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Really, Leonard thought, it shouldn’t have surprised any of them that there might be trouble. Starfleet had done its damndest to keep Khan’s crimes, capture, trial, and most importantly, his sentence, relatively quiet. But as with all things, details leaked out; people talk, after all.
Officially, genetically enhanced people were banned from joining Starfleet. Of course Leonard understood the root of the ban: In many ways it was like taking a performance enhancer, something that gave one an unfair advantage over potential competition. And if there was one thing that Starfleet had, especially amongst the recruits in the Academy, it was hellish levels of competition. Heck, there’d been an illegal genetic-modification clinic operating in San Francisco, catering to Starfleet cadets who needed assistance to qualify for the Academy.
But privately… Well, they let members of alien races serve in Starfleet, didn’t they? Many of those races were faster, or stronger, or had a greater capacity for intelligence than humans, however incrementally. He understood the ban as a detriment from people playing with nature or trying to give their kid an unfair advantage over their peers, but in the bigger picture, it didn’t necessarily even the playing field when some decently-build young man was in a race with an alien with six legs.
When the subject of Khan, a genetically enhanced human, being sentenced to twenty-five years as a member of Starfleet (it didn’t help that most people would not consider that a punishment) was brought to light, people were pretty pissed.
It was bad enough after what happened with Admiral Marcus. Every Starfleet critic from Earth to the Andorian Empire had crawled out of the woodwork to start flinging mud at Starfleet Command, demanding to know how Marcus had gotten away with his actions for so long without them knowing, what had become of Section 31, and why a man who murdered several people was being allowed to join Starfleet as a ‘punishment’ despite clearly being genetically enhanced.
Now, see, normally Leonard would be rolling his eyes at such protestors; prior to the epic clusterfuck with Khan and Marcus, most of Starfleet’s more vocal protestors had been spouting theories that deserved to be framed and honored in the Hall of Crazy Fucking Crackpot Theories. There had been a woman who, Leonard would swear on his life to everyone he told the story to, believed that the President of the Federation was having a hot threesome with both the Romulan and Klingon Emperors; she had entire notebooks filled out with the explicit details of these supposed-trysts, which she had eagerly shown Leonard in an attempt to convert him.
Instead, he had gently offered her a psychiatric evaluation.
The point was, normally the protestors were a bunch of nuts. But this time… Well, this time there was more truth than falsehood to the majority of their accusations, and more reason to their questions.
And while he didn’t plan on camping out in front of headquarters and waving any signs around any time soon, Leonard kind of wanted a goddamn explanation for all of it too.
He’d nearly been killed. His entire fucking crew had nearly been killed, nearly sacrificed by Admiral-Fucking-Marcus because he and Section 31 wanted to- deliberately! Intentionally!- start a massive, bloody war that would have killed countless members of the Federation- it made sense that the Andorians, Deltans, Tellarites, and Vulcans were pissed off (inasmuch as a Vulcan could be pissed off), they’d nearly been dragged into the bullshit too.
And Leonard’s ever-present cynicism could not allow him to believe that Command had had no clue whatsoever as to Marcus’s doings. No way. So what if Section 31 was a covert agency? Did no one have purview over them besides Marcus, or over Marcus himself? ‘Who will watch the watchmen’, was the saying; well, who was watching Marcus? Had he honestly just been given free-reign over a massive intelligence-gathering agency and never been checked up on?
Something about it had stunk, and the stench had only gotten worse when Khan had been sentenced. Okay, so Leonard had worked with Jim and Spock to request leniency- note that it was ‘leniency’, not ‘a free fucking pass onto the Federation Fleet’s flagship! It had thrown him for more than a few loops when Khan was sentenced to work for Starfleet, and that it was on the Enterprise of all places that he would be going to- which, Jim maintained, had not been entirely his choice.
What the fuck was Command playing at? Either they were getting back at Jim for his more rebellious behavior (which was completely fucking unfair, because the kid had changed since the Marcus incident, and Leonard wasn’t the only one who’d noticed), or they were under the impression that it was a good idea to utilize Khan’s intellect for Starfleet’s goals… Which in no way, shape or form could be compared to what Marcus was doing, right? Right?!
And then there Jim was telling him about how Khan ran off a couple weeks back because some Section 31 agent came into his apartment and threatened him. Which added an extra cherry on top of the shit-sundae, because there was a decent chance that Section 31 might not be so inclined to letting Khan head off on a five-year mission without any supervision on their part, which meant that they would have to be vigilant about double-checking every crewmember’s background to make sure there weren’t any inconsistencies.
In summation: Leonard should have stayed in Georgia. Really and truly he should have.
[---]
The call came in at 2:00 AM.
As far as days went, his hadn’t been that bad, but that didn’t make a phone call at two in the morning waking him up out of a dead sleep any less irritating.
When he’d finally managed to drag himself across the bed to the nightstand and pick up the phone, he saw that it wasn’t a call, but a text- from Jim, no less.
sorry for the time, need you at hospital
Leonard felt a chill run down his back. He was suddenly catapulted back to their days in the Academy, when Jim had called from the Academy medical center to ask him for help after some ill-gotten scheme that ended with more injuries than he could reasonably brush off.
What happened you okay??
(Normally Leonard took care to use proper grammar and punctuation, usually to spite Jim’s tendency to forsake both whilst texting, but it was too early in the morning and he was anxious to know what he was walking into.)
The response came within a minute:
explosion. Im fine. Khans not.
Leonard spent a good two minutes staring at the screen, trying to process those words and their meaning. Once the full implications of the message managed to settle down into the gray-matter of his brain, Leonard groaned and pressed his face into the pillow for a moment. So many questions, so little time.
I’ll be right there.
[---]
The emergency room was full.
It wasn’t bedlam, fortunately: Everything seemed to be reasonably under control, hence why he hadn’t received an emergency communication asking for backup already. Leonard’s living quarters were placed near to the hospital for exactly that reason, and so it only took about ten minutes for him to get dressed and hurry over.
It didn’t take long to find Jim and Khan, either: The just-barely-room-level arguing became more audible as he made his way across the emergency room, and in moments he was standing next to the curtained-off area that the argument was coming from.
“-need it.”
“Would you like a mirror? Would you like to see what your head looks like right now? Because you look like something out of a horror film.”
“Clearly you haven’t seen many horror films.”
“Oh, and you have?”
Leonard whipped back the curtain, and started at what he saw on the other side.
Khan had a towel pressed to his head, just above his hairline. At first Leonard thought the towel was brown or black, but then he realized that it had been soaked through with blood. He had a number of other smaller scratches on his face, and his sleeve had been rolled up to reveal another gash on his arm that had hastily been wrapped in bandages- though why the nurse, doctor, or emergency technician in question hadn’t just used a dermal regenerator was a mystery.
“What the hell happened to you?”
“I told you not to call for him,” Khan growled.
“I didn’t,” Jim remarked flippantly, “I texted him.” He pointed to Khan. “There was an explosion. He got hurt in it.”
Leonard gave him a look. “No, really? And here I thought Augments just naturally leaked blood from their scalps. Is that right, Khan? Your hair just kind of bleeds every now and then, without your say-so?”
“Oh yes,” Khan drawled, eyes rolling shut.
Jim’s expression turned moody. “You don’t need to be an ass about it.”
“It’s two AM, and you’re the one who requested me. You knew what you were getting,” Leonard groused. He rummaged through the drawer near the examination bed and pulled out a tricorder, bringing it up to scan Khan in one quick motion. As he did, he noticed a nearly imperceptible movement from Khan that Leonard was inclined to classify as a flinch. He also seemed to be holding himself a bit stiffer than before.
Over the years, Leonard had come to recognize people who were intimidated by medical professionals as easily as he could recognize his own face in the mirror. There were three kinds: People who didn’t try to hide it (most of them children), people who admitted their anxiety but downplayed it with humor, and people who refused to admit for a single moment, thank you very much, that they were afraid of anything, never mind doctors or medical settings- ignore the shaking, the paleness, the flinching whenever the doctor tried to touch them, that was just excitement.
Khan, obviously, fell under Section C.
Once the scan was finished, Leonard looked at the results. “Mild concussion, some blood loss, various lacerations-” He glanced at Khan’s head. “-all fairly obvious.” Then he frowned. “Has anyone other than me examined you yet?”
Khan’s eyes were steely. “No.”
“They tried,” Jim explained, “He refused.”
Leonard’s gaze jumped back to Khan. “Are you refusing treatment?” Please say no, he thought in spite of himself. That thing on your head needs to be sealed up.
Khan let out a low, irate breath, the kind that made Leonard think he was about to breathe fire. “I ‘compromised’,” Khan sneered.
When he didn’t elaborate, Jim did. “I asked if he might be more willing to be treated by you than by a stranger. He agreed.” He glanced towards the entrance of the emergency room, as though remembering something. “Hey, I’m gonna step out for a few minutes. Don’t kill each other.”
Leonard couldn’t help but note that there wasn’t a hint of Jim’s usual teasing tone in his voice.
Jim excused himself, and Khan didn’t look even remotely pleased by the arrangement, but he did take the towel away from his head so that Leonard could examine the wound. It was a nasty one, too: Deep and bleeding profusely… Though perhaps not as profusely as it could have been. Leonard knew Khan had a better rate of natural healing that the average human, and apparently it had already kicked in.
“When did this happen? Minutes ago? Hours ago?”
“Twenty-seven minutes ago.” Khan said with damnable preciseness. Jim must have sent that text minutes after whatever had happened.
“And what did happen, exactly? Jim mentioned an explosion.”
“Something in the apartment either directly above mine, or the one above it, exploded. It felt a bit like a gas explosion.”
“Did you smell gas?”
Khan thought for a moment. “No, I didn’t.”
Leonard didn’t respond as he picked up a dermal regenerator. A gas explosion sounded like an odd explanation- but then he remembered who he was talking to. Safety measures surrounding the (now extremely limited) use of natural gas had been improved considerably since Khan’s time. You'd have to be really, really stupid to get blown up by natural gas nowadays- not, of course, that Leonard was underestimating humanity's new and inventive ways to be fucking idiots. But the odds of anyone in that building having natural gas just kind of floating around in their home was incredibly slim.
Of course, the other alternatives were all, by Leonard’s count, alarmingly sinister, so maybe a gas leak would prove to be less horrifying than the alternatives.
Leonard brought the dermal regenerator to hover over the injury (causing another very slight twitching motion from Khan), idly considering other tests he would have to run to see if Khan would need to stay for observation tonight. It was only once he’d mapped out said tests and ordered them neatly in his mind that Leonard realized something.
“Oh Lordy," he half-grumbled.
“What?” Khan’s voice had a wary undercurrent to it.
“The dermal regenerator is… Not working as quickly as it usually does.” Leonard looked to Khan. “Is that normal for you?”
“I wouldn’t know. It’s a device unique to your lifetime, I believe.”
“No one in this century’s used a dermal regenerator on you before?” Leonard held up the regenerator so that Khan could see it clearly.
The Augment’s eye flickered over the device for a moment, analyzing. Then he shook his head. “Not that I am aware of.”
Leonard blew out a breath. “Shit. That’s concerning.”
Until this moment, he hadn’t fully realized the unique problem they now faced with Khan: Leonard had extremely limited access to his medical records; whether it was limited access based on what had physically been recovered from Section 31 or on Command’s discretion, Leonard didn’t know. Point was, it hadn’t occurred to him until just now that there might be any significant medical anomalies he needed to be aware of with Khan, like the fact that a basic medical tool was working at about half the speed it would for a normal human. And even then, dermal regenerators were meant to be as fast as possible whilst also not fucking up the wound even further, so even on a normal person they wouldn't necessarily be considered "fast."
“I fail to see the significance. My own healing abilities will seal the wound within hours.”
Leonard bit his lip, trying not to stare at Khan as he thought. “It’s not the quality of healing I’m concerned about as much as the speed. If some gigantic beast with claws the size of a small car decides to take a chunk out of you, will your natural capacity for healing be able to work fast enough to compensate for the blood loss or vital organ damage?”
Khan considered for a moment. “I have rarely found myself so severely injured,” was his response.
Leonard laughed darkly. “Oh, buddy, you’re about to embark on a five-year mission that will involve dropping onto planets populated by giant, man-eating locusts. You will get stabbed, you will get slashed, you will get chunks taken out of you. And now I’m concerned about what sort of medical interventions I’ll be able to use to save your life if I have to.”
Khan frowned. “I can’t speak for any future injuries, but stitches will suffice for my current one in lieu of a regenerator.”
Leonard grimaced. Nowadays, stitches were really only used in emergencies when regenerators or other more effective methods of skin regeneration were unavailable. Stitches had a tendency to scar, and sealing the injury so that it was as good as new meant there was less of a chance of anything getting infected.
Not that Khan and his Perfect Immune System needed to worry about that, probably.
Leonard blew out a long breath before giving up on the regenerator and leaning down to pull the stitching equipment out of the often unused lowest drawer on the cabinet.
“How vain are you, Khan?” He asked mildly.
Khan raised an eyebrow at that. “I value looking respectable. Aesthetics for aesthetics’ sake hold no value for me.”
“Well that’s grand. Because I haven’t done stitches in almost two years, and I’m shit at them; so you’re probably gonna look like a freak when I’m done with you. Now hold still, or I can’t guarantee this needle won’t end up in your earlobe.”
[---]
“We have a problem.”
Leonard’s eyes rolled shut, wheeling his chair around to face Jim. It wasn’t too long ago that he’d managed to convince Khan to stick around in the hospital for observation that night- and boy oh boy, had it been a battle. Physicals during the five-year mission were going to be fun.
“I feel like one day, I’m gonna hear those words coming out of your mouth, and then I’m gonna die. What the hell is it this time, Jim?”
Any further sarcasm dried up and died when he saw Jim’s face.
Leonard had known Jim for years now. He considered himself responsible for making sure the kid never got himself booted out of the Academy; how many times had he gone before the administration and vouched for Jim? He’d lost count. For the most part, Jim would always be cemented in his mind as a kind of goofy, heartbreaking prankster who was also shockingly intelligent.
And then there moments like these, when Jim was in Pissed-Off Captain Mode.
Pissed-Off Captain Mode was not a mode you ever wanted to trigger. Never. Jim may be an easy-going guy in general, but that made his transformation into ‘I am going to kick ass and take names if someone doesn’t cut the bullshit right now’ all the more terrifying to behold. Even Uhura, made of iron though she was, had been known to keep her mouth shut when Jim was in Pissed-Off Captain Mode.
Jim was, right now, in Pissed-Off Captain Mode, and Leonard was a little frightened by that.
“Police finally came back with a report,” He said. “It was a bomb, planted in the apartment above the one right above Khan’s.”
Leonard swallowed. “The occupants of that apartment?”
“Out for the evening. Unfortunately, since the bomb went off in right about the middle of the building, not everyone was so lucky.” Jim glared at him, and yeah, that was actually pretty intimidating even though Leonard knew it wasn’t him that Jim was angry at. “I mean, take a wild guess, Bones.”
Leonard nodded slowly. “They wanted Khan.”
Jim began pacing back and forth like a caged tiger. “That’s my theory. Coincidentally, guess who’s suspected of planting the bomb?”
Leonard groaned and covered his face with both hands. “Khan.”
“Bingo.” Jim paused in his pacing to laugh in a way that made Leonard subtly push his chair back a little bit, out of the line of potential fire. “I mean, it’s perfect, right? Of all the people in that building, who’s most likely to have planted a bomb than someone who’s done it before?”
“There is a certain logic to it, yeah,” Leonard agreed. “So judging from your reaction, I’m assuming you’re of the opinion that he’s innocent.”
Jim stopped and fixed Leonard with a ‘really?’ kind of expression that made him look more like himself. “Of course. I was with him right before it went off. I was just lucky enough not to get hurt.” He paused. “He called me over. Told me about a high pitched whine he’d been hearing all day, and wanted to know if there was anything in his apartment that might have been doing it.”
Leonard frowned. “Was it hurting him, or just bothering him?”
“Bothered. But I couldn’t hear anything.”
“So you think he may have been hearing some component of the bomb?”
“He doesn’t take sonic showers, either. He says it’s like nails on a chalkboard to him. It wouldn’t shock me if he could hear something from thirty feet away. The walls are thick, but they’re not completely soundproof.”
“May have been a protestor,” Leonard suggested. “Or some pissed off family member, or survivor from the Kelvin Archive bombing.”
Jim’s shoulders sank a little. “I don’t blame them for being angry. Much as it makes my brain hurt to remember it, we are about to take a murderer onto our ship.”
Leonard snorted. “Sure, but if on the off-chance you end up coming face to face with our current bomber, kindly don’t forget that they just endangered countless lives to get back at one guy. If it does end up to be some disgruntled family member or survivor, then they should have goddamn known better than to put more innocent people at risk.”
Jim swallowed. “Has anyone died? I saw some people being taken away in an ambulance. They didn’t look good.”
Leonard rubbed his eyes. “You and Khan got lucky. There’s a woman who was in surgery for hours because a piece of shrapnel hit her and tore up her liver real bad. Two guys are comatose from a head injury. Teenage girl had to have part of her heart regenerated because something fell on her and broke her ribs, cutting into the left atrium. And there’s a four year-old boy who probably has brain-damage now from the amount of smoke he inhaled before rescue workers could pull him out. Those are the worst, off the top of my head. You’re lucky Khan’s on the second floor.”
“Are we hypocrites?”
Leonard raised an eyebrow. “Say what?”
“Are we hypocrites? Defending Khan, and condemning this guy for doing the same thing he did? Does that make us hypocrites?” Jim looked pained, and couldn’t quite meet Leonard’s eyes.
As for Leonard, he thought about that for a bit. “Maybe we are,” he said. “Maybe we’re not.” He paused. “Look. I based my recommendation for leniency on the idea that Khan doesn’t know any better. It’d be no different if he’d been raised in a cult. He has been engineered for strategy and violence. Whoever tinkered with his genetics before he was born did what they did to produce a cold, hard, killing machine. And then, just to be sure, they supplemented the nature- not that anything about it was natural- with the nurture, by training him to be a cold, hard, killing machine. I…” Leonard bit his lip. Optimism wasn’t something he was accustomed to espousing. “I made my recommendation under the idea that Khan has never been allowed to be any better than what he was made to be, and that we should give him a chance before sealing him up in a cryotube again.”
“Right,” Jim said vaguely, and Leonard couldn’t tell what was going on in his head. “Right.”
“I don’t know that the same rules can be applied to whoever did this. If it was a disgruntled family member, then I understand the anger; I know you would too.” Jim flinched a little at that. “But the thing is, they probably know better. If they’re living in our society, if they’ve been playing by our rules for all this time, then they damn well know better than to set off a bomb in an apartment building full of innocent people. Khan deliberately targeted Starfleet because he saw us as his enemies. Whoever did this detonated a bomb in a building full of men, women, and children, either not realizing or not caring that they could have died. If they’d just gone after Khan, I’d understand; but instead they chose to hurt everyone around him, too, and that’s not fair.”
The corner of Jim’s lip quirked up a little. “Think everyone else is going to like that line of thinking?”
Leonard snorted. “Of course not. I’ve no doubt that some people can and will scream me down about what an idiot I was to make the call that I did. But until I see something to make me think otherwise, I stand by what I said. Khan’s shown no signs of wanting to commit further acts of aggression against Starfleet, and soon enough we’ll be off the planet and away from anyone that might want him dead. Maybe a few years in space, with a relatively small group of people to be around, he’ll chill out.”
I hope.
[---]
The apartment building, obviously, was off-limits.
As it was, most of the people who lived in the building were either active members of Starfleet, or related to someone who was, so Starfleet was able to accommodate the ones who could not find lodgings with family or friends.
Leonard walked to the building with Jim and Khan, who, for the moment, was one of the few people well-enough to actually go to the new lodgings.
And for the most part, he was trying to talk him out of it.
“Somebody may have just tried to blow you to hell, and you want to go to a building where you’ll be almost completely alone?”
“Do you have some other place I might go, Doctor?” Khan retorted smoothly. “Some magical land beyond the reach of anyone with poor intentions?”
“You could ask Starfleet to move you someplace a little less well-known. It’s pretty public knowledge that most of the tenants of the old building are coming here.”
Khan snorted. “Yes, because Starfleet would take great pains to protect me.”
“Oh God, you’re working for them, you gotta stop assuming they’re gonna try to kill you every time you turn around.”
“Bones,” Jim sighed wearily, “I’ve been singing that song for a while now. Don’t bother.”
Leonard knew that Jim has established some kind of relationship with Khan- obviously not a sexual one, Jim was adventurous, but not inclined to sleeping with men who’d murdered his mentor- but he had little idea as to exactly what the nature of said relationship was. They seemed to have a good rapport with one another- and by that, Leonard meant that they could actually hold a semi-normal conversation. Jim seemed to have a better feel for how to handle Khan, even if it didn’t always work; and Khan, for his part, seemed to be at ease around Jim- and by that, Leonard meant that the guy seemed a little less twitchy around him.
That reminded him: He’d need to ask Jim how to best approach Khan on the subject of mandatory physicals. It would be like approaching an escape-artist on how to best guard against prison-breaks, but hopefully he would get something useful out of it.
They came up to the building. It wasn’t as large as the previous one, but it looked newer, like it had just been completed- just in time for the other one to blow up. Leonard didn’t like how easily he could picture this one going up in flames as the other one had.
There was a weary-looking woman standing outside, a couple of children playing in the grass behind her. Two men were pulling some heavy-looking luggage out of the back of a pick-up truck and carrying it towards the building, while a third spoke to the woman. Leonard noticed them the same way one noticed a tree or a mailbox- they’re there, but not of any relevance at the moment.
Until, of course, both of them began to stare.
Leonard did a double-take when he noticed that they weren’t looking away. And his concerns grew when he realized that it wasn’t just that they were staring: They were glaring. And it didn’t take a whole lot of thought to realize who it was in their little group that they were glaring at.
When it became clear that they were heading into the building, the woman marched over to the grass, pulled the two children up by the arms, and pulled them over to the truck, saying something to the man that was inaudible to Leonard. She put the kids inside, still talking- and she jabbed a finger first towards Khan, and then again towards the building as she did. The man nodded shortly, and said something back.
If Khan heard- and he probably had- he didn’t say anything.
[---]
“No. No way.”
“I need him to be comfortable around you.”
Leonard covered his eyes, feeling like he had when his father had tried to talk him into “socializing” with his cousins when he was sixteen. He was just as reluctant to do this as he was that.
“You know you’re going to have to give him physicals at some point. He’ll have to be comfortable around you to be okay with it.”
Leonard lifted one hand enough so that he could glare at Jim. “So, am I hearing that you are not comfortable around me, since you don’t seem to want me performing your physicals?”
Jim grinned. “Nah, that’s just fun.” But then he frowned. “But seriously, Bones. I need Khan to start trusting more people. He’s already assuming that everyone hates him and wants him dead.”
“That’s not the most unreasonable assumption.”
“I know.” A pause. “His neighbors have been giving him shit.”
Leonard took his hands away and sat up right. “You’re kidding.”
Jim looked deadly serious. “I’m not. Someone spray-painted ‘MURDERER’ on his door the night before last.”
“So, let me see if I understand this,” Leonard half-chuckled, more out of disbelief than amusement. “These people think he’s a killer, so they’re provoking him. Because provoking murderers is a totally sane and rational thing to do.”
Jim threw his hands up. “My thoughts exactly. Either they think he’s responsible for the bombing and are stupid enough to go after him for it, or they realize he’s not responsible for the bombing-” He winced. “-this time, and are projecting their anger and fear into their efforts as driving him away.”
Leonard snorted. “Didn’t know you majored in Psych, Jim. But you’re not wrong. Still, does Khan actually care?”
Jim was quiet for a moment. “He says he doesn’t, but I don’t know how true that is. I mean, I don’t think he cares about their opinion of him, but I think it’s aggravating his paranoia. I’ve noticed he’s gotten thinner over the last couple of months, and he’s been looking a little… Sick, lately. I think.”
That’s the nail in the coffin, really. Much as Leonard hates it, he’s probably one of the few doctors of the 23rd century that Khan can even come close to trusting with his issues and ahhhh this sucks, this was not what Leonard was signing up for when he made that recommendation for leniency, it really wasn’t.
“Fine, fine, I’ll go with you to visit the guy. But I won’t like it.”
“You don’t have to.”
[---]
Khan’s apartment was more or less exactly like his old one: Clean, perfect, and utterly lacking in any personality whatsoever. Of course, that wasn’t entirely shocking given that Khan didn’t have any personal items (that Leonard knew of) to put in either apartment; even if he had any personal items, they had probably been destroyed when the bomb had gone off.
It was only when Leonard followed Jim around the corner into the living room area that he saw the window.
“What the hell happened there?”
“A rock came through the window last night.”
Khan said it as easily as one might state the weather, apparently not putting the same amount of importance on someone smashing your window with a rock in the middle of the night that other people did.
“Who?”
“I didn’t quite have a chance to ask for their social security number,” Khan retorted dryly.
“Did you call the cops, at least?”
Jim’s eyes rolled shut, and he shook his head. “Bones, he doesn’t do cops.”
“So, what exactly are you planning on doing when it’s a Molotov-cocktail next time? Beating out the fire and going back to sleep?”
“More or less,” Khan responded without a hint of irony. “Unless, of course, you’re intimating that the authorities would be inclined to taking my side, which is laughable given that they currently think I’m responsible for the bombing at the apartment.”
Leonard leveled an irate look at Jim. “You told him?”
“He guessed.”
“I’m not an idiot. Of course they would suspect me, given my history. The fact that I could have just as easily been killed in the blast doesn’t seem to have penetrated yet.” Khan did seem to be somewhat detached from the subject as he spoke, as though he were speaking about an incident that had no bearing on him whatsoever.
But now that he was looking closely, Leonard saw that Jim had been right about Khan looking thinner, paler, sicker; his eyes were a little red, slight bags forming underneath them like he hadn’t been sleeping properly. Without a closer look, he was guessing stress, which was probably affecting Khan’s appetite and sleeping.
In a normal person it would have been a mild concern- get some sleep, maybe increase your calorie take a bit, find a way to de-stress if you can- but with Khan it was even more concerning, because Leonard was reasonably certain that Khan was built to withstand the usual stresses of life. The fact that his stress had reached such a point that it had overpowered his usual defenses and become something that was obvious just from looking at him was a big, honking red flag.
Which meant Leonard was going to say something.
Crap.
Well, Jim wasn’t the only one who had an alternate personality attached to his profession. Jim had Pissed-Off Captain Mode, and Leonard had No Bullshit Doctor Mode. Jim preferred to call it Mother Hen Mode. Either way you sliced it, they were finding a solution for Khan’s stress concerns today if it killed them.
And it probably would.
Leonard took a deep breath, crossed his arms, and turned towards Khan, running through the talking points in his head with practiced ease.
Alright, engaging No Bullshit Doctor Mode in three, two, one-
“Are you feeling alright?”
Khan sniffed. “I’m fine.”
“You look pale.”
“And here I thought I was sporting a healthy tan.”
“You’ve lost weight.”
“I can’t say that synthesized food is especially appetizing.”
“You’re not wrong. But you look exhausted. You haven’t been sleeping.”
“I wasn’t aware you were watching me in my sleep, doctor.”
“I don’t need to watch you in your sleep to know you’re not sleeping. I’m gonna go ahead and guess that your concerns about Section 31 agents and bombs and rocks being thrown through your window at night is causing you a little stress. And don’t give me any of that ‘I Am Better Than Human Weakness’ bullshit, I’m a doctor, damn it, and I know the physical effects of stress on a person’s body.”
Khan’s eyes had narrowed progressively over the course of Leonard’s spiel, and now he looked outright surly. “It’s none of your business,” He growled.
“It is, actually. I’m the Enterprise’s doctor. I’m responsible for the crew, and that now includes you. I’m also responsible for clearing everyone for active duty on the ship, and you better believe I’m not going to be doing that if you’re not handling your stress properly.”
“Seriously,” Jim piped up cautiously from his place on the couch. “If he knows there’s something wrong with you, Bones will hunt you down. I’m not even kidding. This guy’s been chasing me down for physicals for the last year and a half, Khan. You may as well just let him help you.”
“I don’t need help,” Khan spat. “In any case, all of the ‘stressors’ you’ve listed are beyond my control. Short of me wiping out Section 31 with my bare hands, I’ve no reassurance that I’m not about to be killed. I am built to effectively respond to threats, and I am currently being threatened.”
Leonard processed the implications of that as Khan spoke. If he was hard-wired to respond to a perceived threat effectively, that probably meant that his fight-or-flight instincts were more sensitive than a normal human’s; that meant that sleeping would be difficult, because if at any point those instincts were triggered- maybe by a dream, maybe by a sound somewhere else in the building, or outside- he would be wide awake and ready to respond at a moment’s notice.
So maybe if Leonard could find something, a medication maybe, that could suppress that instinct to some extent, it might allow Khan to calm down enough to sleep properly.
“Okay, have you had any other encounters with Section 31 since the one the night after you moved into your apartment?” Jim asked, sounding like this was a battle he’d fought a thousand times before.
“I have not, but as I have explained to you time and time again, they generally make a point of not being detectable to most people, and as I know remarkably few people in this century I have no idea who is associated with them and who isn’t,” Khan snapped; oh yes, this was definitely an argument he and Jim had had on multiple occasions.
“I know you can’t do anything about them, Khan, but you can do something about your stress levels. I can give you something for the-”
“No.”
“What, you think I’m gonna poison you?”
“Dulling my ability to react to danger is not going to help me.”
“What if we asked Starfleet to move you somewhere else? Some place where people don’t necessarily know who you are?” Jim proposed.
“You continue to have trouble grasping that I have no basis of safety where Starfleet is involved, and they’re informed of every move I make. In any case, given the ire my neighbors seem to be showing me, it wouldn’t surprise me if they informed any potential new neighbors of my presence.”
“What if it was just something mild?” Leonard cut in before the two of them could really start going. “Just a test. Just something to try. You do realize that if you don’t look after yourself, your reflexes will suffer anyway, right?”
Khan was quiet for a time, and Leonard felt like maybe he’d managed to land a hit.
“And think,” Leonard continued, cautious but feeling like Khan was on the verge of saying yes. “It’s just for a while. Then we’ll be in space, away from Earth and Section 31, and maybe you won’t need to worry about it.”
Khan’s face was almost completely blank as he considered. Leonard had to give him credit: He was good at shutting his expressions off and on when it suited him. “Fine,” he muttered, sounding entirely displeased. “Fine. But you’ll find it’s not easy to find medication that meshes well with my metabolism, doctor.”
Leonard shrugged. “And you’ll find that medicine’s come a long way from your time, Khan. Besides, I welcome a challenge.”
“In the meantime,” Jim changed course, looking somewhat wary, “We need to talk about the living situation. Rocks coming through your window at night is not good.”
“You don’t say?”
Jim ignored him. “If you don’t want to be moved somewhere else, then maybe you need to consider making peace with these people. Try to be civil towards them, show them you don’t plan on violently murdering them in their sleep.”
Khan’s face was back to stormy in record time. “I don’t care if they accept me or not. I don’t require their acceptance to fulfill some irrational emotional void,” he spat.
“Maybe you don’t need it emotionally,” Jim argued, “But it wouldn’t hurt to have acceptance on a level that would make them stop harassing you, now would it?”
It was in moments like these that Leonard wondered at Jim’s patience. For someone as determinedly frustrating as Khan could be, Jim seemed equally determined to stay calm and unyielding in his attempts at peeling back the layers to find the (God, they hoped) semi-decent person underneath.
“Much as I hate to encourage his anti-social tendencies,” Leonard drawled, leaning against the wall next to the broken window, “I don’t know what it is you’re proposing he do, Jim: Hand out flower-crowns to everyone who hates him and ask them to join in a few verses of Kumbaya?”
Khan didn’t speak, but raised an eyebrow at Jim and nodded towards Leonard as if to say, ‘Yes, see, even he thinks you sound stupid’.
Jim threw up his hands helplessly. “Shit, I don’t know! I’m just trying to think of ways to get people off your back, alright? A little civility goes a long way.”
“They can hate me all they like. It makes no difference to me, and I doubt any civility on my part will change their opinion of me. They think I tried to kill them all, no amount of pleasantries will undo that.”
“You want them throwing rocks through your windows?”
“I don’t give a damn if they do.”
“You might if it ends up being a grenade next time.”
“If it is, then it will be my problem, not yours.” Khan’s insistence was quietly confident, pointed; which meant he still hadn’t figured out that Jim had a habit of taking his friends’ problems and making them his own- which, judging from the look on Jim’s face at the moment, was exactly what was going to happen.
Now all Leonard had to do was figure out when exactly Jim had started counting Khan as one of his friends.
[---]
It took time and more than a bit of experimentation to find something Leonard was reasonably confident would work on Khan.
There were a lot of things to consider: Hormones, metabolism, brain structure and activity, etcetera, etcetera. The process was involved, because he had to go over his results in painstaking detail to ensure that he hadn’t created something that would turn Khan into a frothing lunatic.
Well. More of a frothing lunatic, anyway.
Finally, Leonard felt that he’d landed on just the right solution: The dosage could be incrementally adjusted in the event that it wasn’t enough to significantly help Khan out long-term. And it probably wouldn’t be, since Leonard had specifically geared it to be as mild as possible. He was trying not to think of this, or Khan, in terms of a science project- his patients were not experiments, however unusual their situations might be- but goddamn, he could tell that this was going to require a lot of tinkering in the future.
Much as Khan tended to annoy and unnerve him, Leonard accepted that he was going to have to win the guy over if he wanted to reduce the amount of head-butting they did in the future regarding Khan’s medical concerns. Or rather, Leonard’s concerns about Khan’s medical concerns, which wasn’t even the right word for it, since it had become very clear that Khan was not at all concerned about his health; that, or he was concerned, but was too stubborn that he needed the assistance of lesser mortals.
He was half-convinced that Khan wasn’t even going to take the damn things. He’d either hide them under his tongue like a damn child, or he’d just leave them on the counter and never acknowledge their existence. Or he would just outright refuse to take them and, when Leonard asked, cite every possible reason under the sun why it wouldn’t work, why he didn’t need them, etc, etc. The very likelihood of that happening had Leonard preemptively irritable, and he wasn’t looking forward to meeting up with Khan to discuss said medication. But it had to be done, or else his efforts would definitely go to waste.
Leonard tried calling him: Four times, over the course of three days.
On the fifth call, he was starting to get a little pissy. “Alright, I’m going to assume that your phone is fucked up, and that that’s why you’re not returning my calls. And if you don’t want me to put a hurt on you when I come to your house tonight, that’s the story you should probably stick to.”
In retrospect, that was maybe not the best thing to say to a guy you were supposed to be earning the trust of, but who knows? Maybe Khan would appreciate not being handled with kid-gloves.
He stuffed the bottle of medication into his bag and set off for the apartment building. Leonard hadn’t been there since he’d gone with Jim, and thankfully, this one still seemed to be standing: No one had set off any bombs, set the place on fire, shot it up, crashed anything into it (if Khan thought he was the only one with crazy-levels of paranoia, he was sadly, sadly mistaken). They still hadn’t caught the one who’d actually set off the bomb yet; but, according to Jim, the police had (grudgingly, apparently) admitted that the evidence pointed to an outsider, not to Khan.
“You just know they were hoping to pin it on him,” Jim had growled, stabbing his food a little too viciously.
It hadn’t escaped Leonard’s notice that Jim had developed a strange sort of protectiveness over Khan. He wasn’t sure they were even friends, but Jim seemed about as determined to look after Khan’s wellbeing as he was Leonard’s, or Spock’s, or Uhura’s, or any other member of the crew. He still wasn’t sure what to make of that, was still so very curious about what exactly had happened to make Jim flip the switch from ‘I’m doing what’s morally right by this guy’ to ‘he is one of my people now and as such I will kill any bitch who messes with him’.
But somehow, that’s where he was.
And as many reservations as Leonard still had about Khan, he’d learned that Jim had a pretty good ability to read people, to see through them; maybe not immediately, he lacked Leonard’s natural cynicism, but he always got there eventually. Evidently he’d seen something worthwhile in Khan, so… Damn it, Leonard was willing to give him a chance. Maybe the guy wasn’t as much of a bastard as he thought.
“You bastard.”
Leonard had just stepped through the door of the building. Khan’s apartment was on ground-level this time, so once he was inside, it was a straight shot down the hall to his front door. Except that this time, blocking that straight shot were two strangers, both men- and Khan himself.
“I’m unaware as to whether or not the people who contributed the two halves of my genetic make-up were married, so that may not be entirely correct.”
Oh, goody. He was baiting them.
“I don’t give a shit what Starfleet says,” The man on the left said, “You don’t belong here. Everyone knows you set off that bomb. My sister and her kids almost died because of you, you murdering piece of shit.” Suddenly, Leonard recognized them: They’d been with that woman the day he and Jim had first gone with Khan to the apartment building, loading and unloading the pick-up truck. Their posture was aggressive, and Leonard was starting to wonder if he should be calling the police.
Khan, as expected, didn’t even flinch. “I don’t see any point in telling you that I had nothing to do with it, since you’ve clearly made up your mind that I have. Though if you honestly do believe that I had something to do with it, then I’d think you’d have better luck speaking with the authorities than you would harassing me.”
They still hadn’t seen him yet. It was entirely possible that Khan had, or maybe heard the door open, but the other two men seemed oblivious. Leonard quietly reached into his pocket and gripped his phone. He was more concerned about the men’s safety than he was Khan’s; while Khan had proven that he wasn’t mindless with his violence, he was more than willing to resort to it if provoked, and these idiots looked like they were dangerously close to provoking him.
“Harassing you?” The second man laughed. “Harassing you? You think this is harassment? Oh no, buddy, let me show you harassment.”
The man lunged forward and shoved Khan hard enough that his head smacked against the wall.
It was a testament to Khan’s physical state that the man had managed to lay a hand on him at all; had Khan been in top-form, Leonard was reasonably certain the man would be unconscious on the floor already. That being said, Khan didn’t need to be in top form to make someone regret picking a fight with him.
Khan sprang back up- and Leonard would later swear that the man blurred as he moved- grabbed the attacker by the arm and twisted until there was a crack and a scream-
“Khan!”
Khan froze in place, but did not release the man’s hand. “Doctor,” He greeted, looking completely unruffled.
“Let him go.”
The Augment shrugged, but did as instructed. The man was gasping, face screwed up in pain, and Khan gave him a flat look. “Oh stop, I only broke your wrist.”
“You're fucked. The cops are gonna be all over you,” The uninjured man said as he helped his friend up.
“Yeah, well, when they get here, you let me know,” Leonard snapped, moving to stand next to Khan. “I’ll be more than happy to fill them in on how you deliberately started harassing this guy and then took a swing at him unprovoked. Beat it, or I’ll be the one calling them.”
“Fuck you,” The man snapped. But he pulled his friend out of the building quickly, apparently not liking the odds.
Leonard blew out a breath and ran a hand down over his eyes. “Well, that was a complete clusterfuck.”
“That’s one way of putting it.” Khan sounded entirely unaffected, as though he hadn’t just snapped a man’s wrist with his bare hands. “I’m surprised you managed to restrain yourself from intervening sooner.” So he had noticed Leonard. That wasn’t too terribly surprising.
Leonard shrugged. “Figured you didn’t want me playing Knight in Shining Armor.”
“You figured right.”
“How often does stuff like that happen?”
“Every so often.” Khan finally met his eyes, and his otherwise neutral expression became sharp. “I don’t need your pity, McCoy, so stop looking at me like that.” He turned and unlocked the door to the apartment, shoving it open.
“Fine. How about this, then,” Leonard followed him inside as he pulled the bottle of pills out of his pocket. “I have your meds. Maybe once you start taking them you’ll be able to duck a punch, unlike that sorry excuse for a non-attempt I just saw.”
Khan sniffed, but took the bottle and examined the label of chemicals present in it. “I know all but one of these.”
Leonard ran through the ingredients in his head. “If it’s the one I’m thinking of, it was invented about seventy years after you went under. Don’t worry, I ran it against a model of your immune system, you’re not allergic. You shouldn’t have any negative side-effects from any of the chemicals in there, except maybe some mild drowsiness. If you do have anything worse than that, tell me.”
“Mhm.” Khan was still staring at the bottle.
“Have you ever taken medication before?”
Khan looked up. “Supplements, before the cryostasis. Once or twice I took medication for illness.”
Leonard frowned. “Which ones, if you don’t mind my asking?”
“A rather potent strain of the flu virus when I was very small, and… Another illness as an adult.”
Leonard got the message, but pushed anyway. “I’m not asking to be rude. I’m asking because I need to know these things if I’m going to be treating you at any point in the future. Certain illnesses can mess up your body, and I need to know if you ever-”
“Syphilis.”
Leonard frowned. That sounded familiar, but where had he-
Oh.
“That was an STD, right?”
“Yes. From your confusion, I assume it’s long since been eradicated?”
“Yeah, almost a century ago.”
“It was a mild case. I was completely cured.”
“Good.” Boy, this conversation had gone the way of the awkward pretty quickly. “So… Still, the meds shouldn’t be a problem. But you need to take them regularly or they won’t work as well.”
Khan’s finger played with the twist-top of the bottle. “Fine.”
“You’ll take them?”
“Didn’t I agree to that already?”
“Sure, but you sound a bit hostile about it, which leads me to believe you might not actually go through with it.”
Khan grit his teeth. “I’ll take the bloody pills, alright? I’ve no special desire to be unconscious if and when-”
SMASH.
“Jesus!” Leonard barked, jumping sharply.
It was a rock. But not just any rock, oh no:
This rock was wrapped in newspaper, and the newspaper was on fire.
It had come through the window of the kitchen- the room they were currently standing in, as the apartment door opened right up into it. Leonard was closer to the door and hadn’t been at risk of being hit, but Khan had been standing further back, and the rock had come dangerously close to hitting him. The Augment stepped forward and began to stomp on the rock, the hem of his long coat catching fire and smoldering as he did.
Leonard ran for the sink, grabbing a glass off the counter and filling it with water. There was probably a fire-extinguisher somewhere, but let’s be real, the sink was closer and he was panicking a bit; catastrophes in space were to be expected, but Earth was supposed to be safe, damn it! He pushed Khan aside and dumped the water onto the rock which, fortunately, had mostly been stomped out. Khan whipped his jacket off and proceeded to beat out the smaller flames clinging to the bottom.
“What the fuck was that?” Leonard thought about going to the window, but it occurred to him that whoever had pitched the first rock might have a few others locked and loaded, and he really didn’t feel like getting a concussion tonight.
“It seems to be a rock. On fire.” Khan said flatly. He looked absolutely moody; it was probably because his coat was now noticeably singed.
“Yeah, that I figured. Not quite a Molotov-cocktail, but close enough, right?”
Khan snorted. “Doctor, it would have been far more entertaining if it had been a Molotov-cocktail.”
Leonard’s jaw dropped. “Entertaining? Are you shitting me? No wonder you and Jim get on so well, you’re both fucking insane.”
“It’s just lazy,” Khan remarked, unbothered by the remark. “If you’re going to set a projectile on fire and hurl it through a window, you might as well do something that will cause damage.”
“I think it would have done plenty of damage if it had hit you!” Now that he thought of it, had Khan been standing in view of the window? Had the person been deliberately trying to hit him, instead of just randomly throwing the rock and hoping it would set something on fire? Khan had been moving around during their conversation. He might have gotten lucky and moved at just the right moment. “Seriously, you need to call someone. If that had clobbered you and I wasn’t here, the whole place could have caught on fire, and you might be dead.”
“As ever, your concern is touching,” Khan said, retrieving the pill bottle from where he’d dropped it on the floor. “But I believe I’ve already mentioned that I don’t trust Starfleet or the local authorities as far as I can throw them. And, metaphor or not, I can throw them pretty far.”
Leonard rubbed his eyes, shaking his head. “You’re gonna die that way. You know that, right?”
“Not likely.”
“Okay, this- this, right here- this is why you need something to manage your stress!” Leonard burst out, unable to keep himself calm. “Because with all of your paranoia about Starfleet and Section 31 and the cops, and the actual threat of people who want to hurt you, there is no way in hell you can convince me that you aren’t freaking out on the inside! No way! And whether you like it or not, Mr. I Am Better, bottling up your anxiety is just going to send you headfirst into a nervous breakdown, because that’s what happens when people don’t manage their stress in healthy ways. I don’t care how augmented you are, you will snap eventually and it’s gonna be ugly and embarrassing and you’re going to hate it.”
Khan wasn’t meeting Leonard’s eyes. From what he could tell, the man’s expression was as neutral as ever: He didn’t look slightly bothered by the outburst, and so whether Leonard’s words had penetrated or not was largely unclear. It was entirely possible that he was taking everything Leonard had just said and was dumping it into a little trash-compactor in his brain.
Whatever. If he wanted to go full-throttle towards a mental breakdown, that was his decision. But Leonard was definitely going to be talking to Jim about this, as well as making the appropriate notes on Khan’s medical record.
“Fine. You don’t want to listen. Take your medicine and let me know if it works or doesn’t work or make you puke or anything like that. I’m going home.”
Leonard turned to leave, setting his hand on the doorknob.
“You…”
Leonard hesitated, and then turned back.
Khan looked indecisive; he was playing with the cap on the pill bottle again. “Going home might not be wise. Those men saw you with me. I have to assume that their friends or associates are responsible for that rock.”
Leonard shuddered a little. Khan had a point: Walking home in the dark might not be the greatest idea. He’d like to think those idiots would think twice about tangling with a Starfleet Officer, but if they’d been dumb enough to mess with a convicted murderer, they were probably dumb enough to mess with him. And while Leonard wasn’t helpless, he also wasn’t Jim or Spock: He was built for healing, not for fighting.
“So what are you proposing?”
Khan rolled his eyes shut. “There’s a spare bed.”
Leonard felt both of his eyebrows pop up. “You wanna have a sleepover, Khan?”
Khan opened his eyes and gave him a seething look. “I want to not be lectured by your dear Captain about how I let his friend go walking out alone in the dark with disgruntled bastards carrying rocks lurking everywhere.”
He didn’t have to stay. He could call a cab.
Still… As weird as it was to think of sleeping in Khan’s personal space (inasmuch as anything in the apartment could be considered personal to the guy), it was also kind of… Nice? For Khan to be considerate of his safety made Leonard feel strangely relieved: This was exactly the sort of behavior that indicated that Khan wasn’t a raving psychopath who would kill for shits and giggles. It might be worth it to encourage the behavior, however odd it felt for Leonard to go through with it. If Khan felt like he was being genuinely appreciated for doing something good for someone else, he’d probably be inclined to do it more.
Never mind the fact that allowing Leonard access to his personal space, possibly while he was sleeping, indicated a certain level of trust- a level that Leonard had been reasonably certain he hadn’t reached just yet. And that was definitely something he should be encouraging, especially since it was pretty clear that Khan didn't feel he had a whole lot of people he could trust.
His shoulders sunk a bit, and he sighed. “Alright. Thanks, Khan. I mean it.”
Khan didn’t meet his eyes. He just twitched his head towards the hallway. “Room’s down here.”
I’m having a sleepover with an ex-terrorist, Leonard thought, shaking his head as he followed Khan down the hallway. I am willingly going to sleep in the house of an ex-terrorist who just snapped a guy’s wrist in front of me.
It occurred to Leonard that this was all technically Jim’s fault.
Which, frankly, wasn’t unusual at all.
-End