Chapter Text
When the Kryptonians came they were so much like us.
They looked like us, and could communicate with perfect accuracy all Earth languages they encountered.
But they were miracles. Super strength, speed, the ability to fly, but what was even better, technology. Technology that they were willing to share.
They would make peace possible for the planet Earth. Save humans from disease, starvation, and climate change.
But no one had ever asked what the price was for all these miracles.
And if they had, no one could have stopped them anyway.
Bruce had never trusted them because Bruce never fully trusted anyone outside his cave. Dick would stay up late at night watching the political talks and Kryptonian’s great feats of strength.
“Him, he’s called Kal-El,” Dick said breathlessly to Alfred as he watched ‘Kal-El’ fly through the sky in defiance of all laws of gravity. “He’s called Superman—well they’re all super, but he was the first one. He said: ‘I come in peace’ and everything to a couple of farmers in Smallville! Can you believe that? It’s sort of corny, but somehow he made it sound cool.”
And Alfred listened on indulgently while gently chiding the boy wonder to bed.
And Bruce would watch the news and think.
He took protective measures, studied weaknesses, kept Batman and Robin out of any limelight that the ‘Supers’ might inspect with their X-ray eyes. Tried to find countermeasures and realized there weren’t many, if any at all.
But that was because he was paranoid, he would tell himself. Although he couldn’t fully trust the Kryptonians, they seemed good. They were survivors of the destruction of their own planet seeking asylum. They refused to offer weapons, only medicines and solutions to problems that had plagued Earth.
He did learn some things though. Their X-ray vision couldn’t penetrate lead. He quickly lined his cowl and Dick’s domino mask.
They even met ‘Superman.’
They even trusted him as much as Bruce could trust anyone outside his cave.
Kal-El smiled at Batman’s scowl while Robin looked on in adoration.
“Fighting crime seems like a noble task. I’m happy to help with that endeavor.”
And for a year everything was good. A new ally, and advancements and benefits for all…
But Bruce was paranoid, so of course he would find it first.
“All the weapons,” Bruce said staring at his computer. Dick came to him sensing how disturbed his mentor was. The boy wonder frowned.
“What is it, Bruce?”
“They’ve taken over and we haven’t even noticed.”
He felt betrayed. More than betrayed. Kal-El had played a friend when really…
“They couldn’t convince Earth to give up defenses willingly, they never even asked. It turns out they didn’t have to. They were planning to shut down everything. They’re planning to take over.”
And there was nothing they could do about it.
The war didn’t last long. There were a small army of Kryptonians versus the billions of people inhabiting planet Earth. The only way to win would have been to burn everything, scorch the planet. Some humans were even willing to do that, the Kryptonians would use that as propaganda later against Earthling rule.
Batman didn’t worry about the inhabitability of the planet although he did salt the Earth in his own way. His goal was information. All that he could he destroyed or hide away. He started as soon as he realized. He knew they wouldn’t be able to hold out.
One thousand Supermen beat everyone, even Earth’s greatest heroes.
“ROBIN!” Batman rasped. Ribs were broken, so was his right arm. He was bleeding, but the wound had been cauterized by the burns. He couldn’t move, he needed to move but he couldn’t move! Where the hell was the Flash!?
Kal-El’s hand was gently placed on the back of Robin’s neck, but that was as good as a gun to the boy’s head. Dick stood perfectly still. His face was blank, neutral as Batman had trained him.
But Bruce could see the fear. The boy, his boy, was terrified.
And so was he.
“Of all of them, you are the one that could cause the most damage,” Kal-El said to Batman.
His eyes glowed red. Bruce was going to die. He had led Robin to his death. He had failed.
“GO BATMAN!” Robin shouted. While Superman was distracted he let the powdered led hidden in his glove fly into Kal-El’s eyes, temporarily blinding him.
“NO!” He roared as everything around him blurred. His heart leapt at the sudden speed. The Flash. Just in the nick of time and far too late.
Batman escaped.
But Robin didn’t.
Humans were delicate creatures. Father said that they were much like Kryptonians before the planet was destroyed.
Human children were especially delicate, he decided.
Robin stood in the middle of the entrance hall completely frozen. His uniform was torn here and there and there were bruises all over his body, most of them, Kal realized, were from Kal’s handling of him. He had been trying to be gentle, but their skin was like flower petals. He would have to work on it. Robin had a guarded stance, but there was hopelessness on his face.
“The fighting’s over, Robin.”
Robin’s hands shook; a human wouldn’t have even noticed it. His heartbeat was pounding, adrenaline rushed through his systems.
Kal didn’t like being a cause for fear.
“What are you going to do?” Robin’s voice was small. It was strange, even after a year on Earth. The children of Krypton were gone. Survivors like him had grown, and because of years of procreation with artificial wombs they were no longer able to carry children to term. He remembered the delight of seeing human children for the first time. How joyful they were.
Robin had always had joy.
“I won’t harm you,” Kal-El reassured him studying the boy’s face.
Robin ran. Kal-El watched and followed the boy’s loud heartbeat as he made his way out Kal’s home.
The humans called them Sky Fortresses. With all the planes and jets destroyed there was no way to reach them unless you had the ability to fly, and if you did the defenses would be a hard thing to overcome.
Robin had run to the very edge and looked down. The city of Metropolis was below them and Robin realized his situation. Kal-El didn’t need to do anything to keep him trapped.
He turned, faced Kal with bravery, “I won’t tell you anything,” the boy swore.
“There’s nothing I want you to tell me,” Kal-El said. He kept his voice even and calm. Robin was becoming more panicked with empty air behind him and Kal-El in front of him.
“What do you want from me?” he demanded, an edge to his voice.
“Batman is a dangerous man,” Kal-El explained, “And you are very precious to him. I’m only trying to prevent tragedy.”
“I’m a hostage.”
Kal smiled, “It won’t be as bad as you think.”
“Batman was right,” Robin said coldly. “We should never have trusted you.”
It shouldn’t have made him wince.
Perhaps it had been a mistake to give Robin the run of his home, but there was nothing that he could really hurt. If he broke anything the robots would fix it. If he wanted for anything the robots would make it. The only thing Kal ever worried about was the boy hurting himself, but he kept track of Robin’s steady heartbeat in the back of his mind. Robin wasn’t allowed to leave without Kal by his side of course; New Kandor would be dangerous for a fragile creature like him. Kal was still having trouble finding the right amount of force to use when touching the boy—which wasn’t often. Robin wouldn’t let him near him if he could help it and Kal-El did his best to respect his wishes.
Mostly Robin rummaged around and broke things carelessly. Kal was convinced he was trying to find a way to escape. Looking at the parts he could use to build things. Other than that he sat in his room and sulked. He wouldn’t speak a word to Kal-El after the first day, full of demands for freedom.
The only rule Kal-El had was that if Robin wanted food he had to eat with Kal-El at his table. Robin didn’t fight with the rule, he didn’t starve himself like people in the Earth movies and books might have. Kal-El wondered if it was thanks to Batman’s training. Robin might see himself as a prisoner of war. A prisoner of war’s duty was to escape, and to escape you had to keep up your strength.
Robin sat across from him eating silently.
Kal-El always tried for conversation. The boy was a talker. He knew that. It was just a matter of getting him to open up a bit, but after three straight days of silence, Kal-El was getting frustrated.
“We’re not trying to hurt any of you.”
“You’ve killed people,” Robin said bluntly. The first words he had spoken in days. It wasn’t exactly the conversation Kal-El had wanted to have, but if it would make Robin open up a little.
“Not me, I’m a scientist,” Well, that was his designation. He really was more of a fact finder. It was his job to learn about Earth’s culture and report back on it. Make first contact. Watch the shifting politics. Which humans to watch out for, and which ones they could trust.
He felt a pang of regret. Batman had been one of the humans he personally trusted, but he knew early on that he would be one of their greatest enemies. He never divulged that to the military until far past the time he should have, but Batman helped people. Kal-El believed in that. He had tried to get him to surrender peacefully, but it devolved into a fight. Kal-El had used too much strength and had hurt Batman badly. Getting Robin was a last-ditch effort for a surrender. He was sure it would have worked if Robin hadn't thrown the lead and the Flash hadn't appeared.
Robin slowly looked up at him. His eyes were still covered by the domino mask, he refused to take off his uniform and Kal-El had the feeling there would be trouble soon about getting Robin into clean clothes.
Kal-El could tell Robin was glaring at him and didn’t say a word to counter Kal-El. Only went back to spooning food into his mouth, at a quicker pace now, perhaps hoping to leave the table sooner.
“We did kill people,” Kal-El admitted, unwilling to go back to stony resentful silence. “But there was a need. Humanity keeps trying to fight and struggle with us, when the best thing to do is—”
“Give in?” Robin was obviously disgusted by the idea.
“Let us help,” Kal-El said gently, “Earth and all its creatures are better off with us taking care of it. We have already eradicated disease and starvation. We’ve collapsed your dated monetary system. Humanity, for the first time, is at peace with itself.”
Robin looked up at him and opened his mouth angrily. He shut it, sensing he was being dragged into a conversation. After a pause, he opened it again, although had a cooler countenance than before.
“You think you’re superior to us, but we’ve seen this pattern before. You’re conquerors. You invaded us. You killed dissenters. You put humanity to work making pieces of puzzles so that they couldn’t learn, but they would be kept busy.” Robin looked down at his plate, “I saw how some of your people treat humans. Is that what you plan to do with me? Groom me to be compliant and then—”
“No,” Kal-El said firmly. His gut twisted from disgust. There had been those who had found the human’s frailty… interesting. To so easily hold power over another sentient creature went to some people’s heads. As disgusting as it was, human pets were an alarmingly growing trend. They were called hostages, servants, and willing… but Kal-El knew what they really were, but it was never children. Never. Robin was the only child taken, and he was a special case. Batman’s only known weakness.
“You’re a hostage,” Kal-El said, “I plan to treat you with respect as if you were my own kin—”
“No,” Robin interrupted. Kal-El frowned.
“My family’s down there,” Robin said. He pushed his empty bowl away and stood up, “I’m not your anything.”
The boy ferociously tried to fight as he was stripped from his uniform and mask.
Clothing had been laid out for him. Kryptonian clothing. It had taken seconds for their robots to get his measurements and create child-sized articles. The problem was Robin’s refusal to touch them. They continued to be neatly folded on his desk. It had been five days since his capture. He was still wearing the brightly coloured uniform. Red, yellow and green. The cape wasn’t so much a problem, but the uniform was dirty and torn. He wanted to start acclimatizing Robin. His Father said that the best way to do that was to get Robin used to Kryptonian life.
“Take away his uniform and give him something decent to wear,” Jor-El had said.
Robin didn’t put them on by himself, asking hadn’t worked. Kal-El didn’t want to force anything on the boy, but it was unhealthy to wear the same dirty clothes for so long.
There was no difficulty catching him and holding him down. Robin yelled in protest. Told him to stop. His heart had sped up and Kal-El felt guilt well. He was afraid again.
“You just need to change, you just need to change,” Kal repeated over and over. He didn’t want to hurt him. He didn’t want to do this either, but he had to.
“Don’t touch me!” Robin cried. Tears soaked into the domino mask and Kal-El stripped it off revealing terrified eyes.
The difficulty wasn’t holding him down; it was being gentle enough, being light, but not so light that Robin could slip away. He did it as quickly as he could, he pulled off the clothes and then stood back. The boy fell back, covered in bruises on his bed, naked. He curled up hiding himself and shaking. Kal-El wasn’t sure what to do so he stepped out. Closed the door. Gave him privacy.
He closed his eyes leaning against the door, silently apologising. He could hear Robin’s quiet choked-back sobs. They echoed in his ears. He tried to turn down the volume, but he was too focused and felt overwhelmed.
“Batman will come,” the boy whispered so softly no human would have heard it, “Batman will come for me.”
Kal-El’s heart broke. He hated Batman in that moment. He hated the child’s dependence on him, and he hated that he hadn’t even attempted to get Robin back yet… as folly as it would have been.
He focused on Robin’s heartbeat. It was quick, like a bird’s, but eventually calmed. Slowed down and evened out.
He was sleeping, exhausted. Humans needed at least six hours of sleep and children needed more, but he knew Robin had been running on two or three quick hours here and there over the past five days.
Kal-El didn’t need as much sleep. On Earth he could go weeks, even months without closing his eyes. He stood vigil at Robin’s door and wished he had gone about it another way.
He should have convinced him. He shouldn’t have forced him. Robin already felt powerless, and taking away the few choices he had left…
He wouldn’t do that again. He would never use his strength against Robin’s.
He held the uniform in his hand and looked down at the ‘R’ sewn on to the chest.
-
“You got the uniform then,” His Father was working diligently at his mechanics. Mother was no doubt in a council meeting. Father should be there as well, but they had a joke that Jor-El was a bit of a recluse. Although he was an honoured member of the council for his work that saved all those of Krypton who would listen about the coming apocalypse of their planet, he was not an even-handed politician. He left it to his wife, Lara, who was brilliant with the political going ons of the council learned from being a leader of the Labour Coucil. If he was needed for a vote, Lara would drag him to the meeting and tell him which way to go. Otherwise, he would work. There was lots of work to do to make Earth the perfect new Krypton they hoped it would one day become.
“Yes,” it almost felt strange to speak Kryptonian when in his home life words were dominated by English. “At a cost.”
“Oh? Did you hurt him? They’re so delicate. You need to be more gentle,” his father grunted pulling at a loose socket.
“I—well yes, I gave him some bruises, but it was more… I forced him out of the clothes and he reacted badly. I took away something from him that he still needed—”
“You did the right thing,” Jor-El turned to his son and put a firm hand on his shoulder, “The little * Robin* (His father spoke the name a bit brokenly in rusty English) needs to learn where he stands. If you give him too much freedom he won’t know what to do with himself. It’s unfair to him. He’s a child, a child needs structure,” Jor-El smiled.
Kal-El forced a smile back. His father patted him on the shoulder, “The council let you keep—the little bird (here his father used a Kryptonian word that was about as close to robin as he could get) because it’s important, not only to learn about them, but to also teach them. We are invaders, until your little bird understands that we will make his world better of course he’ll resent us. Humans are stubborn they don’t really know what’s good for them, but their children are more willing to learn. Teach your little bird. Not only will it keep him busy and let him focus on things other than his own captivity, but it will work towards a happier future for humanity under our rule. If * Robin the Boy Wonder * sees our way of thinking it would be a huge win in convincing other humans. The faster he becomes Kryptonian the happier he’ll be for it. Here, give me the uniform.”
Kal-El handed it over. He didn’t know why his father had asked for it in the first place, but he was nothing if not an obedient son.
“This will send a message to the Bat,” Jor-El said in satisfaction, “Remind him of the precious treasure we keep.”
“If Batman did do something…” Kal-El said slowly. “We wouldn’t really…Robin is our hostage, but he’s a little boy.”
“Kal,” Jor-El frowned at him. “More than any other species our people see children as sacred. You were our last. The Last Son of Krypton–” Kal hated that title. “--We would never harm a child. Children are the future.”
Later Kal-El would wonder about that. How could the Kryptonians have a future without children? Their rule might be longer than an average human’s lifespan, but eventually, they would die out.
But that wasn’t a problem he needed to think about. It was in better hands than his.