The Light That Illuminated Darkness (Khan Star Trek Fan Fiction)

Suicide Silence

“What the HECK happened back there?” Suzie shouted as we drove down the road. It’d been 3 days since my marvelous resurrection and the hospital was finally letting me go, unable to find anything wrong with me. I was lying face up in the back seat, not feeling like sitting up so that I had to see Suzie’s face in the mirror. I just laid there with my eyes closed, my hands propped beneath my chin.

“I told you, Suzie, I don’t know what happened. I got a headache, and a bad one at that, and then I blacked out, and then I woke up. That’s all that happened. I can’t tell you any more.” I replied.

“Well what about this whole name crap? Khan? Where did that even come from? How do you suddenly remember?” She shouted.

“I don’t know! I just do, alright?”

“What happened to you? You were dead for two hours! John, or Khan, or whatever your name is, that doesn’t just happen. You don’t die and then come back to life two hours later. I know that you say you’re some sort of alien, but what the heck? What was that? Don’t do that to me and then lay a butt load of crap on me. Please.”

I didn’t reply. I didn’t want to. I didn’t have anything to say.

“Look, I’m sorry. I’m just stressed.”

“And you think I am not? I was the dead one. I’m the one who suddenly remembers everything. This life I’ve made here, though short, has been nothing but a lie. The John you knew is not the man that I am. I am far from the man you knew and I do not want to be that man. So do not yell at me for your petty problems.”

Where did that come from?

“You’re a jerk.”

“I’m sorry, Suzie, I did not… I didn’t mean it. I was just…”

“I like John a lot better than I like Khan.”

“Then I will try to be John again. I do not like the memories that I see. I will try to change. For you.”

She just sighed. I lay there, eyes closed, trying to force everything away and just be John again. Suzie and I were alone, Steve being at home, having to pack because he had to leave for Syria again. Honestly, I was glad. I didn’t have anything against Steven, other than the fact that he was the husband of the woman that I was desperately, helplessly in love with. It was just that everything seemed worse since he’d come home to visit.

I lay there, trying to scrub away my memories. I didn’t want to remember them, because I knew that they were awful memories, things I’d done that were terrible things. I committed genocide countless times with my family. I’d been cryogenically frozen for three hundred years for my crimes, things I didn’t even see as wrong back then, but now I couldn’t see them as anything other. I just lay there, my eyes closed, trying to block out the memories and the world around me.

I could honestly say that I wanted to die in that moment.

If Suzie learned of it, she’d hate me, throw me out of her house, live happily ever after with Steven. If I kept it bottled up, it would surely kill me, eat me alive. I didn’t know what I was supposed to do in that moment. I knew that I wanted to kill myself, put a bullet through my skull, but I wasn’t going to do that. Not yet, anyways. I wouldn’t do that until Suzie knew how I felt.

“At least tell me what you remember.” Suzie sighed.

“I was frozen for 300 years. A man from this place called Star Fleet came and unthawed me. He had me build these weapons for him. I… I broke free, and I was sought after as a criminal. I was taken aboard the Starship Enterprise, held prisoner, and then I assisted in killing the man who had unthawed me because he had gone rogue. He was going to take out the Enterprise and its entire crew to kill me. So the captain and I went and I killed him. That’s all I remember.” I confessed.

I, of course, was lying. Here’s what I actually remembered. My family, my race and I, committed genocide on countless species that we felt were inferior to us. For these crimes, we were all frozen for three hundred years until we were found by Captain Marcus. He forced me to build weapons because of my primitive nature of violence. I was the only one of my family that he unthawed. So I built the torpedoes but put my family inside. Then I went rogue, killed many people of Star Fleet, and escaped. I was brought aboard the Enterprise, which held my family. I waited until Marcus came and began threatening to kill everyone aboard the ship. The Captain of the Enterprise came to me for help, in which I gladly assisted. Long story short, I killed Marcus, sent Kirk back to the Enterprise where he then got himself killed, threatened to take the crew down if they did not give me my family… Then I was eventually used to save the captain, then refrozen, then sent here as punishment.

I saw Suzie crying in the driver’s seat, something I couldn’t understand. It must’ve been stress. Or nerves. Or both. But that’s the only explanation I found. Why would she weep for me? She had a husband who loved her and cared for her. She would not weep for my well-being. She would not weep for me. I had only known her for a short time. If things were reversed, I surely would weep for her, but they were not. She would never love me. So I didn’t understand why she was crying.

“Are you alright?” I inquired.

“You’re insane.” She whispered disdainfully.

“Suzie, I am sorry.”

“You’re insane.”

I heard this anger in her voice that increased my desire to kill myself by tenfold. Things wouldn’t ever be the same with us and I knew it. I waited until she pulled to a stop, not saying anything, just thinking about how much I loved her. I thought about how much she would hate me if she ever knew what I’d done. I thought and thought, unable to think about anything other than the heinous things that I had done. I took a deep breath, knowing what I was going to do.

As Suzie slowed to a stop on the busy streets, I sat up in the seat. I had to act fast before she got mad and did something. I straightened out my back and took a deep breath. There was never any future for me anyways, a psychopath who didn’t belong where he was put. I scooted across the seat of the car and took a deep breath as Suzie sat in the front, unaware about what was about to take place.

“I love you, Suzie Queens.” I whispered.

“What?” She muttered, turning around.

But it was too late for me to hear her. I opened the door and she began to realize what was going on. She began to panic a bit, but I had convinced myself that it was better this way. I knew that she’d get over it, get on with her life. I climbed out quickly, onto the paved streets, a car on either side of me, one Suzie’s and the other belonging to a random stranger who would soon witness what was going to become of me. I took off into a sprint, running down the street as Suzie emerged from her car, tears streaking down her face.

I ran to the intersection where cars were whizzing by, regular people just on their way to do regular-people things. I took a deep breath and ran straight into the intersection, not caring what was to become of me. I hoped for it to take my life, or at least knock the memories out of me. I could see a large truck speeding toward me, unable to hit the breaks in time. It just kept speeding along, about to take my life. I smiled in the face of death, greeting it like an old friend as I turned toward Suzie. She was shouting my name, running toward me. I held up a hand, one hand, and did something I’d only seen in my visions and yet I knew it perfectly.

I held my fingers apart, the first two and the last two held together by some bond. It was a Vulcan salute. It meant what I wanted Suzie Queens to do. It meant to live long and prosper. I wanted nothing other than that. I wanted her to live a long happy life with Steven. I wanted her to have the kids that she desperately wanted. I wanted her to grow old with the man that she’d loved long before she met me.

And then the pain came.