The House of the Earth Part 2 (4/8): Blood-Stained Fingers
Title: Chapter Four: Blood-Stained Fingers
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-13
Word Count: 3800
Summary: Bruce is called to an emergency on one of the outlying El plantations and needs Kal's help.
Notes: Special thank you to rai_daydreamer for giving advice on the medical information in this chapter!
Kal woke up slowly. The room was still mostly dark; he had kept the windows tightly shuttered since Bruce had started to stay with him.
Bruce.
He woke up the rest of the way to see the human pacing back and forth in the living room outside the bedroom arch. He didn't seem to be impatient; he was just moving restlessly, full of energy. He seemed to be thinking deeply.
Kal knew he probably should sit up fully, make some movement to be sure Bruce was aware of his presence, but instead he just watched Bruce through slitted eyes, following his movements. It was so rare that he could just watch the other man; his gaze seemed to have a terrible weight that he couldn't ever lighten, a pressure as heavy as the silver collar. So he usually kept his eyes averted unless they were talking.
But for just a moment, half-asleep in the dim light of dawn, he watched the other man pace, his movements sharp and purposeful. As Kal watched, Bruce abruptly tumbled into a roll and came up out of it balanced on one hand, his arm tense with his weight, muscles and tendons in sharp relief. His whole body trembled with suppressed, potential power. Kal watched him, enthralled, until he rolled back out of the handstand and looked toward the bedroom. He snapped his eyes shut for a moment, then stirred as if he was just waking. When he opened his eyes fully, Bruce was out of his range of sight, the arch empty.
Kal pulled himself out of bed.
As he floated into the living room and out of the circle of silence, Bruce turned and bowed. "Good morning, Master," he murmured.
Kal forced himself to respond with a friendly, dismissive smile. "Good morning, Brucie," he answered. Bruce had insisted that outside of the circle Kal always call him by the diminutive form. ""You're looking charming today."
Bruce's smile was razor-sharp and fierce, but his voice was meek to the point of absurdity. "My Master honors this unworthy one with his words."
Kal picked up the platter of fruit left by a kitchen slave, eager to get this over with. "Shall we eat in the bedroom, my pretty?"
"As my Master wishes."
Kal carried the platter back into the bedroom, feeling the soft purr of the sphere's influence on his skin with a sense of a burden lifting. He felt his shoulders slumping as he put the platter down and he exhaled slowly.
"Good morning, Kal," Bruce said from behind him.
"Good morning, Bruce," Kal said.
Now the day could truly begin.
: : :
"You're an idiot, like all Kryptonians. Closed-minded, shallow, and condescending."
Kal grimaced. "Bruce, this is hard enough already." He was balanced on one leg, trying to hold himself steady while letting the Earth's gravity pull him down. He glared at Bruce and his balance wavered even more.
"Focus," Bruce said. "You're letting me get to you."
Kal hissed between his teeth. "How can I not?"
"Our lives may well depend on you keeping your cool someday. If you lose your temper when someone calls you insults that they don't even mean, how are you going to handle it when someone insults you in earnest, you thin-skinned, stuck-up sissy?"
"You seem to be enjoying yourself a lot for someone who doesn't mean it," Kal grumbled.
There was a sudden flash of smile. "I'm not going to lie and tell you there isn't a certain amount of...satisfaction in it." Bruce stalked forward until he was uncomfortably close to Kal, and Kal wobbled alarmingly. "But I don't mean it. I promise. It's just...easier."
"Easier than what?" Kal muttered, not really expecting an answer as Bruce stepped back and turned away wordlessly, dropping onto the bed. With more space between them, Kal could take a deep breath and stop the tremor in his legs.
"Would you find it easier to concentrate if I complimented you instead?" Bruce said from the bed, his smile turning wicked. "If I told you your eyes are breathtakingly beautiful and your hands as gentle as rain?" Kal closed his eyes and focused on his balance. "Maybe if I described the arousing dreams I have of you, where you're underneath me and begging me to make you mine, submitting to me sweetly, impossible as that is? If I tell you how much I want to hear your voice raised in rapture when I take you hard and make you feel so good, our bodies together, beautiful Kal, if I tell you how much I want you--"
Kal's other foot thumped to the ground. "That's enough," he said rather shortly.
Bruce's face was flushed. He cleared his throat awkwardly. "Like I said, the insults are easier."
Kal lifted his other foot again, settling back into position. "As no one is likely to attempt to unnerve me by describing sexual intercourse with me, I suggest the insults are more pragmatic."
There was a long silence as he struggled to focus and even out his breathing.
"Idiot," Bruce said softly. "Damn fool idiot. You're a fucking genius, that's what you are."
Kal ignored the insults and breathed deeply. Balancing.
: : :
Another lunch. Kara was in Metropolis for a meeting, so Kal couldn't count on her support this time. Bruce was pressed up against his leg like a possessive cat and Kal was trying to focus on his uncle's conversation.
"--Speaking of meetings, Kal-El, I do believe I'm going to send you to Metropolis tomorrow for the Continental Caucus's quarterly meeting. I'll be sending you in my place--it's about time you started to get involved."
Kal felt some subtle change in Bruce's posture, from languid to alert. "Yes, Uncle," he said meekly, and Zor-El smiled.
"It's good to have you back, Kal-El. You know, you're like the son I never had. I'm sure you'll make me proud."
Kal's smile felt brittle and strained as he glanced up at his parents' portrait, hanging behind his aunt and uncle. "Thank you, Uncle. I'll do my very best," he said.
After the lunch, Bruce asked for permission to visit the kitchen and fix his master some drinks. He entered the bedroom after his errand with a pitcher of iced tea, frowning. "Do you have some cyclamed available?" he asked as he put the pitcher down.
"Of course." There were few diseases that could actually affect Kryptonians under a yellow sun, but "the chill" still gave them headaches and stiff muscles sometimes. It was treated with a medicine called cyclamed.
"We need you to get about five pills through the checkpoint between the big house and the plantations. They won't search you. After we get through the checkpoints I'll need you to slip it back to me and then buy me some time."
Kal went into the bathroom and extracted the pills from a bottle, wrapping them in a bit of cloth. "What's it for?"
Bruce looked evasive. "Bit of an emergency. I'll explain it later. For now...you've taken it into your head to get a tour of one of the southeastern fields, check it for productivity." His smile was crooked. "The overseer of that property will be plenty shocked to see you, I suspect. But he'll bow and scrape and give you a tour...and give me time to get to the slave row and help." He grabbed up his collar and handed it to Kal. "We need to hurry."
Kal held up the collar. "Are you ready?" Bruce nodded and it clicked home.
: : :
The overseer was indeed surprised and rather alarmed to see Kal there. A short, squat man who waddled when he walked, he was one of the humans the Kryptonians had trusted enough to leave in charge of a team of field hands. With only a few thousand Kryptonians, they couldn't be everywhere. And there were always some humans willing to help out in return for slightly better food and lodging.
As the overseer prepared to show Kal around the fields, Bruce bowed deeply to the Kryptonian. "Master, if I'm not needed here...may I go visit the slave quarters? I have a sick cousin there..."
The overseer was watching them keenly. Kal pitched his voice to affectionate and dismissive. "Of course, pet." He reached out and cradled Bruce's face in one hand tenderly. "But do stay out of the sun. I would hate to have your lovely skin all tanned and damaged."
Bruce bowed again and hurried off, and Kal turned back to his guide. The little man smacked his lips in appreciation. "He's a tasty-looking morsel. If you ever get tired of him, I hope you'll remember your humble servant Oswald."
Kal smiled politely, revulsion coiling in his gut. "Show me the fields," he said remotely, and the overseer flinched and led him from his tiny house.
Kal had braced himself for learning that his lessons about happy slaves cheerfully picking iao and singing were wrong, so he was somewhat able to hide his horror as Oswald showed him around. The humans--some hardly more than children--looked up sullenly as the two of them passed, or merely bent more fervently to their work. Had any of these people been at the meeting where he had been revealed as pro-human? From the distant, hostile looks in their eyes he doubted it. The humans worked steadily and slowly, as if there was no end in sight, their drawn faces a terrible contrast to the sea of brilliant scarlet. Collars sparkled in the sunlight, glints of pain.
Oswald was squawking about productivity levels and "disincentives." Hands flickered among the red blossoms, picking, picking. Kal saw with a sudden almost hallucinogenic sharpness how red the fingers were, as if burned. Some were seeping blood from cracks in the skin. "Why are their fingers burned like that?"
The overseer looked surprised at the question. "It's the flowers. The sap is corrosive to human skin. But it's okay, a little blood on the iao never hurt anyone. The flowers are red anyway, you can't even see it!" His raucous laugh echoed among the rows of flowers. None of the humans looked up at the sound.
Kal forced himself to continue to float along, above all the suffering, memorizing it all for later. He had to keep moving forward, couldn't stop, couldn't let it all break in on him. Oswald eyed his frowning face norrowly, rubbing his hands together. "Would the master care to stop by my humble abode for some refreshments? If the master has seen enough."
With a great sense of relief, Kal stopped and said, "I believe I have seen enough. This is all quite satisfactory." A few of the humans within earshot looked up at that, their faces studiously blank; Kal looked back at them haughtily, hating all of it. "Let us return."
Bruce was sitting on the steps of Oswald's house; he sprang up as Kal approached. "Master," he murmured, bowing.
An urgency in his eyes, tightly leashed in his posture, prompted Kal to turn to Oswald. "I shall be returning now."
"Won't you stay and have some tea?" Oswald asked, smiling hopefully.
"I have places to be," Kal said, grateful for once for the ruse that let him be rude to this horrible man. He picked up Bruce's loose chain and floated away briskly.
As Oswald's door shut behind him his movement slowed; he realized he had no idea where he was going. "Take the fork to the right," Bruce murmured from behind him, and he veered off the main path onto a rutted road. Soon a long row of small shacks came into view; while they were still far away Kal could see tiny children halting their play in the dust to gape at the Kryptonian coming toward them.
Bruce's voice behind him was level but urgent. "In the third house on the right there's a woman in labor. The cyclamed has relieved most of her pain, but she's going to need our help. And you have to remain in-character as much as you can, because I don't know how many of these people I can trust."
Kal almost stopped moving. "In labor? Like...with a baby?" he asked without looking back.
Bruce's strained chuckle reached his ears. "Yes, a great deal like with a baby."
Kal wanted to ask more questions, get his bearings, prepare mentally somehow, but they were at the beginning of the double row of houses. In the doorway of one, an older woman in rough and torn clothing waited, her gaze going past Kal to meet Bruce's. "It's bad," she said shortly. Then she sketched a short bow to Kal, as if as an afterthought. "Be welcome, Master," she muttered.
They entered the shack into bedlam. A woman was lying on her back on some planks hammered together in something resembling a bed, her bare belly heaving with her deep, stentorian breaths. Her eyes were blank, but her breathing was hoarse as if her throat was torn with hours of screaming. A few children were sitting on the dirt floor. Tear tracks cut through the grime on their cheeks. Most of the people in the shack were older women; there were no men. Of course, they would all be in the field. The room smelled of blood and sweat and urine.
"It isn't coming," one of the women said. "It's been fourteen hours now. She can't--she can't last much longer." She ducked her head. "We thank you for the medicine. At least she'll die without pain."
"Like hell," Bruce muttered. "Like hell she'll die." He looked around the bare room. "Someone get me a knife." When someone handed him one, he held it up to Kal. "Master," he said curtly, "Please sterilize this."
Kal gaped at him, and Bruce said, "I know it demeans one of the Arrived to interfere in such menial matters, but the woman and her child are your property and it would be a loss to the Els."
Kal pressed his lips together and said, "Yes, this experience should prove..." he trailed off, unsure where the sentence could go from here.
"--Interesting?" Bruce supplied.
"Yes," Kal said. "That. I shall stay to observe your procedure."
Bruce nodded and held up the knife again; Kal applied heat vision until the edge glowed briefly. Bruce then stepped over to where the woman was lying. "Janet," he said softly, smoothing the hair away from her wet forehead. "It's going to be okay. Be brave." The pregnant woman didn't respond, still staring glassily at the ceiling. Bruce shifted his gaze to Kal's face. "I need your help. Your heat vision can seal the blood vessels behind the incision, and keep the bleeding at a minimum."
"No," said Kal blankly, and the room went very still. "No. It will--I'll kill her. I can't."
Bruce's hand tightened on the knife. "She will die, and her child with her, if we don't do this. The child may already be dead," he said inexorably, and one of the children sobbed once, his hands over his mouth.
Kal focused. "The child is alive. I can hear the heartbeat." He looked closely, looked within. "It's a boy. Alive, but weak." A sigh went around the room, a low murmur. It wasn't quite hope. "There's a...some kind of cord around his neck," Kal said, cursing his lack of vocabulary for human reproductive systems. "It doesn't look right."
"It's not," said Bruce. "There's no saving either of them without your help." He looked at Kal. "Their lives are in your hands, master."
Swallowing hard, Kal floated over to stand beside the bed. Bruce lifted the blade. "You've done this before, right?" asked Kal.
Bruce paused and shot him a quick look. "I've...read books about it, master."
"Ah. That's...that's great."
Bruce took a deep breath and began to cut. Someone in the room made a choked moan and stifled it hastily.
The acrid scent of burned blood joined the fetid combination of aromas already in the room. Kal focused all of his attention on his work, shutting out all of his surroundings, all of his fears, putting his emotions somewhere else to look at later. Right now he needed to work. To stop the bleeding. To stop the life from slipping away.
"That's good," Bruce said. "Can you get--" Kal saw the vein he was referring to and sealed it off. "This is...a little more difficult than in the textbooks," Bruce said tightly. There were beads of sweat on his forehead; Kal blew very lightly with cold breath and dried them. Bruce's smile was brief and strained. "We can do this," he said, almost to himself.
Kal didn't dare speak, didn't dare risk breaking his persona. He focused on the blood, on keeping it clear. He hardly noticed when someone lifted out a small, bluish thing, stained with blood. Bruce cut the cord binding it to the woman and Kal sealed that as well, then turned his attention back to the woman's body, checking the veins and arteries for leaks. "He's not breathing," someone said into the stillness. "Rub his limbs, clear his--"
The silence was broken by a shrill, outraged little howl, weak but insistent. The room breathed again, and a small commotion broke out around the baby: water splashing, people chattering. Bruce ignored it; he was threading a needle with some coarse thread. As Kal stared, he began to stitch the incision closed with tiny, careful stitches.
"I need some hot water here," Bruce said tersely, and the clump of people around the baby scattered to his aid. Somewhere in the chaos, someone put something into Kal's arms. He looked down to see the baby, mostly washed but still streaked with blood, its mouth working and its eyes closed tightly against the world, fists waving against the light.
Kal reached out and touched one of the tiny, angry fists. The emotions he had shunted aside during the operation threatened to come crashing in, but they were too big, too impossible to process. So he merely stood and held the baby.
The door of the shack slammed open and Kal looked up to see one of the men who had been working in the field standing there, his eyes wild. He hurried to the woman's side, taking her hand. "Janet!" One of the other women patted him on the back and whispered something to him, and he stood to stare at the bundle in Kal's arms. He held out his arms, then dropped them again. "May I hold my son, Master?"
Kal winced slightly and put the baby in his arms. "Of course," he said. The man stared down at the baby, who batted at his face with one tiny hand. He put one finger, raw and abraded with iao-sap, into the small palm and the baby's grip tightened around it. Two blood-stained fingers, clutching each other. "Thank you," he said rather gruffly to Bruce, then dropped a short bow to Kal. "Thank you, Master." His eyes were wary. "What name will you give him?"
"What?"
"You have the right to name him. He's your property."
Kal moved backwards and banged his head into a rafter. "He's your son. Any name you want to give him is fine."
For the first time, the man almost smiled. "Janet and I, we were thinking maybe Timothy."
"That sounds like a good name." The father nodded and went back to contemplating his son. Outside the shack, a woman's voice lifted in song, weary and triumphant and thankful. Other voices started to join in one by one, a ragged chorus in the twilight.
Bruce was scrubbing off his hands with a rag. He reached out and cleaned some of the blood off Kal's hands as well. "We need to head home, Master," he murmured.
"Yes," Kal said numbly. At the door, he turned back. "They need antibacterial agents for the incision, it'll get infected, she's not out of danger--"
"We never are," Bruce said very softly. "They'll take care of her. We need to get out of here before someone reports to Oswald that you're messing in slave affairs."
Kal left, careful to keep his feet above the dust of the road, his path wavering very slightly. The children stared as they passed.
: : :
Bruce turned off the tap water. "Master. That's enough."
Kal could still smell the blood on his hands, under the lather. "I can't get rid of it. Can't get my hands clean."
Bruce caught his hands up in a towel, rubbing off the soap. "Master." He paused. "Kal. You didn't take a life. You helped save one. Two." He searched Kal's eyes, his own narrowed. "Stay with me, all right?"
"I need to get--somewhere safe. Safe." Kal swiveled and went into the bedroom, into the circle of silence beyond which no one could hear him. He curled up on the chair and buried his head in his arms, shaking. "It's too big," he said as Bruce came into the room and sat down on the bed. "All too big. The...the life. And the pain. It's all--too much. I can't bear it." He couldn't seem to stop shaking.
"You can," Bruce said. "You have to." The lights dimmed; there was a rustling as Bruce changed into night clothes. Had Kal removed his collar? Yes, he had a dim memory of that. But that memory was outside this room, outside the circle, far away.
He didn't know what he was feeling.
"It's too big for me," he said again. Silence met him and he shuddered within it.
"It's not too big for us," Bruce eventually said quietly into the darkness.
After a while, the shaking subsided as the stillness of the room calmed Kal's heart rate. He should get up and move to the couch, he knew. It was his night to sleep on the couch. Outside the circle. Somehow he couldn't seem to face the idea of being outside that circle tonight, beyond the line of absolute silence that would cut him off from Bruce. He didn't want to be out in that world. He wandered between sleep and waking, waiting for Bruce to point out he needed to go.
At some point, still waiting, he slipped into sleep in earnest.
He woke in the morning to the sound of Bruce snoring slightly in the bed.
Kal shifted slightly and found that sometime during the night, someone had tucked a blanket around his sleeping form.
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-13
Word Count: 3800
Summary: Bruce is called to an emergency on one of the outlying El plantations and needs Kal's help.
Notes: Special thank you to rai_daydreamer for giving advice on the medical information in this chapter!
Kal woke up slowly. The room was still mostly dark; he had kept the windows tightly shuttered since Bruce had started to stay with him.
Bruce.
He woke up the rest of the way to see the human pacing back and forth in the living room outside the bedroom arch. He didn't seem to be impatient; he was just moving restlessly, full of energy. He seemed to be thinking deeply.
Kal knew he probably should sit up fully, make some movement to be sure Bruce was aware of his presence, but instead he just watched Bruce through slitted eyes, following his movements. It was so rare that he could just watch the other man; his gaze seemed to have a terrible weight that he couldn't ever lighten, a pressure as heavy as the silver collar. So he usually kept his eyes averted unless they were talking.
But for just a moment, half-asleep in the dim light of dawn, he watched the other man pace, his movements sharp and purposeful. As Kal watched, Bruce abruptly tumbled into a roll and came up out of it balanced on one hand, his arm tense with his weight, muscles and tendons in sharp relief. His whole body trembled with suppressed, potential power. Kal watched him, enthralled, until he rolled back out of the handstand and looked toward the bedroom. He snapped his eyes shut for a moment, then stirred as if he was just waking. When he opened his eyes fully, Bruce was out of his range of sight, the arch empty.
Kal pulled himself out of bed.
As he floated into the living room and out of the circle of silence, Bruce turned and bowed. "Good morning, Master," he murmured.
Kal forced himself to respond with a friendly, dismissive smile. "Good morning, Brucie," he answered. Bruce had insisted that outside of the circle Kal always call him by the diminutive form. ""You're looking charming today."
Bruce's smile was razor-sharp and fierce, but his voice was meek to the point of absurdity. "My Master honors this unworthy one with his words."
Kal picked up the platter of fruit left by a kitchen slave, eager to get this over with. "Shall we eat in the bedroom, my pretty?"
"As my Master wishes."
Kal carried the platter back into the bedroom, feeling the soft purr of the sphere's influence on his skin with a sense of a burden lifting. He felt his shoulders slumping as he put the platter down and he exhaled slowly.
"Good morning, Kal," Bruce said from behind him.
"Good morning, Bruce," Kal said.
Now the day could truly begin.
: : :
"You're an idiot, like all Kryptonians. Closed-minded, shallow, and condescending."
Kal grimaced. "Bruce, this is hard enough already." He was balanced on one leg, trying to hold himself steady while letting the Earth's gravity pull him down. He glared at Bruce and his balance wavered even more.
"Focus," Bruce said. "You're letting me get to you."
Kal hissed between his teeth. "How can I not?"
"Our lives may well depend on you keeping your cool someday. If you lose your temper when someone calls you insults that they don't even mean, how are you going to handle it when someone insults you in earnest, you thin-skinned, stuck-up sissy?"
"You seem to be enjoying yourself a lot for someone who doesn't mean it," Kal grumbled.
There was a sudden flash of smile. "I'm not going to lie and tell you there isn't a certain amount of...satisfaction in it." Bruce stalked forward until he was uncomfortably close to Kal, and Kal wobbled alarmingly. "But I don't mean it. I promise. It's just...easier."
"Easier than what?" Kal muttered, not really expecting an answer as Bruce stepped back and turned away wordlessly, dropping onto the bed. With more space between them, Kal could take a deep breath and stop the tremor in his legs.
"Would you find it easier to concentrate if I complimented you instead?" Bruce said from the bed, his smile turning wicked. "If I told you your eyes are breathtakingly beautiful and your hands as gentle as rain?" Kal closed his eyes and focused on his balance. "Maybe if I described the arousing dreams I have of you, where you're underneath me and begging me to make you mine, submitting to me sweetly, impossible as that is? If I tell you how much I want to hear your voice raised in rapture when I take you hard and make you feel so good, our bodies together, beautiful Kal, if I tell you how much I want you--"
Kal's other foot thumped to the ground. "That's enough," he said rather shortly.
Bruce's face was flushed. He cleared his throat awkwardly. "Like I said, the insults are easier."
Kal lifted his other foot again, settling back into position. "As no one is likely to attempt to unnerve me by describing sexual intercourse with me, I suggest the insults are more pragmatic."
There was a long silence as he struggled to focus and even out his breathing.
"Idiot," Bruce said softly. "Damn fool idiot. You're a fucking genius, that's what you are."
Kal ignored the insults and breathed deeply. Balancing.
: : :
Another lunch. Kara was in Metropolis for a meeting, so Kal couldn't count on her support this time. Bruce was pressed up against his leg like a possessive cat and Kal was trying to focus on his uncle's conversation.
"--Speaking of meetings, Kal-El, I do believe I'm going to send you to Metropolis tomorrow for the Continental Caucus's quarterly meeting. I'll be sending you in my place--it's about time you started to get involved."
Kal felt some subtle change in Bruce's posture, from languid to alert. "Yes, Uncle," he said meekly, and Zor-El smiled.
"It's good to have you back, Kal-El. You know, you're like the son I never had. I'm sure you'll make me proud."
Kal's smile felt brittle and strained as he glanced up at his parents' portrait, hanging behind his aunt and uncle. "Thank you, Uncle. I'll do my very best," he said.
After the lunch, Bruce asked for permission to visit the kitchen and fix his master some drinks. He entered the bedroom after his errand with a pitcher of iced tea, frowning. "Do you have some cyclamed available?" he asked as he put the pitcher down.
"Of course." There were few diseases that could actually affect Kryptonians under a yellow sun, but "the chill" still gave them headaches and stiff muscles sometimes. It was treated with a medicine called cyclamed.
"We need you to get about five pills through the checkpoint between the big house and the plantations. They won't search you. After we get through the checkpoints I'll need you to slip it back to me and then buy me some time."
Kal went into the bathroom and extracted the pills from a bottle, wrapping them in a bit of cloth. "What's it for?"
Bruce looked evasive. "Bit of an emergency. I'll explain it later. For now...you've taken it into your head to get a tour of one of the southeastern fields, check it for productivity." His smile was crooked. "The overseer of that property will be plenty shocked to see you, I suspect. But he'll bow and scrape and give you a tour...and give me time to get to the slave row and help." He grabbed up his collar and handed it to Kal. "We need to hurry."
Kal held up the collar. "Are you ready?" Bruce nodded and it clicked home.
: : :
The overseer was indeed surprised and rather alarmed to see Kal there. A short, squat man who waddled when he walked, he was one of the humans the Kryptonians had trusted enough to leave in charge of a team of field hands. With only a few thousand Kryptonians, they couldn't be everywhere. And there were always some humans willing to help out in return for slightly better food and lodging.
As the overseer prepared to show Kal around the fields, Bruce bowed deeply to the Kryptonian. "Master, if I'm not needed here...may I go visit the slave quarters? I have a sick cousin there..."
The overseer was watching them keenly. Kal pitched his voice to affectionate and dismissive. "Of course, pet." He reached out and cradled Bruce's face in one hand tenderly. "But do stay out of the sun. I would hate to have your lovely skin all tanned and damaged."
Bruce bowed again and hurried off, and Kal turned back to his guide. The little man smacked his lips in appreciation. "He's a tasty-looking morsel. If you ever get tired of him, I hope you'll remember your humble servant Oswald."
Kal smiled politely, revulsion coiling in his gut. "Show me the fields," he said remotely, and the overseer flinched and led him from his tiny house.
Kal had braced himself for learning that his lessons about happy slaves cheerfully picking iao and singing were wrong, so he was somewhat able to hide his horror as Oswald showed him around. The humans--some hardly more than children--looked up sullenly as the two of them passed, or merely bent more fervently to their work. Had any of these people been at the meeting where he had been revealed as pro-human? From the distant, hostile looks in their eyes he doubted it. The humans worked steadily and slowly, as if there was no end in sight, their drawn faces a terrible contrast to the sea of brilliant scarlet. Collars sparkled in the sunlight, glints of pain.
Oswald was squawking about productivity levels and "disincentives." Hands flickered among the red blossoms, picking, picking. Kal saw with a sudden almost hallucinogenic sharpness how red the fingers were, as if burned. Some were seeping blood from cracks in the skin. "Why are their fingers burned like that?"
The overseer looked surprised at the question. "It's the flowers. The sap is corrosive to human skin. But it's okay, a little blood on the iao never hurt anyone. The flowers are red anyway, you can't even see it!" His raucous laugh echoed among the rows of flowers. None of the humans looked up at the sound.
Kal forced himself to continue to float along, above all the suffering, memorizing it all for later. He had to keep moving forward, couldn't stop, couldn't let it all break in on him. Oswald eyed his frowning face norrowly, rubbing his hands together. "Would the master care to stop by my humble abode for some refreshments? If the master has seen enough."
With a great sense of relief, Kal stopped and said, "I believe I have seen enough. This is all quite satisfactory." A few of the humans within earshot looked up at that, their faces studiously blank; Kal looked back at them haughtily, hating all of it. "Let us return."
Bruce was sitting on the steps of Oswald's house; he sprang up as Kal approached. "Master," he murmured, bowing.
An urgency in his eyes, tightly leashed in his posture, prompted Kal to turn to Oswald. "I shall be returning now."
"Won't you stay and have some tea?" Oswald asked, smiling hopefully.
"I have places to be," Kal said, grateful for once for the ruse that let him be rude to this horrible man. He picked up Bruce's loose chain and floated away briskly.
As Oswald's door shut behind him his movement slowed; he realized he had no idea where he was going. "Take the fork to the right," Bruce murmured from behind him, and he veered off the main path onto a rutted road. Soon a long row of small shacks came into view; while they were still far away Kal could see tiny children halting their play in the dust to gape at the Kryptonian coming toward them.
Bruce's voice behind him was level but urgent. "In the third house on the right there's a woman in labor. The cyclamed has relieved most of her pain, but she's going to need our help. And you have to remain in-character as much as you can, because I don't know how many of these people I can trust."
Kal almost stopped moving. "In labor? Like...with a baby?" he asked without looking back.
Bruce's strained chuckle reached his ears. "Yes, a great deal like with a baby."
Kal wanted to ask more questions, get his bearings, prepare mentally somehow, but they were at the beginning of the double row of houses. In the doorway of one, an older woman in rough and torn clothing waited, her gaze going past Kal to meet Bruce's. "It's bad," she said shortly. Then she sketched a short bow to Kal, as if as an afterthought. "Be welcome, Master," she muttered.
They entered the shack into bedlam. A woman was lying on her back on some planks hammered together in something resembling a bed, her bare belly heaving with her deep, stentorian breaths. Her eyes were blank, but her breathing was hoarse as if her throat was torn with hours of screaming. A few children were sitting on the dirt floor. Tear tracks cut through the grime on their cheeks. Most of the people in the shack were older women; there were no men. Of course, they would all be in the field. The room smelled of blood and sweat and urine.
"It isn't coming," one of the women said. "It's been fourteen hours now. She can't--she can't last much longer." She ducked her head. "We thank you for the medicine. At least she'll die without pain."
"Like hell," Bruce muttered. "Like hell she'll die." He looked around the bare room. "Someone get me a knife." When someone handed him one, he held it up to Kal. "Master," he said curtly, "Please sterilize this."
Kal gaped at him, and Bruce said, "I know it demeans one of the Arrived to interfere in such menial matters, but the woman and her child are your property and it would be a loss to the Els."
Kal pressed his lips together and said, "Yes, this experience should prove..." he trailed off, unsure where the sentence could go from here.
"--Interesting?" Bruce supplied.
"Yes," Kal said. "That. I shall stay to observe your procedure."
Bruce nodded and held up the knife again; Kal applied heat vision until the edge glowed briefly. Bruce then stepped over to where the woman was lying. "Janet," he said softly, smoothing the hair away from her wet forehead. "It's going to be okay. Be brave." The pregnant woman didn't respond, still staring glassily at the ceiling. Bruce shifted his gaze to Kal's face. "I need your help. Your heat vision can seal the blood vessels behind the incision, and keep the bleeding at a minimum."
"No," said Kal blankly, and the room went very still. "No. It will--I'll kill her. I can't."
Bruce's hand tightened on the knife. "She will die, and her child with her, if we don't do this. The child may already be dead," he said inexorably, and one of the children sobbed once, his hands over his mouth.
Kal focused. "The child is alive. I can hear the heartbeat." He looked closely, looked within. "It's a boy. Alive, but weak." A sigh went around the room, a low murmur. It wasn't quite hope. "There's a...some kind of cord around his neck," Kal said, cursing his lack of vocabulary for human reproductive systems. "It doesn't look right."
"It's not," said Bruce. "There's no saving either of them without your help." He looked at Kal. "Their lives are in your hands, master."
Swallowing hard, Kal floated over to stand beside the bed. Bruce lifted the blade. "You've done this before, right?" asked Kal.
Bruce paused and shot him a quick look. "I've...read books about it, master."
"Ah. That's...that's great."
Bruce took a deep breath and began to cut. Someone in the room made a choked moan and stifled it hastily.
The acrid scent of burned blood joined the fetid combination of aromas already in the room. Kal focused all of his attention on his work, shutting out all of his surroundings, all of his fears, putting his emotions somewhere else to look at later. Right now he needed to work. To stop the bleeding. To stop the life from slipping away.
"That's good," Bruce said. "Can you get--" Kal saw the vein he was referring to and sealed it off. "This is...a little more difficult than in the textbooks," Bruce said tightly. There were beads of sweat on his forehead; Kal blew very lightly with cold breath and dried them. Bruce's smile was brief and strained. "We can do this," he said, almost to himself.
Kal didn't dare speak, didn't dare risk breaking his persona. He focused on the blood, on keeping it clear. He hardly noticed when someone lifted out a small, bluish thing, stained with blood. Bruce cut the cord binding it to the woman and Kal sealed that as well, then turned his attention back to the woman's body, checking the veins and arteries for leaks. "He's not breathing," someone said into the stillness. "Rub his limbs, clear his--"
The silence was broken by a shrill, outraged little howl, weak but insistent. The room breathed again, and a small commotion broke out around the baby: water splashing, people chattering. Bruce ignored it; he was threading a needle with some coarse thread. As Kal stared, he began to stitch the incision closed with tiny, careful stitches.
"I need some hot water here," Bruce said tersely, and the clump of people around the baby scattered to his aid. Somewhere in the chaos, someone put something into Kal's arms. He looked down to see the baby, mostly washed but still streaked with blood, its mouth working and its eyes closed tightly against the world, fists waving against the light.
Kal reached out and touched one of the tiny, angry fists. The emotions he had shunted aside during the operation threatened to come crashing in, but they were too big, too impossible to process. So he merely stood and held the baby.
The door of the shack slammed open and Kal looked up to see one of the men who had been working in the field standing there, his eyes wild. He hurried to the woman's side, taking her hand. "Janet!" One of the other women patted him on the back and whispered something to him, and he stood to stare at the bundle in Kal's arms. He held out his arms, then dropped them again. "May I hold my son, Master?"
Kal winced slightly and put the baby in his arms. "Of course," he said. The man stared down at the baby, who batted at his face with one tiny hand. He put one finger, raw and abraded with iao-sap, into the small palm and the baby's grip tightened around it. Two blood-stained fingers, clutching each other. "Thank you," he said rather gruffly to Bruce, then dropped a short bow to Kal. "Thank you, Master." His eyes were wary. "What name will you give him?"
"What?"
"You have the right to name him. He's your property."
Kal moved backwards and banged his head into a rafter. "He's your son. Any name you want to give him is fine."
For the first time, the man almost smiled. "Janet and I, we were thinking maybe Timothy."
"That sounds like a good name." The father nodded and went back to contemplating his son. Outside the shack, a woman's voice lifted in song, weary and triumphant and thankful. Other voices started to join in one by one, a ragged chorus in the twilight.
Bruce was scrubbing off his hands with a rag. He reached out and cleaned some of the blood off Kal's hands as well. "We need to head home, Master," he murmured.
"Yes," Kal said numbly. At the door, he turned back. "They need antibacterial agents for the incision, it'll get infected, she's not out of danger--"
"We never are," Bruce said very softly. "They'll take care of her. We need to get out of here before someone reports to Oswald that you're messing in slave affairs."
Kal left, careful to keep his feet above the dust of the road, his path wavering very slightly. The children stared as they passed.
: : :
Bruce turned off the tap water. "Master. That's enough."
Kal could still smell the blood on his hands, under the lather. "I can't get rid of it. Can't get my hands clean."
Bruce caught his hands up in a towel, rubbing off the soap. "Master." He paused. "Kal. You didn't take a life. You helped save one. Two." He searched Kal's eyes, his own narrowed. "Stay with me, all right?"
"I need to get--somewhere safe. Safe." Kal swiveled and went into the bedroom, into the circle of silence beyond which no one could hear him. He curled up on the chair and buried his head in his arms, shaking. "It's too big," he said as Bruce came into the room and sat down on the bed. "All too big. The...the life. And the pain. It's all--too much. I can't bear it." He couldn't seem to stop shaking.
"You can," Bruce said. "You have to." The lights dimmed; there was a rustling as Bruce changed into night clothes. Had Kal removed his collar? Yes, he had a dim memory of that. But that memory was outside this room, outside the circle, far away.
He didn't know what he was feeling.
"It's too big for me," he said again. Silence met him and he shuddered within it.
"It's not too big for us," Bruce eventually said quietly into the darkness.
After a while, the shaking subsided as the stillness of the room calmed Kal's heart rate. He should get up and move to the couch, he knew. It was his night to sleep on the couch. Outside the circle. Somehow he couldn't seem to face the idea of being outside that circle tonight, beyond the line of absolute silence that would cut him off from Bruce. He didn't want to be out in that world. He wandered between sleep and waking, waiting for Bruce to point out he needed to go.
At some point, still waiting, he slipped into sleep in earnest.
He woke in the morning to the sound of Bruce snoring slightly in the bed.
Kal shifted slightly and found that sometime during the night, someone had tucked a blanket around his sleeping form.