Fic: "Smallville by Sunlight" (with Rai_Daydreamer)
Title: Smallville by Sunlight
Pairing: Clark/Bruce
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Clark and Bruce go to Smallville to reunite Clark with his parents.
Notes: A continuation of " Dreams of Sunlight," an AU of "Gotham by Gaslight." Story idea and art by rai_daydreamer ; click on the thumbnails or the link at the end to see the full art! Prompt #15: "Never seen a bluer sky." (see the full table here)
Word count: 2900
The rhythm of the train wheels was a lulling chant: Going home, going home, going home. Clark Kent sat at a table in the dining car, Bruce Wayne sitting across from him. A shaft of sunlight fell across the middle of the table, and Clark put out his hand to let light pool in his palm, warm and soothing. He looked up to see Bruce smiling at him. "Still not used to it?"
Clark shook his head. "I can't imagine I ever will be."
"I love the way light looks, caught in your hair. Like it's finally found its home." Bruce's voice was affectionate, his words spoken so low that no one but Clark could hear them over the clatter of the wheels. Clark looked quickly out the window rather than meet his lover's eyes, watching the rush of sun-dappled greenery outside. He'd flown this fast, of course, but it felt different being carried along.
Going home. Going home.
The chant slowed as the train pulled into Topeka, and Clark and Bruce stepped out onto the platform. Clark kept his hat pulled down to shield his face a bit; he didn't want to risk running into anyone who remembered the Kent's demon son. Bruce swore you could hardly recognize him now, with his eyes bright and color in his cheeks, but it was better to be safe.
They struck out across the countryside, walking along deserted roads and through fields, making their way toward Smallville.
Clark was almost delirious with happiness, seeing the fields of his childhood under the sun's light. He had a tendency to break into a lope, circling Bruce like a golden retriever too brimming with happiness to stand still. The blue sky was a deep and dazzling bowl arcing above them, the fields a shimmering cascade of light, bending to the wind in great, shivering ripples.
When they crested a final hill and saw the white farmhouse ahead of them, Clark went still, feeling like the grass trembling in the wind. On the porch: two figures, rocking. They were still too far for human eyes to make them out distinctly, but Clark took a deep breath. "Ma," he whispered. "Pa." He felt a sudden flicker of uncertainty; the last time his parents had seen him, flames had been licking his body as he hovered in their air, eyes burning.
As if his words had reached the house, one of the two figures stopped rocking, his posture gone tense. He spoke to the woman, and they both went still, gazing up at the ridge for a long, silent moment.
Clark stepped forward, Bruce at his side. He hadn't gone more than a few steps when the man on the porch began to come toward them, walking and then almost running.
Clark ran to meet him.
: : :
Bruce helped place the last utensil on the massive oak table. Wooden, of course--even after all these years, the Kents had never taken out their silver again. "Thank you for your help, son," said Martha.
"It's my pleasure." Jonathan and Clark were in a corner of the kitchen, earnestly discussing the new barn and what Clark could do to help while he was here. "I'm glad to finally meet you."
Martha's face creased in a smile. "I'm just so glad to hear Clark found a friend to help him. We've been praying for him for so long, thinking of him all alone out there in the cruel world." She sniffled slightly and applied herself with vigor to whisking the gravy. "Thank you for taking care of him."
Bruce's ears felt slightly hot; he and Clark had decided not to reveal the extent to which Bruce had been "taking care of" Clark. "That I can fly and set fire to things with my eyes is one thing," Clark had said with a wry chuckle, "But who I have sex with is another altogether."
"He's, uh...he's a good friend," Bruce said lamely.
Martha smiled and patted the back of his hand. "Dinner's served, boys," she called to the other two men.
As they settled down, Jonathan cleared his throat and bowed his head; Bruce hastily followed suit. "Bring hither the fatted calf, and kill it; and let us eat, and be merry," said Jonathan, his voice hoarse. "For this my son was dead, and is alive again; he was lost, and is found."
And they ate and were merry.
: : :
Silence besides the crickets and the low murmur of wind; Clark heard the floorboards creak very slightly in the hall outside. He lifted himself from the bed and floated to the door. "Bruce, you--" He broke off as Bruce's hands pulled him close and Bruce's mouth found his. A long moment later and he managed to pull back enough to whisper, "Bruce! I'm not going to--not in my parents' house--"
"I just wanted to kiss you good-night," Bruce whispered back. "You have no idea how hard it is to watch you sitting there and not be able to do this to you...or this..."
"I thought you were just going to kiss me good-night," said Clark a little breathlessly.
"I didn't say where," Bruce chuckled. "No, no, I'm sorry," he went before Clark could speak, "I'll leave you alone, I promise."
It was Clark's turn to pull him close and kiss him soundly. "I'll be thinking of you."
"You do that," Bruce said, and slipped away into the shadows again.
The floorboards didn't creak at all as he went back to his room.
Clark thought of him until he finally slipped into sleep.
: : :
Jonathan Kent's face was grave as he looked at his son over a table piled high with bacon and pancakes. "Son," he said, and stopped. He pursed his lips and started again. "Clark, there's something...your Ma and I have to show you. We were going to show you when you became an adult, but..." He squared his shoulders. "It's something you have a right to see." He shot a glance at Bruce. "Maybe your fancypants scientist friend can figure it out."
Clark looked at his father blankly, still chewing his pancakes. Martha was twisting her apron in her hands. "I don't like it, Jonathan," she said. "It isn't...canny."
Jonathan snorted. "And Clark is?"
Martha looked at Clark. "Clark is our son."
"And our son deserves to know what we found with him."
Clark glanced at Bruce and saw his lover's eyes were sharp and avid. "You found something along with Clark?"
Jonathan nodded. "He was in a little container of some kind. Like a...box of some sort. With lights and buttons. We never dared touch any of it; I hid it under the floorboards of the barn."
"You let Clark believe he was a demon rather than show him his true heritage?" Bruce's voice was so mild that Clark knew he was furious, and Jonathan bristled.
"We didn't know he thought he was some kind of demon! We sure didn't give him that fool idea! We just..." Clark's father deflated somewhat, "...We just wanted him to have as normal a life as possible."
Martha's gray eyes were full of tears. "He was our boy, Mr. Wayne. Jonathan, he sort of wanted to show him--you did, dear," she said when her husband tried to interrupt. "But I was so afraid--so afraid we'd lose him--" She dabbed at the corners of her eyes with her napkin. "And we did anyway, didn't we? A judgment for our sins."
Bruce's voice was softer now. "I'm sure no one would judge you harshly for wanting to keep Clark near you and safe." He didn't look at Clark, but under the table his foot brushed Clark's very slightly. "It's all worked out well and there's no need to feel guilty." He straightened, a flare of curiosity in his eyes. "But I'd be extremely eager to see this capsule, if you were willing to show it to us."
"Of course," said Jonathan.
Martha turned to Clark, her eyes still wet. "I'm so sorry, Clark. I just...so wanted you to be our son."
Clark reached across the table and caught her hands in his own. "Ma. I'll always be your son. No matter what."
Her smile was dazzling through her tears.
: : :
"The fire didn't damage it a bit," Jonathan said as Clark lifted the tarpaulin-covered bundle out from beneath the floorboards. The canvas fell away to reveal a shining silver capsule, about the size of a coffin. Clark heard Bruce catch his breath beside him. "It opened up when we came close," said his father, "And you were in it, just as healthy as could be."
Clark reached out and touched the shining silver and it split open like a flower, the metal sliding away to reveal strange screens, buttons and controls that flickered into light with a low hum.
Jonathan backed away from the capsule cautiously, looking uncomfortable. "Well, I'll let you and Mr. Wayne look at it. I've got farming to do." His footsteps echoed away across the floorboards.
Clark glanced over at Bruce, who was staring at the silvery-blue light of the capsule with fascination. "Well," he said. "Shall we start?"
"Go ahead," Bruce said. "It's yours, after all."
Clark almost smiled, knowing what a sacrifice it had to be to his scientific friend to cede first rights to him. He leaned in and brushed his fingers across one of the screens and it sparked briefly.
"Kal-El," said a deep voice from the capsule.
Clark looked at Bruce in some alarm. "Is it saying hello?" He turned back to the silver container. "Hello?" The voice said something else in sonorous syllables that Clark couldn't understand. "Is it talking to us?"
Bruce was frowning. "I think it's a recorded voice. I wonder..." He cast a longing glance at his tool case, and Clark laughed.
"Let's get to work and see what we can find out."
: : :
"I can see the underlying function. It's like Babbage's difference engine, just...far, far more advanced. But I can't understand it," Bruce said in annoyance. This readout--" he pointed at a latticework graph, seven strings of glowing green light intersecting with eighteen columns, "--it's asking me to input something, but I can't tell what. And it looks like entering the right information is necessary to access anything else."
Clark held out a piece of fried chicken. "Have some lunch."
"How can you think about food with such a mystery in front of us?" Still staring at the readout, Bruce bit into a chicken leg. His eyes widened and he applied himself with single-minded ferocity to the chicken for a while until there was nothing left but a heap of bones. His methods of eating, Clark reflected, were rather similar to his scientific method.
Bruce looked ready to throw himself back into study, but Clark grabbed his arm. "You need a break." When Bruce started to protest, Clark cut him off. "You always say you need time to let ideas connect in your--what was that thing again?--your unconscious."
Bruce gave him a mutinous look but sighed and rose from the capsule. "Want to give me a tour of the farm?"
"Oh, I'll do better than that." Clark grinned and with a sudden blur of motion clapped a black cowboy hat on Bruce's head. "We're going riding."
Bruce's eyes rolled upward to glare at the hat. "Must I do it in this monstrosity?"
Clark winked from under the brim of his own hat--white, of course. "It's mandatory, I believe." He walked over to one of the stables where a dapple-gray horse nickered at him and pushed its nose into his chest. "Wow, Steel, you've gotten so big. There's a good boy," he said, holding out a palm with an apple balanced on it that the horse took delicately from him.
Bruce strolled past the stables, stopping in front of one containing a coal-black stallion. "This one," he stated.
"Midnight?" Clark asked as the stallion bared its teeth at Bruce in challenge. "You never do things the easy way, do you?"
Bruce caught the tack that Clark tossed at him and bared his teeth in turn. "What would be the fun of that?"
: : :
Clark let Steel ease into an easy trot, feeling the sturdy sides rising and falling beneath him. Well ahead of him, Bruce and Midnight wheeled sharply and galloped past the trotting pair again, the black horse's legs high and proud. Clark caught a glimpse of Bruce's face, fierce and exultant, his body moving easily with the rhythms of the horse's gait. He could tame anything, Clark thought. Horses, technology, Gotham society--he understood it and thus claimed it as his own.
Apparently that went double for moon-men.
They stopped at a creek and dismounted, letting the horses drink. "I used to come here and just sit in the moonlight, sometimes," Clark said as he perched on a mossy rock, the dark water eddying around it. "It all looks so different in the sunlight." He watched the shadows and light dance between the leaves of the beech tree overhead. "I never thought I'd see it."
Bruce sat down on the rock as well, putting his back to Clark's, and they sat in companionable silence for a while, listening to the running water. "Everything can be broken down to its essential elements and comprehended," Bruce said out of nowhere. Clark kept silent: he knew the tone and it meant Bruce was thinking out loud. "You, me, the metal in the capsule--if we could take them apart enough we'd see the basic material it's all made of. Water is hydrogen and oxygen together. Building blocks. The same throughout the world. Throughout the universe." A long, thoughtful pause. "The same." Bruce shifted to bring his knees up to his chest. "Mendeleev's table. But there's only..." His voice trailed off. "Unless..."
He stood up so abruptly that Clark almost fell over. "That's it," he said. "That's it!" He whirled and kissed Clark quickly on the lips. "Race you back," he said, running to his horse.
"I could just pick Steel up and carry him and beat you," Clark called after him, but he was already gone. He swung himself into the saddle. "All right, ready to give it a shot?"
The horse tossed its head and broke into a gallop.
: : :
"See? This grid." Bruce tapped the screen and the glowing latticework appeared again. "The elements are universal. This is a chart of the elements. I couldn't recognize it because it has an extra row Mendeleev's doesn't have. William Ramsey's been working on a theory that there's a set of gases we haven't discovered yet, and I'm betting that's what's thrown me off." He started inputting numbers with eager fingers. "I'm guessing it wants us to enter the atomic weights of the elements. So if I..." He tapped some more and the graph vanished; Bruce yelped with surprise and triumph as a face made of light appeared, hovering above the capsule. Stern and majestic, it gazed out at the astonished pair.
"Kal-El," it said again. "You have proven the scientific prowess of the world you have landed on, and thus the secrets of this craft are unlocked to you." Bruce felt his heartbeat quicken. So much promise, so much potential. "This machine has been monitoring your language and is now able to communicate with you to some extent." The austere mouth softened into something close to a smile. "Speak, my son."
Son? Beside Bruce, Clark took a deep breath. "You...are my father?"
"Yes, Kal-El. I am Jor-El of the House of El, and you are my son."
"Kal-El," Clark whispered, and Bruce could feel him trembling. "My name is Kal-El." There was silence for a moment; Bruce felt the pressure of the thousand questions he wanted to ask becoming almost intolerable but he bit his tongue. This was Clark's heritage, not his.
"Where...where are you?" Kal asked.
The man's gaze became sorrowful. "I, and your mother Lara, and all of your race, are long dead, my son." As Clark took a long, shuddering breath, Jor-El's image continued. "Our planet orbited a star that is--" There was a glitch and a burst of untranslated alien gibberish, and the image went on, "--approximately twenty-seven point three five quadrillion miles from this world's sun."
Bruce couldn't help but whistle. That was a lot farther away than he had ever imagined.
"Our planet was unstable, my son. You were sent at the last instant, the only remaining survivor of your people, to another planet. On Earth you will have great powers that will keep you safe. For a time, when you are young, you will be harmed by the yellow sun. But with your great gifts, you can help humanity under the light of its moon. Help its people, and they will surely welcome you."
"He didn't know," murmured Clark. "He knew about the sunlight, but he couldn't know about the culture. The superstitions." Bruce felt a pang of sadness for Jor-El, sending his son into more danger than he had known, and he reached out to take Clark's hand between his.
The vision was continuing. "Once you reach--" Another blurt of untranslated language, "--the maturity of your heart, your body should adjust to the yellow sun's rays, and you will find yourself even more powerful. I know you shall use those powers wisely, my son."
"The...the maturity of my heart..."
The image seemed unruffled by Clark's hesitation. "The maturity of your heart is the threshold when you find your mate. Once you pass that liminal stage and feel yourself safe and securely bonded, you enter full adulthood. Then your body chemistry will alter to allow you to function more fully under the yellow sun. So I urge you, Kal-El, to seek out a suitable mate and bond with that person."
"Oh," Clark said as he tightened his grip on Bruce's hand. "I think I've managed that."
"Well done," said Jor-El, and Bruce felt a moment's odd satisfaction that at least one set of Clark's parents would openly accept their union. "I am pleased that you have adjusted well, my son. The knowledge of Krypton is yours for the asking."
"Krypton?"
The image nodded. "That is the name of your home planet, Kal-El. It is taken from our name for--" The shining latticework that had guarded the capsule glowed back into life, and Jor-El pointed at one juncture on the grid, "--this element."
Bruce started to chuckle; he couldn't help it. "What is it?" Clark asked.
"That's one of the gases Ramsey's been trying to isolate," Bruce said, grabbing his notebook and scribbling gleefully. "He's going to have a fit when I find it before him and get naming rights." He grinned at Clark like a mischievous schoolboy. "And I already know what to name it."
: : :
Bruce woke abruptly and lay in bed, wondering what had woken him. There was a soft tap at the window: a pebble tossed against the pane. He rose to throw up the sash and look down at Clark Kent in a linen nightshirt, standing below the window barefoot in the moon-shadowed grass. Slinging his legs over the sill, Bruce leapt to the wide branch of an oak tree nearby, making his way to the ground.
"I couldn't sleep," said Clark.
"Ah," said Bruce dryly, "So you have spared me from doing the same?" But he couldn't help but smile a little; Clark was clearly brimming over with happiness. "It's been a big day, after all."
Clark started to walk toward the barn and Bruce fell in by his side. The world was nearly silent save for the soft singing of crickets and the breeze in the corn. "I know why I am what I am now, Bruce. I have a home. A family. A past. A name."
Bruce bit down a slight twinge of something like jealousy that wanted to ask Didn't you already? "Should I call you Kal from now on?"
Clark looked surprised. "Oh...no. That would sound strange. I'm Clark." He looked at Bruce out of the corner of his eye. "Your Clark."
The tight twinge in Bruce's chest eased away as they went back into the barn.
Bruce expected that Clark would go back to the capsule, but instead he climbed up into the hayloft. Bruce followed. Moonlight streamed in through the window, transforming the hay to scattered silver. Clark sat down on a cascade of sweet-smelling hay,
gazing out the window. He patted the hay next to him, and Bruce joined him. There were a lot more stars than in Gotham. "Do you think one of them is the one I came from?"
The odds that Krypton's star was visible from Earth seemed rather small, but Bruce decided not to point that out, settling for a non-committal grunt instead. Clark chuckled and pulled Bruce across his body, the hay shifting and sliding under them. "I'm glad to find out I'm really truly not a demon."
"I wouldn't have cared if you were," Bruce answered, bringing his lips to Clark's, and for a while after that neither spoke. "Whoa, whoa," Bruce eventually said as Clark's hands found their way under his nightshirt, "What about your parents?"
"They can't hear us here," Clark said hoarsely. "Ah, Bruce, Bruce, how I used to sit right here in the moonlight and wish there was someone to look at the stars with me. Someone I could be myself with, whatever that was."
"And you found me," said Bruce, feeling Clark's hands on him, coiling rapture into tighter and tighter whorls.
"I found you. Oh, I found you, my heart."
: : :
Martha pressed the picnic basket into Bruce's hands. "There's some more of that fried chicken you like so much, and I've put some sponge cake in there too. You need to eat more, Mr. Wayne, you look peaked."
"It's all that science work he does. Ain't natural, messing with nature." Jonthan's smile belied his sour words as he shook Bruce's hand. "You come back and study that thing some more real soon, now."
Clark kissed his mother goodbye and shook hands with his father. "I'll come back often, I promise." Martha wiped at her eyes with a handkerchief and smiled as they stepped away from the house.
The fields were bright and green-gold. Clark's gait was cheerful, and the picnic basket was a pleasant weight in Bruce's hand. Maybe they could stop under a tree before they reached the station and have lunch. Just the two of them beneath a spreading cottonwood, looking out over the sunlight plains of grass, under the deep sky that hid so many stars beyond its azure.
"You've got two homes now," Bruce said as they crossed the creek, leaping from stone to stone.
"Two?"
"Smallville and Krypton."
Clark looked at him for a long moment, then reached out to take his hand and help him across the last rock. Bruce could have made the leap perfectly fine on his own, but the warmth of Clark's hand in his was...not unwelcome.
"I only have one home, Bruce."
"Ah?" Curiosity pricked at Bruce: did Clark see his home as Earth or as the stars? "Which one?"
Clark's smile was serene. "By your side, of course."
"Ah."
The sunlight was bright as joy as they walked on, and Bruce saw no pressing reason to let go of Clark's hand.
-----
Click here to see Rai's beautiful art in full at her home page!
Pairing: Clark/Bruce
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Clark and Bruce go to Smallville to reunite Clark with his parents.
Notes: A continuation of " Dreams of Sunlight," an AU of "Gotham by Gaslight." Story idea and art by rai_daydreamer ; click on the thumbnails or the link at the end to see the full art! Prompt #15: "Never seen a bluer sky." (see the full table here)
Word count: 2900
The rhythm of the train wheels was a lulling chant: Going home, going home, going home. Clark Kent sat at a table in the dining car, Bruce Wayne sitting across from him. A shaft of sunlight fell across the middle of the table, and Clark put out his hand to let light pool in his palm, warm and soothing. He looked up to see Bruce smiling at him. "Still not used to it?"
Clark shook his head. "I can't imagine I ever will be."
"I love the way light looks, caught in your hair. Like it's finally found its home." Bruce's voice was affectionate, his words spoken so low that no one but Clark could hear them over the clatter of the wheels. Clark looked quickly out the window rather than meet his lover's eyes, watching the rush of sun-dappled greenery outside. He'd flown this fast, of course, but it felt different being carried along.
Going home. Going home.
The chant slowed as the train pulled into Topeka, and Clark and Bruce stepped out onto the platform. Clark kept his hat pulled down to shield his face a bit; he didn't want to risk running into anyone who remembered the Kent's demon son. Bruce swore you could hardly recognize him now, with his eyes bright and color in his cheeks, but it was better to be safe.
They struck out across the countryside, walking along deserted roads and through fields, making their way toward Smallville.
Clark was almost delirious with happiness, seeing the fields of his childhood under the sun's light. He had a tendency to break into a lope, circling Bruce like a golden retriever too brimming with happiness to stand still. The blue sky was a deep and dazzling bowl arcing above them, the fields a shimmering cascade of light, bending to the wind in great, shivering ripples.
When they crested a final hill and saw the white farmhouse ahead of them, Clark went still, feeling like the grass trembling in the wind. On the porch: two figures, rocking. They were still too far for human eyes to make them out distinctly, but Clark took a deep breath. "Ma," he whispered. "Pa." He felt a sudden flicker of uncertainty; the last time his parents had seen him, flames had been licking his body as he hovered in their air, eyes burning.
As if his words had reached the house, one of the two figures stopped rocking, his posture gone tense. He spoke to the woman, and they both went still, gazing up at the ridge for a long, silent moment.
Clark stepped forward, Bruce at his side. He hadn't gone more than a few steps when the man on the porch began to come toward them, walking and then almost running.
Clark ran to meet him.
: : :
Bruce helped place the last utensil on the massive oak table. Wooden, of course--even after all these years, the Kents had never taken out their silver again. "Thank you for your help, son," said Martha.
"It's my pleasure." Jonathan and Clark were in a corner of the kitchen, earnestly discussing the new barn and what Clark could do to help while he was here. "I'm glad to finally meet you."
Martha's face creased in a smile. "I'm just so glad to hear Clark found a friend to help him. We've been praying for him for so long, thinking of him all alone out there in the cruel world." She sniffled slightly and applied herself with vigor to whisking the gravy. "Thank you for taking care of him."
Bruce's ears felt slightly hot; he and Clark had decided not to reveal the extent to which Bruce had been "taking care of" Clark. "That I can fly and set fire to things with my eyes is one thing," Clark had said with a wry chuckle, "But who I have sex with is another altogether."
"He's, uh...he's a good friend," Bruce said lamely.
Martha smiled and patted the back of his hand. "Dinner's served, boys," she called to the other two men.
As they settled down, Jonathan cleared his throat and bowed his head; Bruce hastily followed suit. "Bring hither the fatted calf, and kill it; and let us eat, and be merry," said Jonathan, his voice hoarse. "For this my son was dead, and is alive again; he was lost, and is found."
And they ate and were merry.
: : :
Silence besides the crickets and the low murmur of wind; Clark heard the floorboards creak very slightly in the hall outside. He lifted himself from the bed and floated to the door. "Bruce, you--" He broke off as Bruce's hands pulled him close and Bruce's mouth found his. A long moment later and he managed to pull back enough to whisper, "Bruce! I'm not going to--not in my parents' house--"
"I just wanted to kiss you good-night," Bruce whispered back. "You have no idea how hard it is to watch you sitting there and not be able to do this to you...or this..."
"I thought you were just going to kiss me good-night," said Clark a little breathlessly.
"I didn't say where," Bruce chuckled. "No, no, I'm sorry," he went before Clark could speak, "I'll leave you alone, I promise."
It was Clark's turn to pull him close and kiss him soundly. "I'll be thinking of you."
"You do that," Bruce said, and slipped away into the shadows again.
The floorboards didn't creak at all as he went back to his room.
Clark thought of him until he finally slipped into sleep.
: : :
Jonathan Kent's face was grave as he looked at his son over a table piled high with bacon and pancakes. "Son," he said, and stopped. He pursed his lips and started again. "Clark, there's something...your Ma and I have to show you. We were going to show you when you became an adult, but..." He squared his shoulders. "It's something you have a right to see." He shot a glance at Bruce. "Maybe your fancypants scientist friend can figure it out."
Clark looked at his father blankly, still chewing his pancakes. Martha was twisting her apron in her hands. "I don't like it, Jonathan," she said. "It isn't...canny."
Jonathan snorted. "And Clark is?"
Martha looked at Clark. "Clark is our son."
"And our son deserves to know what we found with him."
Clark glanced at Bruce and saw his lover's eyes were sharp and avid. "You found something along with Clark?"
Jonathan nodded. "He was in a little container of some kind. Like a...box of some sort. With lights and buttons. We never dared touch any of it; I hid it under the floorboards of the barn."
"You let Clark believe he was a demon rather than show him his true heritage?" Bruce's voice was so mild that Clark knew he was furious, and Jonathan bristled.
"We didn't know he thought he was some kind of demon! We sure didn't give him that fool idea! We just..." Clark's father deflated somewhat, "...We just wanted him to have as normal a life as possible."
Martha's gray eyes were full of tears. "He was our boy, Mr. Wayne. Jonathan, he sort of wanted to show him--you did, dear," she said when her husband tried to interrupt. "But I was so afraid--so afraid we'd lose him--" She dabbed at the corners of her eyes with her napkin. "And we did anyway, didn't we? A judgment for our sins."
Bruce's voice was softer now. "I'm sure no one would judge you harshly for wanting to keep Clark near you and safe." He didn't look at Clark, but under the table his foot brushed Clark's very slightly. "It's all worked out well and there's no need to feel guilty." He straightened, a flare of curiosity in his eyes. "But I'd be extremely eager to see this capsule, if you were willing to show it to us."
"Of course," said Jonathan.
Martha turned to Clark, her eyes still wet. "I'm so sorry, Clark. I just...so wanted you to be our son."
Clark reached across the table and caught her hands in his own. "Ma. I'll always be your son. No matter what."
Her smile was dazzling through her tears.
: : :
"The fire didn't damage it a bit," Jonathan said as Clark lifted the tarpaulin-covered bundle out from beneath the floorboards. The canvas fell away to reveal a shining silver capsule, about the size of a coffin. Clark heard Bruce catch his breath beside him. "It opened up when we came close," said his father, "And you were in it, just as healthy as could be."
Clark reached out and touched the shining silver and it split open like a flower, the metal sliding away to reveal strange screens, buttons and controls that flickered into light with a low hum.
Jonathan backed away from the capsule cautiously, looking uncomfortable. "Well, I'll let you and Mr. Wayne look at it. I've got farming to do." His footsteps echoed away across the floorboards.
Clark glanced over at Bruce, who was staring at the silvery-blue light of the capsule with fascination. "Well," he said. "Shall we start?"
"Go ahead," Bruce said. "It's yours, after all."
Clark almost smiled, knowing what a sacrifice it had to be to his scientific friend to cede first rights to him. He leaned in and brushed his fingers across one of the screens and it sparked briefly.
"Kal-El," said a deep voice from the capsule.
Clark looked at Bruce in some alarm. "Is it saying hello?" He turned back to the silver container. "Hello?" The voice said something else in sonorous syllables that Clark couldn't understand. "Is it talking to us?"
Bruce was frowning. "I think it's a recorded voice. I wonder..." He cast a longing glance at his tool case, and Clark laughed.
"Let's get to work and see what we can find out."
: : :
"I can see the underlying function. It's like Babbage's difference engine, just...far, far more advanced. But I can't understand it," Bruce said in annoyance. This readout--" he pointed at a latticework graph, seven strings of glowing green light intersecting with eighteen columns, "--it's asking me to input something, but I can't tell what. And it looks like entering the right information is necessary to access anything else."
Clark held out a piece of fried chicken. "Have some lunch."
"How can you think about food with such a mystery in front of us?" Still staring at the readout, Bruce bit into a chicken leg. His eyes widened and he applied himself with single-minded ferocity to the chicken for a while until there was nothing left but a heap of bones. His methods of eating, Clark reflected, were rather similar to his scientific method.
Bruce looked ready to throw himself back into study, but Clark grabbed his arm. "You need a break." When Bruce started to protest, Clark cut him off. "You always say you need time to let ideas connect in your--what was that thing again?--your unconscious."
Bruce gave him a mutinous look but sighed and rose from the capsule. "Want to give me a tour of the farm?"
"Oh, I'll do better than that." Clark grinned and with a sudden blur of motion clapped a black cowboy hat on Bruce's head. "We're going riding."
Bruce's eyes rolled upward to glare at the hat. "Must I do it in this monstrosity?"
Clark winked from under the brim of his own hat--white, of course. "It's mandatory, I believe." He walked over to one of the stables where a dapple-gray horse nickered at him and pushed its nose into his chest. "Wow, Steel, you've gotten so big. There's a good boy," he said, holding out a palm with an apple balanced on it that the horse took delicately from him.
Bruce strolled past the stables, stopping in front of one containing a coal-black stallion. "This one," he stated.
"Midnight?" Clark asked as the stallion bared its teeth at Bruce in challenge. "You never do things the easy way, do you?"
Bruce caught the tack that Clark tossed at him and bared his teeth in turn. "What would be the fun of that?"
: : :
Clark let Steel ease into an easy trot, feeling the sturdy sides rising and falling beneath him. Well ahead of him, Bruce and Midnight wheeled sharply and galloped past the trotting pair again, the black horse's legs high and proud. Clark caught a glimpse of Bruce's face, fierce and exultant, his body moving easily with the rhythms of the horse's gait. He could tame anything, Clark thought. Horses, technology, Gotham society--he understood it and thus claimed it as his own.
Apparently that went double for moon-men.
They stopped at a creek and dismounted, letting the horses drink. "I used to come here and just sit in the moonlight, sometimes," Clark said as he perched on a mossy rock, the dark water eddying around it. "It all looks so different in the sunlight." He watched the shadows and light dance between the leaves of the beech tree overhead. "I never thought I'd see it."
Bruce sat down on the rock as well, putting his back to Clark's, and they sat in companionable silence for a while, listening to the running water. "Everything can be broken down to its essential elements and comprehended," Bruce said out of nowhere. Clark kept silent: he knew the tone and it meant Bruce was thinking out loud. "You, me, the metal in the capsule--if we could take them apart enough we'd see the basic material it's all made of. Water is hydrogen and oxygen together. Building blocks. The same throughout the world. Throughout the universe." A long, thoughtful pause. "The same." Bruce shifted to bring his knees up to his chest. "Mendeleev's table. But there's only..." His voice trailed off. "Unless..."
He stood up so abruptly that Clark almost fell over. "That's it," he said. "That's it!" He whirled and kissed Clark quickly on the lips. "Race you back," he said, running to his horse.
"I could just pick Steel up and carry him and beat you," Clark called after him, but he was already gone. He swung himself into the saddle. "All right, ready to give it a shot?"
The horse tossed its head and broke into a gallop.
: : :
"See? This grid." Bruce tapped the screen and the glowing latticework appeared again. "The elements are universal. This is a chart of the elements. I couldn't recognize it because it has an extra row Mendeleev's doesn't have. William Ramsey's been working on a theory that there's a set of gases we haven't discovered yet, and I'm betting that's what's thrown me off." He started inputting numbers with eager fingers. "I'm guessing it wants us to enter the atomic weights of the elements. So if I..." He tapped some more and the graph vanished; Bruce yelped with surprise and triumph as a face made of light appeared, hovering above the capsule. Stern and majestic, it gazed out at the astonished pair.
"Kal-El," it said again. "You have proven the scientific prowess of the world you have landed on, and thus the secrets of this craft are unlocked to you." Bruce felt his heartbeat quicken. So much promise, so much potential. "This machine has been monitoring your language and is now able to communicate with you to some extent." The austere mouth softened into something close to a smile. "Speak, my son."
Son? Beside Bruce, Clark took a deep breath. "You...are my father?"
"Yes, Kal-El. I am Jor-El of the House of El, and you are my son."
"Kal-El," Clark whispered, and Bruce could feel him trembling. "My name is Kal-El." There was silence for a moment; Bruce felt the pressure of the thousand questions he wanted to ask becoming almost intolerable but he bit his tongue. This was Clark's heritage, not his.
"Where...where are you?" Kal asked.
The man's gaze became sorrowful. "I, and your mother Lara, and all of your race, are long dead, my son." As Clark took a long, shuddering breath, Jor-El's image continued. "Our planet orbited a star that is--" There was a glitch and a burst of untranslated alien gibberish, and the image went on, "--approximately twenty-seven point three five quadrillion miles from this world's sun."
Bruce couldn't help but whistle. That was a lot farther away than he had ever imagined.
"Our planet was unstable, my son. You were sent at the last instant, the only remaining survivor of your people, to another planet. On Earth you will have great powers that will keep you safe. For a time, when you are young, you will be harmed by the yellow sun. But with your great gifts, you can help humanity under the light of its moon. Help its people, and they will surely welcome you."
"He didn't know," murmured Clark. "He knew about the sunlight, but he couldn't know about the culture. The superstitions." Bruce felt a pang of sadness for Jor-El, sending his son into more danger than he had known, and he reached out to take Clark's hand between his.
The vision was continuing. "Once you reach--" Another blurt of untranslated language, "--the maturity of your heart, your body should adjust to the yellow sun's rays, and you will find yourself even more powerful. I know you shall use those powers wisely, my son."
"The...the maturity of my heart..."
The image seemed unruffled by Clark's hesitation. "The maturity of your heart is the threshold when you find your mate. Once you pass that liminal stage and feel yourself safe and securely bonded, you enter full adulthood. Then your body chemistry will alter to allow you to function more fully under the yellow sun. So I urge you, Kal-El, to seek out a suitable mate and bond with that person."
"Oh," Clark said as he tightened his grip on Bruce's hand. "I think I've managed that."
"Well done," said Jor-El, and Bruce felt a moment's odd satisfaction that at least one set of Clark's parents would openly accept their union. "I am pleased that you have adjusted well, my son. The knowledge of Krypton is yours for the asking."
"Krypton?"
The image nodded. "That is the name of your home planet, Kal-El. It is taken from our name for--" The shining latticework that had guarded the capsule glowed back into life, and Jor-El pointed at one juncture on the grid, "--this element."
Bruce started to chuckle; he couldn't help it. "What is it?" Clark asked.
"That's one of the gases Ramsey's been trying to isolate," Bruce said, grabbing his notebook and scribbling gleefully. "He's going to have a fit when I find it before him and get naming rights." He grinned at Clark like a mischievous schoolboy. "And I already know what to name it."
: : :
Bruce woke abruptly and lay in bed, wondering what had woken him. There was a soft tap at the window: a pebble tossed against the pane. He rose to throw up the sash and look down at Clark Kent in a linen nightshirt, standing below the window barefoot in the moon-shadowed grass. Slinging his legs over the sill, Bruce leapt to the wide branch of an oak tree nearby, making his way to the ground.
"I couldn't sleep," said Clark.
"Ah," said Bruce dryly, "So you have spared me from doing the same?" But he couldn't help but smile a little; Clark was clearly brimming over with happiness. "It's been a big day, after all."
Clark started to walk toward the barn and Bruce fell in by his side. The world was nearly silent save for the soft singing of crickets and the breeze in the corn. "I know why I am what I am now, Bruce. I have a home. A family. A past. A name."
Bruce bit down a slight twinge of something like jealousy that wanted to ask Didn't you already? "Should I call you Kal from now on?"
Clark looked surprised. "Oh...no. That would sound strange. I'm Clark." He looked at Bruce out of the corner of his eye. "Your Clark."
The tight twinge in Bruce's chest eased away as they went back into the barn.
Bruce expected that Clark would go back to the capsule, but instead he climbed up into the hayloft. Bruce followed. Moonlight streamed in through the window, transforming the hay to scattered silver. Clark sat down on a cascade of sweet-smelling hay,
gazing out the window. He patted the hay next to him, and Bruce joined him. There were a lot more stars than in Gotham. "Do you think one of them is the one I came from?"
The odds that Krypton's star was visible from Earth seemed rather small, but Bruce decided not to point that out, settling for a non-committal grunt instead. Clark chuckled and pulled Bruce across his body, the hay shifting and sliding under them. "I'm glad to find out I'm really truly not a demon."
"I wouldn't have cared if you were," Bruce answered, bringing his lips to Clark's, and for a while after that neither spoke. "Whoa, whoa," Bruce eventually said as Clark's hands found their way under his nightshirt, "What about your parents?"
"They can't hear us here," Clark said hoarsely. "Ah, Bruce, Bruce, how I used to sit right here in the moonlight and wish there was someone to look at the stars with me. Someone I could be myself with, whatever that was."
"And you found me," said Bruce, feeling Clark's hands on him, coiling rapture into tighter and tighter whorls.
"I found you. Oh, I found you, my heart."
: : :
Martha pressed the picnic basket into Bruce's hands. "There's some more of that fried chicken you like so much, and I've put some sponge cake in there too. You need to eat more, Mr. Wayne, you look peaked."
"It's all that science work he does. Ain't natural, messing with nature." Jonthan's smile belied his sour words as he shook Bruce's hand. "You come back and study that thing some more real soon, now."
Clark kissed his mother goodbye and shook hands with his father. "I'll come back often, I promise." Martha wiped at her eyes with a handkerchief and smiled as they stepped away from the house.
The fields were bright and green-gold. Clark's gait was cheerful, and the picnic basket was a pleasant weight in Bruce's hand. Maybe they could stop under a tree before they reached the station and have lunch. Just the two of them beneath a spreading cottonwood, looking out over the sunlight plains of grass, under the deep sky that hid so many stars beyond its azure.
"You've got two homes now," Bruce said as they crossed the creek, leaping from stone to stone.
"Two?"
"Smallville and Krypton."
Clark looked at him for a long moment, then reached out to take his hand and help him across the last rock. Bruce could have made the leap perfectly fine on his own, but the warmth of Clark's hand in his was...not unwelcome.
"I only have one home, Bruce."
"Ah?" Curiosity pricked at Bruce: did Clark see his home as Earth or as the stars? "Which one?"
Clark's smile was serene. "By your side, of course."
"Ah."
The sunlight was bright as joy as they walked on, and Bruce saw no pressing reason to let go of Clark's hand.
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