Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

“Who, Kara?” Clark asked his cousin as as he adjusted her feet in the sun chair as Gary had done for him so many times before. “What do you mean? What guy?” 

‘Kal, there's a guy out there. I forgot. I need help bringing him in. I think he’s dying. I feel like shit, and he’s so fucking heavy. Why is he so heavy?’

Any judgement he’d felt towards Kara for flying under the influence was gone now, for the time being. She’d seemed so normal just a minute ago, or at least Kara normal, still half-drunk and coping with life in her own way, but up close, he’d never seen her this disoriented before. At least she was asking for help. She never asked for his help. 

Kara shook her head and made a clumsy attempt to sit up. The parts of her face that weren’t splotched scarlet from flying in the snow had a sickly grayish sheen, and there was still enough alcohol on her breath to sterilize a wound. Around them, the robots were readying the magnifier. Whatever Kara had gotten into, a healthy dose of yellow sunshine would fix her up, but Clark needed her to talk. What guy? 

 “I dropped him, ‘cause you moved the fucking door...,” Kara said again. “Outside. He lookslike you, if youwere like... undercooked...”

There were at least a hundred thoughts swirling around Clark’s brain at any given time— Work deadlines. Lois. Rent payments. Lois. Climate change. Jarhanpur. Lois. Did I leave the oven on? Lois, Lois, Lois— But Kara’s words brought every last one to a screeching halt. 

“What?” Kara asked, “D’you know him?”

Clark took Kara’s hands. They were so much smaller than his, simultaneously older and younger. These hands had him when he was a baby, but they’d also hammered lead plates into the ground of Argo City to keep the radiation from seeping in. When the radiation had gotten through anyway, those hands had nursed the sick, and buried the dead.

“I’ll handle it,” he told her. He couldn’t stop himself from brushing a few strands of greasy blonde hair behind her ear. “You just focus on feeling better, okay?”

Kara rolled her hazy green eyes at him. “Okay, dad,” she huffed. Her tongue darted out to wet her chapped lips. “I think–I think I dropped him somewhere to the southwest.” 

So, Clark headed southwest.

Outside, fresh snow was falling. It blurred the landscape as he flew, sticking to his hair, his eyebrows and eyelashes. He was still processing the whole “Lex Luthor stole my DNA, cloned me, and then trained my clone to kill me” thing. He was also still processing the whole “my parents actually sent me here to rule without mercy and create a harem of wives” thing too, but that wasn’t the most pressing issue right now. Somehow, Kara had found the clone.

The last time Clark had seen the guy, they hadn’t exactly gotten along, but he’d have to hope that was circumstantial. Beyond the horror of what Luther had done with his scrounged genetic material, all Clark had felt as he and the clone had fought in the widening rift below Metropolis was sadness. Fury towards Lex, pity for the clone. He’d been able to tell in the guy’s face that he hadn’t known any better. He’d been doing the only thing he knew how. And now he was back, evidently spat from the black hole out near Kara’s party planet, and he was dying.

Even with the falling snow, it wasn’t hard to spot the figure laying tiny as an ant on the frozen ground far below him. Clark touched down a few yards off and approached on foot. The clone lay still on his side in the snow, wet hair stuck to his face and in his open mouth. Kara had been right; He looked deeply wrong. Not inherently– whatever Luthor had done to the poor guy’s test tube was beside the point– but grayish, swollen, and inert like something was in the process of destroying him from the inside out. Was this what traveling through a black hole did to their physiology? That didn’t make sense. 

As soon as he was within an arms-length, he could feel it, and figured he should have known. Kryptonite. It was practically leaking from his pores. The fact that Kara had managed to fly him here like this was incredible. 

Through the torn neckline of the clone’s suit, he could see poison-black veins spreading from a dark spot just under the skin. Leave it to Lex Luthor to have had a contingency plan, Clark thought. He’d built in some kind of kill-switch in case things didn’t go his way, an implant remotely degraded with the tap of a button. And holy cow, the guy was loaded. 

Just touching him made Clark’s hands ache, but he got the two of them back to the fortress without dropping him or being sick in the snow. The robots came running to meet them at the door, followed behind by Kara, who was still unsteady but already looking better. 

“Luthor cloned me with a piece of my hair,” he explained quickly to Kara as the robots gathered around the clone and lifted him off the frozen floor, “This is the guy. He was pretty intent on killing me, but that was before Luthor was arrested. If he doesn’t die, I think we can bring him around.”  

“Superman, would you like us to use the magnifier?” Gary asked, standing by. 

Clark considered it. Juicing the clone up with a big dose of yellow sun might give him the power to destroy the entire fortress, if not Kara and Clark. On the other hand, the guy’s eyes were rolled back in his head and he was drooling. It was hard to look at. Clark had never had Kryptonite poisoning that severe, and he could only imagine how awful it must feel. 

“…No,” Clark decided, “But he has some kind of implant on the back of his neck. I need you to remove it as quickly as you can, then have it destroyed. Maybe buried. It’s what’s killing him, and I can’t touch it.” 

The robots scuttled away, and Clark turned to look down at Kara, who had her hands on her hips. “Did you just find him floating out there, or...?” He asked.

She rubbed her eyes. “Pretty much... What the hell...?” 

“I had to knock him into a black hole,” Clark admitted. He wasn’t proud of that, but there hadn’t been any other options.  “You should go lay down. I can take it from here.” 

Once the implant had been removed— it was a half-dissolved capsule the size and shape of one of Lois’s daily multivitamins— and safely disposed of, Clark took up watch by the exam table the robots had moved up from the lab, where the clone lay on his back with his eyes closed, his lopsided mouth still partially open. The suit had been cut off of him, and he was wearing a black full-body undergarment underneath. It looked like pajamas, Clark thought, pretty comfortable. It probably was what he slept in, if they ever took the suit off.

There was plenty of yellow sunlight in here even without using the magnifier, and he expected the clone to come around sooner than later. Then the real adventure would start.

Growing up, he’d always wanted a brother. Ma and Pa had done more than their fair share keeping him happy, and he’d had his friends, but loneliness was inevitable when you’d been the only one on the ship that had crash landed in a field outside of Smallville, and besides. The bonds other kids had with their siblings were so special. He loved Kara, but it was different. They both saw children when they looked at each other, and they rarely just hung out like guys and threw a ball around. 

The clone opened his eyes, looked straight at Clark, and screamed. Then he launched himself from the chair, tripped over his own feet, and face-planted on the hard crystal floor with an audibly meaty thud. 

“Ooh,” Clark winced. He’d immediately taken up a fighting stance, bracing for something, but not that. The clone was getting to his feet now, and once again tried throwing himself into the air, but couldn’t seem to get aloft. It wasn’t just that he was still swollen and sick from Kryptonite exposure— it was like he’d forgotten how. He fell again, growled in frustration, and then was off, running in the direction of the door. 

“Whoa,” Clark said, jogging after him. The robots had all fled. “Hey, man!” He called, “I’m not gonna hurt you! Don’t—”

The clone hit the far wall to the right of the doorway, bounced off of it, and lay where he fell.  After all their history, Clark found himself approaching him the way he might a starving stray dog. “It’s okay,” he said, putting his hands up, “There’s no need to run. We’re trying to help you.” 

“Aaahuuuhhhghhh,” said the clone. He was already starting to look better, but it seemed like he still felt pretty rough. 

“I know it feels bad, and we wanna help, but you have to let us.”

No reply, though the eye that was looking at Clark seemed sharp enough. The other had wandered off somewhere in the other direction. No wonder the guy had needed help fighting, Clark thought. He probably couldn’t see straight. No wonder he was crashing into walls. 

Stealing his DNA and cloning him against his will was violating in the slightest, and it made him feel worse to imagine how Lex had treated his duplicate. Clark doubted he’d been living it up in the Luthorcorp headquarters. He hadn’t been thought of as a person, that was pretty certain. It had probably been a lot of training, objectification, and being ignored.

“You’re safe here,” he said.

The clone lunged at him, knocking into him and sending him staggering backwards… but not very far. He still didn’t seem to be putting his full strength behind his movements. Nowhere near it. Clark got him easily around the waist and pinned him down. “Whoa, calm down,” he said as the clone struggled underneath him, growling, “I don’t—want—to hurt you.” 

The clone tried to head-butt him. And bite him. And thrashed around on the floor like a giant, slippery fish.

 “Kara?” Clark called, “Can I get a hand?” 

Most of the action at the fortress took place in the atrium, but the rest wasn’t just ice crystals and empty space. The second floor was more or less a crystalline penthouse, complete with a large kitchen, a hobby room, and adjacent suites for Clark and Kara. He was working on getting a third suite together for guests, but lately he just hadn’t had the darn time. The room was there, but it was empty except for a half-decent bed.

It took some wrangling, but they got the clone into the unfinished third suite and sealed him inside. It felt better than putting him down in the zoo, but it still felt like punishing him in a way Clark didn’t love. At least it was, he was sure, only temporary. 

“Ho-ly shit,” Kara muttered, dusting herself off. Despite the thickness of the wall, from the inside they could still hear the clone throwing himself against the rocky surface. Slamming into it, screaming, and getting nowhere. 

“He’ll tire himself out eventually," Clark said. 

Eventually was right. In the meantime, Clark made calls—to The Planet about working remote for a few days while he dealt with a ‘family matter’, and to a number of colleagues, who voted near-unanimously, save for Rex Mason, that the clone should be euthanized, a suggestion Clark firmly shut down— while he waited for the furious howling echoing down the hall to die away.

When there had finally been silence on the other side of the wall for a couple of hours, Clark moved it again, and entered the empty third wing anticipating another round of struggle. The clone was laying on the floor facing away from him, and didn’t move. 

“If you’re feeling better, I’d love to have a talk,” Clark said. “...If you can.”

The clone rolled over and gave him a withering look. Even though he’d been the genetic blueprint, Clark wasn’t so sure his own face could do that. The guy could give serious stink-eye. Maybe it was something about the slightly wonky jaw. 

“I can’t blame you for being a little depressed,” Clark told him, “And, unfortunately, I have more bad news for you...” He drew the folded newspaper from under his arm, squatted down slowly, and slid it across the floor to the clone, who flinched away. “Sorry,” Clark said. “That’s your proof for what I’m about to tell you. Your guy Lex has been arrested, so you can’t really go home anymore. Assuming you wanted to. Battle’s over, and you’re here now. But the good news is we don’t have to be enemies.” 

The clone considered the newspaper, looking vaguely at the photo of Luthor’s arrest on the front page, then turned away again. Clark sighed. Lex had probably never taught the clone to read. 

“…Lex called you stupid, and I don’t like that,” he said. “That’s mean. I don’t know how you were treated, or how you feel, but I can say with confidence that you can have a better, easier life now, if you want it. I’m gonna leave you alone now, but I’ll come back once you’ve had some time and maybe we can get to know each other a little.” 

No reply. 

Clark left the room, closing the wall again on his way out. 

The results of the brain scan that the robots managed to perform on the clone from a moderate distance were more or less what Clark had expected. The scan was rudimentary, over-simplified, but it still showed enough growth anomalies to have landed a human child a therapeutic diagnosis and a support team. This child—the clone couldn’t be more than a few years old despite being fully grown—had been born in a lab. His only parent was a capitalist megalomaniac, and he’d been raised as an anthropomorphic attack dog. It made Clark’s chest ache. 

“So, big news,” he told Lois over the phone. This was really best said in person, like most things, but he couldn’t afford to leave the fortress while the clone was still flinging himself into walls and screaming. Still no sign of flight or even super strength, but he expected it to come back as soon as the clone stopped grieving. 

“What, are you finally coming out of your holy hermitude...? You know you’re really stretching your sick time at work, Clark. Perry’s pissed.” 

“Yeah, I know. I’ve gotta call him. But no, it’s bigger than that. You know how I told you about how Ultraman ended up being a clone of me, and he fell into that black hole?”

“You knocked him into the black hole, yeah.”

“I didn’t have a choice. But yeah, Kara found him floating out in her neck of the woods, pretty scuffed up, kinda recognized him, and brought him back here to me. We’re nursing him back to health, and I think it’s going pretty good.” 

“...Wow,” Lois said after a long pause. “What do you mean by ‘going pretty good’.” 

“Well, it seems like he’s forgotten how to use his powers and hasn’t broken anything yet.”

“That’s...good... What about the whole being born and bred to kill you thing, Clark? How does Ultraman feel about that?”

“Ah... good question. I’ve tried to talk to him a little, but I’ve just gotten screaming.”

“...Uh huh. I don’t blame him. Trapped in an ice cave by the man he was raised to believe was his ultimate adversary.”

“Oh, what do you suggest I do? I can’t let him out…”

“I’m absolutely not suggesting that. You just can’t let your frankly extreme levels of optimism get in the way of good decisions.”

“The robots gave him a brain scan, Lois. Lex did a total hack job with him. He won’t survive on his own.” 

“And it’s very valiant of you to want to rehabilitate him. But at what cost, Clark? When his powers come back, what’s really stopping him from causing mass amounts of destruction, killing people indiscriminately, just because he’s upset?”

Clark nodded. She was right. “I know,” he said, “I’m counting on him not wanting to.” 

“I brought you some stuff,” he told the clone. It felt a little like he was talking to himself, but he knew the guy could hear him even if he didn’t respond. He set the bags down and took the toys out. “I don’t know if you’ve seen any of this stuff before, maybe it’s boring, but I think it’s pretty cool.”  

A toy train with a wooden track like the one he’d had when he was a kid, a puzzle cube, a coloring book, more plastic stuff. Things he was hoping would sweeten the deal a little, and give the clone something to do beyond beating himself up. A few times when Clark had come in, there had been blood under the clone’s fingernails from chewing or scratching at himself. Clark wondered if that had been an issue back at Luthorcorp. The Ultraman suit’s gloves had probably prevented it. 

He unboxed the train and set up the track, aware of being watched as he made the train chug around and go through the tunnel. Then he demonstrated the coloring book. “Fun, right?” 

“Fun,” the clone repeated flatly.

Clark tried not to show his surprise. “Yeah, you can have fun now. Did Luthor ever let you play with stuff, or was it just training all the time? ‘Cause playing is what makes life enjoyable.” 

“Lex Luthor,” said the clone, suddenly looking upset. His nostrils flared. 

“Lex is okay,” Clark told him carefully, “But he had to go away for a while for doing bad things.”

The clone sniffed, bared his teeth, and lunged. In an instant, Clark had caught him around the chest with both arms and lifted them both off the ground. Then, he just held him there. Just held him. Deep breaths. Ignoring the clawing at his back and head, and the kicking, and the growling, until it slowly stopped. No more fighting. No more being afraid.

If the clone had been a little depressed before, he was really depressed now. 

“I think I broke him,” Clark told Lois on the phone, watching the clone out of the corner of his eye laying face-down on the floor. He’d let the robots put a blanket over him, but that was a symptom in and of itself. The toys had gone completely ignored. They weren’t even closing the wall anymore. 

“I know I’m really playing the devil’s advocate here, but I’d rather that than him still trying to kill you.” 

“Yeah…” Clark sighed. “I just wish it didn’t have to be this way. He’s just a kid, he didn’t really understand what he was doing.” He got up from his chair, and turned on the screens. He hadn’t watched any of the old family videos since the clone had arrived, and he needed them now.

As the comforting nostalgia of his childhood in Smallville filled the atrium, the gratitude he felt was almost overwhelming. He couldn’t have asked to have been raised by better people, he thought. Ma and Pa still tried so hard for him, and he owed them, everyone in Smallville, everyone everywhere the same in return. There he was learning to ride a bike. Baking cookies over Christmas break. Chasing chickens just to try and hug them. Laughing at Pa wearing a stocking on his head.

Down the hall, the clone slowly lifted his head. Then, he got to his feet and came to stand in the doorway to the atrium, looking up at the screens with an open mouth. Clark saw it all, but withheld a greeting. Patience was key. No sudden moves. 

“Hey, guys?” he asked the robots after a long minute, “Could someone grab another chair?” 

Without turning his head, he got up and took the desk chair the robots rolled in, leaving the sun chair empty. Then he addressed the clone, who was still staring. “Wanna sit down?” he asked, “That one’s pretty comfortable...” A shot in the dark, but...

Stiffly, in a manner that was half military, half extreme caution, the clone sat down on the edge of the sun chair. The videos smiling down on them seemed to have him completely enraptured, his eyes darting from side to side almost in sync as he watched the child version of his genetic blueprint giggle at puppet shows and learn how to read.

“That’s me as a kid,” Clark told him. “That’s my Ma and Pa. They’re pretty awesome.” 

“...Me as a kid,” the clone repeated, as if from a long way off. He was so glued to the screen he’d almost completely frozen up. The expression on his face was difficult to read, but Clark decided to call it wonder…with a little horror thrown in. The clone hadn’t had a childhood, and he certainly hadn’t known Clark had had one either. Luthor had probably led him to believe that Superman had been born fully grown in a lab even more evil than Luthorcorp’s. If he’d ever cared to tell him anything at all. 

“Yeah, well. Me as a kid.” Clark agreed. 

“Me as a kid.” 

“I think you’re kind of a kid now.”

“…Ultraman,” said the clone.

“…Yeah. Did they ever call you any other names? Y’know, my name’s not technically Superman...” 

 But the clone was lost to the world. They’d have that conversation later, he decided. For now, he just let him watch. This was good. This was really, really good.  

“…Me as a kid,” the clone said again when they’d watched everything on a loop three times. 

Clark looked at him. “We’ve gotta get you some new words, dude.” 

The clone was looking solemnly down at his lap. Then he sniffed, and wiped his face on the sleeve of his long underwear. The fabric came away wet. 

Aw, shoot. All Clark wanted to do was hug him, but that didn’t seem like a very good idea yet. Instead, he held himself back and looked away as his clone scrubbed his teary eyes, got up, and plodded slowly back to the nearly-empty guest room. Once he was inside, something like a sob echoed down the hall. 

Clark sighed and laced his fingers together in his lap. The fighting was over, but that didn’t mean it was going to be easy at all. There was a world of past and potential misunderstandings between them, jealousy and resentment and plain sadness. All he wanted to do was model a good life for this guy, and give him the same, if he wanted it, but… 

He thought about his own birth, his own adoption. Ma and Pa had only had an inkling of what they were getting into when they’d found him in the cornfield, but they’d tried for him, were still trying, and that made all the difference. It was a hard world they lived in. A beautiful one, but a hard one. His circumstances and the clones were unique, but… not that unique. Not really. Mothers were faced with giving up their babies every day. Siblings were separated, sometimes ending up living very different lives. 

There was another timeline out there where all he was was Clark Kent, adopted by a good couple from Smallville while his unknown twin had ended up in foster care, or in a home. On this timeline, there were a lot more variables, more responsibility they had to deal with, but in the human regard, which, alien DNA aside, still applied... it wasn’t really more complicated. They needed to be patient, and they needed time, but it had all been done before. There were forums full of people he could talk to to make sure he was doing the best he could for his newfound family. Maybe in-person discussion and support groups if that seemed nice. If anything, it was going to be a gift to get to participate in it all. He’d tell Ma and Pa soon, and he was sure they’d have wisdom to share. Sadness and frustration were inevitable in the meantime, but Clark had nothing if he didn’t have hope.  

*****

“Superman is pacing again,” said Three. 

“Very good point,” said Gary, “Superman, would you like me to display the video of your parents? Perhaps it would be comforting to you.” 

“No thanks, Gary.” Clark shook his head. He needed a clear mind for this. It wasn’t the kind of news he was used to breaking, especially to two of the three people on earth he needed most not to scare. The last thing he wanted to do was make them anticipate the worst before he was able to explain the situation. He had to tell them sooner than later, but how?

Hey, Ma. Hey, Pa. Surprise, there’s another of me now. Another of him who was, at that moment, in the next room sitting under a blanket and watching kids shows after an unknown amount of time being treated as a brainless government-contractable killing machine. Where to start? Probably at the beginning. 

“Ma, Pa... I have some news.” He’d come into Smallville early that morning and was now sitting across from his parents at the kitchen table over mugs of coffee and a little bit of rhubarb coffeecake. He could tell they already knew something was up. They always did. 

“Go ahead, Clark,” Ma said. 

Clark sighed. “Before I say anything, I want you to know that everything is okay now. It was a little... out there, but, that’s in the past.” 

His parents were looking at him so patiently. Gosh, he would anything for them. “Lex Luthor got his hands on some of my DNA,” he continued, “and he used that to make a clone of me. A copy. Kind of. The clone... isn’t exactly identical, he’s mentally pretty delayed, but, um...  After Luthor was arrested, Kara showed up and she and I were lucky enough to be able to take the clone in, and rescue him. So... long story short, I guess I have a brother now.” 

“...Well, gosh,” Ma said, looking at Pa. “That is some news. But it sounds like good news to me, in the end.” 

Pa nodded. “I’m glad you and Kara are workin’ together,” he said. 

“Yeah, something like that...”

“Does he have a name?” Ma asked. 

“We’re still trying to figure that out. He doesn’t really talk. He repeats some stuff, he can memorize things, but...” Clark shrugged. “He’s gonna need support for a long time.” Maybe forever.

“Well, he couldn’t have a better big brother to look out for him,” Pa said. 

The vague anxiety that had coiled itself tight inside Clark’s chest over the past few weeks released what was left of its sticky grip, and finally fell away. “Thank you,” he told his parents. “I didn’t wanna tell you until I was confident that it was all going to work out, but now I am. So yeah. I think we’re gonna be okay.” Lois had come to visit a few days before, and it had gone well, if uneventfully. The clone was still withdrawn, but he was docile, and had eaten Lois’s entire bag of tropical gummy critters as soon as they’d let him loose on them.   

“If you think so, Clark. You know we trust you,” Ma said. “Does he have a good grip on the powers?” 

“Er... He can’t use most of them anymore, as far as we can tell. He’s really just like a big kid. We’re watching movies, and coloring, and stuff.” Crazy but true. 

“So is he stayin’ with you at your apartment now?”

“At the fortress, yeah.” 

“And he looks just like you?”

“Not quite. Thankfully. He’s his own person.” 

“I’ll bet he’s still a handsome boy.” 

“Yeaaah. In his own way.” 

“Could you get him on the telephone?” 

“I don’t know if he’d really know what to do. We’re still working on hello.” 

“Nothin’ I ain’t seen before when I was workin’ at the school, Clark.”

“I’d like him to get to know the sound of his pa’s voice,” Pa added.

Aw, man. “I’m not asking you guys to adopt him,” Clark clarified. “I was thinking he’d stay with me.” 

Ma gave him a look. “You’re awful busy, aren’t you?”

“Sure, but-”

“If he’s your brother, then he’s our boy too, Clark. Even if it’s complicated. You bring him here if you think it’s right, and we’ll see if we can’t get along.” 

Clark nodded. He felt like the luckiest guy in the world just to be sitting at that table right then. “Okay,” he said, “I will.”

Chapter Text

“Alright, dude. That’s all for today,” Clark said, switching the big screen off after a hot nine-hour run. The clone, sitting in what Clark had begun no longer considering his chair, turned his head to look at him, dazed. 

“I know,” Clark said, “and I’m sorry.” Shows were basically all the joy the guy had in life right now, Autobots and Paw Patrol, Yugioh and The Wiggles. Sailor Moon. Teletubbies. Gundam. Bluey. Naruto. Sesame Street. He’d probably watch for days on end if Clark let him, unmoving and unblinking, cooking his brain in a soup of processed color and sound. There were worse things for him to be doing—a lot of it was educational, and it all had good messages— hence the nine-hour watch sessions, but Clark was going for a mixed-media approach to rehab. They had to do some hands-on stuff, too. 

He sat on the edge of his desk and watched as the TV hypnosis faded, until finally the clone sat up straighter in his chair, sniffed, then whipped his head around to look behind him in the direction of the entryway. There, standing and looking awfully small thanks to the ice walls towering over her, Lois stood in a knitted hat and a long wool coat. She gave them a cautious wave. 

“Easy,” Clark said to the clone, “It’s okay. Lois just wanted to say hi.” 

The clone relaxed. Mostly. Clark beckoned Lois over. 

“Hey,” she said, stopping when she was still at a bit of a distance. “We’ve already met, but I’m Lois.” 

Clark looked between them. “Wanna do your thing?” he asked the clone.

“...Lois,” the clone repeated. The voice was his own, but the intonation was a clear copy of Lois’s. Still, it was a lot better than frightened screaming. Clark was proud.

 Lois nodded. “Good job,” she told him. Positive reinforcement was the way to go with this guy. “It’s really about time he had his own name,” she told Clark.

He agreed. It was overdue, but he’d been waiting for the clone to be able to have a say in the matter. “We’re getting there,” he said.  “I was thinking…that it would be fun to do some drawing together. In the art room. it’ll be warmer there.” 

“I would take warmer,” Lois agreed, rubbing her arms. 

“Come on, tough guy,” Clark told the clone, “it’s time to move.” 

They sat around the big table in the Fortress’s art room, Lois on one side and the clone on the other, and Clark in between. 

“It’s been a hell of a long time since I even touched a colored pencil,” Lois said, looking down at the sheet of heavy paper in front of her and shaking her head, “I can’t promise any masterpieces.” 

“It’s a healthy thing to do even if you just scribble,” Clark said. “Oh- Hey, dude, let’s… um… Take this instead.” The half-second that Clark had had his head turned, the clone had scratched a small squadron of raw, red fingernail-marks into his own cheek. 

Clark handed him a pastel, chewing his lip as he watched the claw-marks began to fade and disappear. They all had something, he thought. He wasn’t a stranger to the idea of hurting oneself to cope. He didn’t do it himself, of course, though, heck, he was here chewing his own lip but... well, he and Lois had talked about the phenomenon a little when their high school days had come up. 

The clone drew a single line on his paper, then sat staring intently at it as if it might move. 

“So, you,” Lois said, addressing the clone as she began to doodle. “We’re trying to give you a name.” 

“I’m Clark Kent,” Clark added. He was drawing a bird he’d seen while out flying earlier that day. “Whoever you decide to be, it’ll have Kent on the end, so… take that into consideration.” 

“Ultraman,” the clone said quietly in the direction of his paper. 

“Yeeeahhh… We can’t do that one anymore. Sorry dude.”

“Ultraman. Lex Luthor. Eve...Teschmacher. Angela Spica. Otis Berg. Sydney Happersen. Superman. Clark Kent. Lois Lane.”

It was the most Clark had ever heard him speak, and it seemed like it was just the tip of the iceberg. Who knew how much information the clone had stored in the mystery vault that was his lab-grown head. He was smarter than he’d been given credit for, in his own way. 

“All names,” Lois agreed. 

“We’ll find one,” Clark said. 

“It’s a solid plan to just give him options until he reacts.” 

“Yeah, I don’t know if I’m good at options.” 

“And you write for the biggest paper in the city. What about his shows?” Lois asked. “Is there a character he likes…?” 

“Well, we shouldn’t call him Elmo…” 

“…Clark,” Lois said, “Cccarl. Kevin. Kyle, god forbid, um… Kai.” 

“Uh,”  said the clone. They looked at him. He’d drawn another line on his paper. It seemed very purposeful, but the direction was completely random. 

“There is someone named Kai in one of the shows, actually,” Clark said, shaking his finger. It was true. “Guy with gray hair. He’s got kind of a bad attitude, but they’re all working together and I think he comes around.”

“Kai. You like that?” Lois asked. The clone looked back at them, then drew a single dot.

Lois chewed her lip. “…That’s a yes if I’ve ever seen one.” 

“Kai Kent,” Clark said, nodding. It had a real ring to it. “Well gosh, dude. There you go.” The clone—Kai— was still busy with his drawing, but Clark thought he looked satisfied. He looked at Lois. “You’re brilliant.” 

She smirked. “Shall we test out your cover story?”

“Sure, but I think we’ve got it down pretty well.” 

Lois cleared her throat. “Wow, Clark, it’s been a long time since I’ve seen you,” she said in a joking tone, “And who’s this... big, strapping lad...”

“Oh,” Clark said, slipping into character, “This— Do you wanna introduce yourself?”—No reply from Kai— “This is my brother, Kai.”

“I didn’t know you had a brother.”

Clark smiled. “Neither did I,” he said. “I was, uh, doing some family history research, got ahold of some records, and, well, the rest is history.” 

“So did your parents just give him up for adoption?” Leave it to Lois to cover all the bases. He didn’t want Ma and Pa to be judged for Kai’s sudden arrival for even a second.

“Well, I- I-I’m adopted too.” The Clark Kent persona was in full swing now. Sliding into it was like putting on a well-worn glove. 

“Ah, I see. You aren’t twins, are you?”

“We- We are, actually. Fraternal.” 

“Then why were you separated?”

“There’s a real legacy of disabled people being sequestered from public life all across the globe...” 

“Ooh, what’s his condition?”

Clark frowned, breaking character. “Do you think they’ll ask that?”

“They’ll ask anything. But absolutely.”

“He’s... Autistic,” Clark said, and shrugged. 

“It must run in the family.”

“Yeeeahhh.”

“I’m just teasing.”

“No, I-I think there’s merit to that...” 

Lois laughed. “I’d hope so... Otherwise I don’t think we’d work.” She leaned on her elbow. “Anyway. This is good. The closer to the truth, the better the lie...” 

“It’s not a lie, it’s just... altered wording.” 

Lois laughed. “Sure,” she said, “But good work.”

“Oh, it’s nothing. He’s done most of it.” They both looked at Kai. He’d filled almost his entire sheet of paper in with red pastel. After a moment, he stopped and looked back at them. 

“What do you think about all of this?” Lois asked him. “Do you think we’re being silly?” 

There was a long pause. 

“...Affirmative,” Kai said.

*****

They touched down in a field after dark. It was a pleasantly warm evening, and the air was full of the sound of crickets and frogs chirping in the tall grass. To Clark, it sounded like home. Kai didn’t seem so sure. 

“Those are crickets,” Clark explained, watching Kai look around suspiciously, “Pretty loud, but they’re just little bugs.” 

In response, Kai put the fingers of one hand in his mouth and started to chew. There was a cricket perched on a thin stalk just to Clark’s right, so he caught it gently and held it out to Kai. “Here. Hold out your hand.” 

Something that might have been apprehension flashed on Kai’s face, but he took his hand out of his mouth and did what he was told. He was almost too good at following instructions, at least from Clark, who he’d seemingly decided was his new point-man instead of his arch enemy. Eventually, they were going to have to teach him how to say no. 

Clark tipped the cricket into his palm, and it sat there for a half second before jumping away. Kai seemed confused about where it had gone, but, then again, his ability to track objects smaller than a six foot four, two hundred something pound man wasn’t exactly perfect. 

“They do that,” Clark told him, “It wasn’t very nice of me to catch him anyway. It’s good to leave ‘em alone.”

“That’s none of your business,” said Kai, quoting. It was unexpected. Where was that from? Lex? 

“Oh, they’re just small and fragile, and it’s probably scary to be picked up,” Clark clarified. “So if you do, just be gentle. Come on.” He nodded towards the warm square of light on the other side of the field that was his parents’ front room window, and they started their way there.

“Ma, Pa, this is Kai,” Clark said proudly. “Kai, Ma and Pa.” 

“Hello, Kai,” Ma said, looking up at him, “Boy are we glad to meet you!” 

“Welcome to Smallville,” Pa said.

Kai looked down at them blank-faced, his left eye wandering westward. Then he looked at Clark as if for approval. 

“Now we say ‘Thanks for having us,’” Clark said. Kai’s mouth moved a millimeter, but he said nothing. 

“Being shy is o-kay,” Ma said, moving away from the door to coax them into the living room. 

“Was your trip okay?” Pa asked as they piled in. 

“Oh, it was fine,” Clark said. There was a slight awkwardness to flying with someone his size or slightly bigger who, while keeping excellent flying posture, hadn’t helped with the buoyancy whatsoever, but there was nothing wrong with that. “How are you guys?” 

“We’re good. Nice time with the neighbors this morning…” 

“Nice,” Clark agreed. He turned to Kai. “You can take your jacket off and put it up here…”

Kai was wearing some of Clark’s day-off clothes. That was one hidden benefit of cloning; while Kai was an inch or so taller and a little bigger in the arms, they were functionally identical size-wise, all the way down to the shoes. Clark modeled the motion with his own jacket, hanging it up on the coat rack by the door, and waited while Kai copied his movements. The guy was a fast learner when it came to physical stuff, which… made sense. Given the history.

“Pa made some of those muffins you like, Clark,” Ma said, “Kai, do you like muffins?” 

“I don’t know if he’s ever had one,” Clark told her. 

“There’s a first time for everything,” Pa said. 

As it turned out, Kai did like muffins. His first of three was nothing but crumbs down the front of his shirt before Clark was done with half of his, and then, before anyone could stop him, he ate the wrapper too. 

Oops. 

It was late, so after more pleasant but one-sided chit-chat, Ma and Pa went off to bed with plans for an official farm tour in the morning. Clark led Kai to the bench out front. The stars were coming out. After months of continuous daylight at the fortress, the sight was even more beautiful. 

“Did you ever get to fly really far up?” Clark asked him. Getting to see space from the upper levels of the atmosphere was a real gift, he thought. Kai was still being even shyer than usual. His only reply was a tiny, near-silent burp. 

“…Thanks for coming here with me,” Clark said. 

Kai licked his lips. “…Me as a kid,” he said. 

That thing Clark had said when they were watching the home videos was apparently still hanging out in his head, or else the phrase had just become a tool to express a lingering emotion. Clark just wished he knew exactly what that emotion was. They seemed to have an innate connection, or at least he believed they did, thanks to their being variations on the same genetic theme, but they couldn’t read each other’s minds. Both he and Kai sighed at the same time. 

“Anyone ever tell you you have a great memory?” he asked Kai, watching his face in the dark. 

Kai blinked, then looked back at Clark. “Welcome to Smallville,” Kai mumbled, echoing Pa’s voice. Of course he knew he had a good memory. It was why Luthor had used him the way he had. He was evidently also a little overwhelmed by his surroundings, even if he didn’t seem unhappy about it. 

Clark smiled. “Welcome to Smallville,” he agreed. 

They got up with the sun and met Pa out back to feed the chickens and give the cows some hay. Kai barely needed instruction when it came to lifting the shaggy bales and hefting them into the feeder rack—it seemed some things ran in the family regardless of nurture—, but the chickens, like last night’s crickets, seemed to give him more pause. 

After dumping a scoop of chicken feed onto the ground at Pa’s instruction, he stood frozen and staring at the flock as they hopped and pecked at the grain scattered around his feet. He’d probably seen birds before, Metropolis was practically smothered in pigeons... Just never seen them like this, cute and fat and fluffy, and touching him without the protection of a reinforced fighting suit. And they were touching him. They didn’t seem afraid of him at all. Clark couldn’t say as much for himself; Sometimes, the way the chickens avoided him almost felt a little personal. 

“That one by your boot is Gertrude,” Pa said, “There’s Matilda, and Roberta, Marilyn...” 

Kai was locked in. 

“...I don’t know if we’re gonna get him back,” Clark said. 

Pa nodded. “He sure is good at standing still...” 

Clark smiled. He didn’t want to make Kai move on from the chickens before he was ready—When was the last time he’d truly just gotten to do what he’d wanted to do?—but he also didn’t know the upper limit on how long the guy could just... stand there. Clark was patient, or he tried to be, but it seemed infinite. “You can move on,” he told Pa, “We’ll catch up to you.”

“No, there’s no harm in taking it slow,” Pa said, “They’re good birds. You saw them just a year ago, how small they were...” 

Clark nodded. Some of his earliest, most exciting memories involved raising baby animals, watching chicks hatch under the warmth of a red heat bulb. “Hey, Kai,” he said, “Come’ere.” 

It was as easy as that, for better or for worse. Kai snapped out of his trance, turned on his heel, and followed Clark into the barn and to the nesting boxes, where almost a dozen eggs in different shades of brown and white sat nestled in the hay. 

“This is an egg,” Clark told him, “Here. Careful. This is where baby chickens come from, if you can believe it.”

Kai seemed vaguely perturbed by that, but he held the egg gently, as if it were alive. 

“But right now we’re just gonna eat them for breakfast,” Clark added, “Are you excited for food?”

If last night’s muffin escapades were any implication, the answer was yes. Kai seemed proud to carry the eggs back to the house—all eleven balanced between his two hands—and stood by the sink watching closely while Ma rinsed them. 

His gaze only broke away when she asked him if he wanted to crack them into the bowl. It was hard to tell if he understood what she was asking him to do, but he seemed almost scared to touch the eggs again, and only more so after Clark tapped one against the edge of the mixing bowl to show him how. He just stood there, rigid and staring, until he was told that it was okay, and that he could sit down.

Kai had some perception of his own past, Clark knew. He knew where he’d been, and where he was now, and it stood to reason that he’d eventually understand that the things he’d been made to do in the first era of his life were not things that made most people happy. Luthor was in jail for some of those things, for pulling strings and pushing buttons behind the scenes, but it had been Kai who’d done a lot of the breaking. It stood to reason, too, that he might be afraid of breaking things again. 

They hung out the rest of that day, closing out sitting on the bench out front and chatting while Kai lay in the grass a stone’s throw away with his head turned in the direction of the cows. 

“Are you back to work tomorrow?” Pa asked.

Clark shook his head. “I’m sending in my articles on the computer. I’m not ready to leave him alone just yet.”

“Don’t leave here in a hurry unless you want to. I know we don’t have the fancy wi-fi, but...” 

“There’s somethin’ good for you about bein’ out here,” Ma said, “Don’t you underestimate that.”

“Oh, I won’t, Ma. The fortress is just... It’s safe, you know?”

They all nodded. 

“...We’ll stay ‘till tomorrow,” Clark conceded. He didn’t want to leave as much as any of them, and it was hard to find the harm in it. They were all having a good time, albeit a quiet and contained one, and he was so busy these days that until now he just hadn’t had the excuse he needed to spend more with his parents. Keeping them safe by staying away had been the half-conscious priority, but... Man, it was just good to be home.

“We’ll stay ‘till tomorrow” turned out to be some real famous last words. Rather than leave for good the next day, since Kai was still semi-fixated on the cows and chickens and it felt almost mean to pull him away, Clark settled for traveling between the farm and the fortress alone, checking on things with the robots and helping with the housekeeping, then flying back, then helping out with an out of control factory fire in Metropolis, then back to the farm for Spaghetti dinner. The next day was the same, with slightly more confident periods of absence, and the next, and the next. 

Kai wasn’t exactly magically blossoming at his parents’ house, but something was happening. He was gentle with the animals, and seemed to be picking up looking after Ma and Pa with physical tasks without Clark having had to tell him to. He was scratching himself less, biting his fingers less. It was becoming hard to imagine him ‘going home’, Clark thought, because Ma and Pa had been right. This was his.

 So he stayed. 

*****

“What do you think about a hair cut?” Ma asked over breakfast. Kai was inhaling cereal, and his wild hair was—as was often the case—hanging in his face. He didn’t seem to care about it, but it didn’t seem to be making anything easier for him, either. 

“I hadn’t wanted to freak him out,” Clark told her. He was home for a night or two after his first few away from the farm since Kai had become a permanent fixture, and everything still seemed to be going A-OK. “But yeah,” he added, “Let’s try it now.” 

He’d been cautious about introducing new experiences, let alone approaching Kai with  sharp objects...and then there was the fact that maybe Kai liked his mullet bob thing… but five minutes later, after another bowl of corn flakes, Kai was on a chair in the middle of the room, facing Clark and waiting patiently to be shorn like a sheep.

“I’m thinkin’ just a trim,” Ma said, coming back in with the scissors. She’d cut Clark’s hair with them his whole life. Getting to use them on Kai was a milestone in its own right. 

Clark explained what they were going to do the best he could, miming cutting his own hair with his fingers, and it seemed Kai understood—But as soon as the scissors touched his hair, his eyes went wide and his huge hands clenched into fists. 

Ma could tell before Clark could so much as signal her to pause, and moved the scissors away. “Clark,” she asked, “D’you think you could be my volunteer?” 

Of course he could. He gladly let Ma snip a few stray locks from the side of his head, then nodded and gave Kai a confirming look. 

“Check that out,” he said, showing him the cut curls, “It’s a weird sound, but it doesn’t hurt.” 

“Uh.” Kai said. 

The second attempt was a success. His hair stayed long, but it had a shape now, and was mostly staying out of his eyes. 

“Boy, you’re good at sitting still,” Ma said, lifting the towel from Kai’s shoulders, “Isn’t that better?” 

Kai blinked, then shook his head around like a dog. Yeah, it was better. Clark even thought he saw a half-second smile. 

*****

“You’re very tough, but you need that face,” Martha said, wiping Kai’s cheek with a tissue. The bleeding had already stopped, and the redness was beginning to fade before her eyes. Kai didn’t reply. He just put a finger in his mouth and began to bite his nail. Clark had been away for three days now, and despite her and Jon having being set Kai up in Clark’s bedroom with his shows to watch and chores that he still seemed satisfied to take part in, Kai had started going at his face again, and drawing blood.

“Kai, let’s have you put those hands in your lap,” Martha told him. He did. This was one circumstance of a few where his willingness to receive direction was a particular blessing, but telling him to stop was only a bandaid on the wound so to speak. It wasn’t as simple as Clark not being there, either. She was his ma now, and she could tell something was wrong. It was just hard to know what when he couldn’t or wouldn’t talk to them. 

Clark hadn’t told them so much about where he’d been, and she was sure it hadn’t been very pretty, but, well... They were gonna have to try and give him some help as soon as they could figure it out. Martha had been a elementary school teacher when Clark was little, and many of her friends the same. Some were still teaching. She was planning to ask them for their thoughts, but it was a little early for that. In the meantime, they were still trying to get to know each other, and she just didn’t want him in the habit of tearing himself up.

They’d tried to entertain him with some of the games Clark had liked way back, and he and Jon played a gentle game of catch out front after dinner, but he’d been quiet, even quieter than he’d been with Clark around, and even then he’d only said a few rare things. He was already waking himself up and feeding the chickens on his own, but he was stone-faced, almost unresponsive, and then there was the scratching, the chewing. 

Martha gave Kai’s hair a good brushing, and had him rinse with a little cup of mouthwash. They’d move up to tooth brushing soon, she trusted. Thankfully, with his strong teeth they weren’t too worried about cavities. Just like with Clark. That was real lucky. 

She wasn’t sure if he slept—they knew Clark didn’t quite have to, now that he was grown—but they still put him to bed in Clark’s old room for the routine of it, and hopefully for a sense of belonging, and he was in the practice of staying there ‘till the sun came up. It had to get lonely, just watching everyone all the time, staying up thinking about who knew what. He was thinking, and maybe quite a lot. Martha just hoped he knew they were there in the next room for him if he was feeling too alone.

She let him lead the way down the short hall to the bedroom, then stayed in the doorway while he got into bed. “D’you want your light on, or off?” she asked him once he’d figured out the quilt. They had Clark’s little night light set up for him, and it was on most all of the time. 

“...Turn a light on,” Kai said quietly. It was the first she’d heard from him since at least yesterday.

“Alright,” she said, “I’m leavin’ it on for you. Good night...” 

She wasn’t expecting a ‘good night’ in return, and he didn’t give her one, but that was okay. 

It seemed she’d just settled down on the couch next to Jon to do some reading before bed when they heard it. Clark had been a happy kid for the most part, and so they both remembered all the more how gut-wrenching it had been to hear him cry.

Jon took off his reading glasses and lowered his book. Another low moan came from the bedroom down the hall, and then a tearful sniffle. Jon and Martha looked at each other.

“...It’s been a while…,” Martha said, putting on her slippers and getting to her feet. 

“Yes it has...” Jon agreed. They’d hardly stopped being parents after Clark moved to the city, but it had been a long time since they’d been on nightmare duty. 

Jon followed his wife to the open doorway, through which, in the warm, dim glow of the nightlight, they could see Kai’s sleeping face contorted with distress. His cheeks were tearstained, and he was biting his knuckles hard enough to need bandaids. The Kents exchanged another look.

It only took Martha turning on the bedside lamp for Kai’s eyes to fly open. He flinched away from them and was backwards and off the bed in a split second, pressing himself against the wall and looking at them like they might do something to him despite both being half his size. 

Then his good eye focused, and he seemed to recognize them. His big shoulders lost some of their tenseness.

 “That sounded like a bad dream,” Martha said, coming around the side of the bed to meet Kai where he was. Anyone else might have felt like they were comforting a cougar, but this was their boy. As soon as Clark had told her and Jon about him, she had known he was theirs. Bad dreams and all.

No reply from Kai save for a tiny grunt. He let them sit with him for a minute but still seemed shaken, obviously thinking about what it seemed he’d just relived. Whatever had been eating him, maybe it was starting to work itself out now. 

This called for busting out the big guns, his new parents decided wordlessly. The time-tested formula, the old equation. A mug of warm milk, and a bedtime story to make things right. 

“Let’s get you back into bed,” Martha said once there was a hot mug on the bedside table, and, slowly, Kai obliged. His usual appetite seemed to have left him, but he finished the milk over the course of one of Clark’s old bedtime books, and gradually, but not too gradually, he seemed to come back the rest of the way to the then-and-now. 

But he still seemed awfully sad. 

Chapter Text

He was born the moment he knew he was alive. 

It was all sound before that, all light and color in abstract, before the solidification of his final synapse, when the world became whole. When he knew he was alive, the shapes on the outside of the tank became place, thing, and person. The light became brightness, and the darkness dark. It was dark in the room outside of the tank, too dark to see, and the aquamarine atom-bath he floated in should have muffled all the noise, but he saw and heard everything, the wide room, the scaffolding hidden within its walls, the figures in their lab coats, their brains, and all their ribs. Once he’d noticed the ‘tink’ of scalpels on Petri dishes, and the sound of every mouth breathing, he could no longer tune anything out.  

He was alive, and his ability to perceive what he took in was far greater than his ability to understand it. Everything was everywhere, and when the amniotic atom-bath facilitating his mind’s premature puberty had done all it could do, and the things were things, and the sounds were sounds, and the pain of staring directly into the growth-stimulating lights shining into the tank was burning, blinding pain, his first and only instinct was to fight. He thrashed in the tank, threw himself against the sidewall, shattering the reinforced glass and triggering alarms from above and a sudden horrible feeling, a dragging-down from the inside that he did not and would never figure out, a carefully-measured micro-solution of kryptonite auto-injected into the back of his neck, and he fell face-down onto shards of glass as the atom-bath drained into vents in the floor. He was born fighting, just as he was meant to do. 

Kai Kent gets out of bed when the first sliver of sun appears over the fields in the distance, takes off the pajama shirt Ma and Pa have given him, and puts the shirt on that he’s supposed to wear during the daytime. He does the same with his pants. Jeans. They’re blue, like Clark’s pants. Blue jeans. 

Figuring out which hole to put his head through is hard, and he’s still getting a hang of which arm is supposed to go where, but he goes slow—don’t get frustrated—finds the holes one at a time, and, for the second time in his life, Kai gets dressed all on his own. The fabric is soft and easy to move in. He likes it. He likes putting on new things and being like the people around him. For the first time in his life, he’s liking things at all.

Like any child, for the short time while he was still a child—although he’d been born looking almost grown, and for the rest of his life would remain in a certain state of experiencing things for the first time that others took for granted—he looked first for his mother, and found there a father, a maker, a minor god.

Ma and Pa are still asleep, so Kai goes down the hall trying extra hard not to bump into anything. He’s starting to get used to where things are now, to get a sense of where to put himself and how to move. He doesn’t know how that works, why he can’t see the way he had when he’d worn his suit, and why everything had made more sense both inside and out before it had come off. He doesn’t know why he misses Lex in spite of the huge painful feeling digging a deeper hole inside him whenever he thinks of Luthorcorp, how remembering where he’d been and what he’d done makes him want to hit his head hard against a wall the way he’d done to the clones who had come before him. Grabbed them by their necks and destroyed them so that he would be chosen to survive, because he’d been told to do. He’d thought hurting and being hurt were normal. Necessary.  

Now, he goes out into the dewy grass to feed the chickens before the rest of Smallville wakes up. 

There were two more before him; One was long gone by the time he got there, and the other he saw only at a distance, in passing, in hallways, always being led in different directions by different trainers, so close but so far. They were the same but not the same, knew it somehow, and they looked at each other with curiosity, with sympathy, and with competition. 

The one they called ‘Two’ was also called ‘pretty’. Two was smaller than him, slightly, and prone to fits of screaming that hurt his ears. He understood the sounds implicitly, and resented them the same so that had has no desire to be closer to Two than he already was, but still found comfort in not being the only one. The only him in the world.

And then, one day, he was led to stand facing his other, each on opposite ends of a massive containment cell, hungry, and dressed in the same fatigues. He was aware of a viewing window above them, of Lex’s eyes and approval shining down on them through binoculars and plexiglass.

Win, Lex said. Win, and live. 

They began to circle each other. He had never hurt anyone before. 

Two flew at him. Two was quick, sharper than he was, but, thinking of the screaming, he caught Two by the neck and slammed him hard against the righthand wall, hit him against it until the flesh under his fist crunched and he knew that pretty Two couldn’t get up anymore.

It was easy. It happened fast. The feeling inside him was wild, and it hurt, nowhere near happiness until he looked up at the viewing window and saw Lex looking down at him, smiling.

Kai finds the feed cup where it hangs on its nail, takes a big scoop from the grain bin, and carries it into the coop. The hens are already awake, clucking and flapping around his feet. He moves slowly; They’re so small, and it seems that, if he isn’t careful, he could smash them to bits without trying. And that’s bad. It’s bad to hurt things, he knows that now. It’s bad to be hurt. To bleed. He hadn’t known but now he does, and he feels he might have to spend forever trying to be better. All he’s ever wanted is to do a good job. 

He was good at the things he could do. The strongest. The best. They gave him pats on the back at first, and then, later, a wider and wider berth. Staying away from him, he was that strong. He was protecting Lex. He made Lex feel safe. It didn’t matter that, with the suit on, no one even tried to look him in the eye anymore.

After dumping the grain on the ground, he stands still and watches the chickens eat. The chickens like food. He likes food. Also, everyone seems happy when he eats the food they give him, so he does no matter what. At Luthorcorp, it had all been lab infusions and laying inside a UV-lit capsule while everyone else went to sleep, which had felt nice, made him feel powerful and be able to move fast, except that the sweet round things Eve gave him sometimes from a pretty pink box tasted better than sun. Eve.

He had told on Eve to Lex, and gotten her hurt. That scares him to think about, so he tries not to, but it sneaks in when he doesn’t have other things to focus on. Blurry flashes of faces crying, screaming, looking at him in fear and intimidation. Echoes of pride and a sense of retribution that now made him feel confused and sick. Blood he’d squeezed out through purpled fists in exchange for a life and a name. 

Ultraman. 

He wouldn’t blame Eve if she hated him forever for turning her in. He wouldn’t blame her for being afraid. Trust is earned, he knows, and so are rewards—of which friendship is one. Doing his job had meant telling on her, had meant staying alive because he’d seen what would happen to him if he failed, because he had disposed of the failures. Broken bones. The stink of the incinerator. The hovering threat of another Kryptonite injection to the back of the neck. His fault. 

He tastes iron before he knows he’s broken his own skin again, and puts his hands down by his sides the way Ma wants him to do. Blood under his fingernails. That’s the one constant between then and now, Luthorcorp and Smallville; No biting allowed.

Sometimes he had memories that were not his own. They came to him when he’d least expected it, when he was on the edge of falling asleep in his pod or just standing guard behind Lex, as was his assigned position, and they felt invasive. Violating. 

They were only ever images, snippets of movement, and vague echoes of emotions he’d never felt, and they always upset him simply by being there. Being upset made him want to break things. Obliterate them. He usually got the chance to, because Lex was efficient and driven when it came to making the world a cleaner and better place, but when there was nothing to break, he defaulted to slowly and subconsciously attempting to dismantle himself. 

Before the suit, which stopped the scratching and biting where they began, before he understood that blood was bad, it had confused him when Lex had said that ‘injuring himself’ was a twisted thing to do. He always healed quickly, certainly quicker than Lex, and he was told to hurt other people all the time. He had to assume that hurting was inevitable, and so must not be bad. 

Kai sits down in the dirt and takes Gertrude into his lap, holds her the way Pa showed him while she flaps her wings, until she settles down and perches between his knees. The things he’s learning now are so different. Smaller. No hitting, no flying, no follow the leader. He and Ma do “school” after breakfast, time with the books and big laminated charts she got from her friends. There are symbols for words just like there are symbols for fighting moves, and he’s picking them up okay. Now he sleeps in a soft bed, and watches Naruto for hours of the day, and nothing anyone has told him to do has yet made anyone cry. For the first time, it feels good. Kai is terrified of making that good feeling go away. 

Inside the house, he can hear Ma and Pa waking up. All the confusion and sadness have locked his ability to use most of his powers deep inside him—he cant find them, and doesn’t know why— but his ears are still sharp the same way that he’s still strong. He can hear their slippers on the floorboards all the way from where he is, outside. The warm floor, their soft slippers. The house is the best place he’s ever been, the most personal place, the easiest. His sense of time isn’t strong; as far as he knows he’s already been on the farm for as many years as he’d been with Luthorcorp, which was a whole lifetime as far as he can tell. 

Not knowing until now that he could like being anywhere is half of where his sadness lies. He hadn’t known how bad he’d felt until he’d had something to compare it to. He hadn’t known the concept of lying until the truth had shown him its benevolent but heartbreaking face. 

Soon, Pa will come outside the way he has for the past few days that have become almost forever in Kai’s mind, ‘almost’ in that he already can’t imagine leaving the farm but-and-because he’s only now starting to grasp a concept of ‘tomorrow’. Tomorrow, he’ll wake up and feed the chickens again, and Pa will come out, and they’ll go inside. Together. 

Breakfast is muffins again, and he eats three. Puts butter on them, carefully copying the way he’s seen Pa do it, with the butter knife. The taste is good. He leaves the wrappers on the plate this time—Clark had told him that they were paper, and paper wasn’t for eating—and then puts them in the bin under the sink. Plates go in the sink. He waits until Ma and Pa are done eating to take theirs, too. He gets the same satisfaction from putting things where they’re supposed to go that he had from fighting. It all feels like saving the world. There’s the same sense of participating in something ‘right’, but even more thank-yous this time. Same with “school”—it’s not so different from training, maybe a little harder, but also a little better on the level that he understands. 

Today they’re working on the alphabet again. Good job, Ma says to him over and over again. Good job, Kai. 

Good job. 

******

Early Sunday afternoon and the sun is high overhead, a blazing white spot in an endless blue sky. Kai is on his back in the grass, staring at that sun directly and feeling as good as he’s ever felt in the half-hour gap between school with Ma and something they’re going to do in the afternoon. Maybe watching a show. Maybe reading a book. Without realizing it, he’s coming to look forward to things, not just anticipate them. That’s one of the best parts of learning how to ‘like’. 

There are footsteps in the grass to his left, one of the cows coming to say hello. He’s friends with them now, and with the chickens. He misses them when he has to leave them and go to bed. C is for chicken, and for cow. C-O-W. 

A shadow moves over him, blocking out the sun. 

“Hey dude,” Clark says.

C is also for Clark.

Kai sits up, then stands and straightens up to give his brother a proper greeting. “Clark,” he says. C-L-A-R-K. Initiating straight ‘hellos’ takes an inertia he still doesn’t possess, but names he can do better than ever. Learning to associate words with letters and letters with movements—”sign language”— is making it easier. There’s grass stuck to his shirt. They both notice it, but neither of them does anything about it. 

“How’s it goin’ around here? Have you been looking after the place?” Clark asks him as they start toward the house. Kai had wanted to stay in the field until Clark had started moving, but, in Kai’s mind, Clark’s ideas are king, and he’d started following him automatically before he processed that they were leaving at all. He’ll see the cows again later. He doesn’t look back.

It’s going well. Good. Nothing’s changed. Everyone is alive, and he’s begun to be able to close his eyes at night without being afraid that memories he hadn’t known were bad until after they’d already happened repeating on him. “...Good,” he tells Clark. G-O-O-D. 

That seems to make Clark happy, because his mouth pulls up and his eyes narrow. That’s what makes a smile. Kai tries to make his own face do the same, gets halfway, and then stops. A long time ago now, but not so long ago that it doesn’t feel kind of like an upside down sort of yesterday, Lex had looked down at him in his containment cell and grimaced at his attempt to mirror what was a smirk of satisfaction mistaken for an expression of paternal love. Oh, god, Lex had said, is that a smile? And so Kai had put his bared-tooth smile away. 

He watches Clark closely as he greets Ma and Pa, lingering behind him, the arrival unannounced but hoped for, here on a sunny day for no reason other than to say a happy hello. The way Clark moves is so easy. He knows what words to use, and when, and how. The more Kai learns, the further away he gets from thinking of Clark as inborn competition and the more he believes that Clark is who he could have, should have been. He goes to sleep each night watched over by posters from Clark’s favorite bands and TV shows. Clark’s books look down on him from the shelves, and his toys. He wears Clark’s old clothes. He sees himself in the mirror every day when his face is shaved, the face that came from a strand of hair broken down to minutiae and rebuilt almost right. And Clark he is not. 

Clark is smart. People trust him. He can fly better, fight better. He says things Kai can’t fathom coming up with, and people smile and laugh. He has a girlfriend. Lois. Lex had said Ultraman was an improvement on the original model, the strongest, probably best being on planet earth. Superman was a parasite, a trojan horse, a liar. Now here Kai is in jeans and a t-shirt getting to watch while Clark sits down to help his Pa—their Pa—work on a puzzle, and feeling newly aware of just how far behind Clark he is in the world that seems to exist outside of him that he’d never known about before. Lex had said he was the strongest, but also called him stupid to his face. Kai is proud of everything he’s learning, and how good he can do, and he thinks now that Lex Luthor was the liar all along, but about the last thing... he hadn’t really understood it before, but now that he knows what he does not know, he thinks that Lex was right. 

So Kai tries to copy Clark’s movements, and make sense of the things he says. Follows him into the living room and sits down the way he sits, leaning forward with his hands clasped between comfortable, evenly-spaced knees. Kai wonders how Clark had learned to act like that, what kind of training had made him the opposite rigid while still being disciplined to the point of making Kai envious. How long he’d gone to ‘school’ the way Kai is, with Ma in the kitchen, to learn to talk the way he can. How the lab, the one Kai still assumes Clark was born in the way he still thinks all babies must be born, in labs, had taught Clark to be a part of it all. 

Word has been getting out that there’s a new Kent in town, thanks to Ma going out and getting all the books, and the charts from which Kai is learning to identify his own emotions so he can feel them better. She’d asked her best teacher friends for advice, and they’d all come through. Not too many people, she said, she didn’t want the whole town to come knocking on the door before they were ready for “next steps”, but things get around fast even in quiet Smallville, and now there’s a casserole brought over by the neighbors on the kitchen table. Clark says it looks good. Kai isn’t so sure, but if Clark thinks so, then Clark is right. 

The texture makes him grimace. He can’t help it, can’t see his own face. The food feels wrong in his mouth. 

“Lookit that,” Ma says, “We finally found something that you don’t like.” 

“You don’t have to eat it if you don’t like it,” Clark says on his elbow, his own fork hovering in midair.

Kai looks from Clark, to his fork, to his plate, to Ma and Pa’s plates, to his own plate, and the messed-up square of casserole sitting there looking back at him. He isn’t sure what to do. He’s never consciously made a choice that wasn’t presented to him as one, and he doesn’t exactly know how. 

“It’s okay not to like it,” Pa says, “Just more for us who do.”

No one seems disappointed. No one seems mad. “...Copy,” Kai says. He puts his fork down, and his hands in his lap where they’re supposed to be. Thinks about getting to choose, and what that means. He wants to like the casserole, but he doesn’t. He wants to be like Clark, but he isn’t. 

“Pretty cool being your own guy, huh?” Clark asks him.

“Pretty cool,” Kai says. And it is. 

*****

 “You take a cart now, one of the big ones,” Ma says, “Pull it out gentle- That’s good, Kai. O-kay.“ She nods up at him, then turns towards the sliding doors, saying “Now stay with me, there’s a lot to look at. Though I bet I don’t have to tell ya…” as they go through. 

It’s very bright, and there’s a lot to look at. It’s like looking out a window at the city, Kai thinks, except every colorful thing is right there at arm’s reach. He’s careful to match Ma’s pace as they enter the store, following behind her with the cart, which is inconsequential to push but which makes a bad kind of grating, whacking sound from the wheels as it rolls along on the polished concrete floor. Nothing he can do about that, though. It doesn’t seem to be something he’s supposed to focus on, so he tries not to. Focusing his eyes, and his ears in the direction of where they’re trying to go. 

“The outside’s where all the fruits and vegetables live,” Ma tells him, leading him that way and around wooden displays stacked with shiny red, green, brown, and yellow things. Fruits.  “Now, take a bag—“ she rips a plastic bag off a roll mounted on a post next to a display “—and only one kinda fruit in each bag, ‘cause we’re gonna have to weight it up at the front.”

Kai nods to tell her he understands, and watches her set a bag with two yellow fruits in it in the cart. Then three red fruits, and an ugly green one. It’s hard to imagine wanting to eat that one, but he will if Ma and Pa want him to. If he doesn’t like it, he can stop. 

“Op,” Ma says, “And there’s Betsy.” She’s looking in the direction of a woman standing with her back to them on the other end of the sea of fruits and vegetables, who notices them a moment later and then is fast incoming. “Betsy works down at the post office,” Ma explains. “She’s very friendly.”

Betsy is round and sort of red, like one of the fruits. “Martha!” she says, “I looked over and thought ‘Is that Clark?’ But this isn’t Clark. Now, I don’t think we’ve met.”

“Tell her your name and who you are,” Ma tells him.

Kai swallows. He’s been practicing this, has seen it done a hundred times before by different people. He’s good at this. Tell her your name and who you are.  “My name...’s Kai,” he says slowly, matching the words to their hand signs, “Kai Kent Clark’s brother.” There’s still an ‘Ultraman’ hidden under the ‘Kai’, but he isn’t letting that out anymore. 

“I believe that! You two look just alike. Martha, I had no idea…” 

“Oh, we didn’t either,” Ma says, “But we’re happy to be all together now, ain’t we?” She looks up at Kai, and Kai nods. He is happy to be all together. 

“Well, how great,” Betsy smiles, “You enjoying your time here, Kai?”

He doesn’t have an answer prepared for that one. If she means the grocery store, he hasn't figured it out yet. He’s too busy pushing the cart, doing his job.

“Kai’s still workin’ on his answers,” Ma says. 

She isn’t talking to him anymore so Kai habitually ignores it, looking off over the displays at big cutout of a cartoon cow while the conversation continues beside him. 

“—Clark found him—“

The cutout cow is smiling. He doesn’t know what it has to smile about. 

“—A little bit delayed—“

Maybe the cow is happy working for the store. The cow gives milk. The other workers appreciate the cow. 

“—So he’s stayin’ with us now—” 

And then Betsy is smiling and saying goodbye just as soon as she’s arrived. Like Ma, Kai puts up his hand and waves. 

“Sometimes,” Ma says quietly to him as they enter the meat section, surrounded by shrink-wrapped slabs of the smiling cow, “Sometimes, Kai, you tell people things, ‘cause you know that they’ll go tell other people. And that takes some of the telling off of you.” 

Kai brings the grocery bags inside when they get back, puts everything away in its place, then stands in the kitchen and waits. He can hear the chickens out in the coop, and the cows in the field, everything in its place, and everyone. This is what he’s a part of now, helping to maintain, and protect; Ma is in the living room wiping the table with a fluffy thing, and Pa is outside. Everyone right where they need to be, including him. 

He’s used to waiting, used to being silent and still. There’s both less and more to see here while he waits than there had been with Luthorcorp. Fewer dim rooms and busy screens, and more blades of grass, and birds. It makes him feel peaceful. That’s the word. He isn’t constantly bracing for a fight anymore. 

Clark and Lois are coming. Eve, and someone else whose name evades him. Pa couldn’t remember the name either. It’s okay. 

He feels good about seeing Eve again, ready to say sorry for telling on her. Clark says that, even as bad as it feels to be guilty, it can be a good thing, because once he knows he feels bad he can figure out how to do better. It’s amazing to him, having the power to make someone feel some way, including himself. 

Kai chews the inside of his cheek a little too hard. No biting his nails, but his cheek he can get away with. He gets more than enough sun here—the bite marks will have healed before he has something to do next. 

A long way down the road, too far for anyone but him to hear, there’s a car approaching.

Next steps, Ma had said. 

Is he ready?

Affirmative.