tushanshu_logs | What Are You Worth, the Things You Love or the People You Hurt?

In some ways, he suspected that death would have been less traumatic than what they actually did to Hayley. It takes time before he feels it is appropriate to approach the girl; it is impossible to pretend that the relative lack of physical violence against her means it will be immediately well to speak to her. Memories linger, and he can't expect hers to fade when his have not. Will not.

She still is owed an apology, and even if he will not get her forgiveness (all the things she prizes most they had deliberately stripped away from her) she deserves acknowledgement.

It is what brings him to the door of her suite, roughly two weeks later. He knocks, and then steps away from the door. Far away enough that he is still within range of it and easily visible, but not standing at it. Far more than an arm's length away from the threshold. Dark blue robes over his skinsuit, rather than armor, and while his hands are clasped, it is loosely.

Hayley's not expecting anyone, but few people know where she lives and even less actually come to visit, so she doesn't give the knock much thought. Still, recent events have her on edge and she does a quick push spell just to ensure that she remembers how. Worst case, the combined efforts of the spell and the charm around her neck, hidden beneath her shirt, should give her enough time to escape to Bart's - or call for Kon.

Donning a smile, as if to convince her visitor that her entire world isn't built on fear these days, Hayley moves over to open the door.

She freezes for the first split second that she sees him. Then one hand clasps the charm, though she doesn't yet activate it, and she immediately slams the door. Her heart feels like it's in her throat. She can hear her pulse and feels her muscles tensing. She begins to physically shake as she forces the lock closed and backs away from the door, the slowly fading memories rushing back to her with the sight of him.

It takes a moment for her to focus on breathing. He isn't wearing armor; he's standing back from the door; if he wanted to break in, he would have. Very slowly, logic begins to step in to insist that this isn't the man who terrorized her two weeks before.

She steps up to the door again and, although she doesn't unlock or open it, she listens.

The pause and then immediate slam of the door isn't surprising. The sudden spike in the speed of her heartbeat- from the moment she saw him- is enough to wrest control of his powers away from him for a brief moment; the door suddenly peeling away and behind that her skin exposing her musculature, veins, then the shifting between viscera and skeleton makes him force his head down, to look at the floor until his vision returns to normal.

He waits, and when he hears her move- closer, rather than retreating, he speaks, loud enough for her to hear.

"Hayley, I'm here to apologize."

Hayley remains frozen where she is, one hand now on the lock and the other on the door handle, barely preventing her shaking. His words carry easily through the door. She finds herself caught between two anxieties, that of her neighbors possibly knowing about her business and that of having to face the man who so deeply tormented her not that long ago. And so she remains stuck in place for the moment, her mind racing to weight the two against each other while also trying to focus on the more immediate need for a response.

"How do I know this isn't a trick?" Her volume is raised, enough to carry through the door even though she knows he doesn't really need the aid. It feels better to treat him more normally in this particular situation.

He can still determine that it's in a range that he would have heard without this level of sensitive hearing- it's something he can appreciate, quietly, if only because it means he is not being distilled to just those powers.

In many ways, he's at a loss for words before he replies, and still, even then. "Because if I had stayed that way, I wouldn't be here in the first place." For multiple reasons. Evandau had kept them both under surveillance in the prison until he was sure it was an outside influence, and one that had disappeared.

The change of personality had been to one that consisted of many traits he had opposed in his people- the detachment, superiority. Assured arrogance. Callousness. Distilling everything to logic, as long as it agreed with previous preconceptions. A 'model' Kryptonian who would have never left that cell even under deceit because pretending empathy or affecting equality with alien races would have been beneath him.

Hayley considers. She recalls Evandau's announcement about them being in jail, before she very actively made the decision not to go see them. Dealing with them once was enough that if they continued to be like they were, she wasn't sure she could handle it. They seem to be better. Or, Jor-El does, at least. 'Better' meaning less of an asshole. The whole logic thing is something Jor-El has always pushed her towards anyway. Unlike Superman, his darker self didn't seem so far removed.

After a long pause, she turns the lock. It takes another several seconds before she finally turns the door handle and swings it open. It's only a crack, six inches maybe, for her to look at him. Her hands grasp the door handle on one side and the door frame on the other, to hide her shaking. Her heart is still racing.

She has no idea what to say. Rejecting his potential apology after he so willingly accepted hers, when she physically attacked his son, would be too hypocritical. But it hurts. Her heart still aches with the memory of the pair's words and threats against her and looking at him doesn't help. It makes her throat go dry. So she stands there, silent, watching.

As much as it may not seem to be to her, for him, that dark mirror was an extreme in its own way- Krypton had largely leveled out its people long ago between the conservative nature of its society and the level of genetic engineering they used to maintain its population. The subtlest changes made for the greatest differences, in that light. As it had been, Jor-El was considered a rogue element, an unpredictable extremist in many ways. That other, perhaps in different ways, but ones that would have been secretly agreed on in the darker reaches of Kryptonian politics.

He watches the door open. It is a progress of sort, but one that is slowly gained.

"You must have questions." It's a gentle prompt; an offering for her to take and turn into something of her own making. Allow her to control what happens.

It feels like a device to her. Hayley isn't exactly subtle about her curiosity and his words somehow feel like they're taking advantage of that fact. Or maybe she's just looking for reasons to be angry and distrust him. Either way, her grip on the door handle tightens until her knuckles are white, out of sight of the figure before her.

"Why are you here?" She tries to make her voice level, but it sounds nearly as shaky and uncertain as she feels. For all her efforts at facades, controlling subconscious physical reactions is still beyond her. Maybe with more practice, across the years, but not here, not now.

It is a device; better words and questions, even from anger, than silence from fear instead. For all that she has supplied many questions, and he has given many answers, only rarely has there been true depth or personal closeness to them.

"As I said, to apologize. You didn't deserve what happened." His own voice is steady, even, and soft.

"Then apologize." She tries to pour her anger into her voice, to make the words commanding, but they come out as a simple statement. At least they have the benefit of being more level than her last attempt.

Hayley clenches her jaw in a vain effort to ease her nerves. His calm is hardly comforting. Although reminiscent of her old mentor, his darker self never changed much in that regard. He was colder and more distant than he seems and yet, even now, he seems to be approaching her with logic. Another experiment.

The thought almost makes her slam the door again. Instead she opens it another couple inches to rest the door against her arm, instead of simply clutching it with one hand. The feel of the solid barrier helps give some poor sense of security; it's all she can hope for with him here. With that thought, her eyes quickly scan the sky before returning to him, part of her expecting to see Kal-El hovering not far.

As it is, he's holding on to logic and reason as a support, keeping it in place lest his own feelings (and thus powers) get of control, as they've already threatened once.

"I'm sorry." The words are simple, and yet still foreign. Until this, he has had few reasons to apologize, or has had to acknowledge being in the wrong. Something that on Krypton, was often used as a mark against him- a sign of ego, or a lack of shame.

"What I said and did were things I would never ordinarily do, under any circumstance. I have never wanted to harm you, in any way."

Hayley doesn't exactly understand Kryptonian society or the implications of his actions, but she knows enough to realize that an apology from Jor-El is a pretty big deal. The guy runs mainly on logic and science, things which are rarely wrong, and she kind of wonders if he doesn't have a little pride about admitting some of his potentially smaller faults as well. The plain words, unburdened by clauses or justifications, help.

Another chill runs the length of her spine when he states no wish to harm her. She believed him, before the bottle. If he would treat her with respect after she attacked his son, then the idea of him hurting her was pretty out there. And yet- he did hurt her. Physically and worse.

"What happened?" She asks evenly, not moving from where she is in the slightest. Her shaking slowly begins to lessen without her noticing at all. Hayley knows they weren't themselves, but she doesn't understand what they were or why they were that way.

"The statues in there had some kind of effect." How, he isn't entirely sure, and that is disturbing enough on its own, even without taking the aftermath into account.

"When I touched one, everything changed, drastically. My thoughts, my personality. My perception of others. The views I have, I would have seen as repugnant." Had seen, when suggested in the words and outrage of others. Enough to be worth injuring and killing over. He meets her eyes as he speaks.

"On Krypton, I was an outlier in many ways. I rose in prominence in the Science Guild quickly, even though I was politically unorthodox." Now, he wonders at the fact that he was even allowed to reach the position he had in the first place; at no point had he ever feared voicing his opinions. How much of it was due to the standing of his family he would never know. "I was not as dismissive of new concepts or potential alternatives as our society as a whole was." And yet, having found himself here, he's been challenged unexpectedly- liberal and openminded for Krypton is hardly the same as liberal and openminded for Earth, or Keeliai.

"There were others who also disagreed with the council, but from the other direction. They felt the council was not going far enough. I became what I imagine was their ideal." And yet, he cannot see Zod undertaking the same actions, being willing to kill and wantonly destroy in the name of Kryptonian superiority, even though he knows what the coup must have resulted in.

Hayley's expression tightens for a second, as she attempts to control it. Then she frowns plainly, alleviating herself of the effort. Without noticing, she has stopped shaking and instead simply leans against the door. Her hand on the door's frame pulls free and lifts to press her thumb against her brow as she thinks.

"Which statue?" She remembers at least two statues, maybe three. The young kid had had the same effect on both she and Nico, causing them to tell the truth. Maybe it affected others differently, or maybe the different statues had different effects. It was an easier to solve puzzle that allowed her some measure of distraction for a moment, before thinking on the rest of his words.

"Is that like.. some deep wish? You want to be like that, but you're too afraid or sentimental or cowardly or something to do it and now you feel bad that you got what you want? Or was it like, a nightmare, or..?" She trails off as she drops her hand to her side. "You told me how that you felt about you you. How do you feel about him?"

He's noticing the change, the dissipation of the shaking- it is one for the better, if only because it means her fear is now at least controllable.

"The statue we touched- the adult- turned us into monsters." There're no words to mince on that matter. No other way to put it. There was a chilling steadfastness in the mentality that even now he can still remember, one that thought nothing of eliminating all of the non-Kryptonians present once they had decided on their goal. Hayley was fortunate she had come across them before their decision to assist the dragon.

"I have never had any interest in being like what that made me become."

Hayley takes a deep breath. Her heart starts pounding again with the anticipation of what she's about to do. It feels right somehow, feels like the thing to do. Maybe this is what trusting someone is. Whatever the cause, she lets out her breath and then steps back, opening the door halfway. She drops her gaze for a second and then lifts it to him again.

It's a silent invitation. She has given him enough space to enter without touching her and trusts him not to kill her for now. Even if her heart is beating in her throat. That Jor-El calls what he was a monster is evidence enough for her that he's better now. She knows a monster when she sees one. It's reassuring that, in this case at least, so does he.

It's also a sign of hope.

Jor-El sees it for what it is, and enters silently, giving her as much space as possible until he passes by, before he turns to face her once more.

He is still keeping his distance.

Just when Hayley feels like her heart can't possibly race any harder, it rises to pound in ears as well. His approach causes her muscles to tense again and she has to fight the instinct to again slam the door or to kick or punch him just to feel better. As soon as he's passed her, she slams the door closed in a vain attempt to make herself feel a little better.

When she turns around to look at him, standing there calmly in the middle of her suite, her carefully constructed resolve crumbles. Pain and anger and fear and all those other things she's been suppressing for too long thrash violently to the surface of her consciousness. She marches forward to close the distance between them, cocks back her arm, and punches him in the chest.

It feels like hitting a brick wall. Smoother, perhaps, but no less hard. Hayley lifts her other hand to pound on his chest this time, a little softer and with the flat of her fist rather than in a proper punch. Part of her knows it's doing nothing to him. Her eyes begin to glisten with fresh tears as she pounds at his chest again. And again. The pain of hitting him feels good. Even though she knows it's doing nothing, it feels like some small form of revenge.

The first punch takes him by surprise; it doesn't hurt, and makes no real impact, but it was not something he had expected.

And then the next comes, and the one after that, and he sees the tears beginning to well at her eyes.

At this point, there's nothing to do, that he should do, except wait for her to finish. Stopping her would remove the only outlet she has to take her past what they did to her.

Hayley continues hitting him for what feels like ages. Even though it's only a few minutes, the sides of her hands are growing raw and sore, turning red with the irritation. Tears begin to fall down her face as she continues hitting him, practically silent. She switches to a flat hand, smacking him a few times before she finally makes the gesture of trying to shove him away. All she succeeds in doing is pushing herself away a foot or two away from him.

Then she looks at him, still hurt and angry and confused. She's less afraid now, having been able to hit him without his hurting her. But his unyielding calm only upsets her more. He doesn't understand what it's like and he never will.

"Have you ever been afraid?" She demands, her voice stronger now than it was before, despite her crying. "Actually afraid. Of anything."

"Yes, I have." It's an honest answer, yet one that some on Krypton would have doubted anyways.

"I feared for my life when I wasn't sure I would succeed in doing what I needed to send Kal-El away." How his death actually happened had not been part of the plan, not been intended, but it was not one he had been afraid of- it was the other events of his last few hours that had panged him with a great anxiety that was only displaced when Lara began to ready the launch.

"Every day I spend here has some fear to it; Kal-El has had most of a lifetime to adjust to his abilities. He's grown with them. I was never meant to have these powers, Hayley."

Of course it has to come back to Kal-El. Hayley cringes slightly at the name, frowning. Then she scrubs her tears away as he continues, slowly regaining control of herself. Her heart has stopped pounding. Her hands ache. She feels exhausted from the surge of adrenaline and cortisol in her system now wearing down. She sighs and lifts her hands to scratch at her hair, then grabs two fistfuls and pulls at it angrily, kind of wanting to scream.

It's basically a full on meltdown. While not the first she's had since coming, it's the first to take place in front of someone else. Jor-El's probably not the best person for it to happen with, she realizes, but it's not exactly something she can control.

"You're scared of your own powers?" She huffs, dropping her hands. "Do you even- I mean, I get it, but- Are you seriously-"

It's hard to speak with so many thoughts racing through her head. Part of her resents that it's Jor-El and not Clark here. As fond as she's become of the man here with her, Clark was the closest thing she had to a real caretaker and she misses that, knowing it's entirely her own fault.

"Will you sit, please?" Hayley snaps. Maybe he'll be less intimidating then. Maybe he'll seem less perfectly composed, less judgmental, and less apt to destroy her at any minute.

Edited (icon) 2014-03-14 03:09 (UTC)

As emotional as he has seen her appear, this is the first time he has seen her like this. In many ways, this is something he's more used to, due to Dru-Zod; unlike much of their cohort, including himself, the man had never bothered much with the matter of hiding his emotional state, or afraid of flying into a flurry of passion.

He had learned with Zod that presenting himself passively when the other man had reached a certain point that it would only aggravate him further. Which, depending on the subject matter at hand, could be entertaining in its own right, but sometimes the only way to respond was to match to some extent to the same level.

"Considering the number of times I've accidentally destroyed something in my own suite despite a lack of clumsiness on my part, yes, I am," he returns. He's not snapping, but there's an almost challenging tone to his voice, not quite sarcasm, and not quite a quip as he moves towards a nearby chair, but doesn't yet sit. "It could easily be a person, which is something I've endeavored to avoid."

Kryptonite is the first thing to cross her mind. To some extent, she can't help it. The rock has become such a forbidden object, painted as such evil, that some part of her mind always keeps the idea close at hand. By making it ultimately forbidden, they have made it something she will forever want by sheer rebellion alone. That they then terrorize her when they're evil or that Jor-El's here talking about being afraid of accidentally killing someone.. well, it doesn't help.

But she knows better. Hayley doesn't want to hurt Jor-El. The rock is a comfort to her, another protection like lying or refusing to make friends, but that's all changing now. She wants it to, in some ways, and appreciates the benefits that come with it. It's hard to learn though, hard to truly believe that she doesn't need a Plan B and exit strategies.

"Why are you telling me?" She replies coldly. The girl doesn't consciously recognize his sudden emotion, however feigned it might be, but she responds to it at an unconscious level. "And you need to sit down."

Hayley thought she was getting better. Seeing him stand there makes her nervous all over again. Afraid.

That fear was one of the many things that has in some ways blunted him since his arrival; a new needed caution among others and with things, the constant required need to focus intensely if he didn't want to be completely overcome by the stimulus that surrounded him, the strangeness of the culture already present and those introduced by other foreigners.

"I was under the impression you had asked me if I had ever been afraid." Only a certain dryness belies an actual awareness of what he's saying.

This time, however, he sits down, leaning slightly forward to look at her, hands clasped.

Hayley

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