“Am I disturbing you?”

Sulu roused from what he had not realized was a light slumber. “No,” he said, sitting up and rubbing his eyes. “Hey, what are you doing in here? Am I being released from quarantine?”

Pavel Chekov shook his head apologetically. “Because I have low psi ratings in a number of areas, the doctors have asked me to…”

“Be the canary in the coal mine?” Sulu asked, making a more than educated guess.

Chekov puzzled over the historical reference.

“To see if I’m safe for human company,” the helmsman clarified, surprised at how bitter this came out sounding.

The navigator let the implication that being with him didn’t constitute “human company” pass by unremarked. “Because my psi ratings are so low, they felt contact with me would be relatively painless and might give a….”

“…Sort of a baseline reading,” Sulu supplied for him.

“… By which you and they can judge the extent to which…”

“… I can read or shield from someone…”

“…To better monitor the progress of your…”

“…Detoxification,” the helmsman finished, using what he knew would have been his friend’s word choice.

Chekov sighed long sufferingly. “Yes.”

“Sorry about the…” Sulu made a gesture imitating a sideshow mentalist.

The Russian shrugged. “I have already been through this once with Miss Valley. At least you let me say some of the words.”

The helmsman laughed at the picture of that interview that was still lingering in his friend’s brain. The doctors were right, though. Contact with Chekov was remarkably painless.

“You’re so quiet,” Sulu marveled aloud. The Russian’s mental silence seemed odd because he knew Chekov to be a person with strong emotional reactions. Somehow, though, those feelings just didn’t project outside the navigator’s head like other people’s did.

“Oh. You wish me to talk?” Chekov asked, misunderstanding.

“No, that’s okay… Are you okay? You seem nervous.”

“I’m not,” the Russian assured him, pulling a chair up to his bedside.

Although Chekov’s emotions were faint, his thoughts were very close to the surface of his mind.

“Oh, I see.” Sulu nodded. “This is therapy for you too. Han is afraid that because of your experiences on Dreamland, your aversion to telepaths is going to mushroom into a full blown phobia.”

“Ridiculous, isn’t it?” the Russian said, somewhat angry at himself for having what he felt was such a weakness. “What’s there to be afraid of?”

Inside his head, Sulu could feel the Divine Wind look at Chekov’s open, defenseless mind and lick its lips. “Other than having your soul sucked out of you by a manifestation of pure evil?”

“Yes,” the Russian agreed with exaggerated ease. “Other than that… nothing.”

Sulu decided to experiment and see if by concentrating on not reading Chekov, he could avoid doing so. “Do you think Han and McCoy will freak out if I have some coffee?”

“I see no reason why they should,” Chekov said, standing up and ordering a cup for each of them from the room’s food dispenser.

“Thanks,” Sulu said, accepting a mug. Even when Chekov was this close, if he concentrated, it was still not too difficult to stay out of his head. “So, how’s it going with Daffy?”

The navigator shrugged as he resumed his seat.

“I guess she was pretty upset about the thing with Irina,” the helmsman said, although this wasn’t a guess at all.

Chekov nodded.

“Do you think she’s going to forgive you?” he asked, and didn’t probe for an answer before it was given.

The Russian shrugged again. “I don’t know.”

“Did you tell her you were sorry?”

“Yes,” Chekov replied. “Several times.”

A smile twitched at the helmsman’s lips. “Did she smack you in the back of the head?”

The navigator sighed. “Yes.”

“So that’s good then.”

“I suppose. It is at least usual.”

Sulu took a long gulp from his cup, then set it down on the bedside table. “Pav,” he said quietly, “if you want talk about it...”

“I don’t know what there is to talk about,” The Russian returned. “What is done is done, and we have to deal with what I did.”

Sulu’s mouth again twisted, this time into a slight grimace. “You know,” he said, “I almost wish I knew what that felt like.”

Chekov frowned. “You and Jilla have settled everything that happened with Ensign LiLing,” he pointed out.

“Well, no,” Sulu responded. “And that’s my point. I mean, yes, I’ve apologized till my voice gave out, and yes, she forgave me, but… we didn’t really talk about it. It’s like… almost like it never happened. There’s no accusation in her, no anger, no mistrust.”

“That is not even close to the case with Daphne,” Chekov put in.

“Yeah, I can imagine. But it gives you two the opportunity to come to terms with the emotional complexity of it. Not,” the helmsman continued quickly, “that the situations are comparable in any way other than the literal fact that you had sex with someone else.”

“Yes,” Chekov agreed carefully. “Sleeping with Irina was not something I wished – “ His voice stopped on the lie. “It was not something I had ever intended – I had never thought to have to make such a choice.”

“And I went into it with my eyes wide open, callously disregarding the woman I love,” Sulu sighed.

“I did not mean to…” the navigator began.

Sulu waved the apology away. “I know you didn’t,” he said. “But you should. And Jilla should. That she doesn’t is a miracle I don’t really understand. And because I don’t understand it, because there isn’t any way for us to discuss it…”

“You are not implying you would ever do such a thing again, are you?” Chekov broke in with a flare of righteous anger.

“No, no,” Sulu held up his hands. “No way. Not ever. I’d never even think of…” He paused. “At least, not when I’m not…”

“Cruising your little brain out,” Chekov finished ruefully.

Sulu blinked. “Where’d you hear that?”

“It was Daphne’s characterization,” the Russian replied. “Forgive me.”

“Forgiven,” the helmsman said, “but… you know, there’s a grain of truth in it. Chemicals can dull one’s inhibitions and make one think that one wants what is really only wishful thinking.”

“My only excuse was that I was ordered to ‘get close’ to Irina.” Chekov stared dourly at his half-empty cup. “But I thought that I would’ve made at least a token show of resisting the temptation.”

“And you didn’t,” Sulu’s voice was full of sympathy.

“No, I did not. Even though I was thinking of Daphne at the time, I…” He stopped speaking, finding it very hard to swallow.

Sulu reached out and put a hand on his friend’s shoulder. “You love them both,” he said softly. “And however much it bothers Daffy, it proves you’ve got a heart. I didn’t. I was using Li. I didn’t really care about her at all.”

Chekov looked surprised. “Then why did you…?” he began.

“Because I’m a cruel, heartless, bastard of a whore,” was the helmsman’s answer, and though it was said lightly, there was an undertone of despairing bitterness. “I use people, Pavel. You don’t.”

“I think you are wrong there,” Chekov responded slowly. “It would have been much easier if I had not cared for Irina.”

Sulu snorted. “I know you better than that,” he said. “If you hadn’t cared for her, it would’ve been impossible.”

The Russian flushed at the implication.

“And that’s what you and Daf will eventually come to realize,” Sulu went on. “That you’re a good man who cares for people – even those who have hurt you – and that that’s one of the things she loves most about you. Because you and she can talk about it.” He took another gulp of his coffee.

“Jilla loves you, Sulu,” Chekov said firmly.

“I know. And I love her, and she knows that. But we won’t ever talk about it. And I’ll carry the shame and guilt around with me for the rest of my life.” He tried an awkward smile. “Not that I don’t deserve to, but when you and Daffy work this out, it’ll really be worked out. Daf may give you hell for weeks…”

“Months. Years,” the Russian muttered, standing up to dispose of his empty cup.

“But when it’s done, you’ll both be able to put it in the past. You won’t wonder if there’s a well of pain inside her that you’ll never see.”

Chekov was silent for a moment, then said with a hint of condemnation that he couldn’t prevent, “You don’t really wonder, do you?”

“No,” Sulu said, shaking his head. “No, I suppose I don’t.”

“Well,” Chekov began a little awkwardly. “I suppose I should be going. I still have to visit Mr. DelMonde.”

Sulu grinned wryly. “Saving the best for last, huh?”

“Not exactly.”

“Listen, Chekov. I’m sure things are going to be fine with Daffy, but if you ever need someone to commiserate with…” He gave a half smile and drained his cup. “Maybe we should start a club.”

“The Imperial Order of Fidelity Fuck-Ups?” Chekov quipped wryly.

Sulu laughed, thumping the navigator on the head. “That’s for Daffy.”

“Not that she needs any help with such tasks,” the navigator replied, but returned his friend’s grin before he turned to go.

“Chekov,” Sulu called after him, surprised at how much he regretted seeing the navigator go. “If you need any help, remember…”

“I know,” Chekov said with more than a touch of irony as he paused by the door. “You know exactly how I feel.”

To hear the song, click here

C'est la vie
Have your leaves all turned to brown
Will you scatter them around you
C'est la vie
Do you love
An' then how am I to know
If you don't let your love show for me
C'est la vie

Del sat in the only chair in his sickbay room with his feet propped on his bed. He strummed on the guitar he’d asked them to send in to him. Music sounded awfully thin without his chorus of angels. He supposed it always would now. However, singing did bring back enough memories of the cerulean blue rapture he’d floated in for what now seemed like such a very short time to be of some comfort…. As much as anything was of any comfort to him now.

Oh c'est la vie
Oh c'est la vie
Who knows, who cares for me
C'est la vie.

Even through the thick walls, he could feel Chekov pausing before his door, steeling himself to enter.

In the night
Do you light a lover's fire
Do the ashes of desire for you remain
Like the sea
There's a love too deep to show

“Hello, Noel,” the Russian said. “I have little doubt that you already know why I’m here…”

“So you not gonna even try to do your li’l speech fo' me?” DelMonde replied. “I hurt.”

Chekov sighed and folded his hands behind his back. “Very well. Because I have a low psi rating, the doctors have asked…”

“I not that hurt,” DelMonde interrupted. “An' you can tell Han I t'ink you earn th' right to have a great big ol’ phobia --- an’ it might even be good fo' you.”

“You can tell her yourself,” the Russian replied, not stepping any further into the room. “She will be asking for a report of your reactions after I leave.”

“You know,” Del continued to strum the tune, “about 75% o' the advantages of havin’ a good-lookin’ shrink are lost when you down to jus’ talkin’ to her over th' intercom.”

“Yes, well…” Chekov didn’t seem as though he was yet entirely comfortable with the idea of having a psychiatrist assigned to his case at all.

Although the Russian was as easy to read as he’d always been and the xenoneuraphene was still sparkling in Del’s veins, the Cajun was surprised at how reluctant he was to touch his roommate’s mind. The mental scorching the beast had given him from inside Chekov’s brain made Del feel like a little kid looking at a hot stove. He was daunted by the memory of heat and pain, but still tempted by a perverse desire to touch and see if he’d be burned again.

“So,” he said. “I guess you an’ Daf made it up by now.”

Chekov shrugged diffidently. “What concern of that is yours?”

Del frowned at his guitar strings. He could understand why the navigator was mad at him, but he didn’t have to like it. “Well, if they ever let me out o’ this place, I guess I like to have some warnin’ 'bout who I can expect to find sleepin’ in my quarters.”

The Russian folded his arms. “It’s not your quarters.”

“As much as it is yours.”

“I was there first.”

Del sighed. “Are we gonna argue like nine-year-olds about who owns the li’l metal closet we live in… or are you gonna break down an’ ask me what you wanna know?”

Chekov fell silent.

“Oh c'est la vie,” the guitar sang under Del’s fingers.
“Oh c'est la vie
Who knows, who cares for me
C'est la vie.”

“Why did you prevent me from going to her?” the Russian asked quietly.

Del didn’t have to read his roommate’s mind to know he was talking about Irina’s death. “That how she wanted it,” he replied.

“I could have saved her.” The engineer was glad he didn’t have to feel the anguish that was naked in the navigator’s voice.

DelMonde couldn’t bring himself to speak the whole truth. He couldn’t tell him that although Irina had still loved and wanted him, the girl Chekov had fallen for at the Academy was already long dead before they had arrived at Dreamland – tortured slowly and cruelly out of existence by people so evil it beggared the imagination.

“No,” he replied instead. “You couldn’t.”

“Her death was unnecessary,” Chekov insisted. “Only Chione…”

“Irina was part o' the beast too,” Del interrupted, not meaning the revelation to sound as harsh as it did. “It lived inside Chione, but Irina was th' one who been trained to feed an’ …care fo' it.” The engineer decided not to go into any details about how that was accomplished. If Chekov ever found out some of the specifics, Del was sure the navigator would need a whole team of shrinks working on him round the clock. “The people who made all this happen not do so by accident. If Irina live, it would surely only be a matter o’ time 'fore they dug up another sociopath Izarian who suit their needs, an’ come after her t’mother it.”

The Cajun could see on his roommate’s face that his choice of the word “mother” resonated offensively with things the Russian had seen and heard.

Chekov shook his head stubbornly. “I don’t understand.”

“She not t'ink you could,” Del replied with unthinking honesty.

The Russian went silent again, then his face began to crumple.

“Oh, Sweet Mary,” Del groaned, putting his guitar aside as the navigator’s shoulders shook with silent sobs. “For God’s sake, T-Paul, don’t cry.”

Chekov wiped his eyes on his sleeve. “I’m sorry if I’m offending you,” he said unapologetically.

“It not that.” DelMonde unobtrusively wiped his own eyes as he rose and punched a code into the food dispenser in the wall nearby. “It jus’ that we made a rule ‘bout this sort o’ t'ing. I know it a long time ago, but I still ‘spect you to abide by it.”

“What rule?”

“If you gonna cry…” The Cajun took a glass out of the dispenser and handed it to the Russian. “…Then you gotta be drinkin’.”

“Oh.” The navigator rubbed his nose with the back of his hand before accepting the drink. “That rule.”

“Yeah, that rule.” DelMonde gave a rueful laugh and gestured at the glass in the navigator’s hand. “Can you believe that all the liquor Han an’ McCoy t'ink I require in a day?”

“Oh?” Chekov pulled the glass back from his lips, looking as though he were contemplating giving it back.

“Yeah.” Del punched in another sequence of code, in response to which the dispenser rewarded him with an even larger glass of the same liquid. “Good t'ing I can hack this baby, or I not know what all would to come to pass. Cheers.”

They drank together silently.

“This stuff not'ing like that 150 proof Polish vodka you got hidden in that li'l compartment under your bed,” DelMonde confided. “But it do th' trick.”

Chekov rolled his eyes. “I don’t know why I even bother…”

“’Cause you a selfish young bastard,” the engineer informed him.

“If you didn’t insist on stealing my vodka…”

“…Then I never would get any,” DelMonde retorted. “'Sides, what you need to drink so much for? I just savin’ you from yourself, son. Some day you thank ol’ Del.”

Chekov snorted. “I doubt it.”

A silence fell between the two of them again.

“A toast,” Del said, holding up his glass before they started fighting or crying again. “To Irina – who had th' courage t' go into the Heart of Darkness an’ bring the both of us out alive. She died in the line of duty… after a decade of doin' a job you or I woulda screwed up past redemption by th' second day.”

The Russian nodded, his eyes threatening to overflow again. “To Irina.”

They silently drained their glasses.

“C’est le guerre, non?” DelMonde said quietly.

“Da,” Chekov agreed.

C’est la vie, the memory of angels corrected inside Del’s head. C’est la vie.

Under more usual circumstances, Noel DelMonde would have been overjoyed at the quarantine: but after nearly two weeks of the little blue pills, it wasn’t so much the emotions of others he missed, but his ability to control them. And, of course, with his empathy at such an increased level, not even the quarantine was quiet. He’d expected the crash he’d experienced before, but without the presence of others, it was more an irritation beneath his skin than the cacophony that had greeted him when the level of xenoneurophene had started to decrease. He wondered why Rad had told Sulu that the chemicals wouldn’t wear off – they’d certainly seemed to with him. A part of him figured it might be because he hadn’t gotten the neurotoxin with his doses, but a larger part didn’t give much of a fuck. The easy acceptance of his own madness was gone, along with his choir of angels – but the demons – oh, the demons were still with him, swarming around him, trying to pick him apart. He tried to hold onto the reassurance that had brought him back from the safety of his mother’s arms – you’ve got a friend – but the emotional reality that was Ruth’s marriage weakened it, turning it to cynical, mocking despair. Chekov’s visit had done no more than to reawaken the memories of both the delicious taste of dark power and the parasitic relationship that had been Chione and Irina – and the demons twisted it, showing him the parasitic relationship between he and Ruth. With only the barest thought of Sulu, he could feel The Divine Wind rattling the windows of the helmsman’s abused and hungry soul – and he was torn by the hunger in his own.

But he got his li’l one t' keep it out, he thought bitterly. T-Paul got Daffy – who more like Jilla when it come to th' forgivin’ department than she like to t'ink. An’ Ruth – my Ruth – she got her damned husband…

He sat in one of the isolation rooms in Sickbay, his head in his hands, and wished with all his heart that Ruth had just let him be. The words of a song floated in his mind, the demons cackling them to him, pulling him further and further into the darkness that would never leave him in peace.

To hear the song, click here

Son, you've got a ways to fall
They'll tell you where to go
But they won't know

Son, you'd better take it all
They'll tell you what they know
But they won't show

Oh, I got somet'ing in my throat
I need to be alone
While I suffer

Son, you've got a ways to kill
They're pickin’ on you still
But they don't know

Son, you'd better wait to shine
They'll tell you what is yours
But they take mine

Oh, I've got somet'ing in my throat
I need to be alone
While I suffer

Oh, there's a hole inside my boat
I need stay afloat
For the summer long

The music invaded Ruth’s mind, its guilt and grief and anger colored a dark, desolate midnight blue. She tried to reach out to it with comfort and understanding but was blocked from it by the Zehara’s gentle power, with a sad reminder that this was a pain she couldn’t heal.

Because I’m the cause of it, she thought sorrowfully.

Yes, came the soft though uncompromising reply. This is what you chose, ani Ramy.

I didn’t mean to hurt him.

There are always consequences to the choices we make. The burden of living is to find a way to deal with them.

Ruth sighed, accepting, but couldn’t stop the tears from falling through her mind.

Del, I’m sorry.

Oh, I've got somet'ing in my throat
I need to be alone
While I suffer

Oh, there's a hole inside my boat
I need stay afloat
For the summer

Sulu wept with the anguish that cried out to him, unable to either block it out, or console the mind that was so heavy with grief and regret. Inside him, The Divine Wind whispered that he could, if he really wanted to, but Sulu firmly put those thoughts away, his fingers seeking the silver band on his left hand.

Son, you better wait to fall
They'll tell you where to go
But they won't know

The End