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I know third week in a row of the same picture, but that is my inspiration. Again if you would like to have another one you certainly can. I might be unstuck from this one now, but might not be..lol what can I say I am stuck on trek. Enjoy your Saturday Sanctuary.
Dante had described nine circles of Hell but had missed the tenth and worst of them all: the Terran Empire. This was one hell, in which Khan did not want to rule. This was the kind of hell one could only escape. This was the true city of woe drawn in the sea of terror it had created and that was now crushing it. He had known it all along, but Carol’s coming to him like a lamb to the slaughter, in a misguided and unnecessary attempt to seduce him, had cemented it. What under different circumstances would have been Carol’s crystalline, brilliant mind was now altered by trauma and the horrific abuse and violations she had endured. He had derailed her by inviting her to dinner, only to watch her imbibe to dull her fear, her accelerated heart-beat unbearably loud in the stillness of his quarters.
She drank until she could barely stand up straight and her eye-lids were drooping, her eyes glassy, red blotches creeping onto her cheeks. Even so she was beautiful, but it was her mind, even twisted and tarnished, that truly interested him. After everything she had been through, bent as she was, she was still not broken. Every now and then he caught a sparkle of what had once been a roaring fire in her eyes. She averted them quickly and the light was dim, but it was there. It glimmered whenever she found something fascinating about the weapons he had built, or whenever she liked one of his plans and sometimes when his people spoke to her as though to an equal. Khan was in no hurry to extinguish those embers for good.
He stood and rounded the table to get to her. Drunk as she was, her heart still stuttered, her fear no doubt intensifying. He helped her to her feet and she wavered, all but falling against him. She would not look at him. He half-carried, half-supported her to the bed, pushed the duvet away, and lay her down. Then he removed her shoes. Her breathing was loud in the too quiet room. She was staring blindly at the ceiling, shivering ever so slightly. He pulled the covers over her and ordered the lights off.
“No,” she whimpered. “Don’t leave me alone.”
The bed clothes rustled, as she shifted around probably blindly groping for him. He didn’t know if she was asking, because the sudden darkness had scratched at the open wounds trauma had left on her psyche, a result of her alcohol-impaired judgment, or her isolation, trapped on a potentially hostile ship with nowhere else in whole galaxy to go to, had finally caught up with her. But in any case, her desperation-laced plea found an echo in him and it all came crashing down right at that very moment: the long, exhausting patrol, the responsibility of protecting his imperiled crew and the nightmare, to which he had been awoken. He toed off his own shoes and lay atop the covers next to her, resting an arm over her waist. She sighed softly and shifted even closer, cuddling up to his immobile body.
In the silence that followed, he waited until her breathing evened out as a sign that she had fallen asleep. He almost never admitted to it, but sometimes even he craved comfort and a warm, human touch.
# # #
Carol awoke, warm and securely held in someone’s arms, her cheek pressed against a solid surface, a steady beat rapping against it and reverberating painfully inside her skull. Her eyes opened to complete darkness and when she tried to shift around, one arm tightened possessively around her waist. She moaned softly. Her head was splitting and her mouth felt like cotton. Then she was rolled to the side, the move making her queasy. A familiar deep baritone said something about a hang-over. That sounded about right, but she never remembered feeling having one this bad. She drifted off only to snap wide awake, when something pinched at the side of her neck. Khan’s face floated into view. She blinked.
He held up a hypo. “Hang-over remedy,” he said in an even voice and then lifted a glass of water to her lips.
“Thank you,” she croaked then drained the liquid thirstily. Her thirst was beginning to clear and she realized with a start that her head had been the only one to hurt and she was still fully dressed.
Her memory of the previous night was fuzzy at best, a few disjointed imagines dancing in her mind, but still she was fairly certain nothing had happened between them. The question burnt her lips. Why? After all, it would have been easy and drunk or sober, she had been willing. So why not take advantage of it, if it had been easy? But she did not get to ask. His severe gaze silenced her.
“Never attempt something like this again,” he said, voice cold.
Panic leaped in her throat, but she did not flinch away, gaze buried into those kaleidoscopic orbs of his. If he were to kill her for her mishap, she wanted to die on her feet so to speak, looking her killer in the eye. Instinctively her hand leaped to her chest, her palm pressing onto the cloth-covered patch where her slave serial number had been. She was irrationally grateful to him that she would not have to lose her life with that particular scarlet letter etched onto her.
“I need what you know, what you can do,” he further elaborated. “Nothing else. Do you understand?”
She gave him a jerky nod, still unsure of the damage her thoughtless move had done to her safety.
“Say it out loud,” he commanded. “Do you understand?”
“Yes, I do,” he said quickly.
He looked at her hard, his gaze so piercing, she felt as though it was trying to reach into her head and verify the verity of her reply. Maintaining eye contact was a chore, but she managed it. After a while he nodded back.
“Good. You may use my bathroom, if you wish to.”
# # #
The Augments made a run for it. They broke off from the Klingon border and crossed into imperial territory, keeping complete subspace silence, as they crawled their way at snare pace on thin ice with the water below booby-trapped through what was de facto enemy space and towards the uncertain and distant safety of the Barzan wormhole. If they were caught, they would be killed. Not immediately, of course. They would be tortured first and then killed. Slowly and as painfully as possible. If Cartwright had managed to gain enough clout with Starfleet Command, he would be given the honor to do in Carol. Khan required her on the bridge almost at all hours, since, as a former Starfleet officer and daughter of the highest-ranking admiral, her knowledge of internal security was much more advanced than anything that had been allowed to him. Even if what she knew was slightly out of date, it still was of great help in their insane endeavor of sneaking through the Empire, while a manhunt was undoubtedly on-going for them.
She fainted twice from exhaustion and the doctor pumped her full of every stimulant her human body could take. She got several allergic reactions from them, but she refused all offered breaks. Worse than the fatigue, the splitting head-aches, the irritated, red blotches from the too many hypos or the ensuing infection in one case, was the idea of getting caught. She could not go back into the hands of the Empire. She could not bear the thought of seeing Cartwright again, let alone that of what he would do to her, what others like him would do to her, if she were to be captured. When she tumbled to the floor, drained of all energy, for a third time, Khan himself carried her to the infirmary himself and when she woke up, threatened to tied her to the bed, if she did not rest.
She scrambled backwards on the biobed, panicking. “Please… don’t… I’ll do anything you want.”
The crease between his eyebrows deepened, an emotion she had never before seen in him flickering on his features: pity. Then it disappeared, replaced by the customary authority-tinged blankness.
“I know,” he said quietly, stepping closer to her bed. His right hand shot forward and gently clasped her shoulder, his fingers pressing into her tense muscles and squeezing slightly. “You have been of great help to us.”
“I can’t go back… I can never go back,” she babbled, fear still singing in her veins.
His hand slid up, stroke briefly against the side of her neck before cupping her left cheek, and she shivered. “You won’t,” he insisted. “Look at me!” He would not continue, until she stared him in the eye. “There is nothing I would not do for my family. As long as you are on this ship, you are safe. I promise.”
Perhaps it was an off-shot of her fear, but she believed him. She nodded. His palm was warm and steady against her face, while she trembled. He bent over her and brushed his lips against her, the touch nothing but chaste.
“I though you said…,” she murmured.
“I know what I said, but if you want to, genuinely, I am willing to discuss it, once we are on the other side of that wormhole. Just as long as you are aware that denying me comes at no cost and bears no consequences.” He straightened himself and released her. “But you should also be aware that sleeping is also not a means to curry favors.”
She lowered her gaze again. “I asked you to stay with me… that night, after we had dinner and I got drunk. And you did. I thought I dreamt it, but I didn’t, did I?”
He sat on the edge of the bed, next to her. “No, you did not.”
She raised her head to look at him again. His expression was stormy, a hint of something much like sadness adorning his eyes.
“Why are you doing this?” she asked.
He drew her into his lap, his arms squeezing her against him. She let him.
“Because humans aren’t the only ones in need of comfort.”
She pressed her face against his chest, her nose scrunched against his biceps. “He raped me… Cartwright and others,” she said after a few minutes of companionable silence. Tears leaked out of her eyes, wetting the material of his shirt.
“I know.”
There was a strange twinge to his voice and she wanted to lift her head again to look at his face, but his fingers treaded into her hair, trapping her against his chest.
“Your father employed a wide variety of methods to control me, in addition to keeping my friends prisoners.”
She froze, as her stomach roiled. “Did he…?”
“Not personally, but he did order it and was in the room… watching every time it happened.” His fist tightened in her hair, pulling on it so hard, that her scalp tightened and hurt. She thought she heard tears in his tone, when he spoke.
“How can you stand to look at me?” she asked after a moment’s hesitation. There was a funny ringing in her ears. Agonizers, torture and murders were daily occurrences in Starfleet and part of the Empire’s official policies. She had accepted them as such, though striving to have no part in any of it. But some nights, in the privacy of her innermost thoughts, she used to fantasize about running away and joining the resistance, although she could have never stomached the thought of ending up shooting at her own father. Now she regretted not having done it.
“I have your father’s confidential files. I copied them when I escaped and failed to share that tidbit of information with Pike and Kirk later. I know you are innocent of all of his doings, which makes it all the more ironic that, though you were the one who lived, you are also the one who paid the worst price.”
She shuddered again but said nothing only wept quietly cradled in the arms of his father’s assassin, to whom she felt connected through an unexpected link of victim-hood. They were both broken beyond repair in a universe that was just wrong.
# # #
Khan sat in the captain’s seat on the bridge of the ship he had built for the Terran Empire only to run away with his people in it and watched the vortex of azure and silver of the Barzan wormhole burst open against the eternal night of space. They had made it. A hostile world stretched behind them. The unknown awaited on the other side. He could feel everyone’s eyes on him. He glanced to the helm.
“Lay in a course for the wormhole. Warp factor 6,” he ordered.
Next his eyes tracked Carol at a console to his left. In the chorus of heart-beats on the bridge hers rapped the loudest, as though it was attempting to break free of her rib-cage. Their gazes met and held. He let his lips curve in what hoped was a reassuring smile. Her lips trembled, when she smiled back.
Tags: Saurday Sanctuary, Star Trek, Writing
