Chapter Twelve – Justice Lords Universe
A/N: Well, the last half of this chapter went in a totally different direction than what I was planning. :)
Kal stares at his son's picture that he found on Bruce as if he could will his son into this universe. He still can't believe Bruce left him there. Who knows where his son is in that universe, who is raising him. Of course, Kal has his suspicions as to who.
Kal feels the flare of anger in his chest at the thought of his doppelganger and Bruce's. There's no doubt in Kal's mind that those two are the ones raising his son now. Kal has to stop himself from crumpling the picture with his anger.
He looks up at Bruce who is still lying on the hospital bed. "How could you do this to me Bruce? To us? We were going to be happy. I thought you loved me." He wipes at his eyes, ridding the moisture that built up there. He looks back to the picture and rubs his thumb over his son's picture, trying to bury the stinging pain in his chest. "Don't worry son, Daddy's going to save you. I promise."
"Kal." Kal startles at hearing his name over the intercom. "We have a situation." The voice is John's.
Kal takes one last look at Bruce and then the picture before stashing the photo into his cape pocket. He then gets up and makes his way to the monitor rooms. There he finds John, Diana, J'onn, and Shayera. "What is it?"
"A prison outbreak," Shayera says. "From Belle Reve."
Kal narrows his eyes. "How many."
John crosses his arms. "Enough to require all of us."
Kal suppresses a sigh. All he wants to do is go back to sitting next to Bruce. "Fine, let's go."
As they all walk to the zeta tubes, Diana catches his shoulder. "Kal, are you sure you're okay to go? You look tired."
He feels tired too, the only thing that is really driving him right now is his son. "I'm fine," he tells her, shrugging her hand off. "Come on."
They all zeta down to the prison where there is complete chaos. There's probably more than thirty inmates who have escaped, many of them with metahuman powers, and there are guards being held hostage. "I will take care of the hostages," J'onn says then fazes out of sight.
"Alright everyone, let's get to work," John says next then flies off, Shayera following him.
Diana is back by his side. "I guess that leads you and me together."
With a heavy, tired sigh, he follows her. They take out about ten of the inmates themselves. Of course, Diana had chosen some of the toughest ones and so by the time the tenth one is knocked out, Kal is completely exhausted. "We better go and see if J'onn needs help."
"I am all set." J'onn appears next to them then and when Kal looks over to the entrance of the prison, he sees the hostages running out. "Green Lantern and Hawkgirl will need our assistance, however."
So then they are off to help John and Shayera. Clark takes on someone with ice powers and then another with fire powers. He can't remember their names as they are new. The two showed up together about a month ago and Diana had handled them by herself. Kal just wants to know why there seems to be a gazillion metas and villains that use ice and fire.
He takes them out easily and then moves onto the next. He does this until all of the prisoners are down with the help of his team. "Hey!" He turns to look at John when he calls for his attention. "Should we make an example of one of them?"
Kal looks down at the prisoner Shayera is holding by her feet. The prisoner is a scrawny man, dark hair in a disarray and brown eyes looking frightened. He's on his knees, hands tied behind his back with Diana's lasso. Kal doesn't know his name either. He looks back up to John. "Do it."
He watches as John steps about ten feet away from the prisoner who is now trying to scramble away but Shayera has a strong grip on him. John points his ring at the man and the ring starts to glow green. Kal is almost surprised Shayera isn't going to be the one to kill him as she hasn't killed someone in almost two weeks. Shayera was the easiest one to convert to killing as she never had any qualms about killing in the first place. The only reason why she didn't before is because they told her she couldn't. She was really delighted when that all changed.
Diana was the next one to easily sway to killing. Growing up as a warrior, despite her want for peace, made it so she also had few qualms about it once the go ahead was made. As a warrior she knew when killing was necessary and in a world in which their own president could get away with murder, get away with killing one of their teammates, she knew that killing was necessary now. There's just no question about it with her.
John was a different story. He could kill perfectly fine as he had taken plenty of lives in the military but he was also taught that killing came with a cause and that it was only done because they had to and their targets were the enemy. Villains are their enemy as well but killing them didn't sit well with John at first as he thought that it wasn't the same, that their villains were different somehow. It took Diana telling him, convincing him, that this is a war, that their villains, the ones who murder innocent people all the damn time, are the exact same as the people he gunned down in the military. That they deserve it. Soon after that, John was on board as well.
It was Bruce who was the hardest to convince, the one who took the longest to take his first life. Kal was the one who had to convince him and though it was hard, though it took forever to do, Bruce still hung onto every word he said. Kal still remembers that first night Bruce had killed someone. He was pregnant then and Kal had tried to stop him from going out but he did anyways. When he came home, hands covered in sticky, red blood, tears streaking down his cheeks and breath hitching in his throat, Kal knew exactly what he had done. Kal had followed Bruce into the cave's bathroom where Bruce immediately went to the sink to shakily wash the blood off. Kal stood close behind him, taking both his hands to steady them, and helped rinse them off.
"It's okay Bruce."
"No, no it's not Clark. What I just did… I can't… I killed… I…"
Bruce was shaking violently in Kal's arms and so Kal pulled him closer to his chest. "You had to. It couldn't be helped." Kal placed a hand on Bruce's stomach. "So our baby will grow up in a safe world."
"I killed someone," Bruce sobbed, leaning all his weight into Kal. "I killed someone Clark."
"Shh." Kal lowered the two of them to the floor, holding him close. "It's okay Bruce, it was for our baby, for the world."
They had ended up sitting on that floor for an hour until Bruce cried himself to sleep. Kal then carried him up to bed, stripped him out of his Batman suit, and slid into bed beside him to continue holding him as close as possible, hand placed firmly over Bruce's little baby bump. After that, Bruce no longer had any problems killing.
"Kal?" Kal blinks out of the memory and sees Diana looking at him in concern. "You with us?"
Kal clears his throat. "Yes." He then looks to John and notices that he had already done it, already killed the prisoner and now there is blood pooling around the body and Shayera's boots. Kal feels sick. "I… I'm going to go." He flies away, ignoring Diana when she calls after him. He flies high up in the sky until it's freezing and then chooses a random direction to go in. He feels like he can't breathe and he's shaking. Tears are prickling at the edge of his eyes.
Somehow, Kal finds himself at Wayne Manor and he barges in, his breaths coming in gasps. He stumbles his way through the rooms and the halls, tripping on the stairs as he makes his way up them. He enters the only room he ever spends any time in anymore, crawling under the covers of his and Bruce's bed. If he tries hard enough, he will still be able to smell Bruce, as faded as it is.
Kal curls up on his side, hugging his knees close to his chest, and squeezes his eyes shut. He's still shaking, he's still panting, and he's still crying, loud and wrecked sobs escaping his throat after every other pant of breath. He feels like he's going to throw up as the flashes of Wally, lying dead in his bed amongst a pool of blood, bombard his mind. The worst part about having an eidetic memory, is that when this happens, when these memories, these flashes happen, he remembers everything.
He remembers the way Wally looked, the way he felt, what he heard, what he smelt. Kal swallows thickly, his throat growing dry as the smell of metallic blood fills his nose. He scrambles out of the bed, grabs the trashcan that is next to the bedside table, and pukes. The tears are hot on his cheeks as he continues to cry, as he continues to hyperventilate and shake and sweat, and he retches again but this time nothing comes up. It feels like his heart is beating too fast.
He slides the trashcan away, huddling up next to the bed in another fetal position. Kal buries his eyes into his knees and sobs and sobs and sobs an endless mantra. But, eventually, it does have to end and when it does, Kal is sprawled out on the floor, arms and legs spread out, and staring up at the ceiling. He feels like he is in a daze and he blinks, dislodging a few tears that decided to hang out at the edge of his eyes instead of falling when he was crying. Kal takes a shaky breath in, feels the shudder run through his body, and then slowly sits up.
He looks around the room, wishes Bruce were there and feels a painful sting stab him in the chest. They should have been happy with their son by now. But all it seems is Kal is miserable and maybe… maybe he wants to die just a little bit.
He reaches behind himself, pulls out the picture of Bruce and his son, and looks at it. No, Kal won't die as long as his son is out there, as long as he has his son. His son is the only thing that is keeping him going, keeping him alive. He has to live for his son because he can't abandon him. He won't.
"Kal," J'onn's voice. "You will want to come to the Watchtower."
Kal clears his throat and wipes his eyes to dry them. "What is it J'onn?"
"We have progress."
Kal is up and out of the Manor in a blink of an eye. It doesn't take him long to get back up to the Watchtower and to the room where all the scientists are. "What is it?"
The scientist that is in charge, the one Kal had choked before in order to get him to work faster, approaches him quickly yet warily. "Superman, we've finished. We're successful."
"Successful?"
"Yes, we've managed to get the portal working and we were able to figure out how to get the coordinates in which to type in to get to a specific universe to work as well. It's completely successful and operational."
Kal stares at the portal in stunned disbelief. Then he swallows, blinking to clear his head. Patting the scientist on the shoulder, Kal turns. "Good job Doctor." He starts to walk out of the room, walking past all his teammates as he goes, and pulls out the picture again, looking at his son. He tells them just before he exits the room, "We leave in a few days."
A/N: So, what do you think? Any thoughts or feelings on Lord Clark right now? I wanted to show/remind everyone that Kal isn't the only one who kills in this universe since I haven't really shown any of the others as being crazy.
Thanks for reading. :)
