Thanks, Sassiebone, for the all the awesome reviews as well as helping me come up with an idea for this chapter. :) Thank you, Noxy the Proxyand Elvira Silver(Sorry, I should have thanked you MUCH earlier) for reviewing as well. :)
Chapter 19
They were in the conference room. Silver Moon glared at him from across the table. Her arms were crossed tensely in front of her chest. Khan closed to door to the room and sat down in front of her. Sharp Quill would tend to the children and deal out punishment if they were unwise enough to misbehave while Silver Moon flayed him alive.
"So?" Khan asked quietly.
"What happened?" She sits up, her spine rigid, body tensed.
"Excuse me?" He frowned.
"You hurt Little Wolf," she says point blank and Khan flinched. "Why? What. Happened?"
"Nothing," the lie spills too quickly past his lips. He tries to catch the word, but it rushes past his teeth and leaps off his tongue into the open expanse between them.
"Nothing." Her eyes narrowed slightly.
The word came out as a whisper, deceptively soft and quiet, but he wasn't fooled by her mock calm. The rage that was building was too close to the surface and already it was boiling over into her posture.
Slam!
Her clenched fist punched the hard metal table—she doesn't so much as flinch.
She shrieks at him, allowing him to see plainly her anger: "Nothing isn't what happens when you put someone in the ER. Nothing is not what happens when you snap a little girl's spine!"
Guilt pooled in the pit of his stomach and worked its way into his chest. Slowly, the heavy emotion pooled into his heart and filled it with its heavy leaden burden. He inhaled slowly and exhaled deeply in a vain effort to expel the heaviness in his chest. It only grew worse.
"It was…an unforeseen tragedy."
She was beside him then and a harsh slap exploded across his cheek, turning his head to the side. He glared back up at her but she refused to shrivel away.
"Stop dancing around the subject," she snapped and he nodded once.
"Fine. It was an accident, then. We were sleeping and I…" he trailed off as he thought.
"You…" she prompted.
"I…had a nightmare." He threw the last words out so fast that they jumbled together incoherently. Frustrated, he inhaled deeply and tried again. "When we went to bed, and after we had fallen asleep, I remembered an…unfortunate time in my past. In my memory people that I…that I cared—and still care—deeply about were in peril. They were in danger," he swallowed at the lump in his throat, "because of me. A man, my captor, was going to begin killing them, one after the other, if I did not cooperate in giving him the means to biological warfare. I wanted to kill him, obviously."
Khan remembered the blood burning his veins as all his hatred spilled into his deadly hands. His palms had wrapped oh so delicately around Marcus's fragile neck and then his face…and then…screaming.
Her screaming instead of Marcus. The jolt of surprise that took his breath and froze him in place when he had seen her injured back…
"I had never intended for Little Wolf to—" There was moisture on his cheeks and a lump that had grown painfully in his throat, making it difficult to breathe as sorrow and shame flooded his system and sent electric shocks down his limbs.
"An accident." He swallowed again. "That's all it was," He looked up at Silver Moon and she broke his gaze to stare at the table. "I apologize, Silver Moon. If you wish to leave, I will not stop you."
She was quiet for a minute as she digested all he had said to her. When she finally spoke it was low and quiet: "It was not intentional?"
Had she been waiting for this moment? Waiting for him to snap and violently harm or kill all of them-one after the other? Had she known, deep down inside of her in some dark, obscure crevis of her being, that an event such as this was inevitable...?
"No. What have I to gain from harming a child—my child?" Their eyes met and he memorized the color of her irises. "Is she…better? I mean, is she—"
"Yes…she's 'better'. There's no more injury, thanks, in part, to you." She hesitated and he could read her thought as its message flickered across her face: Even though, technically, the injury was also thanks to you. "X-rays were clear. No signs of paralysis."
"And mentally?" He whispered.
"A nightmare, here and there, but, according to Sharp Quill, she's had those for a while." She shrugged, "So, I don't know. Children are incredible at adapting; time would help. Therapy would as well. Perhaps, if you two talked through it…" she shrugged. "You could explain why it had happened; just spare her the gruesome details, obviously."
He smirked ruefully. "Obviously," he echoed. "What is it you plan to do? Leave or stay?"
His mind rebelled against the idea of letting them go out into the damaged and unpredictable world outside his ship but he easily killed the protest. His job was to keep them safe, even if it was from himself.
"I don't know," she said. She rose quickly to her feet. "I just don't know." Then the door was swishing open and the breeze generated by her body brought a faint scent of her perfume to him: lilacs and vanilla.
Well, at least she was honest.
…
He, too, rose to his feet and watched emotionlessly as she fled from his sight. She had expected him to have purposely harmed Little Wolf, for whatever reason, to hurt her. She had expected him to be cold and cruel.
Emotionless.
Empty.
Damned.
Instead, all she had seen was a man: a very real man with very real emotions. This, of course, had created a conundrum. Had he been cruel, he would have been dangerous, thus making her decision as to whether to leave or stay a simple one.
Now…it was just chaos. An accident. It had been an accident and he regretted it, dearly. So, what was she to do? If they left, they could very well find themselves at death's door thanks to a certain Starfleet Admiral, but, if they stayed, who was to say that such an incident would not occur again? It happened once, why not twice?
Stay or leave?
Leave or stay?
Yes, a difficult choice indeed. He walked to the cockpit and closed the door. This was a decision she needed to make alone; he would not attempt to influence her one way or the other…despite his feelings for her and the others. Right now, he'd focus his efforts elsewhere.
After all, his frozen family still needed him.
And he had a score to settle.