-Chapter Eight-

Kirk turned to Anthea, who held her hand up to forestall anything he might have said.

"You may be under the delusion you have any say here, Kirk, but you don't. I did that on purpose. Now, if you'll excuse me, we actually have to work for a living here, and I have things to do." She headed towards the cargo hold of the Reliance, skirt fluttering, to retrieve some things she'd need when the house was finished. To her annoyance, Kirk followed her aboard the ship.

"I have nothing more to say to you, Captain," she shot over her shoulder. "I've said everything already."

Kirk caught her arm, pulled her back. "Anthea. What are you doing with this guy? I mean, seriously? He's a monster."

She yanked herself free. "He's my husband, Captain Kirk. The one you conveniently forgot to mention was still alive when you took advantage of me. At least he's honest with me."

"You're right. I shouldn't have- Didn't we discuss this a year ago? Agreed it shouldn't have happened?"

"That doesn't change the fact that you lied to me and you-" She gritted her teeth. "Do you have any idea how it made me feel to learn that my husband, the man I love, was imprisoned in a cryotube and I- let you do things to me that-"

She couldn't even get the words out.

"Fine. I'm guilty of being a man. I didn't think you needed to know. You were better off thinking he was dead."

"No, I wasn't!" she screamed, slamming her fist into his chest. "Do you have any idea what it's like to lose someone, Kirk, someone whose loss feels like half of you has been ripped away? Of course you don't, so you don't care how badly I ached without him. You have no concept of what it was like, waking every morning without him, not knowing if he was alive or dead, suspecting he'd been killed but not knowing. All the unanswered questions, the pain, and you took advantage of me when all I wanted to know was where my husband was."

Kirk looked stricken, the colour draining out of his face, as he realised just how mistaken he'd been about her motives all this time. "I'm . . . sorry," he said. "I didn't think-"

"That doesn't absolve you, and it doesn't absolve me. It makes me sick to think of what I did. I lied to Khan and told him I instigated it to get information out of you. If he were to find out the truth, Kirk, he would kill you. And I'm not thrilled at the idea of having him angry at me, either."

Kirk shook his head. "There's no reason he would find out the truth."

"Is there not?"

The low timbre of Khan's voice came to them from the doorway. Anthea took an instinctive step back from Kirk. "Khan," she said.

Her husband stepped into the hold with a deceptively casual poise. His hands were relaxed at his sides, but Anthea knew him well enough to see he was seething with rage. Sometimes, he hid it really well, but she knew him now. She knew what the little tic by his right eye meant.

"I came to get a bandage from the medbay," he explained, "as Joachim hammered a nail into his thumb. I do not know what I'll do with that boy. Imagine my worry, hearing my wife screaming at someone."

"We were just discussing . . ."

"Oh, I heard every word. Every word that was relevant, at least. I suspected you weren't telling me the whole truth," he said to Anthea, but he never took his eyes off Kirk. "You are not that ruthless, my love."

Kirk stepped between Khan and Anthea. "Don't you even think about hurting her!"

Khan's smile was cold. "Captain, Captain, Captain! I would never dream of laying a hand on my beloved wife. You see, I understand that she was alone for so long, that she thought me dead. Why wouldn't she, if she thought she was a widow, find solace? I cannot blame her for that."

Then his eyes went from chilly to nuclear in a millisecond. "But you, Kirk. You knew what she did not. You admitted just now that you lied to her, tricked her into breaking vows she takes seriously enough to violate your precious Prime Directive for me, to commit treason for my people."

"Look, Khan, it was a mistake, we'd been drinking-"

In a dark blur, Khan closed the space between them, his fist pounding Kirk right in the face with the force of a bullet train. The blonde man's head snapped back and he flew several feet. Before he landed, Khan caught Kirk with a hand around the younger man's throat, and slammed him into the wall, suspended off the floor by the one-handed grip.

"I can forgive her," he hissed, as Kirk choked. "Because I love her, and I understand her. But you . . ."

Kirk's fingers scrabbled at Khan's hand, couldn't find sufficient purchase to break his hold. Not that he would have been able to. No one could match Khan Noonien Singh for sheer physical strength, not even that Vulcan, Spock. The only way Spock had won that fight was through Uhura's intervention, and his own dazement after the crash. Kirk was only alive now because Khan still held back. He could have taken Kirk's head clean off if he'd wanted to. After all, tearing one off was only a small step up from crushing a skull with one's bare hands.

The Starfleet captain's face was red, and he gasped, desperate for air.

"Khan," Anthea said. "Please, don't kill him."

He tipped his head her direction, though he didn't look over. "Do you have some affection for him, wife?"

She might have once had a lingering . . . fondness that came from their one, shared night, but no longer. "No, I just don't want to deal with the consequences if we end up with a dead Starfleet captain on our hands. He's Starfleet's golden boy, remember? Also, the cleanup isn't something I feel like dealing with today. Do you know how difficult it is to get blood out of silk?"

Khan turned his head, regarded her in silence for several moments, with a slight smile.

Then he let go of Kirk, and the younger man collapsed to the floor, wheezing as he sucked in much-needed oxygen. Khan aimed a savage kick at the prone Kirk's ribs.

Anthea caught her husband's arm. "Khan! Khan. Don't kill him."

Khan shifted his attention her, his gaze softening. He gently stroked her cheek, once again the picture of calm. "I do forgive you," he told her softly. "What you did for me is enough to forgive any number of sins."

Then he pulled away, turned on one bootheel, and stalked out before his control snapped and he killed the whelp after all.

Kirk rolled to his knees and doubled over, coughing violently. Anthea looked down at him somewhat dispassionately, much calmer than she'd been before.

"Did I mention that my husband has super-hearing, Captain?" she asked. "I said I didn't have anything to discuss with you."

Kirk turned blood-shot blue eyes up to her. "Still can't believe you married that guy." His words were broken and hoarse.

"Love makes us do crazy things sometimes, Captain Kirk. At least I know I can trust him."

"He lied to you for months, though!"

"Not about what mattered, Captain. He never lied about loving me, and he never lied to me about the most important things in our lives." She crouched, didn't offer him any assistance. "You see, I understand now why he did the things he did. He was protecting me from Marcus by keeping me in the dark. You ever stop to think, Kirk, what Marcus would have done to me if he'd known I'm Khan's wife? I would have died, and Nolan with me."

By now, Kirk was on his knees. He cleared his throat, did it again. "He's killed people."

"Technically, so have I. So have you. What Khan didn't tell you, when he was imprisoned on your ship, is that Marcus threatened to kill me just for being close to him. The man you saw then thought he had lost everything. Would you do any different?"

"I wouldn't go rampaging around, killing people indiscriminately in revenge!"

Anthea smiled wryly. "But isn't that what you did, Kirk? When you took those torpedoes to Qo'noS, intending to kill my husband? You didn't kill Khan, in the end, but wasn't that fueled by the need for revenge? If you think it wasn't, you're more deluded than I thought."

She rose, leaving him there, and exited the hold. She found Khan waiting for her there.

"I'm sorry," she told him. "That I didn't tell you the whole truth."

Wordlessly, he caught her hand, hauled her down the corridor to the medbay. Yves was there, and Khan snapped, "Out!"

Once Yves had vacated the room, Khan locked the door, shoved Anthea against it, and kissed her hard. Part of her hated that it thrilled her when he got demanding and pushy like this. The rest really didn't care.

"Khan," she gasped. "Is this really the best-"

"Shut up," he growled. "It's this or I go back in there and I tear Kirk limb from limb."

"I wouldn't want that on my conscience," she murmured wryly, and stood on her toes to kiss him.