Dark, close, stuffy air, the smell of dust and blood … Jay knew this place. The abandoned warehouse where Joker had killed him. "Fuck, this again?" he muttered, and his voice came out higher, sounding like the teenage Robin he'd been.
From somewhere nearby came Joker's ghoulish laugh, and Jay braced himself. He'd done all this before, and survived it. Might as well get the beating over with. It was only a memory. "Come out, you sick fuck," he called. "We both know how this ends."
"Oh, no," Joker taunted, his voice a mocking singsong. "I'm not interested in the same old song and dance with you. You're not any fun anymore, Dead Hood."
Jay headed toward the voice. It was too dark to see, and his face was sticky. He moved as if in slow motion, swimming through some thick, viscous liquid. "Yeah, yeah, more stupid nicknames. Show yourself, Clown."
"I'd rather show you," Joker crooned, and Jay heard another noise. A soft, pained whimper. "C'mere, little Zombie Bird. I found someone else to play with."
His first thought was Harley, but even in this hellish place he knew Harley was gone and safe. Selina? Shit, he had to stop Joker. "Leave her alone, you twisted sonofabitch."
"Come and see, Robin. I found a pretty new little birdie. Come see the remix." Joker's voice called him to a door, its edges bleeding green light like the Lazarus Pit, and Jay steeled himself to throw it open anyway. The Pit was its own nightmare…
No. Not the Pit.
Kryptonite.
Kala lay broken and bleeding at Joker's feet, her eyes rolling like a car-struck dog dying in the gutter, and Jay felt everything inside him give a great nauseous lurch at the sight. "No!" he screamed, trying to get to her, slogging through a river of blood … her blood, she was too strong to die, Joker could only hurt her more and more and more.
"Sweet, isn't she?" Joker said in disgusting, confiding tones, and brought the crowbar down right across her chest.
He heard ribs crunch, saw blood fly from her lips when she screamed, and then Kala looked at him and saw him. The look in those anguished hazel eyes broke something inside him. "Jay, please! Make it stop … please make it stop," she begged, her breath coming in shudders.
"Too late, Jay," Joker said, and hit her again. Kala screamed again, only with a somewhat liquid sound to it this time, her body jack-knifing in agony. Internal bleeding, it had to be. Kala, for all her strength and spirit, all that stubbornness he loved about her, was dying. Jay threw himself forward, trying to take the blow for her if he could, let Joker destroy him instead, shelter her with his own body, anything to stop this, anything.
Instead, he succeeded only in throwing himself out of his bed and onto the floor of his room at the Manor.
For a wild-eyed moment he didn't understand where he was or what was happening. Jay scrabbled to a half-kneeling position, ignoring the bruises on his side where he'd fallen. Instinctively, his hand shot underneath his pillow, and gripped the decoratively-carved hilt of his kris.
Reality seemed to return once he stood up, knife in hand. It was just another fucking nightmare, a little twist this time to really fuck with him. He was a grown man, not a teenager, not helpless. Joker was in Arkham, not gathering up a store of kryptonite. And Kala … Kala was sitting up in bed, looking at him worriedly, not a bruise or a scrape or a speck of blood on her. "Jay? Are you all right?" she asked.
He remembered her crying his name on a gout of blood, and shuddered, hard. Kala was up then, in the circle of his arms, reaching up to touch his face. "It's okay, Jay. I'm right here. We're both safe. That bastard is locked up. It's okay. Stay here with me."
Jay started to relax, to breathe out … and then remembered the knife in his hand. A blade that could actually cut that perfect Kryptonian skin, and holy fuck, the first time he'd woken from a nightmare, he'd actually held it to her throat. What Joker had tried to do, he'd almost done, before either of them realized the kris was actually a threat.
Dropping the knife with a clatter, Jay threw his arms around Kala and hugged her tight to him. "I won't hurt you, I won't let him make me hurt you," he mumbled against her shoulder.
She pressed her hands against his shoulders firmly. "No, you won't. I won't let him hurt you, either. We're safe, Jay."
We're not safe, the voice of experience said bleakly in his mind. Neither of them had ever been, or would ever be, truly safe. Nothing in the world was. Jay had learned far too young just how precarious what the world called 'safety' really was, how thin the membrane between a normal life and tragedy … or between life and death.
"I held that fuckin' knife to your throat," he croaked out. "The first time, the first night, the first nightmare. I woke up with that knife to your throat, and we didn't even fuckin' know it could actually cut!"
"But you didn't hurt me," Kala insisted. "It doesn't matter what could've happened. You didn't."
"I coulda done it again tonight," he whispered, and shivered again. In those long agonizing seconds of not knowing, caught between dream and wakefulness, if she'd moved wrong he could've gone for her.
Kala pressed even closer to him, trying to give him some of her solar warmth. "You didn't. You won't. I trust that, Jay. I trust you with my life."
You shouldn't, the voice of his nightmares said. Even before the gala, before finding out about the kris, he'd dreamed of Joker putting her in the line of his fire. And then in a waking nightmare he'd watched Joker rake a knife across her throat. Hell, at one point he'd owned a huge-ass crate full of kryptonite. She wasn't as safe as she thought she was, and he'd always been a magnet for trouble. If bad luck was electricity, the Todds went through life with a lightning rod jammed down the back of their shirts.
His breathing had sped up, and Kala cupped the back of his neck, making him look at her. "We're all right, Jay. Don't let him give you another panic attack. Just breathe with me."
All of the fear and anger and frustration in him seemed to ground at that phrasing, another panic attack. "I don't get panic attacks," he snapped, shrugging out of her embrace.
Kala looked at him seriously. "Jay, come on. I talked you down from one before."
Anger burned cleaner than fear; anger let him move, let him control some part of his fate, instead of curling up shivering in terror. Jay paced, raking his hands through his hair to dissipate the nervous energy. "That was a one-time thing. Don't talk about it like it's some regular deal, like I have fucking PTSD or some shit. For fuck's sake, you're my lover, not my shrink, no matter how much therapy you had."
He expected her to blow up at that. It was a low blow, turning that on her, but Kala just sat down on the bed watching him. "Jay, we all have PTSD. Including Babs. Definitely Bruce. It doesn't mean what you think it means."
Jay rounded on her, all hopped up on adrenaline and ready to fight. "Oh yeah? And what do you think I think it means?"
Kala's eyes had never looked so wise, or so timeless. She didn't give him a straight answer, though, knowing no matter what she said, he'd go off. "Jay, you're not bothered by that scar on your belly from fighting Black Mask's lieutenant. Why should it bother you to have another healed-up injury? That's what PTSD is. The brain trying to function around an injury. Just because it's mental instead of physical doesn't make it less real. And all of us have been injured that way. It's why we do what we do. So kids like Julio and Carl don't have to go through what we did."
That took the air out of him. Tough-talking no-nonsense Julio, and too-smart-for-his-own-good Carl. Those damn kids were living the good life over in Metropolis. They'd damn near gotten in deep shit, because of him, but he'd saved them with a little help, and now both of them had a chance at a normal life. Something Jay had never really had.
He let out a huge sigh, and Kala patted the bed next to her. "Come here, you big handsome nerd," she said gently. Jay went to her; at some point last night, he'd put on boxers, and she'd thrown on a shirt, so at least he hadn't been pacing naked.
Sitting down, Jay met Kala's gaze. "Don't give me a speech about going to therapy, okay? It's not gonna happen. I have zero interest in digging up all the shit that's better off buried."
"Oh, Jay, for fuck's sake," she sighed. "Would you please stop trying to pick a fight? Haven't we been over this? I've told you that all you guys need it, but have I ever tried to drag you into going?"
He rubbed his hands over his face, trying to scrub away the lingering frustration. "No, you haven't. Shit, K, I'm not right in the head yet, I just woke up. Sorry."
"It's okay. I know. You wanna talk about it?" she asked softly.
Jay remembered the sound of her ribs breaking, seeing blood fly from her mouth as she screamed. "No," he replied shortly. One thing was for sure, he needed to drink more in the evenings. A couple glasses of champagne wasn't enough to shut down the all-night horror cinema special in his mind.
"Okay," Kala said, and reached out to pull him close so she could rub his back soothingly. Jay let himself lean on her, knowing she was strong enough to hold him.
But was she strong enough to hold back all his demons, too?
…
Sebast woke up to a feeling that used to be familiar, but had become less so of late: he was profoundly hungover.
Furry tongue, mouth that tasted like a sewer rat had slept in it, eyes dry and sticky and wincing from the light when he pried them open, sour stomach that greeted his return to consciousness with a foul acidic belch, and of course, the piece de resistance, the splitting headache like some tiny evil gnome was inside his skull with a sledgehammer, trying to batter his way out. "Oh fuck, I hate this shit," Sebast groaned, and tried to stand up.
Correction: he wasn't just hungover, he was also still drunk from the night before, because the room swayed and dipped around him. The crazy dizzy feeling made his nausea a thousand times worse. Sebast bolted for the bathroom, tripping over something that cursed at him in Spanish, and luckily made it to the toilet before throwing up what felt like every meal he'd eaten on this trip.
Trip? Oh, right, he was still in Ponce for the holidays. Last night was New Year's Eve, this was New Year's Day, and he was starting it off feeling like hell. Not to mention, there was no Kala around to tease him and cajole back to a semblance of humanity. If she'd been here last night, she would've made him drink enough water to ward off the worst of the hangover.
If she'd been here, he wouldn't have wanted to get completely blotto drunk in the first place.
When he was sure he was done puking, Sebast flushed the toilet and slowly stood up, gripping the edge of the sink for balance. The face looking back at him in the mirror was red-eyed, wild-haired, and haggard-looking. "You look like shit, 'mano," he told his reflection, and ran the tap for a moment to let it get cold. Then he drank from his cupped hands, slowly, letting his abused stomach settle between sips. He also splashed water on his face, and let it run over his wrists. His grandmother swore running cold water over the wrists would cure a headache, but it had never quite worked for Sebast. Still, he'd try anything.
"If you're alive in there, you owe me breakfast for stepping on me," Mikey said from outside the door.
Sebast's stomach lurched. "Don't talk about breakfast yet, I'll spew again. And what the hell were you doing sleeping on the floor?"
Mikey opened the door and looked in at him with a long-suffering expression. "You decided at about one in the morning that you were gonna get on a plane to Gotham and go talk to Kala. Right then. You were gonna walk through downtown Ponce drunk off your ass. The only way I could keep you here was by sitting in front of the door."
Sebast winced at that, leaning back against the sink. "Shit."
"Yeah. You're not allowed to get that drunk again until you get your shit together where Kala's concerned," Mikey said.
"Look, I'm working on it," Sebast said irritably. "We still have four more days before we head back to Metropolis, and she's in Gotham right now anyway with the other guy's family. I have to talk to her, anyway, our agent is making plans to bring me back to the tour."
Mikey just shook his head. "I can't believe my gay brother has more girl trouble than I do."
"That's 'cause you don't have girls, Mikey," Sebast said, giving him a tired smile. "The dark elf in your video game doesn't count."
"Blood elf," Mikey corrected, and Sebast managed a laugh. Mikey shrugged. "Look, if I have to spend the whole game watching a character run around, it might as well be a hot chick, right?"
"You ever get bullshit from other guys in the game about always playing a girl?" Sebast asked, genuinely curious.
"Nah. Usually they ask if I'm a girl, and I make my voice real deep and say, 'Do you want me to be a girl, daddy?' Then they freak out and call me a fag, and I get them banned for it." Mikey grinned.
"You're evil," Sebast said. He sighed, and looked at his reflection again. "I'm gonna take a shower, and try to take something for my headache, and then probably go back to sleep. I promise not to jump out the window and run for the airport."
Mikey nodded. "Okay. I love you, 'mano. You know that, right?"
Sebast blinked; they didn't do brotherly sentimentality all that often. "Yeah, I do. And I'm grateful for it. I love you, too, Mikey."
"Good. Fix this with Kala, I miss her." Mikey grinned roguishly at him.
"Yeah, I miss her too," Sebast sighed. Normally he'd make some kind of joke at Mikey's expense, but he was too tired and too heartsick to do it this morning.
Instead, as soon as Mikey went on his way, Sebast cranked up the shower. The water pressure was crap, but at least it was hot. And he knew he'd feel better once he cleaned himself up and got all the drunk-sweat off his skin.
What he needed, Sebast decided as he lathered up his hair, was to get himself into an actual relationship. It hadn't worked out with Javier, but that was because Javier was paranoid and jealous on account of being a cheater himself. Ever since then, Sebast had avoided anything serious, and just put all his relationship needs onto Kala. She was the one who gave him someone to talk to, someone to hold through the darkest night, someone he could share his deepest secrets with and not be ashamed.
And none of that was fair to her. True, Sebast had been that confidant for her, too, so it wasn't uneven, but the huge unspoken issue of attraction had been there like the proverbial elephant in the room. If they'd just done something about it, stopped being afraid of what might change, maybe things would be different.
Now, to keep her, he had to find some kind of boundary. It'd be like surgery, in a weird way, trying to cleave himself apart from her, keep the healthy connections and let her have a real relationship with Jason Todd. Which would leave a bunch of severed connections on his end, and Sebast knew he couldn't be bitter about that. He'd fucked it all up. Well, they'd both fucked it up, but he figured most of the fault was his. He'd cared too much about his reputation.
It'd be better for both of them if he actually tried to date, for real, instead of just hooking up. Frankly, the Grindr game was getting stale anyway. Sebast had done more than his share of ridiculous screwing around – although he'd always been as safe as possible – and he was tired of it. Eventually all the names and faces and bodies and cities just blended together in his memory, and he couldn't distinguish any of them from the others.
It was no way to live, really. If not for Kala and the band, it'd be a desperately lonely way to live. Sebast wasn't sure how other musicians stood it. Then again, a lot of people in the industry were into drugs and other awful coping mechanisms. Strange, how a person could be lonely on a music tour, surrounded by bandmates and road crew and thousands of fans all the time, but Sebast figured most people were lonelier in their minds. A crowd didn't matter if there was no connection to them beyond the ephemeral one that came from stepping up to the microphone and throwing his voice over them like a net. All of that faded when the house lights went out and the band disappeared backstage. The memory of it could keep him going, but it wasn't enough. Usually after a show, he and Kala would be laughing and joking and horseplaying around, with each other and the boys, and it helped the comedown from a show to have the rest of them there. And later, when the high of being on stage wore off, he'd still had Kala, the deeper and quieter bond between them that predated the band. Sebast had to find something else, stop putting it all on her, or he'd wreck their friendship and his own mental health.
He finished his shower and got out, annoyed that the guest towels in here were on the rough side. He missed his luxurious towels at home, the ones Kala bought from Bed & Bath. It'd been a few years since she worked their last, but she knew which lines were quality. God, he couldn't wait to get back home…
Sebast froze as realization walloped him over the head again: one of them was going to have to move out. He could barely stand to be in the house, the last time he'd been there. But the tour would wind up in a month or so, and then they'd both be back in Metropolis. Trying to fix his relationship with Kala, they couldn't be in the same house all the time. The thought had crossed his mind before, but it kept swamping him. There was just so much to untangle. Who got to stay, and who had to leave? Who got to keep the things they'd bought together? What, did they just split the towels and the silverware and stuff like that? It was too much like a divorce.
For a moment, he allowed himself to hope that they could live together again, once they got things straightened out. Hah, what a phrase. But then Sebast stamped out that thought. If he acted like that, he'd be no better than the 'nice guys' who were only nice to women in hopes that they'd eventually put out. He had to learn to live without Kala by his side twenty hours of the day, and he couldn't do it if he was just assuming he'd have her back somehow, someway, someday.
No. He had to be real about this. If Kala was in a serious relationship, she was either going to end up living alone, or living with that guy. No sane man would want his lover living with a guy with whom she'd had a complicated past. And Sebast knew that living together would let them slide back into all those comfortable routines that had gotten them far too close in the past, so close that boundaries vanished.
Maybe he could ask her for half the towels. Or at least advice on what brands to buy. He was going to have to outfit an apartment. He could live with his parents for a little while, he'd already been doing that, but to Sebast that would feel like a hermit crab trying to crawl back into an old shell that had gotten too small for it. And roommates … shit, he didn't want to deal with roommates. It'd been awkward at first, living with Kala, and he knew her. Trying to live with strangers sounded like a nightmare at this point.
Sebast perked up for a moment. Maybe he could get Mikey to move out with him. The kid needed a little taste of independence, and it would soothe their mom's worrisome heart if he still had brotherly supervision. That might work … although he'd have to have a serious talk with Mikey. This was the kid who'd dropped a brand-new iPod and shattered the screen because he picked it up to change a song while his hands were still wet from washing dishes. He'd bought the new iPod to replace another one that had been in his pocket when he jumped in the pool. Also the kid who'd blown his lunch money for the week on some goofy helicopter toy that didn't even fly all that great, and then complained about being hungry. He wasn't the best with impulse control, when it came to money, or the best at taking care of his stuff unless it was a game console or a computer. That crap would have to stop, if he was going to live with Sebast and pay half the rent and utilities.
Then again, Mikey had been mature and responsible enough today to make sure that Sebast didn't go wandering off drunk through downtown Ponce, which would probably result in getting his pocket picked at the very least. He had to give him credit for that. And besides, who could you trust if not your brother?
Sebast stepped out of the bathroom, headed back to his room, and dressed for the day. Then he went to find Mikey, who was probably in the kitchen hoping for breakfast, and bounce the idea of getting an apartment together off him. Papi would be pissed at Sebast for giving up his house, but hell, Kala needed those windows and the sunlight more. She also needed the privacy more, to be able to pull of the whole superhero quick-change thing. And it'd be a good way of showing her that he intended to do right by her.
They had to fix this. Sebast wasn't giving up on his best friend anytime soon. Hell, he'd make himself befriend this Jason Todd, too. Whatever it took.
…
Lois stood on the balcony, looking over her city. She was bundled up in pajamas, a robe, and a coat, and was still cold, but she wouldn't miss the early-morning view for anything. Just after sunrise on New Year's Day, Metropolis was quiet, little traffic in the streets below. The early light turned all the steel and glass to rose gold, and the chill air smelled faintly of coffee thanks to the big Maxwell plant a few miles away. Lois always loved it when they were brewing in the morning.
She sipped her own coffee, thoughtful in the dawn quiet. Christmas with Kala, Jason, and Elise had been lovely, but she missed both twins a little now. They were grown and living their own lives, and Lois knew how lucky she was that she got to see so much of them. With Sam in the Army, and Joanna off painting wherever artistic whim took her, Lucy didn't get to see all of her grown kids but once or twice a year. Thank God for Facebook and Skype and cell phones. Lois' kids could fly or jump over to see her anytime. That was sometimes a slight annoyance, when they turned up and cleaned out her fridge, but on the whole she felt very, very fortunate.
And now she was going to be a grandmother in the next month or two. That still felt surreal. Lois didn't think she was old enough to be a grandmother, never mind the increasing amounts of silver in her hair. And never mind that she hadn't felt old enough to have kids at twenty-seven, either.
She didn't feel old. Aging was happening, she couldn't ignore it looking in the mirror every morning, and the cold made her ache now in ways she never would've felt or noticed ten years ago. Lois knew full well she wasn't that twenty-five-year-old reporter anymore; she wouldn't be climbing under an elevator with a hydrogen bomb loaded onto it anytime soon. Mostly because her right arm wouldn't bear her weight that long – thanks, Luthor, you ratfucking sonofabitch, Lois thought, rubbing her shoulder.
Still. She felt older. Not old. Lois felt too vital, too driven, to be old. In another twenty years, maybe she'd consider herself old, but not now.
Sometimes she looked at the new interns with their boundless energy, and remembered being like that. Staying up all night chasing a story, doubling down on coffee the next morning, and powering through the day without so much as a nap. If she tried that not, she'd be damn near hallucinating by lunch. Her body insisted on a minimum of six hours' sleep per night, without which she felt like the record player she'd had as a kid, the one she'd slowed with her thumb on the disc to hear the singers' voices get all draggy and weird. Lois also had to admit that she could no longer eat an entire pizza, an order of hot wings, and two slices of cake by herself.
It was life. It kept rolling, and you either rolled with it or got left behind. For her, that meant figuring out what she needed to do to keep her feet, and maintain the drive that had still had everyone in the City office calling her 'Hurricane Lane'.
"Good morning, Ms. Lane." That velvety voice from slightly above her, and the hero floated down to smile at her. All of a sudden, she felt twenty-five again, looking at her favorite story – who happened to be her husband and the father of her kids.
"Good morning, Kal-El," Lois purred, giving him a wicked smile. The darkening of his royal blue eyes lit a flame of pride in her heart. There were cute young reporters all over this city, and though Superman had begun to gray at the temples, he was still very much a catch. But only Lois Lane – crow's feet and silver hair and all – put that look in his eyes.
"It is a lovely morning," he said, hanging in midair with the sun shining on his cape.
"Yes, it is. It'd be better if one of your friends in the League figured out a time machine for me," Lois replied, giving him a merry grin. "Looking at you makes me want to be twenty-five again."
"We'd just met when you were twenty-five," he pointed out. "If you have to pick a point in time, I'd say … the year after we got married."
"Ah, but if I were twenty-five again, knowing what I know now, things would be different," Lois teased.
"If I were thirty again, knowing what I know now, they certainly would," he told her.
"Hmm. It'd be even better if I could have my twenty-five-year-old body back for a day. I remember how much energy I had, back then. I could get so much done." Lois smirked, knowing that would get a reaction.
"I really don't think we would get anything done, except one thing," Kal-El replied.
That got both of them laughing with the easy familiarity of almost twenty years of marriage. "You're good for my ego, hero," Lois finally said.
"And you're very good for my heart," he replied.
"That is why I married you," she told him. "I mean, the other thing helps, but…"
"I married you because you're the most amazing woman I've ever met," Kal-El said. "In all possible ways and measures."
"Great, make me sound shallow," she teased.
"No. You're not shallow at all." Kal-El landed beside her, and as always, the nearness of him silenced her. No one else quite understood how Lois felt at a moment like this. Not even Elise, who had her own awe-inspiring man from another star – Elise had grown up knowing that Superman existed, that heroes like this were a possibility. Lois had not; Kal-El was a revelation, still. That the world could contain a being like him, with all of his power and all of his kindness … she couldn't help being stunned by it.
Lois sighed, looking at her husband with warm, adoring eyes. A thought crossed her mind, and it made her smile wryly. Now if Kala could get herself situated, we could all have a happily ever after. Of course, Kala seemed to be trending in that direction these days…
"Something just occurred to you," Kal-El said. He'd always been able to read her expressions so accurately.
"I was thinking about Kala. I've got my happily ever after, and Jason has his. I'm hoping she's found hers. Our girl deserves it." Lois smiled, thinking of the girl who was so like her in so many ways – and so like her father, too.
"She seems very happy. So does Jay," Kal-El replied, smiling a little himself.
Lois looked off across the bay toward Gotham. "There's still the Sebast situation to figure out. And she is her mother's daughter – I didn't have my love life figured out until, what, thirty-two?"
"Sometimes it takes a while for everything to fall in line. I was thirty, myself," Kal-El replied. "We'll see what the new year brings for all of them."
"All we can do," Lois said, shaking her head. Of course he'd figured it all out years before she did – from the moment he'd met her, Clark had been infatuated. Lois had taken longer to be certain of herself, and of him. Kala was that way too; the only love she'd been completely certain of, outside her family, had been Sebast. He'd been the only one who stayed, the only one who fit. But he'd been missing out of part of her life. When the Blur made rare, occasional appearances, it wasn't a big deal. With Kala deciding to join the hero game in earnest, there would've been issues even if she hadn't fallen for Jay.
Kala had kept her secrets for the best of reasons … the same way Lois herself had the best of reasons for keeping her kids out of capes until they were in their later teens. But she knew where roads paved with good intentions could lead.
Lois shivered, and Kal-El stepped closer. "Are you cold?" he asked.
"Just a chill," she replied. "Let's go inside, though. I swear I feel the cold more every year."
That would've been a disheartening thought, but he drew his cape around her shoulders to warm her, and Lois stopped worrying about the cold. Or much else.
…
Kala woke up again later in the morning, wrapped up around Jay. The nightmare seemed gone; his brow was smooth, and he'd slept undisturbed, with none of the tossing she associated with nightmares. Right now he was completely out, and wouldn't wake until an alarm went off or she woke him.
She sighed, and gently stroked a stray lock of hair out of his face. His nightmares seemed to be happening more frequently … or was it just that she was here to witness them more often? She couldn't be sure without asking him, and Jay was in full defensive mode. Or at least, he had been in the middle of the night.
Another possibility occurred to her. Jay was being very protective of her lately. This with Dent threatening her, and probably the rest of Gotham's sleazeballs targeting her too, had pushed Jay's stress levels through the roof. Maybe the reason why she hadn't been such a good dream-catcher lately, was because she was the reason for the nightmares in the first place.
That thought made her stomach twist unpleasantly. How could she convince Jay that she'd be fine? He should know that, he knew she'd come to Gotham to get training that was more about controlling her powers than keeping herself safe. And even when she'd faced off against the rogues he didn't want her to deal with, she'd come out on top – through her own abilities, and the ruthless survival instinct of her darker self. Jay didn't need to be so protective of her.
And yet, he couldn't help it. Kala understood that about him. No one had sheltered him from life's vicissitudes, so he did everything in his power to protect other people. Just look at how he was about the kids. And how he'd been about her training. Jay had tried his damnedest to make her leave this town, and when that failed, he'd taught her as much as he could as fast as he could.
She'd had enough therapy to realize that Jay was afraid of being attached to anyone. He'd lost too many crucial attachments too brutally soon. Maybe that was why he'd dated both her and Donna – metahumans were harder to kill. His fear of loss was why he couldn't say those three simple words, I love you. The fact that all of his serious romantic relationships had been in love with someone else in his family just made it worse.
Kala winced a little. She had her own complications; thank God it wasn't someone Jay knew, but still. It would've been better for Jay if she didn't have such an intense relationship with Sebast. And she was certain she wasn't using Jay as a substitute for Sebast, the way he'd been a stand-in for Bruce and Tim and Dick. She loved him for himself, and would've loved him no matter what else had been going on in her life. It was just that Jay was so deeply woven into the hero side of things, and Sebast was such a huge part of the rock star side.
Until recently, her two lives had been sharply divided. Only her immediate family knew that both existed, and she'd always told herself not to mess with capes. Jay had come completely out of left field; he was the most unexpected thing that had ever happened to her. She'd loved Sebast and didn't want him mixed up in the dangerous, difficult-to-believe side of things, but Jay was used to danger and he'd seen weirder things than her. She wasn't afraid to let him see the shadow in her soul, knowing he had his own dark side.
She had to trust in time. Jay would see eventually that she wasn't going to run off on him, and she wasn't going to be driven off by some madman's threats, either. Kala knew that if it came down to it, she could hold her own against the worst this town had to offer.
Jay was right about one thing. She had to keep the villains of Gotham from finding out what she was. If they realized she was Kryptonian, things would become much more dangerous. Luckily, no one knew her full suite of powers, and metahumans were becoming more common. As long as she didn't react to kryptonite, no matter what powers she had, it'd still be plausibly deniable.
…
Lex Luthor paced as the day's results scrolled across the monitors behind him. "We should be further along."
"Scion is making progress daily. We've already unlocked more about the crystal formation than we ever imagined was there to be discovered," Mercy told him.
"But not the weapons. Or their energy sources, which would be too easily weaponized according to that sanctimonious blowhard Jor-El. It wasn't all solar and geothermal, especially not towards the end." He glared at the monitors showing the various research departments' progress, but didn't stop his pacing.
"You always knew the weapons would be the last thing unlocked," Mercy pointed out.
"Scion should be progressing faster. He mispronounced an entire sentence today," Lex retorted. "This is his native language! He learned Kryptonese before English!"
"He's also a child," Mercy replied. "Mistakes are to be expected, particularly when he's tired – and he kept at the program longer than the neurological team's recommendations, because he wanted to succeed for you."
Lex sighed, rubbing a hand over his bald head. "I suppose you're right. I can't fault him for wanting to be useful. How old is he now, anyway?"
She didn't need to consult her notes. "Chronologically? Seven years, two months since he was removed from the birthing matrix. In terms of development, with the cloning program's acceleration during the first few years, he's more like eight or nine."
"I thought he was younger. I was off by a year," Luthor muttered.
"It's not easy to keep track of," Mercy replied. "Particularly when you factor in the accelerated development, and the fact that you're comparing to yourself, and you were especially precocious. I'm dating it relative to our move to this facility."
"That's right, he was the only success out of all our attempts when we first got here. That was almost eight years ago now. My, how time flies." Lex resumed his pacing. "He seems undersized. Are we sure he's getting the right nutrients?"
"As near as we can tell. The nutrition team is offering a variety of foods to track his preferences. So far he seems to seek out certain trace minerals and proteins, and the team is supplementing his diet with those. It's an inexact method, but specific nutritional requirements weren't included on the crystals' programming. Jor-El appears to have assumed that all required nutrients were available on the planet, and his heirs would seek them out as necessary." Mercy shrugged; given that all the descendants of the House of El had superpowers, they could find whatever they needed anywhere on the planet. Typical Kryptonian, assuming their species' supremacy wherever they might land.
"How are his verbal and mathematics skills, relative to his developmental age?" Luthor asked.
"Well above average," Mercy replied. "He's in the 99th percentile in math. Of course, we've accelerated his learning to match his intellect."
Luthor sighed. "We should have accelerated his growth more. I despise waiting. With the cloning program, he could be a teenager now."
"And if we'd done that, we would've sacrificed the time necessary for important mental development," Mercy reminded him. "Some of Project Replica's issues are the result of translation errors in the cloning process, and some of them are likely from a lack of normal development. The cloning program was intended to create spare parts, not functioning sentient beings. You were the one who decided to be conservative with the accelerated growth, Lex. And you were right to do so."
He looked chagrined at that reminder. "You're right. I'll have to learn to tame my impatience. I just can't wait for the day we can turn Scion loose."
Mercy smiled at that thought. "They really don't know what's going to hit them."