The House of the Earth Part 3 (2/8): On the Road
Title: Chapter Two: On the Road
Pairing/Characters: Kal/Bruce
Notes: " The House of the Earth" is an AU in which a few thousand Kryptonians escaped the destruction of Krypton to flee to Earth and enslave its people.
Rating: G
Word Count: 1900
Summary: "Clark" and Bruce spend a day on the road and camp in the evening.
The road wound west through scarlet iao-fields and abandoned ghost towns, weeds growing up through the sidewalks and rubble. Their first stop was a plantation just outside the El property, to drop off some cured ham and dried beans and pick up some shovels and scythes. "That's how the Trade Route works," Bruce explained as they hoisted the tools onto the flatbed. "Each plantation barters a few things for something else. A little medicine for some cloth, some flour for a handful of nails."
Kal had been terrified that the first human they met would recognize him as a Kryptonian right away, but no one seemed to look twice at a man with heavy glasses and grubby overalls, even a man who could lift heavy bundles with maybe a little too much ease. He introduced himself as Clark from Smallville, and they nodded and thanked him for the goods.
Progress was slow, stopping every couple of hours along the way, and sometimes they were invited to have a cup of coffee or a piece of bread by someone grateful for the food and supplies they brought. Kal mostly kept quiet while Bruce kept a steady stream of conversation flowing; after a couple of visits Kal realized he wasn't just making small talk but carefully eliciting information about the plantations and their overseers from the people.
"Why do you do that?" he asked after a stop.
"Do what?"
"Get them to tell you what the iao-production is, or how many kids were born here last year, or how much milk their cows produce?"
Bruce looked vaguely surprised, as if he hadn't really realized he was doing it. "All information is valuable. You never know when you'll need it."
"You're remembering all of that data?"
Bruce shrugged and looked out the driver's side window for a moment. "I suppose I just got in the habit."
Sometimes they picked up a person walking along the road and gave them a lift to the next plantation. The routine was always the same: Bruce would slow down as they approached the trudging figure and call, "To which House are you bound?" The person would stop and answer, "The House of Iv" or wherever their destination was, and if it was on the way Bruce would gesture them to the back of the truck for a ride. At times there were four or five riders in the back, but as the sun started to go down the truck emptied out again until it was just Bruce and Kal.
The endless monotonous crimson of the iao-fields started to fall away as they went further west, away from the coast; for long stretches there were nothing but forests and fields of Terran green. Out here the road was in worse repair; potholes jolted the truck from time to time, and once the entire road was washed out and they had to find a detour. In the middle of the detour they came to a river; the bridge across it looked less than fully stable. Bruce pulled the truck to a stop and looked up at the reddened sky. "Let's stop here and camp for the night. Then in the morning we can check the bridge and make sure it's safe to cross. Not all of them are now."
"We're going to sleep out here? In the middle of nowhere?"
Bruce chuckled. "We've got blankets and campfire material. Don't worry." Kal didn't know quite how to explain that it hadn't been worry but delight sharpening his voice, so he simply helped Bruce unpack their minimal gear and carry it to the side of the road.
There was a huge, gnarled tree near the road, its wide branches stretching out and massive roots gripping the ground. Bruce spread a blanket out in between two of the roots. "Would you gather up some wood for a fire?"
Kal collected an armful of dry branches and returned to the campsite to find Bruce already unpacking one of their hams and slicing off a couple of pieces. He tossed Kal a lighter, and after a fair amount of ineffective fussing Kal managed to get one of the thick branches to catch fire. He stared at the flame slowly licking its way around the wood, feeling absurdly pleased at the warmth coming from the fire. His campfire. Their campfire.
Bruce stretched his hands out to the flame and sighed appreciatively. "It gets cold here at night." He held out a makeshift griddle with the slices of ham on it, and soon the scent of cooking meat filled the air. "There are a couple of rolls in my backpack; saved them from earlier." Kal rummaged around and soon they were eating grilled ham and rolls in companionable silence. The murmur of the river and the crackling of the fire were the only sounds; beneath the scent of cooking food Kal could smell the deep loamy richness of vegetation all around them and the faint green scent of the river underlying it all. He closed his eyes and breathed deeply, savoring the food, the silence, the company. For just a moment, he could feel a ghostly presence: Clark, son of Jonathan and Martha, traveling home with a friend, sharing food under the sheltering branches of a great tree. For a moment, he held on to the illusion, wistfully.
Bruce stood and stretched, then leapt gracefully onto one of the broad tree branches. Springing from branch to branch, he disappeared like a shadow into the foliage; a few leaves drifted down in his wake. Then a small nut pinged off Kal's head. "Hey!" Kal exclaimed, but couldn't help laughing. He caught the next small missile and turned it around in his fingers, examining it.
"Come on up," came Bruce's voice from above him.
Kal looked up with a wry smile. "I have no idea how to climb a tree." He'd only gotten the hang of walking recently; managing crawling into a tree without benefit of flying seemed beyond comprehension.
Bruce suddenly appeared on the branch just above him. "Oh come on, it's not so hard." Kal tried to pull himself up onto the branch; after a great deal of comical flailing and protests, he managed to find himself sitting next to Bruce, feeling surprisingly out of breath. "Higher," said Bruce, vanishing to the next branch.
Kal edged along cautiously after him, grateful that Bruce didn't point out that it wasn't like a fall could possibly hurt him. These little details--the way Bruce unfailingly treated him like Clark, like a fellow human--they made him happier than they probably should.
The bark was rough under his fingers, splotched with lichen. Kal climbed doggedly after Bruce, catching glimpses of their campfire farther and farther below them, until suddenly he found himself on one of the highest branches. Bruce was braced against the trunk and was looking out over the river and the countryside beyond it.
It was a moonless night and the world around them was drowned in darkness, a vast dark sea of trees. On the other side of the river, Kal could see the ruins of buildings, faintly white in the starlight: a mill, a few farmhouses.
"Look," said Bruce, pointing: in the distance, a ripple of wind was gusting through the trees, bending their dark tops in the faint light, a great wave of unseen power coming toward them. It reached them, and for a moment the old tree swayed and bowed; Kal could see a fierce smile on Bruce's face as the tree yielded to the wind and the leaves roared around them. Then it was gone again, moving north along the river, a massive invisible hand that had brushed them and moved on.
Bruce met his eyes, still smiling, and for a moment they hung there in the starlight, with nothing for miles around them but wilderness. Then Bruce slipped off his branch and bounded downward. After a moment, Kal followed him.
At the base of the tree, Bruce was checking the fire, feeding it another large branch. "We'd better get some sleep," he said. "Another long day tomorrow."
Kal curled up on his blanket, rolling a jacket up for a pillow. "Good night, Bruce," he said.
Bruce was looking at him from his own blanket. A branch in the fire snapped and a shower of sparks sprang between them briefly. "Good night, Clark."
: : :
They rose before sunrise and packed up the truck. The bridge proved rickety but sound, and soon they were back on the route, winding their way across the countryside, picking up travelers and dropping off supplies at the plantations. They were spaced out more widely here, away from the coast, and there were long stretches of empty land.
Around noon, they were in the midst of another iao-field, the acrid scent of the blooms all around them--why had Kal never noticed how strong and rank the scent of their pollen was?--when they came across a lone man, trudging the opposite direction from them, his clothes covered with dust.
Bruce slowed the truck as they drew near and nodded. The man stared blankly at them. "Where are you going?" His voice sounded dead in his throat, raw and scraped. "I'll go with you, wherever you go. I don't care."
"Further west, to the Zho plantation," said Bruce.
The man flinched at the name. Then his mouth stretched in a rictus that looked like it could become either laughter or a scream. "No, not there. Anywhere but there," he said. "I'll be damned if I'm going back." He paused. "I'm damned already." He shook his head violently, hands clawing dusty hair. "Don't," he muttered to himself. "Don't think about it."
"You look like you need some help, brother," said Bruce. He reached out a hand, but the man cringed away from it.
"I'm not the one who needs help. Not me. You're the ones that'll need help if you go there," he said hoarsely. "There's nothing there. Not anymore. Nothing but fear. Fear and death." Hysteria was bubbling under his voice now. "Stop it!" he said, not to Bruce. "She was as good as dead anyway, I couldn't do anything, I'm not going back!" Bruce started to say something more, but the man staggered away from the truck, off the road. "He'll eat your soul if you go there, send you screaming into death, and no one will help you, either!" He turned and floundered away through the underbrush, seemingly at random.
Bruce frowned as the sounds of the man's passage faded. "I've heard of this plantation," Bruce muttered. "Rumors. Bad rumors."
"Then we'd better go there and check it out," Kal said. Bruce nodded and put the truck back into gear.
"I know the Zho family," Kal said thoughtfully as they turned onto the long road that led to the plantation. "I don't remember any of them even visiting their western plantations."
"It's not the Kryptonians that have given rise to the rumors," Bruce said as the truck jolted along, "It's the human overseer. I've heard...bad things. Nothing that makes any sense. Ravings, distorted nightmares. Impossible things." He frowned, troubled. The plantation walls drew closer.
"The overseer calls himself Scarecrow."
Pairing/Characters: Kal/Bruce
Notes: " The House of the Earth" is an AU in which a few thousand Kryptonians escaped the destruction of Krypton to flee to Earth and enslave its people.
Rating: G
Word Count: 1900
Summary: "Clark" and Bruce spend a day on the road and camp in the evening.
The road wound west through scarlet iao-fields and abandoned ghost towns, weeds growing up through the sidewalks and rubble. Their first stop was a plantation just outside the El property, to drop off some cured ham and dried beans and pick up some shovels and scythes. "That's how the Trade Route works," Bruce explained as they hoisted the tools onto the flatbed. "Each plantation barters a few things for something else. A little medicine for some cloth, some flour for a handful of nails."
Kal had been terrified that the first human they met would recognize him as a Kryptonian right away, but no one seemed to look twice at a man with heavy glasses and grubby overalls, even a man who could lift heavy bundles with maybe a little too much ease. He introduced himself as Clark from Smallville, and they nodded and thanked him for the goods.
Progress was slow, stopping every couple of hours along the way, and sometimes they were invited to have a cup of coffee or a piece of bread by someone grateful for the food and supplies they brought. Kal mostly kept quiet while Bruce kept a steady stream of conversation flowing; after a couple of visits Kal realized he wasn't just making small talk but carefully eliciting information about the plantations and their overseers from the people.
"Why do you do that?" he asked after a stop.
"Do what?"
"Get them to tell you what the iao-production is, or how many kids were born here last year, or how much milk their cows produce?"
Bruce looked vaguely surprised, as if he hadn't really realized he was doing it. "All information is valuable. You never know when you'll need it."
"You're remembering all of that data?"
Bruce shrugged and looked out the driver's side window for a moment. "I suppose I just got in the habit."
Sometimes they picked up a person walking along the road and gave them a lift to the next plantation. The routine was always the same: Bruce would slow down as they approached the trudging figure and call, "To which House are you bound?" The person would stop and answer, "The House of Iv" or wherever their destination was, and if it was on the way Bruce would gesture them to the back of the truck for a ride. At times there were four or five riders in the back, but as the sun started to go down the truck emptied out again until it was just Bruce and Kal.
The endless monotonous crimson of the iao-fields started to fall away as they went further west, away from the coast; for long stretches there were nothing but forests and fields of Terran green. Out here the road was in worse repair; potholes jolted the truck from time to time, and once the entire road was washed out and they had to find a detour. In the middle of the detour they came to a river; the bridge across it looked less than fully stable. Bruce pulled the truck to a stop and looked up at the reddened sky. "Let's stop here and camp for the night. Then in the morning we can check the bridge and make sure it's safe to cross. Not all of them are now."
"We're going to sleep out here? In the middle of nowhere?"
Bruce chuckled. "We've got blankets and campfire material. Don't worry." Kal didn't know quite how to explain that it hadn't been worry but delight sharpening his voice, so he simply helped Bruce unpack their minimal gear and carry it to the side of the road.
There was a huge, gnarled tree near the road, its wide branches stretching out and massive roots gripping the ground. Bruce spread a blanket out in between two of the roots. "Would you gather up some wood for a fire?"
Kal collected an armful of dry branches and returned to the campsite to find Bruce already unpacking one of their hams and slicing off a couple of pieces. He tossed Kal a lighter, and after a fair amount of ineffective fussing Kal managed to get one of the thick branches to catch fire. He stared at the flame slowly licking its way around the wood, feeling absurdly pleased at the warmth coming from the fire. His campfire. Their campfire.
Bruce stretched his hands out to the flame and sighed appreciatively. "It gets cold here at night." He held out a makeshift griddle with the slices of ham on it, and soon the scent of cooking meat filled the air. "There are a couple of rolls in my backpack; saved them from earlier." Kal rummaged around and soon they were eating grilled ham and rolls in companionable silence. The murmur of the river and the crackling of the fire were the only sounds; beneath the scent of cooking food Kal could smell the deep loamy richness of vegetation all around them and the faint green scent of the river underlying it all. He closed his eyes and breathed deeply, savoring the food, the silence, the company. For just a moment, he could feel a ghostly presence: Clark, son of Jonathan and Martha, traveling home with a friend, sharing food under the sheltering branches of a great tree. For a moment, he held on to the illusion, wistfully.
Bruce stood and stretched, then leapt gracefully onto one of the broad tree branches. Springing from branch to branch, he disappeared like a shadow into the foliage; a few leaves drifted down in his wake. Then a small nut pinged off Kal's head. "Hey!" Kal exclaimed, but couldn't help laughing. He caught the next small missile and turned it around in his fingers, examining it.
"Come on up," came Bruce's voice from above him.
Kal looked up with a wry smile. "I have no idea how to climb a tree." He'd only gotten the hang of walking recently; managing crawling into a tree without benefit of flying seemed beyond comprehension.
Bruce suddenly appeared on the branch just above him. "Oh come on, it's not so hard." Kal tried to pull himself up onto the branch; after a great deal of comical flailing and protests, he managed to find himself sitting next to Bruce, feeling surprisingly out of breath. "Higher," said Bruce, vanishing to the next branch.
Kal edged along cautiously after him, grateful that Bruce didn't point out that it wasn't like a fall could possibly hurt him. These little details--the way Bruce unfailingly treated him like Clark, like a fellow human--they made him happier than they probably should.
The bark was rough under his fingers, splotched with lichen. Kal climbed doggedly after Bruce, catching glimpses of their campfire farther and farther below them, until suddenly he found himself on one of the highest branches. Bruce was braced against the trunk and was looking out over the river and the countryside beyond it.
It was a moonless night and the world around them was drowned in darkness, a vast dark sea of trees. On the other side of the river, Kal could see the ruins of buildings, faintly white in the starlight: a mill, a few farmhouses.
"Look," said Bruce, pointing: in the distance, a ripple of wind was gusting through the trees, bending their dark tops in the faint light, a great wave of unseen power coming toward them. It reached them, and for a moment the old tree swayed and bowed; Kal could see a fierce smile on Bruce's face as the tree yielded to the wind and the leaves roared around them. Then it was gone again, moving north along the river, a massive invisible hand that had brushed them and moved on.
Bruce met his eyes, still smiling, and for a moment they hung there in the starlight, with nothing for miles around them but wilderness. Then Bruce slipped off his branch and bounded downward. After a moment, Kal followed him.
At the base of the tree, Bruce was checking the fire, feeding it another large branch. "We'd better get some sleep," he said. "Another long day tomorrow."
Kal curled up on his blanket, rolling a jacket up for a pillow. "Good night, Bruce," he said.
Bruce was looking at him from his own blanket. A branch in the fire snapped and a shower of sparks sprang between them briefly. "Good night, Clark."
: : :
They rose before sunrise and packed up the truck. The bridge proved rickety but sound, and soon they were back on the route, winding their way across the countryside, picking up travelers and dropping off supplies at the plantations. They were spaced out more widely here, away from the coast, and there were long stretches of empty land.
Around noon, they were in the midst of another iao-field, the acrid scent of the blooms all around them--why had Kal never noticed how strong and rank the scent of their pollen was?--when they came across a lone man, trudging the opposite direction from them, his clothes covered with dust.
Bruce slowed the truck as they drew near and nodded. The man stared blankly at them. "Where are you going?" His voice sounded dead in his throat, raw and scraped. "I'll go with you, wherever you go. I don't care."
"Further west, to the Zho plantation," said Bruce.
The man flinched at the name. Then his mouth stretched in a rictus that looked like it could become either laughter or a scream. "No, not there. Anywhere but there," he said. "I'll be damned if I'm going back." He paused. "I'm damned already." He shook his head violently, hands clawing dusty hair. "Don't," he muttered to himself. "Don't think about it."
"You look like you need some help, brother," said Bruce. He reached out a hand, but the man cringed away from it.
"I'm not the one who needs help. Not me. You're the ones that'll need help if you go there," he said hoarsely. "There's nothing there. Not anymore. Nothing but fear. Fear and death." Hysteria was bubbling under his voice now. "Stop it!" he said, not to Bruce. "She was as good as dead anyway, I couldn't do anything, I'm not going back!" Bruce started to say something more, but the man staggered away from the truck, off the road. "He'll eat your soul if you go there, send you screaming into death, and no one will help you, either!" He turned and floundered away through the underbrush, seemingly at random.
Bruce frowned as the sounds of the man's passage faded. "I've heard of this plantation," Bruce muttered. "Rumors. Bad rumors."
"Then we'd better go there and check it out," Kal said. Bruce nodded and put the truck back into gear.
"I know the Zho family," Kal said thoughtfully as they turned onto the long road that led to the plantation. "I don't remember any of them even visiting their western plantations."
"It's not the Kryptonians that have given rise to the rumors," Bruce said as the truck jolted along, "It's the human overseer. I've heard...bad things. Nothing that makes any sense. Ravings, distorted nightmares. Impossible things." He frowned, troubled. The plantation walls drew closer.
"The overseer calls himself Scarecrow."