A/N: Many thanks to the wonderful (and still, at this time, pregnant) allthebellsinvenice for looking this chapter over for me. There's quite a bit of angst in it, and remember, follks, it's a bit of a love triangle involving infedility and a much darker Khan than I usually write.

She'd seen an old 2D vid once when she was a teenager, downloaded it out of curiosity and boredom one rainy afternoon when she was fourteen or fifteen. She couldn't remember anything much about it now, nearly twenty years later, except for one particular scene, where the heroine skulked out of the shoddy flat of her one-night stand, knickers tucked into her handbag and a look of trepidation on her face. Of course she ran into someone she knew, who teased her about her 'walk of shame', a term Molly then had to look up – and whose definition utterly astonished her. Really, women in the 21st century were held up to such an archaic double standard when it came to sex?

Now, in the early morning sunshine, less than ten hours after she'd arrived at Khan's flat, she understood the concept in a way she never had before.

She'd betrayed her marriage vows and her husband, the man she loved more than life itself, made a devil's bargain and taken her pleasure from it, all for the vial of blood secreted away in the bottom of her handbag. It wasn't a pair of soiled knickers, but it brought the same sense of shame the female lead in that long-ago vid had exhibited.

"It was worth it," she whispered to herself as she quickly sent a text message to Billy Wiggins on her personal communicator. Just two words as she made her way to the nearest transport station. Got it.

Now, all she had to do was introduce the precious blood with its healing properties into her husband's system, and pray that it would do what Khan and her own research said it would do.

oOo

Khan watched from his sitting room window as Molly Hooper hurried across the street, tapping out a message of some kind – a brief one, no doubt letting her computer man know that she'd achieved her goal.

He smiled to himself, a cold smile that curled his lips but never reached his eyes as she vanished from his sight. Ah, the memories of their night together would amuse him for weeks to come, just as he knew it would torture her. He laid a silent bet with himself as he padded into his small kitchen area, uncaring of his nudity as he perched on the cool metal stool and dialed up a hearty breakfast: the first thing she would do after reviving her husband – and she would revive him, he was confident of his blood's unique healing properties although this would be its first true test – would be to blurt out what she'd done to obtain the miracle cure.

"I wonder how long it will take Mr. Sherlock Holmes to pay me a visit after that," he mused before taking a sip of his coffee – black, two sugars – and smiling to himself again.

Of course, if Molly's husband chose to take the high road and simply accept his miraculous cure without confronting the man to whom she'd chosen to 'sacrifice' herself…well, he'd just have to make sure certain footage taken from the night before made its way into his hands, that was all.

There was so little to amuse him these days, to distract him from the unbearable imprisonment imposed upon him by Admiral Marcus, that he could hardly be blamed for snatching up such moments when he could. It was a dangerous game he was playing, true, but that was the only kind he'd ever played.

oOo

The machines beeping quietly in the background were the first thing he heard when he awoke, then the soft sound of someone snoring by his side. Molly; he'd recognize her anywhere. He remembered where he was of course, his mind as sharp as when he'd reluctantly allowed himself to be placed into stasis – how long ago? He'd have to wake Molly up to find out, and he was somewhat reluctant to do so. Either he'd been awoken because a cure had been found (statistically unlikely) or because something drastic had happened, some emergency requiring his keen intellect. Those were the only two scenarios under which Molly had agreed to bring him out of his enforced slumber.

Not that what he'd undergone had in any way resembled sleep; he might have only closed his eyes a few brief seconds ago for all he could tell. There was no sense of time having passed, no dreaming, nothing but the darkness between one heartbeat and the next.

He opened his eyes and turned his head, to see his wife curled up in the chair by his bedside. He studied her, so open and vulnerable, and marveled anew that she'd chosen him to love. He'd considered himself unlovable for the bulk of his life, too sharp with his tongue, too impatient of the masses of lesser minds surrounding him – he'd treated her rather badly when they'd first met, used her to get his way, ruthlessly taken advantage of her obvious attraction to him. It wasn't until John Watson had come into his life and almost literally forced him to reevaluate his life and the people he unwittingly come to rely on that he'd acknowledged how important Molly Hooper was – and always would be – to him.

He didn't deserve her, he never had, but after he'd told her that, she'd advised him that her heart was hers to give. "And you, Sherlock Holmes, have no say in who I love," she'd admonished him, right before they shared their first kiss.

Without thinking he reached out and laid his hand on her arm; she startled awake as if she'd been slapped, sitting bolt upright, eyes wide open and a gasp on her lips as she finally settled her gaze on him. "Hello," he said, hating the slight raspiness of his voice. Still, it wasn't much worse than if he was simply greeting her in the morning after rare night's sleep. "Sorry, didn't mean to wake you."

"Oh, Sherlock!" she cried out, face crumpling as she threw herself into his arms. He held her close, waiting patiently for the storm of emotion to pass. Yes, he was ill and dying, but surely there was something else he was sensing from her? Other people's feelings weren't his area, never had been, but he'd become sensitive to hers and there was almost an edge of hysteria in the way she was holding him so closely. "You're awake, it worked!"

Ah, that was it, then; a cure had been found, no wonder she was so overwrought! "How long?"

"Only a few months," she replied, turning her head but not yet looking at him – why not? "London's still there, and John and Mary, you can get back to work just as soon as you like."

Unconsciously he tightened his hold as she finally raised her face and gave him a watery smile. "I can't believe it worked," she whispered.

"And what exactly is 'it'?" he asked, studying her closely.

Right before his eyes her expression and body language altered; it was as if she'd suddenly shrunk in on herself as she pulled away from him, eyes wide with something approaching fear. Suddenly his own condition was the least of his concerns. Narrowing his eyes, he took in every nuance, every hint from her expression and the changes in her body language and even her sudden silence. What exactly was going on? Only one way to find out; even though he hated turning his deductive reasoning on his own wife, he suspected she wouldn't be entirely forthcoming if he didn't.

"What's wrong?" he demanded, catching her hand in his – good, no physical weakness, his hand and arm responded as automatically as they had before he'd fallen ill. There was no shakiness, either, none of the damned tremors he'd been plagued with for the six months before he'd been placed into stasis.

Still no response from his wife, who could no longer meet his gaze. "You feel guilty, why do you feel guilty? Oh!" he exclaimed as understanding washed over him. As he expanded his observations beyond his wife's reactions, he took in the fact that there were no medical personnel around them; not even John was here, when at the very least a nurse or medic would be required to release him from stasis and administer whatever medication had been used to effect his cure. Nor would such medical personnel have left the two of them alone, even for sentiment's sake. No, someone official should be monitoring his reactions, checking his vital signs and cognitive functions – which appeared to be at peak efficiency, good sign – and asking him dozens of tedious, repetitive questions. "It's something illegal, is it? From off-world…no, not just off-world, from outside the Federation, something the doctors didn't or wouldn't approve, but you were desperate so you tried it anyway."

He could see her struggling between laughter and tears, and finally giving into both, wiping at her eyes as a small, choked laugh escaped her lips. "Jesus, Sherlock, you've just woken up from a medically-induced coma after being ill for months, don't you think you should be saving the d-deductions for later?"

It was such a tiny thing, but it sent a sliver of ice up his spine and settled deep in his abdomen. Molly was stuttering, she never stuttered, not around him, not any more. Not since the earliest days of their working relationship, before he'd come to recognize how much he cared for her, how much she mattered to him. He'd nearly lost her to his own stupidity, by pushing her away in the foolish belief that being alone kept him strong, that he was essentially unlovable, but fortunately John and Mary had helped him to understand just how wrong he was. She'd nearly married another man, and then he'd done some fairly unforgivable things while pursuing a case during that period of time, but in spite of all that, here they were, nearly ten years later, married and deeply in love with one another.

So why was she stuttering again? It wasn't simply her emotions overcoming her, it must have something to do with the guilt he could still read in her microexpressions and body language.

"Molly," he said warningly, then watched in helpless disbelief as his strong, loving wife virtually fell apart in front of him. She tugged her hand from his grasp, covering her face as wrenching sobs wracked her form. She was speaking, gasping out words in between harsh breaths, words he couldn't – didn't want to – understand at first. Blood was one of them, and an Augment named Khan (there were no Augments, they'd brought about their own deaths in the chaos of the Third World War), and the price he'd exacted from her in exchange for the precious fluid, the one that supposedly held a miracle cure in its DNA…

"NO!" The flood of words stopped at his shouted word, although the tears continued to flow. Molly stared at him, but he found himself suddenly unable to meet her fearful gaze. He sat up, ignoring the fact that he would have had trouble doing even that much without help in the days before he'd agreed to be put into stasis. "Molly, none of what you're saying makes any sense, and I can only conclude that you've suffered some sort of…mental breakdown due to my supposed cure. If," he added with a harsh glare, "it actually is a cure and not simply some sort of temporary improvement in my condition from being in stasis."

Molly gave a sobbing, bitter laugh as she rose to her feet, scrubbing at her eyes with the heels of her hands and turning her back on him. "I know it sounds crazy, Sherlock, but it's true, every word." She sounded tired – no, defeated – and he saw the sadness in her eyes as she finally turned to face him, arms crossed defensively over her chest. "The data is all there for you to see." She nodded at the PADD he saw resting on the small bedside table. "As for what I did to get the cure…" She raised her chin in a sad simulation of her most stubborn look. "I won't say I'm sorry, because it worked. I did it for you, because I love you and I'd rather – I'd rather lose your love than watch you die."

He had nothing to say to that, not when he was struggling to restrain the sense of betrayal her confession had aroused in his breast. He supposed he should simply thank her and let it go, but he'd never been that kind of man – and right now it was all too raw, too immediate, for him to feel anything like forgiveness or gratitude. "Well. I suppose you'd better undo whatever it is you did to keep the doctors from being aware of your actions here today, Molly, so the professionals can examine me and make sure that this 'miracle cure' hasn't actually done more harm than good."

She paled and sucked in a breath at his harsh words, her brown eyes enormous, lips pinched, but nodded and fumbled for her communicator. She punched in a brief message – Billy Wiggins must be part of this scheme – and a few minutes later there was a subtle change in the sounds given off by the machinery surrounding him. "The dampener field's been deactivated," she said. "John's been alerted, he should be here soon." She nodded again at the data PADD. "Everything pertinent to your condition is on there. It's up to you if you decide to tell the medical staff what I did."

He turned away from her, from the offered information, curling on his side and closing his eyes. "Just go, Molly," he said, hating the coldness of his voice but unable to bring himself to do anything about it. "I'm sure your new lover will want to hear all about your…success."

A muffled sob, a whispered, "You bastard," and then the sound of her footsteps as she half-ran for the door, which slid open in response to her presence. After that, silence, broken only by the soft beeps and hums of the machinery – and the clamor of his own discordant thoughts.