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It takes a minute for your brain to catch up with what you just did.
For a moment, all that matters is your brother. Everything- Sarah, your friends, your better judgement- had just seemed to disappear as someone yelled your brother’s name in astonishment. You turned your head, and noticed Jon jump up to try and dunk the ball in the net—and keep going up. Up, up, and away.
For a moment, you’re excited.
For a moment, you let yourself experience the euphoria of knowing your brother- the one person you can always depend on, the one person you know more than you know yourself- has powers. He has powers, like you.
For a moment, you indulge yourself, your mind alight with the thoughts of all the things you’d be able to do together now, things you could only share with your father before. You can’t fly, not yet, but you can run, and run fast. Jon always hated running at super speed, but flying- the first time Dad took him flying, he pretended that he didn’t care, but you know your brother; you know he fell in love with it the second his feet left the ground, even if he would never admit it. Now, now he can fly under his own power- and you bet he’ll be fast, too. You wonder who’ll be faster.
For a moment, you feel so overjoyed that you might float away, too.
Only for a moment.
As the moment passes, you realize two things. Your brother’s terrified. He’s still drifting upwards, flailing his arms wildly, out of control and manic. He’s flying upwards.
And he’s not stopping.
You don’t think twice. You surge into action, fast as lightning. The ground cracks beneath you as you leap into the air, latching onto your brother.
It’s a struggle, at first. Your momentum wants to drag you down, but Jon’s power is strong, so you move sideways, but keep gaining altitude. You try to pull him down, but there’s nothing beneath you - no ground for your feet to find purchase against. You realize, suddenly, that you might not be enough - that Jon might end up flying the both of you into the sun. Judging from your brother’s own panic, he might have realized that, too.
And then, as suddenly as it started, it stopped. The spell is broken, and gravity reclaims you.
You fall; not in an arch, but straight down. You retain the presence of mind to shield your brother; you’re invulnerable, but he might not be.
You slam into the ground, hard. Your brother is dazed, but you didn’t hear the sound of his bones cracking- the sound that’s haunted your nightmares and fuelled the worst of your anxiety since you broke his arm in three places, on your last visit to Metropolis. He looks okay, but the weight of the ELT is burning a hole in your pocket.
You should call Dad. Jon looks okay, but he might still be hurt- he could have a concussion, or something. Do half-Kryptonians even get concussions? You’ve never had one, but you weren’t an active child, even before you were invulnerable. Jon’s not invulnerable. And even if he were, he could have like, trauma, or something. Besides, Dad should probably be here in case Jon decides to float away again. Like a balloon.
You pick yourself up. Hopefully the ELT still works, you think to yourself, as you plunge your hand into your pocket, seeking its reassurance.
That’s as far as you manage to get, however. In the next moment, you hear the frantic pounding of footsteps against asphalt. Someone - a teacher of yours? - yells out Jon’s name.
Belatedly, you take stock of your surroundings. You wound up in the street next to the school, on the sidewalk. There’s a crater, about a foot deep, where you and your brother crashed into the concrete.
“Jordan?!”
Sarah looks at you in shock.
She noticed. Of course she noticed; the whole fucking school noticed. Everyone just saw you- you and Jon- they. They know. Oh fuck. Oh fuck oh fuck they know what you did what the fuck did you dothisisallyourfaultdamnit!
You stumble over your words, as your heart beats so fast it threatens to burst out of your chest, as you trying to stutter out some way to write off what just happened- you hate lying to her, and suddenly hate the fact that your Dad had insisted that you wait before you tell her, but she’s not the only one here; she’s not the only one who knows.
Everyone knows.
You think you’ve mentioned something about a freak wind draft, but you can tell that no one’s buying your bullshit.
Shit.
You should really call Dad.
********************************
Deep breaths. In. Out. In. Out. Just like the exercises. Just like therapy. Just like therapy. Just like therapy. Ground yourself; just focus on what’s around you. Don’t think about what just happened. Don’t think about how you have just ruined everything. Don’t think about how you’ve flushed your future down the drain.
Don’t think about it.
And things were getting better, too! You were finally making friends and your life was finally starting to make sense and you had plans and Sarah oh god what was Sarah going to think she’s going to think you’re a freak and you kept this from her she’sgoingtohateyouyou’reafreak- “
“----an! We’re g—na -et through this, okay?”
You feel a slight pressure against your shoulders. It doesn’t hurt; there’s not much from Earth that can hurt you anymore.
Your ears are ringing and everything is too loud, too much. Your heartbeat deafens you, as its irregular throbbing clashes with the noise of your laboured breathing, the clamour of the muscles in your chest contracting, relaxing, contracting, relaxing, over and over and over and over again. You hear everything beyond yourself, too- footsteps, people yelling, laughing, screaming, gossiping- you hear them, and they’re talking about you- it’s not just your paranoia they’re talking about you and they think you’re a freak. It’s too much too much too much. You feel yourself drowning in the noise, as it assaults your senses.
No wonder Dad kept his secret from you for so long. It hadn’t even been 3 years since you found out, and you’ve already ruined everything, as usual. Honestly, it’s amazing it hadn’t happened sooner already. Stupid. Stupid. Stupid. You’re not Dad, and you’ll never be Dad, and if he weren’t so blind he’d have known you’d fuck this up because at the end of the day you’ve never been good at acting normal. You’re terrible at pretending to be normal, and you’re a sorry excuse for a Kryptonian with shitty powers that got you into this mess in the first place and why couldn’t you just have been fucking normal like everyone else and you can’t breathe and it’s cold and this is all your fault and God damn it and your throat is tightening up and the pressure on your shoulders is building and you can’t breathe can’t fucking breathe-
“---y w-t me, --st try -o foc-s on ---t I’m -ay-ng. Jor---? Jordan!”
Oh, right. You dragged him into this mess, too.
“Jon?” You wheeze. It’s so cold- you’re shivering. You can feel your chest getting tighter and tighter, like someone’s pinned you down with a glacier and sucked the air out from your lungs. You try to inhale; the effort hurts, sending pins and needles and daggers of ice into your chest, but you’re so desperate for oxygen that you don’t care. Over and over, you breath in and out again and again and again, faster each time, and it’s not helping, why isn’t it helping?!
“Yeah, it’s me, I’m here, okay?”
Jon. He’s here. Jon’s here. His presence is solid; a rock in the middle of a stormy sea. He’s here, he’s okay. You feel your chest unwind itself, if only for a moment of brief respite, before you start drowning again.
“Okay, I’m gonna need you to stay with me, okay? You can do this. Just, just focus on what’s going on right now. We’ve done this before, a thousand times; you’re gonna be okay, you’re fine.”
“I can’t- “you cough into your hands, cutting your sentence short and puncturing it with a blast of ice. You’re freezing. “-can’t breathe.”
“That’s fine, okay. Remember what you talked about, with your therapist? The breathing exercises?”
You think so. It’s hard, difficult to remember, your brain’s foggy and all you can think about is how fucked you are, how your life’s over already and you’ve dragged down everyone who loves you with you-
You nod mutely, unable to communicate it, and knowing it’d just make him upset if you did. You can’t upset him; you can’t lose him. Not now.
“Okay, okay great.” You hear Jon sigh, and his heartbeat slows slightly. “So, like you practiced, yeah? Breathe in, count to seven, and breath out for 8 seconds. Then just- just focus on what you can smell, hear, touch, and see, that sort of thing. Although, uh, you might want to open your eyes for that last one.”
You hadn’t realized your eyes were closed.
Inhale.
The chair’s uncomfortable, you realize. You shift your weight in it, but it’s made of a firm, badly moulded plastic, which doesn’t support you properly at all. You remember you used to feel sore after sitting in these sorts of junk chairs at your old school in Metropolis, before grandma died and you became such a freak, and you suppose the fact that you don’t get sore anymore is probably the one good thing that’s come out of your entire existence because you just can’t seem to stop fucking with everyone’s life-
“You’re doing great, Jordan.”
Exhale.
You breathe in again.
Right, focus, you need to ground yourself. You take a moment to regain your bearings. You’re… outside the principal’s office? Right. You’re in trouble- you’re in so much trouble- they probably called your parents oh fuck they know how are you going to explain this to Dad he’s going to hate you - when did you get here? You don’t remember moving.
Exhale.
You start the routine again, focusing on your hearing this time, when you notice it. You hear the sound of a truck pulling up near the school- you know that truck.
Dad’s here.
Thank fucking god.
********************************
Not long after Jon calms you down, Dad arrives, and Principal Reynolds promptly shepherds him into his office. It’s not the first time your parents have been called down here- you’re pretty sure Reynolds thinks you’re a ‘troubled student’, considering all the times you’ve been ‘sick’, even if he never said so. To your face, at least.
It’s the first time you felt like you were being led to the chopping block, though.
Jon bumps his hand against your shoulder to get your attention. An unspoken agreement passes between the two of you, and you focus your hearing on their conversation, with the intention of filling him in. Part of you feels guilty, spying on your father like this after justifiably making a big deal out of him doing the same, you rationalize your feelings by deciding that this is too important to be left in the dark about. Even though Dad would relay any important information, you doubt that either of you could deal with the anxiety.
Besides, he probably already knows you’re doing this. He can’t seriously expect you not to listen in. Not when the family secret is on the line.
“I appreciate you coming down here on such short notice, Mr. Kent,” the principal begins.
Your father nods politely, though you don’t need super senses to tell his own nerves are frayed. He never likes seeing you panic like that; mental issues are one of the few things Superman can’t punch or talk down, and though he supports you however he can, he’ll always hate that you’ll have to suffer through this. You know he blames himself for it. Stupid.
“Of course, Principal Reynolds. What’s this about?”
You realize, in that moment, that Dad doesn’t know. Word hasn’t spread far enough to reach him, as both Clark and Superman. Briefly, you allow yourself to hope- maybe it’s not too late, maybe you can contain the damage, somehow have everyone involved sign NDAs or something; you’d have the backing of the department of defense, thanks to Grandpa- he wouldn’t hang you out to dry.
“Mr. Kent, Jonathan and Jordan are both excellent students; although admittedly their attendance has been shaky at best, their grades haven’t suffered for it, and they’ve performed very well on the field during their brief stint on the football team,” Principal Reynolds says, almost robotically.
The rest of his statement hangs in the air, unspoken for a moment, and you wonder if he’s intentionally trying to annoy you father – and you, by extension – by not acknowledging the flying elephant in the room.
“Is this about their attendance, then?” Dad begins, and you can almost feel the noose tightening around your neck. This is it, this is the moment he finds out you’ve destroyed everything he’s built up his entire life, putting the entire family at risk- and he probably won’t even be mad at you for it, even though he fucking should be because you fucked up and ruined everything-
Jon grabs your arm, clearly noticing your distress. “It’s okay, Jordan. If you don’t want to keep doing this- “
“No, no I’m fine,” you reply, gathering your determination and exhaling as you do. In and out. You can’t afford not to listen. “It’s just… stressful.”
“If you’re sure…” Jon says, trailing off, and you tune your hearing back to eavesdrop on the principle’s conversation.
“-the two of them crashed into the pavement next to the parking lot- “
“No offence, Principal Reynolds, but you realize how ridiculous this sounds, right?” You overhear your father exclaiming with incredulity, and you hope that human ears aren’t sensitive enough to notice the less-than-sincere undertones his words carry. “They’re children- my children, at that! They don’t- they can’t fly, Mr. Reynolds- I assure you they’re perfectly human!”
“I’m obviously not disputing that, Mr. Kent” the principal presses on. “However, given your wife’s connection to the story, I would imagine you’d be well aware of the existence of X-Kryptonite; as would, I’d imagine, anyone in town who hasn’t been living under a rock since the fiasco with Morgan Edge.”
Dad is silent for a moment, as Principal Reynolds explains his suspicions that you and your brother are ingesting the mineral - not for the first time, in Jon’s case - and you can feel a weight being lifted off your chest as you relay the new development to your brother.
“Well, we’re all idiots” Jon whispers to you, and you feel hysterical laughter bubbling within your chest.
Of course, of course that would be the first thing that people would assume. For all the pain and suffering those stupid minerals and their alien power-granting properties have caused you and your family, for once they’re actually helping solve a very human fear of exposure.
Minutes later, Dad emerges from the principal’s office. He makes a show of acting stern in front of you and your brother in front of Principal Reynolds, but as soon as you’re all out of sight and safely within the privacy of the truck, he lets a chuckle escape.
“I take it that this isn’t, in fact, the result of a heavy dose of X-Kryptonite, then? Not after last year?” Your father asks as he starts the engine, and you feel your chest swell with pride and excitement at the reminder of the fact that your brother did, in fact, learn to fly; your earlier anxieties, now resolved, lay forgotten.
“Not this time, Dad,” Jon replies, looking down and grimacing somewhat sheepishly at the reminder.
“So… this means that Jon’s finally going to join us for training? Like, real training, right? Not just punching the log?!”
“Maybe not punching” Jon frowns. “I don’t actually have super strength- just the whole, ya know,” he trails off, looking visibly uncomfortable as he mimes a specific gesture with his hand they used to refer to flying with; his palm was outstretched horizontally in front of his chest, and he mimicked the action of a plane taking off on a runway.
“For now, you mean,” you add. The idea that Jon won’t get any other powers seems unlikely to you. He hadn’t gotten any powers for sixteen years; he was probably just a late bloomer, for whatever reason. Genetics are weird, you’ve decided.
“We don’t know that for sure,” your dad chimes in. “Although we shouldn’t rule it out entirely, Jon. We shouldn’t have assumed that the fact that you didn’t have powers meant you’d never develop them.”
Jon agrees noncommittally. You don’t really understand his hesitation; you thought that, since he voluntarily took the X-Kryptonite last year, that he was growing more comfortable with his alien heritage. Apparently not.
“Eh, just you wait, Jon” you pitch in, hoping to ease his discomfort. “You can mock it all you want; you know you’re gonna be the one begging to wear the outfit in a few months.”
“I would- no!” Jon insists, his face red with embarrassment. “Nope, no way, not even when hell freezes over!”
“Whatever you say, Superboy.”
“Sup- that’s your name! You’ve got it practically copyrighted, at this point!”
“I can’t fly, Jon” you grin. “Everyone knows Kryptonians fly.”
“That’s dumb. I can name like, 3 species I know that can fly. Like Martians. You know what Martians can’t do? Shoot lasers out of their eyes.”
“They’re not lasers, they’re- “
“Ocular release of energy, yeah, whatever, Dad, you know what I mean,” Jon huffs.
“It means I should probably start looking for a new name,” you comment.
“How about The Blur, then?” Jon offers, his voice layered with sarcasm.
“That’s dumb.”
“Yeah, no shit it’s dumb. You’re clearly a Superboy, and I am clearly a definitely-not-a-Superboy.”
“Maybe let the media pick out your name, Jon, or your mother at least” Your dad jokes, as he pulls up to the house. You know your dad's deeply uncomfortable with the idea of you- either of you, now, you supposed- risking your lives like that, but you're grateful he doesn't want to bring up that argument again. You think you're wearing him down, but you know he won't even entertain the idea of bringing you along to his rescues; not yet, and definitely not after last year. “I don’t think that’ll stick. Doesn’t roll off the tongue well, you know?”
“Sure Dad,” Jon rolls his eyes and climbs out of the truck.
You follow after him, ready to head inside to finally- finally- unwind after the most stressful day you’ve had in months, when your dad calls you and your brother over before you can take off.
“So,” he begins, climbing out of the driver’s seat. “Let’s figure out how we’re going to begin to explain this to your mother.”
Ah.
Right.
That.
And Sarah too. She’s going to want – answers.
Fuck.