Chapter Text
Jon pants, filling his lungs with carbon monoxide. The hot air burns with every inhale taken but he can’t stop breathing. His arm aches worse than it did last month, the bone barely healed from his most recent attempt at escaping. His fingers claw at the andisol beneath him. The desire to bury himself underneath this soil creeps into his heart, as it does every couple of months when he fails to get away from this prison.
He eyes the volcanic wall beside him, hardened lava that has kept him prisoner for nearly seven years. Or rather, exactly seven years. He presses a nail to the rock and scratches another line. He scratches till his pointer finger starts to bleed; then he switches to his middle finger.
Three weeks into being seventeen and he’s no closer to getting home.
Jon shakes his head, or rather twitches it upwards. A habit he’s picked up to rid of unnecessary thoughts. It never works, but the twinge of pain in his neck acts as a stabilizer. Allows him to focus not on what he’s doing wrong but what he hasn’t tried yet. (He wasted two years on what he did wrong and maybe if he didn’t, he would be back home right now.)
Jon huffs. No use to think of the past. Ultraman has been leaving him alone more and more often, and Jon isn’t about to look in a gift with a horse …
He blinks. Twitches his head. No time to figure out the phrase (no time to mourn the child who would love to learn the idioms; maybe, even tell Damian about it though his best friend would already know it.)
Ultraman left over an hour ago. That means Jon has approximately seven hours left to escape if Ultraman doesn’t come back early. (Please don’t let him come back early.)
Jon’s body is weak, almost as weak as his human side. He’s too skinny compared to what his dad was at this age. Even Kon looked better when he was in the test tube. (He misses his brother terribly bad. A sob itches its way up his throat but Jon swallows it back down, just like the toxic air that made up his stay for seven years.) However, he still has his Kryptonian powers. Despite his failed attempts, each time he’s been exposed to the bright yellow sun of this alternate world, the Kryptonian in him knits back his wounds and brings a sense of comfort to his core. Maybe it knows that he doesn’t belong here, as it huddles his powers away until his next attempt, or per last month when he needs healing.
It can’t heal the slow starvation Ultraman has forced him on, a disease that Jon isn’t sure can be cured if he leaves.
If? He twitches his head.
No.
When. When he leaves.
Jon pants, breathing in the toxicity of volcanic air that shouldn’t bring him comfort yet does if only because it’s been his sole companion. He grips the rock walls, feeling for the gaps that are too familiar at this point. The heat doesn’t bother him like it did when he was first trapped, the calluses on his fingertips long past being healed from his many attempts.
It was stupid to climb the rock wall for an escape, his energy sapped from doing a human activity. However, in his previous attempts, Ultraman hasn’t noticed his plan until after he started to fly and Jon … well, Jon has decided that discipline will be his best friend. He never climbed the whole wall.
He looks up at the opening. It’s too high of a climb and if he falls … he’ll have to use his flight abilities and that’ll take away the time he’s spent on the wall to recover and attract the blasted man.
However, seven hours should be enough time to climb to the summit. (It had to be. It was his only hope.) Jon heaves himself up. His arms shake from the weight of his body but he can’t…he can’t use his super strength yet. He grunts as he pulls himself up another inch. (This is going to be a long climb.)
His eyes burn from the smog. He’s too old to cry; yet tears make their way down his cheeks. He chokes back the coughs that threaten to tear his grip away and haul himself further up the wall.
His foot slips.
Jon pushes his fingers into the wall. A sob crawls its way out of his throat and he grits his teeth down to hide it. His eyes glance up, hoping against everything that Ultraman hasn’t come back because of the slip up. Pain radiates down his wrist to his still healing arm. He waits in tense silence, seconds dragging by as he holds onto the wall. Blood pulses past his ears as his heartbeat thumpers frantically in his chest. Jon takes a deep breath, centering himself. He can’t afford to lose focus.
When Ultraman makes no appearance, Jon hauls himself up to eye level with his hand. His fingers are scraped and bloody, skin barely holding on in some areas.
It doesn’t matter. He will heal soon once he reaches the top.
Jon continues to climb. (If he squeezes his eyes hard enough, he can pretend this is just another adventure him and Damian are partaking in. It’s almost believable except he’s never been in pain when on an adventure with Damian … and his friend never was quiet when he was around Jon.) The silence is suffocating.
The wall becomes harder to climb. The solidified lava has less crevices to squeeze his fingers into, less rocks jutting out for his foot to hang onto. He doesn’t want to fly yet (he won’t make it out in time. He can feel it in his bones) but there’s not much else available to do.
Jon holds his position. It’s as much of a pull-up as a pull-up can be. The muscles in his back ache at the stance, and minuscule shivers began crawling up his biceps. There has to be another way.
He can’t fail again.
The skinny boy rests his head against the wall, eyes squeezed shut.
What to do, what to do.
He breathes in, focusing inward when he feels his powers. His eyes snap open.
Ultraman can hear when he flies, when he uses his laser eyes to burn a hole in the wall. But can he hear if Jon uses super strength to climb a wall? Not his full power: Jon doesn’t think he’d be capable of it anyway but a smidge, just enough to make his own gaps in the wall to climb further up. Will Ultraman hear that?
Jon lifts his head up, sees the distance that keeps him trapped. He’s almost out (just a little more to go) and he makes the executive decision.
He has no choice. It’s this or die (and Jon doesn’t feel like dying again).
His fingers dig into the surface, hardened lava malleable under his strength. It allows itself to create tiny gaps to fit his fingers and Jon almost sighs in relief.
Almost.
He beats down the feeling till it’s curled away from his mind. He cannot focus on this small detail when he is still stuck. He raises his other arm, pushing against the wall again to create another hole. Over and over again, he slowly but surely makes his way up again. The exertion has increased the shaking in his arms, and the pauses to rest get longer each time.
Jon breathes through his nose. His head throbs from both the mental and physical pain his body is under. He doesn’t attempt to lift his head; he doesn’t want to see how much is left to climb. He keeps moving, trying to keep his heart rate steady. When his fingers reach a surface that curves downward, that doesn’t require any strength to make a crevice, Jon lifts his head.
The sky is a beautiful orange.
Jon inhales clear air and digs his fingers into the rocky soil of the volcanic summit. With his human strength, he lifts his body up.
Meeting the sun again is a euphoric experience, like drinking water after being out in a drought for so long. Jon breathes in deeper, easier, as his body is healed by the sun rays. Despite it being sunset, the yellow star burns against his body, knitting his skin back into place.
It’s not his sun but it’s close enough.
Jon can’t stop the sigh of relief from escaping.
Red fills his vision.