...well sometimes...oh, hell, doesn’t matter.  
From that one incident she has become...obsessed.”

“Give me specifics.”

“She said, this is first night, yes?  She says ‘You know, if you leave me, I’ll die.’”

Uhura considered this for a moment, “It wouldn’t pass for humour in my book but do you think she could have been joking?”

Chekov shook his head.  “She said, ‘If you try to leave me, I’ll kill you.”  Pavel could see by the looks on their faces that this distressed them
as much as it had him.  “ I uh...I didn’t know how to think, I thought,  maybe she is drunk? Or sick?  Physically, I mean.  I ask her, ‘Are you
alright?’  Was creepy, she smiles at me, ‘Is just beginning’, she say...no, she said, ‘THIS... this... is just beginning.’  I told her I was going to call
sickbay because I think she is needing assistance.  She decides to leave and stops before door,  ‘Just beginning’ she says again and her
voice was... “

Uhura put her hand on his arm and he gasped,  alarmed she asked, “Are you alright?”

“I forget!  I forget! I for...the, I lost em...”  He tripped over his Standard words, abandoned them altogether and launched into a torrent of
incomprehensible Russian.  

He jumped up and paced a few feet, “Ensign, sit down and start again!”  

He obeyed Uhura instantly, automatically.  She smiled at him, softening the impact of her words and waited for him to continue.

“I lost memory...that night, when she left, no... start again.  We got to my quarters at 2300 and I thought was two hours at most before she left,
but when she was gone I thought about calling sickbay and, or security, but I thought well, is too late and what should I tell anybody and I
looked at my clock and is 0600!  Is not possible!  So, next day I start getting back memories of...waking up in night and she is there and I am
really sick and I thought maybe a dream because I was upset.  So, I don’t think anymore about time being gone but, last night, I notice my
hand...”

He looked down at his hand and rubbed the prominent vein running across the top of it.  “I had mark here and was sore...now is gone.”

“Drugs?” Sulu whispered in shock.  He was starting to feel really terrible about the teasing he had tried to give his friend and he silently vowed
that in future he would not only reign in the part of himself that took particular delight in torturing the Ensign, he would apologize to him and
make it up to him, too.

“That’s it!  We’re going to security right now and you are going to sickbay to get checked out!”  Uhura started to stand, but Chekov stopped
her, “There’s more.”

“Go on.”

“Second day, she was not around, I thought, ok, is good, is over.  Last night, she is back and now I am remembering my hand and oh....”  he
grimaced and paled visibly.

“What, Pavel.”  Uhura said sternly.

He took in a shaky breath, staring at the table he frowned, and as the memory solidified, he squeezed his eyes shut and put his hand to his
mouth,  “Something was...oh.... shto etas nyatchit?”

“Pavel!”  Uhura grabbed his wrists and forced them down to the table.  She slid her hands down until she was grasping his shaking hands.

He opened his eyes, and swallowed,  he squeezed her hands.  He stared at her in horror and she felt terribly cold suddenly as he gasped,     
“Drilling...something was drilling...through the roof of my mouth.”

“Oh, my God.”  Sulu.

Pavel looked up then.  Maria stood above him.  Nobody had seen her enter the mess.  Nobody had noticed her get a coffee from the
replicator.  Nobody had heard her approach their table.  “Ma...” he managed to say before she flung the hot coffee directly into his face.

Pavel screamed and jerked his hands back so hard he pulled Uhura almost halfway across the table before their connection broke and he fell
to the floor.   
Uhura and Sulu dove around the table while Scotty grabbed Seto by the arms.  

She leaned back against the outraged Scott and said in a throaty whisper,   “You don’t need to hold me so tight Mr. Scott...that is, unless you
really want to.”  She licked her lips.  He snorted with disgust and pushed her roughly into a chair.
Sulu’s frantic, ‘“Call for help!”  drew the Scot’s attention away from the attacker as a crewman ran for the intercom.

“Bring me some water!”  Uhura shouted and Janice Lear ran to obey.

Chekov was on the floor writhing, his hands clasped over his face, his voice ragged as he screamed.  Scotty stuck a finger in Chekov’s full
coffee cup, it was stone cold.

Scotty knelt beside Pavel as Sulu pulled him into his lap and Uhura tried to help him pry Chekov’s hands away.  “Pav, hold still, pull your
hands down.” Sulu coaxed.  Between the two of them they managed to pull his hands away from his face long enough for the engineer to pour
the cold coffee on it.  

Lear arrived with water and handed it to Scott who poured it slowly on Chekov’s  face, “You’re okay, laddie, you’re okay.”  Pavel stopped
screaming but was moaning and clenching his teeth, his chest heaving as he struggled to regain control.   

“Okay,  Pav, it’s okay...”  Sulu tried to reassure him,  cursing the tremor running through his voice.

By the time Scott finished pouring the water,  another crewmember, one whose name he did not know but vowed to find out, arrived with a
table cloth soaked in cold water.  They lay it across Pavel’s face and his struggles quieted.  Sulu and Uhura let out a breath hoping they had
done the right thing.

“Such a pretty face it was.”

The icy voice fractured the silence with malevolence.

Sulu stood and made a move toward her but was stopped by Scott with a strong hand to the helmsman’s chest,   “Don’t.”

Seto smiled at Sulu who turned away, feeling a swell of rage rush through his blood.  He distracted himself by shouting across the room,  
“Hanson, did you call security?”  His question was answered by two guards and a Lieutenant in red shirts entering the mess on the run.

“What happened?”  Lt. Zhirovsky demanded.
“This...she threw hot coffee in Chekov’s face!”  Sulu spat out.

Lear spoke up then, “I heard her order it - ‘extra hot’ she said.”

“Oh, my God.”  Uhura stood and faced Maria, “Why?  How could you have done this to him?”

“This?  This is the fault of you. Nobody will hold hands with him.  He was unable even to use his hands to protect himself.  See the trouble you
have caused.”

“Get her away from us.”  Uhura said coldly.

Zhirovsky tore his eyes away from the bizarre conversation long enough to nod to his security team.  As they led their docile perpetrator away,
McCoy ran in with his Medteam in tow.

“What the hell took so long!”  Sulu exploded.

McCoy ignored him,  knelt beside Chekov and ran a tricorder over him, deciding to leave the cloth in place for the moment.  

The doctor’s face looked stricken suddenly, “Singh, get him on the sled now!”  He loaded a hypo with long practiced speed.  “Bleeker!  Call
Chapel, tell her we’re coming in with severe acid burns.”  He emptied the hypo into Chekov’s arm as Singh settled him on the gravsled.

“WHAT!”  Sulu and Uhura both blurted out as McCoy gestured at the coffee cup currently smoking and melting on the table.  McCoy didn’t
look back again but hurried on to sickbay with his patient.

In the stunned silence of the rec room Uhura whispered,  “Oh, no...” as the stinging of the tears in her eyes faintly echoed what Pavel Chekov
must have felt  

“I don’t understand.”  Sulu said numbly.  “I don’t understand.”

He looked to Scotty who said quietly, “Nor I.”

~~~~~~~~~~


“Sickbay to bridge.”

“Bones, wha...”

“Jim!  I need Spock down here now!  And, I need security to get Seto to tell them what the hell she threw on Chekov!  We haven’t been able to
identify it and it’s,  just get Spock down here now.  McCoy out.”

Uhura and Sulu locked eyes across the bridge as Spock entered the turbolift.  It had been two hours since the attack in the rec room.  There
had been only word that he was in surgery.

“I don’t understand.”  Kirk said from his command position.

He stood and walked over to the area in front of the viewscreen, then turned back to Sulu at the helm/navigation console.  “You’ve told me
everything?”

“Yes, sir.”   Sulu couldn’t help sounding a bit defensive.

“Of course, I’m sorry, Sulu.  I just can’t make it make any sense.  Uhura could you run one more check?”

“Of course, Captain.”  She repeated the procedure she had performed shortly after arriving on the bridge, bringing up the bio on Maria Lucia
Seto once more and once more....it made less sense the more they knew about her.

Born on Rigel IV to Terran parents, she had grown up on Rigel, thus her slightly unique speech pattern.  Her parents were both scientists,
mother an Ethnobiologist, father and Endocrinologist.  Maria had abilities, no doubt, but at this time in her life, at the age of twenty, she did
not wish to be bogged down in academia.   She was a qualified lab technician and a good one and for now that was enough to get her the
plum assignment with Dr. Skinner.

Skinner....Skinner could not believe his assistant had done such a thing.  He was adamant that they had the wrong person in custody, Kirk’s
crew had made a grievous error, now please let her go because she could not have done this.

But then....Skinner had paused in his entreaty outside the brig to stare at his assistant in astonishment.  “You did do it, didn’t you.”  And she
had smiled back at him and said softly, “I am going to kill him.”

Skinner turned to Kirk then, “Please, Captain, have your ship’s surgeon examine her, something has to be wrong, something has to be wrong.”

The Enterprise Captain had replied coldly, “I think he’s busy at the moment.”  

McCoy was busy for the next six hours as it turned out.   When he had done what he could, when Pavel Chekov had stabilized enough...
stabilized...on total life support.  McCoy had always thought that term, ‘total life support....LIFE support’ was a misnomer somehow because if
things actually did stabilize for that young man like this, well, that was no life.  It was just minimal bodily function.  

And...what the hell was he going to do about...he slumped over his desk and closed his eyes.  He hadn’t changed out of his surgical scrubs
and didn’t care about this lapse until a quiet knock at his door made him sit up and he heard a sharp gasp.

Uhura and Sulu stood mutely staring at the blood on his shirt.  Oh, hell.  Surgery on a state of the art starship was usually not so messy.  

“Sorry...I’m tired...I should go change..”  

“It’s okay.”

“Alright, come in.”  He said as he straightened up and they took the chairs on the other side of the desk.  He had already had this talk with his
Captain and the sadness in those hazel eyes lingered in his mind as he looked at the grim faces in front of him now.

“It’s bad.”  He said and let it hang there in the air for a bit, waited for it to settle, for the echo of it to die away a little.  And then he realized he
didn’t know what else to say.  Should he say he didn’t know what to do?  Should he tell them Spock was trying to figure out what was
happening to him?  Should he...ya, ya, he should.

“I don’t know what she threw on him but it wasn’t just acid.  It’s...solidified into a kind of sinew.   It’s...it’s working it’s way through his body and
attaching itself to his central nervous system. Spock is trying to figure out what’s going on.  Apparently, she’s not talking, but I guess you know
that.”

“I’ll make her fucking talk.”  Sulu said with venomous, dangerous quiet.

Uhura ignored him, reading the doctor’s face.  “What else?”

McCoy took a breath, “His eyes were destroyed, we...couldn’t save them..well, the truth is...his face is..his whole face...it’s been destroyed as
well...”

“Will he live?”  Sulu stared at the floor as he asked the question and didn’t look up until his question was met with a long silence.

‘Live?’  McCoy thought.  ‘Is that what you would call it?  Is that what HE would call it?’  That question was already plaguing Leonard McCoy but
he pushed it aside for now and concentrated on the people in front of him this very minute.  “He inhaled whatever it was and his lungs have
been severely damaged, we’re doing what we can but...we’re doing what we can for him.”

“Is he in pain?”  Uhura’s voice was full of what she hoped Pavel wasn’t feeling.

McCoy shook his head, “He’s unconscious.  We’re going to try to keep him that way for now because....”

“Can we see him?”  Sulu asked, but already knew the answer.

McCoy shook his head, “He’s quarantined, and he’s been designated a level five bio...”  Hazard.  Biohazard.  Not a person anymore.  Not the
person they knew yesterday, the kid with the ready smile and the quick temper.  Not the irreverent prankster.  Not that kid that could play
gravball with deadly speed few could match but chose to play it for fun and companionship.  Not that serious young man with dark shadows
following him through the corridors of time.  Not that young officer getting ready to receive his Lieutenant’s stripe.  Not that guy that could
dance until one in the morning and still make his morning work-out and beat everybody to breakfast.  

Not that kid that had found a tired physician on the observation deck one night...a physician who had lost one too many patients...and sat with
him through until morning, asking his advice on one subject after another until Leonard McCoy had felt again a sense of his purpose in this
universe.  Not Pavel Andreievich Chekov.  

~~~

The ravaged body that was ‘Level 5 Biohazard - #242 - USS Enterprise’,  lay absolutely still on the sickbay bed. It was nearly invisible beneath
the bandages, the tubes, the wires and especially, the machinery that hummed incessantly in it’s job of keeping the body functioning at a level
that meant it could still be termed ‘alive’, even though it was so deathly still and quiet.

Even from five metres away though, through the containment field and beyond the sealed glass, Spock knew the body was not still.  A terrible
and bloody battle was being waged there, small universes were colliding there, life and death were colliding there.

The Vulcan science officer watched as McCoy and Chapel moved around the bed like ghosts in their environmental suits.

“Push his oxygen up to 12 liters per minute.”  The fatigue in McCoy’s voice was exacerbated by the suits filters and small comm system
speaker.

“His alveolar-arterial PO2 difference is down.”

“Good.  Let’s get another COHgb level on him.”  McCoy pulled aside the guaze covering the Ensign’s face, “Jesus Christ.”  he said quietly.  He
checked the readings on one of the six auxiliary monitors ringing the bed, “Well, at least there’s no decalcification of the bone.  It looks like it’s
stopped where it is.  I don’t think he absorbed enough for it to go systemic but lets keep monitoring his serum calcium levels every half hour.”

The doctor’s voice echoed in the quiet and seemed to hang in the air and fade away slowly.  He looked up at Chapel, she was staring down at
her patient.
“Christine...”

“He was....he was...”

McCoy put his gloved hand out and touched her shoulder, she saw the gesture more than felt it through the layers of protective fabric.  She
drew in a breath of sterile, filtered air and didn’t say what was on her mind then, instead she said, “I’ll do his right hand.”  and moved around
to the other side of the bed. letting the doctor’s hand slide off her shoulder.  She didn’t want to be touched.  

She hated treating patients through these bloody suits.  She wanted nothing more than to give him a hug, or at least let him feel the warmth of
her hand on his arm or his shoulder.  

She pulled aside the dressing on his hand.  The wounds here were much less severe, still second degree though. They would be very painful
if he were to regain consiousness....there it was again, that thought she didn’t articulate earlier....she looked across at the Enterprises CMO
hoping she hadn’t betrayed herself and, she wondered if he was thinking the same thing.

Neither of them spoke about what was happening to his spinal chord because neither of them understood what was going on there, that was
Spock’s area of concern.  The Vulcan was set up outside the room, studying the monitors there, watching the sinews wrapping around and
working their way through the navigators spinal chord.  They seemed to concentrate in the thoracic area, some of them anchoring to his rib
cage. The wire thin filaments had entered his body through his face.  

It was the Vulcan’s opinion that a path had been set for the filaments and after debriefing Uhura and Sulu, he was certain that the sinews had
used the puncture wound in the roof of the Ensign’s mouth as an entrance.  

What Spock didn’t understand was why Maria Seto had used coffee laced with what turned out to be hydrofluoric acid to introduce the
substance when from Spock’s examination of a piece of the filament extracted by McCoy, she could have introduced it to him as an injection
or even orally.  

The purpose of the substance was as yet unknown, it was not causing damage to the tissue it contacted and Spock’s examination showed it to
be a rather benign saline based compound with only one unidentifiable molecule.

It was that molecule that had been the focus of the Vulcan’s attention for the past seven hours.  He was slightly dismayed to find his attention
to the task at hand had been distracted four times in those hours.

It was difficult for Spock.  He did not have to touch someone in such distress to feel the hidden turmoil in the adjacent room, especially if it was
someone, some human, he had become accustomed to.  Pavel Chekov was such a human.  

Spock suddenly recalled a conversation he had had with the young officer one night, very late, in the astrophysics lab, about death, about
fending it off at all costs.  

The Russian’s maternal grandfather had passed away recently, at home in St. Petersburg where he wanted to be and not in the hospital
fighting it out till the bitter end, like some of his children had wanted.  Pavel’s mother Catherine Ivanova, his oldest child, had fought to get him
home and Pavel had agreed with her decision and been glad that he was able to make it home in time to say goodbye to Sergie Pavlovich.  

“I would not want to be kept alive only by machines.”  Pavel had said and he did not clarify or elaborate and Spock wondered at the
circumstances now.  Certainly, he would not wish to be kept alive through this if there were no hope of recovery?  And, what hope was there,
realistically?  Even McCoy, who never gave up, conceeded he was at a loss as to what to do.  Spock wondered if the doctor had checked the
Ensign’s records, his wishes in such a case would be clearly stated.  How long before a decision would be made to carry out what Spock knew
the young man’s instructions would be?

What were the alternatives?   First,  they had to keep him alive, they weren’t sure how to do that.  And, what were they keeping him alive for?  
What was happening inside him?  He may even constitute a danger to the rest of the ship.  If he died his body could not be sent home, it
would end up in a laboratory.  Spock understood from what he knew about Chekov’s family traditions how upsetting that would be for them.  

‘Well, then...’ the Vulcan decided, logically, there was no alternative,  ‘We must solve this problem.’

~~~~~

“Lt. Sulu, you know damn well you’re not supposed to be here.”  Lt. Suzanne Strevens was blonde and pretty and had a soft voice and could
beat the crap out of almost anybody on the ship, Sulu included.  She had several black belts, several meaning nine.  She was five feet three
and most crew asked who they would want watching their backs during a barroom brawl would answer loudly, “Strevens!”

But, she was also kind and sweet for a securtiy guard and, most importantly to Sulu, she was an old flame, well, not so old, less than a year
since and now he was asking her this favour and she was shaking her head.

“I’m sorry, Hikaru, I know what she did, I hope Pavel’s all right,  I like him, but I...”

“He’s not going to be allright Suze, he’s...his face was destroyed, his eyes...”  He stopped.

“Oh, God...”  She looked down at the top of her boots and then back up at him. A strange look, a little smile came over her face, “I was...
remember that fight we had?  You gave me hell for leaning too close to him when we were talking, for looking at him too intensely...”

Sulu remembered the fight, he had felt like an idiot, probably because he had behaved like one.  On the other hand, Pavel could be a
notorious flirt and Suzanne the same, the two of them together combined with the saki coursing through the helmsman’s blood that night had
provided more than enough fuel for Sulu’s insecurities.

“Oh, God, I knew he was hurt but...I’m sorry...those eyes....”  ‘Those eyes’ she had said to Sulu, she just couldn’t help it, she just loved to look
into them, it was nothing really, she wasn’t attracted to him...exactly, well, she was but not sexually...kind of... well, maybe she was but he was
being silly, she was with him.

She looked at him now and could see the rage in his quiet face.  “No way, Hikaru.  There is no way I can let you talk to her.  I’m sorry.”

“We have to find out what she did to him!  Did you try?”  He grabbed her shoulders.

She gently removed his hands from her shoulders, “Of course we tried!”

“Well, you need to do something else!  You need to...”  He threw his arms in the air.

“Pour boiling oil on her?  Pull her fingernails out? “

“If that’s what it takes!”

She had had enough, she took him by the shoulders and turned him toward the door, “Come on, you have to leave.”

“Goddammit, Suzie!” He planted himself.

“Now, Sulu.”

When he didn’t move, she said in her quietest most dangerous voice, “Now, Lt. Sulu.”

He said, “Shit!” under his breath, spun away from her and was gone, leaving Strevens the silence of the brig once more.  

She started back toward the cell area, she’d check on her charge one more time before Jackson came on shift.  She could see Maria on the
monitor but she liked to lay her eyes right on her guests.

Her guest was lying on the bunk on her side, her back to the door.  “Hey, Seto, you okay?”  It seemed strange to her to be asking after her
welfare after what Sulu had told her about Chekov’s condition. “Why don’t you tell us what you did to him.”

Strevens was surprised when the woman sat up and looked at her.  “Exactly what I did I can tell you now. This is ending.”

~~~~
0340 Hrs:  Uhura was surprised to find somebody else in the lounge at this time of the morning.  Even though there were, of course, always
crew about, the ship did maintain a day and night rotation and if you wanted quiet in the middle of the ‘night’ it could usually be found easily in
a rec room or lounge or mess.

She hesitated in the door, debating about returning to her quarters, when she realized who it was.  She moved through the dimly lit room until
she stood above the woman silouetted before the observation window.  “Can I refill that for you?” she asked quietly.

Chapel pushed the cup toward her and Uhura picked it up and carried it across to the coffee station.  She returned with the hot drinks, set
them down and sat across from her friend.  

They drank in silence for awhile, for as long as it took for one of them to want to say something.

“I hate starships.” Chapel looked out the window as she spoke.  “You know, I worked in emerg in Boston General for four years.  Never knew a
single person that came in our door.  Here, I know every goddamned person that comes through our doors.”  She took a drink of the coffee
and leaned back in the chair, looked at Uhura and smiled tiredly.  “You saved his life you know.  Pouring the water on him, it stopped it, it
would have continued on to attack the bone and then....”  

She looked away from Uhura again, the smile gone now, “I hope he doesn’t wake up.”  There.  She’d said it. What she’d been thinking all day.

The nurse looked to her friend again, thinking she might find shock or dismay or anger, instead, she found that face, so familiar, as it always
was, open, waiting, listening.  “It’s called liquefaction, what happened to his face, his eyes...I keep thinking of him waking up, blind, bandaged,
restrained, in the dark, nobody can touch him, he’ll hear humming and whirring, he won’t be able to talk....I hope he doesn’t wake up.”  She
reached for her coffee again, “Leonard drinks brandy until he goes to sleep, I drink coffee until I stay awake all night...I don’t know which is
better, maybe I should try his way.”  

She looked more closely at Uhura, “Did you want to say something?  Ask me something?”  Uhura shook her head and slowly realized that
Chapel didn’t want to talk anymore and she was being asked to leave.  She got up then and kissed her friend on the cheek, remembering too
late that the gesture might remind them both of Chekov’s exuberant kiss-on-both-cheeks greeting they both had gotten so used to.  She could
see in Chapels eyes the same thought and forgiveness for the slip and gratitude for her friendship.

Uhura slipped out of the room quietly and Chapel went back to staring at the stars.  “I hate starships.”  she said to the dark void beyond the
window.

~~~~  


Kirk shifted restlessly in the transporter room.  He had never met Dr. Karpov and so was glad when the doors to the room finally whisked open
and Uhura and Sulu entered.  They weren’t late, Kirk was early as he often was when he was anxious and he was very anxious about this man
coming aboard.

Uhura had informed him just seventeen hours earlier that Dr. Andre Illyich Karpov was aboard the research vessel U.S.S. Bluenose - he had
received word from home of Pavel Chekov’s injuries and was insisting on coming to the side of his stepson.  

Kirk had no reason to refuse him, he wouldn’t have dreamt of it, but he was sorry to be meeting the well known microbiologist under these
circumstances.  And, honestly, as Captain of the Enterprise he felt somewhat guilty at what had happened to his navigator. Intellecutally he
knew there was nothing he could have done to prevent the attack but emotionally it didn’t feel that way.

Kyle spoke up from behind the transporter console.  “They’re ready Captain.”

“Energize, Mr. Kyle.”

Kirk was surprised even before the man solidified, surprised at the size of the sillouette before him.  Dr. Andre Karpov was an imposing figure
and Kirk mentally kicked himself, Pavel was small but he had to remember that this man was not his biological father.

He could have been though, apart from his size, which was at least 6’ 4” Kirk figured.  He had Pavel’s dark colouring, and even wore his hair a
bit like the Russian navigator, except the doctor’s was longer and shaggier and at some points it was hard to tell where his neatly trimmed
black beard ended and hair began.

Karpov didn’t smile as he surveyed the transporter room - until he saw Uhura and Sulu, he nodded an acknowledgement to them.  Kirk
stepped forward and offered his hand - which was immediately swallowed by the very large hand accepting the greeting.

“Dr. Karpov, welcome to the Enterprise, I’m Captain Kirk, I am sorry, sir.  I wish the circumstances were different.”

“I want to see him now, Captain.”  The booming voice spoke with an accent even thicker than Pavel’s and rang with an air of authority that
broached no questioning.

“Of course.”  Kirk gestured and Karpov stepped down off the platform.   “Dr. McCoy would have been here but he...”

“I would prefer he stay with my son, than waste time on social niceties, Captain Kirk.”  With that Andre Karpov turned to Uhura and aborbed
her into a bear hug that left the Lieutenant’s existance in doubt.  When she reemerged she looked up at the giant man sadly, he touched the
side of her face affectionately and then kissed both cheeks.

“Nytosha, thank you for being here.”  He turned to Sulu, “Hikaru.”  Sulu stepped forward and accepted the traditional greeting and then his
slim frame was also lost to sight for a moment as the big man hugged him tightly.

He clapped Sulu manfully on the shoulder,  “Let’s go.”  

~~~~~

Andre Karpov put his hand on the cool glass separating him from his son and said quietly, “I will go in with him.”

“Dr. Karpov, you know as well, BETTER than I do, that that is not possible.”  Dr. McCoy explained....again.

“Of course it is, you will put me in quarantine with him.  Is simple.” Karpov looked down at McCoy and smiled, “Pavel Andreievich told me about
you, he trusts you, he thinks you are good physician.”  His smile widened, “Also large pain in ass.”

Even McCoy had to laugh at that one.  “We butt heads sometimes.”  He looked toward his patient, still kept unconscious by drugs, but
improving by the hour.  “He’s a tough kid.”

Andre looked away suddenly and McCoy was surprised when he realized this huge bear of a man had begun to weep quietly.  Before the
Enterprise doctor could move to comfort him, Andre began to speak.  “I know that you know what happened to him.  When Zukov broke his
arm.  Six years old and his father snapped his arm over his leg... like it was dry twig ”  

He turned to look at McCoy again, the brown eyes, so like Pavel’s, glittering with tears.  “He almost died. His arm - almost severed.  Have you
ever felt that spot, on his upper arm, the little dent there where the bone shattered, the place where it tore through all the muscles there and
the tendons and finally ripped through the skin?”  

McCoy swallowed and nodded, he had felt that spot and asked about it once during an examination, asked the young officer if it ever hurt him
as old breaks, especially bad ones, sometimes did.  Pavel had shook his head slowly and bit his lip and McCoy knew he was lying but let it go.

“My wife told me that  hospital kept her out of his room, he was under infectious control procedures because break infected and so she couldn’
t go inside the room with him and she begged them...she begged them, Dr. McCoy to please let her be there for him when he woke up and of
course, they couldn’t.  And so... he is six years old.  He is almost dead.  He is afraid.  And, he is waking up to strange and frightening beings
hovering over him and here he is again now, and here I am now, now I am begging you to please not let that happen to him again.”

McCoy opened his mouth to speak but Andre continued, “I accept whatever danger may be in that room. I will sign any paper, any release you
want.”  The danger in that room was as yet still unknown, although now they could find no trace of the sinewy substance that had worked it’s
way into his spinal chord and no trace of the strange molecule either.


“I am no danger to him, he is not infected, you tell me the wounds to his face are grafted and sealed now and so he is protected and now you
wear your suits to protect yourselves, not him.  I don’t need protection from him.  You know time is coming, you need to let him wake up.  Don’t
let him do it alone. Not again. Please.”



~~~

Lt. Suzanne Strevens sighed audibly when she saw who had just walked in the door.  She was not surprised, this was the fourth visit to the
brig by one of Pavel Chekov’s friends in three days.  Although Pavel Chekov and the woman standing before her hadn’t been together for
some time, Strevens knew they were more than civil to each other and it wasn’t unusual to see them together in a rec room or mess.

“Landon.”  she said by way of greeting.  The two didn’t exactly see eye to eye on most things, Strevens thought Landon fussy and snobbish -
Landon thought Strevens was always trying to prove to everyone how tough she was and found her boisterousness grating.

And, Martha Landon hated the way Strevens always said hello to her, well, never said hello to her actually - she always just said, “Landon.”  It
seemed to Martha that Suzanne would acknowledge her existence, barely, but that was all.  She had been annoyed when she had bitched
about it to Pavel that he had blown it off and said she was overreacting, that Strevens greeted everyone that way.  But, Landon knew she didn’
t greet Pavel that way, he was always greeted by a bright smile, by sparkling green eyes, by a hand on his arm, by a whispery ‘hello’, by...

“Was there something I could help you with?”  Strevens interrupted Landon’s reverie and her trip down jealousy lane.

“I uh...”  She blew her breath out and put her hands on her hips, “Fuck!”

Strevens stared at her for as long as it took her jaw to drop, then burst out laughing.  Landon chewed her lip and looked annoyed.  “I’m sorry.
I just never thought you ever let anything like that come out of your mouth.”

“Why not?”  Landon demanded defensively, loudly.

“I don’t know, I guess because...I don’t know, you just don’t look like the type.” Strevens shrugged.

“Oh, for Chrissakes!”  Landon bit off her reply when she saw Strevens grin widen at  her second outburst.  Landon sighed loudly then, “I don’t
know why I’m here, I just...I want...I wanted to talk to her.....no, that’s not right -  I want to beat the shit out of her.”  Her eyes suddenly lit by
rage, then glimmered with welling tears.  She sniffed and turned to leave, but was stopped by a tug on her sleeve.

“I just put some coffee on.”

Landon turned back to her, smiled faintly, hopefully, but Strevens shook her head, “I’m sorry, I can’t let you see her.”

“Has she said anything?”

Strevens shook her head again and pulled a chair away from the squad room table.

“She’s been playing games with us.  She told me she was going to talk a couple of days ago, that she could tell me everything because...she
puts things oddly, she said, ‘this is ending’ but then she just smiled at me and hasn’t said a word since.  Strange.”

Martha sat down, her shoulders slumped and she looked so forlorn that Strevens couldn’t help but feel genuine sympathy for her.

“What do you take?”  she asked Landon as she poured the coffee.

“Doesn’t matter.”  came the dull reply.  “His father is here you know.”  She said quietly as Strevens set the cup down in front of her.

“Is he?”  Strevens rolled her eyes slightly, no doubt he would be paying the brig a visit as well.

“I’m glad, he needs to...he shouldn’t be by himself.”  She suddenly looked intently at the security guard and leaning forward, she hissed,
“Have you seen him!”

Strevens swallowed and shook her head.

Landon leaned back and focused on some infinite point on the table top, “You wouldn’t believe it was him.  You wouldn’t believe it.”

~~~~~

Andre couldn’t believe that the faceless being lying on the bed before him was his Pavel Andreievich. Some tiny part of Andre’s psyche held
out hope that a simple case of mistaken identity had occured, that Pavel was off somewhere and this unfortunate young man’s family had yet
to be informed of the terrible misfortune that had befallen him.

Andre held that hope right up until the time he took the hand lying on top of the bedspread.  The man’s knees weakened as his heart sank
slowly for when he took that hand he knew instantly and without a shred of doubt that it was indeed Pavel Andreievich...Pasha.  Andre Illyich
believed this young man to be his son, and he knew him as surely as any father knows his child.  They had both been lost in the world for
awhile, alone - it had taken them some time to finally find each other, but after they had, the bond that joined them was unshakeable.

“Oh, Pasha...oh, nyet, nyet....nyet.”  Andre could not tear his eyes away from what was left of his sons face.  He knelt beside the bed and
kissed the hand and then pressed it to his forehead and put his head down and prayed quietly in Russian.

McCoy hadn’t turned on the universal translator in the room yet and didn’t now - prayers were private matters, he thought, and he wouldn’t
turn the translator on until Andre was finished.

He had tried to prepare the man.  Pavel Andreievich Chekov’s ‘face’ resembled nothing but a pile of putty at this point.  They grafted skin
immediately, they used plas-skin as soon as his cells would take it, as soon as they finished irrigating the wound site and were sure the acid
had been flushed and stopped because they needed to protect him from infection, his biggest enemy.

The reconstruction would come later.  How, McCoy wasn’t sure - cloning perhaps.  Or a combination of cloning and reconstructive surgery.  
They would doubtless use cloning to replace his eyes.  Scotty had suggested the transporter imprint could possibly be used to do the whole
thing at once....somehow.  Spock and the engineer were investigating that possibility and the Enterprises CMO was conferring with specialists
in the Surgeon General’s office.  Their opinion was that they would have to remove what had temporarily been put in place and rebuild the
musculature first, then grafting and cloning of the eyes probably followed by a succession of surgeries to improve the aesthetics of his face.  

It was their opinion that he would never look a hundred percent normal - man’s medical miracles still couldn’t begin to approximate the
complexity of nature herself.  He would certainly never look like himself again.

Andre gripped the young man’s hand tightly - at least these wounds had already healed - he was grateful for that much, for being able to
touch him this way.  His face...his face....there was nothing but a flat tableau of bumpy beige colouring - no nose, the cartilage had been
eaten by the acid, there was only a small hole allowing an oxygen tube through.  No mouth really, his lips destroyed, his teeth had been bared
as on a skull but McCoy had managed to put extra tissue there to close the gap, now there was just a slit - how was he going to eat?  He
wouldn’t be able to talk, he had no facial muscles left, no mouth.  Well, these questions would all be answered one at a time, Andre thought.

He looked at the sunken craters where his eyes had been, not even eyelids now, just seamless shiny plas-skin and pieces of grafting.  

Andre felt overwhelmed again and his chest heaved with the effort not to break into sobs.  He had to be strong.  He had to be strong for
Pavel.  He had to be strong for Catherine Ivanova...she had begged him to come to Enterprise but he had promised her he would bring their
son home.  He had never lied to her before.

‘Alright, Andre Illyich’ he thought, ‘We’ve been through so much...we can get through this too.’  He put his hand on Pavel’s head, smoothing
his hair down, “We’ll get through.”  he said aloud.

He drew in a breath and then collected and drew himself up to his full imposing stature.  He looked toward the glass and nodded to McCoy,
already suited up and ready in the anteroom.

McCoy nodded and popped the seal on the room.  As he entered the room the sounds of Prokofiev’s Troika Overture played softly in the
background.  The music was Chapel’s idea and a good one the doctor had thought.

Andre smiled faintly at him, “Thank you for this.”

McCoy nodded at him and prepared to turn off the sedative drip that kept the Ensign in slumber.  He looked at Andre more closely and the
man nodded back, he was ready.  Andre knelt beside the bed again and took Pavel’s hand again.  McCoy had told him that once the sedative
was shut off Pavel would awake fairly quickly.

McCoy flipped the switch and the drip stopped and they waited.  Thirty-five seconds later Pavel moaned softly and moved his head slowly.  
Andre began speaking to him, in Russian, McCoy heard the translation through his suit speaker.

“Pasha...Pasha, it’s Papa...you’re okay, son....can you hear me.  Pasha, it’s Papa, it’s alright...it’s alright...”

McCoy watched as the young man’s breathing stopped for a second, then he dragged in a lung full of air, it still sounded gravelly and liquid
but his lungs had improved so far beyond McCoy’s expectations the Georgia doctor had stopped just barely short of calling it a miracle.   
Pavel stretched his legs and his arms, Andre held fast to his hand as the young man groaned again and his jaw moved slightly, he swallowed,
and made an odd noise, he was trying to talk.

“Ssshhh!  Pavel, it’s all right.  You can’t talk.  It’s Papa, I’m right here, I’m right here...do you know me?  Squeeze my hand if you know I’m
here.”

McCoy watched the fingers around Andre’s hand tighten until they turned white, Andre grinned, “Good!  Good and strong, yes!”  He smiled up
at McCoy then abruptly turned his attention back to his son when a sob erupted from the young man.  He hugged Pavel close, stroking his
head, “Sshh, it’s alright...it’s alright...don’t be afraid, you are going to be fine, do you hear me?  Do you understand me?  Squeeze my hand if
you know you are going to be fine, yes?”  Pavel responded to him, squeezed his hand again.  “That’s my boy.  You’re all right...you’re all
right.”

McCoy observed the scene before him, as always he was amazed at the power in the voice and the comforting touch of family and only
slightly disturbed by the promises the father made to the son - promises the doctor didn’t know if he could keep.


~~~~~

They were dreams.  Or visions.  Or memories.  He couldn’t know which.  They were a kind of reality that was there for him to feel and live and
remember.  They shimmered, they wavered, they rippled like water and buzzed and whined like grinding machinery and then they stopped
rattling around and froze and she was there.  

He saw her face,  so beautiful and she smiled and the blue/green eyes shifted and then there was such hatred there - why?  Why?  He saw
the jerk of her arm - saw the liquid flying toward him -  it chewed into him - no burning - chewing, consuming, eating, billions of little teeth
sawing through skin, through flesh, into bone...

“Aagh!”  His hands tried to sweep them off his face but he couldn’t reach his face!
He had to get them off!  He had to!

“PAVEL ANDREIVICH!”

He awoke instantly to that commanding voice.  He stopped struggling immediately, his chest clenched around another choked off scream.  
Strong hands held his wrists - he knew those hands - he knew the calluses on the index, third and fourth fingers - calluses grown over years
of wood carving.  

His heart hammered madly and he tried with all his might to focus on calming it, on damning up the adrenaline surging through his blood and
into his muscles that made him want to rip away from the arms holding him fast.  He knew those arms, had as a boy, first pulled away from the
comfort there, not trusting it, not trusting another ‘Andre’ and then gratefully accepted the love found there.  He knew these arms and he let
himself go now, and as his breath surged out of his body along with his fight he let those strong arms take his weight and his fear.  He knew
who was there and that made it alright.

“Hmmpa...”  What was wrong with his mouth?  He felt like he’d been at the dentist, it felt frozen, he, he couldn’t feel it.  He tried again, “Papa.”  
Clear and true.  Andre drew back in surprise, and glanced up at Chapel as she entered the room, the commotion summoning her.  She smiled
through her mask at Andre.

“Da, Pasha!  Da!”  He hugged his son tightly and felt the strength in the small body.  A strength this boy had had all his life.  A strength he
was going to have to call on once more.  

“Sch...schto?”  Pavel croaked out and Andre glanced at Chapel who reached down and squeezed his hand with her gloved hand.

“Pavel, it’s Christine, do you understand?”

“Kishteen who?”  Even though he couldn’t smile and his voice sounded rather like sandpaper scraping gravel, she heard the teasing there.  
She smiled at Andre and shook her head.

“Perhaps I should summon the Chief Medical Officer.”  she said with mock severity.

A small laugh emanated from her patient then, “I’ll be gu..d..”

“Does it hurt to talk?”  she asked him.

He shook his head slowly and pulled his hand out of hers before she felt it sliding through the glove.  The hand was stopped inches above his
face by Andre’s hand holding it firmly and slowly lowering it back to the bed as Pavel’s breathing accelerated.

“Ssshh...” Andre soothed, and began talking gently to his son in Russian as Christine listened through the tinny speaker in her suit.  “Pavel,
do you remember what happened?”  

The young man nodded and asked, “’urned?”

“Yes.”  Andre said firmly, “Pasha you know I’ve never lied to you, don’t you?”  Chekov nodded again.  “I am not lying to you now, when I tell
you that you will recover, you will be alright, do you understand?”

“Da.” quietly, trembling slightly.

“Alright, listen to me carefully, yes?” Andre waited for a response and continued when he got what he wanted.  “She threw  more than hot
coffee on you and your face sustained a serious injury, do you understand?”  Andre felt the hand gripping his tighten,  heard the sharp intake
of breath threaten to break into a sob,  “Sshh, it’s alright, Pasha, it’s alright, you are strong enough to cope with this, we are strong enough,
right?”  He squeezed the hand tighter, “Right?!”

“Da.” barely a whisper.

“Da.  Dr. McCoy tells me you are well on the way to healing and he is preparing to help you in your recovery right now, right this minute.  In a
moment I want you to touch your face, so you will understand and not be afraid.  It is always the unknown that frightens the most, Pavel,
remember?”  Andre waited, and finally after several seconds Pavel nodded slowly.  “Yes, you remember when your mother had her skating
accident, how scared you were until you saw her, even though she was hurt, it was better to know for sure wasn’t it?”  He waited again, the
affirmative came more quickly.  “I will tell you what you need to know and then your hands will tell you the rest and then you will know where we
are beginning from, fair, yes?”

Chekov drew in a breath and steadied himself, “Da.” stronger now.

“Da.  Here is where we are.  It was an acid, Pasha.”  Pavel’s whole body reacted to that and a small moan escaped him, “I know, I know....do
you want a moment?”

Pavel nodded and struggled to get his breathing under control again, “Kisteen?”

“I’m right here.”  she squeezed her hand.

“Goves?”

“The gloves are a precaution against infection Pavel.”

“Papa...”

“I didn’t want to be in envirosuit.”

Pavel squeezed his hand very hard and made a noise that might have been a sob, “Spa...see..a...”

Andre ran a hand through Chekov’s hair and rested his hand on the side of his son’s head, “You are welcome, little one.”  

“Why?  I can....I can’t....kai...”

“Cry?”  Andre asked.

Pavel nodded and Andre leaned forward and kissed his head and drew him closer.  “You are alright, yes?”

“Da.”

“Your eyes were destroyed, son.”  Andre held on as he felt Pavel react to that and this time there was no doubting the sound coming from
him, dry choking sobs that wracked his body for minutes never ending.  Andre rocked him like an infant, rocked him as he had so many
hundreds of times after every nightmare that replayed the horrors of living with his biological father.  That child’s screams still echoed in the
big man’s mind and he choked back his own emotions and drew himself together.

“Pavel Andreivich.....Pavel, Pavel are you listening to me?”

“Da...da...”

“They are getting new eyes ready for you now, yes?  Dr. McCoy is working on it right now and they will be ready in three days and you will
have your sight back then, you will have your eyes back, do you understand?”

Pavel nodded and lay back on pillow with exhaustion.  Andre looked to Christine who checked his readings.  “Pavel, do you want to rest
now?”  she asked quietly.

He shook his head and started to reach for his face.  Andre stopped him once more.  “Not yet, alright?  Not yet.  Take a moment.  Okay, there
we are...try to relax a little.  Always a race horse at the gate, eh?”  Andre paused and was gratified to hear a small laugh escape his son.  

Pavel took a deep breath and visibly relaxed every muscle in his body.  Andre continued, “You need to know where you are, where we are, at
the beginning, at the start of another journey.  We have taken quite a few together you and I, haven’t we?”

Pavel said very clearly, “Yes, we have.”

“Yes.  Always an adventure for us, life.  Would we have it any other way?”

Strongly, “Nyet.”

“Nyet.  Here we are again and once more we need to take the first step.  Let’s take it together, shall we?”  

He picked up Pavel’s hand and guided it to his face.  HIs own big hand rested over his son’s smaller hand as the fingertips touched that
unfamiliar surface for the first time.  

Pavel gasped and jerked his hand away.  Andre took his hand again and brought it to his face again, “It is only unknown Pavel Andreivich, it is
not unknowable.”

The fingertips touched the bumpy surface again.  Pavel was distressed to realize he could only feel his face with his fingers, it was though
they weren’t touching a part of his body at all.  Chapel spoke up then, “It will probably feel strange Pavel because your face is numb right now,
the nerve endings are being blocked by a neural inhibitor until we are farther along in your recovery.  I know it feels strange, it’....”  she
stopped when she realized she was on the verge of babbling, “It won’t be long before we start re...construction.”

She had tried to say the last word positively and cursed her hesitation.  She decided to just be quiet and let him discover what he needed to
know.

His hand traced it’s way around and he said a small, “Oh...” when they found the oxygen tube entering his face through, not a nose, but a
hole in his face.  

“Oxygen tube, Pavel.”

The fingers continued downward and he made another noise when he touched his teeth.  He put his tongue to his fingers and said “Uck!”

Chapel and Andre laughed at the same time, “I’m sorry, sweetie.”  Chapel said brightly, “I should have told you, you have some light ointment
on your hands still.”

“Yum...ee...”

He continued mapping the strange territory that had once been his face.  He stopped just below the place where his right eye should have
been.  Andre placed his hand on his shoulder.  Pavel continued and let his fingers rest there for a long moment and in his minds eye he was
looking at himself in the mirror, he was looking right into his own eyes like he did every morning, like his therapist had taught him to do when
he was a child.

Look into your eyes, don’t look away, look into your eyes and see the wonderful person there.  Look deep into your eyes and don’t look
away.  Look deep and see what everyone else sees, see the handsome young man there, see the good boy there.

“You have the most beautiful eyes!”  Girls, then women - they all said it.  “I love your eyes.”  “Your eyes are gorgeous.”  “I love looking into
your eyes.”  

Your eyes your eyes your eyes your eyes.....”Pavel?”

He suddenly wanted to be alone and he turned away from his father and pulled away from his nurse and curled up on his side and....wished
he could have closed his eyes.


~~~~

This fucking face!  How he hated it!  “You’re so cute.”  “You’re so good looking.”  “You’re so sexy.”  “Ooh baby, baby.”  

He hated it hated it hated it!!! His face, his face....HIS face.  His father’s face, Andre Zhuko’v’s face...it was his now and he didn’t want it and
he stared at it in the mirror and why did it have to be, why didn’t he look more like his mother, why in fucking hell did he have to look like HIM?  
Like Andre.

Andre...the giant...the monster of his days and nights until he was six...the monster under the bed after that, the monster of his dreams later
still.

Even here, even on Enterprise lightyears from the magnificent estate that had been his personal prison, lightyears and a decade and a half
away from that perilous time, even here it followed him into the night and again last night he had screamed in his sleep and terrified Martha by
lashing out at her when her hand had fallen over his face and in his dream it was HIS hand over his face, suffocating him again, hissing at him
to shut up shut up shut up, spitting on him, pushing him down so hard he thought he might shatter under that pressure.  What did he want?  
What did he want?  He heard them arguing in his mind, “not mine.”  he heard his father say, “Don’t be an idiot.”  his mother had spat back,
“The tests proved he’s yours!  I never cheated on you, never!”  And then that sound again, and he knew his mother had been hit again and
the rage blurred his vision as he peeked through the closet door and he wanted to kill that man and was afraid to and ashamed and he was
five years old.

He stared at himself now in the mirror.  “You look so handsome in your uniform.”  His mother had said to him.  How could she stand to look at
him?  He looked just like his father.  Exactly like him.  

“I hate this fucking face.  I wish it would go away.”  He said aloud to the hated reflection in the mirror.

Pavel gasped and awoke and...awake?  He thought he was awake but...he was dreaming about dreams or something and he didn’t know....

“Papa?”  he said aloud and was reassured to hear his voice but he could have been dreaming that too.

“I’m here, Pasha.  I’m here.”  The man sounded tired, Pavel thought, and felt guilty for what he was putting him through and then stopped
himself, knowing the man would be angry if he thought that.  He was always having to correct himself, he thought tiredly, and wondered if he
would have to do it for the rest of his life and cursed that goddamned Andre Zhukov for putting him through this.  

For putting him through so much that he got physically sick if he heard that man’s music and he heard it everywhere, in spaceports and bars
and shopping plaza’s and he would have to rush away and throw up somewhere and then return to his friends with some sheepish excuse
about eating something bad or drinking too much the night before.  He cursed that man for putting him through so much that he couldn’t sing
in his beloved Russian because in his native language he couldn’t make himself not sound like his father.  He cursed Andre Zhukov for putting
him through so much that he hated his very own face and wished it away and now....he had his wish....

~~~~

“Shit.”  Captain James T. Kirk of the U.S.S. Enterprise loved his job...except when he hated it.  Like now.  He switched the viewer off and the
message it bore went away.

That was it, then.  They had tried to get Maria Seto to talk about what she did, how she did it, why she did it and they had failed and now the
Attorney General’s Office wanted her to be sent to Earth to stand trial for assault not only for the incident where she threw the acid on him,
but also for the suspected assault that had taken place several nights earlier.  There was enough evidence that he’d been drugged to lay
charges against her.  And, so she was to be sent to Earth and Enterprise wouldn’t be allowed to hang about in the Algoran Z System any
longer - they had work to do - elsewhere.  For now, they were to head for Starbase 14.

Dr. Skinner had long since departed.  He had tried so hard with Seto.  Skinner had begged, had cajoled, had threatened and pleaded with her
to please, please tell him what she had done and why.  Why?  Why? Why?   She had merely stared back at him for a bit and then smiled
faintly and turned to the wall.  Tears welled in the old doctor’s eyes - he loved this girl like a daughter and he didn’t know who she was now.

Dr. Skinner had apologized profusely for what had happened and gripped Kirk’s arm in the transporter room and said quietly, “I’m praying for
him.”  Kirk felt sorry for the man, for such a brilliant scientist he presented such a picture of befuddlement and confusion regarding what his
assistant had done that Kirk wanted to put an arm around him and tell him it would all be okay.

But, the Captain didn’t think it would all be okay.  Not yet, anyway.  And not if they were going to have to send Seto to Earth.  Starfleet wanted
Pavel Chekov sent to Earth as well and suggested that it would save time and money if Seto and Chekov were sent back together aboard the
same ship.

Kirk didn’t care what it saved - no way in hell was he going to send his navigator across thousands of light years with his assailant!  Of course,
technically he wouldn’t have been with her - he’d still be quarantined.  But, he didn’t care and he was going to talk to McCoy about their
options as soon as he was through with this bloody ‘paper’ work.

The Captain hated paper work more than anything else in the entire known universe, including brussel sprouts.   Of course it wasn’t exactly
done on paper anymore.  No matter, the name still stuck.  Administrative...crap.  With a little smirk  Kirk switched the viewer off, banishing the
hated forms and details of his job to the oblivion he thought they deserved most and leaned back in his desk chair just as the door to his
quarters chimed.  “Come in.”  

The door slid back to reveal a surprisingly fresh looking Leonard McCoy.  The doctor ambled into the room and betrayed his hidden tiredness
by flopping heavily into the chair across from Kirk.

He slumped in the chair and studied the floor and Kirk didn’t press him to speak, he knew him too well for that, the good doctor was a
Southerner and down there in the overheated South things still took their natural time and so the Captain waited for his CMO to tell him what
he came to tell him.

McCoy sighed and rubbed a hand across his eyes, then sat up straight, “I’m not sure what to do.”

“About what?”

“His eyes.”

“I thought you could clo...”

“I can.  I have.  I can implant, well, not tomorrow, but in a few days.”

McCoy didn’t continue and so Kirk waited again.  He actually enjoyed these lazy talks with the physician, if the subject matter had been less
critical, he might have enjoyed it very much, the way the conversation just unspooled of it’s own accord, like a meandering river winding it’s
way slowly under miles of weeping willows.  But, the matter was critical and the Captain found himself checking his impatience before long.

Just before he was about to open his mouth, the doctor spoke, “I don’t know if seeing is really what he needs right now.”

“I don’t understa...”

“You don’t understand because you haven’t seen him!”  The soft voice had turned harsh and accusatory and it stung Kirk.  McCoy could do
that to him like nobody else, ever.  The doctor’s eyes cut like phaser torches right through to Kirk’s bone marrow and he would have averted
his eyes were he a less competitive soul.

Instead, he held the doctor’s gaze as he said quietly, “I....I didn’t think he would know I was there, you told me he couldn’t have visitors, he’s in
isolation.”  McCoy didn’t answer him and Kirk knew what the doctor was waiting for.  The truth.  “I couldn’t.”

McCoy’s face softened, that was all he wanted, the truth.  Kirk hated him at that moment and all of those past moments when the doctor had
done that to him - in silence had pulled out of him what Jim Kirk didn’t wish to voice.

“Starfleet wants us to send him home.”

McCoy looked up at the Captain, “He doesn’t want to go.”

Kirk looked surprised at that. “I would have thought he’d want to go home.”

McCoy shook his head.  “He...well, first of all, we have to get him out of isolation.  If that’s possible and we’ve...Spock didn’t tell you?”

“Spock?”

“We had a set back.”  The Captain shook his head, and the doctor continued,  “Well, it just happened.”

“What happened?”

The doctor’s eyes pierced him once more and McCoy said softly, “The eyes we cloned from his tissue have matured - and they’re bright
blue/green.”

~~~~


Spock looked up from his temporary work station in sickbay and regarded his Captain and the Chief Medical Officer as they walked in briskly.  

“Spock.  What do you have?”  Kirk asked.

“Ensign Chekov’s dna has been altered.  I have been unable to locate the site of the disruption but certainly the conclusion can be drawn that
the unidentified molecule is responsible and that Ms. Seto introduced it.”

The Vulcan Science Officer paused in his report to his Captain and steepled his fingers, “I fail to understand why it should be necessary for it
to enter through a puncture wound in the mouth but that appears to be, as we surmised earlier, the path of introduction.  Perhaps the
combination of whatever drug she used earlier, when he reported being ill in the night, with the acid and the unidentified molecule is required
for whatever process Ms. Seto apparently hoped to precipitate.”

“What the hell is going on?”  Kirk paced the room briefly and then stopped abruptly at the window to Chekov’s isolation room.  His mouth fell
open and he didn’t realize he was staring until he felt someone staring back at him, he glanced to the corner of the room and caught the full
force of Andre Karpov’s intense attention just as McCoy cleared his throat.  Kirk blinked and turned away, feeling sick at heart.  No wonder
McCoy was questioning the wisdom of giving him his sight back at this time.

“Spock, do you have any theories about why she’s done this?  What is she trying to accomplish?”

“I am uncertain, Captain,  but I believe that whatever she is trying to do to Ensign Chekov, has already been done to her.”

“Explain?”

Spock reached out to the computer terminal and put in a couple of commands that brought forward a picture of Maria Seto.  A beautiful girl,
with a sparkling smile that brought forth deep dimples in her cheeks and striking black hair and even more striking bluer than blue eyes.

“I have conferred with Dr. Skinner and it is his opinion that Maria Seto’s physical appearance changed a few months ago.  He hadn’t noticed
at the time because the difference is negligible - there was before that time, no hint of the green colourations that appear in her eyes now.”  
He switched the photo and this newer, recent photo showed an abrupt change in her eyes, the irises were mottled with green, it was beautiful,
but it wasn’t there before.

“Dr. Skinner believes this happened four months ago, the time when he also noticed a change in Ms. Seto’s emotional state.  He claims she
was always a somewhat emotional woman, prone to periods of depression and called her a person of high sensitivities.  He described her as a
somewhat mercurial personality, but not mean and as a matter of course someone who would do what they must to avoid hurting another,
even at her own expense.  He states now that slowly she has become cruel.  He was hoping it was a temporary aberration but says she has
consistently, in the last month especially, acted in a...”  Spock picked up a small memo pad, and quoted the doctor’s words,  “...’deliberately
vicious and cruel manner not in keeping with my previous experience of her personality.’”

“Jim, let’s get her down here so I can examine her.”

Kirk waved a hand at the doctor, asking for a moment, “Where were they?” he asked Spock.

“They were here...”  Spock had the computer display a starmap of a system only vaguely familiar to Kirk.  “Re’Ahl 7...a small scientific outpost
studying the Pixa Radiation Belt.  He noted the change in her behavior there.  They were there for three months, he noted the change near
the end of their stay.  He thought perhaps she was bored or feeling claustrophobic.  The outpost is on an asteroid in that system and is
manned by a permanent rotating crew of fourteen.  They are on a six month rotation.  The station is small, the conditions certainly the type
that can lead humans to suffer emotional distress.”

“But that doesn’t explain the change in her appearance or the fact that what happened to her eyes apparently also happened to Chekov’s.”

“Correct.”

Kirk turned back to McCoy, “Okay, I’ll have security bring her down.”

“Wait a minute, Jim.  We have Chekov in isolation because we were concerned he might be harboring an alien agent of some kind - she
appears to be in the same situation, I think we should set her up in isolation as well.”

Kirk looked to Spock who nodded, “It would seem a wise precaution, Captain.”


~~~~

His dreams were of her.  His nightmares, too. She was light and he was drawn to her.  She was dark and he was repelled.  She felt familiar
and warm....like an old sweater.  She felt strange and cold...like the cold metal thing that had been in his mouth.

His body tried to protect itself and he curled up tight...too late...too late, it’s inside now, it’s everywhere, in every cell, in every living, breathing
part of me.  Too late...too late...it’s here.  And then the realization:

“I brought it here.”

~~~~

“I don’t want to leave him.”  Andre Karpov had whispered when McCoy asked him to come with him into Isolation 2.  But, the man had finally
acquiesced and left his sleeping son, at least he had settled down now, for awhile he had seemed to be having a bad dream.  Andre had tried
once to wake him but Pavel had calmed quickly and Andre let him sleep.

Karpov followed McCoy into the adjacent isolation room and then listened quietly when the doctor told him the problem that had arisen with
the cloned eyes.

“You cannot implant, then.  But, would it really matter?”  Karpov seemed to be thinking aloud to himself and he suddenly switched to Russian
for a few words as he tried to work something out.  Then, he looked up at the doctor apologetically and continued, “If he has already been
altered, what harm could implanting the eyes be?”

McCoy didn’t have an answer for that.  But he did have another question, “Dr. Karpov....”

“Please,  Dr. McCoy, you may call me Andre Illyich, or merely, Andre if that is easier.”

“Andre...Andre, I...can I call you ‘doctor’?”  The big man’s laughter boomed around the room and he nodded, and McCoy pressed on, “Doctor,
I don’t know if...first, I don’t know if these eyes are going to work, every test I’ve run says they should but who knows. And, no, I don’t know if
they will cause any harm....and....”

“And, you don’t know if he should be able to see?”

“Yes.”

Karpov considered what to say to the doctor and it was obvious to McCoy that he had already considered the question itself.  Andre drew in a
big lungful of air and shook his head, “You know...”  he shook his head again and sat in the only chair in the room.  “Damn it.  I don’t know
what to think, I need to think!”  Although he kept his rich baritone under control, the power of that voice, the command it held, the authority,
was very much in evidence, even at lowered volume.

“He is strong.  You wouldn’t believe how strong.”  Karpov studied McCoy for a moment, “I think if you did some reconstruction.  Give him a
nose, a mouth, eyebrows, even if his face is still...”

“I can’t even come close to giving him a normal looking face!”

“I understand that, I do.  But, if you could just give him...the basics and let him see, I know he will cope.  I know my son, Doctor McCoy.”

McCoy chewed his lip, already mentally running through what procedures he would attempt to build some semblance of a face for his patient.  
But,  “Andre...I don’t know what the altered dna is going to do, I don’t know what we’re dealing with.”

“I know...all I ask is this:  don’t let him fight this blind.”

“But...”

“Dr. McCoy, when he was child and was hurt by Zhukov he was defenseless because he was child and he didn’t understand what he was
fighting.  If you leave him blind you leave him again defenseless and again he is not knowing what he is dealing with.  Please do not do that to
him.  At least ask him what he wants.”

~~~~~

“You’re sure?”  McCoy asked again and Pavel Chekov sighed and almost said, ‘If I had eyes I’d be rolling them right now.’  

But, he didn’t, he let the sigh hang in the air.  He felt the doctors hand slide off his shoulder, felt the cold there suddenly and felt afraid.  
“Doctor McCoy?”

“Yes?”  He was still right beside him.

The words were barely  whispered, “How...bad...do I...?”

The warm hand clasped his shoulder once more.  “Son, you look like a million dollars to me because you look a million times better than the
corpse I thought you were going to be.”  The doctor squeezed his shoulder and while he could tell the young man appreciated the sentiment,
he knew it wasn’t what he needed.

“Pavel, you do not look like yourself, that’s for sure.  But, I don’t see any reason why, with reconstruction and time, you can’t look very similar
to the way you did.  Your bone structure is intact and that’s the foundation.  We can build on that.  Well, I mean the general ‘we’ as in the
medical profession.  I’ve been doing some research on reconstructive techniques and I’ll tell you...they’re much better than I thought and I’m
not just sayin’ that...you know me...I never just say anything.  I’m not going to bullshit you Chekov, you have a long road and it’s gonna be
tough - but everybody who knows you knows that you’re tougher than this.”

“I want to know what I will look like now, not after many surgeries.  If these eyes work, what will I see?”

“I don’t know.  And that’s the truth.  We’re going to do some reconstruction tomorrow during the implant and Dr. Calf Robe tells me she’s very
happy with your bone structure and believes she can do a lot with the first surgery.”

Dr. Mary Calf Robe, a Microsurgeon specializing in facial reconstruction happened to do her internship at a hospital called The Foothills
Medical Centre in Calgary, Alberta, Canada,  where she met a nurse named Christine Chapel, on a work exchange from Boston General.

But, Dr. Calf Robe wasn’t on Earth at the moment.  In fact, hours ago she had been aboard the exclusive passenger liner ‘Hosan Ramzy’
sound asleep in the middle of a well earned and needed vacation when her comm very rudely buzzed her until she answered it with a
snapping , “What!”

“Mare’?”

“Chris?  What the hell...”  Dr. Calf Robe sat up and, sweeping her long black hair back from her face, activated the comm’s vid terminal.  
Christine Chapel grinned sheepishly at her.

Mary laughed, “What the hell...” she said again.

Christine’s smile vanished, “We need your help on Enterprise, Mary.”

“Enterprise?  What’s happened?”

Nine hours later Dr. Calf Robe yawned in the dim lighting of the shuttlecraft that was hurtling her toward Enterprise.  She studied the medical
charts on the terminal in front of her, downloaded from Enterprise.  

She was looking at the face of one Ensign Pavel Chekov when a hand touched her shoulder.  

“Coffee?”  Helen Underwood, the shuttle’s copilot handed the cup to Mary and then stretched her legs, “I don’t know how Sara does it, I can’t
sit in the cockpit that long....”  She glanced down at Pavel Chekov’s photo and raised her eyebrows, “Good looking guy.”

With that she patted the doctor on the shoulder and returned to the cockpit of the little ship.  Dr. Calf Robe answered her with an absent,
‘Ya...” before switching the image back to the devastated face she would begin rebuilding in a few hours.


She was on board Enterprise in twelve and a half hours,  in sickbay ten minutes later and had everyone there laughing until their sides hurt in
another ten.  Chapel had forgotten that about her.  

The woman should have been a stand-up comedienne, instead she was one of the finest physicians Chapel had ever worked with, she was a
doctor who was fulfilling her ultimate destiny when she was working, she had that in common with McCoy.  Chapel thought herself very lucky to
have worked with two such doctors in the course of her career.  They were a rare breed.

Dr. Calf Robe was small with the black hair, brown skin and eyes and flat nose and wide mouth of her people, the Blackfoot of Southern
Canada.  She was from a place that Chapel would never, ever forget the name of...’Head Smashed In Buffalo Jump’.  

A high windy cliff atop a vast plain where her people in ancient times ran buffalo over the edge in the autumn to prepare for the harsh winter
ahead.  They used every single part of the buffalo, Mary had explained, the hide for clothing and shelter, the meat for food, the teeth and the
bones for tools, the hooves for candles, the fat for heating oil,  the tendons for sewing...nothing ever went to waste.  

Dr. Mary Calf Robe brought her people’s economy and harmony with the natural world to her work and as she studied Pavel Chekov’s face
with her gloved hands she knew she would have to use every part left to fashion him a new one.  Nothing he had left could go to waste.  
Nothing would.

“How does 0700 sound, young man?”  She asked her new patient.
“Very early.”

Dr. Calf Robe laughed, “I like a man who can make me laugh!”

~~~

“It’s crazy!”  Sulu exploded.

Uhura sighed, she was getting very tired of this argument.  And, it wasn’t going to stop until this whole bloody situation was ended.

“It’s his choice.”  Uhura said quietly, although, in her heart she didn’t know if Pavel Chekov were making the right decision.  It was HIS
decision, she thought, and believed it should be respected.   

But Sulu couldn’t let it go, “It’s reckless!  He doesn’t know what will happen if those eyes are implanted!  Nobody does!  I can’t believe Dr.
McCoy is doing this!  I can’t believe the Captain is allowing it!  I can’t believe we’re all just going along with it like....”

“Sulu, for Chrissakes!”  Uhura glanced around the mess.  Of course everyone had heard that, they probably heard it in Alpha Centuri.  She
lowered her voice, “Why can’t you just respect...”

“It has nothing to do with respect!”  he hissed back at her, angry at the implication that he somehow didn’t respect Chekov’s wishes, or trust
him to make a smart decision.  “I’m...I’m...scared shitless by this!”  

He jumped up abruptly and marched across the floor to get a coffee.  Halfway there he turned around and stalked back, his fists were balled
up into tight little bundles of white knuckles at his side.  His jaw clenched, “Nyota, I’m just...”

He blew his breath out and sat down, deflated suddenly, all the fight went right out of him.  “I’m just really scared, not just about the physical
danger but....”  He looked at her and suddenly was struck by how beautiful she was.  He stared at her skin, so smooth and satiny, her smoky
eyes, the amazing planes of her cheekbones...

She leaned forward and caught his eye...he blinked himself out of his daydream, “I just don’t know what it’s going to do to him, to see himself...
like...that.”

They sat in silence for a moment.  Both had seen him, he hadn’t known they were there.  They didn’t want him to know.  They just asked
Christine to be sure and tell him they were thinking of him and missing him and would see him soon, anytime he wanted and she did and she
told him how worried they were and how they were checking in almost constantly and asking after him and did he need anything and could
they do anything.

But, inside he knew they had been there.  He had sensed them.  He had known exactly when they were there...he had sensed Sulu first, then
realized Uhura was with him.  It was confirmed when he heard a very slight hesitation come into Andre’s voice and a change in volume and he
knew that his father was looking toward the glass at something and then the volume increased and Pavel knew he had turned back and his
father spoke little more rapidly then.  

Pavel had known they were there.  Inside, he smiled to himself.  He knew they were worried about him.  He knew they were upset.  He
wondered how he would have been in their situation.  If Sulu or Uhura...oh, God...he couldn’t think of anything like this happening to Uhura!  
Not that face...no, no, no.  He was glad it was his face.  He didn’t want the damn thing anyway, but he wondered at the future, what would he
look like?  Could he order a face?  Who would he want to look like?  He almost laughed out loud when he thought of getting Sulu’s face, how
much confusion would that cause!  A funny joke, a very elaborate practical joke.  He had a reputation for them.  That would be the practical
joke to end all.

He felt them leave and he felt alone again.  Only of course he wasn’t, Andre was there and he was trying to convince him to go home.

He didn’t want to go home.  If his friends reacted this way what the hell would his mother do?  He couldn’t cope with that.  He couldn’t cope with
the intensity of her emotions.  She harbored so much guilt over his early years and the fact that she didn’t get them out before he was so
badly hurt, that she walked on egg shells around her son.  It drove him crazy.  It made him feel contemptuous of her and guilty for that and
resentful for the guilt and why did it have to be such a damned mess!

Still, he knew he held bitter feelings for her still...no, not now, he didn’t want to think about that now, it made him feel terrible...later....and then
he felt that cold again, the cold that had enveloped him when he lay in the creek with his arm dangling in the water and the blood running out
of it and he watched it, his blood, his life, flowing away and...NO!  No, no, no!

It was starting again, those dark thoughts that used to take him over...he turned this one away, too... he wanted sleep now and he hated
falling asleep like this, without any eyes to close.

~~~~
“Open your eyes, Pavel.”  Andre watched his son intently for more signs of consciousness.  Ten minutes earlier Pavel had made a little sound
and his fingers tightened around Andre’s hand but the movements had subsided and not returned.

Dr. Karpov tried to remind himself that this was normal, that his son wouldn’t just wake up and be aware and lucid in a matter of seconds.  His
body had been through an ordeal today and would wake slowly.

Andre relented and leaned back in the chair, he was exhausted and suddenly his hot tea looked terribly inviting.  He sipped it slowly, able to
savor the sweetness of it and still keep one eye on his son and one ear on the noises he imagined he could hear next door.

Maria Seto was there now.  Brought in this morning and quarantined like Pavel Andreievich.  He couldn’t really hear anything.  The rooms
were sealed and the curtain was drawn across the window between them.

The Attorney General’s office had brought some new charges against Seto under the ‘Genetics’ Codes’, three new charges that to Andre all
sounded the same.  She was charged with tampering with a sentient beings dna and the penalty would be severe if she were found guilty and
again the man wondered why she had done it.

And, then he thought of her and the change in her eyes and he wondered what had happened to her and he knew Kirk was working on that,
had been in contact with that asteroid station Andre could never remember the name of.  

And, he knew Kirk was trying to get Enterprise out there and he thought the Captain would succeed.  James Kirk had a reputation for being
able to tapdance around certain regs and rules and red tape like nobody else in the Fleet.  Andre knew Pavel admired that about him but
Andre himself had always had to bite his tongue when Pavel enthusiastically relayed another example of Kirk’s slippery prowess.  Andre didn’t
always approve of the Enterprise Captain and an ironic smile touched his lips as he thought how much he was depending on the Captain’s
slipperiness now.

He had a very strong feeling that the answer was out there on that mining station, not just for Pavel, but, for Maria too.  Andre felt a twinge of
sadness as he recalled a conversation he’d had with McCoy two days earlier.

The Enterprise’s CMO had contacted Maria Seto’s parents and found them disinterested in the life of their daughter.  She no longer existed
for them and hadn’t for quite some time.

Well, they had that in common, anyway, Andre thought.  Pavel and Maria.  Pavel, of course, had always had his mother but their relationship
was strained.  And, his father, well, he had nothing to do with the man after he was six.  So, they would have felt a common bond with parental
estrangement.

Of course, Pavel had Andre and Andre considered himself his father, but knew that he wasn’t and somewhere inside him Pavel would always
feel it.  Even if it was just a tiny little flicker, the tiniest flutter, it was there.

Andre looked up as Dr. Calf Robe entered the sealed room in an envirosuit.  She smiled at him, she had a wonderful smile, crinkling up the
corners of her eyes, which sparkled brightly when she smiled.

She patted Andre’s shoulder and hovered over her patient.  She laid a gloved hand on his head.  “Hello, Pavel.”

“...lo...”  came a quiet response.

Andre was startled, he could have sworn Pavel was still asleep.

“He’s not really awake, we’re using a new anesthetic, it’s gentler in many ways then the old stuff but it’s a slower return to consciousness.  He’
s in the first stage, he’ll respond to very, very simple things like a hello.  But, he won’t know what day it is or where he is yet.  There’s no point
in pushing him.”  She looked down at Pavel again and stroked his head and said sympathetically, “He’s had a big day.”

Andre looked down at her handiwork.  A face.  His son had a face again. It wasn’t even swollen.  Just red, like a bad sunburn or a windburn.  A
face.

He had a nose, a mouth, eyes.  They didn’t look like his, but, they were closer than Andre would have thought possible with an initial surgery.  
He could, perhaps, have been a cousin of Pavel Andreievich’s.  

The nose was a bit smaller than his own, built from cartilage grown in the lab overnight.  His mouth a little less wide, the lips thinner and not
perfectly shaped yet, a bit uneven.  He even had eyebrows again and flesh on his cheekbones and chin.  The skin covering his face was a bit
too smooth now and gave his face the appearance of a mask.  But, Dr. Calf Robe said texturing would come in a subsequent surgery and
once the redness was gone his skin wouldn’t look so smooth and shiney.

He didn’t have eyelashes yet but he had eyes that Andre was hoping would open soon.  He pushed any concerns he had about those eyes
and their strange colouring aside for the moment, he was sure they had done the right thing.  He was sure Pavel had made the right decision.

McCoy had already attempted to clone a second set of eyes, they bore the same colouring as the first.  They could have tried artificial eyes
but his patient would have to go home for that and he didn’t want to.   

Pavel Chekov had assured his father that he had a very strong intuition that it would be all right to implant these eyes.  He didn’t tell his father
that he knew, in his bones, that the changes that affected the eyes had already taken place inside him.  

It felt like too much adrenaline in his blood, it felt like too much coffee, it felt like the muscle aches that come with the flu.  Whatever it was, it
was inside him and the thought kept coming to him: “I brought it here.”

The thought came when he was waking, when he was falling asleep, it came in his dreams, easily.  In his wakefulness he could turn it away,
but in those other times, it came again and again and again, ‘I brought it here.’

‘I brou...i...eerre...”

Andre grasped his son’s hand, “Pasha, can you hear me?”

Dr. Calf Robe grasped his other hand as Pavel moaned softly.  “Pavel, it’s Dr. Calf Robe, squeeze my hand if you can hear me.”  She reached
up and buzzed McCoys’ office to let him know Chekov was coming round as she felt the young mans’ fingers squeezing her hand.

Seconds later the Enterprises’ CMO was coming through the doorway in his envirosuit.  Chapel stood watching from the observation glass
outside the room with Spock.

McCoy glanced at the readings overhead and was very pleased to see optimal values across the board.  He looked down as Chekov
suddenly opened his eyes and gasped.

Dr. Calf Robe frowned at McCoy, they weren’t supposed to wake suddenly with this new drug.  McCoy shrugged back at her.

“Pasha, it’s okay...okay...”  Andre assured him, all the while feeling quite disconcerted to see such strange eyes looking back at him.  Strange
eyes and a new face but still it was Pavel, no question.

Pavel Chekov looked at the faces about him.  He grinned, his same lopsided grin and a little thrill went through those watching him as they
recognized that expression.  Then he grimaced.

“Smarts a bit like a sunburn, doesn’t it.”  Dr. Calf Robe said.

“Ya...”  He grinned again and laughed a little when he was rewarded with another sting, “...feels....good....”

There was silence in the room for a long moment.  Pavel closed his eyes again for a moment and nobody said anything.  Finally, the patient
opened his eyes again.

“Well?”

“Well what?”  McCoy responded with a trace of irritation.  Chekov relaxed, if McCoy were talking to him like that he knew he was okay.  When
the Ships’ Surgeon was overly solicitous was the time to get nervous.

Pavel’s voice was a bit haughty as he asked, “Aren’t you going to ask me if I can see?”

“We didn’t want to overwhelm you.”  Calf Robe explained.  “Can you see?”

“Yes, but....”

“But, what?”

He studied the surgeon who had rebuilt his face and then looked at the surgeon who had given him eyes again.  He smiled and this time it
didn’t hurt at all.  “I...can see...colours around you...”  He looked at Calf Robe again, “You’re green and purple, it’s shooting from you, like a
sun’s corona.”  He turned his blue/green gaze to McCoy, “You’re almost all green, very bright....”

Pavel Andreievich looked to the man he believed had saved his life many times over and his new eyes glittered, “Papa...you are so bright
purple it hurts my eyes...”

Pavel made a move to sit up and ignored the noises of protest coming from those around him.  “I feel strong.  I need to get up, I’ve been down
too long.”

He swung his legs over the side of the bed while Andre steadied his shoulders.  Pavel closed his eyes again for a moment and breathed
deeply.

“Okay?”  McCoy asked.

Pavel nodded and opened his eyes again, looking toward the glass seal of the room.  He looked at Chapels’ face as she smiled back at him.  
“Kishteen...”  he said teasingly and Chapel sighed inside, afraid she might just have been tagged with a nickname for life, “...you are violet...
warm....”  He looked deeply into her blue eyes and through the glass Christine Chapel felt a connection as strong as any she had ever felt in
her life.  The intensity of it made her sway a little and Spock studied her reaction, ready to catch her should she fall.

“Chris, you okay?”  Mary asked.

Christine nodded, “Fine.....I don’t know... what that....was....”

“Pavel?”  Mary asked.

“I don’t know, either, but it was...strong....”  He looked away from Chapel, embarrassed,  then and focused on Spock and laughed out loud.

“Mr. Spock! You are unequivocally, unambiguously, and without question, completely yellow!”

Spock seemed to rock up on his heels slightly, obviously satisfied with the unconfused nature of his....”Auras?”  Dr. Calf Robe said suddenly.

Pavel was getting to his feet now.  Again, mumbled protests followed his movements and again he waved them off, “I’m fine, I feel really good
and I....”  He swayed suddenly....”Nyet...” he said quietly as he was pushed gently back to a sitting position by Andre and McCoy.

McCoy glanced up at the readings, his heart rate and respiration were up but everything else was fine.  “What is it?”

Chekov looked at his arms, his legs, “It’s black, like a black outline, all around me, black...I’m surrounded by black....”

Before anyone could react he got up, rushed to the window between the two quarantine units and flung the curtain aside.

Maria Seto stood right at the glass, staring back at him with her blue/green eyes.  “....and so is she....”


~~~~

He wanted to be alone.  He wanted privacy.  They all left him then.

He had stared at the young woman who did this to him and she had stared back but there was no hostility between them.  Instead, there was....
recognition.

Chapel had gone into Seto’s room and turned her away from the window and then paused to look at Pavel before she closed the curtain.  
And, just as quickly, she averted her gaze, feeling the beginning of that burst of energy she’d felt before and she thought about how she
could hardly wait to shuck her uniform, throw on her sweats, put her feet up and let out her breath.  

Pavel turned away from the closed curtain and looked to the glass that separated his room from the quarantine’s anteroom.  The glass had
been darkened.  He was alone.

It was time.

He thought about how to do this.  He decided he would touch it first.  He sat down in the chair beside the bed and raised a shaking hand to his
face.  

When his fingertips touched his face he felt a flood of relief.  He could feel it, not just through his fingers, but through his face.  It wasn’t numb
anymore, it was actually a bit sore, more like a windburn, then sunburn, he thought.

His fingers explored and found strange bumps and little dips and...his fingers traced his lips and...they didn’t feel right at all, they felt like the
rest of his face and he wondered briefly what it would feel like to kiss someone with them, would he feel much, would he...Chapels’ face
flashed through his mind, her eyes...her mouth...her lips...his lips...on her mouth....on her breast....he dropped his hands and opened his
eyes.  

What the hell was going on?

He could feel his heart racing again and his hand trembled as he raised it to his face again, hoping to ignore these odd reactions he was
having to the nurse.

He hardly knew her...he certainly never thought, well, he thought she was pretty and kind, she was always nice to him, but he always thought
she was kind of....bland.  And, well, older.

He mentally slapped himself for being cruel....she had shown him nothing but concern...Christ, he had practically lived in the sickbay since
coming to the ship!

Why did this shit keep happening to him, all the time, everything always seemed...”I brought it here.”

‘Shut up!”  ‘ he screamed in his mind.

He stood up and paced a few feet.   He did feel good.  He felt very strong physically.  Mentally, emotionally?  Well, that would come, with time.

Right now...’Focus!’ he admonished himself.

He sat down again and began exploring his face again and then abruptly stopped, ‘To hell with it!’

He got up and strode into the bathroom and there he was in the mirror and it wasn’t him, it wasn’t him at all.

“Bozhe moi!” he said quietly as the tears flowed out of his new eyes and down the......the... ugly face of the stranger in the mirror.

~~~

The U.S.S. Enterprise was on her way to Re’Ahl 7, it would take over nine days to get there at Warp 5 and the crew were enjoying a nice
boring ride out to the asteroid.

Chapel leaned back in her chair and stared out at the stars from Rec Room 2 when Landon left.  The Yeoman had been quizzing her on
Chekov’s recovery, the nurse was tired and anyway, patient records were confidential so she just said that he was fine, progressing.  Chapel
had been a bit short with her and was surprised at the level of irritability Landon had managed to cause in her.

“Do you think he’ll be okay?”  Landon had asked.

“I’m not a fortune teller, Yeoman.”  Chapel had snapped back at her.  The Yeoman blinked back at the nurse, excused herself and left quickly.

‘Good’ Chapel thought.  She barely knew Martha Landon but for some reason the girl was just annoying the hell out of her today.  Her voice
seemed haughty, well, snotty was the word that came into Chapel’s mind.  And, she moved around like a goddamned ballerina and what the
hell was that!  Silly little cow.

‘Christine!’ she yelled to herself.  ‘What the hell is wrong with me, she was just asking.’

Landon should ask, she and Chekov used to be...’What the hell is this?’ she thought as a rage of jealousy rushed through her blood.  ‘What
is this!’

She took a breath and picked up her coffee cup again.

Nobody had seen Pavel Chekov, he refused to see anybody, he was just tired he said, but Chapel knew it was a lie.  She knew he was upset
about his appearance, although he kidded around with the medical staff and teased and joked.  

Well, he had a right to be upset.  She gripped the cup tighter as her heart ached so hard for him she felt dizzy for a moment.  ‘What is going
on here?’  This was more than a nurses empathy, this was more than a friends concern.

She never had been his friend, exactly.  Well, no, not exactly, they didn’t socialize.  But, they did tease back and forth whenever he came in to
sickbay but some patients were like that, it was how they relieved their stress at being sick or hurt and it was actually a good healing force in
itself.

‘Maybe I should tell Leonard about this.’  She became frightened suddenly as she wondered if ‘something’ had gotten through the envirosuit
and she realized that she didn’t want to go back in that room because something was going on here.

Seto was the only other patient in the sickbay and the thought of looking after her had become intolerable suddenly.  Chapel wanted to kill
her.  Damn it!

Why couldn’t she shut off her brain tonight?    She just wanted to relax.  She decided to go back to her quarters and then sighed as she
realized three people were approaching her from across the room.  Uhura, Sulu and Scotty.  Shit.

She stood quickly and walked toward them.  Uhura smiled at her.

“Christine, we were just coming to....”

“I’m sorry, Nyota, I have to go.  I’ll talk to you later.”  With that Christine swiftly maneuvered around her confounded crewmates.  

She could feel their eyes on her back all the way across the room and so when she escaped into the corridor and the doors slid shut behind
her she felt an enormous relief.  

Her dark quarters beckoned.  A book.  A glass of brandy.  Sleep.  Not necessarily in that order.  She grinned to herself as she made her way
down the corridor, that was usually Leonard’s modus operandi, hers was normally coffee.  But, tonight, the wired restlessness of a caffeine
buzz was not what she needed.  She already felt like she’d had thirty cups of her favorite medium roast.  No.  Now, she needed calm.  She
needed peace.  Peace and quiet.

CRASH!

“Shit!”  

Chapel turned.  The ‘ballerina’ had just dropped a tape case on the floor and the alphabetized, categorized tapes were scattered at her feet,
well within kicking range.  Landon sent several flying with a well placed boot.  “Fucking hell!”

Chapel started to laugh.  Landon’s head jerked up and her cobalt eyes seared into her.  A flare of anger lit the nurses blood and she
stomped over to the stupid little goose and when she got close enough she wound up and hauled off and slapped her across the face as hard
as she could.

Landon staggered back but didn’t fall.  She regained her balance and then slowly touched her face and looked up at Chapel but couldn’t
focus on her.  Her head was split by white light that bleached her vision.  Her ears were buzzing but she was still able to hear the hatred in the
nurses voice.

“You’ll never fuck him again.  Understand?”

The shadow that was the nurse disappeared into the haze that dominated Landon’s field of vision.  She suddenly felt like throwing up.  
Instead, she went to the wall comm and called security.

~~~~

Godammit!  Who was coming in?  He told them he wanted to be alone for now.  Didn’t they get it?  He told them.  Andre had been put into
quarantine 3 for now - he couldn’t hang about out in the ship in an envirosuit forever.  Soon, they would run out of quarantine units.

So, who was this?  He wasn’t due any meds.  

He grumpily pulled the blanket higher over his shoulders and turned away, rolling over to his other side.  Then he felt her hand on his
shoulder.  It was warm, it slid under his black tee-shirt, flesh on flesh...he sat up with a start and found himself staring into Chapel’s sleepy
blue eyes.

“What the...”  he stared at her.  No envirosuit.  “What the fuck are you doing!  You can’t be in here like...”  

Her mouth crushed his, shutting him up.  Christine swayed as the room disappeared, the ship disappeared, the world collapsed on itself until
there was just him and the heat where their mouths met.  She opened her mouth to his and their tongues meshed and she tasted the
sweetness inside his mouth and hungrily sought out more as she leaned into him.  

His arms slid around her and he pulled her down even as he felt himself plummeting down some internal height and he rolled over her and
melted against her warm, warm body and she made a little noise and it drove him wild and the flickers of protest his mind fired died like little
sparks falling onto a lava field.

~~~~~~~~~

“Stop laughing!”  McCoy exploded.  But, Chapel and Chekov just kept laughing, giggling like naughty school kids caught fooling around in the
bushes.  McCoy turned back toward them, he wanted to whirl on them but he was slow and awkward in his envirosuit and his annoyance
hitched up a notch.

Well, at least they had decided to cover themselves up a bit, Pavel had given Chapel his robe, her uniform was in shreds, her hair was all
over, her lips were swollen and she was still flushed and McCoy conjured up, easily, rage at his nurse to sweep away the embarrassing
thoughts he was having about her.

The doctor thought about speaking, he thought about screaming, he wanted to think about anything other than what he had seen when he
walked into the unit, alarmed when his patient didn’t answer his comm.  

He could have checked the monitor, but he didn’t, he just jumped into his suit and rushed, as much as one could in one of these ridiculous
puffy suits, into the unit and....Christ!  He thought he might have a stroke....

Somebody was in the bed with his patient and they were, as his grandfather would say, going at it like a couple of rabbits and that was bad
enough, some stupid girl in here with him, in the bloody quarantine unit.  There were a couple of wide-eyed young things on the ship that he
knew followed the Ensign around with puppy dog eyes.  

But then the couple in the bed finished,  and he stood there like an idiot and then he decided to turn the lights up and he marched over to the
bed and opened his mouth to scream at the airhead and the blonde underneath his patient turned her head and it was his freakin’,  
goddamned Head Nurse!

The very one Security was looking for...well, at least he had found her and not those red shirts.  And then there was a commotion out in the
quarantine anteroom and it was Andre, suited up and comming him and telling him Security was here and he wanted to see his son and the
two on the bed started laughing and McCoy wanted to slap both of them but instead he asked them to sto