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(Illustration by the lovely Fiyaharts)
Chris was, as far as he was currently aware, Kal-El and Lois Lane’s first child. Really, he probably should have been the oldest too, but that was a whole…thing. By the time he’d gotten out of The Zone, Jon was a high school sophomore, and Chris was 12 again. Or…for the first time? Thinking about it tended to put him in a weird mood, so he tried to avoid that. Jon was nice, they got along, he wasn’t really mad about it. It was just…strange, it was all strange.
Also before he’d gotten free, they’d adopted his evil clone, which was much, much more upsetting a concept than Jon could ever be. Seeing an older, slightly tan, considerably more smug version of himself that answered to the name that he hated hearing, much less saying was…that was the hard part. Lor was an ass, too. But he also tried…sometimes, so Chris just had to suck it up and deal. In his less proud moments, he found himself wishing he could have traded him for Otho and Osul, let Lor and Kara fight each other instead.
The twins were…familiar to him. Not like he’d known them in his old life or anything, but he recognized the look in their eyes, cause he’d see it in his own when he looked in the mirror. He’d been trying to get rid of it, the haunted thing, because really if he was going to be a Kent, he had to be able to keep up the positivity. And he was good at that but he could just never completely look normal. At least he didn’t think so. Maybe that was partially due to how many different versions of his face he’d had by that point. Otho was him on a rough day, when he was feeling anxious and tense: Ready to move at any given moment. Osul was more like when he was feeling a little tender about stuff, or when he couldn't stop thinking about something he really wished he’d forgotten, or he made the mistake of looking at a scar and being taken back to…the moment.
…But he liked them both a lot, he considered them friends, cousins or whatever, and that was nice.
Kon was like a…a…he was some kind of family member, and Chris admittedly clung to him a little bit. Sure, his parents remembered him now, but when they were still trying to work that out, Kon was the only person who knew him, who actually really literally knew who he was, and he couldn’t help but gravitate towards him sometimes.
Well, there was one other person who really knew him early on, but that was different, Brian knew everything. Chris thought so, at least. Brian disagreed, but the only things Chris had ever seen him even vaguely confused about were his own feelings. He was a little younger, that made sense. But that was it, Brian had an answer for everything else. It was comforting. Brian just…got it. Somehow. He promised he couldn’t read minds, that he was just keeping track of what he knew about Chris, constantly adding current information of all kinds and making predictions and analysis based on that. Or something. He said he was trying to learn how people worked better, which meant that he ended up giving Chris tons of attention whenever they were together. Chris didn’t think that actually held up logically, but he didn’t really care either way–besides, arguing logic with a hypercomputer seemed like a bad idea.
This time though, Brian was probably staring at him because he was being weird again.
“Christopher, you’ve not blinked in thirty seconds, I’m becoming concerned that you’re having a moment, do I need to weaponize affection? Or maybe just…tase you?”
Chris blinked a few times before looking down into those luminescent turquoise eyes. “Oh, sorry, my eyes are bulletproof so they don’t get dry easily. Sometimes I just forget to–”
“What were you thinking about?”
“Butts. Girls with big butts.”
Brian squinted at him. “You are incapable of lying to me, you realize?”
“Sure, but I’m still not gonna tell you.” Chris smiled at Brian’s pout and pulled him in to deliver a noogie.
Brian, as had been established on multiple occasions, was fully capable of overpowering Chris, but just offered tepid resistance, mostly in the form of whiny giggles. “Dude! Hey!”
Chris happened to look up and found Osul watching them, appearing kind of lost and maybe a little nervous. He let Brian go and helped fix his ‘hair’ some. “Hey, ‘Sul, you good?”
“...Yes. Yes. Um. I was sent to let you two know that the others are gathering at the benches under the pagoda. I believe we are going to play a board game?”
Brian sighed. “Aw man. I just got Chris smiling again, now I gotta break his heart into tiny little pieces and then feed them into a particle accelerator as I soundly defeat him at this currently unknown board game.”
Chris shot him a glare and Brian countered with a big toothy grin.
Osul cleared his throat. “Um. Okay, well I’m going to…uh…” He forced a big smile, gave two fraudulent thumbs up, and quickly skittered away to join the other kids.
Chris watched him go for a moment before turning to Brian, who turned to look up at him at the same time.
“What was that about?”
Brian chuckled weakly. “Uh…he just gets shy sometimes, you know. It’s probably that.”
Before Chris could question why he was being so uncharacteristically vague, Brian was dragging him off towards the game and firing off more dramatic brags about his skill at strategy or whatever.
Dork.
***
Osul-Ra still didn’t entirely understand what was going on. Well, like he grasped the concept: Kal-El, patriarch of The House of El, had decided that there should be an annual “family reunion,” and seeing as Kara Zor-El had included he and his sister into said house after agreeing to foster them, they were entitled to come, and so invited. He just didn’t… get it. He saw them all often enough-–being one of the youngest meant that someone was always checking in on him–-so it wasn’t notable in that sense. He supposed seeing everyone at once was different, but even still, he wasn’t sure that he grasped what he was supposed to get out of it. Mostly, everyone looking at him just made him nervous. Everyone wasn’t actually looking at him, he knew that...intellectually. But he also knew that if he looked ridiculous, if he missed some Earth thing he should have understood by then, or worse was just…clumsy, in the way he occasionally was, that everyone would see, and he’d have to atone for that shame.
Kara kept telling him that wasn’t how things worked on Earth, but maybe that was a test, to see if he’d become complacent and lazy-–to see if he’d grow soft. Otho thought he was soft already, though she wouldn’t admit it to him. That was her own softness, the way she wasn’t willing to inform him of how disappointing he often was. He kept trying to fix that, he didn’t want his sister to be vulnerable on his behalf, after all.
But it was hard.
Christopher and Brian hadn’t realized he’d been standing there for nearly a minute while they teased each other. It made him feel weird to witness. Like he was wobbly on the inside. His skin pricked. He wasn’t sure what that meant, he was still trying to figure out what wanting more complicated things felt like. Hunger, exhaustion, pain–all very clear signs that he required something to change. But he didn’t know what he wanted from the other boys. Brian probably knew. Whatever he…whatever thing he was–because Osul had been informed that he wasn’t a robot–seemed to be aware of everything, despite rarely explaining anything. When he did notice Osul, when he looked into his eyes and made Osul feel at a loss for only having two of his own–he seemed to understand something immediately. Osul had no idea what it was, but he didn’t like that Brian’s reaction was to look guilty.
He worried about what that meant all the way to the wooden pagoda, and the wooden bench inside of it, where Jon-El, Kon-El, Lor-Zod and his sister were already seated. Wood was still…odd to him, but not unpleasant. It felt impermanent in a way metal did not, but on such a timescale that it didn’t generally matter. He liked the way it smelled, and the way small particles would rub off at his touch. He tried to occupy himself with that sensation to ignore the excitement with which Jon and Kon were discussing the activity, the way Lor was leaning away from Otho slightly out of barely concealed unease, and the way Otho was trying to search his face. He knew that she knew asking him what was wrong was pointless, but that sometimes the weight of her gaze was enough to get him to spit something embarrassing out. Today he’d refuse, and she wouldn’t push further.
Jon-El, however…
***
Jon was nervous. Sure, he was more nervous in general nowadays, but this was localized, specific–not existential or guilt driven. It made sense, he was sharing a hobby with the other kids for the first time, and he didn’t have a ton of hobbies, so it was personal in a way one wouldn’t automatically assume it was. Conrad and Damian both were supposed to have been there, but for separate, insane reasons, that’d fallen apart at the last minute. So last minute in fact, Conrad had shown up and dropped Brian off, but got called away just as he was about to sit down. That wasn’t enough to really bother Jon, he’d been through a lot, and was secure enough in those friendships to not feel put off–honestly on some levels, the depth of which he was convinced of their devotion was a little scary.
Lor seemed onboard, and logically he would be the hardest sell of anyone, so really, things could only be fine. Sure, Lor’s cooperation clearly had an ulterior motive, and sure if Jon focused on that his cheeks got a little warm…but, good problems, right?
“Jon,” Lor started, “I understand the time constraint that prohibits us from creating characters of our own…”
Jon looked up from his notebook, and into Lor’s uncharacteristically serious brown eyes. He raised an eyebrow. “...But?”
“Well…I’m sure changing from a Goliath to a Shadar-Kai wouldn’t cause any problems, yes?”
Jon frowned. “...Why do you know what that is?”
“I did research after you mentioned you wanted to play this particular role playing game. I was…somewhat disappointed when I realized you meant a boardgame–”
“Lor–”
“But then I decided to actually look into it some more–”
“And you searched around for ‘the best D&D race for edgy characters,’ or something?”
Lor bit his cheek. “...I…well I don’t see why that–can I be the death elf from the lightless shadow dimension or not?”
Oh. Oh Jon hadn’t actually put that connection together. That stung a little bit. “...Yeah, yeah alright."
Lor thanked him, and called him something in old Kryptonese that it took Jon a moment to remember meant “Love.” Which was sweet for Lor…then Jon realized that the reason he didn’t recognize it immediately was that contextually, the word carried the same energy as “Daddy” or something equally as vulgar.
Jon sighed.
He considered throwing a pencil at him–or perhaps just throwing the whole man away, or maybe flirting back, actually–but then he noticed Osul shuffle up to the table and quietly take a seat, obviously going out of his way to avoid making contact with anyone as he did. Jon opened his mouth to ask if he’d found Chris and Brian, when Kon clapped him on the shoulder.
“Dude, this actually seems like a really fun adventure. Did I ever tell you about the time Tim tried to convince us to play…uh…that really confusing one that’s like...about…trade?”
“Settlers of Catan?”
“Yeah! Yeah that one. Anita called him a colonizer for suggesting it, and Tim got really angry, I don't think he completely got that she was kidding, and then she challenged him to a stick fight because I guess she just wanted to take the opportunity to hit him with a stick–it was pretty funny, overall. We didn’t end up playing though…”
Jon giggled and shook his head. “I’m pretty sure this will go better than that.”
He made another note in his pad, then remembered he was going to check on his little cousin.
“You alright, Osul?”
***
Lor really was trying to listen to Jon explain the game and the scenario for the one-shot, but it was really hard when the pale, ‘Victorian orphan’ with an approximation of his face was glaring at him like he desperately wished he could melt said face off. It was rather distracting.
Though he could grasp why Chris was so uncomfortable, they’d been over it in some detail, thrown each other through solid objects, and so on–so there was no mystery. If Chris were truly an El, perhaps he’d have been able to let it go, but perhaps the animosity between them was truly the legacy of their house clinging to their ribs and encircling their necks.
…It was somewhat amusing that Lor was also pondering if he’d been a cute child, like Chris was. He’d only recently come to accept that he had, at one point, been a child, and recontextualizing events with that in mind was still a source of entertainment. And some pain, but there was value in that too. Jon thought it was sad…but Jon was also soft and would have likely still been grieving his parents, had they perished like his own had. Plus, in all honesty, Jon’s childhood hadn’t been much different than his own when one broke it down to material realities, Lor simply wasn’t interested in idealizing matters.
The Clo-–Kon-El elbowed him in the ribs. “Lorzo, you can pick locks, right?”
Lor squinted. “Um…no, no I don’t think Jon gave me that ability.”
“I can! I’m an artificer!” The little fake Coluan cheered from across the table. Terrifying little thing, even more so because everyone just seemed to blanketly accept that he was harmless. Though…he supposed they had been rather accepting of him when he ended up on the Terran backwater, and he had threatened and attempted to kill some of them, so that kind of blind acceptance wasn’t out of step. Foolish, but not unprecedented.
Along those lines, he was also fairly certain that Otho was planning to kill him and make it look like an accident, which he honestly respected. He wasn’t sure why her ire was so clearly aimed in his direction, but it was entertaining. Perhaps she had something of a crush on him? Most things found him attractive, so it wouldn't have been shocking.
But he did keep her in his periphery.
***
Otho-Ra watched Lor monitor her out of the corner of her eye, while watching Chris glare at him(?) from across the table. If she had to decide which one of them to sacrifice in a moment of strife, she would choose Lor-Zod. Chris was younger, had more experience, was less overconfident, and understood horror in a way that she assumed would make him easier to work with in a time of crisis. She did find Lor funny, though.
Anyway, that was enough socializing, she needed to win. She’d taken time during Jon-El’s explanation of the plot details to construct a combat strategy with the items she was provided in her character sheet. It didn’t matter that she was only given a simple dagger, she had enough glass bottles, and various small sharp objects that even if she was disarmed, and given the amount of hitpoints she had, the damage her knife did, what she figured that implied about the damage economy of the game, and assuming slightly worse than average luck, she could likely take down at least three enemies before going down herself.
That seemed reasonable to her, and she nodded in satisfaction, before looking up and catching Brian watching her with mild concern. She glared at him and he smiled at her and she…didn’t really know what to do with that. So she…waved? He flinched a little before Osul said something that got his attention, and he turned to address her sibling.
The little apparition might have given her pause, but he was always kind to her brother, and that was enough for her to not concern herself with his capacity to be a threat. For the time being.
***
Brian leaned into Osul and pointed to a spot on his character sheet. “Okay so, remember, that’s your weapon damage, so you roll that many dice after you roll the icosagon.”
Osul blinked at him. “Uh–”
“Sorry, sorry, uh…” Brian picked up the D20 and slapped it into Osul’s palm. “This one. So you roll this one, and then if Jon says the number you get after you add your bonuses is high enough, THEN you roll…this is a greatsword you got, so that’s two six-sided dice. Okay?”
Osul nodded. “Y-yes. Yes, okay.”
Brian rested his cheek on Osul’s shoulder for a beat before sitting back up. He hoped that moment of genuine physical affection would help Osul along on the path of feeling more comfortable, and show him that he was also entitled to the attention that Brian gave Chris, and that the attention that Brian gave Chris wasn’t weird, or clingy. In fact, they were totally normal! He needed Osul to understand this.
“Great! Lemme know if you need anything else.” And with that, he went back to pretending to look at his character sheet and listen to Jon’s narration, while using six of his other processes to monitor the rest of the table.
Otho had caught him analyzing her earlier, but hopefully they’d both been awkward enough that she focused on that instead of being suspicious. She was accidentally having fun, so maybe strategy games were something that allowed her hypervigilant mind to release some of that ever-present anxiety.
Lor was comically smitten with Jon, a fact that everyone else present at the table seemed to miss, and that Brian wasn’t totally sure Lor himself was aware of at that moment. Though, perhaps Brian had a bit of a leg up: Conrad was very insistent that he understand love conceptually and practically, so he might have had a better sense of what to look for than most.
Jon was trying too hard to seem like he was okay, but was holding up fine, and the way Brian kept picking the right moments to pull the group towards certain plot details seemed to be helpful in keeping him relaxed, as did him offering any rules clarification that Jon seemed to be unsure about it in the breath before that lack of knowledge started to stress him out.
Kon seemed…fine? Yes actually, Kon-El seemed fine. Well. That was good.
Chris was barely able to contain his irritation and Brian was trying all of the ways he knew to distract him that would not also count as embarrassing to experience in public. Chris wasn’t going to actually attack Lor-Zod, but his emotional discomfort was frustrating for Brian to be aware of. He wasn’t his brother, he couldn’t literally sense when someone was upset, but by that point, he knew Chris well enough that if he’d truly wanted to, he could have fooled his friend into believing that he had telepathy, with how accurately Brian could predict his thoughts.
He didn’t do that though, in fact he actively limited the processes he allotted to individual loved ones. He’d learned early on that it distressed people to feel like they did not have free will, and that knowing the immediate future in advance made it harder for him to emotionally invest in anything, and that was the path to becoming his manufacturer, and he did not desire that for himself, to put it lightly. So instead of running simulations of all the possibilities and figuring out the perfect thing to say to get Chris to feel better, he forced himself to try things the normal way.
He had to be annoying.
“Chrisss.” He whispered.
Chris squinted and turned to look at him. “You know everyone here has super hearing, why are you–”
“ Hi.”
“...Hi?”
“That’s it.”
“...That’s it.”
“Yep!”
Just as Brian had hoped, Chris smiled weakly and shook his head. “Dummy.”
“Blondie.”
“We’ve been over, I’m not–”
“It would have been a more thematically fitting character design. As such I ignore your canon and replace it with my own--as is my right. Blondie.”
Brian squeaked and curled in on himself trying to avoid Chris’ pokey retaliation, while silently being relieved that the distraction had worked.
It could be…difficult, trying to make sure Chris had fun. Brian didn’t blame him though: His best friend had mostly bad times for so long that Brian assumed it must have been hard to adjust to the good times again. Difficult, but not impossible.
…But it’s not like ‘impossible’ would have deterred him, anyway.
Not when it came to Chris.
***
Kon smiled to himself while he watched Jon try to get Chris and Brian to stop roughhousing at the table. It was precious to see them all together. The family had gotten so much bigger since he’d gotten back from Gemworld. Almost comically so. Hell, one person basically underwent cosmic mitosis and now there were two flavors of him.
He’d never really thought he’d have a family, not like this at least. It didn’t matter that he was dubiously related to some of them, literally, that was whatever. For a long time he hadn’t been able to really think about what his life as an adult could be like, and he still wouldn’t have gotten here if he did. He’d been born as Superboy, and now there were people, little dudes who thought he was cool and someone to look up to just for being ‘Kon.’
He actually ended up loving kids in general, which he figured out after he started helping Mr. Terrific and Stargirl with all those survivors of the ‘Childminder’ incident, and ‘The Furious’ incident, and then the stragglers Bart kept finding scattered throughout time. He’d never really gotten to be a child. Chronologically, he probably should have been one still, but he’d accepted that cosmic, existential misfortune a long time ago. Still, seeing kids be themselves and getting to help them on their way to being the people they wanted to be was huge. They meant a lot to him.
As did everyone at that table. Jon was his lil bro, and maybe the only person Kon felt compelled to apply a specific familial label to. He tried his best to be there for him as much as he could, and he’d been plenty successful at that. Watching Jon grow was great, protecting him from some of the more alarming stuff was even better.
But…he couldn't catch everything, and the things that happened before he got home were beyond his power to fix.
…Yeah he'd considered asking Bart to correct a few things, but his boyfriend had patiently reminded him that a speedster tampering with time led to the mess that got everything skewed in the first place. So he just had to live with it.
There was something very human about accepting loss, and frankly he'd have been fine with having alien bits that made it so he didn't have to. But he tried not to dwell. Thinking about a better past was more of a Tim thing, Kon was happiest when thinking about a better future. He was something of a 'Man of Tomorrow.'
Which is why he was watching Brian so closely. Even if Bart hadn't warned him that the little kid was an existential question trying to answer itself (and he really didn't know what that meant, but Bart seemed genuinely concerned when he said it, so Kon kept that energy), he would have noticed that expression: It was that thoughtful frustration that the super genius types got when they couldn't figure out the equation they'd been working on forever, and were starting to get desperate. The actual concerning part was that Brian got that look when he was subtly checking on the other kids. Especially Chris. Kon only noticed because he'd had to figure out how to read Tim’s signals, and keep up with Bart’s…Bartness.
Some people were afraid that he'd turn out like his maker, that he'd become the all-consuming monster that Brainiac intended to become when he designed Brian as his new form. Kon had a different but equally alarming concern.
The kid wasn't Brainiac, his intentions seemed genuine, and he held onto an innocence that most people they knew had lost long ago. He was a sweet little guy who cared a lot.
And that was what scared Kon. Because there were different reasons to become possessive, and the most powerful and terrifying tended to be the ones that were pure at their cores. There was a reason Clark always warned the to be careful about what causes they took up and how they leveraged their power.
But right then, Brian was giggling like the little schoolboy he was, and he'd gotten Chris to smile, so really, it was probably going to be fine. Let Bruce catastrophize about it. Brian was a Gotham kid, which meant he was Bruce's problem, and if Kon was reading the tea leaves right, the old bat would end up being related to the kid directly before long.
Now that was a nightmare for another day.
“Okay!” Jon said, looking both exhausted and relieved. “After two hours of harassing shopkeepers and investigating bushes, you guys have come face to face with the cruel, lanky, 'Drake of the Ivory Tower!' I need you guys to roll some initiative!”
Brian and Otho were the only two who remembered what that meant, so after Jon explained again, they all worked together to defeat the monster. And it was fun. It got everyone talking and sharing strategies and jokes. Otho and Chris managed to figure out the lair puzzle, Brain negated an obscene amount of damage through what had to be a rules oversight, Kon used his paladin powers to get Osul back up and fighting, and there was even a really nice moment when Lor complemented Osul's strategy, and the younger boy looked almost on the verge of tears.
…Man, they were some fucked up kids. But they were together, at least for one day.
That was good enough.