Waking up is … jarring.

Unexpected and rough, like getting shaken awake with a jolt that goes beyond the physical.

When the ice melts away they are back in realspace, and before them lies Krypton in her final death throes. Their home reduced to a maelstrom of glowing rubble.

Lara blindly grabs for Jor, seeking an anchor in this madness, and he half-turns towards her, holding her awkwardly. Peripherally she becomes aware that she is still the only person aboard that is unshackled, but it's a distant awareness.

The woman with silent tears on her face gets a little more notice, as does the general when he steps close enough to put a hand on said woman's shoulder, but everything is still in some sort of haze until Zod finds his voice.

"Was sticking to arguments with the Council worth this, Jor-El?" he asks, and though the hollowness of his tone takes the bite out of the accusation, Lara can feel her husband flinch under her arms.

If General Zod can hold grudges beyond the death of their planet, she decides, then so can she!

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She cannot deny that the general is a skilled leader in a crisis, though.

Lara freed Jor once the shock had faded a bit, and Jor, moving almost mechanically, freed Zod, and then there is no sense in holding back, really. The teary woman – commander, of the House of Ul, but Lara can't recall her name, right now – startles violently, in the literal sense, when Lara first reaches for her, but gives the barest nod of thanks once she is free.

When all the forces are gathered, the general declares that they will see if they are meant to starve amongst the ruins of their planet or if there is a chance to live on, for Krypton.

When it turns out that there is a chance, however minuscule, he skillfully uses the bait of the impossible technical challenge to draw Jor into the effort.

It's not that Lara is absolutely opposed to the idea of living a while longer – Kal is out there, and living on might mean to see her child again, one day! – but she despises Zod for the way he uses everyone as means to his own ends.

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It takes Jor a full ten days of ignoring his unhealed injury before he collapses.

By sheer luck Lara is within sight, sees him rock back from the uncomfortable crouch half inside some piece of machinery and go suddenly, horribly limp.

Under the circumstances, it's the final straw. Her first reaction is to scream – and the sound sends people running.

The first to arrive is that big frontline fighter Lara never bothered to learn the name of, but his immediate reaction forces her to acknowledge that 'protect' is as essential to the military caste as 'think' is to the science one.

The huge man scoops up Jor like he weights nothing and carries him to the nook they deemed their 'cabin' without demur, and while Lara fights to clean out the infection as thoroughly as their utterly inadequate resources allow, she doesn't have to think about the fact that Zod has reacted with the same alacrity.

When she has done all she can for Jor but let him rest, the general pushes off the wall he has been lurking against and growls, "Well?"

Lara feels all of her nascent goodwill towards the military caste evaporate.

She lunges and gets her hand within a hairsbreadth of Zod's face before he catches her wrists.

"How could you?!" she shrieks into the tall man's face, terror, old and new, adding fuel to the fury. "Jor always considered you a friend – how dare you pretend you care, now, when you were the one to stab him!"

The general looks startled, then indignant. "I will not apologize for defending my life."

Lara scoffs. "Jor would have never killed you! He never killed anyone!"

Indignation turns into something stronger.

"He killed six of my men within the hour beforehand," Zod hisses, "two of them before your very eyes!"

If that was supposed to cow her, it is exactly the wrong thing to say. "They tried to kill our son!"

The general's face twists into something ugly. "How long do you think that abomination survived, anyway? It would have been kinder to make it quick …."

Her wrists are still trapped, so Lara brings up her knee between his legs. The grunt of pain is satisfying, even if he still doesn't release her.

"His name is Kal!" she hisses back. "He is a perfectly healthy baby boy, no different from any other child you've ever seen!"

Zod sneers at that, but before she can kick him again, Jor starts stirring and they are both distracted.

Especially since her idiot husband tries to sit up immediately.

"Stop!" Lara and Zod snap in unison, and while she hurries to get a restraining hand on Jor before he does himself further injury, the general continues, "Try to stand now, Jor-El, and you won't make it three steps before you fall flat on your face."

A scornful curl of lips. "Which is a lesson you should learn the hard way, but if you tear your wound further, you might die. And I will not have another life wasted to prove your foolishness."

Lara could strangle Zod for his callousness. Jor, for whatever reason, grins like a loon.

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To distract Jor as he heals, Lara starts speculating if Kal might have started crawling by now and what else he might be up to. It helps keeping up her own spirits, too, a much-needed counterweight to the grief and despair and the near-starvation.

And if the general turns away in disgust at any mention of her baby boy – well, that's no loss, in Lara's opinion.