Fic: Both Alike in Dignity
Title: Both Alike in Dignity
Characters/Pairings: Girl!Clark/Bruce
Rating: PG
Summary: The summer of his fourteenth year, Bruce Wayne finds himself in Smallville, where he meets the daughter of Jonathan and Martha Kent.
Word count: 5600
Notes: F25: movieverse au. I'd love to see a genderbender that isn't written by me. Girl!Clark (always been), first time meeting going from there. Um. I got inspired and then most of the way through the fic realized it wasn't...exactly...movieverse, especially Bruce. I'm sorry! But I was having so much fun with it...
The new kid was skinny, with a shock of unruly dark hair that fell into his eyes, untrimmed. He was dressed in jeans with holes in the knees--not deliberate, fashionable holes, either, real holes--and a flannel shirt that looked like it had seen better days.
Jo watched him from the desk next to hers as the teacher droned on about American history. Most of the other boys were fidgety, but the new kid sat still, looking straight at the teacher, not even taking notes.
"So when was the Emancipation Proclamation signed? Anyone?" Ms. Harkin looked around the room. "Come on, kids, this was in your last reading." Still nothing. Jo stared down at her notes. "Stanley?"
Stanley Hofmann squirmed in his seat. "Uh...uh...1964?"
There was a snort nearby; Jo realized it was the new kid. She glanced over to see him rolling his eyes at the ceiling.
Ms. Harkin pounced on the sound. "So--" she glanced down at the roster, "--Bruce, do you know the answer?"
The new kid--Bruce--frowned, looking annoyed and sullen. "Uh...1865?"
"That's much closer," the teacher said approvingly. "You're only off by two years. It was 1863. The South surrendered in 1865."
Bruce nodded and jotted something down in his notebook, biting his lip. To most people, he might have looked chagrined that he hadn't known the right answer. But he had known it, Jo thought, remembering the flicker of contempt in his eyes at Stan's answer. He just hadn't answered correctly. Why would someone answer a question wrong on purpose?
Curiosity was a dangerous emotion, Jo Kent thought, watching his profile out of the corner of her eye. Because curiosity could pique curiosity in return.
Some people had too much to hide to be curious.
He had a good chin, Jo thought, then dropped her eyes back to her own notes, annoyed.
: : :
"I don't see why we have to hire help this year." She heard the whine in her voice and struggled to sound reasonable. "You know I could have the harvest in like that."
Pa Kent shook his head. "Honey, you know that if I did that with no help but my little daughter, there'd be questions."
"I'm not that little," she grumbled.
He reached out and tousled her close-cropped dark curls affectionately. "I know." He bent his head to meet her eyes squarely. "And I know why you don't want people poking around the farm, too." Jo blinked in alarm, then realized too late her expression had given her away. "Sweetheart," Pa Kent said, "I just...don't want you to get in any trouble. You know I can't stop you, but--"
"--I hear them," she blurted out, and her father fell silent. "I can hear them, people screaming. Animals. At first it was just in Smallville, but then I could hear accidents in Eskridge too. And then Topeka. I can't...I can't just ignore them." She felt tears welling up in her eyes and blinked them back, swallowing. "I'm sorry," she said. "I don't know where it's going to end."
After a moment her father patted her shoulder, awkwardly, comfortingly. "Well." He cleared his throat. "Your Ma and I always knew you were meant for bigger places than Smallville."
Her laugh was a little shaky. "You never said so."
He smiled back ruefully. "Did we need to?"
: : :
The sky was gray with morning when the alarm rang. Jo groaned and put the pillow over her head for a moment, then dragged herself out of bed. Two emergencies last night in Topeka, but at least she had managed to go totally unseen this time as far as she could tell. The impulse to slow down long enough to reassure people was strong, but she couldn't afford to let anyone get a good look at her.
In the kitchen, Martha Kent was making pancakes. "Mr. Arnold and his son are out in the fields already," she said. "They wanted to get a couple of hours of work in before his son had to go to school. He's about the same age as you," she said, putting the plate in front of Jo. "Not a very friendly boy, though."
"Mmph," Jo said around a mouthful of pancakes. She still hated the idea of strangers around the farm, but maybe they'd get done quickly and leave her in peace.
She glanced at the clock and bolted the last pancake. She barely had time to get the milking done before school started.
: : :
Bruce was already tired as he slipped into his chair in the little classroom. His arms and back ached from lifting bales of hay. Farm work might be dull, he thought wryly, but it was good exercise. He didn't have to worry about getting flabby while working with Arnold.
Bill Arnold was a grifter and petty thief as an avocation, and had been more than happy to take on a charming and able-bodied boy to play his son in his swindles. Bruce had learned a lot about dissembling, slight of hand, and simple breaking and entering while traveling around the Midwest with him.
Arnold was an unpleasant man under a veneer of politeness that fooled many people just long enough to get the job done. Bruce was looking forward to turning him in to the police--and reimbursing in secret the people he'd cheated--once he'd gotten all the knowledge he needed from him.
"Rumor has it the Kents have something really valuable hidden in their barn," Arnold had said after a day scouting Smallville. "Find it and we're golden, Brucie." Bruce had hidden his grimace at the nickname Arnold insisted on calling him as the crook went on. "We'd get the job done faster if you skipped school, you know."
Bruce had grunted. "Don't want to call attention to us," he'd pointed out. Which was true. But Bruce had his own reasons for wanting to get to know the students in Smallville High. His eyes flicked around the classroom, assessing each person. They all seemed resolutely normal.
But someone in Smallville wasn't normal, Bruce thought. He remembered the photograph: the burning building, someone leaping lightly from the roof with a swaddled bundle, a blur of motion against the flames. Someone here wasn't normal...and had been careless enough to be spotted being not normal.
Which was why Bruce was here.
The class itself was boring as usual, though Bruce paid careful attention: all information was valuable. And it was interesting to watch how each teacher tried to control the dynamic of the classroom. Some did it through self-deprecating humor, some through fear. A few maintained control by picking one student to focus the hostility of the class upon.
Those were the dangerous ones, Bruce thought absently.
"Did anyone even read the assignment?" the English teacher was asking in despair. She looked out over the class, searching for a flicker of recognition. "Jo," she said finally. "Can you tell us what the point of Stoppard's play is?"
A dark-haired girl sitting near Bruce grimaced slightly. Her copy of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead sat on her desk in front of her; the cover had a sharp crease in it. "Well," she said slowly, "It's kind of a weird play."
"How so?" said the teacher with the air of someone who had all the patience in the world as the rest of the class shuffled.
"Well...Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are the main characters in the play, but in the real Hamlet they're totally minor characters. So it's like...we're watching the edges of Hamlet all the time. With the play kind of out of focus in the background. Stoppard makes the important characters minor and the minor characters important."
The teacher nodded. "And why would he do that?"
"Because he's trying to argue that the little people matter?"
Bruce shook his head before he could help it, and the teacher turned to him. "Bruce. You disagree?"
Bruce knew he should just shrug or say something stupid, but the girl was staring at him in annoyance. She had startlingly blue eyes. He found himself speaking to her instead of the teacher. "But they don't matter, right? The whole point is that they don't make any difference, they just bumble around and then they get killed and no one even notices. Fortinbras delivers the news of their deaths to a stage full of corpses. I mean, it's totally pointless."
The girl frowned and a sharp line appeared between her eyebrows. "But the reader notices. It redefines the play. And they do matter to us."
He snorted. "They're imaginary people."
"So's Hamlet, and people care about him, even though he's totally boring, all moody emo attitude."
The teacher laughed and made shushing motions with her hands. "Now Jo, cut the Melancholy Dane some slack." Jo glared at Bruce, then down at her desk, muttering something under her breath.
The whole class was staring at the two of them. Bruce slumped down in his seat and tried to look inconspicuous again. Idiot.
Jo was slouching in her seat too, he noticed.
: : :
Bruce took his lunch tray to the corner of the cafeteria and sat down, carefully opening his milk carton and surveying the room. The girl he had argued with--Jo--was chatting with Pete Ross as they got their food. To his alarm, however, she made a beeline to him. "May I sit here?" she asked politely.
No, I'd rather be alone, he meant to say.
"Sure, I guess," he muttered instead.
"I wanted to apologize for being such a grouch today," she said, picking up her fork. "It was rude of me."
He shrugged. "Nah. I get arguing and don't know when to quit," he said uncomfortably.
"I think we're the only ones who did the homework," she said, a mischievous look in her eye.
"No doubt," he said, and she laughed--an abrupt nasal snort that Bruce found oddly charming.
There was a long, rather awkward pause as they picked at their food. Then both of them started to speak at once.
"You first," Bruce said as they stopped and laughed again.
"No, you," she said.
"I was just going to ask if the Jo stood for Josephine," he said. Brilliant conversational gambit, Bruce.
She took a gulp of milk. "Nope. Joseph."
"Joseph?"
"It's my middle name."
Bruce couldn't help laughing. "Why don't you go by your first name?"
Her smile was impish. "My first name is Clark." She nodded as Bruce stared. "Yep, Clark Joseph Kent. What can I say, my ma liked it."
The name sunk in slowly. "Kent? Did you say Kent?" She nodded. "Oh."
"Oh?"
"It's...well, I'm a worker at Jonathan Kent's farm. Is that...your place?"
Jo's eyes were suddenly wary. "You're Bill Arnold's boy?"
"Yeah, that's me."
"Oh." Jo looked down at her tray, her non-verbals suddenly distant, unwelcoming.
I get it. No mixing with the hired help.
Bruce stood, picking up his tray. "Well, I'd better get going then. Nice to talk to you," he said briskly. He headed for the door and didn't look back.
He cursed himself for wanting to.
: : :
The sun was low in the sky, casting gold across the fields. Jo looked up from her homework, out the little window in her loft room, and saw in the distance the figures of Bill Arnold and his boy baling hay. Bruce Arnold's face sprang into view in her vision, apparently without her volition or concentration. He had bits of hay stuck in his hair and a smudge of grease on his nose; sweat soaked his blue shirt. He grimaced slightly and swung a pitchfork of hay into the baler, making the sweaty shirt cling to his torso in ways that revealed surprisingly well-defined muscles for a boy of fourteen.
Jo looked back down at her homework. Problem number three.
She'd been looking at problem three off and on for over an hour now.
Outside the window, Bruce continued working, the sun glancing off his dark hair and touching it with gold. His father was taking a break, but Bruce kept going, his face grimly set, damp with sweat.
Problem number three.
Jo sighed.
: : :
Bruce looked up from tying another bale to see Jo Kent coming across the field with a pitcher and two glasses. "Ma thought you might like some lemonade," she called as she drew closer.
"Thank you, miss," said Bill, grabbing a glass. Bruce frowned, annoyed at being pulled away from his work. He'd lost himself in the rhythm of the machinery while thinking about how to make the near-antique baler work better.
Still, he was thirsty.
"Thanks," he muttered as he took his glass.
"I was wondering," the girl said, looking down at her sneakers. "When you're done. We could maybe walk into town and get some ice cream. If you're not tired," she added hastily.
Bruce nearly dropped his lemonade. "I look awful," he said, suddenly aware of the dust in his hair, the sweat rings under his arms.
"I don't care," she said. And smiled.
"I'm not too tired," said Bruce, and found that suddenly he wasn't.
The walk took about a half hour, but it seemed to fly by. Jo's eyes lit up when he said he'd seen Metropolis; she wanted to know every detail about it and wrung him dry of information with a thoroughness that left him a bit breathless. They compared notes on other students and teachers; it turned out Jo had a gift for mimicry that left Bruce doubled over with laughter, holding sore ribs at the side of the road.
At the drugstore, Jo hopped onto a swiveling stool and twirled a couple of times, as if she were in such a good mood that she couldn't contain her energy. Bruce wasn't sure what about having ice cream with a sweaty, dirty farm hand was enough to make someone so effervescent, but he wasn't about to complain.
"The usual?" said the man behind the counter, and Jo nodded, then looked at Bruce.
"Uh...a root beer float, please."
The man dropped off the ice cream and Jo dug into her sundae with gusto. "So how long are you in Smallville for?" she asked.
There was a smudge of hot fudge on her upper lip. It looked delicious.
Black eyebrows arched. "Bruce?"
"Uh. Oh. Well, until the crop is in," he said hastily.
She looked a bit disappointed. "That soon? But you're just starting to settle in. And we're doing Romeo and Juliet next in Vose's class."
"Did my heart love till now? forswear it, sight! For I ne'er saw true beauty till this night," Bruce said absently, still eyeing the spot of chocolate. Jo laughed and he hastily turned his attention to his neglected float.
"I should have known you'd already read it," she said ruefully. She spun her stool around, reaching out to tap him with one hand as the arc of her motion drew her near. "You're not like anyone I've ever met," she said, continuing the circuit until she faced him again.
"Is that a compliment?"
"Yes," she said simply, scraping up the last of her ice cream. She wiped her mouth with a napkin, sadly obliterating the alluring bit of fudge. Then she hopped from the stool and paid for both of them without ceremony, to Bruce's chagrin and slight relief--Bill Arnold was a demon for saving money. The door's bells jangled as they walked out into the cooling twilight.
"I'll walk you back to the farm," he said.
"Nah, it's no problem. Your motel's nearby, I'd hate to make you walk all that way three times." She bit her lip. "I wish...I wish you could stay in Smallville longer."
They passed the elementary school on the way to the hotel; swings creaked slightly in the moonlight. On the spur of the moment Bruce turned and entered it. It was empty. Gravel crunched under their feet and Jo absently set the merry-go-round twirling as they walked by. Bruce jumped onto it and let its orbit spin him a couple of times before jumping off onto the gravel again. At the monkey bars Bruce stopped and did a few quick pull-ups, just to burn off some nervous energy. It wasn't to impress Jo or anything. She watched him, a small smile on her face, then took a seat on one of the swings, setting it in motion, kicking toward the stars.
Bruce watched her, moving closer and farther away, closer then farther away. He took a deep breath. "I asked my father to come here. There was something I wanted to find out more about. And maybe...maybe you can help me."
Jo said nothing, but let the swing slow slightly so she could look at him. The air currents moved her dark hair in ringlets around her face.
"I don't know if you've heard the rumors. Of the Smallville Savior."
Jo's expression went absolutely still for a second. The swing came to a stop. "I've...yes. Pete Ross--he claims he got a picture."
"I've seen the picture," Bruce said. "It's blurry, but definitely of a human, or something close to it. Jo. I came here to find him, see if I could talk to him."
Jo opened her mouth, then closed it. "Why?"
"I..." Bruce realized suddenly he had no ready answer to this question. He had never expected to find someone he could--someone he wanted to confide in--until now. "I just...I just want to," he said. "It would be cool."
Jo's face closed up, and she kicked off abruptly from the ground, the swing soaring high, then higher, swooping past Bruce. "I see," she said between passes, her voice a little breathless. "A curiosity-seeker. A freak-hunter. And you thought Smallville would be a good place to find yourself some freaks."
"No," Bruce said, as Jo jumped off the swing at its zenith, landing with a crunch on the gravel, oddly lightly. "It's not..." But he didn't have any other words for what it was. "He's a hero, Jo. Not a freak, a hero. I want to tell him so."
Jo looked back at him from the entrance to the playground, her arms crossed across her chest, body language angry. But her eyes looked somehow more hurt than furious. "I'm not going to help you hunt down someone who clearly just wants to be left alone," she said, and was gone.
The swing kept going back and forth, back and forth, as her footsteps faded down the street.
After a while Bruce put out a hand and stopped the swing.
: : :
Moonlight spilled across the bed in the little loft room. Jo sat in the pool of light, still feeling a bit foolish at her dramatic exit. He didn't mean any harm, she told herself. But it had hurt, somehow, to realize he was here hunting for the mysterious Smallville Savior, that he saw Jo Kent as mainly a possible source of information about the metahuman.
It hurt, she realized with a pang, that he assumed that the hero was a boy.
She closed her eyes and cast her attention outward, listening. There. Two towns over--a woman screaming. In a second Jo was clad in her Kryptonian cloth and on her way.
If she had given in to the temptation to listen in on the Arnold's motel room, she would have heard something that concerned her more.
: : :
"Look, if they did have some kind of treasure hidden in their barn, would they really be using a thirty-year-old baler? I mean, would they still be farming at all?"
Bill Arnold's face was set in stubborn lines that Bruce knew well. They were low on money and Bill was getting desperate, and when he got desperate he made foolish gambles. "They have to keep farming to keep it a secret. I tell you, the old man got really nervous whenever he saw me in the east corner of the barn. It's there, whatever it is." He slung a rucksack over his back. "And we're going to find it tonight."
Bruce trailed after Bill, feeling unease settle in the pit of his stomach. He hadn't expected the older man to make his move so fast.
Now he had to go along and see if he could minimize the danger to the Kents somehow, mitigate his mistakes.
: : :
"There's nothing here, Bill!" Bruce hissed in the darkness of the barn.
"There's got to be." Bill's voice was flat, emotionless. A long pause. "It's in the house, then. There's got to be something."
"In the house? We can't break into the house without them noticing!"
In the dim light, Bruce could see Bill take the rucksack off his back and open it. "There's only three of them. And one's just a girl. No problems."
Bruce heard the distinct click of a gun being cocked.
Icy shock roiled in his gut. "Bill. No." He calculated the distance between himself and the con man as Bill hoisted the gun, self-recrimination searing him. How could he have been so stupid to not recognize the signs of Arnold's increasing desperation, not to see the direction it was going? "Don't do this."
Jo was asleep in that farmhouse, her dark curls fanned across her pillow. His fault.
The gun was pointed at him. Bill held another in his other hand.
"Kid, if you don't have the guts to grab fate by the balls and make it yours, you're of no use to me." Bill's eyes glinted in the darkness. "Are you going to help me or not?"
He wouldn't pull the trigger unless he had to, it would wake people in the house. "I'll help," Bruce said. He took a step forward, the floorboards creaking beneath his feet. Bill's eyes were flat and inhuman, driven beyond reason by greed. But he needed Bruce's help. Another step. Almost close enough.
At the last second something in Bruce's face gave him away, or Bill's nerve broke. As Bruce dodged to the side, Bill's finger tightened on the trigger.
A flash of light, a crease of pain along one arm. Bruce leapt up into the rafters from a crate, running along the beams as silently as he could, afterimages of light hot in his eyes. He didn't have much time before the Kents came to check on the noise. Walking into danger.
Another flash and a whining thunk into the wood near his head. "Fucking brat," snarled Bill.
The muzzle flashes might have affected Bill's vision, Bruce thought desperately. Maybe that would give him an edge. He jumped, scrabbling for another rafter, and felt pain sear along his injured arm.
The muscles gave way and he crashed to the ground, trying to roll with the impact, the wind knocked out of him.
He looked up into two gun muzzles.
Another muzzle flash, a whipcrack of sound--
--And as if in a dream, Bruce saw a hand intercede between him and the bullet, catching it from the air.
Bill's face was locked in a rictus of panic as he whirled to empty both guns into the newcomer, a deafening barrage of gunshots and a strobing flicker of light.
In the sporadic light of the deadly shots, Bruce could see the face of his rescuer, calm and untouched as bullets ricocheted off bright cloth and were plucked from the air.
The guns clicked on empty cartridges, and Bruce lurched forward to cold-cock the blinking, dazed thug. Bill was out before he hit the ground.
"I could have handled that," said a voice in the darkness.
"I know," he said. "I just...I just wanted to punch him."
"You're hurt," she said, and he felt hands on his arm, surprisingly gentle. He gasped as they touched the wound and she made a worried noise. "You're bleeding."
"Tends to happen...with bullets," he said.
A wavering light burst into the door of the barn. "Who's there?" Jonathan Kent said. The flashlight beam picked out Jo, Bruce, and the supine form of Bill in turn.
"Bruce is hurt, Pa," said Jo. The beam of light seemed to be making the whole barn sway around Bruce, and suddenly the floor tilted beneath him. Jo stepped forward and scooped him up in her arms with no apparent effort. "Call the police and tell them there was a burglary attempt."
"Can we trust him?" Jonathan's voice was distant, fading as if down a long tunnel.
"We don't have much choice," Jo's wry voice reached him before everything vanished into grayness.
: : :
He floundered toward awareness, struggling against confining blankets until Jo's voice reached him. "It's okay. You're safe."
His arm hurt and there was sunlight streaming through lace curtains across a bright quilt. Jo dropped her book on the bedstand and reached out to touch his forehead lightly with a cool hand. She was back in jeans and a denim shirt that matched her eyes. "Ma and Pa have talked to the police chief. They won't be bothering you. Your father's in custody. He was babbling nonsense about some super-man stopping him." A small smile.
"He's not...my father."
She didn't seem surprised, leaning back into her chair and raising an eyebrow. "Do you want to talk about it?"
Somewhat to his surprise, he did. And once he started talking, he couldn't seem to stop, pouring words into the sunlight-bright space between them: his parents' deaths, his oath and the ache to make the world better. How he had given up on the idea of working within legal channels, started looking for another way, a way he wasn't sure existed. And then he'd seen the blurred figure in a photograph that seemed to have something like the same idea.
"I'm sorry," he muttered as he reached the end. "I must have looked like an idiot asking you for help finding--finding you. I didn't think--I assumed--"
"You're supposed to," she said wryly. "And you didn't look like an idiot." She reached out and briefly touched the blanket near his injured arm. "Not at all. I'm the one who looks like an idiot, running around in some crazy costume like--like Zorro or something--"
"--No," he said, moving his arm without thinking and wincing. "No, that's important. The costume, it makes you something more, something outside the system. And--" he took a breath, she was staring at him, "I can do it too." He remembered Bill Arnold's face, illuminated in muzzle-flashes, frozen in terror. "I see now how I can do it."
Jo looked away from him, out the window. "You'll get hurt. Bruce, nothing can hurt me. But if you got hurt, I'd..." She trailed off and swallowed.
He reached out with his good hand and tapped her knee; when she looked back at him he was surprised to see her huge blue eyes were bright with tears. "I'm going to do this, Jo. I was always going to do something like this. I have to. This isn't a lark, a whim. It's my life." He couldn't help smiling, he could see it in his mind, unfolding like cloth, red and blue and black. "Can't you see? We're on to something here. Something important. Something that will work--if we do it together." He hesitated a second, frowning. "Eventually. I still have to get so much better--not just stronger, better. I should have known Bill's mind well enough to know he'd be so desperate, so reckless. I didn't see that, it was my mistake. I--I have to know what people like him are going to do, have to understand them." The smile came back, impossible to deny. "I can't count on you to save me every time, and I don't think I like getting shot."
Her face was thoughtful, and he assumed she was coming up with more reasons why it wouldn't work, but then she said, "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. We'll have to look like we're minor characters, unimportant, most of the time."
"When really we're--" He paused, considered. "No, there isn't anyone in Hamlet who'll be as awesome as the two of us working together. No one in Shakespeare. No one in the world."
Her smile was slow, radiant, breathtaking. Then she stopped, considering, hesitating. "It won't bother you to work with a...a freak?" With no warning, she lifted slowly off the chair to hover in the air, an angel in denim, an alien wearing sneakers. "I'm pretty freaky."
"You're beautiful," he said, the only thing he could possibly say at that moment, and she dropped back into her chair with a thump, looking a bit flustered. "You should be working in the open, not in secret."
"Maybe someday," she said. "I hope."
"I know it," he said. A wave of exhaustion went over him as he suddenly struggled to sit up. "My stuff, I have to get it--"
Jo's hands eased him back onto the bed, inexorable and kind. "We already got it all. Relax. Sleep. Ma says you can stay here a while." There was warmth in her voice, like the sunlight falling in lacy cascades all around him. "For now, consider this your home."
The last word followed him into light and warmth that held him safe, that healed.
: : :
Jo was doing her homework when she heard a pebble click against her window. Smiling, she threw up the sash to look down at the figure standing in the grass below her window.
"But, soft! what light through yonder window breaks?" declaimed Bruce, throwing an arm out just a bit gingerly. "It is the east, and Jo Kent is the sun!"
Jo leaned an elbow on the sill and grinned. "That doesn't scan so well," she noted.
"I still consider it a vast improvement on the original," Bruce said. He moved closer to the house and tugged at the ivy that twined up it, then began to climb upward, to Jo's mixed delight and chagrin. "The original did have some drawbacks. Like the ending."
"You're staying just across the hall, Bruce," she said as he made his way up the side of the house. "You could just, you know, knock."
"Ah, but the challenge makes it fun," said Bruce's voice below her, and after a minute his face appeared in her window, a bit flushed with exertion.
"If you fall and break your arm, you'll be stuck here even longer," she said.
"That would be a shame," he said, eyes twinkling. "But I can think of some incentive to stay."
"Thou know'st the mask of night is on my face, else would a maiden blush bepaint my cheek," Jo quoted hurriedly, largely to cover the fact that she actually was blushing just a little. She still hadn't gotten used to Bruce's tentative near-flirting--or, for that matter, quite decided to her satisfaction if it was flirting.
Bruce tilted his head, pondering. "No, getting to sit through more of Vose's English Lit classes is not the incentive I had in mind." The smile fell away as he looked at her. "I haven't seen you in the...in your...you know, special clothes since that night. I was hoping...before I left..."
Now Jo definitely was blushing. "Oh, sure. Hold on," she said, disappearing into the closet. She could change so fast that no one could see her, of course, and yet...well, the closet felt safer.
She emerged in the full red-and-blue regalia, cape streaming, feeling distinctly ridiculous, but Bruce made a small admiring sound. "Wow," he said softly.
"It's...really garish," she said, twitching at the cape a bit nervously. "But I discovered if I just wore regular clothes the air friction tended to cut them to ribbons when I went too fast and I'd arrive totally naked."
The laugh that echoed her self-conscious laughter was expected; the sudden thundering jump in Bruce's pulse was less so, and Jo found herself speechless as he swallowed hard and looked away from her. "Jo," he whispered, looking back at her, eyes bright with moonlight.
And then his injured arm gave way and he fell out of the ivy.
She had him in her arms in an instant, hovering slightly above the great oak tree in the backyard. "Oh," he said, looking around. "Oh. This is amazing."
He was totally unruffled, and Jo glared at him. "You fell on purpose!"
"Maybe," he said. His face was very near hers. He smoothed a curl away from her face. "We're not like them, you know. Romeo and Juliet."
"I should hope not," she said lightly, the pang of something like disappointment locked away carefully. "I'd look a bit ludicrous trying to stab myself, for example. Bit of an anticlimax."
He shook his head. "I just meant we don't have to rush like they did," he said. "They mucked it all up. We won't."
"Oh," she said. "Oh." She didn't know what else to say, but he didn't seem to need her to say anything else, he just floated with his arms around her, eyes dreamy, as if picturing the future.
"I'll come back and find you," he said.
"No you won't." She put a finger on his lips as his expression started to shift into hurt surprise. "I'll go find you."
He smiled into her touch, delicate as a promise. "I'll be looking forward to it."
Characters/Pairings: Girl!Clark/Bruce
Rating: PG
Summary: The summer of his fourteenth year, Bruce Wayne finds himself in Smallville, where he meets the daughter of Jonathan and Martha Kent.
Word count: 5600
Notes: F25: movieverse au. I'd love to see a genderbender that isn't written by me. Girl!Clark (always been), first time meeting going from there. Um. I got inspired and then most of the way through the fic realized it wasn't...exactly...movieverse, especially Bruce. I'm sorry! But I was having so much fun with it...
The new kid was skinny, with a shock of unruly dark hair that fell into his eyes, untrimmed. He was dressed in jeans with holes in the knees--not deliberate, fashionable holes, either, real holes--and a flannel shirt that looked like it had seen better days.
Jo watched him from the desk next to hers as the teacher droned on about American history. Most of the other boys were fidgety, but the new kid sat still, looking straight at the teacher, not even taking notes.
"So when was the Emancipation Proclamation signed? Anyone?" Ms. Harkin looked around the room. "Come on, kids, this was in your last reading." Still nothing. Jo stared down at her notes. "Stanley?"
Stanley Hofmann squirmed in his seat. "Uh...uh...1964?"
There was a snort nearby; Jo realized it was the new kid. She glanced over to see him rolling his eyes at the ceiling.
Ms. Harkin pounced on the sound. "So--" she glanced down at the roster, "--Bruce, do you know the answer?"
The new kid--Bruce--frowned, looking annoyed and sullen. "Uh...1865?"
"That's much closer," the teacher said approvingly. "You're only off by two years. It was 1863. The South surrendered in 1865."
Bruce nodded and jotted something down in his notebook, biting his lip. To most people, he might have looked chagrined that he hadn't known the right answer. But he had known it, Jo thought, remembering the flicker of contempt in his eyes at Stan's answer. He just hadn't answered correctly. Why would someone answer a question wrong on purpose?
Curiosity was a dangerous emotion, Jo Kent thought, watching his profile out of the corner of her eye. Because curiosity could pique curiosity in return.
Some people had too much to hide to be curious.
He had a good chin, Jo thought, then dropped her eyes back to her own notes, annoyed.
: : :
"I don't see why we have to hire help this year." She heard the whine in her voice and struggled to sound reasonable. "You know I could have the harvest in like that."
Pa Kent shook his head. "Honey, you know that if I did that with no help but my little daughter, there'd be questions."
"I'm not that little," she grumbled.
He reached out and tousled her close-cropped dark curls affectionately. "I know." He bent his head to meet her eyes squarely. "And I know why you don't want people poking around the farm, too." Jo blinked in alarm, then realized too late her expression had given her away. "Sweetheart," Pa Kent said, "I just...don't want you to get in any trouble. You know I can't stop you, but--"
"--I hear them," she blurted out, and her father fell silent. "I can hear them, people screaming. Animals. At first it was just in Smallville, but then I could hear accidents in Eskridge too. And then Topeka. I can't...I can't just ignore them." She felt tears welling up in her eyes and blinked them back, swallowing. "I'm sorry," she said. "I don't know where it's going to end."
After a moment her father patted her shoulder, awkwardly, comfortingly. "Well." He cleared his throat. "Your Ma and I always knew you were meant for bigger places than Smallville."
Her laugh was a little shaky. "You never said so."
He smiled back ruefully. "Did we need to?"
: : :
The sky was gray with morning when the alarm rang. Jo groaned and put the pillow over her head for a moment, then dragged herself out of bed. Two emergencies last night in Topeka, but at least she had managed to go totally unseen this time as far as she could tell. The impulse to slow down long enough to reassure people was strong, but she couldn't afford to let anyone get a good look at her.
In the kitchen, Martha Kent was making pancakes. "Mr. Arnold and his son are out in the fields already," she said. "They wanted to get a couple of hours of work in before his son had to go to school. He's about the same age as you," she said, putting the plate in front of Jo. "Not a very friendly boy, though."
"Mmph," Jo said around a mouthful of pancakes. She still hated the idea of strangers around the farm, but maybe they'd get done quickly and leave her in peace.
She glanced at the clock and bolted the last pancake. She barely had time to get the milking done before school started.
: : :
Bruce was already tired as he slipped into his chair in the little classroom. His arms and back ached from lifting bales of hay. Farm work might be dull, he thought wryly, but it was good exercise. He didn't have to worry about getting flabby while working with Arnold.
Bill Arnold was a grifter and petty thief as an avocation, and had been more than happy to take on a charming and able-bodied boy to play his son in his swindles. Bruce had learned a lot about dissembling, slight of hand, and simple breaking and entering while traveling around the Midwest with him.
Arnold was an unpleasant man under a veneer of politeness that fooled many people just long enough to get the job done. Bruce was looking forward to turning him in to the police--and reimbursing in secret the people he'd cheated--once he'd gotten all the knowledge he needed from him.
"Rumor has it the Kents have something really valuable hidden in their barn," Arnold had said after a day scouting Smallville. "Find it and we're golden, Brucie." Bruce had hidden his grimace at the nickname Arnold insisted on calling him as the crook went on. "We'd get the job done faster if you skipped school, you know."
Bruce had grunted. "Don't want to call attention to us," he'd pointed out. Which was true. But Bruce had his own reasons for wanting to get to know the students in Smallville High. His eyes flicked around the classroom, assessing each person. They all seemed resolutely normal.
But someone in Smallville wasn't normal, Bruce thought. He remembered the photograph: the burning building, someone leaping lightly from the roof with a swaddled bundle, a blur of motion against the flames. Someone here wasn't normal...and had been careless enough to be spotted being not normal.
Which was why Bruce was here.
The class itself was boring as usual, though Bruce paid careful attention: all information was valuable. And it was interesting to watch how each teacher tried to control the dynamic of the classroom. Some did it through self-deprecating humor, some through fear. A few maintained control by picking one student to focus the hostility of the class upon.
Those were the dangerous ones, Bruce thought absently.
"Did anyone even read the assignment?" the English teacher was asking in despair. She looked out over the class, searching for a flicker of recognition. "Jo," she said finally. "Can you tell us what the point of Stoppard's play is?"
A dark-haired girl sitting near Bruce grimaced slightly. Her copy of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead sat on her desk in front of her; the cover had a sharp crease in it. "Well," she said slowly, "It's kind of a weird play."
"How so?" said the teacher with the air of someone who had all the patience in the world as the rest of the class shuffled.
"Well...Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are the main characters in the play, but in the real Hamlet they're totally minor characters. So it's like...we're watching the edges of Hamlet all the time. With the play kind of out of focus in the background. Stoppard makes the important characters minor and the minor characters important."
The teacher nodded. "And why would he do that?"
"Because he's trying to argue that the little people matter?"
Bruce shook his head before he could help it, and the teacher turned to him. "Bruce. You disagree?"
Bruce knew he should just shrug or say something stupid, but the girl was staring at him in annoyance. She had startlingly blue eyes. He found himself speaking to her instead of the teacher. "But they don't matter, right? The whole point is that they don't make any difference, they just bumble around and then they get killed and no one even notices. Fortinbras delivers the news of their deaths to a stage full of corpses. I mean, it's totally pointless."
The girl frowned and a sharp line appeared between her eyebrows. "But the reader notices. It redefines the play. And they do matter to us."
He snorted. "They're imaginary people."
"So's Hamlet, and people care about him, even though he's totally boring, all moody emo attitude."
The teacher laughed and made shushing motions with her hands. "Now Jo, cut the Melancholy Dane some slack." Jo glared at Bruce, then down at her desk, muttering something under her breath.
The whole class was staring at the two of them. Bruce slumped down in his seat and tried to look inconspicuous again. Idiot.
Jo was slouching in her seat too, he noticed.
: : :
Bruce took his lunch tray to the corner of the cafeteria and sat down, carefully opening his milk carton and surveying the room. The girl he had argued with--Jo--was chatting with Pete Ross as they got their food. To his alarm, however, she made a beeline to him. "May I sit here?" she asked politely.
No, I'd rather be alone, he meant to say.
"Sure, I guess," he muttered instead.
"I wanted to apologize for being such a grouch today," she said, picking up her fork. "It was rude of me."
He shrugged. "Nah. I get arguing and don't know when to quit," he said uncomfortably.
"I think we're the only ones who did the homework," she said, a mischievous look in her eye.
"No doubt," he said, and she laughed--an abrupt nasal snort that Bruce found oddly charming.
There was a long, rather awkward pause as they picked at their food. Then both of them started to speak at once.
"You first," Bruce said as they stopped and laughed again.
"No, you," she said.
"I was just going to ask if the Jo stood for Josephine," he said. Brilliant conversational gambit, Bruce.
She took a gulp of milk. "Nope. Joseph."
"Joseph?"
"It's my middle name."
Bruce couldn't help laughing. "Why don't you go by your first name?"
Her smile was impish. "My first name is Clark." She nodded as Bruce stared. "Yep, Clark Joseph Kent. What can I say, my ma liked it."
The name sunk in slowly. "Kent? Did you say Kent?" She nodded. "Oh."
"Oh?"
"It's...well, I'm a worker at Jonathan Kent's farm. Is that...your place?"
Jo's eyes were suddenly wary. "You're Bill Arnold's boy?"
"Yeah, that's me."
"Oh." Jo looked down at her tray, her non-verbals suddenly distant, unwelcoming.
I get it. No mixing with the hired help.
Bruce stood, picking up his tray. "Well, I'd better get going then. Nice to talk to you," he said briskly. He headed for the door and didn't look back.
He cursed himself for wanting to.
: : :
The sun was low in the sky, casting gold across the fields. Jo looked up from her homework, out the little window in her loft room, and saw in the distance the figures of Bill Arnold and his boy baling hay. Bruce Arnold's face sprang into view in her vision, apparently without her volition or concentration. He had bits of hay stuck in his hair and a smudge of grease on his nose; sweat soaked his blue shirt. He grimaced slightly and swung a pitchfork of hay into the baler, making the sweaty shirt cling to his torso in ways that revealed surprisingly well-defined muscles for a boy of fourteen.
Jo looked back down at her homework. Problem number three.
She'd been looking at problem three off and on for over an hour now.
Outside the window, Bruce continued working, the sun glancing off his dark hair and touching it with gold. His father was taking a break, but Bruce kept going, his face grimly set, damp with sweat.
Problem number three.
Jo sighed.
: : :
Bruce looked up from tying another bale to see Jo Kent coming across the field with a pitcher and two glasses. "Ma thought you might like some lemonade," she called as she drew closer.
"Thank you, miss," said Bill, grabbing a glass. Bruce frowned, annoyed at being pulled away from his work. He'd lost himself in the rhythm of the machinery while thinking about how to make the near-antique baler work better.
Still, he was thirsty.
"Thanks," he muttered as he took his glass.
"I was wondering," the girl said, looking down at her sneakers. "When you're done. We could maybe walk into town and get some ice cream. If you're not tired," she added hastily.
Bruce nearly dropped his lemonade. "I look awful," he said, suddenly aware of the dust in his hair, the sweat rings under his arms.
"I don't care," she said. And smiled.
"I'm not too tired," said Bruce, and found that suddenly he wasn't.
The walk took about a half hour, but it seemed to fly by. Jo's eyes lit up when he said he'd seen Metropolis; she wanted to know every detail about it and wrung him dry of information with a thoroughness that left him a bit breathless. They compared notes on other students and teachers; it turned out Jo had a gift for mimicry that left Bruce doubled over with laughter, holding sore ribs at the side of the road.
At the drugstore, Jo hopped onto a swiveling stool and twirled a couple of times, as if she were in such a good mood that she couldn't contain her energy. Bruce wasn't sure what about having ice cream with a sweaty, dirty farm hand was enough to make someone so effervescent, but he wasn't about to complain.
"The usual?" said the man behind the counter, and Jo nodded, then looked at Bruce.
"Uh...a root beer float, please."
The man dropped off the ice cream and Jo dug into her sundae with gusto. "So how long are you in Smallville for?" she asked.
There was a smudge of hot fudge on her upper lip. It looked delicious.
Black eyebrows arched. "Bruce?"
"Uh. Oh. Well, until the crop is in," he said hastily.
She looked a bit disappointed. "That soon? But you're just starting to settle in. And we're doing Romeo and Juliet next in Vose's class."
"Did my heart love till now? forswear it, sight! For I ne'er saw true beauty till this night," Bruce said absently, still eyeing the spot of chocolate. Jo laughed and he hastily turned his attention to his neglected float.
"I should have known you'd already read it," she said ruefully. She spun her stool around, reaching out to tap him with one hand as the arc of her motion drew her near. "You're not like anyone I've ever met," she said, continuing the circuit until she faced him again.
"Is that a compliment?"
"Yes," she said simply, scraping up the last of her ice cream. She wiped her mouth with a napkin, sadly obliterating the alluring bit of fudge. Then she hopped from the stool and paid for both of them without ceremony, to Bruce's chagrin and slight relief--Bill Arnold was a demon for saving money. The door's bells jangled as they walked out into the cooling twilight.
"I'll walk you back to the farm," he said.
"Nah, it's no problem. Your motel's nearby, I'd hate to make you walk all that way three times." She bit her lip. "I wish...I wish you could stay in Smallville longer."
They passed the elementary school on the way to the hotel; swings creaked slightly in the moonlight. On the spur of the moment Bruce turned and entered it. It was empty. Gravel crunched under their feet and Jo absently set the merry-go-round twirling as they walked by. Bruce jumped onto it and let its orbit spin him a couple of times before jumping off onto the gravel again. At the monkey bars Bruce stopped and did a few quick pull-ups, just to burn off some nervous energy. It wasn't to impress Jo or anything. She watched him, a small smile on her face, then took a seat on one of the swings, setting it in motion, kicking toward the stars.
Bruce watched her, moving closer and farther away, closer then farther away. He took a deep breath. "I asked my father to come here. There was something I wanted to find out more about. And maybe...maybe you can help me."
Jo said nothing, but let the swing slow slightly so she could look at him. The air currents moved her dark hair in ringlets around her face.
"I don't know if you've heard the rumors. Of the Smallville Savior."
Jo's expression went absolutely still for a second. The swing came to a stop. "I've...yes. Pete Ross--he claims he got a picture."
"I've seen the picture," Bruce said. "It's blurry, but definitely of a human, or something close to it. Jo. I came here to find him, see if I could talk to him."
Jo opened her mouth, then closed it. "Why?"
"I..." Bruce realized suddenly he had no ready answer to this question. He had never expected to find someone he could--someone he wanted to confide in--until now. "I just...I just want to," he said. "It would be cool."
Jo's face closed up, and she kicked off abruptly from the ground, the swing soaring high, then higher, swooping past Bruce. "I see," she said between passes, her voice a little breathless. "A curiosity-seeker. A freak-hunter. And you thought Smallville would be a good place to find yourself some freaks."
"No," Bruce said, as Jo jumped off the swing at its zenith, landing with a crunch on the gravel, oddly lightly. "It's not..." But he didn't have any other words for what it was. "He's a hero, Jo. Not a freak, a hero. I want to tell him so."
Jo looked back at him from the entrance to the playground, her arms crossed across her chest, body language angry. But her eyes looked somehow more hurt than furious. "I'm not going to help you hunt down someone who clearly just wants to be left alone," she said, and was gone.
The swing kept going back and forth, back and forth, as her footsteps faded down the street.
After a while Bruce put out a hand and stopped the swing.
: : :
Moonlight spilled across the bed in the little loft room. Jo sat in the pool of light, still feeling a bit foolish at her dramatic exit. He didn't mean any harm, she told herself. But it had hurt, somehow, to realize he was here hunting for the mysterious Smallville Savior, that he saw Jo Kent as mainly a possible source of information about the metahuman.
It hurt, she realized with a pang, that he assumed that the hero was a boy.
She closed her eyes and cast her attention outward, listening. There. Two towns over--a woman screaming. In a second Jo was clad in her Kryptonian cloth and on her way.
If she had given in to the temptation to listen in on the Arnold's motel room, she would have heard something that concerned her more.
: : :
"Look, if they did have some kind of treasure hidden in their barn, would they really be using a thirty-year-old baler? I mean, would they still be farming at all?"
Bill Arnold's face was set in stubborn lines that Bruce knew well. They were low on money and Bill was getting desperate, and when he got desperate he made foolish gambles. "They have to keep farming to keep it a secret. I tell you, the old man got really nervous whenever he saw me in the east corner of the barn. It's there, whatever it is." He slung a rucksack over his back. "And we're going to find it tonight."
Bruce trailed after Bill, feeling unease settle in the pit of his stomach. He hadn't expected the older man to make his move so fast.
Now he had to go along and see if he could minimize the danger to the Kents somehow, mitigate his mistakes.
: : :
"There's nothing here, Bill!" Bruce hissed in the darkness of the barn.
"There's got to be." Bill's voice was flat, emotionless. A long pause. "It's in the house, then. There's got to be something."
"In the house? We can't break into the house without them noticing!"
In the dim light, Bruce could see Bill take the rucksack off his back and open it. "There's only three of them. And one's just a girl. No problems."
Bruce heard the distinct click of a gun being cocked.
Icy shock roiled in his gut. "Bill. No." He calculated the distance between himself and the con man as Bill hoisted the gun, self-recrimination searing him. How could he have been so stupid to not recognize the signs of Arnold's increasing desperation, not to see the direction it was going? "Don't do this."
Jo was asleep in that farmhouse, her dark curls fanned across her pillow. His fault.
The gun was pointed at him. Bill held another in his other hand.
"Kid, if you don't have the guts to grab fate by the balls and make it yours, you're of no use to me." Bill's eyes glinted in the darkness. "Are you going to help me or not?"
He wouldn't pull the trigger unless he had to, it would wake people in the house. "I'll help," Bruce said. He took a step forward, the floorboards creaking beneath his feet. Bill's eyes were flat and inhuman, driven beyond reason by greed. But he needed Bruce's help. Another step. Almost close enough.
At the last second something in Bruce's face gave him away, or Bill's nerve broke. As Bruce dodged to the side, Bill's finger tightened on the trigger.
A flash of light, a crease of pain along one arm. Bruce leapt up into the rafters from a crate, running along the beams as silently as he could, afterimages of light hot in his eyes. He didn't have much time before the Kents came to check on the noise. Walking into danger.
Another flash and a whining thunk into the wood near his head. "Fucking brat," snarled Bill.
The muzzle flashes might have affected Bill's vision, Bruce thought desperately. Maybe that would give him an edge. He jumped, scrabbling for another rafter, and felt pain sear along his injured arm.
The muscles gave way and he crashed to the ground, trying to roll with the impact, the wind knocked out of him.
He looked up into two gun muzzles.
Another muzzle flash, a whipcrack of sound--
--And as if in a dream, Bruce saw a hand intercede between him and the bullet, catching it from the air.
Bill's face was locked in a rictus of panic as he whirled to empty both guns into the newcomer, a deafening barrage of gunshots and a strobing flicker of light.
In the sporadic light of the deadly shots, Bruce could see the face of his rescuer, calm and untouched as bullets ricocheted off bright cloth and were plucked from the air.
The guns clicked on empty cartridges, and Bruce lurched forward to cold-cock the blinking, dazed thug. Bill was out before he hit the ground.
"I could have handled that," said a voice in the darkness.
"I know," he said. "I just...I just wanted to punch him."
"You're hurt," she said, and he felt hands on his arm, surprisingly gentle. He gasped as they touched the wound and she made a worried noise. "You're bleeding."
"Tends to happen...with bullets," he said.
A wavering light burst into the door of the barn. "Who's there?" Jonathan Kent said. The flashlight beam picked out Jo, Bruce, and the supine form of Bill in turn.
"Bruce is hurt, Pa," said Jo. The beam of light seemed to be making the whole barn sway around Bruce, and suddenly the floor tilted beneath him. Jo stepped forward and scooped him up in her arms with no apparent effort. "Call the police and tell them there was a burglary attempt."
"Can we trust him?" Jonathan's voice was distant, fading as if down a long tunnel.
"We don't have much choice," Jo's wry voice reached him before everything vanished into grayness.
: : :
He floundered toward awareness, struggling against confining blankets until Jo's voice reached him. "It's okay. You're safe."
His arm hurt and there was sunlight streaming through lace curtains across a bright quilt. Jo dropped her book on the bedstand and reached out to touch his forehead lightly with a cool hand. She was back in jeans and a denim shirt that matched her eyes. "Ma and Pa have talked to the police chief. They won't be bothering you. Your father's in custody. He was babbling nonsense about some super-man stopping him." A small smile.
"He's not...my father."
She didn't seem surprised, leaning back into her chair and raising an eyebrow. "Do you want to talk about it?"
Somewhat to his surprise, he did. And once he started talking, he couldn't seem to stop, pouring words into the sunlight-bright space between them: his parents' deaths, his oath and the ache to make the world better. How he had given up on the idea of working within legal channels, started looking for another way, a way he wasn't sure existed. And then he'd seen the blurred figure in a photograph that seemed to have something like the same idea.
"I'm sorry," he muttered as he reached the end. "I must have looked like an idiot asking you for help finding--finding you. I didn't think--I assumed--"
"You're supposed to," she said wryly. "And you didn't look like an idiot." She reached out and briefly touched the blanket near his injured arm. "Not at all. I'm the one who looks like an idiot, running around in some crazy costume like--like Zorro or something--"
"--No," he said, moving his arm without thinking and wincing. "No, that's important. The costume, it makes you something more, something outside the system. And--" he took a breath, she was staring at him, "I can do it too." He remembered Bill Arnold's face, illuminated in muzzle-flashes, frozen in terror. "I see now how I can do it."
Jo looked away from him, out the window. "You'll get hurt. Bruce, nothing can hurt me. But if you got hurt, I'd..." She trailed off and swallowed.
He reached out with his good hand and tapped her knee; when she looked back at him he was surprised to see her huge blue eyes were bright with tears. "I'm going to do this, Jo. I was always going to do something like this. I have to. This isn't a lark, a whim. It's my life." He couldn't help smiling, he could see it in his mind, unfolding like cloth, red and blue and black. "Can't you see? We're on to something here. Something important. Something that will work--if we do it together." He hesitated a second, frowning. "Eventually. I still have to get so much better--not just stronger, better. I should have known Bill's mind well enough to know he'd be so desperate, so reckless. I didn't see that, it was my mistake. I--I have to know what people like him are going to do, have to understand them." The smile came back, impossible to deny. "I can't count on you to save me every time, and I don't think I like getting shot."
Her face was thoughtful, and he assumed she was coming up with more reasons why it wouldn't work, but then she said, "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. We'll have to look like we're minor characters, unimportant, most of the time."
"When really we're--" He paused, considered. "No, there isn't anyone in Hamlet who'll be as awesome as the two of us working together. No one in Shakespeare. No one in the world."
Her smile was slow, radiant, breathtaking. Then she stopped, considering, hesitating. "It won't bother you to work with a...a freak?" With no warning, she lifted slowly off the chair to hover in the air, an angel in denim, an alien wearing sneakers. "I'm pretty freaky."
"You're beautiful," he said, the only thing he could possibly say at that moment, and she dropped back into her chair with a thump, looking a bit flustered. "You should be working in the open, not in secret."
"Maybe someday," she said. "I hope."
"I know it," he said. A wave of exhaustion went over him as he suddenly struggled to sit up. "My stuff, I have to get it--"
Jo's hands eased him back onto the bed, inexorable and kind. "We already got it all. Relax. Sleep. Ma says you can stay here a while." There was warmth in her voice, like the sunlight falling in lacy cascades all around him. "For now, consider this your home."
The last word followed him into light and warmth that held him safe, that healed.
: : :
Jo was doing her homework when she heard a pebble click against her window. Smiling, she threw up the sash to look down at the figure standing in the grass below her window.
"But, soft! what light through yonder window breaks?" declaimed Bruce, throwing an arm out just a bit gingerly. "It is the east, and Jo Kent is the sun!"
Jo leaned an elbow on the sill and grinned. "That doesn't scan so well," she noted.
"I still consider it a vast improvement on the original," Bruce said. He moved closer to the house and tugged at the ivy that twined up it, then began to climb upward, to Jo's mixed delight and chagrin. "The original did have some drawbacks. Like the ending."
"You're staying just across the hall, Bruce," she said as he made his way up the side of the house. "You could just, you know, knock."
"Ah, but the challenge makes it fun," said Bruce's voice below her, and after a minute his face appeared in her window, a bit flushed with exertion.
"If you fall and break your arm, you'll be stuck here even longer," she said.
"That would be a shame," he said, eyes twinkling. "But I can think of some incentive to stay."
"Thou know'st the mask of night is on my face, else would a maiden blush bepaint my cheek," Jo quoted hurriedly, largely to cover the fact that she actually was blushing just a little. She still hadn't gotten used to Bruce's tentative near-flirting--or, for that matter, quite decided to her satisfaction if it was flirting.
Bruce tilted his head, pondering. "No, getting to sit through more of Vose's English Lit classes is not the incentive I had in mind." The smile fell away as he looked at her. "I haven't seen you in the...in your...you know, special clothes since that night. I was hoping...before I left..."
Now Jo definitely was blushing. "Oh, sure. Hold on," she said, disappearing into the closet. She could change so fast that no one could see her, of course, and yet...well, the closet felt safer.
She emerged in the full red-and-blue regalia, cape streaming, feeling distinctly ridiculous, but Bruce made a small admiring sound. "Wow," he said softly.
"It's...really garish," she said, twitching at the cape a bit nervously. "But I discovered if I just wore regular clothes the air friction tended to cut them to ribbons when I went too fast and I'd arrive totally naked."
The laugh that echoed her self-conscious laughter was expected; the sudden thundering jump in Bruce's pulse was less so, and Jo found herself speechless as he swallowed hard and looked away from her. "Jo," he whispered, looking back at her, eyes bright with moonlight.
And then his injured arm gave way and he fell out of the ivy.
She had him in her arms in an instant, hovering slightly above the great oak tree in the backyard. "Oh," he said, looking around. "Oh. This is amazing."
He was totally unruffled, and Jo glared at him. "You fell on purpose!"
"Maybe," he said. His face was very near hers. He smoothed a curl away from her face. "We're not like them, you know. Romeo and Juliet."
"I should hope not," she said lightly, the pang of something like disappointment locked away carefully. "I'd look a bit ludicrous trying to stab myself, for example. Bit of an anticlimax."
He shook his head. "I just meant we don't have to rush like they did," he said. "They mucked it all up. We won't."
"Oh," she said. "Oh." She didn't know what else to say, but he didn't seem to need her to say anything else, he just floated with his arms around her, eyes dreamy, as if picturing the future.
"I'll come back and find you," he said.
"No you won't." She put a finger on his lips as his expression started to shift into hurt surprise. "I'll go find you."
He smiled into her touch, delicate as a promise. "I'll be looking forward to it."