Beware the Ides of March

[candothat]

When; March 15th
Rating; PG-13
Characters; Chekov, Lucy, Uhura, whoever else is hanging out about the hospital
Summary; That awkward moment when your friend stabs you in the back. Literally.
Log;

The hospital is busy. Curses have a way of making that happen, particularly curses that compel people to stab their friends with whatever happens to be close at hand. Not all of the wounds are serious (the man who was jabbed with a spork insists upon seeing a doctor); some of them are. Others are neither one nor the other, leaving the patient in a twilight world between life and death.

Thus far, the hospital staff have managed to avoid backstabbing.

The day is still young.

Comments

[universaltranslator]

Pasha.

[Li is forgotten as Uhura sweeps over to hover over Chekov. She brushes the hair off his forehead.]

Shhhhh, don't try to talk. You need to save your strength.

[candothat]

[A small measure of sympathy? That would make sense, since Chekov isn't even sure why Hei is there. It was kind of him to show, whatever his reasons.

The notion of saving his strength is laughable (or maybe that's the morphine). He's dimly aware of the fact that it would be far better to die than to live; living means a slow healing process and too much time in bed to think. (The fact that he can't think clearly now is, Pavel thinks, a small kindness.) Maybe he could fight to live, if only for Nyota's sake, but there's no strength left to save.

What little pain the morphine left behind is fading. Nyota seems to be fading, as well, and he would like to apologize, but she did tell him not to talk.

The machines are making noises now--a bit like the klaxon on a ship's bridge--but the sound is distant. It gets farther away as Nyota vanishes out of sight. j

And then there's nothing.]

[mortemscintilla]

[ Hei wants to tell Uhura to save her breath. Judging by the fading glow in Pavel's eyes, he's half off the carousel anyway, the other half consumed in morphine. The machinery sounds off -- an onomatopoeic whoop-whoop he hasn't heard since Heaven's War, when the soldier's barracks were rigged with intruder alarms. The room feels like a steel drum, sounds bouncing off the walls; his ears are vibrating. ]

[ 'Li' would opt for wide-eyed panic at this point. But Hei honestly doesn't have the patience. The faint animation in Pavel is nearly all gone already. The rest of him will soon follow. He expects to feel sadness, or at least a facsimile. But all he feels is tired. (It is tiring, the constant grief or performance of grief or the careful suppression of grief.) ]

[ From the corner of his eye, he sees the pointy spikes on the EKG descend to curvy sine waves. Without meeting Uhura's gaze, he says, ] I'll get the doctors. [ But the words come out with a dead flatness, like a dismissal. ]

[ It's already too late. ]

[universaltranslator]

[Uhura doesn't hear Li. She doesn't care. All of her focus is on the young, lifeless body in front of her.

She doesn't break down sobbing. Her Starfleet training keeps the sobs firmly in check, though it can do nothing about the tears coursing down her face as she squeezes Chekov's cold hand and presses kisses to his knuckles.

After everything they've been through, after everything they've survived, she can't believe his life ends like this. It's not right.]