Petty as that might be, Kati could not help herself but feel a hefty measure of glee at the thought of Alexander Marcus being imprisoned in a facility located in Australia. It wasn't anywhere near the Botany Bay, but on the other side of the continent, not far away from Perth, but it was the poetic irony that counted. This soothed at least part of the sting of her conversation with Khan, right before the Enterprise had dropped her and Carol on Earth. The memory, preserved intact and with crystal clarity by her brain, haunted her and poisoned her days with a feeling of disbelief bordering on displacement. But she did not want to dwell on it during her trip on her former home-world, as there was more than enough time to face the consequences once she returned to Menkar. Besides, Carol needed the support of a clear-minded friend, not of one who tied herself in knots.
Perth had done well for itself in the 23rd century, expanding to dimensions no city of three hundred years ago could have had. Despite the forest of sky-scrapers both old and new, there was greenery everywhere. The skies looked as busy as the streets. Shuttles and hovering cars as well as more traditional vehicles, including bicycles, roamed everywhere, and the sidewalks were populated with both humans and aliens. But the suburban beach, where Chris had arranged for Carol and her to stay in a lovely bungalow, was quiet. The sapphire blue ocean, its giant waves tinged with glistening white foam, matched the unfalteringly serene heaven above. No violent winds agitated the balmy heat outside, the steadiness of the air unfamiliar, used as she was to the storms of Menkar.
Whenever she could, she walked down on the narrow strip of sand bordering the water, staring at the lush plants framing the houses. She kept staring at the bright and varied colors of the scenery, feeling silly but unable to stop herself from admiring a sky that was not gray all the time. Under different circumstances, she would have enjoyed this unexpected holiday she got for the first time since awakening from cryo-sleep. But things being what they were, Carol looked positively ashen, got dizzy and almost toppled over every now and then and spent her mornings vomiting in the bathroom. But above all, she worried. In fact, Carol was the spitting picture of concern, visibly tortured by the secret she kept from Khan, fearing for the safety of her unborn child, dreading her meeting with her father and whatever Starfleet wanted her to get out of him. Truth be told, the latter made Kati nervous as well, although she thought she could get the answer all by herself a lot faster and without racking Carol over the coals. Unfortunately, her friend might disprove of her torturing Marcus, no matter how much the man deserved it.
With shuttle technology, transporters and hovering cars available, they could as well have stayed in San Francisco and travel to Australia as needed, but Carol's former Starfleet-issued apartment was gone, and Chris and his colleagues most likely wanted to avoid further tensions and unfortunate implications by having an augment so close to the heart of the Federation. Kati had gone along with it, seeing no reason to insist otherwise, prompting a few grateful smiles and understanding looks from Chris, which failed to illicit any of the usual thrill within her at the reality of their growing ability to communicate without words. If this trip had demonstrated anything to her was that she had severely underestimated the obstacles in the way of tripping their connection past the line of friendship.
Kati was in the process of admiring the mix of wisteria, hooded lilies and coral vines decorating the narrow lawn in front of her temporary house, inhaling the flowers' scent flavored by that of the salty breeze blowing from the direction of the ocean, which spread just across the quaint strip of golden beach. Everything around her invited to relaxation but did nothing to dull the knot of anxiety permanently settled at the bottom of her stomach ever since she had left the familiarity of the colony. Her hearing filtered the sound of approaching foot steps and the scraping of a cane against the ground through that of the waves. She turned her head to see Christopher striding towards her, shoulders squared, the admiral uniform fitting him like a second skin, symbol of the fact that there was a literal world standing between them. The current situation put a serious damper on her developing an optimistic streak and rather reinforced Khan's insistence on remembering that Shakespeare had only written tragedies. Either way, this whole impossible relationships spiel worked wonderfully on paper but was terribly annoying in reality.
His hover car was parked on the edge of the loan and Carol, whom he had taken to the prison her father was held in, was nowhere in sight. Chris had handled most of the issues relating to their stay on Earth by himself and had accompanied them personally to Australia without the addition of any assistant or yeoman. As far as she could tell, that was because either whatever Starfleet wanted from Carol's father was of vital importance or because Chris wanted to safeguard them from the potential prejudices of other officers. Since his affection for her was obvious in his eyes whenever they were together, she was all too aware that some of it was an off-shot of that. She straightened herself up, self-consciously running a hand through the thick of her hair, patting the locks behind her left ear. Christopher stooped in front of her and gave her a weary smile. Amid all the doubts she had been having lately, one thing emerged as certain: they were all tired and on edge.
Not wanting to keep him longer than necessary in full uniform under the late morning sun, she invited him in the house. He had come for Carol fairly early that day in order to take her to see her father for the first time in over a year. Carol had had a better morning, eaten her fill at breakfast and her cheeks were even starting to regain something akin to color. The goodbye had been strained, leaving Kati alone to wait. She had replicated everything she needed to make cake and lemonade in order to wail away the hours. When that had been done and her mind had still refused to stop turning, she had gone outside hoping for a measure of solace in the beautiful vista of the ocean.
Kati and Chris found a place for themselves at the breakfast bar and shared some lemonade, doing a good job at avoiding each other's eyes, while he explained that Carol had seemed fine, when he had left her at the "penal colony".
"Alright," he said out of the sudden, startling her into meeting his gaze, which studied her somberly. "What is it? It can't be healthy to keep whatever it is that's eating you all bottled up inside."
Kati grimaced. "You mean besides all this?" she replied gesturing to their surroundings, instantly aware of the irony of it, as the open space was very nice, a stylized mix of glass, white walls, dark brown furniture and lush house plants under a high and slightly domed ceiling covered by a mosaic with a maritime theme.
He nodded wordlessly, the sobriety of his expression demanding nothing less.
She shifted uneasily on her bar stool and pushed her now empty glass away from her on the table. "What are we doing, Chris?" she finally blurted out. "The two of us. Running off to meet on neutral planets, whenever we get a moment to spare. The Federation is your world and Starfleet your life. You don't even feel at ease wearing something other than your uniform. And I'm never going to leave my family. They're everything I've ever known or had and they need me. We should just... break it off."
He regarded her steadily. "If that is what you want."
His calm infuriated her. "You could at least feign regret," she snapped.
"I don't have to feign anything, Kati, but I don't believe in holding people by force in a relationship they don't want."
"We're in a relationship?"
"Unless there is some cultural code I'm missing, I was under the impression that we were." He paused and only now his voice wavered every so slightly. "Was I wrong?"
Kati swallowed hard, focusing her gaze on maroon surface of the breakfast bar. "You weren't," she relented. "But you can see how our moving at the speed of continental drift might get confusing."
"I thought we had an unspoken agreement about moving slowly and finding where that takes us one step at a time," he remarked in a soft voice, his tone infused with tenderness.
"And where does that leave us now?"
"Kati, I want to be with you... whether as a friend or as something else, it's all fine by me. But you're the only one who can decide what you want. Take all the time you need for it. I'll be right here."
Nobody had accused the augments of having good impulse control... with the exception of maybe Khan, who was very fond of applying their love for order to himself and his reactions and the rest of their family strove to follow his example. So perhaps Kati herself was a bit rash. But then she was being faced with this handsome, kind man, whom she had admired from afar for quite a while now, showing so much understanding and care for her feelings and wishes, that the year spent exercising restraint finally caught up with her passionate nature and she found herself reaching over the table to grab him and pull him close for a kiss. His eyes widened in surprise, but he kissed her back, one of his hands coming to sink into her hair, his fingers fervently stroking her nape. She moaned into the kiss, her skin tingling, as her senses became addled. Then he broke the kiss and drew back, plunging her back into reality. Her only consolation was that he looked as affected by their kiss as she felt: his breathing coming out harsh and labored through red and swollen lips, his pupils blown, his heart-beat erratic, and there were spots of color high on his cheeks. All that made her realize just how she yearned to kiss him again.
"Kati," he said, her name uncommonly loud in the quiet house. "I've missed my chance on one relationship, because I didn't reach out to her before she moved on and then on another, because I rushed head-first into it. I don't want either to happen to us." He rounded the bar to come stand right in front of her. He pressed the back of her hand against her left cheek, making her shiver.
Kati reached to press her palm against his, intertwining their fingers together, prompting him to smile warmly at her. "But I won't lie about my feelings for you," he said, his voice coming off throatier than usual. "I care a lot about you." He pressed a light, chaste kiss on her mouth.
"And I don't want us to break up," she said and winced, realizing that might sound cold in the face of his heartfelt declaration, but he didn't seem to mind. She squeezed his hand one last time before letting go and stepping back. "So where do you see us going and please don't say wherever I want us to?"
He nodded. "Fair enough. Believe it or not, even Starfleet admirals have to retire sometime and if that's alright with you, I can't think of a better way to spend the rest of my life than with you."
She grinned and placed her arms around his shoulders, pressing herself against his body. "That's more than alright with me."
His hands cradled her lower back and they kissed again, slower and more tenderly this time. His lips drifted from hers to stroke across her cheeks, nose and forehead. His arms held tighter onto her, a quiet despair slipping into his brace. It suddenly occurred to her that caught with her outburst and frustrations as she had been, she had missed something essential: it wasn't only Carol who was going through a personal crisis because of Alexander Marcus, it was Chris as well.
Kati opened her eyes to look at him again, this time in a new light. "I was just very selfish, wasn't I?"
He frowned but didn't release her. "No, you weren't. We needed to talk about this sooner or later."
"But later would have been better," she guessed. "I know Alexander Marcus is a touchy subject for a number of reasons from the official and confidential to the most personal, but I was under the impression you two used to be friends so this new asinine behavior on his part complete with dragging his pregnant daughter across the galaxy can't be easy to deal with for you."
Now he did let go, merely taking her by the hand and leading her to the couch by the wall that was made entirely of one tall window overlooking the ocean outside. They sat down side by side, her hand still in his, and for a few long minutes only regarded the waves crashing against the sand.
"Alexander was my mentor," he told her at last. "He talked me into joining, gave me the humanitarian and peace-keeping armada speech and pinned the forth pip on my collar the day I made captain. I don't know where it all went wrong, if it was the war with the Klingons or the responsibility of being head of Starfleet while the entire Federation was at risk. Though it's been two years already, I can't believe that the man I knew could have allowed himself to be so far gone as to almost kill his own daughter, a daughter I know he loves."
Kati's eyes didn't stray from the window, her turbulent past stubbornly knocking on the door of her present. She knew all too well what kind of scars war left on one's soul. She bore them as well, but even so she had trouble empathizing with Marcus. Her only response was to grip Christopher's hand tighter in reassurance.
"He did kill Carol," she said. "But in all fairness, he was aiming for us and she got in the way."
"Defense by intention to commit genocide? Too bad his lawyer didn't think of that one at the court martial."
She smiled ruefully. "For the obvious reasons, that's about the best I've got."
He shifted closer, his knee touching her, his body a steady warmth at her side. Kati rested her temple on his shoulder, basking in the citrus scent of his aftershave. A comforting silence descended around them like a warming clock, lasting until Carol called him.
# # #
Carol had visited her father in confinement before, the last time being right before leaving Federation space to be with Khan on Menkar. That had gone less than well, her imparting of the news devolving in a screaming match, during which she had said a number of things she now regretted. But even if that weren't so, she still felt a measure of discomfort at seeing her Dad diminished like this, stripped of his rank and uniform, devoid of the things he had most cared about and banished from his beloved Starfleet.
She had passed quietly all the required security protocols, as the facility her father was confined to had much sterner rules than the average penal colony, with Admiral Pike at her side. They were lead down to a long corridor and to a visitor's lounge that looked no different than a well-appointed living-room, which given the sensitive nature of the conversation about to be conducted there, was empty of any other occupants. Pike gave her a reassuring smile and gently squeezed on her left shoulder. Carol smiled back, doing her best to appear poised and collected, when she felt none of those things, and nodded him off. He seemed to hesitate briefly but then thought the better of whatever it was that he had meant to say and left.
Taking a deep breath, Carol sank into the plush comfort of a nearby armchair. The second of the chamber's doors opened. She instinctively got to her feet, her trepidation increasing.
"Hello, Dad."
TBC