Matt didn’t have much of a childhood. He didn’t get any sweets, didn’t celebrate most holidays. He was being raised as a solider and in most cases, that’s all it was. He would wake up, train, go to school, and train some more. His only solace were the days his dad was otherwise too occupied to work with him– or days they visited the Luthor’s.
Luthor Corp was a huge building, one that Matt could get lost in if he had the normal sense of adventure a normal child had at his age. He was smart enough to stay out of the restricted areas and by then he had learned to stay away from Lex. Lex was older and sometimes he sat in on the meetings his father was attending. Lex was scary, to Matt’s little 8 year old mind.
Lena was another thing altogether and in most cases, Matt eagerly tried to find her. She probably saw him as a nuisance, considering their difference in age, but he looked up to her. She treated him like an equal. “So I have a secret,” he said once, as they walked down the halls of Luthor Corp. There was a particular jump in his step today, but after finding a small and empty office, he ushered her in and pulled his backpack off of his shoulder. “My dad can never know, he would get so mad, but–” He pulled out a figurine, still in it’s box. The crimson S marked the blue uniform of the Superman figurine. “It’s in mint condition and it only cost me 20 dollars. I got it on my way home from school a couple-a days ago and I have this little box I’ve been putting it in under my bed. Isn’t it so cool?” He waited for Lena to give some sort of agreement before looking back down at the figure, his smile turning into something softer. “One day, I wanna be like Superman. You know he doesn’t even hurt the bad guys? I mean, I guess he hurts them a little, it’d have to be hard not to with super strength and laser eyes, but he hasn’t killed anybody.”