-Chapter Twenty-Three-

Anthea moaned a little in her sleep, curling in on herself. Khan gathered her close, her back to his chest, and brushed his lips against her hair.

"Hush, darling," he whispered. "You're safe."

A seemingly endless number of times during his servitude to Marcus, the stress and fear had given him nightmares. He'd lost count of them during that hellish year, but Anthea had comforted him so many nights those last few months, soothing him with a soft word and a touch, calming the storms of his mind.

It was his turn to drive away hers, and he held her tight, murmuring words of reassurance; though she didn't wake, not fully, Anthea relaxed slowly, melting into him, and her pulse ceased to race.

He slid his hand lower, resting it on the small bump of her abdomen, where their child grew. There were no words for how relieved and grateful he was to have all of them safe again.

She wasn't far enough along for either of them to feel the baby move. It pained him that he had missed the first one, when she carried Nolan. Until Anthea, children had never been on his radar much. Now, he longed to feel the life within her, to feel it kick, and to be there for his child's birth. To know she had suffered that without him was always a blow right to his solar plexus.

Nolan woke and wiggled until he sat up. He rubbed sleepy eyes with his little hands. When he looked up and saw Khan, he cried, "Dada!"

"Shh," Khan murmured. He shifted so he could lift Nolan over Anthea's still-sleeping form. She was so exhausted, nothing bothered her. She was still breathing, something he found himself unconsciously checking for. "Let's not wake Mummy."

It reminded him of the night of their reunion, just five months before, when Nolan had woken in the middle of the night and demanded his attention.

Nolan patted his chest, then plunked his head against Khan's shoulder.

"Dwagons, Dada," Nolan told him, in a serious whisper. "Bad dwagons!"

"Dragons?"

His son nodded, looking up at him with wide blue eyes. He hadn't lost the chubby face yet, but when Khan rubbed his thumb over Nolan's cheek, he could feel the underlying structure, and knew that his son would be the spitting image of him one day.

Khan assumed that "dragons" meant "Klingons". It was an apt description, and must have come from Anthea.

"Thank you for looking after Mummy," Khan murmured. "You are a brave boy."

"Dada come," Nolan said firmly. "Mama say!"

"I will always come for you. I promise."

The child sighed and nuzzled against him. "Dada make dwagons go 'way?"

"Always, my boy. Always."

Khan left early, before Anthea woke, to speak to Kirk about something. When she rose, she noted that she still had a bit of a headache, but she suspected that was to be a problem for a while.

She fed Nolan from the replicator, amused that it was programmed for tater tots and chicken nuggets. Not a proper breakfast food, she knew, but he needed more than the slop the Klingons had fed them for a week and a half.

She had just worked the tangles out of her hair with a borrowed hairbrush when the door buzzed. She crossed the room on bare feet to answer it. Anthea wasn't surprised to see Leonard McCoy there. What surprised her was the tribble.

"Oh. Hello," she said.

"Good morning. I didn't want to call you all the way down to Medbay, so I figured I make a house call, see you you're doin'."

She stepped back to let him in. "I'm alright, I suppose. I've a nagging headache, though."

"Not unexpected with a head injury, but a little troublesome since you didn't have one yesterday. Are you experiencing anything else? Nausea, fatigue- I just realised how stupid that is to ask a pregnant woman."

Anthea laughed. "Nothing out of the ordinary. I haven't had any nausea this morning, but that should be reaching its end, shouldn't it?"

"Theoretically," the doctor said. "I've known women who've had morning sickness beyond giving birth, 'til about six weeks after."

She pulled a face at the thought. "Oh. I hope that doesn't happen to me."

"Did it last time?"

"No, I only had occasional bouts 'til about sixteen, seventeen weeks. I was a little queasy the few days before I had Nolan, though."

Of course, that had been right after discovering that her beloved and missing husband, John Harrison, was really Khan Noonien Singh and enemy of Starfleet.

"I'd expect about the same this time around. You mind if I check you out a little, though, see how your vitals are and all that?"

"Go right ahead." She eyed the tribble. "You'll probably need to put that down, though. What is it for?"

McCoy cleared his throat. "Uh. I was thinking . . . I don't really have much of a use for the little furball here, and Nolan really seemed to like it, so . . ."

He held out the purring ball of fur.

"Are you giving us the tribble?" Anthea asked, as she took it.

"Kid could use a pet, right? Might . . . help with . . . everything." The doctor looked awkwardly at the primitive animal. "Kids sometimes need pets to get them through when they get scared."

Anthea smiled. "How old is your child?"

He shouldn't have been surprised, really, that she knew. "Uh. She's twelve. Her name's Joanna."

"And how long has it been since you've seen her?"

McCoy sighed. "Too damn long. Uh . . . three years? My ex-wife's got custody."

Nolan padded over, hands held out for the tribble. "Mine?" he asked.

Anthea laughed. "He's in the 'everything is mine' phase," she told McCoy. To her son, she said, "But, yes, this is yours. It's a gift from Doctor McCoy."

The tribble was nearly as big as her son, but when Anthea passed it down to him, he held on fiercely, chubby hands buried in its fur. The animal didn't complain, just made a little trilling sound and went back to purring.

"What do we say, Nolan?" she asked.

"Mine!"

McCoy laughed. Anthea rolled her eyes.

"No, sweetheart, we say 'thank you'."

Nolan blinked up at her with big blue eyes, brows scrunched in confusion. "Why?"

McCoy covered his mouth with his hand. "Yeah, there's no doubt that's Khan's kid."

"Mine!" Nolan laughed. "Mine mine!"

"Thank you," his mother said. "I'll have to have the gratitude lesson when he's not ecstatic about purring fur. He's a hardy little boy and not much fazes him, but I still . . . worry."

Nolan sat on the floor, the tribble in his lap, and patted it somewhat randomly. "Mama? Name?"

"We'll think of a name, sweetheart."

The door slid open and Khan stepped in. His gaze flicked from McCoy, to Anthea, then to Nolan with the tribble. The tribble he distinctly remembered giving back to the nurse the previous evening.

". . . Please tell me you've surrendered possession of that to my son," he said to McCoy. "Otherwise, we'll have to deal with an inordinate amount of screaming."

McCoy snorted. "Nah. I gave it to the little guy. They eat grains, mostly, fruits and vegetables. It's been neutered, so you won't be overrun with tribbles."

Khan watching as Nolan snuggled the ball of fur. "They're also useful as a warning system."

"Yeah."

The two men exchanged a look, one Anthea didn't catch.

McCoy pulled his tricorder out of his doctor's bag. "I'm just doing a check-up. We're almost back to your planet. It's a lot faster once you know where you're going, isn't it? I want to see how you're doing, give you instructions for further treatment if needed."

Anthea sat on the bed, and McCoy scanned her, with Khan hovering a little anxiously behind. He informed them that everything seemed the same as before, but her blood pressure was elevate a little.

"Try to get that back down," he told her, as he fished something out of his bag. McCoy handed her some pain relievers. "Only take these if absolutely necessary. They aren't harmful to babies anymore, I just don't want you getting too many of 'em in your system and missing anything if it should go wrong."

"Thank you, Doctor. About the blood pressure, how do I lower that?"

"Relax, mostly." He pointed a finger at Khan. "No lifting, no carrying. Right now, I don't even want her carrying the kid. Max you can lift is, say, ten pounds. Take it easy, and I'm serious about this. Besides, you shouldn't have to exert yourself, with Superman here to do everything for you."

Anthea giggled at that image. "Yes, Doctor. Thank you."

He gave her a list of instructions, and took his leave. Khan shook his head and gently pressed his lips to the bump on her head.

"He thinks he's so clever," he muttered.

She laughed, turning to wrap her arms around him. "Quit being such a grouch. We're almost home!"