Chapter Text
The sky is on fire.
Or, at least, for a moment the whole and total of his vision as he looks up is fire and as the nuclear bright burn lights up his retinas, Bruce Wayne thinks it wouldn’t be so bad – being annihilated into the grave dirt behind Wayne manor. A crater in the grass by the tomb stones.
Alfred wouldn’t have to bury him that way.
But it doesn’t happen. The fire streaks over the low boughs of the willow bent by the grave plot, breaking into a dozen molten orange tails. A large core piece the shape of a minnow rips over the southern slopes of the estate, lighting up the sky for an instant, then impacting at the edge of the trees. Above: the sky is alight with meteorites, hundreds of them, burning up in high atmo and screaming down through the thin ozone layer to arc unknown trajectories toward Gotham. It’s beautiful. Like the indifference of an A-bomb as it lights up the world.
Across the field, the grass is burning. The fallen meteor smolders silver. And the shape, like a minnow, seems less accidental now. A design, the body of the pod finned with three ornate stabilizing foils that fan and fold, as if trying to swim still. It spits gas and greenish flame from cracked seams in the paneling. Too hot to touch. The air around it ripples with heat so Bruce fists Thomas Wayne’s old leather jacket – the one he’s been wearing for three years now – around his hands and uses it to grab the end of the domed wind-shield. He heaves on it, one foot braced against the hot metal. The burning rubber stink stinging his throat, the bottom of his shoes heating up. He can hear screaming. It was the screaming that made him run. The screaming –
“I’ll get you out!” He yanks again, the splintered dome giving slightly, peeling up from its mooring in the ship’s frame. His fingers burn. “Hold on! Just hold on, I’ve got you! I’ve got –!”
The blast-shield gives and, because Bruce used every adrenaline-fueled ounce of strength he possessed, he immediately flops backwards off the ship and hits the ground on his spine. The freed shield goes skidding. For an instant: stars, the sky breaking apart in chunks or orange and green. An alien world in pieces having streaked unfathomable distances through time and space, cutting past stars and other galaxies and ending, finally, over the city of Gotham.
Bruce scrambles back up, lurching toward the ship. He tosses the smoking jacket. His fingers shine bright blistered red. Semi-cauterized gashes across the insides of his palm. His hands shake as he reaches into the pod.
The interior of the pod smells strange, sweet and metallic. (Poisonous maybe. Another world. Viral pathogens. Could kill me. Could –!) Someone’s painted little pictures along the inside of the pod wall: primary colors by hand, soft, round, maybe animals. Layered symbols. (Alien. Alien. It’s alien.) The deep red fabric lining the inside of the vessel weighs heavy, soft, and liquid in his hand as he grabs it up around its cargo. Bruce can hear himself saying over and over, “It’s okay. It’s okay. It’s fine. I’m fine. It’s fine.”
The toddler (alien) in his arms just cries and clings to his neck.
Bruce wraps them in blanket, wadding the big swath of fabric around (him? her?) the child but it does nothing to sooth the wet agonized wailing. Bruce hugs them, gathering them up, cradling their dark curly-haired head in his palm. Skull so small his fingers fit it comfortably – feathery soft curls. Their narrow chest against his, tiny ribs beneath his fingers, a heartbeat fast and hot against his sternum. He sprints toward the mansion, sneakers skidding in the muddy grass. His blood runs freely from his gashed hands now. It’s in the toddler’s hair and on the toddler’s shimmery blue baby tunic. The toddler from the space ship is still screaming. The toddler squeezes tighter, is burying their face in his shoulder. The screams are unbearable but muffled.
“Alfred!” Bruce throws his shoulder against the massive front door, feels the bones in his upper back bruise, then trips to his knees in the foyer. “Alfred, I need help.”
“Is he going to be okay?”
“I have no earthy idea, Master Wayne.”
“He’s breathing funny.”
“If what you say is true, and this child emerged from that craft behind the house, then it’s likely he is not human. We have no idea if this atmosphere is even appropriate for his species. At this point there is… not much I can imagine to do for him.”
“He was… crying before.”
“Master Wayne, will you please let me bandage your other hand now?”
“It’s fine.”
“It’s not fine. It is burned and going to be infected and more to the point - - we have no idea what you’ve been exposed to since you pulled open an extraterrestrial spacecraft.”
“I’m sorry.”
Alfred cannot be certain to whom Bruce is apologizing. He’s looking at the child. The lights flicker and dim, the reserve generators kicking on. Outside, parts of Gotham burn, sections of the city cratered by semi-radioactive debris howling down from the skies. Alfred cannot be sure what sounds are the impact of meteorites and what is the boom of transformers blowing. The unending wail of police sirens carries up from the city to the estate.
“I think I should get another blanket.”
“You’ll do no such thing. You will sit here and let me clean that burn and we will pray that this child survives the night. That is the end of it.”
Bruce, arrested mid-motion, sits back down on bed. Alfred uses the moment of uncertainty to nab Bruce’s other wrist and pull it into his lap. Once there, he gingerly rinses the blisters in a shallow basin of soapy water, gently wiping at the dirt and grit blackening the cuts across his fingers. No broken blisters. Just gashes from the pressure, partially cauterized. That would scar. Alfred dresses the wounds in ointment and clean gauze. Bruce ignores the process, staring fixedly at the rise and fall of the child’s chest, rapid and shallow, ragged with phlegm. Since they brought him to the house, he’s become feverish and asthmatic.
To Alfred and any other bystander it would appear they have a very sick little boy curled up beneath the comforter of the master bedroom. He could be a relative: dark hair, blue eyes (incredibly blue, skies over Kansas wheat fields blue), skin a bit darker than a Wayne, but nothing a cousin couldn’t claim. The red blanket from the ship remains coiled under his cheek, a chilled wash cloth set hopefully on top of his alien head.
“What do we do if he dies?” Bruce says this so quietly Alfred almost misses it.
“I think the better question,” says Alfred firmly, “is what to do if he lives.” He gives Bruce his newly bandaged hand back. “You pulled him from the wreckage. We know nothing about him. Nothing of his origins, but circumstances would strongly suggest genuine non-terrestrial origin. That being the case, we cannot simply turn him over to child services and –”
“We’re not giving him to anyone.”
“I wasn’t suggesting that we do.”
“He’s an alien. If we turn him over to anyone there’s no telling what they’ll do. We can’t do that.”
“Yes, but they might be better equipped to care for him. We can only do so much with –”
“No.”
Alfred sighs. “Distrust of the government, not withstanding, you’re committing to both concealing an alien life form and, potentially, having to fabricate a story in which a child suddenly appearing in the life of Bruce Wayne is not strange.”
“I have money,” he says, as though that resolves the issue. And, yes, it does, but not so simply.
“You’re also sixteen, Master Wayne.”
“We can hide him until I’m old enough to take on a ward, or adopt. No one can question my ability to provide means. He can be an illegitimate half-brother. He could be my son. Whatever story we need. We can fabricate papers to match it.”
“I,” enunciates Alfred, “can fabricate papers. I can do this very specific and very illegal service for you, Master Wayne, but we are not making decisions tonight. Just plans. Plans that, again, involve taking responsibility for raising a child from another planet.”
“There’s no one else we can trust with this.”
“I do have government connections, Master Wayne.” Alfred voices the option even while knowing the answer. “I could use them.”
“Absolutely not. We have no guarantees.”
“Very well, but consider the timing for you personally: You’re one month from beginning a eight-year training regime, a commitment of your own devising.” Alfred has set aside the first aid kit entirely now. He sits forward in his chair dress shirt rolled to his elbows. There’s blood on the floor and a dying child in the room. There are few niceties left. Few proper things. “To begin is full commitment. Some of the men and women you seek to train you may kill you if you fail them. I know at least one of them absolutely will. Where does a child factor into that path?”
Master Wayne’s eyes aren’t quite as blue as his mother’s, more a dull gray, like a sky clouded over. When he looks at Alfred, it’s so very rare for him to wear any particular emotion plainly, but in this particular moment what comes through primarily is a kind of raw heat. The same heat a dying man exudes as the cut artery does its work. A feverish burn.
Alfred softens a little. “You could simply delay your departure. A few years perhaps. Finish your schooling, make other arrangements toward your goal. See how… this situation develops. Then choose a course. For now, we should make no decisions, only… gather intelligence.”
Bruce sits quietly for a moment. No words, but some of that raw ache fades in his stare. He studies the boy.
“What do you think of ‘Clark’?”
Alfred blinks. “As…? As a name?”
Bruce frowns, wheels visibly turning. “I shouldn’t think of human names yet. I need to figure out if he has one already...”
“I said no decisions.”
Bruce looks up finally, toward the window and starts to stand. “I need to look at that ship...”
Alfred catches Bruce’s elbow, gently. “I will handle it, Master Wayne. I believe the catacombs should house the alien vessel safely. Now, remain here and resist the temptation to be productive. Sit for a moment.” Alfred waits until Bruce is safely seated again, ignoring the restless glance he gives the door. “Change the washcloth every half an hour if I’m gone longer than that.”
“Okay.”
“If any trouble arises, I have my phone on my person.”
“Okay.”
Alfred, suspecting that Bruce has begun to disconnect from himself, says more clearly: “I will return shortly.”
An hour and half later, Alfred hikes his way back to the master bedroom to find Bruce asleep on the bed, having lain back on the mattress, boots on the floor, hands folded on his stomach. Rather like he’d lain down to just close his eyes. The alien boy, however, must have woken at some point because he’d crawled out from under the covers to curl up next to Bruce. The red blanket is tucked around both of them and the boy’s breathing somewhat evened. His head rests on Bruce’s chest.
Alfred sighs and leans into the doorframe, watching the skies through the windows continue to burn.
“Damn.”
“Kal. Kal, calm down.”
“I can’t get down! I can’t get down!”
“Calm. Down.”
“I can’t!”
“Focus on my voice. Look at me. You’re okay. You’re just on the ceiling. You’re not going anywhere. You’re –”
The ceiling at Kal’s back splinters, the drywall cracking as though a tremendous pressure is shoving the boy’s skinny body through the roof of Bruce’s Tokyo safehouse. Kal freezes, stops breathing. A low groan rises from somewhere overhead, within the walls, like a steel girder buckling. The ceiling cracks again, splits spider-webbing from where his lower back, hands, and feet are braced. Kal isn’t even moving. Just sitting there while some unfathomable force exerts itself on the boy’s body from no visible source. Kal, who is five years old and not emotionally equipped for such weirdness, immediately starts babble-crying hysterically.
“Fuck,” Bruce whispers.
“I’m gonna fall into the sky!”
“No, you’re not. You need to calm down.”
Kal cries louder.
“Kal. Look at me. Look at me.” Bruce waits until he’s looking and stands beneath him, arms open. “Focus on me. Just come down. Remember what I said about throwing a baseball? You look at your target and step into it. Just look at me and –“
Kal falls fifteen feet off the ceiling.
Bruce’s heart stops but the rest of his body dives and Kal drops directly into his arms, flailing. His elbow pinwheels, striking Bruce in the chin, a glancing blow. The bones in his jaw immediately crack together, a white-hot pain bursting from the point of impact through his skull. He falls over, still bear-hugging Kal, but with stars blooming and waning in his eyes. He breathes through the pain and assesses that his jaw is not broken. One tooth is definitely chipped though. He remains lying on his back, bear-hugging Kal to his chest.
“Kal,” he grunts. “You need to calm down.”
“I’m sorry! I’m sorry!”
“Calm.”
Kal sniffs and breathes and eventually stops shaking. Bruce waits until then and sits up, gently unfolding Kal from his arms. He knows his eyes are running, reactive tears from the blow. He wipes them away with a casual mien and sits cross-legged, Kal’s shoulders in his hands so he can look the kid over. Kal's lower lip trembles, breath jittery because he’s trying not to cry. His bangs hang directly into his eyes.
“Are you hurt?”
“N-no. No, but I hit you! I –”
“It’s fine. Did you have the nightmare again?” Kal looks away, then nods. Bruce taps his chin so he looks at him. “That’s okay. That means we have a ‘why’. Right? So I have a solve for that.”
“Yeah?”
“Sure. When I was your age, I had nightmares.”
“About what?”
Bruce blinks, once, face neutral. “Lots of things. Alfred helped train me to dream lucidly. So when I have a nightmare, I know it’s not real and I make it go away.” He tries a smile, just half of one. “Does that sound good?”
Kal sniffs. “Can I have some hot cocoa?”
Bruce sighs. “Sure.” He pulls Kal to his feet, bouncing slightly. “Let’s go.”
Kal grabs his hand while they walk down the hall toward the kitchen. “I’m sorry about the ceiling.”
Bruce squeezes his hand back. “It’s just a safe house. I’ll fix it later.”
“Why aren’t you freaking out?”
“Who says I’m not? You broke my ceiling, kid.”
Kal scrubs his hand across his face. “Why didn’t the pod tell me how to fly? How come it didn’t have instructions?”
“I don’t think Kryptonians can fly on their homeworld.” Bruce flicks on the kitchen lights and goes about fetching milk, cocoa, and the tea kettle. “The info log your parents sent with you seems like it was made very quickly. They had foresight though. They managed to get that message recorded and equip the ship with some basic educational functions for you.” A pause while Bruce sets the kettle on the stove. “How is the Kryptonian coming by the way?”
Kal makes a weird tri-tonal hum noise that somehow forms syllables then keeps talking that way. Bruce, over the last two years, has determined Kryptonian words and sentence structure itself sounds vaguely Chinese if the Chinese regularly made three different tones in their throat. In pure tonality it reminds him of throat singing. Conversational vibrato and chord. In the limited time he’s had to study Kal’s ship and, through it, the culture of his homeworld, Bruce has found layering and harmony at the core of both writing, language, and architecture. The culture of meshed ideas and aesthetic.
Kal interrupts himself by coughing and bouncing on his stool. “Can I also have chocolate syrup in mine?”
Bruce digs mini marshmallows out of the pantry. “Sure. If you can tell me what you just said, but in Japanese.”
“The girl jumped over the moon and fell through the galaxy. When she fell, she saw Rao and became the great red sun that warmed the world.” Then, in English: “It’s a fantasy legend.”
“A fairy tale?”
Kal considers this. “Yeah, that sounds right. I don’t get what Rao is though.”
“I think it’s a deity, but some of the translations suggest less a god, more a force.”
Kal – who, again, is five years old – nods like that makes sense. “Do gods die if its planet dies?”
“I’m not sure. I don’t know how gods work. I’m not even sure if gods are real. That is something no one knows.” The water is beginning to boil. Bruce lets it go, however, because unless it’s absolutely scalding hot, Kal won’t drink it. Bruce folds his arms, thinking. “But if there are legends of flying, then maybe Kryptonians did fly once. Maybe under a younger sun or on another planet.”
“Huh?”
“Earth orbits a yellow sun.” Bruce gestures with one hand. “From the images in the pod and a few of the videos, I think Krypton orbited a red giant. Young stars have a different kind of radiation compared to old stars like that. I’ve suspected for a sometime that your strength and abilities are linked to the radiation from a yellow star.” The kettle is screaming so he pulled it off the stove and pours the hot water into a mug, reaching for the cocoa. “This might be why you enjoy sleeping in the sun so much, though, I suspect that is just laziness.”
“M’not lazy.” Kal pouts, literally, his lower lip sticking out.
“No, you just enjoy your downtime. Drink your cocoa.”
Kal gulps the boiling drink without flinching. He palms the mug, which is still huge in his tiny hands, “Bruce?”
“Yes?”
“If I can't control my powers... then I can't be around human people can I?” He doesn't say 'normal' people. Bruce coached him away from that. He gazes into his mug and says, quietly, "Cuz it's not safe."
“I think you can learn control.”
“From you?”
Bruce says nothing a moment. Then, “No, actually, I think you would need to learn from someone else. Someone so experienced that your strength wouldn’t phase them. They could still teach you. I think it’s best you learn from a master.”
Kal lights up. “A teacher? Did you find someone? Is it the person you’re training with now? The secret one?”
“No,” says Bruce, tone utterly two-dimensional. “You will not be training in Japan.”
Mostly because Tsunetomo has ties to the Yakuza and in no shape or form will he ever be allowed to know of Kal’s existence, much less his developing abilities to break the law of physics and human limitation. Tsunetomo is why Bruce has rented out a bunker on the far side of Tokyo and why Alfred has gone back to his MI-6 methodology around security and patrol. He’s perimeter checking presently. When he’s not doing that, he makes sure Kal is getting through his studies and not floating around the bunker. The flying thing is new. Alfred, who didn’t agree with moving to Japan in the first place, has made it clear the flying thing has only made life more difficult and he blames Bruce for it mostly.
“How do you feel about China?” Bruce says this the way most parents might say ‘Disneyland’. And Kal, because he is being raised poorly (maybe) lights up exactly like he said ‘Disneyland’. “This time next year I should be done with my training here and I think you’ll be old enough to meet with a teacher.”
“But… the flying?”
“I have confidence we’ll figure that out before then.”
Kal looks doubtful, hope and fear in equal measure behind his eyes and in his tone. “How do you know?”
And Bruce thinks: I don’t. I don’t know anything when it comes you. You’re an unknown constantly evolving variable. You’re five and you can speak an alien language and semi-fluent Japanese, but you struggle with basic math concepts. You can hear things you shouldn’t be able to. You’re as strong as an adult man and only getting stronger. I have no idea what you will become, what our sun may turn you into. Your skin could split and birth a monster form. Your lifespan might only be in handfuls of years. You love chocolate and hate peppermint and refuse to eat your vegetables and I don’t even know if that matters. Maybe your ideal diet is, actually, a bag of sugar every day. You’re fucking five years old and I am terrified every goddamn day for you. It hurts imaging your future.
But what Bruce says is: “Because I’m your older brother and I know best. Drink your cocoa.”
tbc