FIC: Found in Translation
Title: Found in Translation
Pairing/Characters: Clark/Bruce
Notes: Sequel to Family Legacy, an AU based off of Superman/Batman 50, in which Jor-El and Thomas Wayne meet before Krypton is destroyed. I'm assuming a "Birthright"-based Clark who has only discovered his own heritage fairly recently.
Rating: PG
Warnings: None needed.
Summary: Clark Kent can't understand Bruce Wayne in any language.
Word Count: 2000
The room spun around Clark and he landed with a wumph that knocked the air from his lungs a little. He wasn't actually hurt, of course, but he lay on his back for a bit, admiring the ceiling. It was walnut and intricately carved, darkened with time, glossy with age.
All the ceilings in Wayne Manor looked like that.
A form peered into his range of vision: a figure in a white gi, brushing slightly shaggy dark hair out of his eyes. "You don't have to let me throw you," Bruce Wayne said irritably. He held out a hand to Clark.
Ignoring the outstretched hand, Clark propped himself up on an elbow. "I didn't let you do anything. You're the one who's been studying klurkor half your life, not me. It's no surprise you're better than I am."
Bruce rubbed the back of his head. "I keep forgetting that."
"Yeah, well, I'm a beginner at all this." Clark had barely started to grasp the language spoken in the Kryptonian datapad; to find a human capable of speaking it fluently had been...a shock. A glorious shock, a joyous shock, but one that Clark had to admit was mixed with some resentment. Why should this dark-haired stranger have grown up with access to information Clark had never had?
Except of course Bruce Wayne was no stranger to him now. He was the only person besides Clark's parents who knew his secret identity, the only person skilled enough to fight alongside him as an equal. In the last few months since their first meeting, they had stopped Eclipso, defeated Doctor Destiny, imprisoned the Parasite. Either of them alone would have been a powerful protector for their city; together they were practically unbeatable.
And when they weren't fighting alongside each other, they were studying and training together. Martial arts, language, strategy, technology--together they created an elaborate series of hand signals for secret communication, hacked into Lex Luthor's computers, incorporated both karate and flying maneuvers into their teamwork.
By now, there was no one in the world who understood Clark Kent better than Bruce Wayne did.
So why didn't Clark feel like he understood Bruce?
Part of it was the language. Bruce had a tendency to slip into Kryptonian at times, as if he assumed Clark could do so as easily and naturally. So there were times that Clark literally didn't understand him. And asking someone to repeat themselves in your own planet's language was embarrassing at best. But it was more than that.
"Let's work on the car," Clark said abruptly, realizing he was just standing and staring at Bruce. Together they went down into the cave, Bruce discarding his gi with a total lack of self-consciousness and changing into overalls. Clark changed too, although at super-speed, his mind still on the conundrum of the other man.
He understood Bruce perfectly well in so many ways. Bruce had told him all about his parents, about his wanderings across the world, his searching for something more than vengeance to guide his life. And yet there was a sense of reserve about him at all times, a feeling that he was holding part of himself back. Clark wasn't sure what that part was, but he could feel it between them, like a wall of perfectly clear ice he couldn't get through. He shared everything with Bruce, he thought almost angrily as he crawled under the car, staring up at its humming crystalline engine. Why wouldn't Bruce do the same with him?
He hardly saw the work he was doing as he and Bruce started to calibrate the engine. Bruce added a few new crystals to the matrix, and the light shifted from blue to violet. They were lying side by side on the floor, almost touching as they looked upward at the maze of crystal and wires. "I think if we turn this one ninety degrees we should get something of a speed boost," Bruce said.
Clark just grunted, staring up at the crystals that were his birthright. He didn't understand them as well as Bruce did. Bruce should have been the Kryptonian, he thought suddenly, bitterly. He was the one who was hard to read and opaque and strange, not Clark. Bruce asked for a wrench and Clark handed it to him, feeling their fingers brush together. The touch started a clamor of emotions in him that he couldn't seem to decipher: anger and resentment and jealousy tangled up with other things that he couldn't see as clearly, things that made his heart pound and his throat dry.
Bruce shifted even closer to Clark, until his hair brushed Clark's cheek. Clark realized a couple of things abruptly: one was that his eyes were stinging, and the other was that Bruce had stopped working on the car and was just lying there, staring up into the engine. He heard Bruce swallow hard once, then twice. "I always wanted a brother," Bruce said, his voice barely audible over the quiet hum of the crystal engines. "And I thought I had one at last when I found you. Zhelyl varyntheniano shar, urgothun, zhelyl i-athioldiv," he finished. His voice was shaking slightly, but Clark hardly noticed it over the sudden rush of emotion too thick to untangle, too strong to keep at bay anymore.
He stood up abruptly, not bothering to move from under the car, simply lifting it over his head. "I don't understand you!" he heard himself shouting down at Bruce, who was still lying on the floor, his dark eyes wide as if he thought Clark intended to pummel him with the car. "You use my own language and you know I don't understand it like you do, you're just--you're just mocking me!" Somehow he felt absurdly young and vulnerable despite the fact he had a car hoisted over his head. "All I am to you is some kind of extra artifact you can use in your mission. You don't give a damn about me as a person--" He heard the hurt choke his voice, too late to recall it, saw Bruce's eyes narrow, and knew he couldn't stay a moment longer. He put the car down carefully and was airborne instants later, on his way to Kansas, far from the baffling eyes that made his chest hurt, the voice that spoke like music he couldn't understand, couldn't understand.
His parents weren't at home and he found himself sitting in the barn, the sweet smell of hay and the occasional stamping of the horses a balm to his ragged emotions. The bars of sunlight across the floor were turning long and golden by the time the other sound finally registered--a thin, light singing noise, as if someone were running their finger along the rim of a goblet of finest crystal. Light was beginning to fill the air--not the golden light of sunset, but a clear, glassy green radiance. Slowly he opened the capsule he had arrived in, and light washed out over his hands; the memory of green pain made him jerk back reflexively, but there was no burning, no agony, just warmth and a faint scent like flowers.
He lifted the glowing green crystal up, staring at the runes that chased each other across its surface like quicksilver. He could make out a word here and there: home and creation and solitude. Carefully, laboriously, he began to translate the glimmering words.
When he was done, he held the crystal and felt excitement and anticipation welling in him. He could see it in his mind's eye, how the spires would lift into the sky, creating a Kryptonian palace for him, a place where he could study and rest. He would build it in the Arctic, far from any human eyes, and he would...
He would...
After a long moment, he sighed and set the crystal down. Then he turned back to the capsule, accessed the Kryptonian database, and began to look up each word Bruce had said to him hours before.
: : :
The cave was nearly pitch-black when Clark returned to it. "Bruce?" he said softly. The crystal chimed as if in response to the word, sending a sharp gleam of jade light through the darkness. He raised his voice. "Bruce?" The crystal crooned echoes and glimmers of alien delight, but the cave was empty.
He found Bruce on top of the Manor, his back to a chimney, still wearing his overalls and staring out at the distant lights of Gotham. "I'm sorry," Bruce said without preamble as Clark landed beside him. His voice was brusque and businesslike.
His eyes were not.
"I don't always think about these things," he continued before Clark could say anything. "I've studied Kryptonian for so long that there are...things I can't say in English, that I can only express in Kryptonian. Important things. Things that--" He broke off as he noticed the green crystal Clark was holding out between them in his cupped hands. "What's that?"
"It's a--a refuge-constructing-crystal," Clark said. "It doesn't translate well into English," he added sheepishly, and was rewarded by a ghost of a smile on Bruce's solemn face. "If we 'plant' it somewhere cold, somewhere isolated, it will become a sort of...fortress. A giant crystal supercomputer."
Bruce's expression sharpened, craving. Then he looked up at Clark. "'We'?" The word was small and slightly doubtful.
"Bruce." Clark had to stop for a moment as the crystal throbbed in his hand as if in response to the tone of his voice. "All I could think of when I imagined building this was the look on your face, how much you'd love to explore it. All my thoughts were of sharing it with you. You might be the most annoying, baffling, impossible person on this or any other planet--" Bruce's expression wavered between denial and laughter and Clark went on hastily before he became distracted by trying to translate the play of emotions, "--but I want to share this with you. I want to share everything with you." His voice shook slightly on the last sentence, but he ignored it, moved forward to take Bruce's hand and close it over the crystal with his.
The crystal burst into silver-green light as bright as phosphorus.
: : :
"I hadn't planned on bad weather," Clark managed over the howl of wind and blur of snowflakes. "Maybe we should come back later."
"No way," Bruce retorted, his voice muffled by the protective mask, his eyes invisible behind heavy goggles. "I'm not doing this twice." He gestured toward Clark. "What's next?"
Clark looked at the glimmering silvery runes, although he knew them by heart now. "I'm supposed to hurl it far from me and let it, uh...blossom into being."
"Well," said Bruce, "What are you waiting for?"
Clark hefted the crystal and threw it into the howling storm, aiming for an icy pool he had spotted in the distance. He saw it arc high into the air, a fleck of shining mica in a torrent of snow, saw it drop lightly back to earth.
As it touched the water, the storm dropped out of existence as if snuffed by a giant hand. The wind stopped completely, the clouds dissipating and collapsing like a film on fast-forward. An eerie silence descended.
Then Clark could hear it: a great, musical creaking, like ice floes shattering. In the distance, he could see the massive gleaming spires lifting from the ice, a graceful diagonal lattice that shone in the sudden sunlight like diamonds. "Shurra," Bruce whispered next to him; Clark looked over to see he had torn off his face mask and goggles. "Magnificent." His eyes were shining and his face flushed as he turned to Clark. "Your Fortress," he breathed. "It's magnificent."
"Ours," Clark corrected him gently, and saw the brightness in his eyes kindle into something deeper and warmer. "Our Fortress."
As they made their way across the ice, the keening song of the massive crystals like flame in both their veins, Clark heard in his memory once again Bruce's voice speaking Kryptonian as his hair touched Clark's cheek, his voice like music, a tentative melody:
"But you have become my more-than-brother, my other self; become the other half of my heart indeed."
Pairing/Characters: Clark/Bruce
Notes: Sequel to Family Legacy, an AU based off of Superman/Batman 50, in which Jor-El and Thomas Wayne meet before Krypton is destroyed. I'm assuming a "Birthright"-based Clark who has only discovered his own heritage fairly recently.
Rating: PG
Warnings: None needed.
Summary: Clark Kent can't understand Bruce Wayne in any language.
Word Count: 2000
The room spun around Clark and he landed with a wumph that knocked the air from his lungs a little. He wasn't actually hurt, of course, but he lay on his back for a bit, admiring the ceiling. It was walnut and intricately carved, darkened with time, glossy with age.
All the ceilings in Wayne Manor looked like that.
A form peered into his range of vision: a figure in a white gi, brushing slightly shaggy dark hair out of his eyes. "You don't have to let me throw you," Bruce Wayne said irritably. He held out a hand to Clark.
Ignoring the outstretched hand, Clark propped himself up on an elbow. "I didn't let you do anything. You're the one who's been studying klurkor half your life, not me. It's no surprise you're better than I am."
Bruce rubbed the back of his head. "I keep forgetting that."
"Yeah, well, I'm a beginner at all this." Clark had barely started to grasp the language spoken in the Kryptonian datapad; to find a human capable of speaking it fluently had been...a shock. A glorious shock, a joyous shock, but one that Clark had to admit was mixed with some resentment. Why should this dark-haired stranger have grown up with access to information Clark had never had?
Except of course Bruce Wayne was no stranger to him now. He was the only person besides Clark's parents who knew his secret identity, the only person skilled enough to fight alongside him as an equal. In the last few months since their first meeting, they had stopped Eclipso, defeated Doctor Destiny, imprisoned the Parasite. Either of them alone would have been a powerful protector for their city; together they were practically unbeatable.
And when they weren't fighting alongside each other, they were studying and training together. Martial arts, language, strategy, technology--together they created an elaborate series of hand signals for secret communication, hacked into Lex Luthor's computers, incorporated both karate and flying maneuvers into their teamwork.
By now, there was no one in the world who understood Clark Kent better than Bruce Wayne did.
So why didn't Clark feel like he understood Bruce?
Part of it was the language. Bruce had a tendency to slip into Kryptonian at times, as if he assumed Clark could do so as easily and naturally. So there were times that Clark literally didn't understand him. And asking someone to repeat themselves in your own planet's language was embarrassing at best. But it was more than that.
"Let's work on the car," Clark said abruptly, realizing he was just standing and staring at Bruce. Together they went down into the cave, Bruce discarding his gi with a total lack of self-consciousness and changing into overalls. Clark changed too, although at super-speed, his mind still on the conundrum of the other man.
He understood Bruce perfectly well in so many ways. Bruce had told him all about his parents, about his wanderings across the world, his searching for something more than vengeance to guide his life. And yet there was a sense of reserve about him at all times, a feeling that he was holding part of himself back. Clark wasn't sure what that part was, but he could feel it between them, like a wall of perfectly clear ice he couldn't get through. He shared everything with Bruce, he thought almost angrily as he crawled under the car, staring up at its humming crystalline engine. Why wouldn't Bruce do the same with him?
He hardly saw the work he was doing as he and Bruce started to calibrate the engine. Bruce added a few new crystals to the matrix, and the light shifted from blue to violet. They were lying side by side on the floor, almost touching as they looked upward at the maze of crystal and wires. "I think if we turn this one ninety degrees we should get something of a speed boost," Bruce said.
Clark just grunted, staring up at the crystals that were his birthright. He didn't understand them as well as Bruce did. Bruce should have been the Kryptonian, he thought suddenly, bitterly. He was the one who was hard to read and opaque and strange, not Clark. Bruce asked for a wrench and Clark handed it to him, feeling their fingers brush together. The touch started a clamor of emotions in him that he couldn't seem to decipher: anger and resentment and jealousy tangled up with other things that he couldn't see as clearly, things that made his heart pound and his throat dry.
Bruce shifted even closer to Clark, until his hair brushed Clark's cheek. Clark realized a couple of things abruptly: one was that his eyes were stinging, and the other was that Bruce had stopped working on the car and was just lying there, staring up into the engine. He heard Bruce swallow hard once, then twice. "I always wanted a brother," Bruce said, his voice barely audible over the quiet hum of the crystal engines. "And I thought I had one at last when I found you. Zhelyl varyntheniano shar, urgothun, zhelyl i-athioldiv," he finished. His voice was shaking slightly, but Clark hardly noticed it over the sudden rush of emotion too thick to untangle, too strong to keep at bay anymore.
He stood up abruptly, not bothering to move from under the car, simply lifting it over his head. "I don't understand you!" he heard himself shouting down at Bruce, who was still lying on the floor, his dark eyes wide as if he thought Clark intended to pummel him with the car. "You use my own language and you know I don't understand it like you do, you're just--you're just mocking me!" Somehow he felt absurdly young and vulnerable despite the fact he had a car hoisted over his head. "All I am to you is some kind of extra artifact you can use in your mission. You don't give a damn about me as a person--" He heard the hurt choke his voice, too late to recall it, saw Bruce's eyes narrow, and knew he couldn't stay a moment longer. He put the car down carefully and was airborne instants later, on his way to Kansas, far from the baffling eyes that made his chest hurt, the voice that spoke like music he couldn't understand, couldn't understand.
His parents weren't at home and he found himself sitting in the barn, the sweet smell of hay and the occasional stamping of the horses a balm to his ragged emotions. The bars of sunlight across the floor were turning long and golden by the time the other sound finally registered--a thin, light singing noise, as if someone were running their finger along the rim of a goblet of finest crystal. Light was beginning to fill the air--not the golden light of sunset, but a clear, glassy green radiance. Slowly he opened the capsule he had arrived in, and light washed out over his hands; the memory of green pain made him jerk back reflexively, but there was no burning, no agony, just warmth and a faint scent like flowers.
He lifted the glowing green crystal up, staring at the runes that chased each other across its surface like quicksilver. He could make out a word here and there: home and creation and solitude. Carefully, laboriously, he began to translate the glimmering words.
When he was done, he held the crystal and felt excitement and anticipation welling in him. He could see it in his mind's eye, how the spires would lift into the sky, creating a Kryptonian palace for him, a place where he could study and rest. He would build it in the Arctic, far from any human eyes, and he would...
He would...
After a long moment, he sighed and set the crystal down. Then he turned back to the capsule, accessed the Kryptonian database, and began to look up each word Bruce had said to him hours before.
: : :
The cave was nearly pitch-black when Clark returned to it. "Bruce?" he said softly. The crystal chimed as if in response to the word, sending a sharp gleam of jade light through the darkness. He raised his voice. "Bruce?" The crystal crooned echoes and glimmers of alien delight, but the cave was empty.
He found Bruce on top of the Manor, his back to a chimney, still wearing his overalls and staring out at the distant lights of Gotham. "I'm sorry," Bruce said without preamble as Clark landed beside him. His voice was brusque and businesslike.
His eyes were not.
"I don't always think about these things," he continued before Clark could say anything. "I've studied Kryptonian for so long that there are...things I can't say in English, that I can only express in Kryptonian. Important things. Things that--" He broke off as he noticed the green crystal Clark was holding out between them in his cupped hands. "What's that?"
"It's a--a refuge-constructing-crystal," Clark said. "It doesn't translate well into English," he added sheepishly, and was rewarded by a ghost of a smile on Bruce's solemn face. "If we 'plant' it somewhere cold, somewhere isolated, it will become a sort of...fortress. A giant crystal supercomputer."
Bruce's expression sharpened, craving. Then he looked up at Clark. "'We'?" The word was small and slightly doubtful.
"Bruce." Clark had to stop for a moment as the crystal throbbed in his hand as if in response to the tone of his voice. "All I could think of when I imagined building this was the look on your face, how much you'd love to explore it. All my thoughts were of sharing it with you. You might be the most annoying, baffling, impossible person on this or any other planet--" Bruce's expression wavered between denial and laughter and Clark went on hastily before he became distracted by trying to translate the play of emotions, "--but I want to share this with you. I want to share everything with you." His voice shook slightly on the last sentence, but he ignored it, moved forward to take Bruce's hand and close it over the crystal with his.
The crystal burst into silver-green light as bright as phosphorus.
: : :
"I hadn't planned on bad weather," Clark managed over the howl of wind and blur of snowflakes. "Maybe we should come back later."
"No way," Bruce retorted, his voice muffled by the protective mask, his eyes invisible behind heavy goggles. "I'm not doing this twice." He gestured toward Clark. "What's next?"
Clark looked at the glimmering silvery runes, although he knew them by heart now. "I'm supposed to hurl it far from me and let it, uh...blossom into being."
"Well," said Bruce, "What are you waiting for?"
Clark hefted the crystal and threw it into the howling storm, aiming for an icy pool he had spotted in the distance. He saw it arc high into the air, a fleck of shining mica in a torrent of snow, saw it drop lightly back to earth.
As it touched the water, the storm dropped out of existence as if snuffed by a giant hand. The wind stopped completely, the clouds dissipating and collapsing like a film on fast-forward. An eerie silence descended.
Then Clark could hear it: a great, musical creaking, like ice floes shattering. In the distance, he could see the massive gleaming spires lifting from the ice, a graceful diagonal lattice that shone in the sudden sunlight like diamonds. "Shurra," Bruce whispered next to him; Clark looked over to see he had torn off his face mask and goggles. "Magnificent." His eyes were shining and his face flushed as he turned to Clark. "Your Fortress," he breathed. "It's magnificent."
"Ours," Clark corrected him gently, and saw the brightness in his eyes kindle into something deeper and warmer. "Our Fortress."
As they made their way across the ice, the keening song of the massive crystals like flame in both their veins, Clark heard in his memory once again Bruce's voice speaking Kryptonian as his hair touched Clark's cheek, his voice like music, a tentative melody:
"But you have become my more-than-brother, my other self; become the other half of my heart indeed."