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laniew1Still no real pairings, we are working our way steadily to the Tim/Kon/Cassie and Dick/Roy though.
This in no way, shape or form follows current DC continuity. That said more ‘A Bat By Any Other Name (is still a Bat). Read the first part or this won’t make any sense.
Summary: Conner starts to make a life for himself.
TITLE: A Bat By Any Other Name (is still a Bat)
RATING: PG (for language)
PAIRING: Tim/Cassie, Conner/Tim/Cassie, (future Dick/Roy, Bruce/Clark hinted at)
AUTHOR: Melanie
Summary: Conner starts to make a life for himself.
DISCLAIMER: DC owns them, if I did things like Infinite Crisis wouldn’t have happened.
FEEDBACK: Please?
A Bat By Any Other Name (is still a Bat) Part 2
There’s an envelope in his bag that he didn’t pack. Containing a letter that he didn’t write, but is in his handwriting. Inside the letter is money and an ad for an apartment.
The apartment is a one bedroom, it’s dark and dreary and seems to fit Conner’s mood lately almost perfectly.
His father, Dick he reminds himself, comes to look at it with him. Partially because Dick wouldn’t be left behind, partially because Conner isn’t used to making big decisions without at least one of his fathers’ input.
“It’s kind of…” Dick trails off.
Conner knows what he wants to say, but there’s a reason that there was a note from himself, with money and this ad.
This is where he’s supposed to go, what he’s supposed to do. And as much as he just wants to cling to his fathers and let them hide him away, he knows he can’t. Not just because they’re not his fathers, but also because he’s eighteen now.
He’s a grown up and it’s time that he stopped hiding behind his fathers and took control of his life.
He turns to the manager, a big man named David, he’s chewing on a toothpick.
“If you don’t want it I’ve got another gentleman coming to look at it this afternoon.” He’s wearing a stained t-shirt and jeans with holes in them, when he opens his mouth his speech is high class and speaks to someone having been raised with money, Conner knows this because he was raised a Grayson-Harper and was the grandson of Bruce Wayne, he knows how people with money speak.
He wonders what happened to David that he looks the way he looks and manages a run down apartment building.
“I’ll take it,” Conner says, he tries to smile but his lips haven’t seemed to want to move in that particular motion for at least three months. Not since he found out.
David just nods, eyes him curiously, then shrugs. “I’ll start drawing up the papers then.”
He leaves them alone, and Dick looks around the apartment and Conner knows what he’s seeing.
He’s seeing walls with fading paint and peeling paper.
“Really, Conner, Bruce gave me at least four other addresses to try if this one didn’t work out,” Dick doesn’t say it, he doesn’t have to. Conner grew up calling Bruce Wayne ‘grandpa’ and so he knows that the four other addresses are all buildings that either Bruce Wayne owns or Bruce Wayne has plans to buy if one of those is the one that Conner chooses.
“I’m supposed to end up here,” Conner says. He can explain away a lot of the choices and decisions that he’s made by hints and clues that he left himself; the letter was four pages long, he’d explained a lot without saying anything.
Dick just looks at him and for a second Conner sees his father, fully exasperated when Conner did something foolish like run away to the past.
“I guess we can toss a couple of coats of paint on the wall, maybe fumigate or something,” he says.
Conner nods, by the time he moves in it will be fully furnished and there will be some sort of security system on the doors and windows.
He knows his family, even if these people aren’t them. Not yet.
******************************************************************************
There is a housewarming for him, no costumes allowed and he stands off to the side because he knows these people, but not like this.
These are the people that tossed him over their shoulders and played tickle monster with him and changed his diapers and read him bedtime stories.
But they’re also not and he thinks he can be excused for having a hard time separating them in his head.
Clark comes over to where he’s leaning against the wall and he’s awkward but trying.
When he’d turned fifteen and instead of beginning his training to be a Robin he’d started gaining Superman’s powers, they’d sat him down, both his fathers and Clark and Bruce and explained that Clark was his father but that he’d been unable to raise him.
They’d never told him who his mother was, he’s pretty sure that it wasn’t Lois Lane and every time he thought about asking he could see Clark get pale and tense, could see the others exchanging looks that told him maybe he just didn’t want to know.
He’d decided that she must have been a villain; that she must have drugged Superman and tried to blackmail him into marriage and instead had ended up with a kid and a lifelong enemy in the form of Batman.
Batman and Bruce Wayne can both hold grudges for an eternity, back when he’d been kidnapped and tortured by Lex Luthor, after he’d been rescued by the Justice League; Bruce Wayne had systematically destroyed every Lex Luthor owned company that he could get his hands on.
He thought he’d be better of not knowing so he’d never questioned it, Clark had always been there after all, had always been Uncle Clark and it wasn’t like he’d abandoned him, Clark had still been there, he’d just given him to people that were able to raise him.
At least that was what he’d thought.
He could remember being so angry when they’d told him the truth. When they’d told him that he was a clone. That he didn’t have a mother and a father, that he was just a version of Superman that wasn’t even from their time; that he’d been handed over like a package by another version of himself.
That he’d had a purpose and it wasn’t to stay with the only family and friends that he’d ever known, but to go back to the past and pick up a life that wasn’t his and try to fit in with people that thought they knew him but didn’t.
He was prone to doing idiotic things when he was angry, papa said that he got that from his dad.
Clark stands there next to him, a silent watching statue.
Tim and Cassie are across the room, they think they’re being sneaky and if Conner hadn’t been trained by Batman and Nightwing and Robin he might not have even noticed that they keep looking over at them.
“Have you talked to them yet?” Clark asks.
Conner shakes his head.
“I wanted to get… settled in first,” he says. When he looks over Clark is looking at him with something like amazement and awe in his eyes.
“They missed you,” he starts and stops when Conner jerks his head sharply.
“They missed someone that isn’t me, I’m not him Uncle…” he stops, closes his eyes and bows his head. He’d forgotten for a second and he slumps into the wall. Clark’s hand touches his shoulder, squeezes.
“Conner…” Clark waits for him to open his eyes. “I’m sorry,” he says simply. “It’s just… you look exactly like him, you act like him sometimes as well, when you’re not acting like Dick or Roy. It’s hard to separate the two of you sometimes.”
Conner looks over up at him.
“He was their best friend, it doesn’t mean that you have to take that role again, it doesn’t mean that you have to be that person for them. But you should at least talk to them, get to know them. They want to know you, we all do,” Clark says softly.
Conner nods once, Clark smiles at him and pats his arm. Leaves him standing next to the wall and goes to stand with Bruce and Diana.
Conner glances back over at Tim and Cassie and Cassie is looking at him this time, she smiles slightly when he catches and holds her eye.
Tim looks at him and Conner watches them watch him.
They’d always held themselves apart from him, away. He’d never been allowed to call them aunt or uncle like he had all the others, he’d always thought that they’d disapproved of him, of Dick and Roy raising him.
Now he wonders if the reason they stayed away from him was because of the confusion of having two of them, of seeing their third as a child that wasn’t theirs.
******************************************************************************
Tim is the one that goes to him.
Cassie would, but Tim had taken the choice out of her hands.
Conner is his best friend; he is the reason that there is even a Conner for them to argue about visiting. Argue about who has more rights to the places at his side.
Even if this Conner doesn’t know them, even if this Conner doesn’t recognize him as his best friend and possibly has somebody else that can claim that title.
Tim doesn’t like that thought, he chooses to think that Conner had no friends and has been waiting this entire time for him and for Cassie.
Which makes him a horrible person, but he doesn’t care.
Conner looks surprised when he opens the door and sees Tim standing there. He invites him in and doesn’t make an attempt to pat him down for weapons. Tim thinks he remembers Dick saying that he was going to talk to him about maybe not doing that anymore.
Tim has to wonder what kind of world Conner was raised in where frisking guests was considered normal behavior. Then wonders if it was something that was just ingrained in him from being raised by Dick and Roy.
He doesn’t think he can remember all the times that Lian has been kidnapped, maybe they thought to better arm Conner then Lian had been armed.
The apartment has come a long way from the dingy, dirty place that Dick had shown him and Bruce.
There’s paint on the walls, and comfortable furniture. The living room looks light and airy and he wonders if Bruce went against Dick (and Conner’s) wishes and just hired an interior decorator as he’d been talking about.
There’s an entertainment center against one wall and Tim looks at the pictures that hadn’t been there a week prior at the housewarming while Conner gets bottles of water from the kitchen.
There’s one of Conner and Lian and Dick and Roy that catches his eye, Conner looks young, maybe nine or ten. His eyes are bright and happy and Dick is holding him on his lap.
There’s another which is obviously a Christmas picture (the tree in the background is a dead giveaway), it’s the only one of the pictures that Conner has up that Tim can see himself in. Conner is sitting on the floor cross-legged in the center of the picture, beaming a smile of white teeth and happiness.
He’s off to one side, arm around Cassie and he has a smile on his face but he doesn’t look happy. Cassie looks the same; they both are smiling, but look lonely at the same time. He thinks it looks like there is a place to his right that looks empty.
“Dick made me promise to wait until the security system was activated before I put out stuff that can’t be explained away,” Conner says behind him.
He offers a slight smile and a bottle of water. It probably hurts something in him to call Dick ‘Dick’ instead of dad. Same with Roy.
“You probably don’t want people seeing pictures and wondering if they’re making the right or wrong decisions to make the things in the pictures happen,” Tim says. Time travel makes his head (and heart) hurt. His mind is filled with memories of that future Superman that they’d only seen for a few minutes before he’d gone and wiped himself entirely from their timeline.
They have Conner back, but this Conner doesn’t seem to have any interest in being his best friend or Cassie’s boyfriend.
“Most everyone knows what my world was like,” Conner shrugs. “And some things aren’t going to change regardless of what pictures I put up and what I tell people.”
Tim glances over at him.
“You and Cassie are together, right?”
Tim nods once. Because they are and they aren’t. He thinks they’ve always been waiting for Conner.
Tim just didn’t realize that until the day that he saw him on the monitor and realized that if given the choice he would give up Cassie to get Conner back.
He just would rather not, he would rather have them both, and that probably makes him selfish but with everything that he’s had to lose or sacrifice in the last couple of years he thinks that maybe it’s his chance to be selfish.
Conner sits down on one end of the couch, Tim sits at the other. Rolls his bottle of water in his hand and when he glances over he sees Conner intently peeling the label from his.
“We were waiting for you,” Tim says.
Conner just looks at him, doesn’t smile.
“I know.”
******************************************************************************
“How about a first date,” Cassie says, Tim glances over his shoulder and she’s standing behind him with her arms crossed.
He doesn’t know what she’s talking about, they’ve had a first date (and a second, third, fourth, fifth) it went okay, wasn’t spectacular but Tim thinks now that might be because they were missing something (or someone).
“With Conner,” Cassie emphasizes, she has that look on her face like she wonders if Tim has been hit upside the head too many times.
“Both of us?” Tim asks. Cassie rolls her eyes at him.
“Well its not like you’re going to let me go out on a date with him by myself, are you.”
Tim just stares at her; he hadn’t thought he was so easily readable. He hopes that Bruce doesn’t know.
“So date? With Conner?”
“Okay,” Tim nods; he thinks he knows where she’s going with this now. He doesn’t think Conner will say yes, he also doesn’t think he’ll say no. Tim thinks that Conner might be waiting for a sign or something to tell him what he should do.
“Do you want to call him or do you want me to?” Cassie asks. She has her hands on her hips now, a sure sign that she’s irritated with him.
“I don’t think it’ll matter which one of us calls him, I think he’ll say no regardless,” Tim says. He turns back to the computers in front of him. He’s been comparing a sample of Conner’s blood to Kon’s. He’s not sure what he’s looking for, he thinks he’ll know when he finds it.
“So what? We shouldn’t even try?”
“He’ll come to us when he’s ready,” of that Tim is certain.
Conner has been raised by Dick and Roy, two of the most stubborn people that Tim has ever met. Conner’s not going to be pushed, or rushed into making a decision until he’s good and ready to.
Cassie of all people should know that.
Would probably remember that, if she wasn’t pushing so hard for the happy ending that she’s sure is just around the corner.
******************************************************************************
Conner says yes.
“Did you tell him it was a date?” Tim asks, he would have bet money that Conner would have said no.
Cassie rolls her eyes at him, pulls on a light jacket.
“I asked him if he wanted to go to dinner with us, maybe see a movie after. Those are date activities; I would hope that he would infer that it was a date from that.”
Tim isn’t so sure. Conner was raised by Dick and Roy and Dick, at least, can be pretty oblivious to what’s right in front of him.
“He said yes,” Cassie says.
Tim nods, reminds himself that this is Conner not Kon and his reactions are not going to be identical to Kon’s. He’s been raised differently; he’s had a childhood and had a family.
“What movie are we going to see?”
******************************************************************************
They’re being followed.
Have been since they left Conner’s apartment.
Tim is sure when they take Conner home that they’ll find that there has been at least one attempt to break in.
It will have been unsuccessful because Conner knew how to secure his home, and what he didn’t know Bruce had taken care of by installing a security system that Conner pretended to not know about.
When Conner is looking over the selection of movies, gnawing on his bottom lip, Cassie leans into Tim.
“Luthor’s men?” she asks. Tim nods.
He’d expected that eventually Conner would draw Lex Luthor’s interest. He’d been searching for the boy just as long as they had been, had probably sighted him the same time that Cassie had made the initial sighting.
“Why would Luthor have people following us?” Conner asks. Tim looks up and manages to not look surprised, though Cassie jerks slightly. It will take some getting used to, Conner being able to move into and out of their space without them being aware of it.
“What?” Cassie asks.
“Why would Luthor have people following us?” Conner repeats, slowly. Like he thinks that they’re both village idiots and talking slower might help them comprehend faster.
He hasn’t asked about Luthor since he came back, so maybe it’s better to get this over with fast, let Conner know that Luthor was just as upset over Kon’s demise as Superman was, let Conner make the decision of how to proceed with the other half of his genetic gene pool.
Kon would probably have rolled his eyes, two men that couldn’t be bothered to lift a finger for him when he was alive, fighting over who had more rights to a dead boys memory.
He’s not sure how Conner will react.
“Because he’s been searching for you for just as long as we have, his people probably spotted you the same time that Cassie did.”
“Okay,” Conner stares at them both, he looks confused. “That still doesn’t tell me why he would have people following us.”
“They’re not following us, they’re following you. Because Lex Luthor will probably try and give you some sob story about how he missed you more then Superman and how could you align yourself with the people that let you get killed…” Cassie starts, Tim touches her arm and she stops, takes a breath.
“Why would I care?” Conner asks, he still looks confused. Cassie and Tim exchange their own confused looks now.
“What do you know about your dads?” Tim asks slowly. Because he has a dawning suspicion that maybe no one has told Conner who the other half of his genetic material was supplied by.
He really didn’t want to be the one to tell him again.
“Dick and Roy?” Conner asks, and that confused look is still there.
Cassie looks at Tim and Tim nods. They both latch onto Conner’s arms and start maneuvering their way away from the movie theater.
“I thought we were going to see a movie,” Conner protests, though he walks with them and doesn’t dig his feet into the ground forcing them to drag him.
“We’re going to see Superman…” Tim says decisively.
“And probably Batman and Wonder Woman and a couple of therapists,” Cassie mutters. Conner looks back and forth between them; Tim doesn’t want to know what he sees on their faces. He sighs.
“I think I would really rather see the movie.”
******************************************************************************
“Lex Luthor,” Conner says again. It’s the fifth time that he’s said Lex’s name, it’s the only thing that he’s said since Clark started telling him.
On the screen in Batman’s cave there is a picture of Kon, bookmarked on each side by one of Superman and one of Lex Luthor. There is line after line of data running underneath it, which Clark knows if he focuses on and pays attention to, will be Kon’s life story.
It’s a short story; it won’t take long for it to start running again.
He wonders if it would have been easier for Conner to stomach hearing the truth with Dick and Roy there, he hadn’t asked for them but Clark thinks that maybe he thought he didn’t need to.
Or wasn’t supposed to want to.
Conner looks stunned, his face has always been an open book and right now there is nothing there but shock. Tim is standing right behind him, hand on his shoulder and Clark leans forward, lays a hand over one of Conner’s and squeezes.
He’s not alone here, no matter what he thinks.
Conner looks over at him and the shock is still there, his face is pale and Bruce is standing in front of the computer hitting keys. The lines of data stop running; the pictures remain on the screen.
“Lex Luthor,” he says again. His voice is numb.
“Conner,” Cassie starts softly.
“I don’t understand,” he says, he shakes his head, puts his other hand over his face. “How? Why?”
“I died,” Clark says simply. That was when it started. The experiments would have begun prior to that he thinks, in order for them to work through the issues in the process and have enough time for Kon to mature and escape when he had.
“They didn’t tell me,” he says quietly, his voice breaks. “No one told me.”
******************************************************************************
Conner is missing in the morning.
Clark had called him to tell him that Conner had been told about Lex and had told him that Conner hadn’t known. That he’d been distressed.
Dick had maybe, possibly, yelled at Superman and Batman for not contacting either him or Roy and letting them know what was going on.
One of them should have been there.
Dick goes to see him because even if they’re not his fathers yet, he and Roy will be and he thinks that learning to raise a child is going to take more then having one placed in his arms.
He has his own code to get into Conner’s apartment, it was a safety precaution and Conner hadn’t even blinked at the thought of Dick having free access to his apartment in case of emergencies.
He can tell as soon as he walks in that there is something wrong, the apartment is still and quiet.
Conner likes noise, every time Dick has visited at the very least the radio was on, volume up.
He cases the room, sees blankets on the couch (Conner slept there, fitfully, from the way they’re twisted), there’s a cup in pieces on the floor by the door to the kitchen (he has Roy’s temper, Dick decides) on the mantle, where all his family pictures had before been proudly on display, now they’re all face down.
“Conner,” he whispers, bows his head, closes his eyes. Let’s himself feel a few seconds of grief for a boy that believes that his family has betrayed him instead of protected him with every fiber of their being.
He knows that it can’t have been easy for them to not tell him, for the man that Conner will be when the child comes to them, to not say a word and force the issue… it must have been his version of hell.
Knowing how betrayed he would feel, something would have happened to have made him decide to keep quiet, to force the others to keep quiet as well.
He takes a deep breath and then pulls out his phone.
Hits three buttons and says three words. They’ll be relayed to everyone; he doesn’t need to say more.
“Conner is gone.”
******************************************************************************
Jason finds him. He knows that he was only told because it would have looked odd if he hadn’t been.
“They never told me,” Conner says. He has his arms wrapped around his legs. He looks young and lost.
Jason hadn’t known the boy that Conner is the replacement for. He’s not sure if he would have liked him or loathed him.
“Maybe they thought you didn’t need to know,” Jason says, he sits beside him. They’re twenty stories up, there’s a hefty breeze. But it’s cool not cold and he can deal until he gets Conner back to the ground.
He’s already sent the signal telling everyone that he’s found Conner.
“I always thought they loved me,” Conner says, like he didn’t hear Jason at all. “And they didn’t tell me that at all, they told me about Clark but they…”
“Did you ever feel unloved by them?” Jason asks. Conner looks over at him. “They raised you kid, they didn’t have to. Once you were handed off to them they could have handed you off again, to Clark or Luthor or some adoption agency. They didn’t have to keep you.”
“They didn’t tell me,” Conner says again, he looks sad and Jason can’t figure out why. If he had Lex Luthor as his other dad he thinks he would really rather not know.
“Maybe they didn’t think you needed to know, maybe they thought there was nothing you could gain from Luthor except wondering if maybe you were gonna go evil.”
“Uncle Jason,” Conner says, stops, looks away.
Jason feels pleased that he was evidently involved, somewhere, in the process of raising this boy.
“I wouldn’t want to know, if it was me,” Jason says. “And you keep saying that they didn’t tell you, but have you thought that maybe the reason that you weren’t told wasn’t because they didn’t want you to know, but maybe because you didn’t want you to know.”
Conner looks over at him, brow furrowed and for a second he looks eerily like Dick working his way mentally through some problem.
“You’ve got everybody and their brother looking for you kid, let’s get you home before someone we don’t want to find us, finds us.”
******************************************************************************
This in no way, shape or form follows current DC continuity. That said more ‘A Bat By Any Other Name (is still a Bat). Read the first part or this won’t make any sense.
Summary: Conner starts to make a life for himself.
TITLE: A Bat By Any Other Name (is still a Bat)
RATING: PG (for language)
PAIRING: Tim/Cassie, Conner/Tim/Cassie, (future Dick/Roy, Bruce/Clark hinted at)
AUTHOR: Melanie
Summary: Conner starts to make a life for himself.
DISCLAIMER: DC owns them, if I did things like Infinite Crisis wouldn’t have happened.
FEEDBACK: Please?
A Bat By Any Other Name (is still a Bat) Part 2
There’s an envelope in his bag that he didn’t pack. Containing a letter that he didn’t write, but is in his handwriting. Inside the letter is money and an ad for an apartment.
The apartment is a one bedroom, it’s dark and dreary and seems to fit Conner’s mood lately almost perfectly.
His father, Dick he reminds himself, comes to look at it with him. Partially because Dick wouldn’t be left behind, partially because Conner isn’t used to making big decisions without at least one of his fathers’ input.
“It’s kind of…” Dick trails off.
Conner knows what he wants to say, but there’s a reason that there was a note from himself, with money and this ad.
This is where he’s supposed to go, what he’s supposed to do. And as much as he just wants to cling to his fathers and let them hide him away, he knows he can’t. Not just because they’re not his fathers, but also because he’s eighteen now.
He’s a grown up and it’s time that he stopped hiding behind his fathers and took control of his life.
He turns to the manager, a big man named David, he’s chewing on a toothpick.
“If you don’t want it I’ve got another gentleman coming to look at it this afternoon.” He’s wearing a stained t-shirt and jeans with holes in them, when he opens his mouth his speech is high class and speaks to someone having been raised with money, Conner knows this because he was raised a Grayson-Harper and was the grandson of Bruce Wayne, he knows how people with money speak.
He wonders what happened to David that he looks the way he looks and manages a run down apartment building.
“I’ll take it,” Conner says, he tries to smile but his lips haven’t seemed to want to move in that particular motion for at least three months. Not since he found out.
David just nods, eyes him curiously, then shrugs. “I’ll start drawing up the papers then.”
He leaves them alone, and Dick looks around the apartment and Conner knows what he’s seeing.
He’s seeing walls with fading paint and peeling paper.
“Really, Conner, Bruce gave me at least four other addresses to try if this one didn’t work out,” Dick doesn’t say it, he doesn’t have to. Conner grew up calling Bruce Wayne ‘grandpa’ and so he knows that the four other addresses are all buildings that either Bruce Wayne owns or Bruce Wayne has plans to buy if one of those is the one that Conner chooses.
“I’m supposed to end up here,” Conner says. He can explain away a lot of the choices and decisions that he’s made by hints and clues that he left himself; the letter was four pages long, he’d explained a lot without saying anything.
Dick just looks at him and for a second Conner sees his father, fully exasperated when Conner did something foolish like run away to the past.
“I guess we can toss a couple of coats of paint on the wall, maybe fumigate or something,” he says.
Conner nods, by the time he moves in it will be fully furnished and there will be some sort of security system on the doors and windows.
He knows his family, even if these people aren’t them. Not yet.
There is a housewarming for him, no costumes allowed and he stands off to the side because he knows these people, but not like this.
These are the people that tossed him over their shoulders and played tickle monster with him and changed his diapers and read him bedtime stories.
But they’re also not and he thinks he can be excused for having a hard time separating them in his head.
Clark comes over to where he’s leaning against the wall and he’s awkward but trying.
When he’d turned fifteen and instead of beginning his training to be a Robin he’d started gaining Superman’s powers, they’d sat him down, both his fathers and Clark and Bruce and explained that Clark was his father but that he’d been unable to raise him.
They’d never told him who his mother was, he’s pretty sure that it wasn’t Lois Lane and every time he thought about asking he could see Clark get pale and tense, could see the others exchanging looks that told him maybe he just didn’t want to know.
He’d decided that she must have been a villain; that she must have drugged Superman and tried to blackmail him into marriage and instead had ended up with a kid and a lifelong enemy in the form of Batman.
Batman and Bruce Wayne can both hold grudges for an eternity, back when he’d been kidnapped and tortured by Lex Luthor, after he’d been rescued by the Justice League; Bruce Wayne had systematically destroyed every Lex Luthor owned company that he could get his hands on.
He thought he’d be better of not knowing so he’d never questioned it, Clark had always been there after all, had always been Uncle Clark and it wasn’t like he’d abandoned him, Clark had still been there, he’d just given him to people that were able to raise him.
At least that was what he’d thought.
He could remember being so angry when they’d told him the truth. When they’d told him that he was a clone. That he didn’t have a mother and a father, that he was just a version of Superman that wasn’t even from their time; that he’d been handed over like a package by another version of himself.
That he’d had a purpose and it wasn’t to stay with the only family and friends that he’d ever known, but to go back to the past and pick up a life that wasn’t his and try to fit in with people that thought they knew him but didn’t.
He was prone to doing idiotic things when he was angry, papa said that he got that from his dad.
Clark stands there next to him, a silent watching statue.
Tim and Cassie are across the room, they think they’re being sneaky and if Conner hadn’t been trained by Batman and Nightwing and Robin he might not have even noticed that they keep looking over at them.
“Have you talked to them yet?” Clark asks.
Conner shakes his head.
“I wanted to get… settled in first,” he says. When he looks over Clark is looking at him with something like amazement and awe in his eyes.
“They missed you,” he starts and stops when Conner jerks his head sharply.
“They missed someone that isn’t me, I’m not him Uncle…” he stops, closes his eyes and bows his head. He’d forgotten for a second and he slumps into the wall. Clark’s hand touches his shoulder, squeezes.
“Conner…” Clark waits for him to open his eyes. “I’m sorry,” he says simply. “It’s just… you look exactly like him, you act like him sometimes as well, when you’re not acting like Dick or Roy. It’s hard to separate the two of you sometimes.”
Conner looks over up at him.
“He was their best friend, it doesn’t mean that you have to take that role again, it doesn’t mean that you have to be that person for them. But you should at least talk to them, get to know them. They want to know you, we all do,” Clark says softly.
Conner nods once, Clark smiles at him and pats his arm. Leaves him standing next to the wall and goes to stand with Bruce and Diana.
Conner glances back over at Tim and Cassie and Cassie is looking at him this time, she smiles slightly when he catches and holds her eye.
Tim looks at him and Conner watches them watch him.
They’d always held themselves apart from him, away. He’d never been allowed to call them aunt or uncle like he had all the others, he’d always thought that they’d disapproved of him, of Dick and Roy raising him.
Now he wonders if the reason they stayed away from him was because of the confusion of having two of them, of seeing their third as a child that wasn’t theirs.
Tim is the one that goes to him.
Cassie would, but Tim had taken the choice out of her hands.
Conner is his best friend; he is the reason that there is even a Conner for them to argue about visiting. Argue about who has more rights to the places at his side.
Even if this Conner doesn’t know them, even if this Conner doesn’t recognize him as his best friend and possibly has somebody else that can claim that title.
Tim doesn’t like that thought, he chooses to think that Conner had no friends and has been waiting this entire time for him and for Cassie.
Which makes him a horrible person, but he doesn’t care.
Conner looks surprised when he opens the door and sees Tim standing there. He invites him in and doesn’t make an attempt to pat him down for weapons. Tim thinks he remembers Dick saying that he was going to talk to him about maybe not doing that anymore.
Tim has to wonder what kind of world Conner was raised in where frisking guests was considered normal behavior. Then wonders if it was something that was just ingrained in him from being raised by Dick and Roy.
He doesn’t think he can remember all the times that Lian has been kidnapped, maybe they thought to better arm Conner then Lian had been armed.
The apartment has come a long way from the dingy, dirty place that Dick had shown him and Bruce.
There’s paint on the walls, and comfortable furniture. The living room looks light and airy and he wonders if Bruce went against Dick (and Conner’s) wishes and just hired an interior decorator as he’d been talking about.
There’s an entertainment center against one wall and Tim looks at the pictures that hadn’t been there a week prior at the housewarming while Conner gets bottles of water from the kitchen.
There’s one of Conner and Lian and Dick and Roy that catches his eye, Conner looks young, maybe nine or ten. His eyes are bright and happy and Dick is holding him on his lap.
There’s another which is obviously a Christmas picture (the tree in the background is a dead giveaway), it’s the only one of the pictures that Conner has up that Tim can see himself in. Conner is sitting on the floor cross-legged in the center of the picture, beaming a smile of white teeth and happiness.
He’s off to one side, arm around Cassie and he has a smile on his face but he doesn’t look happy. Cassie looks the same; they both are smiling, but look lonely at the same time. He thinks it looks like there is a place to his right that looks empty.
“Dick made me promise to wait until the security system was activated before I put out stuff that can’t be explained away,” Conner says behind him.
He offers a slight smile and a bottle of water. It probably hurts something in him to call Dick ‘Dick’ instead of dad. Same with Roy.
“You probably don’t want people seeing pictures and wondering if they’re making the right or wrong decisions to make the things in the pictures happen,” Tim says. Time travel makes his head (and heart) hurt. His mind is filled with memories of that future Superman that they’d only seen for a few minutes before he’d gone and wiped himself entirely from their timeline.
They have Conner back, but this Conner doesn’t seem to have any interest in being his best friend or Cassie’s boyfriend.
“Most everyone knows what my world was like,” Conner shrugs. “And some things aren’t going to change regardless of what pictures I put up and what I tell people.”
Tim glances over at him.
“You and Cassie are together, right?”
Tim nods once. Because they are and they aren’t. He thinks they’ve always been waiting for Conner.
Tim just didn’t realize that until the day that he saw him on the monitor and realized that if given the choice he would give up Cassie to get Conner back.
He just would rather not, he would rather have them both, and that probably makes him selfish but with everything that he’s had to lose or sacrifice in the last couple of years he thinks that maybe it’s his chance to be selfish.
Conner sits down on one end of the couch, Tim sits at the other. Rolls his bottle of water in his hand and when he glances over he sees Conner intently peeling the label from his.
“We were waiting for you,” Tim says.
Conner just looks at him, doesn’t smile.
“I know.”
“How about a first date,” Cassie says, Tim glances over his shoulder and she’s standing behind him with her arms crossed.
He doesn’t know what she’s talking about, they’ve had a first date (and a second, third, fourth, fifth) it went okay, wasn’t spectacular but Tim thinks now that might be because they were missing something (or someone).
“With Conner,” Cassie emphasizes, she has that look on her face like she wonders if Tim has been hit upside the head too many times.
“Both of us?” Tim asks. Cassie rolls her eyes at him.
“Well its not like you’re going to let me go out on a date with him by myself, are you.”
Tim just stares at her; he hadn’t thought he was so easily readable. He hopes that Bruce doesn’t know.
“So date? With Conner?”
“Okay,” Tim nods; he thinks he knows where she’s going with this now. He doesn’t think Conner will say yes, he also doesn’t think he’ll say no. Tim thinks that Conner might be waiting for a sign or something to tell him what he should do.
“Do you want to call him or do you want me to?” Cassie asks. She has her hands on her hips now, a sure sign that she’s irritated with him.
“I don’t think it’ll matter which one of us calls him, I think he’ll say no regardless,” Tim says. He turns back to the computers in front of him. He’s been comparing a sample of Conner’s blood to Kon’s. He’s not sure what he’s looking for, he thinks he’ll know when he finds it.
“So what? We shouldn’t even try?”
“He’ll come to us when he’s ready,” of that Tim is certain.
Conner has been raised by Dick and Roy, two of the most stubborn people that Tim has ever met. Conner’s not going to be pushed, or rushed into making a decision until he’s good and ready to.
Cassie of all people should know that.
Would probably remember that, if she wasn’t pushing so hard for the happy ending that she’s sure is just around the corner.
Conner says yes.
“Did you tell him it was a date?” Tim asks, he would have bet money that Conner would have said no.
Cassie rolls her eyes at him, pulls on a light jacket.
“I asked him if he wanted to go to dinner with us, maybe see a movie after. Those are date activities; I would hope that he would infer that it was a date from that.”
Tim isn’t so sure. Conner was raised by Dick and Roy and Dick, at least, can be pretty oblivious to what’s right in front of him.
“He said yes,” Cassie says.
Tim nods, reminds himself that this is Conner not Kon and his reactions are not going to be identical to Kon’s. He’s been raised differently; he’s had a childhood and had a family.
“What movie are we going to see?”
They’re being followed.
Have been since they left Conner’s apartment.
Tim is sure when they take Conner home that they’ll find that there has been at least one attempt to break in.
It will have been unsuccessful because Conner knew how to secure his home, and what he didn’t know Bruce had taken care of by installing a security system that Conner pretended to not know about.
When Conner is looking over the selection of movies, gnawing on his bottom lip, Cassie leans into Tim.
“Luthor’s men?” she asks. Tim nods.
He’d expected that eventually Conner would draw Lex Luthor’s interest. He’d been searching for the boy just as long as they had been, had probably sighted him the same time that Cassie had made the initial sighting.
“Why would Luthor have people following us?” Conner asks. Tim looks up and manages to not look surprised, though Cassie jerks slightly. It will take some getting used to, Conner being able to move into and out of their space without them being aware of it.
“What?” Cassie asks.
“Why would Luthor have people following us?” Conner repeats, slowly. Like he thinks that they’re both village idiots and talking slower might help them comprehend faster.
He hasn’t asked about Luthor since he came back, so maybe it’s better to get this over with fast, let Conner know that Luthor was just as upset over Kon’s demise as Superman was, let Conner make the decision of how to proceed with the other half of his genetic gene pool.
Kon would probably have rolled his eyes, two men that couldn’t be bothered to lift a finger for him when he was alive, fighting over who had more rights to a dead boys memory.
He’s not sure how Conner will react.
“Because he’s been searching for you for just as long as we have, his people probably spotted you the same time that Cassie did.”
“Okay,” Conner stares at them both, he looks confused. “That still doesn’t tell me why he would have people following us.”
“They’re not following us, they’re following you. Because Lex Luthor will probably try and give you some sob story about how he missed you more then Superman and how could you align yourself with the people that let you get killed…” Cassie starts, Tim touches her arm and she stops, takes a breath.
“Why would I care?” Conner asks, he still looks confused. Cassie and Tim exchange their own confused looks now.
“What do you know about your dads?” Tim asks slowly. Because he has a dawning suspicion that maybe no one has told Conner who the other half of his genetic material was supplied by.
He really didn’t want to be the one to tell him again.
“Dick and Roy?” Conner asks, and that confused look is still there.
Cassie looks at Tim and Tim nods. They both latch onto Conner’s arms and start maneuvering their way away from the movie theater.
“I thought we were going to see a movie,” Conner protests, though he walks with them and doesn’t dig his feet into the ground forcing them to drag him.
“We’re going to see Superman…” Tim says decisively.
“And probably Batman and Wonder Woman and a couple of therapists,” Cassie mutters. Conner looks back and forth between them; Tim doesn’t want to know what he sees on their faces. He sighs.
“I think I would really rather see the movie.”
“Lex Luthor,” Conner says again. It’s the fifth time that he’s said Lex’s name, it’s the only thing that he’s said since Clark started telling him.
On the screen in Batman’s cave there is a picture of Kon, bookmarked on each side by one of Superman and one of Lex Luthor. There is line after line of data running underneath it, which Clark knows if he focuses on and pays attention to, will be Kon’s life story.
It’s a short story; it won’t take long for it to start running again.
He wonders if it would have been easier for Conner to stomach hearing the truth with Dick and Roy there, he hadn’t asked for them but Clark thinks that maybe he thought he didn’t need to.
Or wasn’t supposed to want to.
Conner looks stunned, his face has always been an open book and right now there is nothing there but shock. Tim is standing right behind him, hand on his shoulder and Clark leans forward, lays a hand over one of Conner’s and squeezes.
He’s not alone here, no matter what he thinks.
Conner looks over at him and the shock is still there, his face is pale and Bruce is standing in front of the computer hitting keys. The lines of data stop running; the pictures remain on the screen.
“Lex Luthor,” he says again. His voice is numb.
“Conner,” Cassie starts softly.
“I don’t understand,” he says, he shakes his head, puts his other hand over his face. “How? Why?”
“I died,” Clark says simply. That was when it started. The experiments would have begun prior to that he thinks, in order for them to work through the issues in the process and have enough time for Kon to mature and escape when he had.
“They didn’t tell me,” he says quietly, his voice breaks. “No one told me.”
Conner is missing in the morning.
Clark had called him to tell him that Conner had been told about Lex and had told him that Conner hadn’t known. That he’d been distressed.
Dick had maybe, possibly, yelled at Superman and Batman for not contacting either him or Roy and letting them know what was going on.
One of them should have been there.
Dick goes to see him because even if they’re not his fathers yet, he and Roy will be and he thinks that learning to raise a child is going to take more then having one placed in his arms.
He has his own code to get into Conner’s apartment, it was a safety precaution and Conner hadn’t even blinked at the thought of Dick having free access to his apartment in case of emergencies.
He can tell as soon as he walks in that there is something wrong, the apartment is still and quiet.
Conner likes noise, every time Dick has visited at the very least the radio was on, volume up.
He cases the room, sees blankets on the couch (Conner slept there, fitfully, from the way they’re twisted), there’s a cup in pieces on the floor by the door to the kitchen (he has Roy’s temper, Dick decides) on the mantle, where all his family pictures had before been proudly on display, now they’re all face down.
“Conner,” he whispers, bows his head, closes his eyes. Let’s himself feel a few seconds of grief for a boy that believes that his family has betrayed him instead of protected him with every fiber of their being.
He knows that it can’t have been easy for them to not tell him, for the man that Conner will be when the child comes to them, to not say a word and force the issue… it must have been his version of hell.
Knowing how betrayed he would feel, something would have happened to have made him decide to keep quiet, to force the others to keep quiet as well.
He takes a deep breath and then pulls out his phone.
Hits three buttons and says three words. They’ll be relayed to everyone; he doesn’t need to say more.
“Conner is gone.”
Jason finds him. He knows that he was only told because it would have looked odd if he hadn’t been.
“They never told me,” Conner says. He has his arms wrapped around his legs. He looks young and lost.
Jason hadn’t known the boy that Conner is the replacement for. He’s not sure if he would have liked him or loathed him.
“Maybe they thought you didn’t need to know,” Jason says, he sits beside him. They’re twenty stories up, there’s a hefty breeze. But it’s cool not cold and he can deal until he gets Conner back to the ground.
He’s already sent the signal telling everyone that he’s found Conner.
“I always thought they loved me,” Conner says, like he didn’t hear Jason at all. “And they didn’t tell me that at all, they told me about Clark but they…”
“Did you ever feel unloved by them?” Jason asks. Conner looks over at him. “They raised you kid, they didn’t have to. Once you were handed off to them they could have handed you off again, to Clark or Luthor or some adoption agency. They didn’t have to keep you.”
“They didn’t tell me,” Conner says again, he looks sad and Jason can’t figure out why. If he had Lex Luthor as his other dad he thinks he would really rather not know.
“Maybe they didn’t think you needed to know, maybe they thought there was nothing you could gain from Luthor except wondering if maybe you were gonna go evil.”
“Uncle Jason,” Conner says, stops, looks away.
Jason feels pleased that he was evidently involved, somewhere, in the process of raising this boy.
“I wouldn’t want to know, if it was me,” Jason says. “And you keep saying that they didn’t tell you, but have you thought that maybe the reason that you weren’t told wasn’t because they didn’t want you to know, but maybe because you didn’t want you to know.”
Conner looks over at him, brow furrowed and for a second he looks eerily like Dick working his way mentally through some problem.
“You’ve got everybody and their brother looking for you kid, let’s get you home before someone we don’t want to find us, finds us.”