dappered | (no subject)

(no subject)

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.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

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.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only