Possession and Its Unassuming Personal Effects

Part 2

You woke up later wrapped in a sheet, alone in the dark. The shower was running in the bathroom. You didn't get up. You just lay there, feeling nothing, remembering suddenly that you had just had sex with a man named Khan, who you didn't know but had claimed he'd saved your life.

The shower turned off and he emerged a few moments later, toweling himself off, running his fingers through his black hair to keep it out of his face. You didn't bother to lift your head to get a better look; you'd already seen more than enough. You heard the sounds of shifting fabric and then he appeared at your bedside, fully dressed, and dropped a bundle of clothing beside you.

"Get up. We're leaving."

You blinked and slowly reached for the shirt that had landed closest to you. "Where are we going?"

He didn't answer and pulled on a long, black coat with a collar that encircled his neck. It made him appear even taller and leaner than he already was. Wanting desperately to be fully clothed after you hadn't been for the last few days, you pushed the sheets away, biting your lip at your revealed nakedness again. You glanced over at Khan but he didn't pay you any attention. You quickly pulled on the underwear and long t-shirt first, then already feeling more comfortable now that you were covered, you slid into the pants which were slightly too tight but they would be fine. There was a pair of smaller boots on the floor and you slid into them as well. Khan gave you a quick once over, then wordlessly handed you a jacket. As you pulled it on, he punched in the key code to his quarters' door, unlocking it with a slight click. Then he grabbed your arm and pulled you with him down the corridor.

"You still haven't answered my question," you chanced to ask as you both stepped into an elevator. He hit a button that said 'G' and you were lifted swiftly upwards. A surge of hope made your heart palpitate that maybe you were leaving this place for a little while at least.

You followed him with two strides for each one of his as he walked across the floor of the Kelvin Archives lobby. Once you were outside the door, you understood the need for the jacket. It was February and the sun hadn't yet come up. In fact London was just barely waking up. You followed Khan across the street without so much as a glance at an oncoming vehicle, then grabbed at his arm when he stopped on the other side.

"Where are we going?"

His gaze flitted between the faces of those brave enough to start their work day so early, then looked down at you.

"If you value your life, you will run," he said. "Stay out of London and San Francisco as well. By tonight, I imagine Admiral Marcus will be dead."

You frowned, trying to catch a glimpse of that something you had seen the day before, but it was nowhere to be found. He took your face in his hands suddenly and pressed his lips firmly to yours, practically pulling you off your feet. When he broke the kiss, he still held you, pressing his forehead to yours.

"I could not let Marcus destroy one more thing after he murdered my crew."

You stared at him, suddenly wanting very much to kiss him again. Instead he let you go and pushed you away.

"Your crew—?"

"I said you should run."

You stared at him for another second, but the cold gaze he gave you sent a shiver down your spine, so you obeyed. You turned and ran.

Minutes passed and you slowed, your heart beating out of your chest, your lungs on fired. The ground rumbled and there were screams in the distance. You whirled to see a large explosion rising up in the section of the city you'd just come from.

You immediately thought of Khan. Had he gotten away? Was he even still alive? Had he just killed himself? What the hell? You cursed at yourself for even bothering to care. You would never see him again, but the ache between your legs reminded you of the night before and you suddenly regretted that you even had feelings of any kind for him. You turned down the sidewalk and headed for the nearest spaceport. You needed to get out of London.

The following day, you let yourself sleep in, and woke at noon. You were staying in an old inn in the countryside, far away from London. You stretched with a groan. You were still sore, probably due to all that running you did in London. You rubbed sleep from your eyes and went over to the table by the window, digging through the sack of food you'd "acquired" late last night. Settling on a box of cereal, you plopped back down in bed and flipped on the ancient television set.

The news channels were all running the same story. Some maniac had crashed an enormous starship into downtown San Francisco and had somehow escaped. There were an estimated two thousand killed with countless missing, and Admiral Marcus' body had been found onboard the ship, his face and head broken apart as though someone had literally taken it between their hands and caved it in. According to an expert currently being interview onscreen, that was impossible, as the amount of forced needed to accomplish something like that was far beyond the human capacity.

Still, you couldn't help but shake the notion that Khan had something to do with this. The television said a terrorist named "John Harrison" was responsible for the attack, along with the bombing in London the day before, as well as the attack on the Daystrom building in San Francisco. With the taste of bile rising in your mouth, you feel more and more certain that this is all Khan's doing. And according to the headline, he's still on the run, somewhere. At first it appeared that Starfleet Commander Spock had managed to pin him down, but he escaped on the top of a garbage barge, and had since slipped out of Starfleet's clutches.

Feeling your heart pounding in your chest, you turned off the television and began gathering your things. There was no telling where Khan was now, but you didn't want to chance it if he was out there looking for you. If anything, you wanted to disappear, and that's exactly what did.

Several months later, he caught up with you in Mumbai, which was ironic considering you'd since discovered who he was and what he'd done in the past to earn his nickname "the Augmented Tyrant." Actually you felt rather stupid for coming to India, but at the time it had seemed like the best option. People still spoke copious amounts of English here, and there were a lot of people, so you had figured it would be easy to hide. You should have known it wouldn't be easy to hide from him.

You quickly discovered Khan hadn't just come for you, but you didn't dare breathe a word about it. You knew the truth, but you let him treat you like his wife for a while. He kept you safe, he kept you healthy, he made sure no one in Starfleet came looking for either of you, and you led him on believing you carried his child. You knew you were screwed the moment he found out you lied, that you were actually barren and would never have children, but what other choice did you have? You were screwed the moment Admiral Marcus thought he could toss you in with Khan to get rid of you. Marcus may have been a sick bastard, but he wasn't a fool. You had even gone to several fertility doctors to run tests just to make sure you weren't fooling yourself. With the amounts of sex you two had, any normal woman was bound to get pregnant.

And that was the best part for you. The sex.

He knew how to bring you right to the edge, hold you there while you writhed and pulled his hair and moaned, and then when you could just barely stand his touch on your skin, his mouth on yours, his arousal plunging slowly in and out of your wide open legs, he would send you screaming over the edge, your fingers digging red welts into his skin that even he could not expect. And he was careful, careful not to hurt you when he fucked you so hard you lost all sense of time and space. When you shuddered through an intense orgasm to the point of passing out, he would hold you tightly, keep your head from banging into anything, and make a point of reminding you that you were his.

One time he lifted you up onto his shoulders, pressing you against the wall while he ate you out. You buckled over, your arms wrapping around his head as you cursed and shouted his name, his tongue not slowing it's hungry march across the folds of your sex. Any other man would have stumbled over at the way you thrashed around on top of him, but not Khan. His fingers made marks in your thighs, and when he was done, he dumped you down the bed, sweating and breathing hard as though you'd run a marathon, and he would slowly drive his engorged member deep inside you, holding your wrists down with his hands. You let him control you in bed. He knew how to make you happy in that sense at least. But you knew this couldn't last.

One day Khan stormed into the apartment, his hands and neck and shirt covered in blood. He grabbed you and pressed you up against the wall by your neck and demanded to know why you had lied. And you just stared up at him in terror, knowing what he could do to you with just his hands, how gentle he could be to the one person he might have cared for, and then how violent he could be to anyone who turned on him, and you didn't even have the courage to say that you loved him. He was so angry that day, you wondered what had really put him into that state. His hair clung to his sweaty, bloody face as though he'd just rampaged through the streets killing everything in his path. And you would never be able to know what set him off, or what tipped him off to your lie, except maybe that your belly wasn't growing.

He quickly crushed your windpipe and you crumpled to the floor while your life rushed back at you, but your vision turned black. Later, from your perch up in the clouds, you watched as he was finally cornered by Starfleet and brought back to San Francisco. There they put him back into cryosleep, where he belonged, a slight smile creeping onto his features right before he was totally out because he'd seen the seventy-two other cryotubes nearby, and for the first time, you knew that maybe Khan had been lied to for a good reason.