Chapter 3: Storm on the Horizon
Absolutely motionless, Joni sat on a couch on the seventy-first floor of an apartment building in Seattle, Washington, mesmerized by the thunderstorm behind the skyline that she was able to observe outside the large living-room windows. She was waiting; she had been waiting for almost an hour. Not for the thunderstorm, but for her mother. Joni was waiting for Amanda to return to the apartment where the Earth woman had been living ever since she and Sarek had separated.
Amanda did not know Joni had been waiting for her, because, being the fugitive that Joni was, Joni had not called ahead of time.
It was Joni's very first time in Seattle, in this life and the last. Ultimately, she knew this fact didn't matter; because she was not there for the tourism or excitement of visiting the megatropolis that was Seattle and Vancouver combined. Yet she was having a hard time not being astonished by what she saw.
The megatropolis and its skyscrapers stretched and stretched almost as far as she could see, even across the water. Joni had had no idea that Seattle surpassed futuristic San Francisco, which was the Capital of United Earth, in size more than twentyfold. In the entirety of the year she had been in this universe, Joni had never thought to research 23rd century Earth geography, which would have alluded to the fact that Seattle had become one of Earth's largest cities.
Joni's mind had been in a million different places. Earth was not on the top of her concerns.
Thunder rolled in as Joni heard the door to the apartment hiss open. Amanda came in wearing a heavy grey coat with a large black collar, and carrying a bag of groceries. Her hair was down, but the Vulcan-accustomed woman wore a green headscarf. The groceries surprised Joni because she had noticed that Amanda's apartment had been furnished with the latest replicator technology, as the ones now installed on the Enterprise… and the Vengeance.
Amanda did not notice Joni and went for the kitchen, rousing Joni to immediately stand from the couch. "Oh good heavens!" the woman exclaimed as she stopped dead at the sight of the unexpected.
"Mother," Joni unspiritedly acknowledged.
The woman hesitated before exclaiming, "Joni!" And after purposely dropping the bag of groceries at her feet, she ran toward her daughter. "Oh child, I barely recognize you," she said as she embraced Joni in a frantic hug. Joni returned the hug with only her real arm, leaving her cybernetic one at her side and mostly hidden under her worn, but still intact, Starfleet jacket.
Amanda eventually pulled away and held Joni's face between both of her hands so she could look her daughter over. "You look so different. You look heartbroken, my child."
Joni forced a smile. "I thought you meant my outside appearance is different, Mother. Not the state of my mind."
"Well, yes," Amanda took a step back and examined Joni's entire appearance. "That's different, too. Ohhh-w," she expressed admonishingly along with a sad smile as she touched the tiny, fine braids against Joni's scalp that Ch'Palla had made. Amanda was undoubtedly remembering a time when she would brush little Star Trek Joni's hair. "Your hair. What did you do to it?"
It was a Klingon hairstyle, but Joni was not about to mention Klingons to Amanda. "It's one of those up and coming hairstyles," she smoothly lied. It was lie number one to Amanda, she inwardly noted. Or maybe it wasn't a lie. Maybe a Klingon fashion fad would sweep the human planet—when things were less hostile with the purple-blooded race.
"And the jewelry?" Amanda touched the metal and red fan-shaped earrings on Joni before examining the jagged metal and typical Klingon necklace around Joni's neck. All of it had been supplied by Ch'Palla who wanted to make Joni look more Klingon, saying it would make Joni braver.
"I've been off-planet," Joni did not lie this time. "Some place that required me to look less human. And less Vulcan."
Amanda suddenly looked hurt and with a frown said, "Spock told me that Starfleet has you doing classified work," as if that explained why Joni had been on Qo'noS. "Have you spoken to Spock since you've been back? He is too stubborn to admit he is worried about you, but you know your brother. I could tell in our last communication that he was concerned about you. You haven't communicated with anyone, except your friend Emily, in months, Joni. You even have your father worried."
With her own mention of Sarek, Amanda's face darkened. She held back some kind of whimper and quickly tried to move past it with, "Why don't I get us some tea, and then we can talk. There's a lot to talk about," she glumly added before she walked into the kitchen.
Joni looked out the windows at the nearing thunderstorm again. The sun was now lower in the sky than the thunderhead as it sank behind the skyline. This illuminated the horizon in a haze of red, but just above the red was the dark promise of the storm as flashes of lightning illuminated the clouds. But there was something else out there that Joni had caught in the corner of her eye every few minutes. It was mechanical and unnoticeable to anyone who wouldn't know what it was.
Taking a seat back on the couch, she reminded herself how much time she had. If she missed her rendezvous with Khan, he would assume she had abandoned him.
Would she abandon him? She had not committed to going to London with him.
Lost in her indecision, Amanda reappeared too soon for Joni to be mentally ready, dropping a teacup on the living-room table in front of her distracted daughter. Amanda had taken her coat off and was now hugging herself in her comfortable long-sleeve white ensemble as she gazed at Joni with concern. The green headscarf had stayed; Joni was certain that it rarely came off. Sarek had probably given it to Amanda a long time ago, and she wore it out of sentiment.
"I will try not to pry into your work," Amanda tenderly said, but Joni only stared at her teacup to watch the tea steep. "But showing up unannounced brings more questions than easing any worries. And everyone is worried. What can you tell your mother that can help all of us understand? Is there anything you can speak of that will help you feel better?"
There were no answers for Amanda. Joni had not prepared proper answers; she had only thought about an excuse to get away from Khan, so she could think more clearly. She had even hoped that perhaps once she was on Earth, her mind would link with Spock's again, if he was on Earth. Then Spock could solve all her problems—theoretically. But Spock's presence was still not there.
The nerves joining Joni's cybernetic arm to her body tightened and twitched with her restlessness. They did that after Joni adjusted the workings in the arm, which she had done just before she and Khan left Qo'noS. It was a painful sensation, the same sort of pain as when one got their braces on their teeth adjusted—sore, sensitive, and lingering. On instinct she stretched the arm out and tested each of the fingers on the arm. It helped stretch the nerves, and to calibrate the rest of the arm.
"I can tell you only this," Joni said as she continued focusing on her arm. Amanda was staring at it too, no doubt baffled by the idea of it. "I came to you because I need you to hold onto something for me," Joni established as she turned to the entranced woman, and now used the arm to pick up her tea. She removed the tea leaf infuser, and as she took a sip she slyly removed something from a pocket of her Starfleet jacket with her real hand. Putting the tea down, Joni said, "Give me your hand."
Amanda seemed confused, but her trusting mother put out her hand for Joni, anyway. Joni quickly put both her hands around Amanda's hand, along with what she had pulled out of her pocket. The vial of lavender blood was now hidden between the two of their palms, and it looked as if Joni was comforting Amanda. "A drone has flown by your apartment windows several times. They are watching. Put this vial some place safe, Mother. Keep it very safe. Tomorrow when you hear the news—and you will hear news—do not believe what they say about me." Joni now pretended a sympathetic frown and directed Amanda to, "Act natural and tell me why you and Sarek are separated."
Amanda only missed a few heartbeats before she put her other hand up and held Joni's hands in hers, making her own sleight of hand to hide the vial between her hands before bringing her hands down, hiding the vial somewhere up her sleeve. It was an impressive move for someone who had been living with Vulcans for so long. But it was foolish to think that Vulcans couldn't be sly. Amanda had probably learned from the best. Or as a human, Amanda had learned to be sly so that the Vulcans would not notice some of her more human habits.
"It was the logical decision," Amanda told Joni. "In order to rebuild and repopulate New Vulcan, Sarek believed a Vulcan wife made more sense. It does," she coldly concluded, visibly trying not to look upset.
"He abandoned you," Joni replied, folding her arms over one another and leaning back on the couch while taking a glance out the window. "Sarek understands that humans have emotional needs. He made the commitment to meet your emotional needs when he took you as his wife. And now he has abandoned that commitment because it is no longer logical."
Amanda looked ready to cry, but she didn't. "Your father is Vulcan, Joni. It is not as if he left me for the emotional want of another woman. We separated on a mutual understanding that his obligation was to his people and culture. A vulcan wife just makes—"
"You don't have to say it," Joni stopped her. She was feeling irritation with Sarek's way of thinking—of the Vulcan way of thinking, "Obligation and logic can be cold and heartless, but it is the Vulcan way."
Her mother was now staring down at her own hands in her lap, shifting uncomfortably. Her head seemed to have shrunk back into her headscarf. "He checks in with me occasionally," she whispered as if it was a secret. "We've chatted on video-call a few times. I think… deep down he cares. Perhaps he's even remorseful. I don't know. When I think about it… I'm heartbroken. Nothing makes sense, yet it all makes sense."
"I know the feeling all too well," Joni heatedly enlightened, understanding she was in a similar situation with Khan. "I understand obligation all too well." Because of her own situation, Joni found herself caring about how Amanda was handling Sarek's abandonment more than she thought she would. Amanda was facing the same logic-or-emotion dilemma that Joni was facing.
Joni stood. "Spock has to agree that Father was in the wrong," she was trying to find some validation to her own opinion of Amanda's matter.
"Hush," Amanda expressed as she stood and took Joni in another hug. Joni felt awkward and helpless as the woman comforted her instead of the other way around. "I am done being sentimental about your father. It's you I am worried about. You are obviously in some kind of danger. Do you need anything? Any way I can keep you safe? Can I convince you to stay and explain what's going on?"
Joni forcefully pulled away. "I have to go," she asserted without meeting Amanda's eyes. "I can't explain now. Just keep that vial safe. In a few days, if my plans go through, I can explain everything. I'll see you soon, Mother," she expressed with a nod to confirm that the intention was true. Then Joni sprinted for the door, turning as it hissed open to say, "Do not say a word to anyone that I was here. Especially Spock, Mother. Please, it's for your protection."
A flash of lightning appeared out the window, and as Amanda instinctively looked, Joni disappeared down the corridor and then the apartment stairs in a run, leaving her mother to worry about everything and everyone, because that's what Amanda did. It was why Joni had given the vial of blood to her. Joni could trust Amanda to be worried and doubtful and scared. Fear motivated people. It would motivate Amanda to stay alert and ask the right questions when the time came.
On her own instinct, Joni hacked into the ground-floor alley door so that the emergency alarm wouldn't go off when she opened it. Bursting through it, she gave herself a moment's glimpse of the sky. She didn't see the drone that was tracking her, but it had to be close.
The decision to definitely rendezvous with Khan had been made when she'd seen the Section 31 drone hovering outside Amanda's apartment. The drone would be armed, and if Joni didn't stay hidden in the shadows, it would attack. It hadn't yet, but that didn't mean it wouldn't. And in knowing Admiral Marcus, who would hardly care if the drone took her out in an open crowd, hiding among the nightlife would not be an option if she didn't want to cause a scene. It may not even be the only drone tracking her.
Dammit, she thought. She already didn't have much time, and now she was being followed. If she got caught, she believed Khan would not come for her as he had at the Io Facility. Not a second time. He had owed her then—owed her for revitalizing his identity as Khan. It may not have been on purpose, but Joni had unintentionally helped on that matter. She'd allowed herself to "bond" with John Harrison; it was her Vulcan telepathy and knowledge of who he really was that revived the Khan in him.
Khan owed her nothing this time. So Joni ran; it was all she could do.
The sun had finally set and the streets were lit by electricity and neon signs. Joni ran past people and places with speed and grace, going mostly unnoticed, until she spotted the drone weaving between the above flying-traffic. With her notice of it, she took a turn down a dead-end dark alley; then she hid behind some large shiny, not-quite-metallic crates, to catch her breath.
Joni was not Khan, nor was she as athletic. Since the Io Facility she had been working out with him, doing mostly exercises for her arm (the physiotherapy Bones had told her to keep up with). So she was more in shape than she'd ever been in her life; but that did not mean she didn't miss sitting in front of a computer or tablet, typing all day. Being a fugitive had truly changed her, and she hated it. She blamed Khan, of course, for the change.
The drone did not follow Joni into the alley. She waited for it, but it didn't come. Getting antsy, she got up from behind the crates to start running again, but there was someone coming down the alley. And the someone was a he in the standard and strictly black Section 31 away-mission uniform.
Shit, shit, shit, Joni growled to herself as she dove back behind the crates. She had cornered herself by assuming that it was just the drones that Marcus had sent. And the approaching man undoubtedly had seen her. Worse, she knew who he was. Of course Marcus would send Sanford.
Sanford had been the last face and then the first face that she had seen before and after Marcus had put her in weeks of isolation at the Io Facility, when she had first refused to cooperate with Section 31.
I guess that makes Sanford my handler, Joni mused.
"Joan," the man named Sanford called out to her. "Joan, I'm unarmed. Marcus doesn't want you dead. You're too valuable, Joan."
"Stop calling me Joan, you bastard," Joni whispered. "Bullshit that you're not armed," she chose to shout, impractically pounding her head against a crate as she tried to figure out what she was going to do.
"I'm not," he promised, but Joni knew it was an absolute lie. A Section 31 Agent on a mission, but without a phaser was like a toothless wolf trying to hunt. Unless you are Sloan, she told herself, preparing to make a run for it on the count of three. She could surprise Sanford by activating the shield in her cybernetic arm.
Sanford had stopped approaching. "I just want to talk. Listen, if we wanted you dead, you'd be dead. We don't want you dead, Joan. We need you."
"I'm sure you can find someone else to build your weapons of mass destruction," she replied, delaying her escape. She'd play along for another minute or two as she calculated what kind of force she would need to knock Sanford down. He was a bulky man. Most of Admiral Marcus's Section 31 tactical agents were.
"You are more than a brilliant weapon designer and programmer, Joan. We need you because having a Vulcan on our side is logical." Joni snorted at the thought. "Being half-Vulcan is all the better. Makes you more trustworthy."
He was trying to distract her? Why?
Joni stood and came into Sanford's view. He wasn't holding a phaser, but that didn't mean he did not have one. She was impressed with how little he'd reacted to her Klingon-esque appearance, besides a slight widening of his eyes. "I steal Section 31 technology. And then I leave with John. That doesn't sound trustworthy to me. It sounds like betrayal. And I fully intended to betray Section 31 when it happened."
Sanford smiled as if he'd won. It was the smile that had greeted Joni when he had opened the door to the cell she'd been held in during her punishment of isolation. It was a smile that made her want to bash his face in. "You haven't betrayed us, Joan. You think running away for a short while means you don't work for us anymore? That bond can only be broken when you're dead."
"So what happens? I come with you peacefully, Marcus forgives me, and the world is right again?" Joni took a menacing step toward Sanford to gauge his reaction. He took a tense step back and his fingers twitched. Joni gathered that his phaser was attached to the back of his belt. He merely needed to reach behind his back in one fluid motion to have it on Joni; meaning he believed he was faster than her.
"You're not like Harrison," Sanford suddenly said. "He killed six people when he came to retrieve you from Marcus. You—zero. He's a cold-blooded murderer, Joan. You have a heart. You're not a killer." He took another step back. "Section 31 needs you because you know when to use and when not to use a weapon of mass destruction. Harrison would use one just to show that he can."
A red dot appeared on Joni's chest, where her Vulcan heart was. That's what he was waiting for, she realized with a glimpse above Sanford's head. The drone was hovering outside the alley in the distance. Why a drone would need a laser-sight was beyond her, but it was at least serving the purpose of a warning.
"Set to stun, I presume," Joni said, meaning the drone's phaser, as she stared at Sanford with amused eyes.
"I told you we don't want you dead," he confirmed.
In an instant, Joni had her cybernetic arm and its embedded shield activated at the same time the drone fired. The shield surprised Sanford and he pulled out the phaser that was behind his back, firing at Joni as she charged at him with the shield as her cover. He tried to back away, but Joni was too quick. When she was within reach of him, she knelt—shield turned-off with a simple unclenching of her cybernetic hand—and tripped him with a swift motion of her legs. The bulky man fell as he fired his phaser, it cutting into the walls of the surrounding buildings.
He fell hard, but Joni still had to summersault over his body; and in a stunt she had practiced with Khan, she crouch-kicked the phaser out of Sanford's hand to stop him from firing. The drone picked up where his phaser left off, so Joni had to dodge the drone's phaser fire in a way that it would hit Sanford before he got up.
Its phaser singed her hair, but she managed to move just in time. And accurately. Sanford was out. Stunned, but not dead.
Her shield immediately went back up, so that the drone would miss her again. It was hovering right outside the alley and because it didn't hover away once she exited the alley, she jumped up and grabbed onto it.
The drone swayed, but was able to hold her weight. It rose a few more feet in the air as it twisted its axis, starting to readjust itself so that it could fire at her again, though she was right underneath it. Joni dangled eight feet from the ground. Using her upper body strength, she swung her lower body upward so that she kicked the drone with both her booted feet with enough force to make it lose its balance. They both went downward.
She was prepared for the impact and dropped from the drone just before it hit ground. The drone was not prepared, and hit it noisily before skidding across the street with sparks, frightening several pedestrians. Many more people were watching, looking at Joni as if she was expected to explain. She took off at a run, again.
Joni ran no more than five minutes before she heard sirens, and then two more drones—police grade—began following her, the lights on the top of their shells flashing.
"Stop, or we will be forced to use a stunning phaser on you," one of the drones declared as it zoomed just behind her. Now, people really got out of the way as Joni ran.
"This is your last warning," the second drone announced as she was coming up to a street-corner. Because Joni did not want to wake up in a Federation prison, she had no choice but to comply.
At the corner of the street, she stopped and put her hands up. Everyone across the street was watching intently; she returned a Vulcan stare at them. She wondered how often Federation citizens got to see a criminal being caught. Federation Earth was considered a utopia with little to no crime. Supposedly, anyway, Joni inwardly thought, knowing little truths from her time with Section 31.
"Slowly turn around and identify yourself," one of the drones ordered her. Because of the order, Joni considered making a run for it again. If the drones got a good look at her, her identity would be transmitted from local Federation law enforcement to Starfleet, almost instantly.
The decision was made for her when a futuristic motorcycle pulled up to the curb. Immediately, the helmeted man on the bike threw something over Joni's shoulder, and Joni heard it hit one of the drones hovering behind. The device that was thrown short-circuited the drone—Joni was overly familiar with the sound. Then there was a loud electrical buzzing before an even louder crash.
Joni looked over her shoulder in time to see that the drone with the device stuck to it was sparking and had flown into the other drone, which was also sparking as they both tumbled through the air together. There were dozens of gasps and cries as people ran out of the way before the two drones hit a building with a small explosion of metal and neon lights.
She didn't need to be told to get on the motorcycle and jumped onto the back of the seat, practically hugging Khan, before onlookers were less occupied with the display caused by the EMP device he had thrown. She noted that it was one of the devices she had seen him tinkering with before they left Qo'noS.
Khan reached back and handed Joni a phaser. She silently accepted it, not knowing what he expected her to do with it. She had proven to him before that she wasn't handy with a pistol. A rifle, she had done a little better with. But pistols made her nervous and insecure. Was he expecting her to improve with it under pressure?
Once she took the phaser, the bike whirred to life and zoomed forward. Joni had never been on a motorcycle before, but this one seemed especially fast. It was dizzying as Khan wove through the streets and the people as if he'd ridden a bike all his life. Joni felt like she was going to hurl.
But a part of that was the elation she felt of seeing Khan. She hadn't even missed the rendezvous, and he'd come for her.
He must have anticipated that she would be followed by Section 31, she decided. On Qo'noS, she'd known when she told him she wanted to go to Seattle that he would disagree, that he would see it as endangering his own reason for returning to Earth. But he'd allowed her to go anyway, and told her that if she wanted to go to London with him to help fulfill vengeance on Marcus, he would wait for her at a designated location outside of Seattle. It wasn't said, but it was implied that if she didn't show, he would go through with his plans without her.
They entered an underground portion of the streets and Joni saw the reason why Khan had handed her the phaser. She hadn't noticed—preoccupied with being on a bike for the first time—but they were being followed by three Section 31 drones. She immediately took aim at the closest one, trying to keep ahold of Khan at the same time. She missed, because she thought they were moving too fast.
The drone started firing, too, so she activated her shield. She needed both hands, but then she'd have to let go of Khan. Flustered, she let go anyway, but had to put down her shield to spin around in a single motion, so that her back was against Khan's on the bike. With her legs, she held onto the bike as tight as she could as she fired and succeeded a shot at the sensor of the first drone. It spun backwards and hit the underground tunnel wall before exploding and causing traffic to swerve.
The second drone fired within the opportunity, so Khan effortlessly jerked the bike left while grabbing onto Joni's right arm so she wouldn't fly right off the bike. She seemingly flew for a split-second before she was somehow back in the seat, set in front of Khan. He swerved the bike a few more times as all the drones began to fire phasers at them. Then he took the phaser from Joni and released his hold on the bike.
It was impossible, but Khan jumped off the bike in that moment onto a cargo van they were riding past. Joni didn't have time to watch the rest of his stunts, because she realized with an, "Oh shit!", that she was in charge of driving the bike.
She panicked and the bike swerved under her until she grabbed onto the handles and leaned into it. It steadied almost instantly and Joni realized that it wasn't as manual of a motorcycle as she thought; it must have had some kind of auto-drive. It became easier to control once she found that it reacted almost instantly to her touch and the obstacles in front of her.
With a little experimenting, she discovered that the right handle controlled the speed. She heard phaser fire and then a very loud and earth-shaking explosion behind her. But she slowed the bike so that she could ride along the cargo van that was now speeding up to get the hell out of the tunnel. Khan had already disappeared from atop of it. There were no rearview mirrors on the bike, so she couldn't tell what was going on, and she firmly believed that she shouldn't look back. There was no telling how many innocent lives were being lost by Khan's actions.
Because of me!
The thought was surprisingly more angering than freaked. Instinct took ahold of Joni and she swerved and spun the bike around, coming to a halt as she faced the direction to see what was happening. There was enough destruction in the tunnel that there was no doubt that a few lives had been lost. It looked as if Khan had collapsed the tunnel. He was still nowhere in sight, so she bolted forward on the bike toward the smoke and flames. Finally he came running out the smoke and debris, and Joni skid the bike to a stop before him.
"Get on," she ordered, feeling angrier with the heat of smoke. The helmet he had been wearing was gone; his face was dirtied and scratched, but he looked amused as he got on the bike, placing himself behind her. She suddenly felt disgusted that he was so close to her—he had collapsed the tunnel merely because he could.
"Harrison would use one just to show that he can," Sanford had said. Joni knew it was true. She knew Khan's nature. She knew, and yet she did not want to abandon him.
With a disapproving glower, she started the bike. She wanted to get out of there fast, so she throttled the bike to full speed, barely managing to dodge obstacles. If it wasn't for the bike's automatic features, she probably would have crashed the bike out of anger to Khan, and especially herself.
The chaos caused by the collapsed street-tunnel had focused most of the law enforcement's attention on medical evacuation. Joni and Khan slipped away with little notice, and ditched the bike as soon as they were at an appropriate distance to do so. Khan then used his wrist-transporter (something he had designed at the Io Facility and kept when he went fugitive) to beam the two of them outside the city to their rendezvous location—somewhere near Cougar Mountain.
The view from where they now stood was breathtaking. The storm had finally hit Seattle, but had not quite reached where they were now. Joni stood in silence as she stared at the storm covered Skyline—lightning dancing before her eyes. It was impressive, and not something she had seen for a very long time. She'd gotten used to hiding away on Qo'noS.
She and Khan had exchanged very few words at all since he'd come to get her on the bike.
He even ignored her now as he tapped at his wrist-transporter and said, "It'll take some time for the cells to recharge. I will let you know when it's time."
Time as in: when it was time to go be in London.
"I'm not going," Joni declared, meeting his eyes—challenging him.
The reaction was instant. Khan grabbed the wrist of Joni's right hand and hostilely said, "Now is not the time to throw a tantrum." Something deadly ran through Joni's veins—hatred—and she scowled at Khan for a very long moment until he threw down her wrist. Scoffing, he said, "Are you upset because I'm exactly who you thought I was?"
"Did you think saving me back there was going to convince me where my loyalties are?!" she furiously retorted, shoving him. She knew better, but she was too tired of restraining her own emotions. It didn't matter, anyway, because shoving Khan was like trying to shove a building.
"I know where your loyalties are," Khan used his voice like a knife. "Your loyalties are not with Marcus," he hissed. "If you don't start acting like it isn't, you'll play right back into his hands."
"I'm not like you!" Joni screamed. "I have remorse. I feel shame for my mistakes. I can't take a life and feel fine about it."
"Do you blame others for their own survival?" he responded with genuine disbelief in his tone. "Do you blame yourself for your own survival?! Don't be afraid to live with the consequences of choosing to live," he said almost out of despair, as if he so desperately wanted Joni to understand. He reached out and put his hands on the side of Joni's face. "And if in the end you have nothing to live for, dear Joan, at least live for yourself."
Joni stared at him with wide eyes of her own disbelief. "It scares me that my survival matters to you," she whispered. "It scares me that you are willing to change for me, and that I might just be willing to change for you. I wanted you to be predictable. I wanted to know how this was going to end… "
That's when the rain started.
It had been months since she felt water all around her skin. She very much missed showers, but then it hit Joni that she had actually not seen or felt rain since long before being in the Star Trek universe. Because she had been whisked away in space a year ago. To the Enterprise. Then to the Io Facility. Eventually finding herself living on Qo'noS where it did not rain very much in the Ketha Province, and it had not since she and Khan had taken refuge there.
The fat, cold drops gratifyingly hit her face, before rolling down to Khan's hands where he held onto Joni. She looked up at the sky, which she found beautiful—stormy, but absolutely beautiful. She closed her eyes and took the cold water in on her face. She laughed, because she had not realized how much she had missed rain. Wonderful, wonderful rain. The sound of rain. The feeling of raindrops. And the entire ambiance of a storm.
She gently pulled away from Khan, putting her arms out to catch more rain on the sleeves of her jacket. Smiling, she slowly spun in circles. It was the most peace she had felt in a very long time as she slowly spun amidst the rain. All the worry, the anger, and the hatred she had been hanging on to just washed away.
Laughing again, and again, she eventually opened her eyes and happily expressed, "I missed the rain!"
Khan broke out in lighthearted laughter and Joni took him by the hand and yanked him to where she had been spinning. "Did you miss the rain, too?" she asked as a child would, holding his hand with her cybernetic hand and gesturing outward toward the sky with her real one.
He looked confused as he stared down at her. "I miss a lot of things," he finally said.
"I understand," she replied. "Now spin in a circle with your arms out… like this," she spaced his arms out for him.
"This is not—"
"You're going to appreciate the beauty of the rain with me," she cut him off. If she had hear "this is not the time" from Khan, again, she was going to go mad. That was Spock's line for her, and she didn't approve of when Spock said it, either.
Joni pushed Khan to try and get him to spin, but he didn't budge. He stared at her in an annoyed fashion, but for once she was able to keep a fierce unfaltering gaze on him. It took a few seconds, but she finally won in dominance and Khan took a step back from her to spin in a slow clumsy circle with his arms out.
Joni made a single clap for him that sputtered rain from her hands. "You did it!" she shouted as she wickedly smiled at him. "I knew you could do it. You can put your arms down now."
"Was that necessary?" he heatedly asked as he put his arms down, looking almost embarrassed. From observation, Joni had learned that instead of the normal manner of embarrassment, Khan got angry when he was embarrassed. She understood; embarrassment was a weakness, and if there was one thing Khan refused himself, it was a weakness.
"Just as necessary as blowing up the Archive," she answered in a condescending tone.
"Very necessary," he snickered in reply. And just like that he went back to being serious Khan. "I'll be inside, recharging the power cells." He turned and walked toward a building that Joni just noticed. It looked like a garage, covered in ivy. He went through a latched door on the side. Joni gave it a minute before she followed him.
And she would follow him. She was already trying to play out how things would end now that she was going to London. She would go to London. She'd allow herself to be a part of Khan's plans.
He'd said that he knew where her loyalties were. If that were true, then Khan would know that her loyalties were not with him. They could never be with him. Joni had made sure of that when she stole and then injected herself at the Io Facility with the genetic-altering disease that Carol Marcus created to kill human augments.
Once Khan found out that Joni was carrying the disease that would kill him and his "family", Khan would finally see Joni as a threat. And Khan would find out. It was only a matter of time.
It was why Joni needed Khan to be predictable. Her survival depended on it.
EssentiallyRei's AN: "It's been a long road, getting from there to here." Okay, so it's been a really long road. But here's chapter three... finally. Hope you like the action-y goodness! And please leave nice reviews. I was nervous about this chapter.
Oh, and I forgot to mention. The song that helped inspire this chapter was: London by Third Eye Blind. Kind of humorous, I know.