Chapter 42: Daughters
Disclaimer: All things Supergirl/Superman belong to DC. No infringement is intended.
Martha Kent looked at her daughter (which she was, blood be damned) and couldn't help but worry. It had been three days now since Karen had returned home after yet another battle with that alien monster Mongul. A battle which had once again left her beaten and bruised. Martha had never been a particularly violent or vengeful woman, but she couldn't deny that – upon hearing that Mongul was gone for good – she had experienced a feeling of immense satisfaction. There was no mercy in her heart for monsters who hurt her child.
Three days had gone by. The bruises on Karen's body had faded. But the immense sadness and deep hurt in the eyes of her daughter remained.
Since Karen had refused to say anything, Martha had taken the initiative and called up Diana, Karen's closest friend. Diana hadn't known much more, but what she had told Martha had sufficed. Martha didn't understand alien parasites, but she could well imagine what it would be like for her daughter to find herself living in a world of perfect happiness, only to find out it was all a lie and being wrenched out of it again.
Karen had seen her entire world perish once before, everything and everyone she loved simply vanishing into the night. And now it seemed she had seen it happen all over again. The deep wounds that the death flash of her world had left her with, wounds that Martha had seen slowly heal over the years, were once again open and raw.
Standing outside the farm house, Karen was dressed in Jeans and a shirt and busily chopping wood on top of the old tree trunk that had been used for that very purpose for generations. She didn't use an axe, of course, she could easily split the wood with a strike of her hand. It was something she sometimes did to unwind and Martha had seen her go through an entire winter's supply of firewood in a matter of minutes, using her super speed. Today, though, she was moving slowly, methodically.
Walking up to her daughter, Martha sat down on a stool net to the log and looked at her. "I don't know exactly what the Black Mercy showed you," Martha began, "but I can imagine."
Karen scoffed, splitting another log. "I doubt you can. Turns out that not even I knew what my perfect world would look like."
"Tell me about it?" Martha asked softly. "Please?"
Karen tore another log apart with her bare hands, throwing the pieces aside. Her eyes were set on something in the distance, something so impossibly far away that not even Kryptonian super senses could see it.
For a long moment it seemed that it might be too soon, that Karen was not ready to share what had hurt her so, but then she sat down on the ground next to the old tree trunk, deflating and looking tired and defeated. Soon the words began to spill out of her like a torrent.
Martha learned of the phantasy world Karen had seen while in the clutches of the Black Mercy. How she had travelled through time and saved the population of Krypton even as the planet died. How they resettled them on Mars and New Krypton was born. Three billion souls saved, three billion of Kara's people. Only it turned out that it was all a lie. A lie that disappeared like a mirage when the trance of the Black Mercy broke and she was torn out of her phantasy and back into the real world.
"That's not all, though, is it?" Martha asked, sensing that there was even more to it than that. What Karen had already described was horrible, no doubt, but she knew her daughter too well. There was more, something more personal.
Karen finally met her eyes.
"Remember that conversation we had a few years back? When we lamented Clark growing up so fast? We didn't really say it out loud, we never did, but we were both thinking it. That Clark would be the only child I would ever have, no matter how long I would live."
Martha nodded again, remembering the conversation in question and her thoughts on the matter. Kryptonians and humans were too different to procreate together. There would never be another Kryptonian child. Karen would never become a mother to anyone else but Clark.
"I was okay with that," Karen went on. "With Clark and everything I was doing here on Earth, everything am I still planning to do... the thought never entered my mind. But..."
Martha understood. "You had a child in that phantasy world."
Karen nodded, her eyes watery with tears. "My little girl, my Kona. She was..."
Karen jumped to her feet and violently slashed her hand down. She chopped the entire tree trunk apart. Breathing hard, she looked down at the ruined stump. "This is so stupid! I am... I am mourning someone that was never real. There was no Kona, she was just a phantasy. Just smoke and mirrors, a trick by an alien parasite to keep me docile while it slowly killed me."
Martha stood up and approached her, wrapping her arms around her daughter's shoulders. "But your feelings for her were real."
"I was under the influence of the Black Mercy for an hour or so at the most," Karen continued, still not allowing the tears in her eyes to fall. "But in that hour... I remember holding her in my arms for the first time, so small. I remember watching her learn to walk, learn to speak. Her first word was 'mommy'. Clark adored her; he called her his little super-sister." She chuckled, though there was little humor in it. "I remember thinking that, even all grown up, he was still dork."
Martha pulled her closer. "It's all right that you mourn her, Karen," she whispered to her. "She was real to you and that is all that matters."
Karen sighed. "I feel so stupid."
"You are not stupid, Karen. Not stupid at all. May I show you something?"
Puzzled, Karen nodded and allowed Martha to steer her in a certain direction. Together the two women walked around the house and to the far edge of the farm. They soon came upon a small plot of land where a simple stone marker sat.
"When you and Clark fell out of the sky," Martha began, looking at the marker, "it was the happiest day of my life. What I never told you, though, was that only a few weeks before that, was the saddest day of my life."
She felt her own eyes become wet with tears, something that happened almost every time she came here to this particular place.
"You know that Jonathan and I tried to have kids for several years. About four months before you arrived, I finally managed to get pregnant. Jonathan and I, we were ecstatic. Having tried for so long, we had almost lost hope. We were so looking forward to our child."
She knelt down, fingers gently touching the stone marker. "It was during the 12th week of my pregnancy that I miscarried. Not a big deal, really, the doctors said. Happens all the time. Further examinations revealed that I would not be able to carry a child to full term, ever. A genetic thing, some kind of fancy name for it. Doesn't matter."
"You never told me that," Karen said beside her.
"There never seemed to be a good time for it," Martha replied. "For several weeks afterwards, I was a wreck. We never got to hold our child, never even got to find out whether it would have been a boy or a girl. Not that it would have mattered, we would have loved it all the same. Finally, Jonathan had the idea to put up this marker here. Something to... to remind us of the child we never got to see. I come here every now and then."
She looked to her daughter. "I never saw my child born, Karen. But that doesn't change the fact that I loved it with all my heart and it nearly killed me to lose it." She put her hands on both of her daughter's shoulders, looking her in the eyes. "Kona might not have been real. But she was real to you. Your feelings for her are real. And your pain is real. It's not stupid. It's just human."
Together, mother and daughter stood arm in arm before the empty grave of a child never born and mourned a child that was never real.
"Goodbye, little Kona," Karen whispered, finally allowing her tears to fall.
Adam Strange stood before the large viewing window and looked out at the vast vista of the planet Rann. Despite having been born on Earth, Adam considered Rann to be more of a home to him by now than the planet of his birth.
He still remembered the first time he had been here years ago. Snatched up by the Zeta beam, not knowing what was happening to him, dumbed into the middle of a war. After a terrifying civil war that had nearly annihilated their entire planet, the Rannians had transformed themselves into an utterly pacifistic society. This turned out to be a problem when they were suddenly beset by enemies from space.
Adam had become their champion, taking up ray gun and rocket pack as if born to it. At first mostly because he figured that the Rannians were his only ticket back home. In time, though, things had changed. Rann had become his home. Mostly because of the woman walking up to stand beside him.
"Can't sleep?" Alanna asked.
He gazed at his beautiful wife. Their romance had been something straight out of a pulp novel, the dashing hero from Earth falling for the alien princess. Well, not a princess as such, Rann was not a monarchy. Still, to Adam she was his princess. One had he fallen for quickly, completely, and eternally.
"Still on Earth time," he said, draping his arm around her.
He was so glad that Sardath had improved the Zeta beam over the years. Initially the effect that took him from Earth to Rann and back had been pretty random and hard to predict. Whenever the Zeta radiation in his body faded, he would be wrenched back to the same spot on Earth he had left from. For some reason this always seemed to happen just when Alanna and he finally managed to find some alone time. By now, though, the Zeta beam functioned like clockwork and Adam could divide his time between Rann and Earth by his own choice rather than random chance.
It certainly made it easier to spend time with his wife. Which he planned on doing far more frequently in the future.
His hand moved to clasp Alanna's and together their hands came to rest on the bump on Alanna's stomach. Almost as if in reaction to their presence, the child growing inside her gave a kick.
"Rambunctious little thing, isn't she?" Adam laughed.
"She is your daughter," Alanna told him, smiling. "Hitting you seems to be a favorite pastime for women in the Strange family."
"Well, you haven't hit me in a while, darling. Nor called me an idiot. I almost miss it."
She lightly punched his shoulder. "That can change in a heartbeat, idiot!"
Laughing together, wife, husband, and soon to be born daughter watched as the sun began to rise over the horizon of Rann.
The girl with no name huffed in annoyance as she quickly flew out of the collapsing warehouse as quickly as she was able. Maybe she should stop hanging out in warehouses. They always seemed to collapse on her. First there was that fire a few days back and now the latest goon squad had cost her another decent hideout.
It was the third time in the past two weeks that they had managed to track her down again. She was really getting tired of it. How many more of them would she need to beat up before the finally got the message that she wouldn't go back?
"I'm not getting caged again," she mumbled to herself. "Never again!"
Still, if they kept coming at her, then sooner or later they might get lucky. She was fast, she was strong, and eventually she would figure out that whole eye laser thing, too, but that didn't mean she was unbeatable. Mostly unbeatable, but not entirely so. And she did need to sleep now and then, too.
Thankfully she didn't need much in the way of food, but the lack of money and proper accommodations was also becoming an issue. Sure, with her powers, it would be all too easy to simply take what she needed, but she refused to do that. It just seemed... wrong.
"Stupid morals," she muttered. "Would be so much easier without them."
Flying low to the ground with no clear destination in mind, the girl pondered what her next move should be. Truth be told she had never really planned beyond getting out of her cage. Gaining her freedom had been the only thing on her mind for quite some time. Now, though, she was free and didn't really have any idea what to do next. Except stay free, of course, but that went without saying.
Her thoughts focused on the T-shirt she was wearing. It was a cheap thing from a street vendor, just a black shirt with the world's most famous symbol on it, but in some way it had become her most precious possession. Not that she had much in the way of possessions. She literally just had the clothes on her back. But out of all that, the shirt was the most precious. The vendor had gifted it to her after she had helped him get rid of a thug who was after his day takings.
He had said "a super shirt for a super girl". In some strange way that had resonated with her.
"Supergirl," she muttered. It did have a nice ring to it, corny as it was.
End Chapter 42
Author's Note: For all that "For the Man Who Has Everything" was a great Superman story, there was never any follow-up to it. Superman had had a son in his phantasy, a son he loved, a son who faded from his arms when the phantasy collapsed. Superman was really pissed at Mongul during the fight, but afterwards it was never mentioned again. That was the way of comics back then, of course, but I figured losing your only son, no matter how imaginary, should have left a mark on the Man of Steel.
As for Martha, the various comics and shows usually just say that she and Jonathan couldn't have kids without ever going into details. Knowing from members of my own family how devastating a miscarriage can be, especially to couples who have been trying for a long time, I decided to put some of that in here, too.