They praise me as a hero. Someone to be looked up to. But I’m not.
I didn’t know I had a clone. But I knew I had failed before he was ever made.
Every kid I save is my own, in a way. I had protected them, helped them survive! This had gotten my through the fits of depression that came upon me when I realized I would always be alone.
I knew I could never have kids. Not of flesh or blood at least, since my body prevents me from making little Kryptonians. Great thing for parties. As a wise singer said, “No regrets, just love.”
My love life wasn’t that good though. I couldn’t keep a girlfriend, because of the flying around in a cape, but at least I saw people. (Being partners with the most amazing, beautiful, and accident prone, woman on Earth didn’t hurt either.)
Everyone loves Superman. He’s the best! Savior of Earth and last on of Krypton.
But the boy in the building wouldn’t be loved. He would never kiss a girl, never see her walking in a white dress toward him with, her father on her arm, or hold his new baby girl, wrapped in a pastel blanket that brought out her little eyes. He would never be called “Dada.”
His first word, and last, was “Dada.”
He said it as he looked through the window while looking at me. I tried to go faster. I really did! But the house- it collapsed. No body was ever recovered.
He had blue eyes, black hair and a scream that would scar anyone for life. It did for me. He’s dead now, just like my old life, that of happiness and apple pie. Things he would never be able to experience. Because of me.
He was just a baby when he died. His life was in my hands, and I let him fall. I couldn’t fly fast enough. Punch hard enough. I FAILED!
A twist in the tale, eh? Most of the time, the superhero finds the baby and saves the day! But I couldn’t just swoop in and hand the baby to the sobbing mother, or the father, trying to be strong while his life was going up in a cloud of smoke. But they were dead too, crushed by the fiery debris and buried in rubble.
The Justice League was my way of making it up to the world. I let one child perish, but I could make the world a better place. I became the poster-boy for the UN’s disarmament program. I tried to make the world safer, but alas, more people died. Batman says it’s the cost of Justice. I just call it sad.
I couldn’t stop all of the deaths. But I could have stopped the fire.
When Superboy came out of that rubble, I felt my heart stop. This can’t be happening! I thought to myself frantically. The boy is dead! He couldn’t have survived! I saw the boy from all those years ago. The one I let die.
But then the boy lifted the torn edge of his white garment. It had my symbol on it. I was scared. Not of the clone himself, but that I would fail again. It was too much to take in! The resurrection indeed!
The boy in the building… was me the whole time.
When Canary told me that that was the name he had chosen, I know the universe was conspiring against me.
Bruce ridiculed me. The whole League did. They said I should embrace him. Show him that I care. But they don’t know why I don’t talk to him. Why I don’t interact with him. Why I can’t even look in the mirror or the papers anymore. The Superman shown there was the idealized one, the grand Hero of Earth! Not someone who let an infant burn. Not someone who could have stopped it.
As I look upon my clone, I see the same confused look that the little boy had. Just before he died.
Later, when I read the papers, I saw what the name of the boy was. Conner.
“I already failed you once Conner. I can’t do it again.” At this, I flew away.
