Chapter Text
Superman threw the papers onto the desk in front of J'onn J'onnz with a little more force than strictly necessary. "Any other paperwork I need to fill out?"
The Martian Manhunter gave him a level look from eyes like polished rubies. "Kal-El. You need to fill out these forms because of the extra property damage incurred during the most recent conflict with Lex Luthor--damage incurred because you rushed ahead recklessly."
Superman grimaced. "He needed to be stopped."
"We were in the process of doing so, and would have more efficiently if you hadn't been so hasty to engage him." J'onn rose from his seat at the League table, his cloak flowing around him. "Kal-El." He paused, seeming to gather his thoughts. "Forgive me if I intrude, but you have seemed more...on-edge than usual. Your actions lack their usual consideration and reflectiveness." When Superman said nothing, the Martian continued gently, "I ask for the good of the team, Superman. Is there anything I can do to help?"
Superman rotated his shoulders as if his back and shoulders hurt, frowning. "I know I've been tense lately," he said grudgingly. "It's no one thing, just a lot of small things piling up. I haven't...been sleeping well. Nothing dramatic," he hastened to assure J'onn, who looked alarmed. "Just that even though I don't need much sleep, I don't seem to feel rested in the morning."
The Martian Manhunter rubbed his chin thoughtfully. "Wait here a moment," he said, and re-appeared in a second with a small faceted gem that glowed slightly with a clear blue light.
"It's beautiful," Superman said softly. He reached out a hand to touch it almost involuntarily, then stopped himself.
The Martian held it toward him with a small smile. "It's a Focusing Gem, the last of its kind. It grants nearby sleepers a sounder sleep, filled with lucid visions of happy times. I'll loan it to you for a week or so; that should be enough to get you fully rested...and perhaps a little less cranky."
Superman put out his hand somewhat hesitantly, and J'onn dropped it into the Kryptonian's palm, where it flared up briefly in a blaze of cerulean radiance, then subsided into quiet glimmering. "Will it work for me?" asked Superman.
"The sections of the Kryptonian brain that control dreaming are remarkably similar to the Martian brain. I believe the Gem will only work for Martians and Kryptonians, actually."
Kal closed his fingers around the gem. Azure light leaked through his fingers, glowing. "Thank you, J'onn. I'll try it tonight."
J'onn bowed his head slightly. "Pleasant dreams, Kal."
The First Night
Clark opened his eyes to find himself sitting on a tree root in front of a frozen pond. He stared down at his small, mittened hands for a moment in surprise before he remembered: the Gem. He had gone to sleep with it on his nightstand, and now he was...
He looked around him at the snow-covered ground, feeling the snap of icy air on his cheeks. He reached up and felt the knit cap on his head and knew that if he could see himself, he'd be about six yours old. He was in Kansas, at the old Bauman pond. It was winter. He was wearing ice skates.
"Kal?" said a puzzled voice beside him. Clark looked over and saw a small boy, about the same age as him, dressed in winter clothes. Sandy brown hair fell down across brilliant green eyes in a heavily-freckled face. The boy lifted hands covered in bright red mittens and stared at them. "What am I doing here?"
"J'onn?" The boy nodded, bewildered. "You...seem to be in my dream."
"That isn't the way the Gem is supposed to work," said the boy, his freckled face uncannily solemn for a six-year-old. Clark felt a sudden surge of childish mischief go through him at the sight.
"Well, you're here now." He reached out and grabbed J'onn's hands in his own. "Let's skate!"
J'onn waved his other hand comically in an attempt to keep his balance as Clark dragged him onto the ice. "Whoa, whoa, why can't I--ooof!" He went down in a heap. Clark skated up to him, suppressing a giggle at the sight of J'onn looking so nonplussed. "I should be able to keep my balance."
"I guess the Gem has given you the form and reflexes of an average young child..."
J'onn pulled himself upright, snatching at Clark's hand as his feet went out from under him. "I fail to see the appeal of this pastime," he said gravely.
Clark reached out and took J'onn's other hand in his. "I loved skating. Just...relax and slide your feet forward. That's right," he said encouragingly as J'onn began to skate along. "Good, good!"
There were still a few spills, but Clark eventually got J'onn relatively mobile. The Kansan's six-year-old body wasn't capable of sophisticated maneuvers, but he could still literally skate circles around the other boy, and proceeded to do so. "You're making me dizzy, Kal," J'onn complained with a smile in his voice.
Clark dug in his skates and stopped in a spray of ice. "You always call me 'Kal.' I'm not Kal here. I'm just Clark." He grinned at the other boy.
"Okay...Clark," said J'onn after a moment. Clark whooped and grabbed his mitten to drag him across the ice again, over J'onn's protests, and they ended up in a snowbank on the far side of the pond.
Clark brushed off his cap and grabbed a handful of snow, packing it between his hands. "This is perfect snow," he said gleefully.
"Perfect for what?" asked J'onn, and received his answer in the form of a snowball in the face. He spluttered and grabbed his own handful of snow as Clark ducked behind a snowbank, the skates magically transformed to boots in the manner of dreams.
A vicious snowball fight ensued, resulting in no clear winner and two winded and grinning boys. "Oh, gosh," said Clark suddenly, looking at the sun sliding down the horizon. "I'd better get home, Ma will be worried about me. Wanna come and have some cocoa?" He smiled invitingly.
"I'd love to," said J'onn slowly.
On the Kent porch, Clark stomped the snow off his boots and pulled his heavy winter wear off, J'onn mirroring his movements carefully. "Ma! I'm home!" Clark yelled. As he went into the warm kitchen, he caught sight of himself in a mirror and stopped to stare at his six-year-old self, so familiar and so strange: cheeks a deep red from cold under a tangle of black hair, his eyes sparkling. Beside him in the mirror appeared another face, freckled and somewhat wary, the bright green eyes half-familiar, half-not.
"Oh? Who's this?" asked a younger version of Martha Kent as Clark entered the kitchen with J'onn.
Clark smiled. "Oh, come on, Ma. It's John! You know, my best friend, John!"
Martha beamed as the dream shifted to adjust to Clark's thoughts. "Well, of course it is. I'm so sorry, John, I didn't recognize you for a moment! Have you gotten a haircut?"
John brushed his hand through sandy hair. "Something like that."
"Well," Martha said, rummaging through the cupboard. "Lucky for you, I still have some..." She returned to the table with a plate with six Chocos carefully arranged on it.
John chortled and swung his feet, looking suddenly a lot like the boy he seemed to be. "Thank you, Mrs. Kent," he said politely before picking up a cookie. Mugs of steaming cocoa joined the table a moment later and the two boys sat in companionable silence, enjoying the snack and the warmth of the kitchen.
"This is nice," said Clark as his mother washed dishes and hummed to herself quietly. "I'm glad you could be here."
"Me too," said John, licking the icing out from the middle of a Choco. The last thing Clark saw as the dream faded out around him was John's smile across the table, boyish and ancient at the same time.
: : :
There was a JLA meeting that Superman had to chair the next day. It was more contentious than usual, and Clark could feel his irritation at the time wasted starting to climb.
Suddenly, in his mind, he could feel a cold wind against his face, the brief exhilaration of skimming speed sluicing through the annoyance. His bad mood dissipated in the memory.
He met J'onn's eyes for a moment and looked away again, smiling, seeing an answering curve on the Martian's lips.
The shared memory.
The Second Night
J'onn was sitting on a large rock in the middle of a creek of some sort. He looked around. On either side of the creek rose the banks of a steep ravine. Large oak trees at the top of the ravine spread dappled shade across the water surrounding him.
Something else was odd. He looked down at himself and realized he was in a windbreaker, jeans, and a t-shirt. He flexed his human hands and estimated his age as about ten years old.
The dream. He was back in Clark's dream. But where was--
"John!" An excited young voice came from the top of the ravine, and John looked up to see Clark waving at him. The other boy scrambled down the steep bank in a cascade of dirt and pebbles, then jumped across stones until he came to rest on the same rock John was on, waving his arms for balance. "You came back," Clark said happily. He was a little taller than in the last dream, but his movements were still full of childish energy.
"It wasn't my choice," John said slowly. "Perhaps it is a residual effect from my many years of using the Gem."
Some of the happiness faded from Clark's eyes at J'onn's abstracted response, but he dropped down onto the sun-warmed rock with a smile. "I used to come here a lot. Usually alone. I knew all these rocks by heart." He looked down into the eddying pools around their perch. Small water-skating insects glided on the still sections of water. Clark picked up a dead leaf lodged in a crevice of the rock and set it in motion in a slow current. "I'd pretend these were boats and race them. Though it wasn't much fun when I was on both sides." He held out a large curved leaf to John with a grin. "Wanna race?"
The two boys followed their leaf-boats down the stream, jumping from rock to rock to keep up and talking trash at each other. Or trying to, in John's case. "Your boat is...an example of inferior workmanship," he managed after a time.
Clark made a snorting noise and almost missed the rock he was jumping to. "Yo mama," he retorted.
"What about my mother?"
Clark blushed. "Nothing. I'm just being silly. Hey look, you won!" he noted cheerfully as John's leaf passed the large white rock that marked the end of the race. "Congratulations!"
"Thank you," said John. He had nearly lost track of the "race" in his attempt to convincingly insult Clark.
"I wonder if they'll be here..." Clark said absent-mindedly as he moved downstream to an area where the creek briefly slowed and deepened. "Hey, look, John!" He snatched at the water briefly and came up with his hands dripping, something clasped in them.
John looked more closely and realized it was a small frog, its throat pulsing wildly in Clark's grip. "Don't hurt it!" he said automatically, and Clark looked indignant.
"Of course not." He opened his hands a little, very carefully, admiring the strange golden eyes staring back at him. "Isn't he gorgeous?" Clark ran one small finger gently down the stripes running along the green body, delicate on the soft skin. "You should hear it when they're all singing at night, it's amazing." He opened up his hand over the water and the frog gathered its long legs up and sprang dramatically from his palm into the pool with a loud plonk. Clark laughed, like the laugh J'onn knew but freer, more open. Then he flashed a mischievous look at John and pulled off his windbreaker. "Let's go swimming."
"What? In our clothes?"
Clark's grin was gleeful. "No, silly." He pulled off his shirt and started untying his sneakers.
"You don't mean naked," John said in horror.
"I thought Martians ran around naked all the time," said Clark. He turned his back to John and unbuckled his belt, then pulled off his pants as well.
"I'm not a Martian right now," John pointed out, keeping his eyes away from Clark.
"Nope, you're my best friend John." There was a splashing noise and John looked to see Clark in the creek, pale body glimmering through the water, his teeth chattering. "C-c-come on in, th-the water's f-f-f-fine!" he managed. "May-maybe a little on the ref-f-f-freshing side..." He ducked his head underwater and came up with a whooping noise, tossing dripping dark hair back.
John slipped slowly out of his own clothes, feeling uncomfortable even though he knew perfectly well this dream-body wasn't his own, and lowered himself into the water, which was indeed almost numbingly cold. As his body adjusted, he looked over to see Clark grinning and splashing around, naked limbs kicking up sprays of water. John slid wholly underwater and felt the silent coldness engulf him. He opened his eyes as Clark ducked underwater himself swimming closer to John, dark hair waving around his pale face like a black corona, blue eyes dimmed by the darkness of the water. John shifted back in the water, feeling it flowing around his body in ripples of cold, and closed his eyes.
The gentle feel of the water around him lifted him out of the dream and back into the waking world alone.
: : :
The call came in at the Watchtower the next day of a massive forest fire in Europe. J'onn was on call and hurried to Austria to find a small village about to be engulfed in flame. He prepared to plunge into the village to rescue people, but found himself pausing for a moment, cursing himself, staring at the flames, feeling their heat sapping his strength, mesmerized.
There was a sudden motion beside him and Superman was there. J'onn looked over at the Kryptonian, who met his eyes steadily. Kal said nothing, but J'onn suddenly remembered cold water around him, pure and soothing, keeping him safe.
Kal nodded.
Together they turned and flew into the village.