Fic: The Light and the Silence (9/?)
Oct. 9th, 2007 06:53 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bagheera_sanWell, finally here's the real action starting. I scrapped a whole damn lot of unneccessary stuff and still this chapter is longer than the rest. Also, no, Lady Jan is not a Mary Sue (in case you're wondering.)
Title: The Light and the Silence (9/?)
Rating: NC-17
Pairing: Clex, but there are other pairings, slash, het and...um... other.
Fandom: Smallville, a couple of DC characters, inspired by the Man of Steel Annual #3, an Elseworlds Superman story called "Unforgiven", of which I posted scans here.
Genre: AU, science-fiction, action/adventure
Summary:
Kal shifted uncomfortably from foot to foot on the thin mat that covered the circular platform. Otherwise it had been cleared of equipment. The last time Kal had been to the spherical Solarium, it had been full of people, furniture and tools, and the Sunrider had hung suspended from the ceiling. The last time the cavern had been bright with piercing rays of sunlight that were directed down here from the surface of Mars by a clever system of mirrors. But this time, the round walls rose up into darkness, lit by electrical torches, and he and Batman were the only people in the room, standing a few feet apart on the mat.
Kal wore the same clothes he had worn all day except his boots; following Bruce Wayne's example, he had slipped them off before stepping onto the mats. Wayne on the other hand wore a loose grey sleeveless shirt and black pants. He had tied back his grey-streaked hair in a ponytail, which made his face look gaunter, and his strong jaw severe rather than feral. He was clean-shaven tonight, and once more Kal could not help but realize that he would have been a handsome man if life had been kinder to him. His robotic arm hung at his side in a relaxed position; it had been polished and repaired, but he didn't seem to intend to use it. His normal arm was all the more impressive. White scars, some thin as hairs, others broad and deep, cut into skin stretched taut over spare muscles and strong tendons. He was still on the starving side of ascetic, but the few days in the rebel base had obviously improved his health greatly.
Compared to him, Kal felt lumbering and uncoordinated. He could not find balance or concentration, and it wasn't merely Batman's fault. Hurrying to their appointment, Kal had run into Lex. He had been glad to see him, and told him of his small success in gaining Wayne's approval.
"Well done, Kal," Lex had said. His praise had sounded unsurprised, even though it was kind, and Kal almost felt as if he was talking to his father and not to his friend, or whatever it was Lex and he now were.
Kal had drifted towards him, hoping to break the ice, and at least steal some reassuring touch. Whatever doubts he had had about his attraction to Lex were gone as soon as they were close, and he could see it reflected in Lex's lingering look, but after a second it was gone.
"Don't let him wait," Lex said. "Bruce can be… strict."
Now Kal still felt as if someone had pulled the rug from under him, and the fact that Batman was preparing to beat him up wasn't helping. When Wayne went into a fighting stance, Kal anxiously warned, "You could get hurt. Maybe this isn't such a good – "
A second later, he lay on his back on the mat, blinking up at the cave ceiling. Wayne stood over him as if he hadn't moved at all, but for the first time since Arkham his face looked relaxed, his blue eyes perfectly serene, a glint of satisfaction in them.
"This isn't about strength. Get up. We'll do this until you learn to move."
*
"Look!" Kal said, and appeared on the other side of the room. The training with his new teacher, although it resembled torture more closely than sparring, was quickly bearing fruits. "I'm fast!"
Lex turned around, a smile curling his lips. He was wearing comfortable clothes, but hadn't slept when Kal had returned from his training in the early morning hours. "You are. It must be going well with Bruce."
Moving in a blink to Lex's side, Kal beamed. "You aren't angry anymore?"
Lex raised a brow. "Angry? What made you think I was angry?"
"I just… had the feeling you were avoiding me," Kal confessed uneasily. He felt a bit shaky when he touched Lex's arm through the fabric of his shirt, but he couldn't resist. All the sparring with Bruce hadn't satisfied the burning need for closeness.
Lex's mirrored the touch, a friendly clasp on Kal's shoulder, and smiled up at him. "Then I'm sorry, Kal-El. I was busy, and I thought you could do with a little time to come to terms with all your new experiences. To be perfectly honest, I wasn't sure how you would feel about me in the morning."
Kal frowned, and let his hand to drop his side. Lex's touch, friendly as it was, set a clear boundary between them. "Feel about you?"
"I hope you had fun," Lex explained. "I wanted to show you how pleasant it can be to shed all your inhibitions, but maybe I went a little too far. If so, I apologize."
Kal swallowed, turning away. So this was it. Oh, he was an idiot – not that he needed any more proof for that. "You were just teaching me. Did you… did you enjoy it at all?"
He heard Lex exhale, and it sounded almost like a sigh of relief. "Kal." A gentle touch at his elbow and Kal found himself pulled to the bed and sitting down. Lex stood before him, their knees almost touching, and looked him up and down, then softly cupped his jaw, stroking Kal's lower lip with his thumb. "Don't let anyone ever tell you that you're anything but beautiful."
Kal's eyes slipped shut and he bent back his head with a stifled gasp. "So – "
"Yes, I did enjoy myself," Lex whispered, and noiselessly went down to his knees between Kal's thighs. "This is a very unexpected side-effect to gaining you for our side," he breathed against Kal's belly where his shirt was riding up, and at the same time undid the button and fly of his jeans and glanced up with a smirk, "But I can't say I'm not enjoying it."
*
"Uh, why are we using a blindfold?"
Kal shifted nervously, and Bruce tugged more tightly at the cloth. "Quiet," he growled and Kal obeyed, although the silence made him uneasy now that he was blind. He didn't feel Bruce's hands on him anymore, but he heard his own blood rush in his ears and then he could hear the man circling him, the soft sandy scrape of his soles on the steps leading out of the Solarium. Bruce no longer scared him the way he had when Kal had still only known him as Batman, but his intimidating attitude hardly inspired confidence. "Follow me."
Fumbling for the steps and the walls, Kal staggered after him. He hoped very much no one would see them, because he had to look ridiculously. But the longer he walked, the less he could imagine his surroundings, or think of anything except the blackness. Suddenly, the thumping of Bruce's heart before him, and their lungs drawing breath, the draft whistling in the hallways and even the gurgling of water from the depths, it all became almost tangible, a plastic presence of sounds shaping the world.
"Oh," Kal whispered, amazed. "This is about listening."
Bruce had stopped beside him, and the air had changed, grown moister. There was an odd hollowness of sound around them. "No," Bruce said and shoved him forward. "This is about trust."
Kal screamed at the top of his lungs when the shove sent him falling into a bottomless abyss, screamed for minutes at the sudden absence of ground under his feet, until he realized that he was no longer falling in darkness, but motionless, floating, then soaring upwards.
He zoomed in on Bruce's heartbeat, and finally ripped off the blindfold when he had recovered enough to be angry. They were in a dark cavern parted by a natural chasm, and Bruce had pushed him down from the edge. Now he stood a few feet below him and stared moodily up at Kal's floating form.
When they stood eye to eye, nothing beneath Kal's feet except air, Bruce said, "Trust no one."
*
Kal still felt queasy. The night before, he and Bruce had sparred for the last time. "One more lesson," Bruce had said, and pulled out a ring from a metal box.
The bruises from the subsequent fight were long since gone, but if Kal never encountered a chunk of kryptonite again, it would still be too soon. He hadn't told Lex about the rough sparring, as Lex's mood had improved over the last days, and Kal did not want to spoil it.
"Can you see through things yet?"
Kal tried, squinting and blinking, but the only transparent thing remained the pane of glass or clear crystal that separated them from Mars's inhospitable surface. It was one of the few free hours Bruce granted him, and after a huge meal and sharing his misery with Dick in the mess hall, he had gone back to Lex's.
"No, I don't think so. Are you sure I'll be able to?"
Lex walked a few steps, then faced the window, staring outside. He looked very far away in his thoughts. "Sometimes I feel like I see right through things," he said, softly and seriously. "I watch things and see their true nature. All their secrets exposed, their inner mechanics. Their destiny. But the day I met you, I think I had an epiphany."
Kal eyed him in surprise, not quite sure what to say. As it turned out, Lex didn't expect him to comment. He smiled to himself, not entirely nice, just determined and sure. Kal sincerely hoped he would never find himself in the way of this determination.
"For the first time I saw the road that was mine. The future I am meant to create."
"You came up with a plan?" Kal asked, trying to follow the conversation.
"Not a plan." Lex shook his head and smiled a bit crookedly. "Nothing concerning the immediate future. I meant the big picture, Kal. The world you're going to inherit when we win."
The prospect was scary. Creating a new world. So many people, so much anger. What would happen to Kal's people if Lex's people won the war as they deserved to? Would they be driven out of the solar system, or could the two people live together in peace, as equals? Maybe they could go and colonize Mars instead.
"There's more to do than shake off oppression, Kal. That's the easy part of any fight. It gets much harder when you're fighting the enemies within. Once we're free, we're going to be ten times as cruel as you to make up for the time we've spent powerless." Lex turned to face Kal and put a hand on his shoulder, looking up at him with eyes burning with intensity. "What you should worry about isn't the war we're fighting now. It's the one that comes after victory that'll be the real test of your good intentions. It's going to be a much longer and harder war than this one."
It was had to breath or form words with this vast, empty road suddenly in front of Kal. He remembered the talk in the attic; his father forbidding him to look for stars and brighter dreams, pointing him instead towards the frozen past. It was like being handed the keys to a prison he didn't quite know how to live outside of.
"But we're going to fight it together, Lex, aren't we?"
Lex's watchful, searching expression froze, then dimmed. He smiled, but it was a smile on the brink of faltering, possessing none of the certainty of his words. "It's a long way until then. Forgive me, Kal. I tend to think in much larger dimensions than some people are comfortable with. And someone like you isn't ever going to lack people willing to follow him to the end of the world."
"What?" Kal frowned in confusion. Lex clapped him on the shoulder and shook his head ruefully.
"If you weren't so horribly noble, I'd think you were fishing for compliments. I'm just saying you make friends easily," Lex replied with a chuckle.
*
The Javelin's cockpit was quiet, filled only by the warbling, hissing sounds of the radio signals from Earth that they were intercepting. The blue planet filled their view screen, large and luminous in the full sun. Everyone was holding their breath as Ollie sat bent low over the receiver and listened to the constant noise with a frown of concentration. He had explained the matter to them earlier.
Earth was guarded by a host of artificial satellites. Some were for surveillance, others equipped with weapons, yet others relayed the communication with the bases in the solar system and the homeworld on Krypton. All of them were controlled remotely from Earth, and they were all coordinated with each other. Every few hours, a blind spot would open in the tightly spun web, and this window they would use to get close enough to Earth for Alicia to teleport them down.
"The intervals aren't regular," Ollie had told them. "The only reliable sign that a window for entry is going to appear is the signal from Krypton – there's a silence after each compressed data burst, as if the whole thing is taking a breath, and that's what were looking for."
And so they sat, the whole team that had come with them to Earth, and waited for silence. Ollie was only their pilot, experienced in smuggling things to and from Earth, but he would return with the Javelin to Mars, where Lois waited for him. She had been unwilling to part from Chloe, but equally unwilling to take Chloe into a potential battle, so she had grudgingly given up the opportunity to fight more Kryptonians. Bruce was with them; he had left the Mars base under Victor Stone's command. Dick had also stayed behind, to Kal's disappointment – aside from Lex, Dick and Chloe were the only real friends he had made on Mars. When they had left, Bruce and Dick had bid their goodbyes with serious faces, and there had been a finality to the ritual that chilled Kal.
"It's habit," Lex had explained. "Dick is slated to be his successor."
The signal from Krypton stuttered for a few minutes, then softened to a long wail, rising higher and higher before it plunged into sizzling white noise. It was strangely rhythmic, almost like a song or a heartbeat and Kal felt dazed just from listening to it, his eyes blinded by the blazing light of the sun reflected from Earth.
And then, suddenly, there was nothing, no noise, no signal, just the light and the silence at the end of the spectrum.
Lex and Bruce jumped into action, and Kal sucked in a startled breath as the Javelin suddenly changed course and dropped closer to Earth. White twinkled on the Himalayans, a circling rainstorm hung like a veil over the azure sea, the Arabian peninsula stood out in warm amber colors. Lex touched his shoulder, and Kal rose, still dazed with the hurried moment, and took his place at Alicia's side.
"Go," Bruce said, and the ship dissolved into prickling darkness.
The humidity nearly choked Kal, and he started coughing. All around them he glimpsed emerald leaves and dark wood, and Earth so dark and red it looked soaked with blood, a smell of rotting things assaulted his senses, and then it was gone, too, as Alicia made the next teleport.
Sand was suddenly under their feet, and they skidded, averting their faces from the furnace of a sun that hung low above their heads, and both Alicia and Lex tightened their grips around Kal's arms. Nausea rose in Kal's stomach, he heaved, but already the desert shimmered like a mirage and was gone.
Next they appeared on top of rocky cliffs sloping down into a violent ocean, and dusk encroached from the West under a front of heavy clouds. Kal bent over, retching, but Lex pulled him up again by the back of his shirt and Bruce gave him a resounding slap. "Not now," he bellowed, and Alicia gasped, "Ready?" and teleported again.
Three more jumps and Kal was barely conscious, but then he was allowed to sag to his knees somewhere dark. Short grass tickled his numb palms. When he finally stopped heaving and looked up, they stood among a group of small, well-tended maple trees. Their leaves where starting to yellow, and some brown ones already littered the grass. Alicia was gone, she had to hurry if she wanted to be back on the Javelin before it had to leave orbit or risk detection. She had offered to stay with their party back when they devised their strategy, but the fewer they were, the less likely they were to raise unwelcome attention. In the distance, Kal saw the cool neon glow of street lights, and tall, many-windowed houses surrounded their island of dark and quiet. They were in a park somewhere.
Kal wasn't the only one who had taken badly to the quick jumps around the globe: Lex looked ashen, his face glistening with sweat from the strain of so many jumps, and even Bruce looked tight-lipped and a little pale.
Lex glanced around, then nodded. "The ninth district," he said.
Kal recognized it, too, when he spotted the tall, illuminated statue of white marble on the other end of the park, in the middle of a small square. The ninth district was east of the Science Palace, still within the centre of Metropolis, but surrounded by some large parks. It consisted of four arcologies grouped around a small square. Before the invasion, human population density had just started to become a major problem. The purpose of arcologies was to concentrate a huge amount of people on a relatively small space. The housing complexes contained all infrastructure needed to technically permit the inhabitants to never leave the place – often they even worked there. The ninth district housed humans only.
At this time of night, approaching midnight, the streets, the parks and the square were deserted, and most windows dark. Only the statue of Governor Zod was bathed in light.
Their plan was to rendezvous with another member of the rebels on Earth, who would supply them with fake IDs, money and everything else they needed to travel to Gotham and set themselves up in No Man's Land, the lawless part of the city that had been fenced off and left to stew in its own juices ever since the devastation of the invasion days.
"There's one of our apartments in the beta arcology," Lex said. Bruce was scanning the area with some device; he only gave Lex a curt nod and followed silently as Lex led the way.
"How will they know we're here?" Kal asked. He hadn't always been present when they had mapped out their strategy, and now he once more felt out of the loop. Neither Bruce nor Lex seemed intent to clue him in, though.
"She'll know," was all Lex said.
They circled the arcology until they had reached the side that faced away from the brightly lit square. The towering complex was shaped like a pyramid, each apartment fulfilling the role of a single brick. Since it narrowed towards a single point, the parts of the apartments that stood out served as balconies, each the exact same shape and size.
"We can scale up," Bruce said, reaching for the grappling hook on his belt, but Lex shook his head with a smirk.
"Why bother when we have a flier? You can manage us both, can you, Kal?"
Kal nodded, he had tried flying with both Dick and Chloe, and once he trusted in his own weightlessness, it was perfectly easy. Lex laid an arm over his shoulder and Kal wrapped his own around Lex's waist, whereas Bruce only gripped Kal's hand with his own. The lift-off was still a bit shaky, since Kal had to jump into the air to gain speed, but then they glided upwards far more silently than they could have managed with grappling lines. Lex grimaced, and Kal gave him a worried look, but he only shook his head. "Heights," he hissed into Kal's ear, then directed him towards the right balcony.
Bruce was the first to touch down, crouching low and glancing around alertly, but the apartment was dark and dead behind the glass balcony doors. Lex entered a quick combination of numbers into the lock and the door slid open. They stepped into a narrow living room. The ceiling seemed low and oppressive after the time spent in the airy caves on Mars, and the air was stale, obviously no one had been here in some time. Kal could see that the entry, located at the end of a short hall, was sealed. Dust covered the flat TV screen set into one of the walls. A locked door went off to the right. Bruce opened it with great care, surveyed the bedroom beyond, and closed it again. Kal followed Lex to the second door on the left.
Lex pressed down the handle and opened it, obviously not nearly as concerned as Bruce, but when he and Kal spotted the intruder at the same time, they both froze. Lex whipped out his laser gun, and there was a glow like embers in the shadow, right where the eyes of the figure sitting at the kitchen table should have been, and then Lex slapped his hand over the light-switch and breathed a sigh of relief when light filled the kitchen.
"Lady Jan," he greeted and she inclined her head a little.
A Kryptonian woman in a full bodysuit, cowl and frills and all, sat at the table, an empty glass and some crumbs before her. She was tall and slim, and her face, framed by the black cowl, was a deep, earthy colour, which paired with her almond-shaped dark eyes made it almost impossible to tell where on Krypton she was from, but Kal belatedly realized that she had to be Lady Jan, last daughter of the House of Nez, wife of Lionel Luthor. Lady Jan was older than Lara, and not exceptionally beautiful, but her bearing was impressive, almost disquieting.
"Lex," she answered Lex's greeting with a surprisingly deep and resonant voice. "And Kal-El, I see."
Kal fumbled a little, unsure how to address her – she was a Kryptonian, and of old nobility, and yet she had recognized him even in human clothes. What was she doing here?
Lex caught his discomfort and holstered his laser. "Don't worry, Kal. Lady Jan is a member of the resistance. She's the contact we were supposed to meet." He glanced over his shoulder into the dark living room, where there was no sign of Bruce. Lex raised a brow at the shadows. "Not feeling social?"
"I'm going to secure the perimeter," Batman's gravelly voice came from a darker shadow by the window, and he slipped out onto the balcony and into the night, gone in a moment like a phantom.
"Your father was getting impatient," Lady Jan said. There was no censure or impatience of her own in her voice, she herself seemed unshakably calm. She was still regarding Kal-El with intense scrutiny.
Lex gave a small snort. "I'm surprised he hasn't come here himself to lecture me on tardiness."
"He had to go to an unscheduled meeting of the senate and the councils tonight," she replied. Then she peered at Kal again. "I've watched you many times, but this is the first time I see you dressed as a human, Kal-El. You look a lot like your father."
"You know Jor-El?" Kal asked, then averted his eyes, abashed by his own rudeness. "You, uh, watched me?"
She didn't seem to mind, instead gazed at Lex for a second. "You've told him much, but not everything," she observed.
"Jor-El had told him nothing at all," Lex countered, he sounded the tiniest bit belligerent. To Kal, he added, "Lady Jan is more than just a member of the resistance. When the contact to your father broke off, she took his place. She's our true leader."
Jan injected, "Lex can explain it to you in full later, Kal-El, but for now there is much Lex and I have to discuss."
Kal did not like the idea of having to let them talk in private, like a child sent off to play while the adults discussed serious matters, but her stern manner was hard to object to. In the gossip, she had been painted in the most lurid colours as weak-willed and corrupted by Lionel Luthor's lure, but quite obviously the gossip was far from the truth. If anything, judging from Lex's words and her manner, she was the one controlling Luthor.
Still, Kal hesitated. "There's… uh, there's still the matter of my payment. Technically, I've fulfilled my mission. I'm not asking for the money for myself, it's just that my parents need it to keep the Kents – our human servants. I don't want them to be sold or separated. Could you ask Mr. Luthor to transfer the money to my parents?"
Lady Jan regarded him gravely. "You care for them a lot. I've often noticed that. It might one day prove a great weakness… but it has also made you the man you are today. I will see to it that they receive the necessary money."
Baffled as to how she could know so much but grateful, Kal nodded and left the kitchen to them, pulling the door shut behind him. The balcony door was still open, and there was no sign of Bruce. At a loss as to what to do, Kal sat down on the couch rather uncomfortably. Just for a second, he let his hearing expand and listened for the conversation in the kitchen, but there was none, just curious silence and Lex's breathing. Jan's heartbeat was odd – he couldn't tell what his own sounded like, so maybe Kryptonian hearts were just different.
Embarrassed by his own attempt to spy and discomfited by the strange silence, Kal picked up the television remote control and switched it on. The crystal screen illuminated, but there was some kind of news program on, a recording of a meeting of the Science Council, and Kal switched channels, looking for something lighter to take his mind off what was going on in the kitchen. He knew he was being silly – Lady Jan was Lex's stepmother after all… on the second channel there was the same news program, and also on the third, and now Kal realized that it was a special broadcast that had apparently interrupted all scheduled shows. The disembodied voice of the commentator was presently explaining the proceedings as a member of the Council of Law spoke in front of the senior council members of both the Science Council and the Council of Law, with the dark, forbidding figure of Governor Zod presiding at the centre of the tribunal. It was being held in the grand theatre, which was located in the shadow of the white spire of the Palace of Science, a round building with enough ranks of seats to hold both councils, the human senate and civilian spectators – together with the members of the city guard and the military, there were more than five thousand people in the theatre. The governor's balcony sat in the centre of the seats reserved for the senior council members, and directly below it was the speaker's podium, which served as witness stand as well.
Occasionally, the camera would swerve over the ranks, and Kal got a short glimpse or two of the very bottom of the theatre. In the round between the lowest ranks of seats, there was a throng of soldiers in their black and silver armour, obviously guarding something or someone hidden by their bulk.
Kal sighed – it was just another trial, some criminals who were expected to receive high sentences. These trials were often broadcast on all channels as they were highly educational. Or, Kal guessed, highly useful to scare the masses. Batman himself had stood down there more than once.
Capital punishment for humans, since the end of the invasion days, was a life sentence in Arkham. Lesser crimes merited a stay in the correctional facility Belle Reve, or being sold into the farming belt. Kryptonian criminals were extremely rare – thinking back as far as he remembered, Kal could only recall a dozen cases or so of fraud among scientists and a handful of highly memorable suicides and suicide attempts. Suicide was the only crime that had ever merited the death penalty, and it had only been sentenced post mortem – in practice this meant that the dead offenders would not be granted funeral rites, and that their spouses and children would use all rights to their name of House.
Kal had no desire to see more Kryptonian injustice. Arkham and the Mars base had cured him of all illusions about the justness of his people. So he ignored the droning voices of the debating council members and tried instead to catch a glimpse of the audience. Jor-El rarely went there, but Lara occasional attended, and he was also curious if he might see Lionel Luthor among the human senate, now that he viewed the man in a new light.
A sudden uproar of whispers among the audience drew his attention back to the speaker, who had been interrupted by an angry voice from the Council of Science.
" – entirely preposterous!" she was crying, and Kal recognized the shrill voice of elderly Lady Ursa. "Of course they are responsible for his actions! Seditious opinions are a habit among that family – "
"The Council of Law is speaking," the speaker exclaimed angrily. "And our opinion must be weighed!"
Zod raised a black gloved hand on his balcony, and Ursa sat back down in her seat while a hush settled over the audience, and the speaker, vindicated, resumed.
"As I was saying, there is absolutely no precedence for a case like this. We cannot judge hastily – we must remain rational, even in the face of such an outrageous crime –"
"Treason!" someone yelled from the audience, and the cry was taken up by many others, "Call it by its name! Treason!"
Grimly, the speaker went on. "The nature of the crime is not up to debate. But since the perpetrator himself is absent, and accusations have been raised against the rest of his house, the case is not as clear. Can they be blamed for the actions of another?"
Again a wave of enraged whispers rose from the audience – only a few faces remained grave and thoughtful. Zod frowned for a moment, then unexpectedly waved his hand again, and it took barely a minute for total silence to fall over the theatre.
"I'm tired of this," Zod said, and he sounded tired indeed, almost bored. "You all love to hear yourselves talk far too much. Let the head of accused house speak for himself. Let Jor-El speak!"
Miles away in the apartment, Kal gasped in shock and barely noticed that he had crushed the remote. Sparks fluttered over his fingers then died, but all his attention was on the screen, where the action proceeded painfully slow. A figure was now mounting the steps from the pit to the podium, tiny among the masses, and then the camera zoomed in on the man and Jor-El's face filled the screen. He looked haggard, aged years since Kal had seen him last, his sallow skin glistening with sweat.
Zod leaned forward in his seat. A hint of a smile tugged at the corner of his mouth as he stroked his beard. "Well, Jor-El. What do you have to say for yourself? Do you plead innocence?"
Of all the possible emotions on his father's face as he looked up at Zod, Kal was shocked to see fear: bleak, frantic fear. Jor-El did not reply at all for long seconds, then visibly gathered his composure in an attempt to speak up. Still, his voice was faint compared to Zod's.
"I raised my son as a good Kryptonian," Jor-El said. "I have never once uttered a word against the Kryptonian state or the Kryptonian people in his presence, nor have I even endorsed the kind of wanton violence that he is claimed to have perpetrated in Arkham."
Each word sunk Kal deeper into a shocked stupor. It was him. Him they were accusing, not his father, his crimes they debated, his trial. Of course he could not have hoped to go unpunished –
"You choose your words much more carefully than you used to, Jor-El," Zod said, now smiling openly, full of condescension. "But everyone well knows that they are not true. Haven't you yourself claimed in front of this very Science Council such ludicrous things as that Krypton was doomed to explode?"
Hostile laughter rose from the seats like the blood-thirsty cries of hyenas, but Jor-El did not shrink from it. His expression had passed from fear to a great calm, and now he looked at Zod almost with a hint of regret. The two of them were the only silent people in the theatre, it seemed.
"My son was a model student, and never once broke the law," Jor-El said when the laughter died down, and Kal felt his eyes burn and his throat hurt in shame at the pride in Jor-El's voice.
Zod cocked his head, and oddly birdlike gesture for such a powerfully built man. He smirked. "Will anyone speak for Kal-El?" Silence followed, and he called out louder, "Will anyone speak for him?"
Jor-El did not wait for anyone to speak up in his favour. "Kal-El was not alone when the incident happened. There was a human with him, and they encountered a known terrorist – "
"A human servant!" Zod laughed. "So that will be your defence? A servant corrupted your son?"
But the Council members did not react as Zod seemed to have expected them to; there was no sign of disbelief among them now, instead their faces lit up with varying expressions of outrage and appalled shock, and they seized on the idea viciously.
"This is unheard of!" the councilman who had spoken before Zod had called up Kal's father exclaimed. "We cannot tolerate our youth to be so corrupted by these low and primitive people! We have been far, far too lenient! I demand – "
Zod narrowed his eyes, now entirely focused on Jor-El, who seemed not to dare to look hopeful and yet was obviously relieved by the reaction of the crowd. The only part of the audience which was now not raving against humans was the human senate itself, where the faces had suddenly paled with uncertainty and nervousness.
"An interesting claim," Zod said to Jor-El. "But your son has not had contact with either of these men before the Arkham incident. He is still almost a youth, and certainly malleable, but would such brief contact be enough to turn anyone into a violent terrorist? A traitor to his people?"
Jor-El held his gaze. "I do not know. I was not present."
Zod cocked back his head with a sudden predatory smirk. "But of course your son has had contact with other humans. We must take that into account."
The councilman, encouraged by the support of his fellows, rose up again. "Yes, yes, we must! I've often warned against the presence of humans in the lives of our children and youths, the danger of them being led astray – "
"You have human servants, haven't you, Jor-El?" Zod asked.
Jor-El stood frozen now, and his voice was perfectly colourless. "Yes, I do."
"And a highly unusual arrangement to boot," Zod went on. "I have read… they have been in your service since the day we passed the law that made human property legal. In fact, they were among the first dozen registered with the Council of Law. And your family lives closely together with them – of course, your budget does not allow for a more proper state of affairs – I assume they have had much unchecked contact with Kal-El since he was an infant?"
"They are simple people," Jor-El objected, but weakly. "They couldn't have – "
"Ah," Zod said, clucking his tongue reproachfully. "Jor-El. 'Simple people'? You of all people should know not to underestimate simple things. One moment of inattention – and already they grow, they change, they evolve. You have made a mistake, and you should have known better. But I see you are not to blame – it is saddening to see a man reduced so, but we are used to your wrong conclusions, are we not?"
Grim nods all around, no laughter now. Jor-El seemed blind to them, he had eyes only for Zod, hanging on his every word as if still expecting a horrible catastrophe. Zod leaned back in his elevated seat.
"We must let this be a lesson to all of us, my fellow Kryptonians." He seemed to be speaking directly at the camera, directly at Kal. "And a lesson to my human citizens as well. We must be watchful and circumspect, because corruption lurks everywhere." And now he smiled, and there was an entirely un-Kryptonian tinge of irony to his voice as he concluded, "Often a single word, a single foolish action may be enough to set into motion a chain of corruption, violence and destruction."
Solemn silence followed his words, and with a wave of his hand, Zod made the guards near Jor-El stand down. "You may return to your wife. No Kryptonian citizen will be punished for mere… stupidity. As for the servants – let the Council of Law speak."
Kal collapsed in a shuddering heap on the couch, clutching his knees with sweaty palms and he fought against the nausea welling up in him. But the trial had not ended, even if his parents were safe – the Kents would surely be sent to Arkham, and Kal knew instantly that he would go there and save them, even if it meant betraying the rebels. It was his fault and his fault only and he could not –
"We must set precedence," the councilman exclaimed. "This is a far graver offence than terrorism and murder. I plead death."
"Death!" The word was taken up, one by one the council members spoke, and nearly unison in their judgement.
Jor-El gripped the podium, straining against the many voiced choir of grim sentences. "You cannot! This is against your laws! You cannot kill!" he yelled at Zod, until the guards seized him and dragged him away.
Zod watched calmly, then nodded. "The votes have been tallied. The Council has spoken. Jonathan and Martha Kent will be executed, like traitors and criminals of war."
Instantly the tumult rose in the theatre to drown out everything else, people standing up in their seats and pushing for a better view of the pit, where now the soldiers parted their tight formation to reveal Lara El being led away the same direction as Jor-El, and a pair of humans, huddled close together, the man's arm's wrapped protectively around the woman, her copper hair the only speck of colour in the sea of black and grey.
It wasn't until then that Kal realized what was about to happen. A summary execution, held directly after the sentence was spoken, just as it had been practiced during the invasion and immediately after. He did not see what happened on the screen, because he was on his feet and out of the balcony door, in the air and racing towards the centre of the city, and the last thing he heard behind him was the double sound of shots.
Title: The Light and the Silence (9/?)
Rating: NC-17
Pairing: Clex, but there are other pairings, slash, het and...um... other.
Fandom: Smallville, a couple of DC characters, inspired by the Man of Steel Annual #3, an Elseworlds Superman story called "Unforgiven", of which I posted scans here.
Genre: AU, science-fiction, action/adventure
Summary:
Kal shifted uncomfortably from foot to foot on the thin mat that covered the circular platform. Otherwise it had been cleared of equipment. The last time Kal had been to the spherical Solarium, it had been full of people, furniture and tools, and the Sunrider had hung suspended from the ceiling. The last time the cavern had been bright with piercing rays of sunlight that were directed down here from the surface of Mars by a clever system of mirrors. But this time, the round walls rose up into darkness, lit by electrical torches, and he and Batman were the only people in the room, standing a few feet apart on the mat.
Kal wore the same clothes he had worn all day except his boots; following Bruce Wayne's example, he had slipped them off before stepping onto the mats. Wayne on the other hand wore a loose grey sleeveless shirt and black pants. He had tied back his grey-streaked hair in a ponytail, which made his face look gaunter, and his strong jaw severe rather than feral. He was clean-shaven tonight, and once more Kal could not help but realize that he would have been a handsome man if life had been kinder to him. His robotic arm hung at his side in a relaxed position; it had been polished and repaired, but he didn't seem to intend to use it. His normal arm was all the more impressive. White scars, some thin as hairs, others broad and deep, cut into skin stretched taut over spare muscles and strong tendons. He was still on the starving side of ascetic, but the few days in the rebel base had obviously improved his health greatly.
Compared to him, Kal felt lumbering and uncoordinated. He could not find balance or concentration, and it wasn't merely Batman's fault. Hurrying to their appointment, Kal had run into Lex. He had been glad to see him, and told him of his small success in gaining Wayne's approval.
"Well done, Kal," Lex had said. His praise had sounded unsurprised, even though it was kind, and Kal almost felt as if he was talking to his father and not to his friend, or whatever it was Lex and he now were.
Kal had drifted towards him, hoping to break the ice, and at least steal some reassuring touch. Whatever doubts he had had about his attraction to Lex were gone as soon as they were close, and he could see it reflected in Lex's lingering look, but after a second it was gone.
"Don't let him wait," Lex said. "Bruce can be… strict."
Now Kal still felt as if someone had pulled the rug from under him, and the fact that Batman was preparing to beat him up wasn't helping. When Wayne went into a fighting stance, Kal anxiously warned, "You could get hurt. Maybe this isn't such a good – "
A second later, he lay on his back on the mat, blinking up at the cave ceiling. Wayne stood over him as if he hadn't moved at all, but for the first time since Arkham his face looked relaxed, his blue eyes perfectly serene, a glint of satisfaction in them.
"This isn't about strength. Get up. We'll do this until you learn to move."
*
"Look!" Kal said, and appeared on the other side of the room. The training with his new teacher, although it resembled torture more closely than sparring, was quickly bearing fruits. "I'm fast!"
Lex turned around, a smile curling his lips. He was wearing comfortable clothes, but hadn't slept when Kal had returned from his training in the early morning hours. "You are. It must be going well with Bruce."
Moving in a blink to Lex's side, Kal beamed. "You aren't angry anymore?"
Lex raised a brow. "Angry? What made you think I was angry?"
"I just… had the feeling you were avoiding me," Kal confessed uneasily. He felt a bit shaky when he touched Lex's arm through the fabric of his shirt, but he couldn't resist. All the sparring with Bruce hadn't satisfied the burning need for closeness.
Lex's mirrored the touch, a friendly clasp on Kal's shoulder, and smiled up at him. "Then I'm sorry, Kal-El. I was busy, and I thought you could do with a little time to come to terms with all your new experiences. To be perfectly honest, I wasn't sure how you would feel about me in the morning."
Kal frowned, and let his hand to drop his side. Lex's touch, friendly as it was, set a clear boundary between them. "Feel about you?"
"I hope you had fun," Lex explained. "I wanted to show you how pleasant it can be to shed all your inhibitions, but maybe I went a little too far. If so, I apologize."
Kal swallowed, turning away. So this was it. Oh, he was an idiot – not that he needed any more proof for that. "You were just teaching me. Did you… did you enjoy it at all?"
He heard Lex exhale, and it sounded almost like a sigh of relief. "Kal." A gentle touch at his elbow and Kal found himself pulled to the bed and sitting down. Lex stood before him, their knees almost touching, and looked him up and down, then softly cupped his jaw, stroking Kal's lower lip with his thumb. "Don't let anyone ever tell you that you're anything but beautiful."
Kal's eyes slipped shut and he bent back his head with a stifled gasp. "So – "
"Yes, I did enjoy myself," Lex whispered, and noiselessly went down to his knees between Kal's thighs. "This is a very unexpected side-effect to gaining you for our side," he breathed against Kal's belly where his shirt was riding up, and at the same time undid the button and fly of his jeans and glanced up with a smirk, "But I can't say I'm not enjoying it."
*
"Uh, why are we using a blindfold?"
Kal shifted nervously, and Bruce tugged more tightly at the cloth. "Quiet," he growled and Kal obeyed, although the silence made him uneasy now that he was blind. He didn't feel Bruce's hands on him anymore, but he heard his own blood rush in his ears and then he could hear the man circling him, the soft sandy scrape of his soles on the steps leading out of the Solarium. Bruce no longer scared him the way he had when Kal had still only known him as Batman, but his intimidating attitude hardly inspired confidence. "Follow me."
Fumbling for the steps and the walls, Kal staggered after him. He hoped very much no one would see them, because he had to look ridiculously. But the longer he walked, the less he could imagine his surroundings, or think of anything except the blackness. Suddenly, the thumping of Bruce's heart before him, and their lungs drawing breath, the draft whistling in the hallways and even the gurgling of water from the depths, it all became almost tangible, a plastic presence of sounds shaping the world.
"Oh," Kal whispered, amazed. "This is about listening."
Bruce had stopped beside him, and the air had changed, grown moister. There was an odd hollowness of sound around them. "No," Bruce said and shoved him forward. "This is about trust."
Kal screamed at the top of his lungs when the shove sent him falling into a bottomless abyss, screamed for minutes at the sudden absence of ground under his feet, until he realized that he was no longer falling in darkness, but motionless, floating, then soaring upwards.
He zoomed in on Bruce's heartbeat, and finally ripped off the blindfold when he had recovered enough to be angry. They were in a dark cavern parted by a natural chasm, and Bruce had pushed him down from the edge. Now he stood a few feet below him and stared moodily up at Kal's floating form.
When they stood eye to eye, nothing beneath Kal's feet except air, Bruce said, "Trust no one."
*
Kal still felt queasy. The night before, he and Bruce had sparred for the last time. "One more lesson," Bruce had said, and pulled out a ring from a metal box.
The bruises from the subsequent fight were long since gone, but if Kal never encountered a chunk of kryptonite again, it would still be too soon. He hadn't told Lex about the rough sparring, as Lex's mood had improved over the last days, and Kal did not want to spoil it.
"Can you see through things yet?"
Kal tried, squinting and blinking, but the only transparent thing remained the pane of glass or clear crystal that separated them from Mars's inhospitable surface. It was one of the few free hours Bruce granted him, and after a huge meal and sharing his misery with Dick in the mess hall, he had gone back to Lex's.
"No, I don't think so. Are you sure I'll be able to?"
Lex walked a few steps, then faced the window, staring outside. He looked very far away in his thoughts. "Sometimes I feel like I see right through things," he said, softly and seriously. "I watch things and see their true nature. All their secrets exposed, their inner mechanics. Their destiny. But the day I met you, I think I had an epiphany."
Kal eyed him in surprise, not quite sure what to say. As it turned out, Lex didn't expect him to comment. He smiled to himself, not entirely nice, just determined and sure. Kal sincerely hoped he would never find himself in the way of this determination.
"For the first time I saw the road that was mine. The future I am meant to create."
"You came up with a plan?" Kal asked, trying to follow the conversation.
"Not a plan." Lex shook his head and smiled a bit crookedly. "Nothing concerning the immediate future. I meant the big picture, Kal. The world you're going to inherit when we win."
The prospect was scary. Creating a new world. So many people, so much anger. What would happen to Kal's people if Lex's people won the war as they deserved to? Would they be driven out of the solar system, or could the two people live together in peace, as equals? Maybe they could go and colonize Mars instead.
"There's more to do than shake off oppression, Kal. That's the easy part of any fight. It gets much harder when you're fighting the enemies within. Once we're free, we're going to be ten times as cruel as you to make up for the time we've spent powerless." Lex turned to face Kal and put a hand on his shoulder, looking up at him with eyes burning with intensity. "What you should worry about isn't the war we're fighting now. It's the one that comes after victory that'll be the real test of your good intentions. It's going to be a much longer and harder war than this one."
It was had to breath or form words with this vast, empty road suddenly in front of Kal. He remembered the talk in the attic; his father forbidding him to look for stars and brighter dreams, pointing him instead towards the frozen past. It was like being handed the keys to a prison he didn't quite know how to live outside of.
"But we're going to fight it together, Lex, aren't we?"
Lex's watchful, searching expression froze, then dimmed. He smiled, but it was a smile on the brink of faltering, possessing none of the certainty of his words. "It's a long way until then. Forgive me, Kal. I tend to think in much larger dimensions than some people are comfortable with. And someone like you isn't ever going to lack people willing to follow him to the end of the world."
"What?" Kal frowned in confusion. Lex clapped him on the shoulder and shook his head ruefully.
"If you weren't so horribly noble, I'd think you were fishing for compliments. I'm just saying you make friends easily," Lex replied with a chuckle.
*
The Javelin's cockpit was quiet, filled only by the warbling, hissing sounds of the radio signals from Earth that they were intercepting. The blue planet filled their view screen, large and luminous in the full sun. Everyone was holding their breath as Ollie sat bent low over the receiver and listened to the constant noise with a frown of concentration. He had explained the matter to them earlier.
Earth was guarded by a host of artificial satellites. Some were for surveillance, others equipped with weapons, yet others relayed the communication with the bases in the solar system and the homeworld on Krypton. All of them were controlled remotely from Earth, and they were all coordinated with each other. Every few hours, a blind spot would open in the tightly spun web, and this window they would use to get close enough to Earth for Alicia to teleport them down.
"The intervals aren't regular," Ollie had told them. "The only reliable sign that a window for entry is going to appear is the signal from Krypton – there's a silence after each compressed data burst, as if the whole thing is taking a breath, and that's what were looking for."
And so they sat, the whole team that had come with them to Earth, and waited for silence. Ollie was only their pilot, experienced in smuggling things to and from Earth, but he would return with the Javelin to Mars, where Lois waited for him. She had been unwilling to part from Chloe, but equally unwilling to take Chloe into a potential battle, so she had grudgingly given up the opportunity to fight more Kryptonians. Bruce was with them; he had left the Mars base under Victor Stone's command. Dick had also stayed behind, to Kal's disappointment – aside from Lex, Dick and Chloe were the only real friends he had made on Mars. When they had left, Bruce and Dick had bid their goodbyes with serious faces, and there had been a finality to the ritual that chilled Kal.
"It's habit," Lex had explained. "Dick is slated to be his successor."
The signal from Krypton stuttered for a few minutes, then softened to a long wail, rising higher and higher before it plunged into sizzling white noise. It was strangely rhythmic, almost like a song or a heartbeat and Kal felt dazed just from listening to it, his eyes blinded by the blazing light of the sun reflected from Earth.
And then, suddenly, there was nothing, no noise, no signal, just the light and the silence at the end of the spectrum.
Lex and Bruce jumped into action, and Kal sucked in a startled breath as the Javelin suddenly changed course and dropped closer to Earth. White twinkled on the Himalayans, a circling rainstorm hung like a veil over the azure sea, the Arabian peninsula stood out in warm amber colors. Lex touched his shoulder, and Kal rose, still dazed with the hurried moment, and took his place at Alicia's side.
"Go," Bruce said, and the ship dissolved into prickling darkness.
The humidity nearly choked Kal, and he started coughing. All around them he glimpsed emerald leaves and dark wood, and Earth so dark and red it looked soaked with blood, a smell of rotting things assaulted his senses, and then it was gone, too, as Alicia made the next teleport.
Sand was suddenly under their feet, and they skidded, averting their faces from the furnace of a sun that hung low above their heads, and both Alicia and Lex tightened their grips around Kal's arms. Nausea rose in Kal's stomach, he heaved, but already the desert shimmered like a mirage and was gone.
Next they appeared on top of rocky cliffs sloping down into a violent ocean, and dusk encroached from the West under a front of heavy clouds. Kal bent over, retching, but Lex pulled him up again by the back of his shirt and Bruce gave him a resounding slap. "Not now," he bellowed, and Alicia gasped, "Ready?" and teleported again.
Three more jumps and Kal was barely conscious, but then he was allowed to sag to his knees somewhere dark. Short grass tickled his numb palms. When he finally stopped heaving and looked up, they stood among a group of small, well-tended maple trees. Their leaves where starting to yellow, and some brown ones already littered the grass. Alicia was gone, she had to hurry if she wanted to be back on the Javelin before it had to leave orbit or risk detection. She had offered to stay with their party back when they devised their strategy, but the fewer they were, the less likely they were to raise unwelcome attention. In the distance, Kal saw the cool neon glow of street lights, and tall, many-windowed houses surrounded their island of dark and quiet. They were in a park somewhere.
Kal wasn't the only one who had taken badly to the quick jumps around the globe: Lex looked ashen, his face glistening with sweat from the strain of so many jumps, and even Bruce looked tight-lipped and a little pale.
Lex glanced around, then nodded. "The ninth district," he said.
Kal recognized it, too, when he spotted the tall, illuminated statue of white marble on the other end of the park, in the middle of a small square. The ninth district was east of the Science Palace, still within the centre of Metropolis, but surrounded by some large parks. It consisted of four arcologies grouped around a small square. Before the invasion, human population density had just started to become a major problem. The purpose of arcologies was to concentrate a huge amount of people on a relatively small space. The housing complexes contained all infrastructure needed to technically permit the inhabitants to never leave the place – often they even worked there. The ninth district housed humans only.
At this time of night, approaching midnight, the streets, the parks and the square were deserted, and most windows dark. Only the statue of Governor Zod was bathed in light.
Their plan was to rendezvous with another member of the rebels on Earth, who would supply them with fake IDs, money and everything else they needed to travel to Gotham and set themselves up in No Man's Land, the lawless part of the city that had been fenced off and left to stew in its own juices ever since the devastation of the invasion days.
"There's one of our apartments in the beta arcology," Lex said. Bruce was scanning the area with some device; he only gave Lex a curt nod and followed silently as Lex led the way.
"How will they know we're here?" Kal asked. He hadn't always been present when they had mapped out their strategy, and now he once more felt out of the loop. Neither Bruce nor Lex seemed intent to clue him in, though.
"She'll know," was all Lex said.
They circled the arcology until they had reached the side that faced away from the brightly lit square. The towering complex was shaped like a pyramid, each apartment fulfilling the role of a single brick. Since it narrowed towards a single point, the parts of the apartments that stood out served as balconies, each the exact same shape and size.
"We can scale up," Bruce said, reaching for the grappling hook on his belt, but Lex shook his head with a smirk.
"Why bother when we have a flier? You can manage us both, can you, Kal?"
Kal nodded, he had tried flying with both Dick and Chloe, and once he trusted in his own weightlessness, it was perfectly easy. Lex laid an arm over his shoulder and Kal wrapped his own around Lex's waist, whereas Bruce only gripped Kal's hand with his own. The lift-off was still a bit shaky, since Kal had to jump into the air to gain speed, but then they glided upwards far more silently than they could have managed with grappling lines. Lex grimaced, and Kal gave him a worried look, but he only shook his head. "Heights," he hissed into Kal's ear, then directed him towards the right balcony.
Bruce was the first to touch down, crouching low and glancing around alertly, but the apartment was dark and dead behind the glass balcony doors. Lex entered a quick combination of numbers into the lock and the door slid open. They stepped into a narrow living room. The ceiling seemed low and oppressive after the time spent in the airy caves on Mars, and the air was stale, obviously no one had been here in some time. Kal could see that the entry, located at the end of a short hall, was sealed. Dust covered the flat TV screen set into one of the walls. A locked door went off to the right. Bruce opened it with great care, surveyed the bedroom beyond, and closed it again. Kal followed Lex to the second door on the left.
Lex pressed down the handle and opened it, obviously not nearly as concerned as Bruce, but when he and Kal spotted the intruder at the same time, they both froze. Lex whipped out his laser gun, and there was a glow like embers in the shadow, right where the eyes of the figure sitting at the kitchen table should have been, and then Lex slapped his hand over the light-switch and breathed a sigh of relief when light filled the kitchen.
"Lady Jan," he greeted and she inclined her head a little.
A Kryptonian woman in a full bodysuit, cowl and frills and all, sat at the table, an empty glass and some crumbs before her. She was tall and slim, and her face, framed by the black cowl, was a deep, earthy colour, which paired with her almond-shaped dark eyes made it almost impossible to tell where on Krypton she was from, but Kal belatedly realized that she had to be Lady Jan, last daughter of the House of Nez, wife of Lionel Luthor. Lady Jan was older than Lara, and not exceptionally beautiful, but her bearing was impressive, almost disquieting.
"Lex," she answered Lex's greeting with a surprisingly deep and resonant voice. "And Kal-El, I see."
Kal fumbled a little, unsure how to address her – she was a Kryptonian, and of old nobility, and yet she had recognized him even in human clothes. What was she doing here?
Lex caught his discomfort and holstered his laser. "Don't worry, Kal. Lady Jan is a member of the resistance. She's the contact we were supposed to meet." He glanced over his shoulder into the dark living room, where there was no sign of Bruce. Lex raised a brow at the shadows. "Not feeling social?"
"I'm going to secure the perimeter," Batman's gravelly voice came from a darker shadow by the window, and he slipped out onto the balcony and into the night, gone in a moment like a phantom.
"Your father was getting impatient," Lady Jan said. There was no censure or impatience of her own in her voice, she herself seemed unshakably calm. She was still regarding Kal-El with intense scrutiny.
Lex gave a small snort. "I'm surprised he hasn't come here himself to lecture me on tardiness."
"He had to go to an unscheduled meeting of the senate and the councils tonight," she replied. Then she peered at Kal again. "I've watched you many times, but this is the first time I see you dressed as a human, Kal-El. You look a lot like your father."
"You know Jor-El?" Kal asked, then averted his eyes, abashed by his own rudeness. "You, uh, watched me?"
She didn't seem to mind, instead gazed at Lex for a second. "You've told him much, but not everything," she observed.
"Jor-El had told him nothing at all," Lex countered, he sounded the tiniest bit belligerent. To Kal, he added, "Lady Jan is more than just a member of the resistance. When the contact to your father broke off, she took his place. She's our true leader."
Jan injected, "Lex can explain it to you in full later, Kal-El, but for now there is much Lex and I have to discuss."
Kal did not like the idea of having to let them talk in private, like a child sent off to play while the adults discussed serious matters, but her stern manner was hard to object to. In the gossip, she had been painted in the most lurid colours as weak-willed and corrupted by Lionel Luthor's lure, but quite obviously the gossip was far from the truth. If anything, judging from Lex's words and her manner, she was the one controlling Luthor.
Still, Kal hesitated. "There's… uh, there's still the matter of my payment. Technically, I've fulfilled my mission. I'm not asking for the money for myself, it's just that my parents need it to keep the Kents – our human servants. I don't want them to be sold or separated. Could you ask Mr. Luthor to transfer the money to my parents?"
Lady Jan regarded him gravely. "You care for them a lot. I've often noticed that. It might one day prove a great weakness… but it has also made you the man you are today. I will see to it that they receive the necessary money."
Baffled as to how she could know so much but grateful, Kal nodded and left the kitchen to them, pulling the door shut behind him. The balcony door was still open, and there was no sign of Bruce. At a loss as to what to do, Kal sat down on the couch rather uncomfortably. Just for a second, he let his hearing expand and listened for the conversation in the kitchen, but there was none, just curious silence and Lex's breathing. Jan's heartbeat was odd – he couldn't tell what his own sounded like, so maybe Kryptonian hearts were just different.
Embarrassed by his own attempt to spy and discomfited by the strange silence, Kal picked up the television remote control and switched it on. The crystal screen illuminated, but there was some kind of news program on, a recording of a meeting of the Science Council, and Kal switched channels, looking for something lighter to take his mind off what was going on in the kitchen. He knew he was being silly – Lady Jan was Lex's stepmother after all… on the second channel there was the same news program, and also on the third, and now Kal realized that it was a special broadcast that had apparently interrupted all scheduled shows. The disembodied voice of the commentator was presently explaining the proceedings as a member of the Council of Law spoke in front of the senior council members of both the Science Council and the Council of Law, with the dark, forbidding figure of Governor Zod presiding at the centre of the tribunal. It was being held in the grand theatre, which was located in the shadow of the white spire of the Palace of Science, a round building with enough ranks of seats to hold both councils, the human senate and civilian spectators – together with the members of the city guard and the military, there were more than five thousand people in the theatre. The governor's balcony sat in the centre of the seats reserved for the senior council members, and directly below it was the speaker's podium, which served as witness stand as well.
Occasionally, the camera would swerve over the ranks, and Kal got a short glimpse or two of the very bottom of the theatre. In the round between the lowest ranks of seats, there was a throng of soldiers in their black and silver armour, obviously guarding something or someone hidden by their bulk.
Kal sighed – it was just another trial, some criminals who were expected to receive high sentences. These trials were often broadcast on all channels as they were highly educational. Or, Kal guessed, highly useful to scare the masses. Batman himself had stood down there more than once.
Capital punishment for humans, since the end of the invasion days, was a life sentence in Arkham. Lesser crimes merited a stay in the correctional facility Belle Reve, or being sold into the farming belt. Kryptonian criminals were extremely rare – thinking back as far as he remembered, Kal could only recall a dozen cases or so of fraud among scientists and a handful of highly memorable suicides and suicide attempts. Suicide was the only crime that had ever merited the death penalty, and it had only been sentenced post mortem – in practice this meant that the dead offenders would not be granted funeral rites, and that their spouses and children would use all rights to their name of House.
Kal had no desire to see more Kryptonian injustice. Arkham and the Mars base had cured him of all illusions about the justness of his people. So he ignored the droning voices of the debating council members and tried instead to catch a glimpse of the audience. Jor-El rarely went there, but Lara occasional attended, and he was also curious if he might see Lionel Luthor among the human senate, now that he viewed the man in a new light.
A sudden uproar of whispers among the audience drew his attention back to the speaker, who had been interrupted by an angry voice from the Council of Science.
" – entirely preposterous!" she was crying, and Kal recognized the shrill voice of elderly Lady Ursa. "Of course they are responsible for his actions! Seditious opinions are a habit among that family – "
"The Council of Law is speaking," the speaker exclaimed angrily. "And our opinion must be weighed!"
Zod raised a black gloved hand on his balcony, and Ursa sat back down in her seat while a hush settled over the audience, and the speaker, vindicated, resumed.
"As I was saying, there is absolutely no precedence for a case like this. We cannot judge hastily – we must remain rational, even in the face of such an outrageous crime –"
"Treason!" someone yelled from the audience, and the cry was taken up by many others, "Call it by its name! Treason!"
Grimly, the speaker went on. "The nature of the crime is not up to debate. But since the perpetrator himself is absent, and accusations have been raised against the rest of his house, the case is not as clear. Can they be blamed for the actions of another?"
Again a wave of enraged whispers rose from the audience – only a few faces remained grave and thoughtful. Zod frowned for a moment, then unexpectedly waved his hand again, and it took barely a minute for total silence to fall over the theatre.
"I'm tired of this," Zod said, and he sounded tired indeed, almost bored. "You all love to hear yourselves talk far too much. Let the head of accused house speak for himself. Let Jor-El speak!"
Miles away in the apartment, Kal gasped in shock and barely noticed that he had crushed the remote. Sparks fluttered over his fingers then died, but all his attention was on the screen, where the action proceeded painfully slow. A figure was now mounting the steps from the pit to the podium, tiny among the masses, and then the camera zoomed in on the man and Jor-El's face filled the screen. He looked haggard, aged years since Kal had seen him last, his sallow skin glistening with sweat.
Zod leaned forward in his seat. A hint of a smile tugged at the corner of his mouth as he stroked his beard. "Well, Jor-El. What do you have to say for yourself? Do you plead innocence?"
Of all the possible emotions on his father's face as he looked up at Zod, Kal was shocked to see fear: bleak, frantic fear. Jor-El did not reply at all for long seconds, then visibly gathered his composure in an attempt to speak up. Still, his voice was faint compared to Zod's.
"I raised my son as a good Kryptonian," Jor-El said. "I have never once uttered a word against the Kryptonian state or the Kryptonian people in his presence, nor have I even endorsed the kind of wanton violence that he is claimed to have perpetrated in Arkham."
Each word sunk Kal deeper into a shocked stupor. It was him. Him they were accusing, not his father, his crimes they debated, his trial. Of course he could not have hoped to go unpunished –
"You choose your words much more carefully than you used to, Jor-El," Zod said, now smiling openly, full of condescension. "But everyone well knows that they are not true. Haven't you yourself claimed in front of this very Science Council such ludicrous things as that Krypton was doomed to explode?"
Hostile laughter rose from the seats like the blood-thirsty cries of hyenas, but Jor-El did not shrink from it. His expression had passed from fear to a great calm, and now he looked at Zod almost with a hint of regret. The two of them were the only silent people in the theatre, it seemed.
"My son was a model student, and never once broke the law," Jor-El said when the laughter died down, and Kal felt his eyes burn and his throat hurt in shame at the pride in Jor-El's voice.
Zod cocked his head, and oddly birdlike gesture for such a powerfully built man. He smirked. "Will anyone speak for Kal-El?" Silence followed, and he called out louder, "Will anyone speak for him?"
Jor-El did not wait for anyone to speak up in his favour. "Kal-El was not alone when the incident happened. There was a human with him, and they encountered a known terrorist – "
"A human servant!" Zod laughed. "So that will be your defence? A servant corrupted your son?"
But the Council members did not react as Zod seemed to have expected them to; there was no sign of disbelief among them now, instead their faces lit up with varying expressions of outrage and appalled shock, and they seized on the idea viciously.
"This is unheard of!" the councilman who had spoken before Zod had called up Kal's father exclaimed. "We cannot tolerate our youth to be so corrupted by these low and primitive people! We have been far, far too lenient! I demand – "
Zod narrowed his eyes, now entirely focused on Jor-El, who seemed not to dare to look hopeful and yet was obviously relieved by the reaction of the crowd. The only part of the audience which was now not raving against humans was the human senate itself, where the faces had suddenly paled with uncertainty and nervousness.
"An interesting claim," Zod said to Jor-El. "But your son has not had contact with either of these men before the Arkham incident. He is still almost a youth, and certainly malleable, but would such brief contact be enough to turn anyone into a violent terrorist? A traitor to his people?"
Jor-El held his gaze. "I do not know. I was not present."
Zod cocked back his head with a sudden predatory smirk. "But of course your son has had contact with other humans. We must take that into account."
The councilman, encouraged by the support of his fellows, rose up again. "Yes, yes, we must! I've often warned against the presence of humans in the lives of our children and youths, the danger of them being led astray – "
"You have human servants, haven't you, Jor-El?" Zod asked.
Jor-El stood frozen now, and his voice was perfectly colourless. "Yes, I do."
"And a highly unusual arrangement to boot," Zod went on. "I have read… they have been in your service since the day we passed the law that made human property legal. In fact, they were among the first dozen registered with the Council of Law. And your family lives closely together with them – of course, your budget does not allow for a more proper state of affairs – I assume they have had much unchecked contact with Kal-El since he was an infant?"
"They are simple people," Jor-El objected, but weakly. "They couldn't have – "
"Ah," Zod said, clucking his tongue reproachfully. "Jor-El. 'Simple people'? You of all people should know not to underestimate simple things. One moment of inattention – and already they grow, they change, they evolve. You have made a mistake, and you should have known better. But I see you are not to blame – it is saddening to see a man reduced so, but we are used to your wrong conclusions, are we not?"
Grim nods all around, no laughter now. Jor-El seemed blind to them, he had eyes only for Zod, hanging on his every word as if still expecting a horrible catastrophe. Zod leaned back in his elevated seat.
"We must let this be a lesson to all of us, my fellow Kryptonians." He seemed to be speaking directly at the camera, directly at Kal. "And a lesson to my human citizens as well. We must be watchful and circumspect, because corruption lurks everywhere." And now he smiled, and there was an entirely un-Kryptonian tinge of irony to his voice as he concluded, "Often a single word, a single foolish action may be enough to set into motion a chain of corruption, violence and destruction."
Solemn silence followed his words, and with a wave of his hand, Zod made the guards near Jor-El stand down. "You may return to your wife. No Kryptonian citizen will be punished for mere… stupidity. As for the servants – let the Council of Law speak."
Kal collapsed in a shuddering heap on the couch, clutching his knees with sweaty palms and he fought against the nausea welling up in him. But the trial had not ended, even if his parents were safe – the Kents would surely be sent to Arkham, and Kal knew instantly that he would go there and save them, even if it meant betraying the rebels. It was his fault and his fault only and he could not –
"We must set precedence," the councilman exclaimed. "This is a far graver offence than terrorism and murder. I plead death."
"Death!" The word was taken up, one by one the council members spoke, and nearly unison in their judgement.
Jor-El gripped the podium, straining against the many voiced choir of grim sentences. "You cannot! This is against your laws! You cannot kill!" he yelled at Zod, until the guards seized him and dragged him away.
Zod watched calmly, then nodded. "The votes have been tallied. The Council has spoken. Jonathan and Martha Kent will be executed, like traitors and criminals of war."
Instantly the tumult rose in the theatre to drown out everything else, people standing up in their seats and pushing for a better view of the pit, where now the soldiers parted their tight formation to reveal Lara El being led away the same direction as Jor-El, and a pair of humans, huddled close together, the man's arm's wrapped protectively around the woman, her copper hair the only speck of colour in the sea of black and grey.
It wasn't until then that Kal realized what was about to happen. A summary execution, held directly after the sentence was spoken, just as it had been practiced during the invasion and immediately after. He did not see what happened on the screen, because he was on his feet and out of the balcony door, in the air and racing towards the centre of the city, and the last thing he heard behind him was the double sound of shots.
