The House of the Earth Vignette: The Scientist and the Thief
Title: The Scientist and the Thief
Pairing/Characters: Lex Luthor/Selina Kyle
Series Notes: " The House of the Earth" is an AU in which a few thousand Kryptonians escaped the destruction of Krypton to flee to Earth and conquer its people.
Warnings: None needed
Rating: PG
Word Count: 2500
Summary: Lex, the slave of a Kryptonian scientist, encounters a cat burglar and forges an unlikely alliance.
Notes: I always wanted to get back to this 'verse and do a little backstory about some of the characters, and Lex and Selina insisted more loudly. The only thing you really need to know to follow this is that the Earth was invaded by Kryptonians about eighteen years ago and Lex and Selina are getting by as best they can.
There were things missing around the laboratory.
Kler-Bos hadn't noticed, of course--how any sentient being as disorganized as he was could even function, Lex had no idea. It probably helped that his father was a powerful man on the Kryptonian High Council; it meant that he could get away with being a shoddy engineer and a generally slipshod and unobservant being.
He never noticed, for example, that the human he kept to "tidy up the lab" knew more about engineering than he did.
It was food, first: energy bars missing from Kler-Bos's cabinets, fruit vanished from the refrigerator. Then it was scraps of leather and cloth, bits of metal. It was skillfully done. Few people would have noticed, except that Lex Luthor was particularly precise about his surroundings.
It took him ten days to catch the thief once he had noticed: ten days of watching, observing, and planning. At the end of it, he found himself with his hand clamped around the wrist of--only the slightest raising of his eyebrows betrayed his surprise--a grubby, spitting girl with green eyes.
Lex looked at his captive impassively. She was probably in her late teens, but her boyish build and emaciated state made her look younger. The silvery slave collar on her neck was too small; Lex could see the sores on the skin where it chafed. It made his own neck itch. Her bony, agile fingers were filthy; the tips stained vermilion, the mark of a slave at work in the fields harvesting the flowers that lengthened Kryptonian lifespans. The juice left its distinctive dye and couldn't be washed out for months. The makeshift bullwhip he had slapped aside lay on the ground nearby; she eyed it hungrily, then lashed out with a kick to his groin. He twisted to let the blow land on his hip and tightened his grip on her wrist until she made a small sound of pain and stopped struggling. Her huge emerald eyes glared up at him.
"You're quite a good thief," he noted. "What's your name?"
"I'm the Cat," she growled.
"That's not a name, that's a title. I don't call people by titles they haven't earned," Lex said. She glared at him in silence, and he could feel her body coiling, preparing to scratch at his face.
"I need you to steal some things for me," he said before she could strike, and her eyes widened, then narrowed again in suspicion. "I won't hand you over to Kler-Bos if you agree."
"Kler-Bos?" The girl's voice was puzzled. "You mean your master?"
"The man who owns a piece of paper that gives him legal right to do as he wills with my body, yes," Lex said. "But I told you, I don't use titles people haven't earned." He released her hand and picked up the bullwhip before she could reach it. Her eyes followed it with a mix of yearning and involuntary fear, and Lex knew without looking that under the filthy rags her back would be ridged with old scars.
"How do you know I won't just disappear?" she said, her face defiant.
"I'll give you this back if you return with the goods," said Lex, lifting the whip. "And I'll give you a good meal too, not just a piece of stolen fruit. A hot meal: stew, bread, rice." He shrugged, ignoring the pathetic, reluctant shine in her eyes at his list of food. "But most importantly, I think you're curious. Curious about me, curious about what I might use your stolen goods for. I think that would be enough to bring you back."
After a moment, she laughed: a hard, mirthless laugh. "Okay then. Tell me what you want."
"I need some pumice dust and a specific kind of bleach. You can find the former in many Kryptonian ladies' boudoirs. The latter might be found at a laundromat, especially one specializing in Kryptonian clothes rather than Terran." He gave her the full details and she listened carefully, nodding.
She turned at the door. "And if I don't find them?"
"Then don't bother to come back," he said, returning to his work.
: : :
She did come back, bearing the two objects, within a couple of days. Lex found her in Kler-Bos's laboratory at midnight again, hefting a piece of titanium sheeting speculatively. "Don't touch anything," he snapped as he came in. "I've got a system so I can find everything I need."
"You mean so your master can find what he needs?"
Lex just snorted and took the items from her, sniffing and touching them carefully. "Yes, these will do." He mixed them together with a mortar and pestle, adding a few other ingredients from the cabinets, until he had a goopy gray mass. The girl watched him warily. "Come here."
She sidled toward him, ready to flee at a moment's notice. "What is it?"
"Give me your hand."
She put it behind her back hastily, glaring. With an exaggerated sigh, he stripped off his work gloves and dabbled his bare fingers in the paste. "No burns, no ill effects. Now give me your hand."
Still uncertain, she held it out, flinching just a little when he grabbed it and stuck it in the goop. He grabbed a rag and scrubbed it off to reveal pale fingers, the red flower-dye completely gone.
She held up her hand, her eyes huge. "How--how--"
"I happen to be a genius, girl."
Her eyes snapped. "Don't call me that."
"I don't have a name to call you," he said, turning to the microwave in the corner of the room and starting it. A few seconds later, a savory smell of herbs and meat started to fill the room. Lex grabbed a piece of bread from a cabinet and ripped it in two. "Well?" He said without looking behind him, taking two bowls of stew out of the microwave and dropping them on the table. "Are you going to eat?"
When she joined him, he noticed the red stains were gone from her other hand as well. "My name is Selina," she said, picking up the spoon.
"I'm Lex Luthor."
"Slaves don't have last names," she said, her eyes resting on his collar.
"True," he said, taking a bite.
After a moment, she followed suit.
He waited for her to finish wolfing down her stew, then said, "That collar looks uncomfortable. You must have gone through a growth spurt after you ran away." Her mouth compressed as if biting back bad memories. "Must hamper your thieving abilities."
She shrugged, unconsciously moving so the collar would chafe less. "It isn't like I can just slip into something more comfortable."
"True." Kryptonian slave collars were designed without locks; only an alien strength could remove them. Lex leaned back, looking at Selina speculatively. "I need you to pick up a few more things for me. Can you memorize a list of ten things?"
A wary look. "I can read it if you write them down."
Lex hid his surprise; teaching a human to read was a death sentence, and few Terrans born after the Kryptonians came were literate. He shook his head: "Give you a record of my little shopping list? What if you were to...carelessly misplace it? No, you'll memorize the items."
She listened carefully, repeating the items back to him. When she had them fixed in her memory, she laughed shortly. "Where am I supposed to get tungsten carbide? Or a medical laser?"
He didn't waste time being surprised that she knew what tungsten carbide was. "You're a clever thief, if shockingly grubby. I'm sure you'll figure something out."
"Why should I take the risk? This isn't some lady's cosmetics, those are dangerous items."
Lex sighed. "If you fulfill your side of the bargain, I'll remove your collar."
Her eyes widened the very slightest of a fraction, then she frowned. "That's not possible. If it were possible, you wouldn't be wearing yours."
"And give up access to this laboratory? Don't be stupid."
"I don't believe you can do it."
He shrugged. "I don't care. If you aren't up to the job, just say so."
She glared as she stood up. "I'll think about it."
He didn't see her for a few weeks this time. He made sure to leave some fruit and bread laying around in the open, and it disappeared now and then. It wasn't charity; simply that a starving thief was more liable to make mistakes.
And he waited.
: : :
She showed up in the lab one night at midnight, lugging a basket of material that seemed too heavy for her slender frame. He took it from her without a word and started to rummage through it.
"I only got you seven of the ten things," she said.
"Too big of a challenge, I see."
She made a small, insulted hissing sound. "Insurance. You don't get the rest until this collar is gone."
He smiled at her for the first time, a wolfish grin of satisfaction. "That's why I made sure some of the items on the list were redundant," he said. "I really only needed five. Your work is thus perfectly adequate."
Pulling out the things he needed, he turned his back on her and began to add them to his half-finished project. Selina started to say something, but he held up his hand and cut her off without turning around. She hissed again, then went to the refrigerator and helped herself to milk and a plate of cold salmon.
When he whirled, holding an item shaped like a gun, she ducked involuntarily, then glared at him.
"Hold still," he said, putting the muzzle to her neck.
"What the--"
Before she could pull away, there was a sharp metallic sound, and the smell of hot metal filled the air briefly. Another motion on the other side of her neck, and the collar fell off in two pieces, making a sweet silvery chime as it struck the concrete floor.
Selina stared down at the pieces of her collar. "Don't touch it yet," said Lex. "The edges are still quite hot." Her hand went to her neck, touching the bare skin, and she turned her gaze to him. Her eyes were full of some emotion Lex couldn't quite decipher, but he'd never been good at reading people. Whatever it was, the intensity of it made him uncomfortable. "There you go," he shrugged. "You're free, whatever that means in this world. In some ways, of course, you're more limited now," he went on as he put away his materials. "You can't pretend to be a slave, so if you're caught, you'll be summarily executed as a rebel. I believe you're the only uncollared human on Earth now, so you'll probably stand out a bit."
"Why?" Her voice was muted, confused. "Why do this for me?"
"Don't be a fool," he said sharply. "I have much bigger plans than getting one dirty slave out of her collar. But one must start somewhere." He finished putting everything back where it belonged, lining up all the tools just right as they should be. "You seem skilled. If you like, we might be able to come up with a mutually beneficial arrangement between us."
After a moment, she murmured, "I see." She looked down at the collar on the floor again and nodded slowly. "Yes. I think we can."
"Well, that's settled then," Lex said briskly, anxious for her to leave so he could get more work done. He felt rather than heard her go as he made a new coded entry in his notebook.
So it was a surprise when he went to his tiny room an hour later and found her sitting on the edge of his bed. Her pose was frankly seductive under her rags, but her eyes were resigned: There is a price for everything, I know. She met his gaze and managed a smile that she probably thought was sultry.
After a moment, Lex stepped forward. "Get off of my bed, you filthy, disgusting urchin," he snapped. "This is my private space. Get out."
The look on her face transmuted to shock and confusion. "But--"
He grabbed a clean blanket from the closet and tossed it at her. "I don't share my room with anyone. You can sleep on the floor of the storage closet if you like, but you need to be out of the lab by eleven o'clock, that's the earliest Kler-Bos ever comes in. Don't come back until after eight. If he finds you here, I shall denounce you as a thief and a runaway and you'll be promptly hanged." He wrinkled his nose, looking at her. "And if you're going to be anywhere in the same building as me, I require you to bathe regularly. There's a shower down the hall to the left. Now leave me alone, I have work to do and the smell is distracting me."
He stripped the sheets off his bed, making her jump to her feet, and shoved them into her hands. "You might as well have these now," he muttered. He waved a dismissive hand at the door when she didn't move. "Shoo."
A flurry of emotions crossed her face in quick succession, too fast for Lex to read, fading into a small, wry smile. Then Selina leaned forward and kissed him lightly, full on the mouth, before whirling to run from the room.
After a while he heard water running down the hall and realized he was still standing with the door open. He could still feel the imprint of her lips on his, warm and almost tingling.
He went back into the lab and put some disinfectant on a cloth, then dabbed fastidiously at his lips. The feeling of the kiss still lingered, but he was reassured that the effect was entirely in his head and all possible germs were effectively neutralized. Down the hall he could hear Selina singing something under the rush of water; curls of steam were leaking from under the door.
Lex Luthor shook his head in bewilderment, but when his glance fell on the remaining items Selina had brought, all thoughts of her odd behavior fled his mind. Yes, if he used that bit of copper to synthesize a Grignard reagent, then it might just be possible to--
Soon he was lost in calculations and plots, wheels within wheels. Caught up in his machinations, he didn't notice that he kept absently touching his lower lip as if to wipe something away--or recapture a sensation.
Pairing/Characters: Lex Luthor/Selina Kyle
Series Notes: " The House of the Earth" is an AU in which a few thousand Kryptonians escaped the destruction of Krypton to flee to Earth and conquer its people.
Warnings: None needed
Rating: PG
Word Count: 2500
Summary: Lex, the slave of a Kryptonian scientist, encounters a cat burglar and forges an unlikely alliance.
Notes: I always wanted to get back to this 'verse and do a little backstory about some of the characters, and Lex and Selina insisted more loudly. The only thing you really need to know to follow this is that the Earth was invaded by Kryptonians about eighteen years ago and Lex and Selina are getting by as best they can.
There were things missing around the laboratory.
Kler-Bos hadn't noticed, of course--how any sentient being as disorganized as he was could even function, Lex had no idea. It probably helped that his father was a powerful man on the Kryptonian High Council; it meant that he could get away with being a shoddy engineer and a generally slipshod and unobservant being.
He never noticed, for example, that the human he kept to "tidy up the lab" knew more about engineering than he did.
It was food, first: energy bars missing from Kler-Bos's cabinets, fruit vanished from the refrigerator. Then it was scraps of leather and cloth, bits of metal. It was skillfully done. Few people would have noticed, except that Lex Luthor was particularly precise about his surroundings.
It took him ten days to catch the thief once he had noticed: ten days of watching, observing, and planning. At the end of it, he found himself with his hand clamped around the wrist of--only the slightest raising of his eyebrows betrayed his surprise--a grubby, spitting girl with green eyes.
Lex looked at his captive impassively. She was probably in her late teens, but her boyish build and emaciated state made her look younger. The silvery slave collar on her neck was too small; Lex could see the sores on the skin where it chafed. It made his own neck itch. Her bony, agile fingers were filthy; the tips stained vermilion, the mark of a slave at work in the fields harvesting the flowers that lengthened Kryptonian lifespans. The juice left its distinctive dye and couldn't be washed out for months. The makeshift bullwhip he had slapped aside lay on the ground nearby; she eyed it hungrily, then lashed out with a kick to his groin. He twisted to let the blow land on his hip and tightened his grip on her wrist until she made a small sound of pain and stopped struggling. Her huge emerald eyes glared up at him.
"You're quite a good thief," he noted. "What's your name?"
"I'm the Cat," she growled.
"That's not a name, that's a title. I don't call people by titles they haven't earned," Lex said. She glared at him in silence, and he could feel her body coiling, preparing to scratch at his face.
"I need you to steal some things for me," he said before she could strike, and her eyes widened, then narrowed again in suspicion. "I won't hand you over to Kler-Bos if you agree."
"Kler-Bos?" The girl's voice was puzzled. "You mean your master?"
"The man who owns a piece of paper that gives him legal right to do as he wills with my body, yes," Lex said. "But I told you, I don't use titles people haven't earned." He released her hand and picked up the bullwhip before she could reach it. Her eyes followed it with a mix of yearning and involuntary fear, and Lex knew without looking that under the filthy rags her back would be ridged with old scars.
"How do you know I won't just disappear?" she said, her face defiant.
"I'll give you this back if you return with the goods," said Lex, lifting the whip. "And I'll give you a good meal too, not just a piece of stolen fruit. A hot meal: stew, bread, rice." He shrugged, ignoring the pathetic, reluctant shine in her eyes at his list of food. "But most importantly, I think you're curious. Curious about me, curious about what I might use your stolen goods for. I think that would be enough to bring you back."
After a moment, she laughed: a hard, mirthless laugh. "Okay then. Tell me what you want."
"I need some pumice dust and a specific kind of bleach. You can find the former in many Kryptonian ladies' boudoirs. The latter might be found at a laundromat, especially one specializing in Kryptonian clothes rather than Terran." He gave her the full details and she listened carefully, nodding.
She turned at the door. "And if I don't find them?"
"Then don't bother to come back," he said, returning to his work.
: : :
She did come back, bearing the two objects, within a couple of days. Lex found her in Kler-Bos's laboratory at midnight again, hefting a piece of titanium sheeting speculatively. "Don't touch anything," he snapped as he came in. "I've got a system so I can find everything I need."
"You mean so your master can find what he needs?"
Lex just snorted and took the items from her, sniffing and touching them carefully. "Yes, these will do." He mixed them together with a mortar and pestle, adding a few other ingredients from the cabinets, until he had a goopy gray mass. The girl watched him warily. "Come here."
She sidled toward him, ready to flee at a moment's notice. "What is it?"
"Give me your hand."
She put it behind her back hastily, glaring. With an exaggerated sigh, he stripped off his work gloves and dabbled his bare fingers in the paste. "No burns, no ill effects. Now give me your hand."
Still uncertain, she held it out, flinching just a little when he grabbed it and stuck it in the goop. He grabbed a rag and scrubbed it off to reveal pale fingers, the red flower-dye completely gone.
She held up her hand, her eyes huge. "How--how--"
"I happen to be a genius, girl."
Her eyes snapped. "Don't call me that."
"I don't have a name to call you," he said, turning to the microwave in the corner of the room and starting it. A few seconds later, a savory smell of herbs and meat started to fill the room. Lex grabbed a piece of bread from a cabinet and ripped it in two. "Well?" He said without looking behind him, taking two bowls of stew out of the microwave and dropping them on the table. "Are you going to eat?"
When she joined him, he noticed the red stains were gone from her other hand as well. "My name is Selina," she said, picking up the spoon.
"I'm Lex Luthor."
"Slaves don't have last names," she said, her eyes resting on his collar.
"True," he said, taking a bite.
After a moment, she followed suit.
He waited for her to finish wolfing down her stew, then said, "That collar looks uncomfortable. You must have gone through a growth spurt after you ran away." Her mouth compressed as if biting back bad memories. "Must hamper your thieving abilities."
She shrugged, unconsciously moving so the collar would chafe less. "It isn't like I can just slip into something more comfortable."
"True." Kryptonian slave collars were designed without locks; only an alien strength could remove them. Lex leaned back, looking at Selina speculatively. "I need you to pick up a few more things for me. Can you memorize a list of ten things?"
A wary look. "I can read it if you write them down."
Lex hid his surprise; teaching a human to read was a death sentence, and few Terrans born after the Kryptonians came were literate. He shook his head: "Give you a record of my little shopping list? What if you were to...carelessly misplace it? No, you'll memorize the items."
She listened carefully, repeating the items back to him. When she had them fixed in her memory, she laughed shortly. "Where am I supposed to get tungsten carbide? Or a medical laser?"
He didn't waste time being surprised that she knew what tungsten carbide was. "You're a clever thief, if shockingly grubby. I'm sure you'll figure something out."
"Why should I take the risk? This isn't some lady's cosmetics, those are dangerous items."
Lex sighed. "If you fulfill your side of the bargain, I'll remove your collar."
Her eyes widened the very slightest of a fraction, then she frowned. "That's not possible. If it were possible, you wouldn't be wearing yours."
"And give up access to this laboratory? Don't be stupid."
"I don't believe you can do it."
He shrugged. "I don't care. If you aren't up to the job, just say so."
She glared as she stood up. "I'll think about it."
He didn't see her for a few weeks this time. He made sure to leave some fruit and bread laying around in the open, and it disappeared now and then. It wasn't charity; simply that a starving thief was more liable to make mistakes.
And he waited.
: : :
She showed up in the lab one night at midnight, lugging a basket of material that seemed too heavy for her slender frame. He took it from her without a word and started to rummage through it.
"I only got you seven of the ten things," she said.
"Too big of a challenge, I see."
She made a small, insulted hissing sound. "Insurance. You don't get the rest until this collar is gone."
He smiled at her for the first time, a wolfish grin of satisfaction. "That's why I made sure some of the items on the list were redundant," he said. "I really only needed five. Your work is thus perfectly adequate."
Pulling out the things he needed, he turned his back on her and began to add them to his half-finished project. Selina started to say something, but he held up his hand and cut her off without turning around. She hissed again, then went to the refrigerator and helped herself to milk and a plate of cold salmon.
When he whirled, holding an item shaped like a gun, she ducked involuntarily, then glared at him.
"Hold still," he said, putting the muzzle to her neck.
"What the--"
Before she could pull away, there was a sharp metallic sound, and the smell of hot metal filled the air briefly. Another motion on the other side of her neck, and the collar fell off in two pieces, making a sweet silvery chime as it struck the concrete floor.
Selina stared down at the pieces of her collar. "Don't touch it yet," said Lex. "The edges are still quite hot." Her hand went to her neck, touching the bare skin, and she turned her gaze to him. Her eyes were full of some emotion Lex couldn't quite decipher, but he'd never been good at reading people. Whatever it was, the intensity of it made him uncomfortable. "There you go," he shrugged. "You're free, whatever that means in this world. In some ways, of course, you're more limited now," he went on as he put away his materials. "You can't pretend to be a slave, so if you're caught, you'll be summarily executed as a rebel. I believe you're the only uncollared human on Earth now, so you'll probably stand out a bit."
"Why?" Her voice was muted, confused. "Why do this for me?"
"Don't be a fool," he said sharply. "I have much bigger plans than getting one dirty slave out of her collar. But one must start somewhere." He finished putting everything back where it belonged, lining up all the tools just right as they should be. "You seem skilled. If you like, we might be able to come up with a mutually beneficial arrangement between us."
After a moment, she murmured, "I see." She looked down at the collar on the floor again and nodded slowly. "Yes. I think we can."
"Well, that's settled then," Lex said briskly, anxious for her to leave so he could get more work done. He felt rather than heard her go as he made a new coded entry in his notebook.
So it was a surprise when he went to his tiny room an hour later and found her sitting on the edge of his bed. Her pose was frankly seductive under her rags, but her eyes were resigned: There is a price for everything, I know. She met his gaze and managed a smile that she probably thought was sultry.
After a moment, Lex stepped forward. "Get off of my bed, you filthy, disgusting urchin," he snapped. "This is my private space. Get out."
The look on her face transmuted to shock and confusion. "But--"
He grabbed a clean blanket from the closet and tossed it at her. "I don't share my room with anyone. You can sleep on the floor of the storage closet if you like, but you need to be out of the lab by eleven o'clock, that's the earliest Kler-Bos ever comes in. Don't come back until after eight. If he finds you here, I shall denounce you as a thief and a runaway and you'll be promptly hanged." He wrinkled his nose, looking at her. "And if you're going to be anywhere in the same building as me, I require you to bathe regularly. There's a shower down the hall to the left. Now leave me alone, I have work to do and the smell is distracting me."
He stripped the sheets off his bed, making her jump to her feet, and shoved them into her hands. "You might as well have these now," he muttered. He waved a dismissive hand at the door when she didn't move. "Shoo."
A flurry of emotions crossed her face in quick succession, too fast for Lex to read, fading into a small, wry smile. Then Selina leaned forward and kissed him lightly, full on the mouth, before whirling to run from the room.
After a while he heard water running down the hall and realized he was still standing with the door open. He could still feel the imprint of her lips on his, warm and almost tingling.
He went back into the lab and put some disinfectant on a cloth, then dabbed fastidiously at his lips. The feeling of the kiss still lingered, but he was reassured that the effect was entirely in his head and all possible germs were effectively neutralized. Down the hall he could hear Selina singing something under the rush of water; curls of steam were leaking from under the door.
Lex Luthor shook his head in bewilderment, but when his glance fell on the remaining items Selina had brought, all thoughts of her odd behavior fled his mind. Yes, if he used that bit of copper to synthesize a Grignard reagent, then it might just be possible to--
Soon he was lost in calculations and plots, wheels within wheels. Caught up in his machinations, he didn't notice that he kept absently touching his lower lip as if to wipe something away--or recapture a sensation.