Lara Lor-Van prided herself on doing some of her best work under pressure, but preparing the launch of her baby boy towards a (hopefully better) new world would have been stressful enough on its own, never mind the battle suddenly raging across Krypton, and she really could have done without said battle getting close up and personal within the room!

Jor-El, her brilliant, reckless, gentle Jor, put up more of a fight than General Zod and his men obviously expected from the science caste, and though his gun went flying when she spared a quick look away from the launch procedures, her husband was holding his own against the general. When she could spare another glance, Zod was on his hands and knees and Jor held his weapon to the general's back.

Lara would have turned back to the launch – she was seconds away from the final command – had she not caught Zod close his eyes briefly at the click of the gun touching his armor, and when he opened them again, the general was clearly about to go down fighting. Her gasp drew her husband's attention, and when Zod whirled and stabbed at Jor with the blade concealed in his gauntlet, the gun discharged, caught the general across the shoulder and threw off his aim. Both men stumbled back, apart from each other, and then, simultaneously, went down.

Heedless of the drama unfolding around it, the phantom drive of the escape pod chose that very moment to enter the final stage of the launch, and Lara, for all that her heart was screaming to run to Jor and check him for injury, took the extra second to input the last command. She would have loved to follow Kal's ascent until the clouds swallowed him, to draw out her last look at her son for as long as she could, but as soon as her finger left the control panel, she was running.

Throwing herself down next to her husband, she discovered a deep slice across his lower ribs that bled freely, but the blank stare on Jor's face was just his semi-conscious attention riveted by the rising pod.

With a half-sob of relief, Lara turned to order the robots to bring her supplies to dress the wound, and found a scorched and semi-dazed, but grim general scowling down on her.

"Your son, Lara, where have you sent him?"

"His name is Kal, son of El!" she snapped at Zod, too furious with that would-be killer of her child and husband to think of the danger he might still pose. "And he's beyond your reach!"

The general scowled some more but then he turned to leave, and Lara finally could concentrate on the important things.

She had just finished staunching the bleeding, and was about to coax Jor into a sitting position where she could reach the wound better to seal it properly, when the commotion on the landing platform spilled inside, again.

More soldiers, these apparently loyal to the Council, streamed in and secured the two men her husband had shot earlier.

And then they turned their guns on Jor and announced, "Jor-El. For breaching the Genesis Chamber and theft of the Registry of Citizens, you are under arrest."

SZSZSZSZSZSZS

When the Codex could not be found on the premises and neither Jor-El nor Lara – nor, as it happened, General Zod – would admit to any knowledge of its whereabouts, theft quickly escalated into high treason. And as the Council could not fathom two independent incidents of high treason occurring in parallel, they were equally quick to pronounce Jor a co-conspirator to the mutinous general.

It didn't help their case that both men used their last words to the Council on decrying the foolishness of that august body yet again, at one point standing shoulder to shoulder and arguing with the same desperate passion about Krypton's impending doom.

The verdict was, consequently, unsurprising. "General Zod. For the crimes of murder and high treason, the Council has sentenced you and your fellow insurgents, including the scientist Jor-El, to 300 cycles of somatic reconditioning."

Jor faced the judgement pale but decorous; Zod spat at the High Eminence, disdainful of the Council's cowardice in trying to pass a death sentence without getting their hands dirty.

SZSZSZSZSZSZS

Lara's involvement might have gotten ignored in all the turmoil, but with her child gone there was nothing to keep her from her husband's side, in the most literal sense, not even Jor's pleading.

Even if, as the freezing cold of the suspended animation crawled up her body, it hurt worse than giving birth to Kal had.