She keeps up the habit.
Marking Kal's age and imagining his possible adventures gets them through the stresses of forcing a slapdash phantom drive[1] through space towards the nearest colony. A colony known to be long abandoned, but as a former military outpost it should still hold some supplies they can scavenge.
Between Jor and Lara, Jax-Ur trying to prove himself to Zod, and the military caste being not half as inept at technical work as the science caste has been led to believe, they leave with a ship much improved. That is, one that at least doesn't tear itself apart just by accelerating, and offers a minimum of variation to their replicator diet.
They launch towards the next colony two days after Kal's first birthday, and Jor celebrates the occasion by whispering a ludicrously elaborate party setup into her ear while he holds her tightly.
Lara returns the favor when their next destination turns out unviable, its parent planet having reverted back from the initial terraforming. She wraps herself around Jor and comes up with an even more ludicrous list of presents to keep her husband from doing something stupid, when Zod completely loses it at the realization that they might truly be the last survivors of Krypton.
Hope, however ludicrous, is really the only way to stave off insanity.
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It's a few days short of Kal's fourth birthday before Lara realizes how much their habit has influenced the rest of the crew.
They have just sought out the sixth outpost and found it long dead, the planet cold and dark and empty.
Tempers are fraying under the constant disappointments, and so it shouldn't have come as much of a surprise when Jax-Ur suddenly snaps.
"We are the last and will stay the last and there is no one else! Kal won't get four in four days – or ever! The stupid thing is long dead and I won't listen to that drivel about what it might be doing any longer!"
As it is, the stark rebuttal still hits hard and Lara is nearly in tears when the tirade is cut short by Nam-Ek, the big frontline fighter, cuffing the smaller scientist across the head with enough force to knock him over.
Jax-Ur shrilly protests to Zod and Nam-Ek visibly braces for a reprimand, but the general just looks down contemptuously and says, "Five days. What kind of scientist are you, Jax-Ur, if you cannot even count to five?"
Then he sends off Nam-Ek to perform some soldierly task elsewhere and turns away himself, without acknowledging the stares.
Lara decides to not antagonize Zod anymore.
When Nam-Ek passes her two days later and briefly holds up three fingers, Lara smiles brightly for the first time in far too long.
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Years pass, marked by birthdays and the expected achievements of a growing child.
Zod takes to offering biting comments on their imaginations, especially denying any feats that require specific instruction first.
Lara is ill-equipped to counter his arguments, her son is alone on a planet she knows very little about. Habitable but never colonized, a yellow sun and an indigenous species sapient enough to raise another intelligent being. She doesn't know more than that, not even what obscure record her husband might have drawn this destination from – and even what she knows is not all safe to share with the general.
Ill-equipped or not, however, Lara doesn't take slights to Kal lying down: so maybe he won't learn to read the Kryptonian letters, but surely whatever civilization there is will have some sort of script and he will learn that! Flowing glyphs or angular letters or maybe pictographic characters, her son is smart and he will manage all or any of them. Jor adds that Kal might come up with his own writing system, if necessary, and Zod storms off in disgust.
Another time when Zod shoots down some intellectual achievement, Jor brushes it off by arguing that their son doesn't need that skill to keep safe what is important – and then the two men nearly come to blows as the general takes offense at that statement. All of the soldiers aboard give them the cold shoulder for weeks afterwards, until even her thick-headed husband takes the hint and apologizes. Or, in his own words, 'clarifies his meaning.'
As irritating as the constant criticisms are, 'uneducated fool' is a long way up from 'twisted monstrosity that ought to be culled on sight.' By the time Kal is ten, Lara is no longer afraid that Zod might kill her son out of hand, should the two ever meet.
By the time Kal is fifteen, the general turns one of Jor's arguments on choice, and that power holds no innate right to oppress the less powerful, on its head: if Kal would become protector of a lesser species by free choice, Zod claims, then the military caste is clearly superior to all others, since that is what even the offspring of two scientists would try to aspire to, if given the option.
The smirk on the general's face, when he leaves her husband temporarily speechless, makes Lara wonder if she shouldn't start worrying about Zod meeting her son for completely different reasons. The general's black-and-white mind-set might look temptingly straightforward to a young man confused by culture shock ….
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The one downside that comes with changing Zod's perceptions of Kal away from 'target' is that he focusses more on another one.
Jor and Lara might consider their son enough of a worthwhile future, but the general does not. He needs more, he needs a planet to protect, and so Zod won't stop seeking the Codex while there is breath in his body – and Lara isn't entirely sure if even a lack thereof would deter him, the general is as stubborn as her husband and even more single-minded.
The only thing that keeps the screaming rows Zod has with Jor on the topic from getting violent (or even deadly) is the cold logic that the Codex is useless unless they possess a functioning Genesis Chamber, too. So far, they haven't found one.
Cold logic will not hold forever, though, Lara fears, and so she is deeply grateful for the unexpected kinship she finds with Faora-Ul. It's a bond first realized when she sees the other woman eye those fights like she cannot decide which man to grab and bash over the head first. Voicing that thought aloud would only push the fiercely loyal soldier into defending her general, of course, and so Lara settles for, "You grab yours and I grab mine if they get out of hand? I'm afraid we have need of both of them, yet."
After a reflexive scowl, Faora agrees with a tiny smile that seems to startle her as much as it does Lara, and from there on the two women become allies. It still takes Lara an unjustifiable amount of time to realize why the soldier blushed faintly at the mention of 'yours'.
When he is more in the mood for common sense, Zod tries to question Lara about the Codex, too, but she can truthfully tell him that she doesn't know its location.
Habitable is the one obvious qualifier and even that is a relative term: they find several formerly colonized planets reverting back from the conditions the World Engines created, twisting all remaining biosphere into desperate viciousness or unviability. Jor solemnly swears to her that Kal's destination was naturally habitable – not an abandoned attempt at colonization but never considered. Even so, the question which flaw of the engines – or law of nature – is responsible for this phenomenon troubles both the scientists and Zod.
When, some two decades into their quest, they happen upon an intact World Engine, Jor nearly takes it apart to find an answer – and Zod nearly strangles him for it. A world reformed to Kryptonian standards that needs to be kept monitored to uphold those standards is good enough for the general, and much preferable to the chance of no such planet at all.
Lara can't help but agree with Zod, no matter how much the scientist in her feels the urge to seek the perfect solution, too.
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And then they receive a signal from a scout-ship sent, long ago, to a distant world.
[1] repurposed from the Phantom Projector that once banished them, an irony Lara could appreciate under better circumstances.
