tame this animal I have become, Chapter 5/10, Kirk/Khan, Rated M

[larienelengasse]

Title: tame this animal I have become
Author: larienelengasse
Pairing: Kirk/Khan, Spock, Uhura, Bones, Scotty, Chekov
Universe: STID - Star Trek Reboot
Rating: NC-17 for violence and sex
Beta: alexcat
Artist: elladansgirl
Warnings: implied torture, violence, remembered canonical character death, & angst.
Author’s Note: Written for the 2014 OEAM Big Bang. Takes place after the events in Star Trek: Into Darkness. Title from the song “Animal I Have Become” by Three Days Grace; the lyrics fit my vision of Khan and Kirk’s relationship.

Summary: Sometimes a man has to take a stand. Sometimes he has to choose to his enemies over his allegiances. And sometimes doing the right thing changes a person.
Chapter Five
Kirk woke up with a groan and rubbed his forehead. The knot wasn’t as big as he thought it would be. Something was digging into his back and he sat up. They were inside a small cave and Khan was crouched at the entrance.

“Where the fuck-”

“Silence,” Khan hissed.

“You’re really starting to piss me off,” Kirk grumbled in a hoarse whisper.

As he looked around, he noticed that it was nearly dark outside. So why could he still see? It was difficult to decipher more than shadow and the outlines of shapes, but he could see. In a cave. In the dark.

“Holy shit,” he whispered to himself, moving his fingers in front of his face.

He had felt stronger since he woke up. Bones told him that he recovered from death by radiation faster than anyone would have thought possible - particularly since it should have been impossible. He had thought briefly about how fast he had just run, how he had kept up with Khan, albeit with extreme effort. Now he could see in the dark. And the voice in his mind was gone, and he was sleeping. That feeling of being haunted and torn apart had disappeared and he felt whole and strong and right. He swallowed as he looked at Khan.

It occurred to him that Khan could have left him behind, but he didn’t. They were clearly cornered, and Khan didn’t need any help defending himself. In fact, being unconscious, he must have slowed Khan down a bit. Had he been left behind, he would be dead. It seemed as if he had been right about the augment all along.

“Silence,” Khan said.

Only, he didn’t really say anything out loud, did he?

“They are searching the woods near the cabin. We cannot go back there.”

Kirk closed his eyes and focused on directing his thoughts at Khan. It probably wouldn’t work….

“Twenty,” came the reply in his mind. “There are twenty and they are not in uniform. This is a black ops mission.”

“Oh, my God,” Kirk whispered.

“I said, SHUT UP,” came Khan’s unspoken reply.

“I can hear your thoughts and you can hear mine!” was Kirk’s unspoken answer.

“And the cut on your cheek is healed,” Khan pointed out silently. “It is my DNA in your blood. It is changing you.”

Kirk felt his face. The cut was indeed completely healed. “Is this good? It feels good,” Kirk thought to Khan.

“It is an infinite improvement,” Khan thought back.

Kirk made a snarky face behind Khan’s back. Khan slowly looked over his shoulder.

“Don’t tell me, I’m going to grow eyes in the back of my head now,” he thought to Khan.

“Do you see any in mine?”

“Maybe they’re invisible, augmented eyes.”

Khan just glowered at him.

“Yeah, well, we could use a little levity at this point.” Kirk gained his feet and clambered over to where Khan was crouched. He couldn’t stand up in this low-walled cave.

“You are enjoying this,” Khan thought.

“A little,” Kirk replied and Khan smirked. “It has been too quiet lately.” There was blood staining Khan’s shirt. “You’re wounded.”

“I’ll be fine.”

“They’re going to find us if we stay here.”

“You are correct about that,” Khan answered.

Without warning, Khan’s hands were around Kirk’s throat. Kirk tried to fight him off, but even with his increased strength, he couldn’t. His eyes slowly rolled back in his head as he passed out again.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

When he woke, Kirk saw the night sky passing overhead. He blinked and groaned as he sat up. He had a massive headache and felt like he had the hangover of ten lifetimes. The knot on his head from the head butt was gone, however.

“You have got to stop doing that,” he grumbled.

“It is more efficient than arguing with you,” Khan answered.

They were on the back of an open bed cargo truck, rolling down the highway and music blared loud out of the cab windows. Khan sat next to him, wrapped in a long black coat, the hood over his head.

“How did we get here?”

“I carried you. This truck was stopped for refueling, I took the opportunity to hitch a ride without the driver’s knowledge.”

Kirk didn’t have to ask what happened back at the cabin. Khan wasn’t wearing the same clothes he had on before. He was wearing what one of their hunters had been wearing, and he thought he could see dried blood underneath Khan’s fingernails.

“They’re all dead, aren’t they?” he asked. The question was rhetorical.

Khan answered it anyway. “Yes. It was . . . necessary.”

“You had to kill them?” he asked, anger mounting.

Khan’s head snapped up and he glared at Kirk. “Would you rather be dead? Would you rather have me back where I was? Would you rather all this be for nothing?”

Kirk growled and punched the sack of potatoes next to him. “You just can’t stop yourself, can you?”

“No,” Khan responded. “I cannot stop protecting myself, and you.”

The last two words fell like a stone.

“I won’t stop killing those who mean me harm. As your Vulcan would say, it is logical.”

Kirk grabbed at his own hair in frustration, and then he ran his hands through it, bringing his arms to rest on his bent knees.

“They will triple their search parties now. I mean, I’m clearly found out and you just keep upping the body count.” His eyes widened. “My crew…”

“They all have irrefutable alibis,” Khan responded. “Their whereabouts are accounted for during the time of the theft. They will be watched and their communications monitored, but they will not come to harm.”

“How do you know this?”

“I have been in communication with them.” He tossed the data pad to Kirk. “I retrieved it from the cabin after I burned the bodies. The encryption is unbreakable, now.”

“You BURNED the bodies?” Kirk shouted.

“I could not risk leaving DNA behind. I burned the cabin as well.”

“Our DNA wasn’t on their bodies.”

“Mine was. I have arranged for a rendezvous with your doctor in a small town just up the road.”

Kirk growled, then asked: “How did you get Bones to agree to meet you without knowing if I’m still alive?”

“I provided proof that you were still alive via your data pad. I did, of course, tell him that you were injured in a firefight. I then told the good doctor I would agree to undergo his procedure.”

“His what?”

“He has isolated the gene that makes me violent. He thinks he can correct it. I promised him I would allow him to complete the procedure.”

“How did you know he found it?”

“I hacked his medical files.”

“And you will do it?”

“Once there is no longer any threat. We do not know how the doctor’s procedure will affect me and I cannot afford to be compromised as long as we are hunted and my crew is captive. Once my people and I are safe, I will submit. If it is successful on me, then those of my people who carry the same defective gene will submit as well. Despite what you may believe, we do not wish to be monsters, and…”

“And what?”

“I will be a slave to nothing, including my own DNA.”

Kirk had no response. He wanted to believe that Khan was telling the truth, but it seemed too soon for him to come to this realization on his own, no matter how smart he was.

“You’ll forgive me if I don’t believe you right off the bat.”

“Understandable,” Khan said, then he looked at Kirk and communicated telepathically: But you want to.

Kirk swallowed. It was true, he did. “How does this work?” he asked.

“What?”

“The telepathic thing.”

“If you direct your thoughts at me I can hear them, and you can hear thoughts I direct at you. It is a psychic link formed because of shared DNA. I share this link with my crew, or at least I did before I was woken.”

“And now?”

“I cannot hear them, nor can they hear me. Once they awake and we are on the same psychic plane, that will change.”

“But, when you were in cryosleep, I heard you and you heard me, and I was awake.”

Khan frowned. “Yes. I can only hypothesize that is due to the amount of my DNA in you. My crew and I share one strand, the rest of their biology is unique. You and I share twice that. More of my DNA was required to heal you than was required to augment them. Less would not have brought you back.”

“I was really dead.”

“Yes, you were. Your entire cellular structure was destroyed by radiation. In order for it to repair itself, a substantial amount of a specific part of my DNA was required.”

“How do you know . . . wait. Let me guess. You hacked Bones’ records.”

“Of course,” Khan answered.

“Of course,” Kirk rejoined. “Can you read my mind?”

“Yes, but not because of our shared DNA.”

“Then why?”

Khan smirked. “You are not nearly as intelligent as you think you are.”

Kirk shook his head. “What the fuck am I doing?”

Khan looked at Kirk with a bemused expression. “Having second thoughts, Captain?”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

It was nearing dawn when the truck pulled off the highway and into a small logging town in northwest Alberta. It was little more than a weigh station, with two motels, a bar and a fueling station. Kirk and Khan slipped off the back of the truck and made their way across the highway into the dark.

They climbed a hill and moved into the woods. Khan found a hollowed out tree that fit them both and had a view of the road and approaching path, if even it was close quarters. They hunkered down as it started to rain; Khan used his over-large coat to cover their heads.

Kirk sat with his knees pulled to his chest and his back resting against the hollowed out tree. He should be colder than he was, but he supposed that was another byproduct of Khan’s blood. Either that or it was the heat that radiated off Khan, which under other circumstances would have lured Kirk into leaning into it. The augment sat beside him, his eyes trained on the dark forest and the road beyond, his face expressionless.

“What are we doing?” Kirk asked.

“Waiting,” Khan answered.

“For?”

Khan turned his head and looked at the man. “Word from Doctor McCoy.” He took a deep breath and sighed as if explaining was a gross inconvenience. “We will have to alter our appearance. Starfleet has obviously discovered that I am missing and that you are to blame. They will raise surveillance levels and we cannot go near the cities until our appearance is altered enough that we do not trigger facial recognition programs. They will also move my crew, if they have not done so already.”

“We’ve got that covered,” Kirk said.

“How?”

He smiled. It was nice to get one over on Khan every once in a while. “We’ve got a . . . woman on the inside.”

“Who?”

“Carol Marcus. She’s installed undetectable tracking devices. We’ll know where your crew ends up.” He felt a tremor course through him as Khan’s arm lowered, brushing his shoulder.

Khan spoke softly, “Why would she help me? I hurt her. I murdered her father.”

“She’s helping because I asked her to, because she recognizes that what her father did was wrong.”

Khan frowned and Kirk twisted slightly to look the augment in the eye. “You don’t understand this, do you?”

“I understand that kindness is a show of weakness.”

“Is it? Really?” Kirk asked. Khan was staring straight ahead, but Kirk could see by the softening in his gaze that Khan doubted what he said was true. The augment didn’t answer him, so Kirk changed the subject. “So what do we do in the meantime? Until our appearance is altered.”

“We stay away from civilization. After our appearance is altered, you will arrange for false identification in the event that we are intercepted. Your Chief Engineer is procuring a ship and a base of operations, and your Vulcan is writing a data corruption package that will damage records pertaining to our identities and cover any data trail we may leave.”

“And you?”

“Once appropriately disguised, I will procure weapons.” Khan sensed Kirk’s apprehension. “Surely you knew, Captain, that once you embarked upon this road there would be no return to your former life. We will encounter resistance when we liberate my people.”

“Yeah, I just…” Kirk ran a hand down the back of his neck. “I’m worried about my crew. I’m not sure they signed up for all of this.”

“They will not be able to return to their lives or their careers in Starfleet if any connection is made.”

“I know.”

“And it is doubtful we can accomplish this without their help.”

“I know.”

“None of them have more than familial ties. There are no children nor spouses nor lovers with the exception of Commander Spock and your Lieutenant Uhura, and they will be together.”

“Wait. How did you know about Uhura and Spock?”

“It was not difficult to discern once she arrived upon the refuse barge and attempted to render me unconscious with her phaser. I saw the look in her eyes as I was beating her lover to death.”

Kirk clenched his jaw. Spock had never told him the extent of the violence of that encounter and the thought of it sparked hot rage in his gut. It was a reminder of what Khan was capable of.

“Ah, you are angry at me now,” Khan crooned. “Now you are thinking that perhaps it would have been better to kill me.”

“Shut up,” Kirk growled.

“But you cannot, not now.”

“I said shut up,” Kirk warned.

“There is a bond between us now, Kirk. I am now part of you. Only death can break it and I doubt you have the resolve to kill me, not to mention the ability. If this angers you, then thank your good doctor. It is he who bound us together.”

“You’re a real charmer, you know that?”

Khan smiled darkly. “You have no idea.”

Chapter Six