FIC: You Have Your Father's Eyes, Part Thirteen
Title: You Have Your Father’s Eyes
Summary: Zod has set you up the bomb. Make your time. Only... the body he has been given to be revived on the plane of existance is PREGNANT, dammit. What’s an evil warlord to do?
Pairing: Zod/Jor-El/Lara, a dash of Zodana, Clex, Brex, Lexiac, plus Vessel/others
Rating: NC-17 because I’m a perv
Warning: MPREG. Twice!
Spoilers: Smallville through Season Five "Vessel", Superman II, basic wikiable Batman and Superman comic canon.
Thanks to my sweet as potato pie beta herohunter
Parts One and Two
Part Three
Part Four
Part Five
Part Six
Part Seven
Part Eight
Part Nine
Part Ten
Part Eleven
Part Twelve
Part Thirteen
Zod could feel the poison seeping into his body as he crawled back into his bed. There were things gone wrong inside him that could not right themselves. The poison was sapping his power. Kal-El watched him haplessly. The boy’s lip quivered.
Zod wished he could be angrier with him. That Kal-El felt so sad to see his ima trapped and dying was touching. Zod focused on blocking his emotions from Kal-El regardless.
“We need to talk,” his boy ventured.
“You had better back away from those rocks. They caused the sickness that killed most of our people before the planet blew,” Zod replied in a stern, instructive tone. Kal-El stepped back a bit.
“I don’t feel it.”
“Even if you do not, it eats you from within. The radiation is insidious. We never found a cure,” Zod admitted. He rested his hand over his stomach, to the side where he could feel his body throbbing. “What is happening? Have the humans regained control?”
“Not exactly.”
“How long have I been out?” Zod asked after a moment, remembering how long it had taken him to regain consciousness after Kal had been born.
“I almost killed you!” the boy exclaimed.
Zod raised a brow, assuming that he must have read the memory from him. “You were merely being born. It is an innocent enough act,” he replied tersely, trying harder to shield his son. No doubt he was failing in this. He’d never had to try before.
“You seem mad at me for it.”
“I am not. I am angry with you for trapping me here in this room and failing to answer my questions. Where are your brother and sister? They need to be fed, and they are frightened.”
“I know,” Clark said, poking the ground with the toe of his shoe. “We don’t know what to feed them, and Mom’s been trying everything. I ate fine when I was a baby.”
“You were a bit older, Kally.” He felt the back of his neck, pondering what would do as a substitute. He could feel the soft short hair and looked up to his firstborn with a raised brow.
“It started growing back. I don’t know what happened, but you’ve changed a little. You don’t look exactly like Lex anymore.”
“My DNA has taken over. How long? How many weeks?”
Clark closed his eyes and gave him a sad smile. “Five.”
“And the twins? Despite the lack of nourishment?”
“We’ve been giving them human breast milk since they won’t drink anything else, but they’re still upset all the time. Lal is doing okay. Same…” Clark looked away.
Zod nodded. The boy child was weak. “Have the humans regained their planet?”
“No. There’s a new set of Kryptonians here.”
Zod raised a brow seriously. “Really?”
“We want to make a deal with you, and I told them I should be the one to talk to you about it,” Clark replied firmly.
“You would face the wrath of Zod?” he demanded imperiously.
“I should. You are my ima, after all.”
“You have betrayed me,” Zod pronounced, looking away with crazed eyes. Clark ran a hand over his face.
“I won’t pretend to understand everything that happened on Krypton, but I’ve lived my whole life here. I’m not really one of you. I think you know that.”
Zod remained silent.
“Still, I think we can come to an agreement. There has to be a way to either live together peacefully or find another planet for the Kryptonians to live on,” Clark insisted, sounding young and idealistic. Sounding like his father Jor.
“Do you honestly believe that humans are capable of cohabitating with Kryptonians? They treat their own pitifully, for petty reasons.”
Clark raised a brow. “You haven’t told me much, but it sounds like Krypton had a cast system that pretty much screwed you over. The only Kryptonians I’ve ever met were petty or stupid or you and the AI based on my real dad is a control freak asshole. For all you think you’re superior, your own society was imperfect, and you destroyed yourselves.”
“It wouldn’t have happened if your father hadn’t betrayed me,” Zod replied gravely.
“Maybe not. But he did. And I did. And here we are.” Clark wiped away a tear.
“Is Ursa among the Kryptonians in control?”
Clark shook his head.
“Well, to use human terminology: fuck. Ursa would be loyal to me.” He rubbed his hand over the short, shaggy mop of white hair. “What kind of deal?”
“You promise to help us make peace, one way or the other, and we’ll reunite you with your kids and let you out.” Clark crossed his arms.
He locked eyes with his son and drawled cautiously, “You trust Zod?”
“I know you wouldn’t put them in danger. I trust that. And I even know that you wouldn’t hurt me unless they were in imminent danger, so… I mean, that’s why you put me in the Phantom Zone, wasn’t it?”
“I didn’t have the time to force you to understand.”
“So? Are we going to make a deal?”
Zod pressed his lips together in a sour, domineering expression. He opened his mind to his children. Less hungry, still scared, and fussy. Especially weak little Same. He looked up at Clark and felt his oldest’s confusion, fear, guilt, and pain. It hurt him to see his Kryptonian family suffer. He sighed heavily.
World domination would have to wait. His babies needed him.
***
All eyes were on Clark as he led the wounded warlord into the room. Zod’s face had changed over the last few weeks. He still greatly resembled Lex, but in addition to the hair, his nose was sharper, his eyes slightly wider.
Martha looked up at him with large eyes. She was bouncing Lal, trying to get the little girl to stop fussing so much. Chloe leaned over the boy rubbing his back. He wasn’t sobbing like the girl was, but he was making pitiful mewling sounds. Zod walked slowly over to them with a look of grim determination on his face, as he pressed one hand over the left side of his abdomen and breathed slowly and with determination.
“Let me see them,” he demanded, when a doctor stepped in front of him, holding up her hands and shaking her head.
“You have to be careful.”
“You had better move, human,” he ordered.
Martha put her hand on Zod’s shoulder and spoke to the doctor, “Mital, it’s okay. I’m sure he won’t hurt his own children.”
He nodded to her and leaned over to look at his boy. Zod pressed a hand on his tiny back, and the child stopped mewling. He was still so small.
“I’m here. Your ima is fine. No fretting,” he ordered in a low, soothing voice.
The girl whined and reached out for him. He held out his arms, and Martha gently laid Lal into them. The baby was stunned for a moment, then cooed softly.
“Oh! My goodness. I never thought she’d be happy,” Martha muttered in relief.
“They get upset to be away from their bearer this young. Kal was the same way. Lara thought he would be a problem, at first. After I woke, he hardly ever fussed.” He leaned against the wall and held his little girl then reached into the crib to reassure Same that he was still there.
“He… he has a scar,” the doctor blurted out nervously. Zod looked up at her severely.
“He has a damaged heart,” the doctor explained, somewhat fearfully. Zod simply nodded, narrowing his eyes and looking through the layers of his child’s skin.
“I heard in his heartbeat when he was born. Did the surgery help?”
She shrugged. “I don’t know what a healthy heart would look like for your species. It’s on the other side of the chest…”
Zod put his hand over his right side where Lal was laying her head. “Here?”
“Yeah… that’s normal?”
He gave her a slight smile. “For us it is.”
Clark stood on the other side of the room, watching them anxiously. Chloe came over to him and rubbed his shoulder. “Is he okay? That’s a long time to be exposed to Kryptonite.”
“I seem to be healing now. Although, I am rather amazed that I have lived so long beside the poison.” Zod looked at her and creased his brow and looked down over himself. “It must be the base of mutant human DNA. So am I to help you find a means of extricating other members of my species? I need to know who they are.”
“It’s not like we’d know,” Clark said.
“We have pictures of the ones we’ve seen,” Chloe told them. “We figured if you knew who they were, it would help you decide how this can be taken care of.”
“It would. Have you seen Ursa?”
She shook her head. “Though, her face has changed so much since she took my cousin’s body. I don’t know that I’d recognize her.”
“I will recognize her,” Zod stated. He watched his son wiggle on his stomach with an unreadable expression.
Chloe crossed her arms. “Is she going to be on our side? And by ours, I guess I mean yours, and now that you have your children within your reach, are you on our side?”
Zod’s lips twitched. “For the moment, I am. Ursa does not think much of you humans.”
“And you’re singing our praises as a species?”
“Not particularly. However, she will follow me in whatever I decide is best for our people.”
Chloe nodded. “I’m going to get Bruce and Lex. We can start talking, if you’re ready.”
“Yes.”
Clark looked over to see that the twins had fallen asleep.
Zod held little Kally to his belly for hours, admiring how perfect his son was, afraid that if he closed his eyes, his boy would be taken from him. He tried to hold back his anxiety, as it only worried the baby, but he knew Lara would come back with a diagnosis of how many years he had left, and it wouldn’t be long enough, could never be, unless he was able to live long enough to see Kally become a man.
Clark smiled and briefly met Zod’s eyes. He then frowned pensively. “How… Fine made it out like you wanted to rule Krypton.”
“I basically did, for a short time. Not in name, however.”
“I don’t get why you would want to take over the planet and not have anyone know.”
Zod leaned over and kissed Lal’s soft white hair. “It was necessary to survive. I hardly cared about the title, so long as I could do what was required.”
“And the cape and stuff when you did it here?”
“The cape was to cover them, Kally.”
“It’s…” Clark frowned and trailed off.
“Clark. Forgive me. I forgot.”
“You… did Jor-El and Lara call me Kally, too?” Clark asked. Zod nodded. “Why didn’t the AI?”
“Because it’s an AI and not a person. Its program was impressive, but not unlimited.”
“You killed the Fortress,” Clark said, though not accusingly.
“I wiped out the AI’s program. We should be able to restart the computer if we need it,” Zod advised.
Clark nodded.
”Are you upset about this?”
“That AI has… done so much to hurt people. It’s tried to control me.”
“It could be malfunctioning.”
Clark picked up a soft pink blankie and rubbed the fabric between his fingers. Chloe came back into the room and started to crack up.
“What is funny about this?” Zod asked harshly.
“I dunno. Never thought pink was your color, Clark.” Chloe grinned.
Zod tilted his head to the side. “This is a human norm I missed when you were growing up.”
Clark rolled his eyes. “Pink is a feminine color. Soft and girlie, you know.”
“Females are hardly soft. Some of my best soldiers were female.” Zod petted the Lal’s hair softly and looked at the jumper they had dressed his son in. “Is blue for males, then?”
“Pretty much, yeah,” Chloe answered. Zod’s eyes fixed on the two men entering the room.
”I am unclear on why infants need a gender designation.” He looked directly at Bruce. “I know you. Don’t I?”
Bruce gave a tense smile, and his eyes went to the child in Zod’s arms.
“I don’t expect much from humans in general. I certainly wouldn’t ask one to rear my children. In truth, stay away from them,” he instructed. Lex lifted his chin in slowly dawning realization and anger at Bruce.
”I thought he was you. He acted like you.” Bruce paused. Lex smacked his arm, and Chloe covered her mouth in amusement. Bruce shrugged. “Maybe a little high?”
“You couldn’t tell? Really? The difference between me and an alien.” Lex glared at him. Clark frowned at their interaction. Zod smirked at the three of them.
“Look, Lex, I haven’t seen you in years. There was a possibility that the differences I was noticing were just… changes. It hardly expected you to stand still for me while I was gone. I’m not the same, am I?”
“You are exactly the same, you freak.” Lex rolled his eyes and looked to Zod. The two men stared at one another for several moments. “You still look a bit like me.”
“I was born long before you. You might say that you look like me.” Zod watched Lex frown at him in the clinical way Lara and her other medical friends might have. He was quite pale, wearing a light bluish purple button-up shirt that he had rolled at the sleeves. He was weak, although only physically, and even that much Zod would have expected, even so many weeks later, after being run through the Emergence Machine. Zod could see in his eyes that he was mentally assessing everything going on around him, and the look he was giving Zod was fiercely defensive. “You are very interesting for a human.”
Lex thinned his lips in an exasperated expression as he stepped forward and handed Zod some pictures. Zod scanned them.
“Peru-Col… Seig-An.” Zod grimaced and shook his head.
“Is he dangerous?” Lex asked in a businesslike tone.
“He hates me. Peru-Col was on my side, but she’s vicious. He should really hate her and Ursa more than I, but I’m sure he despises me.” He tapped his finger on the picture and shook his head uncertainly. “Ursa would not have released Seig-An.”
“Then these aren’t exactly your minions to command,” Bruce said crossing his arms. He creased his brow and rolled his tongue around the inside of his mouth pensively.
“They never were. Some were my allies, however. I’d hope we can use that to our advantage.” Zod set the photo aside to look at the next. “Non is terrified of me. If we come in contact with him, he will do as I say... I do not know about this one.”
He pointed to the dark skinned man who had accompanied Peru-Col in Brainiac’s ship. “I have never seen him.”
“Um… Fine called him and… Peru-Col the disciples of Zod,” Clark offered.
“How nice,” Zod said dryly. “He may be Tal-Al’s child… or he may be Tal-Al if Peru got to her.”
“How is that possible?” Martha asked.
“Early in the process of using the Emergence Machine, we didn’t quite have the ability to remake bodies without killing the donor. Thus, some individuals used their children’s bodies to create a Vessel for them to inhabit.”
Martha’s jaw dropped in horror. “How… even if you didn’t have a psychic connect to your children-“
“Females do not,” Zod corrected her. “Males do not, either, unless they are the bearer, and until recently… at least in my case… we relied on artificial wombs instead of traditionally birthing, remember.”
“Because it usually killed off the bearer,” Clark concluded. Zod raised his brows.
“I still don’t see how any parent could kill their child for their own survival,” Martha argued.
“I tend to agree,” Zod said. He stroked his baby girl’s hair.
“If the bearer usually dies, what was your plan after having Clark? Would you live long enough to finish your plans and rule New Krypton?” Lex asked tersely.
“A bearer might live a year to, perhaps, seven years after his child is born. I hoped to live long enough to get our people to our new home, though I don’t think I had that much time,” Zod said pensively. “I expected that the remaining members of the Science Council would be capable of taking over from there. This would have included Jor-El, of course.” His lips curved. “I don’t know what the Brainiac computer told you about Jor-El, but he was no soldier. He was a lawyer-”
“That explains a lot,” Martha said dryly.
Zod fought a smile at her response. Clearly, the AI had shown them his Jor’s worst side. “And a scientist. Mostly focusing in astronomy and spacecraft construction.”
“What did Lara do?” Clark asked eagerly.
“She was a doctor,” he answered reverently. “A good one.”
“So how many Kryptonians do we have here who are on our side?” Bruce asked.
“Clark, myself, and Ursa, for certain. Non, if I can catch his ear. Peru-Col and whoever this one is.” He held up the picture of the dark skinned Kryptonian. “Are a maybe. Seig-An… he will not be on my side. His attitudes toward humans are unknown to me… he was always quite prejudiced to those from Below.”
“Below what?” Bruce asked.
“No, no, he means the lower class,” Clark explained. “Workers.”
“Charming,” Chloe put in dryly. “Can he fight?”
“I do not know. Peru can.” Zod shrugged. “How is the fight going so far? Have they stepped in my place ruling the planet?”
Clark nodded. Zod thought on that for a moment.
“They’ll release more Kryptonians from the Phantom Zone as soon as they have strong enough human bodies to work with. The Kryptonian DNA apparently overrides the human set over time. We need to be concerned about those individuals because almost everyone in the Phantom Zone is a criminal in the strictest sense,” Zod warned “And I personally sentenced a good number of them with the Science Council.”
”They’ll be looking for meta-humans then,” Lex said. “Clark, I know he hates me, but if you could get Victor Stone to work with us, it would be a big help.”
Clark nodded. “I’ll try. Um, he’s a cyborg,” he explained to Zod.
Zod looked at Lal and made a soothing noise at her, kissed her head, and then looked back up at them very seriously. “We don’t have much time. My advice is to create effective weapons and move in quickly. I can take over the group, and we can have a meeting with your leaders to work out how we want to cohabitate. Are there any planets near here with an oxygen atmosphere?”
“Not within the solar system,” Bruce said. “What kind of weapons are you talking about?”
“Not sure yet.” Zod creased his brow and rubbed his chin.
“Kryptonite bullets,” Lex said after a moment.
Clark rolled his eyes. “Yeah, for humans to use on us.”
“We mix the metal for the guns with lead to block the radiation, so that you, Zod, and whoever joins us can wield them as well.” Lex raised his chin. “I would advise that we not forget in the midst of this family bonding, that this is a dangerous man who
very recently took over our planet. If we have weapons, I want them to work against the two of you as well as the newbies, because of the obvious, which apparently needs to be stated. You are not always in control of yourself, Clark, and he could simply join the other Kryptonians and reclaim his position as lord and ruler of our world. Our end goal is not a Hallmark card, but rather saving the world from domination by aliens.”
Clark gaped. Zod smirked.
“Just wanted to point that out,” Lex finished raising his hands a bit cattily.
Zod raised his brows at Clark, who seemed speechless. “I like this human.”
“Don’t say things like that,” Clark whined. Martha chuckled.
“Jor-El did not approve of you,” Zod informed Lex, nodding a bit. Lex curled his lip and scowled. “Your proposal for the guns sounds like a good idea to me. Simple. Also, initially we’ll have the element of surprise with this type of weapon, which will be very important. We can brainstorm other types of weapons if this escalates. However, the sooner the conflict ends, the better for all of us.”
“Good,” Lex replied with a tense smile.
***
“He likes me. What the hell does that mean? He likes me,” Lex grumbled. He spread their plans out on the table, and Bruce sat beside him.
“Aliens sure do seem to love you,” Bruce commented, looking over their schematics for the gun.
“And you love the aliens, don’t you, Bruce?” Lex replied bitchily.
“That isn’t fair, Alex. I thought he was you.” Bruce sighed and looked over his old friend. Lex had been prickly and determined since they’d come here, focused only on their immediate goal. Bruce had explained his sudden departure all those years ago to his Alexander, and he seemed to listen, but had made little response. “He… it wasn’t anyone. It was a body with your memories. It told me…”
“Don’t do this now. I’m working.”
“You’re always working. You can’t keep avoiding what happened to you. You’ll go insane,” Bruce insisted.
“Repression and denial have worked so well for me over the years.” Lex stared at the plans intently and adjusted the configurations via the computer next to him slightly. “Don’t steal away one of my most precious tools of survival.”
Bruce lowered his voice slightly. “You… are stronger than I am. You’ll survive no matter what you do. I’m simply concerned as to what will be left.”
“Maybe when this is over I can dress up as a large kangaroo and fight crime.”
“Alex,” Bruce warned.
Lex lifted a brow. “No? A bird? A swallow? Swallowman!”
Bruce rolled his eyes and put a gentle hand on Lex’s shoulder. For the first time in weeks, Lex did not jerk away. The scars were beginning to fade, finally, but the extent of the wounds had made them difficult to heal quickly, and Lex was not used to his body being slow about such things.
“He violated you.”
“Do you think I don’t know that?” Lex turned his head sharply. “I don’t have time for this.”
Bruce took Lex’s hand firmly, then held tightly as Lex tried to pull away. “A promise. I want a promise from you, Alex.”
“Let me go!” Lex growled. Bruce thought he might chew through his wrist through in order to escape.
“One promise. That you will talk to me when you’re ready.”
“There’s nothing to say!” Lex roared, pulling back so hard he fell out of his chair. Bruce caught him in his strong arms, steadied him on his feet, then backed away holding up his hands to give Lex room. Lex’s eyes were wild. He let out a staccato laugh. “What’s one more betrayal? One more violation? Just another day in the life of Lex fucking Luthor!”
“Alex…” Bruce shook his head. He wanted to tell him that there wouldn’t be such hurt and betrayal all of his life. That wasn’t a promise he could make.
Lex crossed his arms and pressed his dry lips together. “There are days when I wish I’d gone with Milton.”
“He hurt you,” Bruce boomed. “He betrayed you. He used you for his own agenda!“
“So does everyone else,” Lex said sharply, giving Bruce an intense look before sitting down and going back to work.
“I should have told you. And I’ve said that I’m sorry. But I’ve never betrayed you-“
“You will,” Lex replied with cold certainty.
Bruce ran his hands through his hair. “You no longer trust me. I understand. I can only hope that one day you will forgive me for abandoning you.”
“I’m not a needy little girlfriend. You did what you had to do.” Lex turned his face back to the plans, writing with one hand on the table and working on the computer with the other. “You are forgiven. It isn’t as though you needed my permission to leave.”
“I know that it hurt you. Though, the Vessel didn’t seem to care.”
“The Vessel thought it was a brilliant idea to fuck Lois Lane, you, and then go take on Clark in his barn. I wouldn’t put too much stock in its ability to make sense of the situation.”
“It had your sense of humor,” Bruce whispered. “I’m sorry.”
“Stop apologizing. It’s irritating.”
“It told me that it loved me.”
Lex paused working for a moment. “I love Clark, too. But I’m not exactly going to be trusting him any time soon either.”
Bruce leaned against the table and watched the back of Lex’s head. He wanted to give the bump on the back of his head a kiss. “So we’re on even footing?”
Lex seemed to be thinking for a moment. “I trust you more than him. At the moment, at least.” He lifted his chin and met Bruce’s eyes. “How is that?”
“That’ll do.” Bruce cupped Lex’s face and leaned in to kiss his brow, but Lex turned away from Bruce’s lips and focused on the plans once again.
Summary: Zod has set you up the bomb. Make your time. Only... the body he has been given to be revived on the plane of existance is PREGNANT, dammit. What’s an evil warlord to do?
Pairing: Zod/Jor-El/Lara, a dash of Zodana, Clex, Brex, Lexiac, plus Vessel/others
Rating: NC-17 because I’m a perv
Warning: MPREG. Twice!
Spoilers: Smallville through Season Five "Vessel", Superman II, basic wikiable Batman and Superman comic canon.
Thanks to my sweet as potato pie beta herohunter
Parts One and Two
Part Three
Part Four
Part Five
Part Six
Part Seven
Part Eight
Part Nine
Part Ten
Part Eleven
Part Twelve
Part Thirteen
Zod could feel the poison seeping into his body as he crawled back into his bed. There were things gone wrong inside him that could not right themselves. The poison was sapping his power. Kal-El watched him haplessly. The boy’s lip quivered.
Zod wished he could be angrier with him. That Kal-El felt so sad to see his ima trapped and dying was touching. Zod focused on blocking his emotions from Kal-El regardless.
“We need to talk,” his boy ventured.
“You had better back away from those rocks. They caused the sickness that killed most of our people before the planet blew,” Zod replied in a stern, instructive tone. Kal-El stepped back a bit.
“I don’t feel it.”
“Even if you do not, it eats you from within. The radiation is insidious. We never found a cure,” Zod admitted. He rested his hand over his stomach, to the side where he could feel his body throbbing. “What is happening? Have the humans regained control?”
“Not exactly.”
“How long have I been out?” Zod asked after a moment, remembering how long it had taken him to regain consciousness after Kal had been born.
“I almost killed you!” the boy exclaimed.
Zod raised a brow, assuming that he must have read the memory from him. “You were merely being born. It is an innocent enough act,” he replied tersely, trying harder to shield his son. No doubt he was failing in this. He’d never had to try before.
“You seem mad at me for it.”
“I am not. I am angry with you for trapping me here in this room and failing to answer my questions. Where are your brother and sister? They need to be fed, and they are frightened.”
“I know,” Clark said, poking the ground with the toe of his shoe. “We don’t know what to feed them, and Mom’s been trying everything. I ate fine when I was a baby.”
“You were a bit older, Kally.” He felt the back of his neck, pondering what would do as a substitute. He could feel the soft short hair and looked up to his firstborn with a raised brow.
“It started growing back. I don’t know what happened, but you’ve changed a little. You don’t look exactly like Lex anymore.”
“My DNA has taken over. How long? How many weeks?”
Clark closed his eyes and gave him a sad smile. “Five.”
“And the twins? Despite the lack of nourishment?”
“We’ve been giving them human breast milk since they won’t drink anything else, but they’re still upset all the time. Lal is doing okay. Same…” Clark looked away.
Zod nodded. The boy child was weak. “Have the humans regained their planet?”
“No. There’s a new set of Kryptonians here.”
Zod raised a brow seriously. “Really?”
“We want to make a deal with you, and I told them I should be the one to talk to you about it,” Clark replied firmly.
“You would face the wrath of Zod?” he demanded imperiously.
“I should. You are my ima, after all.”
“You have betrayed me,” Zod pronounced, looking away with crazed eyes. Clark ran a hand over his face.
“I won’t pretend to understand everything that happened on Krypton, but I’ve lived my whole life here. I’m not really one of you. I think you know that.”
Zod remained silent.
“Still, I think we can come to an agreement. There has to be a way to either live together peacefully or find another planet for the Kryptonians to live on,” Clark insisted, sounding young and idealistic. Sounding like his father Jor.
“Do you honestly believe that humans are capable of cohabitating with Kryptonians? They treat their own pitifully, for petty reasons.”
Clark raised a brow. “You haven’t told me much, but it sounds like Krypton had a cast system that pretty much screwed you over. The only Kryptonians I’ve ever met were petty or stupid or you and the AI based on my real dad is a control freak asshole. For all you think you’re superior, your own society was imperfect, and you destroyed yourselves.”
“It wouldn’t have happened if your father hadn’t betrayed me,” Zod replied gravely.
“Maybe not. But he did. And I did. And here we are.” Clark wiped away a tear.
“Is Ursa among the Kryptonians in control?”
Clark shook his head.
“Well, to use human terminology: fuck. Ursa would be loyal to me.” He rubbed his hand over the short, shaggy mop of white hair. “What kind of deal?”
“You promise to help us make peace, one way or the other, and we’ll reunite you with your kids and let you out.” Clark crossed his arms.
He locked eyes with his son and drawled cautiously, “You trust Zod?”
“I know you wouldn’t put them in danger. I trust that. And I even know that you wouldn’t hurt me unless they were in imminent danger, so… I mean, that’s why you put me in the Phantom Zone, wasn’t it?”
“I didn’t have the time to force you to understand.”
“So? Are we going to make a deal?”
Zod pressed his lips together in a sour, domineering expression. He opened his mind to his children. Less hungry, still scared, and fussy. Especially weak little Same. He looked up at Clark and felt his oldest’s confusion, fear, guilt, and pain. It hurt him to see his Kryptonian family suffer. He sighed heavily.
World domination would have to wait. His babies needed him.
***
All eyes were on Clark as he led the wounded warlord into the room. Zod’s face had changed over the last few weeks. He still greatly resembled Lex, but in addition to the hair, his nose was sharper, his eyes slightly wider.
Martha looked up at him with large eyes. She was bouncing Lal, trying to get the little girl to stop fussing so much. Chloe leaned over the boy rubbing his back. He wasn’t sobbing like the girl was, but he was making pitiful mewling sounds. Zod walked slowly over to them with a look of grim determination on his face, as he pressed one hand over the left side of his abdomen and breathed slowly and with determination.
“Let me see them,” he demanded, when a doctor stepped in front of him, holding up her hands and shaking her head.
“You have to be careful.”
“You had better move, human,” he ordered.
Martha put her hand on Zod’s shoulder and spoke to the doctor, “Mital, it’s okay. I’m sure he won’t hurt his own children.”
He nodded to her and leaned over to look at his boy. Zod pressed a hand on his tiny back, and the child stopped mewling. He was still so small.
“I’m here. Your ima is fine. No fretting,” he ordered in a low, soothing voice.
The girl whined and reached out for him. He held out his arms, and Martha gently laid Lal into them. The baby was stunned for a moment, then cooed softly.
“Oh! My goodness. I never thought she’d be happy,” Martha muttered in relief.
“They get upset to be away from their bearer this young. Kal was the same way. Lara thought he would be a problem, at first. After I woke, he hardly ever fussed.” He leaned against the wall and held his little girl then reached into the crib to reassure Same that he was still there.
“He… he has a scar,” the doctor blurted out nervously. Zod looked up at her severely.
“He has a damaged heart,” the doctor explained, somewhat fearfully. Zod simply nodded, narrowing his eyes and looking through the layers of his child’s skin.
“I heard in his heartbeat when he was born. Did the surgery help?”
She shrugged. “I don’t know what a healthy heart would look like for your species. It’s on the other side of the chest…”
Zod put his hand over his right side where Lal was laying her head. “Here?”
“Yeah… that’s normal?”
He gave her a slight smile. “For us it is.”
Clark stood on the other side of the room, watching them anxiously. Chloe came over to him and rubbed his shoulder. “Is he okay? That’s a long time to be exposed to Kryptonite.”
“I seem to be healing now. Although, I am rather amazed that I have lived so long beside the poison.” Zod looked at her and creased his brow and looked down over himself. “It must be the base of mutant human DNA. So am I to help you find a means of extricating other members of my species? I need to know who they are.”
“It’s not like we’d know,” Clark said.
“We have pictures of the ones we’ve seen,” Chloe told them. “We figured if you knew who they were, it would help you decide how this can be taken care of.”
“It would. Have you seen Ursa?”
She shook her head. “Though, her face has changed so much since she took my cousin’s body. I don’t know that I’d recognize her.”
“I will recognize her,” Zod stated. He watched his son wiggle on his stomach with an unreadable expression.
Chloe crossed her arms. “Is she going to be on our side? And by ours, I guess I mean yours, and now that you have your children within your reach, are you on our side?”
Zod’s lips twitched. “For the moment, I am. Ursa does not think much of you humans.”
“And you’re singing our praises as a species?”
“Not particularly. However, she will follow me in whatever I decide is best for our people.”
Chloe nodded. “I’m going to get Bruce and Lex. We can start talking, if you’re ready.”
“Yes.”
Clark looked over to see that the twins had fallen asleep.
Zod held little Kally to his belly for hours, admiring how perfect his son was, afraid that if he closed his eyes, his boy would be taken from him. He tried to hold back his anxiety, as it only worried the baby, but he knew Lara would come back with a diagnosis of how many years he had left, and it wouldn’t be long enough, could never be, unless he was able to live long enough to see Kally become a man.
Clark smiled and briefly met Zod’s eyes. He then frowned pensively. “How… Fine made it out like you wanted to rule Krypton.”
“I basically did, for a short time. Not in name, however.”
“I don’t get why you would want to take over the planet and not have anyone know.”
Zod leaned over and kissed Lal’s soft white hair. “It was necessary to survive. I hardly cared about the title, so long as I could do what was required.”
“And the cape and stuff when you did it here?”
“The cape was to cover them, Kally.”
“It’s…” Clark frowned and trailed off.
“Clark. Forgive me. I forgot.”
“You… did Jor-El and Lara call me Kally, too?” Clark asked. Zod nodded. “Why didn’t the AI?”
“Because it’s an AI and not a person. Its program was impressive, but not unlimited.”
“You killed the Fortress,” Clark said, though not accusingly.
“I wiped out the AI’s program. We should be able to restart the computer if we need it,” Zod advised.
Clark nodded.
”Are you upset about this?”
“That AI has… done so much to hurt people. It’s tried to control me.”
“It could be malfunctioning.”
Clark picked up a soft pink blankie and rubbed the fabric between his fingers. Chloe came back into the room and started to crack up.
“What is funny about this?” Zod asked harshly.
“I dunno. Never thought pink was your color, Clark.” Chloe grinned.
Zod tilted his head to the side. “This is a human norm I missed when you were growing up.”
Clark rolled his eyes. “Pink is a feminine color. Soft and girlie, you know.”
“Females are hardly soft. Some of my best soldiers were female.” Zod petted the Lal’s hair softly and looked at the jumper they had dressed his son in. “Is blue for males, then?”
“Pretty much, yeah,” Chloe answered. Zod’s eyes fixed on the two men entering the room.
”I am unclear on why infants need a gender designation.” He looked directly at Bruce. “I know you. Don’t I?”
Bruce gave a tense smile, and his eyes went to the child in Zod’s arms.
“I don’t expect much from humans in general. I certainly wouldn’t ask one to rear my children. In truth, stay away from them,” he instructed. Lex lifted his chin in slowly dawning realization and anger at Bruce.
”I thought he was you. He acted like you.” Bruce paused. Lex smacked his arm, and Chloe covered her mouth in amusement. Bruce shrugged. “Maybe a little high?”
“You couldn’t tell? Really? The difference between me and an alien.” Lex glared at him. Clark frowned at their interaction. Zod smirked at the three of them.
“Look, Lex, I haven’t seen you in years. There was a possibility that the differences I was noticing were just… changes. It hardly expected you to stand still for me while I was gone. I’m not the same, am I?”
“You are exactly the same, you freak.” Lex rolled his eyes and looked to Zod. The two men stared at one another for several moments. “You still look a bit like me.”
“I was born long before you. You might say that you look like me.” Zod watched Lex frown at him in the clinical way Lara and her other medical friends might have. He was quite pale, wearing a light bluish purple button-up shirt that he had rolled at the sleeves. He was weak, although only physically, and even that much Zod would have expected, even so many weeks later, after being run through the Emergence Machine. Zod could see in his eyes that he was mentally assessing everything going on around him, and the look he was giving Zod was fiercely defensive. “You are very interesting for a human.”
Lex thinned his lips in an exasperated expression as he stepped forward and handed Zod some pictures. Zod scanned them.
“Peru-Col… Seig-An.” Zod grimaced and shook his head.
“Is he dangerous?” Lex asked in a businesslike tone.
“He hates me. Peru-Col was on my side, but she’s vicious. He should really hate her and Ursa more than I, but I’m sure he despises me.” He tapped his finger on the picture and shook his head uncertainly. “Ursa would not have released Seig-An.”
“Then these aren’t exactly your minions to command,” Bruce said crossing his arms. He creased his brow and rolled his tongue around the inside of his mouth pensively.
“They never were. Some were my allies, however. I’d hope we can use that to our advantage.” Zod set the photo aside to look at the next. “Non is terrified of me. If we come in contact with him, he will do as I say... I do not know about this one.”
He pointed to the dark skinned man who had accompanied Peru-Col in Brainiac’s ship. “I have never seen him.”
“Um… Fine called him and… Peru-Col the disciples of Zod,” Clark offered.
“How nice,” Zod said dryly. “He may be Tal-Al’s child… or he may be Tal-Al if Peru got to her.”
“How is that possible?” Martha asked.
“Early in the process of using the Emergence Machine, we didn’t quite have the ability to remake bodies without killing the donor. Thus, some individuals used their children’s bodies to create a Vessel for them to inhabit.”
Martha’s jaw dropped in horror. “How… even if you didn’t have a psychic connect to your children-“
“Females do not,” Zod corrected her. “Males do not, either, unless they are the bearer, and until recently… at least in my case… we relied on artificial wombs instead of traditionally birthing, remember.”
“Because it usually killed off the bearer,” Clark concluded. Zod raised his brows.
“I still don’t see how any parent could kill their child for their own survival,” Martha argued.
“I tend to agree,” Zod said. He stroked his baby girl’s hair.
“If the bearer usually dies, what was your plan after having Clark? Would you live long enough to finish your plans and rule New Krypton?” Lex asked tersely.
“A bearer might live a year to, perhaps, seven years after his child is born. I hoped to live long enough to get our people to our new home, though I don’t think I had that much time,” Zod said pensively. “I expected that the remaining members of the Science Council would be capable of taking over from there. This would have included Jor-El, of course.” His lips curved. “I don’t know what the Brainiac computer told you about Jor-El, but he was no soldier. He was a lawyer-”
“That explains a lot,” Martha said dryly.
Zod fought a smile at her response. Clearly, the AI had shown them his Jor’s worst side. “And a scientist. Mostly focusing in astronomy and spacecraft construction.”
“What did Lara do?” Clark asked eagerly.
“She was a doctor,” he answered reverently. “A good one.”
“So how many Kryptonians do we have here who are on our side?” Bruce asked.
“Clark, myself, and Ursa, for certain. Non, if I can catch his ear. Peru-Col and whoever this one is.” He held up the picture of the dark skinned Kryptonian. “Are a maybe. Seig-An… he will not be on my side. His attitudes toward humans are unknown to me… he was always quite prejudiced to those from Below.”
“Below what?” Bruce asked.
“No, no, he means the lower class,” Clark explained. “Workers.”
“Charming,” Chloe put in dryly. “Can he fight?”
“I do not know. Peru can.” Zod shrugged. “How is the fight going so far? Have they stepped in my place ruling the planet?”
Clark nodded. Zod thought on that for a moment.
“They’ll release more Kryptonians from the Phantom Zone as soon as they have strong enough human bodies to work with. The Kryptonian DNA apparently overrides the human set over time. We need to be concerned about those individuals because almost everyone in the Phantom Zone is a criminal in the strictest sense,” Zod warned “And I personally sentenced a good number of them with the Science Council.”
”They’ll be looking for meta-humans then,” Lex said. “Clark, I know he hates me, but if you could get Victor Stone to work with us, it would be a big help.”
Clark nodded. “I’ll try. Um, he’s a cyborg,” he explained to Zod.
Zod looked at Lal and made a soothing noise at her, kissed her head, and then looked back up at them very seriously. “We don’t have much time. My advice is to create effective weapons and move in quickly. I can take over the group, and we can have a meeting with your leaders to work out how we want to cohabitate. Are there any planets near here with an oxygen atmosphere?”
“Not within the solar system,” Bruce said. “What kind of weapons are you talking about?”
“Not sure yet.” Zod creased his brow and rubbed his chin.
“Kryptonite bullets,” Lex said after a moment.
Clark rolled his eyes. “Yeah, for humans to use on us.”
“We mix the metal for the guns with lead to block the radiation, so that you, Zod, and whoever joins us can wield them as well.” Lex raised his chin. “I would advise that we not forget in the midst of this family bonding, that this is a dangerous man who
very recently took over our planet. If we have weapons, I want them to work against the two of you as well as the newbies, because of the obvious, which apparently needs to be stated. You are not always in control of yourself, Clark, and he could simply join the other Kryptonians and reclaim his position as lord and ruler of our world. Our end goal is not a Hallmark card, but rather saving the world from domination by aliens.”
Clark gaped. Zod smirked.
“Just wanted to point that out,” Lex finished raising his hands a bit cattily.
Zod raised his brows at Clark, who seemed speechless. “I like this human.”
“Don’t say things like that,” Clark whined. Martha chuckled.
“Jor-El did not approve of you,” Zod informed Lex, nodding a bit. Lex curled his lip and scowled. “Your proposal for the guns sounds like a good idea to me. Simple. Also, initially we’ll have the element of surprise with this type of weapon, which will be very important. We can brainstorm other types of weapons if this escalates. However, the sooner the conflict ends, the better for all of us.”
“Good,” Lex replied with a tense smile.
***
“He likes me. What the hell does that mean? He likes me,” Lex grumbled. He spread their plans out on the table, and Bruce sat beside him.
“Aliens sure do seem to love you,” Bruce commented, looking over their schematics for the gun.
“And you love the aliens, don’t you, Bruce?” Lex replied bitchily.
“That isn’t fair, Alex. I thought he was you.” Bruce sighed and looked over his old friend. Lex had been prickly and determined since they’d come here, focused only on their immediate goal. Bruce had explained his sudden departure all those years ago to his Alexander, and he seemed to listen, but had made little response. “He… it wasn’t anyone. It was a body with your memories. It told me…”
“Don’t do this now. I’m working.”
“You’re always working. You can’t keep avoiding what happened to you. You’ll go insane,” Bruce insisted.
“Repression and denial have worked so well for me over the years.” Lex stared at the plans intently and adjusted the configurations via the computer next to him slightly. “Don’t steal away one of my most precious tools of survival.”
Bruce lowered his voice slightly. “You… are stronger than I am. You’ll survive no matter what you do. I’m simply concerned as to what will be left.”
“Maybe when this is over I can dress up as a large kangaroo and fight crime.”
“Alex,” Bruce warned.
Lex lifted a brow. “No? A bird? A swallow? Swallowman!”
Bruce rolled his eyes and put a gentle hand on Lex’s shoulder. For the first time in weeks, Lex did not jerk away. The scars were beginning to fade, finally, but the extent of the wounds had made them difficult to heal quickly, and Lex was not used to his body being slow about such things.
“He violated you.”
“Do you think I don’t know that?” Lex turned his head sharply. “I don’t have time for this.”
Bruce took Lex’s hand firmly, then held tightly as Lex tried to pull away. “A promise. I want a promise from you, Alex.”
“Let me go!” Lex growled. Bruce thought he might chew through his wrist through in order to escape.
“One promise. That you will talk to me when you’re ready.”
“There’s nothing to say!” Lex roared, pulling back so hard he fell out of his chair. Bruce caught him in his strong arms, steadied him on his feet, then backed away holding up his hands to give Lex room. Lex’s eyes were wild. He let out a staccato laugh. “What’s one more betrayal? One more violation? Just another day in the life of Lex fucking Luthor!”
“Alex…” Bruce shook his head. He wanted to tell him that there wouldn’t be such hurt and betrayal all of his life. That wasn’t a promise he could make.
Lex crossed his arms and pressed his dry lips together. “There are days when I wish I’d gone with Milton.”
“He hurt you,” Bruce boomed. “He betrayed you. He used you for his own agenda!“
“So does everyone else,” Lex said sharply, giving Bruce an intense look before sitting down and going back to work.
“I should have told you. And I’ve said that I’m sorry. But I’ve never betrayed you-“
“You will,” Lex replied with cold certainty.
Bruce ran his hands through his hair. “You no longer trust me. I understand. I can only hope that one day you will forgive me for abandoning you.”
“I’m not a needy little girlfriend. You did what you had to do.” Lex turned his face back to the plans, writing with one hand on the table and working on the computer with the other. “You are forgiven. It isn’t as though you needed my permission to leave.”
“I know that it hurt you. Though, the Vessel didn’t seem to care.”
“The Vessel thought it was a brilliant idea to fuck Lois Lane, you, and then go take on Clark in his barn. I wouldn’t put too much stock in its ability to make sense of the situation.”
“It had your sense of humor,” Bruce whispered. “I’m sorry.”
“Stop apologizing. It’s irritating.”
“It told me that it loved me.”
Lex paused working for a moment. “I love Clark, too. But I’m not exactly going to be trusting him any time soon either.”
Bruce leaned against the table and watched the back of Lex’s head. He wanted to give the bump on the back of his head a kiss. “So we’re on even footing?”
Lex seemed to be thinking for a moment. “I trust you more than him. At the moment, at least.” He lifted his chin and met Bruce’s eyes. “How is that?”
“That’ll do.” Bruce cupped Lex’s face and leaned in to kiss his brow, but Lex turned away from Bruce’s lips and focused on the plans once again.