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?"
Some of the phrases skimmed in the deeper recesses of these grammar handbooks (by any other name, etc) suggest there was still orgasmic coupling, even if it's treated as pedestrian and not something worth contemplating over-long, but none of it - even slang - involves inserting organs. Bruce had passively assumed it was a matter of politeness; now he's not so sure. His brain whirs, lightning-quick as much as a human's can be, interested in—
Oof, that steel protuberance bone on his head. Bruce grunts something unintelligible, but doesn't actually protest. Handy of him, to interrupt his spiralling thought process. Too curious for his own good; this is how he ends up building stealth jets in his basement.
"Twinkle twinkle little star," he offers in Kryptonian, devoid of tune or cadence. The AI offers up maps, doing the AI version of apparent confusion.
It makes Clark laugh, just a little, enough for Bruce to feel as much as hear the thrum of it.
"They do have music, actually," he says. "It's a little—well."
He straightens up, relieving the weight of his skull off of Bruce's skull, but arms now draped on broad batshoulders. "Computer, play Threnody-72 of Zistra Va-Rel, please."
And there is music. Long mournful sounding notes from alien instruments—string based, maybe—and the recording of a female voice. Vocalisations are mixed with coherent words, and words are even broken into parts, scattered, ordered. This one is pretty in spite of the strangeness, which might explain why Clark remembers it.
His hand over Clark's shifts to rest against his forearm, shoulders plenty expansive. Enough real estate to comfortably rest all those tracts of Kansan land against.
It is beautiful. In a strange way. Pitches he isn't used to, structures he isn't familiar with; not the sound, but the experience, reminds him of his first explorations on the other side of the globe. Learning languages and learning how to learn languages, getting his brain to accept input from any sound at all. He allows it to wash over him, forcing himself not to take mental notes.
"I can see how a culture might find nothing objectionable about state-coordinate reproduction," he says after a while, once the chamber of the bridge has returned to the standard ambiance of faintly humming equipment, the tiny whiz of his laptop, two people breathing. "Everything flows together. Writing, music, this responsive projection." Sensing Bruce's gaze, the silvery assistant pod shifts in the air near them, its oval 'screen' churning, like it's alive. "Couple of generations of that, and who'd want to make waves?"
Mm, says Clark. They are standing in a ship that is thousands of years old and still runs the same edition of intergalactic Windows that Krypton had going before it exploded. Bruce isn't wrong, in that the answer to rhetorical question would be: no one.
"You'd get bored," he says, after a beat, giving Bruce a squeeze with that arm before finally leaving him in some peace. The squeeze indicates that the figurative you is also you, Bruce.
No one who'd want to and no one who could, anyway.
Anyway. It's still all new and exciting to a Kryptonian raised in Kansas, who posits that maybe there's something useful in the way their songs are written, and volunteers himself into pulling out mathematically quantified sequences with a generous amount of help lent to him by the computer itself. Book smart he is not, but he is quick, given to absorbing and retaining information, sensitively attuned to things like frequency and resonance.
He gets into the second set of sandwiches once he's set the computer on the task of rendering that data down into something Bruce's laptop can crunch, and says, "Is there anything on earth that can do what you want to do? With the atmospheric conditions."
He would get bored, in a bad way. There is no universe out there where Bruce Wayne is anything besides human, with no powers, and no distant planet with a different star waiting to turn him into a god. And that's for the best; just look at the shit he pulls as he is, mortal, wealthy, and with an intellect made by pure coincidence. No one needs to see him crafted into further efficiency through eugenics and left to solve the problem of a planet's imminent demise. Zod would look very tame.
What a thought.
Clark is so brilliant. Bruce can practically see the way he remembers things, and picks apart examples Bruce tosses out, apparently spitballing but truly just seeing what the younger man does with them. It's beautiful, and the language is beautiful, and sitting here with him is compelling in a way he did not prepare himself for.
He doesn't know, after all. Sure, he's done some more general homework, some scouting around the corners of the globe to see if another Lex Luthor (or another Bruce Wayne) is out there plotting how to make a god die (ergh), but this wasn't something he'd considered until today. There's no anxiousness or fear in his expression, just alert curiousity.
Intrigue, too. Building something new, potentially. "Not specifically Kyrptonian," he adds. "But anything with that potential?"
For a split-second, he considered disingenuously thinking on the question - making it look like he hasn't already exhausted the search, and like he hasn't for some time now been prying into the potential for things that could harm Clark. Bruce is aware of what strange ground that might be, for the man who fashioned so many weapons from kryptonite. But, something something, trust. Clark keeps saying he does. So.
"There's nothing naturally occurring on this planet, possibly in this solar system, that can curb you. I would have to engineer it."
Your dad picked well.
"There are two candidate methods. But the reason I want to try to configure a Kryptonian atmosphere chamber first is because the second carries the potential to be very damaging if I build it blind, without data from how you experience that atmo."
Implying that he can just build whatever-it-is blind. Showing his hand a bit, incidentally.
But again, perfectly innocent. Predictably, no piercing distrust, no latent suspicion. Even when Clark Kent, Daily Planet, had squared off with the man he'd as of a few seconds ago discovered to be Batman, there'd been an openness to that glare-off, more of an invitation to disappoint than a scouring attempt to discover something disappointing.
None of that, anyway. Bruce is very smart and it's sexy.
Tuna salad sandwiches, plentiful to balance the moratorium on snack food side dishes (potato chip crumbs? on this hardware?), packed only with some water bottles and cans of Diet Coke. Enough time has passed by now that they won't explode when opened, jostled by the journey, though one is dented. Pressure changes in the flight.
"I would just prefer that you not explode and that I," crack-hiss, hey, still slightly carbonated, even, "do not immediately get leukemia."
But banter isn't released without a slanted look through eyelashes as Clark likewise reaches for a Diet Coke. Bruce, please. The tab is peeled free, the carbonation activates, and talking about this feels a little like he is circling something. A couple things, even.
"You said the chamber might make you sick," he prompts, as he brings can up to mouth to drink from, eyebrows querying.
Mild-mannered journalist Clark Kent. Less so, that m-word. Angling towards the point with his callbacks and questions, digging at a story. Bruce might tell him to cough it up if he didn't find him doing his job attractive (don't unpack that).
"Like it made you sick."
But not, Like it allegedly would have killed Lois, who was given a nifty space hat.
"Sort of. You can adjust. I might not be able to, even if I tweak things. At first, anyway. It's not about the danger of the atmosphere itself the methods used to achieve it. What it looks like, to me, is that the kind of generators - for lack of a better word - used to maintain a Kryptonian liveable atmo on the Phantom Drive ship are not compatible with humans. Or beings from a lot of worlds. You're very good at accepting extreme radiation, no matter the type. I need to look into a... ecologically friendly wind turbine alternative."
He drinks some north pole frozen soda.
"Shellfish."
Ok?
"They do really well with radiation. It's why the fishing market near the wreck has changed like that."
A subtle glimmer of amusement in there. Cool shellfish fact, Bruce. To his credit, Bruce talks about generators and atmospheric conditions and Kryptonian ships and he has Clark's undivided attention, a head-cocked alertness that hasn't gotten old yet, at least not on Clark's side of the conversation. He's never needed to be the smartest person in the room. Or the anythingest person.
"Well, if we can figure it out, and if it doesn't give you a massive radioactive hangover the whole time, it'd be nice to be on a level playing field for a little while. Maybe not only in a strictly professional capacity."
If that's too soon of an angle to pursue, then you'll forgive him for already thinking about it on the plane ride over. Or while they were packing tuna salad sandwiches, even.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
no subject
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."
no subject
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."
no subject
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."
no subject
"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."
no subject
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."
no subject
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.
no subject
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.
no subject
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.
no subject
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."
no subject
(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?"
no subject
"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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Oof, that steel protuberance bone on his head. Bruce grunts something unintelligible, but doesn't actually protest. Handy of him, to interrupt his spiralling thought process. Too curious for his own good; this is how he ends up building stealth jets in his basement.
"Twinkle twinkle little star," he offers in Kryptonian, devoid of tune or cadence. The AI offers up maps, doing the AI version of apparent confusion.
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"They do have music, actually," he says. "It's a little—well."
He straightens up, relieving the weight of his skull off of Bruce's skull, but arms now draped on broad batshoulders. "Computer, play Threnody-72 of Zistra Va-Rel, please."
And there is music. Long mournful sounding notes from alien instruments—string based, maybe—and the recording of a female voice. Vocalisations are mixed with coherent words, and words are even broken into parts, scattered, ordered. This one is pretty in spite of the strangeness, which might explain why Clark remembers it.
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It is beautiful. In a strange way. Pitches he isn't used to, structures he isn't familiar with; not the sound, but the experience, reminds him of his first explorations on the other side of the globe. Learning languages and learning how to learn languages, getting his brain to accept input from any sound at all. He allows it to wash over him, forcing himself not to take mental notes.
"I can see how a culture might find nothing objectionable about state-coordinate reproduction," he says after a while, once the chamber of the bridge has returned to the standard ambiance of faintly humming equipment, the tiny whiz of his laptop, two people breathing. "Everything flows together. Writing, music, this responsive projection." Sensing Bruce's gaze, the silvery assistant pod shifts in the air near them, its oval 'screen' churning, like it's alive. "Couple of generations of that, and who'd want to make waves?"
Everything in its place.
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"You'd get bored," he says, after a beat, giving Bruce a squeeze with that arm before finally leaving him in some peace. The squeeze indicates that the figurative you is also you, Bruce.
No one who'd want to and no one who could, anyway.
Anyway. It's still all new and exciting to a Kryptonian raised in Kansas, who posits that maybe there's something useful in the way their songs are written, and volunteers himself into pulling out mathematically quantified sequences with a generous amount of help lent to him by the computer itself. Book smart he is not, but he is quick, given to absorbing and retaining information, sensitively attuned to things like frequency and resonance.
He gets into the second set of sandwiches once he's set the computer on the task of rendering that data down into something Bruce's laptop can crunch, and says, "Is there anything on earth that can do what you want to do? With the atmospheric conditions."
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He would get bored, in a bad way. There is no universe out there where Bruce Wayne is anything besides human, with no powers, and no distant planet with a different star waiting to turn him into a god. And that's for the best; just look at the shit he pulls as he is, mortal, wealthy, and with an intellect made by pure coincidence. No one needs to see him crafted into further efficiency through eugenics and left to solve the problem of a planet's imminent demise. Zod would look very tame.
What a thought.
Clark is so brilliant. Bruce can practically see the way he remembers things, and picks apart examples Bruce tosses out, apparently spitballing but truly just seeing what the younger man does with them. It's beautiful, and the language is beautiful, and sitting here with him is compelling in a way he did not prepare himself for.
If I told myself five years ago, that—
"Making 'red' radiation?" Query.
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He doesn't know, after all. Sure, he's done some more general homework, some scouting around the corners of the globe to see if another Lex Luthor (or another Bruce Wayne) is out there plotting how to make a god die (ergh), but this wasn't something he'd considered until today. There's no anxiousness or fear in his expression, just alert curiousity.
Intrigue, too. Building something new, potentially. "Not specifically Kyrptonian," he adds. "But anything with that potential?"
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For a split-second, he considered disingenuously thinking on the question - making it look like he hasn't already exhausted the search, and like he hasn't for some time now been prying into the potential for things that could harm Clark. Bruce is aware of what strange ground that might be, for the man who fashioned so many weapons from kryptonite. But, something something, trust. Clark keeps saying he does. So.
"There's nothing naturally occurring on this planet, possibly in this solar system, that can curb you. I would have to engineer it."
Your dad picked well.
"There are two candidate methods. But the reason I want to try to configure a Kryptonian atmosphere chamber first is because the second carries the potential to be very damaging if I build it blind, without data from how you experience that atmo."
Implying that he can just build whatever-it-is blind. Showing his hand a bit, incidentally.
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Like Clark wasn't gonna ask.
But again, perfectly innocent. Predictably, no piercing distrust, no latent suspicion. Even when Clark Kent, Daily Planet, had squared off with the man he'd as of a few seconds ago discovered to be Batman, there'd been an openness to that glare-off, more of an invitation to disappoint than a scouring attempt to discover something disappointing.
None of that, anyway. Bruce is very smart and it's sexy.
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Like Clark wasn't gonna ask.
Tuna salad sandwiches, plentiful to balance the moratorium on snack food side dishes (potato chip crumbs? on this hardware?), packed only with some water bottles and cans of Diet Coke. Enough time has passed by now that they won't explode when opened, jostled by the journey, though one is dented. Pressure changes in the flight.
"I would just prefer that you not explode and that I," crack-hiss, hey, still slightly carbonated, even, "do not immediately get leukemia."
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But banter isn't released without a slanted look through eyelashes as Clark likewise reaches for a Diet Coke. Bruce, please. The tab is peeled free, the carbonation activates, and talking about this feels a little like he is circling something. A couple things, even.
"You said the chamber might make you sick," he prompts, as he brings can up to mouth to drink from, eyebrows querying.
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"Like it made you sick."
But not, Like it allegedly would have killed Lois, who was given a nifty space hat.
"Sort of. You can adjust. I might not be able to, even if I tweak things. At first, anyway. It's not about the danger of the atmosphere itself the methods used to achieve it. What it looks like, to me, is that the kind of generators - for lack of a better word - used to maintain a Kryptonian liveable atmo on the Phantom Drive ship are not compatible with humans. Or beings from a lot of worlds. You're very good at accepting extreme radiation, no matter the type. I need to look into a... ecologically friendly wind turbine alternative."
He drinks some north pole frozen soda.
"Shellfish."
Ok?
"They do really well with radiation. It's why the fishing market near the wreck has changed like that."
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A subtle glimmer of amusement in there. Cool shellfish fact, Bruce. To his credit, Bruce talks about generators and atmospheric conditions and Kryptonian ships and he has Clark's undivided attention, a head-cocked alertness that hasn't gotten old yet, at least not on Clark's side of the conversation. He's never needed to be the smartest person in the room. Or the anythingest person.
"Well, if we can figure it out, and if it doesn't give you a massive radioactive hangover the whole time, it'd be nice to be on a level playing field for a little while. Maybe not only in a strictly professional capacity."
If that's too soon of an angle to pursue, then you'll forgive him for already thinking about it on the plane ride over. Or while they were packing tuna salad sandwiches, even.
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