Ficlet: Upon a Throne of Bones and Ashes | SR/SII | Ursa(Zod) | PG-13 | 1/1
Title: With Fortune's Hand II: Four Relationships They Wished They Could Forget: Upon a Throne of Bones and Ashes
Fandom: SR/SII
Pairing: Ursa(/Zod), reference to Clark/Ursa
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 498
Prompt: For the Superman Movieverse Pairings Challenge: The Phantom Zone, Kryptonian Science Council, Control
Summary: Ursa might have been many things.
Disclaimer: DC and WB own everything. The schmucks.
Author's Notes: Last in the second part of the With Fortune's Hand series. Follow-up to Her Favorite New Plaything.
Upon a Throne of Bones and Ashes
Ursa no longer knew how long she'd been in this place. It might have been months, or years, or decades, but who could tell, with no sun rising or setting over this barren wasteland? And what did it matter, anyway, when the General's grandiose plans for vengeance on the House of El were all-consuming? There was naught else to do here, besides, beyond struggling against the merciless heat and cold and wind. Survival in the Phantom Zone was not easy, with little to eat or drink, shelter often difficult to come by, but it had become so tedious that it was mere background noise, a platform upon which Zod stood to pontificate and plot, the days and months blurring together in their drudgery until time had no meaning.
Beyond that, the only indication of the passage of time for a long while was the growth of her hair; once cut and sleek, it had quickly become long and tangled, unwashed and matted with dust and sweat, and cutting it-shearing it close with a knife hewn from dense rock-often had become a matter of necessity. 'Never give an enemy a weapon', the old lesson went, and long hair was such a weapon, especially in the General's hands. The thick clumps ripped from her scalp had been reminder enough of that lesson.
And so it had gone that she'd taken away the one weapon he had to use against the only Kryptonian that could no longer physically stand against him, for him to simply find another. At which point the fading of bruises became her calendar, the rhythms of her own body no longer reliable. The world had become naught but searing pain and seething hatred, blood and sand and wind and the voice of an angry man without an enemy to fight.
How Ursa cursed the day she'd joined Zod's side.
They were to rule Krypton, deliver it from the stolid hands of the Science Council, old men whose vision had become so clouded by their own self-importance that they saw nothing of what their world had become. And upon their rule, Ursa would have been a queen, sat upon a throne of the bones and ashes of those old men, and all men, save one.
Such a perfect end, then, that the one would be her downfall. She might once have claimed the right to bear the children of any house, to rule that house, might have been the goddess savior of the people of Krypton. Might even have taken the House of El and brought up its heirs with her own strict hand to rule Krypton as her successors upon Zod's untimely and not at all mysterious death.
But instead she was here, trapped on an endless plane of misery, eternally hostage to a madman's whims, sharp bitterness forever on her tongue.
With naught but the growing curve of her belly and a steadily strengthening heartbeat she imagined she could hear to tell the days.
~*~*~*~
Fandom: SR/SII
Pairing: Ursa(/Zod), reference to Clark/Ursa
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 498
Prompt: For the Superman Movieverse Pairings Challenge: The Phantom Zone, Kryptonian Science Council, Control
Summary: Ursa might have been many things.
Disclaimer: DC and WB own everything. The schmucks.
Author's Notes: Last in the second part of the With Fortune's Hand series. Follow-up to Her Favorite New Plaything.
Upon a Throne of Bones and Ashes
Ursa no longer knew how long she'd been in this place. It might have been months, or years, or decades, but who could tell, with no sun rising or setting over this barren wasteland? And what did it matter, anyway, when the General's grandiose plans for vengeance on the House of El were all-consuming? There was naught else to do here, besides, beyond struggling against the merciless heat and cold and wind. Survival in the Phantom Zone was not easy, with little to eat or drink, shelter often difficult to come by, but it had become so tedious that it was mere background noise, a platform upon which Zod stood to pontificate and plot, the days and months blurring together in their drudgery until time had no meaning.
Beyond that, the only indication of the passage of time for a long while was the growth of her hair; once cut and sleek, it had quickly become long and tangled, unwashed and matted with dust and sweat, and cutting it-shearing it close with a knife hewn from dense rock-often had become a matter of necessity. 'Never give an enemy a weapon', the old lesson went, and long hair was such a weapon, especially in the General's hands. The thick clumps ripped from her scalp had been reminder enough of that lesson.
And so it had gone that she'd taken away the one weapon he had to use against the only Kryptonian that could no longer physically stand against him, for him to simply find another. At which point the fading of bruises became her calendar, the rhythms of her own body no longer reliable. The world had become naught but searing pain and seething hatred, blood and sand and wind and the voice of an angry man without an enemy to fight.
How Ursa cursed the day she'd joined Zod's side.
They were to rule Krypton, deliver it from the stolid hands of the Science Council, old men whose vision had become so clouded by their own self-importance that they saw nothing of what their world had become. And upon their rule, Ursa would have been a queen, sat upon a throne of the bones and ashes of those old men, and all men, save one.
Such a perfect end, then, that the one would be her downfall. She might once have claimed the right to bear the children of any house, to rule that house, might have been the goddess savior of the people of Krypton. Might even have taken the House of El and brought up its heirs with her own strict hand to rule Krypton as her successors upon Zod's untimely and not at all mysterious death.
But instead she was here, trapped on an endless plane of misery, eternally hostage to a madman's whims, sharp bitterness forever on her tongue.
With naught but the growing curve of her belly and a steadily strengthening heartbeat she imagined she could hear to tell the days.
~*~*~*~