A/N: the story of The Arrangement ends here. I might write more in this universe, if requested to. Thank you for reading and reviewing! I'm glad you enjoyed my fic. Please tell me what you think of this chapter as well.
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Carol perched on the slip of stone, panting with the effort of the climb, and gazed at the vista the colony made in the valley. She was alone now, Kati who had come with her on this trip, scaling higher, where the air was too rarefied for mere humans to go but Augments with their better lung capacity could venture. Her second year on Ceti Alpha V was nearing its end and the surrealisms of living here had finally begun to ebb.
Life on a still developing colony on such a rough planet continued to be hard and between her work in the augment city and that on the starbase she scarcely got a moment to breathe. At least, the colony was coming off nicely, even if the news of the Federation's conflict with Klingons was somewhat undermining. The war had become a rather cold one and the current stalemate seemed to settle in for the long haul.
Her relations with the Augments were improving, though some still kept their distance, fueled by the camaraderie of working together towards a common goal. From what she heard from those she had befriended, she started to understand the root of their thirst for destruction and hatred of those they considered inferior a lot better. They had been created as means to an end, treated as tools, weapons or test subjects all their lives, never as people. Like other abuse victims before them, they had rebelled against their oppressors and become themselves abusers, taking refuge in a superiority that in their case was more than a mind-frame.
Then they had been defeated only to be awoken again by people, whose good intentions they saw no reason to trust. Unfortunately, her father had proved them right. No matter how hard she tried, she could not comprehend what had made him treat anybody so callously. Had the war embittered him? Or had the change occurred before? Perhaps subtly under her very eyes. But then how could she not have noticed anything?
What had happened to the larger than life heroic figure who used to visit her from time to time in London, where she was lived with her mother as a child? She had used to be so proud of being his daughter. He had inspired her to join Starfleet. After that, they had become close. He had progressively shut her out a short while before he had called her into his office to inform her that she was to be Khan's live-in hostage.
"Done brooding?" asked a familiar, melodic voice coming from only a few paces. She had not heard Kati's approach.
Carol leaned back against the rock wall behind her, shaking herself out of her maudlin musings. "I wasn't brooding," she countered.
Kati scoffed. "Contemplating then?" she wondered, tone playful. "Reflecting? You're always pondering and calculating, Carol. When you're working, when you're on a break. It's not healthy."
Her companion was only half-serious, but it occurred to Carol that she might be right, anyway, and she could use a reprieve from her worries. "What have you found?" she asked indicating the specimen jar Kati had in her hand.
The other woman raised it up for Carol to get a better view of the squirming black Arachnid inside. "Some sort of spider," Kati guessed. "I'm taking it to Rodriguez to see what he can make of it."
Carol nodded eying the naked rock surrounding them. "I thought nothing could survived here."
"Some creatures can live in the strangest of places," Kati replied.
"Yes, they can," Carol said more to herself than to her friend.
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"So you are telling me there exists an alien race, a warrior one nevertheless, the members of which are capable of creating such sounds and they don't use them as a weapon. Or at the very least, as a torture device."
Carol wanted to quip that it was so like him to say that, but the long-suffering look on his face was one she had never seen in all the time she had known him and she couldn't help but laugh out loud instead. Khan seemed positively depressed at her reaction but pulled himself together enough to order the computer to pause in its playing of a Klingon opera.
"Did you go to war with these people upon first hearing this?" he asked sounding so serious that she dissolved into a fresh fit of giggles. His jaw clicked, but his eyes were sparkling with mischief, then his whole face relaxed and his smile had a hint of teeth in it.
"A lot of Federation music critics praise its artistic value," she said, wiping her wet eyes with the back of her hand. She couldn't remember the last time she had laughed so hard.
He winced. "Are they all deaf?"
"According to you, they might as well be, because most of them also like my brand of contemporary classic music, which you think is loud and cacophonous," she said, sitting on the edge of what used to be her bed but could now more aptly be called theirs. He sat himself next to her, his hands coming to rest on her shoulders, long fingers digging into her sore muscles and skillfully releasing the knots of tension they found in their way. She expelled a sigh of relief.
"I cannot help it, if I was contemporary with the greatest 20th century composers," he boasted, one his hands slipping lower, stroking her through the flimsy material of her nightgown, and pressing lightly along the line of her spine.
A cocoon of balmy warmth enveloped her irradiating from his touch and she reveled in it, until the idea of a retort sprang into her mind. "Wait, didn't you say Rachmaninoff is your favorite 20th century composer?"
"I did," he confirmed.
Carol turned to face him, regretfully dislodging his hands. "Didn't he die almost three decades before you were born?" she said in the most innocent tone she could conjure.
He didn't look in the least bit caught, but Carol was beginning to know him better than that. His arms wrapped around her pulling her into his lap. "His music was still relatively new, when I heard it."
"The words on your gravestone will be: I had the last word, won't they?" she said good-naturedly and he leaned forward to press a quick, chaste kiss to her mouth. The gesture wasn't sexual, just a small, spontaneous burst of affection.
She smiled up at him, as her eyes traveled the planes of his face, unabashedly admiring him. He had once told her that nothing she saw was real and that his appearance had been artificially constructed in a time before her ancestors had been born, but still he wore it so well, it had obviously become an intrinsic part of him. There was such an immemorial, mythical beauty to him, as if he were one of the ancient gods descended from the old sagas of long-dead civilizations. She reached and traced a cheekbone with her fingers. His lids fluttered briefly at the contact. Objectively she knew his spectacular eye color was caused by an unusual case of central heterochromia, but still looking into those orbs, that were now gold-speckled emerald green shifting back to blue with the barest tilt of his head, still felt like floating through fantastic nebulae or rare worm holes.
Her thumb grazed his lips and they trembled ever so slightly underneath it. His expression was open and relaxed and the moment was so intimate that she could almost discard the illusion mixed in with all the tenderness. Almost. The only reason she didn't was because she fervently wished it were real. She let her hand drop from his face and hid her head against his chest.
"What's wrong?" he asked, his perceptiveness as unfailing as ever.
"Nothing," she dully. "Just hold me... please."
For once he didn't comment just tightened his arms around her, his fingers combing through her hair. The safety of his embrace was a mirage, but mirages were all she had. He, this semblance of normal and this home so far away from her real one. That was her everything now. He had been right. She had nowhere else to go. But worst of all, she now had feelings for him, insidious feelings that had taken seed in her heart, when she wasn't looking, then spread like wild fire scorching everything in their way. It wasn't love or at least, she hoped it wasn't, but she did care for him. Quite a lot, in fact.
She knew that one day he would use those feelings he was undoubtedly aware of, against her, against her father and against Starfleet, cutting her heart out of her chest figuratively and literally, if need be. Yet there she was, clinging to him, craving comfort from the man who would destroy her sometime in the future. He probably already had several plans for it. Tears prickled at her eyes but she wouldn't let them fall. Tattered as it were, her dignity was among the few things she had left.
"They should have left me sleep," he said suddenly, sounding almost wistful. "Kirk, your father," he elaborated. Startled, she raised her head to gaze at him. He looked lost in thought, the softness of earlier gone from his expression. "It occurred to me the other day that it would have been more merciful if I had snapped your neck the moment you stepped on this planet," he continued, his baritone completely devoid of any menacing quality, even as his right palm stopped above her carotid artery, his hand-span almost wide enough to encompass her throat. He didn't apply pressure and she felt no fear, though one lone tear did fall this time.
"Inadvisable, but more merciful nonetheless," he droned on. "Clean, quick, painless. Like falling asleep." His hand moved up and he thumbed away the tear staining her cheek. "Don't cry, my golden, beautiful queen."
Khan meant king. Historians had quarreled for over two centuries over whether that was indeed his given name or a title he had adopted as such. She didn't know either way. He referred to himself only as Khan and had never told her anything else on the matter.
He inclined his head to press his forehead against hers, squeezing his eyes shut, the sorrow suffusing his features unmistakable. She realized with a start that she was shaking, terror flooding her.
"The weight of this sad time we must obey," he whispered thickly.
King Lear. It was one of his most beloved plays and now appropriate on more levels than one. "Speak what we feel, not what we ought to say." She finished the quote with him.
His eyes snapped open and he drew back a little, breathing hard through his nose. "The warrior of a time long past and his newest enemy's daughter," he observed, calmer now. "It has all the marks of a Shakespearean tragedy, wouldn't you say?"
She nodded grimly. She had always guessed as much.
"I cannot give you back your freedom, Carol. I need you as leverage." He wasn't looking at her anymore, his gaze focused somewhere over her shoulder. "But I can do one thing for you. Three words I have never before spoken in my entire life."
He paused visibly wrestling with himself. He had gone pale, his countenance stormy and haunted by too many emotions for Carol to name. She opened her mouth to say he didn't have to do this, but then his eyes found hers again and her answer got stuck in her throat at the simple regret mirrored in them.
"Carol Marcus," he began solemnly. "I am sorry."
~ the end ~