dappered | (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.

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"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.