A/N: So I lied on tumblr when I said this would be out by this evening. I got it done a bit earlier, and now I am on my way to watch an autopsy and perhaps read the Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock as I reconsider my choices in life. Woohoo.
Khan handled her frail bodily easily, laying her on the cold metal of an examination table in one fluid motion. She was pliant when in his grasp, but restless and fidgety when lying on her back, feeling immensely exposed and helpless beneath his hawk-like gaze.
"You need to lie still." Khan told her impatiently, reaching below the table to retrieve an IV packet and tubing. Carol wanted to obey, if only to show that she was the master of her own emotions, but the stabbing pain traveling up her leg was no longer being suppressed by fight or flight instincts. With just the motion of her breathing, she could feel the scrape of bone and the sting of enzymes trying to heal the damage to her blood vessels.
"Carol," he restated, placing a hand over her stomach. "Lie still."
His voice, his touch, was like morphine in her veins. Only it worked faster and left her cheeks blushing crimson.
He took advantage of her calm immediately, inserting the IV needle into a vein just behind her knee.
"I will need to inflict a deep wound upon myself." he informed her, a scalpel appearing in his hand. "You may look away if it disturbs you."
"I've seen men turned into pink clouds before my very eyes, Khan." She grimaced at him, a drop of sweat racing down her face. "You may continue to underestimate me, but it will only work to your disadvantage in the end."
The man said nothing. He only watched her intently, even as the scalpel dug into his wrist and his lips pursed with discomfort. Tearing a slip on the crest of the IV bag, he held his injury over the clear fluid, allowing his wine red essence to drip into the bag until the gushing mark vanished, replaced by flawless skin once again.
Carol couldn't see what was happening to her leg, but it would have astonished her. Hell, it would have astonished the greatest minds of the century to witness how the bruising ebbed away like smoke from a fire and the outline of her bone began to take its original shape. All she felt was a tingling numbness spread from her knee to her ankle, one that faded once the repairs were complete.
On an impulse, she began to sit up, only to be pushed back down by nothing more than his fingertips on her shoulder.
"What now?" she hissed through gritted teeth.
He watched her closely as he spoke, monitoring every crease and movement on her face and body for even the slightest reason that he should place her in the closest air lock. "You are not an enigma to me, Carol Marcus, but I need to know that I can trust you to be in the presence of my crew."
"I have no reservations with your crew, Captain," she retorted spitefully. "But shall I remind you that it was you who was about to open fire on them because of your obsession with revenge. It was you who cornered me on the bridge after I had just delivered you from an eternity in stasis and forced me to send you hurtling across the room out of self-defense. I may not be as strong as your kind," she said in a quieter, meeker tone. "But I am resilient. And you, for all the genetic superiority you've been granted, did not see what I saw in the cargo bay. I am the reason your crew still lives – not you."
There are not many arrangements of words or speeches that could render a former dictator and superhuman speechless, but Carol's eyes were just as tempestuous as her words. They held him motionless, flaring like a star on the verge of collapsing, until he extinguished it with nothing but a light caress on her cheek.
"Then you will be at my side as I revive them. Our destination is only minutes away now."
"I don't understand…" she began confusedly, though it may have been the rush of hormones that was causing her mind to misplace important facts. "Why are you waiting?"
His eyebrows rose exasperatedly as he turned and paced the room. "You obviously know little regarding the delicacies of 300 year old earthen technology. We will need a proper physician in the likely event that their resurrections come at great difficulty. My own heart stopped and my life nearly faded at the time of my revival."
"Then you're very fortunate that I decided against my plans to wake them." she said with a sigh, staring up at the ceiling.
Whatever she expected to happened at that moment, it did not include Khan's hand fisting around her collar, wrenching her from the table and onto her – surprisingly functional – legs.
"Explain." He said in a deathly tone.
"When your crew was found to be missing and you fled from my father's base orbiting Jupiter, you thought that Admiral Marcus was going to find a way to remove your people from the weapons and then destroy every last one of them. He didn't. But I did." She revealed haughtily.
The meaning – the startling, impossible implication of her words made the very air between them heavy with tension.
"You honestly didn't know this? Even as you threatened to make me a stain on the floor, I always assumed that you knew about the role I played in delivering your crew out of the hands of my father." Carol tried to shake herself out of his grasp, but it was to no avail. "You're evidently not as smart as you think, Khan. I'm his daughter, I already knew about his secret schemes, and I am among the best weapons specialists than Starfleet has produced. Who did you think he was going to call into to inspect the torpedoes once he found out about your plans?"
When he merely stared at her with an unreadable expression, she decided to continue.
"I assigned myself to the Enterprise under a false name in order to continue to safeguard those you placed in the weapons. I was discovered by Commander Spock before I could disengage their torpedoes, which became unnecessary when Kirk went against his orders and captured you on Kronos..."
She was about to ramble on about her attempts to dissuade the Admiral from firing on the Enterprise, to protect her comrades and his people with her own life, but was interrupted by a quiet yet sonorous, "Why?"
Carol knew that he didn't care for morals or philosophy. He was searching for a reason, which was one thing she evidently lacked. "I don't know."
With a trill of surprise and disproval, she was thrown back onto the table, bouncing slightly from her impact with the metal. Khan's darkly dressed body followed her own, climbing over her and pinning her to the wall as she attempted to crawl away.
"Once was insanity, and I was poised to murder you despite your intervention. But twice." He hissed, spittle raining onto her hair. "Twice is such an incalculable probability that there must be an ulterior motive."
"I didn't – I don't – "
"What are you, Carol Marcus?" he questioned, eyes flickering over her entire face as though it held some clue. "You gave me everything and, despite my abuses, committed treason in order to deliver them once again."
He was drawing close. Too close. But it was something else that was very, very wrong. Carol couldn't pinpoint what it was until she looked down.
"What are you doing?" she gasped, the fog in her mind preventing her from noticing the hands travelling beneath her dress. Their softness belied the incredible destructive force they possessed, eliciting another sharp intake of breath as his fingers gripped her waist.
"Tell me," he muttered against her collarbone, leaving it moist with his breath. "Tell me what I should do."
But Carol was a woman of action. An elbow to the groin would have been her first response if she'd not been consumed by a noxious combination of hatred and lust. The resulting overflow made her primal instincts take charge as she, without even a trace of restraint, hungrily met his mouth with her own.
Khan was pushed backward by her tender form, if only a few inches, before leaning into her once again. Her unpredictability was skyrocketing with every turn, especially when she swayed her body to press harder against the hands that were roving over the curves of her body.
"You deem this wise?" he whispered against her lips, taking one between his teeth before she could reply. Carol's heart fluttered, and her head rolled back in bittersweet bliss. The warrior before her took advantage of her compromised defenses and pulled her knees around his abdomen, causing her to straddle him as his face roamed the valleys on her neck.
"I would deem it extremely unwise." she said alongside a moan, just as her mind began reigning in her body's passions, slowing her breath and causing the heat in her veins to run cold. All she could hear now were the screams of hundreds of men and women as she watched the recording of the London bombings… and her vision was now obscured by her father's eyes, brimming with tears as the man he'd used as a weapon ended his life with ruthless intent…
She knew better than to struggle against Khan now that she had so willingly placed herself within his arms. Instead, she let her muscles go slack, and when his eyes met hers in confusion, he saw only a numbing coldness within them.
She expected rage. Lesser men would have reprimanded her fiercely for starting what she could never carry out, but Khan was not like any man at all. He shifted away from her slowly, disliking the way his skin prickled when removed from her warmth, and stood beside where she knelt on the table.
"Dr. – Carol," he corrected, the utter lack of confidence his words carried prompted her to look up at him in surprise. "I am sorry."
As if turned to stone by his words, Carol could only watch with aching breath as he leaned towards her, placing a kiss hesitantly against her cheek, before he turned and left the room in a blur of darkness and pale skin.
A/N: Oh my. Who is Carol Marcus? I may take that particular question a bit further (like what I did in What was Planted) or I may leave it be for some time. Any thoughts or opinions on the matter would be appreciated.
I wanted to be sure that Carol was not entirely submissive, but no one has complete control over their emotions. I see it many times in fanfiction, and I'm not particularly fond of one extreme being chosen over the other. And so the Carol Marcus you read in my stories is going to be human. As remarkable and intelligent as anyone is, passions are typically quite outside of our control, especially in a Stockholm sort of situation. That's what makes people so interesting, after all.
Thank you again for all your support! I enjoyed reading every review and greatly appreciate the feedback as I'm going into writing new chapters.