Fic: The Light and the Silence (3/?)
Aug. 15th, 2007 12:32 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bagheera_sanStill no questions are answered. Instead, there's shooting and running.
Title: The Light and the Silence (3/?)
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
Warnings: some violence, minor character deaths
Summary:
Three
Colonel Lane stepped into the room, her mighty gun held high. "No one moves. You, get out of that corner to where I can see you." Lex obeyed and carefully stepped around Dr Bryce's fallen form into the middle of the room, his hands held palm-out in front of his chest in a placating gesture, while his eyes met the Batman's. They stared at each other like large cats, betraying nothing, never blinking.
"Call security, Colonel!" Bryce demanded. "We have a situation!"
Colonel Lane looked from her to Batman. He stood there with the deceptive calm of a predator right before it strikes, a hollow hungry look in his single blue eye. "Yeah, we do," Lane said slowly.
She jerked her gun at the scarred man. "Give them hell, Wayne."
He stared at her for a moment longer, neither surprised nor grateful, simply assessing her, then he melted into motion and slunk out of the cell like a wraith.
"Colonel?" Bryce's voice was tremulous with anger. "I'll – "
"You'll rot in the pits, Helen," snarled Lane and pulled the trigger of her gun. To Kal's horror, Bryce's body wasn't cleanly vaporized as it looked in the documentaries about past wars that he had seen in school - it sizzled and burned, and there was blood and clotted bits and a smell that went straight to Kal's stomach. His skin went ice-cold, then sweaty. Kal realized that he was trembling and his eyelashes were clinging together with sweat. Bile rose in his throat and he pressed back against the wall hoping that it would swallow him.
"That was rather unexpected," Lex commented, but fell quiet when Lane pointed the gun straight at Kal-El.
"You're next if you don't do exactly as I say, frill-head."
Kal was suddenly very sure that "frill-head" was anything but an affectionate term.
"Hands up in the air. Both of you. And be quiet." She tapped the side of her helmet with her fingers, activating her communicator.
"Control center? This is Colonel Lane. We have a code fourteen in Level Three."
"Lane?" a buzzing voice asked over the com. "What's going on down there?"
"Bryce is down. I've lost our guests. I'm on it, Lane out!"
She closed the connection, pulled off her helmet and tossed it aside. A light brown pony-tail fell over her shoulders and she flicked back her head to get her fringe out of her eyes and gave them a grim smile that promised more violence. Kal's knees threatened to give in. His head felt light, and if would have been so easy to close his eyes and fall, but there was the smell of burnt flesh and a dead body on the floor, and Kal needed to stay as far from it as possible.
Lex said something in a questioning tone, but all Kal understood was a short string of gibberish, maybe a foreign language. Lane didn't seem to care.
"Whatever. Keep your mouth shut and get out." As soon as Lex had stepped outside, she grabbed Kal by the elbow and pushed him into the corridor, the gun pressed against the small of his back. A high-pitched alarm started sounding, and with the Colonel egging them on, they broke into a run. Sterile air replaced the horrid stench, and Kal moved as if swimming through wax, the sounds and sensations around him dulled by a thick curtain of panic. Dimly, Kal noticed that she was counting doors. Three, four, five - when she reached "Nine," she stopped abruptly, forcing Kal to a halt as well, pointed her gun at the door that said "9" and "Laboratory" in Kryptonese, and blasted it open. Kal covered his ears, but she was already dragging him inside.
"You, servant boy," she snapped at Lex, "get over there an open that door!"
Lex gave her a look that was three parts pissed off and one part amused and did as she said. Behind the door was a white room, the walls padded, the ceiling apparently made of mirrored glass. There were security cameras, and in the centre, a bare metal lab table with someone strapped to it.
"Free her," Lane ordered, and Kal watched as Lex's face cleared up with recognition for a second and he then deftly undid the prisoner's restraints. It was the insane girl they had encountered in the corridor. She clung to Lex's arm as he helped her up, her eyes wide and afraid, then getting even wider as she spotted Lane.
"Lois!" she whispered hoarsely, and jumped off the table. She would have fallen, for her knees gave in, but Lex seized her elbow and kept her up. Kal felt a wave of sympathy for her.
"So this is the reason you've let Wayne run free?" Lex asked Lois Lane. "As a distraction so you can get her out? Who is she, your lover?"
"My cousin," Lane said in a tight voice and for a moment forgot to threaten Kal with her gun as she reached for the weakened girl and drew her into an awkward embrace against her armored chest. The girl hid her face against Lane's shoulder and hugged her tight.
"You've come for me, Lois, I knew you'd come," she ranted. "They told me you wouldn't, but they're all lying –"
"Chlo," Lane said. "You need to concentrate now, okay? We're going to leave this place." She reached for her utility belt and pulled out a small communicator to send a signal to someone, then pocketed it again. "Chloe," she said more firmly, and the girl wiped her eyes. "Can you do that for me?"
Chloe nodded slowly. Her eyes were red and puffy and her lips quivering, but she kept from crying as bravely as any Kryptonian girl would have. The two women shared a smile and Kal felt a stab of something other than fear in his chest – a strange mix of envy and satisfaction at seeing Chloe smile.
"Now," Lane said, her voice snapping back to a military tone, "you, frill-head. You're going to help my cousin make it out of here. She's been through hell, and if you hurt her, I swear I'll kill you. Painfully. Same goes for you, Baldy."
"I hope you have a good plan," Lex replied. "One that's a bit more elaborate than 'yell and point a gun at the Kryptonian'."
That, however, seemed to be her plan. She made Kal-El support her cousin, who still had a hard time walking, and with the short girl clinging to his side and a gun pressed to the small of his back, Kal was made to run through the dim corridors. The close body contact was making him trip and stumble – the girl was warm, and soft in places and full of sharp bones in other places, and once, as they huddled in a corner while Lane was shouting and shooting, soot raining from the ceiling, Chloe looked up at Kal and smiled a wobbly smile at him, as trustful as she had smiled at her cousin.
They made it to an industrial elevator on Level Two like this. There was a container full of dirty laundry, and after overriding the controls, they started a long, shaky journey upwards. It didn't go up the main shaft but a smaller, dark one that had narrow ledges on the side every hundred feet or so where probably the laundry was brought to the elevator. Behind the ledges unlit corridors went off. Lane watched them tensely as they rattled upwards, as if expecting guards to come charging at them.
Chloe still clung to Kal, even though they were sitting on the soft laundry and she didn't need to hold on to his arm. The mountain of coarse grey prison suits and worn out sheets was dirty and smelly, and Kal was covered from head to toe in horrible things – soot and dust and human things, dirty, unclean things –
"You're dressed like one of them," Chloe whispered to Kal in a hushed voice, as if it were a great secret and she proud of herself for having found out. "Like an alien."
"Uh, I think this is a misunderstanding," Kal-El corrected her gently. Speaking to Chloe calmed him down immensely. He was scared and powerless, but she was more so, and it was his duty as a Kryptonian citizen to keep up decorum and protect the subjects of the Kryptonian empire. Yes, that thought helped immensely. He sat up straighter. "I'm dressed perfectly normal. I am a Kryptonian "
Her eyes widened, and after a second she reached up with a shaky hand to touch his cheek. Kal would have shied away from the improper touch, but she seemed so fragile and he couldn't hurt her – and then there were finger-tips, warm and soft on his skin and her face blurred in front of him as tears filled his eyes. Tears, like he was the little crying boy again whose wet cheek Martha Kent had gently wiped with her fingers. His nose stung with them, and he could taste them in his mouth, and still his eyes burned.
"You look so human," Chloe whispered, full of wonder and Kal turned away, squeezing his eyes shut against the flood of pain and wild emotion rising in his chest.
And then, all of a sudden, there was a harsh jolt and the elevator stopped going up. The whine of laser guns being powered up rang through the shaft.
"Put down your weapon and freeze!" someone yelled.
Kal opened his eyes and looked up. They had almost reached the top of the elevator shaft, and walked straight into a trap. Five guards with the visors of their helmets down and their guns trained on them awaited them on one of the narrow ledges. He turned around and found Lois Lane looking frighteningly desperate, as if she were considering going down in a blaze of glory, her weapon clutched tightly to her chest.
"You're dead, Lane!" the leader of the guards shouted. "Director Kerr wants your head – without your body attached."
Her lips twitched. "I'll get at least two of you bastards before you get me."
"Throw down your weapon, Lane, and the little meta goes back to where she came from. Otherwise we've got permission to shoot you all."
Kal could see Lane's fingers moving towards the trigger, but then they started shaking. His own breath caught. Chloe's fingers were digging into his arm. Behind him, he heard Lex move a tiny bit, and immediately, guns were pointed at them, too.
Lane bit her lips and dropped the gun to raise her hands. "I'm sorry, Chlo," she said softly.
They dragged her up and out of the shaft, then seized Chloe and Lex and finally one of the guards extended a hand to Kal and pulled him up. "Sorry, Sir," the man said in a clipped voice. "Rest assured that they will get their punishment. Are you alright?"
"I'm fine," Kal-El replied, still too shaken to be sure if he was fine. He couldn't believe it was over already. He didn't think he was hurt – sore and bruised in a few places perhaps, and in need of a dark room and a shower.
"I'm with him," Lex protested as they tried to handcuff him. The guard who did so glanced at Kal-El for confirmation and Kal nodded numbly. Lex returned to his side and they were shooed into the corridor that presumably led back to safety and out of this terrible place. Only the commander, two other guards and Lane and Chloe stayed behind. But just as Kal dared to breathe a sigh of relief, he heard the commander of the guard say, "Against the wall. Both of you."
"You said you'd leave her out of this!" Lane shouted, followed by a muffled gasp and the dull thud of a fist meeting an armored body.
"Oh, she'll go back to where she came from alright. Just a little less alive."
Kal froze. He'd thought the commander had just been bluffing when he threatened Lane because he couldn't imagine that they would shoot him as well. But this didn't sound like a bluff. Next to him Lex walked with his eyes straight ahead, but the thin slash of his lips gave away that he was listening, too.
"Are they - ?" Kal started, and Lex nodded curtly.
"Death is usually instantaneous when you're shot with a laser gun set to kill," he said. He sounded distant and clinical, but the stench of burnt flesh was still fresh in Kal's memory.
It was enough to make him stop and push past the guards leading them away and back to the landing by the elevator. Colonel Lane had a bloody lip, she and Chloe were standing with their backs against the wall, three guns pointing at their heads. Chloe's skin was paper white, her eyes huge. The commander of the guard glanced over his shoulder at Kal.
"Oh, you want to stay and watch? I'd let you have a go at them yourself, Sir, but A.D. Dent hates anything that goes against the regulations, and guests aren't allowed to carry weapons."
Kal didn't know what to say. All words had left him, and his mouth was dry and bitter. Had this man really just offered him to kill two people without a trial, without any kind of… of justice? He knew humans were barbaric, but if this was in the regulations, then it were Kryptonians who condoned such measures…
Lane was looking straight at him. So was Chloe, clinging to her arm, fear and confusion warring on her pale face. And so was Lex, standing just behind Kal. He looked surprised and almost edgy, as if he was on the verge of saying something and forcing it down.
They were going to die. This girl who had touched his face, who had trusted him for a few short moments, whom Kal knew with every fiber of his being to be innocent, was going to be shot in a few seconds. Maybe she had spent years in this cold, Rao forsaken place just to die here, without hope, without mercy. Could he do anything to make this less horrible, or would he be powerless, unable to offer any kind of comfort? Kal's thoughts raced, much faster than he could follow, and suddenly there were an infinite number of choices instead of the narrow, predestined road that his life had seemed to be just a moment before.
"I – what Dent doesn't know won't bother him, right?" Kal-El asked, licking his lips.
"You sadistic piece of filth," Lane hissed.
The guard pursed his lips, then shrugged and gave Kal his gun with a crooked grin. "Justice for all, eh?"
Kal heard the motto of the Council of Law spoken in this lightless place, but it made no sense here, no sense at all. There was no room for justice. Either way, something horrible would happen. He had never committed a single act of physical violence. It was terrifying, all going too fast and too uncontrolled. The gun connected with the commander's temple, and Kal felt the impact all through his arm and saw the puzzled look right before the man fell to the floor. The other two guards shouted in surprise, and suddenly there was a gun pointing at Kal and his finger on the trigger and he knew he would die.
But he shot first and the other man fell, toppled backwards over the edge of the elevator shaft and was gone, plunging away into the dark depths. The third guard came at him, but Lex grabbed him by the elbow and punched him viciously, sending him after the man Kal had shot.
The man he had shot. Kal stumbled backwards until his back connected with the wall, numbed by the thought. He was a murderer. He still held the gun. He couldn't remember how to let go; his fingers seemed to be welded to the hot metal. He had killed.
Lex came into his field of vision, he was saying something, his grey eyes intense as they forced Kal to hold his gaze. "I didn't want to – ," Kal whispered. "I didn't want to hurt anyone –"
Someone tugged at his wrist. Kal turned around and found Chloe looking pleadingly at him. "We've got to hurry," she said.
"We do," Lex agreed and seized Kal's other hand. Lane appeared, stepping over the bodies of the last two guards, whom she had apparently dispatched while Kal stood frozen in shook. She pulled the gun from the death grip he had on the handle and he was glad to have it taken from him.
She looked him straight in the eye, and somehow her approval gave Kal a bit of his resolve back.
Either way, something horrible would have happened here. He had made a choice. He had saved two lives.
"Two more passengers and one of them is a frill-head," Lane said loftily as she led them into the corridor. "Ollie's gonna love this!"
They got into two more fights, and Lex proved that he was as good a shot as Lane with the gun taken from one of the guards. Then, finally, they reached an airlock. Lois ripped open a storage closet and pulled out four space suits. She helped Chloe put hers on, and Kal managed to get into his own like a robot running on autopilot. He didn't ask where they were going, his mind still stuck on what had happened, replaying it over and over again. When had it gone wrong? In the Batman's cell? In the elevator? When he agreed to go to Arkham?
The second door of the airlock opened and they stepped outside onto the milky grey sand of the moon. It wasn't as soft under Kal's boots as it looked. Without artificial gravity, all weight seemed to fall off them, and Kal felt as if he might leap a tall building or even fly up into the star-filled black sky and never come down again. Like dancers in a dreamscape, they skipped over the white sand and the rocks, and there was no sound at all except Kal's own breathing and the blood hammering in his ears. Breathe in. Jump. Breathe out. Come down again. Time stretched.
Finally, behind a large outcropping of rocks, a bus-sized, arrow-shaped freighter awaited them. There was a man standing on a ramp with some kind of weapon in his hands; he was wearing a space suit with a green helmet. At their approach, he lifted the weapon and shot. It turned out to be not a gun but some more primitive device, shooting a line and a blunt grappling hook instead of deadly laser blasts. Lane caught the line and wrapped her arm around Chloe's waist. They jumped and were pulled to the spacecraft by the grappling line. On the ramp, Lane and their rescuer embraced awkwardly in their suits, then the man turned around to look at them and finally shot the grappling hook a second time. Lex caught it and offered his hand to Kal.
He didn't know who these people were or where they would go. They were outlaws, for sure, maybe even rebels working with the Batman. Lex might be a more experiences bounty hunter than him, but even he wouldn't be able to get them out of this if they decided to kill him. But on the other hand, Kal had killed a man to save a criminal, even if that criminal was just a helpless girl. Maybe he was an outlaw now, too.
He took Lex's hand and held on tightly as they were pulled towards the spacecraft. They went through another airlock and hasty decompression, and then they were inside the ship, which looked as if it had been built very cleverly and with much love from scrap parts. Kal didn't trust it to fly five miles, much less to manage interplanetary distances. Lane's friend pulled off his helmet while Kal was still struggling with his own.
He turned out to be a young man with tousled blond hair and a handsome face. Just as he opened his mouth in a surprised exclamation upon seeing Kal-El's Kryptonian body suit, Lane pressed her lips to his. She seemed to suck and nibble and bite. The man's eyes bulged for a moment, then he grinned and returned the – the kiss. Kal-El stared, entirely too shocked to do or say anything. He could not believe what he saw: he had heard about this, faint whisperings, but he had never been able to imagine it as anything but grossly disgusting – and maybe it was, but he couldn't tell anymore. All he could do was watch flush violently.
"Lois," the man breathed roughly, and she still had her hands buried in his hair as he pulled away slightly to stare past her shoulders at Kal and Lex. "The hell. A frill-head?"
"Mm, yeah, maybe you should handcuff them to something. God, I missed you, Ollie," Lane growled. She was transformed, the harsh young soldier suddenly glowing with happiness. They had no shame at all and somehow, seeing their joy, Kal could find no shame in their display of affection.
"Handcuff them?" The man – Ollie – raised his brows at her skeptically. "Who are you and what have you done to the woman who couldn't wait to shoot a frill-head in the head?"
"He saved our lives in there. And I think Chlo likes him," Lane explained. "Let's get out of here, okay? Bats won't keep them on their toes forever."
There were a few short moments of bustling and chaos as everyone found a seat. Chloe seemed half asleep, her eyes slipping shut and her head lolling, and she and Kal were strapped in. Lex offered to ride shotgun and take over weapons control, but Lane scoffed at him and told him to stay out of the way. Kal's stomach lurched as Ollie turned on the engines. The whole ship started to rattle and shiver and then shakily lifted off the ground. The glider he and Lex had bought had flown butter smooth compared to this. Kal missed the Sunrider already.
"Glad to see this thing's still crap," Lane said affectionately.
"The Javelin's the fastest ship in the solar system!" Ollie complained.
"I think we're gonna test that theory right now," she answered, her voice suddenly tense again. "There's a small vessel coming up from the rear – oh shit, is that guy crazy, he's going to ram us – "
There was a jolt as Ollie pulled the Javelin down, Kal fell forward against his seatbelt, and then the front monitor showed a small glider shooting past just above them, making the steep rise out of the crater and flitting up into the sky like a gleaming golden swallow. It was the Sunrider, and whoever flew it was as much of a menace behind the flight controls as Lex.
They still gaped after the space glider, but Lex lunged forward and grabbed the back of Lane's seat for support.
"Follow him!"
"Are you crazy?" Lane yelled.
"It's Wayne. The Batman. He's made it out of Arkham and he's going to fly straight to the rebels. You got any better place to go now that you're on the run?"
Lois jumped from her seat and grabbed Lex by the lapel of his jacket. "That's what you came for, you little weasel, isn't it? You're after the rebels! Well, we aren't a taxi service, understood?"
Lex straightened up and very slowly seized her wrist and pulled her hand off him. Kal only saw the smooth back of his head, but whatever expression Lex wore made Lane shut up immediately. The fact that he wore the servant collar seemed to have lost all meaning. "No. You're as good as dead if you don't find a hiding place, Miss Lane. These rebels have been in hiding for years, and so far neither Kryptonian nor Terran military has been able to find them. Wherever they are, it's the safest hiding place in the solar system."
She glared at him, then raised her chin. "Alright. But the two of you make one false move and I – "
"Don't I get a say in this?" Ollie interrupted. "This is my ship!"
She looked down at him and her glare turned dangerously sweet. "Do we really want to debate that point, Mr Queen?"
Title: The Light and the Silence (3/?)
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
Warnings: some violence, minor character deaths
Summary:
Three
Colonel Lane stepped into the room, her mighty gun held high. "No one moves. You, get out of that corner to where I can see you." Lex obeyed and carefully stepped around Dr Bryce's fallen form into the middle of the room, his hands held palm-out in front of his chest in a placating gesture, while his eyes met the Batman's. They stared at each other like large cats, betraying nothing, never blinking.
"Call security, Colonel!" Bryce demanded. "We have a situation!"
Colonel Lane looked from her to Batman. He stood there with the deceptive calm of a predator right before it strikes, a hollow hungry look in his single blue eye. "Yeah, we do," Lane said slowly.
She jerked her gun at the scarred man. "Give them hell, Wayne."
He stared at her for a moment longer, neither surprised nor grateful, simply assessing her, then he melted into motion and slunk out of the cell like a wraith.
"Colonel?" Bryce's voice was tremulous with anger. "I'll – "
"You'll rot in the pits, Helen," snarled Lane and pulled the trigger of her gun. To Kal's horror, Bryce's body wasn't cleanly vaporized as it looked in the documentaries about past wars that he had seen in school - it sizzled and burned, and there was blood and clotted bits and a smell that went straight to Kal's stomach. His skin went ice-cold, then sweaty. Kal realized that he was trembling and his eyelashes were clinging together with sweat. Bile rose in his throat and he pressed back against the wall hoping that it would swallow him.
"That was rather unexpected," Lex commented, but fell quiet when Lane pointed the gun straight at Kal-El.
"You're next if you don't do exactly as I say, frill-head."
Kal was suddenly very sure that "frill-head" was anything but an affectionate term.
"Hands up in the air. Both of you. And be quiet." She tapped the side of her helmet with her fingers, activating her communicator.
"Control center? This is Colonel Lane. We have a code fourteen in Level Three."
"Lane?" a buzzing voice asked over the com. "What's going on down there?"
"Bryce is down. I've lost our guests. I'm on it, Lane out!"
She closed the connection, pulled off her helmet and tossed it aside. A light brown pony-tail fell over her shoulders and she flicked back her head to get her fringe out of her eyes and gave them a grim smile that promised more violence. Kal's knees threatened to give in. His head felt light, and if would have been so easy to close his eyes and fall, but there was the smell of burnt flesh and a dead body on the floor, and Kal needed to stay as far from it as possible.
Lex said something in a questioning tone, but all Kal understood was a short string of gibberish, maybe a foreign language. Lane didn't seem to care.
"Whatever. Keep your mouth shut and get out." As soon as Lex had stepped outside, she grabbed Kal by the elbow and pushed him into the corridor, the gun pressed against the small of his back. A high-pitched alarm started sounding, and with the Colonel egging them on, they broke into a run. Sterile air replaced the horrid stench, and Kal moved as if swimming through wax, the sounds and sensations around him dulled by a thick curtain of panic. Dimly, Kal noticed that she was counting doors. Three, four, five - when she reached "Nine," she stopped abruptly, forcing Kal to a halt as well, pointed her gun at the door that said "9" and "Laboratory" in Kryptonese, and blasted it open. Kal covered his ears, but she was already dragging him inside.
"You, servant boy," she snapped at Lex, "get over there an open that door!"
Lex gave her a look that was three parts pissed off and one part amused and did as she said. Behind the door was a white room, the walls padded, the ceiling apparently made of mirrored glass. There were security cameras, and in the centre, a bare metal lab table with someone strapped to it.
"Free her," Lane ordered, and Kal watched as Lex's face cleared up with recognition for a second and he then deftly undid the prisoner's restraints. It was the insane girl they had encountered in the corridor. She clung to Lex's arm as he helped her up, her eyes wide and afraid, then getting even wider as she spotted Lane.
"Lois!" she whispered hoarsely, and jumped off the table. She would have fallen, for her knees gave in, but Lex seized her elbow and kept her up. Kal felt a wave of sympathy for her.
"So this is the reason you've let Wayne run free?" Lex asked Lois Lane. "As a distraction so you can get her out? Who is she, your lover?"
"My cousin," Lane said in a tight voice and for a moment forgot to threaten Kal with her gun as she reached for the weakened girl and drew her into an awkward embrace against her armored chest. The girl hid her face against Lane's shoulder and hugged her tight.
"You've come for me, Lois, I knew you'd come," she ranted. "They told me you wouldn't, but they're all lying –"
"Chlo," Lane said. "You need to concentrate now, okay? We're going to leave this place." She reached for her utility belt and pulled out a small communicator to send a signal to someone, then pocketed it again. "Chloe," she said more firmly, and the girl wiped her eyes. "Can you do that for me?"
Chloe nodded slowly. Her eyes were red and puffy and her lips quivering, but she kept from crying as bravely as any Kryptonian girl would have. The two women shared a smile and Kal felt a stab of something other than fear in his chest – a strange mix of envy and satisfaction at seeing Chloe smile.
"Now," Lane said, her voice snapping back to a military tone, "you, frill-head. You're going to help my cousin make it out of here. She's been through hell, and if you hurt her, I swear I'll kill you. Painfully. Same goes for you, Baldy."
"I hope you have a good plan," Lex replied. "One that's a bit more elaborate than 'yell and point a gun at the Kryptonian'."
That, however, seemed to be her plan. She made Kal-El support her cousin, who still had a hard time walking, and with the short girl clinging to his side and a gun pressed to the small of his back, Kal was made to run through the dim corridors. The close body contact was making him trip and stumble – the girl was warm, and soft in places and full of sharp bones in other places, and once, as they huddled in a corner while Lane was shouting and shooting, soot raining from the ceiling, Chloe looked up at Kal and smiled a wobbly smile at him, as trustful as she had smiled at her cousin.
They made it to an industrial elevator on Level Two like this. There was a container full of dirty laundry, and after overriding the controls, they started a long, shaky journey upwards. It didn't go up the main shaft but a smaller, dark one that had narrow ledges on the side every hundred feet or so where probably the laundry was brought to the elevator. Behind the ledges unlit corridors went off. Lane watched them tensely as they rattled upwards, as if expecting guards to come charging at them.
Chloe still clung to Kal, even though they were sitting on the soft laundry and she didn't need to hold on to his arm. The mountain of coarse grey prison suits and worn out sheets was dirty and smelly, and Kal was covered from head to toe in horrible things – soot and dust and human things, dirty, unclean things –
"You're dressed like one of them," Chloe whispered to Kal in a hushed voice, as if it were a great secret and she proud of herself for having found out. "Like an alien."
"Uh, I think this is a misunderstanding," Kal-El corrected her gently. Speaking to Chloe calmed him down immensely. He was scared and powerless, but she was more so, and it was his duty as a Kryptonian citizen to keep up decorum and protect the subjects of the Kryptonian empire. Yes, that thought helped immensely. He sat up straighter. "I'm dressed perfectly normal. I am a Kryptonian "
Her eyes widened, and after a second she reached up with a shaky hand to touch his cheek. Kal would have shied away from the improper touch, but she seemed so fragile and he couldn't hurt her – and then there were finger-tips, warm and soft on his skin and her face blurred in front of him as tears filled his eyes. Tears, like he was the little crying boy again whose wet cheek Martha Kent had gently wiped with her fingers. His nose stung with them, and he could taste them in his mouth, and still his eyes burned.
"You look so human," Chloe whispered, full of wonder and Kal turned away, squeezing his eyes shut against the flood of pain and wild emotion rising in his chest.
And then, all of a sudden, there was a harsh jolt and the elevator stopped going up. The whine of laser guns being powered up rang through the shaft.
"Put down your weapon and freeze!" someone yelled.
Kal opened his eyes and looked up. They had almost reached the top of the elevator shaft, and walked straight into a trap. Five guards with the visors of their helmets down and their guns trained on them awaited them on one of the narrow ledges. He turned around and found Lois Lane looking frighteningly desperate, as if she were considering going down in a blaze of glory, her weapon clutched tightly to her chest.
"You're dead, Lane!" the leader of the guards shouted. "Director Kerr wants your head – without your body attached."
Her lips twitched. "I'll get at least two of you bastards before you get me."
"Throw down your weapon, Lane, and the little meta goes back to where she came from. Otherwise we've got permission to shoot you all."
Kal could see Lane's fingers moving towards the trigger, but then they started shaking. His own breath caught. Chloe's fingers were digging into his arm. Behind him, he heard Lex move a tiny bit, and immediately, guns were pointed at them, too.
Lane bit her lips and dropped the gun to raise her hands. "I'm sorry, Chlo," she said softly.
They dragged her up and out of the shaft, then seized Chloe and Lex and finally one of the guards extended a hand to Kal and pulled him up. "Sorry, Sir," the man said in a clipped voice. "Rest assured that they will get their punishment. Are you alright?"
"I'm fine," Kal-El replied, still too shaken to be sure if he was fine. He couldn't believe it was over already. He didn't think he was hurt – sore and bruised in a few places perhaps, and in need of a dark room and a shower.
"I'm with him," Lex protested as they tried to handcuff him. The guard who did so glanced at Kal-El for confirmation and Kal nodded numbly. Lex returned to his side and they were shooed into the corridor that presumably led back to safety and out of this terrible place. Only the commander, two other guards and Lane and Chloe stayed behind. But just as Kal dared to breathe a sigh of relief, he heard the commander of the guard say, "Against the wall. Both of you."
"You said you'd leave her out of this!" Lane shouted, followed by a muffled gasp and the dull thud of a fist meeting an armored body.
"Oh, she'll go back to where she came from alright. Just a little less alive."
Kal froze. He'd thought the commander had just been bluffing when he threatened Lane because he couldn't imagine that they would shoot him as well. But this didn't sound like a bluff. Next to him Lex walked with his eyes straight ahead, but the thin slash of his lips gave away that he was listening, too.
"Are they - ?" Kal started, and Lex nodded curtly.
"Death is usually instantaneous when you're shot with a laser gun set to kill," he said. He sounded distant and clinical, but the stench of burnt flesh was still fresh in Kal's memory.
It was enough to make him stop and push past the guards leading them away and back to the landing by the elevator. Colonel Lane had a bloody lip, she and Chloe were standing with their backs against the wall, three guns pointing at their heads. Chloe's skin was paper white, her eyes huge. The commander of the guard glanced over his shoulder at Kal.
"Oh, you want to stay and watch? I'd let you have a go at them yourself, Sir, but A.D. Dent hates anything that goes against the regulations, and guests aren't allowed to carry weapons."
Kal didn't know what to say. All words had left him, and his mouth was dry and bitter. Had this man really just offered him to kill two people without a trial, without any kind of… of justice? He knew humans were barbaric, but if this was in the regulations, then it were Kryptonians who condoned such measures…
Lane was looking straight at him. So was Chloe, clinging to her arm, fear and confusion warring on her pale face. And so was Lex, standing just behind Kal. He looked surprised and almost edgy, as if he was on the verge of saying something and forcing it down.
They were going to die. This girl who had touched his face, who had trusted him for a few short moments, whom Kal knew with every fiber of his being to be innocent, was going to be shot in a few seconds. Maybe she had spent years in this cold, Rao forsaken place just to die here, without hope, without mercy. Could he do anything to make this less horrible, or would he be powerless, unable to offer any kind of comfort? Kal's thoughts raced, much faster than he could follow, and suddenly there were an infinite number of choices instead of the narrow, predestined road that his life had seemed to be just a moment before.
"I – what Dent doesn't know won't bother him, right?" Kal-El asked, licking his lips.
"You sadistic piece of filth," Lane hissed.
The guard pursed his lips, then shrugged and gave Kal his gun with a crooked grin. "Justice for all, eh?"
Kal heard the motto of the Council of Law spoken in this lightless place, but it made no sense here, no sense at all. There was no room for justice. Either way, something horrible would happen. He had never committed a single act of physical violence. It was terrifying, all going too fast and too uncontrolled. The gun connected with the commander's temple, and Kal felt the impact all through his arm and saw the puzzled look right before the man fell to the floor. The other two guards shouted in surprise, and suddenly there was a gun pointing at Kal and his finger on the trigger and he knew he would die.
But he shot first and the other man fell, toppled backwards over the edge of the elevator shaft and was gone, plunging away into the dark depths. The third guard came at him, but Lex grabbed him by the elbow and punched him viciously, sending him after the man Kal had shot.
The man he had shot. Kal stumbled backwards until his back connected with the wall, numbed by the thought. He was a murderer. He still held the gun. He couldn't remember how to let go; his fingers seemed to be welded to the hot metal. He had killed.
Lex came into his field of vision, he was saying something, his grey eyes intense as they forced Kal to hold his gaze. "I didn't want to – ," Kal whispered. "I didn't want to hurt anyone –"
Someone tugged at his wrist. Kal turned around and found Chloe looking pleadingly at him. "We've got to hurry," she said.
"We do," Lex agreed and seized Kal's other hand. Lane appeared, stepping over the bodies of the last two guards, whom she had apparently dispatched while Kal stood frozen in shook. She pulled the gun from the death grip he had on the handle and he was glad to have it taken from him.
She looked him straight in the eye, and somehow her approval gave Kal a bit of his resolve back.
Either way, something horrible would have happened here. He had made a choice. He had saved two lives.
"Two more passengers and one of them is a frill-head," Lane said loftily as she led them into the corridor. "Ollie's gonna love this!"
They got into two more fights, and Lex proved that he was as good a shot as Lane with the gun taken from one of the guards. Then, finally, they reached an airlock. Lois ripped open a storage closet and pulled out four space suits. She helped Chloe put hers on, and Kal managed to get into his own like a robot running on autopilot. He didn't ask where they were going, his mind still stuck on what had happened, replaying it over and over again. When had it gone wrong? In the Batman's cell? In the elevator? When he agreed to go to Arkham?
The second door of the airlock opened and they stepped outside onto the milky grey sand of the moon. It wasn't as soft under Kal's boots as it looked. Without artificial gravity, all weight seemed to fall off them, and Kal felt as if he might leap a tall building or even fly up into the star-filled black sky and never come down again. Like dancers in a dreamscape, they skipped over the white sand and the rocks, and there was no sound at all except Kal's own breathing and the blood hammering in his ears. Breathe in. Jump. Breathe out. Come down again. Time stretched.
Finally, behind a large outcropping of rocks, a bus-sized, arrow-shaped freighter awaited them. There was a man standing on a ramp with some kind of weapon in his hands; he was wearing a space suit with a green helmet. At their approach, he lifted the weapon and shot. It turned out to be not a gun but some more primitive device, shooting a line and a blunt grappling hook instead of deadly laser blasts. Lane caught the line and wrapped her arm around Chloe's waist. They jumped and were pulled to the spacecraft by the grappling line. On the ramp, Lane and their rescuer embraced awkwardly in their suits, then the man turned around to look at them and finally shot the grappling hook a second time. Lex caught it and offered his hand to Kal.
He didn't know who these people were or where they would go. They were outlaws, for sure, maybe even rebels working with the Batman. Lex might be a more experiences bounty hunter than him, but even he wouldn't be able to get them out of this if they decided to kill him. But on the other hand, Kal had killed a man to save a criminal, even if that criminal was just a helpless girl. Maybe he was an outlaw now, too.
He took Lex's hand and held on tightly as they were pulled towards the spacecraft. They went through another airlock and hasty decompression, and then they were inside the ship, which looked as if it had been built very cleverly and with much love from scrap parts. Kal didn't trust it to fly five miles, much less to manage interplanetary distances. Lane's friend pulled off his helmet while Kal was still struggling with his own.
He turned out to be a young man with tousled blond hair and a handsome face. Just as he opened his mouth in a surprised exclamation upon seeing Kal-El's Kryptonian body suit, Lane pressed her lips to his. She seemed to suck and nibble and bite. The man's eyes bulged for a moment, then he grinned and returned the – the kiss. Kal-El stared, entirely too shocked to do or say anything. He could not believe what he saw: he had heard about this, faint whisperings, but he had never been able to imagine it as anything but grossly disgusting – and maybe it was, but he couldn't tell anymore. All he could do was watch flush violently.
"Lois," the man breathed roughly, and she still had her hands buried in his hair as he pulled away slightly to stare past her shoulders at Kal and Lex. "The hell. A frill-head?"
"Mm, yeah, maybe you should handcuff them to something. God, I missed you, Ollie," Lane growled. She was transformed, the harsh young soldier suddenly glowing with happiness. They had no shame at all and somehow, seeing their joy, Kal could find no shame in their display of affection.
"Handcuff them?" The man – Ollie – raised his brows at her skeptically. "Who are you and what have you done to the woman who couldn't wait to shoot a frill-head in the head?"
"He saved our lives in there. And I think Chlo likes him," Lane explained. "Let's get out of here, okay? Bats won't keep them on their toes forever."
There were a few short moments of bustling and chaos as everyone found a seat. Chloe seemed half asleep, her eyes slipping shut and her head lolling, and she and Kal were strapped in. Lex offered to ride shotgun and take over weapons control, but Lane scoffed at him and told him to stay out of the way. Kal's stomach lurched as Ollie turned on the engines. The whole ship started to rattle and shiver and then shakily lifted off the ground. The glider he and Lex had bought had flown butter smooth compared to this. Kal missed the Sunrider already.
"Glad to see this thing's still crap," Lane said affectionately.
"The Javelin's the fastest ship in the solar system!" Ollie complained.
"I think we're gonna test that theory right now," she answered, her voice suddenly tense again. "There's a small vessel coming up from the rear – oh shit, is that guy crazy, he's going to ram us – "
There was a jolt as Ollie pulled the Javelin down, Kal fell forward against his seatbelt, and then the front monitor showed a small glider shooting past just above them, making the steep rise out of the crater and flitting up into the sky like a gleaming golden swallow. It was the Sunrider, and whoever flew it was as much of a menace behind the flight controls as Lex.
They still gaped after the space glider, but Lex lunged forward and grabbed the back of Lane's seat for support.
"Follow him!"
"Are you crazy?" Lane yelled.
"It's Wayne. The Batman. He's made it out of Arkham and he's going to fly straight to the rebels. You got any better place to go now that you're on the run?"
Lois jumped from her seat and grabbed Lex by the lapel of his jacket. "That's what you came for, you little weasel, isn't it? You're after the rebels! Well, we aren't a taxi service, understood?"
Lex straightened up and very slowly seized her wrist and pulled her hand off him. Kal only saw the smooth back of his head, but whatever expression Lex wore made Lane shut up immediately. The fact that he wore the servant collar seemed to have lost all meaning. "No. You're as good as dead if you don't find a hiding place, Miss Lane. These rebels have been in hiding for years, and so far neither Kryptonian nor Terran military has been able to find them. Wherever they are, it's the safest hiding place in the solar system."
She glared at him, then raised her chin. "Alright. But the two of you make one false move and I – "
"Don't I get a say in this?" Ollie interrupted. "This is my ship!"
She looked down at him and her glare turned dangerously sweet. "Do we really want to debate that point, Mr Queen?"
