Chapter 12
Khan hunched over the flight console, his eyes blazing with concentration as he tried to keep the Augment ship in his sights. He could feel Beth slipping away from him and he grasped the controls like they were her hands trying to slip through his fingers.
He fired every weapon in his arsenal, and the explosions of the torpedoes against the cloaking shields were his only proof she was still within reach. He couldn't let her ship disappear; without her tracking beacon he would never be able to find it again.
He could tell Matthew was piloting the ship - he was reacting faster than any human could, but he was a doctor, not a fighter pilot, and his maneuvers seemed slow and predictable to Khan. Every time he went left, Khan anticipated it and tagged him with another torpedo. Every time he retreated, Khan was already circling into position. It was lucky Beth had not fallen for Brann, Khan thought wryly, he would have been a much bigger challenge in an air fight.
But Khan was almost out of torpedoes and Matthew's shields were still holding. The cloak was not going to fail. Khan looked around for another option, growling in frustration. He saw Lucy cowering in a corner of the cockpit, staring in horror as he attacked her friends. Her eyes were bloodshot and frightened, and she suddenly looked very young.
"Put on your seatbelt," he barked at her, turning back round.
He wished he had not seen her in the lobby of the Hotel Dacha, wished he had not made a display of kissing her in front of Beth. It had felt good at the time - a big slap in the face to the only woman he really wanted to kiss - but now it was just another crime to add to his long list of offenses, another violation of something innocent. Why had Lucy even agreed to come on his ship? Didn't she know who he was?
Khan fired his second-to-last torpedo and thought of his children - now his last desperate connection to Beth. He felt a stab of guilt as he imagined their confusion when Deanna took them into hiding, and the grief and anger they would feel when they realized their mother was gone.
Would Beth come crawling back for them someday? Or would Matthew get her pregnant before then? Would he even let her see Taren and Allister, or would he keep her monopolized for the benefit of his own offspring?
An image of Beth flashed into Khan's mind, her stomach round with Matthew's child. He knew how Matthew would feel - his happiness and possessiveness as he lay beside her each night, his excitement mounting as he watched his seed grow inside her, his fear becoming frantic as he imagined all the ways he could lose her and the family only she could give him. Matthew would try to make Beth happy, try to make her love him, try to keep her sheltered and dependent. He would take control of her life, one piece at a time, telling himself it was for her protection...
Khan shook his head as an uncomfortable awareness settled around his ears. No, he told himself, it was different with him. He loved her completely, and she had loved him, she had been happy, she had been safe in the fortress of his arms. He just wanted her back there again, just the two of them, with their children... he just wanted his family back the way it had been. He would do anything.
"Hold on!" he called over his shoulder to Lucy, and he set a collision course for the Augment ship's last location.
"No!" she shouted as she realized what he was doing. He could hear her fumbling with a seatbelt as she started to shout something else, but it was drowned out by a sudden metallic scream as his shields collided with the shields of the Augment ship.
Waves of energy flowed through the air and rippled through the walls and the floor and into Khan's body. He felt like he was cooking from the inside and the readings on the flight console went haywire as everything around him threatened to simultaneously explode and collapse.
And then, just as suddenly, there was only silence, and the lingering taste of ozone in his mouth. Khan stared into the space ahead of him and saw the Augment ship, no cloak, no shields, completely naked in front of him. Despite his relief, he felt a moment of triumph and a viscious excitement as he anticipated seeing Beth and Matthew again. Had they really thought they could escape him?
He hailed their broken ship, reading on his sensors that they had just enough power for life support and communications. He wanted to hear them beg for their lives, he wanted to show Beth that he could be forgiving and magnanimous when she pleased him.
But there was no answer from the ship. Khan hissed through his teeth and hailed them again. He only had one torpedo left, but it was all he'd need to pick them off now. Didn't they know they were out of options?
He scanned the ship for life signs and found only two. There was interference, so he scanned the ship a second time. "Do they have a transporter?" he asked Lucy, and hoped it was true. He was furious that Beth might have escaped again, but the alternative was far, far worse.
"No," Lucy said, her voice wavering as she tried to catch her breath. "Why?"
Khan cursed and moved to the transporter console. He locked onto the two life forms and beamed them across to the small transporter room on his ship.
"What's happening?" Lucy asked as he ran past her, but he ignored the question. He didn't have time to answer, didn't want to admit what he had done.
He turned the corner into the transporter room and froze. "No," he said, taking a faltering step forward to where Spock was groaning on the ground with Matthew kneeling over him. Were these the two life signs he had detected? "Where is Beth?" he asked, but he already knew the answer.
He had killed her. His jealousy, his anger, his pride... Khan just stared as Matthew looked up at him, and his eyes were full of hate. It was like looking in a mirror, except that Matthew could not have hated Khan as much as Khan hated himself.
Suddenly there was a crushing pain down the back of Khan's head and neck. He stumbled forward but kept his footing and turned to face his attacker. Beth stood there, her right arm raised, a broken piece of metal in her hand. It was covered in green blood.
"Beth!" he shouted in surprise and happiness, but she swung the piece of metal again. He tried to dodge it, but he was clumsy with relief. She struck his jaw, spinning his head to the side. The pain was staggering, but he didn't care. He kept coming at her, feeling the strange urge to tell her that she should swing at him using both her hands.
"Don't touch me," she warned, holding the piece of metal between them. Khan grabbed it from her and dropped it on the floor. She threw her other hand at him, clenched in a fist, but he didn't try to avoid it. It was contact, and that's what he wanted... more proof that she was real.
"Ah!" she cried as she punched him hard, and when she withdrew her hand he saw that it was covered in blood. It was her blood, weeping from between her clenched fingers.
He reached for her hand, but she pulled back. "No," she said, as frightened as she was angry. "Please."
He persisted, taking her left wrist as gently as he could. "It's alright," he soothed, but she desperately tried to wrench it out of his hands. She turned away from him as he began to peel her fingers back, one at a time.
In her hand were the remnants of her wedding ring, the broken crystals embedded in her bloody skin from the force of the punch, and the force of her gripping them so hard. Khan could just stare at them, remembering the many hours it had taken him to make the ring, keeping it a secret from her though he wanted to tell her a hundred times what he was doing, then finally surprising her with it, and their shared happiness when they'd made their vows to each other. How had it all gone so wrong, so quickly?
"I'm sorry," she sobbed, and she was looking up at him with just as much pain as he was feeling. He let her fingers go and they slowly curled back into a fist.
"I'm sorry," he said, knowing that the words could never be enough. He went to hold her. She was pale and shivering, and her face was so sad he didn't think she would ever smile again. "Come here," he said, putting his arms around her, but she pushed him away.
"You have to help him," she said, pushing him again and looking around his shoulder to where Spock was laying on the floor. "You would have killed me, except for him."
The words chilled the blood in Khan's veins and he turned to look back at Spock. Matthew had rolled him onto his stomach and torn open the back of his blood-soaked shirt. Khan realized why he had detected only two distinct life signs when he'd scanned the Augment ship; Spock had been laying on top of Beth, shielding her during Khan's attack.
Spock's back was covered in bruises and there was a deep wound just to the left of his spine. Khan looked down at the piece of metal Beth had used to hit him. It had been embedded in Spock's back and if it weren't for the Vulcan it would have surely impaled her. Khan felt weak, thinking of how close he'd come to ending her life.
"What can I do?" he asked Matthew, who was applying pressure to the wound.
"I need an autosuture," he said, not looking up. "And a subdermal scalpel."
"Do you have them on your ship?" Khan asked, going to the transporter controls.
"Beth, come and press down here," Matthew said, and Beth dropped onto the transporter pad beside him, putting her hands over Spock's wound. Her left hand was still clenched in a fist, her red blood mixing with Spock's green blood as she tried to keep it from leaking out of him. "I don't have a sterile field for the surgery," Matthew told Khan, moving around to check Spock's neck, feeling along his vertebrae for damage. "I never needed one for the Augments and I didn't think to add it for Spock and Lucy."
"Surgery?" Lucy's trembling voice asked and Khan saw her standing in the doorway. Her big blue eyes were round and full of tears as she stared at Spock. Slowly they turned to Khan, and filled with absolute loathing.
"There's a sterile field at the house," he told Matthew, trying to ignore her. "We have a fully-equipped surgery. After we land I'll help..."
"There's no time," Matthew said. "You have a transporter. Beam us down now."
"I can't beam you down. There's a forcefield around the whole compound."
"Then lower it," Matthew ordered, his fingers pressed against the pulse in Spock's neck. "Or he will die."
Lowering the forcefield would mean lowering all of the defenses around the property, but Khan realized with a pang that there was no one there to protect anymore. "I'm not sending Beth down with you," he said.
"I need assistance."
"For God's sake, Khan," Beth snapped, "He's dying."
But Khan would not let her go with Matthew again, not at any price. He shook his head sadly. "I can't lose you again." But as he said the words he knew they made her want to leave him even more.
"I'll go, Matthew," Lucy said, stepping forward to kneel beside Spock. She put her hands over his wound, taking Beth's place.
"Thank you," Beth murmured, but she did not stand or back away.
Khan dropped the forcefield around the house and carefully calibrated the transporter for Matthew, Spock and Lucy so he could beam them directly into the surgery. He was scared Beth would try to grab them as they dematerialized, but she stayed kneeling in place, her hands balled in her lap, her head down.
When they were gone, Khan watched her for a long time. He could barely hear her breathing.
"He's going to be alright," Khan said, and tried to keep the bitterness out of his voice when he added "Matthew is an excellent surgeon."
Beth nodded and Khan approached her quietly, circling until he stood in front of her, his boots in the pool of Spock's warm blood. He knew he should just pick her up and hold her to him and tell her he forgave her, for whatever she had done. He should beg for her forgiveness and promise he would never hurt her again...
But as he looked down at her, Khan could not say the words. He could not let her know that she had broken him.
"Look at me," he said instead, and his heart ached to see her hazel-green eyes turn up to him with no trace of warmth or affection. He knelt down to touch her face, but his hand went to the back of her head instead, his fingers entwining in her soft honey-blonde hair. She was so human, so fragile, but she held so much power over him that Khan couldn't admit how much he needed her, how much she'd hurt him by running away. "You are mine," he said, but what he feared most was that he was no longer hers.
I wanted to show Khan's perspective here. He is such an intense, complicated man and I hope I got him right. He is overwhelmed by his emotions and has lost so much in his life he just can't trust a good thing. Hope they can sort it out, but it won't be easy, and you can probably see the warning signs that more trouble is around the corner!
Please forgive typos - wrote most of this in the airport. Wanted to get this one up a bit quickly - thanks for reading, and it was great to see the really thoughtful, observant comments about Beth and Khan and if they can/should stay together. Love the discussion, and thanks to these readers for their reviews: Just Pam, rem, Feckless Female, WhitneyG, Bilbo Baggins Is My Hobbit, April, CLTex, Sassiebone, Nirene Harper, NerdyChicksHaveMoreFun, BigStraightCrush, TheJewellersHand, AniMags, DestinyRainEvans and the Guests
xo
