A/N: Last one for this 'fic. I've got a few other pieces in the works, and if you aren't aware, you should check my profile for a few one-shot companion pieces!

-Chapter Twenty-Six-

Yves was torn, wanting to keep an eye on Anthea, but also wanting to tell Kati what was going on, and to give Khan some privacy if . . . this didn't work. There was nothing he could do to save Anthea now, not if the serum and Khan's platelets didn't do what they hoped. The bleeding in her brain was too significant.

He stepped out of the Reliance, finding the entire settlement waiting in tense silence outside. It took the Frenchman back a bit.

"Yves." Kati stepped up with a perturbed Nolan in her arms. "How is she?"

He cleared his throat. He didn't need to speak loudly, as everyone there-save the annoying human woman Anthea had slapped earlier-had enhanced hearing. "She is bleeding in her brain. I do not have the tools to treat it, save . . . for Khan's blood. We have done what we can, but all we do now is wait and see."

Kati clapped a hand over her mouth, tears welling in her eyes. Without thinking, Yves hauled her into his arms. Nolan squawked a protest at being squished so.

Otto came over. "May I go in?" he asked the doctor.

Yves nodded.

Khan's lieutenant entered the ship, walking with a heavy heart towards the medbay. There, he let himself in.

His fearless leader sat on the first of the two beds, hunched over the prone and convulsing body of his wife. Khan rhythmically stroked his fingers through Anthea's hair, and tears ran unheeded down the man's face.

It was a shock to Otto; he had never seen Khan so undone. "Kaiser," he said quietly, reluctant to intrude.

Khan's eyes were red when he looked up. "Yes, Otto?" His voice was quiet and rough.

"Everyone waits outside," the big man said awkwardly. "We wish to know . . . Is there nothing we can do?"

Khan rested his cheek on the top of Anthea's head. "I wish that there were, Otto, I really do. We gave her the rest of the serum developed for Kati, and some of my blood."

"And we wait to see if it works, ja?"

"Yes. I do not know for how long."

And then, for the first time in his adult life, Khan Noonien Singh broke down in ragged sobs.

An hour after they administered the serum, the convulsions stopped. Anthea's vitals hovered at a critical low, but were, for the time being, stable. Yves put her on oxygen, because her lung function kept hitching.

Khan hovered nervously, completely at a loss for what to do. He wasn't used to being helpless like this. He was Khan, ruler of the world, a superhuman who could do anything and always knew what to do and when.

Except when it came to this. Here, in this room, watching a machine breathe for his wife, he felt incredibly small and weak. He needed something to do, but he had no idea what. There wasn't anything he could do but wait, and he didn't want to leave, in case . . . Just in case.

Since Yves's quarters were just across the corridor, the doctor left him alone with Anthea, and Kati watched Nolan for Khan. He sat by himself, in a chair beside Anthea's bed, holding her limp and unresponsive hand in his.

She was in a coma, partially induced by Yves so that Khan's blood could do its work. Yves had brought out the medical android and had drained the hematoma. A bandage covered Anthea's forehead now, and a pint of Khan's blood dripped through an IV, the second one they'd given her since Yves had performed the surgery.

Khan didn't know if she could hear him, but he still spoke to her anyway.

"You know . . . when you came into my life, my dearest, I was not expecting it. I was angry, and afraid, because Marcus had woken me from my sleep, and told me that he held my people captive. He said that he knew who I was, and if I did not cooperate, he would kill them. He and his men tortured me for over a week before I agreed."

He pressed his lips to the cool, velvety skin on the back of her hand. "My servitude began the day Marcus brought me to the Kelvin archive. I had been threatened and hurt, and had nothing to live for save my people's continued safety.

"And then I saw you. I couldn't believe someone as beautiful as you worked for such horrible people. You were a bright spot in my incredibly dark world, and I felt drawn to you like a moth to a flame. I knew I shouldn't draw you in, and I did it anyway, because I was unable to resist you."

Khan rose to sit on the side of the bed, turning her arm in his to run his fingers the length of her forearm, over the hidden scars. "I didn't ask what they'd done to you, because I knew already. And because they had done that, and you still managed to be so strong and warm, when I was feeling so weak and cold, I knew I could have no other woman than you, my Anthea. And I knew you wanted me. It was so clear to me. You gave me a safe haven against the worst Marcus could put me through. You loved me even when I couldn't tell you the truth, loving me even through everything I had to do to free our people."

He brushed his fingers over the bandage on her head. "I tried to reach you from Qo'noS, but I couldn't get through. I believe Marcus blocked our communicators from reaching each other, after I tried to kill him in San Francisco. I did not know if you still lived. He threatened to kill you, my love, and for that alone, he deserved to die. Because you are mine, Anthea. You are the thing I need most in this world. Waking up to your face, when you brought me out of my second cryosleep . . . I know you think I was cold, and distant, but I had gone into it thinking all I love was dead and I had nothing left. To see you alive, to know you had saved me . . ."

There was no response in her, no change in the slow and steady beep of the heart monitor. He sighed.

"I have no words for how much I need you," he whispered. "I love you beyond all reason, and you ground me. You keep the monster they created at bay. If I lose you . . . What will I become?"

Anthea was comatose for four days. Khan didn't leave the medbay, save for seeing to his needs when absolutely necessary, and to take care of Nolan. The little boy didn't understand what was going on, and he cried continuously for his mother. Khan held him and walked the main corridor of the Reliance in the middle of the night, trying to soothe his son. Finding himself effectively a single father was rather a surprise, and one that made him appreciate everything Anthea had done while he had been imprisoned.

Feeding a grouchy toddler, giving the child a bath when he didn't want one, getting Nolan dressed when he wanted to run naked and free . . . Khan didn't know how Anthea managed, and made it look so effortless.

Towards evening on the fourth day, Anthea's vitals changed drastically, the computer helpfully alerting Khan and Yves with a trill. They'd been low but stable, and now they jumped, her heart rate increasing to normal, her respiration rising, oxygen saturation levels shooting from where they'd hovered at ninety percent to nearly a hundred.

"What's happening?" Kati asked, looking between brother and doctor.

"She's waking up," Khan said, and his voice cracked with emotion. He looked to Yves for confirmation, and his friend nodded.

It took a good hour for her to surface, but eventually, her eyes slowly fluttered open. Khan made sure that his face was the first she saw, and he tenderly caressed her cheek as she blinked up at him.

"Welcome back," he rasped.

She licked dry lips, tried to speak but couldn't.

"Water, please, Kati," Khan said to his sister. With Anthea's hand in his, he didn't want to budge.

Anthea turned her head a little, taking in the medbay. When she managed to speak, her voice was barely audible. "-happened?"

Khan helped her sit up a little, handed her the glass of water Kati brought, and helped her hold steady as she took a few sips. "You collapsed," he told her softly. "After you confronted the McGivers woman, you just . . . one moment you were speaking to me, and the next, you just dropped like a stone."

"Apparently, you got angry enough to cause a subarachnoid hemorrhage," Yves told her. He scanned her with the medical tricorder, then manually checked her eyes. "Doctor McCoy warned you about that, non?"

Anthea put a hand to her head, but the bump was gone. "How long was I . . .?"

"Dead?" Khan asked roughly. "Technically, two minutes."

Her grey eyes widened in surprise. "I died?" she croaked.

"Only technically," Yves said helpfully.

Khan shot him a look. "Your blood pressure dropped, likely from shock due to the hemorrhage. We managed to get your heart started again, and Yves . . . We couldn't do anything about the bleeding. So we improvised."

Anthea looked from Khan to Yves and back. "What did you do?"

Khan wasn't a hesitant man by any means. Uncertainty was as unfamiliar to him as the surface of Vulcan. But now, he glanced away and cleared his throat.

"There was only one thing we could do," Yves said. "We gave you the serum we gave Kati. And while that did its work, Khan gave you his blood. We had none, and the serum helped while we extracted enough of his blood to replace what you lost."

"Oh. But . . . why is that bad?" She really didn't understand. Khan's blood healed.

"We had to give you some to keep you alive and stop the bleeding," Khan told her. "And once the bleeding stopped, Yves . . . had to drain what had collected around your brain."

Pressing the glass into her husband's hands, Anthea reached up and felt her skull frantically. "I don't feel anything," she said.

"We gave you two more transfusions," he responded. "And there was an . . . unintended side effect."

"What side effect?" she demanded, not noticing that she had her full voice back and was sitting up on her own. "Is the baby okay?"

"The baby, it is fine," Yves assured her, even as he and Khan exchanged a look. Khan nodded, and the doctor went to fetch something. He came back with a spare metal part Anthea recognised as a piece of one of the dismantled cryotubes.

"Bend that," her husband said, taking it from Yves to hand to her.

"Pardon?"

"Bend it," Khan repeated.

Anthea looked at the metal in her hand. Four inches long and half an inch thick, it was a fairly substantial chunk. "You've got to be kidding me," she said, taking it in both hands. "There's no way I can-"

As she spoke, she put pressure on each half, pushing the ends towards the middle. To her absolute shock, the metal gave. Not much, only a few degrees at most, but still.

She dropped the metal and it bounced off her leg to fall to the floor. "I . . . What just happened?"

"That," her husband said dryly, "is the side effect. Giving the serum to Kati cured her neurological disease. Giving it to you, after you've spent so long with my DNA, Nolan's DNA, in your system through two pregnancies . . . Acted as something of a catalyst, it seems."

"What did you do?!"

"It seems, my dearest Thea, you're one of us now."

-to be continued?-