-Chapter Seven-

They walked in silence to the ship. Khan wasn't sure what the supplies would entail, if they'd be in any sort of container, so he fetched the one from his cabin and carried it to the transporter room in Engineering. The space only had three transporter pads. He knew they worked, he'd used them once before, but hadn't had an opportunity to teach any of his people about the transporter yet.

So, while they waited, he ran Yves through the controls. As he instructed his soon-to-be brother-in-law on the controls, he asked, "Ronja has decided to be part of our medical staff?"

"Yes. We have not fully discussed the details, but she is eager for the chance. I showed her some of the equipment. Kati will be coming down this evening and we will show Ronja at least what we will need for Anthea's delivery."

"Good. We should see if anyone else is interested in medical training. I know you aren't a teacher, but with your guidance and the texts and training programs Anthea … borrowed from Starfleet, it shouldn't be too difficult to teach some level of competency."

Yves shook his blonde head. "I've been going through the files she copied, and the amount of information… It is staggering, Khan, the things she thought of."

Khan smirked. "I know. She says she spent months just copying entire databases. There's a stacks of PADDs we can copy files to, for the others. She remembered all sorts of hygiene supplies, and made sure we had enough blankets and shoes. And yet she forgot birth control and toilets."

"In her defence, I know how much space those took when we picked them up on Elora, and we would not have been able to get them and everything else she loaded onto this ship into the hold. As, eh, undignified as an outhouse can be, it was not a dire need."

"I know. I'm simply amused. But yes, my wife is very details-oriented."

Yves leaned a hip against the console and folded his arms. "You think Starfleet will give us these supplies and not demand anything in exchange?"

Khan snorted. "There's always a price. But there's a reason I let you and Anthea handle negotiations. McCoy likes you, and Kirk likes my wife."

"Is it true that they were involved once?"

"In a manner of speaking." Khan grimaced. "After I was captured and imprisoned in cryofreeze, Anthea tracked down Kirk and seduced him for information. She found out we were still alive and made all of this happen."

"... And you haven't killed the boy?"

"Oh, I've been tempted. But he's useful."

Yves shifted awkwardly, and Khan raised a brow. "Something on your mind?"

"I… wanted to ask you something. I plan to propose to Kati-"

"You haven't already?" Khan was surprised. "I thought you asked her months ago!"

"Not officially. I wanted to ask you for-"

Holding up a hand, he cut the Frenchman off. "You do not need my permission. Kati is my sister, not my property. And I suspect you asking me would upset her. But if you want my approval, you know you have it, mon frère."

Yves beamed, face full of relief. He ran his hands through his blonde hair. "We are technically engaged, oui? But I have not asked. I want to plan something romantic, but do not know what to do."

"Don't ask me, Yves. Anthea still teases me about my proposal."

Yves arched a brow. "What did you do?"

"... Handed her the ring and said 'Marry me'."

The other man burst out laughing. "Mon Dieu, Khan, that is terrible! Forget asking your advice, I'm asking your wife!"

Ruefully, Khan shook his head. "I'm lucky she didn't laugh at me and walk out. I don't deserve her."

The console lit up with a transmission. Grateful for the interruption, Khan flipped the control to answer it.

"Yes," was all he said.

It was McCoy's voice on the other end. "Alright, I got a couple crates of stuff to send down. Our transporter team's got a lock on your transporter. You ready to receive?"

"Yes, Doctor."

"Great. I was able to synthesise some old, retired narcotic medications. Morphine, hydromorphone, a few other things. Didn't take much. You should be able to replicate 'em no problem, but I'm sending what I'm hoping is enough to last you a while. I'd appreciate it if Dr Guillame would study the effects on your people and report back sometime. I'm also sending those antibiotics an' vaccines your wife requested, and some other things I noticed you don't have, like bone knitting medication. It works fast. I used it to repair Kirk's face when you punched him last time."

Khan smiled at the memory of doing just that. "It's very much appreciated, Dr McCoy."

They coordinated the transport, and Yves watched in awe as the two crates appeared in swirls of white light.

Khan waited, scanning for the Federation ship, until it had left the system. "They're gone. Let's get these things sorted and stored away."

—-

Khan wasn't sure how to react when he found that, included in one of the crates, was a large container of chicken coconut korma and steamed jasmine rice, just as Anthea had lamented missing earlier in the day. There was enough for his whole family, Yves and Kati included.

"... That was really nice of them," Kati remarked when she saw the food.

Khan and Yves had brought it up to the house, where they'd found his sister and mother-in-law discussing what to prepare for the evening meal.

"Oh, wonderful," Martha said. "I wasn't looking forward to cooking anything, with such a late start. I'll get this dished up, why don't you go wake Anthea?"

He merely nodded. "Thank you, Martha."

Anthea was sound asleep, lying curled on her side with her pillow under her head and his pillow in her arms. He was reluctant to wake her, knowing how tired she was, so he sat on the edge of their bed and just watched her sleep for a long moment.

He used to do this before, back on Earth, when he rose in the predawn to leave. He'd always needed less sleep than she did, and he'd hated to go before she woke, so he'd sometimes lie beside her and just watch her, enjoying the momentary peace he found there.

Ever so gently, he ran his fingers down her arm. "Thea, darling, it's time to eat."

She stirred, frowning, and opened her eyes. "Is it that fish again?"

He chuckled. "No. A gift from Dr McCoy, actually. Come see."

Khan helped her put on her house slippers, red with grey fur trim, and walked with her to the main living area, which encompassed the kitchen, dining space, and the living room. She was moving more slowly, he noticed, with more of the characteristic "waddle" of pregnancy.

Yes, he thought, she would be having the baby very soon.

Anthea sat with a heavy sigh on one of the chairs, eyeing how much space her belly took up between her and the table. "I almost can't reach. Did I get bigger while napping?"

Martha patted her daughter's shoulder. "No. I think you've just finished dropping."

Nolan tottered over and leaned against Anthea's hip. "Mama!"

"Hello, sweetie." Khan watched her run a loving hand over their son's dark hair. "I'm sorry Mummy hasn't spent much time with you the past few days."

They found chairs for Kati and Yves, the latter of whom sat with Pandu on his lap, the same way Khan held Nolan on his.

"I haven't had korma since 1997!" Kati said, as they all settled in to eat.

"I used to eat frequently at a place in San Francisco, near my work," Anthea said. "But my favourite was a little restaurant a block over from our house in London. Khan and I got take away at least once a week there."

Her husband smirked at her. "We had lamb korma for one of our first dates."

Anthea blushed just a little. She narrowed her eyes at him and turned her attention to monitoring Nolan and the small bit of rice and chicken on his plate, situated between her and Khan. Their son could generally feed himself, but neither of them trusted the toddler with something as potentially messy as the korma sauce, at least without supervision.

Fortunately, no one else at the table understood more than the surface of the exchange, everyone talking about food they missed from Earth.

Anthea poked him in the shin with a bare toe and gave him her own smirk. She'd understood, alright. Their first intimate night together had been after a meal of Indian food on the rooftop terrace outside the master bedroom of her townhouse.

After dinner, Anthea went back to their room and took Nolan with her, wanting to spend some quality time with their son while she could. Khan stayed to help Martha in the kitchen, which surprised his mother-in-law.

They had a sonic dishwasher, the one that had been in their kitchen in London. It was smart of Anthea to bring it along, given that it didn't require water to run. That reminded him that he really did need to focus on their running water issues. A roof-mounted cistern wasn't the best option, even if it rained frequently in their part of the world.

Martha watched Khan load the dishes she'd handed him, her back against the counter he'd built with his bare hands. "I'm concerned about Thea," she told him. "About her giving birth here."

"Our medbay might be small, but it's got top of the line supplies, and Yves is highly skilled. She'll be fine, Martha."

Her blue eyes narrowed. "Are you trying to convince me, or yourself?"

Khan hated to admit weakness, but as a concession to a more harmonious relationship with his in-laws, he said, "A bit of both. Of course I'm worried. Even in this time, childbirth is dangerous. But Anthea has advantages now that she didn't before. One of which is that I'm here this time."

"Hmm." Martha's gaze swept the largely open living area: the kitchen and dining area, the partially walled-off sitting area that featured an open-to-both-sides fireplace. "She told me that she's the same as you now. An Augment."

"She is," he said. "Did she tell you how it happened?"

"She was kidnapped by Klingons somehow and injured, had a brain bleed, and you and Yves fixed her."

"That's the short version. I was away, on the USS Enterprise, with some of my men, going to help a nearby planet that had been attacked by the Klingons. There was a spy on board, which Captain Kirk was unaware of. That spy overheard a conversation I'd had with Kirk about … events that had transpired on Qo'noS at the time I was taken from Anthea. He informed a ship nearby of our colony. Three Klingons snuck into our colony and into our home, aided by one of my men, Miguel Rodriguez, who hated Thea. She managed to kill one of them, but she was protecting Nolan and Rodriguez knocked her unconscious when she ran to him for help. He gave her and my children to the Klingons."

Khan clenched his hands for a moment, remembering the rage and fear that had overtaken him. Forcing himself to calm, he continued, a little roughly, "I killed him, one of my few remaining kind, for hurting her. Kirk gave us his help in locating them. I discovered the spy in their midst and… extracted their location from him. It took us a week to find the Klingons, only minutes to destroy their colony and free my wife and child."

He looked up, finding Martha's gaze steady on him.

Graham, who'd been listening to the conversation from his seat at the table, spoke. "Tell me you wiped 'em out."

His smile, Khan knew, was unpleasant. "All but the one Anthea herself killed there. She's quite a fighter, even with her training not up to our standards. I've worked with her but since she's been pregnant, well. Rodriguez's attack left her with a fractured skull and a subdural hematoma. Doctor McCoy thought she'd be fine with rest, after he repaired the slight break to her supraorbital margin. She didn't even realise she had it, and McCoy didn't tell her. But he was reluctant to address the brain injury with her being pregnant, so he ordered her to rest. Naturally, she didn't, and it ruptured and we had to perform a series of emergency surgeries to save her life. In the process, we accidentally turned her into one of us. It took weeks to fully process, and we were … unsure of that process, given that it had never been done before. We were all created through experimental procedures as mere zygotes. Anthea is the first converted human. I don't even know if it's possible to replicate."

Martha shook her head. "I'm not sure I understand, exactly, what it's done to her. She seems steadier, but these past few weeks, she's been just as tired as the first time."

"We don't know, either," Khan confessed. "We haven't been able to run full tests of her abilities, with the baby. I do know she has enhanced strength and speed, and senses. Her healing is much faster, though not as rapid as my own. I'm not bragging when I say that my abilities surpass those of everyone else. My people are strong, brilliant, and deadly. But they are not as strong, not as fast, not as intelligent, as I am. My creation is what got my mother killed by rival eugenics groups."

Martha fetched a mug and filled it with some water, putting it in the small microwave. "I'm going to take Thea some tea," she said, as explanation. "Tell me more about what you did to her. Don't leave anything out."

Anthea was in the middle of reading Nolan a story on her PADD when her mother came in with a steaming mug of something. "Hi, Mum."

"I've brought you some herbal tea, sweetheart. How are you feeling?"

"I'm alright. Tired. You know how it is. At least Sarina's settled down and has been quiet all evening."

Martha set the mug on the nightstand and then lowered herself to sit on the side of the bed. "What are you reading?" she asked.

"'Kittens On The Moon'," her daughter replied. "It's his current favourite."

She handed her son the PADD so he could continue looking at the pictures. He couldn't read yet, though Khan estimated that would happen within the next few months. He himself had been reading actual books at the age of four, which sounded so unreal to Anthea that she couldn't believe it. He'd been completely fluent in both English and Hindi by five and in four other languages by the age of ten. It scared her to think of their son learning that quickly.

"Your father and I just had a long talk with Khan," Martha said. "He told us about Rodriguez and the Klingons, about your injury and the… augmentation."

"I see."

Martha watched Nolan scroll through the pages on the screen, his pudgy fingers tracing the illustrations. "He really loves you. The way he spoke about trying to find you, about how you almost died…"

"I told you he does," Anthea said, a bit irritated. "He never, ever intended to leave me."

She bent as much as she was able to kiss the top of her son's head, running her fingers lightly through the wispy mop of silky, brown-black hair.

"I know. And I'm sorry that I've treated him poorly. I still don't think highly of some of his actions, but he clearly adores you and Nolan, and he's going to be wrapped around Sarina's fingers from the moment she arrives."

Anthea chuckled. "He is. He might be a ruthless, brutal, calculating warrior on the surface, but he's complete mush under it."

Having seen Khan interacting with his son, Martha nodded. "He's not the man I expected. I'm sorry I misjudged him."

"You didn't misjudge him completely. He can be a cold bas- jerk when he wants to be. Just not with us."

When Nolan got bored of looking at the pictures, and went to go play with Spot—Anthea was still unsure how one played with a Tribble—she pulled up the journal she'd been keeping before her parents' arrival. Handing the PADD to her mother, she said, "This is the journal I kept about our time here before you and Dad came. It's written as letters to you. I didn't think I'd see you again, so it… helped to pretend I was writing to you. You can read them."

Martha took the PADD in its rose gold glitter case. "This case is so unlike you."

Anthea snorted. "It was a birthday present from Lindy. She was trying to cheer me up after John- after Khan disappeared."

Her mother didn't look up from the PADD. "Do you make a distinction between John and Khan?"

"Not … really. It's complicated. He's the same man. I just have some things that I strongly associate with John Harrison. I'm still trying to reconcile them in my head. I knew him as John Harrison for a year and a half. While I've known of Khan for two years, I've only been with him as Khan for less than a year. It's… more habit than anything. Even after I knew his real name, I tended to think of him as John because that's what I was familiar with. It took months to get used to thinking of him as Khan. Didn't help that the rare conversation I had about him with others, I still had to call him John because I wasn't supposed to know his real identity. Admiral Brody had figured out early on that John Harrison was my baby's father, so when she was able, she gave me a file of everything Section 31 and Starfleet had on him, either name." She paused, considering. "Except for what happened to him after Commander Spock and Lieutenant Uhura captured him in San Francisco. I had to get that from Captain Kirk. Anyway, Brody wanted me to know the truth, because, well, Nolan is like his daddy."

Then she chuckled. "She also warned me to make sure he didn't end up like Khan."

Martha didn't look up from the PADD as she said, "Obviously, this Brody doesn't know his father."

Anthea's smile was wry. She rubbed a hand over her belly, noting that Sarina had gone very quiet, just a slight bit of movement here and there. "As far as I'm aware, she never met John Harrison. She only knows of him, from a very few, very bad days out of his life."

"You already know my thoughts on that, so I won't harp on it." Martha's blue eyes looked her over. "How's the baby?"

"Asleep, I think. With the way I've been feeling all day, and her being so quiet, I think it'll be very soon. Tomorrow, maybe. Could be sooner."

Her mother reached out, hesitated, then placed her hand over the swell of her daughter's stomach. "I wish I could have had more, but after three miscarriages… I'm glad you haven't had those struggles."

Anthea clasped her mother's hand. "I know I was horrendous as a child, and I'm sorry for that, but you know I never wanted for anything. You and Daddy did the best you could for me, and I appreciate it so much. And I'm so, so glad you're here. I know it isn't like life on Earth, but…"

"Thea, dear, you're everything to us. I won't lie and say there aren't things I miss, and here, it may be, um, rustic, but I know Khan is working to improve things. And you know, I'd never left Earth before this? Your dad got to go to Mars while in university, but I never really left the ground. And now I've been to three different planets!"

Chuckling, Anthea moved to get off the bed. "I know I've been whinging a lot about being tired of this pregnancy, but I'm not looking forward to the actually delivery. Still, I'd very much like to not have to pee every ten minutes."

Her mother helped her up. "Do you need me to stay and help you back into bed?"

"No, I'll wait 'til Khan comes in. But thanks."

Martha left, and Anthea shuffled to the bathroom. Nolan's labour had been surprising and, to her, sudden; but this felt like it was taking an eternity.

Khan was in the bedroom when she emerged, as she'd expected.

"I feel as if I've been pregnant for the better part of a decade," she complained.

Her husband snorted. "She'll be here soon enough."

"Easy for you to say. You're not the one with a squished bladder." She went to the closet he'd built her and found her jewellery box on a shelf. Digging through, she found a suitable chain and took it back to her bedside, where she'd put the ruby pendant on her nightstand.

Khan stepped up to help her fasten the necklace, and then let his hands settle on her shoulders, dipping his head to kiss the nape of her neck, just above the neckline of her grey dress. "Do you need me to help with anything, like undressing?"

Anthea looked down at her stomach and sighed. "I should put sleep clothes on but I'm rather comfortable in this."

"Then stay in it."

He helped her into bed. She struggled to get comfortable, too distracted to watch him change. When he finally got into bed, she flung her leg over his to relieve some pressure in her hips. Khan merely settled his hand on her thigh.

He'd turned the light low, rather than off. Anthea rested her head on his shoulder and sighed.

"When we make our next supply trip," she said, "I think we should take more people with us. We have room on the ship now, with the cabins cleared out, though Nolan and Sarina would probably need to stay with us again."

"Mm. Yes. Your father would especially like to come with us. I'm thinking of a short trip to Elora again." The Mackintoshes had gone with them to Elora and Quvolis, before the snows hit, but no one had gone since the start of spring.

"If my parents go, maybe we could go on another date." She traced a heart on his chest with her fingertip.

Khan caught her hand and lifted it to his mouth, pressing her knuckles to his lips.

"I'm thinking about changing the roof," he said, staring up at the wooden planks over their heads. "I'm unhappy with the way it's shingled."

"Mmm. What did you have in mind?" It struck her as surreal, once again, how mundane it was, going from designing top secret weaponry to lying in bed, discussing house renovations while their toddler slept down the hallway.

"I'd like to install metal roofing, like we're planning for the community centre. With more solar panels. Maybe add a second floor. I rushed to build this house and I've never quite been happy with it."

Anthea pushed up on an elbow. "We'll have more room when Mum and Dad move out, but I would like to make some changes. I want a bathtub. I know that will need to wait til we've got running water sorted. And we'll need to figure out a waste treatment facility and all of that. But if we moved our space upstairs, or moved the children up there instead…"

"Yes." Khan rolled to his side and placed a hand on her belly. "And there are potential future children to consider. Not right now, obviously, but we might want more some day."

She laughed. "Let's see how we do with these two, first. You haven't been through things with a newborn, yet. But the nursery isn't going to work as a bedroom for Sarina in later years, it's a bit small."

"If we moved our room upstairs, I could add a terrace for us, like we had in London. I could move my workshop into this room, and Sarina could have that room for a bedroom."

She yawned. "It's something to think about. Later. I'm exhausted."

He kissed her forehead. "Sleep, my love."

She snuggled back down, against his side, and was almost instantly asleep.