Inspired by a tumblr post featuring lovely art by flavialikestodraw paired with this anon drabble: "Molly belittled herself to promise him to do anything, just to have a drop of his blood. A single bead of his precious vital fluid could save Sherlock, and she would give Khan everything, just to see the man she loved healthy again. 'Everything, Ms. Hooper? I neither need, nor I want, everything.' His cruel smile became feral. 'I want you.'"
I've had this sitting on my computer for ages and now I'm posting it since I have no current Khanolly WiPs. Warning for dubcon in later chapters. Be aware that Khan is NOT a cuddly kitten in this fic. Betaed by the wonderful allthebellsinvenice.
He knew the instant his true identity had been discovered, but said nothing to Marcus or any of his Section 31 lackeys, certainly not to the ones assigned to follow him whenever he left the building where he spent most of his time designing ever-more-grandiose weapons for the admiral. It was their supposedly impregnable computer security that had been breached, after all; let them deal with it. Or not; as time passed and Marcus showed no signs of panic or rage, Khan realised that he and his sub rosa Starfleet organization were either complacent or incompetent or both in their reliance on electronic security to keep their dirty little secrets.
Of which he, Khan Noonian Singh, was most certainly their dirtiest. A late 21st century crew of Augments discovered in deep space, smuggled back to Earth and being held hostage against their leader's coerced cooperation in clandestine weapon's design…oh yes, he was certainly the dirtiest of the Section's secrets.
And now he'd been found out, but by whom? To what purpose? There was no leaked story to the press or Starfleet Command or any governmental body; Marcus wasn't being blackmailed or threatened, Khan himself – either under his true name or the pseudonym he'd been forced to assume, John Harrison – hadn't been contacted. Nor was he under surveillance other than the usual Section 31 fools. It was an intriguing puzzle, something to occupy his mind with when not busy designing weapons of mass destruction for the man he hated more than anything in the world.
Two days after he noted the skillful pilfering of his identity from Section 31's most heavily encrypted classified files, he had his answer, in the form of scruffy, bearded young hoodlum – or as close to a hoodlum as Earth could manage these pacified, overly-civilized days. "The Missus said you're the one can help her," he said, speaking without preamble as he sidled up to Khan in the middle of the busy market center where he usually ate his midday meal.
Khan continued to calmly chew and swallow his sandwich, then replied in the same quiet tones. "Help her with what?"
His answer came in the form of a data chip pressed into his free hand. His fingers curled around it automatically, and when he looked up for an explanation the other man was gone, vanished into the crowds. Khan's lips curled in a reluctant, appreciative smile; it wasn't every day his superior eyesight and reflexes could be outmaneuvered by a normal human.
The smile vanished as he turned his attention to the data chip, turning it over and over between his fingers as if a simple visual and tactile examination might help him understand what information had just been conveyed to him. None of his Section 31 tails had a clear line of sight on him at the moment, so he caused the thumb-sized wafer to vanish into the top of his boot while he finished eating, then rose and continued with his usual routine – a stroll around the marketplace, a small purchase or two from his preferred food and drink vendors, then a return to his work for his nemesis.
They left him to his own devices once he was inside his London flat, confident that their electronic spies would alert them should he attempt to escape their view or do anything out of the ordinary. They had no idea the ways he'd managed to circumvent them all, how the data they viewed was all manufactured, a lie carefully created and maintained to cover the true activities he generally busied himself with in the evenings.
As soon as he entered the flat, his personal security protocols started up, activated by his DNA. He removed his uniform and boots, leaving the data chip where it was until he'd showered and eaten a small meal. Then he ordered the computer to turn on a programme of classical music, the signal for his security system to start feeding his watchers – active or passive – the false information showing him going about his usual, very boring routine. Once he was satisfied that all was safe, he retrieved the chip and inserted it into his heavily encrypted data reader. If there was a virus or tracer on the chip he was confident of his ability to root it out before anyone received or destroyed so much as a single byte of information from his computer.
It was clean, and when he opened it up to look at the files, the first thing he saw was his own image staring back at him. However, he'd never worn his hair that long, a mass of curls falling across his forehead, although every other detail, down to the prominent freckle on the front of his neck, was accurate – digital manipulation of some kind? He frowned as he scanned the image, both visually and with a program he'd written to analyse such images. No. Not manipulated. He was staring at not himself then, but a doppelganger of some sort – a clone, possibly, although if the Federation had the technology to clone someone to this exacting degree he would know about it. The only secret Marcus had been able to keep from him was the location of his seventy-two fellow Augments, and he was close to solving that particular riddle, the only one that truly mattered to him.
First, however, he had this little mystery to unravel. As he scanned through the files, he found himself more and more impressed with the thoroughness of whoever had put the information he was viewing together; not only was there a complete profile of his life and supposedly classified work for Section 31, there was an entire subdirectory dealing with his true identity. Someone had gone to a lot of trouble to let him know that they were aware not only of who he was now, but who he was no longer allowed to be.
He supposed he should have felt anger at this violation of his privacy, but nearly a year under Admiral Marcus' thumb had numbed him to such; all he felt was curiosity and admiration, tempered with a growing impatience to discover who was behind this, and what they wanted of him.
Instead of discovering that, as soon as he'd closed the files detailing his personal life, past and present, another file revealed itself, containing the last thing he'd ever expected to see: evidence that not only had his supposedly eradicated bloodline continued, but that there remained on Earth one last descendent of his, a many-times-removed great-grandson.
With mounting interest he read about one William Sherlock Scott Holmes, private consultant to local law enforcement here in London and around the globe, with an impressive case closure rate if the attached resume were to be believed. Either this was an elaborately detailed hoax, or else he truly was the antecedent of this man and his two elder brothers, now deceased, as were their parents.
The only living relative listed, in fact, was his wife, one Molly Elizabeth Hooper-Holmes.
Khan brought up her image, and his breath caught. Not only was his descendent an exact duplicate of himself, but the man's wife bore the features of Khan's own beloved, Marla, who slept on with the rest of his crew. His family.
And now there was another…possibly. He refused to allow himself to feel any sort of emotion, to react to the chance that his bloodline lived on. That one of his former paramours had actually given birth to a child of his without him – or any of his many enemies – knowing about it.
Facts. Data. He needed more of both, from independent sources. He fed the information on the married couple into a computer that Starfleet would be very interested to know he had in his possession, instructing it to verify the information contained on the data chip; if this 'Sherlock Holmes', as he apparently preferred to be called, was indeed his descendent…and Molly, presumably, a descendent of Marla's? Well. He refused to speculate ahead of the facts, but there were several fascinating scenarios he could work out in his mind if what he was seeing turned out to be true.
While he waited, he had a second computer search for a matching likeness for the man who had slipped him the data chip in the first place, using his perfect recall to provide a precise, detailed description. Afterwards he rescanned the data contained on the chip carefully, even testing it for DNA other than his own. However, the man had been clever; he'd been wearing some sort of barrier so that no so much as a single skin cell or partial fingerprint had been left behind.
Based on the biographies of Holmes and Hooper (she looked so much like Marla, her hair a shade darker, closer to chestnut than red; her eyes brown instead of blue, but the same slight build, the same expression of quiet resolve on her face that he'd seen so many times before their exile), he tentatively concluded that the man – ah, there he was, one William James Wiggins of London – was the one who'd extracted his secured files from under Section 31's collective noses. Yes. Khan steepled his fingers beneath his chin and relaxed in his chair, resting his elbows on its black leather-covered arms as he studied Wiggins' bio. A computer programmer of some renown in certain criminal circles, until being taken under the wing of Sherlock Holmes and being put to work on the other side of the law.
He barely skimmed the information pertaining to Holmes' known associates – a former Starfleet medical doctor, a Detective Inspector with Scotland Yard, an assortment of uninteresting police officers and forensics specialists – focusing instead on his family history. Father an historian who'd written an impressive array of scholarly works pertaining to the Eugenics War. Mother a Starfleet Intelligence officer. Both deceased, as already noted, natural causes. Eldest brother Robert Mycroft Matthew Holmes, holder of some supposedly 'minor' position in Earth's global government; some digging would be required if necessary to confirm Khan's suspicions that the man's actual position was quite a bit more important. Never married, no children. His death was by far the most intriguing fact; assassination, assailant currently living out a life imprisonment on the New Zealand penal colony, one Sebastian Moran…boring. Second brother, David Sherrinford Andrew Holmes, university professor and archaeologist, three ex-wives and one ex-husband, no children, also deceased, hit by a runaway lorry. Tragic. Moving on.
Molly Hooper was not so bereft of living relatives, but none of them closer than a cousin who was an environmental engineer on Mars and a great-aunt and uncle who had retired to the Sussex colony to study bees. Boring, boring, not worth investigating.
Another program was started, this one researching the genetic backgrounds of his current prey, searching for further proof that there was a real, genetic connection between them. He also added another query, scanning all documents produced by members of the Holmes family as far back as could be traced, searching for signs of an acknowledged connection to Khan, although he doubted very much he'd find any such thing.
His lip curled as he recalled some of the more lurid so-called 'biographies' of him and the other Augments who had sought to bestow order on a world fallen sadly into chaos; none of them had been remotely favorable to his kind. Even their creators had been condemned as madmen and fanatics for daring to attempt to modify humankind into something more worthy of the planet that had birthed them.
He held mixed feelings toward history for having saved no images of any of the Augments, not even for purposes of law enforcement when they were branded war criminals and hounded from Earth. On the one hand, it made it that much easier for the cursed admiral to hide him plain sight; on the other hand, he had no stored images of his crew and those who had died three hundred years earlier. No physical reminder of what they looked like, only his memories. His memory was eidetic, yes, but it wasn't the same as being able to call up his sweet Marla's likeness on the computer any time he wanted, or to see Joachim's solid, beloved features gazing back at him on a vid feed.
At least, he mused, now he could call up images of this Molly Hooper-Holmes. With but a few alterations, she could easily be transformed into the face he most longed to see, to touch, to kiss…
"Pfaugh!" he said, annoyed at how easily he'd allowed himself to fall prey to sentiment. It was a weakness, a chemical defect found on the losing side. Many seemed to believe that this oft-repeated credo of his meant that he was incapable of feeling love, that he held no one close to his heart, when nothing could be further from the truth. Love wasn't a soft emotion; far from it. Wars were started over love, people killed and died for love. No, it was the romantic weakening of that emotion into sentiment that he despised, that softened people's brains and destroyed their ability to reason, to function, to make the difficult decisions that sometimes needed to be made.
Although he was reluctant to admit it, even to himself, Admiral Marcus was a man of like thinking when it came to love. He loved his daughter, he loved his planet and his Federation, but he was ruthless with that love. He would do anything to protect that which he held dear.
Just as Khan would. A pity he hadn't been able to seduce Carol Marcus at some point, but she was too carefully guarded; Marcus had made certain that the two never crossed paths, even though she worked for her father and was frequently on-site. He'd made sure to keep her well segregated from 'John Harrison' and his top secret projects…or rather, Khan thought with a cold smile, he believed he had. The admiral was in for an unpleasant awakening one of these days, when he discovered what his daughter had been up to behind his back.
That, however, wasn't any concern of his. The computer running the background checks on Sherlock Holmes and Molly Hooper gave a soft 'ping', and he spent several minutes confirming that the information in the Federation Database contained the same information he'd received on disk. He checked his secondary program, confirmed that the original data hadn't been tampered with or recently inserted in order to give credence to false data meant to mislead him, and read some very enlightening medical reports that cleared up the fundamental mystery as to why he'd been contacted in the first place.
Before he could do more than start to make mental correlations, the results of the genetic inquiry appeared on-screen, bringing a tingle of anticipation to his flesh and stretching his lips in a satisfied smile.
Although Dr. Molly Hooper, Chief Pathologist at St. Bart's Hospital here in London, was no genetic match for his sweet, sleeping Marla, Sherlock Holmes was, indeed, his descendent. Lineal, from his direct line, not collateral. Not from his younger, unaugmented sister whose fate he'd never discovered; not from his elder brother who had died screaming in battle with the North American Bloc soldiers that had stormed the family compound the night Khan and the others had been forced to flee Earth, to seek refuge far from the world that had turned against them. To hope to find a better life elsewhere.
Such a futile hope it had turned out to be, now that they found themselves back where they started. Once again being used as tools rather than being allowed to take their rightful place…
With a curse Khan flung himself out of his chair; discovering that he had an actual blood relative was affecting his thinking, turning him maudlin and morose, neither of which emotion would do him any good. He stopped, stood with the preternatural stillness that all his people could so easily command, shut his eyes, and breathed deeply, in and out, until he felt the calmness he sought finally settle over his mind.
Snapping his eyes open, he returned to his chair and calmly, methodically began reviewing the information contained on the data chip, reanalyzing it based on the confirmation he'd received that he was, indeed, looking at a likeness of his only living descendent.
The discreet chime of his personal communicator interrupted his analysis, and he narrowed his eyes in annoyance, expecting it to be Admiral Marcus or one of his lackeys demanding his presence at the research facility. Such had happened far too many times in the past, but he never failed to respond, to give the appearance of complete cooperation as he bided his time for the moment of triumph he was certain to face one day.
Soon.
Very, very soon.
Putting a neutral expression on his face, he flipped open the communicator sat on the corner of his desk, confident that the perception filter he'd designed was working to cover the sight of anything he wasn't supposed to have in his possession, and to mask any noises that such contraband equipment might make. The face that greeted him, however, wasn't one he'd been anticipating, although in retrospect it made perfect sense.
Molly Hooper.