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

"Yeah, except that me trying to figure out the right way means I'm constantly being watched, protected, lied to, and criticized," she grumbled angrily. It's a very adolescent tangent and she knows it, but she doesn't care.

Mark seems to be appreciating her efforts. Maybe even Kon too. But Clark, Lois, Bart, and others? They're all too ready to jump down her throat at the first sign of trouble. Meanwhile, the Bat Man's trying to mold her into his own image and Jason was telling her it was only a matter of time until she started killing.

She sighs and reaches out slowly to his cape, running her fingers over the fabric if he doesn't protest. Hayley doesn't understand why he took it off, looking up to him as if silently asking for an answer. Then she remembers his other words.

"I still want to learn," she agrees. "But more about practical skills like defending myself or escaping. I'm in a hero's world, Jor-El. I want to be a part of it."

To her touch, she'd find the fabric of the cape soft and velveteen, comfortable against the skin. The wearing of one was a near constant in some form or style on Krypton, and in his time here, he had not quit the habit.

"Those aren't skills I can teach you safely, as much as I would like to." He learned to fight and how to defend himself from Zod, but here those skills are limited in application, and ones he is hesitant to put to use now, in the aftermath.

The likelihood of severely injuring or killing her in the process, if he did try, would be nearly guaranteed. Even without powers, accidents happened.

As for her grumblings...

"While not everyone uses methods you like, they're trying because they care for you."

Hayley's fingers glided over the surface of the cape for another couple passes before his last words forced her attention to snap back to him. Her eyes lifted and she stared. For as obvious as the information he was presenting should be, there was something about hearing it confirm it like that that surprised her. Bart seemed obvious. Mark too. She doubted the Bat Man did, but Jason had left her a house and some equipment.

"What's the difference between caring about someone and trusting them?" She asked evenly as she withdrew her hand from his cape, bringing it back into her lap. "And if you're seriously that eager to keep me out of harm's way, wouldn't teaching me those skills be better?"

It was easy to mistake his concern for safety as an unwillingness to teach her combat skills. She was, after all, a teenage girl and Bart and Clark both seemed more than eager to try to keep her locked up in her suite rather than let her close to anything potentially dangerous.

"They aren't coupled together so simply. Trusting someone can be a deeper act, if the people involved aren't used to being able to do so."

The line of discussion was almost- almost- a return to the previous discussions they had before. But the reason he was here in the first place he was unable to forget.

"My concern for your safety is because of what could happen if I taught you myself. Accidents aren't uncommon when learning how to fight." He pauses for a moment to allow her to take it into consideration. "I'm not opposed to you learning. It would be to you benefit, but will have to be from someone else."

Hayley flinched at the thought of his hurting her, unconsciously reaching a hand up to its opposite shoulder where the bruise from his grip had faded way. She understood what he meant. Her lips formed a small frown with the thought, that he couldn't teach her the things she most needed to know. Maybe the Bat Man or Mark could.

"Okay," she agreed. "So what do you want to teach me?"

It was a conscious choice not to ask anymore of the first subject or to add to it. To her, the two were fairly deeply intertwined, but she could imagine some scenarios where she had found separation between them and it was something she needed to spend more time thinking about on her own.

The flinching doesn't escape his notice, or the reach for the shoulder he had purposefully hurt under the statue's influence.

Jor-El picks up the cape's edges, as he begins to speak, lifting them. "I will teach you whatever you want to learn."

He sets it around her shoulders. Hayley seemed to take comfort from the cape earlier, and it was the most he felt comfortable with doing, rather than setting a hand on her shoulder again.

Hayley drops her hand from her shoulder the moment she realizes it's there. It isn't her intention to make him feel guilty. Her shoulders tighten when he moves closer to her, but then he's putting his cape on her and it's one of the most meaningful gestures of her entire lifetime, up there with Bruce holding the Kryptonite for her and Bart's yelling at her about caring about her well being. Her posture straightens with the cape now on her shoulders, wondering if it means as much to him as it does to her.

"Teach me how to be good," she answers with a small smile, looking up at Jor-El.

"I will try my best." He isn't aware of the personal significance of the words on either of their parts, or exactly how much they mean to her, but he means his words, completely.

All he is able to work from is what he sees.

There's something almost poetic about the situation, Jor-El offering to teach her. It's the opportunity he might have had with Kal-El in a different circumstance. Now she's the one learning from him instead, the one who attacked the son who was raised by an ordinary human family. Sounds like the stuff of comic books.

Hayley lifts her hands to readjust the cape ever so slightly. Then she wraps the excess width around herself as much as she can while sitting, admiring the feel of it. Her smile remains as she tilts her head. "Why did you give me this?"

It's a scenario he has tried to not think on. He knew well before Kal-El's birth that it was something that would never happen, that it was too late to ever have. He never expected to know his son at all, but here he has. It does not mean he will restrict himself to teaching only family, has not.

"To comfort you." He gives a smile in return. It's small, but readily present, and fully evident it's one. This had gone far better than he had hoped; while she may still have flinched earlier, he hadn't actually expected her to be willing to still continue learning from him, even in the case of her accepting the apology.

She's not entirely certain what prompted it, but she's pretty sure this is the first time she's seen Jor-El actually smile. It only takes her a moment to realize how strange it is. Normally he's so logical. Now here he is, apologizing, giving her his cape to comfort her, and even smiling with a look that Hayley knows she could easily come to strive for.

"Are you feeling okay?" The question comes with some humor in her tone, but the sentiment behind it is sincere. She's certainly not about to complain if he is. The last thing she needs, though, is him showing up in another week to apologize again and ask for the return of the cape.

As unusual as it may seem to her- and he's fairly confident that that is what is prompting her question- he does actually know how to smile. It's something he rarely chooses to exhibit.

"Yes, I am." He has much more to do, with who he needs to find and apologize to, for what he and Kal-El did, but it no longer seems as difficult or unlikely to accomplish as it did at the start. He now has something more than an empty hope and absolute reasoning to go off- evidence.

Hayley gives him another smile. Normally this is the part where she would reach out a hand to shake or give him a nudge. Unfortunately, she finds that for all their talking and progress, the idea of casual physical contact with him is still intimidating. Instead, she just pulls the cape around herself again as a reminder that he's someone to trust.

"Thanks, for apologizing. I know you didn't have to. And yeah, I mean obviously it was pretty evil, but I know you're really trying to make it right." It's the method in which he attempts to find justice that intrigues her more than the actual act. Is this what heroes do? She's not sure she wants to think about it right now.

"With what happened, you deserved one." As do all of the others they attacked. It is something that must be done, at least while Kal-El is still in the prison.

What happened while they were under the statue's influence could not be allowed to control them further.

Hayley doesn't address that. She knows she deserved an apology, maybe was even entitled to one after what he, specifically, did to her. But it also wasn't him and that makes things complicated. A complication she doesn't want to go into, one she's not ready to expound upon.

"What about Superman?" She asks instead, seemingly suddenly. It barely crosses her mind before she blurts it out. Although she genuinely views Jor-El and his son as separate people with whom she has very different relationships, Jor-El is definitely the best one to know what's going on with the other man. "I mean, is he back to normal or..?"

"Yes, he's back to normal." Or as normal as he can be, when wracked with guilt over what they did. That is something that will require time to recover from, if it is something he will ever heal mentally from.

"Kal-El's chosen to stay in the prison for the time being." It's not a choice he can agree with, but one he can understand. They both acted in ways that were against their very core selves, but for Kal-El, it was all the more blatant an offense against his very being while they were like that.

It was something that could easily break a person.

Hayley nods a little to acknowledge she's listening as her gaze wanders away from him. Her eyes fall to some of the fabric around her shoulders and she stares at it, wondering if Clark's cape feels the same. That he's chosen to stay in jail isn't exactly a surprise, but it's not something she understands either.

"Why?" She lifts her eyes to look at him again with the question. She has a very basic idea of the things they did - Bart not wanting to talk about it was indication enough of that - but Superman wasn't himself. "Either it wasn't him and it's not his fault or it was and he should be executed."

It's not quite so black and white as she makes it out to be and some part of her knows that. But it seems unfair that he should pick and choose. It's not his fault when Hannibal uses his abilities to murder her, but it's his fault when some monster does? Maybe he only cares because he saw it with his own eyes. Whatever the case, it makes Hayley feel all the less important or cared for from her former- current friend.

"Because for a short time, we were both living weapons," he responds gently, meeting her eyes in turn.

"It was not his fault, but it was a strong awakening to what could occur here should it happen again, and here, rather than in an enclosed place like the world within that bottle. The prison negates powers."

Both his and Kal-El's particular danger in the event of being controlled again had been made more than clear.

Of course the urge to present her own case emerges. Hayley had been insisting for months that others, besides the Bat Man, should have Kryptonite in case something happened. This was exactly that and- It suddenly occurs to her that maybe that's why Bart didn't want to talk about it. But for as much as she still thinks the rock is a good emergency source, it's not the right answer here. Like the Bat Man taught her. There are other ways.

"He can't stay there forever." Whether it's a remark on her concern for him or the practicality of the matter is unclear. Hayley doesn't even know herself if it's a resentful remark about his hiding away, concern for Clark and the guilt he must be feeling, or both. "Why didn't you stay?"

"It wouldn't help anyone." Staying would have done nothing- for himself or for resolving any aspect of what happened. Full penance can be made through action, rather than doing nothing. For Kal-El, at least, it least had some form of help for him in a way, even if it could not last.

Besides, it would be too much time to deliberate and think on his own actions, not only what happened in Kithika, but since his arrival here in the first place. His original death. It was something he tried to avoid thinking on in depth. There was only so much flexibility in thought that even he could manage.

"He's aware of that. It hasn't changed his decision." Kal-El is an adult, and entitled to his own choices.

There are a million things she can think to say on the matter, both pleasant and not. None are meant for Jor-El. The things she wants to say are all for the friend of hers who sits behind bars feeling the agony of his mistakes. Some part of her feels like maybe this punishment is its own proper way to bring Superman down a peg, something she couldn't have engineered if she tried. A better way.

Whatever the case, she can't think of anything else on the subject that she needs to share with the man's father instead of the man himself. So Hayley jumps topics again. Sort of. "What did you both do to Kon and Bart?"

Edited 2014-03-22 03:50 (UTC)

He looks down for a moment, the question instantly bringing to mind what they had done. While they might recover physically, the damage there would be lasting.

"We injured them when Kon refused to join us." The answer is succinct. The details are not his to reveal.

Hayley watches his face and can tell he's less than pleased by the memories. It's not enough. She can't begin to recognize to what extent they may have hurt her friends - when she did come to have so many of them? - or how badly Jor-El feels. She'll have to resort to asking with plain candor.

"Did they die?" Her expression tightens in anticipation of his answer, hands falling to her lap. Because she can't contain herself, she adds, "Please. Bart won't talk about it and I don't know if it's because he doesn't want to remember or he's worried I'll do something or maybe he's stupidly trying to protect me again, but I need to know what happened to them."

While some part of her is aware of the fact that she definitely cares more for Bart's safety and well being than pretty much anyone else on the turtle right now, Kon is family to the two former monsters and that makes it even worse for him than for anyone else.

Somehow, in spite of everything, she and Kon are kind of friends now. He gave her a chance and understood when it seemed like no one else did and, like Bruce, that means something to her. She can only hope to do the same for him sometime.

Jor-El's response takes longer to come than the last. "Kon-El we left alive." In the state of mind he had been in, while Kon-El's status as a hybrid made the youth less valuable- as though that was something easily applied to a living being, much less a family member- he was still potentially useful, and therefore mattered.

"We didn't check to see if Bart survived." Or if what they had done to him was even survivable.

Bart had not mattered.

Hayley cringes slightly, simultaneously pulling away from him a hint while also pulling his cape more tightly around herself. It pains her, the mere idea of Bart and Kon both being hurt. Especially Bart, though she tries not to think about that specifically.

She doesn't have to ask how badly they hurt Bart. If Jor-El doesn't know if he lived or died, it's bad enough. She can't bring herself to ask anymore details. Maybe the girl can simply try to be there for them and let that be enough. More likely, she'll offer condolences and try to avoid either getting mad at her.

"Thanks for telling me," she says finally, to have something to say.

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