Chapter Text
“I have nothing to say to you!”
One could hardly mistake the exasperated emphasis.
“After I’ve come all this way, through trials insurmountable by lesser beings? Tal quipped.
“Surely, you must have some curiosity,” pausing for effect, he grinned broadly as he opened his arms towards his doppelgänger’s recalcitrant non-goddess.
This last earned him narrowed eyes, a clenched jaw and crossed arms in return. Perhaps this encounter might be more amusing than anticipated. It would be difficult to be less.
Giving no ground, he continued, “If you’re going to be that way, I may as well settle in and get comfortable.”
The non-goddess lowered her chin, tilting her head, now clearly glaring.
Tal turned his upper body back towards the General, asking, “You wouldn’t happen to have an armchair on hand, would you? Something to eat would be pleasant as well. We’re about at the time for high tea.”
Sam Lane interpreted the small act of dominance as pointed at the prisoner, rather than himself. Giving Tal a nod, he turned his back calling, “I’ll see what we can do,” on his way to the hatch.
The prisoner’s eyes followed the General as he went through and the hatch seals engaged behind him.
“Listening for any exterior sounds, are we? Not unreasonable, but this place does even better at keeping it all out than the one on the other Earth.”
Tal decided to levitate in place to be above her eye level. Continuing he said, “But then you’ve had the opportunity to compare the hospitality on both worlds.” That succeeded in elevating her heart rate, slightly.
“So cozy here just the two of us. One can see that you’re more at ease already.”
She unfolded her arms and stepped forward right to the glass barrier. “Will you stop?!!”
Tal’s grin positively beamed.
——————————————
A chair had been found. Sleek, techno black and chrome, with all the adjustments in all the wrong places. As much as he liked modern European design, he would have rather had the comfortable leather club chair of his cell on the other Earth.
Tea (the meal) wasn’t on offer, but he was brought a tray with an almost drinkable crockery mug of coffee and some biscuits that had surely been long past their sell-by date. No matter, the effect was all.
Thirty minutes later Tal found the non-conversation completely stalled, it was like flying directly into headwinds.
She was still standing, stone-faced, silent, having hardly moved.
He’d complimented her fetching suit, mentioned that she was still remembered in her hometown, even noted the devotion of her supporters standing in the hot desert outside the gates. All that earned him was a side-eye and a nose scrunch.
Had he not known how persistently optimistic and chatty Lana Lang Cushing had been in his universe, he would have taken her morose quiet as an innate personality trait.
It was apparent she’d decided on persistent recalcitrance in the hope he’d take himself off. It seemed unlikely she had any inkling he’d been in a similar prison for several times her current stay. He could outlast her by at least a factor of ten.
Time for another tack.
He nibbled a biscuit, sipped some of the coffee with affect, set the mug aside, then crossed his legs and leaned back into a comfortable pose.
“Lana, if I may, I have a good sense of how dull it must be here. I don’t even see any books.”
All that got him was a sharp nod of negation.
Tal wasn’t at all clear whether either Lana was a reader, there weren’t many options for diversion feasible. No electronics would be risked in that cell.
The Lana he knew was an intelligent and persuasive woman with an strong sense of self-worth under the camouflage of her small town middle American feminine self-effacement. Months of isolation and lack of stimulation should have begun to dampen some of that resistance.
Tack again.
“I do think you owe me an explanation though.” Tal said in a considered tone. Raising an eyebrow, he let the assertion hang. Minutes. She flinched first.
“You. I owe you nothing at all. My counsel will be presenting my rights to my husband’s estate in court.”
“The estate that last I read was frozen, with governments in at least 7 countries bringing down legislation for its confiscation?”
“It has nothing to do with you.”
Tal was beginning to think that her labeling by Smallville’s barkeep as “gold-digging” might have merit. Though it might have been a romantic betrayal to his counterpart, this Tal could admit respect for a woman with ambition to better her life. Not however at any cost to those few he valued.
“Be that as it may, I wasn’t speaking of material wealth.”
She looked sceptical. He took any reaction as progress, letting the silence sit, gelled, several more minutes.
Tal’s jaw stiffened. “You’re wearing my family’s sigil. However weird this universe, it seems that I am the sole remaining arbiter of who wears that crest. I’m not convinced that the privilege should extend to you.”
“You shouldn’t have any power here at all!”
“That sigil was leant to you, as the wife of the last Rho native to this universe, not yours by birthright. Having betrayed your spouse to his death, it’s hardly fitting for you to carry on with it.”
“It’s mine to wear by marriage. If there was any betrayal, it was his. He chose his brother over his own wife.”
There was more than a touch of self-righteous anger radiating from weird Lana. By this point, Tal’d expected to be amused. Instead, the Rho sigil and his counterpart’s murder evoked a reciprocal anger. He uncrossed his legs, turning to face her directly in the chair, leaning forward slightly, hands on knees.
“An audacious perspective certainly. From every source, it’s clear that you were very willing to do harm to my counterpart and his brother’s family. If you wanted a divorce dear Lana, I’ve no doubt he would have given you one. Instead, you gave the loyalty you owed him to his killer.”
Her eyes narrowed again. “It’s nothing to do with you.”
“But it most certainly is,” Tal said coldly as he stood, approaching the clear partition of her cell, levitating once more, his fury heating in the yellow glow of her cell.
“Not content to divide your husband from his brother, you did your best to harm my own brother’s family in my universe. My nephew Jordan may be able to fend for himself, but the lives of others were threatened. That will not be forgotten.”
“They would have been better off if they’d simply accepted the merger.” She began to levitate slightly, attempting to match his height, but subsided immediately, powers neutralized my the golden solar glow. “Can you honestly say that their lives were more important than bringing billions of lives to completeness?”
Tal forebore to say that, as far as he cared, his family’s lives were worth more than all the other beings on two worlds. What would Kal say? (Other than that he believed anyone can be saved…)
“So, utterly confident, Lana, that yours is the better way. I won’t ask whether you believe that Allston’s plan was valid, because you quite obviously still do. The near destruction of two solar systems notwithstanding.”
Tal’s temper spiked further contemplating all that he could have lost, “You, Lana, never stopped to consider whether the intelligent minds on the other world wanted or welcomed the merger.”
“So, you would condemn us all to incompleteness just because some people refused to wake up to how their lives could be made whole?”
No evidence of regret or remorse, just the acid of lost hope. Were those pinpricks of tears forming in her eyes?
Well, he hadn’t been in such a different state a year or so ago. He would do her the courtesy of ignoring them.
It was past time though for the ultimate questions. He had reached the storm front.
“Whatever did you see in the life of the your counterpart that would have made you whole?”
He paused a beat, three, then drove the point home, “What was more important than your marriage, your husband’s life, your husband’s family and all those who held you dear?”
She shrunk back.
Dropping to the simple cot bolted to the floor at the back of her cell, she sat, feet braced on the floor, hands on her knees. She whispered, shoulders slumped, “What we experience of our other selves’ lives through the tea is private, never to be shared.”
That clearly had the air of a rote line programmed by a manipulative leader. He experienced a sense of recognition of his own programming by his abusive father.
But this Lana, an adult, had chosen to fall into a cult leader’s charismatic sway. What was this vulnerability, this incompleteness, such that Ally Allston’s vision still held absolute sway?
He was beginning to reflect on whether Donovan might not have a point. De-eradication was not an option to be dismissed out of hand.
The woman, physically one of the most powerful beings on this Earth, remained tightly in the grip of the cult, months beyond a near apocalypse and her leader vanished. His fury cooled somewhat, confronted by her evident the fragility of her current psychological state.
“One must wonder what those glimpses of the other Lana showed you, what deficiencies in your life you thought she would fill.”
Tal descended to the floor, crossed his arms, regarding her speculatively. “We were quite well acquainted actually, Lana Lang Cushing and I. She once worked for me, in a trusted post in on a significant project. Shall I tell you about her?”
The Lana in front of him looked up, disturbed and curious in equal portions. Her lips parted.
“Perhaps I should just list off her notable qualities to see if any resonate.” He had her full attention now at least.
“Where to start?” Tal essayed the tone and smile of charming raconteur.
“She too grew up in Smallville. She however left to better her mind, graduated from an unexceptional university with respectable marks.” Tal noted that superior academic achievement prompted not a flicker in this Lana’s expression.
“Unexpectedly, our Lana eschewed a career in the city or graduate school, marrying a high-school attachment, a fireman, burying herself in her community. I found her under-utilized and under appreciated as a loan officer at the local bank. The potential untapped was exactly what was needed for my program.” Negligible reaction, again.
“I understand she was elected recently as Mayor of Smallville.” He was intrigued to observe that this last provoked a snort.
“Otherwise, she still looks much like you. Attractive, almost middle aged. Fitting with Smallville, her attire is down-to-earth, girl next door as they say.” There wasn’t even a blink in response.
“In her private life, she’s stayed with the same unextraordinary man, the local fire chief. There’s been a recent separation.” Tal paused, “Perhaps another parallel.”
The defiance was back. She sat one leg crossed over the other, and tossed her ponytail, looking directly at at Tal once again.
“I suppose the only thing left to mention is that she has two daughters, one the age of my nephews the other younger. Jordan and the elder one have had a romantic attachment as I understand.”
She stood abruptly, rigid. “The girl who was with her was her daughter?”
“Dear Lana, did you nearly kill your opposite’s child? That would hardly have been a happy realization were you to merge with her,” he drawled.
Tal was in fact appalled. If Lana Cushing’s daughter mattered to his nephew then she was by extension important to him.
As it happened, he had at last had succeeded in making this Lana livid. “I need her to be complete. She has motherhood, her own family. Tal took that from me. Go! Get out, and leave me in peace!”
Tal-Rho removed himself calmly to his chair, resuming a (forcibly) relaxed pose. He sat, right ankle crossed over his left thigh, right elbow on knee, contemplative. “I’ll just give you some time to gather yourself.”
Lana (not Rho, he was now definite on that) turned to face the back wall. What he at first took for another infuriated snort, was in truth weeping.
He’d spent enough of his youth in England to have acquired the profound British male aversion to female tears. He gave her some time to wind down, but it was clear she was deep in the pit of it now. There was nothing for it, sarcasm was the only suitable response.
“What’s your problem now?” Tal drawled again in his father’s most quelling tone.
Instead of stiffening her lip, this Lana turned, mumbling head down with another bounce of her ponytail, “Don’t you understand? He promised I was his everything, that he would give me everything. And at first it seemed he did, even this Kryptonian body.” Tal noted that her gesture towards her form wasn’t one of satisfaction.
“But there were no children. The one thing he wanted most of all. That I wanted most of all.”
She returned to the front of the cell, confronting Tal directly. “My husband, instead of being a father to our children, doted on his brother’s sons. I was left with less than the most ordinary human woman.”
Tal thought he could understand, even if empathy was a reach. This, finally, was a loss that could have drawn her to the quotidian life of the Lana Lang Cushing he knew. He considered his next words very carefully.
“The prospect of having children was always very unlikely. There were no indications it was at all possible before my brother Kal and Lois had their twin sons.”
This Lana’s thoughts however were spiralling down another track. “It was her fault. Who could have thought an AI mother-in-law could be worse.”
Tal was astonished. “Surely you don’t attribute your lack of children to my counterpart’s mother?”
“Yes, I do. I will never believe that she didn’t know that the eradiction process would make us less able to have children instead of more.”
Tal accepted he’d waded into emotions deeper and more heart tearing than he was ready to be confronted with, even from a victim of cult that preyed on despair. He very well knew how to prey on those without hope, those willing to give their entire identities for a better, different version of themselves. Any introspection on this point was beyond where he was prepared to go.
In this Lana he allowed a parallel to his once-held jealousy of Kal’s family, her unfulfilled longing for a family of her own matching his resentment that his brother put his wife and sons before himself.
That aside, a genetic and technical puzzle existed here. One that could have implications for himself and for the future of his family in his own universe. The truths of her bitter claim about the unforeseen cost of the eradication process, or his mother’s AI counterpart’s knowledge, were not something that could be answered in this room.
And he now had one yet more question to ponder regarding Donovan’s de-eradication project. Would she possibly regain her ability to have children, or was that irrecoverable?
More sobering personally, he realized, were her claim true, his father’s dream of reviving Kryptonians in human bodies had always been doomed to fail within a generation. A genocide to restore a people who had no possibility of a future. That was an unwelcome tidbit that would take a very long time to digest.
At some point, Tal realized she was speaking, had been for some time.
He gathered himself, saying, “I sincerely regret, I was lost, deep in my own thoughts. Would you be so good as to repeat that? I am genuinely interested.”
“I’m not sure it’s worth repeating. I probably just needed to say it for myself,” she replied, her breath more steady.
Tal responded, “You’ve given me considerable food for thought.” Her responding look remained marginally sceptical.
“While I cannot fathom how a merger with the Lana of my universe would improve things for you, I very much appreciate how painful must have been the disappointment you and my counterpart experienced.”
Her expression soothed somewhat. “I don’t think I am ready to thank you for that.”
“Unnecessary.” He pushed himself to his most open and sincere expression. “I can’t speak to your accusations about the intentions of the AI of Lara Lor-Van on this world.”
Putting both feet flat to the floor, leaning forward arms on his thighs, palms outward, he offered intently, “I do intend to speak to her however. I can undertake to share anything pertinent that I may learn.”
She nodded.
“In the meantime, are there things from your home that you would to be more comfortable here? A chair? A painting? Your own clothes?”
“You just want me out of this suit with your family sigil.”
“That was a genuine offer. As much as I insist that my family sigil needs no further disgrace in either universe, my intent was your comfort.”
Unconvinced, she looked about to retort but subsided. “I guess I can accept your offer then.” She enumerated, “ Clothes, a chair, bedding. Some magazines and newspapers, maybe some of my old novels. They’re in a box on a shelf at the back of my closet.”
“What I’d like to do is to see my counsel. He hasn’t come in three weeks. They can’t be refusing him entry.”
Tal took the opening, eyebrows rising, “I’ll see what can be done. If anything. I’ll let you know myself if there’s an impediment.”
There remained one last awkward but absolutely necessary bit of ground to cover.
“You need to be aware that the public believes that I am your husband. In my excursion here on your world I took the opportunity to visit this Smallville.”
“You did what? Seriously?”
“Utterly. At present much of this world believes that I am your heartbroken Tal, here finally to break things off with his errant wife. DoD has not countered that narrative.”
That earned a facepalm. She sat back on her cot, sighing, “We need to manage that.”
“We?”
“You said you’d help.”
He hadn’t precisely. He detected some calculation. He deigned to interpret this as progress.
“What if I were to stop in to your supporters outside this place, as I depart, and speak with them? I could say that you are in good health, that I am making efforts to ensure that you are held comfortably. I could ask for their understanding and respect for our privacy in this difficult period.”
“You’ve done this before,” she asserted appraisingly.
“I have been a man of public stature in my universe.”
“Well, if you say it, exactly that way, I am willing to go along.”
Tal restrained himself from observing that with no access to counsel, she had no means to reach her followers with messages. Or, perhaps she did. A security follow-up surely for the General and Irons.
“Then we are agreed. I don’t know precisely when I will be able to return, but I do commit to at least visit you before I make my journey back to my universe.”
She nodded.
Tal stood, made a feint at a chivalrous nod, and took himself to the hatch to hit the call button to be let through.