Fic: The Light and the Silence (8/?)
Sep. 28th, 2007 04:47 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bagheera_sanTitle: The Light and the Silence (8/?)
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:
Eight
The first light of morning found Kal asleep, sprawled over three fourths of the bed.. His mind still blank and slow from sleep, Kal watched the sun creep over the hills on the other side of the wide canyon, many miles away. It was blazingly bright, and he thought he could feel it burn from his retinas straight into his veins. Yesterday he had been strong and invulnerable. Today perhaps he would become fast as sound and airborne like a bird. He stretched lazily and yawned, luxuriating in the light. Next to the bed, the black bodysuit hung over the back of a chair like a shed skin. When Kal was very little, Martha Kent had read a story to him about a strange little boy who could fly and do all sorts of things. He lost his shadow, and it had to be sewn back on by a little girl. But Kal was sure that the shadow of the young man he had been could never be reattached to him. He had crossed more lines in the last day than he had known existed, and to uncross these lines would mean to stop being who he was now.
The thought of Martha Kent, though, settled in his chest like a heavy rock of guilt. Without the money Kal had hoped to bring home, she and Jonathan would surely be separated. He rolled around to wake up Lex and suddenly realized that bed beside him was empty. Lex was gone. Kal pushed himself up on his elbows. The drowsiness was completely gone, and his heart beat painfully fast for a moment. Then he realized that Lex's clothes and shoes were gone as well. He must have risen, bathed, put on his clothes and left all while Kal was asleep.
Kal got up and felt rather lost as he padded barefoot across the room to the chair with his bodysuit. He didn't want to wear it anymore, now that he knew what a prison it had been. It seemed emblematic of all the lies he had been told all his life. Kal went looking for a bathroom instead. Without the bodysuit to regulate his metabolism and without the need for a darkroom, he supposed he should use a normal human bathroom. The one he found was opposite the room with the pool. It looked more or less like the Kents' bathroom, although much more sparingly furnished.
He looked alien in the mirror when he washed his hands, with his tousled hair free of a cowl and his skin several shades darker thanks to the sunlight. There was a second toothbrush thoughtfully put aside for him, and Kal used it. He wondered when Lex had found the time to do all this. He couldn't have slept very long.
Returning into the main room, he noticed a neatly folded pile of clothes on the desk. It had been there before, but now he spotted the note attached to the shirt on top, and to his surprise, it was written in neat Kryptonian. "Try them on. To get breakfast, go downstairs and turn left. Lex."
The shirt was a faded blue grey, like the feathers of a pigeon, and only the underwear looked relatively new. The jeans was baggy and had a hole on the right knee. Kal squirmed a bit as he put the clothes on. How could humans wear these fabrics? They were so coarse in places, and too thin in others, and the seams kept rubbing uncomfortably at the insides of his legs. There were no boots, but Kal could wear the boots he had worn over the bodysuit under the jeans.
He felt wary of leaving Lex's rooms, but he was also the most hungry he could ever remember being. He still felt like a furnace, and presently, his body reminded him that he needed something to burn on other than sunlight. At least he looked mostly human in his clothes, so maybe there was some chance that people wouldn't treat him like an evil slave owner. But he still felt naked in the short-sleeved shirt, and the easy confidence he'd felt around Lex was gone as soon as he thought of other humans.
What he found when he followed Lex's instructions and walked downstairs then left was a cavern about twice the size of the garden at the back of their house in Metropolis, crammed full with tables and chairs, if you had a very generous definition of tables and chairs. Crates, barrels, tires, boards, scrap metal and stones were used as furniture. People were sitting in the room and eating, although not many, Kal guessed it was rather late for breakfast. On the other end of the cavern, food was handed out from a kitchen into bowls and cups by a matronly woman wearing a headscarf to cover her hair.
To Kal's relief, he immediately spotted two familiar faces in the room. Chloe and the young man who had been with Bruce Wayne, Dick, sat at a corner table made from what appeared to be the outer hull of a former spaceship. Chloe sat on a big crate with her knees pulled up to her chest, leaning against the stone wall of the cavern. She too had a new change of clothing; baggy pants and an orange T-shirt. Dick was leaning forward over the table, chatting with wide gestures and an animated voice that carried across the room. From time to time, a smile erupted on Chloe's face, shining in her eyes before it suddenly faltered and she looked startled for a moment before something Dick said got her to relax again.
"You!" the woman with the headscarf shouted. Her English had a blunt accent, but the look she gave Kal made perfectly clear that she meant him. "Come in or stay out, but don't just gawk."
Startled, he obeyed and walked towards her. A few people looked up, and some started whispering. Then suddenly a warm hand settled on Kal's shoulder and Dick leant in close to whisper to him, "Go sit down with Chloe, okay? I'll get you something to eat, but people are curious. I'm not sure if it's a good idea to have them realize you're the Kryptonian everyone's talking about." He gently pushed Kal into Chloe's direction. "Go! We'll pretend you're one of Queen's crew."
Chloe smiled brightly at him as he stumbled over to her, but this time her smile didn't falter. "You look so different now! Your hair's longer than mine!"
It was. Beneath the cowl of the bodysuit, Kal's hair had grown longer than hers, which still was the badly cropped ash-blonde fuzz of Arkham. Now she was taking him in with intense scrutiny, and Kal didn't feel comfortable at all. He kept shifting on the casket he had chosen as a seat until she stated, "Your skin looks different, too. Nicer. It's almost as dark as Dick's, now." She pronounced his name with easy, almost careless familiarity, as if they hadn't just met a day ago.
"It's the sun," Kal said, stupidly. "I got a lot of sunlight."
"Since yesterday?" Chloe asked, wrinkling her nose in disbelief. "Nobody tan's that fast. I… I think I remember when I was a kid I only ever got sunburns." She looked lost for a moment, almost frightened. Thankfully, Dick's return shook her out of it.
He balanced two cups and a large bowl of cereal, putting one cup and the bowl in front of Clark while keeping the other cup for himself.
"Nasreen says you look like a good eater," Dick said cheerfully, gesturing towards the woman who handed out the food. "Tuck in and she won't care whether you're human or not."
"Thank you," Kal said automatically, and took the spoon Dick offered. He, too, studied Kal's changed look.
"I think Lex is the most conniving bastard ever to walk the face of the Earth," Dick said fondly. "Without that frilly suit, you look pretty decent. We could be brothers. Bruce will have a hard time giving you to Hamilton now."
Except for the darker shade of his skin and hair, and the almost startling blue of his eyes, and the fact that he had to be a few years younger (although humans and Kryptonians didn't mature quite at the same rate), Dick and Clark really did look alike. But the mention of Dr. Hamilton and his plans to use Kal for some sort of experiment made Kal queasy. He stared at his bowl of cornflakes unhappily.
"Don't worry, the food's great here," Chloe assured him.
"It's goat milk," Dick added. "Try it, it's great. I don't know how exactly they did it, but we've got a lot of people who used to be herders here, and they got some of our suppliers to smuggle in life-stock. Afghans, and Kurds – people who've been persecuted and had their countries invaded long before you guys came to Earth. They've always refused to bend to the invaders, and they're still doing so now. My family was the same story. They were circus artists, wandering folk, they wouldn't let themselves be forced to settle down or live in a reservation, so they went to Gotham, performed illegally. They were arrested and shot, like Bruce's parents… he and Alfred took me in."
"I'm sorry," Kal said miserably.
Dick gave him a weak but sincere smile. "Wasn't you who did it, right? Go on, eat."
Kal swallowed and dared to eat a spoonful. The flakes were soggy, but the milk was sweet and good. His queasiness subsided after a few bites. "How did everyone get here?" he asked. "How did you find these caves?"
"Lots of resourcefulness. And I think Lex's Dad was somehow involved. Lady Jan is a Kryptonian," Dick shrugged, "so maybe she knew something about caves on Mars. The resistance has been here… I dunno, I think since the first days of the invasion? We've gradually been bringing more supplies and more people here, though. Lots of metahumans or other refugees."
Dick went on, telling them more about life in the rebel base and about his exploits with Bruce Wayne, back when they had worked as partners on Earth. The other side of the story sounded quite differently from what Kal had heard about Batman in the media. The fearsome terrorist couldn't have been more unlike the picture of a courageous and driven man Dick painted, and yet it was essentially the same story, the same events, the same ruthless attacks and reckless life. Kal's bowl of cereal was quickly eaten, and he drank his tea as well, a novel but not unpleasant taste. He was still hungry, though, and suddenly found himself missing Martha Kent's pancakes.
She had always complained about him not eating enough. He stared at his bowl, at the puddle of milk at the bottom, and suddenly remembered a scene from his early childhood, long forgotten, now rising to the surface of his mind with startling clarity. He must have been no more than five, and padding into the kitchen early one morning, he had stopped at the door because his father was there, sitting at the wooden table, a stiff-backed dark figure in the warm kitchen. His parents never went into the basement rooms which where the Kents' domain, and Jor-El in particular rarely left his laboratory in the attic, and so Kal had stopped in the doorway, quiet and unsure what to do, and had watched Martha Kent humming to herself as she prepared breakfast – bacon and scrambled eggs, a cup of steaming coffee – and put it in front of Jor-El. Peeking around the doorjamb, Kal had caught only glimpses – the sunlight playing on Mrs Kent's red hair, her gentle smile.
"This is how Jonathan likes it. I don't know if it's how his mother made it, Mr El – "
And then his father's voice, unusually quiet, "Call me Joe, please. Just this morning." Joe. A human name. Back then it had been inexplicably strange, a great mystery to Kal, and even now, with the knowledge that Jor-El had helped the humans to stage their rebellion, it made little sense. Could it be that the Kents knew about Jor-El's past?
Kal needed to talk to his father. He needed the truth. He needed – to stop being so blind. Why had had he never noticed all these odd little details that were now slowly forming a larger picture? Why, in Rao's name, had he never asked Mrs Kent or Jor-El about that strange morning? Until a few days ago, his world had seemed so simple and well-ordered. The only pressing concern was money. Now every convenient truth seemed to turn around and present its pale and hidden belly full of secrets.
"Kal?"
He looked up and saw the two humans looking at him with curious eyes and raised brows. Chloe was clearly worried. "Is everything alright?"
"I'm just… a bit tired," Kal stammered. The lie seemed obvious to him, painfully transparent.
"We should get some exercise," Dick suggested cheerfully. "That'll wake you up properly. How about I show you some easy stuff – handstands, juggling – ""
"No, thank you," Kal got up, his hands a little shaky. "I… it was nice eating with you."
His exit was more of a flight. He felt the sudden urge to talk to Lex, to seek reassurance and answers. Lex knew so much, was so sure of everything. He longed for the senseless comfort of touch. But Lex's rooms were still empty when Kal returned. It looked as if no one had been there in the meanwhile. Dejected, Kal went back down the stairs. He was too embarrassed by his impulsive departure to return to Chloe and Dick, and so he chose to go right instead of left. How big could the rebel base be? He had to run into Lex eventually.
The tunnels were long, and badly lit in many places. From time to time he passed doors. Some were closed, others merely covered by blankets or tarps, but Kal was reluctant to try and enter as long as he had no idea what was behind them. He reached another crossing of tunnels, and stood undecided, glancing left and right into the quiet gloom.
The only warning he got was a sound like the flap of a large wing, and a rush of air before a large hand on his neck pulled him backwards into a blanket-covered entry. Darkness engulfed Kal as he stumbled backwards and slipped, but he had barely fallen to the floor when he was whisked up again by his shirt and hauled around in a wide arc. His back slammed against a jagged cave wall, but to his surprise it wasn't painful. The dark shadow of his assailant loomed over him, and Kal made out a silhouette with shaggy hair and a laser-red artificial eye.
"What - "
Again he was jerked around, and this time pushed against the barely visible shape of a metal table. "Sit," the man snarled, and finally Kal recognized him – it was Batman.
He sat down on the edge of the table more out of fear than a conscious decision, and Wayne remained motionless for a second before suddenly coming at Kal again, this time making a huge swing aimed for Kal's jaw with his robotic fist. Kal flinched away and threw up his own arms to protect himself, but the fist stopped a few inches from his elbow. It hovered there for a second, and slowly Kal lowered his arms. His heart was hammering wildly in his chest and his breath still came in quick, shocked gasps. Batman, on the other hand, was perfectly quiet, his breathing inaudible, as he, too, lowered his fist. Kal's eyes were adjusting to the darkness, and he could now make out the shapes of the room beyond Batman. There was something like a huge, dark fish tank in one corner.
"Why don't you defend yourself?" Batman demanded. He sounded angry.
The only thing that came to Kal's mind was a startled, "I'm sorry!"
He lifted his fist again. "Could I hurt you with this?"
"No," Kal admitted, but it came out as a plea nonetheless.
"Could you hurt me?"
"Yes." Kal swallowed, but mustered up the courage to say, "I don't want to."
Batman circled the table, staring at Kal from all sides. "You might be a good man," he said, "but we need soldiers. You are as cowardly as the rest of your lot."
"The sunlight makes me – "
"Superpowers don't make you a good soldier," Batman interrupted him harshly.
Batman was frightening, it was true, but his stubbornness was also quickly starting to irritate Kal. All his life he had worked hard to suppress the flares of temper he occasionally felt, but Batman was bringing them right to the surface. "I don't want to be a soldier. I want to help people."
He hopped off the table and crossed his arms, facing Wayne. He reminded himself of the stories Dick had told. There had to be a man beneath the soldier, just a normal man.
Batman's human eye narrowed, the he whirled around with startling speed and grabbed something like a remote from a nearby table. The tank lit up. It had a sickly greenish blue color, and in it floated the most hideous creature Kal had ever seen. He staggered a step backwards in shock.
The thing was dead, though, it's claws hanging slackly and it's black eyes empty. Spikes that looked like rock formation pierced its pallid grey skin. The sudden presence of Batman leaning over Kal's shoulder startled him again.
"This is my choice," Batman growled. "Between an ugly and a pretty monster."
"What is that?"
"Doomsday. Hamilton's soldier. It knows no fear. No weakness. It's a weapon. A bomb. A gun. We control when it's fired. And we can put it away when the war is won." Batman sounded, if anything, disdainful of the notion. He turned off the lights again and flung the remote away.
"You are a naïve idiot. Weak. Trusting. Easy to manipulate. So far you did only one good thing. You saved two people's lives." Batman started pacing again.
"I could save more," Kal whispered.
"One life at a time?" Batman snarled.
Kal thought of Chloe. "Each life makes a difference."
The pacing stopped. Batman regarded him for a long moment, then his scarred face twisted into a grim but honest smile. "Yes, it does."
Kal released a shaky breath of relief at the broken tension. He offered a smile as well, but Batman had already returned to his usual frowning countenance. "We'll go back to Earth," he decided. "But first you'll train."
"Lex and I already started trying my powers out," Kal said eagerly, then was extremely glad that the room was so dark as his cheeks grew hot at the thought of how their experimenting had turned out. He doesn't know, Kal reminded himself. And besides, Batman was human, so he shouldn't mind intimacy. "I can touch people without hurting them."
Batman gave a grunt in reply. "I'll teach you how to hurt them."
Kal swallowed, but he did not protest.
"You will be at the Solarium in two hours," Batman ordered. Kal remembered the spherical room they had visited on his first day at the rebel base, and he hoped he would find the way there on his own. Without another word, Batman headed for the door, and since Kal did not want to be alone in the room with the thing in the tank, he followed him quickly.
*
It was afternoon, in two hours, when Kal had his appointment with Bruce Wayne, it would be dinner time. But Lex's rooms were still empty, although someone had tidied up and put fresh covers on the bed. The mellow glow of the sunlight drenched the room in all shades of copper and pink, and without a thing to do or a person to talk to, Kal stood by the transparent wall that served as window and stared out at the vast canyon. He felt he should have been anxious about his training with Batman, but instead he found himself more preoccupied with Lex's continuing absence. It was beginning to feel like avoidance. Had Kal done something wrong the night before? Or was this maybe some human custom, a period of separation after a period of intense closeness?
Fixing his sight on the distant mountain range on the other side of canyon, Kal had the impression that his sight had sharpened, although sometimes the rock formations swam strangely in front of his eyes, seeming suddenly much closer and then far away, as if he were zooming in on them with a telescope.
There were only two instances in Kal's life when he had looked through a telescope. Once when he had been ten, and passed the entry test of the Metropolis Preparatory School for Higher Sons with flying colors. Jor-El had taken him up to his laboratory. It had been the first time Kal had been allowed to enter his father's sanctuary. The laboratory was no more than a rather cramped room under the roof of their two-storied, human-built house, but the inside was filled with graceful crystal structures, a hidden ice-palace in the attic.
"In truth," Jor-El had said with much gravity, "I come here for solitude more than anything else. On Krypton, this was a huge fortress. A palace of science unlike any you have ever seen. You should have witnessed the wonders – " There Jor-El had stopped abruptly, folding his hands behind his back and raising his chin high. Kal had felt very little, hardly coming up to his father's chest, unable to catch his distant blue eyes.
"I am very proud of you," Jor-El said stiffly. "But you will not become a scientist, Kal-El."
Kal had protested fiercely, unable to see it as anything but a random and cruel injustice. What else was he supposed to be? He could not be an explorer like his mother's ancestors, and he certainly couldn't be a farmer like Mr Kent had once been.
Jor-El had looked grave. "You are meant for something different. A great deal of responsibility lies on your shoulders, Kal-El. You must hold up the name of your house and family in these difficult times. You cannot go chasing stars and dreams like I did. It is not your destiny to stand out and walk were none have gone before. It is my wish that you dedicate yourself to the study of history." There was a pause, in which Kal made a stifled noise of disbelief, but eventually, Jor-El went on, speaking as if the words were leaden shackles to put on his son's wrists and ankles. "The house of El has a great history."
He said no more. Instead he walked to a small window, and somehow caused the crystals to create a kind of work surface. He helped Kal climb up. It allowed him to look out of the window and up at the night sky. Not many stars were visible, their faint glow drowned out by the abundant light of the city, but it was close to new moon and quite some of them glittered in the cloudless sky. From somewhere in the attic, Jor-El produced a small telescope, hardly more than a spyglass.
For an hour or two, Kal was allowed to gaze at the stars, open-mouthed and filled with wonder, until he started yawning and his eyes hurt. He was fascinated the most by the star that he had learned since pre-school to identify as the glorious Rao.
"Will we ever return to Krypton?" Kal had asked.
Jor-El took the telescope from him. "Your destiny lies on Earth, Kal-El."
"Still, I wish I could be a doctor and cure the plague so we could go back," Kal replied with a huge yawn. "I don't understand why they haven't found a cure yet."
"Sometimes the hardest thing about science is to know where to look. That is true for history as well," Jor-El admonished. "Now go to bed. Don't wake your mother, it is late." He stayed behind in the attic, and Kal fell asleep quickly, exhausted by the long day.
The only other time Kal was ever allowed in the laboratory had been six years later. Again Jor-El gave him the telescope. He talked very little that night, and when he talked, it was never more than two words in a row. Kal felt uncomfortable and awkward, now tall enough to look out of the tiny window unassisted, but he searched out a peculiarly bright star not very far from Rao's steady light as he was told and watched, nervously, until after a very long time, the twinkling dot of light suddenly flared up a last time, then faded. Jor-El gave no explanation at all for the odd interlude, and did not leave his laboratory for many days after that night.
Those were the only two times in his life that Kal had held a telescope. Much later, he found out that they were highly censored articles, and only a very select number of people had permission to use them. Now he suspected that his father was not one of them.
Why had he forced Kal to give up his dream of becoming a scientist? Had Jor-El hoped that it would be easier to keep Kal in the dark about uncomfortable and dangerous truths?
He realized that the sun had sunk low and almost two hours had passed. He had to hurry if he wanted to be punctual.
And now I'm gonna go watch the new Smallville ep.
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:
Eight
The first light of morning found Kal asleep, sprawled over three fourths of the bed.. His mind still blank and slow from sleep, Kal watched the sun creep over the hills on the other side of the wide canyon, many miles away. It was blazingly bright, and he thought he could feel it burn from his retinas straight into his veins. Yesterday he had been strong and invulnerable. Today perhaps he would become fast as sound and airborne like a bird. He stretched lazily and yawned, luxuriating in the light. Next to the bed, the black bodysuit hung over the back of a chair like a shed skin. When Kal was very little, Martha Kent had read a story to him about a strange little boy who could fly and do all sorts of things. He lost his shadow, and it had to be sewn back on by a little girl. But Kal was sure that the shadow of the young man he had been could never be reattached to him. He had crossed more lines in the last day than he had known existed, and to uncross these lines would mean to stop being who he was now.
The thought of Martha Kent, though, settled in his chest like a heavy rock of guilt. Without the money Kal had hoped to bring home, she and Jonathan would surely be separated. He rolled around to wake up Lex and suddenly realized that bed beside him was empty. Lex was gone. Kal pushed himself up on his elbows. The drowsiness was completely gone, and his heart beat painfully fast for a moment. Then he realized that Lex's clothes and shoes were gone as well. He must have risen, bathed, put on his clothes and left all while Kal was asleep.
Kal got up and felt rather lost as he padded barefoot across the room to the chair with his bodysuit. He didn't want to wear it anymore, now that he knew what a prison it had been. It seemed emblematic of all the lies he had been told all his life. Kal went looking for a bathroom instead. Without the bodysuit to regulate his metabolism and without the need for a darkroom, he supposed he should use a normal human bathroom. The one he found was opposite the room with the pool. It looked more or less like the Kents' bathroom, although much more sparingly furnished.
He looked alien in the mirror when he washed his hands, with his tousled hair free of a cowl and his skin several shades darker thanks to the sunlight. There was a second toothbrush thoughtfully put aside for him, and Kal used it. He wondered when Lex had found the time to do all this. He couldn't have slept very long.
Returning into the main room, he noticed a neatly folded pile of clothes on the desk. It had been there before, but now he spotted the note attached to the shirt on top, and to his surprise, it was written in neat Kryptonian. "Try them on. To get breakfast, go downstairs and turn left. Lex."
The shirt was a faded blue grey, like the feathers of a pigeon, and only the underwear looked relatively new. The jeans was baggy and had a hole on the right knee. Kal squirmed a bit as he put the clothes on. How could humans wear these fabrics? They were so coarse in places, and too thin in others, and the seams kept rubbing uncomfortably at the insides of his legs. There were no boots, but Kal could wear the boots he had worn over the bodysuit under the jeans.
He felt wary of leaving Lex's rooms, but he was also the most hungry he could ever remember being. He still felt like a furnace, and presently, his body reminded him that he needed something to burn on other than sunlight. At least he looked mostly human in his clothes, so maybe there was some chance that people wouldn't treat him like an evil slave owner. But he still felt naked in the short-sleeved shirt, and the easy confidence he'd felt around Lex was gone as soon as he thought of other humans.
What he found when he followed Lex's instructions and walked downstairs then left was a cavern about twice the size of the garden at the back of their house in Metropolis, crammed full with tables and chairs, if you had a very generous definition of tables and chairs. Crates, barrels, tires, boards, scrap metal and stones were used as furniture. People were sitting in the room and eating, although not many, Kal guessed it was rather late for breakfast. On the other end of the cavern, food was handed out from a kitchen into bowls and cups by a matronly woman wearing a headscarf to cover her hair.
To Kal's relief, he immediately spotted two familiar faces in the room. Chloe and the young man who had been with Bruce Wayne, Dick, sat at a corner table made from what appeared to be the outer hull of a former spaceship. Chloe sat on a big crate with her knees pulled up to her chest, leaning against the stone wall of the cavern. She too had a new change of clothing; baggy pants and an orange T-shirt. Dick was leaning forward over the table, chatting with wide gestures and an animated voice that carried across the room. From time to time, a smile erupted on Chloe's face, shining in her eyes before it suddenly faltered and she looked startled for a moment before something Dick said got her to relax again.
"You!" the woman with the headscarf shouted. Her English had a blunt accent, but the look she gave Kal made perfectly clear that she meant him. "Come in or stay out, but don't just gawk."
Startled, he obeyed and walked towards her. A few people looked up, and some started whispering. Then suddenly a warm hand settled on Kal's shoulder and Dick leant in close to whisper to him, "Go sit down with Chloe, okay? I'll get you something to eat, but people are curious. I'm not sure if it's a good idea to have them realize you're the Kryptonian everyone's talking about." He gently pushed Kal into Chloe's direction. "Go! We'll pretend you're one of Queen's crew."
Chloe smiled brightly at him as he stumbled over to her, but this time her smile didn't falter. "You look so different now! Your hair's longer than mine!"
It was. Beneath the cowl of the bodysuit, Kal's hair had grown longer than hers, which still was the badly cropped ash-blonde fuzz of Arkham. Now she was taking him in with intense scrutiny, and Kal didn't feel comfortable at all. He kept shifting on the casket he had chosen as a seat until she stated, "Your skin looks different, too. Nicer. It's almost as dark as Dick's, now." She pronounced his name with easy, almost careless familiarity, as if they hadn't just met a day ago.
"It's the sun," Kal said, stupidly. "I got a lot of sunlight."
"Since yesterday?" Chloe asked, wrinkling her nose in disbelief. "Nobody tan's that fast. I… I think I remember when I was a kid I only ever got sunburns." She looked lost for a moment, almost frightened. Thankfully, Dick's return shook her out of it.
He balanced two cups and a large bowl of cereal, putting one cup and the bowl in front of Clark while keeping the other cup for himself.
"Nasreen says you look like a good eater," Dick said cheerfully, gesturing towards the woman who handed out the food. "Tuck in and she won't care whether you're human or not."
"Thank you," Kal said automatically, and took the spoon Dick offered. He, too, studied Kal's changed look.
"I think Lex is the most conniving bastard ever to walk the face of the Earth," Dick said fondly. "Without that frilly suit, you look pretty decent. We could be brothers. Bruce will have a hard time giving you to Hamilton now."
Except for the darker shade of his skin and hair, and the almost startling blue of his eyes, and the fact that he had to be a few years younger (although humans and Kryptonians didn't mature quite at the same rate), Dick and Clark really did look alike. But the mention of Dr. Hamilton and his plans to use Kal for some sort of experiment made Kal queasy. He stared at his bowl of cornflakes unhappily.
"Don't worry, the food's great here," Chloe assured him.
"It's goat milk," Dick added. "Try it, it's great. I don't know how exactly they did it, but we've got a lot of people who used to be herders here, and they got some of our suppliers to smuggle in life-stock. Afghans, and Kurds – people who've been persecuted and had their countries invaded long before you guys came to Earth. They've always refused to bend to the invaders, and they're still doing so now. My family was the same story. They were circus artists, wandering folk, they wouldn't let themselves be forced to settle down or live in a reservation, so they went to Gotham, performed illegally. They were arrested and shot, like Bruce's parents… he and Alfred took me in."
"I'm sorry," Kal said miserably.
Dick gave him a weak but sincere smile. "Wasn't you who did it, right? Go on, eat."
Kal swallowed and dared to eat a spoonful. The flakes were soggy, but the milk was sweet and good. His queasiness subsided after a few bites. "How did everyone get here?" he asked. "How did you find these caves?"
"Lots of resourcefulness. And I think Lex's Dad was somehow involved. Lady Jan is a Kryptonian," Dick shrugged, "so maybe she knew something about caves on Mars. The resistance has been here… I dunno, I think since the first days of the invasion? We've gradually been bringing more supplies and more people here, though. Lots of metahumans or other refugees."
Dick went on, telling them more about life in the rebel base and about his exploits with Bruce Wayne, back when they had worked as partners on Earth. The other side of the story sounded quite differently from what Kal had heard about Batman in the media. The fearsome terrorist couldn't have been more unlike the picture of a courageous and driven man Dick painted, and yet it was essentially the same story, the same events, the same ruthless attacks and reckless life. Kal's bowl of cereal was quickly eaten, and he drank his tea as well, a novel but not unpleasant taste. He was still hungry, though, and suddenly found himself missing Martha Kent's pancakes.
She had always complained about him not eating enough. He stared at his bowl, at the puddle of milk at the bottom, and suddenly remembered a scene from his early childhood, long forgotten, now rising to the surface of his mind with startling clarity. He must have been no more than five, and padding into the kitchen early one morning, he had stopped at the door because his father was there, sitting at the wooden table, a stiff-backed dark figure in the warm kitchen. His parents never went into the basement rooms which where the Kents' domain, and Jor-El in particular rarely left his laboratory in the attic, and so Kal had stopped in the doorway, quiet and unsure what to do, and had watched Martha Kent humming to herself as she prepared breakfast – bacon and scrambled eggs, a cup of steaming coffee – and put it in front of Jor-El. Peeking around the doorjamb, Kal had caught only glimpses – the sunlight playing on Mrs Kent's red hair, her gentle smile.
"This is how Jonathan likes it. I don't know if it's how his mother made it, Mr El – "
And then his father's voice, unusually quiet, "Call me Joe, please. Just this morning." Joe. A human name. Back then it had been inexplicably strange, a great mystery to Kal, and even now, with the knowledge that Jor-El had helped the humans to stage their rebellion, it made little sense. Could it be that the Kents knew about Jor-El's past?
Kal needed to talk to his father. He needed the truth. He needed – to stop being so blind. Why had had he never noticed all these odd little details that were now slowly forming a larger picture? Why, in Rao's name, had he never asked Mrs Kent or Jor-El about that strange morning? Until a few days ago, his world had seemed so simple and well-ordered. The only pressing concern was money. Now every convenient truth seemed to turn around and present its pale and hidden belly full of secrets.
"Kal?"
He looked up and saw the two humans looking at him with curious eyes and raised brows. Chloe was clearly worried. "Is everything alright?"
"I'm just… a bit tired," Kal stammered. The lie seemed obvious to him, painfully transparent.
"We should get some exercise," Dick suggested cheerfully. "That'll wake you up properly. How about I show you some easy stuff – handstands, juggling – ""
"No, thank you," Kal got up, his hands a little shaky. "I… it was nice eating with you."
His exit was more of a flight. He felt the sudden urge to talk to Lex, to seek reassurance and answers. Lex knew so much, was so sure of everything. He longed for the senseless comfort of touch. But Lex's rooms were still empty when Kal returned. It looked as if no one had been there in the meanwhile. Dejected, Kal went back down the stairs. He was too embarrassed by his impulsive departure to return to Chloe and Dick, and so he chose to go right instead of left. How big could the rebel base be? He had to run into Lex eventually.
The tunnels were long, and badly lit in many places. From time to time he passed doors. Some were closed, others merely covered by blankets or tarps, but Kal was reluctant to try and enter as long as he had no idea what was behind them. He reached another crossing of tunnels, and stood undecided, glancing left and right into the quiet gloom.
The only warning he got was a sound like the flap of a large wing, and a rush of air before a large hand on his neck pulled him backwards into a blanket-covered entry. Darkness engulfed Kal as he stumbled backwards and slipped, but he had barely fallen to the floor when he was whisked up again by his shirt and hauled around in a wide arc. His back slammed against a jagged cave wall, but to his surprise it wasn't painful. The dark shadow of his assailant loomed over him, and Kal made out a silhouette with shaggy hair and a laser-red artificial eye.
"What - "
Again he was jerked around, and this time pushed against the barely visible shape of a metal table. "Sit," the man snarled, and finally Kal recognized him – it was Batman.
He sat down on the edge of the table more out of fear than a conscious decision, and Wayne remained motionless for a second before suddenly coming at Kal again, this time making a huge swing aimed for Kal's jaw with his robotic fist. Kal flinched away and threw up his own arms to protect himself, but the fist stopped a few inches from his elbow. It hovered there for a second, and slowly Kal lowered his arms. His heart was hammering wildly in his chest and his breath still came in quick, shocked gasps. Batman, on the other hand, was perfectly quiet, his breathing inaudible, as he, too, lowered his fist. Kal's eyes were adjusting to the darkness, and he could now make out the shapes of the room beyond Batman. There was something like a huge, dark fish tank in one corner.
"Why don't you defend yourself?" Batman demanded. He sounded angry.
The only thing that came to Kal's mind was a startled, "I'm sorry!"
He lifted his fist again. "Could I hurt you with this?"
"No," Kal admitted, but it came out as a plea nonetheless.
"Could you hurt me?"
"Yes." Kal swallowed, but mustered up the courage to say, "I don't want to."
Batman circled the table, staring at Kal from all sides. "You might be a good man," he said, "but we need soldiers. You are as cowardly as the rest of your lot."
"The sunlight makes me – "
"Superpowers don't make you a good soldier," Batman interrupted him harshly.
Batman was frightening, it was true, but his stubbornness was also quickly starting to irritate Kal. All his life he had worked hard to suppress the flares of temper he occasionally felt, but Batman was bringing them right to the surface. "I don't want to be a soldier. I want to help people."
He hopped off the table and crossed his arms, facing Wayne. He reminded himself of the stories Dick had told. There had to be a man beneath the soldier, just a normal man.
Batman's human eye narrowed, the he whirled around with startling speed and grabbed something like a remote from a nearby table. The tank lit up. It had a sickly greenish blue color, and in it floated the most hideous creature Kal had ever seen. He staggered a step backwards in shock.
The thing was dead, though, it's claws hanging slackly and it's black eyes empty. Spikes that looked like rock formation pierced its pallid grey skin. The sudden presence of Batman leaning over Kal's shoulder startled him again.
"This is my choice," Batman growled. "Between an ugly and a pretty monster."
"What is that?"
"Doomsday. Hamilton's soldier. It knows no fear. No weakness. It's a weapon. A bomb. A gun. We control when it's fired. And we can put it away when the war is won." Batman sounded, if anything, disdainful of the notion. He turned off the lights again and flung the remote away.
"You are a naïve idiot. Weak. Trusting. Easy to manipulate. So far you did only one good thing. You saved two people's lives." Batman started pacing again.
"I could save more," Kal whispered.
"One life at a time?" Batman snarled.
Kal thought of Chloe. "Each life makes a difference."
The pacing stopped. Batman regarded him for a long moment, then his scarred face twisted into a grim but honest smile. "Yes, it does."
Kal released a shaky breath of relief at the broken tension. He offered a smile as well, but Batman had already returned to his usual frowning countenance. "We'll go back to Earth," he decided. "But first you'll train."
"Lex and I already started trying my powers out," Kal said eagerly, then was extremely glad that the room was so dark as his cheeks grew hot at the thought of how their experimenting had turned out. He doesn't know, Kal reminded himself. And besides, Batman was human, so he shouldn't mind intimacy. "I can touch people without hurting them."
Batman gave a grunt in reply. "I'll teach you how to hurt them."
Kal swallowed, but he did not protest.
"You will be at the Solarium in two hours," Batman ordered. Kal remembered the spherical room they had visited on his first day at the rebel base, and he hoped he would find the way there on his own. Without another word, Batman headed for the door, and since Kal did not want to be alone in the room with the thing in the tank, he followed him quickly.
*
It was afternoon, in two hours, when Kal had his appointment with Bruce Wayne, it would be dinner time. But Lex's rooms were still empty, although someone had tidied up and put fresh covers on the bed. The mellow glow of the sunlight drenched the room in all shades of copper and pink, and without a thing to do or a person to talk to, Kal stood by the transparent wall that served as window and stared out at the vast canyon. He felt he should have been anxious about his training with Batman, but instead he found himself more preoccupied with Lex's continuing absence. It was beginning to feel like avoidance. Had Kal done something wrong the night before? Or was this maybe some human custom, a period of separation after a period of intense closeness?
Fixing his sight on the distant mountain range on the other side of canyon, Kal had the impression that his sight had sharpened, although sometimes the rock formations swam strangely in front of his eyes, seeming suddenly much closer and then far away, as if he were zooming in on them with a telescope.
There were only two instances in Kal's life when he had looked through a telescope. Once when he had been ten, and passed the entry test of the Metropolis Preparatory School for Higher Sons with flying colors. Jor-El had taken him up to his laboratory. It had been the first time Kal had been allowed to enter his father's sanctuary. The laboratory was no more than a rather cramped room under the roof of their two-storied, human-built house, but the inside was filled with graceful crystal structures, a hidden ice-palace in the attic.
"In truth," Jor-El had said with much gravity, "I come here for solitude more than anything else. On Krypton, this was a huge fortress. A palace of science unlike any you have ever seen. You should have witnessed the wonders – " There Jor-El had stopped abruptly, folding his hands behind his back and raising his chin high. Kal had felt very little, hardly coming up to his father's chest, unable to catch his distant blue eyes.
"I am very proud of you," Jor-El said stiffly. "But you will not become a scientist, Kal-El."
Kal had protested fiercely, unable to see it as anything but a random and cruel injustice. What else was he supposed to be? He could not be an explorer like his mother's ancestors, and he certainly couldn't be a farmer like Mr Kent had once been.
Jor-El had looked grave. "You are meant for something different. A great deal of responsibility lies on your shoulders, Kal-El. You must hold up the name of your house and family in these difficult times. You cannot go chasing stars and dreams like I did. It is not your destiny to stand out and walk were none have gone before. It is my wish that you dedicate yourself to the study of history." There was a pause, in which Kal made a stifled noise of disbelief, but eventually, Jor-El went on, speaking as if the words were leaden shackles to put on his son's wrists and ankles. "The house of El has a great history."
He said no more. Instead he walked to a small window, and somehow caused the crystals to create a kind of work surface. He helped Kal climb up. It allowed him to look out of the window and up at the night sky. Not many stars were visible, their faint glow drowned out by the abundant light of the city, but it was close to new moon and quite some of them glittered in the cloudless sky. From somewhere in the attic, Jor-El produced a small telescope, hardly more than a spyglass.
For an hour or two, Kal was allowed to gaze at the stars, open-mouthed and filled with wonder, until he started yawning and his eyes hurt. He was fascinated the most by the star that he had learned since pre-school to identify as the glorious Rao.
"Will we ever return to Krypton?" Kal had asked.
Jor-El took the telescope from him. "Your destiny lies on Earth, Kal-El."
"Still, I wish I could be a doctor and cure the plague so we could go back," Kal replied with a huge yawn. "I don't understand why they haven't found a cure yet."
"Sometimes the hardest thing about science is to know where to look. That is true for history as well," Jor-El admonished. "Now go to bed. Don't wake your mother, it is late." He stayed behind in the attic, and Kal fell asleep quickly, exhausted by the long day.
The only other time Kal was ever allowed in the laboratory had been six years later. Again Jor-El gave him the telescope. He talked very little that night, and when he talked, it was never more than two words in a row. Kal felt uncomfortable and awkward, now tall enough to look out of the tiny window unassisted, but he searched out a peculiarly bright star not very far from Rao's steady light as he was told and watched, nervously, until after a very long time, the twinkling dot of light suddenly flared up a last time, then faded. Jor-El gave no explanation at all for the odd interlude, and did not leave his laboratory for many days after that night.
Those were the only two times in his life that Kal had held a telescope. Much later, he found out that they were highly censored articles, and only a very select number of people had permission to use them. Now he suspected that his father was not one of them.
Why had he forced Kal to give up his dream of becoming a scientist? Had Jor-El hoped that it would be easier to keep Kal in the dark about uncomfortable and dangerous truths?
He realized that the sun had sunk low and almost two hours had passed. He had to hurry if he wanted to be punctual.
And now I'm gonna go watch the new Smallville ep.
