CHAPTER 26:

The lights were still on within the shuttle, which meant that it still had power and functioning circuits. Some circuits would need to be bypassed, others completely rerouted, but Khan had no doubt that he could get the vessel to fly again on the auxiliary power.

He had demeaned himself enough by letting Captain Kirk and Dr. Marcus share the shelter of the shuttle, and so he paid little attention to them when they separate themselves as much as possible. Carol took a seat at the farthest end of the shuttle from the cockpit, wrapped tightly in her wet jacket while she let the gallant captain tend to the wound on her head with a med kit. They whispered quietly together, occasionally casting glances in Khan's direction. But their expressions, when Khan would catch them, were strikingly different from each other. Carol regarded him with the expected hatred, but Kirk had only the wariness of a sportsmanly rival.

Regardless, they were easy to ignore—Marla wasn't. In the past two hours since he had called the truce with the captain, Marla attempted to speak to him. But he was brief in every word or would resort to only a nod when possible. He could not look at her for long before his eyes would avert themselves to his repairs, the storm against the windows, the lifeless consoles—anything else but her exquisite face. She would move towards him and he would move away, until finally she sat apart and watched him with silent defeat.

He was on his back on the floor, the upper half of his body concealed beneath the main console. It was convenient for him that the circuits were in such a difficult place to reach, it allowed him to hide his face. He didn't want them to see how hard it was to keep that heartless facade.

"You didn't have to come for me," Marla's voice broke the looming silence. "I tried to tell you not to."

The flatness of her voice sounded bitter and it made him wince inwardly. He could feel her eyes on him but he didn't stop in his tinkering.

"Khan," her voice rose in volume this time, attempting to penetrate his apparent selective deafness. "You should have left me."

He forced in a slow breath, his lungs constricting with a slew of feelings he couldn't yet resolve. "You needn't remind me." He responded tersely, his hands working faster.

"Then why did you come all this way?" her voice cracked. "Really, what was the point in risking everything just to come here and basically ignore me?"

If she only knew just how desperately he wanted to take her in his arms and dote all his affections on her. To kiss her until he was well and truly drunk on the taste and feel of her. But in spite of himself, his hubris made him cold. He heard the chair move as she stood from it, the light blocked from his small nook as she kneeled in the opening.

"Khan…" she whispered softly.

Her voice was so disarmingly gentle that he almost replied. Almost.

"Please tell me you're not blaming me…" The strain in her voice undermined her attempt to sound indifferent. "Whether or not you think so, I can read you enough to know that this mechanical act means there's a lot on your mind. I think you're worried and not as confident as you want Captain Kirk to think you are."

He closed a fist around the tool in his hand and finally stopped his tinkering. But he continued to stare at the circuits above him, watching her only as a silhouette in the corner of his eye. The light seemed like an aura around her, and he hated himself for noticing. Then, touching just softly enough to make hair stand on end, her hand brushed his sternum to rest over his heart.

"What are you thinking about?" Such a simple question never sounded so much like a desperate plea.

He could feel the creep of vulnerability in the fluttering of his heart beneath her hand. It made him afraid—it made him angry at himself. As if she was a mere cobweb attached to him, he took hold of the console's edge above him and pulled himself out of the alcove. She withdrew her hand, but stayed where she was, kneeling only a breath away from him. Her hand was already framing his face, forcing him with relentless tenderness to look at her.

"What are you thinking about?" She repeated it so quietly that even he hardly heard it, but the inquiry was clear in her eyes and he wanted to pour his heart out to her.

He couldn't stand this.

"I am thinking only of repairing this shuttle that we may return to the ship. So you would do well to stop annoying me."

The words came out rapidly, and no sooner had he uttered them was he pulling away from her touch and onto his feet. With his tools still in hand, he opened the shuttle door and stepped out into the harsh cold of the storm

The malicious downpour had diminished to an icy pitter patter, the wind only evident in occasional light gusts. The thunder continually rumbled, but distantly now as the worst of the storm seemed to be past. The freezing water fell onto his shirt, quickly drenching his shoulders and head foremost as he walked through the slushy grass towards the aft end of the shuttle. This was where many of the main power circuits could be reached. He could have accessed them from the inside, but he needed this unforgiving environment to escape. He welcomed the painful chill in his bones.

He worked diligently, but not too quickly, lest he finished his task too soon and would have to return to her inescapable company. He didn't know how to face her. All at once, his hands seemed to fail him, as if they had forgotten their purpose, and he stopped to brace his palms on the cold, wet surface of the outer hull, his head hanging from his shoulders with a sudden unbearable weight. He knew this asphyxiating feeling well. It wasn't some sedative or effect of the weather. It was anxiety.

"She raises a good point, you know."

The voice startled him and he pushed back from the shuttle. There, hooded from the elements with hands in pockets, was Kirk—looking more like a seafaring captain than a starship captain. He had no clue how long the man had been there, but Khan was determined to hide his embarrassment by slicking back the drenched black strands of his hair to return to his work on the shuttle.

"Marla," Kirk seemed compelled to clarify. "Why the hell did you come all this way just to ignore her?"

"Because I can't bear for her to see the fool that she makes me."

The confession came out before he could even stop it. Yet, it was less embarrassing than being caught off guard a moment ago. Kirk was staring at him, his face a blank slate as he seemed to patiently await some elaboration. Khan stopped working but kept his eyes on the flickering circuits in front of him.

"Thanks to you, this is the second time I've abandoned my crew for her. Only this time I have the misfortune for them to know about it."

The captain's observant blue eyes narrowed and he leaned a shoulder on the shuttle. It seemed he intended to be there awhile. "Why should it matter if you're so sure you've won? Isn't this you having your cake and eating it too?"

"Even if I win your ship, it is a paltry victory."

"What do you mean?"

There was that clutching in his chest again, that anxiety as his mind was prompted to think on it. He took in a slow, forced breath and leaned his back against the hard surface of the shuttle. He looked out at the misted, gray grassland that stretched out as far as the eye could see.

"Since the moment we made our truce, I have been turning every outcome in my head over and over again. If my crew wins, you and yours will be marooned here and we will have the Enterprise and the freedom to fly her at our disposal. But for how long?" He looked askance to the attentive captain. "Your Starfleet will always hunt us, and even to the enemies of the Federation we would be a conspicuous target with such a starship. No matter how formidable she is, the Enterprise is obviously not invincible. If your crew wins… We both know you would stop at nothing to return us to sleep and fulfill your mission of delivering us to Regula I—and I would have no choice but to fight you to the death before submitting to such a fate. That is my duty to my crew… Just as you have a duty to yours. One of those two outcomes will occur, and in neither instance can I ever amount to being what she thinks I am. Or what my crew needs me to be."

There was a brief silence as the rain fell down on the hull beside them in a cacophony of taps. The silence between the two men, however, was deafening.

"So that's it then?" Kirk folded his arms and looked to his feet. "You've fought yourself into a no-win scenario and you just accept that it's all battle one way or the other?"

"Is it ever anything else?"

But Kirk suddenly looked to him, his brows furrowed and his lips parted. "Don't you ever get tired of it?"

"I've always done what they have forced me to do."

"Yeah, I get that," Kirk scoffed. "But you can't tell me you don't get the feeling that we just keep going in circles. In all the fighting between you and me, how far have we really gotten? A stalemate."

"Every war is bound to plateau before plunging into chaos again." The words rolled off of Khan's tongue as if it was an adage he had always known.

"I know with your controlled genetics you're always up for a good fight, but your life's ambition can't be just that. It obviously isn't, if we go by the way you look at her."

Khan's jaw clenched as Kirk brought her back into the conversation. She was far too much of an influence on Khan for him to ever admit it easily. It wasn't until Kirk stood away from the shuttle's hull to face him straight on that Khan reciprocated his full attention.

"What is it that you really want, Khan?"

In all this talk of war, the way the question was asked caught him off guard. Kirk wasn't asking for his demands or conditions. It was an open question—a personal question. Khan was somewhat dazed.

"No one has ever asked…" he confessed softly. He knew what he wanted and didn't need much time to ponder it. "I want to achieve the full potential of the regime that I was denied. To see a magnificent civilization flourish and surpass any that has ever been known on Earth that we may have a legacy worth owning. To achieve a world where war may never have a purpose ever again. I had come close to realizing such a place when I was a prince… But there were far too many who had the means and wrath to destroy what I built. If we could succeed where we had previously failed, then our superior strength and intellect would finally be put to its intended use." Each word was like a weight lifted from his chest, but it did not ease the crushing of nostalgia and hopelessness. "What I want, Kirk… is to be a leader. Never a terrorist."

By the time he finished, there was a look of wonder on Kirk's face. It was almost as though he expected Khan to make declarations of galaxy-wide annihilation of all inferior races. Such was the assumption of everyone who thought they knew what the Eugenics Wars were about.

"And you?" he addressed the captain to jar him from his stupefaction. "What is it that you really want?"

Kirk blinked. "Me? What does that matter?"

"Surely there is more incentive to joining Starfleet than fighting its wars."

The returned inquiry seemed to make the captain's defense finally dissolve away and a smile threatened to appear. "I guess I wanted to achieve something, too. Have adventure in all its risks and mysteries and challenges. Not really for recognition, though. I want to be the first to step foot on a planet so deep in space no one could have even imagined it; to interact with a species that's never heard of the Federation and could possibly teach us something. I want to try to find that better future that we're always told about because it sure as hell isn't here. I want things to be worth the sacrifices that have been made for them… I guess you could say that I want to be an explorer, not a soldier." He gave a breathy, self-conscious chuckle and once again dipped his chin to look at his feet. "Looks like neither of us are the men we wanted to be…"

Khan had always had a small curiosity of what it was that drove the bravado of Captain Kirk, and though he was not given the details behind the flicker of sadness in those blue eyes, he could see there was more to him than Khan had already given him credit for.

"I was right in my opinion of you…" Khan allowed his voice to be genuinely amicable.

"Yeah, I know all about your opinion of me," Kirk mocked. "I don't need another Khan-is-better-at-everything reminder."

Khan suppressed a smile at his childishness. "It may interest you to know, captain, that I believe you're much wiser than you think you are. There would be little pleasure for me if I was forced to kill you, and I would not be completely ashamed if you defeated me, because you have proven yourself a worthy adversary. You are a lion that I am proud to hunt."

Kirk was staring. The confused look on his face seemed to twitch between fear and amusement. "Is that a compliment?"

"If that concerns you, then rest assured I will maroon you and your crew to die on this planet when the time arrives." Khan regained his sinister tone, and it seemed to comfort the captain.

"Don't bet on it, pal," Kirk laughed.

Their mutual arrogance suddenly seemed like a shared joke. Khan allowed a low chuckle to surface and pushed himself away from his lean on the shuttle to return to his tinkering in the open circuit panel.

"I'd offer to help," Kirk glanced at the shuttle. "But I'm not about to start making things easy for you."

"You mean intentionally making things easy…" Khan replied distractedly as he tinkered.

"One word," Kirk sharpened his voice and aimed a pointed finger at Khan. "Stalemate." Seeming satisfied with himself, he turned to make his leave when he paused, deliberated, and faced Khan again. "By the way—and I know it's none of my business—but maybe you should stop punishing Marla. You said you wanted to be a leader, well… She's crazy enough to have followed you this far because in spite of everything, she seems to think you're worth it. So, if anyone is making a fool of you, it's yourself."

And he disappeared around the corner of the shuttle.