-Chapter Seven-

The next morning, Anthea and Khan were dragged out of a sound sleep by a loud pounding on their front door. Khan pulled on a pair of trousers and went to answer the door, hair still mussed from sleep. Anthea was slower in rising, settling for pulling on a Betazoid dressing gown.

"You're certain?" Khan was asking Otto, as they stood just inside the door. It was raining again, and Otto was dripping.

"Ja, Kaiser," Otto rumbled. "All save yours."

"What's going on?"

Both men turned to look at her. Khan said, "Otto just informed me that Chin found the wheat supplies are ruined. They got wet during the storm and the containers are full of mold."

Anthea pressed a hand to her heart. "Oh, no. That means all we have left-"

"Is our portion, yes."

She went to the kitchen, leading the men. Khan lifted the cellar door and went down the short flight of steps. The flat stones tiling the kitchen floor were cold under Anthea's bare toes.

Khan heaved the two containers out of the hole. It wasn't much; they'd only cultivated so much of the surrounding area as farm land, and they only had one small, automated harvester.

Anthea nudged one of the containers with her foot. "They seem alright. Seals don't seem to be broken."

"No, our cellar is dry," her husband said. "It looks like we need to make that supply run sooner than later."

"I have some flour, enough to last a day or two," Anthea told him. "We should distribute this, or have someone make enough bread to keep everyone going while we're gone."

"We are low on the powdered eggs, as well," Otto said. "Iliyana made a list of things we are running out of."

"Have her get it to me," Khan directed. "Quickly. Anthea, get dressed, go get Kati. Take the perishables to Iliyana, as well as anything we don't need immediately. She'll distribute them as needed while we're gone."

Anthea nodded and dashed off to the bedroom, where she quickly changed into a dark grey metallic sweater, brown suede leggings, a desert-coloured cardigan she'd picked up in San Francisco, and a pair of rugged, brown leather boots. The cardigan wasn't her usual kind of thing, but she'd found the tan, red, grey, blue, and olive green mix appealing.

It was still raining, so she pulled on a hoodout of Khan's seemingly endless collection of them, and carefully made her way down the slight hill to Kati's cabin. She found her sister-in-law still sleeping, as normal people were wont to be doing at the crack of dawn.

"What is wrong?" Kati asked, when she answered the door.

"The wheat's been ruined. Khan and I are apparently going to go on that supply run we've been talking about, and he wants you and I to redistribute our perishables while we're gone."

Kati nodded. "That is a good idea. But who will watch the children while we do this?"

Anthea shrugged. "Khan's holding a council, apparently, so as far as I'm concerned, he can keep an eye on them while we take care of this. It shouldn't take long. Bring Pandu up to the house."

Kati ducked into her bedroom and brought out the baby, throwing a blanket over him to keep the rain off.

"You need a proper coat," Anthea told her. "Let's get you one out of my wardrobe. I brought all of my clothes from Earth, and I really don't need that much. I was . . . a clotheshorse."

Inigo and Chin had joined Otto and Khan by this time. Anthea greeted them, then asked her husband, "Will you watch Nolan and Pandu while we take care of the food? It shouldn't take long. We can put the baby in Nolan's crib."

"Yes, that's fine," Khan said with a short nod.

Nolan was awake, so Anthea got him out of his crib and let him play with Spot while they put Pandu in his crib.

"We need to get you a proper bed for him," Anthea said to her sister-in-law, as the two women went into the master bedroom. "And maybe a bigger house. You can't raise a child in that small thing."

She dragged out a box from the closet Khan had built her, amused that he'd thought to do so. His and hers closets. Their cabin wasn't a ramshackle pioneer affair, but a sprawling house that just happened to be made of logs. It wasn't her brownstone in London, with so many fond memories, but she loved it all the same.

"It works for now," Kati said. "I think Yves and I will build a larger home in the spring."

Anthea froze with the lid half off the crate. "Pardon?"

Her sister-in-law grinned. "Yves and I . . . he came to me last night and told me he loves me."

With an answering grin, Anthea got to her feet and hugged Kati. "I'm so happy for you! And it's about time, too!"

She turned her attention back to the clothes. "We'll go through the rest of this later, perhaps give some of it out to the other women, if they'll fit them. There are a few things I've hung on to that will never fit me again, not after two babies. For now . . ."

She pulled out a calf-length, navy blue trench coat with hidden buttons. "This should fit you. Try it on."

Kati took the coat and slipped into it. She was two inches taller than Anthea, but the coat still fit well. "Yes, this will work."

"Then it's yours." Anthea closed the box. "Let's get that food to Iliyana."

Together, the two women gathered up the reconstituted foods in the "refrigerator"-one of the cryotubes, reconfigured and repurposed as cold storage-and carried them across the village to Iliyana's cabin. The Ukrainian woman was the most skilled cook and had rapidly become the one in charge of rations and food preparation.

"Thank you for this," the woman said stiffly, as she took the food. It was obvious that she was worried. She'd never been particularly friendly, and the stress made her short with her visitors.

"Khan is bringing our wheat down," Anthea told her. "We're going on a supply run as soon as we have this situation . . . calmed down. I want these things to be spread out as much as you can."

Iliyana blinked green eyes at her, mouth open. "I . . . Yes, I will, my lady."

"Please, call me Anthea. Oh, and Otto said you have a list of things we need?"

"Yes, I . . . Here."

Iliyana fetched it from her table and handed it over. "This is just an idea of things we could use."

"I'll do what I can to get them," Anthea assured her.

It wasn't until they were headed back up the hill that Kati remarked, "You are doing well with your arm."

Anthea stopped on the path and looked at her arm. The rain had turned, for the moment, to a drizzle. "I hadn't even noticed. It's been the bane of my existence the past few days, and I . . ."

"Yves does good work," Kati said.

"Yes, he does." Then Anthea smirked. "And if he's good at anything else, I don't want to know."

Kati flushed, and Anthea laughed. "Come on, let's get dry."


Anthea dug through her box of older clothing and pulled out a few things she thought would fit Kati. Their styles were very different, she reflected as she set aside a few blouses and a skirt that didn't fit her rounder frame.

"I used to be skinnier," she commented. "Smaller busted, too. Khan never complained, but I can tell he likes the new girls better."

Kati snorted. "Men."

"These should work for you. I haven't any extra shoes, my feet are a size smaller than yours. I'm just glad I got enough shoes in enough sizes to fit everyone."

Her sister-in-law nodded as she held up a dark blue blouse with silver embroidery at neck and cuff. "This is lovely."

"I thought so, too, but I never wore it much. And now, well . . ." Anthea shrugged.

Kati poked through the box, noting a brilliant turquoise fabric with silver beading and little mirrors. She pulled it out. "Oh, this is beautiful!"

Anthea found herself reaching for the kaftan before Kati even had it out of the crate. She forced herself not to snatch it away. "My mum gave that to me. Funnily enough, she and Dad picked it up on a trip to India. Mumbai, I think. I was wearing that the day I bought my wedding dress."

"So it is special, then." Kati carefully folded it and handed it over. "You must miss them. Your parents."

Feeling tears pricking at her eyes, Anthea blinked them away rapidly. "Yes. Very much. But I couldn't- It was a choice between staying with them, or going with Khan, and . . . My choice will always be Khan."

Kati reached over and patted her arm. "As his sister, I am pleased to hear that. But as your friend . . . I wish there was some way we could . . . bring them here."

Anthea smiled. "Yes, I would love to see them again. It's just so complicated. You know that I betrayed the Federation when I stole you from Starfleet and came here? I can't go back to Federation space without risking a court martial or worse. I lied a little when I told James Kirk he has no authority here. If he'd wanted to, he could very well have hauled me back to Earth to stand trial."

"Stand trial for rescuing your husband from an unjust imprisonment?"

She nodded. "In their eyes, it wasn't unjust. Khan . . . orchestrated a terrorist attack on the USS Kelvin Memorial Archive, convinced a man named Thomas Harewood to blow the place up. Forty-two men and women, Harewood included, died. I liked Harewood . . . And he attacked Starfleet Headquarters, killed a captain and an admiral, killed Admiral Marcus, and crashed the Vengeance into San Francisco. He killed a lot of people, even if I completely understand why and even agree with him to an extent."

Kati tipped her head and studied Anthea. "I see. Does it bother you that he did these things?"

Anthea was quiet for a long moment, running her fingers over the silk of the kaftan. "Sometimes," she admitted. "Not Admiral Marcus. If I could, I would kill him myself. And I recognise that crashing into San Francisco was an accident, so to speak. He was aiming for Headquarters, at the edge of the city, and the ship didn't make it that far. He never intended for all those civilians to die. But Christopher Pike and Thomas Harewood? Their deaths bother me sometimes. I like Admiral Pike, from the few occasions we met. And Tom . . . I worked with him directly for a time. I knew him. I'm the one that told him about Lucille, his daughter. The one Khan healed."

"And you feel responsible?"

"Not . . . entirely, no. It's more complicated than that. For a long time, I had no idea why Khan- You see, at the time, I knew him as John Harrison. I was married to John Harrison, and in private, I was Anthea Harrison. It was nearly a year after he disappeared that I found out who he really was, that John had never existed. I had a year of not knowing why, only that for some reason, my husband had gone crazy and killed over twelve thousand people. And when I learned what Marcus had done, and who Khan really was . . . It took time to reconcile it all in my head. Sometimes I still have difficulty. I love Khan as he is, but . . ."

She put the kaftan back in the box, to save for warmer weather. "Sometimes, every once in a while, I can't help but miss John."


In the hallway outside the bedroom, Khan paused with his hand raised to push the door open. He let it fall to his side as his wife's words reached him.

Why had it not occurred to him that she still mourned John Harrison? She'd accepted him so readily when he'd awoken from his imprisonment, it hadn't even crossed his mind that she might, in some small way, see him and his alias as two separate men.

Khan wasn't angered or hurt by her words, just a little saddened. They'd done things together when he was John that he couldn't do with her as Khan. While he knew he was the same man, he could see how she would perceive a difference.

When they went on this trip, he would do something nice for her, something like he had done as John Harrison. A proper . . . date.

He smiled to himself at the thought, at the silliness of it, and knew he'd do it anyway. For her, he'd do anything.

Deciding not to interrupt, he went back to where his men waited, to finalise his plans.