The House of the Earth (6/7): Ruins in Moonlight
Title: Chapter Six: Ruins in Moonlight
Pairing/Characters: Kal-El, Bruce Wayne
Notes: " The House of the Earth" is an AU in which a few thousand Kryptonians escaped the destruction of Krypton to flee to Earth and enslave its people.
Rating: PG
Word Count: 2600
Summary: Bruce shows Kal Gotham and has a long talk with him; Kal makes some decisions.
"Kal, you idiot!"
Bruce leaped for the slave deed, but his hands caught only ash.
The echoes of his horrified cry still seemed to resonate through the room.
Kal stared at him. "What--what--you're free now, Bruce! What's wrong?"
Bruce put a hand to his forehead, grimacing. "It's not that simple, Kal. Do you know what the punishment is for a human caught without papers? I can't just...just walk out of here and pick up a life somewhere. There's no life to have!"
"I'll--I'll smuggle you off-world! There are planets that are friendly to the human cause, I can get you away--" And never see him again, Kal realized. This was a consequence of his impetuous action he hadn't considered, and the thought gave him a surprisingly intense pang. But he'd gladly do it again.
Or would have, if it hadn't clearly upset Bruce so much.
"--And abandon my friends? Abandon my people? My planet?" Bruce snatched up the black robe from the floor and flung it about himself, then threw himself onto the bed, his hands in the air. "I've worked for years just to get back to Gotham, I'm sure as hell not going to leave it now just because you've taken it into your damn fool head to get all enlightened and idealistic and make a grand gesture at the worst possible time!" He ran a hand through his hair, leaving it rumpled and sticking up. "Now I've got to get a whole new set of documents forged..." He sighed, then seemed to notice Kal's stricken face for the first time. "I'm sorry," he said more gently. "I...do appreciate it, Kal. Really. I'll just have to work around your lamentable timing," he added with a lopsided grin.
Kal's head--no, his entire world--seemed to be spinning. Where had the submissive, opaque slave of the last two days gone? The veiled, deferential gaze had given way to a direct look snapping with urgency, the formerly languid posture was now charged with energy. He was like an entirely different person.
He was an entirely different person.
This was the true Bruce.
Everything before had been a pretense.
That realization shook him not half as much as the realization that he had caught glimpses of this Bruce--the real one--from time to time. The level look as he passed the signet ring back to Kal. The conversation--interrogation--in the library, the seemingly polite questions pushing him, challenging him. The very first moment in the garden, the cobalt-blue eyes lifted to meet his directly, the flash of defiance that Kal hadn't even been able to see for what it was. But he saw it now. He knew it.
Everything before had been a facade, and--having seen through that facade for a brief instant--he found that he desperately needed to see the whole person beyond it.
Bruce was looking at him, and Kal realized he'd been staring at Bruce for quite a long time now, revelation slowing his mind to a staggered crawl. As Kal watched him, Bruce's eyes went wary and worried. He suddenly rose from the bed with fluid grace, his body going compact, his gaze dropping. "Forgive me, Master." The blazing-bright man of a moment ago slipped behind a cloud of submission like a veil, as if he had decided it was too much of a risk to show himself. "I've spoken out of turn and unwisely. I beg you to--"
"No!" Kal groped for something to say to bring back that other Bruce, to stop his retreat. "Don't--please don't. I want to...to understand," he said, his hands tracing patterns of confusion in the air. "Help me understand."
Bruce paused, his eyes still guarded. Then he sighed. "Come with me."
At the doorway, he held the silver chain of his collar out to Kal. Kal eyed it like a serpent. "What? You must be joking. I'm not going to lead you around like a pet."
"I'm afraid you're going to have to. I can't afford to have people noticing I walk around untethered."
Kal took the chain from Bruce, holding it gingerly. After a moment, Bruce flashed him a quick smile. "All right. Our first appearance in public together as Master and slave. The scion of the House of El and his newly-acquired property." He took in the revulsion on Kal's face and his own expression softened somewhat. "Kal. Please. If you want to understand, we have to do it this way." As the door swung open, he murmured, "Lead me to the archives."
Uncomprehending, Kal led him from the room and headed toward the archives. Guards stopped to look at them, their eyes curious and calculating. The heir of the House of El taking his first personal slave would alter dynamics among the household slaves. Kal was scaldingly aware of Bruce's quiet footsteps padding behind him as he floated; he remembered the Terran myth of Orpheus and felt a terrible desire to turn around, to look at Bruce directly, to drop the chain that bound them and let him go as free as Eurydice, even if only back to the land of the dead.
He gripped the chain tighter in a shaking hand and made his way to the archives.
Once inside, Bruce moved past him to take the lead, going to a far corner of the library and picking up a small lamp hidden behind some old tomes. He moved aside a floor tile to reveal a passage running downward, into the ground. "Are you ready to go into Gotham?" he asked Kal with a wry smile.
Bewildered, Kal descended with him into the underworld.
Below, the narrow passage quickly widened out into vaulted tunnels, remnants of an old sewer system. The sound of rushing water filled the passages, and Bruce's flickering lamp made the shadows eerie and looming.
Kal floated behind him, feeling the weight of the old city all around him, the human architecture carved into stone and metal. The tunnels felt alien to him, alien and threatening. A damp breeze moved past him, like a sighing breath.
Gotham lived, he realized. It lived on underneath the plantations, under the fields of crimson flowers. It had lived and breathed under them all this time.
Bruce stopped and looked at him, sensing his disquiet. "Don't be afraid," he said softly.
The tunnels picked up his words and echoed them back: afraidafraidafraid.
"What--how--" Kal waved his hands at the tunnels.
"Lead pipes and lead-based paint," Bruce said airily. "They can hide a lot of secrets."
(secretsecretsecrets, answered Gotham)
Kal felt closed in, trapped. His chest ached from Selina's whip. He looked longingly back at the way they had come in, then swallowed hard and followed Bruce again.
Bruce led them through a maze of tunnels, stopping sometimes to examine the walls at an intersection, looking at what seemed to be random scratches on the stone. Finally the two of them emerged into a moon-washed night.
Kal looked around. They were in the ruins of what had once obviously been a very large house of some sort. The walls were broken rubble, covered with vines, soot-stained stone underneath. The floor was of marble, blackened and cracked, bits of rock and detritus strewn across it. Somewhere an owl hooted softly.
Beyond the broken walls, Kal could see the countryside spread around them--they were on a bluff, looking out over what had once been Gotham. He could see the El household, nestled on its small triangular island, the fields of the El plantation spreading across the larger island to the north. Beyond that to the south was the Zo plantation, and the Ozh plantation. This house had once had a commanding view of the city. Now there was no city, and no house. Just ruins in the moonlight, and scarlet flowers blooming over brooding Gotham.
Bruce's footsteps crunched behind him, and Kal turned to look. The human was touching one of the broken walls lightly. "This was my home," he said. "Or it would have been," he added, "Except my parents were forced to flee at the Arrival. My mother was pregnant with me at the time. My father's wealth and connections got them out while Gotham burned and they took refuge in the Appalachians with the other scattered refugees."
He moved to stand next to Kal, looking out over lost Gotham. "We eked out an existence there in the mountains, laying low, keeping hidden as much as possible." He looked around the vast ruins and something like a smile touched his mouth. "Alfred used to tell me stories about my mother when she was a grand dame of Gotham society. I could never even imagine it. My mother, the woman who killed her own chickens and cut her own wood. I never once saw her fingernails clean while she lived."
It was too huge a coincidence. "Alfred? You don't mean--not--"
Bruce shot him a look. "Alfred was my family's butler. He escaped with them. He still always called me 'young master Bruce,' even when I was nothing but a grubby, half-starved little urchin. He insisted I remember my background." He shook his head slightly. "Sometimes I suspect my mother would have preferred he didn't, that we forget that life. We bartered away everything my family was able to salvage from that night. She kept only one thing from all our heirlooms." His mouth twisted slightly. "The pearl necklace my father gave her when they got married. She always wore that, no matter how bad things got." A pause. "They got pretty bad. But we were getting by, we were surviving. We were free."
He fell silent. A wind moved lazily through the weeds that pushed up between the broken marble tiles. "What happened?" Kal whispered.
Bruce sighed. "When I was eight, I was helping my parents in the field when a man stumbled out of the wood. He was starving, half-mad. He demanded food. My parents said they'd share some of what we had. But then he spotted my mother's necklace and his face changed. I'd never seen a man smile like that." Bruce touched the stones gently, smudging the soot. "He pulled out a gun. Said he'd take what he needed. My parents were unarmed." A long pause. "Alfred found me there later, between their bodies." His voice was flat and emotionless, but Kal could feel the anguish twisted tightly underneath it. "The man must have sold our little refugee settlement out to the Kryptonians, because a week later they came for us. Alfred got me away in time with a few others, but he was captured. I never saw him again."
"Until a few days ago."
"Until a few days ago," Bruce repeated, nodding slightly. "I grew up on the run, going from town to town, learning what I could to survive. I was caught a couple of times," he said wryly, gesturing at his back, "But I always managed to slip away again. Eventually I fell in with others."
"Others?"
Bruce's eyes were wary again. "There are some humans who want to fight. Here and there. I traveled the world--what was once called Europe, Africa, Asia. I trained. I studied. I learned. And finally I realized it was time to come to Gotham." He looked down at the blackened stone. "To see this place. The place that should have been my home." His gaze shifted to Kal, and his eyes were dark in the moonlight. "You'll get your slippers dirty," he said.
Kal looked down at his feet, resting on the Earth, on the ruined stones of Bruce's legacy. At some point in Bruce's story he had found himself there. It was solid against his feet. He remembered the feeling of running as a child, of muscles meeting ground in harmony. "Do you mind?"
Bruce looked slightly taken aback. "Why would I mind?"
"My standing on your home." Kal gestured vaguely, unable to explain, and Bruce's mouth twisted in something close to a smile. Kal stepped forward--
Or tried to. Muscles unused to being used that way protested and froze; his balance was unsure, gravity not his friend. Kal pitched forward, staggering.
Bruce's arms were around him, keeping him from falling. "I can't even walk." Kal's throat felt tight with absurd tears--as if he had a right to weep in the ruins of Bruce's life! "Useless, useless, I can't even walk."
Bruce slung an arm under his shoulder, supporting him. "You can. Just...take it slow." One step, then another; his legs protested each motion. The rocks and rubble pressed against his feet. His slippers would be filthy and torn and have to be destroyed in secret, but no terrestrial stone could hurt him. It was the Earth itself that hurt him, he thought confusedly, leaning on Bruce. It hurt him with its beauty, its fierceness, its dignity.
He hugged the pain to his heart, against the whiplash on his skin.
They reached a wall low enough to sit on, and Bruce helped him to it. "Baby steps," Bruce murmured. "We all have to start somewhere."
"It's not starting, it's starting over," Kal said. "I've forgotten so much. Lost so much time. Wasted so many years." Bruce was staring at him and Kal knew his eyes were bright with tears; he hoped the other man would take them as tears of physical pain.
After a moment, Bruce sat down next to him on the broken wall, looking out over the plantations. The wind moved through the trees with a mournful, almost ghostly sound. Bruce was sitting close to him, not touching. But close.
"I want to do something," Kal said.
Bruce looked at him--not the slanting and elliptical look of the slave, but the direct look of the man.
"I want to help. If humans will let me help their cause."
Bruce looked back out over the fields of flowers. "A friend of mine once said--" He broke off and repeated, "A friend of mine," somewhat wonderingly, then continued. "He said that this needn't be a merely human cause. We're struggling to free the planet from this system, not just the humans. How long did you live on Krypton, Kal?"
"I was born a week before we came here."
"You grew up here. You have no other home, no memories of Krypton. You're as Terran as I am, Kal. This is a Terran struggle, and those of us of Terra will have to work together."
"Terran." Kal felt the word in his mouth; it felt right. It felt like home. "I swear, Bruce, I'll do everything I can to help."
Bruce's face was expressionless. "That's a huge statement, Kal. You're the heir to one of the most powerful Kryptonian Houses. Can you really make such a commitment?"
"I swear it," Kal repeated. "I swear by the House of--" He broke off. He had been about to swear by the honor of his House, the traditional and most binding Kryptonian oath. He started again. "I swear by the Earth, by its stones and its soil, that I will be true to you."
For a moment, a strange mixture of emotions played across Bruce's face in the moonlight: hope, calculation, wariness, a flash of near-exultation. He cleared his throat awkwardly. Then he rose to his feet and stood before Kal, putting his hands on Kal's shoulders for a long moment, like a salute between comrades. His hands tightened briefly. "May it be so," he said. He stepped back, the deep emotion gone again, but a slight smile touched his lips. Then the smile was gone as well, replaced by determination.
"We have one more thing to do this evening," said Bruce.
Kal followed him out of the ruins and back down into Gotham and whatever awaited them there.
Pairing/Characters: Kal-El, Bruce Wayne
Notes: " The House of the Earth" is an AU in which a few thousand Kryptonians escaped the destruction of Krypton to flee to Earth and enslave its people.
Rating: PG
Word Count: 2600
Summary: Bruce shows Kal Gotham and has a long talk with him; Kal makes some decisions.
"Kal, you idiot!"
Bruce leaped for the slave deed, but his hands caught only ash.
The echoes of his horrified cry still seemed to resonate through the room.
Kal stared at him. "What--what--you're free now, Bruce! What's wrong?"
Bruce put a hand to his forehead, grimacing. "It's not that simple, Kal. Do you know what the punishment is for a human caught without papers? I can't just...just walk out of here and pick up a life somewhere. There's no life to have!"
"I'll--I'll smuggle you off-world! There are planets that are friendly to the human cause, I can get you away--" And never see him again, Kal realized. This was a consequence of his impetuous action he hadn't considered, and the thought gave him a surprisingly intense pang. But he'd gladly do it again.
Or would have, if it hadn't clearly upset Bruce so much.
"--And abandon my friends? Abandon my people? My planet?" Bruce snatched up the black robe from the floor and flung it about himself, then threw himself onto the bed, his hands in the air. "I've worked for years just to get back to Gotham, I'm sure as hell not going to leave it now just because you've taken it into your damn fool head to get all enlightened and idealistic and make a grand gesture at the worst possible time!" He ran a hand through his hair, leaving it rumpled and sticking up. "Now I've got to get a whole new set of documents forged..." He sighed, then seemed to notice Kal's stricken face for the first time. "I'm sorry," he said more gently. "I...do appreciate it, Kal. Really. I'll just have to work around your lamentable timing," he added with a lopsided grin.
Kal's head--no, his entire world--seemed to be spinning. Where had the submissive, opaque slave of the last two days gone? The veiled, deferential gaze had given way to a direct look snapping with urgency, the formerly languid posture was now charged with energy. He was like an entirely different person.
He was an entirely different person.
This was the true Bruce.
Everything before had been a pretense.
That realization shook him not half as much as the realization that he had caught glimpses of this Bruce--the real one--from time to time. The level look as he passed the signet ring back to Kal. The conversation--interrogation--in the library, the seemingly polite questions pushing him, challenging him. The very first moment in the garden, the cobalt-blue eyes lifted to meet his directly, the flash of defiance that Kal hadn't even been able to see for what it was. But he saw it now. He knew it.
Everything before had been a facade, and--having seen through that facade for a brief instant--he found that he desperately needed to see the whole person beyond it.
Bruce was looking at him, and Kal realized he'd been staring at Bruce for quite a long time now, revelation slowing his mind to a staggered crawl. As Kal watched him, Bruce's eyes went wary and worried. He suddenly rose from the bed with fluid grace, his body going compact, his gaze dropping. "Forgive me, Master." The blazing-bright man of a moment ago slipped behind a cloud of submission like a veil, as if he had decided it was too much of a risk to show himself. "I've spoken out of turn and unwisely. I beg you to--"
"No!" Kal groped for something to say to bring back that other Bruce, to stop his retreat. "Don't--please don't. I want to...to understand," he said, his hands tracing patterns of confusion in the air. "Help me understand."
Bruce paused, his eyes still guarded. Then he sighed. "Come with me."
At the doorway, he held the silver chain of his collar out to Kal. Kal eyed it like a serpent. "What? You must be joking. I'm not going to lead you around like a pet."
"I'm afraid you're going to have to. I can't afford to have people noticing I walk around untethered."
Kal took the chain from Bruce, holding it gingerly. After a moment, Bruce flashed him a quick smile. "All right. Our first appearance in public together as Master and slave. The scion of the House of El and his newly-acquired property." He took in the revulsion on Kal's face and his own expression softened somewhat. "Kal. Please. If you want to understand, we have to do it this way." As the door swung open, he murmured, "Lead me to the archives."
Uncomprehending, Kal led him from the room and headed toward the archives. Guards stopped to look at them, their eyes curious and calculating. The heir of the House of El taking his first personal slave would alter dynamics among the household slaves. Kal was scaldingly aware of Bruce's quiet footsteps padding behind him as he floated; he remembered the Terran myth of Orpheus and felt a terrible desire to turn around, to look at Bruce directly, to drop the chain that bound them and let him go as free as Eurydice, even if only back to the land of the dead.
He gripped the chain tighter in a shaking hand and made his way to the archives.
Once inside, Bruce moved past him to take the lead, going to a far corner of the library and picking up a small lamp hidden behind some old tomes. He moved aside a floor tile to reveal a passage running downward, into the ground. "Are you ready to go into Gotham?" he asked Kal with a wry smile.
Bewildered, Kal descended with him into the underworld.
Below, the narrow passage quickly widened out into vaulted tunnels, remnants of an old sewer system. The sound of rushing water filled the passages, and Bruce's flickering lamp made the shadows eerie and looming.
Kal floated behind him, feeling the weight of the old city all around him, the human architecture carved into stone and metal. The tunnels felt alien to him, alien and threatening. A damp breeze moved past him, like a sighing breath.
Gotham lived, he realized. It lived on underneath the plantations, under the fields of crimson flowers. It had lived and breathed under them all this time.
Bruce stopped and looked at him, sensing his disquiet. "Don't be afraid," he said softly.
The tunnels picked up his words and echoed them back: afraidafraidafraid.
"What--how--" Kal waved his hands at the tunnels.
"Lead pipes and lead-based paint," Bruce said airily. "They can hide a lot of secrets."
(secretsecretsecrets, answered Gotham)
Kal felt closed in, trapped. His chest ached from Selina's whip. He looked longingly back at the way they had come in, then swallowed hard and followed Bruce again.
Bruce led them through a maze of tunnels, stopping sometimes to examine the walls at an intersection, looking at what seemed to be random scratches on the stone. Finally the two of them emerged into a moon-washed night.
Kal looked around. They were in the ruins of what had once obviously been a very large house of some sort. The walls were broken rubble, covered with vines, soot-stained stone underneath. The floor was of marble, blackened and cracked, bits of rock and detritus strewn across it. Somewhere an owl hooted softly.
Beyond the broken walls, Kal could see the countryside spread around them--they were on a bluff, looking out over what had once been Gotham. He could see the El household, nestled on its small triangular island, the fields of the El plantation spreading across the larger island to the north. Beyond that to the south was the Zo plantation, and the Ozh plantation. This house had once had a commanding view of the city. Now there was no city, and no house. Just ruins in the moonlight, and scarlet flowers blooming over brooding Gotham.
Bruce's footsteps crunched behind him, and Kal turned to look. The human was touching one of the broken walls lightly. "This was my home," he said. "Or it would have been," he added, "Except my parents were forced to flee at the Arrival. My mother was pregnant with me at the time. My father's wealth and connections got them out while Gotham burned and they took refuge in the Appalachians with the other scattered refugees."
He moved to stand next to Kal, looking out over lost Gotham. "We eked out an existence there in the mountains, laying low, keeping hidden as much as possible." He looked around the vast ruins and something like a smile touched his mouth. "Alfred used to tell me stories about my mother when she was a grand dame of Gotham society. I could never even imagine it. My mother, the woman who killed her own chickens and cut her own wood. I never once saw her fingernails clean while she lived."
It was too huge a coincidence. "Alfred? You don't mean--not--"
Bruce shot him a look. "Alfred was my family's butler. He escaped with them. He still always called me 'young master Bruce,' even when I was nothing but a grubby, half-starved little urchin. He insisted I remember my background." He shook his head slightly. "Sometimes I suspect my mother would have preferred he didn't, that we forget that life. We bartered away everything my family was able to salvage from that night. She kept only one thing from all our heirlooms." His mouth twisted slightly. "The pearl necklace my father gave her when they got married. She always wore that, no matter how bad things got." A pause. "They got pretty bad. But we were getting by, we were surviving. We were free."
He fell silent. A wind moved lazily through the weeds that pushed up between the broken marble tiles. "What happened?" Kal whispered.
Bruce sighed. "When I was eight, I was helping my parents in the field when a man stumbled out of the wood. He was starving, half-mad. He demanded food. My parents said they'd share some of what we had. But then he spotted my mother's necklace and his face changed. I'd never seen a man smile like that." Bruce touched the stones gently, smudging the soot. "He pulled out a gun. Said he'd take what he needed. My parents were unarmed." A long pause. "Alfred found me there later, between their bodies." His voice was flat and emotionless, but Kal could feel the anguish twisted tightly underneath it. "The man must have sold our little refugee settlement out to the Kryptonians, because a week later they came for us. Alfred got me away in time with a few others, but he was captured. I never saw him again."
"Until a few days ago."
"Until a few days ago," Bruce repeated, nodding slightly. "I grew up on the run, going from town to town, learning what I could to survive. I was caught a couple of times," he said wryly, gesturing at his back, "But I always managed to slip away again. Eventually I fell in with others."
"Others?"
Bruce's eyes were wary again. "There are some humans who want to fight. Here and there. I traveled the world--what was once called Europe, Africa, Asia. I trained. I studied. I learned. And finally I realized it was time to come to Gotham." He looked down at the blackened stone. "To see this place. The place that should have been my home." His gaze shifted to Kal, and his eyes were dark in the moonlight. "You'll get your slippers dirty," he said.
Kal looked down at his feet, resting on the Earth, on the ruined stones of Bruce's legacy. At some point in Bruce's story he had found himself there. It was solid against his feet. He remembered the feeling of running as a child, of muscles meeting ground in harmony. "Do you mind?"
Bruce looked slightly taken aback. "Why would I mind?"
"My standing on your home." Kal gestured vaguely, unable to explain, and Bruce's mouth twisted in something close to a smile. Kal stepped forward--
Or tried to. Muscles unused to being used that way protested and froze; his balance was unsure, gravity not his friend. Kal pitched forward, staggering.
Bruce's arms were around him, keeping him from falling. "I can't even walk." Kal's throat felt tight with absurd tears--as if he had a right to weep in the ruins of Bruce's life! "Useless, useless, I can't even walk."
Bruce slung an arm under his shoulder, supporting him. "You can. Just...take it slow." One step, then another; his legs protested each motion. The rocks and rubble pressed against his feet. His slippers would be filthy and torn and have to be destroyed in secret, but no terrestrial stone could hurt him. It was the Earth itself that hurt him, he thought confusedly, leaning on Bruce. It hurt him with its beauty, its fierceness, its dignity.
He hugged the pain to his heart, against the whiplash on his skin.
They reached a wall low enough to sit on, and Bruce helped him to it. "Baby steps," Bruce murmured. "We all have to start somewhere."
"It's not starting, it's starting over," Kal said. "I've forgotten so much. Lost so much time. Wasted so many years." Bruce was staring at him and Kal knew his eyes were bright with tears; he hoped the other man would take them as tears of physical pain.
After a moment, Bruce sat down next to him on the broken wall, looking out over the plantations. The wind moved through the trees with a mournful, almost ghostly sound. Bruce was sitting close to him, not touching. But close.
"I want to do something," Kal said.
Bruce looked at him--not the slanting and elliptical look of the slave, but the direct look of the man.
"I want to help. If humans will let me help their cause."
Bruce looked back out over the fields of flowers. "A friend of mine once said--" He broke off and repeated, "A friend of mine," somewhat wonderingly, then continued. "He said that this needn't be a merely human cause. We're struggling to free the planet from this system, not just the humans. How long did you live on Krypton, Kal?"
"I was born a week before we came here."
"You grew up here. You have no other home, no memories of Krypton. You're as Terran as I am, Kal. This is a Terran struggle, and those of us of Terra will have to work together."
"Terran." Kal felt the word in his mouth; it felt right. It felt like home. "I swear, Bruce, I'll do everything I can to help."
Bruce's face was expressionless. "That's a huge statement, Kal. You're the heir to one of the most powerful Kryptonian Houses. Can you really make such a commitment?"
"I swear it," Kal repeated. "I swear by the House of--" He broke off. He had been about to swear by the honor of his House, the traditional and most binding Kryptonian oath. He started again. "I swear by the Earth, by its stones and its soil, that I will be true to you."
For a moment, a strange mixture of emotions played across Bruce's face in the moonlight: hope, calculation, wariness, a flash of near-exultation. He cleared his throat awkwardly. Then he rose to his feet and stood before Kal, putting his hands on Kal's shoulders for a long moment, like a salute between comrades. His hands tightened briefly. "May it be so," he said. He stepped back, the deep emotion gone again, but a slight smile touched his lips. Then the smile was gone as well, replaced by determination.
"We have one more thing to do this evening," said Bruce.
Kal followed him out of the ruins and back down into Gotham and whatever awaited them there.