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tallihensia2010-11-13 06:33 pm
seagull2eagle.livejournal.com) wrote in tallihensia2010-11-13 06:33 pm
Entry tags:
Fic: Particle Steps (Smallville) Clex w/Conner Part 1/2
Title: Particle Steps
Fandom: Smallville - Pairing: Clex, w/Conner
Rating: PG - Size: 15,699
Type: drama
Warnings: none
Spoilers: general early SV, DCU Conner, Red, Ryan
Summary: Third in the Conner stories. Sequel to A Complicated Life and Not a Villain. Conner, Clark, and Lex take the next steps back to each other. During the travel, they learn more about themselves. Minions help… and enemies interfere.
Disclaimer: Only mine in my dreams. ;-) This story was written for free entertainment purposes only and may not be reproduced for profit or altered without permission.
Notes:
Promise, this one is happier. ^^
This series is about 14 years past SV Season 2, and the universe is AU after end Season 2 with a judicious mixing of post-season stuff and DC Universe. I go through Season 6 Smallville in parts, but only take 1-2 as canon - the rest is a bit of a grab-bag (ex. no Lex/Lana/Clark). FYI, I'm mucking a bit with Smallville timeline - in my season two, the episode Ryan came first, then Red. (At least the main event parts, the minor storylines stay.) I liked it better fitting this way, and neither storyline had anything that contradicted each other.
Beta by Ronda (Thank you! ^^).
Cross-posted to Archive of Our Own
"The Zantanians have gone back to their own space-time continuum. There is some clean-up work still in progress, however most of the disruptive elements have been mitigated." Green Lantern concluded his report.
"Thank you, GL." Superman flipped through his notes and stopped at one. "Flash, we were speculating that some of the problems you were having in Central City were due to the continuum disruptions. With the Zantanians are gone, have you noticed any difference?"
In the seat next to Conner, the Flash frowned. "Actually, there's been an increase. That means there might be another rip out there."
"Over in Midway—"
Conner tuned Hawkman out. Okay, the first part of the JLA meeting was interesting when they were going over various techniques that worked in the group fight against the Acaroidans... and he supposed, if he was forced to admit it, that this part was worthwhile too. But he was bored. Bored, bored, bored... He sighed.
From the head of the table, Superman gave Conner a quick look with an apologetic half-shrug before he returned his attention to Hawkman. Well, Conner had to admit it was his own fault for being here. He'd been involved in the fight and wanted to be in on the rest of it too. He just hadn't realized how much there was on the rest of it.
Uncapping his pen, Conner started doodling on his notebook, sketching out a buckyball atom. Okay, there was another reason he was stuck here – Clark wasn't letting him out of his sight in case he went running off. It was a valid reason; Conner and Dad One had had another argument about Dad Two just that morning.
Conner remembered it again, trying to see if he could figure anything new out from Dad's reasoning.
"It's been three weeks!" Conner thrust three fingers out to emphasize his point.
Clark scrubbed his face with his hand. "Look, I know you don't believe me, but Lex needs more time. If we confront him now, we'll never get him back."
"That's what you said last week! And the week before! He's going to be gone before we have a chance to get him back at this rate. Are you sure you want him?"
Conner admitted in his own thoughts now that it had been a bit of a low blow; he remembered the stricken look on Dad's face and winced. But he was tired of doing nothing. Conner looked at the completed buckyball and switched to a diamond bond.
Clark turned away from Conner for a long minute while silence dropped into the gap. When he turned back, his face was calm. It reminded Conner of the blank look that Lex used. In some ways, his two dads were a lot alike.
"If you've never gone after him before, how do you know when he'll be ready?" Conner was a little gentler, seeing the distress under the calm. Dad really did want Dad Two, and this waiting was as hard for him as it was for Conner, even if Conner didn't understand why.
Clark shook his head. He walked over to the three-month calendar on the wall and traced his finger over the dates until he stopped on one.
It had been the day that Lex had first come to the apartment, when Kon had found out he had another dad;, when he'd gotten the measure of both dads and decided that he wanted both of them. Clark alone was a great dad, even if they did argue fiercely sometimes. Clark loved him and wanted him and protected him and taught him. It was everything Kon had wanted while he lived in his tube in the lab, looking out at freedom and seeing only his scientific value in the eyes of those there.
Lex, though... that night that Lex'd come over, Conner had realized he wanted more. He'd woken up to the sounds of an argument, and had watched through the wall and listened before coming in. What he saw was another person who wanted him. Somebody who fought with Clark to protect Conner, to provide for him, to make sure he'd be okay. For all of Lois' attachment to Clark, she'd never done that for Conner. Neither had Chloe or Ollie or anybody else. They all wanted Clark and would reluctantly accept Conner to be with Clark. Lex, though, was different. He wanted Conner and would reluctantly accept Clark as part of that.
That night too, there had been something different about Clark. Sitting there arguing with Lex... Clark had been alive. There was a light in his eyes and a restrained energy to his body. Leaning towards Lex... Lex leaning back, both of them focused and intent on each other. It was obvious that the two of them shared something nobody else did.
"Alright, Kon." Clark sounded defeated. "We'll wait two more days. If... if nothing happens by then, we'll go to him."
Conner blinked. He hadn't realized that Clark had been waiting for something specific. He'd thought it was all nebulous thoughts and expectations. But the way Clark was looking at the calendar... "What are you waiting for?"
Clark's hand dropped. He turned back to Conner. "Nothing." His head and shoulders were bowed.
Seeing that, Conner felt like a heel. He'd seen during the breakfast, or more precisely in the fight after it, just how much Lex and Clark really cared for each other, even if they were at odds now. Conner didn't want Clark to give up on Lex now, even if he didn't know what Clark had been looking for. He walked over and hugged Clark, putting his arms around his dad. "It'll be okay, Dad. You'll see, it'll be okay."
Clark returned the hug and didn't say anything.
When he'd been in the labs, Conner had wanted parents. His implanted memories had parents – at least four different sets of parents. Moms and dads both. A child being held in soft arms, swung up on shoulders, hands overlaying his own as he reached for a block, a train, a doll. Gentle voices. Or at least those had been the favorite memories. There were other, not as nice ones too. Conner often wondered if the people putting in the memories had consciously selected them or just randomly dumped them. He'd wanted to ask his brothers which memories they held, but the researchers were careful not to let the clones associate too much; mostly they passed in the halls on the way from research room to tube to research room. Or as fought with each other as part of the programming training, at which point there was no talking, just fighting.
Lex was somebody that could be a father like Clark. Conner didn't want a different parent – he wasn't about to give Clark up, ever. Yet Lex fit in their lives. He fit in a way that Lois and Chloe and Oliver never had, despite the way the three were always trying to shoe-horn their way in. Round pegs trying to fit into hexagon holes. Clark tried hard to let them in, yet there were always gaps, areas they didn't fill, that they didn't even understand to fill. Lex, though... Lex fit without even trying. He just slide right in there like he belonged.
And Conner really didn't need that mental image his thought just brought. Not with his parents. With a shudder, he flipped to a new page on the pad and worked on a krypton atom. Not the most exciting of molecules, really, but it was part of the fission chain. Uranium to krypton and barium, plus some neutrons. Two parents, one child. One child, two parents? Normally the parents would come before the child, but in this case, one could safely say it was the other way around. Now, if only Conner could get the second parent back.
His two parents were two dads, but who cared about that? Two girls, two guys, three girls and a guy, maybe an alien too... Conner figured he wasn't one to throw stones, considering his origins. The irregularity of it hadn't even occurred to him until Chloe had said something when he was pestering her for information about Lex. It didn't matter. Conner wanted them both, and he wanted them together. He would have taken them separately if that's the way they'd swung, but it just made it all the more perfect that they so obviously were in love with each other too. If a little messed up about it.
"... Luthor problem."
At Batman's words, Conner snapped his pen and jerked his head up. What? He glanced over at Dad.
"I'm monitoring the situation," Superman said, looking like he'd eaten something sour.
"Monitoring?" Aquaman snorted. "Luthor was using active sonar in my ocean! He knows damn well what that does to the cetaceans."
"What was he looking for?" Superman asked cautiously.
"Something in the Kuril trench. You think he was going to tell me what he was after?"
"Did he find it?"
"I don't think so – he left when I yelled at him."
Batman folded his hands together. "That's characteristic of the current pattern for three weeks now. Luthor's been active in many areas and yet has been retreating from the field when he is discovered. That is not normally typical of his behavior."
"I'm monitoring the situation," Superman repeated, his left eyebrow ticking.
Conner watched, fascinated. He'd had no clue. Did the League regularly monitor Lex? Why? Well, okay, there was all that about a villain and all, but Lex wasn't a real villain...
"He was in Central City last week," Flash said thoughtfully. "Impulse stopped him from stealing a stone out of the Mineralogical Museum."
"Which stone?"
"Nominally, it was a chunk of charoite, but who knows what he was really after. He left after Impulse talked to him."
Batman put his hands on the table. "Superman, either you do something about Luthor or we will. This can't be allowed to continue. We all have our villains to battle, and he's a distraction."
Conner was sure Batman had been about to say something else after the 'we all have our villains' bit, but the switch had been so smooth he'd barely picked up on it.
Superman opened his mouth, however before he could say anything, the door opened.
"Sorry I'm late," Wonder Woman strode in confidently, "I had a little trouble with Luthor that delayed me."
Superman put his head into his hands as every eye around the table looked at him.
Wonder Woman paused before sitting, her elegant eyebrows raising as she looked around the table. "What did I interrupt?"
"We were just talking about Luthor," Green Lantern said dryly, "and what Superman was planning on doing about it."
"Do about it? You mean him?" Wonder Woman sat down. "Why on earth should Superman do anything about him? Lex is just acting up. He'll settle down eventually, he always does."
Conner had never considered asking Diana for information about Dad Two, mostly because he hadn't known they knew each other. She was, though, the first League member who had called him by his first name. He eyed her curiously.
"I admit, he's usually not as self-destructive as this—"
"Self-destructive?" Conner found himself blurting out.
Wonder Woman paused and Superman lifted his head. The rest of the table followed suit and Conner found himself pinned by the gazes like a bug on display. He shrank down in his seat wishing that Flash was a little larger so Conner could hide behind him.
"Superboy... did you tell Luthor about..." Wonder Woman stopped herself. Not all of the League members knew about the gene-splicing, and they certainly weren't making it public.
Conner didn't look at his dad. "Uh, no... but he found out anyhow." He wasn't about to say it was his dad who had spilled the beans. That was okay, they all knew Lex could find out stuff on his own – Dad had been right in that, the first night.
Wonder Woman sighed. "Well, that explains his little rampage. Besides the more obvious things, I'm sure he's the one who has been responsible for the destruction of several research labs." She didn't say specifically, but it was obvious she meant cloning labs.
"Destruction?" Conner's heart sank.
"No loss of lives at any of them, and he even found homes for all the puppies and kittens," Diana assured him, a twinkle in her eyes.
Superman cleared his throat. "That was last week. What did he do just now?"
She lost her grin. "He was exploring Paradise Island. I retrieved him and dropped him off at his Metropolis penthouse."
Superman paled.
Conner blinked. "Um, I thought you didn't allow men on Themyscira."
"We don't." Wonder Woman folded her arms across her chest, looking remarkably like Superman as she did that. Other than the breasts and the low cleavage that the gesture directed Conner's eyes to. "Luthor is incredibly lucky that Athena and Aphrodite like him, and that he didn't actually set foot directly upon the ground. He was sailing around the island in a dingy."
In a totally different manner than Wonder Woman, Superman folded his arms on the table and dropped his head down on them, the action making him look as little like Superman as he possibly could in the costume. Conner's eyes were large. Not a word was spoken by anybody else at the table.
"Besides the lecture that Artemis gave him, I also talked to his bodyguards. They won't be letting him do anything like that again, I assure you."
Clark gave a little moan and then sat up, running his fingers through his hair and resettling into Superman. Or trying to. The attempt wasn't that successful. "All right. I'll go talk to him."
Wonder Woman blinked. "I really don't think..."
"Good," Batman said bluntly, interrupting Wonder Woman.
Clark stood up and held a hand out to Conner, beckoning him away from the table. "Wonder Woman, you have the chair. I'll see you all later."
Without listening to the protests behind them, Clark and Conner left the meeting room. They didn't speak until they were in the air and flying back home.
"Was that what you were waiting for?" Conner shot Clark a glare. If he'd been egging Dad Two on...
Clark grimaced. "Hardly. But it can't be helped. It's already ten days past... well, past when I thought we'd be able to approach him. We'll have to go to him first."
"I thought that's what we were going to do!" Conner was really seriously exasperated by his dad.
"It's what we're going to do now." Clark sounded bleak, like he wasn't sure if they would win.
Conner was about ready to scream at Clark's defeatist attitude. Yet, Kon had to admit, at the same time, he was afraid. He'd never seen anything like the anger that had flared through Lex's eyes as he'd thrown them out of the hotel. The sheer amount of determination combined with rage was foreign to him. Clark had gotten them out of there while Conner was still stunned and hurt. Conner knew he wanted Lex back in their lives... but he didn't know how. The breakfast had gone so well initially, but it had ended up a dismal failure.
They got back into Metropolis and flew through and stopped some crimes and rescued some cats from trees. They both looked at the LuthorCorp Towers, yet didn't fly there. When they'd killed a few hours doing routine superheroing, they flew home. Tomorrow was soon enough.
Changing into normal clothes was usually done on the roof of the building next door. Or the one next to it. Just in case somebody had surveillance on the apartment. The whole 'protect your secret identity' thing was still weird to Conner. He'd lived his short life in a test tube and then he was out in the world. He was who he was, and the thought of separating out parts of himself... well, it reminded him a little too much of his segmented borrowed memories. Somebody not himself.
Nightwing, however, had shown Conner just what risks there were for superheroes. Not risks for themselves, but for those they cared about. After that, it was a lot easier to follow the rules.
Still didn't mean he had to like them.
Conner pushed the glasses up his nose and sighed. Next time they went to the eye doctor, Conner was going to insist on using some of Lex's money for better frames. The cheap ones sucked.
"Next time we go to the optometrist, we'll get some better glasses for you," Clark said. "I started off with the cheap ones because that's what I had on the farm. No need for us to stuff you into the same mold."
Sometimes it was weird, but more often Kon loved these moments of synchronicity between him and his dad, like they were really just different aspects of the same being. "Thanks, Dad." He grinned as they went up the stairs.
Clark unlocked the apartment door, went in... and stopped.
Conner ran into his back. "Ouch. Hey, Dad..."
For another long moment, Clark stood frozen. Then he turned and gathered Conner into his arms in a giant hug, squeezing him so tightly a normal human would have had problems. To Conner, it felt like being home; safe, secure, and loved.
"It's okay," Clark muttered into Conner's shoulder. "Oh, Kon. It's okay. It's going to be all right. Thank God. Or more likely, thank the Goddesses. He loves you more than he hates me..."
Conner couldn't see a thing, smushed into Clark's chest as he was. The way Dad was holding onto him, Conner also wasn't about to try and get out of the hug – Dad needed this. Kon really wanted to know what was going on, though.
Finally he just x-rayed through Dad's body. There wasn't anything different about the hallway... ah. There. The dining room. There was a stack of papers and packages and stuff on the table that hadn't been there when they'd left this morning. From the way Dad was going on, undoubtedly Dad Two or one of his minions had come in and dropped them off while they were gone. But what would Dad Two have...
"My identification papers?" Conner wondered out loud.
Clark finally untangled himself, his smile wide and happy, a joy lighting up the world. "Probably. "
"This is what you were waiting for?" Conner stepped all the way inside the apartment, pushing his dad further in, too, and closed the door. "Why didn't you just say so?"
"I thought he'd send them sooner," Clark admitted as they walked to the table. "I hadn't realized just how long it had been, and then..."
"Then you were worried he wasn't going to." Yeah, okay, that was worth the silence. Conner picked up the fancy envelope on top and pulled out his birth certificate.
"Conner Ryan Wilson," Conner read. "Son of Clark Kent and Sally Alice Wilson. Sally Wilson? I thought her name was Jessie?"
After no answer, Conner looked up. "Dad?" His father was slightly pale, a hand on the table, looking at Conner with surprise written all over his face. "Uh, Dad, you okay?"
"Ryan..." Clark murmured, then shook himself all over and regained some of his color. "Jessie was in the Witness Protection program. She would have had another name and identity by the time you were born." He smiled, a faint pale imitation of his normal grin. "Lex thinks of everything."
Conner eyed Clark for a long moment, wondering if he should ask about this 'Ryan' person. Dad was now determinedly sorting through the other papers, though, and it looked like it was one of those history things. From back in the time of legend. Conner really needed a better descriptor for those days but hadn't come up with one yet, words not being his favorite thing in the world.
"There's also a completed application for a formal name change to 'Kent', and custody papers for me." Clark snorted as he read the post-it on the custody papers, then handed both sets to Conner.
It was better to be a Kent than a Wilson, in Conner's opinion. Luthor-foresight indeed. "Why do you need custody rights if you're my dad?"
"Because you haven't lived with me before. Your mom raised you, and her dad or other relatives could make a case for taking you away. The custody ruling prevents that. Well, makes it harder."
Conner looked a question at Clark. Clark shrugged. "Opportunists. Fortune-hunters, somebody looking to mess with me. Who knows. This way, no matter what, we're covered."
"Would the Justice League have thought of that?" Conner thumbed through a high school yearbook idly. He supposed he'd have to memorize some of the names in there. He wondered if Dad Two would produce people to vouch for him if needed.
There was a quiet sigh from his dad. "No," Clark admitted. "From them, you got a birth certificate, social security, some school records, and not much else."
Conner jerked his head up and stared. "Got? As in, received? As in... I've got two sets of identities now?"
The side of Clark's mouth twisted up. "I couldn't figure out how to stop them without telling them about Lex. And, well, I figured it wouldn't hurt. Just in case." He disappeared into the back room and came out with a manila envelope. "Don't mix it up with these."
Conner flipped through the papers. Conner Jonathan Kent was his name in the other universe. Dad's dad for the middle name. Conner wondered how he was going to find out about Ryan. Whoever had made up the papers was obviously a traditionalist, giving him Dad's last name when he was living with his mom. His mom in this one was Molly Rowen.
If Conner needed another identity, this one wouldn't help too much – too close to the other, even with the differences. Might be handy in other ways, though. Jobs, tax brackets, off-shore accounts... "Who put this packet together?"
"Probably Chloe as Watchtower," Clark responded casually, opening one of the other boxes. "Gus. Oh, Lex..."
Instantly, Kon put the papers back in the envelope and was at Dad's side. "Stuffed animals?" he asked incredulously. "Toys? I'm not a kid."
Clark gently held the old teddy bear he'd pulled out. "Even adults keep memories of their childhood."
Conner blinked. No, he'd never have thought of that in a million years. He took out a model spaceship and looked at it curiously.
"Project Galaxy," Clark said. "It was popular about six years ago. Lex probably has some dvds of it somewhere in here if you want to see some episodes."
That's exactly what the sticky note on the spaceship said. Conner poked through the rest of the box, reading the notes about his "childhood" toys. There wasn't any note on the teddy bear, however, and Dad was still holding it in the crook of his arm, though his attention was now in the other boxes. "What's with the bear?"
Clark put down the tattered young adult book he'd been reading. "It used to be Lex's. He had it up until he was about nine, and then his dad decided he was old enough to do without stuffed animals. All of his children's toys disappeared while he was at school. The next day, though, one of the chambermaids slipped Lex a note, a diagram to a secret cubby in his room. Lex found the bear in there. But he never saw that maid again."
Conner's mouth dropped open. "That..., that..., that's..."
"I know," Clark wistfully put the bear back in the box.
Instantly, Kon took the bear and walked into his room and put him on the dresser next to his alarm clock. No bear should ever be so unloved. And Lex's dad was an ass.
When he came back, Conner was determined. "Dad, we should go see Dad Two now.
Clark had apparently stopped going through the boxes and was now in the kitchen, getting dinner ready. Dad nodded even as he stirred the macaroni and cheese. "We should. But it'll be you."
"What?" Kon got out a pair of glasses and poured milk in them.
Clark accepted his gratefully as Kon handed it to him. "Tomorrow. Go hunt Lex down and talk to him." He took a sip. "But don't break into his penthouse or evade security to get to him. Just... go up to him at some point when he's not surrounded by a lot of people. You can trust Mercy. Or Hope. Well, trust them to protect Lex and all Lex's secrets, and you can be counted as one of his secrets, so you'll be good with them."
"You're not coming with me?" Conner asked faintly. As much as he wanted them to talk to Lex, he didn't want to do it himself. It was... it would be wrong, to talk to Dad Two without Dad One there. Plus, he was scared.
Clark shook his head. He tested the mac and cheese and then scooped it out on plates for them, the whole packet for just the two of them. "Just you. Lex will talk to you. He won't to me yet."
"But..."
"Trust me on this, Kon." Clark sat down at the newly cleared table. "I bungled badly at that breakfast. Too much, too soon."
"We were doing fine until I had my little fit about super-heroing." Conner cast his eyes down, still slightly ashamed for his outburst.
With a shrug, Clark dismissed that part. "It's still me. Lex will let you in. He sent you Augustus. That's... that's more than I ever thought he'd do. Lex wants you, and he'll let you in – if you're not with me."
"But I want both of you."
"One at a time, Kon. One at a time." Clark smiled at Conner, his love in his eyes. "We're on about step five right now, between us and Lex, and you'll take the next one forward, and maybe he'll take the next, or maybe he'll step back and you'll have to step forward again... but there's still a lot of steps to go. Rome wasn't built in a day, and neither was the space shuttle. I'll join you when Lex is ready."
Yeah, okay, it did make sense, even if Conner didn't want it to. He focused his vision to see inside his bedroom, with the teddy bear sitting there alone. Lex didn't give up the things he loved, and there was proof of it. They were just well hidden so nobody could take them away. Including himself? Probably, yes, himself at least, and possibly also including Dad, who was one of those things both loved and feared. Conner dug into his dinner and tried to think of how to approach Dad Two on his own.
... ... ...
Dad Two was never alone. How the heck did he do any villaining at all, with all the stuff he did in a day? Meetings at LexCorp. Meetings at lunch. Meetings in the limo driving to another meeting across the town. Lex's day was just full of people, people, and more people. The only time he was alone was when he was in his office between meetings, or up in his penthouse. And Conner was under strict rules not to break into either. The first day, Conner had suggested it would be easier. Clark had said no. Well, actually, he'd gone on and on and on about the 'no', but it boiled down to a 'no'.
Finally, Conner saw a chance. Lex had gone for an early inspection at one of his labs. He had to come out at some point, didn't he? Or maybe this is how he went a-villaining, slipping out from lead-lined buildings to who knows where.
Conner stuffed his hands in his pockets and waited. He was just outside of any security camera range, sitting on a steel girder by the walkway. It wasn't outside of teenage human means to climb up there, so it wasn't too weird, hopefully. Security at this lab wasn't quite as tight as it was at LexCorp, and the guards rarely looked up. Conner wouldn't have been able to do this at any one of Lex's real buildings.
"Oh, thank deities." There was Lex at last. Just when Kon's stomach was starting to growl. The car was being brought around for him, and this was Kon's only chance. He hopped off the girder and walked over.
"Hey D—" Shit. He hadn't thought of a name for Lex. And he didn't have a chance to now as everybody turned and the shit hit the fan.
A gun on his neck, another pointed at his stomach, and at least three tasers out. Conner didn't take another step, his eyes wide. Holy crap, that was a lot of gun-power. One of those tasers wasn't actually a taser but a prototype something-or-another – Conner could see inside the structure but that didn't mean he knew what the structure was.
Lex leaned casually against the open door of the car (passenger side of the back seats, Conner noted absently), his blue eyes glittering with cool amusement. "Well. Clark Kent's son, I believe. Trying for a career in journalism so young?"
"Uh..." Conner carefully put out a finger and inched the gun at his throat a slight distance away. The dark woman whose gun it was watched him carefully all the time, permitting the gesture but letting Conner know she wasn't to be messed with.
"I actually wanted to thank you." Conner's gaze met Lex's firmly.
Lex's mouth twitched. "Thank me for what? Giving your father an opportunity for another front news headline?"
Oh God, Lois and Clark hadn't run another expose on LexCorp recently, had they? Conner frantically searched his memory but he honestly didn't pay any attention to the news. Or at least their news. And Lex was waiting for an answer. Six people around them at least, not counting those gathering in the lobby. Think, Kon, think. He couldn't say for his papers... "For the scholarship."
One pale eyebrow darted up swiftly then came down again. "I have nothing to do with LexCorp scholarships. If you won one, it was on your own and your doing, not mine."
Dad Two just wasn't going to make this easy on Conner, was he? Clark had been right not to come – it would be a thousand times worse with him there. "You could have blocked it. Because of my dad. Because of you and he. You could have said, "no, not that one," yet you didn't. You let it go through. Thank you."
Lex made a gesture and all the guns disappeared. "You're welcome," he said dismissively, beneath his notice. Lex turned to get inside the car.
"Lunch?" Conner blurted, frantic. Lex was leaving. He'd finally gotten to talk to his other Dad and now that dad would be gone and Kon couldn't just wait like Clark was, he just couldn't. "Please? Um, my treat? To thank you for the scholarship?"
There was a stunned surprised silence from everybody around them. The security guards, the body guards, the scientists that had walked out from the lab with Lex, from Lex himself. From Conner, too, actually. What had he been thinking?
"What is it with Kents and food?" Lex asked as he faced around again. "The scholarship is to pay for education, not bribery."
Conner flushed hot. "I didn't mean it like that! I just..." His shoulders slumped, defeated. He couldn't think up anything good enough, and perhaps there wasn't actually anything.
Blue eyes regarded him dispassionately. Physically, the eyes were match to Conner's own, yet they were so much more guarded.
"Dinner," Lex finally said.
Conner blinked. Then blinked again. "What?"
"7 pm. Hope will go with you." Lex nodded at the dark woman standing next to Conner, the gun-wielder. Then he got in the car, shutting the door. A tall pale woman with black hair got in the driver's side.
That would be Mercy, Lex's other main bodyguard. Clark had pointed both of them out to Conner before, he'd just never met either of them in person. As the car drove off, Conner looked at Hope, still standing there next to him. "Um... Hi, I'm Conner." He held out his hand.
With a laugh, Hope holstered her gun that she'd never completely put away despite the earlier stand-down. Then she shook his hand. "I'm Hope. Come on, we can walk there."
She turned and started away. Conner watched for a moment, mesmerized by the feminine hips swaying from side to side. Then he shook his head and caught up. "Walk where?"
"To the tailor's. You're not going to dinner with Lex in that," Hope nodded at Conner's jeans and t-shirt.
"Hey!" They weren't holey or worn to threads or even cheap like his dad's suits. These were good quality jeans!
Hope's mouth curved up. "The restaurant has a certain reputation to maintain... not that Lex cares about that, but you'll attract less attention if you blend it."
"You don't blend in." It came out of his mouth before he thought, he swore it did.
"Mercy and I aren't supposed to blend in. We're a distraction, and while people are looking at our breasts and our hips, that's when we shoot them."
Conner eeped a bit, having started to turn red at the mention of breasts and then abruptly reminded of who he was talking to. Then he blinked. "Hey, is that why Wonder Woman wears such a skimpy costume?"
Hope tilted her head. "One of the reasons. We learn from the best. What do you think of verbs?"
"Uh, necessary? Irregular? Spanish ones are easier? What?" Conner blinked.
"How about blood?"
Conner grimaced. "Ick. Um, B-positive?"
"Philodendron."
"Is that Latin?"
Hope rolled her eyes. "Cats."
"Cuddly and cute." Conner was, by this time, simply going along with the flow. He had no idea what they were doing, but he was sure there was a point to it somewhere.
"Acetate."
"Carbon, Hydrogen, Oxygen."
Hope blinked. Then turned her head while they walked to study him thoughtfully. "Top, bottom."
"Charm, strange."
"Microwave."
"Klystron."
Hope laughed. "Okay, Physics it is."
Well, yeah, but... "What is?"
"Your scholarship. We have to give it to you in something you're actually good at, and botany was rather obviously not it."
That must have been the 'philo-something' Hope had asked earlier. Conner stopped in his tracks, indignant. "I wasn't asking for anything!"
Hope walked back to him, her eyes scanning all around them. "It's been five minutes since we left StyCo. By this time, at least fifteen other people know that Lex Luthor was accosted by Clark Kent's son and that said son has a scholarship from LexCorp. In another ten minutes, Perry White is going to be asking your dad about it. We have to have one for you, retroactively, or the whole thing falls apart."
"Dad won't know anything about it," Conner said weakly. "He told me not to break into Lex's penthouse! There wasn't much other choice."
"And we do appreciate that," Hope said, her mouth quirking up. She motioned for him to keep walking with her again. "The details are just something that needs to be filled in. Your dad doesn't need to know – you applied for it without telling him."
Conner opened and closed his mouth, then asked cautiously, "Did you used to play with toy trains?" That was one of his other 'childhood memories' in the box.
"Mercy did. She wanted to be a conductor when she was young – always watched the trains going through SS without stopping, coming from a place that was good and going to one better, the mess in-between invisible to the trains."
SS would be the Suicide Slums, the corner of Metropolis that not even Superman could save. For every criminal he put away, another one sprang up. For every child rescued, another returned to their abusive family. He was making headway on it, from both the super-heroing and also from Clark's articles and pleas for reformation on the edges, but it was slow-going. Anybody who made it out of the SS was... well, obviously Mercy had.
"I donated the books. Andre Norton was a favorite."
He'd never read any. Some of his stolen memories had, but they didn't have details, just broad outlines. Space and anthropology, esper powers and time travel. Cats. Had Conner ever read a book in his life? His real life, not his implanted memories life, and a real book, not a text book? He didn't think so. Maybe he should try Hope's. "Thank you. It was... it was all great. I wouldn't have thought of most of it."
"You're welcome." Hope walked in silence next to him for a bit. "You know, Conner, Lex would have done it no matter what. It helps that you're smart and quick and can banter with him – makes it easier on all of us – but it's not just because of that. Today, if you hadn't come up with the scholarship, he would have thought of something else. He likes to play with us, but if we can't keep up – which we don't always – it's still all right."
Conner was confused for a moment. Then he realized what she meant. It was the experiments, the tests, the hoops he'd jumped through as a clone to prove himself and not to be tossed out like last week's garbage. In the lab, he'd always had to excel, to be the best, the smartest. A clone that didn't make the grade wasn't seen again. Hope was saying that Lex would have loved him even if he'd failed all the tests. Conner had to swallow and look away. An accident of cloning, just some genes spliced in, and somehow, miraculously, that made him a son.
"Hey, if it was a test, I would have already failed," Conner managed a weak grin. "I didn't think of anything except how to meet him."
"You could have made an appointment." Hope didn't look at him.
"Ummm..." Alright, he hadn't thought of that either. Mostly because then he would have had to come up with a reason for the appointment, and, well, obviously, he didn't think of reasons. Just barreling straight on ahead, ignoring everything in his path. Conner sighed. He had a bit more growing to do.
"But I have to admit, this is more fun."
Fun? Conner glanced at his walking companion.
She smiled, the expression brightening her face remarkably. "Coming up with things like this is so much more interesting than our usual. For the scholarship, there'll be your application, your proposal, the program for the winners, scouting out other winners and making sure they'd actually applied for something. And before, gathering up your data, laying the groundwork... Creation is more interesting than destruction."
Conner gulped a little at the list of what would have to happen to back up his impromptu thanks. "I don't mean to cause you trouble," he said weakly.
"You weren't listening; it's no trouble."
A thought struck him. "Who is we?"
Hope hadn't ever stopped looking at everything around them, but at that question, she pulled out a gadget that Conner recognized from Chloe's training. It was a highly sophisticated scanner, checking for electronic surveillance and also came with a silencer, an emp field and static generator. He wore a smaller version with the detector in the frame of his glasses. Looking at Hope with more attention than he'd given before, he could see her detectors woven into the sleeves of her suit and even one in her hair-band. She was right – the physical distraction of the breasts and hips had kept him from seeing the tech.
When she was satisfied that they weren't being observed from afar, at least not with electronics, she answered him in a voice that didn't carry further than his super-hearing and without moving her lips. "Me, Mercy, Charity, Justice, Concord, and Lex himself. You can talk to any of us; don't approach anybody else."
Conner blinked. "Okay, once is normal, twice is coincidence... what the heck is it with the rest of you?"
Hope laughed. For a bodyguard, she was a lot more friendly than Conner would have expected. He suspected, though, that if he wasn't Lex's son, she wouldn't be so nice. Or maybe it was another part of the distraction layer.
"It's a little bit of nature and nurture both. Mercy, Justice and Charity all came from SS, where irony is the by-word of the day. They had the names before Lex found them. The rest of us... It amuses us. I started it, when I was paired with Mercy. What really gets funny is when the want-to-bes start scrambling to try and find virtue names to try and make it to the inner circle, and some even make it to the outer rims. The men have the worst time figuring out new names; it's a little easier for the girls."
"Doesn't that put a target on you?"
Hope shrugged. "It takes the target off Lex, which is part of our role. Lex doesn't necessarily approve, but that's the way it is. Charity, however, is trying to switch her name to Sue in mainstream, and Concord is still Mayik. So it's not all visible to the outside world."
Conner carefully stuffed inside his skull the comparison with superhero and villain identity names. Hope might not be offended, but better not to go there. "Does Lex have another name?"
"Not until you renamed him. He's generally fairly resistant to that sort of thing. Says it goes with tights and costumes and he's not going there."
Maybe he didn't have to repress the other thought. It made him warm, though, to know that Lex had accepted Conner's impromptu naming. And had shared it? Obviously for making up the package of information, Lex had to involve these others, but... "So he has friends." Kon had wondered. Among the superheroes, Lex Luthor was known as a loner, working by himself mostly. Minions, yes, but not like some of the other villains who had their own other identities with lives and sometimes even families.
Hope glanced at him and half-shrugged. "As far as he will allow. He is careful, even among those of us he trusts. We were surprised when he told us about you."
"But you're loyal to him, everybody knows this... all the others, their minions will cave if we push, but you two... never have."
"And never will." Hope touched her hip where the gun was holstered, hidden behind her coat. "I'm answering you now, yet we are watching. There is hope here, but we will guard him as we can. Your little trip to Casablanca... we haven't seen Lex that out of control, ever. And if you hurt him, we will destroy you."
Conner gulped. He suddenly believed everything he'd ever heard about Lex's two bodyguards. It wasn't so much the words as the way Hope spoke. He believed her, totally.
Hope put the scanner away. "We're here." She nodded at a store they were approaching.
Oh. Right. Clothes. "I hate suits. Why can't I just treat him to pizza? He eats pizza, right?" He ate scrambled eggs with ketchup... Dad Two surely liked pizza.
"Do you know how hard it is to secure a pizza parlor? The higher-end restaurants make our job easier." Hope paused outside the window to check the inside before they entered.
"I can protect him," Conner bristled.
With her hand on the door handle, Hope stilled. Then she abandoned the store, grabbed Conner by the arm and hauled him off to a side. "Listen, pipsqueak. You might think you're hot shit now, but you know nothing! You're trailing identity hints all over the place – hell, just saying something like that in public period is stupid! You saw me turn off the scanner." Which was back on again, Conner noticed. "Not even Superman can stop every bullet."
Conner opened his mouth. Hope pulled her gun and flipped what looked like a safety on it. As the green kryptonite radiation washed over him, Conner shut his mouth and fought to stand upright.
"If you sit with him at a deli, concentrating on what you're talking about, would you even see a bullet coming? If it was fired from fifty feet away, with a high tech silencer, would you hear it? If they used a laser, how would you know? You wouldn't, not until his head exploded all over you."
Conner had seen exploding heads before. He shuddered at the thought of it happening to one of his dads. "It wouldn't."
"You couldn't stop it. Not if you didn't know it was coming, or unless you could reverse time. Nine-tenths of security is prevention. We stop it before it gets anywhere near him. Lex has enemies... you don't even know how many. And you want to take him away from us and put him into a place where anybody can come in and kill him. I say no."
"You didn't do such a good job two days ago!" Conner growled, "The world is unsafe! You still have to live in it."
"Sometimes, Lex agrees with you, and that's when he gets himself into trouble. He didn't let us know about that little jaunt ahead of time, but you can bet he's not going to be doing it again!" Hope flicked the switch on the gun again and the radiation faded. "Look, I'm not saying you can't meet with him, I'm saying there's more to it than you can see. You can't protect him, not like we can, and even if you could, we wouldn't let you because it would expose you. Don't get huffy about it, just accept it."
Conner blinked a few times, regaining his strength and thinking over what Hope had said. Curious, he x-rayed the gun, but no surprise, it had a lot of lead in the mix and he couldn't see the details. Regarding the information... Conner sighed. He'd over-reacted, and he knew it. It was stupid of him to make such a blatant remark and stupid to press it. "Sorry."
Hope watched him for a moment, evaluating his answer. Then she nodded and went back to the shop, leaving him to trail in her wake.
With a sigh, Conner followed. Great, he'd managed to piss off one of Dad Two's main minions. Not one of his better ideas.
The shop wasn't like any clothing store he'd been in before. Instead of racks and walls of clothes, it was more like a living room, with sitting areas, sketchbooks on the tables, and a few discreet mannequins. A tall man with features from India approached them, his gaze flickering over Conner then focusing on Hope.
"Ms. Watkins. How nice to see you. What is your pleasure today?"
Conner wondered if shop-keepers knew just how that sounded. He stifled a nervous giggle. He really hated suits.
Hope gestured at Conner. "Dinner guest for Mr. Luthor tonight at the Kramilor. No suits."
"Not his style," the man agreed. "He wears Nalain jeans, so he is not opposed to money, just to formality."
Conner glanced down at his jeans. There wasn't anything obvious on them that showed the brand, so that was really impressive. He looked back up at the tailor with respect.
"Cashmere sweater. Fine slacks. No tie. Comfortable and loose, so he can move, yet tailored to show that magnificent body. Or a fine silk shirt, if you prefer collars."
Hope shrugged. "Try him on both. We'll get both for tonight and see about others for later."
"Later?" Conner squawked. "I can't... Hope, I can't even afford this! Dad will have a cow if I get anything else."
"You're having dinner with Lex Luthor, and if you don't do anything to lose your scholarship, you will probably be having more meetings as well. You'll dress in a manner that will be appropriate. I'll talk to your dad." She paused. "Think of it more like a loan of the clothes than a gift. They'll be LexCorp property and you're just using them for the scholarship meetings."
"I can't wear them other places?"
Hope looked at him in exasperation. "I thought you didn't want the clothes..."
The tailor laughed, "He wants them, as long as they're not a suit. Come with me, young man, and we'll find you something for tonight that you will be happy wearing, and I will work on sketches for the future."
Conner glanced at Hope but went willingly enough. If suits were off the list... he was game. He just didn't want to know what Dad was going to say about it.
... ... ...
Fandom: Smallville - Pairing: Clex, w/Conner
Rating: PG - Size: 15,699
Type: drama
Warnings: none
Spoilers: general early SV, DCU Conner, Red, Ryan
Summary: Third in the Conner stories. Sequel to A Complicated Life and Not a Villain. Conner, Clark, and Lex take the next steps back to each other. During the travel, they learn more about themselves. Minions help… and enemies interfere.
Disclaimer: Only mine in my dreams. ;-) This story was written for free entertainment purposes only and may not be reproduced for profit or altered without permission.
Notes:
Promise, this one is happier. ^^
This series is about 14 years past SV Season 2, and the universe is AU after end Season 2 with a judicious mixing of post-season stuff and DC Universe. I go through Season 6 Smallville in parts, but only take 1-2 as canon - the rest is a bit of a grab-bag (ex. no Lex/Lana/Clark). FYI, I'm mucking a bit with Smallville timeline - in my season two, the episode Ryan came first, then Red. (At least the main event parts, the minor storylines stay.) I liked it better fitting this way, and neither storyline had anything that contradicted each other.
Beta by Ronda (Thank you! ^^).
Cross-posted to Archive of Our Own
Particle Steps, Part 1/2
"The Zantanians have gone back to their own space-time continuum. There is some clean-up work still in progress, however most of the disruptive elements have been mitigated." Green Lantern concluded his report.
"Thank you, GL." Superman flipped through his notes and stopped at one. "Flash, we were speculating that some of the problems you were having in Central City were due to the continuum disruptions. With the Zantanians are gone, have you noticed any difference?"
In the seat next to Conner, the Flash frowned. "Actually, there's been an increase. That means there might be another rip out there."
"Over in Midway—"
Conner tuned Hawkman out. Okay, the first part of the JLA meeting was interesting when they were going over various techniques that worked in the group fight against the Acaroidans... and he supposed, if he was forced to admit it, that this part was worthwhile too. But he was bored. Bored, bored, bored... He sighed.
From the head of the table, Superman gave Conner a quick look with an apologetic half-shrug before he returned his attention to Hawkman. Well, Conner had to admit it was his own fault for being here. He'd been involved in the fight and wanted to be in on the rest of it too. He just hadn't realized how much there was on the rest of it.
Uncapping his pen, Conner started doodling on his notebook, sketching out a buckyball atom. Okay, there was another reason he was stuck here – Clark wasn't letting him out of his sight in case he went running off. It was a valid reason; Conner and Dad One had had another argument about Dad Two just that morning.
Conner remembered it again, trying to see if he could figure anything new out from Dad's reasoning.
"It's been three weeks!" Conner thrust three fingers out to emphasize his point.
Clark scrubbed his face with his hand. "Look, I know you don't believe me, but Lex needs more time. If we confront him now, we'll never get him back."
"That's what you said last week! And the week before! He's going to be gone before we have a chance to get him back at this rate. Are you sure you want him?"
Conner admitted in his own thoughts now that it had been a bit of a low blow; he remembered the stricken look on Dad's face and winced. But he was tired of doing nothing. Conner looked at the completed buckyball and switched to a diamond bond.
Clark turned away from Conner for a long minute while silence dropped into the gap. When he turned back, his face was calm. It reminded Conner of the blank look that Lex used. In some ways, his two dads were a lot alike.
"If you've never gone after him before, how do you know when he'll be ready?" Conner was a little gentler, seeing the distress under the calm. Dad really did want Dad Two, and this waiting was as hard for him as it was for Conner, even if Conner didn't understand why.
Clark shook his head. He walked over to the three-month calendar on the wall and traced his finger over the dates until he stopped on one.
It had been the day that Lex had first come to the apartment, when Kon had found out he had another dad;, when he'd gotten the measure of both dads and decided that he wanted both of them. Clark alone was a great dad, even if they did argue fiercely sometimes. Clark loved him and wanted him and protected him and taught him. It was everything Kon had wanted while he lived in his tube in the lab, looking out at freedom and seeing only his scientific value in the eyes of those there.
Lex, though... that night that Lex'd come over, Conner had realized he wanted more. He'd woken up to the sounds of an argument, and had watched through the wall and listened before coming in. What he saw was another person who wanted him. Somebody who fought with Clark to protect Conner, to provide for him, to make sure he'd be okay. For all of Lois' attachment to Clark, she'd never done that for Conner. Neither had Chloe or Ollie or anybody else. They all wanted Clark and would reluctantly accept Conner to be with Clark. Lex, though, was different. He wanted Conner and would reluctantly accept Clark as part of that.
That night too, there had been something different about Clark. Sitting there arguing with Lex... Clark had been alive. There was a light in his eyes and a restrained energy to his body. Leaning towards Lex... Lex leaning back, both of them focused and intent on each other. It was obvious that the two of them shared something nobody else did.
"Alright, Kon." Clark sounded defeated. "We'll wait two more days. If... if nothing happens by then, we'll go to him."
Conner blinked. He hadn't realized that Clark had been waiting for something specific. He'd thought it was all nebulous thoughts and expectations. But the way Clark was looking at the calendar... "What are you waiting for?"
Clark's hand dropped. He turned back to Conner. "Nothing." His head and shoulders were bowed.
Seeing that, Conner felt like a heel. He'd seen during the breakfast, or more precisely in the fight after it, just how much Lex and Clark really cared for each other, even if they were at odds now. Conner didn't want Clark to give up on Lex now, even if he didn't know what Clark had been looking for. He walked over and hugged Clark, putting his arms around his dad. "It'll be okay, Dad. You'll see, it'll be okay."
Clark returned the hug and didn't say anything.
When he'd been in the labs, Conner had wanted parents. His implanted memories had parents – at least four different sets of parents. Moms and dads both. A child being held in soft arms, swung up on shoulders, hands overlaying his own as he reached for a block, a train, a doll. Gentle voices. Or at least those had been the favorite memories. There were other, not as nice ones too. Conner often wondered if the people putting in the memories had consciously selected them or just randomly dumped them. He'd wanted to ask his brothers which memories they held, but the researchers were careful not to let the clones associate too much; mostly they passed in the halls on the way from research room to tube to research room. Or as fought with each other as part of the programming training, at which point there was no talking, just fighting.
Lex was somebody that could be a father like Clark. Conner didn't want a different parent – he wasn't about to give Clark up, ever. Yet Lex fit in their lives. He fit in a way that Lois and Chloe and Oliver never had, despite the way the three were always trying to shoe-horn their way in. Round pegs trying to fit into hexagon holes. Clark tried hard to let them in, yet there were always gaps, areas they didn't fill, that they didn't even understand to fill. Lex, though... Lex fit without even trying. He just slide right in there like he belonged.
And Conner really didn't need that mental image his thought just brought. Not with his parents. With a shudder, he flipped to a new page on the pad and worked on a krypton atom. Not the most exciting of molecules, really, but it was part of the fission chain. Uranium to krypton and barium, plus some neutrons. Two parents, one child. One child, two parents? Normally the parents would come before the child, but in this case, one could safely say it was the other way around. Now, if only Conner could get the second parent back.
His two parents were two dads, but who cared about that? Two girls, two guys, three girls and a guy, maybe an alien too... Conner figured he wasn't one to throw stones, considering his origins. The irregularity of it hadn't even occurred to him until Chloe had said something when he was pestering her for information about Lex. It didn't matter. Conner wanted them both, and he wanted them together. He would have taken them separately if that's the way they'd swung, but it just made it all the more perfect that they so obviously were in love with each other too. If a little messed up about it.
"... Luthor problem."
At Batman's words, Conner snapped his pen and jerked his head up. What? He glanced over at Dad.
"I'm monitoring the situation," Superman said, looking like he'd eaten something sour.
"Monitoring?" Aquaman snorted. "Luthor was using active sonar in my ocean! He knows damn well what that does to the cetaceans."
"What was he looking for?" Superman asked cautiously.
"Something in the Kuril trench. You think he was going to tell me what he was after?"
"Did he find it?"
"I don't think so – he left when I yelled at him."
Batman folded his hands together. "That's characteristic of the current pattern for three weeks now. Luthor's been active in many areas and yet has been retreating from the field when he is discovered. That is not normally typical of his behavior."
"I'm monitoring the situation," Superman repeated, his left eyebrow ticking.
Conner watched, fascinated. He'd had no clue. Did the League regularly monitor Lex? Why? Well, okay, there was all that about a villain and all, but Lex wasn't a real villain...
"He was in Central City last week," Flash said thoughtfully. "Impulse stopped him from stealing a stone out of the Mineralogical Museum."
"Which stone?"
"Nominally, it was a chunk of charoite, but who knows what he was really after. He left after Impulse talked to him."
Batman put his hands on the table. "Superman, either you do something about Luthor or we will. This can't be allowed to continue. We all have our villains to battle, and he's a distraction."
Conner was sure Batman had been about to say something else after the 'we all have our villains' bit, but the switch had been so smooth he'd barely picked up on it.
Superman opened his mouth, however before he could say anything, the door opened.
"Sorry I'm late," Wonder Woman strode in confidently, "I had a little trouble with Luthor that delayed me."
Superman put his head into his hands as every eye around the table looked at him.
Wonder Woman paused before sitting, her elegant eyebrows raising as she looked around the table. "What did I interrupt?"
"We were just talking about Luthor," Green Lantern said dryly, "and what Superman was planning on doing about it."
"Do about it? You mean him?" Wonder Woman sat down. "Why on earth should Superman do anything about him? Lex is just acting up. He'll settle down eventually, he always does."
Conner had never considered asking Diana for information about Dad Two, mostly because he hadn't known they knew each other. She was, though, the first League member who had called him by his first name. He eyed her curiously.
"I admit, he's usually not as self-destructive as this—"
"Self-destructive?" Conner found himself blurting out.
Wonder Woman paused and Superman lifted his head. The rest of the table followed suit and Conner found himself pinned by the gazes like a bug on display. He shrank down in his seat wishing that Flash was a little larger so Conner could hide behind him.
"Superboy... did you tell Luthor about..." Wonder Woman stopped herself. Not all of the League members knew about the gene-splicing, and they certainly weren't making it public.
Conner didn't look at his dad. "Uh, no... but he found out anyhow." He wasn't about to say it was his dad who had spilled the beans. That was okay, they all knew Lex could find out stuff on his own – Dad had been right in that, the first night.
Wonder Woman sighed. "Well, that explains his little rampage. Besides the more obvious things, I'm sure he's the one who has been responsible for the destruction of several research labs." She didn't say specifically, but it was obvious she meant cloning labs.
"Destruction?" Conner's heart sank.
"No loss of lives at any of them, and he even found homes for all the puppies and kittens," Diana assured him, a twinkle in her eyes.
Superman cleared his throat. "That was last week. What did he do just now?"
She lost her grin. "He was exploring Paradise Island. I retrieved him and dropped him off at his Metropolis penthouse."
Superman paled.
Conner blinked. "Um, I thought you didn't allow men on Themyscira."
"We don't." Wonder Woman folded her arms across her chest, looking remarkably like Superman as she did that. Other than the breasts and the low cleavage that the gesture directed Conner's eyes to. "Luthor is incredibly lucky that Athena and Aphrodite like him, and that he didn't actually set foot directly upon the ground. He was sailing around the island in a dingy."
In a totally different manner than Wonder Woman, Superman folded his arms on the table and dropped his head down on them, the action making him look as little like Superman as he possibly could in the costume. Conner's eyes were large. Not a word was spoken by anybody else at the table.
"Besides the lecture that Artemis gave him, I also talked to his bodyguards. They won't be letting him do anything like that again, I assure you."
Clark gave a little moan and then sat up, running his fingers through his hair and resettling into Superman. Or trying to. The attempt wasn't that successful. "All right. I'll go talk to him."
Wonder Woman blinked. "I really don't think..."
"Good," Batman said bluntly, interrupting Wonder Woman.
Clark stood up and held a hand out to Conner, beckoning him away from the table. "Wonder Woman, you have the chair. I'll see you all later."
Without listening to the protests behind them, Clark and Conner left the meeting room. They didn't speak until they were in the air and flying back home.
"Was that what you were waiting for?" Conner shot Clark a glare. If he'd been egging Dad Two on...
Clark grimaced. "Hardly. But it can't be helped. It's already ten days past... well, past when I thought we'd be able to approach him. We'll have to go to him first."
"I thought that's what we were going to do!" Conner was really seriously exasperated by his dad.
"It's what we're going to do now." Clark sounded bleak, like he wasn't sure if they would win.
Conner was about ready to scream at Clark's defeatist attitude. Yet, Kon had to admit, at the same time, he was afraid. He'd never seen anything like the anger that had flared through Lex's eyes as he'd thrown them out of the hotel. The sheer amount of determination combined with rage was foreign to him. Clark had gotten them out of there while Conner was still stunned and hurt. Conner knew he wanted Lex back in their lives... but he didn't know how. The breakfast had gone so well initially, but it had ended up a dismal failure.
They got back into Metropolis and flew through and stopped some crimes and rescued some cats from trees. They both looked at the LuthorCorp Towers, yet didn't fly there. When they'd killed a few hours doing routine superheroing, they flew home. Tomorrow was soon enough.
Changing into normal clothes was usually done on the roof of the building next door. Or the one next to it. Just in case somebody had surveillance on the apartment. The whole 'protect your secret identity' thing was still weird to Conner. He'd lived his short life in a test tube and then he was out in the world. He was who he was, and the thought of separating out parts of himself... well, it reminded him a little too much of his segmented borrowed memories. Somebody not himself.
Nightwing, however, had shown Conner just what risks there were for superheroes. Not risks for themselves, but for those they cared about. After that, it was a lot easier to follow the rules.
Still didn't mean he had to like them.
Conner pushed the glasses up his nose and sighed. Next time they went to the eye doctor, Conner was going to insist on using some of Lex's money for better frames. The cheap ones sucked.
"Next time we go to the optometrist, we'll get some better glasses for you," Clark said. "I started off with the cheap ones because that's what I had on the farm. No need for us to stuff you into the same mold."
Sometimes it was weird, but more often Kon loved these moments of synchronicity between him and his dad, like they were really just different aspects of the same being. "Thanks, Dad." He grinned as they went up the stairs.
Clark unlocked the apartment door, went in... and stopped.
Conner ran into his back. "Ouch. Hey, Dad..."
For another long moment, Clark stood frozen. Then he turned and gathered Conner into his arms in a giant hug, squeezing him so tightly a normal human would have had problems. To Conner, it felt like being home; safe, secure, and loved.
"It's okay," Clark muttered into Conner's shoulder. "Oh, Kon. It's okay. It's going to be all right. Thank God. Or more likely, thank the Goddesses. He loves you more than he hates me..."
Conner couldn't see a thing, smushed into Clark's chest as he was. The way Dad was holding onto him, Conner also wasn't about to try and get out of the hug – Dad needed this. Kon really wanted to know what was going on, though.
Finally he just x-rayed through Dad's body. There wasn't anything different about the hallway... ah. There. The dining room. There was a stack of papers and packages and stuff on the table that hadn't been there when they'd left this morning. From the way Dad was going on, undoubtedly Dad Two or one of his minions had come in and dropped them off while they were gone. But what would Dad Two have...
"My identification papers?" Conner wondered out loud.
Clark finally untangled himself, his smile wide and happy, a joy lighting up the world. "Probably. "
"This is what you were waiting for?" Conner stepped all the way inside the apartment, pushing his dad further in, too, and closed the door. "Why didn't you just say so?"
"I thought he'd send them sooner," Clark admitted as they walked to the table. "I hadn't realized just how long it had been, and then..."
"Then you were worried he wasn't going to." Yeah, okay, that was worth the silence. Conner picked up the fancy envelope on top and pulled out his birth certificate.
"Conner Ryan Wilson," Conner read. "Son of Clark Kent and Sally Alice Wilson. Sally Wilson? I thought her name was Jessie?"
After no answer, Conner looked up. "Dad?" His father was slightly pale, a hand on the table, looking at Conner with surprise written all over his face. "Uh, Dad, you okay?"
"Ryan..." Clark murmured, then shook himself all over and regained some of his color. "Jessie was in the Witness Protection program. She would have had another name and identity by the time you were born." He smiled, a faint pale imitation of his normal grin. "Lex thinks of everything."
Conner eyed Clark for a long moment, wondering if he should ask about this 'Ryan' person. Dad was now determinedly sorting through the other papers, though, and it looked like it was one of those history things. From back in the time of legend. Conner really needed a better descriptor for those days but hadn't come up with one yet, words not being his favorite thing in the world.
"There's also a completed application for a formal name change to 'Kent', and custody papers for me." Clark snorted as he read the post-it on the custody papers, then handed both sets to Conner.
It was better to be a Kent than a Wilson, in Conner's opinion. Luthor-foresight indeed. "Why do you need custody rights if you're my dad?"
"Because you haven't lived with me before. Your mom raised you, and her dad or other relatives could make a case for taking you away. The custody ruling prevents that. Well, makes it harder."
Conner looked a question at Clark. Clark shrugged. "Opportunists. Fortune-hunters, somebody looking to mess with me. Who knows. This way, no matter what, we're covered."
"Would the Justice League have thought of that?" Conner thumbed through a high school yearbook idly. He supposed he'd have to memorize some of the names in there. He wondered if Dad Two would produce people to vouch for him if needed.
There was a quiet sigh from his dad. "No," Clark admitted. "From them, you got a birth certificate, social security, some school records, and not much else."
Conner jerked his head up and stared. "Got? As in, received? As in... I've got two sets of identities now?"
The side of Clark's mouth twisted up. "I couldn't figure out how to stop them without telling them about Lex. And, well, I figured it wouldn't hurt. Just in case." He disappeared into the back room and came out with a manila envelope. "Don't mix it up with these."
Conner flipped through the papers. Conner Jonathan Kent was his name in the other universe. Dad's dad for the middle name. Conner wondered how he was going to find out about Ryan. Whoever had made up the papers was obviously a traditionalist, giving him Dad's last name when he was living with his mom. His mom in this one was Molly Rowen.
If Conner needed another identity, this one wouldn't help too much – too close to the other, even with the differences. Might be handy in other ways, though. Jobs, tax brackets, off-shore accounts... "Who put this packet together?"
"Probably Chloe as Watchtower," Clark responded casually, opening one of the other boxes. "Gus. Oh, Lex..."
Instantly, Kon put the papers back in the envelope and was at Dad's side. "Stuffed animals?" he asked incredulously. "Toys? I'm not a kid."
Clark gently held the old teddy bear he'd pulled out. "Even adults keep memories of their childhood."
Conner blinked. No, he'd never have thought of that in a million years. He took out a model spaceship and looked at it curiously.
"Project Galaxy," Clark said. "It was popular about six years ago. Lex probably has some dvds of it somewhere in here if you want to see some episodes."
That's exactly what the sticky note on the spaceship said. Conner poked through the rest of the box, reading the notes about his "childhood" toys. There wasn't any note on the teddy bear, however, and Dad was still holding it in the crook of his arm, though his attention was now in the other boxes. "What's with the bear?"
Clark put down the tattered young adult book he'd been reading. "It used to be Lex's. He had it up until he was about nine, and then his dad decided he was old enough to do without stuffed animals. All of his children's toys disappeared while he was at school. The next day, though, one of the chambermaids slipped Lex a note, a diagram to a secret cubby in his room. Lex found the bear in there. But he never saw that maid again."
Conner's mouth dropped open. "That..., that..., that's..."
"I know," Clark wistfully put the bear back in the box.
Instantly, Kon took the bear and walked into his room and put him on the dresser next to his alarm clock. No bear should ever be so unloved. And Lex's dad was an ass.
When he came back, Conner was determined. "Dad, we should go see Dad Two now.
Clark had apparently stopped going through the boxes and was now in the kitchen, getting dinner ready. Dad nodded even as he stirred the macaroni and cheese. "We should. But it'll be you."
"What?" Kon got out a pair of glasses and poured milk in them.
Clark accepted his gratefully as Kon handed it to him. "Tomorrow. Go hunt Lex down and talk to him." He took a sip. "But don't break into his penthouse or evade security to get to him. Just... go up to him at some point when he's not surrounded by a lot of people. You can trust Mercy. Or Hope. Well, trust them to protect Lex and all Lex's secrets, and you can be counted as one of his secrets, so you'll be good with them."
"You're not coming with me?" Conner asked faintly. As much as he wanted them to talk to Lex, he didn't want to do it himself. It was... it would be wrong, to talk to Dad Two without Dad One there. Plus, he was scared.
Clark shook his head. He tested the mac and cheese and then scooped it out on plates for them, the whole packet for just the two of them. "Just you. Lex will talk to you. He won't to me yet."
"But..."
"Trust me on this, Kon." Clark sat down at the newly cleared table. "I bungled badly at that breakfast. Too much, too soon."
"We were doing fine until I had my little fit about super-heroing." Conner cast his eyes down, still slightly ashamed for his outburst.
With a shrug, Clark dismissed that part. "It's still me. Lex will let you in. He sent you Augustus. That's... that's more than I ever thought he'd do. Lex wants you, and he'll let you in – if you're not with me."
"But I want both of you."
"One at a time, Kon. One at a time." Clark smiled at Conner, his love in his eyes. "We're on about step five right now, between us and Lex, and you'll take the next one forward, and maybe he'll take the next, or maybe he'll step back and you'll have to step forward again... but there's still a lot of steps to go. Rome wasn't built in a day, and neither was the space shuttle. I'll join you when Lex is ready."
Yeah, okay, it did make sense, even if Conner didn't want it to. He focused his vision to see inside his bedroom, with the teddy bear sitting there alone. Lex didn't give up the things he loved, and there was proof of it. They were just well hidden so nobody could take them away. Including himself? Probably, yes, himself at least, and possibly also including Dad, who was one of those things both loved and feared. Conner dug into his dinner and tried to think of how to approach Dad Two on his own.
... ... ...
Dad Two was never alone. How the heck did he do any villaining at all, with all the stuff he did in a day? Meetings at LexCorp. Meetings at lunch. Meetings in the limo driving to another meeting across the town. Lex's day was just full of people, people, and more people. The only time he was alone was when he was in his office between meetings, or up in his penthouse. And Conner was under strict rules not to break into either. The first day, Conner had suggested it would be easier. Clark had said no. Well, actually, he'd gone on and on and on about the 'no', but it boiled down to a 'no'.
Finally, Conner saw a chance. Lex had gone for an early inspection at one of his labs. He had to come out at some point, didn't he? Or maybe this is how he went a-villaining, slipping out from lead-lined buildings to who knows where.
Conner stuffed his hands in his pockets and waited. He was just outside of any security camera range, sitting on a steel girder by the walkway. It wasn't outside of teenage human means to climb up there, so it wasn't too weird, hopefully. Security at this lab wasn't quite as tight as it was at LexCorp, and the guards rarely looked up. Conner wouldn't have been able to do this at any one of Lex's real buildings.
"Oh, thank deities." There was Lex at last. Just when Kon's stomach was starting to growl. The car was being brought around for him, and this was Kon's only chance. He hopped off the girder and walked over.
"Hey D—" Shit. He hadn't thought of a name for Lex. And he didn't have a chance to now as everybody turned and the shit hit the fan.
A gun on his neck, another pointed at his stomach, and at least three tasers out. Conner didn't take another step, his eyes wide. Holy crap, that was a lot of gun-power. One of those tasers wasn't actually a taser but a prototype something-or-another – Conner could see inside the structure but that didn't mean he knew what the structure was.
Lex leaned casually against the open door of the car (passenger side of the back seats, Conner noted absently), his blue eyes glittering with cool amusement. "Well. Clark Kent's son, I believe. Trying for a career in journalism so young?"
"Uh..." Conner carefully put out a finger and inched the gun at his throat a slight distance away. The dark woman whose gun it was watched him carefully all the time, permitting the gesture but letting Conner know she wasn't to be messed with.
"I actually wanted to thank you." Conner's gaze met Lex's firmly.
Lex's mouth twitched. "Thank me for what? Giving your father an opportunity for another front news headline?"
Oh God, Lois and Clark hadn't run another expose on LexCorp recently, had they? Conner frantically searched his memory but he honestly didn't pay any attention to the news. Or at least their news. And Lex was waiting for an answer. Six people around them at least, not counting those gathering in the lobby. Think, Kon, think. He couldn't say for his papers... "For the scholarship."
One pale eyebrow darted up swiftly then came down again. "I have nothing to do with LexCorp scholarships. If you won one, it was on your own and your doing, not mine."
Dad Two just wasn't going to make this easy on Conner, was he? Clark had been right not to come – it would be a thousand times worse with him there. "You could have blocked it. Because of my dad. Because of you and he. You could have said, "no, not that one," yet you didn't. You let it go through. Thank you."
Lex made a gesture and all the guns disappeared. "You're welcome," he said dismissively, beneath his notice. Lex turned to get inside the car.
"Lunch?" Conner blurted, frantic. Lex was leaving. He'd finally gotten to talk to his other Dad and now that dad would be gone and Kon couldn't just wait like Clark was, he just couldn't. "Please? Um, my treat? To thank you for the scholarship?"
There was a stunned surprised silence from everybody around them. The security guards, the body guards, the scientists that had walked out from the lab with Lex, from Lex himself. From Conner, too, actually. What had he been thinking?
"What is it with Kents and food?" Lex asked as he faced around again. "The scholarship is to pay for education, not bribery."
Conner flushed hot. "I didn't mean it like that! I just..." His shoulders slumped, defeated. He couldn't think up anything good enough, and perhaps there wasn't actually anything.
Blue eyes regarded him dispassionately. Physically, the eyes were match to Conner's own, yet they were so much more guarded.
"Dinner," Lex finally said.
Conner blinked. Then blinked again. "What?"
"7 pm. Hope will go with you." Lex nodded at the dark woman standing next to Conner, the gun-wielder. Then he got in the car, shutting the door. A tall pale woman with black hair got in the driver's side.
That would be Mercy, Lex's other main bodyguard. Clark had pointed both of them out to Conner before, he'd just never met either of them in person. As the car drove off, Conner looked at Hope, still standing there next to him. "Um... Hi, I'm Conner." He held out his hand.
With a laugh, Hope holstered her gun that she'd never completely put away despite the earlier stand-down. Then she shook his hand. "I'm Hope. Come on, we can walk there."
She turned and started away. Conner watched for a moment, mesmerized by the feminine hips swaying from side to side. Then he shook his head and caught up. "Walk where?"
"To the tailor's. You're not going to dinner with Lex in that," Hope nodded at Conner's jeans and t-shirt.
"Hey!" They weren't holey or worn to threads or even cheap like his dad's suits. These were good quality jeans!
Hope's mouth curved up. "The restaurant has a certain reputation to maintain... not that Lex cares about that, but you'll attract less attention if you blend it."
"You don't blend in." It came out of his mouth before he thought, he swore it did.
"Mercy and I aren't supposed to blend in. We're a distraction, and while people are looking at our breasts and our hips, that's when we shoot them."
Conner eeped a bit, having started to turn red at the mention of breasts and then abruptly reminded of who he was talking to. Then he blinked. "Hey, is that why Wonder Woman wears such a skimpy costume?"
Hope tilted her head. "One of the reasons. We learn from the best. What do you think of verbs?"
"Uh, necessary? Irregular? Spanish ones are easier? What?" Conner blinked.
"How about blood?"
Conner grimaced. "Ick. Um, B-positive?"
"Philodendron."
"Is that Latin?"
Hope rolled her eyes. "Cats."
"Cuddly and cute." Conner was, by this time, simply going along with the flow. He had no idea what they were doing, but he was sure there was a point to it somewhere.
"Acetate."
"Carbon, Hydrogen, Oxygen."
Hope blinked. Then turned her head while they walked to study him thoughtfully. "Top, bottom."
"Charm, strange."
"Microwave."
"Klystron."
Hope laughed. "Okay, Physics it is."
Well, yeah, but... "What is?"
"Your scholarship. We have to give it to you in something you're actually good at, and botany was rather obviously not it."
That must have been the 'philo-something' Hope had asked earlier. Conner stopped in his tracks, indignant. "I wasn't asking for anything!"
Hope walked back to him, her eyes scanning all around them. "It's been five minutes since we left StyCo. By this time, at least fifteen other people know that Lex Luthor was accosted by Clark Kent's son and that said son has a scholarship from LexCorp. In another ten minutes, Perry White is going to be asking your dad about it. We have to have one for you, retroactively, or the whole thing falls apart."
"Dad won't know anything about it," Conner said weakly. "He told me not to break into Lex's penthouse! There wasn't much other choice."
"And we do appreciate that," Hope said, her mouth quirking up. She motioned for him to keep walking with her again. "The details are just something that needs to be filled in. Your dad doesn't need to know – you applied for it without telling him."
Conner opened and closed his mouth, then asked cautiously, "Did you used to play with toy trains?" That was one of his other 'childhood memories' in the box.
"Mercy did. She wanted to be a conductor when she was young – always watched the trains going through SS without stopping, coming from a place that was good and going to one better, the mess in-between invisible to the trains."
SS would be the Suicide Slums, the corner of Metropolis that not even Superman could save. For every criminal he put away, another one sprang up. For every child rescued, another returned to their abusive family. He was making headway on it, from both the super-heroing and also from Clark's articles and pleas for reformation on the edges, but it was slow-going. Anybody who made it out of the SS was... well, obviously Mercy had.
"I donated the books. Andre Norton was a favorite."
He'd never read any. Some of his stolen memories had, but they didn't have details, just broad outlines. Space and anthropology, esper powers and time travel. Cats. Had Conner ever read a book in his life? His real life, not his implanted memories life, and a real book, not a text book? He didn't think so. Maybe he should try Hope's. "Thank you. It was... it was all great. I wouldn't have thought of most of it."
"You're welcome." Hope walked in silence next to him for a bit. "You know, Conner, Lex would have done it no matter what. It helps that you're smart and quick and can banter with him – makes it easier on all of us – but it's not just because of that. Today, if you hadn't come up with the scholarship, he would have thought of something else. He likes to play with us, but if we can't keep up – which we don't always – it's still all right."
Conner was confused for a moment. Then he realized what she meant. It was the experiments, the tests, the hoops he'd jumped through as a clone to prove himself and not to be tossed out like last week's garbage. In the lab, he'd always had to excel, to be the best, the smartest. A clone that didn't make the grade wasn't seen again. Hope was saying that Lex would have loved him even if he'd failed all the tests. Conner had to swallow and look away. An accident of cloning, just some genes spliced in, and somehow, miraculously, that made him a son.
"Hey, if it was a test, I would have already failed," Conner managed a weak grin. "I didn't think of anything except how to meet him."
"You could have made an appointment." Hope didn't look at him.
"Ummm..." Alright, he hadn't thought of that either. Mostly because then he would have had to come up with a reason for the appointment, and, well, obviously, he didn't think of reasons. Just barreling straight on ahead, ignoring everything in his path. Conner sighed. He had a bit more growing to do.
"But I have to admit, this is more fun."
Fun? Conner glanced at his walking companion.
She smiled, the expression brightening her face remarkably. "Coming up with things like this is so much more interesting than our usual. For the scholarship, there'll be your application, your proposal, the program for the winners, scouting out other winners and making sure they'd actually applied for something. And before, gathering up your data, laying the groundwork... Creation is more interesting than destruction."
Conner gulped a little at the list of what would have to happen to back up his impromptu thanks. "I don't mean to cause you trouble," he said weakly.
"You weren't listening; it's no trouble."
A thought struck him. "Who is we?"
Hope hadn't ever stopped looking at everything around them, but at that question, she pulled out a gadget that Conner recognized from Chloe's training. It was a highly sophisticated scanner, checking for electronic surveillance and also came with a silencer, an emp field and static generator. He wore a smaller version with the detector in the frame of his glasses. Looking at Hope with more attention than he'd given before, he could see her detectors woven into the sleeves of her suit and even one in her hair-band. She was right – the physical distraction of the breasts and hips had kept him from seeing the tech.
When she was satisfied that they weren't being observed from afar, at least not with electronics, she answered him in a voice that didn't carry further than his super-hearing and without moving her lips. "Me, Mercy, Charity, Justice, Concord, and Lex himself. You can talk to any of us; don't approach anybody else."
Conner blinked. "Okay, once is normal, twice is coincidence... what the heck is it with the rest of you?"
Hope laughed. For a bodyguard, she was a lot more friendly than Conner would have expected. He suspected, though, that if he wasn't Lex's son, she wouldn't be so nice. Or maybe it was another part of the distraction layer.
"It's a little bit of nature and nurture both. Mercy, Justice and Charity all came from SS, where irony is the by-word of the day. They had the names before Lex found them. The rest of us... It amuses us. I started it, when I was paired with Mercy. What really gets funny is when the want-to-bes start scrambling to try and find virtue names to try and make it to the inner circle, and some even make it to the outer rims. The men have the worst time figuring out new names; it's a little easier for the girls."
"Doesn't that put a target on you?"
Hope shrugged. "It takes the target off Lex, which is part of our role. Lex doesn't necessarily approve, but that's the way it is. Charity, however, is trying to switch her name to Sue in mainstream, and Concord is still Mayik. So it's not all visible to the outside world."
Conner carefully stuffed inside his skull the comparison with superhero and villain identity names. Hope might not be offended, but better not to go there. "Does Lex have another name?"
"Not until you renamed him. He's generally fairly resistant to that sort of thing. Says it goes with tights and costumes and he's not going there."
Maybe he didn't have to repress the other thought. It made him warm, though, to know that Lex had accepted Conner's impromptu naming. And had shared it? Obviously for making up the package of information, Lex had to involve these others, but... "So he has friends." Kon had wondered. Among the superheroes, Lex Luthor was known as a loner, working by himself mostly. Minions, yes, but not like some of the other villains who had their own other identities with lives and sometimes even families.
Hope glanced at him and half-shrugged. "As far as he will allow. He is careful, even among those of us he trusts. We were surprised when he told us about you."
"But you're loyal to him, everybody knows this... all the others, their minions will cave if we push, but you two... never have."
"And never will." Hope touched her hip where the gun was holstered, hidden behind her coat. "I'm answering you now, yet we are watching. There is hope here, but we will guard him as we can. Your little trip to Casablanca... we haven't seen Lex that out of control, ever. And if you hurt him, we will destroy you."
Conner gulped. He suddenly believed everything he'd ever heard about Lex's two bodyguards. It wasn't so much the words as the way Hope spoke. He believed her, totally.
Hope put the scanner away. "We're here." She nodded at a store they were approaching.
Oh. Right. Clothes. "I hate suits. Why can't I just treat him to pizza? He eats pizza, right?" He ate scrambled eggs with ketchup... Dad Two surely liked pizza.
"Do you know how hard it is to secure a pizza parlor? The higher-end restaurants make our job easier." Hope paused outside the window to check the inside before they entered.
"I can protect him," Conner bristled.
With her hand on the door handle, Hope stilled. Then she abandoned the store, grabbed Conner by the arm and hauled him off to a side. "Listen, pipsqueak. You might think you're hot shit now, but you know nothing! You're trailing identity hints all over the place – hell, just saying something like that in public period is stupid! You saw me turn off the scanner." Which was back on again, Conner noticed. "Not even Superman can stop every bullet."
Conner opened his mouth. Hope pulled her gun and flipped what looked like a safety on it. As the green kryptonite radiation washed over him, Conner shut his mouth and fought to stand upright.
"If you sit with him at a deli, concentrating on what you're talking about, would you even see a bullet coming? If it was fired from fifty feet away, with a high tech silencer, would you hear it? If they used a laser, how would you know? You wouldn't, not until his head exploded all over you."
Conner had seen exploding heads before. He shuddered at the thought of it happening to one of his dads. "It wouldn't."
"You couldn't stop it. Not if you didn't know it was coming, or unless you could reverse time. Nine-tenths of security is prevention. We stop it before it gets anywhere near him. Lex has enemies... you don't even know how many. And you want to take him away from us and put him into a place where anybody can come in and kill him. I say no."
"You didn't do such a good job two days ago!" Conner growled, "The world is unsafe! You still have to live in it."
"Sometimes, Lex agrees with you, and that's when he gets himself into trouble. He didn't let us know about that little jaunt ahead of time, but you can bet he's not going to be doing it again!" Hope flicked the switch on the gun again and the radiation faded. "Look, I'm not saying you can't meet with him, I'm saying there's more to it than you can see. You can't protect him, not like we can, and even if you could, we wouldn't let you because it would expose you. Don't get huffy about it, just accept it."
Conner blinked a few times, regaining his strength and thinking over what Hope had said. Curious, he x-rayed the gun, but no surprise, it had a lot of lead in the mix and he couldn't see the details. Regarding the information... Conner sighed. He'd over-reacted, and he knew it. It was stupid of him to make such a blatant remark and stupid to press it. "Sorry."
Hope watched him for a moment, evaluating his answer. Then she nodded and went back to the shop, leaving him to trail in her wake.
With a sigh, Conner followed. Great, he'd managed to piss off one of Dad Two's main minions. Not one of his better ideas.
The shop wasn't like any clothing store he'd been in before. Instead of racks and walls of clothes, it was more like a living room, with sitting areas, sketchbooks on the tables, and a few discreet mannequins. A tall man with features from India approached them, his gaze flickering over Conner then focusing on Hope.
"Ms. Watkins. How nice to see you. What is your pleasure today?"
Conner wondered if shop-keepers knew just how that sounded. He stifled a nervous giggle. He really hated suits.
Hope gestured at Conner. "Dinner guest for Mr. Luthor tonight at the Kramilor. No suits."
"Not his style," the man agreed. "He wears Nalain jeans, so he is not opposed to money, just to formality."
Conner glanced down at his jeans. There wasn't anything obvious on them that showed the brand, so that was really impressive. He looked back up at the tailor with respect.
"Cashmere sweater. Fine slacks. No tie. Comfortable and loose, so he can move, yet tailored to show that magnificent body. Or a fine silk shirt, if you prefer collars."
Hope shrugged. "Try him on both. We'll get both for tonight and see about others for later."
"Later?" Conner squawked. "I can't... Hope, I can't even afford this! Dad will have a cow if I get anything else."
"You're having dinner with Lex Luthor, and if you don't do anything to lose your scholarship, you will probably be having more meetings as well. You'll dress in a manner that will be appropriate. I'll talk to your dad." She paused. "Think of it more like a loan of the clothes than a gift. They'll be LexCorp property and you're just using them for the scholarship meetings."
"I can't wear them other places?"
Hope looked at him in exasperation. "I thought you didn't want the clothes..."
The tailor laughed, "He wants them, as long as they're not a suit. Come with me, young man, and we'll find you something for tonight that you will be happy wearing, and I will work on sketches for the future."
Conner glanced at Hope but went willingly enough. If suits were off the list... he was game. He just didn't want to know what Dad was going to say about it.
... ... ...