Who Clark Kent and Connor Kent. What: Connor sets fire to the school library. When: Earlier this month. Where: School library. Warnings: Fire!
Connor had a hell of a time fitting into new places. He didn’t really know how people reacted to things, he mimicked to learn. School however, was a different beast altogether. Everyone reacted wildly differently. Some stuck to themselves, others clung to groups. Connor was mostly of the earlier mentioned loner for the first few days. He was the new kid again. He’d never not been so far for the first year of his life, so that was frustrating. He had to rebuild all over again. He found doing so was difficult.
Days passed without incident, but he was tired come Thursday with a new schedule he wasn’t used to being forced to keep. With his exhaustion he found himself resting in the library. His head was down on his arms and his eyes were closed. At first, it was silent.
Then the sound of some kind of bug caused his eyes to snap open. There was no bug in sight.Then, a girl raising her voice at some guy. There was no one yelling in the library though. To Connor, it sounded as clear as day.
Then more voices. He looked for the sources, but none of them were in his direct vicinity.
He put his hands over his ears hoping to block the sound, but of course that did basically nothing. Brows furrowed as the noises separated. They were sharp like a hot knife cutting at his insides. His body reacted the only way it knew how.
Defense. It thought it was being physically harmed, then suddenly that library was on fire as a beam of red hot fire from Connor’s eyes caught a nearby bookshelf. People started running and the noises only got louder and louder. He was breathing heavily at that point as he stood.
Some people stared, most just ran away once they caught sight of him and the flames rising from the bookshelves that he didn’t know were even there. It felt like he was being pulled apart in five different physical noisy directions.
It only got worse. The fire alarm blared. Connor could no longer focus.
Clark was at work when he heard fire alarms blaring. Ones that sounded like they were coming from the high school. He knew Laura wasn't attending high school, but he also knew Connor was. So he immediately headed toward the area. He knew there was a fire department equipped to deal with such things, but he was quicker. He wasn't about to not go just because there was a fire department. That wasn’t how he was.
When he arrived, within seconds of hearing the fire alarms, he found the location of said fire. The library. He used his powers to get most of the fire to go out but – it didn’t seem to want to go completely out. The source of the fire was apparently still around.
Then he spotted the source – Connor Kent. “Connor!” he said, not bothering to raise his voice much. He knew the teenager would be able to hear him over everything else. Within a moment, he was at Connor’s side. He grabbed the teenager by the arm, and pulled him toward himself.
“Stop, Connor. It’s okay. You’re okay.” Perhaps school had been a bad idea for Connor, perhaps Clark hadn’t thought it all the way through. But he hadn’t expected a fire in the library to happen because of the kid going to school.
“Take a deep breath. Everything is okay,” he said, trying to sound soothing.
Trying to fix everything.
He could hear Clark, but he couldn’t register it. It was like his entire body was on the fritz. Like something had broken and he couldn’t see. He was panicking. It only made things that much worse. Red eyes turned towards Clark as one of the few moving figures in the room, narrowly missing him as he approached but putting another fire in the floor of the library.
When Clark got within range to grab at him, he tensed for a minute. Everything was so loud even that soft sounding tone. He couldn’t respond with words yet. He tried to close his eyes, but their powers didn’t exactly allow for that to easily happen Connor tried to force his eyes shut, He couldn’t focus enough to stop.
Okay, so. Clark soon realized that he needed to get Connor out of the situation. So his arms wrapped around the teenager, and flew the two of them out of the library. He knew he needed to go to a place where minimal damage could be done, and where Connor wasn’t as overwhelmed by everything in the school. In the library.
Within moments, they were in a clearing in the woods. It was the quietest spot Clark could think of. True, there were many flammable things within the woods, but he hoped the significant decrease in noise would help the teenager.
“It’s okay, Connor,” he said, softly. “You’re okay. Deep breaths.”
The sensation of the ground leaving them behind was a bit unnerving. Connor had actually never flown before. He gripped onto Clark like a lost child, which is really what it was. He could barely even see much less function well enough to comment.
The forest around him looked like a sea of red thanks to the laser heat vision. The anger was fading, the sound of Clark’s voice cut through the alarm bells. Finally they began to silence in his head. And then the red faded. All he was left with was a world of confusion. It took a moment for him to regain his bearings enough to speak. When he had, his memory was hazy. He looked up at Clark, apparently registering him as not a threat at this time. Then he stood. His entire body felt like it was going to collapse, but he forced himself to remain standing.
“Where are we?”
"The woods," Clark answered. "I thought you may need as much quiet as you could get," he explained. "I forgot how overwhelming public school could be, especially when you're not used to it. And with powers like yours…" Clark had been overwhelmed at first as well, but it had been so long for him.
Jordan had developed his powers after he'd already gotten used to high school. Clark hadn't taken that into consideration before enrolling Connor.
"... you don't have to go back if you don't want to," he offered. "You're 17. That's close enough to not needing it…" Of course, he'd probably need to talk to Lois about it, but he thought she'd understand.
It was still loud, there were things that skittered about in the woods. But, there was also less of the way of human voices. In spite of his eyes shifting towards the students though they would occasionally stare at a bush nearby. He was hyper alert thanks to all that overwhelm. He just knelt there on the ground for a moment before sitting entirely and putting his hands in his head. “It hurts.” Advil didn’t really work on them either, he sort of envied normal kids that could take stuff for pain.
He looked up at him through pained eyes. They were still red from the laser vision. Looking more like strain than more use though. “I don’t know what the hell I should be doing!” He snapped unintentionally, not directed at Clark but his own frustration and current discomfort.
Finally it seemed as though some of that pain was fading at least. Though there were still signs of strain. “I don’t know why I’m here. All I was made for was being a weapon.” He had only just started to learn what friends were, and now he’d lost them.
“I know,” he said. “It will get better in time, though I know that doesn’t help any now.” He had honestly forgotten that Connor hadn’t actually lived as long as the age that his body appeared to be. He hadn’t meant to, but it was easier to do than he would like to have admitted.
“All you can do is try to adjust,” he told the teenager. “I know it probably isn’t what you wanted to hear, but that’s all I can offer.”
Clark remained silent for a moment, his head tilting slightly. “No one knows why they are here. But… perhaps you should speak to Laura. She’s young, I know, but she was made to be a weapon as well. She’s been here for almost a year – perhaps she can help.”
“..How?” His voice was sort of small, defeated. Brows knit together with stress. Connor really didn’t have a clue how to be a regular person. He’d only been alive at all for a few months, and he’d been thrown into the Titans immediately instead of this regular school environment. He just sat on the grassy floor of that forest, looking more like a lost kid than he ever had felt like in the past.
Everyone there had friends, a life. Connor had none of that now. And just then he felt more alone than he ever had. Everything he’d known in his short period of actual life was gone. He’d barely been alive for a year. “Yeah, maybe.” He was just left with this unwanted cold feeling. “Everything’s gone.” He looked down at his hand. “Never known anything but the Titans.”
Clark felt useless and at a loss at the moment – he wasn’t exactly sure how to tell Connor how he was supposed to adjust to life in Madison Valley. He hadn’t had a life like Connor’s – it was different from the life Clark had led. “All I know is that it takes time – just like everything in life,” he said, softly. “I know that all you’ve known in life are the Titans, but there’s an entire world out there aside from them. Dick is here, yes, and is part of the Titans? How has he adjusted to life here?”
He sighed softly, and sat down beside Connor on the forest floor. “Just so you know – many teenagers feel the same way you do. Lost and confused and without a clue of how to adjust to high school or life or anything.”
The older Kent shrugged slightly. “I mean. You both were created. To become weapons, to get the best of who you were created from. Laura might know what you’re going through. Don’t let her age fool you.”
Connor was just quiet for a minute as Clark joined him there. Lost was a good way to describe the moment. He was feeling a lot of that. Emotions were a new thing for him. He was still trying to figure out how to exist and be normal, where as it seemed like everyone else just instinctively knew how. He had to learn by copying. “Most people have at least been teenagers before.” He gave a bit of a faint smile. Though it was a little distant.
He had no more words. Instead he did something a little bit surprising and leaned against Clark. He wasn’t used to having to rely on adults for this sort of thing, that much had to be obvious. “I know I messed up.”
“Yes,” he said, agreeing. It would do nothing for either of them if he lied to Connor – and Clark wasn’t much of a liar, anyway. Except when it came to being Superman. But he didn’t much like to lie to those he cared about, and Connor was one of those people he cared about. Even after such a short amount of time.
“The good thing is you didn’t mean to mess up. I know it was an accident.”
He knew the young man hadn’t used his abilities to purposely harm anyone. To cause a fire in the school’s library. That’s what mattered. To Clark, at least. “How about we head home? We can stop and get you some food if you want. Are you hungry?”
Conner clearly had a long way to go when it came to figuring out his powers. Being a super hero wasn’t exactly text book stuff that he could just pick up from the library. There was no How To Kryptonian guide. He frowned a little at that comment. ”Well no.” He hadn’t meant to. The library had just been the wrong place at the wrong time.
“Okay.” Finally his head had stopped throbbing as much as it could for the time being, and Conner stood. He hadn’t eaten at all yet that day so he nodded to that. “Yeah actually. Starving.” He’d used a ton of energy. Soaking in the remaining sun and food would help replenish that energy. Home sounded good. Maybe he did have a place there as awkward as he felt.