Chapter Text
Lor is in immeasurable pain.
He can feel his skin taut and broken across his back, too painful to lay on overnight. He can feel his cheek inflamed and pressing up against his eyelid. He can feel his ribs sensitive and cracked, aching against his every breath.
And the worst of it all is the way the rage against him has still not diminished.
In the past, Lor has been disciplined. It is not an unfamiliar sensation. But his parents finished with the consensus that a lesson of some sort has been learned. Lor even finds himself in agreement with them.
Not this time. Not today. He is hurt and they finished the discipline without any commentary or any softness to their expressions.
No, though, that is still not the worst. Not as Lor lays on his bed in hysteric contemplation alone in the dark.
The worst thing of all is that he cannot shut his eyes, cannot sleep, without the hideous cracking of Ti’ahl’s arm sounding off between his ears. The echos of her cries and the horror of the crowds reverberate throughout Lor’s body and send cold shivers through him.
His family is not loved when the masses of Jakuul bow. And Lor’s entire universe is turned upside down knowing this.
Before this terror in his life, Lor still did not have a full understanding of his world or his life. He is, after all, a child. But he thought he understood what he was to his father and mother.
He is the Last Son of Krypton. He is the future of the House of Zod.
But he also knows that not living up to such things means that his parents’ approval is gone. And if it is gone, bad things will happen.
Now, as he understands with the display involving Ti’ahl, those consequences are far greater than anything he could have imagined beforehand.
Suddenly, horrifically, Lor understands that his life is not the most valuable part of him.
And he is scared.
In the middle of the night, alone in his room, Lor feels the strongest impulse he has ever had in his short life.
Lor-Zod knows, without a doubt, that he needs to leave.
The instinct comes from deep within him — thoughts of the Phantom Zone and its endless prison, how escaping it meant never staying somewhere he didn’t want to again. He can see it, his old dreams of leaving for different worlds the moment he was scared or unsafe.
The only home he had ever known had been the promise of leaving the places that were wrong and painful.
And, now, Lor needs to go. He’s scared. It isn’t safe.
Thinking of his lessons on the sunstones, Lor moves, sluggishly and painfully through the palace toward the transportation lab. What little Kryptonian equipment and weapons they have managed to gather and to create — or have the Jakuul create — rests in there, including the Phantom Zone pod.
The spiral pod is bronze in color with no seeable thrusters, only a thin screen that allows its occupant to see outside the pod. It does not steer, does not operate as a ship in any way, but as a bullet to be fired in a singular direction. Once someone is inside of it, outside of a Phantom Zone Projector, nothing will be able to tear the pod off its course. It will phase through matter, it will burst through time and space. And whoever is within it will sleep until they are released, heal until they are done.
And that is all Lor needs. Peaceful, forceful sleep without interruption. He needs comfort and rest, to heal up his ribs and his back and his eyes so that when he is done, he can return to being what his mother and father need him to be.
So that he is not treated and left in pain that someone like Ti’ahl experiences.
He can’t imagine there’s something better, something in between.
Lor loads his burdens onto the pod and begins setting his coordinates. He has not lived out of the Phantom Zone long and can only think of a few places he can go.
One is Krypton, his home he never knew and is no longer there.
One is Earth, his father’s enemy, and his only other point of contact.
If he can make it to Earth and back, perhaps Lor can make it through anything else. Including his parents’ anger.
At least, that is his sincere hope.
Just like that, Lor leaves his family’s palace.
Father doesn’t look surprised by Damian’s intrusion on his meeting with Cassandra. He barely acknowledges that it means Damian is missing school and instead asks him if there is anything Damian would like for him to know.
Within Damian’s heart, he feels the judgment, knows the look of his father searching him for something Damian isn’t giving. It’s frustrating. It’s painful. And it’s a look he’s never seen given to Cassandra.
Damian has nothing to say except for what he feels is obvious.
“I am better than any of you see in me,” he informs his father haughtily.
His father gives him a sigh and waves him off, dismissive and annoyed. Like swatting at a fly.
“We’ll talk about it later, Damian,” Bruce Wayne says in a voice that is distinctly lacking Batman in it. It’s weary and light. Others in the family call it the Brucie Wayne voice, but for Damian, it’s something far worse.
It’s basically baby talk toward him.
Cassandra doesn’t get that treatment either.
“I doubt it,” Damian glowers, crossing his arms.
When Damian looks back up toward his father, he is met by sharp blue eyes piercing his own gaze. That is more like Batman. It sends a shiver down Damian’s spine.
Much better than baby talk, that is for certain.
“I have something important I need to discuss with Cassandra,” his father reminds him darkly. “Give us some privacy.” He gives a purposeful pause before continuing, “Please.”
For a few long moments, Damian stands cross-armed beside Cassandra, facing his father’s large executive desk. The entire suite is large and deceptively slick and modern. Devices and trick switches are hidden behind the ostentatious decor and smatterings of family photographs framed and preserved seemingly forever. Newspapers are mounted with new stories of interest over the decades.
Everything is large, squared, and imposing.
Just like their father.
When it reaches the point that Damian feels as though the silence is threatening to eat them all whole, he finally relents and turns around. It takes him nearly double the strides it would require his father to make to exit the room, just as it would take him twice the height to meet the same reach his father does.
Logically, Damian knows that the unspoken part of his father’s request for privacy was for Damian to continue from his way out of the room down to the street level where Pennyworth and the car would be waiting. Then Damian could receive a whole other lecture on manners and family and general behaving that he has received over a dozen times before.
He’s tired of it before he’s even done processing the thought of it.
Making an executive decision of his own, Damian does not leave for Alfred and the car but instead takes a hard left at the elevator shaft. Having memorized the blueprints — the actual blueprints — for Wayne Tower, Damian knows that in the blindspot of the stairwell security camera is an always taped off custodial closet. In that custodial closet is a secretive shaft that will lower into the bowels of the Tower itself.
Once a part of the robust subway tunnel system beneath the streets of Gotham, the old junction now serves as the open space for research and development of their nightly activities. At least, one of the spaces for R&D at least.
It is also the one place where Damian can open up the Oracle Network safely in Wayne Towers and check in on others without causing too much of a fuss.
Anyone who notices will assume it is Batman and everyone leaves Batman alone to his devices for the most part.
Stepping up to the large silver monitor screen, Damian watches as everything in the room begins to activate — light by light, display by display. It is a very sleek and intimidating presence.
His father is good at maintaining certain aesthetic sensibilities, Damian will give him that, at least.
Looking around, Damian sees the computer chair, built for the size and magnitude of Batman, and immediately jumps into it. His body impressively slumps into the cushions, leaving him staring straight ahead in annoyance.
Recovering from the momentary sag of his body, Damian scoots the chair up, hands gripped to the armrests so tightly his knuckles whiten. Then he leans forward to the keyboard and begins typing.
Using spy satellites is an unfortunate habit that Damian has picked up from his father, but he assures himself it is for good reason.
There is still something so wrong and disconcerting about the way that Jon reacted to Professor Pyg.
Few things dig themselves into Damian’s guts and leave him unsettled. His friend being hurt somehow by the madman was one of them. Whether it was Damian’s sense of guilt or genuine fear for Jon, Damian is still working out.
Either way, he wants to hone in on Metropolis and see how his friend is doing for himself.
It isn’t a difficult maneuver. There is already a preset coordinate to the exact location Damian needs.
Damian expects no less from his father, after all, there are a myriad of reasons to keep watch on the family and wellbeing of the most trusted and power being in the world, if not the universe.
He watches with vague interest as two figures — Superman and Superboy — approach the balcony of the Metropolis apartment in question. One has a suitcase, the other a backpack beneath his cape. Then, in a dash of color, they are both gone long before a less accurate or powerful satellite or camera would be able to capture them.
At least, Damian would hope so.
Leaning his head forward, chin sharply balanced on his palm, Damian tries to think of the expression on Jon’s face. It’s hard to tell, even with Wayne Tech advances, the nuances of someone’s face at that distance. The pixelation hides the crevices and intensity.
But Jon seemed to be smiling. Which is, really, all Damian wants to make sure of.
At the end of the day, Damian does not have many friends. The ones he does have are important to him.
And he’s still not sure that allowing himself to be in the equation frees his friends to have good things happen to them.
The thoughts are still heavy on his mind when the monitor and all of the Oracle Network change in an instant.
A red flash comes across the screen with a blare of a signal. Then again and again. It continues.
Damian jerks into sitting upright again. His shoulders drop as he looks around wide-eyed toward the different monitor screens.
Something is happening in Metropolis.
Reaching for the keyboard, Damian zooms out from the tiny apartment and widens his view to the city. Even above the city, there does not seem to be anything he can see at a distance. But, as he begins to wonder if he should switch to news coverage, Damian sees that the sky is the source of the danger alert.
Heading directly for Metropolis is a fireball the size of a car.
Before he even thinks about contacting his father or anyone else, Damian is leaping for the closest plane his father has been working on.
He knows he might not get there before the crash, but Damian is definitely going to be there to help his friend with the aftermath.
Jon still feels off-balance in the air. His leg wobbles a lot, the plank-like rigidness he needs to maintain for a smooth flight can still tire him. He’s working on it.
And it always feels easier in the morning with his dad.
When his pa smiles down at Jon, he feels like no matter how weird his thoughts for the morning, the whole world is going to be okay. That Jon is going to be okay. Because how can the world be anything less than perfect when Superman himself smiles like he means it at you.
Holding onto the straps of his backpack, Jon readies to part from his dad and head down to the Siegel and Shuster Middle back gym entrance, but his ears begin thumping.
Just like when he listened for his mother’s heartbeat earlier, Jon can feel every noise, every vibration of all of Metropolis at once. His jaw tightens and he tries to push the noises out. The screech and scream and bark and cry and pop all at once, but he knows that there is something still off about them. There’s something different from normal if he can hone in and direct himself to it.
He halts in the air, raising his hands up to his ears and begins mashing the heels of his palms into the ear canals. It does nothing to help him out, but he tries it anyway.
“Ow! What is that scratchy noise?” Jon can’t help but whine.
Ordinarily, Pa’s soothing voice would put him at ease, explain everything away. But it’s different this time.
Instead, Jon glances over his shoulder and sees his father also stopped in the air. Superman stares, wide-eyed and slack-jawed for a long moment before tensing up.
“Stay here, son,” Clark orders before disappearing in a dazzling whirl of red, blue, and yellow.
The whiplash of it all nearly makes Jon go crosseyed. He regains his position in the air, hovering with far less security than his pa manages to. Then he looks around in concern.
With a simple scan of the surroundings, Jon can see what got his father’s attention and it nearly makes him gasp.
Falling from the sky, seemingly from nowhere and at ludicrous speeds, is a flaming ball of metal aimed right for the city.
“Where did that come from!?” Jon asks clouds around him.
As to be expected, he doesn’t get an answer. But Jon does know what he needs to do next, even without an omniscient reply to his questions.
At full speeds, Jon pushes himself forward, his fists held out in front of him as he aims for the exact place in the sky where his father is lining up with the mystery object.
Even at his highest speeds, Jon is too slow to get there when his father first makes contact with the object and begins flying back, resisting with all his might despite the hurdling force. He is engulfed in the flames, slowing, but still heading for the skyline of Metropolis.
There needs to be more force on Pa’s side and Jon intends to provide it.
He swoops down between the city buildings and positions himself just like he saw his father do before him. He holds his arms out wide and holds out his hands to catch.
It feels like only a blink before his hands are filled with his dad’s cape, and Jon is suddenly falling back through the skies as well.
“Jon!” Superman chokes out between gritted teeth, straining with all his power.
“Pa!” Jon manages to get out alongside him
The particulars of their conversation are forced to wait as they buckle underneath the heavy metal and flames. Jon pushes into his father’s back, his father pushes into the machine, and they progressively slow as they drop through the sky.
“Feet! Flatten your feet!” Pa orders before showing Jon with his own.
Jon obeys, the soles of his tennis shoes directed toward the ground. It still shocks him when his feet hit and the air nearly leaves his lungs, or when he skids backward with the asphalt crackling beneath them. They keep moving, backward, with the space between them getting tighter and tighter as the broken roads rise up and push Jon into his father’s back.
When they stop at long last, Jon full bodily collapses against his dad and breathes a sigh of relief.
People are already on the streets, looking on in awe, which limits the conversations they can have out loud. That doesn’t keep Jon’s pa from turning on his heels, hands on his hips, and looking at Jon very seriously.
“Son,” he says sternly. “Go to school.”
“What, no way, you’re not going to let me even look in it?” Jon asks, circling around his father as widely as possible to get to the hull of the copper-colored machine. “It’s so weird and looks like a snail shell, I bet it’s an alien!”
His father is about to continue with words of wisdom or some all-important notes on responsibility, but Jon cannot hear them. He looks instead at the strange screen on the machine they stopped together and tilts his head. It’s fogged up, like the mirror after he uses the shower, and he can’t see in it. But he can see a strange, blue glow from within.
Squinting, Jon taps on the glass-like structure only to jolt as the metallic shell opens up.
A thick fog hisses out of the opening and forces Jon to wave it away from his face.
And when it’s gone, Jon looks into the face of another boy, no older than him, with strangely cut brown hair and a swollen eye and lip.
“Whoa!” Jon exclaims.
Then he is punched in the face with more force than he has ever felt in his life.
It hits so fast, so hard, Jon is sent soaring through the air backward, headlong into his father’s chest as the larger than life superhero moves in to catch him.
“Superboy!” Pa yells out in code that still can’t hide his horror or anger.
“Ow,” is all Jon can manage to get out, feeling like stars are still busting behind his eyelids.
By the time he’s set back on his feet, Jon can see that the boy from the pod is floating above it, eyes wide and confused. He turns to run.
Suddenly, Pa isn’t behind Jon holding him up anymore.
Jon realizes his dad is in front of him now, next to the boy, stretched out so his large, kind hand is wrapped almost gently around the boy’s wrist. It keeps the boy back, but he isn’t fighting, isn’t resisting. He’s looking at Superman with terror, tears in his eyes.
But Jon can feel his entire face swelling, he grabs at it and looks frantically to his dad. “Dad! He punched me!”
“Hold on, son,” Superman says without looking Jon’s way. He lowers his arm, the boy slowly dropping with it, head bowing and shoulders jerking uncomfortably. Then, Superman pulls the mystery boy to his chest and holds him. “Hold on.”
Confused and more than a little betrayed, Jon shakes his head at the nonsense and rubs at his aching face.
He doesn’t know what’s going on, he can’t even contemplate it. But he’s hurt and he has a bad feeling it’s going to get worse.