Chapter Text
All things considered, it had been an utterly uneventful day thus far–the kind that, by the following week, would hold memories of essentially nothing for Clark. Perfectly pleasant, but not so perfect as to fill him with glee. No major incidents, no significant trouble at work, and both Lois and Jon reporting similarly decent days over the dinner table. A nice day. The kind of day Clark rarely got to have, and that was almost, almost over. He’d been so close to blissful normalcy.
And then, of course, that facade of normalcy shattered into a million glittering pieces.
Spoonful of white chicken chili halfway to his mouth, the beeping started. It was a specific code emitting from his Justice League communicator that Clark knew to mean one thing: a member of the team had signaled an SOS, and Clark was the nearest available to assist. Of course, other members of the Justice League would be receiving alerts of the SOS, but the closest person in proximity got their own unique beep beep beep. And from the beep beep beep ringing out at the moment, it was clear that Clark was that closest person.
In a blink, he had the communicator in his hand, twenty feet away from the kitchen table, desperate to see who’d sent the alert and where their location was.
His worry wilted into frustration.
Lois, aware of what the signal meant, called from the kitchen, concerned, “Clark, who is it?”
On his way out the door, suit already whisked on, Clark growled, “Superboy.”
He’d flown out too fast to hear his family’s response, acknowledgment of the alert sent back in from his end, letting the rest of the League know he was on it and would check in ASAP.
In the brief interlude between the exit of his apartment and arrival on the scene, Clark fumed. It was always something with this kid–in the six months since Conner’s arrival, Clark felt as if he’d been on constant alert, monitoring Young Justice missions as they happened, forced to reprimand the boy for his nearly consistent recklessness.
And all he ever got in return was a stone-faced nod, perhaps a “Yes sir, it won’t happen again.” No remorse or fear of what his abilities made him capable of, a lack of concern that kept Clark up at night. Conner seemed to Clark just shy of an automaton, an almost identical reflection of Clark himself as a teenager, with so much potential for harm, but with so little emotion, so little caring.
Clark pondered what it was this time–what trouble had Conner gotten himself into now? He feared the worst, considering the severity of the code, but he didn’t have much time to mull it over, what with his speed. Before he knew it, Clark reached the coordinates, lowering himself to the ground.
The sight before him seemed to freeze–a still life captured in nanoseconds of chaos, a snapshot seared into his memory immediately. The kind of moment you know, right away, will split a line in your life demarcating the before and the after, even before you’ve comprehended it yet.
Struggling against five different individuals stood Conner in his Superboy getup, desperately resisting being overtaken. Each arm, flailed out on either side of him, had attached to it a person, one in front pulling, the other behind pushing, each clearly using all of their strength. Behind Conner stood two grown men, hands braced against the boy’s back, shoving hard. The final attacker had placed himself in front, fists clenched into the fabric of the symbol across Conner’s chest, yanking.
Conner’s feet stood planted firmly on the ground, rooted, but it was obvious he was struggling. And something about his face, the straining effort, revealed something else, something Clark recognized, then belatedly sensed himself, feeling stupid for not noticing immediately.
One of these people had Kryptonite.
Not a lot, and surely not enough to subdue Superman. But enough to render the boy in front of Clark weaker than normal, weak enough that perhaps, if they tried very hard, five incredibly strong grown men could grab him off the street.
After what must have only been a few seconds cataloging the information in front of him, Clark leapt into action.
Nobody had noticed him touch down in their fervor, and were subsequently quite surprised to be interrupted. Clark made exceptionally quick work, using his speed and strength as efficiently as possible to remove each attacker and leave them unconscious but without brain damage, a task Clark was at this point adept at executing. Distantly, he heard the car that had been idling on the street peel away. In his haste, he hadn’t clocked it initially–rookie mistake. The kind of mistake he’d have reamed Conner out for making.
Of course, as soon as Clark made his presence known, the group attempted to scatter, abandoning Conner so abruptly that he fell backwards onto his butt from the force of resisting being pulled forward.
Clark focused on wrangling the dispersing crew, assuming the kid hadn’t been affected enough by the Kryptonite so as to hurt himself falling.
Upon depositing the fifth and final assailant next to the other four, sitting up unconscious against the nearest brick wall, Clark finally peered around to see if Conner was okay.
His peering, however, revealed no teenage clone in sight.
Unsettled, Clark nearly forgot he had superpowers. For a moment, he felt a surge of panic, thinking Conner had been snatched after all, and the panic snagged open a little tear in his chest allowing guilt to start leaking out alongside it, as Clark recalled how irritated he’d been.
But immediately, his other senses kicked in, and Clark heard it.
Coming from within an alleyway opening up just a few feet from where the action had taken place were the sounds of breathing.
Well, not so much breathing as hyperventilating.
Clark wasted no time striding forward into the darkness where the streetlights couldn’t quite reach, finding the boy quickly.
He hunched, back pushed up to a dumpster that sat against one of the alley walls, head between his knees, heaving. The fact that Conner was leaning against the dumpster and not the wall right next to it made it seem to Clark as if the kid had scrambled backwards away from the fray, blindly moving into the shadows of safety until smacking into the dumpster. The imagined sight of Conner scooting with terror on the ground cut again into his heart.
Despite this, Clark stood immobile over the boy. His previous notions of Conner and this current scene were so violently opposed that he felt momentarily stunned to the point of inaction. Until now, Clark had viewed Conner, though he wouldn’t have admitted it out loud, as a representative of Lex Luthor, a product of the billionaire’s greed and obsession and a walking disaster waiting to happen. Conner’s inability to show any semblance of emotion outside of obedience didn’t help things. Clark looked at Conner and saw, essentially, a Luthor Corp robot in the shape of a person with his face and Kryptonian superpowers. An attack dog with new owners. And that had made him uncomfortable, angry, resentful. Scared.
But now, that preconceived notion had shattered irrevocably in front of Clark, the jagged pieces raining down and cutting him open. Robots don’t have panic attacks. Attack dogs don’t hyperventilate.
Before he could overthink it any longer, Conner must have sensed, perhaps not Clark’s presence, but the presence of a person standing over him, and began to wheeze out in between shuttering gasps of breath:
“P-Please, don’t. I… can’t… go b-back.” Clark sucked in a sharp gasp, but the boy kept going. “Dont-don’t make… me… please, please, please, please no…”
Clark crouched down, tried to make himself less hulking and large, as Conner continued chanting, “No, no, no,” head still cradled between his knees. His muscles were coiled so tight with fear, Clark could see them tremble.
He looked… so small.
Finally remembering himself, and recalling the several times he’d had to calm down a team member, or even more often, a stray Bat, Clark started with the first tactic he could think of.
“Hey Conner, hey, it’s Clark, buddy. It’s just me. I’m gonna ask you a few–a few things, okay? While I do, I need you to focus on breathing for me, okay? Alright pal?” Conner didn’t respond, but Clark hadn’t expected him to. He’d stopped chanting his mantra of no’s, however, which felt like a start.
“Alright,” he continued, “I need you to do me a big favor and open your eyes, okay? Keeping them shut only makes it worse.” Clark craned his neck lower to peek at Conner’s face. After a few seconds, punctuated by as violently shuttered breathing as before, the boy’s eyes miraculously cracked open. Within them, Clark saw unbridled terror.
“Good job, bud! Great job,” he forced out, willing away the surge of upset he felt at the teenager’s broken expression. “You’re doing awesome, okay? Now I need you to name five things you can see. It’s okay if it’s hard to say at first, but do your best. Focus on one thing at a time.”
Still heaving, Conner obviously got to work nonetheless. Clark could tell, the kid wanted to follow directions, as always. A horrid, cold thread started to unspool in Clark, as soon as his brain allowed himself to look for alternate reasons why that might be the case, outside of is puppet of Lex Luthor. Clark shoved that unwinding thread away for the moment, as Conner’s eyes flitted around on the ground and he continued to desperately suck air in.
After a few seconds, he stuttered out in between gasps, “G...G-glass.”
Peering down, Clark belatedly realized that, yup, the kid was sitting on a pile of broken glass. Not tons of it, but shards were plainly visible. They were next to a dumpster, after all.
Grateful for once at Conner’s powers, knowing a normal person would have probably gotten cut, Clark huffed what would have been a laugh under different circumstances.
“Yes! I see it too. That’s great, Conner. Let’s go for a second one. You can do it.”
Conner looked a bit further ahead, eyes landed somewhere near Clark’s feet.
“G-gum,” he forced out. The breathing was still pretty bad, but Clark could tell they were getting somewhere.
He nodded enthusiastically. “Gum! I see it. Nice. How about a third thing?”
At this, Conner had to finally look a bit harder. He turned his head a little, huffing and puffing, but bit out a smidge more easily than before, “A bottle.”
And following his gaze, Clark confirmed that, yep, there was a broken bottle on the other side of the alley to their left. Not the most hygienic list of things named before, but it was the practice that mattered.
“Amazing Conner, you’re more than halfway there, bud. Number four, let’s go.”
Conner’s breathing finally started to pace itself, still coming in fast, but with a normal rhythm. He sounded more out of breath than anything. He didn’t answer, however.
Clark gave it a second, but then tried to check in.
“Conner? If you’re–”
Before he could finish, the teenager shot up to his feet with a jolt. Clark started, and stared upwards in shock before following suit. He began to finish his thought, but Conner beat him to the punch.
Eyes cast firmly on the ground and hands at his sides balled into fists, Conner muttered out through his residual huffs, “I’m so sorry s-sir. That was a lapse in–or, I didn’t–it won’t happen again.”
Clark blinked, completely shocked.
Conner took the silence for disapproval, continuing, “I won’t let my-my emotions get the better of me again, sir. I really do apologize. Thank you for–for the help.”
Ice started to flood Clark’s veins, starting up top near his skull and rushing down. He realized suddenly, all of the revelations he’d just made catching up to him, just how badly he’d fucked up. He saw before him a child–and when did fifteen-year-olds get so small, when did Conner get so small, had he been so small at that age?--a kid not that much older than his son, a kid with a face like his, powers like his, shaking violently in fear, and Clark finally understood, the understanding a block of ice settling in the pit of his stomach, hard and unforgiving, that he’d taken part in cultivating that fear.
This boy was scared of him. He was terrified.
“Conner,” Clark started, but didn’t know where to end, the sentiment fizzling out.
He tried again.
“Conner, I–You have nothing to be sorry for. You didn’t do anything wrong, and I’m not–I’m not mad, okay? It’s okay.”
Conner didn’t respond, but Clark could see his eyes—still cast downward—flitting around nervously as if he was trying to think of what to say. Clark had mercy on the poor kid.
“Tell you what, I’m gonna call Flash here so he can handle getting those guys properly taken in, and then I’ll take you back to the Tower, okay?”
Conner deflated and offered a jerky nod.
While Clark contacted Barry and sent over the information and coordinates, Conner remained standing nearly stock-still in the alley. Clark figured he wanted to stay as far away from his would-be kidnappers as possible, even if they were knocked out, and Clark agreed.
Barry appeared quickly, of course, and got right to work properly restraining (Clark didn’t have anything on him, after all) the assailants and whisking them away one-by-one to the Justice League’s nearest containment cell. After that, he’d likely get Batman on the case, but Clark’s mind had shifted to Conner as soon as it was able. Normally, he’d have jumped in to help his friend with the task but he didn’t want to leave the boy alone even for a few minutes.
“Alright pal,” Clark huffed once Barry had begun his rather arduous task, “Flash is off to work, so we can head out. The nearest Zeta tube isn’t too far—“
“I know, that’s where I’d been going,” Conner interrupted testily. As soon as he’d spoken, however, his eyes widened in surprise at his own words, and he rushed to add on, “I-I just mean, I’ve used that one before, and—”
“Conner.”
“I apologize for my tone, sir, I—“
“Conner,” Clark tried again, hands going up in front of him placatingly. The boy snapped his mouth shut, peering back fearfully. “You’re all good, bud. No worries, okay? Let’s hit the road.” He tried to put the kid at ease with a friendly smile, but Conner just blinked back with confusion plainly written across his face.
Accepting the fact that that was the best they’d both get, Clark tacked on a firm nod to his smile, and turned around to head out of the alley. Conner followed and, upon seeing the four remaining attackers resting on the sidewalk, tensed up so noticeably, Clark could hear it.
Clark turned around and, careful not to actually touch Conner, hovered his arm around the boy’s shoulders, gently herding him in the opposite direction.
“Hey, don’t worry about them anymore, alright? You’re in safe hands now. Let’s get to that Zeta!”
Conner let out a shaky breath but allowed himself to be guided and the two then embarked on a very awkward and silent ten minute walk. Conner didn’t say anything, unsurprisingly, and Clark felt like anything he’d have to offer up would be unwanted.
Finally, they arrived at the tube, and before Clark knew it, they were back at Titans Tower, standing uncomfortably in the entrance room. Choosing action over talking–what would he even begin to say anyway?--Clark clapped his hands together decisively, about to announce they should head to the kitchen to get a snack, but Conner’s violent, full-body flinch at the noise killed that thought in its tracks.
Right. The kid was clearly scared of Clark. Like, actually, truly scared. The rapid, staccato echoing inside Conner’s chest was yet even more proof of that.
Deciding acknowledging that fact would perhaps make things worse right then, however, Clark continued on with his plan, doing his best not to react to the very obvious flinch.
“Whenever I have a tough moment on the field, I like to eat something sweet! Let’s see if we can’t dredge up something for you from the kitchens.”
Conner blinked owlishly at him a few times, before speaking as if the words were being pulled forcibly out of his mouth, “Don’t we… need to, like… write up an incident report…?”
It was Clark’s turn to blink. Because, sure, they would need to do that. But the kid had just been assaulted by Lex Luthor’s goons, and had a violent panic attack as a result. Surely he didn’t think that paperwork came before his essential needs?
Except, Clark realized, again that newly settled block of ice giving his insides frost bite, that yes, Conner did think that. Cataloging his memories with the teenager, Clark felt himself unable to conjure up any time he’d given the kid a reason not to.
He’d just assumed… somebody had been looking out for him? The Justice League was full of well-intentioned, excitable mentor figures. Clark figured, in the wake of his obvious disinterest in Conner, someone had at least partially stepped up to the plate?
Again, studying Conner’s expression, Clark’s assumptions began to fall apart. The fact that he’d made such assumptions at all chilled that damn ice cube, solidified it even more.
“Well… yes. We will need to write a report at some point, probably tonight. But… you just went through something, well, uh… scary, and upsetting. It’s okay to give yourself a moment to come down from that, okay?” Conner still looked completely lost, like Clark was flipping his whole world upside down. He supposed, considering the boy’s history with authority and rules, maybe he was. Fuck.
“Consider it a directive from me,” Clark landed on, remembering that falling back on orders, as distasteful as it felt, usually worked. It did.
“Um. Okay.” Leaving no more room for discussion, Clark spun around and headed towards the main kitchen, with a shorter version of himself trailing anxiously behind.
Once they arrived, and Clark convinced Conner to take a seat at the breakfast bar-style counter top that faced the kitchen itself, a new problem presented itself.
“Where’s all the food?” he asked the boy, ping-ponging from refrigerator to pantry to cabinets. Inside them all collectively were some takeout leftovers, cereal boxes, milk, protein bars, and chips.
“Um…” Conner started, but trailed off.
Clark turned to face him. “Is the rest of the food in the kitchen upstairs? I thought you guys didn’t like that one as much.” It’d been a while, but last Clark heard from Dick and company, the residents of Titans Tower almost always preferred the kitchen they stood in currently, for lots of reasons. Its proximity to the living room with the gaming equipment set up likely stood as reason number one.
“No, uh… This is the one we use.” Conner didn’t elaborate.
Clark felt himself tilt his head to the side, his ‘puppy mode’ as Lois mockingly liked to call it. “There’s barely any food here, Conner. And most of it is, well, junk.”
The boy shrugged. “I eat enough to maintain my caloric baseline factoring in training.”
Clark just blinked. Previously, this would have, if anything, contributed to his predisposed judgment of Conner as an emotionless, less-than-completely-human clone with Luthor propaganda plugged into his brain.
But this wasn’t that. Facing him was a confused teenager, one who’d never been taught how to care for himself, and certainly didn’t have any adults around to do it for him. His big, gray-blue eyes held an ocean of uncertainty, and, again, the fear lurking underneath it.
“If–if you don’t think my diet is sufficient, then you can definitely make me a plan, sir, or-or–you probably don’t have time for that. I, uh–”
“Whoa, whoa, Conner, slow down.” Clark took a steadying breath, pulled it in, let it out. He needed to tread carefully here. He felt exasperated already, mostly at himself, and to be honest, the other adults who should have noticed something wasn’t right sooner. But he didn’t want Conner to think that impatience was his fault. He probably already did.
“I don’t… This isn’t about your–your training, or being a superhero, or anything like that. I just… You’re only fifteen, and it’s important to eat healthy. Yes, it’s good you’re getting enough calories, but there’s more to food than that. First of all, eating is fun. Eating different types of things is fun. Cooking can be fun too, for some people.”
Conner gaped. He was very evidently at a loss for words.
Clark tried a different approach. “When you go to the store, what are you thinking when you get groceries? Like, for example, the cereal. You’ve got, like, four different types in there, and that’s not very calorically dense, so you must be buying it because you like it, yeah?”
Conner hesitantly nodded, as if admitting he got food for enjoyment was against some type of ruleset he’d been given.
“So, you know, you can get lots of other things just because you like it.”
“I, I don’t,” the boy started, before abruptly cutting himself off and looking down at his lap.
After a moment, Clark followed up gently, “You don’t what, bud?”
“I don’t, like, actually go… to the grocery store. I just, like, order stuff for delivery. And I’ve never–I mean, I just got what I assume is like, normal stuff. I don’t really know how to make anything.”
For such a relatively short couple of statements, Clark felt overwhelmed with how much to unpack there. Why didn’t Conner go to the store? He’s only, what, buying food based on presupposed notions about what normal people eat? Where did he get those notions from–Luthor, or television, or what? And not knowing how to make anything–of course that’s true. Unlike Jon, Conner never had a grownup gently ask him for help making cookies, or pouring the cheese packet into boxed macaroni, or cutting up a cucumber for the first time. Conner was fifteen, but experience-wise, he was, what, a baby? And nobody’d been helping him through it all, he’d been wading into this big, scary world all alone…Thanks, mostly, to Clark.
He decided to start with the first thought.
“Why don’t you go to the store itself? I find that can help when I don’t know what I want to get.”
Conner looked back at his lap, a blush creeping up his neck, shoulders high and stiff. “I…I know that Luthor doesn’t know my identity outside of Superboy, but… I just… I’m a little… I don’t want him to find me. And, I guess, lots of people being around, I… I know it’s stupid, I mean, I have superpowers, like regular people can’t hurt me, but, I just… don’t like… crowds, I–I guess.”
Before Clark could respond, Conner rushed to follow up, “I know that’s a weakness I need to overcome, and I will, especially with crowds, how else am I expected to–”
“Conner,” Clark interjected, attempting to be gentle, for what felt like the millionth time that day. How many times had Conner done this previously, without Clark recognizing it for what it was? Rushing to explain himself, excuse basic human behaviors and fears, especially considering what he’d gone through? How many times had Clark responded insufficiently, cementing this child’s notion that normal fears and anxieties were failures?
“I,” Clark started before sighing, realization settling over him. He supposed it would have to be now. Better to–well, not nip it in the bud, considering how far this mistake had blossomed, like a weed taking root–but cut it off as best he could, no half-hearted shearing, just going right for it.
“I owe you an apology, Conner.”
Eyes wide with shock, Conner simply responded, “What?”
“Actually, I owe you more than that. But I’ll start with an apology.”
“Uh… what?”
Taking another steadying breath, Clark leaned forward on the counter that separated them, resting on his elbows, to level his gaze more evenly with Conner. He didn’t want to stand like a giant over the boy.
“I…I’m afraid I’ve made a really, really big mistake here. Well, not a single mistake, actually, lots of mistakes. First of all, I’ve treated you terribly. I should have been around to help and support you, not just offer criticism.”
Conner didn’t respond, but Clark could hear his heart slamming against his chest.
“I thought… I acted selfishly, and let my own issues with what Luthor did get in the way of properly mentoring you. I thought that another Justice League member was bound to pick up the slack, but that was an assumption I made for my own comfort. I didn’t check to see if I was right, either. And obviously,” he gestured behind him towards the empty cabinets and refrigerator, “I wasn’t.
“I don’t expect you to forgive me, really, especially not right now. You… what you went through at Cadmus was… horrific, and I never made sure that you were getting proper care for that, either. All around, I failed you, and I didn’t realize it until today. I’m just,” Clark ran his hand through his hair, struggling through with words alone, “I’m really, really sorry Conner. I’m sorry.”
Conner stared helplessly back, clearly at a loss for words, for a few seconds, before, like a switch had been flipped, his face shuttered, expression cooled into something far more apathetic.
“It’s okay.”
He offered a bland smile that didn’t reach his eyes and nodded as he said it. But Clark could still hear that off-the-wall heart beating in his chest. He could see through the counter between them, Conner fidgeting with the leg of his costume, pulling the stretchy material between two fingers, letting it go, pulling it, again and again. He could just tell, suddenly seeing it so clearly, that the ‘emotionless’ face the boy put forward until now was just that–a face. A facade, covering up a well of fear and, no doubt, countless other wounds that Clark let fester.
“I–” he tried, but Conner was persistent.
“Really, it’s okay, Clark. I understand.” Another tepid smile. “If that’s all, can I please go write up my report now, sir?”
Clark hadn’t realized he’d dropped the ‘sir’ until its coming back walloped him like a sucker punch. It was like he’d been body-snatched every time he’d interacted with Conner until now–how in the fresh hell had he let a traumatized teenager keep calling him sir?!
But there was nothing for it now, at least in this exact moment. Behind the sheen of desperate nothingness that Conner had pasted over his expression, Clark could see so clearly in his eyes, maybe because they were so much like his own, that Conner was begging to be let go. He wanted to escape, and badly. But he wouldn’t leave without permission first. Fucking Christ.
“Of-of course, Conner, but–”
The teenager shot up out of his seat. “Thank you sir,” he said quickly enough that it sounded like a single word, and absolutely bolted out of the room.
Still reeling, Clark just let his head hang between his shoulders, heaved out a sigh, and cursed himself silly.