Lt P. A. Chekov

Pasha hated arguments.

Arguments meant that people were refusing to submit to the force of her superior will. It was only natural that it was superior because, well, she was very Russian and very stubborn. But stubbornness had gotten her into the dark days of this depressing situation where Ben wouldn't speak to her and she wasn't so inclined to speak to him herself. If anything it was her pridefulness that had brought her into this crossroads. Or perhaps it was her stubbornness. Or the way she didn't like to be shown to be wrong. Whatever it was, sometimes Pasha found herself wishing that she was more of an agreeable person.

Maybe being agreeable would have made her life easier.

It would have certainly meant that she wouldn't have been in this situation. But then, she wondered as she sat and flicked through the pages of a book she had acquired, wouldn't that make her a doormat? If she had just bitten her tongue and not said a word, blithely allowing Ben to ogle whoever he wanted. People better looking. Who didn't have frizzy hair, or dressed in whatever was closest and warmest, people who didn't get jealous and petty. People who wouldn't start arguments with him about looking at other people if they were in her position.

Pasha gritted her teeth, forcing that thought away with a huff. Comparing herself to other people had never gotten her anywhere before. She was the person that others compared themselves to; the girl genius who was meant to have had a captaincy by twenty. But now she was twenty, hadn't seen the Enterprise or her crew in two years, couldn't keep a handle on her own relationship and to top things off she'd died and spent a year and a bit trapped in a city of sin. The life plan hadn't gone so well.

Never the less sulking in her room hadn't gotten her to San Francisco and Starfleet at the tender age of fourteen without a childhood full of hard work and she wasn't about to let all the hard work and confusion she'd invested in a proper adult relationship go down the drain without a fight. No, she was much too stubborn to let it all go until she was good and ready. Not in a crazy stalker way, she amended in her head, but in a fight for your man even if it's you you're fighting against kind of way.

She'd already quit that job - a poorly conceived idea if ever she'd had one - but that wouldn't do anything to fix up the rift that she'd created between her and Ben.

There were three routes she could take to fix this, with varying levels of embarrassment and issues that came alongside them. Route one was her least favourite which was to admit she was wrong, apologise then try to make amends in whichever way that she could. Which was the least manipulative but by far the most difficult. Route two was to get drunk and either cry at or have sex with Ben until he forgave her. Possibly both of those things. That one was a little more manipulative than she would have liked but it had the upside of her being too drunk to care about making a fool of herself. Route three was buying him a motorbike.

There weren't any motorbikes in Thuriaz or Dagaz from what she had seen so it looked as if it were down to option one or two.

Pasha closed her book, drumming her fingers on the cover as she weighed up how much damage option two could actually cause. Probably more than it was worth. She had accused him of only being in the relationship for sex - after all how couldn't she take his saying she was allowed to flirt to her hearts content as long as she didn't have sex with anyone else as anything but trying to protect his stakes - it wouldn't be fair if she used sex to try and get back into his good books. She doubted it would even work. If he had screwed up so royally; ignoring her, being a hypocrite, starting fights in public with her friends. Hell, she doubted she would ever want to sleep with him again. So why would it be the reverse for him?

She sighed. Option one it was then.