Title: Asymmetry
Fandom: Nolanverse/Superman Returns/Equilibrium
Pairing: Bruce/Clark
Rating: PG-13 to M
Summary: Cleric Bruce Wayne is Libria's top enforcing officer - and Kal-El's newest assignment.
Disclaimer: I own nothing but this idea.
Notes: I'm already working on a movieverse Bruce/Clark longfic but this idea just won't leave me alone. (If you haven't watched Equilibrium, Youtube if your best best. But you didn't hear it from me). I hope someone finds this entertaining. Comments are love and love is welcome.

This story will be also be posted on my LJ (see my profile). Chances are it will be updated there first.

01. PROLOGUE

But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.

Kal carefully marked the page with a crimson ribbon and put the thin book back in its place in the second drawer of his desk. If he wanted, he could have had the contents of the yellowed pages transferred into his holo-pad but there was a quiet wonder in running a gloved finger over the black printing as he wet his lips with the English words, almost tasting the ink in the back of his throat.

He'd never tasted ink, of course, and the archives weren't very forthcoming on the taste of a substance used in human writing. But he liked to think it'd be sharp, like the golden nib of an antique (how he relished the word) fountain pen, as rendered in the digital he'd saved in his personal folder –

"I hope you're not reading that human import again, cousin."

– a folder Kara had no business knowing about. They'd agreed to share an office and spacious that it was, all clean lines and stainless steel, it was no match for the House of El's inherent curiosity. That was putting it politely.

"Import?" Kal raised a brow. "You make it sound so...clinical."

"It's what it is."

"It's Yeats."

"What?"

"Never mind. Don't you have a report to write or something?" He made a show of being very interested in the screen in front of him.

Blue eyes, a shade lighter than his own, regarded him coolly over a steaming cup of coffee – a very human import, he was about to say when their holo-pads started beeping.

"Council meeting." Kara rose, silencing and pocketing the device in one swift, practiced movement, watching Kal struggling to do the same in cool bemusement. "Oh, for Rao's sake, give it here, Kal." She didn't wait for him, snatching it out of his hands and pressing the appropriate button. "Let's go – it seems urgent."

He barely caught the device when she tossed it over her shoulders. By the time he'd found the pocket of his own robes, she was already at the transporter, head tilted in that infuriatingly patient way. Muttering under his breath, Kal left the room, only getting his robes caught by the doors once.

He stepped over the sixth body with practiced ease, the guns cooling in his gloved hands. The body was that of a man, bloodied hands clutching a battered record player. Contraband – a foreign item in this cramped room of blood, sweat and gunpowder. It'd be taken care of in due time, along with its unfortunate, glassy-eyed keeper.

The enforcers moved forward with a deftness that bought to mind the repeated blows of slick bamboo on the skin of his back. His skin had been raw and bleeding for days, stinging under the simple cut of the monastery tunic, but he'd learned his lesson. These men would too, someday, but not with blood on their backs but in their mouths.

"Here," he murmured, stopping at a narrow door way.

Light filtered in through a dirty window, running down the peeling wallpaper and onto the faded rug. A small room, even by rebel standards, and lacking the sharp smell of urine they'd found in all the other rooms. Here, there was just the smell of dust, of age.

Always mind your surroundings.

His eyes narrowed. "This is it." In his peripheral, he could see Patridge shift, shoulders tensing ever so slightly.

"Where?"

"There."

Enforcers filed in, lifting the carpet, unsettling what looked like at least two years of dust. A section of the wooden planks underneath came loose with the persuasion of the crowbars, giving way to paintings he'd only seen in fuzzy digitals at the monastery.

Patridge's breath hitched behind him as they bought up the top piece: a woman, sans eyebrows and malice, half-smiling at him, hands folded, every part the picture of Renaissance grace.

Sixteenth century. Oil on poplar panel. Florence, Italy. Previously owned by the Government of France and displayed in the now-demolished Musée du Louvre in Paris. Painted by Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci. La Giocondo. La Joconde. The Mona Lisa.

He looked to the Inspector whose Verifier had probably accessed the same information from the list of contraband material that was part of the advanced monastery curriculum.

The instrument beeped in confirmation and the bespectacled Inspector half-nodded. "It's real."

He anticipated Patridge's flinch at his shoulder before he gave the order: "Burn it."