FIC: DCFic - The Other Side - R - 1/4
Mar. 6th, 2007 05:53 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
laniew1I’m still working on the next story in my Kon Resurrection series (titled Custody) but until then have the first part of a different Kon Resurrection series.
Also, I went to the DC Comics website to see what kind of pictures they had up for New York Comic Con and found that the Jim Lee picture for Sunday is of him working on my Superboy/Kon sketch, the next picture is of his colorist beginning a quick coloring of the drawing. Which is framed and will eventually be hung up on my wall.
He knew he was alone...
Spoilers, for all of Teen Titans, Infinite Crisis 1-7. That should be it.
TITLE: The Other Side - 1/4
RATING: R
PAIRING: Tim/Kon/Cassie, UST Clark/Lex
AUTHOR: Melanie
SPOILERS: Spoilers, for all of Teen Titans, Infinite Crisis 1-7. That should be it.
DISCLAIMER: The Multiple Earths have returned and one barrier is beginning to stretch thin.
NOTE: The sections in full italics are of the Alternate Earth.
FEEDBACK: Would be lovely.
The Other Side: Part 1
He knew he was alone. Mercy had checked the penthouse before she’d removed herself for the evening and if there was one thing Mercy was, it was thorough at her job. If there’d been anybody inside she would have shot them and then had the body removed while Lex waited on dinner.
So, yeah, he knew that he was alone… and the fact that he was hearing voices only served to make him wonder if he was close to another break.
The voices ceased, and really it was only the one voice and not so much even a voice but a series of mumbles in a familiar cadence, so maybe he didn’t have anything to worry about.
Except that Kon was dead, and even though they’d never sat down and really talked Lex still knew what the boys’ voice had sounded like.
“It’s just a bunch of calculus proofs, I can do them anytime…”
Lex stopped, turned. That had been an actual sentence, words that he understood instead of the mumbling voice that had been plaguing him since Mercy had left.
“No, I’m with Clark next week. Lex is going to be in Tokyo or something.”
He followed the voice, insistent as it was that he pay attention to it since it wouldn’t go away.
There was a room at the end of the hall, it had been empty for years. Although when he pushed open the door there was… he blinked because it couldn’t be real.
Kon was dead. He hadn’t been invited or allowed at the memorial, but that didn’t mean that he was any less aware that the boy that for all intents and purposes was his son was dead.
Except there he was, hazy although if he turned his head to fast the entire room, boy and all his belongings were prone to flickering in and out of view like a mirage and he wondered if this was some new way that Superman and his band of do-gooders was going to try and drive him insane.
******************************************************************************
Kon laughed, phone pressed to one ear and he should be working on his Calculus homework but instead he was listening to Tim tell him a seriously long winded story that somehow made Batman sound like a bumbling idiot.
Which Kon knew was nowhere near the truth and Batman would skin Tim alive for even allowing him to think that.
“Kon?” a knock at his door and Lex’s head appeared. “Homework done?”
Kon grinned, his gentle, easy, ‘believe everything that I say’ grin that he’d learned in equal parts from Lex and Clark alike. “Almost.”
Lex raised an eyebrow, “Busted,” Tim laughed in his ear.
“Don’t we have an agreement?”
Kon sighed, “I’ll call you back later,” Tim murmured his ‘I love you’ and Kon grunted his agreement because there was no way that he was saying that in front of the man that by some creepy form of genetics was actually half his father.
Ammunition was ammunition, and Lex might be acting the role of his father but that didn’t mean that Kon had to put actual weapons into his hands.
“Finish your homework before ten and you can call him back,” Lex smirked, like he knew that the likelihood of that happening was impossible.
Which it was, unless Lex helped him with his homework. And weren’t dads supposed to do that? Help their kids out with homework? He could remember seeing some movie that had shown dads doing that.
Moms too, but he didn’t have one of those.
Just two dads, who tried to kill each other on odd days and acted like they were best friends on even.
“He’ll be out on patrol before I get done,” Kon muttered.
“Then you should probably get to work.”
“You could always help me with it,” Kon said hopefully.
“I could, but then Clark would tell me that I’m not allowing you to develop your own problem solving skills or some such nonsense and we wouldn’t talk for a week.”
******************************************************************************
It had been a long day.
Too long, dealing with Lex and what Clark hoped was just another bid at his getting a shot at an insanity plea, though he wasn’t being tried for anything at the moment which kind of made that entire thought seem kind of silly.
Then there’d been a shuttle launch that had gone awry when he’d been leaving for lunch. Getting the shuttle and its crew safely back to the ground had taken his entire lunch break plus a half hour and listening to Perry scream at him about his lack of dedication had never been made his top ten list of favorite things to do.
Lois was out of town so he had no one to commiserate with, he could probably call Bruce and have a good laugh about Lex seeing Kon in his penthouse, but he knew Bruce (and Batman) well enough that Bruce wouldn’t find it amusing.
And Clark had better things to do then spend the evening staking out Lex wondering what evil scheme he’d put into motion that Clark didn’t know about.
He rubbed his forehead and twisted his key in the lock and was trying to decide whether to have pizza or Chinese and then he stopped dead.
Because maybe Lex wasn’t going mad.
Maybe they all were, or at least him and Lex together.
Because there was Kon, looking younger then he’d been when he’d died. Sitting on his couch like he had every right to be there. Bag of chips in one hand, bottle of water in another and the TV remote balanced on one knee.
Clark felt his heart and stomach twist in pain at so many things left unsaid and undone.
******************************************************************************
“Kon,” he stopped dead in the doorway and tried to remember if this was his week to have Kon.
Back when Kon had first appeared, a young Superboy in a version of his own costume, looking so like him at twelve that it had been painful to look at him sometimes, Lex had made up a schedule of when each of them would have him.
A custody agreement of sorts for a child that was both of theirs and yet neither of theirs.
“Lex is in Tokyo this week,” Kon’s eyes didn’t move from the TV.
Clark wondered if Kon got along better with Lex then he did with him. Sometimes Clark thought that Kon didn’t seem to like him very much.
“It’s just until tomorrow, I’m at Titans Tower this weekend,” Kon said, eyes finally flicking over to him. Clark moved fully into the room and noticed that there was a commercial on the TV, and maybe Kon didn’t mean to ignore him, maybe he was just entranced by whatever TV show he was watching.
“Okay, does this mean I won’t have you next week?” Clark asked. And regretted it immediately because of the way that Kon made himself busy shuffling the bag of chips to the side and setting the water down.
“No,” he shook his head, not meeting Clark’s eyes. “Not unless… I mean Lex will be back by then if…”
“Kon… I didn’t mean…” He always seemed to say the wrong thing when it came to Kon. Every word that came out of his mouth seemed to drive some invisible wedge between them and he didn’t like it.
This was his son, his and Lex’s and he didn’t like thinking that maybe Lex was better then him at being a father to this boy.
Even if Kon was getting ready to turn seventeen and was getting to the point where Lex and him trying to act like his parents was getting to be invasive.
Clark knew that Lex had people watching Kon even when he was with the Titans. Like the way that Lex had people watching him even when they were supposed to be enemies.
Lex took care of the things that he thought of as his, even if he didn’t like them very much.
For Kon, that meant an over-protective father figure. For Clark that meant an enemy that spent half his time trying to protect him and the other half trying to kill him.
He was sure there would come a time when that didn’t sound insane to him, but not any time soon.
******************************************************************************
He was just thankful that Robin wasn’t with him.
He turned a blind eye but he knew what was going on beneath the Titans Tower, knew what Robin was hoping to accomplish and while part of him applauded the boys’ sense of dedication another part of him wondered if Robin had maybe been too attached to Superboy.
He should probably have nipped that friendship in the bud the moment that it had become apparent that there was something there besides the sense of camaraderie.
But they were teammates, friends. Even the few, subtle hints that he’d dropped, the ones that said without saying so that his friendship with Kon-El could make him a liability had been dismissed as irrelevant.
******************************************************************************
“Something I can help you with?” his voice was calm and even to the point of uncaring. He was glad that he’d sent Robin to Blüdhaven to work with Nightwing for the night.
The clone flinched, the hurt expression reminiscent of early barbs that he’d tossed at Superman that had hit their intended target.
Batman took no prisoners; this… thing shouldn’t even exist. Let alone be involved with Robin.
“I know what you want,” the voice was soft, young. Sounded like Clark instead of Superman.
“Do you.”
“You want me to leave Rob, but I’m not going to,” sullen now. A little bit of anger and the anger was all Lex Luthor because neither Clark nor Superman had ever sounded like that.
“Why do you hate me?”
“I don’t hate you; to hate you would imply that I care one way or another about you. The only thing that I care about is that your very presence is distracting to Robin and I can’t allow that.”
“What about Wonder Girl?”
“What about her?” he skirted around the clone, the computers were still booted up, a tap of keys showed them all still locked.
“Why aren’t you all trying to get her to leave Rob? It’s not just me in this thing you know…” the clones voice trailed off, like he’d just realized that maybe Batman didn’t know about their little escapades.
But he knew everything.
“I know all about your little triumvirate, more then either Superman or Wonder Woman know.”
“But you’re only trying to get rid of me, not her. Is it because she’s human? Because I’m half human you know.”
“It has nothing to do with her being human or you not being fully human, it has nothing to do with the fact that half of you is made from Lex Luthor or that you were cloned in a lab. It has to do with what is right,” he stalked up to the clone, looming a little bit and was struck suddenly by how young it looked. Not that he let it show.
“You are children, playing with things that you have no knowledge of.”
“I love them,” came the soft whisper, a hint of despair.
He leaned closer, eyes locked on the clones. “And that will never be enough.”
******************************************************************************
He got to the Watchtower at the same time as Wonder Woman, she looked calm and cool and he figured that was a sure sign that she hadn’t been plagued by visions of Kon in places doing things that he’d never done.
Talking about Clark and Lex like they were age old friends instead of long time enemies.
They were silent as they walked down the hall to the meeting room, both of their steps slowing as they saw Martian Manhunter and Hawkgirl standing outside the room. Batman was coming from the opposite direction and Superman peered over J’onn’s shoulder and almost choked.
“Okay you all are seeing this right?” and that wasn’t a whine in his voice, because it wasn’t a hallucination or him going crazy if everyone was seeing it.
Right?
******************************************************************************
“Do we have any semblance of a plan?” Dick asked. He shifted in the seat and wondered how Bruce had managed to sit for hours in this chair when it was so freaking uncomfortable.
“We’re hoping that the Justice League isn’t totally destroyed, we’re hoping that some of the smaller teams are still at least partially intact,” Donna was tapping her fingers against the table, sitting ramrod straight in Wonder Woman’s seat like she could feel the ghost of her mentor standing behind her coaching her on how to look and act like a proper superhero.
At least she wasn’t crying anymore.
“That’s a lot of hoping,” Connor was standing behind the seat that the Green Arrow would normally be in, he wouldn’t sit down until the last possible moment. Like the rest of them he felt the ghosts of their older counterparts keenly, and his was doubly bad because Roy should be sitting in that chair… and would have been if his transport hadn’t been destroyed mid-flight.
“We’ll have big blue at least,” Dick said optimistically. At least with Superman they could have some form of strength.
“No you won’t,” three sets of eyes shot up at the soft voice.
Kon stood in the doorway, blue jeans, ragged t-shirt. Cuts and bruises on his skin that would heal within days but just served to show at the moment how badly he must be hurt.
Behind him Bart was a still presence. Dick had wondered where Bart had disappeared to, he wouldn’t have thought it would be to find Superboy.
A glance over at Donna showed bright eyes and with Kon standing there awkwardly like he’d rather be anywhere else but standing in front of them there was bound to be tears, and yelling at any moment.
“We should get cleaned up, get everyone into costume,” a pointed look at Kon who only had to pull on a t-shirt yeah, but a break would allow everyone the chance to adjust to their new circumstances…
Kon nodded and patted Bart on the arm as he left.
“I won’t work with him,” Donna snarled.
“Donna…”
“Cassie and Tim are dead. And if he hadn’t left them when they’d needed him the most…”
“We need all the help we can get,” Connor murmured rubbing a tired hand over his face. “The Green Lantern Corp will be here when they can but… it’s just us.”
Dick closed his eyes and felt bitterness and sorrow on his tongue. “All hail the Justice League, long live the Justice League.”
******************************************************************************
“That is why I called you here,” J’onn said, arm waving at the room as they scene vanished and they saw an empty table, empty chairs.
“What the hell is going on?” Clark asked angrily.
Beside him he could feel Bruce’s body tight with tension; Diana was staring at where Donna had been sitting only seconds before.
Cassie and Tim dead? All of them dead if whatever evil they were being faced with had dealt a big enough blow where Dick and Donna and Connor, Kon and Bart were all that was left besides the Lanterns.
“It is a repercussion of the destruction that Superboy Prime and Alexander Luthor caused. The walls between the worlds wear thin, the wall separating our world from that one is perilously close to fading entirely away and that world with it.”
“What are they facing? Can we send them help?” Ollie had snuck up behind them at some point, whether he’d seen Connor sitting at the table in his place Clark didn’t know.
“These are memories, faded actions. Whatever battle they were facing has already been either won or lost. Now we just wait for the outcome so we can know what actions we need to take for their Superboy.”
“You think this has something to do with Kon?”
“The memories all have a common link…”
“The clone,” Bruce murmured.
“The young Superboy has appeared in all of them so far. Cyborg called from Titans Tower to say that they had witnessed a fight between Superboy, Wonder Girl and Robin that led to Superboy quitting the team.”
Ollie slapped him on the back. “Have a spare bedroom Superman? You may need one.”
******************************************************************************
Bruce wouldn’t tell him what memory he’d seen though he’d confirmed that there had been one. Diana had just stated quietly that in her memory she’d appeared to be warning Kon away from Cassie and Tim both.
Clark wondered at what he’d missed, what he hadn’t done here that he’d done in some other universe that had caused him and Lex to be able to co-exist semi-peacefully so that they could raise Kon if not together then with each others help.
He slowed when he saw Bruce standing outside his door, still in uniform.
“I was doing much in the same way as Diana,” he said quietly, no emotion at all in his voice.
“Warning him off?”
What had he missed? What could have been so vastly different that he and Lex could raise Kon together, but that Bruce and Diana didn’t want their charges to be friends with his son?
“They were in a relationship, the three of them. Together.” Bruce stopped when Clark gaped at him.
“We shouldn’t talk about this out here,” Bruce yanked on his arm and pulled him into his own room. Then they both stopped dead.
“You know at some point I’m going to get used to walking into a room and having a ghost staring at me,” Clark sighed.
Because there was Kon again, in the act of taking his t-shirt off and Clark gasped at the sight of the bruises and cuts on the boys’ chest and back.
Some of the cuts were still slowly seeping blood and from Kon’s posture he could tell that he was bone-tired.
Bruce shivered next to him when Dick walked through him into the room.
******************************************************************************
“You should have somebody take a look at those.”
“They’re fine, they’ll heal in a couple of days,” Kon muttered, turning so his back faced him, yanking a t-shirt on over his head.
“We don’t have a couple of days to wait for you to heal back up to full strength,” Dick stated. “We have a matter of hours before Doomsday makes his way to us; we need everybody at 110 percent.”
Kon nodded, back still turned to him. Dick rolled his eyes and turned to leave.
“I didn’t leave them,” he heard softly as he was halfway to the door. He stopped and turned, Kon’s back was still to him. “They left me before… we had an agreement you know, back when everything started… the three of us together or nothing and,” deep breath and Dick was almost positive that if Kon had been facing him that the younger man would have had tears in his eyes. His voice was shaky enough for it.
“They left me, they didn’t need me. They didn’t want me anymore and…”
A cough and Dick wondered if this was all some ploy for sympathy or if Kon was telling him the truth, god knew that Tim had been closed-mouthed about what had happened. He knew from Donna that Cassie had been as well.
There’d been three people in that relationship and two of them were dead and couldn’t speak for themselves.
“We need you at top shape…”
“I know,” a whisper.
“What we really need is Superman, is there any chance that…?”
“He’s dead, him and Lex both. I searched and searched until... there wasn't anything to hear anymore then I searched for five more days because Clark at least… I knew that if I could find him and get him to the sun that…” Kon shook his head. “They’re both dead.”
Dick felt that iron-vise around his heart, the one that kept tightening every time another fatality came in.
“We’re all going to die,” he said softly, a sudden realization. Because there was no way that they could win, not against Doomsday, not against the one monster that had managed to kill Superman and yeah he’d come back from the dead but…
Kon turned, eyes red-rimmed but still dry.
“Probably. But at least we’ll go out fighting.”
******************************************************************************
Clark closed his eyes.
Doomsday.
There was no way that Kon even with the help of the others could fight and beat Doomsday.
He was trying not to think about that fact that he was apparently dead, that he’d apparently died with Lex.
******************************************************************************
They were waiting on pins and needles waiting for the next memory.
There was no telling who it would appear for, or where. Everyone waited and there’d been a brief moment when Clark had thought that Bruce and Diana might have been able to convince Tim and Cassie and rest of the Titans to wait at Titan’s Tower.
He’d hoped for that outcome, because each memory showed a darker and darker future. One where they were all dead and the only people still standing were getting ready to go into a battle they couldn’t win.
He stood at the window and stared into space. Somewhere, just a little ways past a thin barrier that separated their world from others, a battle had taken place that had been even more brutal then one they’d faced with Superboy Prime and Alexander Luthor.
There’d certainly been more casualties.
“Is anybody else kind of freaked out by this?” he heard Dick murmur and he turned.
******************************************************************************
“Any sign?” Dick asked, he’d been forced into the infirmary, arm bound in a sling and he’d palmed the tablets that the Lantern Corps doctors had tried to foist on him.
Until everyone was safe he couldn’t afford to be knocked out.
“The Lanterns are still checking in, still nothing,” Donna had a bandage across one cheek; one eye was swollen almost shut.
They were still alive.
“Connor?”
“Is still unconscious, Bart needed a snack and he said he’d start searching again.”
“Do we even know if he’s still on Earth?” Dick asked, Donna shook her head.
“We’re looking everywhere.”
“He’s wearing one of those stupid monitors that Luthor designed to keep track of him, how can we not have found him yet. Is it even still emitting a signal?” Dick made to move Donna out of the way and she snarled at him, snapping teeth and he held up his one functioning hand and backed off.
“If it wasn’t still emitting a signal we would have stopped looking. It’s still there, faint but there. It’s just…” Donna smacked the side of the monitor in front of her. “It’s like something is bouncing the signal, every feed I get says that he’s in the Artic,” she looked at him meaningfully.
The only thing in the Artic was the Fortress of Solitude, and there was no reason for Kon to be there.
“The Fortress of Solitude is a big pile of ice, its rubble. Kon spent almost a week there trying to get to Superman and Lex after Doomsdays first attack.”
“I know that,” she growled, then slumped in her chair. Fatigue evident in every line of her body. “It doesn’t make any sense. But every reading I’m getting says that’s where his signal is emitting from. I’ve got every Lantern at our disposal tearing it apart piece by piece and nothing.”
“There can’t just be nothing, Kon can’t have just disappeared. If his signal is coming from there then that’s where he is.”
******************************************************************************
Clark stared as the memories faded into nothing and left a silent room in its wake.
The Fortress, Kon was at the Fortress.
His Fortress in this world not the other, that’s what it all had to mean. It’s what every memory had been driving at them.
Kon was here in their world, had been for who knew how long because J’onn had said that these memories were of past events and it had been weeks since he’d been to the Fortress. Kon could have been there the entire time.
“Superman wait,” Batman made to grab for him as he turned.
It took him mere seconds to get there, and he knew that there would be a contingent behind him, though it would take them some time to get organized and determine who was going.
In his mind he put even money on Batman appearing alone while they argued.
“Kon?” he yelled, a hollow, echoing sound and he raced through the rooms. Desperation flooding him, making him move faster.
He had a chance to fix things, to do things maybe they way he should have, could have done them.
But not if he was too late.
It was the last room he checked, his own room in the Fortress, and he could vaguely hear his Pa’s voice in his mind telling him that things were always in the last place you looked.
“Kon,” he whispered. He pulled the boy into his arms with gentle hands, it had been too long.
Whatever injuries he’d suffered were mostly healed, the cuts were but faint lines, bruises mostly faded… but his skin was pale and for a brief terrified second he couldn’t hear a heartbeat, couldn’t feel him breathing.
Too late, too late, too late.
He cradled him against his chest and took a deep breath, a calming one and concentrated.
And there was the heartbeat, faint and weak. A shallow puff of air against his cheek and he closed his eyes and bent his head and didn’t know what to do.
He didn’t know how long he sat there, he knew he should move. Should get Kon to the Tower so that the others could help, but instead he sat there. With this boy that was his son in his arms, listening to him breathe.
He would need to tell Lex, he knew this. Knew that Lex had been seeing the memories the same way that they had been. He had to remind himself that his Lex wasn’t his friend, hadn’t been helping him raise Kon.
He hadn’t even been raising Kon. Just letting Ma and Pa do it, because in his mind there had been no place safer then Smallville for Kon and somehow he’d convinced himself that it was the right thing to do.
Ma and Pa had raised him and he’d turned out okay, and what he knew about raising a teenager could fit on the pin of a needle. There was no doubt in his mind that if he’d been trying to do it, by himself, that he would have screwed up and Kon would have had a fit of teenage rebellion and gone evil.
A hand touched Kon’s arm and he realized that his eyes were still closed when he opened them and found Batman kneeling in front of them.
“We need to get him help,” Bruce said softly, and it was Bruce staring at him. Not Batman, Batman wouldn’t be talking softly, wouldn’t still be touching Kon’s arm.
Clark nodded and started shifting. Kon still cradled against him and when he moved the boy moaned low in his throat. Though his eyes never opened.
******************************************************************************
Part 2
Also, I went to the DC Comics website to see what kind of pictures they had up for New York Comic Con and found that the Jim Lee picture for Sunday is of him working on my Superboy/Kon sketch, the next picture is of his colorist beginning a quick coloring of the drawing. Which is framed and will eventually be hung up on my wall.
He knew he was alone...
Spoilers, for all of Teen Titans, Infinite Crisis 1-7. That should be it.
TITLE: The Other Side - 1/4
RATING: R
PAIRING: Tim/Kon/Cassie, UST Clark/Lex
AUTHOR: Melanie
SPOILERS: Spoilers, for all of Teen Titans, Infinite Crisis 1-7. That should be it.
DISCLAIMER: The Multiple Earths have returned and one barrier is beginning to stretch thin.
NOTE: The sections in full italics are of the Alternate Earth.
FEEDBACK: Would be lovely.
The Other Side: Part 1
He knew he was alone. Mercy had checked the penthouse before she’d removed herself for the evening and if there was one thing Mercy was, it was thorough at her job. If there’d been anybody inside she would have shot them and then had the body removed while Lex waited on dinner.
So, yeah, he knew that he was alone… and the fact that he was hearing voices only served to make him wonder if he was close to another break.
The voices ceased, and really it was only the one voice and not so much even a voice but a series of mumbles in a familiar cadence, so maybe he didn’t have anything to worry about.
Except that Kon was dead, and even though they’d never sat down and really talked Lex still knew what the boys’ voice had sounded like.
“It’s just a bunch of calculus proofs, I can do them anytime…”
Lex stopped, turned. That had been an actual sentence, words that he understood instead of the mumbling voice that had been plaguing him since Mercy had left.
“No, I’m with Clark next week. Lex is going to be in Tokyo or something.”
He followed the voice, insistent as it was that he pay attention to it since it wouldn’t go away.
There was a room at the end of the hall, it had been empty for years. Although when he pushed open the door there was… he blinked because it couldn’t be real.
Kon was dead. He hadn’t been invited or allowed at the memorial, but that didn’t mean that he was any less aware that the boy that for all intents and purposes was his son was dead.
Except there he was, hazy although if he turned his head to fast the entire room, boy and all his belongings were prone to flickering in and out of view like a mirage and he wondered if this was some new way that Superman and his band of do-gooders was going to try and drive him insane.
Kon laughed, phone pressed to one ear and he should be working on his Calculus homework but instead he was listening to Tim tell him a seriously long winded story that somehow made Batman sound like a bumbling idiot.
Which Kon knew was nowhere near the truth and Batman would skin Tim alive for even allowing him to think that.
“Kon?” a knock at his door and Lex’s head appeared. “Homework done?”
Kon grinned, his gentle, easy, ‘believe everything that I say’ grin that he’d learned in equal parts from Lex and Clark alike. “Almost.”
Lex raised an eyebrow, “Busted,” Tim laughed in his ear.
“Don’t we have an agreement?”
Kon sighed, “I’ll call you back later,” Tim murmured his ‘I love you’ and Kon grunted his agreement because there was no way that he was saying that in front of the man that by some creepy form of genetics was actually half his father.
Ammunition was ammunition, and Lex might be acting the role of his father but that didn’t mean that Kon had to put actual weapons into his hands.
“Finish your homework before ten and you can call him back,” Lex smirked, like he knew that the likelihood of that happening was impossible.
Which it was, unless Lex helped him with his homework. And weren’t dads supposed to do that? Help their kids out with homework? He could remember seeing some movie that had shown dads doing that.
Moms too, but he didn’t have one of those.
Just two dads, who tried to kill each other on odd days and acted like they were best friends on even.
“He’ll be out on patrol before I get done,” Kon muttered.
“Then you should probably get to work.”
“You could always help me with it,” Kon said hopefully.
“I could, but then Clark would tell me that I’m not allowing you to develop your own problem solving skills or some such nonsense and we wouldn’t talk for a week.”
It had been a long day.
Too long, dealing with Lex and what Clark hoped was just another bid at his getting a shot at an insanity plea, though he wasn’t being tried for anything at the moment which kind of made that entire thought seem kind of silly.
Then there’d been a shuttle launch that had gone awry when he’d been leaving for lunch. Getting the shuttle and its crew safely back to the ground had taken his entire lunch break plus a half hour and listening to Perry scream at him about his lack of dedication had never been made his top ten list of favorite things to do.
Lois was out of town so he had no one to commiserate with, he could probably call Bruce and have a good laugh about Lex seeing Kon in his penthouse, but he knew Bruce (and Batman) well enough that Bruce wouldn’t find it amusing.
And Clark had better things to do then spend the evening staking out Lex wondering what evil scheme he’d put into motion that Clark didn’t know about.
He rubbed his forehead and twisted his key in the lock and was trying to decide whether to have pizza or Chinese and then he stopped dead.
Because maybe Lex wasn’t going mad.
Maybe they all were, or at least him and Lex together.
Because there was Kon, looking younger then he’d been when he’d died. Sitting on his couch like he had every right to be there. Bag of chips in one hand, bottle of water in another and the TV remote balanced on one knee.
Clark felt his heart and stomach twist in pain at so many things left unsaid and undone.
“Kon,” he stopped dead in the doorway and tried to remember if this was his week to have Kon.
Back when Kon had first appeared, a young Superboy in a version of his own costume, looking so like him at twelve that it had been painful to look at him sometimes, Lex had made up a schedule of when each of them would have him.
A custody agreement of sorts for a child that was both of theirs and yet neither of theirs.
“Lex is in Tokyo this week,” Kon’s eyes didn’t move from the TV.
Clark wondered if Kon got along better with Lex then he did with him. Sometimes Clark thought that Kon didn’t seem to like him very much.
“It’s just until tomorrow, I’m at Titans Tower this weekend,” Kon said, eyes finally flicking over to him. Clark moved fully into the room and noticed that there was a commercial on the TV, and maybe Kon didn’t mean to ignore him, maybe he was just entranced by whatever TV show he was watching.
“Okay, does this mean I won’t have you next week?” Clark asked. And regretted it immediately because of the way that Kon made himself busy shuffling the bag of chips to the side and setting the water down.
“No,” he shook his head, not meeting Clark’s eyes. “Not unless… I mean Lex will be back by then if…”
“Kon… I didn’t mean…” He always seemed to say the wrong thing when it came to Kon. Every word that came out of his mouth seemed to drive some invisible wedge between them and he didn’t like it.
This was his son, his and Lex’s and he didn’t like thinking that maybe Lex was better then him at being a father to this boy.
Even if Kon was getting ready to turn seventeen and was getting to the point where Lex and him trying to act like his parents was getting to be invasive.
Clark knew that Lex had people watching Kon even when he was with the Titans. Like the way that Lex had people watching him even when they were supposed to be enemies.
Lex took care of the things that he thought of as his, even if he didn’t like them very much.
For Kon, that meant an over-protective father figure. For Clark that meant an enemy that spent half his time trying to protect him and the other half trying to kill him.
He was sure there would come a time when that didn’t sound insane to him, but not any time soon.
He was just thankful that Robin wasn’t with him.
He turned a blind eye but he knew what was going on beneath the Titans Tower, knew what Robin was hoping to accomplish and while part of him applauded the boys’ sense of dedication another part of him wondered if Robin had maybe been too attached to Superboy.
He should probably have nipped that friendship in the bud the moment that it had become apparent that there was something there besides the sense of camaraderie.
But they were teammates, friends. Even the few, subtle hints that he’d dropped, the ones that said without saying so that his friendship with Kon-El could make him a liability had been dismissed as irrelevant.
“Something I can help you with?” his voice was calm and even to the point of uncaring. He was glad that he’d sent Robin to Blüdhaven to work with Nightwing for the night.
The clone flinched, the hurt expression reminiscent of early barbs that he’d tossed at Superman that had hit their intended target.
Batman took no prisoners; this… thing shouldn’t even exist. Let alone be involved with Robin.
“I know what you want,” the voice was soft, young. Sounded like Clark instead of Superman.
“Do you.”
“You want me to leave Rob, but I’m not going to,” sullen now. A little bit of anger and the anger was all Lex Luthor because neither Clark nor Superman had ever sounded like that.
“Why do you hate me?”
“I don’t hate you; to hate you would imply that I care one way or another about you. The only thing that I care about is that your very presence is distracting to Robin and I can’t allow that.”
“What about Wonder Girl?”
“What about her?” he skirted around the clone, the computers were still booted up, a tap of keys showed them all still locked.
“Why aren’t you all trying to get her to leave Rob? It’s not just me in this thing you know…” the clones voice trailed off, like he’d just realized that maybe Batman didn’t know about their little escapades.
But he knew everything.
“I know all about your little triumvirate, more then either Superman or Wonder Woman know.”
“But you’re only trying to get rid of me, not her. Is it because she’s human? Because I’m half human you know.”
“It has nothing to do with her being human or you not being fully human, it has nothing to do with the fact that half of you is made from Lex Luthor or that you were cloned in a lab. It has to do with what is right,” he stalked up to the clone, looming a little bit and was struck suddenly by how young it looked. Not that he let it show.
“You are children, playing with things that you have no knowledge of.”
“I love them,” came the soft whisper, a hint of despair.
He leaned closer, eyes locked on the clones. “And that will never be enough.”
He got to the Watchtower at the same time as Wonder Woman, she looked calm and cool and he figured that was a sure sign that she hadn’t been plagued by visions of Kon in places doing things that he’d never done.
Talking about Clark and Lex like they were age old friends instead of long time enemies.
They were silent as they walked down the hall to the meeting room, both of their steps slowing as they saw Martian Manhunter and Hawkgirl standing outside the room. Batman was coming from the opposite direction and Superman peered over J’onn’s shoulder and almost choked.
“Okay you all are seeing this right?” and that wasn’t a whine in his voice, because it wasn’t a hallucination or him going crazy if everyone was seeing it.
Right?
“Do we have any semblance of a plan?” Dick asked. He shifted in the seat and wondered how Bruce had managed to sit for hours in this chair when it was so freaking uncomfortable.
“We’re hoping that the Justice League isn’t totally destroyed, we’re hoping that some of the smaller teams are still at least partially intact,” Donna was tapping her fingers against the table, sitting ramrod straight in Wonder Woman’s seat like she could feel the ghost of her mentor standing behind her coaching her on how to look and act like a proper superhero.
At least she wasn’t crying anymore.
“That’s a lot of hoping,” Connor was standing behind the seat that the Green Arrow would normally be in, he wouldn’t sit down until the last possible moment. Like the rest of them he felt the ghosts of their older counterparts keenly, and his was doubly bad because Roy should be sitting in that chair… and would have been if his transport hadn’t been destroyed mid-flight.
“We’ll have big blue at least,” Dick said optimistically. At least with Superman they could have some form of strength.
“No you won’t,” three sets of eyes shot up at the soft voice.
Kon stood in the doorway, blue jeans, ragged t-shirt. Cuts and bruises on his skin that would heal within days but just served to show at the moment how badly he must be hurt.
Behind him Bart was a still presence. Dick had wondered where Bart had disappeared to, he wouldn’t have thought it would be to find Superboy.
A glance over at Donna showed bright eyes and with Kon standing there awkwardly like he’d rather be anywhere else but standing in front of them there was bound to be tears, and yelling at any moment.
“We should get cleaned up, get everyone into costume,” a pointed look at Kon who only had to pull on a t-shirt yeah, but a break would allow everyone the chance to adjust to their new circumstances…
Kon nodded and patted Bart on the arm as he left.
“I won’t work with him,” Donna snarled.
“Donna…”
“Cassie and Tim are dead. And if he hadn’t left them when they’d needed him the most…”
“We need all the help we can get,” Connor murmured rubbing a tired hand over his face. “The Green Lantern Corp will be here when they can but… it’s just us.”
Dick closed his eyes and felt bitterness and sorrow on his tongue. “All hail the Justice League, long live the Justice League.”
“That is why I called you here,” J’onn said, arm waving at the room as they scene vanished and they saw an empty table, empty chairs.
“What the hell is going on?” Clark asked angrily.
Beside him he could feel Bruce’s body tight with tension; Diana was staring at where Donna had been sitting only seconds before.
Cassie and Tim dead? All of them dead if whatever evil they were being faced with had dealt a big enough blow where Dick and Donna and Connor, Kon and Bart were all that was left besides the Lanterns.
“It is a repercussion of the destruction that Superboy Prime and Alexander Luthor caused. The walls between the worlds wear thin, the wall separating our world from that one is perilously close to fading entirely away and that world with it.”
“What are they facing? Can we send them help?” Ollie had snuck up behind them at some point, whether he’d seen Connor sitting at the table in his place Clark didn’t know.
“These are memories, faded actions. Whatever battle they were facing has already been either won or lost. Now we just wait for the outcome so we can know what actions we need to take for their Superboy.”
“You think this has something to do with Kon?”
“The memories all have a common link…”
“The clone,” Bruce murmured.
“The young Superboy has appeared in all of them so far. Cyborg called from Titans Tower to say that they had witnessed a fight between Superboy, Wonder Girl and Robin that led to Superboy quitting the team.”
Ollie slapped him on the back. “Have a spare bedroom Superman? You may need one.”
Bruce wouldn’t tell him what memory he’d seen though he’d confirmed that there had been one. Diana had just stated quietly that in her memory she’d appeared to be warning Kon away from Cassie and Tim both.
Clark wondered at what he’d missed, what he hadn’t done here that he’d done in some other universe that had caused him and Lex to be able to co-exist semi-peacefully so that they could raise Kon if not together then with each others help.
He slowed when he saw Bruce standing outside his door, still in uniform.
“I was doing much in the same way as Diana,” he said quietly, no emotion at all in his voice.
“Warning him off?”
What had he missed? What could have been so vastly different that he and Lex could raise Kon together, but that Bruce and Diana didn’t want their charges to be friends with his son?
“They were in a relationship, the three of them. Together.” Bruce stopped when Clark gaped at him.
“We shouldn’t talk about this out here,” Bruce yanked on his arm and pulled him into his own room. Then they both stopped dead.
“You know at some point I’m going to get used to walking into a room and having a ghost staring at me,” Clark sighed.
Because there was Kon again, in the act of taking his t-shirt off and Clark gasped at the sight of the bruises and cuts on the boys’ chest and back.
Some of the cuts were still slowly seeping blood and from Kon’s posture he could tell that he was bone-tired.
Bruce shivered next to him when Dick walked through him into the room.
“You should have somebody take a look at those.”
“They’re fine, they’ll heal in a couple of days,” Kon muttered, turning so his back faced him, yanking a t-shirt on over his head.
“We don’t have a couple of days to wait for you to heal back up to full strength,” Dick stated. “We have a matter of hours before Doomsday makes his way to us; we need everybody at 110 percent.”
Kon nodded, back still turned to him. Dick rolled his eyes and turned to leave.
“I didn’t leave them,” he heard softly as he was halfway to the door. He stopped and turned, Kon’s back was still to him. “They left me before… we had an agreement you know, back when everything started… the three of us together or nothing and,” deep breath and Dick was almost positive that if Kon had been facing him that the younger man would have had tears in his eyes. His voice was shaky enough for it.
“They left me, they didn’t need me. They didn’t want me anymore and…”
A cough and Dick wondered if this was all some ploy for sympathy or if Kon was telling him the truth, god knew that Tim had been closed-mouthed about what had happened. He knew from Donna that Cassie had been as well.
There’d been three people in that relationship and two of them were dead and couldn’t speak for themselves.
“We need you at top shape…”
“I know,” a whisper.
“What we really need is Superman, is there any chance that…?”
“He’s dead, him and Lex both. I searched and searched until... there wasn't anything to hear anymore then I searched for five more days because Clark at least… I knew that if I could find him and get him to the sun that…” Kon shook his head. “They’re both dead.”
Dick felt that iron-vise around his heart, the one that kept tightening every time another fatality came in.
“We’re all going to die,” he said softly, a sudden realization. Because there was no way that they could win, not against Doomsday, not against the one monster that had managed to kill Superman and yeah he’d come back from the dead but…
Kon turned, eyes red-rimmed but still dry.
“Probably. But at least we’ll go out fighting.”
Clark closed his eyes.
Doomsday.
There was no way that Kon even with the help of the others could fight and beat Doomsday.
He was trying not to think about that fact that he was apparently dead, that he’d apparently died with Lex.
They were waiting on pins and needles waiting for the next memory.
There was no telling who it would appear for, or where. Everyone waited and there’d been a brief moment when Clark had thought that Bruce and Diana might have been able to convince Tim and Cassie and rest of the Titans to wait at Titan’s Tower.
He’d hoped for that outcome, because each memory showed a darker and darker future. One where they were all dead and the only people still standing were getting ready to go into a battle they couldn’t win.
He stood at the window and stared into space. Somewhere, just a little ways past a thin barrier that separated their world from others, a battle had taken place that had been even more brutal then one they’d faced with Superboy Prime and Alexander Luthor.
There’d certainly been more casualties.
“Is anybody else kind of freaked out by this?” he heard Dick murmur and he turned.
“Any sign?” Dick asked, he’d been forced into the infirmary, arm bound in a sling and he’d palmed the tablets that the Lantern Corps doctors had tried to foist on him.
Until everyone was safe he couldn’t afford to be knocked out.
“The Lanterns are still checking in, still nothing,” Donna had a bandage across one cheek; one eye was swollen almost shut.
They were still alive.
“Connor?”
“Is still unconscious, Bart needed a snack and he said he’d start searching again.”
“Do we even know if he’s still on Earth?” Dick asked, Donna shook her head.
“We’re looking everywhere.”
“He’s wearing one of those stupid monitors that Luthor designed to keep track of him, how can we not have found him yet. Is it even still emitting a signal?” Dick made to move Donna out of the way and she snarled at him, snapping teeth and he held up his one functioning hand and backed off.
“If it wasn’t still emitting a signal we would have stopped looking. It’s still there, faint but there. It’s just…” Donna smacked the side of the monitor in front of her. “It’s like something is bouncing the signal, every feed I get says that he’s in the Artic,” she looked at him meaningfully.
The only thing in the Artic was the Fortress of Solitude, and there was no reason for Kon to be there.
“The Fortress of Solitude is a big pile of ice, its rubble. Kon spent almost a week there trying to get to Superman and Lex after Doomsdays first attack.”
“I know that,” she growled, then slumped in her chair. Fatigue evident in every line of her body. “It doesn’t make any sense. But every reading I’m getting says that’s where his signal is emitting from. I’ve got every Lantern at our disposal tearing it apart piece by piece and nothing.”
“There can’t just be nothing, Kon can’t have just disappeared. If his signal is coming from there then that’s where he is.”
Clark stared as the memories faded into nothing and left a silent room in its wake.
The Fortress, Kon was at the Fortress.
His Fortress in this world not the other, that’s what it all had to mean. It’s what every memory had been driving at them.
Kon was here in their world, had been for who knew how long because J’onn had said that these memories were of past events and it had been weeks since he’d been to the Fortress. Kon could have been there the entire time.
“Superman wait,” Batman made to grab for him as he turned.
It took him mere seconds to get there, and he knew that there would be a contingent behind him, though it would take them some time to get organized and determine who was going.
In his mind he put even money on Batman appearing alone while they argued.
“Kon?” he yelled, a hollow, echoing sound and he raced through the rooms. Desperation flooding him, making him move faster.
He had a chance to fix things, to do things maybe they way he should have, could have done them.
But not if he was too late.
It was the last room he checked, his own room in the Fortress, and he could vaguely hear his Pa’s voice in his mind telling him that things were always in the last place you looked.
“Kon,” he whispered. He pulled the boy into his arms with gentle hands, it had been too long.
Whatever injuries he’d suffered were mostly healed, the cuts were but faint lines, bruises mostly faded… but his skin was pale and for a brief terrified second he couldn’t hear a heartbeat, couldn’t feel him breathing.
Too late, too late, too late.
He cradled him against his chest and took a deep breath, a calming one and concentrated.
And there was the heartbeat, faint and weak. A shallow puff of air against his cheek and he closed his eyes and bent his head and didn’t know what to do.
He didn’t know how long he sat there, he knew he should move. Should get Kon to the Tower so that the others could help, but instead he sat there. With this boy that was his son in his arms, listening to him breathe.
He would need to tell Lex, he knew this. Knew that Lex had been seeing the memories the same way that they had been. He had to remind himself that his Lex wasn’t his friend, hadn’t been helping him raise Kon.
He hadn’t even been raising Kon. Just letting Ma and Pa do it, because in his mind there had been no place safer then Smallville for Kon and somehow he’d convinced himself that it was the right thing to do.
Ma and Pa had raised him and he’d turned out okay, and what he knew about raising a teenager could fit on the pin of a needle. There was no doubt in his mind that if he’d been trying to do it, by himself, that he would have screwed up and Kon would have had a fit of teenage rebellion and gone evil.
A hand touched Kon’s arm and he realized that his eyes were still closed when he opened them and found Batman kneeling in front of them.
“We need to get him help,” Bruce said softly, and it was Bruce staring at him. Not Batman, Batman wouldn’t be talking softly, wouldn’t still be touching Kon’s arm.
Clark nodded and started shifting. Kon still cradled against him and when he moved the boy moaned low in his throat. Though his eyes never opened.
Part 2
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2007-03-07 01:46 am (UTC)Btw, I was at the Comic Con too, though on Sat. It was fun:)
(no subject)
Date: 2007-03-09 01:02 am (UTC)Did you pick up anything good while you were at Comic Con?
(no subject)
Date: 2007-03-07 03:30 pm (UTC):)
(no subject)
Date: 2007-03-09 01:03 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-03-07 11:40 pm (UTC)And I loved the way you wrote Clark and Kon interaction. I wish canon gave Clark similar regrets towards his actions with Kon.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-03-09 01:05 am (UTC)I'm truly disappointed with how DC in general has handled Kon's death in the OYL stuff.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-03-13 12:14 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-04-09 12:20 am (UTC)I'm going to try and read the other parts when I get the chance, but I just wanted to say great job.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-04-28 12:28 pm (UTC)Now I wonder why did Tim and Cassie leave Kon.
Ohhh boy won't Lex be surprised about having Connor in his life again.
annakas