Clark would be curious to know what computational resources are allotted him on a daily basis inside Bruce Wayne's head. He doesn't assume more than he'd expect, when Batman has better things to do than think about Superman—these days, anyway—but it's a humbling thing, to have a genius level intellect levelled on you, the things you might need, the things you might want.
It's not quite the same as hearing Bruce's heartbeat from a neighbouring continent. It's not quite the same because Clark doesn't all the time know what he's doing with this information. There are times it just feels selfish. What does he do for Bruce, really? What does this data translate to?
Maybe he'll get hit with inspiration one day. For now—
Restlessness drives him to walk, still keeping Bruce's hand. Enough staring into eyeballs, noting on a terrifying microscopic level of detail each little twitch and tonal shift.
"Me too," Clark says. "Ever since I was little kid, wishing I was like the other kids. That's—not the same hang up these days. But sometimes."
Me too, Clark says, and it lands somewhere unexpected. It isn't that Bruce has never conceptualized the concept of Clark not wanting to be other. Loneliness is devastating. And who wants ultimate power? Truly? Who wants the burden of knowing every moment spent sleeping or having a bagel is a moment not spent on diverting a flood somewhere, or pulling someone out of a burning car? Bruce would crumble under that awareness. For whatever reason, he has not specifically imagined Clark articulating his own childhood, before. And it sounds so much like his own thoughts, back then, that he feels humbled, and a little foolish.
He squeezes the Kryptonian hand in his, which feels very human, and very not, and in every way acceptable. Does not echo, Me too, though he could. It'd just be more sad bullshit, and they've done enough of his sad bullshit for one day.
"I had thought," he begins, but doesn't finish. Footsteps over to that long railing, looking around in the broken-down atrium. Tries again: "I had worried, that you might not be comfortable with an attempt at something like that."
Following, then finding a place to lean carefully on railing. The impulse to answer fast—a reassurance, enthusiasm, something—is on the tip of his tongue but Clark resists. It's a valid worry.
Shit can happen. And when it does, it's usually on ridiculously, cosmically huge proportions.
'Worried' is cute, but Clark spares Bruce from drawing his attention to it. "I save a lot of kittens out of trees," he says, instead. Code for: carrying people from flash floods, digging people out of collapsed buildings, shielding people from explosions with his destructible whole self. "And it's not something I need practice to do. But we're always waiting for the next monster. The next horde of something. I want to be better when it happens. I watch you fight, and Diana. I get it.
"And," he adds, with the weight of an important appending detail, "I trust you."
Hush, you, he's vengeance and the night, he's not cute.
All of that is true. The things that Superman does are not the things that Batman does. Batman is a firefighter, and the fire is never-ending, the building is always burning and people are always trapped inside. Superman is an architect, reshaping humanity for a better future by pulling miracles from the sky. Even when they are both simply combatants, Clark is another order of thing altogether.
So he should know how to punch better. And know how to take a hit.
I trust you.
('Should you.')
"You may have to trust me even more," he ventures. "What I meant by keeping it between us only— you're not going to come back one day and there'll be a magic room. We're looking down the barrel of months of working together in close quarters on a project that's half construction, half tedious chemistry."
What Clark could have said: I trust you completely.
But apparently there is 1% of trust in reserve dedicated solely to still expecting Bruce to shy away from these kinds of declarations, to rebuff him or withhold something, so it wouldn't have been completely true anyway. Just 99% true.
"If I say 'that sounds fun', will you think I'm not taking you seriously?" he queries, and then talks over whatever reply that might net. "I trust you the correct amount, Bruce. I can't figure this stuff out on my own." A beat, and he adds, "Did you get everything you need already, from the scout ship? Because you're welcome there too."
Taking it to the North Pole had not not been playing an elaborate game of keep-away, but mostly from the government, from the Lex Luthors of the world, and only a little bit Justice League. Stopping any of them from going where they want is more trouble than it's worth, he figures.
"A bit," he shoots immediately, but the volume is low, just a deep grumble, anticipating Clark's intent to make that rhetorical by talking over him. And lo.
The thing is, Bruce may never not do this. His crime against Clark was not an ordinary thing. What should happen is that they should never see each other again, and Lois should be threatening to leave him over the association. Instead they're doing this, and Lois is maintaining a viciously even-matched mobile board game competition with Bruce in which expensive bottles of scotch are waged. That insanity is held hostage by how much Bruce adores him, how increasingly charmed is by his wife, and the slow acceptance of: we have lived the very worst of each other, and been baptized by it, and coming out the other side of it like this is sometimes too beautiful a thing to contend with.
He drags in a slow breath. His sigh after is very quiet.
"I've been working on learning Kryptonian, out of necessity. If you think there's anything there that could help facilitate it, I could probably find a coat."
"Well, there's no Duolingo owl, but there're plenty of records. Audio and written."
Clark has been getting the hang of it himself in the moments he indulges, with a better brain for that kind of thing than you'd think, and he almost doesn't say out loud, "It'd be nice having someone to practice with," because this shouldn't only be about himself, but he says it anyway. It's worth saying, in opposition to Bruce's sense of necessity.
"And I fixed the thermostat," he adds. "In some spots, anyway. Want to show me where our dorm rooms are gonna be?" And then they can look into coats.
Bruce gives him a look, one of many in his broad language of unspoken moments, and this one is serious - as usual - but compelling. Affectionate, even. He likes the idea of learning the language with Clark, and furthermore, the idea of seeing more of how quick the other man's mind adapts and understands complexities. A thing he's noticed, yes, and a thing that's hard for him to find anything but attractive.
"Yeah. This way. Plenty of room for bunk beds."
And privacy, and so on. On their way back out Bruce hops through a burned window to pass through to the other wing, noting a scarred walled in a small maybe-library with the skeleton of a grandfather clock. Next time, he says, jerking his thumb over his shoulder at it, and if Clark bothers to x-ray peek, he will see some shit, underground.
Presumably they pack lunch at least for the North Pole. Coinflip if Bruce stubbornly brings a batjet or if Clark talks him into a romantic flight shoved into a thermal sleeping bag like the world's worst luggage.
The batjet wins out, partially because Clark wants to go for a ride. He will ride his bike to work and take the ferry to Gotham and call down an Uber and it's not all just to act like Clark Kent, because in a lot of the ways it matters, he is Clark Kent.
That said, there's no sense of grounding or anything very sentimental in selecting this particular mode of transport. Like any regular person, he would just like a go in the cool stealth plane. He even waits until halfway there to get antsy at the pace.
Of course, the North Pole itself is ocean, and Clark was not feeling so petulant or adventurous as to land the thing submerged, beneath the sea ice. The rocky island that is home to the scout ship is snow-crusted and home only to Kryptonians and neighbouring polar bears, and at this time of year, they are in the depths of months-long darkness. Navigational tools do the work but Clark directs Bruce to a hangar entrance, a broad doorway opening slickly and swiftly to permit them entry.
And they can see. Lightsources unknown paint cool illumination over the broad curvatures of the interior. It is still extremely cold, inside, breaths leaving them as thick clouds of fog, but nothing like the outside blizzards.
There's a slight crinkle sound. Clark retrieving a sandwich wrapped in wax paper.
Edited (crucial word change) 2021-01-31 09:55 (UTC)
The jet (dceu wiki cheekily calls it the Batwing) is a fine piece of technology; in its rebuilt state, hauled away from where Doomsday had swatted it down and tinkered with on and off for a year, the co-pilot's seat was finally put back in. Then taken out. Then put in again. A private, silent argument with himself. But it's there for Clark to get bored in, even at supersonic speeds no military craft can match. Maybe the mild-mannered reporter in him will remember a harsh critique of Wayne Enterprises' failed in-and-out defense contract from the staunch money men of the WSJ; What business does Mr Wayne have blowing off such a rare offer?
Bruce is in a very insulated coat, over very insulated other garments. It might not be as cold, inside the scout ship, and he might be used to Gotham's insidious damp chill, but there's a reason Superman parked his reappropriated space ship here. Not much manages to be alive.
"Are you hungry already?"
We haven't even done any work, Kansas.
A louder sound, Bruce pulling a heavy bag from the cockpit, slinging it over his shoulder. Not sure yet, if it's safe to set up a link between the cave's computer and this one - for reasons of alien viruses harming his terran tech, and terran viruses harming alien tech, and much more mundane concerns, like, 'will someone track that funny IP ping'. He walks in, looking up, taking in the sight of the place. Not unfamiliar, strictly but still strange.
Which doesn't prevent Clark from taking a corner bite. Tuna salad. He was being considerate about the close confines of the jet after thinking about them nonstop since take off, give him a break.
And he is not quite as wrapped up, but does where his own fur-lined hooded jacket, open over his winter things. Better for a brisk midwest winter than the Arctic Circle, but a gesture towards his capacity to be effected by anything. That he might prefer to rug up against a snowy night and also meditate in the vacuum of space speaks to something about the worlds he moves through.
Speaking of worlds.
"You'd want the bridge, I guess we'd call it. I guess you know the way." Which doesn't stop Clark from walking up alongside, roaming a fraction ahead. As they walk, the air begins to warm. They cross through a chamber that had once been the final resting place to mummified Kryptonians, long since laid to rest somewhere more appropriate even before Zod had commandeered the ship for his invasion. In that time, the temperature hikes up, comfortably gradual, but soon stifling in big coats.
Aside, "Told you I fixed the thermostat," and pleased with himself about it, like maybe he's talking about the radiator in his Metropolis apartment, and had promised Lo he'd make an attempt.
He will need to be shown the way, somewhat - this is not the entrance he used, when he did what he did, and Kryptonian design is not perfectly intuitive to an Earthling. I guess you know. Because Bruce has been here before, has done long hours of work in here, before.
They cross a chamber until they don't, when Clark is the only one crossing and Bruce has paused. Just looking. At the ship, and him.
After a moment he moves again, and makes a grunted sound of what might be approval. Yeah yeah, you're very handy. He reaches out, hand wrapping around Clark's wrist to direct that sandwich at his own face, which he uses to take a bite of it. Hmph. An inescapable truth, Alfred's tuna salad is divine. And now if they kiss later, they'll both taste like tuna and no one will find it off-putting. Bruce's footfalls on the strange metal deck are audible as they go - not yet adapted to making them silent, on this material of unearthly origin, but by the time they leave Clark will have to go back to listening to his breathing to hear him move around. He had been busy with other things, the last time he was aboard.
"Gonna go out on a limb and guess my pronunciation is shit," he says, when they arrive at the bridge. "I can read alright, at least the primary written language. It helps that I can already read a handful of Earth abugidas. There are some references to what appears to be an older multi-tiered alphabet system, but I haven't seen enough of it to many any sense of it. Can you ask the computer to only recognize Kryptonian?"
Clark shrugs out of his coat as Bruce speaks, the last of the (first) sandwich seized between his teeth as he does so. He hangs his coat on the edge of what looks like a captain's chair, eats that last corner of sandwich, and scans his eyes over the strange organic structures that imply themselves as some kind of interface.
He touches a raised, palm-sized protrusion, the key already settled in the lock.
"Set main computer language recognition to Kryptonian, exclusively," he says, and the burbled voice of the computer echoes around them.
It will take a moment, to reshape one's brain around theory and practical application when it comes to language, but the reply is straight forward enough, the sibilant, complex patterns of Kryptonian syllables affirming this new setting. The sideglance to Bruce is not self-conscious, but,
well maybe a little. Still, Clark clears his throat, and requests, "Run through the Kryptonian letter-system," in what is probably not entirely grammatically sound fragments, but enough to have the computer obey, patiently naming each letter while the symbol attached to it bristles across the silver panel, three-dimensional and topographical.
Hearing it out of the ship cements some things in Bruce's head; the way the phonetic written language made non-audio learning possible, at least, but it begins to click over rapidly now that he can actually listen. As far as he knows, the scout ship never projected anything besides English to him or any other earthbound visitors, but it wasn't surprising. Zod's worldwide message in search of Kal-El had been adaptive, and so it was no great stretch to discover the tech is standard in Kryptonian craft. They had been exploring to make colony worlds. A vital tool. (In subjugation?)
Better than the ship, is hearing Clark. To Bruce's ear he has no reason to be self-conscious— what he lacks in practice in he makes up for in natural inclination. Bruce can hear how correct it is, how effortless, all of his genetics primed to make those sounds, form those words.
"Run through the Kryptonian letter-system," he repeats, mimicking Clark, and when the computer begins to comply, he says, "Correct my grammar."
Immediately, the computer complies. Bruce shoots Clark a look. Another echo, "We should come up with a song."
The computer informs him that he's actually said 'come up with' as in, 'climb higher', and offers phrases to replace it based on intent.
Clark has not deliberately separated the two spheres of his personal life and this reclusive place, nothing like the considered hard divide of public appearances, but standing here and watching Bruce voice commands in the gentle-sounding structures of Kryptonian demonstrates that he, well. Has. Maybe subconsciously, old habits tamping down alien aspects even amongst those who know better—and Martha knows even less, about all this.
After his father told him that he was from some other world, he'd imagined what that would be like. Not just how it would feel, but concrete things, like it would be a place he could visit, and people he could be friends with, and that whether he wanted them to or not, all those things kept hidden would spill out into the open.
And some of it has. But it's not the same.
So it's a little like Bruce is standing in some corner of his own subconscious, poking around in there and not a computer. It's not all bad. It's certainly less lonely.
"There's some—" Clark's brows draw together. "I guess educational programming. For children. It's not a class, or. Sesame Street, or even a guide. I think it's supposed to be a kind of... subliminal... immersive experience."
He is trying not to say brainwashing.
"It wasn't comprehensible to me, anyway, but maybe we could pull it apart."
Some silence. Bruce watches the waiting input terminal, its shifting mercury-that-isn't.
"Don't like 'subliminal immersive experience,'" he says, nearly quip-like, offhand bluntness in a rare cadence that makes him almost sound like he might actually be from New Jersey. Also, like he definitely heard brainwashing anyway, and is politely working out a way not to say What the fuck, even though he's sure Clark can hear that, in return. Companionably.
All kinds of languages are fun, see.
He's taking his coat off, finally, and considering the other wax paper-wrapped sandwich, which he'd have been perfectly able to forget about for hours had Clark not wolfed one down already, highlighting the existence which now burns jealously at the edge of his awareness in an insulated messenger bag.
Clark knows Bruce knows he's talking about brainwashing small alien children, and Bruce knows Clark knows that Bruce knows, but it's very good of Bruce not to say it out loud as Clark tips him a rueful half-smile and nods. In his hesitant but not halting Kryptonian, he directs the computer to pull data from the modules.
There's a lot to clean out. They don't, for instance, need quite this much repetition, and they don't need it delivered pitched at certain kinds of frequencies ostensibly to better implant these lessons in their brains. There is a visual component that they don't have access to, standing on the bridge, that appears to use abstract visual input as more of a hypnotic tool than an education one, but.
There's an alphabet in there somewhere.
They discover, quickly, that more advanced modules begin to differentiate between specialised streams of learning. Different language paths between soldiers, artists, engineers, doctors, architects. Farmers. Not wholly separate lexicons, but different emphases, alternate jargon and concepts relevant to profession. It's disquieting enough that Clark becomes quiet as they work, quiet between issued commands to the computer, suggestions around means of compilation.
Eventually, "You'd have liked my father," a little wry, a little intended to talk around something, away from something. "Or the digitally rendered consciousness of him. I did."
Bruce pulls his laptop out of his bag, sets it up to work with the data being offered. He has to be selective, because even though his modest equipment brought along is more state of the art than even military, he would like not to fry anything. Data is not always compatible. He's clinical about it, avoiding commentary or apparent investment in the way things are so unnervingly segregated. They are not levels of formality; this is something else. Unfortunately, though, it loops in with what he's already gleaned about Kryptonian society.
In between divvying up sandwich no 2, he asks the computer to provide lessons centered around media liaisons. The loophole seems to work, because of course, there are certain positions that need to have the ability to converse with everyone, though he gets the impression that the AI speaking calmly to him does not appreciate his cheek. He wonders if it remembers him hovering over Kal-El's corpse, floating him in the forbidden murk that birthed the thing that had slain him in the first place.
Probably just projecting onto a computer.
"Jor-El?" Bruce looks at him, doing an okay job at not looking overly curious. Birth parents is not a foreign concept to him - an intimately relevant one, truly - but the way Clark has experienced that dynamic is a far cry from how he, or his kids, have.
And then, as an explanation of why he's heard the name, "Lois." He's taken in her impression of the long-dead Kryptonian, guiding her through a CSGO round on Zod's prison ship. But he'd be lying if he said he's had cause to think much of it since that talk.
It's probably a little careless, talking of fathers without specificity, and it's the kind of care he takes around his mother, for instance, for all that their conversations around such things tend to lack in details anyway. Sometimes he calls the smear of drifting spacedust that was Krypton his home, and he means no disrespect to Smallville either.
His attention tracks to Bruce when he says that name, nodding.
"I think he was a good man," he says. "By anyone's standard, not just Earth's, Krypton's. I don't know how he felt about here, not exactly—whether he chose Earth for me, or me for it. But I think he really wanted something better for it, than what happened to Krypton."
It should feel odder than it is, to talk about these things. They're big things. Titanic, in the scheme of it all. Cosmic. But it comes with the territory of what he shares with Bruce Wayne—someone with the same big picture capacity as Jor-El, and Lois Lane, and himself.
"The last thing he said to me," is a little fond, even, "was that I could save everyone."
Not just one person, not just some people, but a whole planet's worth of human beings, and Clark had believed him. Sitting here in a ship, silent as a mausoleum, reminds him of the everyone that Jor-El had tried to save himself.
Digitally rendered consciousness is specific enough for Bruce. Who is a detective, anyway. Mostly, he's just surprised to hear Clark speak about him, since this is a first, and so much of his Kryptonian identity seems to be ... burdensome. (No thanks to you, Bruce reminds himself.)
He could say—
A thousand things about climate change and political death cults, capitalism, fascism, Arthur's megalomaniac half-brother having a point, about the way they've seen fit to destroy the oceans. Earth may be headed toward's Krypton's end no matter how many evil monsters they vanquish, and what happens then? Do they send a baby away to some other world, and hope it's not too late? Does Clark survive alone, in the cold nothingness of space, until the stars all run red with age?
Not any of that.
Bruce lets out a breath, easily mistaken for a wordless laugh if not for the way his eyes skitter away to his laptop screen, expression doing something. One hand moves on the controls, but it's aimless, busywork.
"I didn't think it would mean anything to me," he says after a moment, perfectly fine. "But that's just because I didn't think about it. Being right here and you being alive, right here. Turns out it means a lot. And your father is right."
So. Taptap. What interesting syntax on this sentence.
It does all seem extremely unlikely, this moment, this conversation. And it's probably true that if Clark thought Superman could literally do it all, he'd have no need for Clark Kent at all. It's also true he died once. True he doesn't blame Bruce for that either.
He'd been sitting crossed legged on the smooth ground but now gets up, a human awkwardness to the motion despite everything. It's an increasingly common move, to step up behind where Bruce is stationed and sitting at the terminal, as if he were at his own work stations back home, and cup his shoulders in his hands and then bury a kiss in his hair, on the top of his head.
Sometimes an excuse just to smell the fancy hair whatever Bruce puts in there, but most times that's a happy bonus.
"He was hopeful," Clark says, after, looking at the screen over top of Bruce's head. "In a way I hadn't been before. Even if he was wrong, that's something."
Bruce does not react at first; sometimes when Clark does this, he will turn his head half a degree, you-are-interrupting-me position, and wait impatiently for the younger man to arrive at the point and then remove the distraction. Other times, it is this: permitting himself the luxury of letting his head rest back against Clark's invulnerable chest, closing his eyes for just a moment. Not really invulnerable. Once in a while he still finds himself expecting a gaping hole there, when he pushes his shirt off. Clark's hands are so warm.
(It is kind of Clark, to not ever question his sanity in having gone full Doctor Frankenstein out of obsessed grief. Granted, he benefitted, but it was not normal of Bruce in any way.)
"If he'd sent you for no other reason than to save his child," Bruce says, somewhat muted, "he'd have been doing the right thing."
Talking to Martha Kent at the funeral had been impossible. She was so kind. In the middle of tolerating his halting condolences, she had come to a realization - not that he was Batman, she was plainly aware of that from the get-go - but that he was Bruce Wayne, and the only other person in attendance who had lost a child. Neither of them said anything, faltering in grey light and dull black clothes. Silently breathed in air that tasted like dirt, and bitterness.
Jor-El must have loved so viciously.
"Also wanting you to deliver your new home to a better fate is the kind of grandly stubborn optimism I can appreciate." His eyes are open again. He hits a key, compiling a primer. "What do you know about him?"
Clark's hands smooth inwards, to conform where Bruce's shoulders curve to his neck. The sweep of his thumbs against the back of it. Not designed to transmit any other message than warmth, acknowledgment.
"Some things," he says, voice quiet where it originates above Bruce's head. "He was a scientist. An advisor to whatever governance existed. They both were, he and—his wife, my mother. Lana Lor-Van."
The information feels thin on the ground, as he says it. The projection of Jor-El had its priorities, but had been equally amenable to the questions Clark had asked too. They'd been preliminary questions, with the presumption he'd be able to ask more of them. Important things, stupid things.
"They broke the laws of their people to have me. But the way he talked about it felt deeper than that, like doing something like that went against something innate. Or—the other way around. But it was like he could see where Krypton had gone wrong, and he could see how much a part of it he was, despite everything."
"Is his work documented in the database here?" he asks, and then repeats the query with his fingers, in Kryptonian. Yes, apparently. Volumes of what looks like scientific academia mostly, but he imagines there's still plenty in there that's telling of the man himself. Language chosen, priorities ranked, commentary offered. Interesting. He doesn't open anything - assuming Clark has already dug through - but he'll remember, for future reading.
Considers, then, listening. After a moment his left hand drifts up to find Clark's corresponding one. Not a natural movement. Still learning. Rare moments of clumsiness when he acts on desires he usually ignores.
"That paints quite the picture." Huh. One eyebrow ticks up. "And implies an explanation for why romantic vocabulary and reproductive vocabulary have no overlap."
Did your parents fuck for freedom, Clark? Fascinating.
"One generation probably wasn't anywhere near long enough for him to divert the course. Unfortunately. That kind of insight can feel like a curse."
Clark's hand arcs a little into Bruce's, ever receptive.
"There's nothing romantic about their reproduction," he agrees, a little wry.
A little sheepish, on behalf of however many billions of dead Kryptonians, and their hollowed planet. Production and evolution, all without purpose. He remembers Zod's sense of superiority, and he remembers thinking: why? To what end?
They haven't even talked about the Codex.
And Clark doesn't want to. He rests his chin on Bruce's head because he's pretty sure he can get away with being annoying today, which does make it awkward to say anything, but says anyway, "How's the song going?"
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no subject
It's not quite the same as hearing Bruce's heartbeat from a neighbouring continent. It's not quite the same because Clark doesn't all the time know what he's doing with this information. There are times it just feels selfish. What does he do for Bruce, really? What does this data translate to?
Maybe he'll get hit with inspiration one day. For now—
Restlessness drives him to walk, still keeping Bruce's hand. Enough staring into eyeballs, noting on a terrifying microscopic level of detail each little twitch and tonal shift.
"Me too," Clark says. "Ever since I was little kid, wishing I was like the other kids. That's—not the same hang up these days. But sometimes."
no subject
He squeezes the Kryptonian hand in his, which feels very human, and very not, and in every way acceptable. Does not echo, Me too, though he could. It'd just be more sad bullshit, and they've done enough of his sad bullshit for one day.
"I had thought," he begins, but doesn't finish. Footsteps over to that long railing, looking around in the broken-down atrium. Tries again: "I had worried, that you might not be comfortable with an attempt at something like that."
You know. Since shit can happen.
no subject
Shit can happen. And when it does, it's usually on ridiculously, cosmically huge proportions.
'Worried' is cute, but Clark spares Bruce from drawing his attention to it. "I save a lot of kittens out of trees," he says, instead. Code for: carrying people from flash floods, digging people out of collapsed buildings, shielding people from explosions with his destructible whole self. "And it's not something I need practice to do. But we're always waiting for the next monster. The next horde of something. I want to be better when it happens. I watch you fight, and Diana. I get it.
"And," he adds, with the weight of an important appending detail, "I trust you."
no subject
All of that is true. The things that Superman does are not the things that Batman does. Batman is a firefighter, and the fire is never-ending, the building is always burning and people are always trapped inside. Superman is an architect, reshaping humanity for a better future by pulling miracles from the sky. Even when they are both simply combatants, Clark is another order of thing altogether.
So he should know how to punch better. And know how to take a hit.
I trust you.
('Should you.')
"You may have to trust me even more," he ventures. "What I meant by keeping it between us only— you're not going to come back one day and there'll be a magic room. We're looking down the barrel of months of working together in close quarters on a project that's half construction, half tedious chemistry."
no subject
But apparently there is 1% of trust in reserve dedicated solely to still expecting Bruce to shy away from these kinds of declarations, to rebuff him or withhold something, so it wouldn't have been completely true anyway. Just 99% true.
"If I say 'that sounds fun', will you think I'm not taking you seriously?" he queries, and then talks over whatever reply that might net. "I trust you the correct amount, Bruce. I can't figure this stuff out on my own." A beat, and he adds, "Did you get everything you need already, from the scout ship? Because you're welcome there too."
Taking it to the North Pole had not not been playing an elaborate game of keep-away, but mostly from the government, from the Lex Luthors of the world, and only a little bit Justice League. Stopping any of them from going where they want is more trouble than it's worth, he figures.
no subject
The thing is, Bruce may never not do this. His crime against Clark was not an ordinary thing. What should happen is that they should never see each other again, and Lois should be threatening to leave him over the association. Instead they're doing this, and Lois is maintaining a viciously even-matched mobile board game competition with Bruce in which expensive bottles of scotch are waged. That insanity is held hostage by how much Bruce adores him, how increasingly charmed is by his wife, and the slow acceptance of: we have lived the very worst of each other, and been baptized by it, and coming out the other side of it like this is sometimes too beautiful a thing to contend with.
He drags in a slow breath. His sigh after is very quiet.
"I've been working on learning Kryptonian, out of necessity. If you think there's anything there that could help facilitate it, I could probably find a coat."
no subject
Clark has been getting the hang of it himself in the moments he indulges, with a better brain for that kind of thing than you'd think, and he almost doesn't say out loud, "It'd be nice having someone to practice with," because this shouldn't only be about himself, but he says it anyway. It's worth saying, in opposition to Bruce's sense of necessity.
"And I fixed the thermostat," he adds. "In some spots, anyway. Want to show me where our dorm rooms are gonna be?" And then they can look into coats.
no subject
"Yeah. This way. Plenty of room for bunk beds."
And privacy, and so on. On their way back out Bruce hops through a burned window to pass through to the other wing, noting a scarred walled in a small maybe-library with the skeleton of a grandfather clock. Next time, he says, jerking his thumb over his shoulder at it, and if Clark bothers to x-ray peek, he will see some shit, underground.
Presumably they pack lunch at least for the North Pole. Coinflip if Bruce stubbornly brings a batjet or if Clark talks him into a romantic flight shoved into a thermal sleeping bag like the world's worst luggage.
no subject
That said, there's no sense of grounding or anything very sentimental in selecting this particular mode of transport. Like any regular person, he would just like a go in the cool stealth plane. He even waits until halfway there to get antsy at the pace.
Of course, the North Pole itself is ocean, and Clark was not feeling so petulant or adventurous as to land the thing submerged, beneath the sea ice. The rocky island that is home to the scout ship is snow-crusted and home only to Kryptonians and neighbouring polar bears, and at this time of year, they are in the depths of months-long darkness. Navigational tools do the work but Clark directs Bruce to a hangar entrance, a broad doorway opening slickly and swiftly to permit them entry.
And they can see. Lightsources unknown paint cool illumination over the broad curvatures of the interior. It is still extremely cold, inside, breaths leaving them as thick clouds of fog, but nothing like the outside blizzards.
There's a slight crinkle sound. Clark retrieving a sandwich wrapped in wax paper.
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Bruce is in a very insulated coat, over very insulated other garments. It might not be as cold, inside the scout ship, and he might be used to Gotham's insidious damp chill, but there's a reason Superman parked his reappropriated space ship here. Not much manages to be alive.
"Are you hungry already?"
We haven't even done any work, Kansas.
A louder sound, Bruce pulling a heavy bag from the cockpit, slinging it over his shoulder. Not sure yet, if it's safe to set up a link between the cave's computer and this one - for reasons of alien viruses harming his terran tech, and terran viruses harming alien tech, and much more mundane concerns, like, 'will someone track that funny IP ping'. He walks in, looking up, taking in the sight of the place. Not unfamiliar, strictly but still strange.
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Which doesn't prevent Clark from taking a corner bite. Tuna salad. He was being considerate about the close confines of the jet after thinking about them nonstop since take off, give him a break.
And he is not quite as wrapped up, but does where his own fur-lined hooded jacket, open over his winter things. Better for a brisk midwest winter than the Arctic Circle, but a gesture towards his capacity to be effected by anything. That he might prefer to rug up against a snowy night and also meditate in the vacuum of space speaks to something about the worlds he moves through.
Speaking of worlds.
"You'd want the bridge, I guess we'd call it. I guess you know the way." Which doesn't stop Clark from walking up alongside, roaming a fraction ahead. As they walk, the air begins to warm. They cross through a chamber that had once been the final resting place to mummified Kryptonians, long since laid to rest somewhere more appropriate even before Zod had commandeered the ship for his invasion. In that time, the temperature hikes up, comfortably gradual, but soon stifling in big coats.
Aside, "Told you I fixed the thermostat," and pleased with himself about it, like maybe he's talking about the radiator in his Metropolis apartment, and had promised Lo he'd make an attempt.
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They cross a chamber until they don't, when Clark is the only one crossing and Bruce has paused. Just looking. At the ship, and him.
After a moment he moves again, and makes a grunted sound of what might be approval. Yeah yeah, you're very handy. He reaches out, hand wrapping around Clark's wrist to direct that sandwich at his own face, which he uses to take a bite of it. Hmph. An inescapable truth, Alfred's tuna salad is divine. And now if they kiss later, they'll both taste like tuna and no one will find it off-putting. Bruce's footfalls on the strange metal deck are audible as they go - not yet adapted to making them silent, on this material of unearthly origin, but by the time they leave Clark will have to go back to listening to his breathing to hear him move around. He had been busy with other things, the last time he was aboard.
"Gonna go out on a limb and guess my pronunciation is shit," he says, when they arrive at the bridge. "I can read alright, at least the primary written language. It helps that I can already read a handful of Earth abugidas. There are some references to what appears to be an older multi-tiered alphabet system, but I haven't seen enough of it to many any sense of it. Can you ask the computer to only recognize Kryptonian?"
A concession to manners. It's Clark's house.
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He touches a raised, palm-sized protrusion, the key already settled in the lock.
"Set main computer language recognition to Kryptonian, exclusively," he says, and the burbled voice of the computer echoes around them.
It will take a moment, to reshape one's brain around theory and practical application when it comes to language, but the reply is straight forward enough, the sibilant, complex patterns of Kryptonian syllables affirming this new setting. The sideglance to Bruce is not self-conscious, but,
well maybe a little. Still, Clark clears his throat, and requests, "Run through the Kryptonian letter-system," in what is probably not entirely grammatically sound fragments, but enough to have the computer obey, patiently naming each letter while the symbol attached to it bristles across the silver panel, three-dimensional and topographical.
"We should come up with a song."
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Better than the ship, is hearing Clark. To Bruce's ear he has no reason to be self-conscious— what he lacks in practice in he makes up for in natural inclination. Bruce can hear how correct it is, how effortless, all of his genetics primed to make those sounds, form those words.
"Run through the Kryptonian letter-system," he repeats, mimicking Clark, and when the computer begins to comply, he says, "Correct my grammar."
Immediately, the computer complies. Bruce shoots Clark a look. Another echo, "We should come up with a song."
The computer informs him that he's actually said 'come up with' as in, 'climb higher', and offers phrases to replace it based on intent.
"Pretty good, for not being a Duolingo owl."
"Correction error."
"Mm."
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Clark has not deliberately separated the two spheres of his personal life and this reclusive place, nothing like the considered hard divide of public appearances, but standing here and watching Bruce voice commands in the gentle-sounding structures of Kryptonian demonstrates that he, well. Has. Maybe subconsciously, old habits tamping down alien aspects even amongst those who know better—and Martha knows even less, about all this.
After his father told him that he was from some other world, he'd imagined what that would be like. Not just how it would feel, but concrete things, like it would be a place he could visit, and people he could be friends with, and that whether he wanted them to or not, all those things kept hidden would spill out into the open.
And some of it has. But it's not the same.
So it's a little like Bruce is standing in some corner of his own subconscious, poking around in there and not a computer. It's not all bad. It's certainly less lonely.
"There's some—" Clark's brows draw together. "I guess educational programming. For children. It's not a class, or. Sesame Street, or even a guide. I think it's supposed to be a kind of... subliminal... immersive experience."
He is trying not to say brainwashing.
"It wasn't comprehensible to me, anyway, but maybe we could pull it apart."
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"Don't like 'subliminal immersive experience,'" he says, nearly quip-like, offhand bluntness in a rare cadence that makes him almost sound like he might actually be from New Jersey. Also, like he definitely heard brainwashing anyway, and is politely working out a way not to say What the fuck, even though he's sure Clark can hear that, in return. Companionably.
All kinds of languages are fun, see.
He's taking his coat off, finally, and considering the other wax paper-wrapped sandwich, which he'd have been perfectly able to forget about for hours had Clark not wolfed one down already, highlighting the existence which now burns jealously at the edge of his awareness in an insulated messenger bag.
"But let's give it a go."
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There's a lot to clean out. They don't, for instance, need quite this much repetition, and they don't need it delivered pitched at certain kinds of frequencies ostensibly to better implant these lessons in their brains. There is a visual component that they don't have access to, standing on the bridge, that appears to use abstract visual input as more of a hypnotic tool than an education one, but.
There's an alphabet in there somewhere.
They discover, quickly, that more advanced modules begin to differentiate between specialised streams of learning. Different language paths between soldiers, artists, engineers, doctors, architects. Farmers. Not wholly separate lexicons, but different emphases, alternate jargon and concepts relevant to profession. It's disquieting enough that Clark becomes quiet as they work, quiet between issued commands to the computer, suggestions around means of compilation.
Eventually, "You'd have liked my father," a little wry, a little intended to talk around something, away from something. "Or the digitally rendered consciousness of him. I did."
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In between divvying up sandwich no 2, he asks the computer to provide lessons centered around media liaisons. The loophole seems to work, because of course, there are certain positions that need to have the ability to converse with everyone, though he gets the impression that the AI speaking calmly to him does not appreciate his cheek. He wonders if it remembers him hovering over Kal-El's corpse, floating him in the forbidden murk that birthed the thing that had slain him in the first place.
Probably just projecting onto a computer.
"Jor-El?" Bruce looks at him, doing an okay job at not looking overly curious. Birth parents is not a foreign concept to him - an intimately relevant one, truly - but the way Clark has experienced that dynamic is a far cry from how he, or his kids, have.
And then, as an explanation of why he's heard the name, "Lois." He's taken in her impression of the long-dead Kryptonian, guiding her through a CSGO round on Zod's prison ship. But he'd be lying if he said he's had cause to think much of it since that talk.
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His attention tracks to Bruce when he says that name, nodding.
"I think he was a good man," he says. "By anyone's standard, not just Earth's, Krypton's. I don't know how he felt about here, not exactly—whether he chose Earth for me, or me for it. But I think he really wanted something better for it, than what happened to Krypton."
It should feel odder than it is, to talk about these things. They're big things. Titanic, in the scheme of it all. Cosmic. But it comes with the territory of what he shares with Bruce Wayne—someone with the same big picture capacity as Jor-El, and Lois Lane, and himself.
"The last thing he said to me," is a little fond, even, "was that I could save everyone."
Not just one person, not just some people, but a whole planet's worth of human beings, and Clark had believed him. Sitting here in a ship, silent as a mausoleum, reminds him of the everyone that Jor-El had tried to save himself.
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He could say—
A thousand things about climate change and political death cults, capitalism, fascism, Arthur's megalomaniac half-brother having a point, about the way they've seen fit to destroy the oceans. Earth may be headed toward's Krypton's end no matter how many evil monsters they vanquish, and what happens then? Do they send a baby away to some other world, and hope it's not too late? Does Clark survive alone, in the cold nothingness of space, until the stars all run red with age?
Not any of that.
Bruce lets out a breath, easily mistaken for a wordless laugh if not for the way his eyes skitter away to his laptop screen, expression doing something. One hand moves on the controls, but it's aimless, busywork.
"I didn't think it would mean anything to me," he says after a moment, perfectly fine. "But that's just because I didn't think about it. Being right here and you being alive, right here. Turns out it means a lot. And your father is right."
So. Taptap. What interesting syntax on this sentence.
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He'd been sitting crossed legged on the smooth ground but now gets up, a human awkwardness to the motion despite everything. It's an increasingly common move, to step up behind where Bruce is stationed and sitting at the terminal, as if he were at his own work stations back home, and cup his shoulders in his hands and then bury a kiss in his hair, on the top of his head.
Sometimes an excuse just to smell the fancy hair whatever Bruce puts in there, but most times that's a happy bonus.
"He was hopeful," Clark says, after, looking at the screen over top of Bruce's head. "In a way I hadn't been before. Even if he was wrong, that's something."
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(It is kind of Clark, to not ever question his sanity in having gone full Doctor Frankenstein out of obsessed grief. Granted, he benefitted, but it was not normal of Bruce in any way.)
"If he'd sent you for no other reason than to save his child," Bruce says, somewhat muted, "he'd have been doing the right thing."
Talking to Martha Kent at the funeral had been impossible. She was so kind. In the middle of tolerating his halting condolences, she had come to a realization - not that he was Batman, she was plainly aware of that from the get-go - but that he was Bruce Wayne, and the only other person in attendance who had lost a child. Neither of them said anything, faltering in grey light and dull black clothes. Silently breathed in air that tasted like dirt, and bitterness.
Jor-El must have loved so viciously.
"Also wanting you to deliver your new home to a better fate is the kind of grandly stubborn optimism I can appreciate." His eyes are open again. He hits a key, compiling a primer. "What do you know about him?"
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"Some things," he says, voice quiet where it originates above Bruce's head. "He was a scientist. An advisor to whatever governance existed. They both were, he and—his wife, my mother. Lana Lor-Van."
The information feels thin on the ground, as he says it. The projection of Jor-El had its priorities, but had been equally amenable to the questions Clark had asked too. They'd been preliminary questions, with the presumption he'd be able to ask more of them. Important things, stupid things.
"They broke the laws of their people to have me. But the way he talked about it felt deeper than that, like doing something like that went against something innate. Or—the other way around. But it was like he could see where Krypton had gone wrong, and he could see how much a part of it he was, despite everything."
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Considers, then, listening. After a moment his left hand drifts up to find Clark's corresponding one. Not a natural movement. Still learning. Rare moments of clumsiness when he acts on desires he usually ignores.
"That paints quite the picture." Huh. One eyebrow ticks up. "And implies an explanation for why romantic vocabulary and reproductive vocabulary have no overlap."
Did your parents fuck for freedom, Clark? Fascinating.
"One generation probably wasn't anywhere near long enough for him to divert the course. Unfortunately. That kind of insight can feel like a curse."
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"There's nothing romantic about their reproduction," he agrees, a little wry.
A little sheepish, on behalf of however many billions of dead Kryptonians, and their hollowed planet. Production and evolution, all without purpose. He remembers Zod's sense of superiority, and he remembers thinking: why? To what end?
They haven't even talked about the Codex.
And Clark doesn't want to. He rests his chin on Bruce's head because he's pretty sure he can get away with being annoying today, which does make it awkward to say anything, but says anyway, "How's the song going?"
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