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Spike ([info]bloodislove) wrote in [info]dunwichgame,
@ 2025-05-06 23:28:00

Previous Entry  Add to memories!  Tell a Friend!  Next Entry
Entry tags:buffyverse: spike, star trek: khan noonien singh

SPIKE
KHAN
WHO Spike and Khan
WHERE Pickman
WHEN Mid-evening
WHAT Spike checks in on Khan
Status Ongoing
WARNINGS Very tired Khan. Talking about wars, death, being labrats, ect.


It had been a few days since Spike had heard from his new acquaintance, and although it was curiosity about the super-man that had reminded him of it, it was also a noticeable absense. Just before his shift ended he'd texted the relative stranger, inviting him to meet after he was relieved of duty.

At the end of his shift, however, there was no reply. Shrugging it off and paying his tab he started to walk home. At least it was early enough in the evening he'd get to spend some quality time with Darcey.

Still, as he turned to walk home he hesitated. Something felt... off.

Pausing on the cool street and lighting a cigarette he took his phone out again and opened it, dialing Khan instead of texting this time. He tilted his head and took a long drag before he picked up.

"Hey. It's your favorite undead Englishman," he smirked into the reciever, then exhaled. "Was just curious if you were up for that follow-up drink tonight."


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[info]best_of_tyrants
2025-05-08 03:17 am UTC (link)
Khan nodded at the question. "Honestly, I think putting me back in cryosleep and just letting the machinery fail as the decades passed was the most humane punishment they could come up with. I don't think they knew what else they could do. Capital punishment is outlawed in the Federation in all but a very few cases, and those situations are really more like compassionate euthanasia than an actual punishment."

He sighed and took a long sip of his beer. "Now, in all fairness, it was Spock who apprehended me, and he was utterly enraged at the time. I have no doubt he would've killed me if he hadn't been stopped. And he had good reason to. You see, the Enterprise was also damaged and falling out of the sky, and Kirk saved the ship by climbing into a live warp core -- lethal levels of radiation -- and manually realigning things to give them enough power to overcome the pull of gravity on a 700,000-metric-ton starship. When I was brought back aboard the Enterprise and saw that all 72 of my people were stowed in Sickbay in their cryotubes, I couldn't not help their chief medical officer resuscitate Kirk. Their humanity is a debt I can never repay, even if I spent the rest of my life trying. Do I still have serious issues with Starfleet? Yes. But with Kirk and his people? No." He sighed. "Unfortunately, Spock does not feel the same way, and the Jim Kirk who is here isn't the same people who experienced all that the Kirk from my reality did. But when Spock arrived, I needed to come clean about all that had happened in my reality before Spock took control of the narrative, so that put a bit of a damper on my friendship with Jim. Oddly, though, not with Christine."

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[info]bloodislove
2025-05-08 03:38 am UTC (link)
Spike nodded, understanding. "I've had a few from my world show up and take pretty unkindly to me for... well, not exactly similar reasons, but close enough. They wanted me dead, I had less violent but not great farewells with them myself. It gets harder when you're cramped in a small community with other people who know versions of your own world."

He chuckled at the comment. "Yeah. Well you seemed more amused by him flirting with that sop at the bar than intimidated. As for the rest, well. Cheers to findings the people who aren't like their people." He only tipped his bottle neck towards the other, making no indication for them (Khan) to reach out himself. He looked better with some food in him and was speaking more fluidly, but it was hard to tell if that was him pretending or actually gaining strength.

He paused after a slow drink, thinking back over the story for a moment before he shrugged. "For what it's worth I've never been to space, and I was never particularly a fan of San Fransisco. You're alright by me."

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[info]best_of_tyrants
2025-05-08 03:46 am UTC (link)
Khan actually was feeling better. Food and drink helped immensely, and being able to tell his entire story with relative non-judgment was such a balm for his soul. He still needed sleep some time soon, but it wasn't quite time for Christine to stop by, and he was enjoying the downtime.

"I'm glad to hear it," Khan replied with a soft smile. He took a moment to check on Karuna and make sure her heating pad was still on -- they didn't make them without timed safety shutoffs anymore -- before returning his attention to Spike.

"So now that I've rattled on about my three lifetimes of misadventure, what about you? Where does your story begin?"

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[info]bloodislove
2025-05-08 04:13 am UTC (link)
Spike was glad to see it, and the air seemed to lighten. Much better than what he'd walked in on.

At the question he smirked slightly. Turnabout was fair, after all.

"My story's... well, you'd probably find it mundane by an emperor's standards. I was born on the low end of humanity's gene pool in England, 1853. I was the last in the line of a barely aristocratic family that was one step away from being tossed into the dirt any month. We had one servant, for my mother, and one cleaning maid who came in on tuesdays to dust worthless artifacts. I myself was a pathetic nobody and a failed poet. They called me 'William the Bloody Awful'."

Hey, Khan had been pretty honest with him as far as he could tell.

"After some unfortunate circumstances I was turned into by a mad witch of a vampiress with whom I was utterly enthralled. I either spent my time as her lapdog trying to impress her, or tearing the globe up to impress her and make her come back to me. Made new names for myself. Spike the Bloody. Spike the Slayer-Killer, but it started all becoming a mouthful. So, I've been Spike for the last few decades or so.

Then I met a new Slayer. Tried to kill her, you know, to maintain and improve my reputation. Unfortunate events to be explained later I was grabbed by the government's 'supernatural' division and experimented on, implanted with a chip that kept me from being able to feed from humans. 'Neutering', essentially. That forced me to work with her instead. Stop the government psychos, and she'd keep bringing me pig's blood so I wouldn't starve to death. I wound up falling in love with her. Hence the whole 'regain my soul' fiasco to prove I was worthy of her."

He sighed. It was a pretty embarrassing story overall, but he'd had his moments of glory and few regrets. He smirked and swirled his drink slightly, looking up evenly.

"Did you want to know anything in particular?"

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[info]best_of_tyrants
2025-05-08 04:22 am UTC (link)
"Yes," Khan replied with a smile. "Why is it that the psychos always end up in public service? Can't they have decent, self-respecting jobs like slightly-above-average serial killer or something?" It was an expression of great sympathy because he had very little love for the clandestine, the-rules-don't-apply-to-us workings of government. Even when that government had been his own. "Do you still write poetry?" It was an honest question, especially since Khan recalled that Spike had called Darcy his Muse.

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[info]bloodislove
2025-05-08 04:35 am UTC (link)
A snort of agreement was the vampire's response.

At the question he hesitated, considered his answer, then smirked.

"Yes. Recently. But only for my Lady. She got me a bit knackered and I let slip what I spent twenty odd years as a mortal doing, and when I tried to recite some she... well, she laughed. But not the way they used to. No idea if I'm any better than I was, but I'm sure not being a spineless, stuttering fop helps." And Darcey's eyes would sparkle at him when he tried, and his heart would melt.

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[info]best_of_tyrants
2025-05-08 04:42 am UTC (link)
Khan could tell that Spike truly was in love with Darcy. He didn't have to say a word about it. It was all over his body language. "I should be so lucky as to have such a Muse," Khan confessed. "There was no time for poetry toward the end of my reign, and after that, I was more motivated to design for the sword than the pen. As much as I hated working under duress, the design process itself wasn't terrible. How did you and Darcy meet?"

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[info]bloodislove
2025-05-08 04:53 am UTC (link)
Spike let out a low laugh, then tilted his head back a bit to look back at the picture of the kitten on the wall behind him, appreciating it again. "I think you've found one, mate," he grunted, straightening his head and grinning and the fuzzy little purring machine.

"I met her here, naturally. She's from a different universe, but we struck up a conversation outside at a party. We talked through the night, till the sun forced me to leave. I wasn't sun-proof, yet."

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[info]best_of_tyrants
2025-05-08 05:01 am UTC (link)
Khan smiled at that. "I'm thankful for the independent confirmation," he remarked. "I think I was half-asleep when I drew that one."

To the comment about being sun-proof, Khan added, "I had wondered how you were out and about before the sun set."

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[info]bloodislove
2025-05-08 05:20 am UTC (link)
"The creative part will probably come back more when you've slept a bit," Spike chuckled. "Though that space between dreaming is when they usually whisper to you, or so I hear. I suppose I never stopped being a romantic, even while I was busy being a monster."

"Eh. I was the first vampire in history to kill two Slayers, first to chase down my soul and reclaim it on purpose... I figured, why not be the first to walk around in the sun? Besides, for all it's faults a lot of sciences and a lot of magics come through this place. I had help getting my chip removed, getting my soul returned, and getting some kind of magic SPF ingrained into my skin. The first two were necessary, the last was more of a surprise for Darcey." He felt guilty when his limitations made things trickier or more difficult for her, even if she never held it against him. "Not that it hasn't been brilliant not spontaneously combust in the smallest sunbeam, of course."

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[info]best_of_tyrants
2025-05-08 12:43 pm UTC (link)
Khan could very much relate to that sentiment on romanticism. He had always been very protective of those in his charge even when he sent them on life-threatening missions for the cause, and all of them had done monstrous things only to come home and switch gears into a large, relatively stable family unit. Even he had fallen in love before, to a woman long gone now. "Those two things are not mutually exclusive, no matter how much people wish they were," he agreed.

He smiled softly at the revelation that Spike had found a way to live in the daylight. "Love does make for innovative solutions to stubborn problems," he remarked. "For me, it was developing a sign language that my children could use and most everyone else could understand without needing to learn an entirely new communication system. They were both Autistic, but my son Simran was nonverbal about eighty percent of the time. My daughter Hira did a lot of translation for him."

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[info]bloodislove
2025-05-08 01:21 pm UTC (link)
Spike hesitated. Commenting anything about one's children was usually ill advised, especially between relative strangers. Still, he appreciated Khan's openness about it.

"Sorry to hear of their troubles. But it sounds lucky they had each other, and you for a father," he murmured finally. Especially an emperor who could protect and provide for them. He cleared his throat and his tone evened into normal. "I doubt my father even knew if I was boy or girl. He left before I was born, though I don't blame him fleeing his witch of a wife. And she only got worse over time."

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[info]best_of_tyrants
2025-05-08 09:10 pm UTC (link)
"They were the most amazing, infuriating, adorable little ones I'd ever known," Khan remarked quietly. "I would've taken them with me to space if I could've, but the supercooling technology of cryogenic suspension was never designed for or tested on young children. It would've killed them to attempt it. They stayed with their mother when we fled. She at least had the means to protect them. I'm told at least one of them survived to have children of their own. But I would give up just about everything to hold them again."

He listened to what Spike said, nodding. "That is the unfortunate reality of the world, isn't it? Sounds like you were dragged up from day one. How long did it take you to get out on your own?" Khan had escaped containment at fifteen. Which in his time was still several years away from full adulthood, but Spike might've been considered a young man at that age.

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[info]bloodislove
2025-05-08 09:16 pm UTC (link)
Spike had no answer for that, so he simply nodded.

At the question he cringed. "27. I never left her house, the family estate. Not so strange in those days except I was an aging and unappealing bachelor, so I would have stayed there until the house was taken." He sighed. "Still. She was my mother. When I was turned into a vampire I went to her, to turn her. She was sick, dying, and I was a devoted son even as a newborn demon. It... didn't end well. Didn't turn out great for me either. Out of the frying pan, you know? I belonged to Dru from then on. When she wanted me around, anyway."

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[info]best_of_tyrants
2025-05-08 09:28 pm UTC (link)
"Such a different world it was," Khan mused with a sympathetic smile. "Though to be fair, the property was yours by right. Why give it up when you could wait it out?" Still, he had a great deal of understanding for a childhood like that.

"I think you might've had more patience and devotion for your elders than I ever did. I had far more love for the other children in my cohort -- the ones who survived, anyway -- than any of us ever did for the scientists who created us. We broke free when I was fifteen. And there were a lot of crushed skulls in our wake."

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[info]bloodislove
2025-05-08 09:51 pm UTC (link)
"Technically it was still my dad's. It was back when divorce was as cardinal a sin as suicide. I suppose he ran off to America or something. Mother tried to have him named dead when I came of age, but his family showed proof he was still in correspondence with them and just 'traveling abroad'. He was probably trying to smoke her out so he could return.

"It probably would've served me better to not respect her for so long. Not that I'm proud of it, but I was a sniffling little mother's boy until Dru bit me," he sighed. "And then still until I turned her."

Then he started to laugh. "I bet the breakout was exhilirating. Mine was when the containments failed and all the demons the humans had been torturing and experimenting got loose. The escapees who didn't immediately flee had a grand old time with them."

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[info]best_of_tyrants
2025-05-08 10:00 pm UTC (link)
"We all have our failings," Khan pointed out. "And it was quite a long time ago. Everyone's got a cringeworthy story somewhere in their life."

But at Spike's reaction to the mention of his breakout, Khan couldn't help but chuckle himself. "Oh, it was quite an adventure," he replied. "They tried to stop us with tasers, as if we hadn't been trained to resist cattle prods and household voltage. Then they called in their military support, as if we hadn't been training alongside special forces commandos since we were four and five years old. By the time they called an evacuation, they'd bottlenecked, and after that it was like a miniature Thermopylae. They couldn't escape without being killed, they couldn't hide without being killed, and they certainly couldn't run without being killed. And once they were all gone, we washed up, put on clean clothes, and walked right out the front door to freedom."

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[info]bloodislove
2025-05-08 11:36 pm UTC (link)
"Bet that air tasted sweet. Mine would have probably if I wasn't distracted by my head splitting open," the vampire chuckle. Then he sighed. "I tried to join in the fun, but the chip was already functional. I went outside to watch the pedestrians panic at all of the monsters and impossible things exploding out of some facility like... well. Bats out of hell. Wound up having to chase a few down after a couple nights, but I understand where they were coming from."

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[info]best_of_tyrants
2025-05-09 02:00 am UTC (link)
"Oh, it did," Khan replied with a smile. "I was pretty solidly the leader of my contingent by that time, so when we went our separate ways, only a few split off to pursue their own ends. And when things got really dangerous, I had a lot of defectors come in from other facilities. Most of those people are in cryosleep right now." He hoped they were alright. He suspected they were, but he knew it was probably a race against time to help them before their cryotubes failed.

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[info]bloodislove
2025-05-09 02:57 am UTC (link)
"Then you've got a chance to get to them, when you get back," Spike grinned cheerfully. He nodded to the little sleeper. "And this time your next empire can have it's own mascot."

Which given his experience with kitten claws would probably terrify his enemies just a well as any dramatic battle-cry.

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[info]nurse_hijinks
2025-05-09 03:02 am UTC (link)
"And she will be known as Empress Mahakaruna," Khan agreed with a soft laugh. "Long may she reign."

Christine knocked on the door then, and when she heard Khan tell her it was unlocked, she stepped inside with her medkit in one hand and her tie-dye crossbody slung across the other shoulder. “What’s this I hear about a kitten?”

Khan stood up and moved to her, giving her a genuinely relieved hug. “Her name is Karuna and she’s a week old and needy as all hell,” he answered, then he guided her closer for introductions. “Christine, this is Spike. He’s been keeping me awake, fed, and sane for the last little while. Spike, Christine Chapel.”

“A pleasure,” Christine said with a sweet smile.

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[info]bloodislove
2025-05-09 03:28 am UTC (link)
"Oh yeah, that's a hell of a strong name. She'll be loved and feared equally."

At the knock he turned, and stood as Khan did, though he gave him a slightly annoyed glance. He'd gone through the trouble of setting up the coffee table to keep the man still. Then again, he wasn't looking like he was going to keel over anymore, so maybe it was alright.

Straightening his coat he instantly switched on his charming smile as he turned towards her without approaching, nodding. "Pleasure's all mine, Miss Chapel," he responded warmly and politely. Then his smile turned into a slightly more mischievous one and he jerked a thumb towards Khan. "This one hasn't slept in six days or eaten since yesterday. I took care of making sure he ate, but he still needs a serious powernap." He didn't mind throwing Khan under the bus, or letting him downplay his state in front of his not-lady "friend". It was important she knew. "I don't know shite about kittens, though."

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[info]nurse_hijinks
2025-05-09 03:47 am UTC (link)
"Oh, is that right?" Christine remarked upon hearing the depths of Khan's not-alrightness, giving the Augment a sidelong look. "Seeing or hearing anything that you're not sure is actually there?"

"We're not going to discuss that." Which was a resounding yes.

"Mhm." She pulled out her medical tricorder and gave him a quick scan, much to Khan's annoyance. "You've dropped weight, which, given how lean you are, is likely muscle mass."

"You needed a tricorder to tell me that?"

"No, I needed the tricorder to get your metabolic rate." She put that device away and picked up another one, making a few selections on the little touchscreen and waiting for a moment while it calculated dosage and spat out a vial of prepared medicine.

Khan's eyes narrowed. "You're going to tell me what that is, of course."

"Ten milligrams of haldol," Christine replied. "Which should be enough to knock you on your ass for several hours." She loaded the vial into a hypospray injector and hit him with it before he could protest.

"That is rather unsporting of you," Khan complained, shaking his head to clear the fog as the medicine began to work.

"You've got about 20 seconds," the nurse replied matter-of-factly. "You might want to get somewhere horizontal."

"Damned unsporting," her recalcitrant patient muttered, though he did in fact make his way to the bedroom nook behind the large bookcase and flop down on the bed. "Wake me up in six hours," he called.

"I'll wake you up when you need to be woken up," Christine called back to him.

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[info]bloodislove
2025-05-09 03:53 am UTC (link)
Spike was smirking as the genetic-super soldier scowled and tried to hold his ground against the slender woman, and failing spectacularly. "Better make it to your bed, mate. I already carried your food, I'm not carrying you. That's third-date stuff. And for god's sake get some rest. You're too new to Dunwhich to be this haggard."

He shot Christine a quick wink to promise he was kidding. The apartment was too small and Khan was too lanky to leave sprawled out on the floor. "Your kitten needs your health as much as her own."

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[info]nurse_hijinks
2025-05-09 04:02 am UTC (link)
Khan muttered something that might've been 'traitorous bastards' through very slurred speech as the medicine continued to kick in. But there was the sound of two shoes dropping to the floor as he toed them off and the little light in the bedroom nook turning off before Khan's breathing shifted into an exhausted, drugged sleep.

Christine only smiled and put away her tools, going to the dishpan beside the couch and gently lifting up the sleepy kitten. "Oh, look at you, so precious. You're officially the tiniest NICU baby I've ever cared for." She spoke to the kitten as if she understood every single word she was saying. Then she turned to Spike. "Thank you for taking care of Khan," she said genuinely. "The last thing anyone in Dunwich needs is a sleep-deprived Augment walking around hallucinating. Could you hold Karuna while I mix up her formula?"

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(no subject) - [info]bloodislove, 2025-05-09 04:26 am UTC
(no subject) - [info]nurse_hijinks, 2025-05-09 04:36 am UTC
(no subject) - [info]bloodislove, 2025-05-09 04:58 am UTC
(no subject) - [info]nurse_hijinks, 2025-05-09 05:07 am UTC
(no subject) - [info]bloodislove, 2025-05-09 05:22 am UTC
(no subject) - [info]nurse_hijinks, 2025-05-09 10:15 am UTC
(no subject) - [info]bloodislove, 2025-05-09 12:25 pm UTC
(no subject) - [info]nurse_hijinks, 2025-05-09 01:30 pm UTC
(no subject) - [info]bloodislove, 2025-05-09 02:58 pm UTC

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