Chapter Text
It's important to understand that the Phantom Zone is not a void. Many fundamental things are absent from within its confines, but it is not absence itself. It is populated by the lost and forsaken. Dozens of bodies and minds, all condemned to an eternity of torment, without hope of escape through madness or decay.
Oblivion would have been kinder.
In fairness, it was never intended to be an eternal sentence. But the destruction of Krypton effectively took freedom off of the table. Kal-El became the unwilling final warden of those imprisoned there. The cruelty of it all weighed upon him, but he also couldn't justify the risk of releasing a collection of jaded criminals with his powers into the universe.
If he'd known about the child though, he may have considered a different course of action. If he'd known about the little boy, conceived and born in an anomalous part of that bleak place where bodies are allowed to touch, to change each other and be changed--he would have tried to save him. In fact, that was exactly what happened in every timeline where he found out about Lor-Zod before his initial escape. More often than not, he succeeded, and Lor didn't have to pay for the sins of his parents.
The Lor-Zod who would rename himself ‘Chris’ was not one of those lucky ones. In fact, he may have been the least fortunate version of himself. For you see, most twists in his life don't send him back in the dark where he was born.
He was taken back twice.
Then his timeline unraveled.
And when time was repaired, when some of the damage was undone, reality seemed to decide that his return wasn't vital. That his story was over.
Chris was lost.
He told himself he was okay with that.
Over, and over, and over, and over again. It was a mantra, almost.
He needed it, needed a thought to cling to, a shard of determination, a feeling. Most people clung to dreams in times of distress. But The Zone stole those too. It was hard to think in those impossible wastes, almost like the very fabric of the place hungered for experiences, and had no aversion to taking them by force.
So it was hard for Chris to remember himself.
Mon-El had been trapped there for longer than him, as far as anyone could grasp time in the zone, and seemed to be able to manage it better. Perhaps it was because he had more lived experience to hold onto and the loss of some memories didn't affect that as much. Perhaps the zone has grown bored of him. Perhaps it was just harder on a child.
Those were all facets of the truth, but had Mon been able to see the whole picture, to understand how much of what was happening to Chris was petty cruelty, it would have lit a torch of wrath in his chest, hot enough for him to almost feel warm again.
But he didn't understand, and so offered soothing words instead.
“What are you thinking about, Chris?”
It took Chris a moment to respond. “...I think I'm forgetting what some things sound like.”
Mon wasn't solid enough to swallow, but he thought about the sensation.
“Oh yeah? Which ones? Perhaps I can help.”
Chris shook his head. “Names go first, feelings go last. I dunno.”
Mon wished he could squeeze his shoulder to ground him.
“When you get out of here, it'll all feel like a distant dream. You'll stand in the sun and this place won't matter anymore.”
Chris nodded. “Okay. Can you remind me what the sun feels like?”
It was a request Chris made more often than he realized. Mon never let on, though. The joy in Chris' eyes every time was worth an eternity of repetition.
This time though, he didn't get the chance.
This time something changed.
Now, if Chris was among the least lucky versions of himself, Lor-Zod was...middle of the pack, really. He didn’t get a benevolent version of his biological parents, nor did he get saved from them early in life. However, this incarnation of his father, Dru-Zod, was a smidge more sentimental, and his mother, Ursa, was...well, she was still a terrifying sadist with very little empathy, but what little she had was occasionally offered to the boy. So without the egregious abuse that pushed Chris to want to escape, Lor ended up rather loyal to his family and house. He did terrible things in the name of his forebearers, anointed his crest in the blood of his enemies, and of the creatures deemed less useful for their goals. There were the briefest moments of guilt, but Lor-Zods don’t tend to be deeply reflective. They’re capable, clever enough, sure, but generally prefer to find a cause that sounds and feels right, and follow whoever is leading the charge.
The cruel irony is that this version of him was the one that ended up living with the Lane-Kents. He’d never have chosen it willingly. After his parents' deaths at the hands of a lantern coalition, his options had been limited: live the rest of his days locked in an Oan sciencell, or accept Kal-El’s offer of “a second chance.” whatever that meant.
He wanted to refuse on principle, but like most Lor-Zods, he remembered the sunless waste he came from. His pride was weaker than his love of open skies, and so he accepted the offer with as much bitterness as he could get away with.
Seven months in, he was becoming a better person, objectively. Less openly murderous. Slightly more humble. Jon liked to call that progress. Jon talked too much.
“I win again!”
He had Lor pinned to the floor of his room, grinning like he’d personally defeated Darkseid. Lor hated him. Lor hated him so much. The smile on his own lips was routine deception--nothing more than habit, really. Lor was good at that. So good in fact that he was incapable of stopping himself from looking up at Jon with a fondness so convincing, that he felt his diaphragm tense with hallucinated excitement.
Jon’s smile, unfortunately, was real.
Lor attempted a glare. “No one likes a braggart.”
“That’s not true, dude. Plenty of people like you. A whole three, even.”
“Let me up.”
“Admit that I’m stronger than you.”
“You aren’t.”
“I really am.”
“There is no way your diluted biology can outstrip mine.”
“Oh yeah?” Jon leaned down, smug and infuriating. “Then push me off.”
Lor hissed. “I could. But I have a cramp.”
“A cramp, Lorzo?”
“I told you to stop calling me that.”
Jon just leaned closer. He loved infringing upon Lor’s personal space. “You’re such a sore loser.”
Lor hated that Jon’s herbal tooth care supplies smelled pleasant.
“If you kiss me,” Lor said, deadpan, “I’ll tear out your throat.”
Jon hit the ceiling like Lor had kicked him.
He stayed plastered there for a second, like he was trying to coax the drywall into eating him. “WHAT?! Ew—no! Stop saying stuff like that!”
Lor rolled his eyes and sat up. “And forfeit the power to banish you to the opposite end of the room on a whim? I think not.”
Jon dropped back to the floor with a dramatic thud and brushed his shirt flat. “Whatever. Always gotta make it weird.”
He still offered Lor a hand up. Lor took it because that gave him the perfect opportunity to drag his middle finger over the center of Jon’s palm.
Jon yelped and jerked away like he’d been electrocuted. “LOR!”
“It’s not my fault you always fall for that.”
“Well maybe I just like being hopeful that you’re gonna become a better person!”
“If the pinnacle of my evil is making you turn red and complain, then perhaps your family is managing to…” Lor flicked invisible dust off his sleeve. “Rehabilitate me.”
Jon folded his arms. “Eh. Still better than recreational genocide.”
Lor winced. “Alright, yes, fair, that one was—whatever.”
Jon’s face softened immediately. “...Sorry. Maybe that was a little mean.”
“Well you are a bit of a--”
“Don’t say it.”
“--pest.”
Jon narrowed his eyes. “That is not what you were gonna say.”
Lor gave him his most innocent look, which was terrible. “You’ll never know.”
Jon huffed, then brightened again. “You gonna join us for the movie later?”
Lor groaned. “I thought your people didn’t believe in torture.”
“You don’t even know what we’re watching.”
“Who chose the film?”
Jon paused. “...I did.”
Lor bit the inside of his cheek. “Disastrous.”
“Please?”
“...What’s in it for me?”
“Lor--”
“Fine. Fine.”
Jon grinned. “Heck yes. It’s called Inside Out. I think you’ll like it.”
“I’ve already agreed. Stop failing to sell it. Rao.”
Jon opened his mouth to fire back, then stopped.
Lor’s vision had blurred for a second.
It was brief. Just a shimmer. A wrongness at the edge of him. But it was enough to make Jon squint.
“You alright?”
“Of course.”
Jon’s eyes narrowed further, x-ray vision combing through soft tissue and bone. Lor resisted the urge to shove him.
“Hmm,” Jon said. “Well. Alright. We should probably head downstairs before Mom decides we’ve started killing each other again.”
“I’m not in the mood,” Lor muttered.
“You’re never in the mood.”
“Yes, and yet you persist. A curious flaw.”
Jon smiled, about to say something else.
Then Lor folded in on himself.
The pain was indescribable—but perhaps not in the way one would assume. Usually, indescribable pain meant intensity too great for clean comparison. In this case, the sensation itself was impossible. It felt like Lor was melting out of himself, which was a disturbing image, but still not enough to communicate the wrongness of it.
Suffice to say, it was agony, and Lor was not pleased.
Jon’s immediate panic did not help matters.
“Oh my god—oh my god—Lor, what—”
“NO, I DON’T KNOW WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING ON!” Lor snarled through gritted teeth as purple energy crackled around him. “STOP ASKING STUPID—AHH—!”
Jon yanked his shirt off to reveal absolutely nothing useful underneath, since he wasn’t wearing his costume that day, and then just looked stupid and alarmed and shirtless while Lor doubled over.
“Lor! Stay with me, stay with me— I could take you to the Fortress but I dunno if you’re gonna explode if I move you—”
“I COULD WHAT?”
“I DON’T KNOW, DUDE! I ALREADY PINGED DAD, HE’S ON HIS WAY, MAYBE I’LL CALL PEEJ—”
“NO! I’D RATHER DIE THAN LET THAT APOKOLIPTIAN SCIENCE FREAK—” Lor pitched forward with another strangled cry. “—AUGH, THAT’S BAD, CALL HIM, CALL THE HANDSOME SCIENCE FREAK—!”
“DONE! STOP DYING UNTIL HE GETS HERE!”
“I AM NOT DY—”
Suddenly, the pain vanished.
The energy cut out all at once.
Lor blinked, swaying slightly. “...Oh. That’s...huh.”
Jon stared at him. “Are you okay? Is it over?”
“Eh. It had better be. I was getting dangerously close to considering my own mortal--”
Then reality tore open.
There was no other way to describe it. The air around Lor split with a wet wrongness, purple and dark and inside-out. Before the panic could really set in, the strange energy vanished and something phased out of Lor’s center, hitting the floor with a sound that made Jon flinch.
It was a boy.
Maybe eleven or twelve. Small. Brown hair. Frightened, thin, shaking so hard it looked painful. He pushed up halfway, dazed and gasping, eyes unfocused.
Jon froze.
Lor, still half on his knees, stared in stunned offense at the thing that had essentially just fallen out of his chest.
The boy looked up, vision lagging behind his hearing. Jon took one involuntary step forward.
“L-Lor--?”
The boy’s face changed instantly. Terror lit through him so fast that Jon stopped to make sure there wasn’t something horrible standing right behind him.
“Don’t call me that!”
Jon threw his hands up. “Hey, I wasn’t calling you—”
The boy’s eyes caught on him fully then, wide and bright and wet with hope.
“Dad!”
Jon recoiled like he’d been slapped. “I’m--not--I mean, if anyone here is that--”
“SHUT UP,” Lor snapped reflexively, because whatever was happening, he was not in the mood for it.
The boy’s head whipped toward him.
And then he started screaming.
This time the pain belonged to him alone.
Purple fire licked over his skin without leaving marks. His body arched so hard Jon heard his back hit the floor. He dropped beside the boy without thinking, reaching out to cradle him, and denying the urge to pull back when the cold of the strange flames bit into his skin like a kiss from the void.
“Oh no. No, no, no--”
Clark arrived less than two seconds later, first a stiff gust of wind, then a monument of a man standing in the middle of the room.
He took in the scene in one sweep: Lor looked like he’d just been beaten by a sentient explosion, Jon was panicking and crying a little, but Clark quickly realized that those were tears of pain from trying to cradle a small boy who seemed to be burning with some kind of strange, purple fire. Horrible scene to walk in on, but he couldn’t let it get to him if he was going to fix whatever was going on in time.
He crouched, spoke low, gentle, and steady even with alarm already clawing up his throat. “Hey, buddy. I’ve got you.”
The boy made a broken sound that might have been another attempt at Dad.
Clark slid one arm under his shoulders and one under his knees, lifting him carefully free of the floor. The cold hit immediately—wrong cold, dimensional cold, the sort of thing that bypassed skin and went right for the deeper architecture of the body. Jon’s forearms were already paling from it.
The child was clearly in agony, but Clark noticed at once that the flames weren’t damaging him. Not physically. No burns, no blistering, no tissue loss. Just pain.
That scared him more.
“Dad—” Jon’s voice cracked. “He just—Lor just—he came out of him—”
“I know,” Clark said, though he did not, in fact, know anything.
Lor pushed shakily to his feet. “Appalling,” he said through clenched teeth. “I have opinions about this.”
“Save them,” Clark said, already turning. “We’re going to Mr. Terrific.”
That had all taken maybe five minutes. Clark spent the next ten standing in the lab, trying to look both reassuring and exude a calming presence, while also staying out of Micheal and his staff’s way, and not meddling like he was almost instinctually drawn to do.
They’d managed to stabilize the boy pretty quickly through some kind of intervention from Jeffrey’s fatherboxes. Clark’s pingspeak was rusty, but it sounded like one of them said something about “restricting superdimensional mobility.”
Whatever they did, it worked, and while it meant the boy had to stay in a rather small observation chamber, it also meant that he could catch his breath and wasn’t in so much pain.
Clark took it as a win, he had to.
Jon hovered near the chamber looking guilty and shell-shocked, arms bandaged now where the cold-fire had bitten him. Lor was seated on a med-table across the room, refusing pain relief out of spite and glaring at everybody equally. Lois arrived halfway through the stabilization process, took one look at Clark’s face, one look at the chamber, and moved directly into problem-solving mode.
“Okay, hit me.”
Michael glanced up from a screen full of alien nonsense. “He’s Kryptonian. Genetically stable. Roughly eleven to twelve years old. There’s significant Phantom Zone energy threaded through him, but it seems to be fading. I’m also picking up a different signature here that I haven’t been able to match yet.”
Lois started scanning around the room, trying to get a read on things based on people’s expressions.
“How did he get out? Why was there a child even in the zone? I thought Lor was the only time that happened.”
Micheal’s focus was already back on the screen. “That may technically still be true. I’m working on it.”
Lois’s gaze softened as she looked at the boy in the chamber. “How conscious is he?”
“Coming around. Maybe fifteen seconds from waking up.” Michael said.
Clark had been trying very hard not to crowd the glass.
He was also trying not to think too hard about the way the child had reached for him on instinct, or the way his own chest had tightened at the sight. There was something terribly familiar in the shape of the boy’s face, though not in any simple genetic sense. Clark kept circling the feeling and coming up empty.
Inside the chamber, the boy stirred.
His eyes opened slowly. For a second they were unfocused, drifting over light and ceiling and reflected faces on glass. Then they landed on Clark, and everything in him sharpened with desperate, disbelieving relief.
“Dad.”
The room went very still.
Clark felt the word hit him like a physical force.
The boy pushed himself up too fast, wincing. “Dad. I knew you’d find me.” His eyes darted around the room, racing to take it all in at once. “I--I was confused earlier, but I think I saw this guy who looked like you? Who was that?”
Jon made a tiny, strangled sound in the back of his throat. The boy followed the sound, and looked truly disturbed when he and Jon made eye contact.
“Uh, hey. Hi.”
The boy quickly looked back at Clark, like he was trying to forget what he’d just seen.
“Dad, what--what’s going on?”
Clark’s mind blanked.
He had no idea who this little boy was, or why he seemed so certain he was his father. A good solid whiff had told Clark that he was Kryptonian, and given that Jon had said he’d sort of...fallen out of Lor, that made as much sense as anything else. But the boy wasn’t genetically related to him as far as he could tell, so the he’d would have had to have been adopted.
But that still didn’t solve the obvious problem. He hadn’t adopted any children, and the boy had to have been eleven or twelve, so Jon would have waddling around when he was born, and there was no point in the last decade where fostering seemed like a good idea. Taking Lor in was pretty clearly a bad idea, in fact. Clark was still quietly mesmerized at how well that had gone. Well. After the initial...growing pains.
Still, he had to say something.
He reached for the procedure, because the procedure was safer than the truth of his confusion.
“Hey, kid,” he said softly. “Can you do me a favor and tell us your full name for the record? Mr. Terrific just needs to log you into the system.”
The second the words left his mouth, Clark knew they were wrong. Too formal. Too distant.
The boy knew it too.
His eyes searched Clark’s face with trembling care, as if testing whether this was rejection or merely uncertainty.
Then, very quietly, he said, “Christopher Kent.”
Clark forgot how to breathe.
Memory did not return so much as rupture.
It hit him all at once—small hands, smaller laughter, the weight of a child tucked under his chin, Lois smiling tired and fierce over a kitchen table, fear, joy, grief, tenderness so huge it made his knees weak. Not a full life. Not a linear set of facts. Just shards. Enough to carve him open.
He did not know how he remembered.
He did not know if the memories belonged to this world.
He knew they were real anyway.
“Chris,” he said, and his voice broke on the name. He swallowed hard. “...You’re little again.”
Chris’s face crumpled with relief so pure it made Clark’s chest hurt.
“M-maybe I can come home now?” he asked.
Clark nodded before anyone else in the room could speak. “Of course.”
Michael cleared his throat.
Clark turned, already braced for resistance.
“We have to talk.”