A/N: Sorry for the inordinate delay folks, and thanks for being so patient. Senior residency and multiple personal and social obligations have been taking up all of my time as of late, and I'm out on a limb here. Anyway, I had to tweak these last two chapters, mostly reshuffling some content and adding an integral new scene in the next chapter, all to pave the way for the unfolding saga. So, do forgive me for keeping you waiting. I'll make it up to you all with both Ch6 of Code Red as well as Ch2 of Cael's Cut next week. Don't worry- neither story is forgotten or buried. Once I start something, rest assured that I'll see it through to the end.

Previously, on Code Red: CRITICAL MASS:

"Are you all right?" she asked again.

He was deliberating on how to answer, and decided on telling her the truth. "I… I'm not sure I remember anything... about who I am, or what I'm doing here…"

She drew closer, and he could see how beautiful she was. If beauty was equated to royalty in this weird little world, then he surmised that she had to be the Queen.

"I… I don't remember."

"It's all right." She had come up to him now, and she was standing so close that he could smell her perfume. "It'll all come back to you. I'm just so glad you're awake..." She laid a slender hand on his cheek. "…My darling husband."

The memories came in a dizzying rush all of a sudden, and he knew it to be true.

.

Standard disclaimers apply. Superman, Wonder Woman and any other syndicated characters are the intellectual property of DC and Warner Bros.

Thanks of course to Angelic Enchantress for the beta and invaluable inputs.

Oh, and before we proceed, it's appropriate for me to clarify that whatever Galatea says (or thinks) in this chapter and in upcoming ones is not how I see it, nor do I intend to justify or support her actions in any way. It's just her own skewed view of things plus I'm attempting a quasi-sympathetic portrayal for her. I had to point that out since a couple of ladies have asked me that, worried that I might actually favor the villain of the story. Rose and Diana Grey, I've cleared that up for you. Satisfied now?

Rating: Still Rated M for Mature for exploration of themes, especially in later chapters. Enjoy!

Code Red: CRITICAL MASS

By Cael-El595

Ch 4: The Man Who Would Be King

Kal was still mystified even seven hours after he'd woken up. His mind was raising too many questions, and he wanted answers.

"And how long did you say we have been married?"

He was sitting at a table laden with bread and fruit, in a balcony overlooking a city that felt as alien to him as his wife. The setting sun was bathing the towering metallic spires with a glistening rose-colored hue. Between them, he could see tractor beamed pathways, plazas with fountains and congregations of colorful people going about their business everywhere; women carrying their children, android and gynoid workers tending to their programmed tasks. Further still, the land sloped downwards to meet the cerulean blue of the ocean, the skyline dotted with flying craft of every shape, size and speed.

It all looked very interesting and Utopian, but terribly...unreal somehow. He would have to explore the city later, feel and touch it for himself. He'd always trusted his acute senses.

The flashes of intuition in his head were getting alarming. He wondered if he had taken more of a fall than they had reckoned, and part of his brain was now permanently scarred, beyond their ability to restore even with the nanobots.

He was wondering why he was so skeptical, but everything felt weird, especially his memories, as patchy as they were. He couldn't quite describe it, but even the colors felt wrong to him, as though they had gone through multiple filters just to get that extra loudness that was so jarring to him.

The beautiful flame-haired woman sitting in front of him, watching him eat was nevertheless very real. She appeared outwardly calm and composed, but he could tell she was nervous by the fluttering of her eyelashes and the surreptitious twitching of her hands.

"Don't you remember, Kal? The day we met?"

He searched for the memories, and they were there, hazy like a storm cloud. "I was exploring this planet for the first time, after a really long inter-stellar voyage. I was standing in the Great Hall, looking up at the throne, and you were sitting there. I thought you were the…"

He was going to say the most beautiful woman he had ever seen, but somehow he knew that felt wrong. He wasn't sure of many things right now, but he was very sure of this. He had never been one to be attracted to physical beauty for beauty's sake alone. Somehow, his wife's obvious attributes struck him as bizarre. He never thought he would ever marry someone simply because she looked like that. She would have been out of his league, and he would have been running scared for the rest of his life, wondering when she would wake up to the fact he just wasn't good enough.

You've always been self-deprecating. You never truly believed in what you could do. In what you could be.

And League. Now why did that word sound so familiar? Like it was important, that it should mean something else for him?

"You were visiting with your brother," his wife said. What was her name again? Galatea. "I was supposed to be betrothed to him. He was your father's eldest, the heir to the Kryptonian Kingdom. Our marriage was supposed to have sealed an alliance. But when I saw you, standing by your brother's side..."

"We were drawn to each other –"

"As though we'd known each other all our lives– "

"And so we got married," he finished, as if by rote, like he'd rehearsed this conversation before.

It all seemed terribly contrived to him somehow, like it had been scripted. Though he was sure it had happened to him. Not in this context though. In another time, another place. With someone else who lurked in the shadowy recesses of his consciousness, a vague incorporeal figure that refused to take shape.

He even remembered the wedding day. His brother had been none too pleased; he had been looking for a trophy wife, and who better than the Queen herself, with her own kingdom as a very expansive dowry. The wedding had been exactly six months after they had met, though the whole thing had turned downright political, and he had already made himself at home in Galatea's bed the very night they had met.

Even though that's something you would normally never do, shy as you are when it comes to women.

And everyone had come to accept that it was the next best thing that could happen, for really, how could anyone thwart true love, however clichéd as that may sound?

The wedding was like an image of crystal clarity in his mind, like a… video recording?

A swirl of white lace, fine silk and candelabra, with endless goblets of wine being toasted, and maidens in shimmering silver garments with blue flowers in their braided hair. And the honor guard turned out in their full regalia, with golden breastplates and purple cloaks, brandishing swords and gauss rifles that gleamed silver in the dazzling light.

She was a resplendent vision, her burnished hair cascading down her shoulders, and her creamy complexion contrasted by her rich green and gold gown.

And him, majestic and regal in a steel blue bodysuit with a white cape, the golden sheen of his adamantine sword gleaming from his golden belt. He stood tall and proud, wearing the white and red shield symbol of his ancestors on his mighty chest. They stood on the altar, hand in hand before the high priestess, ready to embark on this new chapter of their lives together.

"That was two years ago," he added.

"Yes. We've been married for two years."

He sat there, looking at her, wondering if she could discern that he was feeling a little off. Because really, she was like a stranger to him, and it would hurt her to know that. He couldn't remember anything else about her besides the throne room incident, the wedding and a sort of understanding in between happened. Did she have any brothers or sisters? Was green her favorite color, because he couldn't recall seeing her in anything else? On which side of the bed did she prefer to sleep, the left or the right? What did she like to do in her free time? Did it involve him?

There were so many things he had forgotten- didn't know -about her that he was alarmed.

What in the world did she do as a Queen anyway? And if he was her consort, what on Earth was he supposed to do? For a man who was soon to be king, he knew precious little about his life, about hers, about anything.

Earth?

He had absolutely no idea at all.

And he still had that painful throbbing in his temples.

-x-x-x-x-x-

It had been so easy really.

Back in the chamber, when he was asleep, she had come to him, her lips lined with a poison formulated specifically to render him unconscious. She had kissed him, long and deeply; and he had stirred, murmuring his love's name incoherently. There was always significance in her kisses; she had always used them sparingly, though he couldn't possibly know that. She kissed him again, full-mouthed, just to be sure she had left just enough poison in his system; and he had sunk gradually but surely into a coma.

Kal, I'm so sorry…but you'll thank me one day for doing this.

She couldn't risk overdosing him on the poison. In enough doses, it could be lethal, even for him. So she had made sure his breathing was regular, while lovingly stroking the hair off his forehead, before proceeding to enact the second part of her plan.

It had been so easy as well to insert the second ingredient into his veins via an intravenous cannula, a liquefied form of the crystal she'd biosynthesized, only for it to inexplicably turn ruby-red at the end of the process. There were other modes of delivery, but this was the fastest and the best, and she had to be sure. She had buried all his memories, every single one of them - Diana, Lois, being sent away from his native world of Krypton as it died behind him, Earth, his life as the protector of the human race and his other life as Clark Kent, his nightmares, his dreams - all memories, good and bad.

While looking at his sleeping form, his mind as malleable as a newborn's, she felt a surge of an emotion so inexplicable she could only liken it to that of a mother for her child. Which was discomfiting because she wanted to be his lover more than anything else. But truly, what woman – across the universe, irrespective of race- had not subconsciously dreamt of this, especially if the man she desired belonged to someone else?

Like with everything else however, there were limitations to the extent one could tamper with the mind. She could only give him new memories, she would have no idea if his old ones were completely gone until the chamber rebooted itself and began the next phase of operations.

She could not give him personality traits. He was a sum of his real past and his own chromosomes - the twin building blocks of personality - and not the past she manufactured for him. That she could not erase.

She could not predetermine his thought patterns, or his reactions. Neither could she determine his situational behavior, his tendencies and his preferences. She could not compel him to like the color green, if he didn't like it in the first place.

She could not alter his likeness. Not that she wanted to in the first place. He was a very handsome man. The Gods had crafted him to be a true representation of masculine beauty, made even more appealing because he didn't seem to be conscious of it himself most of the time.

She could however bury all memories of what he had learnt his entire life, from his parents, his loves, from his work, from Earth and from being Superman. She could make him forget he had ever learnt how to use those marvelous powers, though he would always retain his abilities - all of them. He just would never know he had them, like the subservient slave - oppressed by a tyrant - who never knew he had it in him to rise up and start a revolution.

She could not alter his soul. She didn't want to. It was part of what made him so attractive.

She had decided on a shared life on her own home world, together as Queen and Consort, presiding over a Golden Age. Once it began, however, she would have no control over its events and how he would react to them. In there, he'd still retain his own personality and shape his own destiny. She could only ensure the fail-safes were in place.

I'm giving him a life. The life he deserves. This is a good thing. Honest.

And I love him, from what I have assimilated from the brief time we shared. I will love him even more when we have had the chance to live our lives together. When he has had the chance to love me in return.

Which of course led to the question she had been dreading right from the beginning, but knew it would regardless be answered. There would be no escaping it.

Could love really be programmed into the mind? Even by an empath of her power?

She feared she was going to hate the answer, no matter what it was.

-x-x-x-x-x-

As Galatea watched Kal grope his way through his new environment, she was struck by how easily he took to it, like he had been born to rule. It should've come as no surprise really- after all, he'd survived- no- thrived on an alien world he'd been sent to even as an infant. He took long tours through the capital city; ascertaining how his people lived in the farther reaches of the kingdom, discussing matters of science with the astronomers and physicists at the orbiting observatory, affairs of State with his retinue of advisors, visiting the galactic fleet to watch operations as the shuttles docked, immersing himself in his new life and getting a firsthand perspective of everything. He took a great interest in everything and everyone around him, and why not? He was seeing everything for the first time. And a subconscious part of him knew it.

Initially, she feared for his safety. He was after all the Prince Consort and although she hadn't included any enemies, all previous attempts to render it completely perfect had been doomed to spectacular failure, and she knew too well that the rogue inhabitants in this world she had created would pick up some unpleasant tendencies. Like kidnapping, for instance. Or worse still, regicide. Some amount of entropy was unavoidable, despite her best efforts.

She needn't have worried. Kal retained that aura of otherworldly invincibility even in this dream world. Although he had absolutely no knowledge of his powers, nor had he a chance to use them, the people seemed to embrace him with a fondness and loyalty usually reserved for very old and doting patriarchs.

Even in this world, as on Earth, he set about to help the citizens make better lives for themselves. It was ingrained in his personality to cut through the chase to get to the heart of things. She'd learned that his birth father had been the foremost scientist on Krypton. And now he was following in his footsteps, helping invent and perfect ways to extract and utilize the precious trizelium ore and harness the ion clouds hovering over the planet, forming a thick blanket over its atmosphere. He took part in meetings of the various guilds, attentive to every minute detail. He was playing an even more integral part here than he had played on Earth, since everyone wanted him to be a part of anything and everything. It was likely he'd have lived like this had Krypton survived.

Another more sinister reason was, she suspected, he was trying to avoid her.

It wasn't as though he openly displayed it. He was too kind and emotionally matured for that. Sometimes she caught him gazing at her with a perturbed look in his eyes, as if to ask, Why are you still a stranger to me? When he made love to her, which was often, his doubts and fears about her seeped through. She could read the thoughts running through his head - he thought she was a wonderful wife; it caused him great anguish to be unable to give himself completely to her. Some lingering memory of something that would not quite come to the surface was holding him back.

She had underestimated the power of his bond with Diana. Even from beyond, she was calling to him. That posed a far more serious threat, one that could actually shatter her perfect little world. The distinct possibility of her managing to break him out of this was alarming and caused her no small amount of concern.

Sometimes she felt like weeping. She had chosen this path for both of them, and although he was kind and courteous, generous and loving to her, there was always the sense of something missing, something that was incomplete. Not that he wanted to hold anything back, he was struggling within himself to come to terms with it; but it was something out of his control.

On her part, she gave him almost her all. She gave him her body, heart and soul. All the love she could not bestow upon her husband from another life, Ragnor, she now lavished upon Kal. It came easily to her. Even though he had closed up some remote part of himself to her, he was still very easy to love. The only things she promised herself she would ever hold back from him were his real memories. It was for their protection, both hers as well as his.

Two years had lapsed since she had brought Kal into this world. Two years of waiting for him to love her as much as she loved him. She couldn't afford to lose it all now.

She wanted nothing but the chance to live her life all over again, as she would have chosen it. She wanted nothing but the best for both of them. Was that so wrong? Did it make her a terrible woman for wanting that?

Kal marked their fourth –although he couldn't really trust that it had been four years– anniversary with trepidation. It was something he couldn't quite put his finger on, but it was there, like a jagged shard wedged in his mind.

He had tried to love Galatea. She was everything a man could want, his friends - who seemed to have known him since the day he landed on this strange world - were quick to point out.

"If I had the Queen as my wife," said Wanev, the queendom's best bard, and an irrepressible free spirit, "I wouldn't be out here drinking with us in a bar on Ursa Minor Beta like this. I would be home with her every night, -"

Kal gave him a look, cutting him off before he could get too graphic. He really didn't need that right now. Here he was, doing something completely uncharacteristic, for him anyway– trying to drown out the dreams and his guilt with drink, only to have these men who were supposed to be his most trusted friends ending up reminding him of it. And he couldn't get this load off his chest, as much as he wanted to. Heck, his own wife wouldn't understand, so he couldn't expect Wanev, or even Bryce to. Chances were, they'd probably think him to be mad if he told them what he'd been experiencing.

"Okay," his friend interjected hastily. "Don't mean any disrespect to the Queen. But you don't know what you've got there. When she looks at you, her eyes light up, as though you're her whole reason for her existence. Have you seen that?"

Kal sighed wearily. Leave it to a bard to be so dramatic, he thought. But yes, he had seen it. It had made him feel guilty as hell.

"I'm a good husband to her," he said, suddenly feeling the need to defend himself.

And really, he was. He made sure all her needs were taken care of, whatever it was in his means to provide, even though since she was Queen anyway, nothing material was required of him. He accompanied her to state occasions, temple gatherings and sumptuous parties given in their honor by the gentry. He made love to her almost daily, even when his heart wasn't in it, taking care to make it pleasurable for her. Lovemaking was something she was very good at, being boundlessly creative and unknown to him, having the means to enact both their fantasies. He enjoyed all their intimate contacts, which were plagued only by his guilt that he wasn't really in love with her.

He was very fond of her however. He did love her in a fashion; the kind of love one had for a friend who had been very good to him; a love grown over time, after much mingling and many good deeds. But it was not the head-over-heels passion, the stuff of lore that lovers had died for. Unlike Bryce, he was not quick to dismiss such stories, because somewhere in some strange netherworld, he knew he had loved and experienced that kind of love, if not here, then somewhere, far, far away both in distance as well as in time.

What the hell, he thought. At any rate, telling his spymaster couldn't possibly make things any worse. Bryce was a bit of a shadowy character in his own right, with his more nefarious contacts and his own personal demons, connections to a murky past. The man wasn't exactly a saint.

Of course, none of us really is.

And Kal desperately needed someone else's perspective on these… dreams, visions, whatever they were. Moreover, the man was his best friend, or in any case, the closest to being a best friend as Kal's status would allow him. Of course, Kal had never let that get in the way of their friendship, and any third observer would've thought they were brothers.

He turned to his friend, " Look, I know this sounds ridiculous, but I don't know how to explain it…"

He was there again; on a world he couldn't recognize, with her, standing side by side with a statuesque, astoundingly beautiful, raven haired woman. He looked into her eyes, and despite the fact that he couldn't recall her name, he was absolutely certain he'd known her for a long time, theirs an indefinably intimate connection.

The memories were jumbled, with scattered glimpses, but in the midst of it all, were crystal clear images of a duel with her, the Empress, having fought his way through the entire army of exoplasmic and sentient and non-sentient hosts to defy his fate. He'd already killed her once, only to find that it hadn't changed anything, and had made the impossible journey against the timeline in order to save her. And here, yet he stood, face to face with her once more. He had to ensure he didn't repeat his earlier mistake. He wasn't sure he could survive the trip twice over.

It had taken every last ounce of his strength and speed and skill with the psionic claymore to overcome her, all the while leading her towards the hidden machine. In the midst of their bitter duel, he'd managed to activate the machine, vault over her and tackle her with his shoulder, sending them both hurtling into the open temporal window.

They'd landed outside her tower, on what appeared to be sacred ground, and she'd furiously attacked him again. With some fortitude and skill, and lots of luck, along with the benefit of hindsight, he had successfully parried her strike, and knocked her back with a backhand, prying her weapon loose and launching himself over her to claim it, forcing her to surrender.

He'd finally defeated her, only to then have to fight together against a new enemy, some faceless, nameless, monstrous evil. The battle had been terrible and long, but when the dust settled, she had somehow pushed the Guardian to the precipice, allowing Kal to lunge forward and drive his blade into its eye and the great beast had exploded and disintegrated into sand, dissolving into the water, leaving them the victors, the survivors.

He'd collapsed onto his knees in relief and exhaustion, not realizing that she was moving towards him until she was right in front of him, the fabric of her gown brushing against his arm. He looked up, half expecting to have to fight her yet again, only to have her lift him up to his feet and bring her arms around his neck as she kissed him. Well, that was unexpected to say the least.

He'd saved her, and in doing so had saved himself. And deprived the island, and the entire planet, of it's sustaining force for so long, now causing it to cave in on itself.

They'd left the disintegrating planet together, taking off in his small sleek winged craft, leaving her world behind, her opulent but deadly prison.

He'd just finished entering the co-ordinates for the star jump and retired to his small but comfortable room behind the control deck when she entered, still wearing the robes she'd worn as the Empress. He'd grabbed her almost viciously, pushing her against the wall. She'd quivered at the unexpected sensations from his touch, almost breathless in anticipation, and that had told him all he needed to know.

He'd taken her that night -he wasn't too sure of the time since they were in space- and initiated her in the art of emotional and physical intimacy. Whatever life had in store for them, they'd now face it together as one, no matter what.

"Another life maybe?" the spymaster ventured.

"Maybe." Kal frowned, "I'm trying to think back to my earlier years back home. But the only thing I can remember is this. I don't remember anything else, her name, her identity, where we were, nothing. At least you'd think I'd remember someone I had loved like that. But no."

"It was the blow on your head. Wipes out everything. Probably it was the Queen. Who knows?"

"No. If it had been Galatea, I would have known it. It was someone else."

"You're not going to hurt her, are you?" The spymaster arched an eyebrow. "She's still my Queen and I'm sworn to protect her."

"I would never hurt her." He knew what Bryce was referring to. There were many women in court who did not mind catching the eye of the Prince consort, Queen or no Queen, and the temptation came daily and incessantly. But he respected Galatea far too much to do something that inconsiderate. Moreover, he had never been really interested. Even his excessive lovemaking to his wife had been a form of compensation for not loving her enough.

Unless...

There were moments when the floodgates threatened to break and allow the strange memories to burst through. Like when he was looking outside a crystal pane one night, and the rain was spattering against it, prismatically scattering into multiple hues. The water running down vertically in tiny rivulets down the blue and gold crystal had awoken some unsung memory inside him-

He'd thought he'd bring her home, having overcome one nightmare only to find himself in a new one.

They were seconds away from entering the atmosphere, when they were greeted with unprovoked laser fire. Caught off-guard, Kal had taken the first hit before taking evasive action against the next burst of fire. An ambush!

Things were about to get worse. Much worse.

They picked up the distinct electromagnetic signature of another starjump. He saw the blips on his radar, five of them, and then he saw them to his stern.

A squadron of starfighters had jumped through the vortex and was coming straight for them, and he'd have to act fast. He couldn't try to negotiate. Whoever had attacked his world clearly wasn't interested in brokering surrender. And no time to send out a distress signal. They'd be blown out of space before he could send a signal.

He- they'd have to put up a fight. Kal's Vox-75C was nimble enough, and fast, but not very well armored and not exactly armed to the teeth. Two pairs of pulse laser cannons with a limited charge on them and three plasma torpedoes were the only armaments on board. Well, they'd just have to make do with what they had, and chances were his world's defenses had already been subdued, possibly even wiped out.

"Hang on! We're under attack!" he warned her as she rushed back to the cockpit from their shared room. She hurriedly took her seat and strapped herself in.

He veered sharply, steering the craft expertly as he swerved and wove in and out of enemy fire, executing a barrel roll while returning fire with the plasma cannons, making sure to only use judicious bursts. But he was still outnumbered and outgunned.

One of the enemy fighters came at him, launching a plasma torpedo. Kal maintained his course, opting for a risky double arrow maneuver and fired a torpedo of his own at the last possible minute before pulling back desperately on the controls and pulling off the transition to a knife edge. He barely escaped, the enemy torpedo narrowly missing his wing and tail, destroying one of their own fighters instead while Kal's own torpedo found its mark. At the back of his mind, amidst all the fighting, Kal was keeping score. Two down, three to go.

His triumph was but momentary however, as his scout craft was thrown violently about, careening out of control as it hit the atmosphere. He had taken a direct hit to his right wing. They were now on a wing and a prayer.

The plane was breaking up, burning rapidly on re-entry since the fuselage was compromised. The heat inside the cockpit was becoming unbearable, their air supply running out. She had already passed out, and probably suffered a concussion as well. If he couldn't bring them down in one piece, they'd suffer a lot worse than that.

His face and back were soaked in sweat now, his hands now damp, making it even more difficult for him to man the controls. The plane was now beginning to resemble a fireball.

He'd expected to return home with his new bride to a hero's welcome, find open arms. Instead, all he'd found were fire and death.

The engines finally stirred back to life, and he tried everything he could to avoid crashing onto the jagged face of the tectonic plates ahead. Finally, he managed to crash-land it on its belly on the shore, using the vectored thrusters to swing the nose up by 30 degrees. The landing was extremely jarring, something he could do absolutely nothing to avoid.

He looked up, hazy from the shock and the loss of blood. She was still out cold. He struggled furiously with her straps, and once he freed her, hauled her out of the wreckage, carrying her in his arms and running away from the impending explosion.

He wasn't fast enough. The plane's failsafe kicked in, erupting with a massive concussive shockwave that threw them both a good ten meters. Kal hit his head hard, and then all was black.

When he opened his eyes again, he looked around frantically and found no sign of her. Up ahead, he saw two large, inhuman soldiers carrying her unconscious form away. Anger, blind, helpless anger coursed through his veins like venom. For the moment, he was powerless to stop them, as good as dead if he tried.

He had fought his way through his father's palace, his knowledge of the palace's secrets and his own skill aiding in picking off the soldiers one by one, and discarding the useless dagger for a more suitable weapon, and his preferred one, his trusted psionic claymore.

He'd stumbled upon all the slain guards, his father's elite royal guard among them.

The catastrophe unfolding was beyond anything he could've imagined. The whole city in flames. Scores of people dead and his bride the enemy's prisoner. And it was all because of him.

He thought he'd saved her, saved himself. Instead, he'd damned them all to a horrific doom.

He should've chosen his moment cautiously, used stealth. That was what his ordeal until now dictated. Instead, in the heat of his anger and shock, he'd broken through to the courtyard, scaling down the tower for a desperate assault.

It had been foolish to say the least. He'd landed on his feet, poised to deal a lethal strike to the invading warlord, only to find himself surrounded by a dozen cutthroat soldiers.

The warlord turned to face him, his features oddly obscured and hidden from him, and he was saying something, gloating about how he'd managed to bring the empire to its knees, and how he was going to take the Empress for himself. Kal stood there, helpless, feeling impotent at his inability to stop the unthinkable.

"All that's rightfully yours is mine. And mine it will be," the man's voice was strangely familiar, almost too familiar, like he'd known it all his life. Before Kal's horrified eyes, the man raised his hand, and Kal caught a familiar glint. His father's crown, the brilliantly cut aventurnine on the front stained with blood.

The nightmare was still unfolding. With everyone's attention on Kal and the conqueror, she'd snuck past the guards and moved towards the edge of the cliff. Kal saw what she was trying to do. Kal had bested her in combat, but not subjugated her. She was still his equal. Now faced with the prospect of living as a tyrannical conqueror's slave, she'd chosen death instead. All because he couldn't save her.

"Diane!"

He willed his way past the brutes, dispelling them with a sudden burst of strength and dived, lunging desperately to stop her, his sword still in his right hand, his left arm shooting out to reach for her hand.

She was almost within reach. He only had to stretch that last bit to catch her, when he felt the piercing pain shooting up his arm and he was violently stopped in his tracks. A harpoon, embedded in his left shoulder.

She wore a sad smile, resigned to her fate. It was as if she was absolving him of all responsibility, "I trust you," And he could only watch as she gave herself up to the sea, it's waves rising up to embrace her, to claim her.

"Diane!"

"No!"

"Kal?" Galatea had come up behind him. "What's wrong?" She had appeared concerned.

The moment had been shattered like the tinkling of crystal, and the images hidden by a heavy mist that crept up like a veil. Or a shroud.

"Nothing," he had assured her, kissing her on the lips and absent-mindedly rubbing her cheek, "It's nothing."

Diane. The last thing he needed his wife to know was that he was dreaming of another woman, even if he himself didn't really know who she was.

Eventually things did get better for Kal. It all started with the rescue of a child from a war between Illusk and Nethril. The boy had no family left, all victims of genocide on Illusk, and the fact that the child had even survived was a miracle in itself. He needed a home and a family, and Galatea had a yearning for children. Calaran was a neutral world, a largely peaceful and safe haven if they could ever find one for the boy, and Galatea had been instantly drawn to the child. Moved by the boy's plight and by his wife's earnestness, Kal had decided to take him in.

If Kal had any doubts about raising a child with someone he wasn't truly in love with, they were dispelled the moment he saw her pick him up and cradle him in her arms. They named him Apollo, and infused him with all the values worthy of a royal heir from an early age.

He was taught to be courteous to everyone, regardless of social status and hierarchy, and that to abuse his position's power was unworthy of a monarch. He was taught to cherish all life, and to take from nature only what was needed. He was taught the best thing you could do for the needy was not to give them what they needed, but to instill in them a sense of pride and an ability to procure it for themselves. He was taught knowledge was power, and that to share it was even greater.

Raising Apollo was such a joy and success that a year later, when the boy was five, Kal and Galatea adopted another child. She was named Artemis, after her brother's Olympian namesake's twin. While Apollo was a pensive, thoughtful child who liked to read and take long reflective walks by himself, Artemis was noisy and gregarious, with an appetite for life that was as bountiful as it was exhausting.

"She certainly doesn't take after me," Kal said.

"Nor me," Galatea said. "It must have been one of our ancestors."

Since neither of them had any true ancestors in this world, she knew that was impossible.

Now that they had two children and they were both approaching middle age - Kal was thirty-nine and she one year younger, though her actual age numbered a good many more moons than that - they had settled into a comfortable rhythm of family life and routine, with a sense of serenity. The Morphean Chamber had allowed them to age with the rest of the world; it was one of the dream parameters she had been very particular about- the ability to grow old along with someone and to experience the best of what life would offer thereafter. It was both the gift and the price of mortality.

Kal had aged well, with the physical appearance of a man ten years younger. She supposed it was in his Kryptonian genetics, augmented by Calaran's golden sun- not that he knew it; in this world, he was oblivious to his ability to physiologically process solar energy.

Galatea too had aged well. At first she had been apprehensive, she who was immortal and had never seen a silken gray hair on her pristine coif, or a wrinkle on her flawless features. But it was more pleasant than she had initially thought. There was a sense of passage and progress, an achievement of milestones.

Something more wonderful had come between them however. Her husband had begun to love her the way she wanted him to. It had happened somewhere in the middle of teaching Apollo to walk and deciding as a couple to adopt Artemis. It was a deep-seated love of respect and mutual trust, of loyalty and acceptance. It was the love that many brides come to develop for their husbands from arranged marriages, whom they have only met on the wedding day. It took time like many other good things - sometimes over several years - but it was well worth the wait.

As long as she had the love of her husband, even her inevitable mortality was a price worth paying.

It was even worth the measures she was going to take to safeguard it.

-x-x-x-x-x-

Diana raced through the winding corridors of the palace, searching high and low for any opening, any pathway that seemed unusual. The building was a veritable maze, easy to get lost in. Hera, Kal was right. This could take her hours, even days.

That damnable woman was cunning, she had to give her that.

Time wasn't a luxury Diana had, and if her instincts were correct, Kal was in dire peril. And it'd be a cold day in Tartarus before she let Galatea harm him. And she was making no headway.

All was seemingly lost, with no hope in sight, and caught in a wave of irrational despair, she slumped against a wall.

She was still surprised that she'd feel this way about him. The realization had hit her like a bolt from the blue, a powerful epiphany that threatened to overwhelm her. Kal was her best friend, her guide in a strange and new world, such a direct contrast to everything her mother had ever warned her about men. She remembered how he'd swept in to take that lethal shot from Toyman's temporal displacement cannon, and how she'd reacted so violently to his apparent demise. Even she hadn't expected to react so fiercely and to take it so hard. She'd told herself it was because he was a friend, a trusted colleague, nothing more, nothing less.

Hera, she'd been so blind. What use were the wisdom of Athena and the lasso of truth when she'd been so clueless and deceiving herself this entire time?

No, she couldn't just lose him like this. Not now, not when she'd finally accepted that she loved him.

Blessed Aphrodite. I… love him.

She couldn't stop repeating it in her mind now that she knew it. It was becoming a mantra in itself.

How had she allowed any of this to happen?

Kal...

She remembered the first time she saw him. His image in the Oracle's pool, rather.

Amazon or not, she was still a woman, and like all young women, she'd been curious about her future, and the Oracle had told her she was destined to know a man of unfathomable power who had fallen from the stars, and that man would be her greatest ally in times to come, that they'd forge a bond like no other.

Thereafter, she checked up on him regularly, drawn to him, long before her mother had arrived on the decision to appoint an ambassador. At night, she watched him for hours on end, especially when he was at home. She felt guiltily like some twisted voyeur, but the curiosity was overwhelming.

This was the one, the Oracle had told her, that she would befriend, maybe even love. Would she even have a choice in the matter?

Even as the wheels were turning, she was falling in love with him, just watching him everyday. Here, the suggestion predated the event, just like the man who had psyched himself up so much to think he was ill that he actually became ill, like a form of self-hypnosis.

She was psyching herself up to love him even though she didn't have an inkling of this kind of love; and really, it was so easy. They were kindred spirits, both outsiders whose gifts could at times seem like a curse with their isolating effect, whose souls seemed to call out to each other across barriers of time and space.

As far as she knew, since she started watching him, he had not dated. He did not seem to be in contact with his family in Metropolis, if he had any. He had a few friends, who popped in occasionally, but they were mostly all from work, and only two of them were female. He would often cook by himself in his modest apartment. He rarely went out unless someone needed Superman.

He was alone. So very alone.

What are you doing now, she would venture daily, sitting by the divining pool, watching the image floating across her Kal-scape. Are you sleeping well? Are you as restless as I am? What are you thinking? What are you actually like, in the flesh?

When Hippolyta had made the decision to appoint an ambassador one fateful day and announced the tournament, she decided to sneak in. She'd resolved to become the champion, and earn the rights and responsibilities that came with the title.

"You want the first peek at him, don't you?" her sister had sniggered mischievously. Donna was fascinatingly intuitive. Diana just hoped she wouldn't blab it out to someone.

"That's none of your business."

Everything had gone straight to Tartarus soon after that. The Imperium invasion had devastated the world, and in a bid to keep their land secure, her mother had called off the tournament for the time being.

Diana had gone anyway, stealing the armor and flying off to lend a hand against these invaders, hotheaded young woman that she was. Her mother wouldn't be the least pleased about this, and would most likely banish her once she got wind of her escapade. Diana found she didn't care. She had more pressing concerns. Like the fate of the entire human race for starters.

When she saw him close up for the first time, hurling an alien destroyer like a discus, she was taken aback. Gods... he was beautiful. That was the only word with which she could describe him. He had chiseled features that were finely crafted, as though Hephaestus himself had wrought his divine tools to them, with high cheekbones and hypnotic eyes that were pools of blue she could swim in for all eternity. He had the bearing of a king and the beauty of a god, with a profile that could've adorned a coin.

The next few weeks were a heady blur. Fighting, planning, storming an alien mother ship, rescuing civilians, the whole gamut of things ranging from crucial to the mundane and everything in between, all good, as long as it was with him.

Diana wondered if something was wrong with her, for being so deeply affected by a man to the point of inebriation, that too one that she'd just met. Her mother had shielded her for years, warned her of the evil nature of men.

She'd grown up hearing Hippolyta's cautionary tales of the horrors inflicted on her and her sisters. And this man was so reminiscent of Heracles, a modern demigod with his power and beauty. The similarity between her present situation and her mother's initial infatuation was disconcerting to say the least.

She wondered if that would be an obstacle to any alliance of any sort between them- the fact that he sometimes evoked such comparisons to a man who had enslaved and humiliated her race. It was in those times that she felt ill at ease. Would she remain attracted to a man like that? Or would the precedent of her own mother's personal tragedy dissuade her?

One look into his eyes dispelled all that. Kal was no Heracles, devoid of any malicious intent, and one by one each and every one of the Amazon axioms about men was deconstructed and dismantled. She would have no doubts about his sincerity and nobility, and the strength of his conviction, so like her own.

He was ever the perfect gentleman with her, polite and cheerfully helpful without being patronizing. He became her anchor in this strange new world, going out of his way to help her get acclimatized and settled.

When she was banished after they'd stopped Faust, he'd been a rock, a pillar of support as he did everything he could to take her mind off her pain, showing her she was not alone, that she'd be welcomed back into her family eventually and that in the meantime, she already had a new one.

He took her out to dinner, making her laugh with anecdotes such as the time he tried to milk his first cow at the ripe age of seven, only for it to turn out to be a bull and kick him into a pile of manure. He didn't care about embarrassing himself no end, as long as she felt better. His ploy had been a resounding success- by the time dinner was over and they walked back together under a full moon, he had her laughing uncontrollably.

As long as he was by her side, she'd never feel alone.

All this time, he never tried to assert his supposed superiority over her in any way as she had been told men were wont to do, instead maintaining a respectful, almost reverential distance. Whoever said chivalry was dead?

She marveled at that. The idea that someone like Kal who stood toe to toe with Ares and won, and rubbed shoulders with kings across diverse trans-stellar dynasties sometimes regarded her like some sort of hallowed idol was something of a paradox, especially given the realization that with him, she could freely be herself without the weight of expectations. Not Wonder Woman, the inspirational symbol of purity and womanhood, or the much sought after and fussed over ambassador, but just Diana.

It was strange, to find such kinship here with him, something she had never found at home, even though she had been surrounded by her entire family.

And now she was on her own, just when she had realized she'd loved him all along. It had been insidious, creeping up on both of them as they were caught unawares. It was almost absurd. All this time he was right in front of her and she'd never acted on it, even before she'd learned of Lois, and now that she knew her heart when she least expected it, he was spirited away. The fates, it seemed, had a penchant for irony.

Gather yourself Diana. This isn't over.

She was an Amazon, and would never give up, no matter what the odds. She couldn't- wouldn't lose him like this, not without a fight.

Picking herself up, she resumed her hunt with a renewed purpose, a firmer resolve. She'd raze this palace to the ground and fight Ragnor's entire elite guard if she had to.

That woman was going to regret ever trying to mess with her and Kal. One way or another, she was going to ensure that.

TBC

A/N: I know- I'm an ass, lol. Relax; I know what I'm doing, so just bear with me for a while. The action begins in another couple of chapters, I promise. Thanks for your patience and understanding, and for all the great feedback. Keep it coming!

Do continue on to Ch5- it's been overhauled quite a bit, hence the relocation of all of this to this chapter. Until next time, take care, and happy reading.

Cael