Music of the Spheres 9: Transformations
Pairing: Clark/Bruce
Disclaimer: The boys belong to DC and to each other, but not to me.
Notes: "Music of the Spheres" is a series set in the combined universes of "Batman Begins" and "Superman Returns." Other stories and notes on the series here.
Rating: PG for some violence
Summary: On All Hallow's Eve, the Faerie Queen stakes her claim to Kal's soul.
Word Count: 4692
I saw Eternity the other night,
Like a great ring of pure and endless light,
All calm, as it was bright;
And round beneath it, Time, in hours, days, years,
Driv'n by the spheres
Like a vast shadow moved...
Batman was standing at a crossroads. A distressingly literal crossroads, as a matter of fact. Close-cut grass like green velvet stretched out in all directions around him, an infinite, well-tended lawn. On the horizon he could dimly make out trees. A silvery mist crawled sinuously along the grass. He stood at the intersection of two roads paved with glittering cobblestones. A signpost made of something like ivory, etched with vermilion letters, indicated the two roads led to "Krypton" and "Faerie."
He looked down at himself, at the black armor wrought and etched with fantastic patterns. A helmet and visor hid his face; his black cape curled behind him in the muttering breeze.
Batman was being forced to seriously reconsider his previous dismissive stance on magic.
: : :
All Hallow's Eve had started well enough for him. He had hurried home from Gotham to examine his treasure, secured from Luthor's office during his early-morning visit: a tiny gleaming crystal, no more than an inch long. It must be from Kal's Fortress, it must be. Superman would forgive him for taking just a little time to look at it, just a few hours. He had conducted a hasty battery of tests on the glimmering thing, hardly pausing to look at the results--he could analyze them later. By ten-thirty, he was on top of a Gotham building, holding the communicator. He was getting the crystal back to Kal the same day he had found it. For some reason, that seemed important.
Kal's voice came over the device, sounding absurdly pleased to hear from him. "B? Happy Halloween. Must be your favorite holiday."
Batman grunted, cleared his throat. "Um, Kal. I found something when I was in Metropolis. I think it's one of your crystals." He heard the sharp intake of breath on the other end and continued hurriedly, "I was wondering if you'd be willing to come up to Gotham and get it?" Don't ask why I didn't just give it to you in Metropolis, don't ask why--
"I'll be right there! Do you really--I mean, do you think--" The hope in Kal's voice shamed him. "Anyway, I'll--" Superman's voice broke off again. Batman could suddenly hear screaming and a strange roaring noise on Kal's side. "What the hell...Batman? I might be a little delayed. Got a dragon problem here. Better sign off."
A dragon problem? "Just put the communicator in your ear, Kal, it'll keep working." He didn't want to miss this.
"All right." High-pitched screeching noises followed shortly thereafter; Batman heard a ripping sound and a grunt of pain on the other end. "B? This doesn't look good. I think this thing is magic."
"There's no such thing as magic, Kal," Batman explained.
Breaking glass. Kal's voice continued, sounding winded. "Magic is...an alternate quantum viewpoint. It's real. And I'm very vulnerable to it, B. I...I might need to bring this dragon up to Gotham and get some help from you."
Batman frowned. "Magic isn't real. Unless by 'magic' you mean the concept that any sufficiently advanced technology--"
"I'm aware of Clarke's Law," Kal's voice snapped. "Magic is something different, okay?"
"That's impossible, Kal. Dragons aren't real. They don't exist."
From the sky, like a shooting star, Superman appeared, fighting a silver dragon about ten feet long. The dragon roared and batted the Kryptonian out of the sky. He landed on his back near Batman; the concrete crazed on impact, cracks stretching to Batman's feet.
Superman rolled over painfully, glaring at Batman. "All right, B. You've convinced me with your unimpeachable logic. Magic isn't real. Dragons aren't real." He pointed up at the shining serpentine form coiling itself for a new attack. "Now, just convince the dragon of that and we'll have no problems." He gathered up his tattered cape and launched himself back into the sky.
Batman watched the spectacle, feeling a bit stunned. Why exactly had Superman thought he would be useful in this situation? He groped in his mind for information about dragons, found some story he had read as a child about how all dragons had a weak spot on their throats--there. A rough patch of brown in among the profusion of platinum scales. Before he could think about how ludicrous it all was, he threw a batarang at the spot with all his might.
If he was hoping for gouts of blood and a dramatic death, he was sorely disappointed. The impossible dragon merely coughed irritably and focused its attention on the annoying man in black. But Kal used the moment's distraction to gain the upper hand, and both dragon and man crashed to the ground in front of Batman.
The dragon--the creature that somehow looked like a dragon--seemed dazed. Superman put a foot on its throat, holding it down, and grinned at Batman. "Nice shot!"
The silver monster beneath his foot twisted and blurred and suddenly became a woman dressed in flowing silver robes, her star-pale face framed by flowing black hair, her eyes a smokey lilac. Kal involuntarily removed his foot from her throat. "Oh, I'm sorry."
The woman flowed sinuously to her feet and twined her arms around Superman's neck. "Perfect. You're perfect," she said in a husky voice.
She kissed Kal, her pale, silvery lips on his mouth.
His eyes closed.
The woman broke off the kiss and took Superman's hand, smiling. "Come, my Redcross Knight, my True Thomas, my love. Let me show you your new kingdom." She turned and shot Batman a smiling look of pure venom. Kal followed her gaze obediently, but his blue eyes were clouded and dull. He didn't seem to see Batman.
"Kal?" Everything seemed to be happening too fast. Magic wasn't real, Faerie Queens weren't real--
Kal and the woman had started to move through some sort of twisting, shimmering gate that hurt the eyes. Batman lunged forward, grabbed Superman's cape, held on.
And so the Dark Knight passed into the realm of Faerie, and found himself alone on the other side.
: : :
An eldritch light hung over the impossible field of smooth green, and the sky was thick with countless stars in no patterns Batman had ever seen before. He closed his eyes. Think, Bruce. Think. In every story, Faerie had laws that must be obeyed, they were merely not the normal scientific laws. What story was he in and what were the laws? He just had to figure them out.
"Redcross Knight," the woman had called Kal, and "True Thomas." The former was from Edmund Spenser's poem "The Faerie Queen," the latter from the Tam Lin folk songs. Both stories were about knights who were stolen by Faerie and had to be won back. As the Tam Lin stories featured a crossroads on Halloween, he would have to assume that story was the working paradigm here.
He wracked his mind to remember the basics of the Tam Lin fable. There were so many versions...but in almost all of them, the heroine was visited by her lover and given advice on how to free him from the clutches of Faerie, by standing and waiting at a crossroads on Halloween. The Faerie court would ride by, and the would-be rescuer was to seize the man on a white horse:
"First let pass the black, he said,
And then let pass the brown,
But when ye meet the milk-white steed,
Pull ye the rider down."
The Faerie Queen would put the knight through a series of transformations into vicious animals, but the rescuer was told to hold tightly no matter what:
"They'll turn me in thy arms into
An adder and a snake;
But hold me fast, let me not go,
To be your worldly mate.
They'll next shape me into thy arms
A wood-black dog to bite
Hold me fast, let me not go,
I 'll be your heart's delight."
Batman sighed to himself. Apparently he was going to be cast as the love-lorn maiden in this bizarre drama.
The specific shapes the captive knight would take varied from story to story, but all the stories he had read agreed that at the end he would be turned to fire:
'They'll turn me to a flash of fire,
And then to a naked man;
Wrap you your mantle me about
And then you'll have me won.'
Well, at least he had a mantle handy. He'd hate to go through all that and fail at the end just because he didn't have a cape.
As Batman planned his strategy, the stars in the sky shifted unnervingly, became a beautiful, placid face. "Mortal child, mortal child," said the Faerie Queen's silvery voice, "Why do you interrupt our happiness? Your love is not of Earth, does not belong to such as you." The voice was kind and understanding. "Truly, I tell you, his home is here, in the land where flowers bloom eternal and unwithered."
A door appeared out of nowhere, standing surreally in the middle of the field. It swung open to reveal the familiar concrete and stone of Gotham. "You may leave, mortal child, for I am merciful. Go home and leave us in peace, I beg of you."
Batman stared at the door. Gotham. It looked blessedly solid and sane compared to here. He could go back. What did he owe Superman anyway? He could go back and the world would make sense again. No more aliens flying around like angels. It would all be like it was before.
Like it was before.
Batman turned his back on the door and crossed his arms. "I'm not leaving here without him," he said to the sky.
The lovely face contorted in anger. "Human child, human child, he is not for you. The stench of mortality clings to you; you are rotten with it." A roiling wave of carrion stench rolled across the plain, chokingly thick. "You reek of your own death. You taint this place and all you touch." The sweetness was gone from her voice. "Leave your love here and begone."
"He chose to come back to us, he didn't choose to go with you. I'm not leaving without him." A perverse irritation made him add, feeling utterly ridiculous, "And he's not my damn 'love.' I already have one, thank you."
Delicate starry eyebrows lifted incredulously. The Faerie Queen laughed, a silver carillon of scorn. Her face faded from the sky and the door to Gotham faded with her.
It was official: magic sucked.
Thinking the petty vulgarity comforted him somewhat as he waited at the crossroads, at least until he heard, in the distance, the unearthly chiming of bells: the bridle bells of the Faerie Court's procession.
Very slowly down the road marked as leading to Faerie they came: a vast parade of horses, normal-looking except for their intelligent red eyes. At the head was the Faerie Queen, dressed in full wedding regalia. She rode by Batman without looking at him, her horse's hooves sparking on the eldritch cobblestones. Batman watched the black and brown horses go past. Kal had to be in there somewhere, on a white horse--there. Kal was in scarlet and black armor, a ruby diadem on his dark curls. He stared straight ahead, enthralled, as Batman darted into the procession at him. Dodging hooves, he made it to the white horse and grabbed Kal, pulling him to the ground with a jolting thud, wrapping his arms around him.
Things became very confusing after that. There was a hideous screeching noise from somewhere, and he was holding a black cobra that hissed and sank its teeth into his neck again and again. He felt the burning of venom and reassured himself: faerie wounds were imaginary, they would disappear once he made it through the trial. His hands started to go numb as he clutched the snake, tendrils of acid pain lancing through him. He held on.
Next was a black dog that ripped and ravened at his chest, shredding his armor like smoke. He held on. If he let go, there'd never be a voice on the other end of that communicator again; he wasn't sure anyone else in the world would be so stupid as to put on a ridiculous costume and fight evil. He couldn't let Kal go. He felt the claws and teeth rending his chest, tearing flesh and tendon--it was an illusion, it wasn't real, it hurt like it was real but it wasn't real, it wasn't.
Then he was holding a spark, it was a flame, it was a fire, it was an inferno, searing and scorching him, his flesh bubbling. It was a living, dancing star in his arms.
It was Kal.
He held on. Somehow, he held on.
And then, as suddenly as it had begun, it was over. The air was filled with a weeping keening, so plaintive that Batman nearly felt pity despite himself. Kal was unconscious in his arms, naked and pale, and Batman unclasped his cape and wrapped it around his body. The weeping died into sobbing and faded away. They were back in Gotham, under the familiar stars.
Batman tried to move Kal and noticed with alarm that the Kryptonian's bare chest was streaked and splattered with blood, lots of blood, far too much blood. Was Kal wounded? No, the skin was perfect and unbroken. Then where--
Bruce looked down at his own chest.
"Ah, hell," he heard himself say distantly as darkness washed over him.
: : :
The Fortress of Solitude was dark and quiet as Kal arrowed in, holding Batman's body in his arms. All he could hear was the thready, faint beat of Batman's heart as he put him on a crystalline dais. It was weakening. Blood stained the crystals.
He was dying.
Damn Luthor! If he hadn't stolen those memory crystals, it was possible that--wait. Kal remembered Batman's voice from before the dragon appeared, talking about a crystal, a crystal--
It was in a pocket at his waist, a tiny crystal, hardly more than a sliver. Kal inserted it into the console with shaking hands.
The heartbeat was weaker now.
A few crystals glimmered to life, but Kal could hear the murmuring denial all around him. He addressed the Fortress: "Heal him. No earthly healing can save him. You must save him."
Crystalline whispering. An icy, angry wind began to whip through the Fortress, cold and denying. It was impossible. Faerie wounds...even at full capacity, impossible. And to lavish such energy on a mere mortal, one so broken...
"Take the energy from me," Kal stood in the middle of the Fortress and cut across the denial, across the stinging, rising wind. "Draw on my power to heal him. You must obey me."
Shocked chiming, utter repudiation. The risk--Never. This place exists to protect Kal-El, the Last Son of Krypton. He must continue, must not throw his life away...
Kal felt his feet leave the ground, felt his eyes kindle. Something cold inside him melted and boiled over into molten fury. The long black cape flared and blazed around his bare body; he clenched his hands in it and hurled his voice into the wind like a weapon:
"You will heal him! He's the only person like me, the only one, he's given his life for me, and you will heal him! If you do not, if he dies and you fail to save him, I swear to you I will leave this place and find a red sun and fly into it and to hell with your Last Son of Krypton! Do you hear me? I will not do this alone any more!"
His last words fell, ringing, into the sudden silence. The wind died as abruptly as it had arisen.
The crystal dais holding Batman's body burst into azure light.
: : :
He opened his eyes to starry skies hung with the Northern Lights wheeling above his head, the veils of light rippling and burning in majestic silence. Batman sat up, his cape slipping from him, exposing--he stared--his unwounded, unscarred chest. In fact, a few old scars were missing now. That was...unsettling, although he was in no position to protest. Behind him, someone cleared his throat.
Kal. Batman got off the dais to face the Kryptonian, back in his familiar red and blue. "You healed me."
"The Fortress healed you."
"With that one small crystal? How did it manage that?"
A pause. "I...told it I would kill myself if it didn't."
Batman snorted. "That's an impressive bluff."
Kal's face was calm. "I never bluff." It was Batman's turn to pause. He looked closely at the alien's face, noted the signs of strain and exhaustion that hadn't been there as they left Faerie.
"What did you do?" Kal's face showed only incomprehension, but the Kryptonian was a poor liar. "What did you do?" He sounded more angry than he meant to.
Superman looked away. "The crystal fragment wasn't enough. The Fortress needed more energy to heal you."
Batman crossed his arms over his chest and glowered. "You didn't do anything stupid, did you?"
"It all worked out."
"Well maybe it wouldn't have! And then you would have thrown your life away for nothing, you would have left us again. You're a symbol of hope, Kal, you don't have the right to just..."
Kal didn't seem to be listening anymore. He was staring at Batman, his blue eyes wide. "Your life isn't nothing, B. Don't say that, ever again. Ever." He sounded deeply shocked. "And besides, you almost died to save me."
"I didn't know the magical wounds were real."
"The pain was real enough."
"It was just pain. It doesn't count." He sounded petulant even to himself.
After a moment, Kal smiled, a very sweet, lopsided smile. "Are we keeping score now? I'll let you save me next time to keep it even, then."
Batman said nothing--he wasn't going to dignify such frivolity with an answer. He gritted his teeth and glared. Superman seemed to find this less intimidating than entertaining, unfortunately. After a moment, however, the Kryptonian's face grew melancholy again. He floated closer to Batman, his slippered feet just brushing the icy ground. "I'm sorry," he said softly, indicating the torn black armor. "I'm sorry I hurt you." His voice dropped to almost a whisper. "I almost killed you. What could I do? I had to save you."
Batman shrugged. "That wasn't you. It was the spell."
The perfect, placid face remained grave. Kal took a deep breath. "The Queen was wrong, of course. Timeless perfection is the perfection of death. And yet..." Another deep inhalation. "The appeal can be...substantial." Pain shadowed those terrifyingly blue eyes.
Batman sensed an opportunity, a vulnerability. Kal seemed to want to talk about something. He didn't know what, but any chance to understand..."What do you mean?"
Superman paused so long that Batman began to think he wouldn't answer at all. Then he began to speak, haltingly. "Have you ever heard of...the music of the spheres?"
A shrug. "The ancient belief that the celestial bodies made unearthly music in their revolutions, inaudible to the human ear? Sure."
"B. It's real." At Batman's blank expression, Kal repeated, "It's real. And I can hear it."
"You can hear it? When?"
Kal's face went rigid with some emotion too strong to read, agony or ecstasy. "All the time. It's always there, in the back of my mind. Calling me. There have been a couple of times when I thought, maybe...but it never goes away completely. When I'm awake, when I'm sleeping, it's always there." He inhaled, shook his head as if to clear it. "Always."
"How long have you been able to hear it? All your life?"
Kal laughed mirthlessly. "I wouldn't be here if I had. No." He arranged himself on a crystal pillar, wrapping his cape around him. "Five years ago, I...made a mistake. I entered into a relationship with a human woman. One night together. She--it didn't--I can't have normal relationships with humans as an immortal. I can't love them unless I give up my powers. And I can't give up my powers, because I love people and want to help them. I shouldn't even be considering--" He broke off and took a deep breath. "It's impossible. The paradox was too painful. I ran away."
Superman closed his eyes. "I wasn't thinking. I just wanted to get away from the people I wanted to love and couldn't love because I loved humanity. I think...I really do think, B, that I would have turned around after a couple of weeks, once I had time to get over the worst of my grief. But by then it was too late."
"Too late?"
Kal nodded. "I heard the music. It was--I can't describe it. Pure beauty. Pure harmony. Timeless, eternal, perfection beyond comprehension. I was part of it and was lost in it, my personality pared away to starlight and music. I remember nothing of the trip to Krypton, only the music. Then I got there and everything was dead and I had to turn around and go back into it. Back into a timeless time contemplating infinite beauty." He opened his eyes. They were glowing a very soft, silvery blue in the dimness of the Fortress. "Sometimes I can't believe I have any soul left at all. Sometimes...sometimes I'm not sure I do." A ragged breath. "I want to be here, to be fully here, so much. But I can hear it, all the time, pulling me away. The temptation is so strong to go back, throw myself into the stars, lose myself in the music again. To be...annihilated by perfection."
There were tracks of tears on the alien face. Batman couldn't understand all this mystical cant, couldn't empathize, but it bothered him to see Kal weep. It was...unnerving. Groping for something to say, he latched onto something that had bothered him earlier. "Why would you think you have to lose your powers to love a human?"
A small frown. "My mother said so. She said that I couldn't love a mortal if I was immortal. And Lois--B, it almost shattered her mind to love me. She couldn't do it when I had my powers."
Batman crossed his arms and glared at Kal. "I'm sure your mother was a lovely lady, but with all due respect, that's bullshit. I mean, look at the two of us. You're obviously capable of friendship--" he broke off as Superman made a fluttering movement.
"Friendship? Would you really say you're my friend?"
Batman snorted irritably. "After what I went through tonight, Kal, I think I deserve something more than 'business partner' or 'crime-fighting associate.'" He looked away from Kal's face and up at the Northern Lights, as they were less dazzlingly bright, and cleared his throat. "Anyway, friendship is a human connection no less profound than erotic love, is all I'm saying. It is, in fact, a form of love. You saved my life, you consider me a friend--and your powers remain intact, and I'm still sane. Relatively sane," he amended at Kal's expression.
"I'll probably outlive any friend, any love I have. It would be unwise--"
Batman interrupted almost angrily. "Love is unwise, Kal. Choosing to love is always a risk. Look at my life. Anyone who chooses to love me will probably outlive me. But that doesn't make it impossible to love me."
"No, it's impossible to love you because you're an overbearing, paranoid--"
"Shut up, you." Batman waved a black-clad hand. "I'm just saying that your mother, who wanted to see you safe and unhurt above all else, might not have been the best source of information about how to go about establishing relationships with humans. And then you have one hookup with a woman who can't handle loving you as you are, for what you are, one experience that seems to confirm what your mother said, and you throw everything away and run off? You have no sense of proportion."
He frowned. "I don't want to shock your delicate sensibilities, Kal, but it might make human relations easier if you tried to live among us, live an ordinary life at least some of the time, to know what it's like. Eat our food, have a job, see our lives from the ground rather than the sky. Sort of...have a civilian identity?" Superman stared at him. "It wouldn't be that bad," Batman added hastily. "We're pretty messy and limited, but life as a mortal does have its good sides. It might even distract you from that damned music. It wouldn't be easy to make you a history, a background, a real life. But we could probably do it." He made a small growling noise and muttered, "I can't believe I'm giving romance tips to a superpowered alien."
Superman stared at Batman like he wasn't sure whether he was going to laugh or cry. Then he nodded to himself. "Wait here."
Batman glared around him. "Where the hell would I go?"
A blur of red and blue into the recesses of the Fortress. Kal returned holding something in one hand and floated up to Batman. "I want you to have this." Batman reached out without thinking and found himself holding a small metal box in the palm of his hand. The dull metal was surprisingly heavy: lead. He cracked the box open by its hinged cover; Kal moved backwards quickly as green light leaked from the box into Batman's hands.
Batman stared at the ring for a while. Then he closed the box and met those shining turquoise eyes squarely. "But Kal...when are we ever going to find the time to register for a china pattern?"
Superman gaped at Batman. Bruce tried to keep his mouth steady, but the Kryptonian's stupidly stunned expression made his lips quirk despite himself. A snort of laughter eventually made it out, which finally broke Kal from his paralysis into whooping laughter of his own. Low and raspy, high and clear, a duet of laughter echoed under the stars.
Batman was the first to compose himself. He held the little box out, back towards Kal. "I don't need this."
Superman shook his head. "But I need you to have it. I need to know that you know that I trust you enough to let you keep it." Batman considered that for a time. Then he nodded gravely and pocketed the box.
"Are you about ready to head back to Gotham?"
Batman looked slightly alarmed. "How long have we been here? Some stories about Faerie have centuries go by in the real world..."
"I checked. We lost a day--it's early Thursday now."
Batman dusted ice crystals off his cape. "In that case, I definitely need to get back to Gotham. I have an impossibly hot date to prepare for." At Superman's incredulous snort, he said, "What? Is it so hard to imagine I have romance in my civilian life?"
"It's just the image of you showing up at someone's door in full regalia with flowers." Superman dropped his voice into a gravelly rasp. "'Brought you something. You look lovely tonight, my dear.'"
"So speaks the man who admits he's only gotten laid once in his life. I'll have you know as a civilian I have an enviable love life."
Superman looked at him a bit wistfully. "I wish I could meet you out of costume sometime."
Batman stepped forward and threw his cape and arm around Superman's shoulders, readying for flight. "Tell you what, if you let me make you that civilian identity, I'll take you out for coffee someday without the capes."
Superman smiled. "I'd like that, chum."
"Chum?"
"You said we were friends."
"Kal? Don't push it."
Superman smiled and put his arm around the Dark Knight in turn, then launched into the sky with his friend.
Disclaimer: The boys belong to DC and to each other, but not to me.
Notes: "Music of the Spheres" is a series set in the combined universes of "Batman Begins" and "Superman Returns." Other stories and notes on the series here.
Rating: PG for some violence
Summary: On All Hallow's Eve, the Faerie Queen stakes her claim to Kal's soul.
Word Count: 4692
I saw Eternity the other night,
Like a great ring of pure and endless light,
All calm, as it was bright;
And round beneath it, Time, in hours, days, years,
Driv'n by the spheres
Like a vast shadow moved...
Batman was standing at a crossroads. A distressingly literal crossroads, as a matter of fact. Close-cut grass like green velvet stretched out in all directions around him, an infinite, well-tended lawn. On the horizon he could dimly make out trees. A silvery mist crawled sinuously along the grass. He stood at the intersection of two roads paved with glittering cobblestones. A signpost made of something like ivory, etched with vermilion letters, indicated the two roads led to "Krypton" and "Faerie."
He looked down at himself, at the black armor wrought and etched with fantastic patterns. A helmet and visor hid his face; his black cape curled behind him in the muttering breeze.
Batman was being forced to seriously reconsider his previous dismissive stance on magic.
: : :
All Hallow's Eve had started well enough for him. He had hurried home from Gotham to examine his treasure, secured from Luthor's office during his early-morning visit: a tiny gleaming crystal, no more than an inch long. It must be from Kal's Fortress, it must be. Superman would forgive him for taking just a little time to look at it, just a few hours. He had conducted a hasty battery of tests on the glimmering thing, hardly pausing to look at the results--he could analyze them later. By ten-thirty, he was on top of a Gotham building, holding the communicator. He was getting the crystal back to Kal the same day he had found it. For some reason, that seemed important.
Kal's voice came over the device, sounding absurdly pleased to hear from him. "B? Happy Halloween. Must be your favorite holiday."
Batman grunted, cleared his throat. "Um, Kal. I found something when I was in Metropolis. I think it's one of your crystals." He heard the sharp intake of breath on the other end and continued hurriedly, "I was wondering if you'd be willing to come up to Gotham and get it?" Don't ask why I didn't just give it to you in Metropolis, don't ask why--
"I'll be right there! Do you really--I mean, do you think--" The hope in Kal's voice shamed him. "Anyway, I'll--" Superman's voice broke off again. Batman could suddenly hear screaming and a strange roaring noise on Kal's side. "What the hell...Batman? I might be a little delayed. Got a dragon problem here. Better sign off."
A dragon problem? "Just put the communicator in your ear, Kal, it'll keep working." He didn't want to miss this.
"All right." High-pitched screeching noises followed shortly thereafter; Batman heard a ripping sound and a grunt of pain on the other end. "B? This doesn't look good. I think this thing is magic."
"There's no such thing as magic, Kal," Batman explained.
Breaking glass. Kal's voice continued, sounding winded. "Magic is...an alternate quantum viewpoint. It's real. And I'm very vulnerable to it, B. I...I might need to bring this dragon up to Gotham and get some help from you."
Batman frowned. "Magic isn't real. Unless by 'magic' you mean the concept that any sufficiently advanced technology--"
"I'm aware of Clarke's Law," Kal's voice snapped. "Magic is something different, okay?"
"That's impossible, Kal. Dragons aren't real. They don't exist."
From the sky, like a shooting star, Superman appeared, fighting a silver dragon about ten feet long. The dragon roared and batted the Kryptonian out of the sky. He landed on his back near Batman; the concrete crazed on impact, cracks stretching to Batman's feet.
Superman rolled over painfully, glaring at Batman. "All right, B. You've convinced me with your unimpeachable logic. Magic isn't real. Dragons aren't real." He pointed up at the shining serpentine form coiling itself for a new attack. "Now, just convince the dragon of that and we'll have no problems." He gathered up his tattered cape and launched himself back into the sky.
Batman watched the spectacle, feeling a bit stunned. Why exactly had Superman thought he would be useful in this situation? He groped in his mind for information about dragons, found some story he had read as a child about how all dragons had a weak spot on their throats--there. A rough patch of brown in among the profusion of platinum scales. Before he could think about how ludicrous it all was, he threw a batarang at the spot with all his might.
If he was hoping for gouts of blood and a dramatic death, he was sorely disappointed. The impossible dragon merely coughed irritably and focused its attention on the annoying man in black. But Kal used the moment's distraction to gain the upper hand, and both dragon and man crashed to the ground in front of Batman.
The dragon--the creature that somehow looked like a dragon--seemed dazed. Superman put a foot on its throat, holding it down, and grinned at Batman. "Nice shot!"
The silver monster beneath his foot twisted and blurred and suddenly became a woman dressed in flowing silver robes, her star-pale face framed by flowing black hair, her eyes a smokey lilac. Kal involuntarily removed his foot from her throat. "Oh, I'm sorry."
The woman flowed sinuously to her feet and twined her arms around Superman's neck. "Perfect. You're perfect," she said in a husky voice.
She kissed Kal, her pale, silvery lips on his mouth.
His eyes closed.
The woman broke off the kiss and took Superman's hand, smiling. "Come, my Redcross Knight, my True Thomas, my love. Let me show you your new kingdom." She turned and shot Batman a smiling look of pure venom. Kal followed her gaze obediently, but his blue eyes were clouded and dull. He didn't seem to see Batman.
"Kal?" Everything seemed to be happening too fast. Magic wasn't real, Faerie Queens weren't real--
Kal and the woman had started to move through some sort of twisting, shimmering gate that hurt the eyes. Batman lunged forward, grabbed Superman's cape, held on.
And so the Dark Knight passed into the realm of Faerie, and found himself alone on the other side.
: : :
An eldritch light hung over the impossible field of smooth green, and the sky was thick with countless stars in no patterns Batman had ever seen before. He closed his eyes. Think, Bruce. Think. In every story, Faerie had laws that must be obeyed, they were merely not the normal scientific laws. What story was he in and what were the laws? He just had to figure them out.
"Redcross Knight," the woman had called Kal, and "True Thomas." The former was from Edmund Spenser's poem "The Faerie Queen," the latter from the Tam Lin folk songs. Both stories were about knights who were stolen by Faerie and had to be won back. As the Tam Lin stories featured a crossroads on Halloween, he would have to assume that story was the working paradigm here.
He wracked his mind to remember the basics of the Tam Lin fable. There were so many versions...but in almost all of them, the heroine was visited by her lover and given advice on how to free him from the clutches of Faerie, by standing and waiting at a crossroads on Halloween. The Faerie court would ride by, and the would-be rescuer was to seize the man on a white horse:
"First let pass the black, he said,
And then let pass the brown,
But when ye meet the milk-white steed,
Pull ye the rider down."
The Faerie Queen would put the knight through a series of transformations into vicious animals, but the rescuer was told to hold tightly no matter what:
"They'll turn me in thy arms into
An adder and a snake;
But hold me fast, let me not go,
To be your worldly mate.
They'll next shape me into thy arms
A wood-black dog to bite
Hold me fast, let me not go,
I 'll be your heart's delight."
Batman sighed to himself. Apparently he was going to be cast as the love-lorn maiden in this bizarre drama.
The specific shapes the captive knight would take varied from story to story, but all the stories he had read agreed that at the end he would be turned to fire:
'They'll turn me to a flash of fire,
And then to a naked man;
Wrap you your mantle me about
And then you'll have me won.'
Well, at least he had a mantle handy. He'd hate to go through all that and fail at the end just because he didn't have a cape.
As Batman planned his strategy, the stars in the sky shifted unnervingly, became a beautiful, placid face. "Mortal child, mortal child," said the Faerie Queen's silvery voice, "Why do you interrupt our happiness? Your love is not of Earth, does not belong to such as you." The voice was kind and understanding. "Truly, I tell you, his home is here, in the land where flowers bloom eternal and unwithered."
A door appeared out of nowhere, standing surreally in the middle of the field. It swung open to reveal the familiar concrete and stone of Gotham. "You may leave, mortal child, for I am merciful. Go home and leave us in peace, I beg of you."
Batman stared at the door. Gotham. It looked blessedly solid and sane compared to here. He could go back. What did he owe Superman anyway? He could go back and the world would make sense again. No more aliens flying around like angels. It would all be like it was before.
Like it was before.
Batman turned his back on the door and crossed his arms. "I'm not leaving here without him," he said to the sky.
The lovely face contorted in anger. "Human child, human child, he is not for you. The stench of mortality clings to you; you are rotten with it." A roiling wave of carrion stench rolled across the plain, chokingly thick. "You reek of your own death. You taint this place and all you touch." The sweetness was gone from her voice. "Leave your love here and begone."
"He chose to come back to us, he didn't choose to go with you. I'm not leaving without him." A perverse irritation made him add, feeling utterly ridiculous, "And he's not my damn 'love.' I already have one, thank you."
Delicate starry eyebrows lifted incredulously. The Faerie Queen laughed, a silver carillon of scorn. Her face faded from the sky and the door to Gotham faded with her.
It was official: magic sucked.
Thinking the petty vulgarity comforted him somewhat as he waited at the crossroads, at least until he heard, in the distance, the unearthly chiming of bells: the bridle bells of the Faerie Court's procession.
Very slowly down the road marked as leading to Faerie they came: a vast parade of horses, normal-looking except for their intelligent red eyes. At the head was the Faerie Queen, dressed in full wedding regalia. She rode by Batman without looking at him, her horse's hooves sparking on the eldritch cobblestones. Batman watched the black and brown horses go past. Kal had to be in there somewhere, on a white horse--there. Kal was in scarlet and black armor, a ruby diadem on his dark curls. He stared straight ahead, enthralled, as Batman darted into the procession at him. Dodging hooves, he made it to the white horse and grabbed Kal, pulling him to the ground with a jolting thud, wrapping his arms around him.
Things became very confusing after that. There was a hideous screeching noise from somewhere, and he was holding a black cobra that hissed and sank its teeth into his neck again and again. He felt the burning of venom and reassured himself: faerie wounds were imaginary, they would disappear once he made it through the trial. His hands started to go numb as he clutched the snake, tendrils of acid pain lancing through him. He held on.
Next was a black dog that ripped and ravened at his chest, shredding his armor like smoke. He held on. If he let go, there'd never be a voice on the other end of that communicator again; he wasn't sure anyone else in the world would be so stupid as to put on a ridiculous costume and fight evil. He couldn't let Kal go. He felt the claws and teeth rending his chest, tearing flesh and tendon--it was an illusion, it wasn't real, it hurt like it was real but it wasn't real, it wasn't.
Then he was holding a spark, it was a flame, it was a fire, it was an inferno, searing and scorching him, his flesh bubbling. It was a living, dancing star in his arms.
It was Kal.
He held on. Somehow, he held on.
And then, as suddenly as it had begun, it was over. The air was filled with a weeping keening, so plaintive that Batman nearly felt pity despite himself. Kal was unconscious in his arms, naked and pale, and Batman unclasped his cape and wrapped it around his body. The weeping died into sobbing and faded away. They were back in Gotham, under the familiar stars.
Batman tried to move Kal and noticed with alarm that the Kryptonian's bare chest was streaked and splattered with blood, lots of blood, far too much blood. Was Kal wounded? No, the skin was perfect and unbroken. Then where--
Bruce looked down at his own chest.
"Ah, hell," he heard himself say distantly as darkness washed over him.
: : :
The Fortress of Solitude was dark and quiet as Kal arrowed in, holding Batman's body in his arms. All he could hear was the thready, faint beat of Batman's heart as he put him on a crystalline dais. It was weakening. Blood stained the crystals.
He was dying.
Damn Luthor! If he hadn't stolen those memory crystals, it was possible that--wait. Kal remembered Batman's voice from before the dragon appeared, talking about a crystal, a crystal--
It was in a pocket at his waist, a tiny crystal, hardly more than a sliver. Kal inserted it into the console with shaking hands.
The heartbeat was weaker now.
A few crystals glimmered to life, but Kal could hear the murmuring denial all around him. He addressed the Fortress: "Heal him. No earthly healing can save him. You must save him."
Crystalline whispering. An icy, angry wind began to whip through the Fortress, cold and denying. It was impossible. Faerie wounds...even at full capacity, impossible. And to lavish such energy on a mere mortal, one so broken...
"Take the energy from me," Kal stood in the middle of the Fortress and cut across the denial, across the stinging, rising wind. "Draw on my power to heal him. You must obey me."
Shocked chiming, utter repudiation. The risk--Never. This place exists to protect Kal-El, the Last Son of Krypton. He must continue, must not throw his life away...
Kal felt his feet leave the ground, felt his eyes kindle. Something cold inside him melted and boiled over into molten fury. The long black cape flared and blazed around his bare body; he clenched his hands in it and hurled his voice into the wind like a weapon:
"You will heal him! He's the only person like me, the only one, he's given his life for me, and you will heal him! If you do not, if he dies and you fail to save him, I swear to you I will leave this place and find a red sun and fly into it and to hell with your Last Son of Krypton! Do you hear me? I will not do this alone any more!"
His last words fell, ringing, into the sudden silence. The wind died as abruptly as it had arisen.
The crystal dais holding Batman's body burst into azure light.
: : :
He opened his eyes to starry skies hung with the Northern Lights wheeling above his head, the veils of light rippling and burning in majestic silence. Batman sat up, his cape slipping from him, exposing--he stared--his unwounded, unscarred chest. In fact, a few old scars were missing now. That was...unsettling, although he was in no position to protest. Behind him, someone cleared his throat.
Kal. Batman got off the dais to face the Kryptonian, back in his familiar red and blue. "You healed me."
"The Fortress healed you."
"With that one small crystal? How did it manage that?"
A pause. "I...told it I would kill myself if it didn't."
Batman snorted. "That's an impressive bluff."
Kal's face was calm. "I never bluff." It was Batman's turn to pause. He looked closely at the alien's face, noted the signs of strain and exhaustion that hadn't been there as they left Faerie.
"What did you do?" Kal's face showed only incomprehension, but the Kryptonian was a poor liar. "What did you do?" He sounded more angry than he meant to.
Superman looked away. "The crystal fragment wasn't enough. The Fortress needed more energy to heal you."
Batman crossed his arms over his chest and glowered. "You didn't do anything stupid, did you?"
"It all worked out."
"Well maybe it wouldn't have! And then you would have thrown your life away for nothing, you would have left us again. You're a symbol of hope, Kal, you don't have the right to just..."
Kal didn't seem to be listening anymore. He was staring at Batman, his blue eyes wide. "Your life isn't nothing, B. Don't say that, ever again. Ever." He sounded deeply shocked. "And besides, you almost died to save me."
"I didn't know the magical wounds were real."
"The pain was real enough."
"It was just pain. It doesn't count." He sounded petulant even to himself.
After a moment, Kal smiled, a very sweet, lopsided smile. "Are we keeping score now? I'll let you save me next time to keep it even, then."
Batman said nothing--he wasn't going to dignify such frivolity with an answer. He gritted his teeth and glared. Superman seemed to find this less intimidating than entertaining, unfortunately. After a moment, however, the Kryptonian's face grew melancholy again. He floated closer to Batman, his slippered feet just brushing the icy ground. "I'm sorry," he said softly, indicating the torn black armor. "I'm sorry I hurt you." His voice dropped to almost a whisper. "I almost killed you. What could I do? I had to save you."
Batman shrugged. "That wasn't you. It was the spell."
The perfect, placid face remained grave. Kal took a deep breath. "The Queen was wrong, of course. Timeless perfection is the perfection of death. And yet..." Another deep inhalation. "The appeal can be...substantial." Pain shadowed those terrifyingly blue eyes.
Batman sensed an opportunity, a vulnerability. Kal seemed to want to talk about something. He didn't know what, but any chance to understand..."What do you mean?"
Superman paused so long that Batman began to think he wouldn't answer at all. Then he began to speak, haltingly. "Have you ever heard of...the music of the spheres?"
A shrug. "The ancient belief that the celestial bodies made unearthly music in their revolutions, inaudible to the human ear? Sure."
"B. It's real." At Batman's blank expression, Kal repeated, "It's real. And I can hear it."
"You can hear it? When?"
Kal's face went rigid with some emotion too strong to read, agony or ecstasy. "All the time. It's always there, in the back of my mind. Calling me. There have been a couple of times when I thought, maybe...but it never goes away completely. When I'm awake, when I'm sleeping, it's always there." He inhaled, shook his head as if to clear it. "Always."
"How long have you been able to hear it? All your life?"
Kal laughed mirthlessly. "I wouldn't be here if I had. No." He arranged himself on a crystal pillar, wrapping his cape around him. "Five years ago, I...made a mistake. I entered into a relationship with a human woman. One night together. She--it didn't--I can't have normal relationships with humans as an immortal. I can't love them unless I give up my powers. And I can't give up my powers, because I love people and want to help them. I shouldn't even be considering--" He broke off and took a deep breath. "It's impossible. The paradox was too painful. I ran away."
Superman closed his eyes. "I wasn't thinking. I just wanted to get away from the people I wanted to love and couldn't love because I loved humanity. I think...I really do think, B, that I would have turned around after a couple of weeks, once I had time to get over the worst of my grief. But by then it was too late."
"Too late?"
Kal nodded. "I heard the music. It was--I can't describe it. Pure beauty. Pure harmony. Timeless, eternal, perfection beyond comprehension. I was part of it and was lost in it, my personality pared away to starlight and music. I remember nothing of the trip to Krypton, only the music. Then I got there and everything was dead and I had to turn around and go back into it. Back into a timeless time contemplating infinite beauty." He opened his eyes. They were glowing a very soft, silvery blue in the dimness of the Fortress. "Sometimes I can't believe I have any soul left at all. Sometimes...sometimes I'm not sure I do." A ragged breath. "I want to be here, to be fully here, so much. But I can hear it, all the time, pulling me away. The temptation is so strong to go back, throw myself into the stars, lose myself in the music again. To be...annihilated by perfection."
There were tracks of tears on the alien face. Batman couldn't understand all this mystical cant, couldn't empathize, but it bothered him to see Kal weep. It was...unnerving. Groping for something to say, he latched onto something that had bothered him earlier. "Why would you think you have to lose your powers to love a human?"
A small frown. "My mother said so. She said that I couldn't love a mortal if I was immortal. And Lois--B, it almost shattered her mind to love me. She couldn't do it when I had my powers."
Batman crossed his arms and glared at Kal. "I'm sure your mother was a lovely lady, but with all due respect, that's bullshit. I mean, look at the two of us. You're obviously capable of friendship--" he broke off as Superman made a fluttering movement.
"Friendship? Would you really say you're my friend?"
Batman snorted irritably. "After what I went through tonight, Kal, I think I deserve something more than 'business partner' or 'crime-fighting associate.'" He looked away from Kal's face and up at the Northern Lights, as they were less dazzlingly bright, and cleared his throat. "Anyway, friendship is a human connection no less profound than erotic love, is all I'm saying. It is, in fact, a form of love. You saved my life, you consider me a friend--and your powers remain intact, and I'm still sane. Relatively sane," he amended at Kal's expression.
"I'll probably outlive any friend, any love I have. It would be unwise--"
Batman interrupted almost angrily. "Love is unwise, Kal. Choosing to love is always a risk. Look at my life. Anyone who chooses to love me will probably outlive me. But that doesn't make it impossible to love me."
"No, it's impossible to love you because you're an overbearing, paranoid--"
"Shut up, you." Batman waved a black-clad hand. "I'm just saying that your mother, who wanted to see you safe and unhurt above all else, might not have been the best source of information about how to go about establishing relationships with humans. And then you have one hookup with a woman who can't handle loving you as you are, for what you are, one experience that seems to confirm what your mother said, and you throw everything away and run off? You have no sense of proportion."
He frowned. "I don't want to shock your delicate sensibilities, Kal, but it might make human relations easier if you tried to live among us, live an ordinary life at least some of the time, to know what it's like. Eat our food, have a job, see our lives from the ground rather than the sky. Sort of...have a civilian identity?" Superman stared at him. "It wouldn't be that bad," Batman added hastily. "We're pretty messy and limited, but life as a mortal does have its good sides. It might even distract you from that damned music. It wouldn't be easy to make you a history, a background, a real life. But we could probably do it." He made a small growling noise and muttered, "I can't believe I'm giving romance tips to a superpowered alien."
Superman stared at Batman like he wasn't sure whether he was going to laugh or cry. Then he nodded to himself. "Wait here."
Batman glared around him. "Where the hell would I go?"
A blur of red and blue into the recesses of the Fortress. Kal returned holding something in one hand and floated up to Batman. "I want you to have this." Batman reached out without thinking and found himself holding a small metal box in the palm of his hand. The dull metal was surprisingly heavy: lead. He cracked the box open by its hinged cover; Kal moved backwards quickly as green light leaked from the box into Batman's hands.
Batman stared at the ring for a while. Then he closed the box and met those shining turquoise eyes squarely. "But Kal...when are we ever going to find the time to register for a china pattern?"
Superman gaped at Batman. Bruce tried to keep his mouth steady, but the Kryptonian's stupidly stunned expression made his lips quirk despite himself. A snort of laughter eventually made it out, which finally broke Kal from his paralysis into whooping laughter of his own. Low and raspy, high and clear, a duet of laughter echoed under the stars.
Batman was the first to compose himself. He held the little box out, back towards Kal. "I don't need this."
Superman shook his head. "But I need you to have it. I need to know that you know that I trust you enough to let you keep it." Batman considered that for a time. Then he nodded gravely and pocketed the box.
"Are you about ready to head back to Gotham?"
Batman looked slightly alarmed. "How long have we been here? Some stories about Faerie have centuries go by in the real world..."
"I checked. We lost a day--it's early Thursday now."
Batman dusted ice crystals off his cape. "In that case, I definitely need to get back to Gotham. I have an impossibly hot date to prepare for." At Superman's incredulous snort, he said, "What? Is it so hard to imagine I have romance in my civilian life?"
"It's just the image of you showing up at someone's door in full regalia with flowers." Superman dropped his voice into a gravelly rasp. "'Brought you something. You look lovely tonight, my dear.'"
"So speaks the man who admits he's only gotten laid once in his life. I'll have you know as a civilian I have an enviable love life."
Superman looked at him a bit wistfully. "I wish I could meet you out of costume sometime."
Batman stepped forward and threw his cape and arm around Superman's shoulders, readying for flight. "Tell you what, if you let me make you that civilian identity, I'll take you out for coffee someday without the capes."
Superman smiled. "I'd like that, chum."
"Chum?"
"You said we were friends."
"Kal? Don't push it."
Superman smiled and put his arm around the Dark Knight in turn, then launched into the sky with his friend.