Chapter Text
He didn’t have a name.
Not that he needs one, everybody who surrounds him always says something quick and biting to get his attention- “ Clone, It, Thing, Experiment, Project.”
The scientists get names, they call one another playfully and tease across the room, across consoles and when controlling the lights overhead.
He wonders, for the first several months of his stuttering half-existence he wonders when a name will be blessed upon him, when will somebody look at him with any kind of emotion other than vague disinterest and tell him his name. Give him something that he can look inside of himself and label the mess that makes his unstable self a little less unstable.
For the first several months, he’s not a whole person, not really, he’s not really a person at all. He’s a melting mess of a clone before he stabilizes up enough to be taken out of the tanks and into the holding cell. His hands stop shaking themselves into non-existence and his skin stays on for almost a full week before they remove him from the floating tank and into the place where the lights are red and he can stand under his own power.
His skin is white, his veins wiggle underneath his skin, a brilliant pathway that he follows with his fingers when there’s truly nothing else to do and everyone has gone away from the room that he’s never left.
The light above him is red, red, red, the people around him talk about it all the time, they check on the several red lamps and banter back and forth when they do maintenance- nobody talks directly to the clone that sits underneath them and uses most of his energy to hold himself together. The best thing in the whole wide existence is when the people talk to one another about things that aren’t him or the other clones, They talked about daughters, or sons, or cats or dogs, or cousins, or sisters, or brothers, mothers, fathers-
They talked about the world- the whole wide world that must have been- it must be rooms and rooms and rooms, larger than this one and filled with so much love, so many people. They talk about cities and lovers and cars and-
They talk about the clones the most. The failed ones, the ones that have made it this far, the ones that have already died.
They talked about their bosses, their funding, their progress.
The clone liked it more when they talked about themselves.
“We’re going to do a big test today!” one of them jokes, a short one with short hair that’s dark like their skin tone, so different than the clones own. “You’ve done so well so far that we’re moving your schedule up!”
The clone doesn’t understand. The people take his blood constantly, twice every time there's people around- like clockwork. What is possibly on his itinerary that would warrant this?
Turns out- those lights above him can be turned off.
It happens fast, just a simple flick while there’s five or six white coats outside of the glass that separates them-
The lights go out.
There’s no red anymore, no bright lights above him, cold and soft at the same time, like the clone imagines what snow must feel like, what clouds have to be when people touch them. To have anything touch him, something that wasn’t the cool metal of the floor, or the slick sparking glass of his walls. The lights go out- the darkness sits like a lead weight against the clone, his vision black, the whispered words just outside of his hearing, just right there, so close, so very close.
The clone stands, carefully on shaky legs, and moves forward. His hands are out in front of him, fingers spread wide and nervous, the glass wall is four steps in front of him- he counts them out mentally as he takes them, making sure that he’s not going to collapse with every step.
He takes five steps- smaller than normal due to the nervous nature of the halting strides- and when he touches the glass that keeps the boundary of his room it tingles in the normal way. A small shock that jarred the clone's hands, arms, shoulders. It’s a relief to touch, to hold onto something that is solid in the dark.
“H-” The word gets caught in his throat- stuck there from lack of use (nobody likes it when he tries to mimic their sounds back at them) - “Hello?”
It’s not a perfect sound that escapes from the clone, but it's enough.
A creak, rusted metal groaning in distress from above.
The clone doesn’t make another sound, he simply huddles closer to the glass, the shocks echoing down his chest from where his thin chest now presses against the cold surface.The sounds above him are terrifying, they squeak and pull and scrape, a slow tripping drawl that creaks and-
There’s light, coming from the top.
Not normal light, which is red, red, red and rests in the clones’ very bones. This light is weirdly without color, the same as the coats in which the people outside of his room wear. The light is just getting brighter- the opening gasping open like a yawn.
Sure enough, there’s a hole in the ceiling, nestled between the artificial lamps and it looks… It looks strange and weird and so very colorless.
Without the red tint, the clone's eyes aren’t used to this- it burns. There’s colors that are creeping out from the blurry pain- bright vivid colors that the clone’s brain informs him of blue and green and yellows . Colors that he knows of- mentally, from whatever they do to feed him this information without his being aware of- but seeing them for the first time makes something misfire.
They’re beautiful.
The colors that aren’t red.
“Are you gonna get into the sunlight or are you just gonna gape like a fish?” The white coat that’s not very nice sneers from the back, the clone can imagine their face perfectly all scrunched up and their teeth on display.
“Shut the fuck up, Bennie.” The short one with dark hair and skin snaps back.
The clone is still in the dark- about six inches from the blinding light that filters in from above.
It looks so innocent, a hexagon on the floor that displays the lab’s logo so perfectly in the center. The metal looks slate grey now, bluish tinted with hints of green that zig zag through the metal as it reflects up.
“Will it hurt?” The clone asks, the words burn in his throat.
Nobody answers him.
They normally don’t.
There’s only one thing to do then- the clone braces himself against the pain that’ll rankle up his form, adding to the low-lying pain that is constantly hidden in his joints, his center, his heart.
The clone steps into the light-
It’s warm.
It shocks the clone so bad he screams, the sound ripping from his throat with a painful yank, jerking back.
There’s sounds of the white coats moving behind him- they’re talking to one another with vivid interest.
He’s shaking, scared, unsure, his heart pounds heavy in his chest- the monitor that tracks his slow and steady beat now trips up in a stucco rhythm. Thirty five beats a minute. Racing.
“Stand in it for more than a millisecond!” That's the mean white coat- his face screwed up so tight it was hard to get any smaller. “You stupid brute-!”
A shock- a serious one, hard and violent- comes from the glass. It hurts, hurts enough to make the clone stumble back from the six inch safety of the glass and back into the strange light.
It’s warm.
It’s warm, and it makes it so that the hair that falls into his face lights up a different color- it’s not pure black ink anymore it’s got undertones of red that shine brilliantly.
It’s warm and it makes his pale, almost translucent skin shiver. His veins shine so purple-blue-green underneath the shine, if he looks carefully he can spot the red-purple flush of color that blooms up.
It’s warm and it makes something inside of him creak open, soft and unsure like a sprain that’s being worked out. Like the door that opens and lets in the white coats, slow in the morning and hazy.
The clone looks up, up, up . Into the warmth like if he stares hard enough then more will come. He can feel every twitch of himself, every breath, every inhale, he can feel the way his pupils contract, narrowing just the barest hint, swirling like an aperture of the camera lens, open and closed, open and closed.
There’s a blooming in his chest, pumping through his five chambered heart like an injection through his veins. Something pushes out, an awareness like never before, weak and fleeting as it grows slowly around his skin.
The light is sunshine, and the clone has gotten his first taste of it.
Organs that have long worked in their perfectly intended ways underneath a red sun now desperately react and respond to a whole new radiation spectrum.
A little oval shaped organ- about the size of a cookie- that rests above his heart swells up as it takes in as much radiation as the ambient atmosphere provides. There’s nothing sweeter to a Kryptoian than certain wavelengths of radiation, ultraviolet in particular along with gamma makes the cells in the clone's body react in strange and exciting ways.
The scientists watch the heartbeat, enzymes and nitrogen in the clone’s system react in ways they’ve been trying this whole time. They whisper to one another, and they take notes with a vicious kind of glee. There’s nothing like an experiment going so right , it all coming together and a clone holding together when all the others up to this point have failed rather spectatuallry.
The clone reaches upwards, grasping at the light that filters through his fingers.
It’s a drowning man getting to land, a desert oasis to a traveling merchant, a taste of sugar for the first time after a lifetime of nothing to eat but sand.
The clone wants more, wants to be covered with all this light all the time, to feel so free and so endless, to see the particles in the air and to hear the heartbeats of the living creatures around him and to feel the way the air moves on his skin in almost slow motion. It’s coming up for air after living in the darkness, it’s kissing in the rain or finishing a life goal or-
The light above him begins to close.
“No!” The clone stands right in the center, but he can hear the electronic buzz of the button being pressed, hear the shift of gears and hydraulics, the click of a gear beginning to close. The light gets smaller by a slow inch.
“No! Please!” The clone reaches up, desperate, grasping, he looks from the light to the white coats behind the glass, they look so clear in the darkness in a way they never were before.
They don’t respond to his requests, they never do.
The light gets a little smaller, a little further away.
“ No! ” The clone’s desperate, he can feel his heart pound in his chest. There’s something primal within him that wants this to last a little longer than it has.
So he lets instinct take over, he surges forward, something in his brain telling him to grab at the thing out of his reach.
The air parts for him, it sings under his hands.
The clone flies .
Distantly, the clone can hear the gasps from the white coats. They’re all talking now, loud enough that they’re all overlapping one another in his senses, screaming in excitement. Fists hit glass, thick and solid and just as electrified as the glass that surrounds the clone at all times.
The mechanics still close the window to the light- slowly and surely removing the white from the clone’s cell. The door is above the glass somehow, the clone can’t reach it, can’t stop it.
“No! No! Please! No!” There’s nothing more than the clone can think of to scream, to beg. He’s useless here, stuck in a glass container and being played with.
The light disappears and the clone falls.
--
“What the fuck is this?” The man in the suit visits today- Lex Luthor is what the white coats call him.
The white coats don’t realize that the clone can hear them a whole lot better since they’ve been exposing him to the sunlight. They talk about so many more things when they get out of the room where they keep him.
“What… What do you mean, Luthor?”
“You said this was a clone of Superman and myself. How is it female ?”
The tone of voice is one full of contempt, disgust.
“Ah, yes, a surprise to us too about it’s physical shape. You said you wanted it to look more like a kryptonian does so we designed the genes to make it exactly how you wanted it-”
“Why is it female ?”
“It’s not .” The white coat talks to the man right before the door has an undercurrent in the voice of the whitecoat is strained.
Luthor opens the door anyway, full of bluster and importance even as he slams a tablet into the white coats hands. The clone has seen him before, once or twice, never often, and the last time he came around the clone was still trying to hold himself together, be stable. The sunlight has improved his stability by leaps and bounds, he very rarely has spasms anymore.
Luthor has a sneer on his face, like he has the previous two times, and a suit that’s nice and shiny and black.
Luthor walks around the whole cage, pacing quick fast like people do when they're agitated. His eyes trace over every inch of the clone's body. This isn’t the first time and it won't be the last that someone is going to look over him with a critical eye.
“You certainly look more like him than myself.” Luthor … it’s not really a smile, but it has the passing appearance of one.
The whitecoat tetters in, tablet pressed close to their chest. They’ve got long hair with thick glasses- “We told you before you came, it’s more Superman than it is you, it had to be to have similar properties to Kryptonian powers.”
“It certainly looks like a boy, doesn’t it?” Luthor ignores the whitecoat like he does everybody underneath him. “A boy about ten, you didn’t age him up to where I wanted?”
“It’s a slow process, we have to age him in increments because he doesn’t seem to age on his own.”
Well that's new information. The clone wasn’t aware that he didn’t age.
“Strip, boy. ”
Luthor’s command sent ice down the clone’s spine for a brief flurry of a second, but it’s nothing that he’s not done before.
So he reaches back, catches the seam where the white malleable fabric is sealed against his skin at the base of his neck, and pops the tab. The suit technically doesn’t have a zipper , it’s more like a strong adhesion that activates with the tab at the base of the neck.
So peeling himself out of the suit is nothing, it unfolds around his body easily with no effort on his part and falls to the ground.
Nobody’s surprised by either the nudity or the way the clone looks, his entire body has been made with exact care over the course of many years of study. There’s nothing for any person in this room to be surprised at, they’ve all seen everything he has to offer many times over.
“I knew I should have said girl instead.” Luthor sneers.
“We made him to your exact standards, Lex. We were surprised at the … appearance of the first clones but we’ve done x-rays and we’ve done autopsies on the failed ones. The joints are strange too, Superman must have had some kind of training to look as normal as he does. This one tries to emulate but he’s grown up mostly without interference so he moves as his ligaments and joints allow naturally.”
“ Really ?” Luthor seems so interested, morso than any of the white coats when they talk about the clone. “Show me.”
The white coat huffs, irritated underneath the false veneer of an underling. “When there’s people in the room it naturally tries to emulate them.”
The clone hates that they don’t talk to him, they chat and mumble like there’s not a single brain cell in the clone’s head. It’s like they think he doesn’t understand them, or he can’t contribute to the conversation at all. “Of course I try to emulate you.” He doesn’t snap, because when he does people file out of the room quick and don’t come back in for hours. It makes him relentlessly bored, so he doesn’t let his voice growl out above a daring if not pointed conversation. “It makes you uncomfortable when I don’t”
“She speaks!” Luthor laughs, bright and amused.
“It’s male .” The scientist grounds out, fingertips white against the tablet they have in their hands. “If you want to refer to it using gendered language at least recognize that we’ve been tasked on making a clone of Superman , not his stupid fuckin’ cousin or whatever Supergirl is.”
Luthor huffs out what could be a laugh or could be an amused form of hatred. “It looks like you forgot it’s dick then. There’s not even hair anywhere- and it’s in the wrong spot to be anywhere close to a real woman.”
“Internal reproductive system, Lex. Inactive unless stimulated and the body’s currently fuckin’ ten . We’re not touching that, you can’t begin to make us.” The white coat shutters, visible to the clone’s heightened senses.
The clone looks down at himself, then right back up.
Luthor makes a noise of surprise, genuine. “Oh there is something wrong with you, when you move.”
Is there? The clone’s noticed that when he moves too much people get wary, but he’s always chalking that up to people not enjoying his presence in general.
“Do something else then, show me how you move.” Luthor leans close to the glass, closer than any other scientist has ever, “ Boy. ”
So he does. The clone strides forward, no tension in his limbs or expectation on how he should appear, it’s not often he moves without thinking about it, a world of restriction he’s always been very aware of how his body is shaped and how far his chains can be tugged. He lets his bones move how they walk, and not how he’s seen others. It's odd and weird and a little shaky, but it feels right in a way that he hasn’t felt in a long time.
If ever.
Luthor scuttled away from the glass with a kind of instinctual jerk. Eyes wide, a quickening of both heartbeat and breath, the smell of the first trickle of preseperation, the smell of sharpline fear . “Jesus christ that’s creepy.” Luthor takes control of himself with the distance between them, always looking down at everyone. “God how uncanny, when it moves it really does look like a little alien doesn’t it?”
The clone mimics a very human gesture- it shrugs.
Luthor laughs again, delighted. “But it blends in so well!”
The clone steps back to the center, right where the first hint of real sunlight would start if they opened the window above him. It’s his favorite spot in the whole cell, it's where he gets the most amount of sunlight time if he starts and stops here, in the warmth of the centre. His clothes- the white suit they have given him- is pooled at his feet.
Luthor is impressed .
A little horrified, a whole lot more curious, but impressed .
“Let him have some sunlight.” Luthor tells the man at the controls of the cell. “I want to see him at his best.”
The man nods, and presses the button.
The clone’s head snaps right up, his huge pupils going into pinpricks, letting the almost-too-blue overtake everything. At both extremes Luthor can see the clone has hexagonal shaped pupils, not circular ones. With big eyes, a brilliant blue, the clone looks right up into where the sunlight falls down and settles around him.
The clone doesn’t move even to breathe.
Luthor waits, it’s thirty minutes before the scientists close the opening as a safety precaution.
Even when the sunlight is gone, the clone still looks up, hands lax at its side and unmoving.
Nothing anybody does makes the kid move, he just … looks up into nothing.
The rest of the visit goes off without a much more interesting happening, there’s files and files on the thing that sits so still in the cell that Luthor has poured over every night. There’ s nothing to be gained from a project that won’t move.
--
Luthor watches the way the clone’s knee’s bend just a little off from humans, how it twists its hips in a way that’s just downright fucking unsettling. It’s just a little farther than what normal people should be capable of, but at the same time weirdly restricted. A torso that’s stiffer than a human's very flexible spine but joints that seem to make up for it. The thing before Lex has two less vertebrae than humans do and two extra ribs down the side of the ribcage with no floating ribs to speak of. The clone has more space in his joints to make up for it however, along with a strange kind of flexibility in its neck.
It looks mostly with full body twists, able to turn its head just a little less than a normal human would. It seems like tracking with just eye movement is a learned behavior, not one that comes naturally to it,
It’s ankles and wrists have more of a range of motion than humans do, so do it’s fingers. IT’s hair doesn’t grow longer than it’s collar bones no matter how long the scientists here don’t bother to cut it. Hair doesn’t fall off either, it just stops growing but it doesn’t fall out. The thing’s skin also doesn’t shed, it seems like the thing recycles its own skin from underneath instead of on top.
It’s now physically about fourteen or fifteen, aged up artificially over the course of several months. It learns fast when given the opportunity too, so the scientists that get put on this project quickly learn to stop talking to it. It doesn’t move often, and eats the sunlights that gets fed to it for thirty minutes every four days.
Luthor watches it move and twist and dance to follow the beam of sunlight that moves through its enclosure. Lex is the one on the controls, he’s got the sunlight narrowed down to only about the size of a fist and makes it jerk all over the cage.
The clone dives after it like a starving man- which it technically is. Luthor has asked the scientists not to feed it the sunlight for a total of two weeks, the thing waned like a drooping sunflower and got more and more lethargic until it barely responded to stimuli anymore. This is its first food in that time, and now it’s being recorded to get the full extent of how the thing naturally moves.
It’s amazing how instinctual beings get when they’re deprived of basic needs.
“Has it reached maturity yet?” Luthor asks, almost offhandedly, as he toys with the thing in the cage that looks so much like superman but has Luthor’s narrower frame and sharp brows.
“It will when we run it through the next aging session.” The scientists says, easy as ever and bored. “Then we can start harvesting its finalized adult DNA to make more clones. We can’t clone children- it makes unstable clones everytime, but once we have a full working adult on our hands we can begin to make more and more.”
“ Excellent .” Luthor’s excited that something is finally going his way for once.
The clone dances for the sun, darting back and forth at just a little less than human eyesight can comprehend.
It’s like a cat, an overly complicated cat that costs billions of dollars every time it so much as twitches. Luthors little plaything, his almost son, the thing that’s going to take superman’s place as a perfect obedient thing under Luthor's instruction.
“When can we age it up to an adult to harvest the mature DNA?” Luthor asks.
“For him to be stable enough that we’re sure of its success, it'll take another month.”
That’s alright.
The sunlight stops in one place now, Luthor taking his hands off the controls. The clone stops with it, putting his face to the beam and staying as stock still as possible. When the thing eats it takes hours to reboot back to baseline.
The sunlight will only be open to the clone for another three minutes.
Luthor doesn’t mind.
He’s got a month to spare.
--
“We’ve gotten word from a whistleblower that you might want to check out.”
Batman stands on a rooftop in Metropolis, his cape is long and it covers most of his body, even when it blows in the wind that laces through the bright city that Superman has called his own.
A wonder, this city is a night, with it’s dancing white lights of an era bygone and the smell of the sea close at hand. There’s still billboards with fluorescent bulbs, selling products for the common blue collar worker. The city is all gleaming whites and blues, dancing with red flags with Kal-El’s insignia. There’s something to be said about it here, with it’s color and its hope that can’t be found nearly anywhere else.
Batman sort of hates it here, it's not like Gotham, where it's a battle that cuts away the rot at the heart, but something much stranger that echoes rust over a golden facade that can’t be contained no matter how much polish one gives it.
Kal-El raises an eyebrow at his sister city's protectors, but there’s been information leaked to Bruce’s company through a whistleblower that needed his attention.
Bruce had promised Tim to take him out on patrol the day before, so he’s keeping that promise.
Now Batman and Robin are talking to Superman a building over from the daily planet, the two have to be incredibly delicate when breaking the news to him.
Kal-El just smiles as easy as he can and puts his hands on his hips. “Sure, lay it on me.” He holds out his hand.
“I don’t have it on a flashdrive.” Bruce has given the alien information like that in the past, but this has been too delicate.
“You’re going to tell me all about it? Like, actually physically talk to me about it?” Kal-El’s eyebrow ticks right up in a bemused expression.
Robin laughs, just a little high echoey giggle.
Batman’s already regretting everything about this, but he couldn’t just email this to Superman and let it be done with.
“Kal, this information is …. Not easy to hear.” Batman had a say in who came to his home, who he accepted with open arms, but this is a violation of the absolute highest order if it was true.
Kal sombers, his happy go lucky attitude is replaced by something much more reliable and real.
Bruce walks over, getting closer so his voice doesn’t have to tumble across the whole rooftop, motioning Robin to walk with him.
They went over what they needed to do, to say, to show Kal on the way over to get the full point across without triggering the alien into some kind of emotional meltdown. Tim has the files ready to be accessed on his gauntlet, ready to show. Bruce is going to do most of the heavy lifting here, because he’s closer to Kal in approximate age and has-
They get within four feet of the alien, something Bruce would normally never do. He motions for Tim to show what they got from the whistleblower.
A picture flickers to life on the holo-display on Tim’s glove.
It’s a boy, only two or three years older than Tim himself, closer in age to where Jason is- had been.
He’s clearly related to Superman, to Kal . With the same dark hair and the same eyes, the bridge of his nose and the curl of his mouth. There’s something else mixed in- in the shape of the face and the cheekbones that peak out of a thin visage. It’s just a face, colored with red overtones and young in a way Clark isn’t.
It’s the something else that raises huge alarms, that made Bruce leave the boardroom and almost run back to the manor, only barely managing to grab Tim on the way.
Kal goes completely still, eyes blown impossibly wide.
Another photo, this time the boy’s whole self, covered in something form fitting and white while he looks up like a sunflower to a beam of light that rains from above. The body type is wrong for Kal, to thin in the shoulders with longer fingers.
Another photo, this time of the boy from the back, no clothes on, showing a musculature that’s unlike any human on earth.
Another photo, from the front, from the chin to the knees-
“That’s enough .” Kal doesn’t clasp a hand over the hologram that Robin provides- he’s seen how Batman reacts when he views that his partners are in any kind of danger- but he does turn away.
Robin turns off the display, moving back behind his mentor with practiced ease.
“What the hell is that, Batman.” Kal’s still not moving but he does look back now. “Because if I didn’t know any better I would say that was me .”
“We have intel from a deserter at LexCorp that Luthor had gotten ahold of some of your DNA.” Bruce doesn’t know how to explain this without it … without it being terrible. “Through a fight, through his own strange methods, through kryptonite, who knows. He tried to clone it, but failed-”
Kal’s jaw tightens “Bizzaro.”
“This is a combination of your genes and a human donor, with some of J’onn’s DNA to hold it together.”
Bruce can trace the Martian's contribution with the barest hint of the way the clone’s eye is shaped. Just an impression, a barest hint that would never be connected if Bruce hadn’t seen the files for himself.
Kal bites in a terrible sound that emits from somewhere in his chest, a pitched keen that makes the hair on Bruce’s neck stand straight up. “Where is he?”
Bruce hesitates, a moment, trying to decipher the alien noise that can't reach very far at it’s pitch. Robin huddles closer to Batman, a knee jerk reaction to the sound that makes something in his chest ache.
“Where. Is. He.” Superman grounds out that noise hasn’t stopped even through the English words. “ Batman -”
“He’s currently hidden somewhere in Hawaii.” Bruce can feel that soft, pitched kneel in his sternum, it’s strange and makes his heart beat just a little faster.
Superman grabs ahold of Batman’s wrists.
“Take Robin as well.” Bruce has to speak quickly, forgoing his normal growl for pure speed. “I can’t leave Robin alone-”
Superman moves , a blur of blue-
Bruce finds himself holding onto Kal’s back, a position he’s been in before. Kal’s got one arm underneath Batman’s thighs and the other one holding Robin in the same way, an impression or a parody of a parent holding onto two overgrown children. Bruce immediately throws one hand over Robin to stabilize him, to protect his child- his Robin not his child- in some way and then his other hand goes around Kal’s neck. There’s no moving Superman’s steel, not for a normal human with no leverage, so both Batman and Robin are along for the ride of a man who’s controlled by his emotions.
“The main island has a LexCorp building!” Batman shouts over the wind, knowing that Superman can hear him anyway. “It’s forty levels underground and underneath white noise generators and lead! They wanted to keep this from you at all costs!”
Superman can’t go his top speed with a normal human on board, but he can push it pretty far with people as well trained as Batman is, however-
“If you make my Robin pass out, I’m going to gut you.” Batman growls out as not a threat but a warning .
Superman slows down by only the barest increment, but it’s enough for Robin’s eyes to focus back on the real world and not being close to blackout.
The trip’s long, shorter than it would be on a plane that’s for sure but in no way comfortable. Kal’s arms have a human softness when a brief touch occurs, but when pressed it’s more like trying to press down on hard sheet metal. The entire time it’s almost like holding onto a warm industrial barstool, Bruce can feel the bruises from last week smart in pain at the position.
Tim wiggles like nobody’s business, but he’s not able wiggle free thanks to Superman’s tight grip.
Thank god.
It takes nearly four hours.
Which is downright amazing, considering that if it was in the batplane it would have taken closer to eleven.
By the time Superman sets Batman and Robin down on the LexCorp building on the main island of Hawaii both normal humans are groaning in sore pain. At least the six hour time change makes it so it's close to the same time in Hawaii as the time that they left Metropolis. Tim’s rubbing his sore knees, wincing as the blood flows back into his feet, but Bruce wants to lay down for several hours for his body to readjust to living. Bruce doesn't lay down, he sends a request for the watchtower to send down a Javelin sooner rather than later and have it in the area for a retrieval after this mission.
There’s no time though, because they’ve got to get down the entire LexCorp building, then underneath the building into the secret levels.
The government already must know that they’re here- Superman was flying at a speed detectable by radar- if Luthor gets the call, and that man will get a call, then the entire project could be destroyed or moved elsewhere.
“I can’t hear anything.” Superman says, eyes narrowed as he looks downwards. “You’re right, there’s a white noise generator that’s buzzing down below- it’s taking out most of the noise of the whole block. There’s also a large shielding of lead that covers the whole building, I can’t see through.”
Bruce wasn’t surprised. His home had a white noise generator- but so did multiple other buildings in all major cities, but there was no lead anywhere because it’s a dead giveaway that somebody has something to hide.
(There was enough natural lead ore in the cave that X-Ray vision wouldn’t help anyway.)
“We have to act fast- Robin, get into the security systems. Superman and I will start heading down.”
Robin nods, bending his knees a few more times before he darts into the roof access door. Tim’s had enough training that it’ll be fine to leave him to the security and minor reinforcements.
Batman follows Robin into the stairwell- it takes no time for Batman to watch his charge dart into a vent ahead of them.
Superman’s out of his depth here, with some of what he normally uses to get around blocked. Batman grasps his hand and tugs him along down the stairs at a breakneck pace- there’s no easy way down for them- it’s all running.
Thank god buildings in this state have to be shorter here than the east coast. Twenty flights of stairs are nothing to sneeze at but it’s better than some of the stairwells Bruce has climbed in Gotham.
The com link clicks to life, a soft sound that let’s Bruce know that Robin’s gotten more than ten meters away from him and now coms will pick up even the sounds of their breathing through the line.
“Howdy B.” Tim says, soft and quiet. “I’ve located where the security room is and I’ll be down there within fifteen.”
Bruce hums a tone that gives confirmation.
Superman and Batman don’t stop running downwards, Superman cheating by floating at the brisk pace Bruce sets.
“Security is down.” Robin calls through the coms thirteen minutes later, just as Bruce is making it to the ground floor. “I’m replaying footage from yesterday and deleting the footage of us in the stairwell.”
“Acknowledged, Robin.” Bruce says soft and low.
“I’ve also found the controls for the white noise generator, tell Superman I’m turning it off now.”
“Tell him yourself once you do.”
A huff of air, a laugh coming from Robin. “Fine you loser .”
Superman makes a noise, a human one of surprise.
“Hi, Supes.” Robin drawls over the com, exactly in the same midwestern accent that Superman has. “I can direct you to the spot in the floor plans that don’t make sense- but I don’t see a ‘obvious evil lair’ door labeled anywhere.”
Superman cracks a smile- “Just tell me where to go, Robin.”
--
There’s no noise anymore.
The clone looks around, unsure of what's happening, why it’s happening, and why nobody else is responding to it.
The white coats don’t seem to mind, or even notice. They keep on with their day like nothing’s changed. One of them is the dark skinned one who’s nice and will smile if the clone catches their eye- the other one is the lazy one who works only when observed.
The clone stands up from his curled up sitting position. He paces his whole room, back and forth, agitated that there's no more sound. He can hear the room over, then the next room after that, even one after. He can hear the heartbeats and the breath and the blood in their veins.
“Why is it loud?” The clone asks, mostly to himself. He feels his own voice in the air like- like a hammer on the glass.
The dark skinned one looks up, “What is it sweetie?”
“Why is it loud? ” He asks again, nervous that they’re not answering him. Is this a punishment, and if it is then why is he being punished?
The nice one frowns, confused. She looks at her colleague for only a second before turning back and getting up to walk closer to the glass. “What are you hearing?”
It’s not what he’s hearing, it's what he’s not hearing anymore. “Can you not normally hear the noise? Where’s the noise? What have you done to it?”
“What noise are you talking about, project?” The nice one doesn’t get too close to the cell, staying at least a step away from the glass.
There’s footsteps everywhere, the sound of people and the stuttering wheezing death of the few other projects like him that made it to any kind of stable heart beat. Creaking of bones in bodies, the hum of the earth below him, the sway of the rooms and the pipes in the walls, the scratch of skin against skin as people moved, the riding of fabric, the noise of airwaves being distrubed. It’s all his to take in, to observe, to process.
There's something pressing at his skin, it’s everywhere, he can hear the way that the air rubs together on itself, the way that the vibrations echo along the solids and the strain of chairs as the white coats breathe three rooms over. The soft noise blanket is gone , and with it comes all this new information that the clone has never had to process before.
Why did they do this to him? Has he not done all they asked of him? Why did they take away the soft noise that underlined everything around him? What?
Who is that?
Footsteps, one, but two heartbeats. Slow and steady, both of them, but one’s the typical ba-dum, ba-dum of a human the other is something he’s never heard outside of himself .
Ba-tish-da, Ba-tish-da .
It’s louder than his own, larger, stronger . It’s not a clone, he’s the only one they’ve ever managed to get the heart right for he’s heard them talk about it.
Ba-tish-da. Ba-tish-da.
Even without being able to see anything outside of the red glow of his room, the clone can follow the sound of the heartbeat as it treks wide above him. It’s getting closer, he can tell. He can’t take his eyes off of where the heart thuds in a chest that matches his own.
“Honey, what do you hear?” The nice dark skinned one asks again. “Do you hear somebody talking to you?”
Ba-tish-da. Ba-tish-da.
It’s getting closer by the second, but it’s still not walking. There’s no sound of footsteps to accompany the soft sounds of silken fabric moving across something broad and the sound of the heart that matches his own. The only set of footsteps that he does hear are light, almost silent even to his ears, and carefully placed- they’re not carrying the heartbeat he could recognize anywhere.
“Hello?!” the clone calls up to the ceiling. He speaks on all of the frequencies he can press into his voice, something deep in his chest breaks open, desperate, long since beaten out of him by the lack of response to the calls. The thrill starts underneath his sternum, low in his lungs and coming out unbidden.
“Oh honey-” The nice white coat looks so sad, but she doesn’t step forward. “Honey stop that noise, it makes us sad.”
But the clone can’t stop- he can’t - because there’s finally, after all this time, an answer .
The answer is a deeper one, hummed at a different tone and rolling along the air like nothing the clone has ever heard before. It catches like a surfer through the waves and slices straight to something hidden in between his ribs.
The clone just tries to thrill a little louder. “Hello!?”
“Stop that right now, you know none of the scientists here like that.” The nice woman scolds, she’s right in front of them and has her arms crossed now, a frown on her face with a stern kind of expression. She’s frowning at him. “I know you’ve stopped those noises in the past and I’m going to need you to stop them again for me. Can you do that?”
“I can’t.” He can’t, he can’t not when there’s finally an answer right there and getting closer every time he gives the call. “I can’t stop it.”
There’s commotion above him- there’s the sound of things hitting against one another and the panicked sounds of people moving faster than they normally would. Screaming, calls of voices in distress, the heartbeat is coming quicker towards him now- a direct path.
The clone has to help- somehow- has to meet them halfway.
The clone walks from his position in the center, towards the wall where the scientist stands.
She backs away quickly- faster than normal with her heartbeat racing against her throat. The clone can see it, can hear it now.
The clone puts his hands on the wall, feeling the low level shock that always thrums through the glass. It hurts, it always does, but it doesn’t hurt enough to stop the clone- it hasn’t in a long time now.
The first hit does nothing but shock the clone, sparking up and off the glass with the impact. The second hit does nothing better- the third is when the first crack appears underneath the clone’s knuckles.
“It’s trying to escape!” The lazy one screams, loud and energetic for the first time the clone has ever seen him. “Stay back! Stay the fuck back!”
Both jump to the consoles, they work the controls over with a frantic energy, a hectic pace.
The shock gets stronger- on the fourth hit it hurts all the way up to the clone’s shoulder. The fifth hit shocks the clone so bad he cries out and steps back, jerked by the pain and the fury.
He can see the sparks, the small pops and sparkles that set fire in the glass in ways he hasn’t seen since the first time he woke up in here. He can hear the hum of the electricity, loud and vibrant, sparking and spitting.
It covers up the sound of the answer .
“No!” the clone screams, hidden underneath the layers of noise again. “No! Turn it off! Turn it off, you're not letting him answer anymore!”
“Calm down honey! Calm down!”
That’s when the ceilings cracks open, and it all goes to hell from there.
--
Clark hears him before he sees him, the white noise machine gets turned off and Clark might not be able to see through lead but there’s nothing stopping him from hearing around it. A buzz of electricity, the sound of people milling about, talking, typing, breathing, living .
The soft humming buzz leads to a heartbeat underneath layers and layers of rock.
Clark’s learned to tune out his own heartbeat over the years, it’s always been just a little off compared to his mothers, his fathers, the people at school and work. His own heartbeat was always underlying his existence, as easy as ever, but now there’s the same ba-tish-ba that is just a little out of time with his own.
“Stay hidden .” Batman hisses from behind him. “It’s easier to get out if you stay hidden .”
There’s a fury that erupts within him, at the proof that sits right under them. Luthor has done something unexceptable, something that violates every kind of law in existence. There’s no reason in the universe to explain why Luthor thought this was any kind of okay to do. This violation goes beyond the normal beatdowns, this is a whole sentient life that’s sitting down in the basement of a lab somewhere that's being manipulated, that comes from Kal’s own genetic line.
Distantly, Clark can hear Batman say “Damn it, Kal-el!”
But underneath the fury there’s an instinct that gets triggered at the soft sound that comes from underneath the floor.
Clark has never cared about the sounds of baby crying- no more than what is a learned response over the many years of living on earth. Cark always assumed it was because he heard the undertones of the shrill cries, the sound of the vibration that echoed up from human vocal cords has never done anything to Clarks base emotions. There’s only certain kinds of sounds that automatically catch his attention and most of them exist outside of the realm of human hearing.
The sound that now comes up from the floor is similar to the sound that’s Clark built into Jimmy’s watch- pitched and high that percies through the ears and hits a chord deep inside of his chest. There’s a rumble that Clark emits when the beacon watch gets activated, but normally when the watch gets activated it is just a soft sound just fluctuating at the bottom of the human hearing range that gets smushed immediately, this rumble is a low rolling one that builds on itself.
Ma always did say that when Clark was a baby he made the strangest little noises, liked being held by his Pa when Pa would sing along to old country songs.
Clark’s always sort of liked the old low songs, and now he might have a reason why.
The fortress has plenty of files on Krytponian biology and children, but beyond looking at if human and kryptonian biology is compatible (it’s not- well it's not naturally at least) Clark’s never spent time looking that deep into it.
Clark’s burrowing through the floor to get to that noise, tearing apart pipes and concrete and computers to get through to where the call is coming from.
The final wall is like wet cardboard bursting through, the soft hum of a live wire has snapped into something that’s more like an active electric relay plant. There’s enough power here to hurt even him .
The room is full of red sunlight, when the dust finally clears. Two scientists and a cage that’s way too small, there’s nothing out of the ordinary about the two scientists or the paneling on walls. The control panels seem to have all kinds of complicated buttons and keys that would take Batman a few seconds to figure out but Superman had a much faster solution.
There’s a teen behind the glass- wearing white and holding onto his hand close to his chest. Clark smells the faint hint of what he would once assume was his own blood, now he sees the way the knuckles on the boy’s injured hand are split and cracked open. Long hair, a gaunt face full of open wonder and the sound of that pitched whine. A faint crack has already laid the groundwork for Superman to follow-
Clark cracks open the boy’s cage with a single hit.
Faster than humans can comprehend the teenager’s bursting out of the glass room, he’s fast and shaky on his feet, clearly not used to moving around so much, while the sound that comes from the teen’s chest warbles three little notes that have Clark rush forward and scoop the teenage close to his chest.
The teenager goes stock still at the touch, but takes only a second to lean into it fully and wholly.
This isn’t like holding onto cardboard, there’s clearly some of that easy give that Clark feels when he holds onto his Ma and Pa, but there’s a solid kind of hold that displays itself in almost the same way as hugging Kara feels like. It’s easy to hold onto and offer comfort, the teenager clearly hasn’t had any lessons in controlling that strength he has locked in his frame because the hug would have crushed a normal human.
“Superman!” Batman’s voice comes from several floors above- strained and in need of assistance.
“We’re going up kid- hold on tight.” Superman tells him.
“Don’t have to tell me twice.” The teeanger grips a little tighter, Clark can feel his ribs constrict. It’s a little surprising that the clone can speak so well, considering the whole Bizzaro fiasco and the fact he’s probably never been out of this lab.
Superman tears right back out of where he’s tunneled down- using the holes he’s previously made to get right back up to where Batman is trying his best to dodge the bullets of the security team.
“Kal-El! We’ve got Flash on his way right now with a Javelin.” Batman curls behind the bullet blocking body of Superman, his cape flared and a teenager in his arms. Clark can smell the sharp tang of iron and wet heat that means injury, some of it the security officers - Batman doesn’t pull punches for anybody which means batman’s gauntlets always smell like iron and cleaning detergent, along with anybody Batman puts down for the count- but some of it’s the familiar scent of Batman’s own blood.
Clark shifts the teenager out of the way a bit before he opens up a hand for Batman.
The teen doesn’t want to move, but Clark’s still significantly stronger than him and maneuvers him with only minimal effort. Batman reaches out and takes the offered assistance, holding onto Superman’s arm.
It takes no time at all to go back the way they came, up the fight out’s normally easier anyway- the package is safe and secure and they’re going to keep it like that. There’s no computers they need to mess with and Luthor and his supply of kryptonite is all the way across the globe, there’s no bombs to disarm or any other delay to work around- it’s a in and out mission through and through.
Batman drops his hold when they get to the stairs, preferring to get around under his own power and not have his shoulder torn out of socket. The clone also wiggles out, so Clark lets the kid drop just a little bit.
He drops to the ground- no hovering or flying to Clarks surprise- and begins to run right behind Batman.
Robin’s already waiting for them on the roof, he’s fending off any security who wants to try and prevent the Javelin from landing.
Batman jumps right into the fray, seamlessly integrating into Robin’s choreography.
Superman jumps forward to help, to either block bullets or play damage control.
The clone got to the roof with them, but when he emerges into the moonlight all he does is look straight up at the moon and stutters to a halt.
The Javelin lands, the Flash isn’t the best pilot of these things but he was the only one available to give them a lift today so they’re just going to have to put up with the shaky landing before Batman can rush in there and take over the controls.
Once the docking doors are open Robin immediately jumps up into it the cargo bay, the ramp hasn’t even fully extended yet but the bo-staff comes in handy when used by a person who’s an expert in how it works.
Batman doesn’t need the ramp either, he’s a master of movement and follows his Robin like a shadow. “Swap with me!” He calls to the Flash, who’s already moving out of the driver's seat to allow a more experienced flier to maneuver the plane.
Superman notices that his clone is frozen in his spot, so Clark darts back to grab him- scooping the kid up and darting into the Javelin.
The clone lets out another little warble of a thrill, that same one deep from his chest. Superman answers with a much deeper one, the clone relaxes into his genetic donor's hold and both of them go up into the safety of the plane.
Batman takes off without bothering to close the cargo doors, with a glance Superman can see that Robin is strapped in while Flash is only half in costume holding onto the cargo netting.
The cargo doors close while they’re in the air, getting further and further away from the clusterfuck they left behind with every second.
--
There’s so much to see, overlooking everything from up here, and the clone can’t keep his eyes off the world below.
There’s so many sounds here, even though they tell him that it’s rather late and this ‘watchtower’ place is normally just absolutely filled to the brim with people, right now there’s a skeleton crew just keeping it floating peacefully above the entire rest of the planet.
The clone doesn’t touch the glass, he’s been taught better than that, but he was directed into a room with a wall of glass pointed to the globe and more of that pale bluish light that seems to fill up the entire space with it’s lovely warm glow. It’s blessed , the amount of light that the clone is being exposed to, if this is how normal people got to live then the clone wants to live among them all and never again go below ground. Of course if this is just something that people exposed to guests too, or if this isn’t normal at all then the clone is going to have to figure out how to lay himself here for the rest of his probably short life.
Currently there’s only one other person in the room, the boy the other’s had called ‘ Robin ’. A bird’s name, unisex for humans, fallen out of style in the 1980’s in America.
This particular Robin seems short, small, a boy, black hair like the clones own but his skin seemed weird, covered in dots and nothing like the clone has encountered before.
They haven’t really … spoken yet.
The clone and Robin, a few preliminary words in the jet but other than a stark order to ‘stay here’ by the man in the black cape to both of them no words had been exchanged since the adults had rolled into another room and the conversation started up.
The clone could hear talking, muffled words, but there was that same underlying noise here like there was back home- that easy repetitive flickering oscillation that makes it easy to relax and hard to overhear specific words or heartbeats or the sound of the blood in Robin’s veins while the other boy works with his hands mindlessly on something in front of him.
It’s also hard to hear the answer to his calls when he starts to rumble out little panic noises, but he’s only started that up once and stopped when he got that low tumbling gravel roll back at him. He’s been very good, and hasn't made much noise at all. The scientists told him his reflexive sounds make people uncomfortable, that he should stop making them, that he needs to be quiet . He’s been very quiet since he came, he’s being so good, when they give him back he’s going to get all kinds of sunlight as a reward.
All kinds of sunlight, just like he’s getting now where he looks down onto the whole wide planet below him.
--
This kid was a freakazoid.
Robin had been asked by Batman to keep an eye on things and to stay out of the way while the rest of the big league talked about what exactly to do in this situation.
Robin had perched up and got ready to be talked to, to listen to excited babble or even rambling happy stories just like Superman would do.
The kid just kept his hands perfectly at his sides and looked through the windows. He hasn’t moved in the slightest, just a hitching almost real kind of breathing that looked more like a porcelain automaton than anything else. He looks older than Robin, but according to the file’s he’s about two, aged up artificially, worryingly translucent, with viens a color just a little off from humans trailing up from his fingers and across the back of his palms, in his neck, the little bit of skin revealed looked computer generated and not really human .
Uncanny.
Superman sometimes moved in a way that made Robin jump, everybody’s seen the youtube videos that have collected the various bits of shaky camera footage of Superman moving or acting or saying things that aren’t quite lined up to the rest of humanity. #Alien, #NotHuman, #ETQuirks. All kinds of people who took screen grabs from interviews and fawned over the minute almost unnoticeable differences between Superman and the human race.
None of those people have ever seen Superman after a fight, collapsed onto a chair somewhere and wearing soft sweatpants holding a piece of gauze to a scrape and trying not to fall apart as one of his friends gets stitched up from the edge of death in medbay. When not thinking about it, Robin has seen Uncle Kal fall apart and move like no horror movie could ever capture, but it’s always offset by blinding smiles and apple pie and careful control.
This … person had none of that.
None of that training, that experience, that life.
Just a little too pale, a little too still, and a little too alien.
The Javelin ride was mostly Batman yelling at Superman about being discrete, Flash asking what the fuck was going on, and Superman yelling back that he was gonna punch Lex in the goddamn face, now they were stuck here and not doing much, so Robin decides that he’s gonna make the weird clone thing a little less strange.
Now they’ve been sitting in silence while Tim works on cleaning the lenses of some high-end cameras that are used mostly for surveillance (the Question has a collection of cameras, but takes horrible care of them, having something easy and mindless to do while on the watchtower while Batman is on a warpath is satisfying).
“What’s your name?” Robin decides on, because when you name something it grows on you.
The clone doesn’t startle, just twists around a little strangely to look at Robin. “What?”
So much for super hearing, christ . “Your name?”
“I don’t have one.” The clone turns back to looking at the world below. “Mostly they referred to me as a project, or a clone.”
Christ . This is the saddest shit. Good god.
“Do … Do you want one?” Robin’s not sure how to proceed in this situation, it’s like talking to a weird brick wall that you were pretty sure had feelings of some kind but you also weren’t sure how to go about navigating those feelings.
The clone turns its eyes on Robin, a jerk of his whole upper torso to turn enough to see Robin fully instead of how everyone else would just cut their eyes askance and give Robin a side eye.
A smile, hesitant, hopeful, creaking across the clone’s face, a smile that’s awkward and unnerving and more of a barring of teeth than an actual smile. It’s like a ray of sunshine after a hurricane, a door to the storm shelter opening safe after a tornado, a soot covered fireman saving a family from the burning building.
A thing they pulled from somewhere equable to hell, in the facsimile shape of a person, backed by the nothingness of space and haloed by a sun over the edge of the world.
Long hair tangled, dirty from dust sticking to it’s too oily strands, eyes too unsure and wide. White uniform streamlined in a way that only can be described as something out of a medical sci-fi movie, complete with the tag that dangles from his ear like an animal for slaughter. The clone looks heartbreakingly happy here, delighted in something as simple as a name.
Before Tim even thinks about it, he’s holding one of Question's really nice cameras, lines up the shot through a newly cleaned lense, and takes a picture.
--
Luthor sues the Justice League.
He’s on a podium, leaning into a microphone at a press conference smiling wide and amicable while laying out exactly what had occurred- and why he’s both in the right to sue the Justice League for ‘Scientific Misconduct’ and ‘Theft’ .
“-We were using a highly anticipated brand new method of cloning to create healthy genetic matches for people on the organ donor list.” Luthor’s tie is a brilliant green today, against his black suit it stands out on camera for the whole nation to see. “We were going to revolutionize the field of medicine, allow sick people a second chance at life, but we’ve been set back years by both corporate espionage and the merry band of vigilantes who tore through my facility with little abandon.”
“We need to tell these so-called ‘ superheros ’ that they have no right to barge into our personal and private property, to moderate our ideas and free thinking like the very thing that the American Nation has always fought against. I was trying to do something wholly good for people who needed it the most, and the alien being who nobody can beat or contain came into my facility, took my research and destroyed my files, preventing me from continuing my research as planned.”
“We’ve already established in a previous legal case- such as the Hero's Foundation vs. Wayne - that as vigilantes the men in tights have no rights to their image, name, and likeness. That case was established as meaning that these beings, beings that we as normal people have no real chance against, can be used as objects in the public trust, a copyright free for all. When I was using this precedent to the fullest extent I could, the Justice League decided on their own violation to uphold their own version of the law.”
“What is this then? Where is the line?”
Luthor raises his arms, gesturing to the entirety of the room at large, to the nation watching, to the world that was watching.
“Do I have to live in fear of the next time I cross some arbitrary line? Do I have to run by every \single idea I- or anyone on my team- thinks of the team that lords over us in the sky just in case? There’s nothing I want more than to help people, so how can I possibly do that when I don’t know when anything I look into might trigger the destructive rage of an alien who nobody on earth can barter with?”
“I ask you, humans, people, beings whom I share my life with, what is the line? ”
The reporters take pictures, surge to ask follow up questions, and the world over considers these words.
--
Clark doesn’t know what to do with the boy.
He doesn’t have enough to support both of them, he’s sitting well enough on his own but adding a child into the mix with strange needs and no control means money that he simply doesn't have. He doesn’t have the time either- between his job and his hero work there’s very little time for himself , let alone a kid who needs a little more care than a normal child.
The kid doesn’t seem to want him either, if that’s any consolation. They don’t know what to do with one another, but everyone else seems to think that they just need to be best friends immediately or something, come out of here with the kind of relationship that Batman holds with his Robins.
Batman is a father, though, he loves being a father, loves having kids, loves being paternal even though he’ll never say it. Batman wanted kids since he was a kid and collecting up teenagers like pokemon can’t put much financial strain on a guy who’s wrecked more plans than Clark has had vehicles. Why can’t Batman take the boy, Clark wants to ask the League at large, but as much as Batman keeps shooting glances over at the unclaimed teen with itchy fingers Diana, Barry, and J’onn seem to think that Clark should be the one to take this boy under his wing and be a dad!
Arthur seems uncensored either way, while Hal hasn’t commented on anything.
They’ve been talking about this problem for almost a week now, the whole world below them is kicking up a fuss demanding the League to give Luthor back his ‘experiment’ while the League can’t really reveal that Luthor made a weird copy of Superman and himself without stripping away any chance that the boy has at being a normal teenager .
Personally, Clark thinks the kid is so beyond normal that it’s not worth trying to salvage.
Batman is very much on the side of trying to keep the kid out of the limelight, and seems to be rather desperate to keep the clone as far away from prying camera’s as possible.
It’s a fight, like it always is between them.
At least Robin is having a good time, him and the clone seem to have made fast friends up here.
Clark has been trying to avoid the boy, and the boy seems not to care whether or not he’s within visible range of his genetic donor.
It’s not because of any hatred of the boy, or despises the clone’s percentage of Luthor’s genes, there’s nothing against the kid.
It’s so that Clark won’t latch onto him without thinking this through and being ready to fully support and take care of a kid that he didn’t have any say in or know about.
Kryptonians have … bonds , is the closest collective word in english. There’s a connection thrumming through blood that solidifies over the course of child’s development and birth into a family bond between whoever was involved in making the child and the child itself. It’s a slow building unbreakable core concept that once it takes hold means that Clark won’t be able to give up the kid to somebody more suited to taking care of him, more interested in raising him, somebody who can give this kid a better life.
Clark latched onto his parents as a kid, as children do, and he feels their warm contentment in the curve of his skull. Us-te , the bond between child and parent. There’s a reason why he’s able to call his Ma or Pa when they're feeling down with unerring accuracy, it’s because he knows at some basic passive level when they're feeling particularly strong emotions. He has to visit them at least once a month or he’ll get upset and nervous, unsettled. Krypton had huge family clusters, multiple people all living and breathing and settled into the same space with little problem. Clark knows it’s probably not healthy to have as little bonds as he does but he’s talked with Kara about it and she says that it’s okay to only have so little- Kara and Clark send one another pings of warm affection every few days just to reassure one another.
But Kara and Clark aren’t parent and child- their bond’s are purely functional as cousins. They’ve talked about it, they meet up to get lunch every now and again, and they work as perfectly fine extended family members. Us-cheh , the bond between them, a bond between close family members on the same level, cousins, siblings, more distant but still called upon.
Clark can feel the want of connection that thums through his heart every time the kid looks over at Clark when they pass by one another. Us-kah , the bond from a parent to a child, careful and overpowering, a need to protect and keep safe, a drive to provide for and cherish.
(Just like the dusty deep-love-bond pings a little question every time Clark and Batman spend quiet time together, leaning on one another after a hard battle and saving the world. Us-ni , the word for a bond between lovers, a bond that Clark is refusing to inflict on anybody around him.)
Clark does acknowledge that he’s got to be the one to bring the poor clone to the fortress and teach the boy about … well… everything about himself. He’s not a full Kyrptonian, so there’s bound to be some differences that hopefully can be ironed out and are not a danger to the boy’s long term health, but from what files where given over with the corporate whistleblower and the ones pulled form Luthor’s files before Robin had data-nuked the entire facility, the clone is more like Clark than he is like Luthor.
Which brings them to where they are now.
Clark had agreed to bring the boy to the fortress but only with J’onn there for his minor contribution to the boy and Batman as a buffer (and as a person who might know what he’s doing in regards to parenting teenagers, Clark is so out of his depth ).
Clark’s pulled up every file he could over the past few days about family and teenage care, but those files are few and far between, laden down with scientific inquiry and strange phenomenon outside the norm.
There is a whole subsection dedicated to cloning and genetic reconfiguring, but that’s been labeled as dangerous, do not try, will disintegrate over time, and abomination .
This, the word for atrocity, monster, disgusting, is written over the translation for clone .
Kon .
Clone, horror, broken one, exact match, Kon .
Robin had asked for the word for clone during that initial meeting at the watchtower, where Clark wasn’t nearby and so he had looked at the other authority on Kryptonian culture, and without thinking Kara had given it to him.
So now, a week after Robin and the clone had made friends with one another, Clark doesn't have the heart to tell poor Kon that his name doesn’t mean anything nice.
Kal-El, Batman, Robin, J’onn and Kon are all in the fortress now, with the two boys off in the sunroom while Batman and Kal work through the files on childcare and teenagers. Kon only has a few articles of clothing, mostly borrowed from Batman or Clark himself, but he likes wearing the hand-me-down shirts. If Clark wanted to bother, he could pull up footage and check on the two teens, but he’s trying to distance himself so that the us-kah doesn’t solidify.
Batman flicks to a new file, thick gloves not at all clumsy on crystals.
Clark looks over, it’s a file about the separation of children and parents with and without a bond.
Batman’s got his cowl off- just a domino and his under armor for comfort during this long weekend at Kal’s fortress- so Clark can see the confusion flash across his brows before being smoothed out.
Clark goes back to looking over his own files- about how teens needed both an excess of sleep and a large social group to function optimally during the day.
“These would be a lot more useful if we knew how both the yellow sun and the human genes affected him.” B says, low and almost to himself. “Does he form these same links as you do? Is he too human? Does having other, martian, DNA make him form the … us-te differently than you or Kara would?”
J’onn’s mostly been reading the files from Luthor’s facility. “There’s no significant notes on his mental ability.” J’onn moves, tapping a few keys on Batman’s laptop that sits in his lap. “Cadmus labs mostly focused on trying to keep him stable; it seems like they cared not for his ability to think or form mental links.”
Kal can’t even imagine. It’s his childhood nightmare come to life. “ Rao .” He breathes, a catch in his breath and a stutter over his emotions. That calming sound comes from deep in his chest, a noise that’s an adult soothing a child, like cooing at a baby or sushing a toddler.
The response comes immediately, a much higher pitched call at a much higher decibel down past the winding hallways. Kon’s safe and alert.
It makes Batman flinch away.
Over the course of the week Clark has noticed that everytime he chimes in that particular infrasonic rumble it makes normal humans uneasy, unsure, move away from both Kon and Clark.
It’s why the boy’s previous caretakers told him to not make that particular call, it made them scared .
Batman recovers quickly from the quick shock of ice down his spine that comes with the sound. “Can we test Kon’s ability to form mental links through something called-” Batman flicks his eyes to look at the document on his side of the screen, rechecking his pronunciation “- us-ni ?”
Breath stuttering, Clark jerks in surprise. “ No. ”
“Why not? Robin and Kon seem close enough-”
“ Nope! ” Clark can’t listen to that, oh god. The two of them are children . “They’re teenagers!”
Now that flash of confusion from before comes in full force. “What? Don’t you have this link with somebody? A ‘ bond - allies - trust - together - endless ’?”
Clark sags, grabbing ahold of the console and leaning heavily into it. Translation error, maybe? “That’s- it’s a little more than allies , it’s more like …”
Batman cocks an eyebrow. “Isn’t it something like you have with the Justice League?”
Shaking his head, Clark doesn’t even know how to begin to unravel this misunderstanding. “It’s like- J’onn help me out here.”
The martian perks up, and like he always does press a gentle question of permission on both Kal and B’s minds.
Kal accepts, and floods the link with the exact connotation of the us-ni bond. Deep, unending, sexual love, a full devotion and binding bond that doesn’t end except in death. Batman’s mind blinks, like a rubber band, before mortification floods the mental connection between them facilitated by J’onn.
J’onn breaks the overt link, leaving Kal with just his three baseline ones at the very back of his awareness.
“ Jesus .” B rubs at his eyes. “You could have just told me that I was making the wrong assumption there. Now I have to live with the knowledge that I accidentally proposed a forced marriage between our kids.”
--
Shit .
Bruce controls his base flinch when Kon begins up that unsettling rumble-cry-whine.
It’s late, late enough that J’onn has gone back to America and took Robin with him so both of them could get back to work and school, respectively. Officially, Bruce had taken a ‘impromptu vacation’ from Gotham, to be back at an indeterminate date. Nightwing has agreed to take over for a little bit, now with the help of Robin.
Kal had run off to help with some disaster in Europe, a massive flood if the news feed was correct, so the only two people here where Bruce (doing work and translating any kind of resource from the fortress) and Kon (who was working on controlling his strength and flight- the only two abilities the boy has shown to have had so far).
Kon’s a fan of laying in the sunroom, either basking in the warm water pool by the tropical plants of Krypton or floating right above it. The sunlight here in the arctic hasn’t faded, it’s the wrong time of year for that, and Kon hasn’t come out of the brilliant blinding light more than twice.
Bruce had moved his laptop to the sunroom just to keep a closer eye on Kon while Kal was out.
Bruce isn’t the one with super hearing or the ability to smell when the kid’s in distress or whatever it is that Kal does. Bruce isn’t the one with a helpful emotional link between him and his sons, if he was then his life would have gone so much differently.
Jason would probably be alive-
Not going down that path! Bruce does not go down that path. He is a simple human with simple human limitations and there is no way to make sure that he always knows that his children- no, his Robins are still alive and breathing and how they’re feeling that day.
Kon’s still making that soft rumble sound, pitched in such a way it feels like fingernails down chalkboards, but somehow soft ? It’s like the scrape of a fork against a plate, something about it makes a shiver go right down Bruce’s back.
“Kon?” Bruce asks, closing his laptop and putting it aside to focus totally on the kid in front of him.
Kon snaps too, the noise stops- Bruce has noticed that Kon is a lot better at stopping noise and movement than Kal is- and Bruce involuntarily relaxes.
“What’s wrong?” Bruce asks, not standing, just sitting on a comfortable lounge chair and keeping his attention fully on the boy in front of him. “Is Kal coming back?”
Kon unfurls from where he’s been hovering above the warm water pool, turning his gaze onto Bruce. “Sorry.” Kon says, soft, “I’ll try to be quiet.”
Bruce’s heart breaks a little more, damn Luthor to hell. No children should have to go through events that break them down into nothing, no child in the world should have to pick themselves up from the very bottom and claw themselves back into a semblance of a person.
“You don’t have to be.” Bruce decides on saying, words are his most hated enemy here, but he’s trying . “If you tell me what’s wrong I might be able to fix it.”
Both of them are … not ever going to be the best at human interaction and communication. Bruce has a whole host of problems wrong with him, so many problems that go a whole hell of a lot deeper than just him beating the shit out of muggers in the back alleys of his home town. Kon’s chronologically a toddler, physically a teenager, but mentally all over the place, he’s interacted with maybe seven people outside of his original cage and says things that Robin has reported back to the League as being ‘horrifically depressing’.
But Kon’s trying his best to sort everything out, just like Bruce is trying to be a little more open with people.
“I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”
Kon’s hovering a foot above the pool, hair floating up around him with weightlessness, eyes not meeting Bruce’s. “I’m getting enough sun, I’m not in my room, You aren’t asking me to undress and you don’t want pictures or my blood or samples. I’m- I’m just sitting here talking with Robin and you and Kal and J’onn day in and day out so nothing should be wrong with me but-”
Bruce opens his arms, but Kon doesn’t come closer.
“I’m okay! I should be fine.” that unsettling rumble whine starts up again, the sharp terror accompanies it like a shotgun cocking, “I haven’t been hurt, why am I not-”
“Kon.” Bruce says, gesturing with his arms again.
The rumble cuts off- sharp and choked down, suppressed and smothered and desperate not to be reprimanded. Kon warily looks up at Bruce’s arms, but still doesn’t move.
“Kon, come here?”
The boy floats over, his hair moves in ways Superman and Kara’s doesn’t. It’s more like the boy is moving through water instead of air, while Kal’s and Kara’s hair seems to be affected by gravity at all times. Is he floating the same way as either of them?
Kon gets within two or three feet, Bruce closes the difference,
Gentle as possible, Bruce puts his hands onto Kon’s shoulder and pulls the boy close. Gentle, so very gentle.
Kon goes very still, he’s been working on not breaking things he touches, but accepts the hug by leaning as far as Bruce allowed him too.
Bruce was stronger than the average bear, he’s also more used to Kal’s hugs than most of the rest of the population of the entire world. He so very softly pulls Kon into his embrace, and offers the most basic form of comfort he can. Kryptonians are a little cooler than humans naturally are, but clearly that didn’t matter to Kon or Kal or Kara, who all seem to melt into any embrace given to them.
Sure enough, Kon stops hovering, falling into Bruce’s chest and curling in on the warmth and comfort offered freely.
--
There’s a problem here, however.
Clark Kent was trying his best to do what he had thought was the best.
Bruce Wayne was trying his best to do what he had thought was the best.
Kon was simply working with his own very limited view of the world, his own instincts and emotions and desperate attempts to feel both safe and secure.
Beforehand, he had never imprinted onto the scientists around him because while he had always liked listening to them, he also knew that he wasn’t on the same level, that none of those scientists had cared . So now Kon sits, wrapped in the warmth of B on a sunny arctic day in a room that was out of a tropical island, he calms down, the beat of his heart loud in his own ears.
Ba-tish-da. Ba-tish-da.
Us-te .
It’s a bond from the child onto it’s parent, unable to be taken back and unable to be broken. There’s a faint connection that has strengthened Kryptonian families for generations and protected the people who it holds.
Kon’s mind works a little strangely, as it always will. A Kryptonian’s psychic centers are normally small, just enough to latch onto one another and share faint whispers of emotions.
Kon’s own brain is a hash between multiple people and races- a pure half and half human/kryptonian split should have had a weakened psychic center, but not only was Kon’s human DNA altered to be ‘more Kryptonian’ in nature, boosting his psychic center, but he also had a good amount of DNA from a species that was considered one of the most psychic in the universe.
Which means that he forms mental attachments rather easily, with all the ferocity of a fish hook in soft skin, and those mental attachments are a tad stronger than a normal Kryptonians would be.
Which means that when Kon finally feels comforted, safe, he latches onto that feeling- that person- with all his might.
Kon, a clone, not a person, not an individual, not a real boy, latches onto the mind of Bruce Wayne with a desperate grab at comfort and safety.
Bruce Wayne’s mind, a normal human mind, offers no resistance.