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Chapter Text

There was nothing better, Jordan decided, than having the warm sun shine down on him while he held his girlfriend in his arms. Things with Sarah had never been better. Summer break had meant that they had seemingly infinite time to hang out, and it seemed like they had reached a whole new level of their relationship. Gone was the uncertainty over every text and every glance and instead he felt a level of security with her that he had only really felt with his family before.

Being with her was enough to make him stop reliving the terrifying events that had taken place just a couple weeks ago. The town had been cleaned up, and the DOD was completely gone. Jordan wanted nothing more than to forget the whole thing, and when he was with Sarah it seemed like that was possible, even if it was just for a moment.

“Hey,” she nudged him gently, “you doing okay?”

“Uh, yeah,” he nodded, bringing himself back into this shared moment with her. “I’m just… having a good time with you,” he told her, holding her a little tighter.

“Jordan… You know that you can talk to me about it, right?” she offered hesitantly. “My parents went through the same thing; I understand what happened.”

Jordan sighed. She understood part of it, maybe, but his own brush with the Eradicator was still steeped in secrecy. While she seemed to buy the idea of Morgan Edge having some kind of vendetta out for Lois Lane and her family, Jordan had mostly brushed off the whole thing by telling her that he didn’t remember anything about it.

That was mostly true, anyway. He wasn’t really sure how much of his nightmares were actually memories or just random scraps that his brain had stitched together based off of what his family had told him.

“I don’t want to think about it anymore,” Jordan told her. “It’s all over with, anyway, and I’d rather just spend as much time as possible this summer making happy memories together.”

She gave him one last look of concern before relenting. “I guess I can go for that,” she said, tilting her head up to him for a kiss.

He broke away from him too soon.

“I need to get going,” she told him reluctantly. “Mom’s got that election interest meeting today and I promised I’d watch Sophie for her.”

“Okay,” Jordan agreed, running his thumb over her fingers. “But I’ll see you tomorrow, right?”

“Yeah,” she smiled, leaning in for one last kiss. “Tomorrow.”

“I love you,” he told her, feeling that familiar zing of happiness course through him as he said the words.

“I love you, too,” she smiled sweetly.

Jordan took his time walking back home, not caring that there seemed to be a permanent grin stuck on his face. It felt good t just be happy about something normal for a change. As he made his way down the drive towards the house, his dad stepped out of the barn.

“Good visit with Sarah?” Clark asked in a friendly tone.

“Yeah,” Jordan replied, feeling his grin stretch even wider. “We’re planning to meet up tomorrow at Victoria May’s, too.”

Clark eyes widened, but he still shrugged supportively.

“Okay. Just make sure you’re back by six. John Henry and Natalie are coming over.”

Jordan nodded, feeling his mood fall a little at the reminder. Although John Henry had finally moved out of the barn into a real home in Metropolis after accepting a position with the DOD, he had been by a couple times with his daughter for some of the most uncomfortable family visits that Jordan had ever participated in.

Natalie had been told everything about Jordan’s family, and as much as Jordan understood why that had happened, it meant that everyone was dealing with a lot of complicated emotions. There had been some very awkward and tense moments during the visits so far and tomorrow night would probably be a repeat of those same problems.

But despite all of that, Jordan did feel a strange connection to his half-sister, and it didn’t feel right to just give up on getting to know her.

“I’ll be here,” he promised.  He turned to make his way inside, but his dad stopped him.

“Jordan, I was thinking that now would be a good time to go down and do some practicing,” he suggested gently.

Jordan swallowed nervously.

“I still don’t feel anything,” he replied guardedly. It was true. Ever since he had recovered from Zeta-Rho’s attempted eradication, he hadn’t felt any stirring of his powers. The strength that had been steadily increasing over the last year was gone, the constant cool tickle at the back of his throat had died down, and even the continual hum in his ears was blissfully absent.

His dad had first theorized that he was just exhausted from the energy that Zeta-Rho had used when he was inside of Jordan, but after two weeks there was still no sign of Jordan’s abilities reappearing. Jordan was in no rush to see them resurface. The only thing they had done for him was cause him pain and made him a target.  

Clark fixed Jordan with a particularly worried expression that was becoming very familiar.

“I think if you tried to push through-”

“What if I don’t want to?” Jordan burst out. “What if I just want to forget about powers for a little while?”

His dad sighed regretfully. “Jordan, we can’t forget who we are. Your powers aren’t just going to go away.”

Jordan swallowed down the uncomfortable surge of emotion at that reminder.

“Okay, but can’t we just wait?” he begged. “If…if they’re gonna come back anyway, do I have to force them?”

Clark frowned, but still looked sympathetic.

“Look, I know what it feels like now,” Jordan bargained. “I promise I’ll tell you if I notice anything, and we can go right back to practicing. But… I just want to feel normal for a little bit.”

“Okay,” his father finally agreed reluctantly. “We can wait a little longer.”

Relieved that he had escaped for now, Jordan made his way towards the house with plans to just enjoy the rest of a perfectly normal day. He had a vague idea of just messing around on a videogame until dinner and texting with Sarah. His mom was at the Gazette for an all-day strategy meeting with Chrissy, so he knew he wasn’t going to get sucked into any unwanted household chores.

Unfortunately, it looked like Jon wasn’t going to be up for gaming with him. Jordan could see him laying underneath the big tree in their yard and it looked like he was almost asleep.

Jordan watched him for a moment before turning to go inside on his own. It was best to let Jon some sleep when he could. Jordan knew he wasn’t the only one with nightmares.

Having a cast on during the summer sucked even more than when he had it before. It was hot and sweaty, and it seemed to get dirty way faster. There was also the familiar problem of having to find a comfortable position to sleep in, and that was now combined with the nightmares that Jonathan couldn’t seem to shake to matter how hard he tried. He still woke up way too often with the sight of his brother’s burning eyes rattling in his head.

Being outside in the sun seemed to help keep those fears away, and Jonathan had found himself underneath the giant tree in their front yard several times already this summer. Today was a particularly bright day, and Jon let his eyes slip closed as he felt the sun bake into him. Maybe he could actually manage to get some sleep.

He felt perfectly relaxed as he stretched out on the grass. So relaxed, in fact, that it took him longer than it should have to hear the strange high-pitched buzzing that reverberated through the air. The sound pulsed through his head, making his teeth rattle. He frowned and pushed himself upright as he opened his eyes to see what it was.

But the only thing he saw was an impossibly bright flash of otherworldly light that blinded him and knocked him back as the sound took over.

Jon opened his eyes and found himself in a cave made of ice with a strange man standing in front of him. He didn’t recognize him, but the crest on his chest was very familiar.

“You are Kal-El’s other son,” the man intoned. “I am Jor-El of Krypton.”

“I’m Jonathan Kent,” Jon corrected, feeling himself prickle at being called ‘the other son’. He had spent enough time over the last year wrestling with those very feelings, he didn’t need some hologram feeding into those insecurities. “I thought you were dead,” he said bluntly.

“My crystal has been irreparably damaged,” Jor-El spoke somberly. “I am no longer able to provide guidance to my son as I once did.”

“Yeah, well, you were dead wrong about my brother,” Jon spoke up. “He’s got way more power than you guessed. So maybe your guidance wasn’t so great after all.”

“I am bound by the limitations of my programming,” Jor-El replied. “I could only advise from the information I had access to.”

He was staring at Jon in a very calculating manner, and Jon shifted uncomfortably. It was a dream, he decided. It had to be. He pinched his arm forcefully, but nothing changed.

“Yeah, well, now we can help my dad,” Jonathan spoke up, not really sure why he felt the need to defend himself to this dream-hologram of a dead AI. “He’s got his family on Earth to be here for him.”

Jor-El cocked his head thoughtfully, not letting up with his intense stare.

“What would you be willing to do to help my son?” he asked.

“Anything,” Jonathan answered confidently. His heart pounded.

Jor-El nodded, looking pleased with something. It didn’t give Jon a good feeling.

“You have a strong mind,” Jor-El spoke decidedly. “A Kryptonian mind.”

Jon scoffed. “Yeah, you got that wrong there, gramps. I don’t have any powers.”

“There is more to being Kryptonian than the abilities granted under the power of the yellow sun,” Jor-El corrected. “You possess the strength of will and the increased mental capacity that sets us apart from the humans on this planet. You are capable of carrying on the legacy of Krypton.”

Jonathan shuddered, and shook his head. The arrogant words bothered him, but more than that, he didn’t like thinking of himself as Kryptonian. They had experienced enough of the destructive ‘legacy’ of that planet, and it was hard enough to reconcile the fact that his dad came from the same place that all those murderous Kryptonians had. He definitely wasn’t ready to think about how he fit in with that legacy.

“Look, Krypton’s gone,” Jonathan spoke up bluntly. “The sooner you guys realize that the better. Now will you just shut up and let me wake up out of this weird-ass dream?”

“This is not a mere dream,” Jor-El corrected. “I am using what remains of the energy from my sunstone to communicate with you directly in your mind.”

Jon felt a thudding dread settle in his chest. Apparently, his instincts had been correct. Not that it was much comfort. Was he completely powerless against this alien AI?

“So… what do you want from me?” he asked fearfully.

“I wanted to know what you would be willing to do to help my son,” Jor-El responded. “And you have told me.”

“Yeah,” Jonathan nodded. “I would do anything.”

“Good,” the AI said with a flash of triumph.

Then Jonathan was suddenly hit with the worst pain he had ever felt in his life.

Pressure gripped his head, and it felt as if his brain was swelling uncontrollably, pushing against his skull as his vision faded into pinpricks of light. His lungs were paralyzed, and he couldn’t even draw a breath to scream. Waves of heat pulsed through him, and Jonathan could vaguely feel his fingernails digging into his scalp, instinctively trying to free himself from the attack he was experiencing.

The pain carried through until finally, a scream ripped out of him. It gave him some release, but every nerve still sang with agony. He couldn’t see anything anymore, and he felt like he was tumbling down an infinite black hole. As much as he wanted to fight it, he just couldn’t help wanting any escape possible from the pain.  

As he surrendered to the darkness, he could distantly hear the sound of his father’s voice shouting repeatedly.

When Jon came to, he almost wished he hadn’t. The headache still thundered through him, although it was thankfully at a lesser intensity. The rest of the pain seemed to have faded, so at least there was that. He could feel his dad shaking him gently, trying to rouse him, although he couldn’t focus enough to make sense of what he was saying.

He cracked his eyes open and immediately slammed them shut again, groaning at the brightness. There was nothing he wanted more than to roll over and go to sleep, but his dad’s insistent voice was impossible to ignore.

“I’m okay, Dad,” he groaned. “Just give me a minute so everything can stop spinning.”

There was silence from Clark, and Jon took the opportunity to risk opening his eyes again.

It wasn’t as bad this time. Jon could make out the leaves rustling gently above them, and when he squinted, he could focus on his father’s worried face. Jordan was hovering over them worriedly as well, eyes darting nervously between Jonathan’s face and their dad. Apparently, whatever happened to Jonathan had drawn enough attention that both of them came to investigate.

There was a black, charred section of grass right beside Jonathan, and he swallowed back a surge of fear when he remembered that it was the same place where they had buried the sunstone.  

“Jonathan,” his dad spoke slowly and cautiously, looking fearful. “Can you understand what I’m saying?”

“Yeah,” Jon huffed. He cautiously pushed himself upright, still pressing a hand against his aching head. “My head’s killing me but my hearing’s fine.” He was still trembling, though, and he felt impossibly weak. What exactly had happened in that weird dream?

Clark frowned deepened. Behind him, Jordan’s voice spoke up, but the sounds washed over Jonathan without making any sense. His temples throbbed as he listened to his dad respond in the same nonsensical way.

“Jonathan, what happened?” Clark asked urgently. He was now perfectly understandable, and Jonathan was starting to worry. Something was definitely wrong.

“I had a weird dream,” he remembered. Everything seemed all jumbled up in his head, and he was having a hard time sorting things out. “Jor-El was there, he said that he was communicating with me… Dad? What’s going on? What were you and Jordan saying?”

“You couldn’t understand us?” Clark asked fearfully.

“No,” Jonathan admitted with a whisper. “It sounded like another language or something.”

Clark nodded his head somberly. “Jordan and I were speaking English,” he told his son. “You’re speaking Kryptonian.”

“What…” Jon could hear it now. The sounds of the words they were speaking were disturbingly foreign to him, but somehow, they rolled smoothly off his tongue like he had been using them all his life. His heart was thudding so heavily it felt like it was about to burst through his chest.

Jordan was talking again, Jon recognized. But as hard as he tried, he couldn’t make sense of the sounds coming out of his brother’s mouth. His head ached, and he saw stars dance in front of his eyes.

He couldn’t breathe properly, he noticed dimly. His chest was tight, and air squeezed through in painful, short bursts. The rush in his ears drowned out of the panicked voices shouting out to him.

It was a relief when everything finally faded away again.

Chapter Text

When Jon found himself back in that stupid dream cave, he wasn’t sure if he was feeling more angry or terrified.

Jor-El stood in the same place as before, but he looked almost faded. The cave was now dark and shadowy, and Jon could somehow feel the cold seep into his skin even though he knew it was all happening in his mind.

“What did you do to me?” he demanded. Even now, he could hear the Kryptonian words ringing out in the space and for the life of him, he couldn’t bring any English ones to mind.

“I have given you the entirety of my knowledge,” Jor-El replied heavily. “Now you will be able to guide Kal-El on Earth as I once did.”

“What, you just hijacked my head?! And… and now I can speak your language?”

“Among other things,” Jor-El replied. “It will take some time for your neurons to finish reforming. Once the process is complete, you will have wide-ranging knowledge of our science and history. Your unique combination of human and Kryptonian biology will allow you to assist Kal-El in a way that I was never able to do.”

“I don’t want my neurons to reform!” Jon shouted. “You have to reverse this. I can’t do this!”

“My son needs access to the knowledge contained in my crystal. You told me that you would do anything to help Kal-El,” Jor-El reminded him. The cave was darkening even more, Jon noticed, and he had to strain to see through the shadows.

“I would! I just…” Jonathan tried to force his racing mind to make sense. “He wouldn’t want this either,” he finally declared. “He doesn’t want me to suffer.”

“The benefit will outweigh your temporary suffering,” Jor-El told him.

“I can’t understand English anymore!” Jon objected. Saying that out loud seemed to make it more real for him, and he felt a rush of sickening panic. Infuriatingly, Jor-El seemed unaffected.

“It was impossible for your mind to retain everything without some loss of your human knowledge. Earth languages are easily relearned, especially with your increased mental capacity,” Jor-El replied neutrally. “I ensured that your personal memories have been preserved and retained.”

“What, like I’m supposed to thank you for that?” Jonathan spat. He could barely make out the hologram now, he realized. Everything was fading and he still wasn’t getting any answers.

“My consciousness is depleting,” Jor-El spoke. Even his voice was fading out. “I will not survive long in your mind. It is now up to you to carry on the legacy of Krypton.”

“I don’t want to carry on the legacy,” Jon shouted out. There was only a hint of light now, and the cave was empty. “Did you hear that? I don’t want this! Take it away!”

But there was no one there to hear him.

Jordan had been the subject of a few family meetings over the last year, and as much as being the center of attention sucked, he hadn’t really appreciated how difficult it was to be the person watching from the sidelines.

Everyone was all together in the living room, and Jordan couldn’t stop staring at his brother as their dad clumsily explained how a supercomputer had somehow been uploaded into Jonathan’s brain. And how, apparently, he was just translating what he had been told because Jon wasn’t able to explain it for himself.

“So… Jon can’t understand us?” Jordan asked uncomfortably.

“No,” Clark answered softly, glancing over to where Jon was staring at the floor and fiddling with his cast. Lois was sitting beside him, her arm wrapped tightly around him.

“Apparently, the AI has essentially overwritten his knowledge of English with the Kryptonian language,” Clark explained. He was standing with his arms crossed in front of him and his jaw clenched tightly.

“Oh.” Jordan could tell that his dad wasn’t taking the news well. Although Jordan had never liked Jor-El much, he knew that his dad loved his Kryptonian father in his own way. But the idea that the AI had just callously messed with Jon like this was pretty unsettling.

“He can learn it again,” Clark explained to them. “He has the same mental capacity and affinity for languages that I do, so it won’t take him long to regain some basic fluency. Maybe a week or so.”

“Wow.” Jordan stared some more. That seemed like a crazy short amount of time to learn an entire language. But on the other hand, Jordan couldn’t imagine having to wait that long to have a proper conversation with his brother again.

Jonathan looked up from where he had been staring at the floor and said something to Clark.

The hair on Jordan’s arms prickled as he listened to them talk back and forth. He didn’t understand the words being spoken, but they had an eerie familiarity to them. Jordan was pretty sure he knew where he had heard that language before, but he refused dwell on it now.

“He’s tired still,” Clark explained as Jon slowly got up, pulling himself away from his mom’s arms. “He’s going to get more sleep.”

“Hey.” Lois stood up and grabbed him by the shoulders, looking him dead in the eyes. “I love you,” she told him forcefully and simply. “You understand? I. Love. You.” She tapped her chest and then his.

Somehow, the message got through because Jon nodded before sinking into her arms once again. Jordan swallowed a heavy lump down as he saw Jon flick away a couple tears from the corner of his eye.

What could Jordan even say to his brother? There were no easy fixes, and Jon couldn’t even understand anything, anyway.

But before Jordan had a chance to speak, Jon turned away and slid upstairs.

There was a moment of silence in the living room before Lois turned towards her husband.

“Clark, this isn’t your fault,” she told him bluntly.

Clark scoffed bitterly. “It was my father’s technology that did this to him.”

“You had no way of knowing what that crystal was capable of. None of us did.”

Clark shook his head, still looking unwilling to let go of his guilt.

She sighed, and then turned to look at Jordan. Her eyes were brimming with tears, and Jordan felt his throat tighten in response.

“It’ll be okay,” she encouraged softly, running a hand through his hair. “We’ll help him get through this. You’ll see.”

Jordan nodded, trying to believe in her optimism. He had experienced his fair share of danger, but it seemed somehow harder to sit here and not be able to do anything. He felt absolutely useless.

When Jonathan woke up, he stared at the ceiling for a moment, chasing away the wisps of his dreams from the night before. They had been filled with jumbled memories of strangely clothed people all wearing family crests on their chests and discussing things like energy crystals and core instability. He wished he could just forget them all.

His headache was finally gone, at least, as was the woozy, disconnected feeling that he had been muddling through ever since his encounter with Jor-El. He honestly felt like he was close to normal.

But he knew that he wasn’t.

Operating on autopilot, he reached over to his phone to check his notifications and then back a pained gasp.

He couldn’t read any of it. Sure, he recognized the logos from his most-used apps, but the text that followed made absolutely zero sense to him. They were English letters, he knew that. But when he tried to even name one of them, his head throbbed painfully, and he quickly gave it up.

Squeezing his eyes shut, he felt hot tears prickle up. So much of what he knew had been completely rewritten with that one moment. How was he supposed to communicate with his friends? Or even his mom or Jordan? Things with Tegan had barely even begun and now he couldn’t even talk to her. He couldn’t speak, couldn’t write… and would have to learn it all over again.

Unexpectedly, a flood of information bubbled up from within him.

A precise picture of his neural pathways appeared in his mind, and he could see how the knowledge the AI had given him was laid within his neural network rather than the crystal it had existed in before. He knew exactly how the technology worked, he knew (as much as it made his gut churn uncomfortably) how his brain was different than a human one, and he knew without a doubt that it would be impossible to reverse what had happened to him.

Jon shook his head and tried to remember to breathe. If he was being honest with himself, the weirdest thing about knowing all of that was that it didn’t feel foreign or artificial. It felt like something he just naturally knew about like how to tie his shoes or his favourite ice cream flavour.

But just because his entire brain had been restructured didn’t mean he had to go along with it.

He took in a deep, shuddering breath and shoved it all down inside himself as best he could. He wanted nothing to do with this Kryptonian knowledge. It may be impossible to remove all of it from his head, but he could at least keep it locked away. He rolled over and pulled the covers up over his head. All he wanted to do right now was just shut out the world.

But he knew he didn’t have that option. The sooner he got over himself the sooner he could get back to his regular life. At least the one benefit of having a weird alien brain was that it would take him an incredibly short amount of time to relearn English. Then, maybe, he could just forget about the whole thing.

Swinging his feet onto the floor, Jon stood up cautiously. The headache stayed away, and it seemed like his body had mostly recovered from the yesterday’s shock.

He could faintly hear the sounds of dishes rattling downstairs, and Jonathan realized that he was actually feeling a bit hungry. He started down the stairs but found himself stopping a couple steps from the bottom.

Jordan was talking to their mom. He could hear their voices, but as hard as he tried, he couldn’t get them to make any sense.

Jon hesitated. He couldn’t hear his dad’s voice among them. Was he even there or did he get called away? Jon wasn’t sure if he could handle being in that kitchen without the only person who could understand him right now.

He waffled on the stairs longer than he was proud of and had just taken a step backwards when his foot hit a creaky spot. The chatter stopped abruptly, and Jon knew he couldn’t duck back to his room now.

Taking a deep breath to settle himself, he came through the hall and into the kitchen where his mom and Jordan were sitting around the table.

He waved silently at them. It was worth pushing past his discomfort at using the Kryptonian words when his dad was there to understand them, but there was no point in saying anything now.

There was an uncomfortable moment where Jordan and Lois blinked back at him without speaking. Jordan waved back at Jon with a pained smile.

Then Lois seemed to make a decision. Striding forward, she grabbed his arm and pulled him to a spot at the table, talking the whole time. As she set out a plate of scrambled eggs for him, she chattered in a determined way, making eye contact with him on and off in a clear sign that she was actually talking to him even though they both knew he couldn’t understand a word.

Jon turned to give his brother a bewildered glance, wanting to see what he thought of their mom’s antics. Jordan just grinned and shrugged.

Maybe Jon would never know what exactly she was talking about, but the sound of her voice was comforting, at least. It was something familiar to latch onto in the midst of all the uncertainty.

She was pointing at a pile of papers on the table and Jonathan glanced down at them curiously before noticing the Kryptonian characters written on the pages. It was written for him. Eagerly, he grabbed the stack and pulled it closer.

On top was a note from his dad explaining how he had gotten called away on DOD business. It was going to be at least another couple of hours before he’d be back, but he had made something to help in the meantime. Jon looked at the other pages with interest, flipping through them slowly with his casted arm.

It was a rudimentary dictionary, of sorts. Lists of Kryptonian words with English counterparts written beside in a way that Jonathan could read and understand. It had been handwritten, of course, and Jon felt his tense shoulders relax for the first time this morning. His dad may not be here right now, but he had spent however long painstakingly writing out as much as he could to get Jon started. Even for a guy with superspeed, it was a pretty amazing thing.

Jon flipped through the pages and noticed that they were organized loosely according to topic. A list of family members was pretty close to the front.

“Mom,” he sounded out hesitantly. The word didn’t feel as awkward to him as he expected, and he felt a vague sort of hope that maybe he wasn’t as far up a creek as he’d thought.

He almost spilled his orange juice on the pages when his mom’s surprisingly strong arms gripped around him in a tight hug. There was another avalanche of words spilling from her, and he patted her arm clumsily until she eased up on her embrace.

It wasn’t that big of a deal, honestly. He had only managed to say one word, probably one of the first words he had ever learned. He rolled his eyes over at Jordan, who returned the gesture with a familiar ‘just let Mom do her thing’ shrug. Jonathan smiled at their unspoken connection. Then he looked up another name on the list.

“Jordan.” He held his arms out in a big, cheesy gesture like he was expecting a hug, and Jordan just laughed and shot back a reply.

Jon didn’t understand it, of course, but he still knew it was some kind of smart-aleck retort based on his brother’s expression, so he just learned back in his chair, smugly miming that he couldn’t understand his brother.

Jordan rolled his eyes and went back to his breakfast.

Jon grinned and did the same. At least there were some ways that they could still communicate.

Jordan had wanted to enjoy his date with Sarah and had actually been looking forward to visiting the newly restored diner.

Ever since he got his hearing, the background kitchen noise at Victoria May’s had been a challenge to focus through. But now with his powers on an indefinite hiatus, he didn’t have to put in any of that extra effort. He could just focus completely on her.

He couldn’t help his thoughts straying back to Jon, though. They had spent some time that day working through some of the words their dad had left, plus some stuff that they had figured out between themselves.

Jon was picking up on all of it disturbingly quickly, but there was still a long way for him to go before he’d be able to come into town and not raise suspicion. With their dad taking longer at the DOD than planned, both their mom and Jordan had been hesitant to leave him home alone. But he had insisted that he was okay, and he did have the ELT in case of emergency, so Lois had gone to meet with Chrissy and Jordan had met up with Sarah as planned.

Unfortunately, the date wasn’t going well. Jordan knew he was distracted, but he couldn’t manage to pull himself back to the present. Sarah, as perceptive as always, could tell that something was off.

“Okay, what’s going on with you?” she asked after having to grab his attention yet again. “I can tell something’s wrong.”

“Sorry,” Jordan apologized. “I’m just worried about Jon. He’s had kind of a crappy day.” It was a complete understatement, but at least it had a hint of the truth with it.

Sarah nodded sympathetically. “What’s going on? Do you think he wants to come meet up with us? Get out of the house for a bit?”

“Oh! Uh… no, probably not,” Jordan fibbed clumsily. “I don’t know if he wants to talk about it or anything.”

She had pulled out her phone and was texting a message. It was probably to Jon, Jordan realized in a rush of panic. And unless she had a Kryptonian keyboard installed on her phone, Jon wouldn’t be able to understand a word of it.

“I think his phone is kind of on the fritz, too,” Jordan spoke up impulsively. “I know he was complaining about it dropping the signal yesterday. Might need take it in to get it fixed.” He forced himself to shut up before his lies spiraled out of control. Had it been this hard for Jon to cover for him all those times he had missed school?

Sarah narrowed her eyes suspiciously.

“Okay, what is happening?” she asked. “I can tell you’re lying to me.”

Jordan felt his ears heat up.

“Uh…”

She sighed in frustration. “I’m not dumb, Jordan. And you know I hate secrets.”

“I know you do,” he nodded quickly, trying not to descend into panic. “It’s just that… It’s kind of Jon’s thing,” he finally said. “It’s not up to me to tell.”

She frowned, but nodded slowly anyway.

“Okay,” she agreed grudgingly. “I get that you want to leave it up to him.”

“Yeah,” Jordan spoke gratefully. Hopefully by the time she actually talked to Jon again they could come up with a good story. “Anyway, I’m sorry if I’m a little distracted. And I’m sorry I can’t talk to you about it. Look, I still want to be with you. Can we try to make the most of it?”

She looked at him searchingly for another moment, and Jordan tried not to squirm.

“Alright,” she finally decided. “Let’s try again.”

Jordan forced a smile at her and took a sip of his drink. He could make this work. Somehow, he would figure out how to have a normal life.

Chapter Text

If they had been a normal family, Jon suddenly getting a massive upload of Kryptonian data and being unable to understand almost everyone on the planet would have been enough cause to cancel their evening plans. As it was, their guests were interdimensional refugees, one of whom was an actual blood relative, so it was hard to decide who was in a weirder position.

When Jordan had first learned of his sort-of half-sister, he had pictured her as pretty bad-ass, being able to help build John Henry’s metal suit under incredibly difficult circumstances. In real life, she was as bold as he envisioned, but it often came out as biting sarcasm and a generally cold manner when she interacted with the Lane-Kent family.

She was awkward around Lois, stalking her movements with pained, longing eyes, but then abruptly distancing herself in conversation. She skittered around Clark and hadn’t managed to say anything more than a couple muttered phrases to him the entire time she had known him. And she was often abrupt and sometimes downright rude to Jordan and Jonathan.

Jordan knew all about having your mouth run off on you when you were upset. And he knew about everything she had gone through on her world. He couldn’t imagine how he would deal with any of that stuff.

But as much as he understood why she was having such a difficult time, he still wasn’t really sure how to handle her. And it bothered him to see his dad try so hard to appear harmless, always wearing his blandest button-ups and staying in the background as much as possible. What that other Superman had done wasn’t his fault, yet he was still trying to make up for it in some way.

Maybe it was too soon to push through all of that, but despite everything, Jordan felt a strange sort of pull to connect with Natalie. Not matter how screwed up it was, she was still kind of family. And she was pretty alone in this world, so any connection she could make had to help, right? Apparently, the adults felt the same way because they made of point of trying to plan semi-regular visits where everyone could become more comfortable with each other.

It was a mark of how much the Irons family had dealt with when they easily accepted what had happened to Jon after just a few questions.

“He’s still of his own mind?” John Henry asked pointedly.

“It wasn’t like the Eradicator,” Lois explained, keeping a supportive hand on her son’s shoulder throughout this scrutiny. “He’s still Jon, and he just needs some time to figure things out.”

Jon had been watching the two visitors as this conversation went on, and Jordan could see his brother’s face pinched in closed-off frustration. The list of words he knew was pretty impressive for just a day of practicing, but he was definitely a long way off from following a conversation like this.

John Henry seemed satisfied with the explanation, and they all somehow stumbled through dinner together. Afterwards, Lois suggested that ‘the kids’ go off by themselves for a bit.

Jordan felt it was a little misguided to try to get them to ‘bond’ on their own or whatever, but he was still willing to give it a try. He had been a bit stumped as to what to do, though. Just talking seemed like it was a bad idea. He hadn’t realized how much he depended on Jon to grease the conversational wheels until now. And he was pretty sure that offering to play anything out of his collection of violent videogames would be a bad idea. Natalie had seen more than enough of that in real life.

Finally, Jon had remembered the stash of old games that their grandmother had always brought out when they visited the farm as kids. Jordan looked at the collection critically. Scrabble would be a no-go for Jon, as was any other game that involved wordplay.

“Uno?” he suggested, grabbing the worn deck from the pile.  

“Yeah,” Jon grinned gratefully.

Apparently, Uno wasn’t a thing in Natalie’s universe but after a brief review of the rules (and a reminder of the vocabulary for Jon), they were able to kick off a game.

“So,” Natalie drawled sarcastically. “This is what people in Smallville do for fun?”

Jordan frowned, not liking how she was talking about his adopted hometown. Sure, it wasn’t the most exciting place, but Smallville had given him a lot lately.

Jon didn’t seem bothered by it, though.

“Smallville,” he repeated, nodding his understanding. “No fun,” he grinned before dropping his card on the pile.

“Why did you guys even move here from Metropolis?” Natalie wondered.

Jordan shrugged uncomfortably. There were a lot of complicated reasons to explain their move, but it mostly tied into him needing to control his powers and his dad wanting to be less busy as Superman. He didn’t really want to talk to Natalie about those things.

Jon drew his attention with a smack to his arm.

“Metropolis?” he asked pointedly.

Jordan twitched his arm away in annoyance before pulling out his phone. Jon was starting to pick out key words to figure out what everyone was saying, and Jordan was happy to find a picture to help clue his brother in. He just didn’t love the whole hitting thing that came from it all.

“Oh, wait, I think I know,” Natalie spoke slowly. “It’s because of you. My dad says you have some of Superman’s powers, right?”

Jordan frowned. He knew his dad trusted John Henry, sure, but he didn’t love how much his parents had shared with the man. Who had then apparently shared it all with his daughter.

“It wasn’t completely because of me,” Jordan shifted uncomfortably.

“But you do have powers, right?” She stared at him accusingly, and Jordan felt himself squirm under the scrutiny. He couldn’t tell if she was angry or scared about that.

“I did,” he told her. “I mean, I do… Just not for the last while, so maybe they’re gone completely, who knows.” He shut up when he felt another smack from Jon.

“Jordan,” Jon frowned. He obviously could tell that there was something going on even if he couldn’t understand it.  

Jordan was trying to figure out how to try to explain what was being said to Jon when Natalie scoffed impatiently and rattled out a string of words in what sounded like fluent Kryptonian.

He stared at her with a slack jaw, and Jon looked equally surprised.

“You speak Kryptonian?” Jordan wondered. And she had watched Jon struggle this whole evening and said nothing?

“When your entire planet is occupied by a hostile alien force, it makes sense to learn their language,” she shrugged, staring down at her cards. She clenched her jaw in an eerie echo of Lois Lane’s mannerisms.

Jordan shared a glance with Jon. They had come disturbingly close to that reality happening here as well, but everything had somewhat miraculously worked out. They still had Metropolis; they still had the world. They still had their mom.

Natalie had lost all of that.

Looking almost a little bit guilty at reminding her all she had gone through, Jon said a few words to her in Kryptonian. She listened with a mulish expression.

“Fine,” she said abruptly. She glanced over at Jordan’s look of confusion. “He told me to lay off you,” she explained.

“Oh.” Jordan hated that Natalie knew how to talk to his brother better than he did.

“Whatever, I think it’s my turn,” she brushed off, scowling at her cards.

Taking a cue from her, Jordan turned his attention back to the game. They mostly kept to English, still, although Natalie did throw a couple of Kryptonian words at Jon when he really got stuck on something. There was always a strain in her manner when she did it, though, and Jordan could understand why she wouldn’t want to use the language. Just hearing it reminded him too much of his own experiences that he was desperately trying to forget.

Later that night, Jordan got a chance to catch up with Jon in his room.

“Thanks,” he told Jon, “For what you said to Natalie.” He spoke slowly so his brother could hopefully keep up with at least the general idea of what he was saying.

Jon nodded his understanding and shrugged that it wasn’t a big deal.

“You still looking at that dictionary?” Jordan asked, pointing to the pages in his brother’s hand.

Jon nodded again. It was becoming a constant gesture for him.

“I thought you already worked through it all,” Jordan remarked, grabbing a seat on his brother’s bed.

Jon shook his head in confusion.

“Um… done?” Jordan tried again. “Aren’t you done?”

“Oh. No.” Jon showed him the last few pages that he was still looking at. “Food,” he explained, tapping the page he was currently on.

Jordan nodded at him expectantly. Jonathan heaved out a comedically heavy sigh, and then turned to read off the page.

“Eggs. Pizza. Cookies.”  

“Chocolate covered bacon?” Jordan wondered, remembering who the author of this list was.

Jonathan searched the paper and then his eyes lit up in laughter.

“Yeah,” he said, pointing to a spot on the page. Jordan automatically leaned in to get a closer look, and there was an awkward beat before they both remembered that he actually couldn’t read anything on that page regardless of how close he was.

“Jordan…” Jon put his papers down on the desk. “You give… um… friend… uh… friend words?” he said, wincing at his clumsy phrasing.

Jordan thought for a second. “Names?” he guessed. “You need names for friends?” Jordan was still getting surprised with all the things that Jon needed to relearn. Did he have Kryptonian equivalents for those people instead? Or was it just blank? He didn’t really have the guts to ask about those kinds of details.

“Names for friends,” Jon repeated gratefully. He dug out his phone, and Jordan noticed a ton of notification badges before Jon opened his photo app.

Jon saw where Jordan’s eyes had strayed to.

“Yeah,” he acknowledged, looking worried.

They hadn’t talked about what to say to people yet. Not being in school made it somewhat easier, but it wouldn’t be long before people started to wonder why Jon had just suddenly dropped off the face of the Earth.

And Jordan knew he would be the first person they would ask.

The last few days had been hellish. Jon had dove into relearning English with as much energy as he tackled everything and had objectively made a lot of progress. He had crushed learning his dad’s dictionary and had been working away at a language learning app his mom had found that didn’t require the user to know another Earth language. But it was still a daunting and exhausting task.

He was really starting to get better at following a conversation, but constructing his own sentences was proving to be challenging and the perfectionist in Jon was annoyed at struggling with all the little grammar quirks that had once been intuitive. As he went to sleep each night, strings of English words and phrases crowded his thoughts, but he always ended up dreaming in Kryptonian.

The Fortress was almost calling to him. Tantalizing scraps of ideas danced through his mind throughout the night, and he wasn’t really sure if it was just the random knowledge he possessed still settling into place or if it was some remnant of Jor-El trying to guide him on this supposed destiny. Either way, he tried to ignore all of it, but it was proving to be difficult.

In the end, it was the increasingly crushing loneliness that tipped the scales for him. His dad had been great through all of it, hanging around as much as he could and willingly translating every little phrase he was asked to, but Jon had always been somewhat of an extrovert so having only one person that he could actually talk to had been really hard. If he could use all of the unwanted gifts that Jor-El had given him to drag himself out of the trouble the Kryptonian had created, then so much the better.

So, he had asked his dad if they could go to the Fortress. He had tried to explain what he had hoped to do there, and it had been a weird moment when his dad didn’t actually understand some of the scientific Kryptonian words that Jon used.

When they arrived in the cave, Jon felt an unsettling feeling of déjà vu. It was the exact same place he had seen in those dreams with Jor-El. That in itself wasn’t an incredible surprise, but that wasn’t the only thing he noticed.

Even though he had never physically stepped foot in there before, he understood every corner of this place. While the walls looked like they were made of ice and other Earth materials, Jon knew that complex Kryptonian technology was layered underneath. And he knew how to use all of it. The AI that had managed it was now destroyed, but the Fortress was still powerful in its own right.

Jon pulled out the navigation crystal he had taken from his dad’s spaceship and settled it into the notch that he knew would be on the East wall. There was no AI to interact with anymore, but this new crystal could be modified so he could work with the Fortress directly, more along the lines of a traditional Earth computer. Kryptonian characters pulsed into view in front of him, and Jonathan got to work with his project.

His dad was watching him, and Jon tried not to feel too self-conscious as he worked. If he let himself think about it, the whole situation was completely screwed up. This was his first visit out here, and yet he knew more things about this place than the person who had literally planted it in the Arctic. It was just easier to focus on the task at hand. He didn’t speak until he reached a good stopping point.

“Okay, so the Fortress should be done rendering them in a few minutes,” Jon announced. He was speaking in Kryptonian, wanting to save the mental effort it took to use English for when he was at home with his mom and Jordan. Although with the translators he was making, he could be a little less precious about how he used that energy.

“So, you just knew how to do all of this?” Clark wondered.  

“Yeah,” Jon shrugged. “It’s actually not much work at all. The Fortress already has really good translating capabilities. Jor-El was programmed in Kryptonian, but you guys spoke in English all the time, right?”

“We did,” Clark admitted, looking surprised that Jon would know that.

Jon shrugged. There was a lot of stuff he knew now.

“Anyway, at least with these I can hopefully talk to mom and Jordan properly again,” Jon said, pointing to the devices that the Fortress was creating for him. “I know I still need to mostly be practicing English, but this’ll give me another option when I get stuck besides charades and Pictionary,” he joked.

But his dad didn’t seem to be in the mood for humour.

“Jonathan… I’m so sorry about all of this,” his dad spoke with a heavy voice.

“It’s not your fault,” Jonathan protested uncomfortably. He had seen enough of his dad’s guilty stares in the last few days that he needed to clear the air. “Yes, it really sucks, but I don’t blame you or whatever.”

“I just don’t understand why my… why Jor-El would have done this to you.”

“Well… yeah, it was kind of messed up,” Jon decided. “But I think Jor-El, the real living one on Krypton, programmed the AI to look out for you as a priority. Not me. I don’t know if he was thinking about grandkids,” Jon smiled wryly. “And I did… sort of consent to it. I told him I’d do anything to help you, and that’s true.”

“You didn’t consent to this; you had no idea what you were saying yes to,” Clark reminded him in a troubled voice. He put a solid hand on Jon’s shoulder, making Jon feel grounded despite the unsettling conversation.  

“No, I guess I didn’t,” Jonathan allowed. “But I will be okay, Dad. I’ll get through it.”

Clark searched his expression carefully before nodding and pulling Jon in for a hug. “I know you will,” he said with confidence. “You have incredible fortitude, Jon. I just wish you didn’t have to handle quite so much.”

“I think that’s just sort of part of being in this family,” Jon shrugged as they separated. “And, Dad, if you do need… I dunno, something. That Jor-El would have helped you with before. I…I can help you now,” he decided. “Now that I have all this stuff inside me, it shouldn’t go to waste.”

Jon hadn’t even wanted to think about offering that before. But something about the conversation they just had or maybe the atmosphere of the Fortress was starting to make him think along those lines.

But his dad didn’t seem interested in that. “Jonathan, as much as I appreciate that offer, that’s still not your responsibility, not matter what’s inside your head.”

“But, Dad…”

“I’ll get by just fine without Jor-El, and I don’t want you feeling the need to take his place. You need to focus on living a normal life: enjoying high school and just being a teenager. Got it?”

“Alright,” Jonathan finally agreed.

But in his head, he still wondered how sustainable that would really be. He knew that even after decades of being Superman, his father still needed Jor-El’s knowledge and advice with certain problems. How could that need just suddenly go away?

Jordan took the curvy metal wire from Jonathan and held it in his hand.

“In your ear,” Jon prompted, looping his own identical device onto his ear. Jordan followed suit and shuddered when he felt a wave of goosebumps prickle across his scalp and a strange high-pitched tone pulse in his ears before fading out.

“How do we know if it works?” he wondered out loud.

“Works for me,” Jon spoke. “How about you?”

It was the weirdest sensation. Jordan saw Jon’s mouth moving, and there was a faint echo of the strange sounds he was becoming more used to hearing from his brother. But more clearly, he heard different words filtering into his head in his brother’s voice. They were English words, spoken smoothly and expressively.  

“Yeah, it does!” Jordan nodded in wonderment.

A relieved and happy grin spread over Jon’s face.

“Thank fuck,” he heaved, leaning back in Jordan’s beanbag chair. “You have no idea how tired I was getting of not being able to talk properly.”

“Yeah, I kinda missed this, too,” Jordan nodded. They had worked hard to communicate over the last few days, but everything had still been very stilted and frustrating.

“I can’t use these too often, though,” Jon frowned. “I really need to be practicing English properly as much as I can.”

“It’s good to have the option for a break, at least,” Jordan pointed out.

“Yeah. And even though Kryptonian and Earth tech are kinda screwy when you try to put them together, I think I can figure out how to make these work for my phone.”

Jordan nodded gratefully. They had finally settled on saying that Jon was laid up with a severe concussion, which helped explain why he had to stay at home and why he wasn’t using his phone. But that wouldn’t last forever, so if they could figure out a way for him to reply to his own messages at least it would help take the pressure off of Jordan.

“I’ll have to figure out some speech to text and screen reader functions, too,” Jonathan added, staring down at his phone. “I still suck at reading and writing,” he admitted.

Jordan nodded. They had been focusing on his listening and speaking skills, but eventually Jon would have to tackle that whole other aspect of language. And they’d have to do it with enough time for him to be ready to go back to school.

“Here, let me look,” Jordan offered. Jon handed his phone over before shifting to stretch backwards in his seat, and Jordan started to dig around in the accessibility settings. “You know I’ll help you work on whatever you need, right?” Jordan offered. “Now that I don’t have powers anymore, I have a ton of time. No more practicing with Dad.”

“You still have powers, Jordan,” Jonathan corrected casually, staring up at the ceiling. “You’re just repressing them. But you can’t get rid of them completely unless you change at a cellular level and that’s not happening any time soon.”

Jordan looked up from the phone. “How do you know that?”

Jon sat up again and shook his head to clear it. Apparently that knowledge had surprised him as much as it had Jordan.

“I have Kryptonian Wikipedia in my head,” Jon reminded his brother. “If you’re ever interested, I can also recite, like, six of whatever the Kryptonian equivalent of a ballad is. They’re all terrible, though.”

“Weird.” Jordan shook his head in disbelief. He couldn’t even fathom having that much random stuff crammed in his brain.

“Anyway, the mind’s a powerful thing,” Jon continued. “It’s possible for you to want to avoid your powers so badly that you’re repressing even the passive ones.”

Jordan shifted uncomfortably. He didn’t like the thought of his mind messing with him in this way, but at the same time he couldn’t deny that ever since Zeta-Rho, the mere thought of using his powers had terrified him.

“Look, I understand why you’re avoiding it,” Jon told him sympathetically. “If I went through what you did… But if they don’t make an appearance soon, we should take you for a scan at the Fortress to make sure things are okay. Your cells are still storing solar energy and that all has to go somewhere sometime.”

Jon was frowning as he said all these things, apparently thinking them through as they rose up in his mind.

“That really doesn’t sound good, Jon,” Jordan spoke nervously.

“Well, maybe you can just unlock them somehow on your own. Maybe Dad can help you,” Jonathan encouraged.

“Yeah, maybe.”

“And I’ll see if I can remember anything else that’ll help,” Jon offered. “This whole Kryptonian mind palace thing is shitty, but at least it’s good for some things.”

Jordan nodded, but then realized something he had missed earlier.

“Wait… this thing works on swear words?” he asked with interest, touching the device that was wrapped around his ear.

“Well, yeah, I built it and I wasn’t about to censor myself!”

“Of course not,” Jordan grinned.

A frown came over Jon’s face. “Jordan, I just realized, I don’t know any swear words in English anymore!”

“What, Dad didn’t make a page of those in his dictionary?” Jordan asked sarcastically.

“If only,” Jon snorted.

“We’ll add it to the list,” Jordan offered. “Reading, writing, swearing…”

“Jumpstarting superpowers,” Jon added.

“Right,” Jordan nodded, feeling a flutter of nerves at that reminder.

“Yeah,” Jon decided, “We’re going to be busy for the rest of the summer.”

They definitely would be. But at least they’d be doing it together.

Chapter Text

The last time Jordan had been to the Fortress, he had been made to suffer through a pain that was somehow worse than the Kryptonite virus that had been slowly killing him. So, he had definitely tried to postpone this visit for as long as possible, but Jon had really started to look worried about Jordan’s lack of powers and as soon as he had started working on their dad, there was no way Jordan could put it off.

He kept expecting to see or hear Jor-El, and the dark, silent walls felt a little spooky without the hologram. Jon seemed oddly at home, though, quickly bringing up a panel of Kryptonian characters on one of the walls and bringing a hum of life to the cave.

“Stand over there,” he told Jordan abruptly, still concentrating on the wall.

Jordan opened his mouth to object to being bossed around, but he saw his dad’s serious expression and decided not to push it. He impatiently stood where he was told, waiting for some big sign that something major was going to happen. There were a couple flashes of light, but that was it.

“Okay,” Jon nodded. “Done.”

“Done?” Jordan wondered. “That’s it? No fancy hologram or anything?”

“All in here,” Jon explained, tapping his head and shrugging. “So. You are keeping energy,” he explained, glancing between Jordan and his dad. “Like a…” He frowned, turned briefly to Clark, and spoke a word in Kryptonian.

“A battery,” Clark supplied.

“A battery,” Jon repeated thankfully. “A Kryptonian battery. With sun energy. You don’t use your powers, so the energy stays in your body.”

“It’ll just keep piling up?” Jordan wondered nervously. “How much energy do I have?” He hadn’t felt any different, but it had been three weeks without him using his powers, so that really didn’t bode well.

“You have…um… six tens? Of one hundred? Of Dad.”

“What?” Jordan asked dumbly.

“Translator,” Jon growled in frustration. He had been trying to go without as much as possible, but they had expected that this conversation would get too technical for his limited vocabulary.  

Jordan slipped the device on, hearing the now familiar tone as it engaged. It was a good thing that his dad didn’t need one because Jon had only been able to make two.

“You have about sixty percent of the energy that Dad stores,” Jonathan explained easily.

“Oh. That doesn’t sound too bad,” Jordan shrugged off.

“Yeah, but the last time you were here Jor-El scanned you at having five percent capacity,” Jon explained.

“Oh.” Jor-El had somehow made time to give him a weird check-up in between all the lasering?

“Sixty’s going to be a lot for you to handle. When it finally busts out,” Jon told him hesitantly.

Jordan shuddered. He had felt himself getting progressively stronger throughout the year, pulsing with energy. Now, apparently, he had over ten times that amount hidden inside of him. And it would just keep stockpiling if he couldn’t figure out a way to offload it.

“Jon…” Clark pinched the bridge of his nose. “Do you have any ideas of what we should do?” he asked reluctantly.

Jordan looked over at Jon worriedly. It was strange to realize that he was now the expert on all of this. But hopefully that meant he had a fix.

“I think we need to figure out how to get Jordan to push through whatever’s blocking him,” Jon suggested. “It might be kind of… messy when all that power gets released, but you’ll be able to help him, Dad. We’ll just have to make sure it happens with you and not spontaneously when he’s somewhere else.”

Jordan swallowed nervously. Yeah, that definitely didn’t sound good. The idea of trying to trigger a “messy” explosion of powers was pretty unsettling. But it sounded like he didn’t have much choice about it. And the sooner it happened, the better.

Jon was starting to go a little stir-crazy. While he had passed some time with his dad trying to get Jordan over the hump with his powers, they were trying to trigger his superhearing right now and it was honestly pretty boring to watch. Jon couldn’t do anything to help with that one, so he had left them to it.

It wasn’t like he could head into town. Even with the help of his rigged translator set-up, he knew he barely managed to sound normal over text message to his friends. There was no way he could handle a face-to-face conversation with someone who didn’t know what he was going through. So, he had given excuses that his concussion was still really bothering him and that he could barely stand to look at a screen for long. He could only hope that Tegan wouldn’t think he was ghosting her, and they’d somehow eventually be able to pick up where they left off but he wasn’t holding his breath.

He had slipped into the house and was wandering around a little aimlessly when he caught sight of his mom in her office.

“Hey,” she greeted him. “Are they still working out there?”

“Yeah,” he nodded, slouching into the chair across from her. “Working on the Gazette?” he asked her.

She replied, but he didn’t recognize the word she used. He shook his head in confusion, and she turned her laptop towards him so he could see the columns of numbers lined up in tiny cells.

“Budget,” she said again.

“Oh. Gross,” Jonathan replied.

“Yeah,” she sighed. “I keep telling myself that it’ll be worth it, though.”

“It’s cool,” Jon told her. “That you have the paper now.”

“Thanks,” she smiled. Then she lowered her laptop screen. “How’s your day going?”

“Fine,” Jon shrugged. “Just bored. Dad and Jordan are busy. And I can’t talk to friends.”

“Not even over message?” she wondered. “You’ve got that screen reader and you could take some time to translate anything if you needed.”

“Yeah,” Jon nodded, trying not to feel frustrated at the reminder of how much help he still needed just to understand a simple text message. “But it’s more. The… the words I use are different than when I speaked before.”

“Spoke, not ‘speaked’,” Lois amended gently, proving his point.

Jon sighed. He wanted to be corrected on his grammar, but a part of him still hated having his mistakes pointed out to him.

“When I spoke before,” he dutifully repeated.

“I know it’s probably hard to realize when you’re in the middle of all this, but you are really doing amazing with all of this,” Lois told him. “And that’s even when you take your super-brain into account.”

“But I still sound… wrong,” he insisted. “I can’t find the words now. I always talked good before. I could sound… smart? Right?” He searched his mom’s expression, hoping that she understood what he was trying to say.

Words had always come naturally to him. It was one of his strengths. He had always been ready with a clever quip or an encouraging comment. Even though he could now stumble his way through a conversation with someone, he still felt like he was missing an essential part of himself.

“Jonathan, you are more than the words you say,” Lois told him firmly. “And this is coming from a writer. You are still a brave, compassionate, and generous person no matter what you can or can’t do. Don’t ever forget that. Come here.” She stood and pulled him into a tight hug.

Jon sank into it gratefully, soaking up her stability and strength. There was love there, and neither of them needed words to feel it.   

“Thanks,” he smiled as he pulled away. “I, uh, don’t know all the things you said but they sound nice.”

Lois huffed out a soft laugh. “They are nice. You’re an amazing person. Never forget that.”

He shrugged, bashful in the face of all her praise.

“I think you need a break from working,” she decided suddenly. “We both do.” She shut her laptop definitively. “Let’s go for a drive.”

“Mom, I can’t go to Smallville,” he reminded her as she went to collect her wallet and keys. “My, uh, my talking is wrong. People will know.”

“So, we won’t go to Smallville,” she shrugged. “We’ll go to…”

He shook his head again when he couldn’t understand the rest of what she said.

“Where?” he asked.

“The blue diner on the road?” she watched his face to make sure he was following her explanation. “Marcy’s.”

“Oh!” Jon was pretty sure he knew the place she was talking about. They had stopped there pretty much every time they drove out to visit their grandma. It was just off the highway about a half hour West from here, and they were unlikely to run into anyone from Smallville.

“Okay,” he agreed readily. “How do you say the food they have? With the… the dry grapes?” He cringed at his phrasing, but his mom seemed unfazed by it.

“Bread pudding,” she told him. “With raisins in it. Yeah, we’re definitely getting that. If we’re feeling nice, we’ll even bring some back for your dad and Jordan but no promises there.”

Jon felt a genuine relaxed smile spread over his face as he dropped into his seat in the truck and the motor started. He hadn’t been anywhere except the farm and a cave in the Arctic in almost two weeks, and he hadn’t realized how much he needed this until now.  

“Thank you,” he told his mom gratefully.

She flashed a smile at him before turning her eyes to the road. Jonathan watched the corn whiz by as the truck picked up speed. It was only a hint of normalcy, but at least it was enough to keep him going for now.

Jordan looked at the truck in front of him and flexed his hands nervously. He still remembered watching his dad lift the pickup in the air and using it now felt like everything carried more meaning, somehow. He wasn’t going to lift it, of course, but the plan was to have him try to push it across the yard on his own. They had been trying for a couple days now, and this was the latest idea they had decided to attempt in order to unlock Jordan’s powers.

“Take a deep breath first,” his dad coached him from the side, watching carefully. “Remember, you can work up to using more strength gradually.”

Jordan nodded. Everyone was a little concerned that a massive surge would be inevitable once he finally managed to access his powers again, so it was probably for the best that he started out slow with this.

“Jordan, it’s like football,” Jonathan reminded him. “The… the hitting people?”

“Tackling,” Jordan supplied.

“Yeah. Tackling,” he nodded gratefully. “What did Coach say?”

“Stay grounded, bear forward,” Jordan remembered. He had mostly focused on pulling back during practice, but he had still listened attentively to Coach Gaines so he could mimic the proper movements, even if he didn’t need them to harness more power.

“Wait, ‘bear’?” Jon asked looking between Jordan and their dad in confusion.

“There’s ‘bear’ the animal and ‘bear’ to push through. Or to carry,” Clark explained.

“And ‘bare’ as in no clothes,” Jordan smirked.

Jon frowned as they went through the list of meanings. “So stupid,” he grumbled.

Jordan shrugged apologetically and turned back to his task. The language sidetrack had helped to lighten the mood a little, at least.

He got a solid stance underneath him and put his hands against the back of the truck. He pushed against the tailgate and felt the vehicle ease forward on its suspension. Engaging his core and tightening his shoulder blades, he kept pushing forward. The gravel underneath started to crunch as the wheels rolled, but Jordan found himself shaking with the effort and had to step away as the truck rocked back into place.

“Sorry,” he shook his head.

“That’s okay, just give it another try,” his dad encouraged.

He stopped again after a couple more attempts, his arms starting to feel a little shaky with the effort. It felt kind of weird to have to try so hard with something like this. The last year had been a constant endeavour to hold back, but now his was faced once again with the reality of what his “human” limitations were. Even though Jon had been insistent that those limitations didn’t actually exist.   

“Are you sure I still have all my powers?” he asked his brother.

“Yes,” Jon rolled his eyes. “You’re the same. The sun are the same. I saw it at the Fortress.”

“The sun is the same,” Jordan corrected automatically. But he couldn’t argue with the other thing.

He trusted Jon way more than he ever had Jor-El, so if his brother said he was building up a dangerous amount of energy then that’s what was happening. He flexed his hands nervously. What would happen when all that power suddenly released? Did he have any hope of controlling it?

“Jordan, it’s okay,” Jonathan spoke up, noticing Jordan’s hesitation. “Dad will help with this.”

Clark nodded. “We just need to push past your block here, then I’ll help you get everything evened out.”

It was the best plan they could come up with. The last thing Jordan wanted was an unexpected explosion of power when he was with Sarah or something. The whole thing was starting to freak him out, and he had put off one date with her already. Apparently, a couple of weeks was the only break he was allowed to have from weird power-related absences.

“Let’s try one more time,” Clark encouraged. “Focus on what it felt like when you’ve used your powers before. Try to replicate that same feeling.”

Jordan nodded and turned to the truck again. He remembered how it felt to channel his strength when he punched that log before. He placed his hands back on the tailgate and tried to repeat how it felt to tackle all those guys on the football field.

But as he leaned in to push, he felt a flash of another memory. This one surged with power, but he could also feel the echoes of someone who was cruel and absolutely ruthless.

“I can’t,” Jordan spoke, stepping away from the truck. “Sorry, I just… I can’t.”

“Jordan.”

“Dad, I remember what it felt like!” he confessed. “Not… details or anything, but what it was like to have Zeta-Rho in me. I can’t… I can’t be that way. I don’t want to be like him.”

He pushed a shaky hand across his face to wipe off the tears that had sprung up.

“Jordan.” His dad put a solid hand on his shoulder. “I remember what it felt like to be eradicated. And it scared me, too.”

“It did?” He felt so juvenile asking that question. But when your dad was actually Superman, it was sometimes that much harder to see him as a real person with real fears.

“Yes.” His eyes were warm and sincere behind his glasses, despite the heavy topic. “I know how difficult it is to learn to trust yourself again. But I promise that I’ll help you through it. You beat him already; don’t let him keep a hold on you still.”

“Okay,” Jordan agreed shakily. “I’ll try.”

He put his hand in place again and summoned up the flow of energy that lay within him. He could feel it coursing through his veins and could remember flashes of the vindictive joy that Zeta-Rho had relished in when using his powers.

But he took a deep breath and pushed past all of that. His abilities went beyond what some crazy Kryptonian stranger had used them for. They were a deep connection he shared with his dad, a common ground that he never expected to find but that he actually ended up cherishing even through all the difficulties he had faced.

He dug deep within that feeling and pushed as hard as he could.

The truck shot across yard, tires sliding over the gravel until it finally skidded to a stop. Jordan heard an excited whoop from Jon, and he was about to turn to his brother in triumph when he felt his unlocked powers surge within him.

Waves of sound came crashing down around him, and Jordan groaned as he tried to bring his hearing back into focus. His limbs shook, and he could feel the strength sparking within them. He hung his arms stiffly at his sides, not daring even to reach out.

Jon was shouting something in Kryptonian, and the sound of his brother’s voice throbbed through Jordan’s head, and he felt a wave of heat pulse behind his eyes. The pressure was building, and Jordan slammed his eyes shut, knowing exactly what this feeling meant.

Everything was piling on top of itself, and Jordan couldn’t seem to bring any of it under control. The sounds of the world crowded out anything nearby and made his head pound even more. Then finally, thankfully, he felt his dad’s arms around him, lifting him off the ground and taking him somewhere safe.

That afternoon, Jon actually found himself thankful for the random knowledge stuffed inside his brain. It made it easier to be here on the farm waiting by himself while his dad and Jordan were off at the Fortress or whatever other isolated place they had gone to.

He knew that Jordan would eventually be okay once he managed to puke out almost a month of stored-up yellow sun energy. It wouldn’t be pleasant for him, that’s for sure, but he would get through it and even out soon. He had texted his mom an update, but also said that she might as well stay at the Gazette office until they got back.

With no one else at home, Jon decided to get some reading practice in. He had been working through some digital readers, and although his mom had helped him find some that weren’t geared at little kids, he couldn’t help feeling a little embarrassed as he struggled through the bold, simple text on each page.

Maybe it was because of his half-Kryptonian brain making itself subtly known, but school had always come easy for him. He hated that he now had to fumble through things that he had mastered in elementary school. And as the days of summer ticked by, he was feeling a growing worry that his knowledge gap would be noticeable when he went back to school.

It was sunny outside, and Jon found himself not wanting to stay stuck in the house. A helpful memory within him popped him, reminding him that is was his hybrid genetics that made him crave the outdoors. The sun would have a positive effect on him even if he wasn’t exhibiting powers.

The reminder wasn’t exactly welcome, but the truth was unavoidable. And if getting some sunshine made it that much easier to catch up on his language skills, then he’d take that advantage.

He hesitated as he looked across their front yard. The tree out front had always been one of his favourite spots, but he hadn’t been out there since Jor-El.

Squaring his shoulders, Jon marched towards it. If his brother wasn’t going to let Zeta-Rho ruin his powers for him, then Jon wasn’t going to let Jor-El ruin this tree.

He could still see the blackened patch of earth, but when he kicked it with his foot, he only turned up ash and dirt. There was no sign of the crystal that had once been buried there. Shuffling a little further away from that spot, he settled down with his back against the trunk and pulled up his reading app.

He had been concentrating so deeply that he didn’t notice that anyone had been walking across the soft grass towards him until he heard Sarah’s voice.

“I thought you were supposed to avoid bright light when you have a concussion,” she spoke flatly.

“Sarah!” Jon dropped his phone and stumbled to his feet.

“So. You look just fine,” she told him, eying him up and down with arms crossed in front of her.

“Uh… I…” His brain had completely short circuited. He chased scraps of English around in his head but couldn’t seem to form a logical sentence.

She shook her head.

“Forget it, Jon. I thought we were friends, but you don’t have to give me an explanation if you don’t want to. But I do want to know where Jordan is,” she told him firmly. “And this time I want to know the truth.”

Chapter Text

She was staring at him stubbornly, not backing down despite his silence. Jon took a deep breath to try to collect himself.

“Jordan is with Dad,” he spoke slowly, hoping that he could pass as somewhat normal. “They’re gone today.”

She frowned and shot a volley of angry words at him. It was too fast for him to follow, and Jon gulped down a swell of panic. Had his family been going too easy on him the whole time? Or was it just harder to focus with so much pressure? Either way, he was pretty screwed.

It was something about a phone… Jordan was supposed to have texted her?

“His phone are broken- is broken,” he stammered hastily.

“Just like yours was before you got your ‘concussion’?” she asked sarcastically.

This is why Jon hated lying. Had Jordan told her that before they created his cover story?

“Sarah, I’m sorry. Jordan is, uh, is telling you that for me.”

Her anger dropped away, and she fixed him with a look of concern. “Jon, are you okay?”

He felt his face heat up. He couldn’t even hold his own for a few seconds?

“Yeah,” he replied, deciding to stick to keeping things as short as possible. “Fine. No problems.”

She didn’t look convinced.

“Is anyone else home right now?” she asked carefully, her eyes straying to the house.

“It’s me only. Sarah. I’m safe. You don’t need to worry.” Jon could tell something was off in the way he was saying it because her frown just deepened.

“Jon, I think we should call someone for help.” She nervously brought out her phone, not taking her eyes off him. “I’m sorry I thought you were faking your concussion, okay? But this doesn’t seem normal even for that. I think something else is happening.”

“No! Don’t call.” Who would she even call? If it was anyone besides his mom things would only get worse. “I don’t need a…” Fuck, what was the word? “A person that say if I’m sick. Just-”

“No, I think you do need a doctor.” She insisted, looking rattled now. “I think we need to call one of your neighbours and see if someone can take you into town. That’s probably the fastest.”

Screw it, he had to tell her something.

“Okay. Wait. My talking is wrong. But I’m not hurt.”

He dug into his pocket and pulled out his translators.

“Here. Put this in your ear and I can tell you.”

She looked at the device suspiciously.

“Sarah. Please?” He put his own translator in place.

Finally, she nodded and slipped it onto her ear.

Even after hours of burning holes in the ice and lifting up every rock he could find in the Arctic, Jordan was still jittery. He still felt way stronger than what he remembered from before Zeta-Rho, and he wondered if maybe all that time storing energy had simply increased his capacity. His dad hadn’t known the answer to that, so Jordan made a note to ask Jon about it later.

At least he wasn’t exploding with power anymore. They had decided that he was okay to come back home as long as he was careful. His control was tested more than he liked, however, when he found out that Jon had taken his absence as an opportunity to tell Sarah way more than was probably safe.

“I told her some things not all things,” Jon insisted. His face was pinched in concentration as he spoke. They only had two translators, so he didn’t have any other option other than to muddle through with English when they were together as a family. “She doesn’t know of Dad.”

“But she knows that your knowledge of English has been rewritten with Kryptonian,” Lois filled in bluntly. “Does she know about all the other data Jor-El implanted in you?”

“Uh… Does she know…” Jon shook his head in confusion.

“What exactly did you tell her?” Clark asked carefully. Even though his voice was steady, Jordan could hear the stress that lay beneath it.

“I told her that it was Kryptonian uh… computer? That changed my speaking. But that’s it.”

“You didn’t tell her how you came across it?” Lois asked.

“I said it was…uh… how do I say… that I couldn’t tell. That, uh, Grandpa’s work? Said not to tell.”

“You said it was classified,” Jordan filled in, still trying to keep still despite the nervous energy thrumming through him right now. He didn’t really trust the tenuous grasp he had on his strength. At least focusing on this conversation helped him keep his hearing occupied.

Jon shrugged. “She knows about Kryptonian stuff in Smallville because of Tal-Rho. So it could happen. I had to sayed something to… to she? To her?”

“You could have called me,” Lois pointed out. “You didn’t have to jump right to telling her.”

“Jump?” he asked in exasperation.

“Your mom is saying that you should have waited to tell her anything,” Clark clarified.

“I sound stupid now,” Jon objected. “She wanted to take me to a…um…” he growled in frustration. “A person who looks at people? She thought that I was had… the thing where your brain bleeds?”

“A stroke. And you don’t sound stupid, Jon,” Clark told him gently.

Jon scoffed bitterly.

“Did she think it was weird?” Jordan asked, unable to hold back.

Jon blinked in surprise. “Uh, yeah. It is weird, Jordan.”

“No, but did she get freaked out or something?”

“I don’t know ‘freaked’,” Jon frowned.

“Was she scared?”

“Oh. No,” he shrugged. “She told me to do texting with her so she can help it sound normal.”

Jordan nodded in relief. It seemed like she was strangely accepting of Jon’s new reality.

“Look, Jonathan, all we’re saying is that it would have been safer if she didn’t know,” Lois told him. “We don’t want people making connections between our family and Krypton.”

“I know,” Jon nodded. “But she won’t tell people. She knew its…uh…” He turned to Jordan for help.

“Classified.”

“Classified,” Jon repeated.

Jordan watched his parents exchange a glance. They still didn’t look happy about it, but there seemed to be nothing else they could do.

It was later in the evening when Jon caught up with him privately. Jordan was looking through his message thread with Sarah and trying to figure out how to reply when Jon came into his room and passed him one of the translators.

“Hey, what did you tell Sarah about me?” he asked once he had the device in place. The string of texts from her had started out worried and then moved to angry, but then she had sent him a final, supportive message just saying that he should talk to her whenever he felt ready.

“Oh. I just said that you were still having a hard time with all the Morgan Edge stuff and that you were out of cell service with Dad for the day.”

“So, mostly the truth.”

“Mostly,” Jon shrugged. “Yeah, that’s what I wanted to talk to you about. I’m sorry that I got to tell Sarah most of my secret and you still have to keep yours from her.”

“Oh. No, it’s okay. You were right, you had to tell her something.” He shifted gingerly in his spot, careful to keep the flow of energy within him. “Was she really okay about everything?” he wondered.

“Yeah. She wasn’t…” he tapped the translator with his finger. “Say that word from before?”

“Freaked out.”

“Oh! Yeah, no, she wasn’t. Like I said, it’s a weird thing to get used to, but she was pretty good about it.”

“That’s good,” Jordan nodded. But there was still a swirl of anxiety within him.

“You’re not just worried about me, are you?” Jon guessed.

“No,” Jordan admitted. He sighed. “Look, I hate lying to her, but at the same time, I just don’t know if I’m ready for her to know the truth about me. We both know it’s kind of a lot and I don’t know how she’s going to react. Especially with what happened with her dad. Do you think she’d be upset that I’m, uh, part Kryptonian?”

He swallowed compulsively. It had been difficult enough to think about himself like that when he first found out the truth. But now his heritage was stained by the attack spearheaded by Morgan Edge and his father. His parents had assured him that all of the negative Superman press would blow over soon enough, but Jordan couldn’t stop worrying about it.

“I don’t know, Jordan,” Jon shrugged. “She was pretty cool with everything that happened to me, but, yeah, the fact that we’re half Kryptonian is a whole other thing.”

Despite his worry over Sarah, Jordan found it comforting that Jonathan was including himself in this. He never had before, and as much as Jordan wished his brother didn’t have to suffer the way he had, at least they were together in it all.

“I think she’d be okay with it,” Jon finally decided. “It might take her a bit to get used to it all, but I don’t think she’d lump us in with Morgan Edge and all those other Kryptonian creeps.”

Jordan nodded, hoping his brother was right.

“Anyway, you can just have her focus on my weird thing for now,” Jon offered. “And at least it’s one less secret you have to keep from her.”

“Yeah,” Jordan shrugged. It would be nice to have another person that he didn’t need to lie to about this. And it would give Jon another person to talk to.

“Hey, I never got a chance to ask,” Jon spoke up. “Did everything go okay with your powers?”

“Mostly,” Jordan answered, flexing his hands carefully. “I still sort of feel like I’ve downed a pint of espresso, but I’m not shooting lasers spontaneously, so at least there’s that.”

“Yeah, you probably just have some residual overflow. Don’t be surprised if it takes a couple days for you to be able to sleep,” Jon told him.

“What? Really?” Just when he thought his body couldn’t feel any stranger…

“Sorry,” Jon winced. “Now that I say it out loud, I get how weird that sounds. It’s just that you’ve still got so much extra energy stored up that you probably won’t need to sleep.”

“That’s still weird,” Jordan pointed out. Then he remembered his question from earlier. “Do you think I’m always going to be able to store this much energy? Now that I’ve done it once?”

Jonathan gave him a critical look. “Maybe,” he acknowledged. “I can’t tell for sure. We’d have to go back to the Fortress in another day or so and run some tests.”

“Jor-El said I’d never be able to store this much,” Jordan remembered.

“Yeah, well, I knew better than him even before the Great Upload,” Jonathan boasted. “Now, I know everything he did plus I’m not a stick-in-the-mud program incapable of change. He couldn’t even connect to Wi-Fi.”

Jordan snorted. “I’m not saying I wanted you to have to go through everything you did… But, yeah, it’s way better to have you than Jor-El,” he told his brother. “I’m glad that you can help me through this.”

Jonathan shrugged. “Yeah, it’s, like, the one silver lining in all of it. I’ve finally got a way I can help.”

“You helped a lot before,” Jordan reminded him. “You didn’t need a computer in your brain to be kick-ass.”

“Yeah, I guess. But, as weird as it is, it’s still better to have kind of a purpose, you know?”

“Yeah,” Jordan nodded. “I think I get what you’re saying.” He didn’t have Jon’s experience, but he still remembered what it felt like when he first learned of his Kryptonian heritage. Despite everything he had faced with his powers malfunctioning and fighting against Zeta-Rho, he couldn’t quite shake the connection he felt to his dad’s people. And now Jon had a connection that was different, but still just as concrete.

In their own way, they were both growing into their father’s legacy.

Jon took it as a sure sign that his brother had officially drank the small-town Kool-Aid when Jordan had announced his plan to take Natalie to Victoria May’s the next time she visited. It wasn’t that great of a restaurant, especially compared to Metropolis standards, but Jon had been wanting to get into town more anyway, so this was as good of an excuse as any.

His speech had improved to the point where he could mostly pass without suspicion, and he wanted to get some practice speaking to other people with Jordan or someone else there to help him through any rough spots. School was coming up in just over a week and he wanted to be ready.

To his surprise, Natalie seemed to like the vibe of the restaurant and immediately asked the twins for their advice on what to order.

“Definitely the milkshakes,” Jon recommended. “Get the… uh, Jordan, how do you say the flavour I like?”

“Cookies and cream.”

“Right,” he nodded. “Cookies and cream.”

Natalie raised her eyebrows. “That’s my favourite, too.”

“Good choice. We must be related or something,” Jon joked.

She snorted out a surprised laugh and didn’t actually seem upset by that thought.

“Your English has really improved since the last time I saw you,” she commented. They were far enough away from any other patrons that they didn’t need to worry too much about being overheard.

“Yeah, it’s mostly all there now,” Jon brushed off.

He didn’t want to delve too deep into that topic. He had managed to skate by it with Sarah because she never really knew how bad it was at the start, but Natalie knew that his Kryptonian mind was why he had been able to become this fluent in only a few weeks.

“Sometimes there’s still stuff I don’t get, though,” he admitted. “Like, how are you with text messaging? One of my teammates keeps texting me this thing? QB2? Do you know what that means?”

“Jon, that’s your nickname,” Jordan informed him patiently. “You were second quarterback. QB2.”

“Oh. Yeah, that makes way more sense than what I was thinking.” Good thing he hadn’t tried to use it himself in any texts.

“Hey, you had a nickname, too, right?” Jon remembered. “When you were on the team? What was it?”

“Uh… Really strong…dude,” Jordan replied, darting a self-conscious glance over at Natalie.

“Yeah, that’s not it,” Jon rolled his eyes. “Wasn’t it something about pancakes?”

Jordan shot him a glare and grumbled something under his breath.

“Fine,” Jon relented. “Although you know I’ll just find out when we go back at school.”

“Back to school. And I’ll cross that bridge when I get to it,” Jordan replied.

Jon blinked.

“What the hell does that have to do with anything?”

Natalie stifled a laugh.

“Sorry,” she muttered apologetically.

“It’s fine,” Jon shrugged, smiling a little himself. It was the first time he’d seen her genuinely amused at something, and he found he didn’t mind that it was kind of at his expense.

Before he could try to figure out what Jordan had been talking about, he saw caught sight of Sarah heading down the street just outside the diner. He rapped sharply on the window, and she pivoted around, smiling and waving when she saw them. She had been extremely helpful getting him to sound like a normal high schooler over text messaging, and he kind of wished he had thought to ask her about the whole QB2 thing way earlier.

“Who’s that?” Natalie asked.

“Jordan’s girlfriend,” Jon answered as she came into the diner. “Hey, Sarah,” he greeted her. “Got time to join us for a bit?”

“Sure,” she agreed easily. She tucked in beside Jordan and looked curiously across the table at Natalie.

“Oh, this is Natalie,” Jordan spoke up. “She’s, uh…”

“Sort of a distant relative,” Natalie spoke up. “I’m visiting from Metropolis today. Nice to meet you, Sarah.”

“Hi,” Sarah smiled in return.

“Oh! Sarah! You can help me out,” Jon remembered. “What was Jordan’s nickname in the football team? He won’t tell me.”

“Uh…” Sarah shot a careful glance over at Natalie, who turned to look at him with concern.

It took Jonathan a beat to realize what the problem was. Yet another reason why secrets were the worst.

“Oh. Right. It’s a crazy story, but you guys are the only people our age who know what happened to me,” he shared. “So, it’s okay if we talk about stuff like me not remembering Jordan’s nickname.”

“Great job, Jon,” Jordan spoke up in a faux-chipper tone, “Way to face the elephant in the room.”

Jon narrowed his eyes. “Shut up. There is no way that’s a real thing. You’re just trying to distract me.”

“It’s real,” Sarah smiled apologetically.

“Can you blame me for trying to kill two birds with one stone?” Jordan asked smugly.

“You’re the worst,” Jon grumbled.

“Well, don’t have a cow,” Jordan shrugged.

“Or get bent out of shape,” Natalie chimed in.

“Hey, I know that one!” Jonathan pointed out triumphantly.

Natalie and Jordan laughed, and Sarah nudged in close to Jordan as she bent to peruse the menu. Jon leaned back in satisfaction.

Despite a few gaps, it seemed like he was back on track. And he knew Jordan was feeling better, too. They had gone to the Fortress a couple days ago, and he was at about twenty-five percent compared to his previous sixty. It was a lot more manageable, but it was a clear sign that he would keep getting stronger as time progressed.

He looked across the table at his beaming brother who seemed happy and relaxed with Sarah. There very well could be more difficulties that Jordan would have to face, and Jonathan knew that he would be in the thick of it as well. But despite that, it was a comfort to know that they would be able to face them together.  

They could take it in stride.