CHAPTER 21:

Kirk was only hit with a moment of doubt when he carried Marla's unconscious body onto the transporter pad. It was too late to go back now, and as soon as he gave the command to energize, it was a one way ticket via transporter. Spock had orders to destroy its components the moment Kirk safely rematerialized on the planet's surface. Furthermore, they were not permitted to give up the ship by any means. Even at the cost of the captain's life or freedom.

Once his molecules were put back into proper order and the light of the beaming flickered away, he found himself staring into a shadowless grassland bathed in blue. There seemed to be more sky than earth, which was covered over by churning clouds. The landscape was not perfectly flat, since in what faint shadows there were, he could make out the shallow rolling of low-lying hills in the distance.

Sensor readings had given them a heads up of the climate conditions of their coordinate and Kirk had put on a standard issue coat to prepare for it. The same had been put onto Marla's limp body, so when he felt just how much the wind bit at his skin, he made sure to pull the hood over her head. It felt like a storm was coming in and they just had to beam in the middle of flatlands where there was no cover to be found. Wonderful. The waves in the tall grass glided along like ribbons of light, making the place look almost electrified. In fact, the static in the air told him that perhaps the place literally was electrified.

Marla was laid carefully onto the soft bed of grass and Kirk kneeled beside her. There was a small bruise forming on her jaw where he had punched her, and he winced with guilt. He hadn't meant to hit her that hard. It was bad enough that he hit her at all, but if that didn't infuriate Khan, then nothing would.

He pulled on his own hood and forged out to find a means of warmth. Lighting a fire in a currently dry and windy grassland was too stupid to even consider, so instead he looked for a rock. This place was remarkably like Earth, save for the strange specks of what looked like florescent paint in the blades of the grass that stood tall enough to reach his mid-thigh. He found a rock, one a little more than twice the size of his head, and rolled it towards where he had left Marla.

She was still comatose, and he rolled the rock close beside her. Drawing his phaser, he adjusted the setting to a steady beam and fired on the rock until it began to glow a molten red. The heat that emanated from it would have to be enough for now.

Now all he could do was wait.

As much as he wanted to relax and recuperate, he was now on an alien planet. There was no sign of any life around, but that didn't stop him from expecting some million-eyed, million-toothed thing to burst out of the ground and try to eat him. So he paced in a wide circle around the campsite, creating something reminiscent of a lopsided crop circle in the grass.

He had been moving for only fifteen minutes or so when a small groan came from the ground. Marla was stirring and he quickly dropped at her side to help her sit up.

"You all right?"

The sound of his voice made her gasp and she threw off the hood to stare at him. Then she looked around at the wall of grass that surrounded her.

"Where…? Oh God, are we on the planet?"

"Yeah…" he touched her chin in an attempt to examine her face. "Look, I'm sorry I hit you. I feel… really, really terrible…"

She slapped his hand away, her gaze fixing on him hatefully. "You should feel terrible for thinking you can lure Khan with such an obvious plan. It won't work, he isn't stupid."

"We're all stupid under the right circumstances," Kirk said simply as he settled himself on the flattened grass. "Why are you so sure he won't come after you?"

She finally brought a hand to her bruised face in a poor attempt at nonchalantly hiding from Kirk's view. But he could see tightening of her lips. "He has his crew now, why should he?"

"You love him though," Kirk said carefully, gauging her reaction. "Don't you?"

A smile appeared on her face that was painfully bitter. "When he was going to smuggle his people away from Admiral Marcus, I was going to go with him. He asked me to and I said yes without even thinking to ask him where we were going. It was enough just to be with him. But they arrested me and Khan got away. I was glad. But days turned into weeks, then weeks turned into months, and I couldn't help wondering if he knew where I was. If he was going to come back for me… I feel selfish for thinking he would, and it's idiotic to think so, but… I guess we can't stop ourselves from hoping we can be that important to anyone. But then, he's not just anyone…"

He didn't know why she was telling him all this. But the look of pain that distorted her face, and the shaking that suddenly began to wrack her body could be nothing else but emotions spilling over. That look of agony was a long overdue catharsis and Kirk wouldn't interrupt her now.

"The truth is, I can't handle any more of this," her throat constricted and the tears filled her eyes. "The waiting and thinking just maybe he'd come for me because I was almost certain he loved me once…"

She stopped to drag the sleeve of her jacket under her eyes and push the disheveled red strands from her wet face.

"I don't want him to come," her voice hardened. "I want him to accomplish what he set out to do from the start—where I had no place to begin with—so I can finally tell myself with certainty that I'm not to him what he is to me. And I'm fine with that. As long as he can save the people that truly matter to him…"

Her erratic breathing revealed that she was containing more tears than she was letting out. Even though this woman was a traitor who had mucked up his ship from the inside, it was hard to watch. She was more tormented about Khan than she was about going rogue against her own people. Marla McGivers was in love with a monster and had the misfortune of knowing it.

He sat back quietly, to let her cry as much as she needed to. When her sobs finally lightened to mere sniffles, he propped an elbow on his knee and leaned forward.

"You wanna know why I took the risk of using you as bait? I wasn't betting on a fifty-fifty chance that he cared about you."

Her reddened eyes turned to him skeptically, but curiously.

"See, Mr. Spock and I had an argument while you and Khan were in the maintenance tunnels sabotaging my ship. We disagreed on whether or not someone's love for another person could be seen by the way they look at each other. Spock said that was bullshit—not exactly his words—and I said it was true. I saw that look on Khan's face three times, and each time was because of you. I saw it when he called the bridge and nearly passed out, then when he overheard that you were arrested, and finally when he saw me hit you. You didn't see how enraged it made him."

She was simply staring at him and he could tell she was disbelieving every word of it.

"I agree with you completely, Marla, when you say Khan is human. When we had him in the brig a year ago, he showed us just how much of a raw nerve his heart is when it comes to people he cares about. He lets it rule over his brain more often than not, and for the sake of war, I'm not afraid to exploit that. He's definitely in love with you and because of it, he's going to lose."

He meant to sound proud of such a victory, but he was surprised at how solemn his voice was. Maybe even a bit guilty for resorting to such a low tactic.

"And you call him ruthless?" she looked at him with revulsion.

He had no response. Just a lingering sense of shame somewhere in his gut. The communicator chirped on his belt, with a clearing of his throat, he answered it. "Yeah."

"Sulu here, captain! One shuttlecraft has just deployed and is en route to your coordin—it's Khan, but he has—with him and—estim—ETA of—approx—"

"Sulu?" He attempted to adjust the frequency, but all that spattered through were fragments of sound and static. "Sulu! Great…"

The communicator was snapped shut and he looked to Marla. The look on her face was a startling mixture of joy and terror, the tears all but gone.

"See?" he wished he could manage a smug smile. "All he has to gain by coming is you, Marla."

He also had everything to lose.