Gift for KittyAugust! The Greatest Secret
Title: The Greatest Secret
From: pitch-hit from Tallihensia
For: Kitty August
Type: Fic, 7k+
Rating: G
Warnings: none
Request: see notes
Summary: At summer camp, Conner finds out his main rival at camp is just like him. And by just like him, that included all his super powers, as well as his looks. Conner and Carl work together to figure out the secret, and then untangle their mutual past, revolving to fix what had gone wrong and find their way to a family again.
Gifter's Note: Pitch Hit for Kitty August, who asked for "Connor sees The Parent Trap and gets ideas about how to fix his Christmas by setting up his parents". I took the base idea and then went back a couple of steps with it and this is more of an actual plot of it, though more based on the book, which had in 1942 meant to be a movie titled "The Great Secret." It's no secret that I've always thought there should be more clones. ^^ Future fic AU, mix of worlds. Plus throwing in a side dish of some of the other requests. ^^
Cross-posted to AO3: http://archiveofourown.org/works/9611456
Note - Carl Krummet was one of Superboy's aliases in one of the universes.
The Greatest Secret
"Camp sucks," Conner muttered as he stomped through the grounds between the cabins. He hesitated before the one he was assigned to, not wanting to go in where there would be other boys. Normal boys. Non-super-powered boys.
Heaving a giant sigh, he went to an old oak near the cabin and hauled himself up into its branches until he could sit upon a limb. Despite their not being allowed to climb the trees, a multitude of initials in the bark showed how well any teenagers obeyed.
When his dad had originally asked him to go to the camp, Conner had readily agreed. Clark had to go off-world as Superman, and travel time alone was going to be a month at least. Staying in Smallville with Grandma and Grandpa was... well, it was boring, honestly. And there had been this camp that Diana had recommended, saying the Amazons had used it for introduction training where there were a limited number of young humans from all over to adapt to. Differences could be shrugged off in a mix of people like that.
At the time, Conner had thought it had meant Cassie would be there too, or at least one of her cousins. He should have known better. He'd been suckered into an all-boys session of the camp and they were all boringly mundane.
In the cabin across from his, the door opened and Conner's red-haired nemesis, Carl, walked out. He unerringly looked over to the tree and frowned at Conner. Then he turned and headed off in the direction Conner had just come from.
Conner and Carl were the top two rivals at the camp. They both excelled at nearly everything, with sometimes one of them on top (Conner at Archery and Biology), sometimes the other (Carl at Rifles and Math), and sometimes a near-tie (both of them in Track and Swimming). Everybody but the two of them thought they should be friends.
Conner was brash and reckless, Carl was soft-spoken and calculating. Conner was easy-going and accepting. Carl was quick to anger and yet just as accepting. They both had a lot of friends in the camp, just not the other. There was something about Carl that put Conner on edge, and he'd seen the red-head giving him the same looks.
A grant had gotten Conner to the camp, him being middle-class with farmer grandparents. Most of the Amazons usually had mixed backgrounds as well, so the camp had been set up with an array of people from all over admitted to it. Carl, though, was apparently rich and he had a bodyguard who had come with him to camp. The bodyguard stayed in a cabin with the other bodyguards, Carl not being the only one so followed. It was amazing their rivalry had stayed at just glares and avoidance so far, with so much different about them.
Stifling an outward sigh this time, Conner looked up through the tree at the stars. It was daylight and most people couldn't see them, but he just had to shift his vision a bit to look on a different wavelength. The first time he'd talked to his dad about it, Clark had blinked, then asked him to describe how he'd done it. He hadn't been able to explain it well, being young at the time, but Clark had figured it out and then they'd both watched the stars together, at all times. They were considered a little strange by their neighbors.
He hadn't thought he'd miss his dad that much. Teenagers were supposed to rebel, weren't they? But Clark had never given him a lot to rebel against, always taking the time to explain his reasoning for various rules, and adjusting as needed. Superman was always off fighting evil somewhere... but he usually came home eventually to Conner.
Speaking of evil... Conner turned his head as his super-hearing caught the sound of gunshots. Which sometimes sounded like firecrackers even to his hearing, and had resulted in some embarrassing incidents when he was a kid and running to rescue other kids from Fourth of July fun. But after intense work with the Fortress comparing the various sounds at distance and near, Conner had finally learned to instinctively tell the difference, and these were gunshots.
He squinted, also highly trained to check out the situation first before running in. It was a fair distance away and even though he could see stars, he still had to strain to be able to use his x-ray and distance together to focus on a noise. Something his dad did much better, but even Superman had wryly remarked it hadn't come instinctually at first.
Conner stiffened as he saw that the gunshots weren't from bad guys but good - the police were firing at a small humanoid that was coughing fire balls at them. One cop car was already in flames, though it looked like everybody had gotten out okay. There didn't seem to be any other super-heroes around, just the normal heroes - not special-powered, but doing all they could to protect people anyhow.
Giving a quick glance around and not seeing anybody looking his direction, Conner climbed up to the top of the tree, changing into his costume along the way, and then launching himself from the top into the air as Superboy.
As he arrived on the scene, a costumed figure in green and purple got between a fire ball and a wounded cop. The fire splashed off the other's chest, highlighting his hair in red. No, that was red hair.
Even as he blinked, Conner used a breath of super-cold to extinguish the flames around the fire humanoid, who proved to be human after all, a glint of madness in his eyes, even as he turned to raise a weapon at Conner.
Carl super-speeded there first, wrenching the weapon out of his hand and bending it in two, where it promptly exploded. Conner dashed the extinguished human out of the way of the mini-explosion, trusting Carl would be okay.
The flames were coming back, and Conner used his breath again, this time a bit chillier, leaving a glimmer of frost on the pale skin.
"Anybody have a trank?" Carl turned to the police. "This guy needs to get up to the JL while he's still cooled down."
There were sadly enough encounters with bad meta-humans nowadays that one of the cop cars arriving at the scene did, indeed, have equipment to deal with them, and to contain the meta until a representative from the Justice League could come and get him.
After the police gave their thanks, the two teenagers left.
They flew up and in the direction of camp, but stopped off on a tall hill before they got there. Carl sat down on a rock while Conner claimed a different one.
"So," Carl said, looking Conner's costume up and down. "Superboy, I take it."
"Yeah." There wasn't really any way of hiding it with the big red 'S' on his chest. "Should I know you?" Conner flushed at the way that came out, but he had thought he knew most of the teenage superheroes. Carl wasn't in the Teen Titans, that was for sure.
"Kid Hawaii," Carl admitted. "I don't go out of the islands much, and when I do, I'm usually helping out the ships or the Atlantians or out the pacific rim way.
Conner nodded. He knew the name. Aqualad had spoken well of him. "So what are you doing out here now? If I lived in Hawaii, I wouldn't ever leave."
Carl kicked his feet against the rock. "My dad is in the hospital. He didn't want me hovering or out super-heroing when he couldn't back me up, so he ordered me off to camp. I hate it."
"That... sounds really familiar." Conner thought about that for a minute. "Your dad is a super-hero too?"
"Dad? No." Carl laughed. "But he has a lot of cool tech and likes to keep an eye on me."
They eyed each other for awhile longer. Both of them in costume and sitting on top of a hillside after fighting a villain with super-powers was a far cry from competing with each other in camp in archery and mathematics.
"It's not really all that common for heroes to have the same powers, is it?" Carl finally asked in a hesitant voice. "Dad never... Dad always changed the subject when I asked."
Conner shook his head, his gaze constantly going over Carl up and down, studying him intently like he'd never done at camp. "And..." he stumbled over it himself before going on. "Other than the hair..."
"We look alike," Carl finished for him. They each took their gaze off each other and looked down at their costumes and themselves before looking back again. "I didn't see that before."
"You wear loose pull-overs and slacks, even when we're hiking," Conner pointed out. "I wear tight t-shirts and jeans, all the time."
"My hair distracts people from looking at my face," Carl admitted.
"Is it natural?"
Carl smiled a bit. "Yeah. Matches below as well. It's why I don't spend much time in the changing room."
Conner snickered. He'd never looked in the showers. No reason to. "We have the same weird eyes." They were an odd shade of blue hazel, with flakes of green.
"That I'd noticed," Carl shrugged. "Dad's eyes are similar, though his are more blue-grey."
"My dad's are green."
They looked at each other some more.
"I notice neither of us has mentioned a mother." Carl moved to the next step. "Dad said I was artificially inseminated. No mom."
Conner gulped. "I... Dad told me that when he was dead, a rogue group of scientists tried to clone him. When he got better, he got me back."
Carl swallowed and looked away. "If you were going to clone somebody..."
"I wouldn't just make one," Conner finished.
There was another long pause.
"Who is your dad?" Conner finally asked.
Carl's mouth twitched up. "Yeah. Well. Nowadays, he goes by Alex Krummet, but you'd probably know the name of Lex Luthor."
Conner drew his breath in with a sharp hiss, startled and a little frightened. The other heroes told horror stories of the super-villain Lex Luthor, arch-enemy of Superman. Though... his dad never did. Conner let the hiss die, his reflex turning to thought.
"Yeah," Carl said in response to the hiss, matter of fact about it. He tilted his head back and looked up at the sky, bringing a leg up and clasping his hands around his knee.
It was a gesture Conner made all the time. "He stole you?"
Carl shook his head. "Doubt it. You think Superman would have let him?"
"But..." Nobody had heard of Lex Luthor since Superman came back to life. Superman wouldn't talk about it. "They..."
"I don't know," Carl admitted. "I always wondered about my powers, but Dad... I love my dad. Didn't want to hurt him by asking. He raised me, training me as each came along, accepting it always."
"There's got to be a record." Conner stood up. "We'll find it."
Carl grinned and dropped his pose. "Your place or mine? Mine has security, even if Dad's not there."
"Mine, then." Superman wouldn't be back for awhile still.
They both took off at the same time, flying together through the air. As they headed to Metropolis, they tested each other's limits and found they were nearly the same. As with the camp, small differences, not major.
"Nothing." They turned off their computers with simultaneous sighs. "Whatever records there are, they aren't in the public stories, nor in anything we can hack."
"We could go to the Fortress..." Conner said slowly, testing it out. "It would know."
They looked at each other, wide-eyed. They were skimming the edges of the truth and neither one knew if they wanted that much.
Carl suddenly glanced at the wall where the clock hung and swore. "We're late for camp dinner."
"Oops." Conner had completely forgotten about that.
They flew quickly back, starting to head towards where they left their clothes when Carl tugged Conner towards the parking lot. There was a flashing green light going off, in a frequency too low for most people to see.
When they landed, Carl's bodyguard came out to meet them. She looked at the two of them and shook her head. "I had a feeling. I covered for you both - Conner is helping Carl after the hospital called with word from Carl's dad."
"Really?" Carl perked up and looked worried at the same time, a feat Conner had previously thought only he was capable of.
"No, not really!" the bodyguard growled. "Idiots. Get changed and get back to your cabins."
"What about dinner?" Conner couldn't help but ask.
The bodyguard rolled her eyes. "Okay, get changed and go get a late dinner."
"But Mercy, what about Dad?" Carl persisted.
Conner blinked several times at hearing her name. After pouring through all the old records, he was a lot more familiar with the public history of Lex Luthor in Metropolis and the encounters with Superman. His bodyguards, Mercy and Hope, had figured in many of the tales, as fairly formidable women.
Mercy reached out and ruffled Carl's hair, while Carl shied back a little but not far enough to avoid it.
"Your dad is fine. Made it through the surgery okay and is in recovery. Hope is with him and she says he's trying to order all the doctors and nurses around already."
"Sounds like Dad." Carl smiled.
Conner tilted his head. "Um, Miss Mercy..."
The bodyguard blinked as she turned to him. "Just Mercy."
"Do you know about us?" Conner gestured between the two of them.
Carl brightened, coming to point and looking hopeful.
Mercy looked between them. "Yeah," she sighed. "I was there. Look. Go to dinner..." She paused. "Oh forget camp. Let's go into town. I miss restaurants."
Over lasagna and alfrado, the story came out.
It was much like Conner had heard before but with a few more details and a larger cast. Instead of one rouge scientist, it was a whole branch of a company that Lex Luthor owned, but hadn't authorized. Hope had been the one to find out what they were doing, while Superman was still dead. They'd stopped the experiments and gotten the scientists arrested for a different charge, and had been left with five little toddlers...
"Five?" Carl and Conner looked at each other and back at Mercy. A string of spaghetti hung off Conner's fork and then the whole pile fell to the plate.
Mercy shook her head. "The others didn't make it," she said briefly. Pain in her voice told another tale they weren't going to ask about right now.
The two of them were raised together in the Luthor Corp towers, until Superman returned.
"He was a little upset." Mercy simplified.
Eventually believing Lex, Superman didn't back down on wanting both of the remaining children for himself. Lex wouldn't back down on wanting them either. The battle, apparently, was epoch.
"We're children of divorced parents," Carl said, wide-eyed.
"Why did Luthor even have any say in it?" Conner wondered. "He found and rescued us, okay, but if we are clones of Superman..."
"You're not clones," Mercy said quietly. "You're hybrids. The scientists used half of Superman's DNA, and half of Lex's."
Conner's fork hit the plate with a clatter before it fell to the floor.
Carl blinked. "You mean we really are children of divorced parents?"
Mercy shot him a look. Then she laughed. "Well, essentially. God knows the tension between them had always been so thick that Hope and I just wanted to shut them in a bedroom and let them work it out."
"That was," Conner started.
"More than we wanted to know," Carl finished. He gave Conner a fork from his plate, being an odd person and eating his alfrado with a spoon.
Mercy just grinned and dug into her lasagna while they absorbed that part of the story.
They were on dessert before she finished. Pretty much as they had expected at this point. With some intervention from the other superheroes, including Supergirl and Wonder Woman, the bitter feud was not so much resolved as sliced down the middle, with Superman keeping the baby with the dark hair, and Lex taking the baby with the red hair and moving to the opposite side of the country and across the ocean away. Part of the settlement was for Lex to give up his villainy ways, and so the name change as well. Clark's part was to never meddle and to stay away from Lex from then on.
"Seriously divorced parents," Carl muttered as he dug into the cheesecake.
Conner had chocolate fudge cake. He hummed an agreement. Then he stopped humming and looked up at Carl, as Carl stopped eating and looked back at him.
Then they looked at Mercy.
"No," she said reflexively. "Whatever it is, no."
----
"It's a stupid idea," Mercy said as she drove them back. "You can't just switch. They're going to know. You're not identical."
"Dye our hair, and we're just about. The genetics were obviously dna selected, or we wouldn't even be this close."
"It's not just the appearance - you two have different personalities and you like different things. They're your dads - they'll know."
"They're going to be distracted," Conner pointed out. "My dad is just getting back from that big trip, and Carl's dad..."
"Is getting out of the hospital," Carl finished. "As sharp as Dad is normally, he's not going to be paying that much attention, especially if you vouch for Conner as me."
"We're all doomed," Mercy muttered.
Carl didn't look upset, so Conner figured that was acceptance for Mercy. "One of our dads probably already knows anyhow."
Carl glanced at him and nodded. "The odds of both of us showing up at the same camp on the same two weeks? Coincidence happens, but human intervention is more likely."
Mercy drummed her fingers on the steering wheel as she pulled into the parking lot and stopped. "No. I think you're right about it not being coincidence, but I think you're wrong as to who's behind it."
"Who then?" They stayed in the car as they talked. They were going to be in such trouble with the camp, but none of them cared.
"Who was it that told you about this camp?" Mercy turned it back on them.
"Diana," Conner said slowly. "Didn't you say she was part of the divorce settlement?"
"And Aunt Kara," Carl reflected. "She's the one that talked Dad into in on our end."
"Supergirl?" Conner blinked. "Aunt Kara?"
Mercy chuckled. "Kara and Lex have always been friends, even when Superman and Lex were at their worst in the fighting. And yes. Kara and Diana..."
"They're good friends," Carl put in.
"We'll leave it at that," Mercy said wryly. "I suspect they thought ten years had been long enough. None of us ever thought Lex and Clark would really stay away from each other. It was just supposed to be a breathing space to let them calm down."
"So you'll help us?"
Mercy sighed. "May the Goddesses have mercy, I'll help you." She paused. "Just remember I'm not as invulnerable as you two are."
---
Conner was used to different situations as Superboy, but he wasn't so used to them as himself. But he wasn't himself right now, was he? He glanced around the elegant home, trying not to stare. He kept telling himself he'd grown up with this luxury, this space. He couldn't quite believe it, though.
The house was up in the hills, on the dry side of Kauai, in a neighborhood with lots of space between the homes. It was huge. Carl had gone over a map of it with him until he knew all ten rooms - bedrooms for Lex (Alex), Carl (himself, now), Mercy and Hope, as well as kitchen, dining room, living room, rec room (fighting room), man-cave (Carl's game room, mostly), solarium, and office.
Mercy stayed close to Conner, which was more reassuring than he would have thought it would have been a few weeks ago.
He only had a moment to absorb the initial entry as his new dad was approaching. It didn't look like he'd just been in the hospital, but that was one of the reasons Carl wasn't worried.
They don't talk about it much, but Dad was in Smallville the day the meteors came down. He heals. Not instantaneously... but after living my life worried about him for stuff, I've gotten used to it. If it doesn't kill him, he's good.
Conner tried desperately to project Carl. This was going to be the hardest part.
Lex came to him, a wide grin on his face and love in his eyes. He was flicking his gaze up and down Conner's body, reassuring himself that all was okay with his son. "Carl," Lex said, and enfolded him in his arms.
Conner returned the hug carefully. Before this moment, he'd thought Carl had been on crack when he was trying to describe his dad's hugs. He's not a big hugger, so don't expect it regularly, but I do get them at things like coming home. He... don't glomp hug him. Kara glomp hugs - she hugs easily and heartily. Dad... Dad's hugs are special. They have meaning. They... oh, you'll just have to experience it. But hug him carefully back. I always do.
Clark hugged much like Kara hugged - frequently and with the whole of himself. Lex hugged... Lex hugged like it was precious. He wasn't hesitant, and he was obviously familiar with hugging... but the hug had an almost deliberate feel, as if Lex had calculated it all out and was choosing this hug and all that this hug meant and stood for, and it was a special hug for his son.
Just as carefully as Carl had said, Conner returned the hold, both savoring his first contact with his other dad, and feeling a little guilty at the same time.
"You could just tell them you want to meet - if you ask, they'll both agree."
The teens looked at each other. "But then our dads wouldn't see us - they'd see each other. We want to know them without that in-between."
Lex drew back, the smile dimmer but still there. "Are you okay?"
"Fine, Dad," Conner tried out the title on his new dad. It felt awkward but rolled off smoothly enough. "Just... it's been... are you okay?" He blurted that last out, still worried despite Carl's reassurances.
With a laugh, Lex withdrew the rest of the way, leaving a hand on Connor's arm the longest until finally that touch, too, left. "I'm fine." He raised his other hand. "They didn't even have to chop it off - arthroscopy is advanced enough they were able to do all the work inside."
Conner was fascinated in spite of himself, but he forced himself not to ask - Carl's interest was in math, not biology. Which was too bad, because Conner really wanted to know.
For a little bit longer, Lex talked to him, asking about camp. Conner replied with Carl's answers, which they'd practiced ahead of time, knowing that this part would be a no brainer for their dads to ask. The confidence and assurance in those answers let him get through the next several minutes until Lex finally stopped at Carl's room and turned away to let his son unpack in peace.
Mercy gave Conner a slight nod of approval as she went down the hall with her gear to her own room.
Shutting the door, Conner heaved a sigh of relief. The hardest part was over. Now to explore.
--
In the middle of the night, they met on the small island of Lehua, careful to stay on the ground below the high tide mark. Conner wore Carl's Kid Hawaii suit of green and purple, while Carl wore an all-black one that Conner sometimes used for practicing with Tim, when they didn't want anybody to know Superboy was there.
They fist-bumped, relief and congratulations both. "We survived the first day!"
"Though you didn't tell me about dish washing," Carl laughed.
Conner blinked. "Dish washing?"
"You've seen our place... I don't do the dishes. Not more than putting them in the sink. I had to make an excuse to your dad for a delay and then quickly google it while x-raying through to other people in the apartment to see what they were doing. I still don't think I got it quite right, but your dad didn't say anything."
Conner laughed a little helplessly. "Your dad asked me what I thought of one of the stock market indexes that was flashing by on the tv. I dashed off to both google it and search in your computer and got him an answer... I don't know what he thought of it. He had the oddest look on his face."
Carl cracked up. "I don't always tell Dad everything I have on the computer, trying to keep ahead of him. You might have impressed him."
They both snickered over their near-misses.
"I went flying with your dad tonight." Carl tilted his head back to look at the stars. "Doing super-hero rounds. It was the coolest thing. I usually do my rounds here by myself. Sometimes with Kara if she's around, but it's my islands, my people. Going around Metropolis with your dad... he's a real super hero."
Conner nodded. "He always has been," he replied quietly. "It's always been special. And yet..."
"They'll always be first," Carl finished.
Lifting one shoulder up, Conner dropped it in a half-shrug. "Not... not exactly. If I need him, he'll always be there, no matter what else. But... he'll give his life for them, all of them, the world. It's what a hero does, and what he always does. I've always lived with him fighting impossible odds, and winning most times, but always at a cost. I don't forget it was his death that made them think of creating me."
Carl nodded. "Yeah. With Dad... Dad gave everything else up to have me. I poked some more at the records today, what there was in your place. He used to be as big a figure in Metropolis as your dad. It's so strange to think of my dad and your dad, and to be hanging out with your dad for the day and trying to imagine them."
"Yeah," Conner agreed. He'd been doing the same for the whole day, only mostly trying to reconcile the tales the other heroes told of the evil villain Lex Luthor with this stay-at-home dad who did remote research work for alternative energy systems. "Our dads."
"Our dads," Carl repeated.
They both watched the waves lapping up on the island around them, over their boots, foam glinting in the moonlight.
"Wanna go on my rounds with me?" Carl finally asked.
"Sure," Conner agreed. He'd been hoping Carl would ask. They switched costumes and flew around the islands and on a wider circle, checking the boats and vessels in the area. Unlike Superman, who pretty much stopped to help everybody and anything he could if he was there, Carl didn't intervene unless it was big. The smaller rescues he did do were mostly out in the ocean, things like unwinding fishing string from around a dolphin's fins, or seeing a mass of plastic clumped and floating and retrieving and disintegrating it.
Instead of commenting, Conner just helped and learned. At the end of the rounds, they changed costumes again, and Carl flew back to Metropolis, just under the speed of sound. Conner more slowly went back home to Kauai.
Lex was waiting up for him when he got back. They talked a little about the ocean life and the plastic and some of the other things. Lex calmly accepting all of it, a thoughtful look on his face as he discussed what other sorts of things they could do as humans to help.
Conner went to bed even more thoughtful. Dads. Plural. It was something he'd never even thought about having. And now a brother and a second dad both.
--
Conner called his home with trembling fingers. When his dad picked up, he didn't even think. "Dad, I need to talk to Carl."
"Carl? Who is... Conner? Is that..."
"Conner, I need to talk to Conner. We switched. Just... Is he around?" Conner wasn't thinking too well.
Carl's voice could be heard in the background, super-hearing with all involved making actually handing the phone over not needed. "Conner? What's wrong?"
"You've got to get home, Carl. It's..." Conner swallowed. "It's your dad. The surgery didn't take. Lex's hand is... There's something seriously wrong. He's burning up with fever and the hand is... Just get back here, please."
There was a click of the phone disconnecting, and then a few seconds later, a sonic boom in the air, closely followed by another. The windows rattled and the ground shook with the force of it, but Conner didn't care about anything but his brother and father. He went to intercept them before they got to Lex's bedroom.
Hope let them in, her eyes narrowed as she glanced between Carl and Conner, but most of her attention was on Clark, her hand hovering near a gun, but not gripping. Mercy was at Lex's bed, using a wet rag to mop his sweating face and his dry hand and arm, swollen and a horrifying color of mottled red and green together.
"Dad!" Carl dashed in and flung himself over Lex's chest.
Lex opened his eyes and smiled without actually seeing them. "Carl. So that... was Conner... I'd wondered." He tried to lift his other hand and failed.
Clark walked up to the bed and touched Lex's face. "You idiot. Why didn't you call me?"
"Not... your... problem. Clark." Lex breathed out, his gaze focusing a little more sharply.
Taking a deep breath in, Clark held it for a moment, then let it out without saying anything. He gently nudged Carl to one side and then picked Lex up. He looked at Mercy. "We're going to the Fortress."
"Not... for human interven---"
"Shut up, Lex." Clark took off, breaking through the bedroom window with his heat vision and breath an instant before he went through it with Lex. Carl was right behind them, following literally on Clark's heels.
"He could have used the door," Conner said a little numbly.
Mercy dropped the rag back in the bowl and laughed with a tinge of hysteria. Hope came in from the other side and looked at the window.
"Go, Conner. Be with them. Let us know. But if he's truly taking him to the Fortress..."
"What was wrong with his hand?" Conner stayed instead. He'd been in medical in the Fortress enough times to know that once you were there, there was nothing more to be done than sit back and wait. All he'd do there would be to stand around. Which he would do. But this first.
Mercy stood up and walked over to Hope so they were standing together. "It was back when he and your dad were fighting all the time. He'd made a ring with Kryptonite, to taunt Superman."
"Umm..." Conner's eyes widened. "That's dangerous."
Hope shrugged. "He was already a mutant, and usually with Kryptonite, it's one time only, no matter what else happens. It wasn't as dangerous as if he'd been normal... and taunting Superman was worth it."
Conner walked to the nearest wall and banged his head against it.
"Yes, well, we were all a little foolish back then. And those two just as much as anybody."
"He stopped wearing it after you two were found, but..." Mercy spread her hands.
"Ten years for it to grow, whatever it was." Conner said grimly, thinking of it.
"Twelve. He had you both for two years before your dad came back." Hope corrected.
Conner had been having dreams at night of something like that. The two of them as toddlers together, sometimes with others. But mostly playing with the red-haired other. He'd thought they were dreams. Maybe they'd been memories. "They're both my dads," he said softly.
Mercy smiled back at him. "Go, then, and be with them. We'll..." she paused.
Hope put in wryly, "We'll get the wall fixed. Let us know."
"I will," Conner promised, and then took off.
---
When he got there, Carl and his dad were staring at each other.
Lex wasn't anywhere to be seen - presumably the Fortress already had taken him interior for medical work. It could do that with visual access, but sometimes didn't depending on what it was doing and who was watching. Having an AI helping out was useful, but sometimes never quite the same. Not a computer that just did what it was told.
Conner was relieved to know Lex was with the Fortress AI. Lex had been right - Clark didn't use the healing for people, and rarely even for them. Grandmother Martha had taught Conner all about the various ethnical issues that were in play for using the technology so selectively, and the issues that could arise if anybody knew the Fortress could heal. There were many, many villains who would want it, and business people, and world leaders, and... everybody.
Though from what Lex had said... "Did Lex know about the Fortress?" Conner asked, moving to his brother's side and touching his arm lightly.
Clark heaved a distressed breath. "Yes. Stubborn, stupid idiot. He should have called me last year, from the looks of it. Definitely last month. I don't know what he was thinking, trying to let human doctors work on it."
"He was probably thinking you wouldn't help," Carl said bluntly.
Conner winced. "Plus, you were out of town. Like a galaxy out of town."
"I wasn't a year ago, or before you two went to camp," Clark said tiredly. "You're right. He thought..." Clark paced around one of the stalagmites. "He thought wrong. I... It's Lex. It's... He's..."
Carl and Conner traded wide-eyed looks at Clark's uncharacteristic fumbling.
"He's the father of my children." Clark finally said quietly, turning back to look at them. "How did it get to be ten years?"
He walked back, and put a hand out towards Carl, not quite touching him, just studying him intently. "I can see Lex in you. It's the way you hold yourself, the way you speak. I didn't know what was triggering all my dreams this last week." Clark smiled wryly. "Good job, boys. Way to fool your fathers."
"Lex said---"
"Lex was bullshitting." Clark snorted. "It's how he keeps himself at the top in his games. If he'd known, he would have called me. Well, Kara, at least. Definitely would have said something to Hope and Mercy."
"Mercy was in on it with us." Conner and Carl traded looks again. "She thinks Kara and Diana set us up."
Clark sighed loudly, rolling his eyes. "They would have." He laughed a little. "I don't think they expected us to actually split like that. Not for this long."
"What happened?" They'd had the story from Mercy, but here was a chance to interrogate one of their dads directly.
Clark shook his head, returning to his path around the crystals. He finally settled in a new spot where he activated a view panel, and brought up baby photos. There had been five of them, just as Mercy had said. It was obvious even in the pictures, though, that at least two of the others weren't healthy. But all were equally cared for in the photos. The screen flashed to a headline, "Superman is Dead", then quickly off again to a statue of Superman in the Metropolis Plaza. Then more baby pictures, toddlers, three of them, then just two.
"I was so angry," Clark said quietly. "I had... it was pretty awful, coming back. Not... not easy. It wasn't like waking up at all. And then, pretty much the first thing I'm told is that Lex stole my children."
"He rescued us!" Carl burst out angrily.
"Yes, well, I bet you didn't hear that from him," Clark said a little wryly. "Lex doesn't... he stopped trying to correct people's assumptions years ago. My assumptions. We've had a... complicated past."
A flick of a finger against a crystal, and there were pictures from Smallville, ones Conner had seen before in the photo albums at his grandparents' house, but had never known who the bald guy had been. Hadn't ever asked, not really being interested in them, but sitting still for politeness only. Knowing now who they were... Beside him, Carl made a small sound of amazement, and Conner felt like echoing it. The friendship between them was clear. Friendship, and....
Clark touched the crystal again, and there were now scenes of fighting, of laboratories, of Lex holding people hostage, of Clark destroying computers, of Lex shooting Clark with a green ray gun.
This time, the sound out of both of them was horrified.
"Complicated," Clark repeated. "I wanted you. When I found out about you, I wanted you. Lex didn't want to let you go. Either of you, both of you. We wouldn't give an inch on it, either of us. We both wanted it all - both of you, with us, away from the other."
Clark switched back to the toddler photo of the two of them, near-identical except for the hair, their chubby arms around each other, grinning at the camera.
"Kara and Diana talked us into one apiece, for the sake of the world, but neither of us wanted that. It was a compromise neither of us were happy with. We each wanted both. I threw in the bit about giving up LuthorCorp thinking he'd never go for it and I would win. I've never been so shocked in my life as when he agreed."
Clark flicked to a photo of Carl in Lex's arms, Conner in Clark's, and Diana and Mercy standing near them, both looking wary and ready to intervene if needed. Kara had probably been taking the picture.
"He's a stubborn idiot, and so am I." Clark turned off the viewscreen. "I can't believe it's been ten years." He glanced towards the inside of the Fortress, where Lex had been taken. "I've forgotten why we were ever fighting in the first place. Well, I know, but... we were only ever fighting because of the pain. He could have asked me. I could have checked. We're both too stubborn."
"Will he...?" Conner looked that way too.
Carl was the one who answered. "The Fortress said it could fix him, though he might lose the hand after all. But it sounded sure that it could get all the infection out, and any remaining Kyrptonite radiation." He stood a bit closer to Conner. "Dad's going to be okay."
Conner put his arm around Carl's shoulders.
Clark looked at the two of them and smiled, before returning his gaze inside the Fortress.
--
"I'm fine, stop fussing!" Lex batted away Clark's hand.
Clark retreated a step, but no further. "It's cold in here, you should be wearing a jacket."
"Then turn. Up. The heat." Lex growled, each word coming down hard. "Or let me go back to Hawaii where it's actually warm."
Conner moved his knight and took one of Carl's bishops. Carl growled, sounding much like his father. "Okay, that's it, no more mister nice guy." Without pausing, he moved his queen and took Conner's last rook. "Check."
Conner sat back to study the board, disgruntled. He didn't spend a lot of time playing, and when he did, he usually beat the pants off people without trying. It was strange to actually have to think about it.
Their dads had turned to watch them with Carl's proclamation.
Lex stretched, and then took the jacket from Clark without comment, laying it over his shoulders more like a cape. Clark didn't fuss, but it started getting warmer inside their room.
Since Lex had gotten out of the healing machine, it had been like that. Clark solicitous, Lex reluctantly accepting, the two of them circling around and around. There had been a few fights, but there had been more remembrances. Carl and Conner had helped with that, intervening when needed, and coaxing for more tales. The more the older two talked about the past, the closer they got. Little by little, it was happening.
It only took a few more moves before Conner was check-mated for good. He threw up his hands. "How about a game of battleship?" he suggested with a grin.
Everybody laughed, including both their fathers.
"Let's watch a movie," Carl suggested instead. "I'm gamed out."
That was a polite way of saying he'd won the last three. Though Conner usually beat him on ones that were more reflexive, like Scan or Blindfold. They'd even pulled out a version of Wack a Mole just for amusement, and Conner had out-wacked Carl easily. Carl thought too much for those. There had obviously been a big difference in the way they'd been raised. Or maybe it was just them. They weren't identical, not really. Though they had switched their hair back, re-dying to their original. Their parents had said 'thank you' when they'd done that.
The two of them settled down to review the movie lists. The hazards of having everything in the world accessible was that there was too much of it sometimes.
"While you're deciding, we'll watch Star Trek," Clark told them, amusement lacing through his tones. They'd started rerunning the old series when the movie selections started taking forever. They only did an episode a night, though, so weren't too far along.
As they went through the list, Conner saw one, and stifled a giggle, pointing it out to Carl. Carl looked at the listing for "The Parent Trap," and grinned.
They both turned to look at the couch where their parents were now sitting watching the old tv show. Clark had managed to coax Lex into leaning against him, and Clark's arm was around Lex's shoulder. Lex didn't look entirely relaxed yet... but they had hopes for it.
Carl and Conner smiled at each other in perfect accord. They were ready if more was needed, but for now... for now, the plan was going successfully.
The movie probably wouldn't be needed. They had what they wanted, right here and now. Two parents, one brother, for both of them, and for each other.
From: pitch-hit from Tallihensia
For: Kitty August
Type: Fic, 7k+
Rating: G
Warnings: none
Request: see notes
Summary: At summer camp, Conner finds out his main rival at camp is just like him. And by just like him, that included all his super powers, as well as his looks. Conner and Carl work together to figure out the secret, and then untangle their mutual past, revolving to fix what had gone wrong and find their way to a family again.
Gifter's Note: Pitch Hit for Kitty August, who asked for "Connor sees The Parent Trap and gets ideas about how to fix his Christmas by setting up his parents". I took the base idea and then went back a couple of steps with it and this is more of an actual plot of it, though more based on the book, which had in 1942 meant to be a movie titled "The Great Secret." It's no secret that I've always thought there should be more clones. ^^ Future fic AU, mix of worlds. Plus throwing in a side dish of some of the other requests. ^^
Cross-posted to AO3: http://archiveofourown.org/works/9611456
Note - Carl Krummet was one of Superboy's aliases in one of the universes.
The Greatest Secret
"Camp sucks," Conner muttered as he stomped through the grounds between the cabins. He hesitated before the one he was assigned to, not wanting to go in where there would be other boys. Normal boys. Non-super-powered boys.
Heaving a giant sigh, he went to an old oak near the cabin and hauled himself up into its branches until he could sit upon a limb. Despite their not being allowed to climb the trees, a multitude of initials in the bark showed how well any teenagers obeyed.
When his dad had originally asked him to go to the camp, Conner had readily agreed. Clark had to go off-world as Superman, and travel time alone was going to be a month at least. Staying in Smallville with Grandma and Grandpa was... well, it was boring, honestly. And there had been this camp that Diana had recommended, saying the Amazons had used it for introduction training where there were a limited number of young humans from all over to adapt to. Differences could be shrugged off in a mix of people like that.
At the time, Conner had thought it had meant Cassie would be there too, or at least one of her cousins. He should have known better. He'd been suckered into an all-boys session of the camp and they were all boringly mundane.
In the cabin across from his, the door opened and Conner's red-haired nemesis, Carl, walked out. He unerringly looked over to the tree and frowned at Conner. Then he turned and headed off in the direction Conner had just come from.
Conner and Carl were the top two rivals at the camp. They both excelled at nearly everything, with sometimes one of them on top (Conner at Archery and Biology), sometimes the other (Carl at Rifles and Math), and sometimes a near-tie (both of them in Track and Swimming). Everybody but the two of them thought they should be friends.
Conner was brash and reckless, Carl was soft-spoken and calculating. Conner was easy-going and accepting. Carl was quick to anger and yet just as accepting. They both had a lot of friends in the camp, just not the other. There was something about Carl that put Conner on edge, and he'd seen the red-head giving him the same looks.
A grant had gotten Conner to the camp, him being middle-class with farmer grandparents. Most of the Amazons usually had mixed backgrounds as well, so the camp had been set up with an array of people from all over admitted to it. Carl, though, was apparently rich and he had a bodyguard who had come with him to camp. The bodyguard stayed in a cabin with the other bodyguards, Carl not being the only one so followed. It was amazing their rivalry had stayed at just glares and avoidance so far, with so much different about them.
Stifling an outward sigh this time, Conner looked up through the tree at the stars. It was daylight and most people couldn't see them, but he just had to shift his vision a bit to look on a different wavelength. The first time he'd talked to his dad about it, Clark had blinked, then asked him to describe how he'd done it. He hadn't been able to explain it well, being young at the time, but Clark had figured it out and then they'd both watched the stars together, at all times. They were considered a little strange by their neighbors.
He hadn't thought he'd miss his dad that much. Teenagers were supposed to rebel, weren't they? But Clark had never given him a lot to rebel against, always taking the time to explain his reasoning for various rules, and adjusting as needed. Superman was always off fighting evil somewhere... but he usually came home eventually to Conner.
Speaking of evil... Conner turned his head as his super-hearing caught the sound of gunshots. Which sometimes sounded like firecrackers even to his hearing, and had resulted in some embarrassing incidents when he was a kid and running to rescue other kids from Fourth of July fun. But after intense work with the Fortress comparing the various sounds at distance and near, Conner had finally learned to instinctively tell the difference, and these were gunshots.
He squinted, also highly trained to check out the situation first before running in. It was a fair distance away and even though he could see stars, he still had to strain to be able to use his x-ray and distance together to focus on a noise. Something his dad did much better, but even Superman had wryly remarked it hadn't come instinctually at first.
Conner stiffened as he saw that the gunshots weren't from bad guys but good - the police were firing at a small humanoid that was coughing fire balls at them. One cop car was already in flames, though it looked like everybody had gotten out okay. There didn't seem to be any other super-heroes around, just the normal heroes - not special-powered, but doing all they could to protect people anyhow.
Giving a quick glance around and not seeing anybody looking his direction, Conner climbed up to the top of the tree, changing into his costume along the way, and then launching himself from the top into the air as Superboy.
As he arrived on the scene, a costumed figure in green and purple got between a fire ball and a wounded cop. The fire splashed off the other's chest, highlighting his hair in red. No, that was red hair.
Even as he blinked, Conner used a breath of super-cold to extinguish the flames around the fire humanoid, who proved to be human after all, a glint of madness in his eyes, even as he turned to raise a weapon at Conner.
Carl super-speeded there first, wrenching the weapon out of his hand and bending it in two, where it promptly exploded. Conner dashed the extinguished human out of the way of the mini-explosion, trusting Carl would be okay.
The flames were coming back, and Conner used his breath again, this time a bit chillier, leaving a glimmer of frost on the pale skin.
"Anybody have a trank?" Carl turned to the police. "This guy needs to get up to the JL while he's still cooled down."
There were sadly enough encounters with bad meta-humans nowadays that one of the cop cars arriving at the scene did, indeed, have equipment to deal with them, and to contain the meta until a representative from the Justice League could come and get him.
After the police gave their thanks, the two teenagers left.
They flew up and in the direction of camp, but stopped off on a tall hill before they got there. Carl sat down on a rock while Conner claimed a different one.
"So," Carl said, looking Conner's costume up and down. "Superboy, I take it."
"Yeah." There wasn't really any way of hiding it with the big red 'S' on his chest. "Should I know you?" Conner flushed at the way that came out, but he had thought he knew most of the teenage superheroes. Carl wasn't in the Teen Titans, that was for sure.
"Kid Hawaii," Carl admitted. "I don't go out of the islands much, and when I do, I'm usually helping out the ships or the Atlantians or out the pacific rim way.
Conner nodded. He knew the name. Aqualad had spoken well of him. "So what are you doing out here now? If I lived in Hawaii, I wouldn't ever leave."
Carl kicked his feet against the rock. "My dad is in the hospital. He didn't want me hovering or out super-heroing when he couldn't back me up, so he ordered me off to camp. I hate it."
"That... sounds really familiar." Conner thought about that for a minute. "Your dad is a super-hero too?"
"Dad? No." Carl laughed. "But he has a lot of cool tech and likes to keep an eye on me."
They eyed each other for awhile longer. Both of them in costume and sitting on top of a hillside after fighting a villain with super-powers was a far cry from competing with each other in camp in archery and mathematics.
"It's not really all that common for heroes to have the same powers, is it?" Carl finally asked in a hesitant voice. "Dad never... Dad always changed the subject when I asked."
Conner shook his head, his gaze constantly going over Carl up and down, studying him intently like he'd never done at camp. "And..." he stumbled over it himself before going on. "Other than the hair..."
"We look alike," Carl finished for him. They each took their gaze off each other and looked down at their costumes and themselves before looking back again. "I didn't see that before."
"You wear loose pull-overs and slacks, even when we're hiking," Conner pointed out. "I wear tight t-shirts and jeans, all the time."
"My hair distracts people from looking at my face," Carl admitted.
"Is it natural?"
Carl smiled a bit. "Yeah. Matches below as well. It's why I don't spend much time in the changing room."
Conner snickered. He'd never looked in the showers. No reason to. "We have the same weird eyes." They were an odd shade of blue hazel, with flakes of green.
"That I'd noticed," Carl shrugged. "Dad's eyes are similar, though his are more blue-grey."
"My dad's are green."
They looked at each other some more.
"I notice neither of us has mentioned a mother." Carl moved to the next step. "Dad said I was artificially inseminated. No mom."
Conner gulped. "I... Dad told me that when he was dead, a rogue group of scientists tried to clone him. When he got better, he got me back."
Carl swallowed and looked away. "If you were going to clone somebody..."
"I wouldn't just make one," Conner finished.
There was another long pause.
"Who is your dad?" Conner finally asked.
Carl's mouth twitched up. "Yeah. Well. Nowadays, he goes by Alex Krummet, but you'd probably know the name of Lex Luthor."
Conner drew his breath in with a sharp hiss, startled and a little frightened. The other heroes told horror stories of the super-villain Lex Luthor, arch-enemy of Superman. Though... his dad never did. Conner let the hiss die, his reflex turning to thought.
"Yeah," Carl said in response to the hiss, matter of fact about it. He tilted his head back and looked up at the sky, bringing a leg up and clasping his hands around his knee.
It was a gesture Conner made all the time. "He stole you?"
Carl shook his head. "Doubt it. You think Superman would have let him?"
"But..." Nobody had heard of Lex Luthor since Superman came back to life. Superman wouldn't talk about it. "They..."
"I don't know," Carl admitted. "I always wondered about my powers, but Dad... I love my dad. Didn't want to hurt him by asking. He raised me, training me as each came along, accepting it always."
"There's got to be a record." Conner stood up. "We'll find it."
Carl grinned and dropped his pose. "Your place or mine? Mine has security, even if Dad's not there."
"Mine, then." Superman wouldn't be back for awhile still.
They both took off at the same time, flying together through the air. As they headed to Metropolis, they tested each other's limits and found they were nearly the same. As with the camp, small differences, not major.
"Nothing." They turned off their computers with simultaneous sighs. "Whatever records there are, they aren't in the public stories, nor in anything we can hack."
"We could go to the Fortress..." Conner said slowly, testing it out. "It would know."
They looked at each other, wide-eyed. They were skimming the edges of the truth and neither one knew if they wanted that much.
Carl suddenly glanced at the wall where the clock hung and swore. "We're late for camp dinner."
"Oops." Conner had completely forgotten about that.
They flew quickly back, starting to head towards where they left their clothes when Carl tugged Conner towards the parking lot. There was a flashing green light going off, in a frequency too low for most people to see.
When they landed, Carl's bodyguard came out to meet them. She looked at the two of them and shook her head. "I had a feeling. I covered for you both - Conner is helping Carl after the hospital called with word from Carl's dad."
"Really?" Carl perked up and looked worried at the same time, a feat Conner had previously thought only he was capable of.
"No, not really!" the bodyguard growled. "Idiots. Get changed and get back to your cabins."
"What about dinner?" Conner couldn't help but ask.
The bodyguard rolled her eyes. "Okay, get changed and go get a late dinner."
"But Mercy, what about Dad?" Carl persisted.
Conner blinked several times at hearing her name. After pouring through all the old records, he was a lot more familiar with the public history of Lex Luthor in Metropolis and the encounters with Superman. His bodyguards, Mercy and Hope, had figured in many of the tales, as fairly formidable women.
Mercy reached out and ruffled Carl's hair, while Carl shied back a little but not far enough to avoid it.
"Your dad is fine. Made it through the surgery okay and is in recovery. Hope is with him and she says he's trying to order all the doctors and nurses around already."
"Sounds like Dad." Carl smiled.
Conner tilted his head. "Um, Miss Mercy..."
The bodyguard blinked as she turned to him. "Just Mercy."
"Do you know about us?" Conner gestured between the two of them.
Carl brightened, coming to point and looking hopeful.
Mercy looked between them. "Yeah," she sighed. "I was there. Look. Go to dinner..." She paused. "Oh forget camp. Let's go into town. I miss restaurants."
Over lasagna and alfrado, the story came out.
It was much like Conner had heard before but with a few more details and a larger cast. Instead of one rouge scientist, it was a whole branch of a company that Lex Luthor owned, but hadn't authorized. Hope had been the one to find out what they were doing, while Superman was still dead. They'd stopped the experiments and gotten the scientists arrested for a different charge, and had been left with five little toddlers...
"Five?" Carl and Conner looked at each other and back at Mercy. A string of spaghetti hung off Conner's fork and then the whole pile fell to the plate.
Mercy shook her head. "The others didn't make it," she said briefly. Pain in her voice told another tale they weren't going to ask about right now.
The two of them were raised together in the Luthor Corp towers, until Superman returned.
"He was a little upset." Mercy simplified.
Eventually believing Lex, Superman didn't back down on wanting both of the remaining children for himself. Lex wouldn't back down on wanting them either. The battle, apparently, was epoch.
"We're children of divorced parents," Carl said, wide-eyed.
"Why did Luthor even have any say in it?" Conner wondered. "He found and rescued us, okay, but if we are clones of Superman..."
"You're not clones," Mercy said quietly. "You're hybrids. The scientists used half of Superman's DNA, and half of Lex's."
Conner's fork hit the plate with a clatter before it fell to the floor.
Carl blinked. "You mean we really are children of divorced parents?"
Mercy shot him a look. Then she laughed. "Well, essentially. God knows the tension between them had always been so thick that Hope and I just wanted to shut them in a bedroom and let them work it out."
"That was," Conner started.
"More than we wanted to know," Carl finished. He gave Conner a fork from his plate, being an odd person and eating his alfrado with a spoon.
Mercy just grinned and dug into her lasagna while they absorbed that part of the story.
They were on dessert before she finished. Pretty much as they had expected at this point. With some intervention from the other superheroes, including Supergirl and Wonder Woman, the bitter feud was not so much resolved as sliced down the middle, with Superman keeping the baby with the dark hair, and Lex taking the baby with the red hair and moving to the opposite side of the country and across the ocean away. Part of the settlement was for Lex to give up his villainy ways, and so the name change as well. Clark's part was to never meddle and to stay away from Lex from then on.
"Seriously divorced parents," Carl muttered as he dug into the cheesecake.
Conner had chocolate fudge cake. He hummed an agreement. Then he stopped humming and looked up at Carl, as Carl stopped eating and looked back at him.
Then they looked at Mercy.
"No," she said reflexively. "Whatever it is, no."
----
"It's a stupid idea," Mercy said as she drove them back. "You can't just switch. They're going to know. You're not identical."
"Dye our hair, and we're just about. The genetics were obviously dna selected, or we wouldn't even be this close."
"It's not just the appearance - you two have different personalities and you like different things. They're your dads - they'll know."
"They're going to be distracted," Conner pointed out. "My dad is just getting back from that big trip, and Carl's dad..."
"Is getting out of the hospital," Carl finished. "As sharp as Dad is normally, he's not going to be paying that much attention, especially if you vouch for Conner as me."
"We're all doomed," Mercy muttered.
Carl didn't look upset, so Conner figured that was acceptance for Mercy. "One of our dads probably already knows anyhow."
Carl glanced at him and nodded. "The odds of both of us showing up at the same camp on the same two weeks? Coincidence happens, but human intervention is more likely."
Mercy drummed her fingers on the steering wheel as she pulled into the parking lot and stopped. "No. I think you're right about it not being coincidence, but I think you're wrong as to who's behind it."
"Who then?" They stayed in the car as they talked. They were going to be in such trouble with the camp, but none of them cared.
"Who was it that told you about this camp?" Mercy turned it back on them.
"Diana," Conner said slowly. "Didn't you say she was part of the divorce settlement?"
"And Aunt Kara," Carl reflected. "She's the one that talked Dad into in on our end."
"Supergirl?" Conner blinked. "Aunt Kara?"
Mercy chuckled. "Kara and Lex have always been friends, even when Superman and Lex were at their worst in the fighting. And yes. Kara and Diana..."
"They're good friends," Carl put in.
"We'll leave it at that," Mercy said wryly. "I suspect they thought ten years had been long enough. None of us ever thought Lex and Clark would really stay away from each other. It was just supposed to be a breathing space to let them calm down."
"So you'll help us?"
Mercy sighed. "May the Goddesses have mercy, I'll help you." She paused. "Just remember I'm not as invulnerable as you two are."
---
Conner was used to different situations as Superboy, but he wasn't so used to them as himself. But he wasn't himself right now, was he? He glanced around the elegant home, trying not to stare. He kept telling himself he'd grown up with this luxury, this space. He couldn't quite believe it, though.
The house was up in the hills, on the dry side of Kauai, in a neighborhood with lots of space between the homes. It was huge. Carl had gone over a map of it with him until he knew all ten rooms - bedrooms for Lex (Alex), Carl (himself, now), Mercy and Hope, as well as kitchen, dining room, living room, rec room (fighting room), man-cave (Carl's game room, mostly), solarium, and office.
Mercy stayed close to Conner, which was more reassuring than he would have thought it would have been a few weeks ago.
He only had a moment to absorb the initial entry as his new dad was approaching. It didn't look like he'd just been in the hospital, but that was one of the reasons Carl wasn't worried.
They don't talk about it much, but Dad was in Smallville the day the meteors came down. He heals. Not instantaneously... but after living my life worried about him for stuff, I've gotten used to it. If it doesn't kill him, he's good.
Conner tried desperately to project Carl. This was going to be the hardest part.
Lex came to him, a wide grin on his face and love in his eyes. He was flicking his gaze up and down Conner's body, reassuring himself that all was okay with his son. "Carl," Lex said, and enfolded him in his arms.
Conner returned the hug carefully. Before this moment, he'd thought Carl had been on crack when he was trying to describe his dad's hugs. He's not a big hugger, so don't expect it regularly, but I do get them at things like coming home. He... don't glomp hug him. Kara glomp hugs - she hugs easily and heartily. Dad... Dad's hugs are special. They have meaning. They... oh, you'll just have to experience it. But hug him carefully back. I always do.
Clark hugged much like Kara hugged - frequently and with the whole of himself. Lex hugged... Lex hugged like it was precious. He wasn't hesitant, and he was obviously familiar with hugging... but the hug had an almost deliberate feel, as if Lex had calculated it all out and was choosing this hug and all that this hug meant and stood for, and it was a special hug for his son.
Just as carefully as Carl had said, Conner returned the hold, both savoring his first contact with his other dad, and feeling a little guilty at the same time.
"You could just tell them you want to meet - if you ask, they'll both agree."
The teens looked at each other. "But then our dads wouldn't see us - they'd see each other. We want to know them without that in-between."
Lex drew back, the smile dimmer but still there. "Are you okay?"
"Fine, Dad," Conner tried out the title on his new dad. It felt awkward but rolled off smoothly enough. "Just... it's been... are you okay?" He blurted that last out, still worried despite Carl's reassurances.
With a laugh, Lex withdrew the rest of the way, leaving a hand on Connor's arm the longest until finally that touch, too, left. "I'm fine." He raised his other hand. "They didn't even have to chop it off - arthroscopy is advanced enough they were able to do all the work inside."
Conner was fascinated in spite of himself, but he forced himself not to ask - Carl's interest was in math, not biology. Which was too bad, because Conner really wanted to know.
For a little bit longer, Lex talked to him, asking about camp. Conner replied with Carl's answers, which they'd practiced ahead of time, knowing that this part would be a no brainer for their dads to ask. The confidence and assurance in those answers let him get through the next several minutes until Lex finally stopped at Carl's room and turned away to let his son unpack in peace.
Mercy gave Conner a slight nod of approval as she went down the hall with her gear to her own room.
Shutting the door, Conner heaved a sigh of relief. The hardest part was over. Now to explore.
--
In the middle of the night, they met on the small island of Lehua, careful to stay on the ground below the high tide mark. Conner wore Carl's Kid Hawaii suit of green and purple, while Carl wore an all-black one that Conner sometimes used for practicing with Tim, when they didn't want anybody to know Superboy was there.
They fist-bumped, relief and congratulations both. "We survived the first day!"
"Though you didn't tell me about dish washing," Carl laughed.
Conner blinked. "Dish washing?"
"You've seen our place... I don't do the dishes. Not more than putting them in the sink. I had to make an excuse to your dad for a delay and then quickly google it while x-raying through to other people in the apartment to see what they were doing. I still don't think I got it quite right, but your dad didn't say anything."
Conner laughed a little helplessly. "Your dad asked me what I thought of one of the stock market indexes that was flashing by on the tv. I dashed off to both google it and search in your computer and got him an answer... I don't know what he thought of it. He had the oddest look on his face."
Carl cracked up. "I don't always tell Dad everything I have on the computer, trying to keep ahead of him. You might have impressed him."
They both snickered over their near-misses.
"I went flying with your dad tonight." Carl tilted his head back to look at the stars. "Doing super-hero rounds. It was the coolest thing. I usually do my rounds here by myself. Sometimes with Kara if she's around, but it's my islands, my people. Going around Metropolis with your dad... he's a real super hero."
Conner nodded. "He always has been," he replied quietly. "It's always been special. And yet..."
"They'll always be first," Carl finished.
Lifting one shoulder up, Conner dropped it in a half-shrug. "Not... not exactly. If I need him, he'll always be there, no matter what else. But... he'll give his life for them, all of them, the world. It's what a hero does, and what he always does. I've always lived with him fighting impossible odds, and winning most times, but always at a cost. I don't forget it was his death that made them think of creating me."
Carl nodded. "Yeah. With Dad... Dad gave everything else up to have me. I poked some more at the records today, what there was in your place. He used to be as big a figure in Metropolis as your dad. It's so strange to think of my dad and your dad, and to be hanging out with your dad for the day and trying to imagine them."
"Yeah," Conner agreed. He'd been doing the same for the whole day, only mostly trying to reconcile the tales the other heroes told of the evil villain Lex Luthor with this stay-at-home dad who did remote research work for alternative energy systems. "Our dads."
"Our dads," Carl repeated.
They both watched the waves lapping up on the island around them, over their boots, foam glinting in the moonlight.
"Wanna go on my rounds with me?" Carl finally asked.
"Sure," Conner agreed. He'd been hoping Carl would ask. They switched costumes and flew around the islands and on a wider circle, checking the boats and vessels in the area. Unlike Superman, who pretty much stopped to help everybody and anything he could if he was there, Carl didn't intervene unless it was big. The smaller rescues he did do were mostly out in the ocean, things like unwinding fishing string from around a dolphin's fins, or seeing a mass of plastic clumped and floating and retrieving and disintegrating it.
Instead of commenting, Conner just helped and learned. At the end of the rounds, they changed costumes again, and Carl flew back to Metropolis, just under the speed of sound. Conner more slowly went back home to Kauai.
Lex was waiting up for him when he got back. They talked a little about the ocean life and the plastic and some of the other things. Lex calmly accepting all of it, a thoughtful look on his face as he discussed what other sorts of things they could do as humans to help.
Conner went to bed even more thoughtful. Dads. Plural. It was something he'd never even thought about having. And now a brother and a second dad both.
--
Conner called his home with trembling fingers. When his dad picked up, he didn't even think. "Dad, I need to talk to Carl."
"Carl? Who is... Conner? Is that..."
"Conner, I need to talk to Conner. We switched. Just... Is he around?" Conner wasn't thinking too well.
Carl's voice could be heard in the background, super-hearing with all involved making actually handing the phone over not needed. "Conner? What's wrong?"
"You've got to get home, Carl. It's..." Conner swallowed. "It's your dad. The surgery didn't take. Lex's hand is... There's something seriously wrong. He's burning up with fever and the hand is... Just get back here, please."
There was a click of the phone disconnecting, and then a few seconds later, a sonic boom in the air, closely followed by another. The windows rattled and the ground shook with the force of it, but Conner didn't care about anything but his brother and father. He went to intercept them before they got to Lex's bedroom.
Hope let them in, her eyes narrowed as she glanced between Carl and Conner, but most of her attention was on Clark, her hand hovering near a gun, but not gripping. Mercy was at Lex's bed, using a wet rag to mop his sweating face and his dry hand and arm, swollen and a horrifying color of mottled red and green together.
"Dad!" Carl dashed in and flung himself over Lex's chest.
Lex opened his eyes and smiled without actually seeing them. "Carl. So that... was Conner... I'd wondered." He tried to lift his other hand and failed.
Clark walked up to the bed and touched Lex's face. "You idiot. Why didn't you call me?"
"Not... your... problem. Clark." Lex breathed out, his gaze focusing a little more sharply.
Taking a deep breath in, Clark held it for a moment, then let it out without saying anything. He gently nudged Carl to one side and then picked Lex up. He looked at Mercy. "We're going to the Fortress."
"Not... for human interven---"
"Shut up, Lex." Clark took off, breaking through the bedroom window with his heat vision and breath an instant before he went through it with Lex. Carl was right behind them, following literally on Clark's heels.
"He could have used the door," Conner said a little numbly.
Mercy dropped the rag back in the bowl and laughed with a tinge of hysteria. Hope came in from the other side and looked at the window.
"Go, Conner. Be with them. Let us know. But if he's truly taking him to the Fortress..."
"What was wrong with his hand?" Conner stayed instead. He'd been in medical in the Fortress enough times to know that once you were there, there was nothing more to be done than sit back and wait. All he'd do there would be to stand around. Which he would do. But this first.
Mercy stood up and walked over to Hope so they were standing together. "It was back when he and your dad were fighting all the time. He'd made a ring with Kryptonite, to taunt Superman."
"Umm..." Conner's eyes widened. "That's dangerous."
Hope shrugged. "He was already a mutant, and usually with Kryptonite, it's one time only, no matter what else happens. It wasn't as dangerous as if he'd been normal... and taunting Superman was worth it."
Conner walked to the nearest wall and banged his head against it.
"Yes, well, we were all a little foolish back then. And those two just as much as anybody."
"He stopped wearing it after you two were found, but..." Mercy spread her hands.
"Ten years for it to grow, whatever it was." Conner said grimly, thinking of it.
"Twelve. He had you both for two years before your dad came back." Hope corrected.
Conner had been having dreams at night of something like that. The two of them as toddlers together, sometimes with others. But mostly playing with the red-haired other. He'd thought they were dreams. Maybe they'd been memories. "They're both my dads," he said softly.
Mercy smiled back at him. "Go, then, and be with them. We'll..." she paused.
Hope put in wryly, "We'll get the wall fixed. Let us know."
"I will," Conner promised, and then took off.
---
When he got there, Carl and his dad were staring at each other.
Lex wasn't anywhere to be seen - presumably the Fortress already had taken him interior for medical work. It could do that with visual access, but sometimes didn't depending on what it was doing and who was watching. Having an AI helping out was useful, but sometimes never quite the same. Not a computer that just did what it was told.
Conner was relieved to know Lex was with the Fortress AI. Lex had been right - Clark didn't use the healing for people, and rarely even for them. Grandmother Martha had taught Conner all about the various ethnical issues that were in play for using the technology so selectively, and the issues that could arise if anybody knew the Fortress could heal. There were many, many villains who would want it, and business people, and world leaders, and... everybody.
Though from what Lex had said... "Did Lex know about the Fortress?" Conner asked, moving to his brother's side and touching his arm lightly.
Clark heaved a distressed breath. "Yes. Stubborn, stupid idiot. He should have called me last year, from the looks of it. Definitely last month. I don't know what he was thinking, trying to let human doctors work on it."
"He was probably thinking you wouldn't help," Carl said bluntly.
Conner winced. "Plus, you were out of town. Like a galaxy out of town."
"I wasn't a year ago, or before you two went to camp," Clark said tiredly. "You're right. He thought..." Clark paced around one of the stalagmites. "He thought wrong. I... It's Lex. It's... He's..."
Carl and Conner traded wide-eyed looks at Clark's uncharacteristic fumbling.
"He's the father of my children." Clark finally said quietly, turning back to look at them. "How did it get to be ten years?"
He walked back, and put a hand out towards Carl, not quite touching him, just studying him intently. "I can see Lex in you. It's the way you hold yourself, the way you speak. I didn't know what was triggering all my dreams this last week." Clark smiled wryly. "Good job, boys. Way to fool your fathers."
"Lex said---"
"Lex was bullshitting." Clark snorted. "It's how he keeps himself at the top in his games. If he'd known, he would have called me. Well, Kara, at least. Definitely would have said something to Hope and Mercy."
"Mercy was in on it with us." Conner and Carl traded looks again. "She thinks Kara and Diana set us up."
Clark sighed loudly, rolling his eyes. "They would have." He laughed a little. "I don't think they expected us to actually split like that. Not for this long."
"What happened?" They'd had the story from Mercy, but here was a chance to interrogate one of their dads directly.
Clark shook his head, returning to his path around the crystals. He finally settled in a new spot where he activated a view panel, and brought up baby photos. There had been five of them, just as Mercy had said. It was obvious even in the pictures, though, that at least two of the others weren't healthy. But all were equally cared for in the photos. The screen flashed to a headline, "Superman is Dead", then quickly off again to a statue of Superman in the Metropolis Plaza. Then more baby pictures, toddlers, three of them, then just two.
"I was so angry," Clark said quietly. "I had... it was pretty awful, coming back. Not... not easy. It wasn't like waking up at all. And then, pretty much the first thing I'm told is that Lex stole my children."
"He rescued us!" Carl burst out angrily.
"Yes, well, I bet you didn't hear that from him," Clark said a little wryly. "Lex doesn't... he stopped trying to correct people's assumptions years ago. My assumptions. We've had a... complicated past."
A flick of a finger against a crystal, and there were pictures from Smallville, ones Conner had seen before in the photo albums at his grandparents' house, but had never known who the bald guy had been. Hadn't ever asked, not really being interested in them, but sitting still for politeness only. Knowing now who they were... Beside him, Carl made a small sound of amazement, and Conner felt like echoing it. The friendship between them was clear. Friendship, and....
Clark touched the crystal again, and there were now scenes of fighting, of laboratories, of Lex holding people hostage, of Clark destroying computers, of Lex shooting Clark with a green ray gun.
This time, the sound out of both of them was horrified.
"Complicated," Clark repeated. "I wanted you. When I found out about you, I wanted you. Lex didn't want to let you go. Either of you, both of you. We wouldn't give an inch on it, either of us. We both wanted it all - both of you, with us, away from the other."
Clark switched back to the toddler photo of the two of them, near-identical except for the hair, their chubby arms around each other, grinning at the camera.
"Kara and Diana talked us into one apiece, for the sake of the world, but neither of us wanted that. It was a compromise neither of us were happy with. We each wanted both. I threw in the bit about giving up LuthorCorp thinking he'd never go for it and I would win. I've never been so shocked in my life as when he agreed."
Clark flicked to a photo of Carl in Lex's arms, Conner in Clark's, and Diana and Mercy standing near them, both looking wary and ready to intervene if needed. Kara had probably been taking the picture.
"He's a stubborn idiot, and so am I." Clark turned off the viewscreen. "I can't believe it's been ten years." He glanced towards the inside of the Fortress, where Lex had been taken. "I've forgotten why we were ever fighting in the first place. Well, I know, but... we were only ever fighting because of the pain. He could have asked me. I could have checked. We're both too stubborn."
"Will he...?" Conner looked that way too.
Carl was the one who answered. "The Fortress said it could fix him, though he might lose the hand after all. But it sounded sure that it could get all the infection out, and any remaining Kyrptonite radiation." He stood a bit closer to Conner. "Dad's going to be okay."
Conner put his arm around Carl's shoulders.
Clark looked at the two of them and smiled, before returning his gaze inside the Fortress.
--
"I'm fine, stop fussing!" Lex batted away Clark's hand.
Clark retreated a step, but no further. "It's cold in here, you should be wearing a jacket."
"Then turn. Up. The heat." Lex growled, each word coming down hard. "Or let me go back to Hawaii where it's actually warm."
Conner moved his knight and took one of Carl's bishops. Carl growled, sounding much like his father. "Okay, that's it, no more mister nice guy." Without pausing, he moved his queen and took Conner's last rook. "Check."
Conner sat back to study the board, disgruntled. He didn't spend a lot of time playing, and when he did, he usually beat the pants off people without trying. It was strange to actually have to think about it.
Their dads had turned to watch them with Carl's proclamation.
Lex stretched, and then took the jacket from Clark without comment, laying it over his shoulders more like a cape. Clark didn't fuss, but it started getting warmer inside their room.
Since Lex had gotten out of the healing machine, it had been like that. Clark solicitous, Lex reluctantly accepting, the two of them circling around and around. There had been a few fights, but there had been more remembrances. Carl and Conner had helped with that, intervening when needed, and coaxing for more tales. The more the older two talked about the past, the closer they got. Little by little, it was happening.
It only took a few more moves before Conner was check-mated for good. He threw up his hands. "How about a game of battleship?" he suggested with a grin.
Everybody laughed, including both their fathers.
"Let's watch a movie," Carl suggested instead. "I'm gamed out."
That was a polite way of saying he'd won the last three. Though Conner usually beat him on ones that were more reflexive, like Scan or Blindfold. They'd even pulled out a version of Wack a Mole just for amusement, and Conner had out-wacked Carl easily. Carl thought too much for those. There had obviously been a big difference in the way they'd been raised. Or maybe it was just them. They weren't identical, not really. Though they had switched their hair back, re-dying to their original. Their parents had said 'thank you' when they'd done that.
The two of them settled down to review the movie lists. The hazards of having everything in the world accessible was that there was too much of it sometimes.
"While you're deciding, we'll watch Star Trek," Clark told them, amusement lacing through his tones. They'd started rerunning the old series when the movie selections started taking forever. They only did an episode a night, though, so weren't too far along.
As they went through the list, Conner saw one, and stifled a giggle, pointing it out to Carl. Carl looked at the listing for "The Parent Trap," and grinned.
They both turned to look at the couch where their parents were now sitting watching the old tv show. Clark had managed to coax Lex into leaning against him, and Clark's arm was around Lex's shoulder. Lex didn't look entirely relaxed yet... but they had hopes for it.
Carl and Conner smiled at each other in perfect accord. They were ready if more was needed, but for now... for now, the plan was going successfully.
The movie probably wouldn't be needed. They had what they wanted, right here and now. Two parents, one brother, for both of them, and for each other.