FIC: Family Legacy
Title: Family Legacy
Pairing/Characters: Clark, Bruce, Thomas Wayne
Notes: An AU based off of Superman/Batman 50, in which Jor-El and Thomas Wayne meet before Krypton is destroyed.
Rating: G
Summary: Bruce Wayne discovers a family secret that changes his life.
Word Count: 2200
Bruce hears the car start up. The trunk is dark and close and the suitcase just takes up more space. He tries to breathe slowly, tries not to think about running out of air. No one has found him so far; he's done it, he thinks, feeling a surge of excitement.
The car bumps along for a long time and soon the rhythm of the tires on the road becomes soothing. Bruce finds himself dozing, slipping in between dreams and waking as the adrenaline wears off and tedium sets in. He went without drinking anything for as long as possible before this morning, but eventually biological urges reassert themselves; he winces and grits his teeth, refusing to give himself away. He has to hold out as long as possible.
Many hours later, the car comes to a stop. He hears footsteps on gravel, a key in the lock, and braces himself. The trunk is opened and the harsh light of a streetlamp glares into his eyes, blinding him for a moment. He squints up at the dark figure looming over the trunk.
"What the hell?" says Thomas Wayne.
"Hello, Father," says Bruce, trying to smile.
: : :
"Yes, Martha, he's fine," Bruce's father sighed into the phone receiver. "A little tired, but fine." Bruce was sitting next to him on a hard motel bed; the sounds coming out of the receiver made him feel like maybe this adventure hadn't been such a great idea after all.
"I don't see as we have any choice," Thomas said in response to some of those sounds. "The little nipper's a stubborn one." He rumpled Bruce's hair roughly and Bruce felt an incongruous glow of pride. "Takes after his mother. No, I don't think he's going to give up on this."
After he hung up the phone, Thomas turned to Bruce, his face very serious. "Bruce, why did you do that?"
"Well." Bruce bit his lip. "Every year around this time you go on a trip. And...I noticed you had maps to Kansas. And I wondered if this was why we always get that newspaper from that town in Kansas. And I was...curious." He wasn't sure how to explain it was more that that, how he had noticed a suppressed excitement in his mother and father's voices sometimes when they read the Smallville Register, the look in their eyes when the state of Kansas came up at random in conversations. Like there was a secret there, something big. Something exciting. "I promise I won't tell, Father! I promise!"
Thomas was looking at him with his brow furrowed, a speculative look that made Bruce feel both warmed and worried. He tried not to squirm on the hard mattress, tried to sit up straight and show how mature and responsible he was. "You're not going to let this mystery go, are you, son?"
"Um. No, sir," Bruce said, and his father threw back his head and laughed.
"I suppose you have a right to know. And if, God forbid, anything happens to your mother and I, it will be your responsibility. Do you understand that?" he said mock-seriously, but Bruce nodded fervently.
Thomas opened his suitcase and took out a small golden ovoid. When he tapped the top, it levitated slightly--Bruce's mouth fell open--and a brilliant blue beam shot out from it, fanning out to become images, flickering pictures of people in flying cars, buildings like the ones in his favorite Flash Gordon comics, beautiful people in strange alien clothes...
"Golly," Bruce breathed, "What is it?"
So Thomas Wayne walked his son through the use of the machine and explained how eight years ago, he and his wife had been driving through Smallville and found a UFO, how Thomas had been transported to a strange doomed place called Krypton and spoke to a man named Jor-El, a man who needed to know if Earth would be a good place to send his son Kal-El. Bruce stared as the people in the images spoke in a strange language--all of them long dead, he thought suddenly. Only that little baby left. "You go back every year to check on the baby," he realised.
Thomas nodded. "He's not a baby anymore, he's your age."
"Do you talk to him?" Talking to a space alien! Bruce's mind reeled, but his hopes were dashed when Thomas shook his head.
"Your mother and I were going to go back and try and adopt him, raise him as your brother, but then you showed up and your mother was so sick for a while. By the time we got back, he'd already been taken in by a very nice couple and we didn't want to interfere. I go every year just to see how he's doing, then go back. I don't want to upset his family."
Crushing disappointment. He'd almost had an alien for a brother! And now he wasn't even allowed to talk to him! The unfairness of life overwhelmed Bruce for a moment. His father must have caught his crestfallen mood, because his pulled Bruce into a one-armed hug. "Tell you what, when you get a little older I'll let you use the machine to learn more about Krypton."
"Really?" Getting to play with alien toys was a close second to having an alien brother, and Bruce was somewhat consoled. He watched raptly as his father played a few more visuals of Krypton, and went to bed without complaint, exhausted from the day's excitement.
He heard the liquid, starry sounds of Kryptonian in his dreams.
: : :
Smallville was like a town in a television show, Bruce thought as they drove down Main Street. Big leafy trees edged the road, and the brick buildings lined up neatly along it. "He goes to school here," his father said as they pulled up in front of a small white building. They got out of the car and strolled along the sidewalk as if they were sightseeing.
A bell rang and kids streamed out of the school to the playground, falling into the familiar patterns of hopscotch, jump rope, and kickball Bruce was used to in his own school. He stared at the mass of kids in bright clothing, trying to figure out which one was the last survivor of that beautiful and dreamlike world he had seen. "There he is," murmured his father. "In the blue and green sweater."
The boy's dark hair had a cowlick at the back, and he was wearing ridiculously thick glasses and carrying a book, holding himself with a slouching, reserved shyness. He circled the groups of kids playing marbles, four-square, and tag, always on the edges, watching. Other kids smiled at him and talked with him, but he always moved on, not really joining in. Bruce felt disappointment squeeze his heart like anger as the kid eventually ambled away to sit on a rock and open his book. He wasn't sure what he had expected--maybe someone surrounded by friends, able to kick a kickball across the whole field, the center of attention, glowing like a god--but he hadn't expected that.
"He's boring," he muttered sullenly. "There isn't anything special about him at all."
His father crouched down to look Bruce in the eye. "He's a stranger from another world. He'll never be the same as the rest of those kids. He has to try every single day to fit in, to not frighten the other kids. That's pretty special."
Bruce hooked his fingers into the chain link fence and scuffed his foot against the concrete at the base. "That's nothing special. I wanted him to be different. Different from me."
A long silence. Bruce re-heard his words echo a few times. Then his father's hand ruffled his hair, surprisingly gently, as Bruce glared at the links in the fence and felt his eyes burning. "I think, son, that in the long run you'll discover that finding people like you is more of a treasure than people who are different from you."
A bell rang inside the building and the kids started to pelt into the school. The alien boy was still sitting on the rock, his book open on his lap. He was staring up at the sky. "Clark!" hollered a teacher, and the boy started and jumped up to hurry inside.
"He's our secret," Thomas Wayne said as they watched him disappear indoors. "And to some extent our responsibility. You understand?"
"Yes, Father," said Bruce.
: : :
The night that everything falls apart, Bruce finds himself remembering the boy. Now we're both orphans. We're both the last. The rain starts to rattle the windows of the Manor. He finds himself wondering what book the boy had been reading, what his voice sounded like.
Clark, he thinks. Clark Kent.
My alien brother.
: : :
He doesn't go back to Smallville. At first it's impossible, and as he gets older, silence and purpose crystallizing around him, he doesn't quite trust himself not to say something. He reads the Register, he tracks every bit of information about the town, about the Kents. He knows when Clark wins a spelling bee. He knows when there start to be reports of strange phenomena, odd happenings. He knows what's going on, and he feels the secret and the responsibility like a warmth and a weight in his mind, in his heart.
When he's learning computer code, the first files he hacks into are Clark's school records. No surprises there, but he feels a rush of accomplishment when he sees the information scrolling across the screen.
There are long years when he isn't in the country at all, times when every day is a series of bone-jarring training sessions and exhausted sleep, times when hunger dogs him until he can hardly think at all. He has a purpose, he knows he does, but he's not sure what it is yet. It's real, a weight that pulls him around the world, searching.
When he can dream through his exhaustion, he dreams of the spires of Krypton. He dreams in the language he's been studying every moment he has the chance.
He learns--judo, archery, lockpicking, dancing, mountain climbing, yoga--and learns some more. He's gathering skills and information, but somehow it doesn't come together. He's looking for something. He doesn't know quite what he's looking for. He searches the world. He dreams in Kryptonian.
He comes home and begins to put certain systems in place. He isn't ready yet. He isn't exactly sure what he's waiting for, what he's preparing for. But he knows he'll be ready for whatever it is.
: : :
When Clark Kent goes to Metropolis, Bruce uses his pull at the Star, the second-best paper in the whole city, to get the kid offered a job.
When Clark gets a position at the best paper in the city, Bruce makes two resolutions: to acquire stock in the Daily Planet, and to never underestimate Clark Kent again.
: : :
He's watching the news when it happens: a falling plane, a streak of blue and red. He's standing up. He doesn't remember standing up. He feels a wave of exultation, of recognition. Clark, he thinks.
The boy catches the plane out of the sky, and of course he's not a boy anymore, Bruce isn't sure why he's been thinking of him as "the kid." He's on the television and without the glasses and slouch he should look totally different, but he doesn't. He smiles and it's a shy smile, diffident. The smile of a person who wants to do the right thing.
Who doesn't want to do it alone.
This is what Bruce has been looking for, of course, he realizes at that moment. There in Smallville all along, and now in Metropolis.
Bruce finds himself pacing the floor. He has the skills. He has the will. What he needs is...something. Something like the Kryptonian symbol for hope over Clark's heart. He needs a sign, to make him a symbol, to make him something more than human as well, in a different way. He needs to be more than Bruce Wayne, just like the shining figure in the sky has become more than Clark Kent. He needs a sign, an emblem, a thing he can become. Not of hope. Something else.
There's a crash against the window, glass falling. Bruce looks up, startled.
The fluttering shadow falls across him.
: : :
His first patrol in costume was three nights ago. His decel line is reinforced with crystalline alloys, none of which the planet has ever seen before. He knows fighting styles that give the thugs on the street nightmares, inhuman moves that leave them gasping, wordless.
Batman is on a roof under a red harvest moon when he comes, cleaving the sky to touch down lightly in front of him. His face is curious, not hostile. Almost hopeful.
Bruce bows slightly. < Kal-El, > he says in flawless Kryptonian. < I am pleased to meet you at last. My name is Bruce. >
His alien brother smiles in wonder.
Pairing/Characters: Clark, Bruce, Thomas Wayne
Notes: An AU based off of Superman/Batman 50, in which Jor-El and Thomas Wayne meet before Krypton is destroyed.
Rating: G
Summary: Bruce Wayne discovers a family secret that changes his life.
Word Count: 2200
Bruce hears the car start up. The trunk is dark and close and the suitcase just takes up more space. He tries to breathe slowly, tries not to think about running out of air. No one has found him so far; he's done it, he thinks, feeling a surge of excitement.
The car bumps along for a long time and soon the rhythm of the tires on the road becomes soothing. Bruce finds himself dozing, slipping in between dreams and waking as the adrenaline wears off and tedium sets in. He went without drinking anything for as long as possible before this morning, but eventually biological urges reassert themselves; he winces and grits his teeth, refusing to give himself away. He has to hold out as long as possible.
Many hours later, the car comes to a stop. He hears footsteps on gravel, a key in the lock, and braces himself. The trunk is opened and the harsh light of a streetlamp glares into his eyes, blinding him for a moment. He squints up at the dark figure looming over the trunk.
"What the hell?" says Thomas Wayne.
"Hello, Father," says Bruce, trying to smile.
: : :
"Yes, Martha, he's fine," Bruce's father sighed into the phone receiver. "A little tired, but fine." Bruce was sitting next to him on a hard motel bed; the sounds coming out of the receiver made him feel like maybe this adventure hadn't been such a great idea after all.
"I don't see as we have any choice," Thomas said in response to some of those sounds. "The little nipper's a stubborn one." He rumpled Bruce's hair roughly and Bruce felt an incongruous glow of pride. "Takes after his mother. No, I don't think he's going to give up on this."
After he hung up the phone, Thomas turned to Bruce, his face very serious. "Bruce, why did you do that?"
"Well." Bruce bit his lip. "Every year around this time you go on a trip. And...I noticed you had maps to Kansas. And I wondered if this was why we always get that newspaper from that town in Kansas. And I was...curious." He wasn't sure how to explain it was more that that, how he had noticed a suppressed excitement in his mother and father's voices sometimes when they read the Smallville Register, the look in their eyes when the state of Kansas came up at random in conversations. Like there was a secret there, something big. Something exciting. "I promise I won't tell, Father! I promise!"
Thomas was looking at him with his brow furrowed, a speculative look that made Bruce feel both warmed and worried. He tried not to squirm on the hard mattress, tried to sit up straight and show how mature and responsible he was. "You're not going to let this mystery go, are you, son?"
"Um. No, sir," Bruce said, and his father threw back his head and laughed.
"I suppose you have a right to know. And if, God forbid, anything happens to your mother and I, it will be your responsibility. Do you understand that?" he said mock-seriously, but Bruce nodded fervently.
Thomas opened his suitcase and took out a small golden ovoid. When he tapped the top, it levitated slightly--Bruce's mouth fell open--and a brilliant blue beam shot out from it, fanning out to become images, flickering pictures of people in flying cars, buildings like the ones in his favorite Flash Gordon comics, beautiful people in strange alien clothes...
"Golly," Bruce breathed, "What is it?"
So Thomas Wayne walked his son through the use of the machine and explained how eight years ago, he and his wife had been driving through Smallville and found a UFO, how Thomas had been transported to a strange doomed place called Krypton and spoke to a man named Jor-El, a man who needed to know if Earth would be a good place to send his son Kal-El. Bruce stared as the people in the images spoke in a strange language--all of them long dead, he thought suddenly. Only that little baby left. "You go back every year to check on the baby," he realised.
Thomas nodded. "He's not a baby anymore, he's your age."
"Do you talk to him?" Talking to a space alien! Bruce's mind reeled, but his hopes were dashed when Thomas shook his head.
"Your mother and I were going to go back and try and adopt him, raise him as your brother, but then you showed up and your mother was so sick for a while. By the time we got back, he'd already been taken in by a very nice couple and we didn't want to interfere. I go every year just to see how he's doing, then go back. I don't want to upset his family."
Crushing disappointment. He'd almost had an alien for a brother! And now he wasn't even allowed to talk to him! The unfairness of life overwhelmed Bruce for a moment. His father must have caught his crestfallen mood, because his pulled Bruce into a one-armed hug. "Tell you what, when you get a little older I'll let you use the machine to learn more about Krypton."
"Really?" Getting to play with alien toys was a close second to having an alien brother, and Bruce was somewhat consoled. He watched raptly as his father played a few more visuals of Krypton, and went to bed without complaint, exhausted from the day's excitement.
He heard the liquid, starry sounds of Kryptonian in his dreams.
: : :
Smallville was like a town in a television show, Bruce thought as they drove down Main Street. Big leafy trees edged the road, and the brick buildings lined up neatly along it. "He goes to school here," his father said as they pulled up in front of a small white building. They got out of the car and strolled along the sidewalk as if they were sightseeing.
A bell rang and kids streamed out of the school to the playground, falling into the familiar patterns of hopscotch, jump rope, and kickball Bruce was used to in his own school. He stared at the mass of kids in bright clothing, trying to figure out which one was the last survivor of that beautiful and dreamlike world he had seen. "There he is," murmured his father. "In the blue and green sweater."
The boy's dark hair had a cowlick at the back, and he was wearing ridiculously thick glasses and carrying a book, holding himself with a slouching, reserved shyness. He circled the groups of kids playing marbles, four-square, and tag, always on the edges, watching. Other kids smiled at him and talked with him, but he always moved on, not really joining in. Bruce felt disappointment squeeze his heart like anger as the kid eventually ambled away to sit on a rock and open his book. He wasn't sure what he had expected--maybe someone surrounded by friends, able to kick a kickball across the whole field, the center of attention, glowing like a god--but he hadn't expected that.
"He's boring," he muttered sullenly. "There isn't anything special about him at all."
His father crouched down to look Bruce in the eye. "He's a stranger from another world. He'll never be the same as the rest of those kids. He has to try every single day to fit in, to not frighten the other kids. That's pretty special."
Bruce hooked his fingers into the chain link fence and scuffed his foot against the concrete at the base. "That's nothing special. I wanted him to be different. Different from me."
A long silence. Bruce re-heard his words echo a few times. Then his father's hand ruffled his hair, surprisingly gently, as Bruce glared at the links in the fence and felt his eyes burning. "I think, son, that in the long run you'll discover that finding people like you is more of a treasure than people who are different from you."
A bell rang inside the building and the kids started to pelt into the school. The alien boy was still sitting on the rock, his book open on his lap. He was staring up at the sky. "Clark!" hollered a teacher, and the boy started and jumped up to hurry inside.
"He's our secret," Thomas Wayne said as they watched him disappear indoors. "And to some extent our responsibility. You understand?"
"Yes, Father," said Bruce.
: : :
The night that everything falls apart, Bruce finds himself remembering the boy. Now we're both orphans. We're both the last. The rain starts to rattle the windows of the Manor. He finds himself wondering what book the boy had been reading, what his voice sounded like.
Clark, he thinks. Clark Kent.
My alien brother.
: : :
He doesn't go back to Smallville. At first it's impossible, and as he gets older, silence and purpose crystallizing around him, he doesn't quite trust himself not to say something. He reads the Register, he tracks every bit of information about the town, about the Kents. He knows when Clark wins a spelling bee. He knows when there start to be reports of strange phenomena, odd happenings. He knows what's going on, and he feels the secret and the responsibility like a warmth and a weight in his mind, in his heart.
When he's learning computer code, the first files he hacks into are Clark's school records. No surprises there, but he feels a rush of accomplishment when he sees the information scrolling across the screen.
There are long years when he isn't in the country at all, times when every day is a series of bone-jarring training sessions and exhausted sleep, times when hunger dogs him until he can hardly think at all. He has a purpose, he knows he does, but he's not sure what it is yet. It's real, a weight that pulls him around the world, searching.
When he can dream through his exhaustion, he dreams of the spires of Krypton. He dreams in the language he's been studying every moment he has the chance.
He learns--judo, archery, lockpicking, dancing, mountain climbing, yoga--and learns some more. He's gathering skills and information, but somehow it doesn't come together. He's looking for something. He doesn't know quite what he's looking for. He searches the world. He dreams in Kryptonian.
He comes home and begins to put certain systems in place. He isn't ready yet. He isn't exactly sure what he's waiting for, what he's preparing for. But he knows he'll be ready for whatever it is.
: : :
When Clark Kent goes to Metropolis, Bruce uses his pull at the Star, the second-best paper in the whole city, to get the kid offered a job.
When Clark gets a position at the best paper in the city, Bruce makes two resolutions: to acquire stock in the Daily Planet, and to never underestimate Clark Kent again.
: : :
He's watching the news when it happens: a falling plane, a streak of blue and red. He's standing up. He doesn't remember standing up. He feels a wave of exultation, of recognition. Clark, he thinks.
The boy catches the plane out of the sky, and of course he's not a boy anymore, Bruce isn't sure why he's been thinking of him as "the kid." He's on the television and without the glasses and slouch he should look totally different, but he doesn't. He smiles and it's a shy smile, diffident. The smile of a person who wants to do the right thing.
Who doesn't want to do it alone.
This is what Bruce has been looking for, of course, he realizes at that moment. There in Smallville all along, and now in Metropolis.
Bruce finds himself pacing the floor. He has the skills. He has the will. What he needs is...something. Something like the Kryptonian symbol for hope over Clark's heart. He needs a sign, to make him a symbol, to make him something more than human as well, in a different way. He needs to be more than Bruce Wayne, just like the shining figure in the sky has become more than Clark Kent. He needs a sign, an emblem, a thing he can become. Not of hope. Something else.
There's a crash against the window, glass falling. Bruce looks up, startled.
The fluttering shadow falls across him.
: : :
His first patrol in costume was three nights ago. His decel line is reinforced with crystalline alloys, none of which the planet has ever seen before. He knows fighting styles that give the thugs on the street nightmares, inhuman moves that leave them gasping, wordless.
Batman is on a roof under a red harvest moon when he comes, cleaving the sky to touch down lightly in front of him. His face is curious, not hostile. Almost hopeful.
Bruce bows slightly. < Kal-El, > he says in flawless Kryptonian. < I am pleased to meet you at last. My name is Bruce. >
His alien brother smiles in wonder.