[Emissary] Chapter 22 - Daughter (Patreon)

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Chapter 22 -  Daughter

 

‘Could it be… that she doesn’t know how to talk?’

It sounded crazy, but upon taking a moment to think about it, things were starting to make sense.

 ‘She looks like a miniature version of Kara. She’s most likely a Kryptonian too. I found her in a pod, at Cadmus, who were doing human experiments, and worse… '

'...Could it be that she’s a clone?’

He took off the oxygen mask and the IV in his arm before getting out of bed. He groaned as he forced himself to stand up. His groans of discomfort became louder as he started walking, one slow step at a time. 

The noises he made alerted Power Girl, who was quick to come inside the room once she heard him. 

“Harry?! You’re in no condition to move on your own!” she said and sped up to him to catch him lest he fall and hurt himself. “Come, don’t be stubborn, just take a seat.”

“You’re telling people not to be stubborn?” he said teasingly. 

“If you’re still in the mood to joke around, you’ll be fine,” she said, rolling her eyes as she led him back to the bed. 

Sitting on the edge of the bed, Harry asked:

“How long was I out? And who found me…who found us?” 

When he corrected himself, Power Girl’s eyes fell on the little girl, who was now eyeing them both curiously. 

“Four or five hours,” she said, a distracted look on her face.

She had to put in some serious effort to tear her eyes away from the young girl, who looked like a carbon copy of herself, only miniaturized. 

“You’re so badly injured,” Kara said, turning her attention back to him. 

A worried look surfaced on her face when she used her X-ray vision to check out the damage in his left arm.

“The doctors said that they can’t save your arm. The bones were shattered beyond repair.”

Harry winced at the sound of that.

"Shit..."

At that moment, a young voice unexpectedly repeated after him:

“Shit!” 

Harry and Kara looked at her wide-eyed. 

“Oh, come on, Harry! Swearing in front of a kid?!” 

“Ugh-, it wasn’t an actual swearing.”

“Shit! Shit! Shit!” the young girl said repeatedly, laughing all the while. 

“Ah, damn it! Sorry, I-, ugh, I never had any kids.”

“Damn it!” the little girl repeated after him. 

Harry looked like a deer caught in the headlights.

“Why is she only learning the swear words??!” 

“But why are you swearing in front of her!!” Kara shot back, raising her voice too. 

Harry brought his hands to his face, rubbing his eyes and forehead, momentarily at a loss for what to say. 

“Who is she, exactly?” Kara asked. 

“Deep down, you know it, don’t you?” he said meaningfully. 

The little girl climbed up on the bed and squeezed her way through Harry and Kara, sitting down between the two of them. 

“I’m not a mind reader, Harry,” she said impatiently. 

“Look at her. Take a good look at her.”

Kara swallowed a node in her neck. When she didn’t say anything, he spoke:

“I found her in a medical pod in Cadmus’ secret facility. I couldn’t just leave her behind, especially when she looks so much like you. I think they cloned you.”

Power Girl alternated between looking at Harry and at the little girl. 

“I admit, she could pass off as my little sister. But that doesn’t mean-”

“She’s a Kryptonian, Kara,” he cut her words off. 

“How do you know that?” 

Typically, Kryptonians took a while before they manifested their powers. Superman was a teenager when he realised he had superpowers too. The girl seemed a bit too young for her powers to start manifesting. 

“I saw her firing heat beams from her eyes. She actually killed the creature, saving my life in the process. So think about it… Kryptonians don’t just grow in trees, and she looks almost identical to you, only younger.”

Power Girl stood up from the bed and ran her hands through her short hair as she started pacing around. 

The little girl was watching them with a look of worry on her face. She didn’t know how to talk, but her face was so expressive, she was like an open book. 

Harry raised his hand to pat her on the head and ruffle her hair gently as it to comfort her. 

“Don’t worry, we’ll take good care of you,” he said in a kind voice, smiling at her. 

The girl didn’t understand a word he said, but his friendly smile and gentle caress melted her worry away, giving way to a brilliant smile. 

“We can discuss more about the little you-” Harry began to say, only for Kara to abruptly shoot back at him:

“Don’t call her that!” 

“She doesn’t have a name, what am I supposed to call her?” 

“I don’t know! Just don’t say she is me!” 

Harry pinched the bridge of his nose. “Why are you yelling?”

“I’m not yelling!”

He let out a long sigh. 

“I understand it must be weird for you-”

“Now that’s an understatement!”

“-but the girl is not at fault for being brought into this world.”

When he put it that way, Kara’s anger subsided, and she let herself fall to the floor by sliding down against the wall. 

“If anything, we should see it as fortunate that we managed to save her before Cadmus had the chance to indoctrinate her and turn her into a weapon or a killing machine to destroy the Justice League.”

All of a sudden, a growling sound came from his side, and Harry found himself smiling at the sight of the little girl holding both hands to her tummy. She was hungry. 

⁂

Ten minutes later, Power Girl watched blankly how Harry was sitting with the little girl at the table, their chairs close to each other. He was teaching her how to eat. 

“Could you give me a hand? I can’t show her how to hold the sandwich with both hands.”

His left arm was destroyed. He couldn’t move it or even feel it. It was only thanks to the drugs that they had injected him with that he was not crying out from pain now. 

She dragged a chair close to them and sat down. 

“Look at her!” Harry said, pointing with his finger at Kara for the little girl to see how she was holding the sandwich with both hands and taking a bite out of it. 

Although the young girl didn’t even know how to talk yet, that did not mean she was stupid. It was quite the opposite. She easily imitated Kara’s way of eating. 

While the girl was wolfing down the sandwiches, Harry asked Kara in a serious voice:

“Have you managed to capture the leaders of Cadmus?”

“Not all of them,” she said, shaking her head. “We captured Doctor Moon and Professor Hamilton. But Amanda Waller and General Eiling escaped. As for Tala and Doctor Milo, as you know, they are already dead.”

“What about Lex Luthor and Maxwell Lord?” asked Harry before turning his attention back to the little girl at his side and wiping the butter smeared around her mouth with a napkin. 

Secretly, Kara couldn’t help taking notice of his actions. 

“Luthor wasn’t at the Cadmus base when Superman and I returned there to get you out. There was no trace of him at all. Maxwell wasn’t there either, but we found records of his visits in the facility’s monitor room. This is terrible... Maxwell was the main sponsor of the Justice League of Europe. We never thought he would secretly be working against us.”

“Figures that the billionaires got away,” Harry muttered. 

But then he winced and let out a sudden groan. 

“What’s wrong?”

“I think the drugs are starting to wear off. Ugh.”

Seeing as his bones were shattered into countless little pieces and his arm was purple and swollen, it should have been amputated. Leaving aside the insane pain, an injury like that could even lead to death unless it was treated swiftly. Power Girl had not taken him to a proper hospital for real medics to treat him only because she thought that he might have a solution with his magic, hoping that he would not need to lose his arm. 

Sweat was starting to gather on his forehead as the pain increased in intensity. Due to the numerous injuries he had had over his long life, Harry had a high pain threshold. Nevertheless, feeling countless tiny bone chips stabbing his flesh was enough to make him break into a sweat. 

He took out his wand and cast a nonverbal charm, Vanishing all the bones in his left arm. Power Girl and her little lookalike both watched with rapt attention how he drew a series of glowing symbols in the air with his wand. 

His facial expression smoothed as the runes sank into his arm. He also conjured a cast around his arm and a string around his neck to hold it close to his body. 

“I didn’t heal it, if you’re curious. I just vanished the bones and cast a spell to numb the pain and one to put my arm in stasis. It’s only temporary, until I find a way to regrow my bones,” he explained. 

“You can do that?!”

He nodded. 

“As long as I have the necessary ingredients for the potion, yes. I don’t know where I’ll be able to find them in this world, though… Still, I have to try. I can’t afford to lose my arm. I need both hands, no matter what.”

Power Girl looked at him strangely. Losing an arm was terrible, indeed, but it wasn’t the end of the world. Many people could live just fine after losing an arm, and that was the case for them even more than so considering that, with the Justice League’s technology, they could make a robotic prosthetic arm for him. 

Understanding the meaning of the look in her eyes, he explained:

“It wouldn’t be the first time I lost one of my arms. I wouldn’t care so much if not for the fact that there is one spell that I can only cast if I have both hands intact. It’s one of my most powerful spells, one that would be invaluable in the future against Darkseid and his army. That’s why it’s of vital importance for me to recover.”

⁂

Morning came in the United States, and with it, the still-living members of the Justice League of America and the Justice League of Europe gathered at the Watchtower. 

“After everything we’ve done to fight crime and protect the innocent, the government is trying to have us killed?! Why?!” Flash said, almost shouting in frustration. 

“I can’t believe Captain Atom and Rocket Red are dead…” Elongated Man said in a voice just a bit louder than a whisper. 

Captain Atom had been the leader of the Justice League of Europe, and not only. He had been like a mentor for everyone. All members of the Justice League of Europe looked up to him. 

 

In contrast, his wife, Sue, was quiet; she was overwhelmed by what had transpired. Only a few hours ago, a villain called Doctor Light, together with a squad of special forces operatives tried to kill them both. And they would have succeeded if not for Flash’s timely return. They survived only by the skin of their teeth. 

“Is John alright? Where is he?” Power Girl asked Hal Jordan. 

Had it been any other time, the playboy Green Lantern would have rejoiced at the chance to speak to her and try some of his pick-up lines on her. However, Hal couldn’t bring himself to crack jokes and flirt in that situation. 

“He’s standing by Hawkgirl’s and Animal Man’s side, in the hospital, protecting them from any potential assassins. They’re both in critical condition. Hawkgirl, especially; doctors say she might not make it…and even if she does, she would be bound to a wheelchair for the rest of her life.”

It was a terrible day for the Justice League. 

Rocket Red and Captain Atom were killed. 

Hawkgirl and Animal Man were gravely injured, and they were in critical condition at the moment. 

Superman, Flash, Powergirl, and Ralph and Sue Dibny had almost lost their lives too, surviving only by a stroke of luck. 

As Emissary stepped into the room, they all turned to look at him. Then, their eyebrows rose in surprise at the sight of the little girl holding his hand and walking by his side. 

By now, everyone heard about the fact that Batman lost his life due to Harry’s spell. They used to think ill of him and distrust him (for good reason). However, today’s events changed their opinion of him completely. He had saved the lives of Superman, Power Girl, and Flash and, indirectly, saved their lives as well. 

“Kara, could you take care of her for a bit? I don’t think it would be good for her to witness what is about to happen,” Harry said as he came to Power Girl. 

“Who’s the kid?” asked Hal, curious as to why there was a child that young at the Watchtower among the members of the Justice League. 

“She’s with me,” Harry said, not wanting to elaborate. 

“Is she your daughter?”

“Mhm. Something like that.”

His curt answers tipped Hal off, and he stopped pressing for more information. 

Power Girl took the little girl’s hand in hers, but when she tried to walk away with her, the girl resisted her and gripped Harry’s hand harder, pulling him after the two of them too. 

“See? I told you she wouldn’t listen. She won’t leave your side, no matter what.”

The young clone may have appeared to be 12 or 13 years old, but, mentally, she wasn’t that different from a newborn baby; she was just smarter and more perceptive. 

“Then how did you convince her to wear clothes?” Harry asked, half-amused, half-exasperated. 

“She saw we’re all wearing clothes, so she probably realised she should be wearing some too. Oh, look, it’s about to start,” Power Girl said as she turned to look at the large screen of the Monitor Room’s supercomputer. 

It showed in real time Superman going to the Watchtower’s cells, where Professor Hamilton had been imprisoned. 

Harry let out a sigh. He would have preferred to be there, right next to Superman, and use his Legilimency on the traitorous scientist, but he couldn’t due to the little girl who was clinging to him like a limpet. 

“Come on, you little monkey, we should head back,” Harry said, and the girl squealed in glee when he levitated her and brought her to sit on one of his shoulders. 

The little girl’s happiness contrasted greatly with the sombre mood in the Monitor Room. Once she and Harry left, silence was instilled in the room. 

⁂

“Finally showing your true colours,” said Professor Hamilton when he saw Superman coming in front of his cell. “To think that the Watchtower even had a private prison built in.”

Superman frowned. 

“My true colours? I trusted you! I thought you were my friend for years! But you went behind my back and colluded with a shady organization like Project Cadmus! Why? Did they coerce you? Tell me that they forced you to work for them!”

The middle-aged scientist stood up and came closer to the bars. 

“Coerce me? I went to them.”

Superman had a hard time believing his ears. 

“You volunteered? How can you work for these people?! Do you know what they are?”

Hamilton replied calmly:

“Power brokers, politicians, criminals, terrorists, and black ops mercenaries… but they have one thing in common: they are humanity’s last hope against your kind.”

“What are you talking about?!” Superman said scandalised. “Humanity doesn’t need protection from us!”

Hamilton flinched from his outburst, but he didn’t back away. 

“I used to believe that too. I thought you were a guardian angel who’d come to answer our prayers. But Lucifer was an angel too, wasn’t he?”

“Professor-”

“The world has not forgotten what you’ve done, Superman. I have not forgotten. How many hundreds of people lost their lives when you invaded Metropolis together with Darkseid’s army a few years ago?”

“That wasn’t me! Darkseid manipulated me! He brainwashed me! I wasn’t aware of the wrongness of my actions!” Superman shouted. 

“Even if that were to be the case, who is to say it won’t happen again?” the professor asked. “Who is to say someone else won’t mind-control you, or Wonder Woman, or the Green Lantern, and kill us all?”

Momentarily, Superman was silent, and Hamilton pressed on:

“It took a Kryptonite Warhead to put you down when you invaded Metropolis and even then, it didn’t kill you! But that’s just one of you! Who is going to stop someone like Wonder Woman or Green Lantern who have no kryptonite? Our tanks and bullets?” He snorted as if the idea of it was ludicrous. “Will we have to use nukes and kill millions of other innocents in order to stop the Justice League if you were to betray us?”

“You dare talk about betrayal? You and the Star Labs betrayed us!” Superman said incensed. “You stole Power Girl’s DNA. You violated her trust! Our trust! You cloned her!”

“The chicken or the egg, Superman?” Hamilton asked. 

⁂

While the Justice League was watching Superman’s conversation with Professor Hamilton, Harry went to the Watchtower’s observation deck and sat together with the little girl on one of the couches and cushioned chairs in the room. 

When Power Girl came to them, she found herself smiling at the sight of Harry teaching the young clone various words. 

“Hand,” he said slowly as he took the girl’s hand into his. 

“Haaand,” the girl repeated after him. 

“Nose,” he said, lightly poking her little nose with his index finger. 

She laughed and poked his nose in return too as she repeated the word he said. 

“I never thought you’d be so good with children, but I guess I should’ve seen it coming considering you’ve been married before,” she said. “Come to think of it, you never told me anything about your children. You don’t talk much about your past.”

“That’s because I’ve never had any,” Harry said. 

“No way! You’ve lived hundreds of years, and you’ve been married more than once, haven’t you? How come you’ve never had any children?”

“I’ve always wanted a family… but I am Death’s Emissary. Death doesn’t create life.”

Kara became silent for a few moments. 

“I’m sorry,” she said uncomfortably. “I didn’t mean to-”

“No worries,” he said, seemingly unaffected. “I may have never had children of my own, but I’ve loved and cared for others as if they were mine. And it looks like I've gotten a new daughter in this world too.”

“You got a new daughter...just like that?” 

Harry chuckled at the disbelief in her words. The little girl didn’t know why he was laughing, but she giggled with him too. 

“Look at her, isn't she a cutiepie?” he cooed, grinning widely at how adorable she was. 

“Be serious for a moment, Harry,” Kara said. 

“But I am serious. Don’t let her physical age fool you, Kara. She opened her eyes for the first time only a few hours ago, and I am the first person that she has seen. On an instinctual level, she knows that I protected her because she protected me back too. For all intents and purposes, in her eyes, I am her father. We are family.”

Kara took a seat on the couch opposite them and rubbed her neck while letting out a long sigh. 

“So… How are we going to do this?” Kara asked. Before he could reply, she continued. “God, this is going to be so weird!”

“It doesn’t have to be,” he said as he conjured a bouncing ball and showed the young clone how to play with it. 

“You don’t understand! She’s… she’s basically me! I’m going to be raising myself! And how are you not weirded out?!”

Harry chuckled softly and stood up from the sofa when the little girl ran after the ball. Sitting next to Kara, he wrapped his good arm around her shoulder in a one-armed hug. She leaned into his embrace, relishing the physical contact.

“I actually understand you perfectly. I am not weirded out because I am used to seeing people who look the same but have completely different personalities. I also raised my younger self in my third life.”

“...How did something like that even come to be?” she asked, too emotionally drained to feel shocked anymore. 

“He was an orphan, just like I was, and he also grew up with his magic-hating relatives. I took him away from them and offered him a home. I also- blimey!” he exclaimed and raised his hand to magically stop a couch that suddenly went flying at them. 

The bouncing ball ended up underneath a couch, and the little girl unknowingly sent the whole couch flying when she pushed it away in order to retrieve her ball. 

“Rao… give us strength!” Power Girl prayed. 

Harry burst into laughter. 

“I’m glad you’re with me in this, Kara,” he said. 

“...How couldn’t I? If we don’t take care of her, who will? I can’t leave her alone, and putting a Kryptonian up for adoption is a recipe for disaster.”

The little girl was a clone and a Kryptonian. Not only that she didn’t have anyone, but she would also be targeted by all sorts of unsavoury people. After all, who would pass on the opportunity to gain a Kryptonian weapon at their beck and call? Moreover, her Kryptonian powers could pose a severe danger to regular people. Just earlier, that flying couch could’ve gravely injured a normal person or even killed them if they were particularly unlucky. 

“It’s going to be okay,” he said, squeezing her shoulder encouragingly. “But, before anything else, we should give her a name.”

“This is going to be difficult. Other parents spend months or even years thinking of a name.”

“We have a few hours. I’ll start; how about Klara? It comes from Latin. It means clear, bright.”

Kara gave him a sideways glance. “Really? That’s the best you could come up with? It’s almost identical to my name! First of all, we should decide on whether we give her a Kryptonian name or an Earthling name.”

“She’s going to live on Earth so we should give her a name from Earth.”

“But she’s a Kryptonian.”

Unexpectedly, the two of them couldn’t come to an agreement. 

“Let’s just settle it the old-fashioned way. Rock-paper-scissors,” Harry said. 

“You’ve got to be kidding me!” 

“Do you have a better idea?” he asked. 

The two of them looked at each other pointedly, only for the bouncing ball to suddenly fly between their faces like a bullet and burst into countless tiny rubber pieces as it slammed into the wall. 

Harry swallowed his saliva. 

“I might have to wear a shielding spell on me even when I’m sleeping now that she’s around.”

The ridiculousness of the situation made Power Girl snicker. 

⁂

“You’re definitely cheating!” Kara blew up at him after losing three games of rock-paper-scissors in a row. 

“How would I cheat? You’re the one with superhuman vision and reflexes. You can change your sign right after you see mine, and I wouldn’t notice a thing!” 

“That’s still not enough to win when you’re reading my mind!”

“Aha! So you did try to cheat!” Harry shouted in triumph. “Yet you dare point fingers at me!”

“You’re cheating too, so you have no room to talk either!” she retorted. 

Despite their age, they were bickering like children. 

“Let’s forget about rock-paper-scissors,” Harry said when he saw that they weren’t getting anywhere like that. “How about this: I won’t try to give her flower names, and you won’t try to give her some weird alien names either. Let’s compromise.”

“Weird alien names… really now? So my name is weird too?” she glared at him. 

It took nearly an hour for them to finally come to an agreement. Thankfully, in the meantime, Power Girl had brought over a laptop from the conference room and played a video of cats playing for the little girl to watch. 

Something about seeing the cute balls of fluff must’ve touched her because she was so enraptured by the video that she seemed to have completely forgotten about Harry and Kara, who were arguing next to her. 

“She’s going to love Stinky,” Power Girl said.

“That mangy cat? That little asshole-”

“Harry!”

He immediately shut up, realising his mistake. Luckily, the little girl seemed too focused on the video to pay attention to their words. 

Harry slowly took away the laptop, making the girl turn her attention to them. 

“Astrid,” Harry said, pointing to her to make her understand that that was going to be her name. 

Then he pointed his finger at Kara and said “mama,” before also pointing his thumb at himself and saying “papa”.

Although Astrid was ‘born’ only a few hours ago, her brain was much more developed than that of a toddler. She was soaking up information like a sponge. 

“Papa, mama, Astrid,” the little girl repeated after him, pointing her finger at each of them with every name she said. 

Power Girl’s face flushed an interesting shade of red when he heard Astrid calling her ‘mama’. It was not going to be easy for her to get used to the idea that she had suddenly become a mother.