Author: sorion
Fandom: Star Trek, Star Trek Into Darkness
Pairing: Kirk/Khan
Genre: character development, character study, character interaction, romance, some adventure
AN: This is a fix-it for Khan. If you don't like canon characters genetically tampered with and developed, don't read it. (Apart from that, I will do my best to keep Khan – and everyone else – in character.)
I'm taking my time with this. There will be no overnight solution. This one takes more than a wave with a wand.
AN2: I will work on this whenever I find the time. Do not expect regular updates. They could take days or several weeks, depending on my RL schedule. I always finish my stories, though.
Summary: "Captain... you do not suggest that I am anything but the sum of my genetic programming, surely?" He chuckles, darkly, feels the anger and fury course through him like a steady electrical surge. It is palpable. He can almost taste it on his tongue. "I assure you, Captain, this is who I am."
MOONRAKER
Chapter 1: Dark Awakening (Prologue)
He is waking up. He can feel it. His mind is ahead of his body in the process because it lets him appear inoffensive for longer, while in truth he is already waking bit by bit, muscle by muscle, without any potential threat being any the wiser.
He assesses his body's status. He is clearly not waking from a natural sleep or even a sedative. He is waking from a cryo-stasis, even though the longer his brain is working, the more memories return, and he remembers fighting and being stunned. Repeatedly. He remembers...
... He remembers...
300YearsFederationMarcusSection31ExperimentsVengea nceEnterpriseKirkHisCrew!
His crew!
His eyes fly open.
He can see the bright, white ceiling of a Federation cell. He knows the relentless design.
It hasn't been long, then...
He turns his head towards the side where he knows the glass is (unbreakable even for him) and whoever is holding him captive behind... Bile rises in his throat, his eyes darken.
"Kirk."
"Good morning." The man has the audacity to smile.
Khan immediately sits and swings his legs over the edge of the bed he is lying on. His clothing is as white as the ruthlessly blinding environment.
He knows the doctor standing close to Kirk, and he remembers the muffled words of the woman as she tried to stun him before he lost consciousness. Knows their odious, undeniable meaning.
The mere thought that his blood has been used to revive the man standing unrepentant in front of him, as if he didn't have a care in the world, makes his ears roar, his body tense, his heart constrict... makes every single cell of his body prepare for battle.
"You!" he growls, not caring to hide his hatred, having been robbed of another possibility to manipulate this malleable, pitiful human.
He stands and moves to bang his fists against the glass in an instant, making the armed, red-shirted guards raise their weapons in alarm. Kirk stands his ground and doesn't so much as blink.
"You killed them!" Khan yells in a short burst that he cannot hold back. Then he drives his anger to take control of his body, calms its reactions and searches Kirk's eyes, not allowing the other man to look anywhere but into the depth and blackness that he can feel oozing from his own.
Kirk's smile disappears.
Khan's voice is low, dark and personal when he continues. "They have done nothing to you, and you murdered my people."
He wants to let Kirk know how very much this makes them alike, puts them at the same low-point of morality, the same cursed place from which nobody can ever rise...
"Your crew is fine, Mister Singh," Kirk says, his voice assertive, calm and even.
Khan's next words die in his throat. This is not possible. They were his torpedoes. His! He knows this beyond the shadow of any doubt!
He narrows his eyes. Kirk is mocking him! Mocking his pain, his loss. The loss of his family.
Kirk refuses to move or back down or admit his cruel lie, and Khan can feel his traitorous heartbeat speed up and his chest rise and fall in uncontrollable gulps of painful and useless hope. He forces both down. His face loses all expression, but he cannot keep the quiver of rage out of his voice.
"If you believe for even a moment that I will let you use your petty lies to manipulate me and do your bidding, you are sorely mistaken, Captain." He remembers what he has done to the last person who has tried to use him in such a way, and it grants him a brief flash of satisfaction.
Kirk remains unperturbed. He turns slightly to the side. "Bones."
The doctor – Bones; Khan can only assume that it is proof of affection and familiarity between the men – takes half a step away from the console he is monitoring and faces him.
"We had strong reasons to believe that you would betray us... as you then proceeded to do," the doctor adds the last part with a sarcastic, raised eyebrow, before he continues, "... so Commander Spock ordered the appropriate measures be taken."
"Clarify," Khan demands.
"All cryo-tubes were removed from the torpedoes before we activated them." He gives a sardonic half-smile. "And since you so helpfully dared us to open one, before, we already knew how to do it."
He nods sideways, urging Khan to follow his line of sight to a screen to his left.
"All seventy-two of them are currently safely within this facility."
Khan cannot but stare at the image of thirty-six cells similar to his own, holding tubes that do indeed look like the ones he is so eerily familiar with. He searches for signs that the images are manipulated, that the tubes are mere copies, that the machinery is not live...
"Do I have your attention, now?" Kirk asks.
Having found nothing to disprove Kirk and the doctor's claim, he returns to look at the man. Even the slightest chance that they are telling the truth is worth exploring. The slightest, most traitorous...
"What is it you want?" Khan asks, before his thoughts can lead him into yet another impasse. "Why did you revive me?"
The doctor returns to his console and Kirk... oddly... takes a deep breath as if steadying himself, then licks his lips and stares at the floor for a long moment.
"Out with it! I am in no mood for more games! You and your governments, your scientists, your Federation and your admirals. You have used and played me at every given chance, from the moment of my conception, only to then revert your own blame onto me." Kirk looks up at that. "I would rather you killed me right now than have you be my next puppet master, Captain Kirk," he spits out the name as if both name and title were an insult.
Kirk nods, slowly, then clears his throat. "Point taken."
Khan frowns. The man does not react as he expects him to, as he knows him to.
Kirk straightens and squares his shoulders. "Most of the records from the time of your... conception," he says, using Khan's own word, "have been lost." He pauses, waiting for a reaction. When none follows, he continues. "But Section 31 knew who you were when they revived you, so we were reasonably sure that some of the material had to have been recovered. We found what little of it was left, and..." He pauses, again, his expression sour. Or perhaps painful. "And you're right."
Khan doesn't reply. He just waits. This is nothing new to him.
Kirk shares an uncomfortable look with the doctor before returning to look at his prisoner. "You... were designed." He does not appear as if he likes the word he is forced to use by facts. "Not only to be mentally and physically superior, but... to be ruthlessly aggressive. Single-minded. They have added savagery, as you called it, to your DNA."
Khan is vaguely amused by that analysis, but he waits for Kirk to continue.
"And then Marcus used you, like your creators did." He licks his lips again. "You never had a choice."
At that, Khan's grin can no longer be held back. "Captain... you do not suggest that I am anything but the sum of my genetic programming, surely?" He chuckles, darkly, feels the anger and fury course through him like a steady electrical surge. It is palpable. He can almost taste it on his tongue. "I assure you, Captain, this is who I am."
"Jim..."
Kirk turns to the doctor and looks at the monitor, frowning.
"Lights up like a damn Christmas tree when he's angry," the doctor grumbles, though still clearly audible for Khan.
Kirk straightens. "Show him."
The doctor blinks. "Jim, I don't think..."
"Show him," Kirk repeats. "Show him his readings. Show him what his programming is doing to him."
The doctor does not appear to be happy about that, but he does as he's asked, and then lets Khan know with a histrionic hand movement that his cell monitor is showing him what the Captain wanted him to see.
Khan hesitates, then, angry at his own reaction, complies. After a moment, he frowns, unsure what the reading is meant to tell him. He walks closer, seeing strings of DNA and the corresponding timeline since he was revived only minutes earlier.
"This reading is nonsensical," he declares after several long heartbeats.
"You're telling me," says the doctor. "There is something added to your DNA that sticks out like a damn hangnail. I don't know how you're even alive and breathing, but whatever the hell it is, and even if it wasn't designed to turn you into a killing machine, this kind of alteration would drive anyone to madness."
Khan returns to his spot in front of the glass and Kirk. "And now you have decided that I would be a more useful tool to you if you were to remove that... hangnail... and have me be your docile dog to heel by your feet," he concludes.
"We are offering you an opportunity," Kirk counters. "If the procedure suggested by Doctor McCoy is successful, and psychological as well as telepathic analyses confirm that you are no longer a time-bomb about to go off, you and your crew could be granted a new life on a colony of your own."
Khan huffs. "Exile, once more, Captain?"
Kirk shifts. "Not indefinitely, of course. At least not for your crew. Long enough to ensure that you are capable of upholding a society and are of no danger to yourselves and others."
Khan raises an eyebrow. "My crew but not me." He is hardly surprised. If there was a future for him that does not include a maximum security prison, he would be.
"A Federation court," Kirk mentions the Federation haltingly, as if he knows exactly how little faith in it Khan has reason to have, "has ruled that any actions committed by your crew in times of war are by now time-barred. Your actions, on the other hand – however genetically coerced and manipulated they may have been – are not."
"Indeed." Khan is amused again. Bureaucracy.
Kirk ignores his comment. "Since your whole crew is too dangerous to be revived as they are, you would have to sign an agreement for them to undergo treatment if yours goes well." Another point Kirk appears less than thrilled about.
"I am to make a decision for seventy-two individuals who cannot speak for themselves?" The tone of Khan's voice lets Kirk and the doctor know quite clearly what he thinks of such suggestions.
Kirk's jaw sets. "That is the standing offer. And according to your results, another court ruling will decide what will happen to you."
"And what are the potential results of such a court ruling?" Khan asks, cynically. He has been offered 'options' before. This doesn't sound very different from what Admiral Marcus has promised him, with the exception of him undergoing whatever treatment this Doctor McCoy has fabricated.
"Always assuming that you will come out at the other end as a human being capable of rehabilitation, it would mean therapy and continuous assessment, and then, ideally, house-arrest on that new colony selected for you and your crew, until such a point where it is decided that your movements no longer need to be restricted."
Khan tilts his head. "And if your miraculous cure fails?"
Kirk firmly holds Khan's cold gaze. "Maximum security prison with no chance of ever coming out. You – and your crew – are one risk the Federation is unwilling to take. It took every ounce of convincing I possess to even get you this far."
Khan's eyebrows rise. "Is that so. Why would you of all people insist upon offering me a... chance?" He makes 'chance' sound more like a joke than an opportunity, but Kirk takes it, anyway.
"Carol Marcus approached me." Kirk smiles a dangerous, edgy smile. "You know. The woman whose knee you broke and whose father's skull you crushed in front of?"
"I am aware of her identity."
"She was the one who searched for and found your files and then brought them to my attention." He takes a deep breath and releases it in a huff. "I... am a strong believer of every person being allowed to decide his or her own destiny. You never got that chance. I am willing to offer you at least the possibility of finding out if it was your own free will that made you do the things you did."
Khan blinks, calmly. "And if I refuse treatment?"
"You'll be frozen, again. You are just going to have to hope that any future generations who are forced to deal with you give you yet anotherchance and don't just kill you where you lie."
Khan tilts his head, appreciative of Kirk's more ruthless side. "You do not leave me with much of a choice, Captain."
"Neither do you."
Khan nods his head, once, in acknowledgement. "Granted."
Kirk's breathing visibly speeds up. "So you agree to the treatment?"
"Who guarantees me that this one alteration of my DNA is all you will remove? Who is to say that you do not cripple my genetic design to the point that I am no longer myself? That I am no longer in possession of my mind and body because you fear my superiority?"
"I guarantee it," Kirk says, firmly. "I am not afraid of mentally and physically superior beings."
Khan's lips quirks. "I am almost tempted to believe you, given what I have learned about you. But your Federation might not be quite as open as you are."
"That's why I am in charge of this project." He nods. "People I trust are on it and will continue to supervise it." His eyes briefly dart to the side, his thoughts clearly with a specific person who is not present.
Khan has the distinct feeling that Kirk would defy orders to keep control over this... project. Interesting. He is not quite certain what would drive a person to take this kind of risk, merely because it is what they perceive to be the 'right thing', should it even exist.
"You have my word," Kirk adds.
"I believe you," Khan says. He has no illusions whatsoever as far as the success of this endeavour is concerned. There is no doubt in his mind that his very nature is impossible to remove from his core.
However... he has faith in his own ability to make people believe that it has succeeded...
"I... accept your terms," is what Khan finally says.
Kirk grins in a way that suggests that he knows what Khan is thinking and disagrees, regardless.
"A wise choice, Mister Singh."
McCoy manipulates his device, and surveillance and medical equipment is being revealed in compartments of Khan's cell wall.
"Lie down on the bed, again, please," the doctor says.
Apprehensive of the apparatuses that are mostly unknown to him – having been kept in a military and not a medical environment all his life – Khan nonetheless does as he is asked.
The lights above him brighten and lose some of their edge.
McCoy walks up to the glass. "The procedure will take about two weeks," he explains, probably to assess Khan's reactions until he loses consciousness. "When you wake, you will feel weakened and disoriented, but given your extraordinary physical abilities, that shouldn't last long."
"I understand," Khan says, mostly to see if he is still in control of his mental faculties and his vocal cords.
"Your body will go through quite the ordeal, so it won't be like waking from cryo-stasis or natural sleep. You will probably require a lot of rest at first."
McCoy's voice has a buzzing undertone to it, as if the sound-waves are physically crawling under Khan's skin... He wants to turn his head... but forgets...
"Sleep well, Mister Singh." A soft, low roar more than a voice.
Kirk is the last thing Khan hears.
TBC