A/N: if you read it, please tell me what you think, whether good or bad.
They had been thrown off course thrice, the frailty of their ship in the face of space disturbances making Carol think of the wooden vessels at the mercy of the oceans of Earth. Each new deviation added to the journey, until it got a week longer than initially anticipated. If Khan was frustrated with this new development, he didn't show it, his laser focus on navigations. Or perhaps his unperturbed calm hid more strategic planning. Either way, his confession had lifted the cloud of tension hanging above their interactions and they were now working together with considerable ease. He also seemed to be recovering nicely from the ordeal Section 31 had put him through. He even gained some of his lost weight back, losing some of that frightening skeletal look. His eyes had cleared up. His recovery was even more obvious in the swift and sleek way he moved, like a panther on the prowl.
It was all the more evident in the impeccably straight line of his body, reshaping muscles pushing against the material of his shirt, the tendons in his neck stretched to perfection, as he stood in front of the starcharts on the view-screen at the back of the bridge. They were almost at the Cardassian border, tucked in the safety of a small asteroid field. Carol reviewed the sensor data and walked up to his side.
"The only way we can reach Talos III is through Federation territory," she said tapping a finger nail against the rim of the tea cup she was holding.
He raised his right eyebrow by a fraction of an inch. "We?"
"Yes," she said adamantly. "You promised me nobody else would die and I'm going to make sure you keep your word."
He didn't point out that she didn't have much in terms of options of stopping him from killing anyone. "And then?" he asked in carefully controlled voice.
She glowered at him, as her hackles started to rise. "You said the Federation would never hear from you again."
He turned his head to look her in the eye, his gaze as penetrative and inquisitive as ever. "You won't! I plan to take a sturdier ship from whatever base we will find on Talos III and take my family to the region marked as unexplored here," he said gesturing towards the wide pocket of space between the Tholian and Cardassian frontiers. "We will never return," he added, pale lips pulling back from over his teeth. "I was inquiring about you."
"Good to know you're planning to let me alive, when this is over," she quipped. He made a show of rolling his eyes at that. She pursed her lips. "I will be court-martialed for deserting my post. Cartwright won't even have to come up with a trumped-up charge."
He inched himself closer, his face pinching into a stern expression. "Cartwright will make you disappear."
"I have to go back," she said tightly.
"There is a difference between going back to your death and going back to tell Section 31 that if anything happens to you, every news service in the Federation will receive a recording of myself recounting all of my dealings with them."
Carol froze, arrested in place by the intensity of his gaze. "Only that there is no recording!"
"There is, if I make one for you."
"Why? Why would you care what happens to me?"
"I wouldn't, but you rescued me and now you're helping me find my people, which leaves me in your debt."
She made to step aside. "That's not why I did it."
He lightly gripped her upper arm to stop her from moving away. "I know. This is precisely why I'm offering."
She shrugged free of his touch and he allowed it. She strolled back to her seat, her body numb, yet her mind turning feverishly. If she had actual, hard evidence of Section 31's existence, then she could expose them and stop the cogs of this monstrous machine.
"Your great accomplishments are routed in mechanical improvements, but improve man and you gain thousandfold. But even someone who is better at everything has at least one flaw," he said.
He had come closer, towering over her. Carol stared aimlessly at the asteroid-peppered cosmos outside the ship's windows. She knew what he hinted at: not even he was flawless. The genetically-engineered supersoldier had emotions of a potency no human could hope to match. She ran a hand through her hair. "Is this your way of telling me nothing is perfect?"
"If a battle cannot be won, do not fight it," he said mildly in that rumbling, low baritone of his.
"Says the person who waged a one-man war against Starfleet." There was no heat in her voice and she looked up at him with slight smile, even as she spoke.
A hint of a grin flourished on his lips. "No, that was something Sun Tzu said. And I did not wage a war against Starfleet, I went on a suicide mission intent on taking as many of enemies with me as I could."
She shifted uncomfortably in her seat. "Shit! You didn't run off to Kronos to hide, did you? You dared my father to come after you."
He snarled and sat behind the command console in that imperious way that was his alone.
"I can't just let this slide," she said with finality.
He slammed his fist down on the console. "Do you think that if you do this the pain in your leg will somehow go away? That it will prove that you are not a victim? That it will make you feel less culpable for not suspecting what your father was hiding? Or do you simply wish to kill yourself?" He inclined his head in her direction, his pinpoint pupils dark and laser-focused digging relentlessly into her own gaze. "You're not responsible for what Alexander Marcus did, nor are you a victim, but you will be, if you embark on a crusade you cannot hope to win against Section 31."
His words cut deep, his insight disconcerting. There was a pause, enough for the silence between them to become oppressive.
"If you want it, that recording is yours. You choose what to do with it," he said a while later, his voice now level. "We are nearly at the border. You should get some rest, before we cross it."
# # #
If their mission had been Starfleet sanctioned, crossing the Badlands in a small Denobulan ship functioning solely on auxiliary power would have been one for the history books. Things being what they were, Carol was grateful she and Khan had managed not to kill each other on the way. They were now in their respective seats on the bridge looking at the Olmerak system on the view-screen.
She rested her head against the back of her chair. "Is this a bad time to tell you I don't speak Cardassian?"
He gave her a wan smile. "This close to the frontier it's likely someone on the colony knows Standard."
The ship had no transporter capabilities so they landed it on the outskirts of a town on the first inhabited planet they found. The city looked worse for the wear: barely scraped together buildings, dirty streets and Cardassians who averted their eyes, as Khan and Carol passed them by. As they moved deeper in, they came across other races as well, the colony's border outpost status obvious in its mixed character. They arrived at a sort of bazaar buzzing with commercial activity. Carol asked the first Orion they came across about an engineer capable of repairing Denobulan ships, explaining that they were peddlers whose vessel had been caught in a space anomaly.
The woman, a tall blue Orion, eyed their long, black overcoats with hoods suspiciously. Carol pushed her cowl back, releasing her hair to be ruffled by the soft breeze floating around. The air smelled of sea and rotten food. The Orion smiled slightly, her eyes arrested by the sight of Carol's blond hair.
"I heard humans have yellow hair, but I never thought it was true. There is a former starships engineer two streets from here, at the edge of the market. He's Cardassian, but he's trustworthy." The woman's smile grew coy. "Now, I believe I'm due a reward for the information."
From the corner of his eye, Carol saw Khan take an almost imperceptible step closer to the alien. "What kind of reward?" Carol asked carefully.
The Orion's dark eyes darted nervously to a still hooded Khan, the imposing straightness of his posture radiating danger. The woman hesitated, shifting her weight from one foot to another. Carol stepped between them. There was no point in them attracting further attention to themselves. "What would you like?" she insisted.
The alien seemed to regain some of her sang froid. "A lock of your hair," she answered in one breath.
"No," Khan said firmly from behind her, his voice low and menacing.
Carol put up a gloved hand. "It's alright."
She had a vintage, 21st century Swiss army pocket knife, a birthday gift from her Academy mates, on her so she pulled it out and quickly chopped a small lock of her hair, which she then handed to the Orion who snatched it with a wide, fascinated grin, before casting yet another wary glance in Khan's direction and hurrying away. Carol watched her until she disappeared in the crowd then turned to her augment companion. "Shall we?"
The Cardassian engineer was old but moved with sufficient vigor and best of all, spoke a broken Standard. He showed definite interest when Carol mentioned that they could trade medical supplies for his services. He took a younger Cardassian and some instruments Carol didn't recognize with him, when they lead him to their ship so he could look it over. Khan let her conduct the negotiations, only surveying the proceedings from a distance, his quiet yet powerful presence visibly intimidating their alien contractors, who kept darting anxious looks towards him. Carol had a feeling that they would not have to worry about them getting double-crossed or attacked.
The Federation might not have a currency-based economy, but many Starfleet officers, Carol herself included, carried with them several items that could be used for a trade-off with civilizations outside familiar borders. So she handed the engineer her samples of Terran and Vulcan spices exchange for his working through the night to get the ship ready in the shortest amount of time possible. While he worked, he recommended them an inn not far away from where the vessel was parked.
She paid for their rooms and meals with a few Spican flame gems she had won at the Dom-jot table during a long, dull cultural exchange program on Andoria, back when she had still been an ensign. The chambers were small to the point of claustrophobic, but they looked clean and had en suite, sauna like baths with real water. The inn's restaurant, however, smelled profusely and unpleasantly of fish and lacked anything with caffeine. So they ordered food and camped by an opened window. They waited for a long while, until the waitress returned to them with two large bowls of pieces of a gelatinous, green mass sticking out of a a milky, white sauce. It didn't smell bad per se, but the scent was not appetizing, either. That did not seem to deter Khan, who diligently applied himself to the task of eating the congealing, uneven course.
The waitress came again slamming two tall mugs of steaming liquid on their table. Carol snatched one and breathed in the pungent smell. She blew over it and took a tentative sip. It tasted as spicy as she imagined, but otherwise, it was delicious.
"You should not have given the Orion that lock of hair," he said, his gaze washing over her face, shifting his attention from his meal to her.
She shrugged one shoulder. "I didn't see the harm in it."
"You gave her your DNA," he muttered, a tinge of something much like concern filtering in his voice.
"I gave her a token," she explained. "Orions traditionally collect souvenirs of physical traits they find unusual in other races. I had friends both at Oxford and at the Academy who did the same. It's not a big deal. Besides, we should count ourselves lucky she didn't fancy one of my eyes," she finished with a smile meant to lighten the atmosphere.
It had the exact opposite effect on him. His jaw set, his lips paling and pressing together angrily, as the look on his face hardened. His fingers curled tighter around his fork, knuckles now white. She stared at him questioningly but he said nothing.
"How is the food?" she asked to change the subject.
He dumped his fork onto his plate, his gaze still laser-focused on her face. "Revolting, but fresh. It tastes like some sort of meat so you should eat it. You need the protein." Every one of his words was carefully-measured, voice even deeper than usual.
It wasn't exactly a ringing endorsement, but her stomach was cramping with hunger, so she stabbed at a piece of that gummy would-be stew and shoveled it into her mouth. She had to cover her lips with her hand to prevent herself from spitting it out. He was right: it was revolting.
# # #
Carol was one wall away, even closer than on the ship. The wall separating them was certainly flimsier than the vessel's thick metal bulkhead. He could tear this one down with a fist. If he concentrated, he could hear her breathing through the cracking and crinkling of the frail structure they were in. She was a beautiful woman. It wasn't that Khan had not noticed before. He had first noted it, when he had caught a glimpse of the picture the admiral had of her on his desk in the Section 31 London base. It had not meant anything. It had been merely an observation in the same vein that he remarked that the sky earthen sky was still blue. But now after weeks in the cramped quarters of a crippled, alien ship, the details of her beauty emerged clearer than ever: the elegant slope of her swan-like neck, her marmoreal skin, her golden hair and her heterochromatic eyes.
He carefully kept his thoughts from straying from physical traits and into the realm of the gratuitous kindness she had shown him and which he could not rationalize away, her intelligence, remarkable for a mere human, that allowed her to easily navigate her knowledge of applied physics and think quickly under pressure, and above all, her tenacity. She had been ever so determined to present him a brave facade. She persevered in defying the limits of her all too human body to be on the bridge and stumble through the unequal battle they had fought and won against the Badlands.
She reminded him of someone attempting to climb a rocky mountain without proper equipment: crawling up, cutting herself, bleeding and almost suffocating at times, yet never giving up. Khan had seen worse than the Badlands, but Carol had grown up free in a peaceful and prosperous world without inequities and injustices. She had never been to war and as far as he could tell, until her father's betrayal, she had been reasonably able to trust the people in her life. Being trapped with someone she was wary of on an extremely dangerous journey had to have been nerve-wrecking, but she had displayed no outward sign of stress, her focus seeming entirely on reaching their destination.
Physical attraction he could keep under control. Others of his kind had been less inclined so, but he did not see the point of superior ability if one did not use it to maintain an iron grip on one's impulses. He held order in high regard and considered the lack thereof an attribute of the weak. But now lying in bed in a Cardassian hotel, unable to sleep, the woman next door haunted him, the edge of his desire sharpened by her suicidal insistence on going against Section 31 on her own. He wanted her to live almost as much as he had once wanted her father to die.
He slid off his bed and pulled on his trousers and shirt, then went to knock on her door.
"Who is it?" Carol asked in Standard in a voice thick with sleep.
"Carol, it's me," he responded in English.
He counted up to a minute, until she opened the door. She was wearing only that electric blue slip she had seen her in before.
"Is something wrong?" she asked, a note of worry trembling in her tone.
He came in uninvited, his body almost brushing against hers, as he crossed the threshold. She commanded the door shut in his cue. He shook his head 'no' at her question. She looked at him in puzzlement. He walked into her personal space without a word and gently brushed a few stray hairs from her face, the pads of his fingers skidding across her silken skin. The heat of her body seeped into his. He leaned over and ran his lips over the side of her neck in a slow, careful caress. His hands came to rest on her lower back, pressing into the satiny material of her night-gown, pulling her flush against him. He hadn't been this close with somebody in this manner since before the war, since before tactics and increasingly higher chances of defeat had taken over his every waking thought.
She smelled piquantly of alien soap and was so warm and pliant in his arms. For a while he just held her, trailing his right index finger up and down the length of her spine. Then he realized that something was off. She was not pushing him away or saying no, but but she stood too still against him, her arms by her side, not returning his embrace. The way her heart was racing was open to interpretation so he needed to see her face to properly gauge her mood. He let her go instantly and lifted her head with a light grip on her chin. Her eyes were swimming with tears. There was no fear in them, but then she went to great lengths to never show him any.
Horror struck immediately, catching him wrong-footed. He had never claimed to be the paragon of morality, but he had never forced anyone into his bed, either. However, she had no way of knowing what lines he would not cross. Had she let him touch her, because she was all too aware of her inability to fight him off? It came into direct contradiction with everything he knew about her, but then she had been pushed to the brink one time too often lately so it was conceivable that something inside had snapped at some point.
He slowly backed away from her. "I'm sorry," he said mechanically. "That was presumptuous of me."
And with that he left. Back in his room, he started pacing up and down, his feet scrubbing against the bristly rug. Guilt was a rare and entirely unwelcome occurrence for him. On the other side of the wall, Carol was sobbing loudly.
TBC