𝗚𝗢𝗢𝗗 𝗟𝗨𝗖𝗞 ━◈
Warnings -> Dark themes, Death, Dark/Yandere Behaviors, Neglect, Abuse, Manipulation, Seizures
(A/n: I got lazy near the end, sorry :p .)
𝑀𝒶𝓈𝓉𝑒𝓇𝓁𝒾𝓈𝓉
Chapter Guide
Ｏｎｅ
[2023-12-13 05:47:00][ꜱᴛᴀᴛᴜꜱ: ᴏʙꜱᴇʀᴠᴀᴛɪᴏɴ ʟᴏɢ ꜱᴛᴀʀᴛ]
[ꜰɪʟᴇ ᴏᴡɴᴇʀ: ██████████ ██████████]
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𝖡𝖾𝖾𝗉
𝖡𝖾𝖾𝗉
𝖡𝖾—
Lois wakes up to the alarm on the second buzz.
She slaps at her phone with the accuracy of someone who has been doing this for years, squinting at the screen long enough to confirm that yes, it is morning, and no, she does not have the luxury of pretending otherwise. For a brief moment, she considers rolling over and stealing a few more minutes of sleep.
Then she remembers she's a mother.
With a sigh, Lois pushes herself upright and swings her legs over the side of the bed. The room is cool, the thin rug beneath the bed doing little to warm the cold tiles. It was snowing outside, adding to the chilly atmosphere. Clark's side of the bed was empty though, sheets neatly pulled back.
"Of course," she murmurs, rubbing sleep from her eyes.
She stands, stretches until her back gives a quiet, satisfying crack, and shuffles toward the bathroom. The overhead light flicks on with a faint hum, revealing her reflection in the mirror, hair doing something creative and unapproved, faint creases under her eyes that no amount of optimism will convince her aren't permanent.
She grabs her toothbrush and starts brushing, pacing herself against the counter while her brain slowly wakes. The mirror fogs as she breathes, halfheartedly wiping a clear spot with her sleeve, only for it to smear worse.
Fantastic.
Lois spits, rinses, and leans closer to the mirror, inspecting herself one more time before exiting the bathroom to continue her morning routine.
She enters the kitchen, greeted by the smell of coffee and morning air. Her favourite mug sits on the counter, next to the coffee pot, which was half full. Clark must've started it before flying off. A twinge of appreciation mixes with her fatigue as she picks up the pot and pours herself a drink.
Her hand trembles, and she can't help but scold herself. Everything's fine, she reminds herself as she stares at her reflection in the mug. As of late, she hasn't been sleeping well, plagued with a worry only a mother is cursed with.
Lois's eyes drift to the hallway leading upstairs, where your room lies quiet. The seizures were becoming more frequent now, three in the past month. Clark scheduled another appointment with the doctor, a sentiment Louis has recently begun to disagree with.
She takes a sip of coffee and grimaces; it's gone lukewarm already. In her distraction, she'd forgotten to drink it while hot. Setting the mug down, Lois turns to the stove and sets a pan on the burner. The familiar motions of cracking eggs into a bowl and whisking them gently offer a momentary respite. Normalcy, she reminds herself. Keep things normal if she can make a decent breakfast and coax a smile out of you; maybe this day will start on the right foot.
It was a special day after all.
On the counter, the radio is tuned to a quiet murmur of news. A cheerful voice is reporting the weather and the previous night's local headlines. "...city crews have been salting the roads after yesterday's snowfall, though we still advocate caution; those roads are slick! In other news, the Metropolis Museum's charity gala is set to begin this evening, many famous guests are set to attend, even Gotham's own billionaire playboy..." The broadcaster's upbeat tone droned on, allowing Louis to focus on something other than her worry.
The toast pops up, startling her slightly. One slice is a shade past golden, nearly burnt. She sighs and butters them anyway. The routine is grounding: pour the orange juice, set out plates, dish up the scrambled eggs. All the while, Lois's mind wanders despite her efforts to focus on the mundane morning routine.
She thinks of an argument that happened some time ago. She and Clark had stood right here in this kitchen, voices low to avoid waking the kids, but the intensity had been unmistakable. They'd argued about your condition; what to do next, which doctor to go to, how to afford yet another round of inconclusive tests. Clark had folded his arms, that familiar crease between his brows, as he insisted they try one more specialist, a renowned neurologist in New York.
Lois remembers gripping the edge of the counter, knuckles white. She wasn't opposed to seeking more help; no, she was just as desperate for answers, but she worried about the toll on their daughter. "She's been prodded and scanned enough," she'd said quietly, frustration evident. "Maybe... maybe this isn't something a normal doctor can fix."
The unspoken possibility hung between them: the possibility that your health struggles might be tied to that extraordinary half of your heritage, your Kryptonian side.
You'd never shown any trace of the abilities your brother developed at puberty. No super strength. No heat vision. No signs you would ever be anything other than human. And perhaps that was the problem. Maybe you weren't just a late bloomer. Maybe this was what happened when Kryptonian and human genetics didn't line up the way they were supposed to.
Lois had never felt farther from Clark than she did in that moment, two parents standing in the same kitchen, staring at the same child's future, and somehow seeing different worlds.
The smell of burning eggs pulled her back into the kitchen.
"Fuck—" she muttered, lifting the pan and scraping the scorched eggs onto a plate. They were half-charred; the little black edges made her feel more bitter than the ruined breakfast. She dumped the pan into the sink with more force than necessary, the clatter echoing her frustration.
Today was your seventeenth birthday. Seventeen, and she couldn't even make you a decent breakfast. Worse, your father had slipped out of the house without a word to you. The thought of it knotted in her chest: anger and helplessness mixing like an unfavable cocktail.
Lois took a slow breath, forcing herself to steady. It wasn't fair to you, she thought; she knew Clark didn't mean to shut you out. But knowing that didn't make the absence hurt any less.
She set the plate down more gently this time and, for a long moment, let the quiet settle.
Looking back, Lois can pinpoint when the distance between you and Clark began. It was around the time Jon began showing signs of being like his father—superhuman strength, incredible speed, flight. Clark hadn't meant to leave you out. He'd just been swept up in the responsibility of raising a boy who could accidentally break bones with a hug or see through the walls of his own home. Training was bonding; bonding you couldn't partake in. Lois knows too well how rejection can feel when you're the one left waiting.
She had faith, stubborn, hopeful faith, that everything would fall into place once you started developing abilities of your own. But twelve came and went. Then thirteen. Fourteen. And still nothing..
Years later, when your health began to falter, Clark's presence around you seemed to change. It wasn't just caution anymore; it was fear, a painful uncertainty about how to connect with a daughter he suddenly thought might break under the weight of his embrace.
Lois fears that somewhere along the line, you mistook his carefulness for disinterest, his love for distance, his awe of Jon for a lack of awe in you.
Once more, her thoughts were shattered by a sound from deeper in the house; a sharp clatter like something heavy hitting the floor, followed by a terrified scream.
The plate in Lois's hands slips, shattering against the cool tile floor.
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Jon always liked to think back to the snapshots of his childhood.
Accidentally overwatering his class-assigned plant, and you laughing as he tried to fix it, only to make it worse. You and him huddled under blankets during thunderstorms, whispering about monsters and aliens like the ones your father fought. Your fingers hooked in his sleeve on the first day of school, biting your nail, and him promising you that he wouldn't let anything get you.
Back then, it was you two against the world.
Then things changed. Slowly at first. So slowly that Jon didn't realise it was happening until he looked back and couldn't recognise the distance between you.
His powers hit him like a freight train.
One day, he was the regular old Jon Kent, worrying about pre-algebra homework and when his favourite comic was coming out; the next, he was different. Stronger. Faster. The world around him was more vibrant and alive than before.
He remembers the proud look in his father's eyes, and how he basked in it.
Training sessions replaced afternoons spent helping you with homework. Patrols took over game nights. Conversations began to happen without you. After all, how could you be expected to understand if you weren't like him and Dad?
Jon remembers catching your expression once, standing at the edge of the barn, hands shoved into your jacket pockets, watching him lift something impossibly heavy while Dad looked on with pride.
You’d smiled when Jon noticed you watching—a genuine smile. You wanted him to come play; he could see it in the hopeful, playful glint in your eyes. You even waved him over.
He looked away, pretending he hadn't seen you at all.
Jon tells himself now that he didn't choose the distance. That it was inevitable. That things just... shifted.
It's the only way he knows how to dull the guilt of his youth, because the truth—the quiet, uncomfortable honesty—is that a part of him enjoyed the way things became.
When Dad looked at him like that, when the world suddenly made space for his abilities, it felt good. It felt important. And standing next to you, still human, still asleep to the world he woke up to, he didn't know how to reconcile the difference. He tells himself now that it wasn't superiority he felt; he was just lost in the motion. Like he was being carried forward by something too big to stop. Turning things back to how they were never crossed his mind.
You stopped coming along. Jon stopped asking. And somehow, that became normal.
The seizures came later.
Those were different. Those were terrifying in a way no amount of super-strength or heat vision could fix. There was nothing Jon could punch, nothing he could outrun. All he could do was watch as your body betrayed you.
He remembers the first one vividly. The sound you made when you hit the floor, the violent way your body seized. It looked so painful...
Dad changed after that. Everyone did.
Jon tried not to resent the way his father's expectations shifted into something heavier, the way fear settled into the house and lingered. But resentment has a way of creeping in anyway, especially when you're sixteen and scared, watching your sister grow slowly shrink in on herself.
And then Conner showed up.
At first, Jon had been relieved. Another super-person in the house meant someone who understood what it felt like to be different. He knew Conner's history with their father was... complicated. He'd expected it might take time for Conner to warm up to the family.
What Jon hadn't expected was how easily Conner slipped into your orbit.
Conner listened. Really listened; in that blunt, unfiltered way of his. He didn't treat you like you might break; he didn't shy away from your health, didn't dodge conversations about powers or family history. When you talked about feeling left out—about Dad, about Jon—Conner didn't try to soften it or explain it away like Mom always did.
He just understood.
He understood you in a way Jon never had.
And somehow, that mattered more than anything else.
Jon hated that. He hates admitting that he hated it. It wasn't jealousy, he tells himself. Not really. It was... loss. Watching someone else slip into a space he hadn't even realized he'd abandoned. Watching you laugh with Conner in a way that used to be reserved for him.
Watching you choose someone else.
The guilt of it sits heavy in his chest now as he moves down the hallway, still half-asleep, still trying to shake the strange tension clinging to the house.
It's your birthday. Seventeen. He'd planned to knock on your door, surprise you with a visit home from college. He and Mom planned it—she'd even helped sneak him in before dawn.
Instead, he hears a noise.
A thump. Something heavy hitting the floor.
Then your heartbeat; fast, erratic. Your breathing follows, shallow and uneven, panic sharp in the air.
Jon is moving before his mind catches up. His heart slams against his ribs as he takes the stairs two at a time, socked feet slipping on the carpet.
"F/n!" he calls your name.
No answer.
Another sound—furniture scraping, something tipping over—and then a sharp crash, unmistakable. Glass.
He reaches your door and doesn't bother knocking.
It flies open, slamming hard enough to rattle the wall.
Your room is chaos.
Drawers half-open. A chair overturned. Something shattered near the bed, glass scattered and glinting in the dim morning light. You're on the floor, back pressed to the bedframe, hands clawing at your chest as you struggle to breathe.
Your eyes are wide.
Unfocused.
Jon takes a cautious step into the room, carefully avoiding the glass. "F/n," he says again, softer now, trying to make sense of what he's seeing, what could have possibly happened?
Your gaze snaps to him, eyes locking onto his face.
And it hits him—the raw, unfiltered terror there. Not recognition. Not relief. Fear so deep it's as if you don't know him at all.
You scream.
The sound cuts through the house, sharp and panicked.
And somewhere in the distance, a plate shatters against the floor, the echo ringing out like a warning bell as the rest of the world finally catches up.
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[2023-12-13 06:47:00][ꜱᴛᴀᴛᴜꜱ: ᴇʀʀᴏʀ—ɴᴏ ʀᴇᴄᴏᴠᴇʀʏ]
ʀᴜɴɴɪɴɢ ᴅɪᴀɢɴᴏꜱᴛɪᴄꜱ...
ʀᴇʙᴏᴏᴛ ꜰᴀɪʟᴇᴅ
ꜰᴀʟʟʙᴀᴄᴋ ᴜɴᴀᴠᴀɪʟᴀʙʟᴇ
[ꜰɪʟᴇ ᴏᴡɴᴇʀ: ██████████ ██████████]
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