Chapter Text
Pod slum, Trambalar
“This isn’t what we agreed on.”
“It’s all I have, Kal. I’m sorry.”
He sighed and took the tokens from Sunnor, a pang in his stomach as it realized he would deny it sufficient food again just to meet his monthly savings goal. He looked at the old man once again, waiting for at least a hint of anger to show through. But he felt nothing. Pure apathy.
He wished he could be like Kara. She would never tolerate being cheated out of her tokens she worked hard for. It terrified the neighborhood how she could get when someone so much as thought of crossing her. Kal couldn’t be like that. Rather, he had the luxury to not be like that. She did the dirty work for him, the morally questionable things that would eat him alive if he ever mustered up enough courage to do it.
Sunnor wouldn’t deserve it. He was too old to be taking care of three grandchildren and without his vision, he wouldn’t be able to pilot for LE Intergalactic Corp. Without his job, the three kids would starve.
Kara would’ve broken the seeing eyes the minute Sunnor revealed he didn’t have the agreed upon tokens. He understood where she was coming from, but it would just be a waste. If he broke Sunnor’s seeing eyes, it’s not like the tokens would appear magically. Kal would’ve spent the time fixing it anyway and Sunnor wouldn’t have the means to earn enough tokens to stay alive and perhaps one day, give him what he was owed. It wasn’t cheap feeding three children. Kara only had to feed him when he was little and he saw how that drained her.
Perhaps if she’d arrived alone, she wouldn’t dull every waking moment of her life with endless packets of spirit. He put the tokens in his backpack and left Sunnor to drown in his guilt. Kal didn’t hold it against him but he wished the man would’ve told him upfront that he only had 17 of the 28 tokens they’d agreed upon.
He would’ve done the job anyway. For those kids if not for their grandfather.
He walked slowly back to the pods as the red hues of the day gave way to the pitch black night. He always made it a point to return before curfew ended. He didn’t want to have to sleep on the roads when the pods auto-locked. He inserted six tokens in the pod’s payment slots. Three in his, slot #2, and three in Kara’s, slot #4. He didn’t even have to look to know slot #3 was fully paid for for the week. Kara always paid for Krypto’s slot before hers. He was a terrible pup, but he was still just a pup and he wouldn’t survive on the streets even for a night. Even if he could, Kara wouldn’t let that happen. He was all she had of home besides Kal.
The little troublemaker jumped up at Kal as soon as the pod opened for him. The smell of blood hit his nose, but he had no time to process it with Krypto all over him. He laughed as the little guy licked his face clean, his tail wagging at such a speed that it looked like a white blur.
“Okay, okay. I get it. You smelled the ribbons,” he said, reaching into his bag and getting the packet with the ribbons of red meat. He had some lard and spice to cook it for himself and Kara later on but the plain ribbons had to do for Krypto. He took it between his teeth and ran to his favorite spot, the pillow at Kara’s side.
Krypto’s tail wagged against a sleeping Kara and she shot up from bed, immediately hitting her head against the bed above her. She whimpered and rolled out of bed, stiffening when she saw him.
“How did the assignment go?”
“Great!” she said, throwing her body at him. He caught her in his arms and squeezed her in a hug. She always did okay, but that didn’t stop him from worrying. She was clearly terribly injured. Their pod didn’t usually smell like blood. But she was well enough to talk and wake up with the slightest disturbance and that had to be enough for then.
“Got paid too. And got hired for two more. I’m heading out tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow? You don’t look too well…”
“I’m fine. I took some Morph.”
“The pod smells like blood.”
“Oh, that isn’t me. There’s blood all over the sink. It’s not mine, though. I swear. Shit! What if Krypto licks it or something,” she said, hurrying out to the kitchenette.
“Threw up blood? Is she okay?” He asked, going over to the bunks and peeling the blanket off of Deen.
“Shit.”
Emergency vans were not easy to get in their neighborhood. The roads were too narrow and the comms signal was weak from how overcrowded the area was. But he and Kara managed to carry her over to the edge of the pods circle where a kid was kind enough to drive them to the care center. Bitten by a venomous quact. The worst luck anyone could have. She worked in the seedier parts of town and the abandoned buildings were breedings grounds for all kinds of creatures. Without pest control, accidents happened too often.
But that meant the care center was well equipped to handle Deen. They shot the antidote into her veins before they could even enter the center.
“Give this to her once every three hours.”
He nodded, accepting the vials from the carer who save Deen. Had they stepped inside the center, they would’ve had to pay. It would’ve cost the remainder of what Kal made that day, leaving zero savings for his trip. The meds were subsidised, thank the Gods. The carer was acting out of the kindness of her own heart and even drove them back to the pods.
Rather than lift her into her bunk, they placed her in Kara’s. Would be easier to take care of her that way.
There were four beds in their pod. Two bunks of two. Kal, Kara, and Krypto had three because the pod owner wouldn’t allow pets unless they rented an additional bed. The rent was atrocious but it was the only place that allowed them to keep Krypto. Keeping Krypto was a non-negotiable.
Kara giggled all of a sudden, making him look up at her. She already had another liquor packet in her mouth, hand squeezing the bottom as she drank it.
“That’s gonna be me one day.”
“Kara…”
Another giggle had her coughing the liquor up. The sounds echoed through the pod and Krypto joined in with his whines of concern.
“Could be tomorrow. Could be my last assignment.”
“Don’t say that.”
“What? It’s true! Stop being a little bitch, Kal.”
“It’s a dangerous job?”
“They’re all at least a little dangerous.”
She usually said danger hated to see her coming. But the shock of Deen’s hospitalization must’ve gotten to her. And the liquor. The filters were off when she was drunk and she was drunk often.
“I don’t think Krypto will let that happen,” he said in a pathetic attempt to lighten the mood. It did nothing for him what with the blood fully visible in the sink. But Kara pulled the dog into her lap and cooed at him so it was better than nothing.
“Yeah,” she said quietly, her voice soft and sweet. Youthful like it was supposed to be. “My baby.”
She was out cold, arms around all the white fur. He checked on Deen one last time and looked at the timer. Two hours and twenty minutes until her next dose of the medicine.
He hopped onto his bed and turned the lights out, keeping only the miniature light on. He propped his pillow up against the wall and leaned against it, relaxing for the first time that day. His attention turned to his wrist as it always did in times of solitude. The sharp angles of the strange script appeared half his lifetime ago. An alien mate.
It was extremely rare as far as kara knew. Only one in a million had a mark in a foreign language. If you weren’t wealthy enough to fly out to the planet or if the planet barred visitors, you were essentially doomed.
But Kal still counted himself lucky in that regard. At least he still had a soulmate. Kara’s soulmate was Kryptonian like them, another casualty of their planet’s destruction. She didn’t even get to meet them.
He liked to torture himself with thoughts of how easy it would’ve been for him to find his soulmate had they been back home. Their families were reasonably wealthy from what she’d told him. They could’ve hired a linguist to trace the origin of the language. He wouldn’t have to choose between food and saving enough tokens for the hypothetical day he finally finds which planet his soulmate was from.
Chances were he would never find her.
There were plenty of people who died without ever meeting their soulmate. He couldn’t give that thought much significance. It was all he had now. Someone out in the cosmos who was looking for him just as he was looking for them.
LOIS LANE, DAILY PLANET
He traced the words with the tip of his pinky. He already had the pattern memorized. He could write it on a piece of paper without ever having to look at his wrist. He used to do it too. Back when the mark was fresh and he was so hormonal that was comforted by the mere sight of the words she would say, changing his life for the better.
He used to wonder if she was trying to find him just as he was trying to find her. How did her world treat people with alien soulmates? Did she find out he was from Krypton? If she had, it was very possible she assumed he was dead and moved on…
But he had to hope she hadn’t yet found the origins of the script. Had to hope she was waiting for him.
There was little else to look forward to.
“I owe you one.”
“You don—” he stopped himself, taking a look at Kara sleeping with Krypto in her arms. She would jump to the opportunity. It was largely a favor economy as no one had enough tokens to fulfill all their needs. He’d fixed household appliances and comms gadgets many times in exchange for food. Kept them from having to spend too much on groceries.
“I want a job at the library,” he said, squirming in place at the words that came out of his mouth. One thing he’d never done was demand a favor in exchange for saving a life. He was committing the same mistake that contributed to Krypton’s demise.
“That’s it?”
He nodded, still ashamed but somewhat relieved that she didn’t immediately shame him for this.
“I don’t know how you’ll survive if it weren’t for your cousin.”
He didn’t either. But it wasn’t so simple a request. Getting a data processor would cost him an arm and leg and even if he managed to buy one second or third hand, there was no room in their pod. The heat from the processor alone would melt their faces off.
He needed to get in the library. That wasn’t possible for someone without an ID badge living in the outskirts of the city and surviving on odd jobs. Besides, he needed to access their books in the linguistics section. They didn’t think to copy those files to their drive. The only resources they had on linguistics was centered around Kryptonian and while that would be useful for keeping their language alive, it wouldn’t help Kal find his soulmate.
“You know the pay is shit. I survive on odd jobs. The library job is just for tax purposes.”
“I know. I just need an in.”
I was a junior scientist. My intellect is slipping through my fingers each day I survive instead of live. I haven’t read a book in years and I don’t know who I am if not the scientist my parents raised me.
Unspoken words threatened to choke him from being suppressed so long. All he managed was, “Please, Deen.”
Deen managed to forge some papers and was kind enough to lend him a friend’s formal wear for his interview. The job was just cleaning up. He could choose his shifts but only if the other cleaning staff were amenable. He’d mainly be cleaning up after the higher ed students— they were allowed to bring food in as they mostly existed in the libraries. Then there was the mopping and dusting and anything else that his crew leader would ask of him.
The days went on and he found the cleaning to be quite easy. Higher ed students were much less messy than Krypto. He was able to bring some of the gadgets he had to repair to the library. When he had some downtime, he fixed them. The best part of his day (or night) was access to the linguistics section. Not until that night, though. It was torture until the night he found a script that matched the words on his wrist.
Latin.
Metropolis, Earth
Cigarette between her lips, Lois stormed into the office building. A look at the giant clock that hung from the high ceilings told her she still had a few minutes left. Few more puffs. She stood by the trash can and took hurried drags, her hands shaking from the anger that powered her to walk several miles from the restaurant. With one minute on the clock, she put the cigarette out and took the elevator.
The bullpen was busy as usual, Perry shouting orders out to the senior reporters who’d stayed behind to complete the pieces about the brawl at the senate confirmation hearings an hour ago.
She hung her backpack by the straps off the back of her chair before plopping down on it. She got to work at once, returning to her back and forth with a source and fact-checking a soccer piece at the same time. It was good that she was fully occupied. Because if she strewed in the events at lunch, she would pop a blood vessel or two.
“Hey… You alright?”
“What?” She snapped before she looked up at the kind face of the sweet voice and gave her the least convincing smile possible. She didn’t like being fussed over. Didn’t like being pitied or treated like she was a helpless child. It was what everyone did when they found out.
“Sorry, Cat. Just… deadlines.”
“Yeah…” she trailed, looking utterly unconvinced. Before Lois could make something else up, she said, “I’m here if you wanna talk about it. Deadlines or Dadlines.”
That brought a small smile to her lips. Genuine, a product of feeling at least a little bit safe with someone she was beginning to consider a friend. There was no sign of disgust, or worse pity when Cat found her and Jimmy organizing a protest against the whole system. In a moment of panic, she told her she had empty wrists.
People only had empty wrists for two reasons— either they had no soulmate or they were lying and hiding it with full coverage body paint. The latter was usually for the purposes of cheating on a partner. While it was true that she hid hers with body paint, it wasn’t so she could cheat. She’d actually have to be with someone to cheat.
She wasn’t one of those purists who refused to be with anyone other than their ‘one true love’. Of course not. The exact opposite.
She simply didn’t have the time for that stuff. First one to enter the Planet and last one to leave didn’t leave a lot of space to go out and meet people. Sure, there were one or two dating apps for unpaired people. But it was to the brim with paired up couples ‘looking for an unpaired third to have loads of fun with’. Or it was men who swore up and down that they weren’t looking for their soulmate and believed in falling for someone organically who would dump a woman the second they found their so-called soulmate.
She had a profile once. Lucy made her do it because she knew her big sister was ‘the most lovable person in the world’. How fucking cute. Lois knew it would be a failure and within hours of swimming in the dating pool through her profile, Lucy was shaken to the core.
It was mainly dick pics and solicitation for a third or old widowed men preying on younger women. It was easy to prey on unpaired people’s insecurities. Hard to tell an older person ‘no’ when you’ve been told all your life that you were worthless.
It was why she did what she did.
Lois was never keen on finding her soulmate. She didn’t wait with bated breath for her soul mark to appear on her wrist. Already in her rebellious stage, she was afraid that she would get a mark. Would’ve lost her a lot of street cred. But at the same time, she was curious to know who the “universe” had chosen for her. She was ashamed by the thought, but she no longer blamed herself. It was hard to escape the propaganda around it. It was tempting to believe that a benevolent, omniscient being paired them up with the one person in the universe who was perfect for them. When nothing was promised in life, not one moment, the idea of one true love kept people from jumping off a fucking cliff.
Having recently lost her mother, she wanted desperately to believe there was someone out there in the world made just for her. Who, when she found them, would make the loneliness disappear. It was so tempting even though she didn’t believe in the system. Then the symbols appeared.
It was short. Maybe one or two words.
Dad took a picture of it and sent it off to his contacts at the CIA to identify the language. If anyone could identify a foreign language, it would be the organization that toppled foreign governments for America’s benefit. So when their answers were a resounding ‘I have never seen that fucking alphabet in my life’, she knew she wasn’t getting a soulmate.
She displayed a devil-may-care attitude and chastised Lucy for crying over what appeared on her wrist. But deep down, she was at least a little dejected. The random squiggles were worse that having nothing at all.
There was a community of people who didn’t get their mark. Of people who lost their soulmates and were trying to find love again despite the stigma. Of people who stood up and said proudly that they would not honor the mark that appeared on their person without their consent. They supported and cheered each other on. Most of the time anyway.
There was fuckall for the people with squiggles.
She’d tried to find them. Showed off her wrist and the inexplicable symbols, hoping there were others who could relate. She kept it covered for years. It was customary for people to keep it hidden so that no one could sneak a peek to pose as their soulmate. But she was on the last tube of the full coverage skin tint and she was determined to not purchase a new one.
Not like someone could read it and spit it back at her.
Smallville, Earth
Three years later…
Any rational person would’ve called the sheriff.
Jonathan said the words, but he made no move to call anyone. She gave him first aid and he called Stacy the nurse from down the road and neither of them thought to call the authorities. When Stacy stitched up his wounds and left to get some painkillers for when the boy woke up, they looked at each other and came to a silent agreement. It wouldn’t be safe for him.
When they boy— young man, really— fell in their backyard, he managed to say a few words before he lost consciousness. And golly, it was not English. He did not look like a Mexican boy, but who knew these days? His clothes were strange too, but nothing that young people wore made any sense to Martha anymore.
They tried to get in the vehicle that he came in. Maybe he had his phone inside. Not like she or Jonathan could operate one. Maybe Stacy could when she came back. But the car— no, definitely not a car— was jammed shut. Bigger worry for them was the big hole it left on the side of the barn. Thankfully it was still warm outside and the cows wouldn’t shiver all night.
The hole stayed for a few days and cows were only slightly annoyed at the damage caused to their shelter. When the young man woke up, it became certain to them that he spoke not a word of English. But he took their hands in his and he said something that sounded close to gracias and she could piece those clues together to realize he was thanking them.
Kal El was his name and the next word he repeated must’ve been sorry at the sight of the hole in the barn that his ship left. While he looked lanky, he got to work at once and patched up the side of the barn. The cows grew to like him quickly.
Neither she nor Jon asked him to do anything, but he took it upon himself to perform hard physical labor without anything other than food and shelter in return. In the darkness of night when they went to bed, Jon whispered to her that having him around felt like having a son. The softness of his voice and its light tremble had her tearing up too.
As old married couples do, they agreed in the silence of the night that they would do whatever needed to help the boy.
It took a few weeks, but Kal showed them the reason he was there. He pulled back the sleeve of his shirt, revealing his soulmate mark. Of course! Of course he was in America to find his soulmate. Jon read the words out loud and his eyes brightened like the sun. He repeated the words like it was a question. Clumsy, mispronounced, but so earnest. He helped Kal say it right and when Jon clapped him on the back and gave him a smile, he beamed at them.
It wasn’t unusual for people to go overseas looking for their soulmate. Her own Jonathan came from a faraway town on his bicycle looking for her. It was easier back in the day when borders weren’t so strict and cameras weren’t everywhere. She’d heard about a lot of folks being arrested for coming to the country illegally to find their soulmate. Even a whisper in the air about an illegal alien would have the sheriff knocking on their door and the boy put away in some horrible prison.
They couldn’t do that to him. No one deserved to be punished for daring to love.
Metropolis, Earth
Two years later
Kal had wasted three years of his life learning Latin. Three years.
Kal wasn’t the kind to cry over spilt milk, but it hurt when he first found out that Latin was dead but it had transformed into multiple Romantic languages that shared the script. He learned English. Thanks to the Kents and Lana. All the time he spent learning Latin helped too, what with it being a kind of root of English. All the hard work with Latin also primed his brain to learn more languages.
It worked to his advantage that Earth had a yellow sun. He’d heard about its impact on Kryptonian biology before, but never internalized it until he woke up magically healed of every scar, new and old. Who needed that creepy green owl when he could fly to every country whose language he wanted to learn.
It started as an inevitability. The yellow sun made his hearing incredibly powerful— he could hear every husk of corn rustle in the wind, every fly rubbing its limbs together, the first cry of a newborn baby on the other side of the world, people near death crying for help.
A flying man was scary even if he rescued you from a fire without breaking a sweat. Less so if you spoke to them in their language.
In his first weeks on Earth, he believed kindness was the way of things there. A paradise of a planet where greed touched no one and everyone helped everyone else. As he learned the language and understood why the Kents kept him a secret… Earth was a place like any other. Not a paradise where his soulmate was waiting for him where his ship landed to embrace him in her arms.
Help wasn’t always appreciated. People had screamed in his ears when he rescued them. They were few and far between but let’s just say that if “what the fuck!” were the words on his wrist, he would’ve had a hard time figuring out who his soulmate was.
But he didn’t discriminate. Kindness always worked out well. Helping Deen got him into that library. Fixing a Higher Ed student’s mini processor got him the resources to rent the ship he took to Earth. Being kind to the Kents as they’d been to him meant learning the language of the woman he was destined for. He wasn’t looking for people to be nice to him in exchange for saving their lives. If he placed conditions on his kindness, there would be an excuse to not help basically everyone.
Like people who put themselves in trouble.
Slowing down above the abandoned factory, he didn’t know that was it for him. For two years he saved people and fled the scene immediately, wore disguises of all kinds to stay a spectre. That was what they called him. The spectre. Sometimes it was The Blur but the former caught on better. More mysterious, better suited to the man no one could catch, who helped and left before anyone could ask about him.
He swooped down and picked the woman up mere moments before it exploded. She jolted in his arm as the explosion went off, her hands going up to cover her ears and dropping the notepad and pen. He caught them in one hand, opened his mouth to say something reassuring. But she opened her eyes and it was as though the universe stilled.
She had blue eyes. Not like his icy blue. They were…beautiful. They were a kind of turquoise or teal, but those words couldn’t accurately describe them. They were like a rock found on a scientific expedition on a dangerous part of the planet… A rare, precious rock sculpted into jewelry gifted to royalty. Piercing sharp that revealed a sort of grit. But something soft, ethereal in its beauty with how her purple sweater just…it did something for her eyes.
Her hands fisted in his clothes, she parted her lips, a peachy pink that showed evidence of being bitten. Several feet above ground, having narrowly escaped death, eyes glassy from the cold wind, she somehow managed to look fearless. Seeing those eyes, he could believe she actually was. Her voice trembled and her hands fisted his clothes in a vice grip, but she spoke.
“Lois Lane, Daily Planet. Do you have a comment for me?”