Chapter Text
Present
Conner continues to stand his ground as Metallo charges him at full speed, screaming in rage as he swings at him.
He ducks under – legs shaking and joints screaming as the kryptonite radiation spears through him – and grabs his arm, pushing everything he can into leveraging and throwing Metallo behind him.
Gagging as nausea rolls over him and his muscles pull sharply in different directions, Conner staggers forward, smacking his hand over one of the broken chunks of wall and flinging it at Metallo as he turns around.
The brick of cement blazes red as it goes flying, his TTK wedging it perfectly over the opening in his chest.
“What?” He squawks, trying to get his fingers around the edges with no luck.
“Concrete and lead paint.” Conner smirks back, pushing himself up, and as if the universe sensed the shift in the fight, the hazy cloud cover parts and the November chilled sun hits him directly in the face.
“NO!”
Tilting his head up, breathing in, the charred smoke and metallic decay washes over him, but over all of it is the spiced ozone of solar radiation leaving the faint tickle instead of the rush of summer sun, but it’s powerful all the same.
Conner turns in his three-point stand, watching as Metallo reels and lurches up, racing down at him with panic in his optics.
He waits until he’s only five feet away, the cyborg hesitating as Conner never moves from his spot – watching how the man would move – and that minute jerk to stop before moving forward again is enough.
Springing forward with the sun at his back and the radiation in front of him mellowed, Conner lays a haymaker across Metallo’s left jaw, following it up with a roundhouse kick that sends him soaring down the island onto the shore. Rushing there he goes for another sideswiping punch, but Metallo catches his side, blocking and throwing him back.
It’s a constant fury of blows being traded and blocked, barely moving from the area Metallo crashed on, agony still pooling in Conner’s joints and feeling every hit ring through him.
“Seems your old man made sure you were equipped.” He taunts, eyes flashing as he tries an optic blast, the heat searing over Conner’s head as he drops down.
“Nope. I made this decision all on my own.” Swiping the cyborg’s feet out from under him and kicking him back.
It sends Metallo sailing back onto the mainland and into one of the decrepitate buildings. Shaky, Conner jumps up and hits a patch of sun extending his hang time, and looks down at the man and the rest of the roof he took out, smiling widely when he sees what he fell near.
Then letting gravity take hold drops down hard enough to shake the ground, but not move any of it. With Metallo trying to find his equilibrium, Conner flies low to the ground around the building, dragging his fingers along the way before flying higher. Whistling to get the cyborg’s attention lets his plan take effect.
Rustling and scraping are the only notice that Metallo gets before barbed wire is jumping towards him!
Conner had crashed through some of it earlier, it scratching him up, but now they were slithering swiftly toward Metallo, every gnarled up chunks dragging more for him to manipulate as he had them snap out like a snake striking, wrapping around in every joint it could, pulling Metallo to his knees and holding him taut.
“What! How!?” He roars, pulling against the wires.
But Conner doesn’t say a thing as he drops down, grabbing a fallen metal flagpole a few feet away from him.
“Don’t know,” Conner shrugs walking back over, “but it’s pretty cool isn’t it.” Setting himself up for a javelin throw.
“NO!” Struggling harder now, optics brightening with rage, “How could you’ve beaten me!”
Smirking, Conner lines up the shot, “Because I’m Superboy.”
And lets it fly.
Metallo screams as the rounded edge cracks the brick clean in two, continuing through the cyborg and popping the hunk of kryptonite he had out his back. Letting go of his control around the wires, Conner pulls the pole back to him.
Dropping forward to his hands, Metallo wheezes in defiance, trying to crawl forward, but barely moving a centimeter before looking up, the metal contorting furiously.
“Baa-ZZRT!-aasstaaaarrrr……” Powering down and leaving him frozen.
But even then Conner doesn’t look away, everything in him telling him it’s not over yet, his eyes starting to sting from the pain of watching Metallo.
Oh. That has to be the kryptonite, Glancing briefly away to see it embedded in the dirt it pushed up on impact, only a couple dozen feet away.
And seeing it seems to clinch it, that it was over, and Conner can’t stop himself from falling to his knees, the pole falling from his grasp as everything about him was shaking. It ends up knocking Metallo in the head, pushing him over to his side. He can barely feel bad about it, and it’s only a little anyway, before Conner’s pushing himself to his feet in fear as consecutive sonic booms speed towards him!
“Kon!” Kara shouts, as she comes into view at the city’s edge, speeding towards him, “I’m here! Where’s — ”
And stopping on the other side of the island looks down at everything in shock before flying wide around the kryptonite to get to him as he stumbles back to sit on his butt.
“What took you so long?” He smiles through the low burning sting that rolls and pinches randomly.
Lips quirking into a watery smile she lightly punches him in the shoulder, “Brat.”
Then wraps him up in a tight hug that he struggles to return, the both of them sighing in relief.
The rest of that afternoon is a smear blur of memories that Conner can’t quite hold on to, the kryptonite still working its way out of his system and making his thoughts hazy. But by the time he’s dress in some sweatpants and pushed into bed with a sunlamp on and his curtains open, Kara’s promise that the SCU got Metallo to Stryker’s, MPD took the kryptonite to S.T.A.R Labs, and yes, like the last three times he asked her, she would go check on the people and buildings he saved.
Having the confirmation again is a weight off his shoulders and Conner feels like he can finally breathe again, that perhaps he could rest easy now………
Eyes snapping open, awake and alert as he always was, Conner breathes in, shaky, pushing the intensity of his senses down until he can only hear what’s happening in the apartment, hearing two familiar heartbeats.
Clark’s back. He thinks happily to himself.
Clark had been gone for the last three days with a secret mission in space, telling him to be safe and to call him every night. Grimacing, Conner can only imagine how the man was taking getting a call from Kara about his fight yesterday.
Calming his breathing like Dinah showed him, Conner sits up, dropping his head between his raised legs, getting used to not feeling the vicious agony that came from his body absorbing the deadly radiation. He goes through the grounding technique and finds himself dazedly staring at his blue comforter.
Taking a deep breath, he pushes himself to stand, grabs a t-shirt, shuts off the sunlamp on his bedside table, and closes his curtains before he leaves his room. Gravity feels like too much to deal with so Conner lets go, floating up a couple inches to glide down the hall like a week’s old ballon towards the sweet scent of sugar and cinnamon.
His entrance isn’t meet with the usual bright ‘Good morning!’ from Clark or the mumbled ‘Morning’ from Kara, or even the more panicked rushed response he was expecting. Instead, Kara was sitting crosslegged in oversized sweats on the counter, beaming at him, while Clark watches him intensely from the kitchen. The stare becomes fond when Conner makes a halfhearted nod his way and he smiles at him, lifting a plate for him stacked with waffles, which seemed appropriate with Clark still dressed in his dorky plaid pj set.
“How y’ah feelin’ Conner?” The country twang telling Conner that Clark hadn’t been up much longer than him.
He hums in greeting and as an answer.
“That good, huh,” Clark winces in sympathy, “We’ll get you under my sunlamps after breakfast, okay.”
Conner just grunts as he goes around to sit, but stops, feet dropping to the carpet as he sees thirteen newspapers laid out in two fan spreads.
“Surprise!” Kara spins around, reaching out to ruffle his hair, “You gotta choose!”
And looking down at all the title he doesn’t know how he could.
‘Superboy! Keeping the Boy of Steel Title!’
‘Teen of Tomorrow takes on the Metallic Menace!’
‘Superboy’s Metal Defense!’
“This is my favorite,” Kara grins, holding up The Metropolis Star’s ‘Superboy! The Teen Powerhouse!’ with a front page of him jumping at Metallo during their first clash on the road, “Gotta get it framed for the Fortress.”
Almost all of them looked like that, of him in some battle pose and looking as heroic as the Superman memories that were implanted in his mind. And Conner won’t lie, he likes them a lot, but that’s not what draws his attention to the one from The Daily Planet, written by Lois Lane.
Looking up, Clark smiles wry and sips at his orange juice, “Can’t be biased. I’d be too proud of you.”
Conner unfolds it and sees the faces that had caught his eye. Every other newspaper had him fighting, but The Daily Planet was the only one to show the people he helped, the change he actually made. It showed him just before he landed, mid-flight, holding all of the sisters securely as their father ran into frame, first responders in the background. He looked gentle, but powerful. Courageous, but kind. Conner looked like how he was at that moment, that he cared.
Glancing up, his breath catches in his throat at the title;
‘Superboy: The Second Generation’
Nothing wild or eye-catching as the others, but it did catch his, and that was the most important. Speed reading through, he sees that everyone that gave a quote – Committing the family name Ferreira to his mind so he can check in on them later – to Ms. Lane believed the best of him, that he could be like Clark, that Superman must be so proud.
That Superboy did care about them.
Conner glances up slowly, both Clark and Kara waiting patiently – Well not so patiently as Kara was eating one of his waffles – with expectant smiles and he holds out the paper to Clark, his own smile twitching at his lips.
“This one.”
Clark is around the counter and taking the paper in a moment, fitting it into a frame that was sitting and waiting on the bookcase, waiting for him to choose. It’s a quick and quiet thing with Clark putting his first big battle up, but it has Conner going back through his grounding techniques because he’s finally there. He’s cemented in this world and the world wants him to stay.
He’s going to stay.
Conner doesn’t realize he’s moved closer to the wall to see himself up there with Kara and Clark, or when he starts crying, but he does notice when he’s wrapped up in the tightest hug yet.
“I was so, so scared when I got back and heard the news. But Conner,” And pulling back, Clark cups his face, wiping the streaming tears away as his own gather in his eyes, “Conner I am so so proud of what you did.” Kissing the top of his head and Conner hugs Clark back lightning fast, crying and laughing as Kara joins in, Conner holding on to her and feeling more full – real – than he’d ever been before.
This may not be his original world, but it was his now. He cared about it, loved the people here, and he was always going to defend it so anyone could always feel as safe as he’d did in the arms of his family.