#aether56

[suzukiblu]

WIP excerpt for Aether56; “baby clone and all associated trauma". content notes: nonconsensual cloning, trauma symptoms in a child, trauma symptoms in a teenager, unhealthy coping mechanisms in everyone. (( chrono || non-chrono ))

"No, kid," he says, and tells himself it still doesn't sound like "Kid". Hopes it doesn't, anyway. "None of that is anything you did. You got scared because something was scary, and you came out the size you'd been developed to, and you broke all that stuff accidentally. And—you're not Kon, but that's not something you did. That's just . . . who you are."

"You could still finish me, though," Tobias mumbles, rubbing harder at his eyes. "You could p-put me back an' finish me an'—an' ask Wonder Girl to get a god or somebody to put Kon's soul in me instead, and—and then it'd be okay, an' I wouldn't b-be . . . I w-wouldn't . . ."

The kid's tears drip down his face faster, fat and messy and guilty, and Tim thinks—

Tim thinks about what it means that he made a person. Made a person exist. Out of . . . nothing, really. DNA and uploaded information and a lot of science equipment, but . . . nothing more than that.

He made a person exist where one didn't before, and he made that person think they shouldn't exist at all.

"Tobias," he says. "I'd never let anyone do that to you. Not ever. Not for anything."

"But I make you really sad," Tobias says in the smallest voice Tim might've ever heard, and more tears drip down his face. He wants to say I deserve to be sad, but that isn't going to make Tobias feel like anything but a punishment. He's pretty sure the kid already does feel like he's a punishment. And he definitely feels like he's a problem.

Tim made him feel like that.

Tim made a kid feel like a punishment and a problem, like something unwanted, like a mistake. Like he's just an obstacle in the way of someone better existing in his place.

Like he doesn't have just as much a right to be here as anyone else.

So . . .

"I don't care," is what Tim says instead.

It's a lie, obviously, but so is everything he says these days.

[suzukiblu]

Thank-you sentences for Aether56; "the one where Kon is stronger than Clark". (( chrono || non-chrono ))

He broke Diana's arm, Clark thinks. Broke Diana's arm through her bracers.

"It sounded like he wasn't aware that what he did was—impressive, either," Clark says, and says . . . carefully, for lack of a better way to say it.

"He isn't," Bruce confirms.

"How?" Clark asks incredulously, but already has an awful suspicion of what the answer is going to be.

"Because it was easy," Bruce replies, and confirms that awful suspicion just as matter-of-factly as he did the kid's . . . idolization. "And because Superman could've done better anyway."

Clark isn't naive enough to hope that statement wasn't a direct quote.

"Hell," he says. "That's—where is he now?"

"Nightwing and Starfire took him out for an afternoon joyride around the moon in an attempt to discourage any more local attention," Bruce says, then adds dryly: "He thinks they're 'mad rad', apparently."

Clark would think that was funny, normally. Think it was a good sign, even. If it were Mae—yes, he'd have thought it was funny if Mae were using that kind of slang, and he'd have thought it was a good sign that she liked Dick and Kori.

But this isn't Mae, and the only things Clark even knows about this kid are what Bruce and the media and thirty seconds' worth of the most intimidating experience with hero worship of his entire life have told him, which is mostly just that Bruce is right: this kid has absolutely no idea what a terrifying powerhouse he actually is or what he's actually capable of.

And he also has no idea what Clark is actually capable of.

The kid had talked to him like he thought Superman was stronger than him—better than him. Like he thought he was a watered-down version of Superman, or . . .

Like it was just natural, that Superman would be "better" than him. Like it was just . . . obvious, and immutable, and a fact of existence.

Like Superman was something to be aspired to, but not in any way that Clark's ever wanted Superman to inspire anyone to "aspire" to be. Cadmus clearly put some ideas in this kid's head when they were building him, though, and as far as Clark can tell, none of them were particularly good ones.

Or even particularly accurate ones, it seems.

But that's assuming that Cadmus even knew what they were going to make, when they were making this kid. Assuming that Cadmus even in their most optimistic projections and wildest dreams thought they could make something like this.

All else aside, Clark can't imagine how they could've actually done this on purpose.

There's nothing, actually, that he can imagine could've actually done this on purpose.