People Living in Glass Fishbowls

[madimpossibledreamer]

I suspect ‘grand poobah’ is the sort of phrase that probably has some vaguely racist origin, but given that this is Bones… (Also he’s kind of ticked for some reason…)
Into Darkness issues aside, the (slightly tweaked) line at the end is a really good one.

Main Points:
Star Trek (the 2009!movie verse) Cambion AU (New Genesis)
Summary: Kirk and crew get "rescued".
Word Count: 2511
Rating: Teen
Minor McCoy/Kirk (McKirk)

 

        Given everything Leonard knew about the situation, he’d been aware that there was no chance the rescue would be anything but hostile. He hadn’t fully expected that ‘rescue’ to come from supposedly long-dead Augments, but finds he’s not entirely surprised, either. Not after having read that they’re still alive, and involved. Not with his own experience watching how the universe decides to screw over good, honest folk. 
        They only try briefly to pull the wool over everyone’s eyes by pretending the man in charge isn’t Khan. Seeing as while many of the records of the Eugenics Wars were destroyed in the upheaval, they still had pictures in the history books, that’s not too effective. Some of the scientists play along largely out of fear, but the Vulcans just matter-of-factly categorically refuse. Leonard might never actually voice it, but he’s actually slightly impressed they’ve adopted the exact same approach that he had, with roughly the same effect—annoyance, but also a kind of admiration. After a while, they just give up the pretense entirely.
        He only hears after the fact about how they’d gotten in. Brute force, phasering their way through tons of rock, vaporizing the section of ‘Eden’ too close to the edge. The rest of it will probably die off sooner rather than later, on account of the sudden intrusion of the vacuum. What makes it worse is that includes Palmieri, though no one’s sure if he just was vaporized like just one of the fauna while attempting the same on a smaller and much safer scale from the inside or if he got sucked out to die by the sudden introduction of the vacuum of space. It’s probably just as well McCoy had learned about this after the fact. They’d showed remarkable restraint for killer supermen so far, but he’s got to reckon they have their limits and he’s no good to anyone if he’s dead. (A mere week ago, he might’ve argued he’s no good to anyone, period, but recent events have been more than a little convincing. A good doctor is always of use, particularly in space with all of its dangers, and no matter the fact that he’s still less sure of his being good at anything else, once he’s gotten his head out of his ass he’s finally remembered that he is, in fact, a damn fine doctor.) It sure explains the defiant, controlled rage in Kirk’s eyes when they were first captured.
        He gets to see the brig on the Enterprise—because of course the bastards commandeered Kirk’s ship. Why not? It was there. Kirk certainly hadn’t bothered with this part of the ship on his little tour. Chekov tried to apologize, but Kirk quickly shushed him. Most of the crew got marooned down on a dying, cracked planet losing its oxygen, which probably hadn’t helped the Captain’s disposition. And then, since he’s not holding any particularly useful secrets, he gets to just sit there as they retrieve person after person, his own imagination supplying any number of terrible fates courtesy of the dark ages. When they finally return one of the scientists, March, maybe, McCoy has had absolutely enough. He gets up to take the limp, unconscious form and do whatever kind of medieval medicine he can cobble together here, and they try to stop him.
        “I knew you all were inhuman pieces of work with a sadistic streak a mile wide, but all of you must’ve lost some brain cells along the way in cryogenic suspension if you’re willing to just destroy a valuable resource for no goddamn reason. He’s got no worth to you if he dies,” McCoy growls. “Step aside and let me do my work.”
        Seems he’s caught the attention of the grand poobah himself, because Khan actually steps out from where he’s been watching to address McCoy directly. “You’re not afraid?”
        “The only thing that’ll stop me doctoring is death, and even then I’ll put up one hell of a fight.” He’d forgotten that, caught up in his own guilt over his family, his failure to save his father and the resulting fallout with his wife. If this whole experience has given him nothing else, at least it’s given him meaning and purpose back.
        The man pauses, either testing McCoy’s determination or as a means of underlying who’s really in charge here, like anyone’s in danger of forgetting, and in response the Enterprise’s current doctor and head nurse, M’Benga and Chapel, come to stand beside him in silent support. And that, for some reason, makes the man smile. “Give them their tools; let them work,” he tells his followers, acting every bit the beneficent ruler some had tried to portray him as. He then follows that up with a precise list, leaving out anything that would be too useful in escape, which is impressive. McCoy had the feeling that they’d have had to familiarize themselves with the modern day, but the ‘magnificent tyrant’ himself choosing to do so shows a dangerously admirable willingness for the man to involve himself in the details.
        McCoy doesn’t erase that from his mind, and he’s not exactly so caught up in the newfound euphoria of actually getting to do his job again, either. Sure, Vega colony had been safe, but a clinical practice with nothing but the routine vaccinations, the occasional sniffle, and the rare broken bone isn’t what he’d trained for. Like any good doctor, though, he’s capable of compartmentalizing, performing triage and doing his damndest with what he’s been given to stabilize the worst cases before moving on to the easier ones, giving encouraging pats and painkillers (he’d rather have a good hypo any day, but reckons they’d been considered too easy to misuse against the guards), setting dislocated limbs and cleaning up the blood. Not enough, really. Not nearly enough, but it’s something, and there’s only two he’s seriously concerned about managing to pull through by it’s time for him to get hauled off.
        They’re not as rough with him, but he’s under no illusions about that actually indicating anything about his fate. He’d managed to amuse, but the novelty only lasts so long.
        Leonard’s convinced about staying, though. Pity M’Benga’s probably going to leave, but Chapel is one of the finest nurses he’s had the chance to work with, even if she’s just as contrary as he is. He just might play hard to get. He doesn’t particularly want anyone to know he’s that broken.
        To his surprise, though, they sit him down to watch an interrogation. He does his best not to swallow or give any sign he’s uncomfortable, even if they’ve probably already noticed from a bunch of body language he hadn’t even noticed. He wants to think that they don’t know about his importance to the Captain and vice versa, but neither he nor the Captain had been too subtle in their arrival and the Augments had been torturing scientists, and given that they’ve put him right next to Carol Marcus, it’s a whole lot more likely to be a pointed message. Maybe they’re trying to convince him they’re not mistreating Kirk too badly, and aren’t likely to escalate if someone doesn’t agree to their demands. If so, they’d have a much better chance with someone who’s not a doctor.
        Kirk has less obvious damage. He doesn’t have a missing fingernail, like one poor son of a bitch, and the blood on his face is minimal, but he’s masking bruising if not worse behind dignity as he sits. Carol seems to realize that, too, because suddenly her hand is in Leonard’s. She starts to pull her hand back when he glances over, caught off guard, and he sets aside his jealousy and any worries about giving away anything to these bastards and his own damn issues and grabs back, because they’re two dumbasses at least a little in love with an even bigger dumbass, and if that doesn’t require some compassion they’re not human.
        “You’re Captain James Tiberius Kirk, correct?” Khan asks, like he doesn’t already know the answer.
        “I figured Khan Noonien Singh had better things to be doing than playing name games,” Kirk responds, stopping just short of provocative. Leonard doesn’t know him well enough yet to know if that’s a good sign, because it means that Kirk is taking this seriously, putting that pretty little mind to work trying to get them out of this situation with the same boundless optimism and determination that he’d been using on their previous problem, or if it should worry everyone because he’s actually showing that vulnerability in front of the enemy.
        Khan smiles, like that’s somehow amusing. “You have all created your own bogeyman, hiding behind your beds like frightened children at the mere concept of genetic engineering.”
        “It’s not the circumstances of your birth that concern me,” Kirk states dismissively, waving it away like it has as much relevance as eye color. “It’s your actions. My ship, my crew, your record.”
        “I have ensured that your crew has come to no harm. They are stranded, but they will survive,” Khan begins.
        “My ass,” McCoy mutters, missing some of the next sentence as one of the guards prods him. McCoy’s glare actually seems to be effective, however. Because he’s seen, as Kirk has not, what’s happened to the members of the crew still on board, and it’s a far cry from ‘no harm’. He gathers it’s something about genetics again, maybe something a little more prodding about how they’re used in the Genesis Device, though, going by Kirk’s reply.
        “Sure, basically everything man could ever invent could be misused. That’s no reason to impede progress, only make sure that we’ve done what we can to try to protect people.” He doesn’t look impressed by the attempt to get under his skin.
        “Your laws on genetic engineering led to the famine on Tarsus IV.” McCoy’s ready to dismiss this whole line of thinking as nonsense, bringing up the name of an incident most in Starfleet haven’t even heard, if not for the fact that the Captain is still as serious as he’s seen him. “Governor Kodos took the only action left to save the colony.”
        Kirk snorts and shakes his head. “It’s easier to call something a last resort if it’s not the first action you take. He didn’t bother to try to hold out until supply ships came, and they came before food would have run out. Sure, we’d all have suffered from malnutrition, and some of the oldest and weakest probably would’ve died, but not so many.”
        Khan looks interested for the first time, even as McCoy gets an awful feeling in his gut. He mutters an apology to Carol for strangling her hand, getting a worried smile and a shake of the head in return. “Then why do you think he chose to cull the population?”
        “This is just impressions I’ve gotten after the fact studying unofficial reports. I was a kid at the time.” Kirk takes a deep breath. McCoy has been catching glimpses of the reason he’d been promoted to Captain, as well as hints of the fact he shouldn’t have had to have been. That kind of display of perfect control even in the face of something so terrible is the strongest of them all. “He hadn’t been a particularly good fit for the leader of an agricultural colony in the first place. He didn’t know the first thing about crops, and it turns out he was minimally funded, most of which he decided to spend on grandiose buildings rather than practicalities. He cut corners by ordering just one supposedly disease resistant crop and supplementing the rest with supply ships. If he’d been doing his job right, Tarsus IV should have been self-sufficient, but instead we were an agricultural colony only in name far away from traditional shipping routes. Put that way, famine was almost inevitable.” Kirk shrugs. “I think he was a coward too worried about saving his own skin to worry about leadership. I think he wanted to be hailed as the hero who saved the colony without being the villain that doomed it. I think he was the typical bureaucrat promoted beyond his ability too soft to keep his head in a crisis.” He’s still in control, but the anger and resentment, unfortunately, make this all read as entirely personal.
        “So what would you have done in his stead, Captain Kirk?” Khan asks, eyes burning with something that looks very uncomfortably like delight.
        Kirk reels himself back in, smile back on his face. It’s...hard to tell, honestly, if he’s purposefully mirroring Khan, or if Khan is managing to get under his skin. “Without technology, you look to the past. Rely on a single crop, and you spell disaster. The Irish Potato Famine was before your time, but from what you’ve said the famines in America and China were contemporary, and the wheat, corn, and rice they relied on was genetically modified to be resistant to disease. It just takes one fungus or parasite or virus to mutate to far more than decimate a monocrop. Diversity is key. Even without genetic modification, if you’re an agricultural colony, grow many types of crops. Let fields lay fallow, rotate crops, use greenhouses, use biological matter as fertilizer. They didn’t even use the bodies of the killed. Just let them rot in the streets where they’d been shot.” 
        He’s actually getting the man from the past nodding along. Wonder of wonders, the genius kid is actually managing to get the respect of the great white shark. “And you would have used the bodies?”
        Kirk stops staring off into the distance to meet Khan’s eyes. Absolutely fearless. “If I’d been in charge, those bodies shouldn’t have been there to begin with. But yes, Mr. Khan. If there had been bodies, I would have made sure they helped actually advance the position of the survivors. It would’ve hurt morale, but less than the smell of decay. The temptation for the starving to resort to cannibalism, only to succumb to the illness of eating rotting flesh. And definitely not for feeding, say, pigs. That’s how you spread disease.”
        “Interesting,” Khan murmurs. He hadn’t managed to get answers about the Genesis Device, or the ship. Hadn’t stated his own opinion on the subject either. In fact, McCoy finds himself more than a little lost on the point of the whole thing. He stands and bows—not deeply, but it’s more acknowledgment than he’d bothered to give anyone else. McCoy’s not certain if that’s a good thing either, but given that it’s happening, there’s no changing it, either, just working out how to use it before they all go under. Kirk bows back, which seems to humor the tyrant. And then he gives them one last parting clue designed to get right under Kirk’s skin. “I believe, genetics aside, as you like, we have more in common than you would believe. Your crew is your family. Is there anything you would not do for your family?”