* BRAINS / BEAUTY

       ❝  i wouldn’t know them. i’ve been rather caged, after all,  ❞  julian makes no attempt to hide the scorn in his tone, continuing on as his chin lifts.  ❝  besides, when i was with section 31, i had more important things on my plate than worrying about what you lesser operatives were doing, or the gossip around you.  ❞

     history is rarely right. it’s wrote by those who won — those who had the platform and power to write into existence what they wished. it’s written by the living; the truth and other viewpoint dying with the losers. a bitter truth. one julian gets to live through now, as these humans try to tell him what they had done, and what truly happened in a land they never stepped into until they wanted war. 

     head lowering ever so slight, brown eyes fixate on her, narrowing. observe you all. with a short huff, he replies, trying to soothe his raising hackles.  ❝  if by ‘you all’, you mean khan and i, and the guards, then be my guest. you’re going to be disappointed, though. i doubt watching augments eat and nap is very thrilling.  ❞

      she doesn’t doubt he’s not heard about her. why should he have? he was in cryostasis for centuries, & when he awoke? she doubted they told him much of anything of current events, & she certainly wasn’t important enough to be mentioned.

      but she knows all about HIM. at least, what history has said about him & his husband. both augmented as children. both rebelled against section 31, slaughtering anyone who got in their way. & then? they & the other augments took over the world.

      it’s a simplified version of actual events, so all the details have been taken out, redacted. but the truth is in the details, the parts that have been erased. so few know this for certain.

      but the point of studying the augments is to find out more about them. lena thinks their history is just as important as their biology, but section 31 doesn’t seem to feel the same. so any information she gathers on their history is for her personal curiosity. she’s here because she’s a SCIENTIST.

     julian recalls every single section 31 agent’s face. committed their appearance to perfected memory, swearing that he’ll get revenge for what they’ve done to him, to his family. all of section 31 is guilty. all of them. 

     the news of a new scientist crawling aboard the enterprise to ‘improve’ the implant buried in his neck is … enraging. captain kirk may have good intentions, julian doesn’t doubt that, but whoever starfleet is sending? starfleet themselves? laughable. they couldn’t give less of a shit if it causes harm to them. 

     stoic expression twists. a glower leveled at the woman who enters. he recognizes her. she’s apart of section 31. those lying bastards—-

       ❝  i know who you are, ❞  it’s cold — vastly out of character for the rather mellow augment. so much so, the guards around him tense, glancing among themselves. julian would laugh at her — a fucking behavioral conditioner! what an adorable way to re-brand a torture device — but anger clenches his throat shut; clenches his jaw shut and grinds his teeth together. 

     his shoulders roll as he takes a breath; a moment to remind himself his anger, no matter how justified, will only worsen things. the burning hatred in his glare remains, though. he won’t let her believe she has him tamed with this device. 

       ❝  julian singh. though i’m sure you’re already aware of that, too,  ❞ oh, his bitterness doesn’t end there, though.  ❝  remarkable. here we are, believing what we were told! that your little branch was going to be dismantled, and yet you’re here. we’re promised we’re not going to be your lab rats, and yet? here you are, eager to use us as your newest study object. tell me, how many times do you plan on using the implant on us a day, hm? how many times will you have to turn it on and toy with it before you get all the data you need?  ❞

      “ i tend not to believe rumors. god knows there’s been enough of them about me. ”  it’s ironic, really. lena takes rumors with a grain of salt. but what she knows of augments are not RUMORS. at least, she doesn’t think so. it’s history, so there must be truth to it. the fact that she believes this to be true shows just how young she is.

      of course, she knows history is not ALWAYS right, but when it comes to augments, there have been no arguments. the people she’s grown up with, the people who have taught her have never once challenged this part of history. augments were dangerous. they were murderers. they killed without regard for innocence or age. it is part of human history, something accepted by the entire species, save for a few small groups here & there. it’s not surprising that she believes what she knows of augments when one takes into account all of this.

      but it doesn’t mean she’s right. 

      this new assignment is a bit nerve-wracking for lena. since graduating from the academy, she’s only ever worked in one environment --- section 31. but now that more augments were being awoken, starfleet has requested her presence aboard the ship that held them: the u.s.s. enterprise. the doctors onboard have been pushing for a complete overhaul of the system that they had been using to keep KHAN under control. they said it was too powerful, too inhumane.

      lena had always thought that inhumane measures & measures against those who were inhuman were two separate concepts, but perhaps the line had blurred when she initially began developing the device. it’s worth taking another look at. it is only a prototype, after all.

      but knowing that she would be in such close proximity to the subjects she had designed them for is  .  .  .  unsettling. a bit worrying, even. she trusts that her invention does a good job of keeping the starfleet crew safe, but she’s begun to wonder  .  .  .  is it too much? but she supposes that’s why she’s here. to witness her device firsthand & make the necessary modifications.

      she’s just finished settling her things into her new quarters when she decides it’s about time to visit her research subjects. she’s only ever received data on them. no personal accounts, no photographs or videos. she is uncertain what to expect when she approaches the designated meeting place & finds one augment surrounded by five different guards.

      as she crosses the room, she stands tall, posture unwavering. she won’t let him know the anxiety she feels just standing before him.  “ my name is lena, ”  she says.  “ i’m here to study the effects of the behavioral conditioner on augment physiology. ”

#《 ◣ 》 star trek au

lena kieran luthor was born in 2236 to lionel luthor & his mistress. lena & her mother were kept a secret from lionel’s wife lillian & his son lex until lena’s mother passed away. at the time, lena was 4-years-old. lionel told lillian about lena & the two  ‘ adopted ’  lena into their family. it wasn’t until she was 24 that she found out the truth: she was a luthor by blood.

growing up, lena wasn’t close to her parents, but she was closer to her father than she was to her adoptive mother. lillian had always been distant & cold, and this made lena feel like an outsider in her own family. lionel’s death only furthered that distance.

lena was, however, close to her brother lex. that is, until lex began crusading against the federation. he’d always thought he was meant to do great things, & this belief turned into the delusion that he was meant to protect humans from aliens & rule the galaxy. after an attempt to destroy the federation resulted in the deaths of hundreds, lex was given 32 consecutive life sentences.

as a result of this, the luthor name was forever branded dangerous. this in addition to the way people saw her, as the luthor family’s charity case, made lena very self-conscious. she was a very intelligent girl & worked hard at everything she did, but still, she couldn’t help but feel like everybody was waiting for her to mess up.

in regards to education, lena attended the best school for engineering, earning a degree in bioengineering in three years. she then applied to starfleet academy despite knowing how her brother felt about the federation. she didn’t anticipate, however, that he would try to destroy it.

she had already been accepted into the academy & completed her first semester when lex attempted to take the federation down. this resulted in an interrogation into lena & her motives for joining starfleet. though she had no knowledge of the plot or intent to harm anyone, the starfleet academy brass felt it necessary to watch her closely.

upon graduation from the academy, starfleet sought to assign her somewhere her talents could be used but somewhere her family couldn’t cause any further damage. however, she graduated at the top of her class & this gave her access to choose her own assignment. luckily for starfleet, she was approached by an organization called section 31. while they were not directly affiliated with starfleet or the federation, on occasion, starfleet graduates took up posts within this  ‘ elite ’  organization. unaware of the depths of the organization’s unsavory history, she accepted the job.

this pleased starfleet, as lena was now hidden away from the eyes of the galaxy while also using her talents to benefit them. of course, lena didn’t see it that way. she saw section 31 as a means to an end. her goal had always been to make the galaxy a better place. she wanted to turn the luthor name into a force for good. 

* / specific to verses where khan ( boundlesswrath )  &  julian  ( hearttm )  are on the enterprise

though lena wanted to be a force for good, she was young & still a bit naive. when admiral marcus found what was left of the augment tyrant khan’s army, lena was tasked with developing technology with the ability to subdue an augment.  ‘ just in case, ’  they’d said, & she had trusted them. her original designs were good, but too tame. so she continued improving them. she suited them to the stories she’d been told of the inhumane dictator, each version more powerful than the last.

but before she could finish the implant design, khan escaped admiral marcus’s custody. it was only after he had wreaked havoc on the u.s.s. enterprise & killed her captain that the design was finalized. with captain kirk revived & khan back in starfleet custody under a sentence of rehabilitation aboard the enterprise, lena’s implant was finally put to the test.

  Dammit. She’d hoped her answer would be enough for her to shrug it off, and move on - but evidently not. It was rare indeed for her to be caught using her powers, and she didn’t know whether to continue to deny anything…or tell her the truth. 

“I can’t talk about it here,” she mumbled, gnawing on her bottom lip. “If you want me to explain, you can come back to my place? It’s only a short walk away.” If she’d rather not know, that was fine with her! But she didn’t want to risk being overheard, even if the majority of the people at the bar were completely drunk. 

      brow raising at the response she received, lena gave a small nod.  “ yeah, alright  .  .  . ”  it was never really the smartest idea to go off with a stranger, particularly one who had abilities like kiara. but she seemed harmless. in fact, she was a healer. lena tended to trust people like that, even if merely tentatively.

       As her new acquaintance approached, she gave her a small, tired smile. “Done all I can,” she murmured, as she wiped the blood from her hands. Yet her smile faded at the question, and her eyes darted down to the drops of blood splattered across the floor. Shit, shit, shit. Right, don’t panic. Taking a deep breath, she glanced back up at her and managed to plaster a hopefully realistic smile back on her features. 

Feigning confusion was probably the best strategy at this point! 

“Hmm? I’m a doctor,” she explained again, with a shrug of my shoulders. “He’ll need stitches, but I thought I’d leave that to my colleagues. Better to do that in a sterile environment than here,” she glanced around their surroundings, where the bar staff were beginning to clear up the broken glass and overturned chairs. 

      head tilting as she studied kiara’s face, lena’s brow furrowed. then she shook her head slightly, catching her gaze so she would understand.  “ that’s not what i meant. ”

      but she didn’t say any more at that moment. there were too many people around, & the staff was closing in to clean up the mess. so she stepped aside, leaving room for the doctor to follow her.

       Head wounds often bled profusely, but this amount seemed excess. She managed to reach her new patient without too much trouble, and quickly got him to lay down; God, it was just as well the hospital was just over the road. If she could stop the bleeding…but using her powers here was too risky! There were too many witnesses?

All it took was a quick glance up to determine that everyone here - apart from her new acquaintance - was entirely pissed. Even if they did see something, they’d likely blame it on the drink…or not be believed, regardless. It was worth the risk.

Taking a deep breath, she gently covered the head wound with her palm and held still for a few seconds. When she moved her hand away, the bleeding had stopped and the wound looked decidedly smaller. “There, I’ve stabilized him. Take him to the hospital over the street,” she ordered to one of the men nearby, who seemed to be his friend. 

      though she was at a bit of a distance, lena had a good view of the scene. that, paired with good corrective lenses, allowed her to noticed even slight details from far away. so when the wound shrank just enough to be noticeable --- she noticed.

      sitting up in her seat, lena blinked in surprise, brows furrowing. had her eyes been playing tricks on her? or had this man’s wound gotten smaller? no, it definitely had. a wound that small could not have caused the loss of that much blood. she knew surface wounds bled quite a bit, but in such a short amount of time, to lose that volume? well, it was unlikely. 

      “No, you’re quite right,” she observed, and her lips twisted in discontentment as she saw the amount of blood pouring from one of the men’s head wounds. “I guess I better go and patch him up,” she mumbled, with a faint sigh. “Excuse me, for a moment…hopefully, I won’t be long.”

     Her energy had picked up since her shift, and she’d be able to subtly use some of her powers to help speed up his healing process. “Hey, watch out, let me through. I’m a doctor,” she ordered, authoritatively. 

       A deep sigh escaped her as she saw the blood begin to pool, and she ran a tired hand across her forehead. “I was really hoping for a quiet evening,” she admitted, with a wry smile. “Do you think I can just call 911 and pretend I don’t know all the paramedics?” she questioned, with faint humour. 

Of course she wasn’t going to do that, and already she’s taken a couple of steps towards the men…but as they are still fighting, despite the blood dripping down onto his shirt, she doesn’t go much further. She certainly didn’t want to accidentally get involved! 

      “ i think you’d be better off waiting it out, ”  she said. lena sighed & sipped her drink as she followed the ordeal with her eyes. the brawling men made their way from one corner of the bar to another, disrupting quite a few drinking parties along the way. 

      Lovely.  She should have gone into another bar or restaurant, but this one was just across the road from the hospital and she didn’t have enough time in her break to travel much further. Her eyes widened at the sudden raucous on the other side of the room, and she couldn’t help but let out a faint sigh as one of the men got hit over the head with a glass bottle. There was her next patient. 

      “Do you think I should help?” she questioned tiredly, giving the woman a small smile. “My name’s Kiara by the way. It’s nice to meet you.” 

      “ mm, personally, i wouldn’t. if they want to act like a bunch of imbeciles, that’s their prerogative. but not to worry, i’m certain it’ll be over soon. then you & help patch them up --- ”  she paused to grimace as she watched a man’s head break the glass of a picture frame hanging on the wall.  “ --- ouch. looks like they’re gonna need it. ”  it had only taken her a moment to recognize the way kiara carried herself. she’d met quite a few doctors & nurses at this bar, since the hospital was just across the street.