A/N: Where did all my readers go?

-Chapter Nine-

Elora was a full day's journey from Sitara. Everyone quickly grew bored of the view at warp, and returned to doing other things. Anthea put Nolan to bed, and slept herself. She wasn't able to stay up all night, piloting the ship like Khan could, especially now that she was pregnant, and still sick. Everything wore her out.

When she rejoined him in the morning, she pressed a kiss to his temple. "Did you sleep at all? You know Barton could have spelled you for a bit, if necessary."

"No," he murmured. "We'll get a room at a nice hotel tonight, if there are any, and I'll sleep then."

She resisted the urge to roll her eyes. "Just don't make yourself exhausted." Anthea sat down at the navigator's station and pulled up the file on their destination.

"And how did you sleep?" he inquired.

"As well as I could with indigestion, a leg that wouldn't stop twitching, and Nolan kicking me in the back."

He chuckled. "You could have put him in the cabin across the hall, like before."

"And leave him unsupervised? Hardly. I'm not an idiot. Anyway, he's in with Kati now, 'helping' her with Pandu. He's full of questions about babies, now that I've told him about my pregnancy, and I figured I'd let her field some of them for a while."

"I thought you liked Kati," Khan said, feigning shock.

She stuck her tongue out at him and returned to what she was doing.

"You know, I was thinking last night, lying in bed without you, that your Starfleet file said you were born to Richard and Sara Harrison in Dover," Anthea commented, as she reviewed the information on Elora, "and that you were on Tarsus IV."

"Sara was close to Sarina," he said, after a long moment. "And obviously, I was never anywhere near Tarsus IV."

"I'd noted it in your file, but given what I've heard about what happened there, I didn't want to bring it up," she told him. It was then that she looked up, to study him. "Asking about surviving a starving colony that resorted to cannibalism? I did not want to know."

He grimaced, recalling times when he and his people had been in hiding, when food had been scarce. Even just thinking about how bad it could have gotten was enough to turn his stomach. "Though I wasn't there, I was thoroughly briefed as part of my cover. It's one of the reasons I'm so concerned about our people. Tarsus IV had a poisoned wheat supply. Ours is moldy. I would really rather our people not turn to eating each other."

Anthea gagged. "I'm with you on that one, darling. Out of curiosity, if I had asked about it, what would you have said?"

"That I didn't want to talk about it. I didn't want to add that to the lies I was already forced to tell you."

She reached over to squeeze his shoulder. "You know, I assumed, when you told me about your mum dying when you were little, and being raised by others, that you ended up on Tarsus IV and that was when you lost your sister. There was nothing in the file about your supposed parents, other than their names, and no siblings listed, so . . ."

"Obviously, now, you know that isn't true. But that would have been what I would have said, if pressed. It's a very good cover, really, to keep people from asking questions. No one wants to talk to a survivor of Tarsus IV about what they saw, after all." He shook his head, impatiently brushed at the hair that fell in his face.

Anthea ran her fingers through his hair. "You could use a trim. Maybe find a barber while we're on Elora. But don't cut it all off. I love it the way you had it when you were John."

He turned those multi-hued blue eyes her way. "I overheard what you said to Kati. About missing John Harrison."

"Oh. I . . . can explain."

"You do not need to. I understand." He reached up to put his hand over hers, where it rested on his shoulder. "You didn't marry me. I know that I am the same man, essentially, but I courted you as John Harrison, and I married you as John Harrison. I didn't do those things as myself, and you've had to live with me, a man you don't know. Our life on Sitara is so different from the one we had on Earth, and there was no transition for us. Not a proper one."

Anthea turned her hand in his, weaving her fingers with his, her ring catching and turning to her palm as she did. Unconsciously, he turned it back around. "It has been jarring," she admitted. "But I love you."

"I know you do. I still feel that I need to . . . make more of an effort. You didn't come into our marriage expecting to be the queen of a civilization, no matter how small."

"I didn't, no. I've been unprepared for most of this, and . . . I do sometimes feel as if I don't really know you. There's so much of you, as Khan, that I don't know. You're right. I love you, I can't help but love you and I always will, hopelessly, but I married John Harrison, and sometimes that life seems so far away."

He lifted her hand, pressed his lips to her knuckles. "When I was John, I was . . . free to do things I had never really been before. First I was a soldier, then I was a prince, a king, and . . . I didn't do things like go to nightclubs and make love to my wife in private lounges on New Year's. And while I was enslaved by Starfleet, I was still . . . free of the constraints of being me. I cannot really afford to be like that on Sitara, and I'm afraid you have paid the price."

"Oh, sweetheart. No." She moved from the navigator's station to sit, somewhat awkwardly, across his lap. "Khan, it's selfish of me to want things I can't have, like that. I knew this would be difficult when I left Earth. And, yes, I do miss dragging you dancing, and lying together on the roof, watching what few stars we could see. I miss going for Chinese and laughing at the stupid fortunes in the cookies, adding silly phrases to the end. I miss us piling into that chair by the fire in our study, you reading Dickens to me on Christmas Eve. But because of Marcus, this was our only choice, and I'm okay with that."

Khan cupped her face in his hands, ran his thumb over her cheek. "That man is still within me," he whispered. "But I don't know how to be him, and to be Khan Noonien Singh, at the same time."

Anthea shifted to rest her head on his shoulder, her face against his neck. "Just be you. Don't worry about how your people see you. They know you after this long. You don't need to rule them by making them fear you. But if you need to keep parts back, just for me and our children, that's okay, too. Just be with me, be yourself with me. I think that's what . . . I think that's what you were with me, as John. You were you. Not the ruler, the brother, the protector. You were just the man I love."

"One forced to design weapons for a madman."

"I wish I could go back in time and get a few punches in before you squished him," she said, and he laughed.

She rose from his lap, and he caught her hand before she left.

"We'll make that a tradition," he told her.

"What?"

"Dickens on Christmas Eve. Even if it's the middle of summer on Sitara, and our lunar year is longer than the Federation's stardate year. We'll read Dickens to our children."

Anthea leaned over and kissed the top of his head. "I'd like that. Now, I'm going to go rescue Kati. How soon 'til we arrive?"

He checked the readouts. "A few hours."

"Mm. Maybe I'll leave Nolan where he is for a bit. Take a break from this, now that Barton is awake."

His thumb found her palm, rubbing in a circle. "Did you have anything particular in mind?"

"What do you think, genius?"

Kati came in briefly, wanting to see what the exit from warp looked like, but soon retreated to join Yves where he was hiding in the Medbay. Anthea didn't really have anything to do as co-pilot, but she was there just in case Khan had to split his attention and she would be needed.

"Kati says she and Yves are moving in together," she told Khan as he piloted the ship down into the atmosphere of Elora.

"Yes, he asked me for permission to move into the larger cabin that Yosef vacated when he moved in with Iliyana, since it's significantly larger than Kati's."

"I was a little alarmed at the speed they're moving, but then again, they've known each other how long?"

"Years," her husband confirmed. "And we married after seven weeks of involvement."

"I note you didn't say 'dating'," she said wryly.

"I wouldn't call that a proper courtship," he returned, cutting his eyes over to her briefly.

"Yes, that was definitely more of a siege-and-conquer," Anthea murmured.

His deceptively mild retort was, "Veni, vidi, vici."

Anthea pretended to slug him in the arm. "You owe me, then."

"Which is why I had you bring something nice." He grabbed her hand, giving it a brief squeeze before letting go. "There are a lot of things I owe you, and a proper date is one of them. After all, how long has it been since just the two of us did something together, that didn't have to do with Starfleet duties?"

"Earlier, in our cabin," she said sweetly.

Khan narrowed his eyes.

"Yes, yes, I know. I think it's been . . . Valentine's, 2259, really." She shook her head. "That was a while ago."

"Precisely."

She eyed him speculatively, wondering just what he had in mind.