#jollyjet

“Wounded?” Damian repeats, unable to believe it. His father is invulnerable. He can’t possibly be wounded, much less undergo surgery. “How can Mr. Kent be wounded?”

“Lex Luthor decided today was a good day to let his ego loose. He’s under police custody and all the Kryptonite has been confiscated. Our doctors on the Watchtower are doing their best to retrieve every shard lodged in Clark’s body. They’re still in the operating room, and it will be a while until they’re done,” he explains. “Jason will be up there helping monitor his condition and keep me updated, and take any Kryptonite retrieved. Conner will stay here and assist me, Clark when he gets back, until he’s well enough,”

Kryptonite? In Mr. Kent’s body? They’d had this lesson before. The green glowing gem, a part of Mr. Kent’s home planet, can cause severe injury and death. Not too long ago, Mother had been gassed with the fear toxin, and now, Mr. Kent had been attacked with the very thing that can extinguish him. It makes Damian’s chest tighten.

“Will he be alright? Can we see him?”

“I’m afraid not,” Mother answers. “We have the very best doctors caring for him on the Watchtower, and he’ll need a lot of direct solar radiation to heal. You can’t absorb any of that. He’ll be in the solarium until most of the physical wounds heal. Jason, make sure Dick gets a hold of those rocks, and you ensure the solar suit gets to him before he leaves for earth. He’ll be having that thing on for a while,”

“Sure thing,” his elder brother answers. “And I already called the lawyers,”

“Good,” Mother hands the tablet back to Jason. “Coordinate with Lucius and file lawsuits against LexCorp for the damage to all buildings I own and make sure everybody gets their damages paid in addition to their insurance payout,”

“Conner—”

But Conner cuts him off. “Please don’t send me to Metropolis,” he begs. “I don’t…I don’t want to run into him. Or his CADMUS lackeys. Or into whatever he has there,”

Mother sighs and the that kind of business look fades away. “I won’t. But you will one day, stand face to face with them, Conner. If not as a civilian, as a Titan,”

“I know…” Conner’s shoulders fall. “It’s just…he’s manipulated me before and I don’t ever want that to happen again,”

“It won’t,” Mother’s conviction is firm. “If you’ll let me have the room. I’ll be speaking with the Tower’s chief medic. Jason, please expedite those lawsuits and get Dick on the Tower; Conner, I’ll call when I need you, okay?”

His two older brothers nod, and again, usher him out of the pool house. He hears his conversation with the medic fade into silence when Conner shuts the door. A red dot and a sounding crack from the doorknob signal it’s been locked.

“You’ll babysit,” Jason tells Conner and the half-Krypontian nods.

He rarely uses the ‘big brother voice’ on them since Richard does that plenty, and when he does, things are grave. When the younger elder brother becomes in charge, hands are definitely full.

“If things go smoothly on my end of the chores, it’ll be a long day. If not, an even longer one. And you,” he turns to Damian. “You have a knack disappearing when Clark is in trouble, so don’t. It’s cute, but don’t. Dick will be going on patrol and then up to the Tower, and Tim will be going out tonight with Steel as backup in Metropolis to gather intel and do some hacking. Stay out of trouble, both of you,” he makes a face and sticks his tongue out, pretending to dislike a taste in his mouth. “Yuck. You know it’s serious when I’m becoming the responsible one. Sheesh. I’ll call when I’m on the way home,”

“Good luck,” Conner says as Jason makes his way back into the house.

“We’re gonna need all the luck we can get,” says Jason.

In silence, Conner toes off his shoes, folds up his pants, and sits at the edge of the pool, swirling his feet around in the water. He sighs.

“Who’s Lex Luthor?” Damian asks. He’s heard of him and has seen him in pictures and the TV in passing, but it never really comes up enough for him to think he’s any kind of important. “Why did he want to hurt Mr. Kent?”

Conner humphs. “He’s egomaniac with a god complex that’s what he is,” he says it with venom. Like he’s spitting out poison. “Playing with fire he can’t douse and fucking with creation like he holds some kind of divine providence over life. Over people!”

Damian freezes. It’s not like this family to throw profanities around like this.

“Worst part is he has the fucking money to do whatever he wants. He’s gonna be out of prison in a year, maybe even less, having paid everyone in the judicial system. It’s a never-ending cycle of this shit. Even here in Gotham. Sometimes I just wish some dude would just, I don’t know rob him at gunpoint and…ugh!”

That’s…that’s how Mother’s parents died. He eyes Conner’s hand, gripping the smooth, pebbled cement edge of the pool so tightly, a fracture might form.

“He hates Clark because he thinks nobody should have that much power. He thinks Superman, an alien, replaced his imaginary position in Metropolis like he’s a usurped lord trying to recapture his territory. He wants to kill him because he doesn’t think an alien can and should protect mankind. Because he wants to do that himself. Because he thinks he’s superior to him. What the fuck is that supposed to mean?”

It’s not surprising to Damian that someone would want to end his father’s life. After all, in this job, one collects more enemies than one can count. He hums in thought. “Why would he think he’s superior?”

“I don’t know?” Conner says irritably. “Because he has money? Influence? Power over politics and the economy? Smarter than everybody else? He even bullied Clark’s boss until Bruce bought the paper!”

“But wouldn’t it be pointless?” he asks, taking a seat beside Conner. “Why not just help the cause in his own way? Like how Mother provides help to the citizens?”

“Because he’s a douchebag alpha who thinks with his knot. Doesn’t think an alien can protect mankind, but clones me from a DNA sample from Clark, out of sheer obsession for Superman, to be a weapon for the government,”

The revelation hits Damian square in the gut. Conner is a clone.

“All that brain and no ounce of common goddamn sense,”

“He…” Damian chooses his next words carefully. “Created you?”

Conner sighs, hoping the breath takes with it the heat of his anger. “Thanks for putting mildly, baby bird,” he raises his hand as an invitation for a fist bump, and Damian gladly returns it. “Remember when we first met, and Bruce said I was ‘conceived under unethical circumstances?’ This is it,”

“Is this why you don’t like talking about how you were born?”

“Because I wasn’t born, Damian. I was artificially created in a lab. Grown in a test tube,”

Damian’s brows meet in confusion. “Grown? Like a plant?”

“I guess you could put it like that. When Dick found me, I was 16 weeks old. 16 weeks! I should have been like, what? Five ounces and five inches long inside my mother? Instead I was plucked out of a test tube a fully formed young adult. I don’t even know how long it took them to grow me. I just remember being kept in a containment pod, educated by telepathic G-Gnomes, always asleep unless they needed me. I’ve never seen the sky or the sun. I didn’t know what grass felt like,” he kicks at the water. “I’m actually younger than you. Did you know that?”

“You are?”

“Yeah. I’m eight. I can’t remember my pretend age most of the time,” he lets out a breath, feeling most of the anger dissipate, but it’s replaced with anxiety and fear. “Partial genetic clone and all that…”

“Partial?” Damian parrots. “You carry only a fraction of Mr. Kent’s genetics?”

“I was called Project Kr,” Conner says, looking at the waves his feet are making in the water.

Damian listens intently.

“CADMUS called their genetically engineered lifeforms genomorphs. Bruce hates that word. Back when I was on shaky ground with the League, I knew they called me that and ‘clone’ whenever they talked about me. I mean, they’re not wrong, but it hurt a lot, especially after I knew what it was like to be treated like the actual child I was. By Bruce,”

“Mother does have that gravitation to children,”

“And children gravitate towards him, too. He told me one day, that I may not have been born the way other children were, but I am a child nonetheless. And then he gave me a home. Clothes. A bed. He sent me to school. He wanted me to have a life. It was very nice of him,”

“And Project Kr?”

“Before Project Kr, they had Project Match. They kept attempting to clone Clark from a single DNA source but it kept failing. The cloning procedure kept failing and the clones deteriorated until they died. Until they succeeded in producing one clone, but he was severely unstable and deformed. Until one of the scientists suggested that the source DNA could be balanced out with a donor one. Lex Luthor offered his,”

It puzzles Damian how someone who wants to extinguish Mr. Kent from the world, would elect to offer his own DNA to create a child with half of the genetic makeup belonging to the person he wanted to end.

“Lex Luthor is your father?”

“No!” Conner hisses. It makes his blood boil when someone says that. When he thinks that. “I refuse to call him that. I refuse to give him the satisfaction of me admitting he’s my father. He’s my donor. Clark is my father! I just…” he chokes on a cry that he forces back. “I’m terrified of becoming him,”

“Is that why you don’t want to run into him?”

“No. I don’t want to run into him because I don’t want him to see me and take all the credit for who I’ve become. For my achievements as a Titan. For what I’ve done for myself. For what Bruce and Clark did to shape me into the person I am now,”  

Damian hums. “We are the same,” he muses. “I, too, am afraid of losing my way and becoming Ra’s Al Ghul,”

“What?” Conner turns to him. “No way. That dude’s your dad?”

“No,” Damian humphs. “He lost that right when he attacked Mother and attempted to take me back to Nanda Parbat by force,”

“We’ve got fucked up donors, baby bird,”

“We do,” Damian agrees, “But remember what Mother said on the day we met? You are his son. And I am Mr. Kent’s son. We don’t need our donors. We are not and will never become them. They’re useless. Can’t even be bothered to pay child support,”

That makes Conner snicker. “They can keep it,”

“Besides. You’ve got way too much good-looking hair to end up like Mr. Clean,”

Now, Conner cackles. “Mr. Clean! That’s a good one,”

For a few moments, both boys enjoy the silence between them, the rustling of the leaves, and the chirping birds.

“Want me to get some boba?”

“Yes,”

“Cool,”

Conner flies out after putting his shoes back on, comes back in a while and they share some boba by the pool until Bruce asks for Conner.

---

Mr. Kent comes back after two days. It is Jason and Dick who come fetch him from the Metro Tower, driving in and out inconspicuously and anonymously as their seniority allows.

He enters through the front door, brothers behind him, and Damian basically leaps off the bannister and runs into him, welcoming him back with a tight hug.

His father is in one of his favorite sweaters, still pale, a little hunched, shoulders still low, and there’s a stagger in his steps, but gathers Damian into an embrace he melts into.

“Hi, Damian,” comes the kind, warm voice, resonating and rumbling from his chest like a purring cat against Damian’s own ribcage.

The young alpha buries himself into Clark’s neck. “You are not allowed to do that again,”

“I’m sure your mother has the same sentiments,” he chuckles.

Damian lets go. “He’s waiting for you,”

“I better not keep the lord of the house waiting,” Mr. Kent winks and gives Damian a weak smile, then makes his way to the pool house.

“Damian,” says Richard. “Will you please help Alfred and Conner prepare dinner? We will be joining Bruce and Clark in the garden. Jason and I will be downstairs for business, and Tim will beam shortly from Metropolis. Tell Conner to put some Ambien in Tim’s drink so he gets sleep,”

He nods. He watches as his older brothers wind the grandfather clock’s hands to 10:48 to reveal the stairs to the cave, descend down the steps, and the clock slides back in place and the hands wind back to the actual time as if nothing happened. (1)

Mother says, when he’s not beckoned to join them for business in the cave, it means it’s League business and he has no clearance for it. Richard, Jason, and Tim are all have enough seniority to attend to matters and make decisions in Mother’s stead.

He watches as Mr. Kent joins Mother in the pool house.

—-

“Clark,” Bruce breathes, opening his arms and his mate places himself in them and pulls him into desperate flurry of warm and breathless kisses. “Don’t ever do that to me again,”

“I won’t, if you promise the same, Bruce,”

“I promise,” Bruce says quickly.

It will happen again and they both know it. Bruce will get injured to near death or disability again defending Gotham or earth, and Clark may never get his abilities back, or die, if the unfortunate kind of Kryptonite is used against him in a fight.

“How are you feeling?” Bruce asks, beckoning Clark to join him on the bed.

Clark relaxes into the sheets, laying his head on his mate’s lap and nosing his clothes, basking in the comforting scent of his mate, as Bruce runs his fingers through his hair, massaging his scalp. “Heavy. I’ve got the solar suit on so maybe in a few days I’ll be right as rain,”

“Did you tell your mother?”

The alpha sighs. “Not yet,”

“Clark,”

“I know. We already told her about your knee. I just don’t want to worry her…”

“Telling her later will only make it seem worse,” Bruce tries again, but he’s met with silence. Clark’s already fallen asleep.

He runs a finger over Clark’s pallid cheek, then pushes the curl of hair on his forehead back. The curl falls back into place like it’s glued, and Bruce smiles.

“I love you,”

---

Mr. Kent is back to work and radiating sunshine once more after a few days. Being in the pool house, surrounded by sunlight most of the day, together with the solar suit, helped expedite his recovery. And of course, he knows being so close to Mother all the time is part of it.

He returns to being Mother’s primary caregiver, the therapist is back, and Conner’s gone in to work again after taking a few days off. Damian is relieved that everything has gone back to normal somewhat, even though his big brothers are still up to their necks in work at Wayne Enterprises regarding the damage done to Metropolis, and facilitating the immediate arraignment of Lex Luthor together with the League’s liaisons and Superman’s representatives.

And then Damian finds out on the news that Luthor’s in jail, with a bail he can’t pay, with his charges being filed and trial about to be scheduled. He’s pleased with the developments. Conner keeps bringing him snacks and drinks after work. He tries to burn it all up with swimming and gymanastics.

Today, his brothers are out working, and he’s in the living area of the pool house doing his homework, while Mother has his laptop on typing away, and Mr. Kent’s putting away the dishes after they’ve had their lunch. They’re discussing hosting a private engagement party for their League friends.

Now a wedding, that’s something he can get behind.