"I have held the hope in my hands." -Jor El
'Faora!' She looks down at her sleeping child and ignores her husband's screams. Her husband will come soon and destroy this fruit of their creation. She will not let him. She has never disagreed with Zod but she can't agree with him on this one thing.
She will not be a threat to their society. When she carried to term she thought it would be easy getting rid of her but then she experienced her kicks, saw her smile and she realized that her child was not an abomination. But the laws of Krypton were clear. Heresy.
This child meant her society's destruction. That everyone could do what they want whenever they wanted. A child like this also meant a return to the old days when Krypton's people were divided. Each killing each other for the simplest thing, each creating an identity for themselves. Those dark days were over. Individualism was destroyed, everyone worked for the good of the other. Everyone was Krypton and everyone worked for the good of their race, their people, and their planet.
She punches the lunch key and puts the baby inside. The machine will provide for her, she has formed no attachment with her, she's put her out of her mind. She is on her own now. Wherever she will go, she will take the bloodline of Zod and El with her.
She is no longer her problem.
'Goodbye my child' She says and raises her eyes towards the heavens. 'May you live a good life and awarded a good death.' Then there is nothing.
Catherine struggled. The child was taking all of her life force. She gave one last push and the child emerged almost at once. All the pain was gone and she got to see her son.
"A daughter, Your Majesty." She was told but instead of showing disappointment she gave everyone a smile. Her friend Lady Salisbury was there with her.
They traveled through London showing her newborn babe. After she had been churched, a household had been established for the Princess.
She was sent to the Welsh Marches where she would be cut from her parents until the Yuletide. Lady Salisbury sent the queen daily reports.
The princes was a joy to take care of and she had a lot of her parents' features, her mother's dark features and her father's pale skin. Yet there were streaks of red in her hair that Margaret could only guess came from her Plantagenet ancestors.
The older woman came to love her charge as if she was her own. And then one day ...
The child stopped breathing and Margaret sent for a physician but it was too late. The child was already dead. Had been, he told her. For three days.
Margaret wept. She bought the doctor's silence and concealed her death from everyone. This was the second time a charge of hers had died. The first time the king and queen had not blamed her because they trusted her but since the king had become increasingly suspicious, he would see this as an act of treason and accuse her of poisoning his children so she could advance her own children and get them one step closer to the throne of England.
Prepostrous! She thinks. How can she -she of all people who has been fiercely loyal to the Tudor regime- try such a thing? Did she not bend the knee? Did she not swear fealty like all the rest?
The King would have to hack her into pieces first before getting a confession out of her.
I must do something. Something. Anything. Many of the Princess' new maids were young and lust and the household was mostly filled with young men. Some of them was bound to get with child ...
But then just as that, the answer came from the skies.
'What is it?' Asked Janet, one of the younger maids. She peers closer to the object but Mary's governess shoos her away.
'Go all of you' She screams. She waits until they are all gone so she can explore the mysterious object. 'Reveal yourself to me' she speaks in a voice full of authority.
As the cylinder begin to open, an image emerges of a beautiful woman. 'Who are you?' Margaret asks, taken aback by the woman's beauty. She had not seen someone so beautiful except the Queen when she was younger.
'Greetings human.' The woman said, her voice devoid of any emotion. 'For years my planet has harvested other planets, this was meant to be one of our outpost but our ancestors abandoned their projects for reasons yet unknown. What you have before you is a ghost, the memory of what I once was.'
Margaret blinked. The woman stepped aside and gestured to the infant laying in the craft. Margaret's heart went out to the little mite. She took the wailing child in her arms and calmed her with her voice.
Seeing the child's dark red hair and the woman's dark hair with streaks of red and similar features, she asked the obvious. 'Is this your child?' The woman nodded tearing her eyes away from her.
Margaret was surprised at her coldness. The child seemed to sense Margaret's anger and started to wail again. Margaret calmed her down again singing her a lullaby.
'She will be an outcast amongst your people. An abomination. Many will want to kill her, others will want to use her. The choice is yours which one of these will be her fate. Fare well, the fate of the child is in your hands.'
'Wait!' Margaret held out her hand but the ghostly image was gone. A thing at the center of where she retrieved the baby, floated. It was a small cylinder with a strange marking that looked like an upside down scythe.
Margaret put it underneath her bodice and took the child inside. The maids looked at the baby with curiosity. 'It's a miracle.'
'A gift from heaven.' They exclaimed taking the child from Margaret.
They played with her and made silly faces amusing the child.
They even twirled her in the air and were surprised by how agile she was. She stretched her limbs with seemingly little pain. Most infants were fragile but this child was made of steel!
A plan formed in Margaret's head as she watched the maids interact with their out of world guest.
'Your Majesties!' Greeted their daughter's governess.
They greeted the Lady Salisbury back and asked where her daughter was. She led them to the nursery where she told them she was responding better than last time. 'Such a sweet little thing' Her nurse said bouncing the baby in her knee. 'She hardly needs to be fed.'
The Queen took the child from her and smiled down at her daughter as she held her in her arms. She never got the chance when she gave birth to her to look at her. She was snatched from her arms by the midwife who presented her to Henry. Now she could look at her child for the first time.
'Hello Mary it's me, your mama. Say mama." Catherine said excitedly not believing she would actually say it. But then her daughter surprised everyone saying 'Mama!' then pointed her left arm to her father. 'Papa!'
The King and Queen were taken aback.
'My god Lady Salisbury what wonders have you worked on our daughter?' The king asked her. He was mesmerized by how blue and sparkling his daughter's eyes looked. Last time he saw her she was coughing and dozing off every time he held her, but now she was active and smiling. Just the way he would expect a true daughter of the house of Tudor to act.
'Nothing especial Your Majesty.' The countess replied pleased with her work. 'The princess has behaved as a good princess would. She started talking weeks ago but I did not want to tell you until you came so you could see for yourselves.'
'Wise Lady Salisbury! Wise! My daughter, my pearl! You are just as beautiful as I last saw you.' More -he believed. He kissed her brow and her cheeks and twirled her in the air.
'She never grows tired!' Henry screamed and Catherine could only chuckle at her husband's words. He looked like a child who just had his first sweet.
It was time to go and she told Henry so but he did not listen. He wanted to stay all day and hold his child. His child. He thought. One day I will have my daughter in my arms and next to her there will be her brothers. He and the queen were still young. They could still have more children.
'Be safe Kal. Build a better world than us.' Lara said watching the destruction of her world. She closed her eyes and let the flames engulf her. Krypton was no more.
Cersei was angry with her son's caretakers. Not only had they failed to take care of the King's son, they failed to take care of her son!
In Westeros everyone rejoiced when Joffrey was born and cried when her firstborn died. A fever. They said. But Cersei knew the truth.
No. It hadn't been a fever. It had been more than that.
Cersei could not bare to hold her son, her half breed son, a Baratheon and a Lannister, a stag and a lion. A freak. She had her baby killed because she could not stand a bastard of Robert in her arms.
But then the tears of Lys had an effect on her as well as she mourned the death of her child a year later, after Joffrey was born. Already she could feel Robert's seed flourishing inside her and she thought that the gods had given her another chance but she was wrong.
The gods did not exist. They did not give her any mercy.
She cursed them and cursed the people she entrusted her son with.
'My Queen, something you should see.'
'Leave me be.'
'But my lady it's important'
'I said let me be!' Cersei screamed wishing these hens would just leave her alone and return to their penniless hens. But just then the answer dropped right from the sky and she watched astonishes, at what everyone was watching.
Outside Casterly Rock a strange vessel landed. A cylinder made of metal. 'You two come with me.' The Queen's handmaidens followed.
They were astonishes as well and murmured amongst themselves. 'Who could have done this?' This was unlike anything they had ever seen. They began to speculate that this was a gift from the great Seven!
Idiots! Cersei swore under her breath. Her fingers ran through the large cylinder's symbol. 'It looks like an "S" Your Grace.' One of her handmaidens.
'No the curve are bigger. It can't be an "S". The gods don't make things that simple.' She said. She was one of her plainspoken handmaidens. Cersei forgot her name but she would remember to thank her for silencing the rest of her maidens with that comment.
'Can it be?' Cersei asked herself. Was this an answer to her prayers? She was not a religious woman but what if the gods had answered her. Two sons of Robert had died, one by her own hand, one by the gods. Maybe this was their way of rewarding her and making up for what she'd lost.
Her hands touched the surface of the symbol, her face hopeful, a smile on her lips, she whispered 'Open' and it did.
Cersei's smile became wider. Perhaps the gods did not exist, perhaps they were merciless, perhaps they were not. But one thing she knew for certain as she retrieved the small individual from the capsule, was that this child would be her own.
Hers to raise and no one else's. Cersei was smarter than the rest. She knew this child came from the stars and not from the celestial heavens.
Somewhere out there you have a mother and father who loved you. But now they're dead. Rotting in the ground, nothing but dust and bones and they sent you here to escape their fate. You owe it to the people of Earth, to me, your safety. Because there was no other explanation. Why else would you send your child millions of miles across space and time unless you were running from something?
It doesn't matter, does it? She thought looking down at the child who raised his sky blue eyes at her and smiled. His eyes were not like Robert's which were dark grey. People might suspect that but it didn't matter. She was the Queen and her family was the second most powerful family in Westeros after house Baratheon. Her word was law.
'Your parents are gone. I am the only mother you know' Cersei whispered bringing her face closer to the child's. The child seemed to understand and a sad expression crossed his face but then it was replaced by a smile as Cersei spoke her last words: 'I am the only mother you will know. You will live solely to protect me, to protect my son, your brother and you will love no other person but me and I will love you in return.'
'What is it?' The plainspoken handmaiden asked.
Cersei turned holding an infant in her arms. 'The answer to our prayers.'
'Is that a-' Cersei silenced her.
'This is your Prince, the King's second born, Prince Steffon of house Baratheon.' The Queen spoke and as she did everyone bowed their heads and she had them sworn to silence the minute she stepped in her father's castle.
She took the key bearing the "S" she found in the baby's capsule with her. When the time came she would tell him the truth. But the truth would never come because Cersei Baratheon nee Lannister erased all intention after the child became one and he became a part of her as much as Joffrey.