Dark Tide

Summary: A different take on the events of Man of Steel.

Disclaimer: I own nothing.

Of all the situations Lois Lane has found herself in over the years, creeping her way through the corridors of an alien spaceship while being guided by the ghost, for lack of a better term, of Clark Kent's alien father was never amongst them.

But it needed to be done.

Under his guidance she reaches a door and opens it…

Lois blinks in shock.

This looked like the command deck and there was Clark, in the red and blue costume and he was standing there next to General Zod and Sub-Commander Faora-Ul. They were just standing there, chatting like old friends almost.

Clark notices her moments before they all do. "Huh. You were right. He did try to lead her to an escape pod," he comments to Zod.

"Naturally. Remember Kal I knew your father very well."

Lois is very lost. "W-what's..."

Zod snaps his fingers and points at the Earth woman and two soldiers stomp over and grab her by the arms and drag her over. "I had the ship's schematics in the data banks altered so you would be led here," he explains how she ended up here.

Lois looks at Clark for an explanation but doesn't receive one. Only a rather...regretful look?

"You might as well show yourself Jor-El," Zod calls out to the air. "I know you're in the system. Don't you have something to say before I have you purged?"

Jor-El's image flickers into existence. His eyes look at his son in confusion. "What are you doing Kal?"

"What am I doing?" Kal asks back, incredulous that the question even needs asked. "I'm bringing our species back from extinction," he explains it like it should be obvious. He looks to Zod. "Right?"

Zod inclines his head once in acknowledgement that that is correct. He addresses his old friend, "Your son has the strength you sorely lacked Jor," he says it with an insulting overtone.

"What have you done to him?" Jor-El demands to know.

"I have done nothing except offer him the truth. When were you going to tell him about the Codex? When were you going to tell him that the means to resurrect our race was within him?"

Yes, they knew. Had discovered it hidden in Kal's cellular structure.

Jor-El remains stoic. "I would have told him when I believed he was ready."

Clark snorts, almost disgusted.

"You needed to learn what it meant to be human first," he addresses his son. "You needed the wisdom and maturity not to repeat our mistakes."

"And leaving me alone, leaving me to think I was the last, that was better?" Clark asks in disbelief. "That was an act of unbelievable cruelty, dad," he says the word mockingly, almost sneering in his contempt.

"I know it was harsh but if our race was to be brought back and thrive there had to be a bridge between our species and the humans."

"Was he always this infuriating?" Clark asks Zod.

"Frequently," Zod says with a hint of...admiration in fact. There was a reason he did consider Jor-El his friend.

"What would have we resurrected Kal? Him?" Jor-El asks, nodding in Zod's direction. "Look at him. He could have handled his arrival here in so many other ways. He could made peaceful overtones when he arrived. Instead he made threats. He could have negotiated asylum, made an offer to share this world or took what he needed and find another world to settle on. Instead he stands here, planning the genocide of the human race. He is a soldier down to his very last strand of DNA. He can't be anything else. He is a product of Krypton's failures."

Zod shakes his head and mutters under his breath.

"That is why you were born the way you were Kal. To break the cycle. To free you to be anything you choose."

"And I choose to save my race," Kal responds. His blue eyes narrow as he comes to stand face to face with his father. "I think you don't give the General and his soldiers here enough credit. Look at how they have adapted to survive. Wandering through space for decades. He might not like me saying this but he and they have grown beyond merely being soldiers."

On instinct Zod doesn't like what Kal is saying...yet he can't help but consider his words may have merit.

"You know I do appreciate what you were trying. I even understand it. And I am thankful you saved my life. After all who doesn't want to live but why here? Do you even understand the hell you put me through? Do you know how excruciatingly painful it was as my senses developed?" Kal asks, anger lacing through as his tone becomes short, like a whip cracking.

There is regret in Jor-El's face. "I am sorry Kal..."

Clark snorts. "He's sorry," he mutters. "Why Earth?" he asks. "There's lots of inhabited worlds in the galaxy. Some far more advanced than this one. Some who would have taken me in and looked after me. Worlds with red suns where my childhood wouldn't have been filled with agonies. You know I was lucky. I was found by a kind couple who chose to adopt me. Another may have just handed me over to the government. I can guess what sort of life I would have had then. Probably involved a laboratory and cutting me apart to find out how I ticked. It was a sheer fluke that that was not my fate wasn't it?"

"The alternative was your death along with Krypton's."

"That didn't address the question of why Earth. You notice that?" Clark asks Zod.

"I did," Zod confirms.

"The pain you endured was a trade off for the strength of the yellow sun. That strength you needed to give you the advantage to survive. As for why Earth? Because humans have potential. They have good in them. In many ways they are like what Kryptonian use to be many thousands of years ago. They only need a light, an example to follow to a future better than ours. To avoid our mistakes."

Clark folds his arms across his chest. "When were they suppose to follow me? Before or after decreeing me a threat and trying to capture me?"

"I never said the path would be easy."

"Your path," Clark snaps the correction. "That's the problem. You talk about choice but from the moment you decided to start talking to me it's been your path, the one you think best for me you've been pushing me along. It was never my path. It was never my choice."

"It was always your choice."

"No. This..." Clark gestures around them. "This is my choice. To no longer be alone. It may not be perfect and perhaps you're right it was flawed but I can tell you from growing up on that world below us, human beings are no less flawed. Yet you seem to want to give them more right to exist than your own species," he accuses his father.

"I want both to exist, in peace. That's what I thought you wanted," Jor-El argues with his rebellious son.

"I only went along with it because until General Zod showed up I truly thought I was alone and had no other choice. It's not you, dad who gave me choice. It was him," he points at the General.

"Kal don't do this," Jor-El pleads.

"I thank you, dad for giving me life. I would thank my mother too if I could but it's time I started living my own life, not yours," Kal tells him.

"Kal..."

"Can you please shut him up now?" Clark pleads.

Zod turns to one of the soldiers at a console. "Purge the invasive intelligence," he commands.

"Zod..." Jor-El starts to say.

Zod holds his hand up to stop him. "Your son has said all that is needed. I have no intention of getting into a debate with a ghost. Goodbye my old friend," he says his farewells.

And with that Jor-El flickers out of existence, a mournful look on his face of complete failure and despair.

Clark takes a deep breath and finds a hand on his shoulder. He turns his head to find it is Zod, showing a sliver of sympathy.

"What have you done?" comes the shocked voice of Lois.

"Made a choice," Clark says with a heavy heart. He looks at her with a sorrowful expression. "It can only be one of us. My people or yours. I choose mine."

"You can't!" Lois cries. "All those people! Your mother! I thought you were more than just some unfeeling alien!"

"You have no idea what I am. Neither do I. These people are the ones who can teach me."

"Bastard!" Lois screams in fury. "You...you monster!"

"Take her back to her cell!" Zod snaps off the order, having heard enough.

Lois struggles and cruses but even in their natural atmosphere Kryptonians are far stronger than one human female.

"Curious creature," Faora remarks, her first words since this all began, her expression one of finding a...pet perhaps.

Clark manages a tiny smile for some bizarre reason before sobering. "I don't want her to suffer," he expresses his wish. "I don't want any of them to suffer any more than necessary."

"Compassion, Kal-El?" Faora questions him.

"Now Sub-Commander," Zod says, using a slight chastising tone. "Kal is correct. There is no need to inflict more suffering than absolutely necessary. That is inefficient, wouldn't you agree?"

Faora inclines her head with an imperious air. "Yes, General," she acknowledges his point, without giving an indication whether she agrees with it or not.

"Then see to our guest, efficiently," he gives the task to her.

Faora turns on her heels and exits the command deck to do just that.

"Curious creature," Clark remarks at the departing figure.

Zod actually laughs. "She has her uses," he says in response.

"I can imagine," Clark quips...or then again maybe not. He hasn't a clue what goes on under her icy exterior. His mind had been preoccupied with trying not to notice how she is one of the most stunningly gorgeous women he has ever laid eyes upon. Many people have reflected that he has stunning eyes. So does she but in her eyes you can see the inherent danger of the woman. She has the eyes of a predator. That is the one thing he has fathomed about her.

At first Zod feared that Kal might be just like his father but after he entered the boy's head(and he really was still just a boy by Kryptonian standards) he found someone quite different. Someone forced to grow up alone and different from everyone around him. Forced to wander the planet trying to find his place and unable to do so because they were not his people. Someone with a resentment of his father for all he had had to endure. Someone who was only truly starting to feel alive now he was amongst his own kind...and when Zod offered him a place amongst his people he accepted.

Still, even then, Zod knew Kal was not making this choice without regret. Even Zod regretted it in a way. If he had another option he would take it. He doesn't. You can't just terraform any world. The planet has to meet precise conditions. Earth meets those conditions.

However, even then they will need to adapt. The new atmosphere will filter out some of the effect of the yellow sun but not all of it. They will still be far stronger than they would have ever been on Krypton. Their senses will be far more acute even if they are not at the full madness inducing levels that Kal himself has had to endure.

Zod admires that. He can see a strength in Kal not all possess. He adapted to this world and its yellow sun and not just survived but thrived. Now he had adapted to his own native atmosphere, even if it was a struggle at first but here he stands after only a short time. Kal's experiences, his strength allied with Zod's own will be crucial if they are to adapt and survive now. If they are to bring their race back from the precipice.

He almost can't believe that they are almost there. Decades wandering the stars, trying desperately to bring his species back and now they stand on the threshold.

"I would like to go to Smallville," Kal announces.

Zod waits for the explanation.

"To get my ship and to..." he swallows a lump in his throat, "...to say goodbye to my mother. She deserves that much for raising me," he explains with the most regret of all but she can't survive on the new Krypton that is about to be born.

"You could bring her here," Zod offers. He is not above a compassionate gesture.

Clark shakes his head. "She would never accept just standing here, watching, while her world dies. You saw it with Krypton. Would you accept it?"

"No," Zod says in understanding. "Very well Kal. While you do that I will retrieve the scout ship and secure the Genesis Chamber." He turns to a lieutenant. "Prepare the World Engine for deployment."

"Yes, General."

Zod watches on from the command deck of Black Zero as the transformation process begins and the gravity waves begin to tear the city below apart. The scout ship was now safely aboard and more important the Genesis Chamber contained within with which their race would be reborn upon this transformed world. Upon this New Krypton.

Kal was here with him, by his side as he had wished Jor-El would have been. The boy had been quiet since his return from Smallville and Zod had heeded his inherent strategic thinking and not asked what happened.

Clark...no, no Kal. He has to start thinking of himself by his given birth name. Kal watches on. This gives him no pleasure. It just had to be done. Though he can easily imagine what would have happened if he had made the opposite choice. He would be out there, helping humanity stop his own people. It would have to be him. Their technology and weapons were no match for either Black Zero or the World Engine. This fact proved by their pointless attempts to attack them.

But he made the simple choice. To just not be alone any longer.

He feels a hand on his shoulder and is surprised to find that it belongs to Faora. It's the 1st time he's ever seen the remotest hint she possesses compassion or sympathy...or at least the 1st time she's ever shown she possesses it is perhaps more accurate.

Though for Faora's part it's more a spark of intrigue. Kal-El is different. Free born. He's like no other Kryptonian so she has no preprogrammed basis on which to judge him. Every other Kryptonian she can basically judge them by what she knows they were created to be. Not with him though. It makes him interesting to study...and she will be studying him closely. Make no mistake about that. For now she turns and watches with a...gladness in her heart that her race will soon be reborn, better and stronger than before.

While the Kryptonians look on and wait for their new world to be born, for the humans below it is, to put it simply, the end. They can do nothing as the wave of destruction spreads outward.

For them it is a Dark Tide of Death.

The End.

Author's Note: So why not twist the whole movie around. Clark would have plenty of reasons to be annoyed at Jor-El. Growing up with the pain of all his supersenses. The fact he could resurrect his race contained inside him being withheld from him and the simple fact of feeling the connection to his own kind far stronger than any desire to defend humanity. It is, after all, a thin line. I do believe he feels the temptation of the pull to his own species but normally he resists to do what is right. Well here is a dark world where he didn't do the right thing...or he did from the Kryptonians' perspective. C'est la vie. Hope you enjoyed.