A/N: reviews keep the muse happy! :)

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The Badlands was a more than appropriate name for that region, as well as confirming Doctor McCoy's claim that space was sheer danger. With no mapping available, she could not afford to let the autopilot control the ship. She had managed to get Khan on the biobed in the infirmary, dragging his unresponsive body on the stretcher exhausting her physically the same way her predicament had drained her mentally. Currently she was running on adrenaline alone, her mind focused solely on not ending up trapped in a plasma storm, as she maneuvered her vessel through uncharted territory.

Khan had yet to show any reaction besides the empty staring. She had suspected he had some sort of optical nerve-damage, but the two subsequent tricorder scans had revealed he was indeed in good health, if one discounted a very slightly elevated white cells count, undernourishment and one too many muscle-paralyzers. His passiveness unsettled her much more than any upfront confrontation could, because it could only mean one of two things: either he was lulling her into a false sense of security or he was truly in shock as a result of some torture Cartwright had conveniently left out of the conversation, in which case, lacking in psychiatric expertise as she was, she had no idea how to deal with him. What did one do when confronted with a potentially traumatized homicidal madman? She had never imagined she would come to wish he were as violent as she remembered.

Once she was confident she was deep enough within the Badlands for anyone to follow, she placed her ship in the orbit of a planet, the surface of which the sensors showed to be free of any ionic storms threatening the on board equipment. She lay her back against the command chair, letting out a long, deep sigh. Every muscle in her body was stiff with tension. She rubbed at eyes that felt dry and gritty and realized with a start that she was hungry and that she had forgotten the last time she had eaten something.

She made the trip to the living quarters and ordered two steaks and sugary desserts from the replicator, which she then carried into the medbay, where Khan was still staring at the wall. He made no effort to look at her, when she came in. She had given him something earlier that would prevent him from standing up, but by now he should have recovered enough use of his upper body so he could eat by himself.

"I thought you might want some real food," she said.

No response. She placed the tray on the bedside table, pulled herself a chair and grabbed her own place, hoping the scent would entice him to eat. No such luck. If he meant to wear her down through his creepy, silent posturing, it was working.

"Alright," she muttered in exasperation. "Let's get one thing very clear: I have no plans to make you build any ships or torpedoes for Starfleet and no intention of exacting a bloody personal revenge on you."

There was silence for a few moments more. Then he spoke: "Why not?"

Carol froze in place.

Khan lolled his head to look at her and she instantly wished he hadn't. His gaze burnt with a strange intensity that was unlike anything she had ever seen before. "I took your father from you. I killed him while you watched. When you tried to reason with me, I didn't even listen, I broke your leg and moved on to your father. Do you remember the fear on his face, as he died? I do. He died like a coward. He couldn't even look me in the eye, when his skull bones shifted under my fingers. I wonder: did you hear them crack?"

She slammed her plate on the bedside table, her appetite gone and her stomach spasming. "Stop," she cried out. "Just stop it!" Something stirred in her leg, as suffocating anger suffused her chest, nearly shutting her lungs down. She jumped to her feet and turned her back to him, aware even as she was doing it, that it was anything but wise.

"Even Kirk punched me in the name of his friend I've killed," he drawled on. "But not you. No, you want to be a saintly martyr, caring for your father's assassin. Tell me, what would he think, if he could see you now? Offering me food and pain medication. Would he be furious or... disappointed?"

She whirled around to face him again. There was glint of something much like madness in his eyes. "You're a monster," she murmured before she could think the better of it. Her leg was now positively smarting.

"Of course I am," he said casually. "And you apparently just rescued me from the people who treated me as such. Why would you do that, Carol? Even you can't be that naïve to believe I'll ever be allowed to stand trial."

Carol felt her eyes begin to water, as much as she hated the mere notion of crying in front of this man. It was true. She didn't know what hurt the most: the fact that she would never get justice for her father or that the idea that the equality the Federation was supposedly based on was not for everyone. Either way, it was most distressing that he didn't even have to lie to get to her. Still she refused to back down from his challenge.

"You," she spat through gritted teeth. "You presume to lecture me?! The man who kills fathers in front of their daughters and then gloats about it. You've crashed a ship into defenseless civilians. While we're on the topic of genocide, how many did you butcher during your reign of terror on a quarter of a planet?"

A shadow darkened his face. "At least, I didn't pretend to be better or talk about rights and due process. While you are being so self-righteous, perhaps you'd care to discuss how the Enterprise's first officer ended the lives of seventy-two people in their sleep?"

His voice nearly broke on that last sentence and in a flash of insight she understood why he behaved so weirdly. He thought his crew was dead. Of course. He probably had never been even awake after he had been transferred off the Enterprise.

"They're not dead," she said before she could help herself.

Something shifted in his expression and he frowned. "You're lying."

She bristled. "Just because you don't have a conscience, it doesn't mean that nobody else does. Spock took all the cryotubes out of the torpedoes, before he beamed them over. I saw your people in the Enterprise medbay with my own eyes. They're all alive."

Everything changed. He squeezed his eyes shut, the vacant expression melting off his face only to be replaced with a mixture of emotions she had a hard time reading: relief, hope, joy even cascaded over his features. His mouth fell open, lips trembling, and he sucked in a shuddery breath. His pallor seemed to deepen, if that were possible. His fist clenched in the blanket to the point where his knuckles turned white.

"Where are they?" he asked, his voice so low she had to strain to hear him. "Show them to me and I'll do anything you want me to." His eyes slid open, the look in them almost pleading. "There is no need to kill any of them."

She threw her hands up in the air. "For the last time: I have no intention of killing or torturing anyone. Nor is this a scheme. In fact, if it weren't for me, you'd still be a prisoner inside your own body, while Section 31 infected you with one deadly pathogen after another."

His features smoothed out, his eyes studying her attentively. "I see. So this is an attempt to prove to yourself that you're not your father," he said sardonically.

She glared at him. "Some of us don't go on a roaring rampage of revenge the second someone wrongs us."

"No," he bit out, his voice a menacing rumble. His awkwardly sit up, his sluggish moves betraying the weakened state of his body. "That was not revenge. Revenge would have been making him watch, while I killed you slowly and in the most painful way I could conceive."

She raised her chin in defiance. "Then why didn't you?"

"My quarrel was not with you."

"It certainly seemed like it was, when you broke my leg."

"You got in my way," he retorted with the air that her injury at his hand had somehow offended him.

She took a deep, calming breath. "If it wasn't revenge, then what was it?"

"Justice," he growled, looking away. "The only one my murdered family members would ever see."

"Murdered? What are you talking about? All seventy-two of your people were right there, in the torpedoes where you put them, when my father gave them to Kirk."

He looked at her then, the look in his eyes haunted. "There were eighty-three of them, when we left Earth."

The bottom of her stomach dropped out. She shook her head resolutely. "No!" She paused to dig her teeth into her lower lip. "I don't believe it. You're making it up, because you know I have no way of verifying it."

"He sent Kirk to kill me on Kronos with the torpedoes containing my people and almost destroyed the Enterprise, but you refuse to accept that he ended the lives of eleven alleged war criminals from the past, in order to force their leader to cooperate with him."

He was right. She knew it before he even spoke, yet for some reason, after everything she had been through in the past year and a half, that was the stroke that broke the camel's back. She pressed a hand to her mouth in an effort to stave off the mounting nausea, as fresh tears threatened to burst. Unable to stand being in his presence a second longer, she fled.

TBC