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It begins to unravel the moment he hears the phaser fire a stun blast. Kirk is young and emotional, a boy captain trying to lead from the front lines, the weight of his command slowing his reactions (the fear, Khan can smell it on him) and he'd thought perhaps, perhaps, that it would be possible to accomplish his goals without sacrificing any unnecessary pawns. Marcus was one man with one ship. Destroying an entire planetary organization down to the last rivet was a project too ambitious for his resources as they were; he needed allies more than he needed comprehensive annihilation, at least until his people were safe.

Hitting the deck of the Vengeance abruptly rewrites his priorities. When he re-awakens it is like his first awakening all over again, no allies, no honor, just cause and effect and calculations as a hostile, lesser species attempts to coerce and corner him. The warm spatter of Marcus's blood on his hands is hardly enough to make up for everything. Firing upon the Enterprise is neither entertaining nor part of his retribution, it is merely closing off a loose end. Who can be trusted with seventy-two lives, these days? Certainly not the Federation. Perhaps not even Khan himself, although he is doing his best for them. He wishes briefly for their counsel, for their material assistance, but those are not the variables he has been given. He must do this alone.

And then he is alone, the damned Vulcan sees to that, and the equation becomes even simpler. Take what he has and destroy as much as he can with it. Go out like a dying star. Show them what they are dealing with, that he cannot be controlled, cannot be collared, cannot be reduced.

They do reduce him, in the end. One single phrase. "They are alive," and the medical officer requires his blood to save the boy captain's life, and the Vulcan watches him with eyes as flat and cold as a cobra's, waiting for the opportunity to strike. Vulcans are a curious race. Khan rather respects their practicality, but they are so rarely brutal. This one is something new.

The Vulcan does not demand his cooperation, for demands can be refused. The Vulcan states what is and what will be, you will be held in custody until no further blood transfusions are required, you will then be tried as a criminal for the acts you committed as John Harrison, and what Khan really hears is 'I will kill you myself if he does not wake up.'

He accepts these terms, for he can do nothing else with his crew being held hostage. Again. His blood is a potent drug and the boy captain's body can only assimilate small amounts of it at a time. Khan is to be his personal blood bank for the foreseeable future, a shadow in the hospital and aboard the Enterprise for as long as it takes Kirk to recover completely. He wears shackles and a collar with a detonation device implanted inside (and sedatives, but Khan is under no illusions that the Vulcan who carries the codes will hesitate to choose the more lethal option) and a dark gray civilian jumpsuit with no insignia, no weapons, no access codes. 'Khan' is a tangled problem for the decimated Federation Command to wrestle over, he is John Harrison for the duration of his custody. Bones is happy to exclaim over the miracles in his DNA, happy to see the miraculous improvement in a radiation victim, but Khan doesn't answer his barrage of questions. He doesn't answer the interrogators that come to pry information out of him. He doesn't answer the Admiral's daughter, or Uhura, or the Vulcan, although he doesn't need to, as the Vulcan merely takes the data he requires out of Khan's mind until Khan learns how to block him out.

And then the boy captain wakes up and, with all his typical brashness, insists that he's fit for command. He wants to be present for the repairs. He wants his ship and his crew, argues that the medical bay there can treat the rest of his condition as well as an Earthside hospital can. He wants his chair back. He wants to know what happened to the Augments.

The cell walls are not as thick as people imagine them to be. Khan hears things, and the next time Bones comes by to take some of his blood, he speaks aloud for the first time in weeks, his voice rusty with disuse. He recites his name and serial number as a proper POW would, and waits to be taken to the captain.

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He's not fit for command. He knows it. Feels it, down in his bones.

(You know radiation affects bone marrow?)

But he doesn't let himself think about it, get lost in it. He has to be at his best, he has to push and recover. His resolve is cracked at the foundations but not broken, he just has to survive. Endure.

Dying haunts his dreams and chases the shadows of his waking thoughts, but living takes up the rest of it. He keeps himself busy writing reports and checking on everyone else's health and well-being. Writing letters to the families of those that he lost. It's an exercise in masochism, he doesn't even know if he'll ever send them (be allowed to send them, per Federation regulations) but it's... cathartic, to get it out. It keeps him humble.

'You don't respect the chair' Pike had told him. But Pike's dead and rotting in a Federation mausoleum somewhere and all Jim can think about is the fact that Khan's blood could have saved him if they'd known about its restorative properties. He doesn't think about that. He can't. It's like looking into an abyss and you know what? Maybe he's not ready for that, either.

It's a bitter thought, harsh and cold and self-flagellatory, and Jim clenches his hands until his knuckles are white with anger. He feels a lot of that these days, and he recognizes it as a symptom of his younger years. When he was so sure he was going to coast through life meaning nothing to anyone, when he was so tangled up in his father's legacy he couldn't even think about the consequence of carving his own.

Spock cried for him.

That still weirds him out.

They're well into the gamma shift when Bones calls him up on the comm, and Jim reaches out to steady the punching bag he's been whaling on for the better part of an hour. He tells everyone it's to build his strength back up, but the fact of the matter is he doesn't even need to. He's stronger than he was before and that-- it terrifies him. Khan's blood. Pulsing in his veins, through his heart, under his skin and sometimes he thinks he can even localize the way it burns. It saved his life, but he wants it gone. It feels too much like being in his debt, and Jim-- he hate that more than anything.

"Khan wants to talk to you," Bones' drawls, but the sheer cold of space is in his tone. "I think. Bastard just started reciting his credentials last time I bled him like a pig."

Jim starts unwrapping his knuckles. He'd been hitting the bag with everything he had but the skin stretched across the fine bones of his hands is completely without bruising. He flexes them. "I'm on my way, just-- clear everyone out, okay?"

"Jim--" Bones says, and it sounds like an argument waiting to happen. Something in him snaps.

"Kirk out." He hits the communicator harder than he needs to, and it sparks. Jim stares at it with venom, and leaves the grav-gym, pulling his black undershirt on over his head as he goes.

When he gets to the brig, there's absolutely no trace of emotion on his face. He's done showing this man his vulnerabilities.

"You wanted to see me?"

It's not the first time Khan has seen him since the Vengeance, there'd been dozens of trips to his bedside, watching him breathing shallowly while Bones administered the latest transfusion and the Vulcan waited for any hint of an adverse reaction. Khan presumed it was because Spock wanted to kill him the absolute instant anything went wrong, without having to deal with an inconvenient distance between the hospital and the brig, which honestly seems somewhat practical. There are times when delays and semantics and morals interfere with the simple necessity of what needs to be done.

The boy captain is looking much better now, certainly, as well he might considering what is coursing through his veins. Khan delays his response, allowing his eyes to travel steadily over Kirk's frame, gauging. His pulse is elevated slightly, despite the blankness of his features, and his fists keep clenching and unclenching.

Khan stands perfectly in the middle of his now accustomed cell, at something like parade rest with his hands held loosely at his sides. It's almost a faithful recreation of the last time they'd spoken through the shield of a cell door.

"Captain." He keeps his voice flat and incurious and his gaze travelling, not meeting Kirk's eyes because it will infuriate him.

It does. Jim fights down the sudden surge of anger, like an ocean swell. He cocks his head to one side instead of giving into it.

"You remembered. I'm touched."

Khan completes his inspection and finally meets the boy's gaze, noting the anger there.

"How could I forget." There's a hint of sarcasm, dry as dust, but he's moving on almost before the sentence is complete.

"I'll presume that you've been informed about the terms of my custody arrangements?"

Khan's baiting him. This is a chess game, and he's on the offensive, and Jim has to remember to breathe. He has to think about it inorganically. Everything rendered down to annotations and checkered squares. He doesn't think about Pike or the people he lost or Spock's voice, right now I am failing.

Jim brings down the wall of the brig and steps inside. Brings it back up. Sits on the bench opposite Khan.

"What of them?"

The anger is washed out of his tone, gone from his shoulders. It's there. God, it's still there, but he's buried it deeper than the dead he carries with him now.

There's a moment, when the wall comes down, that Khan lets himself consider the possibility of escape, of snapping the boy's neck or taking him hostage, forcing his way off the ship-- but there are too many unknowns, his crew is still imprisoned somewhere and it's certainly not onboard the Enterprise. Wherever they are, their safety is still in his shackled hands.

He tracks Kirk automatically, however, never giving the impression that his attention is divided, and tilts his head ever so slightly at the boy captain's deliberate denial of his emotions, acknowledging. Kirk considers himself the betrayed, here, and that would be amusing if it weren't detrimental.

"Doctor McCoy has not been very forthcoming with information about your condition. By my count, you've been given thirty-seven doses of my blood, if not more." He pins Kirk with an inhuman blue stare.

"I was simply wondering how well you were taking it."

"Well, I'm not radioactive anymore." Jim's eyes are bright and his posture stays easy. Calm. Khan knows how to needle him, press in on the bruises and scars Jim knows he's aware of. But the more he does it, the easier it is to sink into the game. He'll lose himself if he goes too deep, but he's not worried about it. Not now.

"So I guess it's working out pretty well for one of us. Nice trick, by the way. I bet that you just hate that you're being used like a lab rat to save my life, huh? I bet that burns."

"It does." He gives that up easily, because it's easily presumed. No living creature enjoys captivity. "But it also makes me your responsibility, and you mine. I do have extensive experience with the-- changes your body is currently going through."

It hardly needs to be told that there had been no official sanction of Bones's decision to give Kirk his blood, and even Section 31's files on Khan's biochemistry are sketchy and full of speculation. Admiral Marcus had kept private files with more detailed information, but that was data Khan had seen destroyed. As far as Starfleet is concerned, these transfusions could be doing just about anything to Kirk, and Khan is willing to bet that they-- or Section 31-- are going to come sniffing around asking pointed questions sooner or later.

Jim's eyes flicker, a bare whisper of expression. "Bones synthesized your blood. No side effects."

Another man would have smiled in response to that. Khan does not. He catalogs reactions instead, watching Kirk give himself away, knowing that Kirk knows what he's seeing.

"Were you told that?" he asks, without gentleness.

"Let's talk about what you want, Khan," Jim says conversationally. He has one hand resting on his knee, elbow turned out and locked, and with his other hand he rubs at his mouth. "Let's talk about your crew."

"What I want," he echoes, because that's funny, and Kirk hasn't the dedication to cruelty that Marcus had learned. He hadn't needed Khan at all, in the end. There was enough savagery ingrained in the human species already.

"Were you going to tell me something I don't already know, I wonder. Their location. The intentions of your government." Now he does smile, without humor and without referencing Marcus, knowing Kirk will pick up the implication anyway. "What you'll do to them if I don't cooperate?"

"You've already cooperated," Jim points out. "And we both know you'd do anything for them. See, that's the problem, Khan. At the end of the day you know exactly what I'm capable of. But it's a two-way mirror." He hates saying it. He can hear the blood rushing in his ears, Khan's blood, and for a moment the edges of his vision are black.

"So no. I'm not going to hold them over your head. You saved my life. I'm not turning them over to the Federation. And I don't murder," and that word is stressed ever-so-faintly, "innocent people. They're safe and they'll stay that way, you have my word. But this thing - whatever it is - with you and me? I promise you, it's not finished."

Jim cants his head to one side, drops his hand away from his knee. "Would you have let my crew live if I hadn't stunned you?"

There is nothing Khan wishes to dispute in any of that, so he doesn't. Nor does he remind Kirk that his cooperation now does not in any way guarantee his good behavior in the future. Cages and chains and coercion will not hold him forever.

But the question, that question, almost moves him to irritation, and he shifts his weight for the first time in their entire conversation, impatient. The fact that Kirk had chosen to have his man fire on him in the first place clearly indicated that their alliance had been at the end of its usefulness.

"If I could not convince you of my intentions when we had a common goal, I will not waste my time doing so now." He glances out the transparent wall of the cell, noting absently the changing of the guard shift. "A prisoner will say anything to his captor."

Jim watches him with interest, noting the shift in his body language. He knows those seventy two supersoldier-cicles is a sore spot with Khan, but he hadn't expected to hit the mark quite that efficiently.

"Try me."

It's no secret, not now, even if Kirk had been temporarily dead during Khan's attempt to destroy Starfleet HQ, there are no doubt dozens of logs and reports documenting the attack, and the personal testimony of the Vulcan himself. They'd all watched Khan run mad with grief over the supposed deaths of his crew.

Or perhaps the Vulcan had not chosen to speak to his captain about that little incident. He'd tried a mind meld during their struggle, and in it Khan had seen Spock's own madness very clearly. It's been a warming thought during all their dealings afterwards, where the Vulcan does not allow his gaze to settle and speaks instead to the air over Khan's left shoulder.

"Yes, Captain," he answers at last, patiently, catering to what he clearly considers an obvious question with an obvious answer. "I had thought to spare them, as they were sheltering my crew at the time."

Jim makes direct eye contact, unflinching. Searching for something. "So," he prompts. "Back at square one. Why did you want to talk to me?"

There's no lie in Khan's demeanor, but neither is there anything else except the controlled tension of a soldier waiting for the proper battlefield, which this is not. Kirk had never been more than a cog in the greater system under Marcus's nominal control, spinning blindly. He had never been a personal nemesis.

Now, however, he's something different.

"I wanted to see your progress for myself--"

Before the word is entirely finished, however, he shifts his weight into a combat stance, ready to lead off into an attack from the right, not to actually execute the motion but to test Kirk's reflexes and confirm his own suspicions about those supposed non-existent side effects.

Except he'd been expecting it. Khan's been pushing him this entire conversation, guiding it to something, to a point, and Jim doesn't even flinch. If Khan kills him, his crew will just bring him back again. Jim's betting it would take a lot less blood to heal from a broken neck.

Then again, he doubts it would fix one of Khan's brain pancake specials. But in that case, the only thing he'd accomplish is jeopardizing his own crew.

Jim wouldn't do that, in Khan's position. He doubts the man himself would.

So he just raises an eyebrow. "You done?"

That earns a smile, brief and startlingly foreign on Khan's face before it flickers out. Heightened reflexes and abilities could kill an unprepared man as surely as they could make him a more efficient soldier. Kirk seems to be adapting, or his own body would have thrown him across the room in reaction to a threat.

"Not just yet. I have a request for you, Captain, and some advice if you care to listen."

Jim's eyes narrow. "Talk."

Now he does move, swift and silent, stepping into Kirk and conveniently edging him back against the wall, his lips barely brushing the shell of other man's ear. He keeps his words too low for the security systems in the cell to pick up but Khan knows what his own ears can hear, and takes a gamble that Kirk shares that ability.

"Move my crew. Wherever they are, wherever you think they're safe, they are not. Move them and keep moving them. Irregular schedules. Split them up if you must."

Jim goes rigid at the sudden proximity, every instinct screaming at him to fight, to get out of there by whatever means necessary. But he doesn't. He just stands stock still, hands at his side, breathing only just elevated.

"I don't owe you any favours," he grounds out, instead.

"You said you would not murder innocent people," he reminds. "If you do not do this, you will be an accomplice to their deaths. What Marcus wanted from us was too big to keep clandestine. He contracted out to private interests, not just your government's intelligence agency. They're going to want us back, James Kirk, and they'll go through you and your limited authority to accomplish it.

If you promise their safety, you will have my obedience. No tricks, no traps. I will keep you alive and unfettered with all of my considerable ability." He turns his head, just enough to speak the words directly into the hinge of Kirk's jawbone, pretending his interest isn't in the fluttering pulse directly beneath. "They're going to come for you, as well. It's already started inside you, and they're going to find out. Creatures like us don't get to walk free."

Jim presses the pads of his fingers against the wall behind him to keep from lashing out. He hates people being in his space without invitation, especially when it's someone who's laid a beating into him as badly as the one Khan gave him on Marcus' ship.

But he's not afraid. Just distinctly uncomfortable, and he's not going to give Khan the satisfaction of seeing him sweat.

Bones' official report - and Spock's, which surprised him - as well as the testimonials of everyone on the ship tell the story of how Jim Kirk, recently radioactive, was stuffed full of drugs by the fast action and invaluable skills of the CMO and staff, flatlined once, and came back. That's it.

And it's not like it's not true. It's just... technicalities. Spock had told him that.

"First of all," he says, sliding sideways, away from Khan. "I do a pretty good job of keeping myself alive and unfettered. Second, when I say your crew is safe I mean that more than you can possibly understand. We detonated those missiles, Khan. That's what they know, that's all they know. And I already told you, nothing's changed."

"Then you're lying to your superiors about what really happened."

Khan makes no move to deter Kirk, only watches him sidle away, filing that information.

"You'll be able to hide it successfully for a time, depending on how your body reacts. It's different for everyone. But someone is going to notice, eventually."

Indifferently, "As I said, I am willing to aid you despite our... history. If you cannot accept that, then I can only conclude that soon enough I will be in another's custody, and making new deals, as you will certainly be dead or locked away."

He doesn't rise to the bait. He just looks at Khan and a muscle jumps in his jaw. "Or I strand you on some godforsaken planet in the middle of nowhere so far away from Federation space you will never find your way back." His tone is low.

"You could have done that at any time in the last several weeks." Between the regular letting of his blood, and Kirk's own adamant declaration that John Harrison was going to stand trial-- eventually-- for his crimes, it seems unlikely that even Kirk could get away with making him disappear, not unless he was willing to produce a corpse and claim that Khan had been killed during some escape attempt.

"It would be far more efficient to kill me. Fewer questions, although I imagine there will still be an investigation into the sudden disappearance of Earth's most wanted terrorist. Or are you attempting to get your crew used to lying to the Federation for you?"

"I've been pretty busy the 'last several weeks'," he snaps out. His temper is fraying, one strand of titanium cord at a time. He steps away from the wall and circles back around to the center of the room, fighting to command the space.

"You don't get to talk to me about my crew."

Khan remains motionless, unaffected, letting Kirk's emotion break against his impassiveness as the boy captain's blows had broken on his flesh on Qo'noS. He has several more cards to play here if it should become necessary (and one piece of information he may be forced to volunteer, as it directly pertains to Kirk's condition), but they are back to discussing crews.

"Is that guilt, Captain? A recently renewed vow to do better for them in the future? Perhaps you're regretting some of the actions you took during this little misadventure."

You know like offering Khan up to Marcus as part of a bargain where Khan could hear and then demanding his help and also shooting him in the back.

"Or perhaps I don't think you have the right to talk about them like you're equals. These are the best men and women I've ever met. What're you? A jacked up remnant of another era who uses force and bullying to get what he wants. Yeah. Real superior. Good job with that, by the way." His temper ratchets up another notch, but he keeps his breathing even. Controls the rage. God, everything since he bowed over Pike's body has been so screwed up. Every emotion, every decision-- everything.

He remembers people falling past him when the Enterprise twisted in the air and the gravity failed, not being able to catch them. Hearing them scream.

Maybe that's why he went into that core. It was atonement as much as sacrifice. I'm sorry I couldn't save them.

There it is, that implication once more that Khan had betrayed him and not vice versa. He doesn't scoff, but leans forward the tiniest centimeter, and quotes Kirk's own words back at him with deliberate slowness:

"Please, sir. I'll do anything you want. Just let them live."

If Kirk imagines for one moment that Khan is anything less than a desperate man in that same position, that Khan will accept admonishment over his actions or hesitate to be so brutal in the future, he is sorely mistaken.

He's ran that moment over and over again in his head so many times it doesn't even make him flinch. He just grits his teeth that much more, and exhales sharply. "Yeah? And?"

"And you should not have broadcast that transmission publicly without the expectation of... consequences."

"Do you play chess, Khan?"

It might seem like it's out of left field, but it's not. Not really. Jim's expression is back to being restrained, and his tone is downright bland.

Oh gurl. Khan's eyebrow raise is deliberately Spock-esque, reserved for answering questions with obvious answers. They're playing chess right now, and they both know it.

"Once upon a time."

"Then you know that not every move means what you think it does, asshole. I never would have given you to Marcus, I was buying time. Why do you think I lied about where you were? He was going to kill you. Straight up. No trial. And I told you you were going to trial." Jim drags a hand through his hair, looking tired.

Something that might be a bitter smile twitches at the corner of Khan's mouth.

"You were not lying when you offered him 'anything.' Or should I have been expected to believe that you would value my custody over the lives of your crew?"

"I wasn't even talking about you," he says, irritated. "You really don't know how to read between the lines, do you? All that Übermensch genius floating around up there and you have no idea that what I was offering was my life. I was ready to let him kill me. Ready to let him blame everything on me, drag my name through the dirt just to save my crew. And maybe he would have killed you too, who knows. You're right, I'd have sacrificed you for my crew. But it wasn't on my mind."

Khan gives him an irritated look right back. Kirk might not have known the part of Admiral Marcus that Khan had been so regularly exposed to, but the simple fact that the Admiral had gone out of his way to sabotage Kirk's ship, stranding him at the border of a hostile planet, indicated Marcus's true intentions the entire time. He'd wanted the entire ship, all of the evidence, destroyed from the moment he had agreed to let Kirk take the mission and one offered life, even a captain's, was a poor bargaining chip against such intentions.

"I understood what you were offering at the time."

"Then what the hell is your problem?"

Yeah, he's mad.

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