Not an update, sorry. It just came to my attention that a large chunk of text was in Italics that should not have been. I really should check these things before I upload. Next chapter is on its way!

When she went to see him again to bring him breakfast, she discovered that Khan had moved to the farthest corner of the room, and had gotten rid of his meal from the night before. Whether he had eaten it or not, there was still only empty air where his plate used to be.

His lengthy frame was pressed against the wall, his head leaning onto the solidness, long fingers hidden in fists at his sides. She felt sorry for him.

"Hey," she said. "Breakfast is here."

Not a single thing.

His meal (a bowl of warm oatmeal with a smattering of berries and a glass of orange juice) went neatly onto the bench in the same location his dinner had occupied 8 hours prior. It still gave her the creeps to be in there with him. He reminded her of a panther. A brain dead panther, but a panther nonetheless.

She only paid him a short glance as the glass slid between them once more.

As promised, she met Uhura for breakfast and they chatted casually about their lives up until that point.

"So you and Spock have been together for 2 years?"

Wendi's eyebrows were raised, a spoonful of pasty oats hanging an inch from her mouth.

Uhura nodded and dabbed at her smiling mouth with a napkin. "How the hell have you not killed him?"

The other woman surprised her by looking around suspiciously and leaning forward conspiratorially.

"Sometimes I imagine leaving him on a class 1 planet in the middle of space," she whispered. Wendi grinned at her. "But he always makes up for our fights."

The grin twisted into a sneer of disgust as Wendi recoiled, dropping her spoon back into her oatmeal and scrubbing her hands over her face.

"Oh dear, lord!" she groaned as Nyota let out an amused laugh. "I will never be able to get that out of my head."

She regrouped with Bones in the Med bay and helped train the newbies for most of the day; they were all relatively competent, thank heavens, and the hours passed quickly and smoothly. Between shift hours, she brought Khan his meals.

Her life went on this way for a whole, uneventful week.

During the 7 earth days, she discovered that she could get Khan to answer basic questions with a simple Yes or No if she waited long enough.

"Can I get you anything else?"

"No."

"Do you want soda?"

"No."

He wouldn't utter a single syllable to anyone else, but then again, no one else really talked to him, much less had the patience to wait for an answer.

It was getting easier and easier to picture herself waking up on a space ship every day for the next 2 years.


"Jax!" she craned her head over her shoulder to find the source of the voice, half way through piling a scoop of rehydrated mashed potatoes onto Khan's plate. It was Kirk, waving her over from the far side of the room with Bones and Sulu on either side.

A grin shot in their direction signaled her acknowledgement, and she turned back to the frothy white mess dripping off of the spoon and onto the countertop. A disheveled server gave her a cold glare with his eyebrow raised, and she hurried away with her two plates.

"One sec!"

She dropped her own meal into the spot across from the 3 and headed down to Khan's cell with his.

"Hey there," she greeted him, completely accustomed to his lack of response while she set to sliding the glass out from between them. "Some sort of repackaged meat-stuff, mashed potatoes, and freeze dried peas."

It had become a habit of hers to tell him what he'd be eating that night. As much as he probably didn't care (or seem to hear her at all), she still told him.

Perhaps, somewhere deep in her soul, she felt a tiny bit sorry for him…but that wouldn't matter. He probably felt sorry enough for himself.

Still, she allowed him these small mercies. "It's not bad if you mix the peas with the potatoes."

The Augment was still pressed up against the corner wall like a starfish. Wendi had taken to placing his food near him on the ground so he wouldn't have to get up (another one of those small mercies) if he didn't want to.

The glass made a soft clink as it settled near his pale fist.

He didn't even blink.

"Where were you?" Sulu asked as he picked at his remaining food with a pair of chopsticks (he'd brought them from home).

"Fraternizing with the devil, am I right?"

Kirk half-grinned at his comment, Bones rolled his eyes, and Sulu just looked horrified.

Wendi flicked a few peas at his angel face.

"No, I was just dropping off his food," she said, smearing her mashed potatoes around a bit while Kirk picked peas out of his hair. "I'm required to do that."

"She's also required to tell him bedtime stories and kiss him goodnight," Kirk shrugged, blocking the text spoonful of peas with his hand. "If you spoil him, Wendi I swear."

"Too late. I already got him a new PADD and a robo-pony. His bed time is never."

Sulu snorted as Bones gracefully spit his drink back into the glass.

The subject of their cargo, both warm and frozen, was blissfully ignored for the rest of the conversation.

Instead, they focused on what needed to be done within the next 2 weeks before the cadets switched positions. It was slightly monotonous, but she found comfort in planning ahead.

When it suddenly dawned on them that they were the only ones left in the cantina besides the cleaning droids, they got up to leave, stacking their plates atop a patient robot who sped around the corner a few moments later.

"We're flying straight through the Eskeldian asteroid fields in a few hours," Kirk told them as they reached a crossroads in the hall. "Nothing to worry about, but it might get a bit bumpy around the time you're trying to sleep."

"Can't you just fly over it?"

"No, Bones, it's the biggest asteroid field in the known Universe. People run out of fuel trying to get over this thing. We're taking it low and slow."

Wendi raised an eyebrow. "Who are you and what did you do with Jim Kirk?"

He grimaced.

"I'm not the one driving. Spock actually has the patience for that kind of thing. I'm just telling you so that if you wake up on the floor, blame the asteroids and the midnight Vulcan chauffer. Not me." He eyed Bones a little bit longer than necessary and the Doctor blinked at him.

"What?"

"Nothing."

The day could not have ended better.

She bid her friends goodnight and headed back down the hallway to her room to get ready for bed. The pale sheets looked pretty welcoming, and she hoped that the rocky venture wouldn't be as rough as the Captain suggested.


She vaguely recalled falling, but she was definitely conscious of her skull snapping to the solid layer of frozen water so hard, she thought she'd crack the ice caps.

Wendi jerked herself awake to the feeling of the great Enterprise shaking from Bridge to Tail as it scraped along a road of rocks.

Kirk hadn't been joking when he mentioned falling out of bed.

"Dammit, Jim." She cursed under her breath and rubbed the back of her skull where it had struck the small table on her way down, briefly entertaining the thought of Bones shouting the exact same thing somewhere down a hall or 2.

Her fingers pressed gently against the lump forming on her head and winced at the feeling of blood pounding angrily against the inside and outside of her cranium.

Something was missing. Something between the space of sleep and hitting her head; something that she couldn't place.

What the hell?

She shook the strange feeling off as the jerky bounce of the ship calmed into a low rumble; climbing back into bed and dropping her head softly onto the pillow at angle so as to avoid inflicting another headache.

It soon became apparent that she was not going to be able to go back to sleep.

With a soft huff, she sat up and tugged her hair into a messy plait before reaching over to the traitorous cabinet for a hoodie to pull over her tank top. Maybe walking a few hallways would tire her out. Or get her lost.

After a few absent minded turns, she found herself at the prison bay doors. Whatever had led her here, she had no idea, but she was going to blame the Enterprise for being so damn huge that of course her feet would only carry her along paths she already knew, where else would they take her?

She hoped Khan was asleep. After the first few days, his eyes had started to sink, shadows like bruises forming around his hazy, crystalline irises.

Her route took a switchback as she turned, heading away from the dead end, but before she could get much farther than a few steps, muffled voices caught her ear- emanating from inside the closed door that she soon had the side of her head pressed up against in curiosity.

Individual words were impossible to pick out, but the speaker sounded angry. Very Angry.

Wendi pulled away in alarm and hit the keypad.

The first thing she noticed upon entering was that the glass was down, allowing for a young boy that couldn't have been more than 19 years old to stand in front of the cell's inhabitant, screaming with all the rage in his trembling body at the hunk of unresponsive rock. How he had gotten in was beyond her.

"...bastard! You filthy, rotten, bastard! You should have died on earth after Spock beat you to a pulp with his bare hands! I-"

Wendi made her way quickly toward them, watching Khan carefully. There was no sign that he was even paying attention (He had moved back to the bench), but at the last remark, she caught a small flicker of movement in his fist. Oh shit.

"Stand down, soldier!" she barked, marching briskly toward them as her spine automatically straightened and her shoulders squared. This was routine. This was the army. This was an assignment to protect. And she was ordering rookies around in her pajamas, but Khan was a definitely a threat to whoever this kid was, and he was a threat to Khan.

She realized her mistake one second too late.

The moment the intruder whipped his shaggy, brown head in her direction (she remembered him then; one of the trainees from the med bay. The one who laughed at her magnet smiley), shock and fear etched into his flushed features, Khan moved.

In milliseconds, the enormous man was on his feet, lashing out with all the speed and agility of a viper as he reached for the boy's fragile neck.

But the touch never came.

Wendi watched in morbid fascination, yanking the now pale and pasty adolescent out of the way, as the great and mighty Khan Noonien Singh trembled with the jolt of electricity that Hendrix's collar and cuffs sent streaking through his body, and then crumpled to the floor.

The boy she'd wrenched out of Khan's grasp tore from her fingers and ran off; she heard his pounding footsteps receding down the hall as the door slid shut, but they barely prodded at her thoughts as she dropped to the ground beside the fallen Augment.

His body was bent against the wall where he'd gone down, nearly propping him up as he slumped against it, and his limbs were just a woven mess, clothing creasing at odd angles where it clung to his tallowy skin.

The flesh around his closed eyelids looked bruised, highlighting the jagged edges of cheekbones now sharp enough to cut.

The smooth lids parted suddenly and he looked at her with all the chill of his ice colored eyes, and Wendi recoiled as image after image seared paths of charcoal and decay across her memory; children watching from the side of dirt roads as their tiny, twig arms reached and reached for help; thinning mother's running their fingers through their sick daughters' dirt encrusted curls as she coughed; a camp of leprous Carthians- lying quietly in their shacks while disease ate away at their flesh. Their eyes were all the same. Starved. Broken. Dead.

"Shit," she gasped, stumbling backwards gracelessly, still under the laser of his tired eyes. "You haven't been eating, have you."

Where the hell was Bones?


"Dammit, Wendi!" he groaned as she tugged his tired form down the dim hallway, rubbing the sleep from his eye with the hand that wasn't having the circulation cut off by a vice like grip to the wrist.

He was still in uniform, having dropped into bed like a meteor after the long day, and his shirt was as mussed as his hair. "What do you want?"

"Sorry, Bones!" she apologized hurriedly, forcing him to lurch along a bit faster. "Emergency! How do I get Khan's jewelry off?"

She felt him wake up.

"Why?" he demanded, warily, tearing his wrist from her grasp when she didn't respond. "Wendi, stop! Tell me what's going on, now."

Wendi stopped, turning to face her concerned friend and his 5'o clock shadow.

"He's sick, Bones."

She raked her fingers through the top of her hair. "I know he's a jerk, but I think he's going to die if we don't do something, and I just can't let that happen. Not after-"

"Wendi," he stopped her forcefully. "I get it." Softer.

She chewed her lower lip as she watched the wheels spin in the doctor's head, his lips pressing into a solemn, frustrated line.

At last, he sighed.

"Let's go."

She ignored his dark muttering as they hurried to the med bay.

As soon as they had gotten the hovering stretcher through the door, Wendi left Bones to unlock Khan's cell.

He was unconscious again, still curled against the same wall and she knelt near to his side.

"Bones?" she called, kneeling near his torso and eyeing the metal cuffs.

"Coming," he replied, and his footsteps tapped lightly across the floor until he was crouching next to her. "Only Kirk, Spock, or I can do this, alright? Hendrix scanned our fingerprints. If you try, they'll shock you."

She nodded and Bones gingerly touched his thumb and middle finger to either side of the silver neck band. It clicked open immediately, sliding off of his neck to join the wrist circlets on the ground, and Wendi immediately reached for his pulse.

His skin was shockingly cold, but a faint pounding reverberated against her two fingers. One…two…three… It was achingly slow, but it was there.

Bones was back, lowering the stretcher to the floor before scooping up the 3 hunks of metal and sending them clattering into a side pocket before meeting Wendi's eyes.

"Come on," he said, gesturing to the limp body on the ground.

Together, they moved him onto the bed. No easy task. Regardless of his recent dietary changes, Khan was still a very solid mass of person.

In the med bay, Bones presented her with a drip bag and an IV before wishing her luck by touching his fingers to her forearm, and leaving without looking back. She didn't blame him for it, of course, but being in a room alone with Khan, even while he was under, was one of the most terrifying things she'd endured so far.

Her hands moved quickly and methodically, securing his limbs to the table, rolling his sleeve above the elbow while she avoided his skin, sliding a square of alcohol over his veins and wincing as it burned her sinuses while the needle made a soft sound as it punctured his flesh.

A monitor to her right showed his vitals, blipping with his heart rate and she listened to that as she worked; a metronome to her movement.

She was just stripping off her gloves when he came to.

"You should have let me sleep."

Wendi jumped, her heart in her throat as she whirled toward the sound, dropping her gloves in the process.

He was staring at her, a tired look creeping into the pale of his skin and the shadows beneath his brows, and she thought that it made him look old.

"I-uh…sorry, no." she sputtered, bending down slowly to pick up the fallen piles of latex with her eyes on him the entire time.

Her skin burned as the cold of his eyes raked over her face, leaving what felt like a sunburn over her cheeks. It was as if he were sizing her up; the way a boa constrictor would before it swallowed its prey whole, but she stood her ground until he looked up to the ceiling in what seemed like resignation.

"I cannot even die correctly, it would seem."

She swallowed and placed the fist containing the gloves on the table.

"I'm not going to let you do that, kay? Sorry, I'm just…I can't."

And she meant it. Why? Who knew. But she did. "Get some rest. Your body needs to heal. I'll be back soon."

All he did was blink at the ceiling.

She turned her back to him for a moment, and reached for a mild sedative, removing the protective tip to prep the needle and send him into much needed oblivion.

"You are afraid of me, Miss Jackson."

"Of course I am."

Maybe she could go for some of that oblivion.

A/N

Sorry for the wait, Uni and my new job are getting pretty restrictive. I'll try to have another chapter written this weekend,but I can't promise. Everything is so wonky. This chapter is rough, and I apologise.

All my love from across the pond.