From last time:
She forced herself to fly straight back to Metropolis from Germany, when all she’d wanted to do once the terrible task had been completed was to collapse in a heap somewhere, alone and unbothered. Tears blurred her vision, forcing her to stop often mid-flight and brush them away. She still hated crying with that stupid mask.
She touched down on a brownstone-lined street on the city’s elegant Upper East Side, not far from Centennial Park. She remembered the building by the ornate knocker on its heavy door. She walked up the steps into the lobby and headed for the elevator. It was still before business hours in Metropolis, even though the day seemed like it had dragged on for decades. She crossed the hallway to the suite at its very end and opened the door into the well appointed reception area. The primly dressed middle aged woman looked up from the calendar spread in front of her receptionist.
“Ultrawoman! What can I do for you?” she asked as she put on her glasses.
Lois opened her mouth to speak but had trouble forming the words. “Dr. Friskin, I need help,” she said in a voice so small and scared she didn’t recognize it.
********
New stuff:
Clark walked through the corridors, flanked by a pair of unwanted guards. This far away from the security of the administrative compound, they wouldn’t have dared to let him walk alone. Of course, how likely was it that an assassin was lurking in the pathways linking entirely residential compounds to one another, waiting on the off chance that the First Minister might happen by?
The mazes of hallways and paths impressed him. The Kryptonians had built their main colony so that one never had to go outside to get anywhere. Homes were organized in large, apartment complex-like groups and connected to each other and everything else in the colony by a series of pathways. The design made perfect sense – the weather on New Krypton wasn’t exactly pleasant and it was only in the last fifteen years or so that the atmosphere had become comfortably oxygenated. Early in the colony’s history, they hadn’t been able to spend much time outside, unprotected from the elements, at all.
Clark turned a sharp corner, managing a brisker pace than he was accustomed to, finally feeling free to put his weight on his knee or ankle without worrying he’d injure them again. A group of children darted past him, apparently oblivious to the First Minister’s presence. He smiled to himself, glad to see that someone around here still had time for a game of tag. Entourage in tow, he crossed into the school compound and made his way to one of the classrooms. He stepped inside to find one lonely child, sitting at a desk, concentrating intently on her studies. Her body was so small that she could sit in her chair and swing her dangling feet without any risk of contact with the floor.
“Thia?” he called her name gently. She looked up at him, her green eyes beaming. A wide grin spread across her face. He found himself smiling in response. She’d lost a tooth.
“Kal El!” she exclaimed as she hopped out of her seat and ran toward him.
He scooped her up easily into his arms. “Hi there,” he said.
“I missed you,” she replied, her arms around his neck.
“I missed you, too,” he said, touched by her words. “What are you working on?” he asked as he looked down at the papers on her tiny desk.
“Multiplication. I’m supposed to work on my arithmetic until Davi’s mother comes for me,” she responded softly.
“Wow, I couldn’t do multiplication when I was five,” he said.
“I’m almost six,” she corrected him.
“Well, I still couldn’t do multiplication when I was six,” he said, grinning.
She regarded him curiously for a long moment, a somber expression in her eyes. “How come Aunt Enza hasn’t come back yet?” she asked.
He drew in a deep breath. “Do you remember who Commander Talan is?” he asked. The little girl nodded. “Well, I asked her to do something very important and she said that she needed help. So I told her to find the smartest and best person to help her. And she chose your Aunt Enza. So it’s my fault she hasn’t come back yet.”
“She always goes away,” the little girl said, her bottom lip starting to tremble.
“And she is always going to come back to you. Just as fast as she can,” he reassured her, trying not to sound as though he was dismissing her fears, which he knew were quite real.
“I want her to come back now,” she replied quietly.
“I know,” he said.
One of the two guards stepped forward. “Sir, I am very sorry, but we are terribly behind schedule,” he said softly.
Clark frowned and bit back a sigh. “I have to go to a meeting,” he explained to Thia. She looked at him forlornly. “But I will come back and see you again soon,” he added.
“Goodbye, Kal El,” she said quietly as he lowered her back down to the ground.
“Goodbye, Thia,” he replied, truly saddened that he couldn’t stay with her longer.
********
“Double time,” Talan instructed loudly from the front of the column. There was only a mile left in their ten mile march and she was going to get some decent work out of these soldiers if she had to chase them back to the base personally. Head of Operations of Joint Command was the most coveted position a brand new General Commander could hope for, but it also meant that she was no longer a field officer. She was no longer responsible for field training or even leading troops in combat, but this mission was too important for her to take a hands-off approach. Besides which, she made a point never to ask anyone to do anything she herself wouldn’t do. So she carried the same pack and equipment that the soldiers did and she completed the same march they did. With her Expeditionary Forces, she would never have worried about whether they could keep up with her pace on this march, but it would be a while before these soldiers performed up to standards.
They started up the ridge back toward the base, but the sound of voices gave her pause. She held up her hand, bringing her troops to a halt. “Wait here,” she instructed her junior officer. She drew her weapon and crept forward silently, searching for the source of the voices.
********
The sound of the door to her office being wrenched open caused her to look up. A corporal stood in the doorway, his shoulders rising and falling as he panted, out of breath. “Ma’am, a saboteur was caught on the northern ridge,” he said.
“Take me to him,” she said as she stood up from her desk. Enza followed the enlisted man through the hallways and out of the compound.
They jogged quickly toward the edge of the military base and up the hills toward the northern ridge. A group of soldiers were gathered around a single man, his arms bound behind his back. One of the soldiers raised his weapon high above his own head, preparing to strike the prisoner with the butt of the rifle. Her throat dry, she barely managed to yell, “wait!”
The moment the word passed her lips, she saw a figure leap out from behind an outcropping of rock. In a blur, Commander Talan struck the elbow of the soldier, causing him to drop the gun. She put the soldier in a hammer lock, forcing him to his knees.
********
Talan tightened her grip on the soldier, straining to subdue him. He fought frantically, his arms flailing. “Soldier, calm yourself,” she said sternly. The soldier stopped moving instantly.
The other five soldiers stared at her. “Ma’am, the man was trying to lay explosives,” one of them started to explain.
“He’s a murderer,” another spat.
“He’s the one setting explosive traps in the villages. He kills children.”
Talan wrenched the soldier back to his feet and forced him to stand face to face with the saboteur. “Look at him,” she commanded. She released her arm around his neck and held him by the collar of his uniform. He flinched away from her, but she didn’t loosen her grip. Reluctantly, the soldier looked at the prisoner. “He’s a murderer,” Talan continued, whispering harshly in the soldier’s ear. “He kills unarmed civilians and children, and on the field of battle killing him would not give me a moment’s pause.
The soldier turned away. “I said, ‘look at him!’” Talan ordered. He obeyed silently. “He is everything that you and I have sworn to fight against. He is what I’ve spent a lifetime hunting down, because he is a threat to everything decent in this world.” In her peripheral vision, she saw the color drain from the prisoner’s already pale face. His eyes grew wide and he swallowed roughly. She focused more intently on the soldier still in her grasp. “Now I want you to think about what gives us the right to fight him. What makes us better than he. What is it that separates the soldier from the murderer?”
She tightened her grip when the soldier didn’t answer. “I…I don’t know,” he stammered at last.
“If you kill the defenseless, if you do to him what he does to our people, you become him. You erase the line between a good man and a murderer. Now you’ll spend thirty days in detention thinking about how close you came to becoming a monster.” She let go of his uniform in disgust. She looked around at the suddenly silent soldiers gathered around her. She stared hard at them, challenging them to make eye contact with her. “There is no vengeance in my army,” she declared. “Is that understood?”
“Aye, ma’am,” came their replies.
She reached for her communicator. “Grezin, Faral, come up here now.” She called for two of the sergeants who’d been leading the march to take the saboteur back to the camp. “The prisoner is in your charge, Captain Enza,” she said, before turning around to come face to face with her legal officer.
Enza looked surprised and there was no reason she shouldn’t have been. Talan had given no hint that she’d seen the younger woman, waiting silently just below the ridge. Enza bowed slightly. “Aye ma’am.” She said nothing more.
********
“I’m sorry I’m late,” Lois said as she gathered up the folds of her cape before lying down on the leather sofa. “There was a car accident.” She fiddled nervously with the edge of her cape. She didn’t like psychiatrists, or spilling her guts to practical strangers, waiting to be exposed, observed, and analyzed.
“That’s all right, I understand,” Dr. Friskin replied kindly. “Your job keeps you very busy, doesn’t it?”
“I could do it twenty four hours a day and still not have enough time to do everything,” Lois confessed.
“But you don’t, do you?”
“No,” Lois admitted, wondering where this line of questioning was going. She was going to exhaust herself if she had to watch every answer she gave in order to figure out where the good doctor was going to take it.
“That’s good. People with stressful jobs, especially ones where lives are at stake, are at a high risk for suffering burnout, especially if they don’t take any time for themselves. So do you enjoy your work?”
“I used to,” Lois replied honestly.
“But you don’t anymore?”
Lois sighed. “It’s important work and I’m glad that I can do it. It’s just been a rough couple of weeks.”
“I see. So what did you enjoy about your job?”
She closed her eyes. “When I make a rescue and I see the look of relief on someone’s face and know that I’ve spared them some pain, I know I’m doing exactly what I’m supposed to be doing.”
“And what don’t you like about it?”
“It’s the difference between getting there in time and being one lousy second too late, having to see someone I was too late to help. Thinking there was more I could have done. Living with the knowledge that someone needed me and I wasn’t there.”
“But you can’t do everything or be everywhere. No matter how powerful you are, you can’t help everyone.”
“I know,” Lois replied, having heard this mantra a million times before.
The doctor scribbled something on her notepad. “So what’s changed? Why are you more focused on the bad instead of the good?”
Lois shrugged her shoulders. “It seems like there are more bad days now than good ones. More people I can’t help than people I can, and it seems like its just getting worse. I’ve seen terrible things before, but never like this. I’ve never seen just how awful human beings can be to one another. How much pain they can cause. And it makes me angrier than I can ever remember being.” She heard her voice waver and could feel her body tremble with the echoes of rage. “And I don’t have the luxury of getting angry.”
The scratching of Dr. Friskin’s pen against notepad stopped. “That’s a rather tall order, don’t you think?”
“I’m not like other people. I can’t lose control over my emotions because if I do, someone will get hurt,” she confessed, as though unburdening her soul of its darkest crimes. How would the world react if it knew that its incredibly powerful do-gooder harbored atavistic thoughts? She looked at Dr. Friskin, who wore a studious frown. Her expression gave away nothing, making it impossible for Lois to figure out whether the psychiatrist was alarmed or surprised by her comment.
“Have you ever used your strength to harm another person?”
“No, never,” Lois replied emphatically.
“So why do you think that will change?”
“Until recently, I’ve never even thought about it. But a couple of times now in Kinwara, I’ve wanted to. I’ve been so angry at what the rebels have done to innocent people.”
More scratches on the notepad. “What stopped you?”
“I don’t know,” she admitted. “Each time, it was like something was just building up inside me, almost to the breaking point, like I wanted to make them afraid. To make them feel the same things their victims felt, and then, it just stopped. And I’d realize what I was doing.”
“You realized it would be wrong to act on those feelings?” Dr. Friskin asked.
“I guess so.”
“And why would it be wrong?”
Lois wasn’t sure she understood the question. She couldn’t have misheard it, though. That was one of the upshots of superhearing. “What?”
“Why would it be wrong? The people you were angry with seem to be among the most dangerous and immoral people in the world.”
“They are. Don’t get me wrong, doctor, I get the whole shades of gray, but I’ve seen hell. The men I’m talking about are evil and I can’t say for certain they wouldn’t have deserved it. But that doesn’t give me the right to play judge, jury, and executioner. I don’t get to make my own rules just because I’m stronger than they are. It would make me no better than them.”
“It seems to me that you have a pretty strong moral sense, Ultrawoman. You don’t appear to be conflicted about it at all.”
“But I still wanted to…” Lois trailed off.
“We all do, from time to time. We’re all tempted to do something we know is wrong. We wouldn’t be human, otherwise. But there’s a difference between experiencing emotions and letting them control us. We can’t bottle up the feelings we don’t like and pretend they’re not there, even when we know it would be wrong to act on them.”
********
Enza stared at her monitor, trying to glean anything useful about her saboteur from between the lines of the intelligence report. He’d spent the last few hours alone in detention, and with any luck, he was ready to talk.
She stood up and headed down the long corridor to the brig. The guard saluted her as she approached lockdown. She glanced at the overhead camera, silently recording the goings on in the cell. The prisoner did not move from his seat on the cell’s only bunk. He managed to look straight at her without acknowledging her presence.
“I do apologize for the way you were treated,” she began as she entered the cell, closing the door firmly behind her.
He stared at her through narrowed eyes, but said nothing.
“It was completely inappropriate,” she continued.
“I do not have to tell you anything,” the prisoner replied, jutting his chin out obstinately.
“No, you do not,” she agreed. “You do not have to say anything at all. But it would be very helpful if you did.”
“Helpful to whom?” he retorted.
“Well, to me, no doubt. But to you as well.”
The prisoner snorted, folding his arms across his chest. “I have nothing to say.”
“That is unfortunate,” she replied. “Because mine will be the last sympathetic ear turned to you.”
“I am facing a life sentence. What do you think you can do for me?”
“You would be surprised,” she said, her jaw set. She narrowed her eyes as she stared at the prisoner. He was a murder of children, a despicable wretch of a creature who deserved even worse than she could have ever imagined. She tried to control her anger, to not let him see the rage boiling up inside her. “You cannot conceive of how much worse a lifetime of hard labor in the outerlands, in the wind, and perpetual cold, would be. You will spend every moment of every miserable day craving the relative comfort of an empty, cold, dark cell. If you cooperate with us, if you tell us what your group is planning, it will be all the better for you.”
He arched a brow incredulously. “And you can protect me?”
“Only if you let me. If you do not cooperate, you can be certain that the prosecutor will charge you as an accessory to every single attack that happens. But if you help us, I will see to it that the sentence of exile and hard labor are removed from consideration.”
********
“Commander, all are accounted for. Prepare to return to base,” Talan announced to the ship’s pilot over the intercom. The commander took her seat before the transport lifted slowly off the ground. She looked around at her assembled forces, triumphant in their recent mission. She’d only called up experienced soldiers, those who had served with her unit. There would be plenty of time to test out their work in reintegrating the soldiers from the Belaar later. This time, she could have afforded no unknown variables. Their mission had been a total success; the saboteurs had been captured before they could do any harm.
“Very nicely done,” she said to the captain who’d commanded the interdiction force.
“We had outstanding intelligence, ma’am,” he replied modestly. “How did Captain Enza get the information out of prisoner?”
“It is quite simple. She was smarter than her subject. She capitalized on both his hopes and his fears and made him trust her.”
********
She was a surgeon from a seemingly unbroken line of surgeons stretching back beyond memory. For someone who’d seen so much misery and sorrow, she smiled easily and often – the sort of smiles that lit up her eyes. She spoke with a gently lilting accent that even made German sound like a softly whispered lullaby...
Jonathan folded up the newspaper. He’d read the column so many times that he’d committed it to memory. His wife sat down on the sofa, snuggling up beside him. He placed his arm around her. She opened up her copy of The Daily Planet; ever since Clark began working at the paper, they’d ordered two subscriptions. Martha claimed it was because he had a tendency to maul his newspapers first thing in the morning, leaving nothing left for her. She turned to Lois’s column, tilting it toward him because she knew that he liked to read over her shoulder.
“She’s hurting,” he said. His daughter-in-law had just finished giving Jon his bath and put him down to sleep before heading out for her nightly patrol.
“I know,” Martha replied. “But I think she’s starting to work through it.” Lois had never actually told them much of the details of what had happened. Instead, they’d gleaned it from her columns and articles; the pain she couldn’t talk about was expressed in written words.
“I hope so,” he said, wondering if there was any more he could do besides hope.
********
Clark flexed his grip on the quarterstaff as he paced around the gymnasium floor.
“Are you certain you want to do this, sir?”
“Just fight me, Ching,” Clark replied.
“Whatever you say, sir,” Ching said evenly as he squared off against Clark. Ching launched an attack which Clark deflected ably. He found himself favoring his stronger leg as he moved, a weakness his sparring partner immediately capitalized on. Ching pressed forward with a combination attack Clark was barely able to stave off, but instead of seeing his attack through, Ching backed off.
Clark gritted his teeth as he counterattacked. “Come on, Ching, I have a seventy year old aunt who would put up a better fight.”
Ching parried and Clark overcompensated, stumbling forward as he missed his mark. Ching immediately stepped in front of him, preventing him from falling. Clark pushed him away as he returned to a defensive position.
“Are you all right, sir?” Ching asked.
“I’m fine,” Clark growled. He was tired of feeling weak and helpless. Tired of feeling like a fragile, pathetic shell of a man. He wasn’t made of glass and dammit, he wanted people to stop acting like he was. He launched another attack, which Ching blocked. The quarterstaffs cracked as they struck one another. He was caught off guard by Ching’s counterattack and couldn’t move his hands quickly enough.
“Damn,” Clark cursed as he dropped the quarterstaff. He shook his throbbing hand.
“I am truly sorry, sir,” Ching said as he stepped toward Clark.
“It’s nothing,” Clark replied, staring down at his reddened knuckles.
“Are you certain? Perhaps I should call Tao Scion.”
“It’s nothing,” Clark repeated.
Ching put his quarterstaff back on the wall rack. “Then I think it best that we call it a night. Please let me know if you need anything at all, sir.” Ching bowed deferentially before turning to leave the gymnasium.
Clark made his way back to his own quarters, his hand still throbbing where he’d received the harsh rap across the knuckles from Ching’s quarterstaff. In his washroom, he stripped off his sparring uniform and stared at his reflection in the mirror. He was still thinner than he was before. His muscles atrophied and loose from idleness. His skin marred by scars of every possible shape and size. Even without his powers, he’d been a pretty solid guy, strong and capable. Now, he was a wreck – a delicate, fragile mess that everyone was afraid of disturbing. He knew they were trying to be polite, but what they were really doing was shutting him out of his own life. They tiptoed around him, always pretending there was nothing wrong – especially when the exact opposite was true. He was so very tired of being weak. Tired of the sympathy it engendered. Tired of wondering if his closest advisors were being candid with him.
He stared hard at his reflection, at the pale, dull-eyed man staring back at him. The one who couldn’t trust the people around him. Who had lost all semblance of patience. Who seemed to spoil for a fight for no good reason at all.
He showered, dressed, and awkwardly bandaged his injured hand. Out in the main chambers of their shared quarters, Zara seemed to be waiting for him. She stood up as soon as he entered the room. He saw her eyes dart down to his hand. “Are you all right?” she asked.
“I’m fine,” he replied curtly.
“Are you sure…”
“Dammit, Zara, I’m not a child!” he interrupted. “I don’t need you mothering me.”
Her face fell and he watched her try to hide the hurt look in her eyes. “I’m sorry, Clark,” she said graciously, taking no note of his explosive and flat out rude tone. “I did not mean to insult you.”
“No, don’t apologize,” he said weakly. “You didn’t do anything wrong. I was completely out of line and I’m sorry. I have no right to treat you the way I have been these last few months.”
She shook her head sadly. “You have been through things no human being should even have to imagine. Neither Ching nor I really know what to do. I'm afraid that by trying to make you more comfortable, we have only managed to do the opposite."
"I do appreciate your support," Clark replied as he dragged his uninjured hand through his hair. "I'm just not sure there's anything you can do."
"There are days when everything seems fine and you seem like your old self. But there are others, when I cannot help but feel..." she trailed off. She walked across the room, closing the distance between them, and touched his arm. "Clark, you do know that I am more than willing to listen if you would like to talk, don't you?"
"I know," he said softly, avoiding eye contact. "But I don't think it'll do any good."
"You have been there for me in my very darkest hours. Please, let me do the same for you."
He searched for the words to explain the mixed up jumble of worry and anger in his head. "The truth is, there are things I don't want you to know," he admitted. "Things that, if I told you, you'd never see me the same way again."
"I do not believe that," that she said in a quiet, but firm tone. "There is nothing you can tell me that will diminish my respect or admiration of you."
"Yes there is," he replied just as assuredly. "I don't want you to know what Nor took from me. Because all you'll see when you look at me is what's missing. What used to be there that I don't have anymore. No matter how hard you try, you'll see nothing except the hole.”
"You are still Clark Kent. You are a good man, Nor hasn't changed that." There was a fierce sense of conviction shining in her hazel eyes as she looked up at him.
He turned away from her, knowing that she was wrong. She wouldn’t say these things if she knew about how often while being tortured, he’d prayed for the sweet release of death. How much he’d just wanted it to be over. She wouldn’t look at him the same if she knew just how much the simple mention of Nor’s name was enough to send a tremor through his entire body. How he couldn’t close his eyes at night without seeing his tormentor’s face. How the very sight of it left him paralyzed with fear. "Zara, please let me just pretend I still have my dignity."
********
