Khan had never told anyone his story. The only people whom he could trust with it were his family and they had lived it with him. As a ruler of a quarter of Earth, he had had to be careful with the imagine he had projected as well as not give his numerous enemies any more ammunition to use against him. Alexander Marcus had never asked, not that Khan would have given him any details about himself. But then again nobody before had ever asked his forgiveness, either. Her apology had staggered him and the ensuing act of penance, the leap of faith she had taken in telling him his people's location, had floored him completely. He was rarely unsure of how to act, but he was a warrior so he went to confront the situation head-on, squashing any hesitation on the way.
He found her on the floor drinking, crumpled under the weight of what had gone on between them. It gave him no amount of satisfaction. He had meant it, when she had told her he bore her no ill will. With her father dead at his hands and his lost friends avenged, the issue of the debt her parent owned him was tabled, as far as he was concerned. If she instead had sought revenge on him, he would have fully understood, yet she seemed intent on demonstrating herself that she was above all that and hold onto her sense of right and wrong, that despite himself, he could not help but feel wry respect for her. He might not agree with her principles, as in her place he would have struck without hesitation, but he had to admire her loyalty to her morals.
Her regret was unwarranted. There was no blood on her hands. Her decency almost demanded repayment. So he sat in front of her and the words just poured out of him. Measured words of a story that at times seemed to have happened to somebody else. At first, she stopped drinking, then after a while they relocated to the table and he got them food from the replicator. He kept talking through their meal, his eyes fixed on her meticulously cutting into her roast beef, dragging the bit through the sauce, and loading her fork with vegetables. She then chewed every mouthful with extra care, ending up eating a lot less than she should have, considering how much alcohol she had just imbibed.
He told her of his birth, son of the first generation of test-tube modified embryos, implanted in the womb of one of the founders of the medical facility in Northern India, where of his kind had been created. Dr. Sarina Kaur had never seen herself as his mother, considering his birth merely a successful result of the experiment. She had not even given him a name. None of them had had names, in fact, only serial numbers. They had taken names by themselves, inspired by the region the lab was located in or borrowed from the books their supervisors had them read. He told her of growing up in sterile rooms with bunked beds, of white corridors, of armed guards and electrified fences surrounding cement courtyards, of abusive instructors and of nurses reprimanded for showing them affection, of endless experiments using early and unreliable DNA-resequencing techniques in order to improve their capabilities, of their thinning numbers, as some procedures back-fired or when some of them were sold to dictators and terrorist organizations to assure that continuing funding for research that been mostly illegal and highly unethical even then.
He told her of the escape he had orchestrated, of his killing Heisen, of being hunted, of finding out there were similar medical facilities in poor countries, where the threat of starvation and the corruption of local governments had allowed ambitious scientists and unscrupulous businessmen to conduct banned medical research. But he did not mention that he had spared Sarina Kaur and kept discreet tabs on her, practically watching her obsession with genetic engineering destroy her. He spoke of contacting running augments from other laboratories, of their concerted take-over, of his empire, of the short-lived peace it had enjoyed, until it had been attacked by his augment neighbor, Harulf Ericsson, who had thought he could contain the human rebellion within his borders by extending his kingdom. Before long the human revolt in Ericsson's kingdom had spread to his and he had been fighting a war on two fronts.
It was during his tale of the war that she began drinking again, pushing the plate of food aside in favor of the bottle of alien whiskey. He found himself unconsciously pushing her untouched dessert towards her. She didn't comment on it, merely filling a tumbler and taking a swig. He moved to the replicator to get himself a second serving, relieved both that his appetite had returned and that unlike the ones Starfleet utilized, this machine delivered food that tasted like the real thing.
He did not tell her that he and his family had only escaped thanks to the diversion one of his human generals had lead during the enemy assault on his fallen capital. The general had been captured alive and torn to pieces by a furious mob. He did tell her of the launch of the Botany Bay and of waking up in the twenty-third century, carefully evading any mention of the displacement he had felt at first. He did speak of the family members Marcus had killed, of their names and of their lives, his gaze fixed on her emptying bottle. She did not cry again only drank in bigger and bigger gulps, her eyes going glassy. There were spots of pink high on her cheeks and her hand was now unsteady, as it grabbed for the bottle.
"You'll get alcohol poisoning," he warned, placing a hand over her glass.
"We've got a cure for that now," she said dully.
He dragged the tumbler away from her, the glass racking against the odd metal of the table.
She shook her head, seeming at a loss. "If your crew is not on Talos III, I have no idea where else they might keep them," she added, slurring only a bit.
That had occurred to him as well, but her theory made sense and given the extent of Federation space, he might as well start the search somewhere. He made the short trip to the replicator to get her some water, which she did not touch, still staring emptily into space. He recognized the look on her face: it belonged to somewhere whose entire world was collapsing around them. Compassion sprang to life withing him again, but he shoved it aside, rationalizing it as concern that her defeatist attitude might impact negatively the rest of their trip. He knew it was not true, even as he thought it: she did not need her to make it to the Cardassian border. He could pilot the ship for the long hours it took until he tired and then parked it in a safe spot while he rested.
"You adapted to the change in technology very quickly," she remarked in the same toneless voice.
"Once I got used to the tridimensionality of space, it was easy. The mind is its own place, not to be changed by place and time," he paraphrased, mentally apologizing to Milton for meddling with his poetry.
She blinked owlishly. "Are you... quoting?"
He slid the water across the table and closer to her. "Paradise Lost," he explained.
"Milton? I would have pegged you for a Nietzsche admirer."
He grimaced. "They accused me of genocide and following Nietzsche philosophy?"
She cackled dryly. "There's one cliché that will never recover."
"Have some water and then you should lie down," he advised after a few tense moments.
She stared at him in wide-eyed shock and then threw her head back and started to laugh maniacally. "And now... we're in an absurdist play," she wheezed. She dissolved into tears, her shoulders trembling with the sobs. "I'm in a nightmare and I can't wake up," she whispered so softly, he only heard her thanks to his enhanced aural acuity. She hid her face in her trembling hands.
He went to her and gently helped her to her feet. She swayed a little and he put his hand on her left upper-arm to steady her. She stiffened and gaped at him with puffy, wet eyes. They were mismatched: the right one blue and the left one green. He hadn't had a reason to pay it any heed before.
"It's alright," he assured. "I won't hurt you."
"You don't...," she began, voice quaking. "You can't imagine how I want to hate you."
"I know," he said.
Khan guided her to the bed and helped her lie down. He pulled her shoes off and then grabbed of corner of the duvet to cover her. "You can sleep, until the storm dies down."
Carol buried her head into the pillow, squeezing her eyes shut. He left the glass of water on the nightstand within her reached, before he ordered the lights off and left.
# # #
Carol stumbled to the infirmary, her head pounding. Her mouth felt like cotton and tasted positively fetid. She rifled through the supplies, until she found something that would eradicate the worst of her hang-over symptoms. She could never hold her liquor very well, though to be fair, she had little practice in that area. One did not get a PhD in applied physics and graduate from Starfleet Academy before thirty while being a hardcore party-girl. She had spent her teen years making her way to Oxford and her twenties blazing a path through a highly-demanding field, competing with both humans and aliens more intellectually-gifted than them. That had meant Saturday nights spent in labs and libraries rather than bars and canceled weekend get-aways. Christine Chapel had once suggested more or less seriously that Carol had opted for a specialty that allowed her to professionally blow up stuff to relieve some of her stress and frustration.
After her trip to medbay, she showered and changed. One omelette with toast later, she began to feel more like herself so she grabbed a coffee and made her way to the bridge, where she found Khan studying starcharts. He looked up and straight into her eyes.
"How is the storm?" she asked in her best casual voice.
"Finally winding down," he replied in a neutral tone.
She sipped at her coffee, as she strolled towards the second seat. She would not acknowledge the strange and inexplicable thing that had gone between them earlier. She had been drunk and emotionally raw. Her nerves had been frayed. And they were currently under a lot of pressure. That was it. Even so, she knew he would not soon forget everything he had told her. It had the ring of truth and fit some of the monographs she had read on him so she couldn't dismiss it as lies, either. Maybe it was unfair, but wanted to. It would allow her to go back to thinking of him as that monster who had murdered her father.
"How are you feeling?" he wanted to know.
"Fine," she said, her fingers speeding over her console's commands, as she checked the meager data the ship's sensors had gathered on the storm. It was beyond anything cosmologists had ever theorized about plasma storms and she could only imagine the important information a ship like Enterprise could have stored on the phenomenon. "I am fine," she added in one rushed breath, acutely feeling his eyes on her. However, he did not bring up their extended conversation, either.
TBC