Chapter Text
[December 1st, Team Year Zero]
Rrht-tht-tht-thih-trr-trr-trr–
How the bullets bounced right off his chest, his knuckles bounce against the assassin’s mask. The assassin’s head bounces against the concrete. Rubber, but crackling. Pieces of red burst out–a shattered lens, little flakes, then little drops. Strings of red. A flash of it on Conner’s own wrist–not broken. Whole. Complete.
Burning. Conner grits his teeth. The bouncing is in his chest as much as against his knuckles. Rapid-fire pounding–he growls over the feel, the sound. The world is in ripples–he can feel it all. Fight it all. Protect it all. The world is full of killers–he hates them, hates him. Conner's knuckles find skin, tufts of hair, planes of the skull, the crunch of the nose, the cavity of the eye–it starts here. All the evil. It’s one piece of it, one piece in Conner’s hands–he can break it. The gunshot and the heartbeats–one exploding, and every other speeding up. The footsteps on the rooftops, a clean shot, a clean kill–it was easy. Too easy. How dare he–power. Because he could. That’s all his type needs to justify it. The why is power, the how is the weapon.
The air hits sharper against Conner’s teeth, copper smell filtering in, as he feels his lips curl. The why and the how–he is the weapon.
And this is his power.
One impact has no recoil. Thunk, sglit–Conner’s fist sinks into heat. It’s not good enough. He needs to break through. Conner pulls his fist out, raises it back up above his head–
–Conner’s arms both lock behind his head, and his chest goes tight. His knees leave the concrete. No! he shouts inside his head, wrenching his eyes shut as his body fights him. He doesn’t want to fly, not now, all he wants is to–
“–Superboy, stop!”
The voice booms through his ears and straight down into his chest, reverberates in his bones like it ripped out of his own throat. Hands tighten around his jacket at his shoulders. The rippling of the world shrinks down to the ripple of cape folds–Superman. The hot blood on Conner’s hands goes cold, but inside, his own blood surges. Right now, it’s the same as Superman’s. It’s every bit as Kryptonian as his. Conner growls, kicks, and swings his fists. Superman keeps his hold, but not without one momentary falter–too soft, too yielding–his strength a match for Conner’s, but Conner’s–Superboy’s–a match for his. The Shield on Conner’s wrist pulses an affirmation–do it. Finish it. The hold around his arms won’t let him–it disconnects him from himself. But his feet know who and what he is, and his fists know what the assassin is. He lunges again. Superman holds him in place.
“He’s a killer!” Conner roars. “He deserves what he gets!”
“That’s not how we do things!”
Conner growls. The voice is wrong, sounds wrong and says the wrong thing. We find the threat. We end it. We stop it, the rampage–hearts like fists keep pounding into his head from below, above, all around–it’s fear, he knows it. The assassin’s keeps beating–it’s evil, Conner knows, and he knows what he is. He knows what he was made to do.
To replace him should he perish, to destroy him should he turn from the light.
Superboy breaks free–all the power is in him, and he is the weapon.
“No.”
Even Superman’s voice is weak against him now. Superboy descends.
“Superboy–”
[–Conner?! Conner!]
Conner’s feet hit the rooftop, and his breath bounces out of him. He snarls. M’gann’s voice leaves an echo in his head, a pulsing through his skull–it’s fear. It’s fear, too. His hand goes to his wrist–fire floods his veins. Stay back springs up from his mind but doesn’t leave his lips, his clenched teeth. All that escapes is a rough pant as he forces his eyes back open.
It–it’s more blood than how he left it–left him, left the assassin. It’s more blood than he meant. M’gann’s eyes are wide and white in her green face. With a shock through the concrete that Conner’s boots don’t absorb, Superman lands behind him.
Conner closes his eyes, and it’s daylight. He’s falling–he’s floating. A cloud of dust fades from the crater below in a breath. One last exhale leaves a broken face. Red splays out around the body in blue, more than just from the cape.
No.
[Conner–]
–Conner wrests his sleeve down over his wrist. [No.] He starts to move. He has to move. Has to–go. The fire won’t leave his veins. Superman’s hand grabs his shoulder–his heart only stops for a second, then the adrenaline is back. Growling, he shrugs off the hand. The assassin lets out a ragged, whistling breath through gaps in his teeth–fine. Still breathing. Conner stomps towards and then past him. Another breath cuts through Conner’s ears–a short sigh of relief. Conner’s head goes low on reflex, pulling at his neck. He shoves his fists into his pockets, plunging them into puffs of hot, sticky air.
M’gann lands in front of him, heels clacking like teeth against the concrete. The soft sway of her cape draws Conner’s eyes up to her rising hands. He braces himself for upturned palms, for a wordless stay back, for a look in her eyes that says the fire inside him has burned all the way through and made him into something that could kill her.
The burning doesn’t stop, but a shiver makes his breath hitch. He’s always been something that could kill her.
M’gann’s gloved hands touch down on his jacket.
“Aargh!” Conner jumps back. Seething, he meets M’gann’s eyes.
They’re not not afraid, but not–not even surprised anymore. Just scrutinizing–pleading–too on him, looking through him, or trying to–
[–Conner, what happened?] M'gann reaches for him again. [This isn’t like you–]
–No. With a growl, Conner storms past her, too. [‘Course it is.]
[Conner–]
[–Leave me alone.] Conner doesn’t look back, just thinks of a wall, something cold, hard, and opaque between them, wrapping around and holding in his thoughts–just like she taught him. Rock, steel–a sheet of glass pulled in tight, with light inside too bright to see through. M’gann’s presence tingles at the edge of his mind, and then it flickers out.
Conner’s feet take him to a wall outside his mind, bricks barely up past his knees. Below is inky black concrete, wet as if with blood. The copper smell doesn’t leave him. Neither do the heartbeats. He stands still–the world keeps rippling. M’gann’s heels knock softly, trailing away from him. The assassin groans–tissue crackles, slick and wet–pieces clatter against the concrete, mask and teeth. Conner doesn’t need to see it to know–everything is there in his head. Everything wrong. A small thwup becomes a hard thwap against air–two hearts take off into the sky.
“This man needs medical attention,” Superman’s voice declares.
“At least President Harjavti is safe, and we stopped Queen Bee from taking revenge,” M’gann declares back, a defensive edge to her voice over an anxious skip in her heartbeat. Faster than a speeding bullet, Superman is gone–though Superman must still hear her. No response. Conner feels a fresh snarl start on his lips–ignoring him is one thing, but ignoring her–
–A fresh pulse starts in Conner’s wrist, sending him lurching towards the gutter below. He keeps his footing and jerks up his sleeve. The blood on his skin is still bright–the Shield in his skin has gone dark, but holds its edges. Five points in all directions. Power fanning out and flowing through him, sinking in, making him whole–making his skin hot to the touch and making his fist curl tight enough to turn his knuckles bone-white and his fingertips a purple-blue. He could break himself. Kryptonian nails against Kryptonian skin. Kryptonian teeth against Kryptonian teeth. His heart pounds against his ribs. He could break anything.
“So that’s good, right?” M’gann’s voice lilts back into his ears. Footsteps bring her closer, like the ticking of a clock, ticking of a bomb.
It has to stop. Conner clamps his hand down on his wrist, squeezing against the pulse. Pressure on a wound–stop the bleeding, even inside. A cold tingle starts in his palm, and a twitch runs up his elbow–his fist drops open, uncurled and limp. It feels like death, like powerlessness–his hand shakes. Blood rushes to his head–he staggers back, both feet leaving the concrete at once and then hitting it again–the power is back, coiling all his muscles tight and then snapping them loose, releasing heat into his bones until it melts them away, and he’s lighter than air. He could float. He could fly. He could fight. He could kill.
“Right?” M’gann’s voice gets closer, yet only gets softer. “...Conner?”
“No! What are you doing?”
The vision never tells him who the woman is–
“Superman! What are you doing?”
–But it knows–but he knows, watching it–that whoever she is, she trusts Superman. Believes in him. Even with the Daily Planet’s globe ripped from the rooftop and hurled into the sky–
“–Stop! What’s wrong with you?”
To anyone–to everyone–
"–What are you–erk!”
–When Superman’s hand closes around her throat, it’s a betrayal.
Conner blinks back the vision and claws at the Shield. He needs it. He needs it to make himself strong enough. He needs it to make himself right–even with the blood on the concrete, even with the crunch under his knuckles, even with the squish–but right now, he needs it gone. Luthor plucked the Shield right off his arm. This one is in him, is him now. It's deep–he’ll tear the skin out if he needs to.
He can’t let her see it. He can’t let her see what he is.
He can’t tell if his nails break through. Something behind his eyes splits instead. He wrenches them shut; inside, somehow, they still open. Heat flares up in his cheeks, rushing to the very edges of his eyelids–heat vision. Has to be. He’s only felt it once–it didn’t burn like this–but it wouldn’t have. Before, he didn’t hold it in.
One look at her now, and he’ll kill her.
M’gann’s hand presses into his back. “Conner?”
Conner jolts, gasps. Liquid heat runs down his throat like a gulp of his own blood, pulling the muscles in his neck and chest tight. He gathers his sleeve back over his wrist, crumpling leather in his fist. M’gann’s own gasp cuts into his ears, and her hand leaves his back. It’s as good as a push.
Conner's feet find the ledge. He kicks off.
“Conner!”
The alleyway swallows him down fast–something in his chest wants to pull towards the sun, or even just the moon, but even with the power to fly, he remembers to fall. The ground buckles under his knees, sending up splatter–bone breaks against his own, blood hits the skin keeping his own trapped and rushing inside of him–no. Concrete and rainwater. The craters he feels beneath him are nothing new. It's how he lands.
It shouldn’t take his air. He heaves, breath rasping out, and without a thought, his eyes snap open. No! The heat bristles in his head, stinging his eyes. He shuts them again before they can fire–his lids barely hold the heat back. It doesn’t stop. It has to stop. Something has to stop this, something has to stop him, something has to give, something has to break–
–M’gann tumbles down from above him like an avalanche, cape rippling, heart throbbing. Conner scrambles to his feet, rubber heels of his boots slipping against uneven ground and wet grit. His hand finds a wall and makes its own hold–five points of impact, then a fistful of rubble. His grip tightens. Shards shoot out from his fist and hit his own chest and leg as quickly as bullets. As weakly as bullets.
M’gann’s touch floods his nerves and his mind all at once. Her hands close around his heart from either side, his chest and his back, and her urgent voice takes all the heat in his head and makes it her for a moment, forcing his blistering eyes to meet hers without a thought. There's fire in her own eyes, nestled in a web of worry lines and creasing freckles across her face. [Conner. Please. Please, tell me what’s wrong–]
–It’s too much at once. The pulsing in his head, his chest, his wrist–all of him demands release. Conner roars. A thread snaps between his shoulders, and his fists fly up. M’gann goes back. His arms swing–burn–search. M’gann’s eyes are a sharp light, then a wet blur. His knuckles hit something harder than air, but something with give, then a stop–it pulls his fist in and holds him. The air crackles. A ringing peals through his ears.
Something beats his breath back hot into his face. For a moment, it's alive; he holds his breath, and instantly, he feels the cold. A sound he knows is M'gann's voice flickers weakly in his ear. His chest starts to throb before he can even remember how to let the air back in–he opens his mouth, and the gulping comes too fast for any air that reaches his lungs to stay.
“Conner…”
M’gann’s voice comes from behind him. It brings her heartbeat back to his ears, and the rest of her fills into place. Her heels tap the shattered concrete–a single step towards him, then she stops. A short huff of a sigh leaves her nose, her lips pressed audibly shut.
Inch by inch, Conner pulls his fist out from the hole he's made in the wall. More cracks reach out across his vision with every twitch. Tatters of leather slide out with the stone crumbs. What’s left of his sleeve flops down past his elbow. Brown and gray grit sticks to the blood on his skin; under his skin, the mark of the Shield blots at the edges like an ink stain, like a bruise. There’s nowhere else to hide it now. His arm snaps to his chest. His fingers dig in.
M’gann lays her hand over a crack in the wall. Conner’s eyes let in green, blue, and white, then the world blurs. Hot white sunlight bleeds in behind his eyes again–Cadmus’s light. Luthor’s light. The vision shows him Superman again, dead in the debris. It’s wrong. Conner knows it’s wrong.
It should be me.
The light swallows up the corpse, the debris, the voices–every voice. What’s left is blank. An expanse. A space for him to sink into without a sound, a thought. Without an impact. The space closes around him, containing him. All he needs to be. He knows it. His body knows it even better than his mind. He knew it before he ever thought, ever opened his eyes. The light, and a wall. The glass keeping him in.
A knock hits his ears and the inside of his chest. Another follows. A thrumming starts below it. A low, metallic hum, and then a pulse. Then a beat. A pounding. Throbbing–
–Conner growls, blinking darkness, grit, and grime back into his vision. M’gann leans in, eyes round and sharp in his shadow. Conner steps back; M’gann’s brow furrows in determination, and she steps closer. Heels and concrete leave his senses–all Conner hears is a boom.
“Conner.” The beating of her heart muffles her voice, but the word is too familiar for him not to understand. “I know thi–” Thuh-bump. “–you really are.” Thump-buh– “Thi–” Thump-thuh-bump-thuh-buh– “–n’t your fault. Superman–”
–He knows that word anywhere, too.
“I told you to leave. Me. Alone.” At first, his voice can barely rise. The words come out panted through gritted-shut teeth. “What–part of that–don’t you understand?!” Tendons in his neck quiver with tension until a snap throws his head back, lifts him up and sends air rushing through his ribs, heat tingling through his skin. HIs eyes latch onto M’gann. “What part of that don’t you understand?!” he roars, feeling shock waves of his voice reverberate off stone and through his chest. “Get away from me!” More concrete crumbles under his heel. “Don’t you get it? Get–away from me–right–now!” His fists fly out at his sides. The Shield mark throbs against open air. A chill cuts through the anger in him: she can see it.
She doesn’t see it. He can tell. Her eyes don’t break from his for a second. Wide and white in the darkness, they don’t even blink at him. Conner’s head loses heartbeats–all that fills it is a roar to match the one that left his throat. Echoes of his own. Reverberations that hit. Light prickles in M’gann’s eyes, a slow release, slivers skirting the edges of her lashes. It hangs there until it breaks, and then trails of it slice down both her cheeks in an instant.
Air abandons Conner’s lungs again. He doesn’t gasp for it back. A stillness creeps over his body like a weight bearing down–what it doesn’t reach, he freezes himself. His knees and elbows twitch as he clenches himself in place. It’s too late. More tears flicker down M’gann’s cheeks like licks of flame.
“I-I-I’ll be i-in the… Bioship,” she breathes out through the tremor of a sob running visibly through her chest. Her mouth curls into a thin, puckered line, and she nods. A sniffle, and she’s gone. Her cape ripples overhead like crumpling paper, then as liquid as her tears, her form slips into the sky, movement invisible against the blank evening haze. On reflex, Conner’s eyes switch to infrared to keep her in sight–he forces them shut before X-ray vision can show him muscle. Bone. Heart. Anything else he can break.
It’s too quiet too fast. Conner hears his own nose pull in a wet, shaky breath. A tremor runs through his own chest. It stops at his throat and sets off another through his shoulders, his wrists, his knees. A deep, guttural breath shakes itself out through his teeth.
He checks his arm. The mark is there, but fading. The human–the Luthor–starts to drain back in. Back to normal. Back to what he really is.
“...Big Boy Blue lives in the world of black and white,” Luthor says coolly. “You were created by the bad guys, so there must be something wrong with you.”
There is, Conner snaps back at the memory, however pathetically–outside his head, his voice keeps leaking out on every breath, bubbling up from deeper parts of himself than he’s ever felt. Wounds buried in his chest. That first cut, never fully healed.
“But we both know life isn’t that clear-cut.”
The assassin almost killed Harjavti. Conner almost killed the assassin. Superman took the assassin’s side–Superman stopped Conner from killing the killer, and he was, is a killer, even if they stopped him today. What’s my body count have to be before he decides I’m worth that attention–the moment he has the thought, the thought makes his stomach turn. Attention–that’s not what he wants, or what he deserves. He screamed M’gann away for trying to give it to him. Her face–
–Conner’s back finds the wall. It should tumble down and bury him. His back braces against it; all that weakens is his knees. Nothing else–there’s still too much strength in his fists as he curls them tight, still too much heat in his eyes as he wrenches them shut. He growls, then bites his lips. If he makes himself bleed, it doesn’t matter. Something needs to. Something needs to be able to. Something needs to be strong enough. Something needs to be strong enough to kill him.
He may never see that sword again. Kryptonite–exists, in scarcity. He’s never felt it. That could be wrong with him, too. It may not even hurt.
If he’s really half-Luthor, then this should work:
“R-red…” He can’t recognize his voice. It’s neither Luthor nor Superman. It’s barely anything. It’s broken. He tries it anyway. “R-red… Red Sun.”
He slides down the wall, conscious of every inch, every second of the fall. The ground doesn’t break twice beneath him–he’s just a drop. Liquid heat leaks out from his eyes–on reflex, his hands slide back up the hot, wet trails on his cheeks and press against his eyes. He’s not supposed to want to bleed. He’s supposed to try to stop it. Conner pries his hands from his eyes. If it’s a wound, let it bleed. He can barely smell the copper now–he can barely smell anything, even as his nose keeps sniffing, his breath catching over and over, his body twitching, jerking. He pulls his knees to his chest to try to hold himself still–why, he’s not sure. Another reflex. His body begs itself to break, then doesn’t listen. Stop it, he commands it from inside his head, as if any thought he could think could give him that kind of control. Do something, he demands. His head goes to his knees. Just give up or get up, he seethes at himself, hearing the stilted, muffled hiss of his own breath before his throat shoves out a tiny yelp. His heart keeps beating–too hard. His breath keeps coming–too fast. His head keeps thinking–too much.
He’s supposed to be–stronger than this. He’s supposed to be–better than this. He’s supposed to be–he was supposed to be a weapon, then he was supposed to be a person. He’s supposed to be–something. Anything. Anything but this.
Even under all the pressure, all the tension of his body against itself, something splits Conner’s chest from the inside like a blade. He jerks his head up and gasps, taking in a determined gulp of air. His eyes open raw and blurry, but despite how they feel, the world isn’t blood-red. He knows what this is. He’s felt it–through the link–the psychic training exercise, Artemis–Superman, Wolf, everyone dead, and the world ending–M’gann bleeding out tears like an open wound in his hands–
–Conner growls himself to his feet. His fist finds the wall again–it still doesn’t topple down on him, just grows more cracks. Stupid–he runs a hand up his wet face again to knot fingers into his sweat-matted hair. I’m crying. That’s all it is. He wipes his eyes against his knuckles and wrist, holding himself back from full-on punching himself in the face. Red Sun didn’t work, but the sky is still darker than the last time he looked, and empty, save for faint streetlight haze and moonlight. I scared M’gann off for this–
–Conner’s eyes drop two more hot tears out of him at the thought. M’gann’s eyes do the same in his memory, seconds before she flies off and vanishes. I made her cry. Again, his stomach turns, pulling his throat tight again. Like this. I made her feel like this.
He also nearly beat a man to death in front of Superman.
Conner checks his wrist. Dirty, but no Shield. He checks his hip pocket–still intact, both the pocket and the box. Reflex pulls his hearing out in search of M’gann’s heartbeat–dozens flood into his head at once, sirens wailing through the thunder. Right, he thinks, hand to his head, drawing his senses back–and that’s not even ‘cuz of me, he has to remind himself. What started all this was the assassination attempt on Harjavti, not his own assassination attempt on the assassin–and M’gann said they’d stopped him. The shot was fired–it must have missed. What they’d–what he’d stopped was another shot from being fired, on anyone but himself. Anyone it could have hurt.
Conner starts to jump, but his feet sit in the rubble just like two more slabs of stone. She–
–Was she–proud of me?
Ice runs down Conner’s face, draining all the way into some empty pit in his stomach that twists as the thought sinks in. It’s too much to think. Too much to feel. He growls both the thought and the feeling away. With adrenaline from his thumping heart rushing to his legs, Conner takes off for the rendezvous point.
[He didn’t mean it.]
The moonlight traces a thin outline around Bioship’s camouflaged form. M’gann looks up at her, feeling herself squint despite Bioship’s presence registering plainly in her mind. It’s more of a wince, she knows. [R-right?]
Bioship shuts off the radio–right, M’gann thinks, realizing she’d already tuned it out. Bioship then coos and sends a flickering ripple across her form despite instruction to remain camouflaged. M’gann’s mouth twitches into a smile. [I know. I shouldn’t be asking you.] The smile slips back out of her face with ease. She tugs her hood down tighter over her face and re-crosses her arms. [Do… do you see him yet?]
Telepathically, Bioship projects a negative. M’gann sighs. [I shouldn’t have–well, I… don’t feel good about having left him. It… was a choice, even if I was just doing what he asked.]
“Get–away from me–right–now!”
The thought of his voice makes her flinch. Her flinch at the thought makes her sick. Her hand goes to her mouth, knuckles against her lip to keep it from quivering again. Hello, Megan–this is Conner! He was just–upset. You know that. And you know it was because of Superman–
–Clark Kent. Superman’s human–er, civilian identity. Hel-lo, Megan–of course Uncle J'onn knew that. And now, so does she. Uncle J’onn likely wouldn’t approve. And even though she didn’t read it psychically, just put two and two together visually, Kaldur would probably try to explain to her again the importance of telepathic privacy–save for the bad guys’ minds. And Clark Kent–Superman–
“M’gann, try to understand… I want to get to know him… as a person, not as Superman’s clone.”
Superman isn’t a bad guy. He’s just hurting Conner all the same, without even trying. If he didn’t care at all, that would be easier, M’gann thinks. Easier to resolve, or at least easier to respond to.
[M’gann, you must understand. This will not gain you their acceptance,] her father’s pleading voice rasps into her head, his white claw clasping awkwardly against her human-shaped shoulder. [They will still see you and know who you are inside.]
[But they will hurt you for trying to deceive them!] her mother’s voice peals through the link, her eyes bright red with alarm, her green claw stretching out to M’gann’s green face but stopping short, curling back instead of touching down onto the hot, wet spot on her soft, sore cheek.
M’gann’s green fingers, all five to each hand, clench around her elbows, curling into the folds of her stealth cloak. This is who I am inside. Her cheeks burn freshly hot. [Is he there yet?] she projects out to Bioship again. [At least in range? Not that… I could link with him again after he…]
Bioship projects back a flicker of confusion. M’gann lets some of the memory slip to show her: the wall going up, but the waves not stopping. Conner’s thoughts thrumming and churning and crackling on the psychic plane, but one small, deliberate gesture telling her to keep out–a whisper in a hurricane. [I tried to listen,] M’gann insists to Bioship, [Really, I–I understood what he was trying to signal psychically, but–and I know jumping off the roof for him shouldn’t mean anything, didn’t necessarily mean anything, like it would for someone without powers, but–but I wasn’t trying to read his mind, I was just trying to reach him, and he wouldn’t respond to anything else, and–]
–Bioship sees the fist plunging into the wall and jumps, her form rippling in the air. M’gann closes off the memory. [It’s okay, girl. I wasn’t trying to scare you. And he wasn’t–]
–M’gann pauses.
She shouldn't be so sure. She's not supposed to know how he felt, no matter how clearly she could feel it, too. She was–is–supposed to just ignore that. Supposed to be able to. Thought she could–it’s her power. He isn’t the telepath. It’s her responsibility–her mind could break someone with one wrong thought. Like Artemis–gone–and then an exercise becomes the apocalypse, and the only way to save her friends is to kill her–to snap her out of it. Like you think I won’t hurt you, you don’t know me at all, and Psimon…
…Is a bad guy, M’gann reminds herself. The air she floats in is still, but a cold gust cuts through her, straight to her bones. She clutches her elbows tighter, feeling her nails pushing into her arms through her suit. She wills her nails down into soft stubs–all that lessens is the sharpness, not the pressure. This is me. I can’t lose this. A wave swells up inside her, shooting heat up to her eyes. I can’t lose–all of this. The tears come back like they never stopped, like her body was just waiting for that one wrong thought again. In her mind, she sees the blood, the red-purple-blue tissue where the assassin’s face should be–in her mind, she feels the still-crackling void where Psimon's presence on the psychic plane had been, sees him look at her but see nothing, sees the saliva running down his limp jaw–
–An echo of Conner’s pain blazes through M’gann’s mind. She shuts her eyes and swallows against the urge to sob. She shouldn’t be feeling it–shouldn’t have felt it–and Conner shouldn’t have either. If it had been Psimon, she thinks to herself, I would have done it again.
That thought flips a switch in her mind. All the feelings inside her turn light and simple, almost disappear. The emptying almost scares her, but as the new feeling sits inside her, she decides it's not quite numbness. She thinks it might be certainty. Acceptance, at least. Not of everything. Queen Bee is still a threat–maybe not now to Qurac, after today, but to her. But Psimon–maybe what Conner said about the assassin was right. He deserves what he gets.
With a psychic nudge, Bioship blips a visual into M’gann’s mind: Conner. M’gann gasps and whips around in the air. Conner lands at the edge of the rooftop, head low, flaps of shredded leather dangling past his elbow. Instinctively, M’gann’s mind reaches for his, more immediate and urgent than eye contact–a tingling starts, and she whips back around to face Bioship, slamming a wall down at the edge of her psyche. Right. Don’t.
“...M’gann?”
M’gann sniffles. Every instinct screams at her to fly into both his mind and his arms. She knows she can’t do both.
But just his arms, at least–
“–You’re there, right?” Conner asks in a small, sore-sounding voice. “I mean…”
His voice gives way to silence. M’gann doesn’t look, just holds herself still. Unease creeps into every muscle almost instantly–oh. Breathe, she reminds herself, letting air out.
“...Can see you on infrared,” Conner then mutters.
Oh! Hel-lo, Megan! With a thought, M’gann drops her camouflage and herself, feet quickly falling to the cement below. Bioship lowers herself in kind to be boarded; M'gann sends her a mental impression of a pat, lacing an apology into the gesture. [Not yet.] She bites her lip. [I'm not… ready to turn around yet.]
“Are you–” Conner chokes out the words. M’gann winces. Faintly, Conner growls. “You okay?”
“I’m fine!” M’gann blurts out. “And reportedly, so is Harjavti–both President Harjavti and his brother Sumaan, who took the bullet for him–in the shoulder, and reports are that his condition is stable. That’s–not the same as us going to check ourselves, of course, but–but it’s something! Right?” She’s been speaking out loud now for all of six months–hearing her now, she thinks, anyone would know it. “We ended the threat. That was our mission!” It’s as clinical a response as she can stomach, and a spoonful of cheerleader cheer helps it come out–it’s nothing Megan would ever say, but if she did, it’s how she would say it, M’gann thinks.
And it’s said to Bioship, who already knows. M’gann shifts her weight between her feet. Her hands find their way back to her elbows. I’m not ready to turn around yet. She blinks–no more tears, just the faint stinging that always lingers in her eyes after she cries, like using up all her lacrimal fluid at once leaves them dry. It’s how her new eyes are supposed to work–she thinks. She’s never asked. For now, she wipes the cold stickiness from her cheeks and wills the dilated blood vessels of her eyes to shrink back down. Any redness there, he doesn’t need to see–she doesn’t want him to see, though some small part of her thinks that she should want it.
With everything else aside–his pain, the mission, even Superman–with just her own thoughts in her head, she can’t ignore the one that wants to spring out from her mouth:
I didn’t deserve to be yelled at like that.
Or the one that holds it back:
Did I?
“Did I…”
M’gann jumps. Conner’s voice puts him inches away, right behind her. Bioship alerts her late, and with a tinge of confusion in her mental nudge as to whether she was supposed to do so at all–M’gann sends back an assurance of no, despite the strange burst of adrenaline that persists in her bloodstream. She puts a hand to her heart.
“Did I… make you cry?”
M’gann lets out a gasp and then pins her mouth shut. …Yes. No. Maybe? I mean, I–yes, I was crying, but I stopped now, and even when I was, I–I didn’t blame you. I–not really, I–blamed Superman, even though that’s–not really fair either, but–but…
M’gann lets out a determined huff of a sigh. …But I really should be saying all of this out loud.
“Um…” M’gann’s fingers find the ends of her hair sticking out from the hood she’d shifted into just to hide. With another sigh and with both hands, she lowers the hood from her head. [I don’t like lying to my boyfriend,] she’d boldly claimed right to Superman’s face–she could shift red back into her eyes now, but it wouldn’t be the same. A cover-up of a cover-up. Lie on top of a lie. [And they say I’m pathological,] Psimon had sneered at her before she–
–Enough. He deserved what he got, M'gann tells herself, just like Conner would.
Maybe even if he knew the whole truth.
But she can never take that chance.
M’gann then turns around, determinedly steady on her human-shaped feet. “Uh… what was the question?”
Her low-hanging gaze gets stuck on Conner’s hands, picking out grit and little slips of red. Blood, she knows. Before any other thought, there’s pure relief that it isn’t his.
"I said did I–make you cry, M'gann," Conner says, choking on his own urgency. "Tell me."
M'gann's eyes trail up to his chest, to the ever-familiar red S-Shield. Superman is a distant thought–when she sees it, it’s Conner. “I… guess. But, it’s fine, I mean… I’m not… upset like I was, I just...” She doesn’t want to talk about this. She doesn’t want to keep feeling this. All she wants is to lay her head there onto Conner's chest. She pushes away the fantasy, and instead, she makes herself meet his eyes.
Thin smears of red cut across his cheeks and temples, nicking the edges of his eyes. More blood. M’gann squints just to be sure–it’s on the surface of his skin only, disappearing into his sheen of sweat when the moonlight hits it right–no wounds, but it’s evidence, all the same. The streaks go up and away from his eyes–she knows what from them must have trailed down.
M’gann throws her hand up to Conner’s cheek. “Oh, Conner, you–”
“Don’t.” Conner backs out of the touch.
M’gann steps forward, re-closing the gap between them. “But–”
“No.” Eyes puffy as they narrow, Conner looks away. “Don’t.”
“Conner, I can tell you’ve been crying, too, so let me–”
“–No!”
Conner meets her eyes with fire in his. M’gann drops her hands to her sides. Again, she thinks immediately, before she can decide exactly how she wants to feel. He’s doing it again.
[He’s not usually like this,] she’d said to Superman. [I mean, he used to be, but recently he’s been much better.]
She was telling the truth.
“I just… wanted to help… make you feel better,” M’gann fumbles out. It’s more truth, at least. “Can… can’t I do that?”
Conner shoves his fists into his pockets. With the hunch of his shoulders, his jacket curls and hardens around him like a shell. “Thought on missions you were my teammate, not my girlfriend, right?” he half-spits, half-mutters, his collar jutted up to his mouth. “You’re not my keeper, either.” He stomps as he turns away. Gray dust from the busted wall puffs off of his shoulder then disperses into the air.
Her own words against her–ugh. She didn’t mean for them to mean this. There’s got to be a way out of this–Hello, Megan. “But… the mission is over,” M'gann starts optimistically. “So… I go back to being your girlfriend now. Right?” There, she thinks. I solved it.
No answer. Just Conner’s back to her, fists at his sides.
“Love you?” the projection snarls, the worst anger in Conner's face that she has ever seen–a cold, closed disgust. “I can’t even look at you–”
Stop it, stop it, stop it, M’gann stamps into her mind, shutting out the memory–it wasn’t real, it’s not real, and it’s not this. This isn’t about her. This isn’t even about them. It’s about him and Superman.
“R-right?” M’gann repeats, voice cracking all the same. No, she tells her body–this body that’s supposed to be hers–but tears are already past her aching cheeks again, breaking at the edge of her jaw before telekinesis can pull them back. She holds her head up and sniffles, biting her lip and wincing to keep more tears from leaking out from her eyes. This isn’t about her.
It just–feels like–
–Conner whips around. There’s no anger in his face–M’gann sees that much before a wave of raw, wounded fear from him crashes through her chest and sets her eyes to overflow. She squeezes her eyes shut against more pooling heat and gulps for breath. Her throat itches for gills. A pressure like the ocean all at once threatens to force her down small, too small, compress her lungs, burst her heart–
“–S-stop.”
Conner’s voice opens her eyes.
“Don’t–” he chokes out.
She’s never seen his eyes this red. Even the blast from Ivo’s M.O.N.Q.I.s had healed by the time she and Kaldur had reached Gotham. She pants for breath now, panic in her chest like she’s never cried before, like her body already forgot–like her body is wrong, and wasn’t built for this–
“Don’t,” Conner tries again, softer now. “Don’t cry.” His eyes slip from her face. M’gann’s panting breaks in a shudder, but the next gasp pulls more air in. “Please,” Conner all but whispers. M’gann watches his hands curl and uncurl into fists, grasping and wringing at air–she feels his touch. A memory, a projection, an intent, a want–his, hers–it’s all everything. It’s all in her head.
The waves inside her shift. Physical and psychic separate–she finds the line. His feelings, her feelings; they feel the same, but with focus, she can source them, sort them out. Him–the look on his face stings in her chest, but that’s her–sympathy. It’s as far as she can let herself reach. She roots herself in place and forms the wall again. Letting out a sigh, she feels her shoulders slump with relief.
Her heart still lurches for him.
Her body follows suit. She’s tired of–whatever this is. Fighting. It should be so easy to fix–that is, if she can do anything. If she can do anything, she will do anything. Give everything. M’gann dives into Conner’s chest and wraps her arms around him, as tightly as she wants his arms around her. A little sound escapes his throat–a gulp or a gasp–it barely registers as the warmth of his form against hers sends a fuzzy wave through her head. A good kind–the best kind. She breathes out and feels her body shape itself into him, everything inside her going soft.
Conner’s shoulders twitch, and then his body goes stiff. M’gann catches herself starting to slide down his chest; she holds him tighter and holds herself in place. Her mind stays closed, but her ear against his heart tells her that his pulse is racing–another twitch in his arms, and the sound Conner makes this time is an unmistakable growl.
M’gann lets go. Her arms come back to her feeling too long, her chest too hard, all bone. Stepping back, she teeters on her feet again, forgetting the shape of them, how they’re meant to fit against the ground. Her body feels wrong again, when different would only be wrong-er. She looks to Conner’s eyes for answers.
Conner still won’t look at her.
“C-Conner?” Stay whelmed, M’gann chides herself. Her mind itches to open to his again. Use words, out loud. Talk about this. She takes a breath. “Why are you–”
“–Why did you just hug me,” Conner grunts out, more accusation than question.
M’gann stiffens at his tone. A swirl starts up again inside her, this time all her own. Why wouldn’t I? Why wouldn’t you want me to? Why are you mad at me? That thought comes hot, scratches something brittle in her chest. Why are you mad at me? Heat sparks in her cheeks–she bites her lip and dampens the thought. “Be-cause… you… felt–er–” She’s not supposed to know. She’s not supposed to feel him. “Looked like you needed it,” she responds, honestly but hollowly. It isn’t the whole truth. “And because I… wanted to,” she adds.
Selfish? Maybe.
Intrusive? She didn’t know. He seems to think so.
True? Yes. Too much so, maybe. In whatever way it’s wrong, Conner doesn’t like the answer. His creased brow and bared teeth say it for him first; he growls again then meets her eyes.
“I could have hurt you.”
With no forethought, M’gann scoffs. Conner’s eyes widen at her. Why did I… oh, no. Am I being dismissive? “You didn’t,” she adds quickly. Hello, Megan–that's worse.
“That’s not the point,” Conner snarls out–not that she can blame him. “I almost killed someone.”
So? M’gann’s mind supplies as an immediate response–this time, she catches herself. “You didn’t!” she manages to instead repeat. That's not better! she laments in her head. I’m making this worse, aren’t I?
Conner confirms her fear. His eyes break from hers, wincing as if from too sharp a light, even for him. His head drops low, as does his voice. “We don’t know that.”
“I–” Hadn't thought of that, M’gann realizes. Her heart skips a beat. She’s felt death–not it, really, but the before and after was–enough. Henry Yarrow died in her hands and on her link. She felt panic, but only when she first connected–the disconnect was quick, and involuntary on her part–just a slip, fade, and tapering off into nothing, nothing for her to feel. The bullet in his chest came from his own gun. If he hadn’t fired it at Robin, Conner wouldn’t have had to deflect it.
Is this really so different? M’gann thinks, almost says. The assassin brought it on himself–not that he is dead. She bites her lip. Please. She wills a small prayer to C’eridy’all, or any Earth god listening–to Superman, even, that he got the assassin treated in time. Not for the assassin’s sake. For Conner’s.
She has felt death–Artemis’s, Kaldur’s, Robin’s, Wally’s, and Conner’s. All almost just as real. All her fault. Pain then nothing. Her death was just pain, even if not all her own–her own drowned it out fast, but guilt twinged the hand cutting into her chest. Hurting someone else can hurt, too, she notes with a desperate calm, trying to find some conclusion to reach to make the thoughts pass. Even if it’s truly needed–
Her head and stomach churn. Too many thoughts. Too much at once. Too much at once, too much at once! M’gann chirps at herself in Megan’s voice inside her head, letting the world behind her eyes go fuzzy and bright, not sharp and dark. That’s so me. Her hands–are her hands, and they find her elbows.
“I guess–we don't know," she finally chokes out, shaking her head. Her mouth twitches with a smile–something has to make this better. Her hands want Conner. They break from her elbows. Head spinning, she swings for his sleeves–intact or shredded, she doesn’t care–"But–”
“No buts.” Conner’s fists go up. M’gann’s fingers close around air as Conner takes one, two steps back from her. His fists fall back to his sides, clenching tighter, tension rippling visibly up his exposed arm. “No excuses. Not for me.” He turns his back to her. “Not from you.”
“W-what–” Not again–please. M’gann shoves her palm into her cheek and pins her fingertips to her forehead. Her eyes burn. Her head pounds. A trickle of heat runs through her mind, in counterflow to her own thoughts–tears threaten to spill out, and Conner’s emotions threaten to spill in. The walls of her mind are so weak–and so dangerous. She forces a breath out, and another in. Focus. Ask the question. “W-what does that mean?”
“...I made you cry,” Conner says simply, voice barely above a whisper.
“So?” This time, she doesn’t–can’t–hold it back; the word bursts out from her mouth. She doesn't try to take it back–they have to get past this. He has to get past this. “Superman made you cry.”
That sound again, straight from his throat, a quiet choke–then on his heel, Conner turns and roars, “What did I say?!”
M’gann’s own throat goes tight, but she keeps herself from flinching. A wave of emotion cuts right through her defenses, but it’s a backwards anger; it hits her coldly, brushes the edges of her perception, then swirls back into Conner. The vacuum pull of it nearly knocks her forward–she braces the treads of her stealth-suited feet against the concrete. He doesn’t want her gone–he’s not angry at her. He wants her mad at him. It’s more than she should know–or something so obvious, she already should have known without her psychic senses. It doesn’t matter. She can’t ignore it now. “Conner, please–”
“–Why are you okay with this?!”
I’m not, M’gann thinks, and then it happens. Tears. The last thing she wants to feel again–the last thing Conner needs to see. M’gann squeezes her eyes shut again, forcing pressure down on them to stop the trickle. Human anatomy comes with the reflex to cry but no easy way to turn it off. It’s not fair. Chemicals in her brain want to override her willpower–so does Conner, without even meaning to.
She’s supposed to be stronger than this.
She’s supposed to be stronger than this, and she knows that she is.
M’gann opens her eyes. She swallows, and a weight drops through and out of her chest. One blink, and her eyes are clear, and Conner is clear in them. She meets the blue of his eyes like the blue of the Earth outside Bioship’s window six Earth months ago–no matter what, this is where she belongs.
“You’re strong, and I’m stubborn,” he’d said.
Together.
“Conner, I love you,” M’gann says simply.
“Don’t say tha–”
“–Don’t tell me not to say it. I mean it. I still mean it, just like I meant it earlier, at the sanctuary. I won’t let you put yourself down like this. Not as your teammate, or your girlfriend.” Holding his stare, M’gann reaches for his hand again. Her fingertips touch down on rough, sticky knuckles–Conner flinches and steps back, a hurt, wary look in his eye. M’gann places her hands on her hips instead. “All that happened is that you went a little overboard.”
“‘A little’?” Conner huffs. M’gann’s hands don’t leave her hips. She straightens her back and her knees–cheer formation, if that’s what it takes. Conner looks her up and down, brow furrowed tight, then shrugs, sliding his fists into his pockets. “Huh. Guess that’s my ‘a little.’”
No! Ugh. M’gann’s hands drop from her hips. "Fine. A lot overboard! But I know that’s not your normal.” M’gann returns her hands to her hips. “So would Kaldur, Robin, Wally, Artemis… anyone who’s taken time to get to know you, who you really are.”
Conner scoffs then goes small again inside his jacket, collar returning to his mouth. “Superman saw all he needed to see,” he murmurs.
“Superman…!” M’gann bites her lip and stomps. “Well, if–if–Superman thinks badly of you after today, then he only has himself to–”
“–Then he’s right.”
“And I’m wrong?”
“You…”
The word leaves Conner’s mouth, and like an exhale, the anger slips out of Conner’s face. He closes his mouth and sighs, shoulders slumping. His whole form seems to soften in the moonlight–bright, blurring edges–M’gann blinks away anything else it could be, batting air-dried lashes. Letting her arms fall back to her sides, she dares a step closer to him. Conner’s eyes flicker down to the concrete. A strange warmth starts in M’gann’s chest–he looks so sad, and so sweet. It doesn’t make her happy, but it makes her love him–more, somehow, or just as a reminder. He looks so… himself. Another step, and their hands are close enough to slip into each other, no need to reach. Hers waits an inch away from his. She looks up into his eyes, and he eclipses the moon, and every star in the sky. Every distant sun.
And I’m wrong? she repeats in thought, just at the edge of her own psyche. She doesn’t project the thought out into his mind; instead, she thinks the answer into her eyes for him to see and know. Absolutely not. Not about you.
Conner stares back into her eyes until he winces, then he drops his gaze, brow furrowing. He’s close enough that when he swallows, M’gann can see the shadows shift over his throat–a second later, he’s one step’s worth of distance back from her. M’gann blinks, shaking her head. The warm haze behind her eyes shuts off like a valve; the absence of it sparks a shiver up her spine. “...Yeah. You are,” Conner responds with one last look straight into her eyes. Another step, and his back is to her now, again, this time receding against a darker sky.
“Ah! I-I-I…”
M’gann’s mouth gapes open but barely takes in air. Her eyes want to burn and leak one more time, like something’s broken behind them–like anything Conner says or does will start it now–like he is right, and she is wrong. M’gann’s mouth closes on clenching teeth. No. I’m not crying again. She takes a step forward instead, then another–by the third step, she’s airborne, and barely a thought later, she’s right over Conner’s head.
“You don’t… really think that,” she calls down softly.
“Don’t tell me what I think,” Conner snaps back, lowering his head and picking up his pace.
M’gann speeds up in kind. “I’m not trying to tell you what you think, Conner!”
“You’re tryin’ to tell me what to think, then,” Conner grumbles.
“I’m just trying to tell you you’re–that if you ask me, I think you’re wrong!”
“I didn’t ask you.” Conner slows. From her vantage point, M’gann sees it: only a few more steps until he’s over the edge and down off the roof again. Behind them, Bioship lifts herself back up into the air and sends a soft pulse through M’gann’s head: now? [No, girl, sorry, please wait–] M’gann shakes her head. No. No more waiting. Conner stops, but M’gann keeps flying–skirting right past him, she turns and places herself between him and the drop, arms crossed. Conner stumbles back a step, jerking his head away from her. I’m ending this now, M'gann thinks, narrowing her eyes at Conner even if he won't look. In her mind, it's no longer a question:
“I don’t deserve to be treated like this.”
Wow, out-loud and everything, she can almost hear Zatanna say. Conner meets her eyes with shock in his own but fight in his furrowed brow and pouting lip. M'gann does her best to hold his stare, but his face as a target makes the words feel less real, barely even as substantial as an unshared thought. He breaks the stare first, and she almost takes the statement back.
Almost.
“No, you don’t,” Conner says, turning his back to her again.
M’gann huffs and folds her arms together tighter, pulling folds of her cloak into her grip. No, I don't–w-wait. M’gann gasps. That wasn’t him arguing with–
“You deserve a better boyfriend.”
M’gann’s heart swells and stings beneath her crossed arms. “C-Conner…” She feels herself drop an inch down in the air. You’re talking about you. The words almost leave her mouth simply as a reminder, a correction–he doesn’t sound like he’s even talking about himself. Anymore. Already. Like he’s already decided. She didn’t–doesn’t–want that–anything but that–
M’gann takes in a breath and lets it out slow. He didn’t… he didn’t mean it.
“Conner, I…” M’gann floats back to the edge of the rooftop, touching her toes back down onto concrete and pinning herself there. “I want you. I love you.” She keeps her voice soft and low, letting it rasp a bit–any stronger, and she knows he’ll hear it crack, and she will, too. She reaches for his back, but stops short of touching him. She’s not sure if she’s supposed to, allowed to now. The rules keep changing. She drops her hand and holds it herself instead, wringing at the sleeve over her wrist. “So do I… do I deserve to lose you?”
The beam rips through Conner’s bones, and then the weight of pain turns paper-light–ashes, then less than ashes–numbness, then nothing. A hole. M’gann feels it in her head, then it blasts through her heart–
–Not that kind of “lose”! M’gann snaps at herself. That one was my fault. It was all my fault. M’gann huffs through gritted teeth, squeezes her eyes shut, and shoves the memory as far back into her thoughts as it will go. Not now. Not ever. Enough.
She opens her eyes to Conner facing her again but stepping back from her, his eyes down past her feet at the rooftop’s edge. Gravity rushes down M’gann’s form in a cold wave, the breeze pushing her backward in her head even as she holds herself in place. On a spike of adrenaline, her thoughts go simple. She’ll block his jump. Telekinesis, or her own body. She can fly; he can’t. I can stop him–he can’t stop me. His body angles down, no sound, no warning, but she’s ready–
–Slowly, carefully, like the concrete or the air itself could crack at one wrong move, Conner sits himself down in place, folding his legs under him.
Oh. M’gann’s own feet leave the roof, braced legs going limp with relief.
She drifts to his side and drops herself next to him, crossing her legs to match his. Conner rubs the hunch of his bent neck, his body going almost spherical–Sphere folds up to rest, she thinks, so maybe this is… good? Reddish-brown smudges linger on the skin just above his collar as his hand goes to his lap, his elbows to his knees. Without thinking, M’gann lays her hand over the back of his neck and wipes at the dirt–the blood–with her thumb, feeling sweat and rising hairs, prickling skin–then a twitch up his spine.
“Oh,” she half-whispers, then snatches her hand away. She wipes her thumb on the inside of her cloak. “I'm–sorry.”
Conner shakes his head. Clasping a hand around his wrist, he stares down at his lap and lets out a whisper-quiet sigh through his nose. His expression–what M'gann can see of it past his collar–loses intensity by the second but doesn't relax, just turns blank, distant, like he's staring straight down to the ground stories below. M'gann fights the urge to reach over again and wiggle her hand under his face. The silence cramps her crossed legs, makes all her toes and fingers clench.
She's tried–she's trying–but no part of her, body or mind, knows what to do. Every part of her just knows that she has to do something.
“I just…"
"Oh!" Oops–shush! M'gann slaps a hand over her mouth.
Conner holds himself silent for what feels like too long, however long it is–like a drawn-in breath being held underwater, even with super-strength–her fault? She can't tell. Her hand gets too comfortable over her mouth–if Conner looks, she'll look horrified, not patient. She quickly swipes it back down from her face, pulling it tight into a fist in her lap to be covered by her other hand, her other fist, as she waits. The second Conner does look, her hands relax. There’s the blue, even if only out of the corner of his eye, even if only peeking up from his slumped head–even framed by what she knows rubbed off from his hands when he wiped his own tears. There he is. There he is.
Conner’s eyes dart away, landing somewhere between the sky and the ground. "...I just don’t get how you can look at me like that,” he mutters.
“Like…” M’gann feels her brow furrow–eyes widening in realization, she tries to pull her face back to how it was seconds before. She must have been smiling, she realizes. She rubs her lips together into a lopsided line. “Like what?” she asks with a soft laugh, partly to sell the smile, partly in spite of herself.
“Same as you always do,” Conner responds.
“Oh.”
The hand around Conner’s wrist clenches it tight, shadows rippling across his knuckles.
M’gann’s own hands sit uselessly in her lap, pinching at her sleeves. “Well… well, of course I can. Nothing about tonight changes anything, Conner, about how I see you, or… about who you are.”
“‘Course it does.” Conner’s hunched back goes as stiff and straight as a board. His eyes are somewhere else again, somewhere she can’t see–telescopic, microscopic, and infrared vision all at once, staring out, piercing inward, burning hot. “It should. I’m supposed to be over my Cadmus programming. They wanted a weapon, they got it.”
“You’re not a weapon, and they don’t have you, Conner.” M’gann’s hand is halfway to his arm before she remembers; she makes it drop to the concrete instead, pressing her palm down firmly into rough and cold and willing the touch of her hand to reach him. Not as a psychic act. Just a wish. “Not anymore. And never again,” she adds, pressing warmth and softness into her voice instead, as much as she can.
“Yeah, well, maybe they should.” Conner sinks into himself again, curling tight. “I lost control,” he says, voice thin and muffled by his chin against his own chest. “Didn’t even feel like it. It just felt… right. Like it’s what I’m supposed to do, what I’m supposed to be.”
“You’re not.”
“Says you.”
“Don’t I get a say in it?”
Conner’s only response is a growl. M’gann bites her lip. Not the greatest comeback, she laments to herself. And we’re fighting. Again. Her teeth release her lip to clamp down on her tongue instead. How do I win an argument with someone so set on losing? Her tongue starts to prickle under the pressure of her teeth. It shouldn’t be a fight, or about me winning it–I just want him to understand. Her hands wring together in her lap. She’s left with, stuck with words.
Her own and his.
“You said it… felt right,” M’gann starts tenuously. “But now it… clearly doesn’t, I-I mean, you pretty clearly feel now that it was wrong, know it was wrong…” It’s a concession. I don’t think you did anything wrong won’t help–that much, she knows–and after I don’t deserve to be treated like this, she can’t even claim it as true. “You regret it now, right? Doesn’t that count for something?”
Conner’s head tilts up promisingly, his shoulders slipping up then back. His eyes stay narrow, and razor-sharp with light, as he keeps them looking out into the hazy darkness.
“...Doesn’t change what happened,” he says quietly.
“No, it… it doesn’t,” M’gann concedes. “But it… can change what it means. About you, it’d… be different if you weren’t upset, if it didn’t bother you, if you were proud of it… you’d be different. So this is you, you can’t control now what’s already happened, but you can control how you feel about it–I mean…” M’gann’s eyes trail away from him, tracing the edge of the rooftop down to the corner in the distance. “As much as anyone can control how they feel. I know I sometimes have… trouble… too.” [No, we need to end this now,] J’onn’s voice commanded, cutting through the chaos seconds before contact, every second of it real until it was too real to stand. “You–” M’gann swallows, throat turning tight. “You… wouldn’t say I’m better off as someone else’s weapon, would you?”
“No!” Conner’s voice hits her ear like a hot shock of breath from inches, not feet, away. “Why would I?” he adds; M’gann flinches, blinks, but doesn’t look. The crackle in his voice alone puts sympathetic tears back in her eyes. Even blocking him off psychically, she can still feel the anger, the hurt.
“After…” Stop it, M’gann chides–begs–herself. It’s too much, too much her for this, too much for him or anyone else to be burdened with. But there’s no other way for her to put it. There’s no other way she can think to connect. “After the exercise–”
“–That wasn’t your fault.”
Conner cuts her off on the end of an exhale, his own voice breathless as he rushes the words out of his mouth. M’gann pauses, then remembers to breathe back in. “I… I didn’t do it on purpose, but it still–”
“–Nobody blamed you. Not J’onn, not Batman.” Denim and leather shuffle and shift, and Conner’s voice gets both closer and softer. “Not me.”
“I-I know–” Her height above ground catches up with her, every inch all at once, like it never has before–a thin edge of light gray, then murky darkness below–M’gann shuts her eyes. The tears budding out aren’t for him now, just her own. She tilts her head back to keep them from falling–her head tells her she will instead–both palms to the concrete, she shakes her head, fighting back against the feeling. “B-but I just,” she hiccups out, voice turning higher and thinner the more tightly-shut she forces her eyes. “I just mean–”
“–M’gann.”
Something locks around her elbow with a vice-like grip–"Agh!” flies out of M’gann’s mouth on reflex, the sharp clench of her tendons shocking her eyes open. The world stops spinning–it all shrinks down into the hand now, even as its touch goes soft, light, then limp before he lets her go completely. Oh no. No, no, nononono–
–Conner is already on his feet, veins popping in his wrist from the clenched-tight fist at his side. “Conner, no,” M’gann tries, a featherlight feeling in her head as she rises too high too fast, feet flailing in the air for leverage to push off from. Conner’s feet crack the concrete, every footfall another crunch as he stomps toward the corner of the roof, a blade’s tip of light against wide open dark. Every crunch gusts out heat, like cracks in the earth itself–the world pulls down. Below is all spinning, and a sick kind of inviting–she feels the need, the hope, the disappointment for one act that will fix things, when the jump won't do it–
M'gann's toes curl in the air. What jump? I’m not going to jump. No–she gasps. This isn't me! Not again–both of us.
I have to stop this.
M’gann’s eyes lock onto Conner–the hunch of his back is her target, and she has to get there now. Her body foregoes physics; sheer will sends her flying. The wind seethes in her ears, then chokes out on impact, just as a deep “umph” hits the inside of her own chest like a heartbeat. Without another thought, M'gann slings her arms around Conner’s shoulders. Conner freezes. M’gann hooks her hands together by the fingertips over his chest and pulls him back and up, straightening his spine, rocking him back on his heels and nearly knocking him off his feet. She sets her forehead against the top of his head and holds him still. It should be a hug. Even on her end, it feels like an attack. But her head, heart, and gut all tell her: anything less won’t be enough.
“Let go,” Conner grunts out, his neck and shoulders trembling with tension in her grip.
“No,” M’gann huffs into the pocket of space between her face and the back of his neck. Conner shivers, breath sharp and wet like a sob, and then his shoulders go slack. M’gann loosens her grip enough for her to slip down and set her head into the crook of his neck. Her arms slide down to his waist, where he’s narrow enough for them to lock around and press into him. Stretching one leg down, she taps toes to the concrete–it’s all the anchoring she needs now. He’s not jumping with her. And if he does jump, he’s not jumping without her.
M’gann feels the growl start in Conner’s chest before his voice reaches his breath. “You can’t help me, and I can’t help you,” he spits out through audibly bared teeth.
M’gann just turns her head to the side to press her temple into his neck instead, letting cold air wash back over her face. “That’s not true. That’s what I was trying to say before I…” She gulps. “...Got… lost in thought. That wasn’t very helpful, but I know what… could be. What I wanted to say. After the exercise, Black Canary said I needed to practice until I gained control and regained my confidence. That’s all you need, too! I…” M’gann drops her right hand past her left elbow until she finds his exposed arm, and–ignoring his twitch–she runs her fingers down his skin. “...Have to believe that, for you and for me.”
Her fingertips can only reach as far as a knuckle or two. She ponders an extra arm–some strange growth from her hip–or willfully lengthened fingers–an all-too-familiar claw–before sliding her hand back up his wrist, finding the space just below his elbow, and squeezing as hard as she can. It’s nowhere close to his grip, she knows, but she prays it makes her point: do it again. I’ll do it, too. I know you’re only ever trying to show me that you love me. I don’t care if you do it wrong, just please let me try, too. I love you. I love you. Every part of her form curls tighter around him, down to the wrenching of her brow as she tries to push the thought out and into him without using her mind. I love you.
M’gann hears a sniffle, and then Conner’s hand is over hers–barely, practically hovering, but the warmth of it seeps down into her skin. M’gann touches her other foot down to the concrete. Conner lets his hand weigh more substantially onto hers, and his thumb nudges its way in between her palm and his wrist. He sets his fingertips over hers, then with the faintest suggestion of pressure, wordlessly asks to fit them between hers. M’gann loosens her grip enough to oblige. His fingers start to curl around her own, and at first, M’gann holds her hand still in gentle resistance; when his fingers slip through and under to wrap around her hand, however, she lets herself let go.
“Mmm,” M’gann hums and sighs into his back, feeling her cheek curve against the leather as she smiles. “See?”
“It’s…” Conner starts, his voice a throaty whisper.
“...Yes?”
Conner’s hand tightens around hers for a second–a twitch, almost like a fluke. M’gann feels his fingers slacken and a tremor run up his arm instead. “It’s not that simple,” Conner rasps, gravel in his voice. “You don’t even know everything that’s wrong with me.”
M’gann curls her fingers into his, squeezing his rough, sticky knuckles. “I know that nothing is.”
“I don’t wanna hear that,” Conner huffs. “Tell me something I’m gonna believe.”
“I love you.” Pushing herself up onto the tips of her toes, she props her chin up on Conner’s shoulder. “Do you believe that?”
“Yeah, I guess.”
“You… you guess?”
Conner sighs a low, rumbling sigh, and turns M’gann’s hand around in his. From over his shoulder, M’gann sees her own green palm nestled into his; his thumb pins hers back, opening her hand wider. Conner’s breath catches in his throat. M’gann squints and sees it: a smudge of reddish brown barely peeking out from her palm’s creases and shadows. Conner yanks his fingers out from between hers–friction like struck matchsticks leaves the back of her hand hot. She grasps for his hand, but he drops it away. Rolling his shoulders, he tries to shrug her off like a coat–her body yields to the push, arms unlocking from around him, but he takes one step away from her, and she latches her hand around his wrist.
No guessing. I love you. “Conner.”
Conner huffs, then turns his head enough to the side to address her, just not look at her. "I got it on you."
"I got it on me, and I'd do it again!" M'gann declares. Hello, Megan, you're talking about blood, and someone else's to boot.
“Uh…”
“I… would rather not, but… my point is…” M’gann shakes her head. “I’m not taking it back!”
“Fine," Conner says. "Guess I don’t guess. You…"
Yes!
Conner says nothing, seemingly losing the thought. M'gann knows better.
"Say it." M’gann gives his wrist a slow, firm squeeze. "Please."
"...You love me, I just don’t get why,” Conner fires back, adding the latter part fast before the first can sound like a victory.
Undaunted, M’gann wraps both her hands around his wrist and gives it a light tug. “Because you’re you,” she insists.
Conner scoffs. “Gonna need a better reason than that.”
“I can't give a better reason when it’s the best reason there is.” Keeping hold of Conner’s wrist, M’gann steps out from behind him to face him instead. Lifting up Conner's hand, she delicately presses it like a flower–like Quraci poison sumac, even, if she had gotten the chance–between both of hers.
“Stop it,” Conner says, almost listlessly now, the least fight in it yet out of any of his objections.
“Well, why?” she asks.
Conner’s head droops, but his face is tight again, eyes narrowed in a wince. “Because I can hurt you.”
“You already said that. It didn’t convince me the first time.” M’gann says. “Why would it now?”
“Your arm,” Conner answers.
“It’s fine. All you really did was surprise me.” The really makes it not a lie, M’gann decides. “And you snapped me out of a… well, something I needed to be snapped out of.” Just like a hand through her chest–stop, M’gann pleads with herself, for her sake and his, everyone’s–stop! “I want to help you, too,” she says in defiance of her own shortened breath, her own skipped heartbeat. “Is… pushing me away really helping?”
“No,” Conner responds immediately. The way the line of his mouth skews and his eyes almost cross tells M’gann he may have meant to lie, or at least think before answering.
M’gann can’t help but smile. A reflex. A natural reaction. She’ll never be able to look at him long without smiling again. And you don't get why I love you? she thinks at him. Isn’t it obvious?
Conner doesn’t hear her–of course–but her smile is enough to put a pleading look in his eyes for the split second before his eyes dart away, and his mouth curls into a firm grimace. “But you’re not–making it easier,” Conner then says. “‘Cuz you’re wrong. I–just–look. I don’t–I don’t like it. I’m not gonna let you just–like it was nothing to you, and nothing coming from me, and nothing you say is gonna change what could’ve happened when you don’t even care– ”
“C-Conner, I’m–not even sure what you’re talking about, but of course I care about–”
“–Exactly.”
“Exactly what?”
Conner growls, his shoulders hunching up. “I was overprotective after the Reds. I get it. But why did–” The taut line of his mouth quivers. “Why did that bother you more than me trying to hurt you?!”
A prickling rush of anger brushes the edges of M'gann's psyche, leaving her cheeks hot. This time, it is aimed at her–in part. The wave recedes quickly, sucking back towards Conner and crackling in place around him. M'gann blinks herself out of her wide-eyed stare and makes the glare on Conner's face make sense in her head. It's more anger at himself. She takes a breath and shakes her head. “Conner, you’ve… never tried to hurt me.”
Conner’s glare turns no less intense but shifts to an almost pleading look, eyes turning liquid bright as the creases beneath them only darken. The wave from him sinks dizzyingly low. Hand to her head, M’gann tries to both think and not think about it. It’s no clue she should have, and even though she has it, it doesn’t help.
Until the low wave dips completely out of her perception for a moment, and the familiar chill up her spine solves it for her. That blankness. Hello, Megan.
“Wait, you… you mean in the alley?” M’gann asks. “You weren’t trying to hurt me. I know that.”
I know too much about that–
“–No, you don’t. You have no idea what’s going on–I mean it.” Conner’s hand goes to his hip, fingers curling at the top of his pocket. “There’s no way you could.”
“A-actually, I…” Shouldn’t, but I– “Do, sort of, but…” M’gann swallows. “But only by accident, I promise.”
Conner’s hand drops to his side, and the crackling around him starts to billow, burst. “You read my mind?”
“No! I–” On reflex, M’gann steps back as if the heat from him is physical. “–Made no attempt to try to read your thoughts without you knowing, and I didn’t read your thoughts, but I… could overhear, almost, some feelings, w-without trying, I…” M’gann sighs. “I’m… still… I’m not sure how to say this… but I'm not–” Completely in control–no. Used to things on Earth–as if I ever liked how things were on M’arzz. “On M’ar–” The slip makes her pause. She’s on Earth now. She can say it like an Earthling, because it’s there and she’s here. “On… M-Mars, there’s a… basic shield up around every Martian’s mind. Most intense emotions don’t get broadcasted onto the psychic plane unless it’s very much on purpose. On Earth… no one really has the power for that same kind of shield–no non-psychic, anyway. Instead of a two-way closed connection, I have to… block it out from my end, if it’s… loud enough. I… really thought I was better at it by now–even before coming to Earth, I had to–” –Hel-lo, Megan. T-M-I! “I–well, I… I couldn’t block out your emotions. It’s true, I… I don’t know exactly what you were thinking, but… I know how you were feeling. The most detail I get is some very strong intent–a-and I wasn't quite getting that from you, back there, but–but that's how I know you absolutely weren't trying to hurt me, you just… wanted me to leave. I mean–” A laugh breaks out of her, quick and shaky and breathless. “That was clear enough from what you were expressing out loud, of course, but… a-as for the rest, the waves of it are like, well, um…” She tries to weave her hand through the air to illustrate–immediately, the wiggle motion of her wrist feels silly. And inadequate. For what she felt from him, she’d almost have to dance–the most joyless dance she could imagine. The clearest way to show that pain, Conner already performed himself: a fist into a wall. “I’ll… stop,” she assures him, pulling her hand into a still, tight fist instead, and putting it to her chest. “But it… it comes and goes, and there was enough of it coming that I… I just couldn’t ignore it.” The last words tumble out of her in dismay, the force of the sigh that follows shoving her head and shoulders down. “Does…” She catches her breath and raises her head, biting her lip. “...Does any of that make sense?”
Conner’s stare softens but turns inward again; his mind still feels like a campfire that she’s put herself too close to. Roaring ripples, tight and contained, reach her head and echo in her chest, and little sparks of thought break off and flick out in her direction, nicking her skin. Whens and whats and whys–slips of anger, patters of shame, and a rush of something she can’t discern that only makes her mind want to focus, hone in and lean in, sink into his. If any time’s the time to stop, it’s now, M’gann, if you are really sorry–with a lump of guilt in her throat, she forces a wall back down at the edge of her mind.
“What you said about…”
M’gann gulps.
“...Havin’ a shield…” Conner continues, putting a hand to his wrist.
“Y-yes?”
Conner’s hand slides up his exposed arm, then back down, clutching his wrist. “...Never mind. Doesn’t matter.” Both his hands drop to his sides as loosely curling fists. “I… really made you… have t’feel all that, too?”
Oh, Conner. Hand at her chest, M’gann barely keeps herself from whimpering the thought aloud. “You didn’t make me feel anything, Conner,” she says instead, keeping her voice sturdy. “Or… at worst, I guess you could say you made me feel… powerless to help.”
Which, to be honest, I still feel, M’gann thinks, almost says, but the fists at Conner’s sides tighten, and M’gann hears a faint rumble of a growl.
“That’s not it,” Conner says firmly.
“You… don’t believe me?” M’gann asks with a determined neutrality.
“I yelled at you and made you cry. Don’t try to tell me that was anything else.”
The hand at M’gann’s chest slides down to her side. Oh. Right. She’d almost forgotten, almost lost track. Between his emotions and her own–between his emotions and her own, there’s her, and she’s supposed to be strong. She is strong. “Okay, you’re right,” M’gann says coolly. “I know how upset you were, and that it… wasn’t really my fault, but that it came out in how you were responding to me. And that made me upset, too, even without adding in what I was feeling psychically. But you’re so clearly sorry for that, that I really didn’t even see the point in–”
“–Don't.” Conner slips his hands into his pockets and shrugs the shoulders of his jacket up to his ears again, crumpling himself up into another ball. “Don’t forgive me this time."
“I–wh-what?”
“I keep saying sorry,” Conner rasps, his eyes thin and hot in a glare pointed straight down at the concrete, or his own shoes. “I'm tired of it. Doesn’t mean anything if I just keep messing up. Just keeps letting me off the hook 'til I do it again.” His fists shove against the insides of his pockets, giving the leather of his jacket a hard thwap. “Like being sorry is my excuse,” he grumbles into his own shoulder, sneering off at nothing–nothing but himself, M’gann knows, as if his reflection was there in the dark, hazy void. And as if he would recognize it.
If he could see himself through her eyes now, M’gann thinks, he’d never say anything like that again. This should be so simple. I love you. And I… I know you love me. Why is this so hard?
“Conner…” It’s a start. Next step: she brings herself back close to him. Conner takes a step back–she matches it. His hands stay in his pockets–with nothing else to hold, she wraps her hands around her own arms, crossing her arms loosely over her chest. His chest rises and falls under the armor of his jacket, the red S-Shield pulsing like a bare open heart. Love, love. For a moment, there’s nothing else to feel. The next moment, there’s love and everything else. M’gann sighs, feeling herself blinking too much. Tears could always come back. “I… want to forgive you,” she says softly to keep herself steady. “Actually, I… I already do. But if I don’t get to, then… then this will never go away, will it? And that means I have to keep feeling it, too. Please don't… do that to me, too. Me or yourself." Slowly, she brings her eyes back up to his, meeting his widening stare with a soft squint and fluttering lashes, trying to push a feeling out to him with just her eyes, not her mind: love, of course, and hope.
Please let this be enough, she prays again to whoever may be listening now, but most of all, to him.
“...Okay?” she adds, tilting her head to the side.
A bare, open sadness takes hold in Conner’s expression–M’gann feels it with her eyes before any wave can reach her mind. His liquid bright eyes slowly sink down past hers, lips parting and quivering in voiceless words. As softly as she can manage, her own mouth merely patting at air itself, M’gann starts to ask him what?–he finds his voice first, even if only a piece of it, raspy and low.
“...I’m sorry.”
A smile breaks instantly across M’gann’s face. A laugh wants to bubble up and pop out of her mouth–release and relief–but she holds it back, locking it behind the suddenly-aching curves of her cheeks. He still needs her to be soft. Looking at his eyes, it’s easy. “I forgive you,” she says, and Conner’s eyes shoot right back up to hers. For a moment, he just stares, but then with a flick of his eyes off to the side, he nods faintly.
M’gann then watches his eyes watch her hand rise to his cheek again. Letting it hover inches from his skin, she waits for an objection. Conner neither nods nor shakes his head. She waits. Conner waits, too, unblinking. M’gann touches her hand down onto the side of his face. At first, there’s the flinch–M’gann barely feels it as more than a twitch at the corner of Conner’s mouth, but she hears his breath catch. Before she can pull back, though, Conner’s heavy, wincing eyes close completely, and his head starts to droop into her hand. He leans his cheek into the curve of her palm and sighs deeply, puffing his breath onto her wrist.
Her lips want to kiss him everywhere, not just his lips. Her body wants to press a million I love you’s, a million blessings, a million pieces of anything and everything good inside her into his skin, take away every spec of blood, sweat, dirt, or tears. Her body doesn’t move. The weight of his head in her hand is enough to paralyze her, and she feels her mouth gaping open as she stares into his surrendering face, cold air on her tongue. Dampness from the edge of his closed eyelids reaches the tip of M’gann’s thumb–the moment she feels it, the paralysis breaks. She strokes the top of his cheek, slowly but steadily, until the tear streak is gone, soaked into the pad of her thumb. Conner furrows his brow briefly but doesn’t pull away, just sighs again into her hand.
Thank you, M’gann thinks to him. For this. For the honor.
Keeping his head in her hand, Conner slowly opens his eyes. He dodges her stare at first, darting his eyes out towards other rooftops, then down at her feet and his own. At any moment, he could raise his head and disconnect, but he doesn’t–instead, his eyes rise to hers full of need. Thinking softness and light, M’gann feels the smile that her face gives him, sees it in her mind’s eye: it’s perfect. It has to be. It couldn’t feel more important, and more real.
Conner doesn’t smile back, but he nods against her hand. His own hand inches up to hers; his fingertips brush her knuckles and the bone of her wrist, then fall back away. M’gann feels a twitch at the edge of his jaw, the top of his throat–he swallows, frown deepening, and lifts his head from her hand. Again, M’gann doesn’t move. Whether or not she even could, she doesn’t know–she doesn’t think to try. Her hand stays empty in the air as Conner steps back, rubs at his wrist, and then slips his hands back into his pockets.
Was that… really enough? M’gann thinks, watching Conner’s eyes watch her again. The look on his face turns from solemn to confused, then critical–his brow furrows, then one eyebrow quirks up at her. M’gann drops her hand back to her side. The fingers of both her hands reach back and curl into small fistfuls of her cloak, wringing at the folds.
“You, uh.” Conner’s voice comes out rough but thin, like speech is new again for him. The sound of it clearly bothers him; he clears his throat with a low, sharp cough behind a tightly-closed mouth, and his hand leaves his pocket to rub the back of his neck. “Guess we’re–done here. You, uh, wanna go back and… y’know.” Another cough, and his eyes are too bright in the darkness again. “See your… family?”
M’gann jolts. “M-my–”
“–S’what they called you, right?” Conner says, kicking the heel of his boot against the concrete, knocking bits of rubble loose from the sole. “Thought it… makes you happy, so.” He slips his hand back into his pocket and shrugs.
"My daughter Megan"–the memory gives M’gann fresh goosebumps, gets her heart racing in her chest again. But Superman–it isn't fair. This feeling in her heart, in her bones–Conner deserves it, too. They both have the Team–they both have friends–it's like a family, but–
–But now, she has something that he doesn't. Especially now. Superman saw a fluke, a slip, an overreaction–Conner couldn't be more sorry, and Superman may never know. May never care to learn–he said he wanted to get to know Conner, but that was before. It's not fair. It's not–
"–M'gann?"
"Ah! Um…" M'gann blinks the tension out of her face, taking in a deep breath to regain her focus. "I… no, um… we… need to get back to the Cave to give our report to Batman, after all." She flexes a smile at Conner to cover her thoughts. I won't make you have to face another reminder of what's hurting you, she decides, half-regretting even stopping by the sanctuary at all–though her heart pulls back in the other direction. "My daughter Megan." Marie's hand on her shoulder. Garfield bounding out of the house to greet them–both of them, her and Conner. That was for him, too. She's not sure how much it counts. Did you feel it? she wants to ask him, mind-to-mind. They love you, too. I love you, too. I love you. She huffs a sigh out through her nose, biting the insides of her lips, and stomps her flat heel against the concrete. How do I help you?
"...Right," Conner says lowly, making M'gann jump back out of her head again, her teeth unclenching. Her eyes dart straight to his–with a furrowed brow and lopsided frown, he looks her up and down for a moment, then sighs, rolling his eyes. "That'll be fun. I guess unless Superman's already reported me himself."
"Superman, a reporter?" flops out of M'gann's mouth. Oh no. "Oh, no, I–can't imagine. I mean, after all, he–"
"–Probably hasn't had the chance. Still busy with the assassin."
"R-right, there you go, uh–oh. Right."
Conner shrugs faintly in response, but he’s already inside himself again, too far for her to feel any real reaction–not that she’s supposed to. She reaches for him nonetheless, if only by hand. He doesn’t flinch as her fingers brush his arm. It’s almost not a good thing. He looks at her hand like it’s a leaf blowing past him in the wind. She presses her hand firmly into his shoulder, curling her fingers and stroking the leather with her thumb.
What she does feel is a wind. A short puff of air comes from behind him, kicking up tendrils of her hair. Bioship lifts herself off the surface of the rooftop and nudges herself forward a few feet, then touches back down, waiting. Even without optical sensors that readily resemble eyes, Bioship makes her stare felt. M’gann re-links with her. [Sorry, girl, I know you’ve been ready to go, and we’ve been ignoring you. We just… needed to talk first.]
Conner shrugs off M’gann’s hand, turns, and starts a silent walk towards Bioship.
Not that I’m… sure it really helped, M’gann adds quietly to herself.
Bioship lifts up into the air again, spins herself around, and sets herself back down, opening her back port and letting down the ramp. M’gann swipes down the hairs that fly into her face and fights the urge to pull her hood back up. She might as well hide if she can’t do any good, if she can’t change anything. It’s an uncomfortably familiar thought. Something opens inside her chest, some small part of her that she thought had been kept closed, pushed out of her new anatomy. A cold feeling leaks out.
The hands on either side of her neck fluff her hair out instead, pulling the end of every last strand out from under her cloak. On Mars, she gave up–on everything but Earth. She’s here, she fights. Whatever that fight looks like. This one is love. She flies up to Conner’s side. Once her feet touch back down beside his, she matches his pace. Her hand goes to his back.
I forgive you for everything that happened, not just what happened with me. Even though the assassin won’t. Even if Superman never does.
Conner’s eyes stay on the flickering, bobbing shadows of his and her footsteps.
I just… don't know how to make that matter to you.
M’gann lets her hand slip from Conner’s back.
But I won't stop trying.
She wraps her hand around his at his side, threading her fingers through.
Conner slows, but doesn’t stop. His fingers don’t curl into hers, but he doesn’t pull away.
“The attempt on President Harjavti’s life was a failure.”
The screen is blank and it’s full. The dots go nowhere but don’t stop.
“Do not mistake the enemy’s failure for your own success,” Batman then says, white eyelets of his mask going narrow. “That Rumaan and Sumaan Harjavti are alive comes down to sheer force of luck.”
The buzzing sits in his head, a low crackling, a muffled hissing.
Right as “luck” hits, M’gann’s heart unmistakably skips a beat. Out of the corner of his eye, Conner checks on her–if not for her heartbeat, he may not have caught the anxious twitch in her brow. The empty space on his bare wrist itches, a brief lick of flame from under his skin. One spark. That’s all it takes.
“Luck? You mean Superman,” Conner spits back at Batman, clenching his fist and letting the resulting pulse stifle the itch. “You didn’t trust us to begin with. Why else send him?”
Soft fuzz. It’s comfortable.
“...So in a way, I guess you could say Sumaan Harjavti saved the day!” M’gann’s voice filters in over the fuzz.
“Oh, c’mon. That was luck.”
That isn’t her. It’s almost, but it isn’t.
“I, um, well, it–”
That’s her.
Batman only glares, but he has a heart, too–M’gann’s thumps louder, but Conner hears something. M’gann’s heels clicking against the metal floor block out any further hint of the sound. He hears her “hm!” at herself, if only to herself.
“Was Superman meant to be part of the mission?” M’gann then asks Batman, her voice barely above a murmur, but her eyes so resolute that, on reflex, Conner gulps.
“Superman was on his own mission,” Batman says.
Whatever that means. Conner spins the TV remote in his hand, each of its four corners taking turns pressing into his palm.
“I’m willing to bet no assassin shows up to the job with one bullet in the gun, if you catch my drift,” Marie Logan says, voice tinged with its own static.
“I recognize the likelihood that Superman was a distraction,” Batman says, “but one by now you should be able to handle.”
There’s nothing to say. He’s right.
“But…”
M’gann wobbles on her feet; Conner watches her gloved hands form tightly-curled fists at her sides, and then she stands firm. “We did end the threat.”
We–
“Oh, well, yes–that was Conner!” M’gann cheers.
The remote’s plastic body clicks in Conner’s grip. Her hand, too. He thought he saw it, and had to know. He was right. The blood. Just from touching him–just from him letting her.
“Your objective is always to neutralize the enemy.” Batman takes one step towards M’gann. Another spark. “Not eliminate.”
"...And?" says one of the voices coming from M'gann's room–almost hers, again, but off. Metallic tinge. Slightly too deep.
“Oh, it's–nothing, just…" M'gann that time. It's clear.
“She didn’t do it.” Ignoring the quiet gasp behind him, Conner stomps his way to the center of the mission room floor. “You’re talking to me,” he tells Batman, gesturing with his thumb at himself, at the red S-Shield on his own chest–whatever it should mean, it’s his. It’s him.
"I guess… between him and Superman, I just…” M’gann pauses, and a soft thumping starts in the back of Conner’s head, faster than the static can ripple. The pocket at his hip is empty, its secret buried under layers of black t-shirts. All the power left to reach for is in small rubbery buttons.
Batman meets him where he stands and glowers down at him. “I know” is all he says.
“...Don’t think I managed to be much help at all,” M’gann says.
Conner throws the remote out of his hand. One weak bounce across the couch cushions, and the remote lands face-up with a dull thup. NO SIGNAL stays up on the screen.
[Conner?! Conner!] M’gann’s voice brings him back. “Oh, Conner, you–” M’gann’s hand goes to his cheek–he just doesn’t let it touch him. “The mission is over. So I go back to being your girlfriend now. Right?” She almost cries again, but just hugs him instead. "Conner, I love you," she says simply. "Don't tell me not to say it." He keeps pushing–she keeps catching him. "I want you. I love you. Do I... deserve to lose you?" She looks at him like there's nothing wrong with him. “You regret it now, right? Doesn’t that count for something? If it didn’t bother you, if you were proud of it… you’d be different. So this is you." She says it like it's a good thing.
Then one touch and she screams, and he knows she’s wrong. He knows he’s wrong. He’s wrong. He’s wrong–
“–Oh, please. You’re sixteen,” Marie says, her signal momentarily cutting in crystal clear. “Both of you. It’s a miracle at your age if you even do your homework.”
"Oh–ohh," M’gann responds, sounding confused. Conner takes a breath and hears himself shudder. His eyes and cheeks are hot again, like heat vision trying to burn through. He knows, of course, that it isn't that–instead, it's an ability that he's never wanted. Not even a power. A weakness. He checks his cheek–it's dry, at least.
"You are doing your homework, right?" Marie then asks. “I get your bit about civics credit was just cover for ‘the press’.”
Conner's brow furrows. What's it to you?
"Oh, of course!" M'gann responds eagerly. “It’s–” Thump. Deep screech of a zipper. A quick, thin scraping noise–the clatter of tiny firecrackers going off. Paper avalanche. “–Um, somewhere in all this–” Papers start shuffling, scritching and flapping against each other. “I-I mean, it is all this. Civics is just, well…” More smacking–Conner winces, tries to put the static buzz back closer in his ears to soften the blows. “A-actually, Mr. Carr doesn’t really give a lot of homework, he just tells us to watch the news, um…”
“Uh-huh. This is starting to sound flimsy,” Marie says.
She said she doesn’t have any civics homework, Conner thinks, gritting his teeth. Down the back of his neck and inside his wrists, his skin prickles.
“I just… wasn’t expecting you to ask!” M’gann keeps her cheer, but Conner hears the anxious edge in her voice. “I…”
“...Uh-huh?”
Conner waits. Without a thought, his eyes are off the screen and down the hall. No X-ray vision–he can only peer so far before hitting solid rock.
“C’mon,” Marie prods, but there’s a laugh in it. Not at M’gann–Conner thinks. But M’gann’s heart fills the silence with quietly-building adrenaline. The static is gone. His head is just her.
“I don’t… need… any help with my homework,” M’gann finally says.
She sounds… sorry.
“If–if I knew, I would have… saved it,” she adds. A tiny crinkle, then a deep breath. “Is… is that really not something that just happens on TV?”
Something cold and heavy drops down into Conner’s chest. He slumps back into the crook of the couch. Right. Kids and parents. His eyes fall to the uncurling fists atop his knees. That ‘quality time’ I’ve heard so much about. “I try not to live or die over getting his approval,” Icicle Jr. had said–good thing I don’t either, I guess, or else I’d be dead, Conner thinks.
“...They didn’t want you, did they?”
Conner’s breath catches; M’gann’s high, sharp gasp cuts through his head, right through a string behind his eyes. Heat rushes to the surface, blistering–his eyes water to cool it down, make it stop, get it out–he knows what this is, again. He holds his eyes shut and clamps a hand around his head to hold it in.
M’gann sniffles. “W-what?” she responds, her wet breath shaking with a stifled sob–whether Marie hears it, Conner doesn’t know. All he knows is that he does.
He’s on his feet in an instant. Wolf raises his head and tilts it at him, twitching an ear.
“If I hear it, I know you do,” Conner mutters to him. “We proved that," he adds, remembering being the one thing alive with less than four legs that can hear this frequency, Superboy–
–Luthor in his head, even as a memory. Conner growls and shakes the thought out.
“Please, don’t take this the wrong way, I’m still not mad,” Marie’s voice flickers into his head instead. “But accepting Gar and me as family was one thing–”
“Me accepting you?” M’gann interjects, a spike in her heartbeat and urgency in her voice. “I–uh–mmn. I’m sorry. …Go on?”
“But M’gann, I’m not psychic, but I didn’t just hear that ‘really’ in my head when I called you my daughter. I felt it. And I know this much: a kid that needed to hear someone say they’re theirs that badly hasn’t heard it enough before.”
That ‘really’ in her head–private link, Conner deduces–not that any of it wasn’t obvious. He’d said it himself: this makes her happy. They make her happy. And he makes her–cry. Hide. Yelp. Make excuses for him. Talk him down. Hold his hand.
Wolf grumbles and sets his head back to the floor. His eyes stay on Conner. Conner drops back down onto the couch cushions, bouncing the remote again with no effect on the static. He might as well not move. He’s not needed in there.
“I… wouldn’t say that it was… quite like that…” M’gann’s voice returns to his ears, quiet but steady. Careful. “Me and… them. I just… wasn’t… what they… thought I would be. I’m… I’m not what they thought I would be. But… this is… who I am. I… I tried. I think… they tried, too, but it–just–” Paper crackles, crumples. “It just wasn’t going to work.” M’gann’s voice flickers between a whisper and a sob. “Nothing was–”
“–You can stop there, Megan. I’m sorry,” Marie says, her voice a static-tinged but still soft rasp. “I know exactly what you’re talking about.”
“...Really?”
Conner hears–and feels–that one this time. Right along the insides of his arms. The empty space between them. The pockets of air left in his hands as his fingers curl into fists.
“Really,” Marie answers back. “Your friends accept you, and so do Gar and I. That is family.”
“Thank you,” M’gann says, just like before. It plays back in Conner’s head like an old tape, her leaving his side to go running into Marie’s arms. He can see the smile on her face now, without X-ray vision and without budging. If he were a good boyfriend, he thinks, the mental picture wouldn’t hurt. He’d be smiling, too. A knot forms in his chest–it pulls at the inside of his stomach. Nothing’s wrong–with any of this–her there, her happy, him here, Superman–somewhere. Anywhere but here. It’s how it is. It’s how it’s going to be. His head already accepts that. The tension is still in his chest. The empty, quivering ache is still right under his ribs–
–Superman is anywhere but here, and he should be, too. Conner rises to his feet again. He’s going. He’s gone.
“Fin-ished!” says a third voice from M’gann’s room–familiar enough, but neither M’gann’s nor Marie’s. Process of elimination says it’s Gar. “Hey, sis!” confirms it.
“Hi, Garfield,” M’gann responds, sounding breathless with relief. Good, Conner thinks, walking past the remote, then past Wolf, ignoring Wolf’s groan of confusion. Good for her. “What’s that?” he still hears M’gann ask. It doesn’t matter. He needs air. Even just in his head, he can see the sky above the mountain, and see himself in Supercycle taking off. Moon, sun, even stars–doesn’t matter. Just the darkness. Just going and gone.
“My report,” he catches Gar saying proudly. “Where’s Superboy?”
Conner freezes in his tracks.
“Uh-um, Conner?” M’gann half-yelps.
Marie chuckles. “Are there any other Superboys we should know about?”
No, Conner thinks immediately. Project Match sits in a pod, frozen over like a corpse. There was nothing he could do, nothing he can do–even with the pulsing in his wrist–
“–N-no, of course not!” M’gann’s anxious laugh pings against the rock walls around him like a bullet bouncing off the back of his head. “He’s just…” Her heartbeat starts to trickle in like a release from a valve. Like blood from a wound. "He's, um, just… after today, and everything, he just… well…"
"...Is he okay?" Marie asks lowly.
"Don't answer that," Conner blurts out, as if him hearing her means that she can hear him. And if she can feel him… he's not sure what she's feeling. "The most detail I get is some very strong intent," she'd said, "and I wasn't quite getting that from you." He'd wanted gone. He wanted to just disappear–he's still here, listening to them. And listening to himself ruin it for her without even trying.
He knows that's the last thing that he wants to do.
Conner pivots and runs. He's no Wally, but he clears the living room in seconds, passing Wolf's swishing tail and the still-buzzing screen. He turns down the hall, grazing the entrance with his shoulder–if anything crumbles, he doesn't hear it, and doesn't stop to look.
I'm coming.
"I… think… he…"
M'gann stalls as if she knows. Conner passes several unclaimed rooms, then Zatanna's–he stops himself at M'gann's with a palm against the rock wall, keeping his head from colliding with the metal door. He pictures his head busting through it anyway–yeah, I'm fine, why wouldn't I be? he says to himself sarcastically, imagining saying it to them.
Then Conner freezes, staring down his own shadow and his own blurred reflection in the door's smooth silver surface. Even without that kind of entrance, he still has to say something.
"Um…" M'gann keeps stalling.
Conner growls at his own hesitance, then he knocks on M'gann's door, giving it two quick taps with the side of his fist. The door ripples like a clap of thunder. M'gann gasps. Papers rustle and crash.
Conner slaps his hand against his forehead, runs it down over his eyes. The ripple leaves a ringing both in his head and in the air above it, reaching up to the ceiling. Stupid–
"–Are… we a secret all of a sudden?" he hears Marie ask.
"Oh, no!" M'gann responds quickly. "Just, um, force of habit, b-but that's him now, I bet!" Papers swish and scritch. "Uh, come in!"
The ringing fades out from the impact, leaving M'gann's rippling heartbeat as the only thunder in Conner's ears. Of course it's me, he thinks, gritting his teeth. No one else could get this wrong, too. All the same, he floats his hand over the control panel.
Blinking cursor, blank lines, number pad.
"It's locked," Conner grunts out at M'gann through the door.
"Oh! Um–" A soft thud, a dull creaking. "Right," M'gann whispers under her breath. "Uh, coming!" she then calls out for everyone to hear. Footsteps bring her breath and heartbeat closer. Conner huffs out a sigh and makes his jaw unclench. Whatever she sees when she opens the door, whatever they'll see, it will be wrong. But it will be him.
Get what you ask for, he tries in his head, readying his defense. If they want him as a part of this, if she still wants him as a boyfriend–
–The door slides open. M'gann, in her human skin, looks straight up into his eyes, pure astonishment in her face. Her eyes look bright but sore, red at their edges. Her cheeks are red, and redder as he stares. He almost looks away, but M'gann gives him a nod into her room, a smile settling into the corners of her closing mouth before her lower lip disappears under her teeth.
"I, um, it's them," she then says just above a whisper, releasing her lip. "Do you…"
"Yeah, fine," Conner responds with a glance toward her lamp, to EARTH above her bed in all red letters–anywhere else. He braces himself to be led again, just like earlier, when she called him her boyfriend in front of that reporter–no matter what, his hand cannot move. She'll sense what's still in him the moment her touch makes him flinch. Not the Shield–everything else. Everything the Shield drowns out.
M'gann just steps aside, her hands around each other, her smile aimed at her laptop screen. Her heart gives a momentary spike, then it's normal again. What's behind her smile, he can't tell from his angle–what she's sensed from him–
–Maybe nothing. Maybe this just is normal, his normal.
"Yay, Superboy!" Gar cheers from the screen, green eyes wide and bright. Conner just stares for a moment, forgetting to match the joy to the name and the name to himself in his head. Above Gar, Marie smiles but co*cks an eyebrow at him. Conner blinks himself back to alertness. Right, he reminds himself, don't blow this for M'gann.
"Hi," he says aloud flatly, raising his hand in a gesture like a wave. Immediately, he knows it's not enough.
Immediately, it's accepted anyway. "We stole your idea about writing a report on the impeachment hearings," Marie says. "Gar's been working on his."
"M'gann made that up," Conner supplies factually. He hears how it sounds. “I mean... don't give me credit," he adds.
Marie chuckles. "Extra or otherwise, huh?" She lifts a sheet of paper into view and plucks her glasses up from the neck of her shirt. Opening them up and slipping them onto her face, she looks at the paper and gives a lopsided smirk. "None for you either," she says, looking down at Gar.
"What?" Gar snatches the paper back from her and looks at it, eyes darting across its surface. “What’s wrong with it?”
"One sentence is not a report," Marie states coolly as she hangs her glasses back on her shirt.
M'gann's stifled giggle hits Conner's ear, a low, soft fluttering of her voice.
Gar crosses his arms, smugly tilting his head up in the air. "Then it's a headline," he counters. “You know, like a report, but the only part anybody reads.”
M'gann snorts. Her hand flies up to cover her nose.
“Mm-hmm,” Marie hums. Both the corner of her mouth and her eyebrow twitch. Her blue eyes keep it strange, but in some form, Conner’s seen that face before–M’gann’s form. Over Wally’s shoulder, just a hint of sarcasm–humoring, but kind.
Conner blinks, and blue eyes win out. Marie is alien again–no matter what he is, or half-is. Yeah. ‘Family resemblance’ all right, he remarks to himself in his head. The moon fills in the space around the thought, carrying along Superman’s descending silhouette and the no in Superman’s eyes when Conner raised his S-Shield. Family resemblance–nothing he can do about that, he thinks.
"...If it's a headline," Marie then says, "then it's too long."
Gar flops his arms down at his sides. Through the laptop speakers, the sheet of paper in his hand gives a weak patter as it snaps against air. "I thought it was too short!"
"For a report," Marie says, plainly smiling now. "Not to mention it's embellished."
M'gann lets out a full laugh. The delight in her eyes–maybe he has seen it, or come close. First day of school, cheerleading tryout. Close, but not close enough–he can’t dismiss it, can’t look away. She doesn’t even notice his stare. He’s barely even there.
"What does it say?" M'gann asks, bouncing on her heels.
Marie smiles at her, very gently rolling her eyes. “All it says is ‘Superboy punched the bad guy in the face.’”
Fire erupts under Conner’s skin. He tried. It’s done. This time, he is gone. M’gann gasps discreetly enough, but she feels it, he’s sure–“Exactly, what’s wrong with that?” Gar quips. Good. They don’t know. Keep it that way. He moves his feet, starts to turn–
–M’gann’s hand on his back freezes him.
“For starters, that’s adding detail you can’t confirm,” Marie says.
Gar scoffs. “I totally can! Hey, Super–”
“–Number two, for a report on the impeachment hearings, I’m not hearing a lot of impeachment.”
“Meh, that’s the boring stuff," Gar says with a wave.
M’gann’s fingertips press into his back. Conner waits for a flicker in his head. Tell me something that’s going to convince me to stay, he dares her. Tell me it’s okay. His throat turns tight. Please.
He thinks it, but he hates the thought. It doesn’t matter–her touch inside his mind never comes. It’s fine, Conner thinks to himself. Wouldn’t’ve believed it anyway.
“Oh, you’re right,” Marie says to Gar teasingly. “It is the grown-up stuff.”
Gar looks at Marie with wide eyes, then crosses his arms, crumpling the paper between them and his chest. "Fiiiine,” he lets out, throwing his head back and rolling his eyes.
Marie gestures for the paper back. Gar keeps one arm to his chest as he hands it to her, then keeps his arms crossed as he waits. Marie smoothes the paper's creases out. “Call it a rough draft,” she says, scratching the top of Gar’s head. Instantly, he drops the pout–like it’s rehearsed, or programmed in–just instinct–he ducks and grins, wiggling his head in time with the touch. “We’ll save it for later.”
“Ohh-kaaay." Grinning as he moans, Gar accepts the paper back. He runs out of frame, the sound of no more than two footfalls picked up onto the call before he’s gone, but Marie stays looking in his direction, smiling warmly.
It's real life, not a TV show, but it’s on the other side of a screen, and Conner knows: just seeing this can make M’gann feel like a part of it. Or at least, like she could be. It’s how she lived before. It’s why she’s here now. It’s the only reason he has her: that hope–that need–but that hope for something better.
He tries to feel it. He can’t. Whatever is supposed to be in him to make him able, Cadmus left it out. A weapon didn’t–doesn’t–need it.
Marie looks at him and M’gann again. “I know, he’s eight. But he likes acting like an adult so much that sometimes I like calling his bluff.” She winks, then shrugs faintly. “Consequence of no time around kids his own age, I'm afraid.”
Conner’s eyes fall past the laptop screen and down into the fake sky on M’gann’s floor, setting into the empty space between two white star shapes. "Yeah, I know how it is. I'm the only one I know that's eight months. Force-grown in a pod by the bad guys and all that."
Marie says nothing. M'gann sucks in air through her teeth, and her hand at Conner’s back curls around a fistful of his shirt. You wanted me here, Conner throws back at her, still not looking at–or feeling–anyone. The thought bounces against the walls of his own head. This is what you get.
"Eh, Gar was IVF,” Marie then says. “And I've birthed a live oryx by hand that was, let’s say, stuck. There's no way into the world that isn't weird." She hums a laugh. Conner looks up to see her shrug and smirk. "We're just happy you're here. And, if it's any consolation, you're a very mature eight months."
Marie gives him a smile that, seconds ago, was just meant for her son.
"Uh…” Conner’s cheeks turn hot. The words start to sink into his chest–like his insides are all soft and thin, easy to break, ready to dissolve. Seep out. A cut from the right blade, letting heat rise to the edges of his eyes. Conner grits his teeth and swallows, wanting everything steel again, like it’s supposed to be. He forces air in–all he needs–and M’gann’s hand rides the wave of his back, then slides up to his shoulder, rubbing it softly, carefully.
Without looking, he can see her face. Tonight alone, he’s seen the expression enough times to know. She says there’s nothing wrong with him, then acts like he’s about to self-destruct. “Thanks," he says flatly at both her and Marie, if only to get their eyes off of him.
M’gann’s hand goes still, but doesn’t leave his back. “Well, I… I should probably go get dinner started,” she says. “It’s already so late.”
Conner rolls his shoulder forward and steps out of her touch. No. No way I’m letting you let me ruin this. "I'll go," he states. "You don't." It comes out like a command. "...Don't have to, that is," he adds, just to soften it–slightly. He means it: don't leave them. Just let me go.
“You mean no one’s making you dinner?” Marie asks, voice cutting louder through the speakers than before. M’gann’s heartbeat spikes to match it as her hand drops away from him. “The Justice League doesn’t just stash you two away in a cave alone, do they?”
“Oh, no, there’s three of us now!” M’gann assures her. “It’s… not under happy circ*mstances, I'm afraid, but…”
Losing a dad–Conner knows objectively, intellectually, that it hurts. The rest is an empty space inside him that feels like a gap in his DNA. He keeps it empty. Nothing in him that could fit there is anything he wants to feel.
Zatanna had a dad to lose, and had a normal reaction. He’d thought Superman was dead, and all he felt was relief.
“...But we’re… trying to make her feel at home," M'gann continues, "and the rest of the Team hangs out here all the time! It really is like a clubhouse. I… think at first no one wanted to call it that, because it made it sound… less serious, but–”
“–Okay, so I’m hearing a lot of minors and no adult supervision.”
"Oh, no, Red Tornado is our den mother!" M’gann says, clapping her hands together. “He lives upstairs.”
"Red Tornado…” Marie’s own hand rises into frame. “Wait, don't tell me, I'll think of it in a minute."
"Mo-om, c'mon,” Gar calls out from wherever he is. Moments later, he’s back at Marie’s side. "Robot, wind powers. He makes tornadoes! Duh."
"Riiight.” Marie nods solemnly. “And I'm guessing he's purple.”
Gar throws his head back and whines, fists out at his sides. "Moooom!"
Conner waits to hear M’gann laugh again. He almost smiles himself–his mouth seems to remember how, at least, as he feels one corner try to twitch up, but his lips stay heavy and stuck. M’gann stays quiet.
“Where have you been?” Marie asks Gar.
“Looking for Monkey,” Gar responds.
M’gann’s eyes are on Conner instead of the screen. Conner frowns down at her. Look at them, not me, he thinks–if he thinks it hard enough, she’ll hear it, feel it.
M’gann looks back at him with a face he can’t read. A heartbeat starts in his head that could be hers, but feels like his own.
“Well, did you find him?” Marie asks Gar.
Slowly, M'gann's eyes drift away from him, but her brow furrows, and her hand wrings at the fabric of her skirt.
Whatever. Conner looks back at the screen.
Gar’s hands go to his hips. “Nope!” he says with a wide grin.
“Oh, boy.” Marie rolls her eyes back to M’gann and Conner. “Sorry, guys, but I think we have to sign off for the night. But we're not done talking about dinner. Christmas, Eve or Day, both of you, if you're not busy saving the world."
"Really?!" M'gann jumps and latches onto Conner's arm. Conner lets the bounce of her body against his make him sway. It’s easier than a reaction–to her or to the invitation. Too many thoughts crash into each other at once–who should be inviting him, if he even cares about Christmas, if he even belongs there, if he even belongs here, and M'gann holding onto him with both hands–
–M'gann releases his arm.
Fine. One fewer direction for his mind to spin in. His thoughts get simpler from there: her hands were on him. He watches them disappear as she tucks her arms behind her back.
"Really." Marie smiles and nods. "And if you don't mind vegan. Actually–even if you do."
M'gann giggles. It sounds at least half-earnest. One hand leaves her back to pull at a lock of her hair.
"Bye-ye!" Gar waves at the screen with both hands–one for each of them, Conner guesses. It would make sense. "Bye, Superboy! Bye, sis!"
M'gann releases her hair to offer her own wave, though while keeping her hand close to her chest. "Bye, Gar!"
"Bye, you two," Marie says, leaning forward and looking off to the side, squinting.
"Bye, M–mmn." M'gann bites her mouth shut, lips disappearing into a firm line. "Mm… mm-hmm, g-goodbye!"
"Mom, we need a new computer," Gar says, leaning over Marie's shoulder.
"It's just our signal. Miracle it held up this long," Marie responds, still squinting.
Gar's finger nearly pokes through the screen, his shadowed, blurry hand blocking both him and Marie from view. "Right there, Mom," he says, sounding exasperated.
"Gotcha."
They disconnect. On the screen, M'gann's digital reflection knots her hand into her hair and squirms at Conner’s side. Conner just stands there, board-stiff, arms limp. Weapon deactivated.
Eventually, the screen goes black.
“Was… that okay?” M’gann asks him.
Conner’s eyes go to hers on reflex at the sound of her voice, but the moment they connect, he looks away. The mirror in the corner sits at the wrong angle for him to see himself again–or see her, with him. “Don’t ask me,” he mutters back to her. They're your–he swallows–family.
“Oh, no," M'gann says softly. "I meant… for you.”
Conner clenches his teeth. “Yeah, why wouldn’t it be? We were just there this morning.” Thought you said nothing about tonight changes how you see me, he keeps to himself. But his mind is–loud and messy and defective, and the wrong thing could come out of it. The wrong thing could even feel right. “You think that I’m jealous?” he asks her, bracing himself for the answer–if it's yes, he deserves to hear it, to know just how bad he is–
“–N-no!" M'gann's hands fly up in defense. "No, not… exactly that." Her voice is soft again, held back in a muted rasp, as her fingers curl closed. "But… I just thought–”
"–You tell me 'exactly' then," Conner commands her. "What do I feel?”
What am I supposed to feel–
“I-I can’t… tell how you’re feeling, Conner, honestly.” M'gann's lips curl in tight, and there's more light in her eyes than there was a second before. Her cheeks start to redden. Conner holds his breath. M'gann lets hers out heavy through her nose, heaving her shoulders. “That’s why I was asking.”
Conner releases the breath, but his throat stays tight. “I don’t wanna talk about it.” The back of his neck prickles with heat; he only raises his hand to rub it once he’s taken a step away from her, feeling too big and too close. “I’m fine.” Conner’s eyes pick through purple and white carpet fibers again, wander over to M’gann’s black shoes and up her tall white socks before darting back to the black-screened laptop, then the empty mirror. Nothing makes the pulsing any weaker in his ears or in his veins, blood pumping heat into his eyes and cheeks, and something putting the heat into the blood. He can’t blame the Shield. This is him. “I’m fine,” Conner argues at air, and at his own cells. “You gonna try 'n' tell me I’m not?”
His eyes shoot back to M’gann’s face for that. She’s a target, an endpoint. If he hurts her, then he’s right, and he doesn’t have to fight it anymore. She’s strong enough that she might even say it–even if she won’t, her eyes will: I give up. There’s too much wrong with you.
Her eyes almost say half of that: something’s wrong with you. But no matter how he stares, he can’t find the accusation in it. Something’s wrong. That’s all. And absolutely no give up–just a plea. Help me. Help me fix you.
It’s just her expression, not a transmitted thought, but it’s enough. He hit his target. It just doesn’t mean anything gets to stop.
“...I’m sorry,” Conner then says, for her sake.
I want to forgive you, she’d said. Actually, I already do. But if I don’t get to, then…
“...For what?” M’gann asks, a hint of a smile forming at the corner of her mouth.
…Then this will never go away, will it? And that means I have to keep feeling it, too. Please don't… do that to me, too.
The smile is meant. It just isn’t right. “Making you… look at me like that again,” he answers her, barely keeping his eyes on her, fighting the pull to look anywhere else and escape.
“I’m… sorry if I’m looking at you in a bad way.” M’gann turns her head and puts up her hand to block her eyes from his view. Her thumb hides the corner of her mouth, but he sees her smile go flat, her lips firming up into a thin line.
“Stop it,” Conner barks out. M’gann drops the hand on command but keeps her eyes averted, shooting an anxious laugh and a quick shrug of her shoulders towards her room’s back wall instead. Conner holds back a growl. Stop letting me do this. “I’m the one that barged in in the middle of your call.”
M’gann’s head jerks back his way. “Oh, that’s perfectly alright–they were asking about you!”
“I know.”
“Oh–ohh.” Instantly, M’gann’s smile deflates again. “You… heard everything, didn’t you.”
Conner slips his fists into his jean pockets and shrugs. “None of my business. ‘Specially since your door turned out locked.”
You wanted me out, he thinks. It’s not an accusation. Had enough of me for one day. He shrugs again just at the thought. You and me both. A knot still wants to form and rise up through his chest, sit in his throat–I get it, he asserts to himself to force it down.
I’m sorry wants up and out of him instead, just for that. Just for her locking her door, like he demands she have a reason, and that reason is him.
M’gann looks at him with a wince and the slightest jump of her shoulders, and another sorry inside him pushes up against the first. Her head starts to shake. “I… wasn’t trying to keep you out, Conner, actually, I just… hadn’t told you yet, and I wanted to–” She rolls her eyes and bops the side of her head with her palm. “Hel-lo, Megan! It really was silly, wanting to wait for the perfect moment when it’s something as practical as opening a door.”
Conner feels his brow furrow. “Wait for what?”
“Well… your birthday!” M’gann says. “I-I mean not… wait for your birthday to ever let you back into my room–" She lets out a nervous laugh. "But… I finally assigned the passcode to my room, and I wanted to pick numbers that were special, so I… picked ones that would make me think of you, every single day." M’gann blinks fast as her cheeks turn bright red, and she holds her arm by the elbow, swaying in place. Less than an inch above her hand is where he’d made her cry out; Conner’s own hands turn cold as his eyes focus in, picking through orange freckles for any sign of a green bruise. “Not that I… didn’t already,” M’gann continues, “but–”
Suddenly, she goes still. The sound of her voice stops. The sound of her heartbeat doesn’t, but Conner’s own heartbeat spikes inside him–he’s the only one that can hear it, save for Wolf if he’s awake.
“Conner?” M’gann’s hand slips down to her wrist. Conner watches her knuckles flash white as she squeezes it tight. He blinks, shakes his head. Right. Door code. Birthday.
–Birthday?
“Why?” leaves Conner’s mouth the moment it enters his head. It comes out angry. Immediately, M’gann recognizes that–Conner hears it in her heart and sees it on her face. He doesn’t recognize it in himself. It’s not anger at her–at her is something else, something deeper that hurts but makes him feel featherlight all at once–almost like the Shields. The anger is–Cadmus. The pod. Luthor.
There's no way into the world that isn't weird. We're just happy you're here, Marie had said in a voice so close to M'gann's–and that M'gann's is allowed, welcomed to be so close to. Saying the words back to himself, they feel like nothing now.
M'gann wants something special from him, and all he can give her is a start date.
“I don’t have a birthday,” Conner says succinctly, no fight and no sorry. It’s just what he is.
“Of course you do! It’s the first day there was… you in the world! It’s right there in the data Robin accessed from Cadmus the night they found you. He showed me. And it’s the first day of spring, which I think is just… perfect for the person who brought me flowers just this morning.”
M’gann puts her hands to her hips and holds her head up proudly. He didn’t always see it at first–he didn’t know her well enough–but when she talks, smiles like that–sing-song emphasis, big stance–she’s trying to be Megan. Not herself, but what she wants herself to be.
It doesn’t matter what new name for him they settled on. He’s never going to fit into her fantasy.
“That was poison sumac,” Conner reminds her, gritting his teeth.
"Well…" M’gann’s smile deflates, and her brow furrows. "I-I know, b-but–you're not! Not poisonous, or dangerous, and absolutely not–"
–Conner puts up a hand. "I know, don't say it, don't even think it, I'm your boyfriend." He drops the hand, waving in dismissal. “Already heard it.”
“...Did it really not help?”
Conner gulps. “What?”
“I thought… when I kissed you, it… felt like you were smiling.” M’gann’s hand wraps back around her elbow. “And I felt… a warmth coming from you in the link like… you were happy.” She looks straight into his eyes as if looking for confirmation, or denial–Conner just stares. The moment he finally manages to blink, M’gann looks away. “I know what came later, and I know how it hurt, but–” M’gann holds her mouth firm, but her brow quivers. “–But, at the time, I really thought it… if only for the moment.” Her hand rises up and flicks at her bangs, but Conner sees the base of her palm wipe the corner of her eye as she turns her face away. “I know that’s not enough, but I–”
"–It’s–it’s not that,” Conner fumbles out, “I'm just–" Ruining everything again. "Bein' sarcastic, I guess. Forget–or don't. Probably shouldn't. I don't know." All the powers he does have, all the more he can get, all the things in his head, and he can’t do this. "I don't…” The veins in his wrist start to pulsate, and all his muscles tighten up, twisting and throbbing. All he’s good for is force. Not care. Not love–either end of it. “...Know what to say," he admits. "Or do. I just don't–" He walks clenching toes and twitching knees backward until he finds the wall, and the bump against it makes his already shaking breath catch in his throat, makes his voice come out in a loud gulp. He grits his teeth. The growl is already starting behind them–the roar is already in his chest–"I just don't, okay?!"
He yells again. He can see her face in his mind: shocked, scared, hurt. He can’t see it with his eyes–tears flood his vision in an instant. He shuts his eyes. He knows it shows. She’s still right there–closer in his ears than to the rest of him, but she sees him. Her bedroom wall won’t topple down and cover him unless he makes it fall, and he could–just a thrust of his elbow. Only him–no matter what she’d want to try and prove, their training would kick in, and she’d jump back. It wouldn’t crush him–wouldn’t kill him–just hide him. Bury him underground. Hold him. Contain him–
–Two points of pressure hit his chest from the outside. His eyes stay shut, but he gulps for air. The touch lingers, and he knows it, knows the shapes; his heart bounces into M’gann’s palm. M’gann’s hand slides up past his collarbone, stops at his shoulder–his heart keeps going until it hits his throat. M'gann's fingers slip and curl against his shoulder, trying to hang on against his breath–no matter how much it tightens, his chest won’t go still.
Her other hand leaves his chest. She wraps her arm around his, squeezing tight. Something hard and warm hits him next, dead center; M’gann’s breath soaks his skin through his shirt. Conner holds his breath and opens his eyes. It’s what he thought: she’s put her head against him. Her heart and his own beat out of sync, but at the same pace, with the same adrenaline. Bullet-fast. He can’t hold his breath forever–underwater, if his lungs gave up, they’d fill and he’d die. Here, he holds his mouth shut and sucks in air through his nose–her head bounces. Rrht-tht-tht-thih-trr-trr-trr–
–Her head, soft and dry, rides the tremors of his hiccuping breath. He felt the skull crack. He felt the blood seep. It didn’t stop him. The liquid heat in his eyes rushes out and down his cheeks–two tears disappear somewhere into his shirt, but the third leaves a dark spot on the top of M’gann’s head. He shuts his eyes again to hold the rest in. M’gann pushes her head up against the underside of his chin, leaning more of herself into him, giving his chest less room to jump. The hand on his shoulder slides up to the side of his neck–her thumb swipes across the corner of his jaw. He feels her find the wetness–he hears her muffled gasp, and then her whole hand is there, pressed into the side of his face.
His hot, wet cheek melts into the warmth and softness of her palm. His chest goes still. He opens his eyes and lets them rise up to the ceiling, stares into the Cave’s embedded lights until the blurry rings fade and slip out of his vision.
Again, huh.
M’gann slowly disconnects her hand from his face and brings her palm back down over his heart. Conner breathes in deep and huffs out a short, sharp sigh, letting the air pull his chest up and push it out. M’gann doesn’t even notice, or if she does, doesn’t react. Her body stays awkwardly fit against the front of his, no space between his back and the wall for her arms to reach around him. It’s a hug, he knows, just like on the rooftop when she latched onto his back. It’s the best she could manage with him.
I’m not even good at this part, Conner thinks.
The thought makes his body tense against hers. She doesn’t budge. He doesn’t either, just stares down at the top of her head. The tear spot is gone. All that’s there is a ring of light. Conner blinks at his still-stinging eyes and sniffles. The pressure inside his head releases enough that the smell of her shampoo slips in. Lavender, she’s told him before–she’d read somewhere that it makes people happier, she said. Humans, maybe–full humans, at least. If poison sumac can’t hurt him, there’s no chance lavender will help. Nothing will.
“...Not gonna say anything?” Conner decides to say. The sooner she gives up and lets go of him, the better for her.
M'gann's fingers curl, pulling at the fabric of his shirt. "I don't… know what to say or do either, Conner," she murmurs into his chest. "I just know that when I cry… this is all I want."
When I cry, Conner repeats in his head. He knew she knew. Hearing it said still sparks a small panic in him. The wall at his back becomes breakable again; tension ripples up his arms as he holds them stiff and straight at his sides. She’s there–it’s not an option anymore. At least you know how to cry, he thinks at her inside his head. Captain Marvel reached her first–better him than me, Conner thought, still thinks. He knew, they all knew how she felt, all felt it–it still felt like a guess to him. He should have felt like her. Losing everyone, losing himself–it should have hurt.
If he was ever going to cry, that should have been the first time. Not today.
“...I’m sorry that it doesn’t help,” M’gann then says, her voice a tiny shard of glass.
Conner’s breath hitches. His hand flies to the small of her back. Reflex. He keeps his fingers splayed and palm flat against the curve, barely touching her. “Don’t be,” he responds, turning his head to speak out into emptiness instead of into her hair. “It’s not your fault I’m me.”
He says it, then fights the urge to growl at himself. In his head, he knows it’s the problem. Out loud, it doesn’t sound obvious, or adequate. It sounds like an excuse.
“You don’t have to be so hard on yourself,” M’gann then says, voice stronger and clearer as she turns her head in the same direction as his, laying her cheek against his collarbone. “Really. I wish you wouldn’t be.” She sighs quietly, but Conner hears it, feels her breath push into him. “But even saying that, I know, doesn’t do any good.” M’gann’s grip on his shirt slackens. Her hand goes flat against his chest, then starts to slip off. “Should I just… leave you alone? Because I… I just–”
“–I’m right here, aren’t I? You supposed to just ignore me?” Conner puffs up his chest to keep her hand as close as it was. His fingers at her waist close around creases in her shirt. “‘Cuz I wouldn’t expect it. Not from you, anyway.”
You’re not Superman.
M’gann hums. The vibration from her cheek puts a warm buzz in his bones. “I’m glad for that at least. That you know I’ll always keep trying. Honestly, it… makes me feel better about… going after you like this–”
“–Don’t say it like that,” Conner interrupts again, furrowing his brow. Like you did something wrong. It’s me.
“Well, I–I sort of tackled you from behind earlier, and right now I… kinda have you pinned against a wall…”
“Uh, right.” Conner pushes up from the wall. He steps forward, keeping hold of her waist; backwards, M’gann steps with him, keeping her place. The arm she’d locked around his own lets go–he reaches for it back, hand brushing her elbow only to find her hand already reaching up to him, slipping past his shoulder. Over her shoulder, Conner watches her heels leave the floor as she pushes herself up onto her toes. Both her arms wrap around his neck. Her temple leans against the side of his jaw, and her lashes flutter against his cheek. The warmth of her breath hits the lobe of his ear. The sound is close, but soft. Normal.
Conner closes his eyes. It feels right to do. Objections creep back up into his head–he shouldn’t accept this, shouldn’t want this–but he feels her wanting it, too, maybe more–but maybe not–and the thought of forcing her off of him feels like tearing at his own skin. All his hands want to do is travel up her back and into her hair, under her shirt–as far as they can go. As close. As full of her as they can get. The adrenaline in his chest keeps him still. Her heart beats soft and steady against him; the pounding in his head is only his own. She feels too good. He wants her too much. There’s no Shield on him, no Shield near him–
–But the Shield was no excuse. He knows that. What he did with it on, he could have done without it. He could do again. All that can stop him is guilt. Fear. Regret. Nothing outside him, not even Superman. Only what’s in him. Only himself.
“...Black Canary said I needed to practice until I gained control and regained my confidence,” M’gann said. “That’s all you need, too! I…”
M’gann’s touch on his skin. His twitch.
“...Have to believe that, for you and for me.”
“I don’t have any easy answers, Conner,” Canary told him. “But one thing’s clear. Admitting it is the first step.”
Yeah, and what’s the next supposed to be? His beating chest starts to ache. I almost killed someone. I still want to hold M’gann. I still want to be with her. His aching chest starts to quiver, like all that holds him up from the inside is one shaky beam. I still want to be happy.
Outside him, M’gann holds him up, stable on her toes. The fluttering at his cheek stops. Her nose and mouth brush his jaw as she tucks her head under his. The wet heat of her breath against his neck feels like a direct line of oxygen into his throat, his lungs. It wasn’t meant to be a kiss in Atlantis, he knows–not that time, not yet. It was just the way she saved his life.
It felt like both.
He needs it to be both again.
Conner presses his lips into the first part of her they can find: a bed, a mouthful of hair. Lavender quickly fills his head–he doesn’t care what scent it’s supposed to be. It’s her. M’gann’s breath at his neck cuts off in a gasp, whistling through her teeth. At the back of his head, her hand clutches at his hair, curling around a shallow fistful. Her head moves under his; he lifts his lips from her.
For a split second, his eyes open and meet hers, heavy-lidded and bright. Hers close first. No thought passes from her mind to his, but he knows–it’s obvious–there’s no time to overthink, second-guess, change his mind or hers–
–M’gann pushes a kiss into his lips. Conner locks both his arms around her waist and lets himself fall back, meeting the wall with his hips. M’gann moans into his lips; her voice runs down his own throat like syrup. The hand at the back of his head releases its grip, and both her hands touch down delicately onto his shoulders. Conner opens one eye–he knows both should stay closed, but he can’t just feel this. He has to see it. M’gann leans closer into him, stomach soft against his–past the edge of her face, Conner watches her foot pop up into the air behind her. He closes his eye again and breathes deep, breathes more of her in–parts his lips and hers, runs his hand up her back and into her hair, lets the weight fall, lets himself sink. His heart beats hard, but steady. Her heart beats with it. One sound, one pulse, one warmth. Nothing else.
Every gap in him fills in. In a way, he doesn’t feel any different, just better. He’s himself, and he’s hers.
It’s all he needs to be.
M’gann sucks in air sharply through her nose, her chest pulling back from his, and her heart starts to beat one beat ahead of his, then more. Her fingers curl into his sleeves. He knows what it means: he has to stop at some point. Conner raises his head, breaking the kiss. His lips, sore and suddenly cold against air, won’t close at first, leaving his mouth hanging open–he has his own breath to catch, he realizes. He opens his eyes to M’gann’s eyes still closed and both sides of her neck quivering independent of her breath, rows of slits forming and peeking open. They quickly shut and slip back out of existence, her skin smoothing back over. M’gann opens her eyes and lets out a soft pant.
“I was… ready to try to keep going,” she says to him, breaking out into a fluttery laugh that shakes her body in his hands. Her heart is still fast as the laugh tapers off, her lips and cheeks flushed red with warmth.
Conner stares, shuts his mouth, and swallows. Too soon, he tells himself. Give her air.
“...Are you okay?” he then watches her mouth ask him. A moment later, the words catch up. He shakes his head to focus.
“Yeah,” he responds, his eyes darting above then back below hers.
He watches M’gann frown. “Are you sure?”
No. Instant response, but it stays in his head. Nothing’s changed, but he feels better. It’s what he should have wanted–it’s the best that he could hope for. It still feels strange, shameful–letting it go shouldn’t be so easy. But his eyes land on M’gann’s, and she needs an answer. That shouldn’t be so hard.
For more reason than one. “I mean, you would know, right?” Conner says. Her hands still on his shoulders keep him from shrugging.
“I… that’s not how it’s supposed to be. I know that.” M’gann’s eyes drop down to his chest. “I… have control, after all, and I need to exercise it. I… actually haven’t been sensing you psychically since Dhabar. I… wanted to re-establish that boundary–b-but also I… know enough about you, I think, to know, um, Gar’s ‘report’? Maybe… made you feel–”
“–Don’t worry about it.”
“I’m just… sorry if that came at a really bad ti–”
“–I said don’t–” Conner stops himself. Not this again. He unclenches his jaw. “It’s not their fault or yours. It happened. It’s okay. And, to be honest, it…”
M’gann looks straight back up into his eyes. Her face shows no scrutiny, no confusion, just something like awe, like he’s high above her head–like he’s the one of the two of them with the natural ability to fly. This is how it feels, too, huh, Conner thinks, the image prickling at the back of his mind of blue tights and a red cape. No wonder the guy’s a jerk.
“It… kinda doesn’t help if you… keep bringin’ it up,” Conner then admits, forcing himself not to mutter.
M’gann’s eyes spark. “Oh!” Her hands knead his shoulders, mostly clutching at fabric, but the soft pressure of her fingertips sends a shot of both warmth and coolness down his arms, like fresh air on his skin. “I understand,” she says gently. Her eyes and smile make him believe it.
“Thanks,” Conner says in response. At least one of us does, he adds to himself. He still sent a man to the hospital, if not the morgue–
“–Do you want to help me make dinner?” M’gann asks.
“No.” Instant response, this time out loud. Wait.
M’gann tilts her head to the side and furrows her brow, but a hint of a smile stays on her lips.
“...Yes,” Conner then says, re-orienting himself with a pinch of her shirt at her waist. M’gann breaks out in a grin and breathes a laugh.
“It is just you and me tonight, after all,” she then says, raising her hand from his shoulder to tap one finger to his cheek. The touch pulls his mouth into a half-smirk in her hand’s direction. “Since Zatanna is in Gotham, of course.”
Conner frowns. “Of course?”
“You didn’t get her text?" M'gann asks, eyebrows raised. "She said Artemis invited her to the ‘afterparty’ of this boy from her school’s birthday party. We weren’t here, so that’s why we weren’t invited,” she says with a determined nod. “...I think,” she then adds quietly. “But she did send a picture!” M’gann’s hands pat him excitedly then push off from him, fingers curling into open, fluttery fists. “Hold on.”
She says hold on but means let go, Conner realizes as he feels her stepping back. She turns and skips towards her bed, leaving his hands to drop back to his sides. Haven't looked at my phone since we got back, he thinks. Just debrief then showers then to the couch to stare at static and sulk. She doesn't need to know that. M’gann closes her laptop and then gathers up the papers scattered around it, knocking the bottom of the stack in her hands against the top of the laptop to straighten it out. Her fingers pinch and pull at the zipper of her backpack, then flick up as she drops the papers in. The sounds stay normal in his ears–she's here, and he is, too, even if several feet away. His hips stay pinned to the wall; his back hovers inches off of it. He doesn't have to be even several feet away–there are no glass walls around him, and no rubble ready to fall. He stands up straight and makes himself move.
M'gann lifts her backpack then her laptop, then sets them aside, smoothing out her crumpled sheets. She lets out a displeased-sounding hmmn at the flat spot, then lifts her bag again, knocking the pillow behind it against her bed's headboard, where it bounces then flops back into place. "Where did I..." she murmurs under her breath before a sigh. Hands on her hips, she raises her head and steps back from the bed, starting to turn. "Hello, Megan, where does a phone go–ah!"
M'gann's hands fly up at him, her whole body jumping at his presence. Conner keeps himself determinedly still. It's fine, he says to himself, and at her if she could hear it. Just need to learn to... walk louder, I guess.
M'gann's hands fall back onto him, and her shocked-open mouth settles back quickly into a grin. "Hi!"
His heart starts to fill in the sound his feet didn't. She's here, and he is, too, and there's no good way to say he doesn't care about the phone, or parties, or anyone else in the world right now, unless they're in danger and need him more than he needs this. Statistically, someone might–he'll be selfish, then. He doesn't say anything, just puts his hands around M'gann's waist until they cross and lift her closer. His lips touch teeth and intercept a gasp, and then her lips close and press back into his.
Her knee brushes up the outside of his thigh. His stomach clenches. His head spins. Blood rushes out of it to... somewhere else, and on impact, on reflex, he grunts into the kiss. M'gann moans back at him, sending more pulsating warmth down and through him. She pushes her stomach deeper into his, pulling her lips back from his only to take in a shaky breath before resuming the kiss, harder now, fistfuls of his shirt swirling in her hands as she groans, almost whines. Pressure becomes a pull. He feels a thump then slips down, catching himself by one knee at the edge of her mattress. M'gann doesn't stop sinking. Their lips break apart again. Conner groans as their bodies disconnect, save for at the legs. Her knee rubs against his inner thigh now, slow up and slow down, then back up again. Instinctively, his hips rock into the motion, against air. His jeans are a wall.
Conner bites his lips around her name or just a moan. "Mmn." He opens his eyes.
His hands are in her hair. It fans out around her head, her headband slipping up at one end; her eyes are round and dark and bright all at once in his shadow, her lips red and open like ripe fruit, her cheeks pink and orange and gold like a sunrise. The sight of her breath puts the sound of it back in his head: steady, but heavy. With her small jacket flipped open, her chest rises and falls in swells against the inside of her thin white shirt. Her heartbeat ticks inside her chest with urgency, calling him down, calling him closer.
He doesn't move. He thinks to, but nothing happens. M'gann raises her hand and taps fingertips to his lower lip, traces the curve of his chin–he watches her arm moving, her lashes fluttering. Her lips close enough that her breath whisps through her teeth now, still heavy, still hard. He looms over her with all his weight, all his force. Gravity starts a pulse in his palms, his fingertips, his wrists.
No. Conner falls back onto his feet, lifting his hands. Red sticks to them, drips off of them, hangs in the air. M’gann lets out a gasp, high and sharp. The pulsing inside him doesn’t stop, pumping heat under the chill rushing over his skin. Gunshot, impact, shatter, breakthrough–blood, heat, power–bullets, heartbeat, his fists–rrht-tht-tht-thih–
–Red Sun.
His mind goes empty, save for blank light.
[Conner.]
Conner’s eyes snap open, and he gulps out a breath. M’gann’s hands hold his head. Her knees prop up his chest. His hands hold clumps of fabric at the edge of the mattress. He looks down. It’s all blue-green. Not red.
[Conner?]
He looks back up. M’gann’s wide eyes scan his face, her mouth closed tight. [Are you–are you with me? I felt–] He hears her swallow. [I know I shouldn’t have, but this…] Bh-dmp, bh-dmp, bh-dmp, bh-dmp– [Is starting to scare me, Conner–]
“S-scare you?” Conner chokes out, voice mangled by his own throat, but the sound muffles her heart. Speaking moves the muscles of his face against her hands, and he feels the skin of her fingertips unstick–sweat. Just sweat.
[Not you–this.] Bh-dmp, bh-dmp, bh-dmp. One hand leaves his cheek to slide across his forehead–the same hand quickly goes to her own forehead, her brow furrowing in a wince. [I–I don’t know what this is. Maybe I–shouldn’t know, but you’re–] Bh-dh-bh-dh-bh-dh-bh-dh– [You’re hurting so much–]
“–I’m fine,” Conner states, numb reflex.
[Con-ner!]
She says there’s hurt. There’s tightness in his chest, and prickling in his hands, but in his mind, there’s just–her. And everything else. A wall in between. Memory versus a presence. In some part of his head, somewhere deeper than she is, every feeling is right there, ready to come back. The sound of the gunshot. The feel of the crunch. The smell of the blood.
It’s there, but he’s here, and all he smells is lavender.
His hands let go of her bedsheet. His shoulders slump, but his legs feel sturdy. M’gann’s hand stays pressed into his left cheek, her palm soft. Her knees slowly slip down from his chest. Her free hand nudges her skirt back down over her thighs as her feet touch the floor.
Right, Conner thinks to himself, then he realizes: he doesn’t have to. Engaging with her psychic presence feels almost like clearing his throat–physically, a small cough hits the back of his teeth. [We were going to…]
[What?] M’gann lays her free hand onto his arm. Fresh skin-to-skin makes him flinch, a chill rushing up his back as his heart lurches towards her. M’gann looks down at her own hand on his arm and lets out a tiny gasp. [Oh, that’s–the farthest thing from my mind right now, honest!] Both her hands leave him. Patches of warmth turn cold on his arm and cheek. [Not that I… didn’t want to, of course, but–but it was all me in the first place, wasn’t it? I misunderstood your signals–]
[–No, you–]
[–And then physically, I felt you–]
[–Yeah, let’s not–]
[–I’m sorry.]
[Don’t–] Without a thought, Conner cusps his hand around her hip bone. His own heart jumps with hers, but he holds his breath; hers keeps rising and falling against the pad of his thumb. Her body is soft, and so is his touch. He breathes out. [Don’t… be… sorry.] Her presence in his mind spins and flickers–confusion, he thinks, and concern, pretty obvious–but still, it's living light. He closes his eyes. M'gann's hand goes to his forehead again, palm pressing in, fingertips pushing past his hairline and into his hair. Outside and inside, physical and psychic, her touch sinks in. Conner sighs, feeling his own breath bounce off her wrist. [I think you’re… helping,] he thinks to her.
[R–] M’gann’s presence in his head ripples. Shock, at first, it feels like, then it softens, flutters. [R-really?]
Conner opens one eye at her, keeping the other scrunched to hold in the feeling, and hold himself in–part of him feels like he could float up out of his own head. He’s not sure it’s relief. [You tell me.]
[Conner…] M’gann lifts her hand from his forehead. Conner squeezes both his eyes shut in a wince as much as in a mental grasp. Her presence in his mind doesn’t fade, just shrinks down slightly, like her body under the pressure of the ocean. The ghost of her hand on his forehead becomes the impression of her psychic presence–a touch, just one hand, laid fingertips to palm on his mind’s surface. Like a finger, an ear on a pulse.
Psychically, Conner leans more into the touch. Physically, M’gann wrings her hands together in her lap. Conner takes a seat beside her. His weight on the edge of the mattress drops her into him. Her head bumps his shoulder. M’gann presses her hand into his arm again, if only to catch herself. Conner watches her pull it halfway back to her lap then leave it hovering, fingertips pinching and rubbing at air. He frowns. M’gann’s psychic touch lessens, like fingertips staying pinned but her palm tilting up and off.
Her physical hand, he could grab and hold–and hurt. He leaves it where it is. The only power he has to maintain this touch is his will and his words. [I mean… tell me,] he says. [Really. Whatever you felt before–you still feel it?]
[I…] M’gann’s physical hand settles on his knee. Her eyes stay fixed down on the hand, her lower lip pulled up behind her upper lip and teeth. [Surface-level reading only, of course, I…] She shakes her head. [...Don't. Not anymore. But I can't believe that it's just… gone.]
Rrht-tht-tht-thih–Conner forces his tight throat to swallow, and with the push, imagines rolling a boulder back. Stay there, fine, he says to the weight, keeping the thought directed inward. But let me keep going. [You've been trying to make me feel better, right?] Conner then says to M’gann, rubbing the back of his still-prickling neck. [You didn't think it'd end up working, why'd you keep trying?]
[Conner, I… I'm not pressing, not psychically, I promise, but…] M’gann runs her hand over the curve of his knee just like she did his forehead. Her thumb rubs a smaller circle higher up on his thigh. Her hand sits inches away from the pocket at his hip–the Shields. [Are you… well, I–I don't…]
Don’t, Conner tells himself. Don’t think about them. They’re not still in the pocket–they're in his room, and all they do is make him stronger. He’s still broken either way.
M’gann’s hand on his knee twitches, curls. [...Want to say 'being honest,' but… are you… just… trying to make me feel better now instead?]
‘Honest,’ huh, Conner thinks. Whether you wanted to say it or not, you did.
Private thought. It’s what it’s meant to be, and it’s how it stays. M’gann doesn’t even blink–her eyes stay wide open and locked onto his. What she's seeing in him–is him staring right back, Conner realizes, just as strongly. He gulps, more at himself than at her. Heat vision is locked away in his cells, but it’s there. So are tears. He knows which is easier to access, and which is more dangerous. He knows which one should scare him more.
[...Conner?]
Conner breaks his stare first. His eyes fall to the freckles on the knuckles of her hand on his knee. Past them are the stars on her rug, trailed out at his feet and hers. The mirror, the door–his "birthday" as her code–anywhere he looks is a piece of her, and a piece of him with it.
It all just feels like wreckage in his chest. Cracks, rubble. Smears of blood.
[You want honesty, then no,] Conner tells her. [I’m not putting on an act. You think I know how to just–make this stop?] His fist falls down onto his right knee. Her hand stays on his left. [I don’t. It’s like any moment, you’re gonna see me cry, or yell, or freak out again, and I’m gonna hate it, because it’s gonna matter to you, but I don’t wanna feel it. And I’m gonna hate me for making you have to feel it, and deal with it. But, same time, I don’t…] He huffs a sigh out through his nose, feeling his chest heave. [...I don’t wanna get over it. I don’t want it to just… not feel like anything. And worse than that, I…]
His eyes are too hot again. He blinks until the world is flickering, until there’s just as much darkness as there is light in his vision. It’s not enough. He shuts his eyes.
M’gann’s hand curls tighter around his knee. [...Yes?]
Conner breathes out through pursed lips, hearing himself shake. [Worse than that, I… don’t…] He forces his eyes to open and fall into her freckles again. [...Want to be alone right now.]
M’gann crashes into him, over him, but doesn’t move–not physically. Her heartbeat is part of it, but it’s just a sound–the pulse she sends into his head is a curtain, a gust, a wave. It slides right off, passes through him, but the wave leaves sparks crackling in his skin, opens up air and sunlight behind his eyes. Her hand leaves his knee. He looks up at her. M’gann ducks her head and pinches her lips together shyly, her cheeks flaring pink.
[What was that?] Conner asks.
[Well, we were… already linked, so…] Her thumb rubs at her wrist, her hands folded back together in her lap. [Rather than… saying anything, I thought I could just… share the feeling itself as a response.] Her pressed smile becomes a tight frown. She swallows, a thump down and then a beat back up–her heart rate spikes. [Was that too much? Please tell me. I won’t do it again if I shouldn’t have. I promise. I really didn’t mean to–]
[–It’s, uh.]
M'gann goes quiet. Just as he’d hoped, he halts her apologizing–and her telling him how to feel about it. Now he gets to decide.
Now he has to.
[It’s… fine,] Conner decides to say, [just… to be honest, I’m…] He blinks at her floor’s upside-down sky. His vision is clear, but in his mind, the fading ripple tells him everything should be soft. The stars in her rug twinkle. [...Not sure I got it,] he admits.
Confused–disappointed, even–skeptical, maybe–he isn’t sure, but he feels something simmer on her end of the link–M’gann tilts her head and crinkles her brow. [You didn’t… feel anything?]
[No, I mean, what it was. I feel–] Conner reaches back into his mind, trying to pull the feeling into the forefront again–his mental hands, if he has them, grope at empty, shallow space. [I felt… something. It just… felt like…] He’s left with memory for reference–from seconds ago, from what he’s lived, and from everything Cadmus stuffed into his head. [It felt like… flying. Kinda. I mean… what I think it–] Match knocking him back, but him catching himself–on nothing–Conner shakes his head. [You know. I don’t know.] Honesty, sure. [But, kinda like…] Something closer. [Being… scared to, but needing to,] Conner manages to say. [To fly anyway. Even if… you’re not sure you’re supposed to. And it feeling…] He swallows. [...Good.] His wrist itches, burns. Reflex doesn’t put his nails to his skin. It puts his eyes to M’gann’s hands, inches away from him. [What does that mean?]
[I… felt it just as you did, Conner, not before, so I’ve had just as much time to think about it,] M’gann responds. [And, well, I… know what I think I’m thinking–]
[–You think you’re thinking?]
M’gann giggles aloud. [Sometimes I have to think! Even though I’m always thinking. I think.] A giggle becomes a laugh that rocks her backward and kicks her feet off of the floor. Reflex puts Conner’s hand to the center of her back to keep her from falling over. The short gasp and soft sigh she gives in response keeps it there. [I think I’m thinking of…] Her wide smile shines, but flashes closed for a moment; the tip of her tongue peeks out from between her lips, then she grins again. Her hand floats up to Conner’s face, taps gently on the edge of his jaw, and then falls back to the top of his thigh, fingers spreading out. [Well, to put it simply, all I can think about is… how much I love you.]
[Oh.] Love. That’s what he should have said. [Is that all,] Conner thinks back, forcing psychic sarcasm. It's an effort, but not impossible. He’s done it before. But M’gann leans her head onto his shoulder, and he chokes. [Sorry,] his mind spits out at her with no forethought. M’gann rubs her head against him, nestling it closer into the crook of his neck. A flutter runs up through Conner’s chest, lifting him up from the inside as if by a string around his sternum–it’s not just love, he realizes. It’s a response. Her shaking her head.
[Conner, you know that…] M’gann’s hand leaves his leg to travel up his hip, past the empty pocket. [...I don’t…] Her fingertips walk up his side, finding places soft enough to sink into. [...Like to be alone, either.] She lays her palm over his ribs.
[Yeah,] Conner responds, letting his hand on her back creep up to her shoulder, her hair catching and then slipping through his fingers as they go, brushing over his knuckles and the back of his hand. It’s her hair, and his hand, but he thinks of soft kisses. His shirt soaks in her breath. His lips go dry against open air, tingling with memory.
[So if I...really am helping just by being with you, then that’s… perfect.] Her hand slides back down to his thigh. [As long as it’s… really true.] She hums and nudges her shoulders up in a shrug, enough to be felt but not enough to move his hand. [I… like what you said you just felt from me.] She says it almost like an offer. [About flying?] she adds.
Conner feels his brow furrow. [You want me to read your mind?]
[I want you to know how I feel,] M'gann says, fingertips swirling and scritching at the denim of his jeans. [I think it… I really think it's worth sharing, actually. A-and I haven't always… felt that.] Her hand goes still. [I don't, always…] Her fingers curl into a loose fist. [But I do around you. And I always want to know what you're feeling, too. Maybe too much, sometimes.] She raises her head. Conner keeps hold of her shoulder, her sleeve clumped into his grip, as she sits up straight enough to look into his eyes. [Right?]
Conner sees parting lips first, watches them curl and catch under teeth, and then makes himself blink. Her eyes don’t make sense. She asked him a question as if she can’t see right through him, into him. She could, but isn’t, Conner reminds himself. The look in her eyes is just want, need.
He almost tells her she is right, but just like in a battle, his mind plots an outcome, a reaction from her and his own reaction to it: if he says “right,” and if it makes her look away for just one second, a cold hole will rip itself open in his chest.
[Not tonight,] Conner answers her instead.
M’gann bounces in place, in his hand. The mattress shakes under him. [Really?]
…I didn’t just hear that ‘really’ in my head, Conner remembers Marie saying, I felt it. [Really,] he responds, feeling a smile twitch at his own mouth as M’gann grins. Part of him wishes it was a lie, just so that he could say it only to make M’gann happy–that it was something he could give, just by choice. Part of him wishes he didn’t want her, need her, to care. Everything that did to you tonight, he thinks into her eyes, but not the link. Everything I did. He looks for ghosts of tears to address, his evidence against himself. All he has is in his memory. Her face hasn’t kept them. And you just… M’gann’s eyes soften at him, turning almost wistful, and pure warmth thrums through the link like sunlight on the back of his neck. Words, he could twist–his mind is Luthor enough for that. This feeling is a fact. All he can do is look inward and decide what it means to him.
Someone who sees the psycho that you are, and likes you anyway, Junior had said.
Or maybe I’m just the idiot who still doesn’t get that loving me actually makes her happy, Conner thinks now.
With his hand still on her shoulder, Conner nudges M’gann back closer to him; instantly, M’gann accepts, ducking under his chin to lay her head against his collarbone. Her head does graze him, but then she slips. “Whoop!” she says out loud. Conner catches her by the shoulder before she can land face-first into his leg–just one upward push, and she twists, kicks, and flips herself around, laying her back into the palm of his hand and hooking her arms around his neck. She looks up at him and giggles, shaking the mattress and him on it again as her feet flap against the edge of the bed. [Happy accident!] she swears. He believes the happy half of it–the other half, he doesn't care. He wraps his hand around one of her knees, and she taps her other knee against his knuckles, parting her legs enough to make her skirt slip down to her hips.
Conner's stomach clenches. The thought of following her skirt down her legs with his hand passes through his head–he lifts his hand from her knee and coughs into his fist instead.
"R-right, dinner!" M'gann exclaims aloud, pulling herself upright by his neck and scooting herself out of his lap, her legs sliding over his. The moment her feet touch the floor, she’s off the bed and on them again. “Hel-lo, Megan! And… my phone, which… I’m sure I’ll find eventually.”
Empty-handed, Conner frowns. [That’s not what I–]
–She’s not there. In his mind, where she was, Conner gropes through empty space, then finds a wall. Physically, his fist would already be through it–on the psychic plane, that power isn’t his. The most he can do is project–think hard enough, shout loud enough in his head to be heard. Force out the wave. He knows she’d feel it.
Reflex still works faster in his body than in his mind: he grabs her hand. M’gann’s heart blips back into his hearing, and without even a tug, she’s back on the bed with him in an instant. “Oh! Do you…” Her cheeks go pink, and she swallows. “...Well, um, hi!”
“Stay with me,” Conner says, staring straight into her eyes.
M’gann blinks and tilts her head to the side. “Of course,” she answers softly. “We’re… still having dinner together, right?”
“I mean…” Conner drops his stare down to her hand in his, bent awkwardly at the wrist, her fingers scrunched in his grip. He tries to slacken his grip without letting go. He can hear her heart–she’s not in pain. He knows too tight, just like he knows too hard, and too much. Nothing that happened today was a slip. It was just him. How he’s built–body and mind. He wanted impacts. Wanted breaks. Wanted blood–
–Wanted to stop thinking about it. Had stopped. “I mean, stay linked with me,” Conner hurries out, feeling himself need an extra breath. “For a… little longer, I guess. For a while.”
“For the night?” M’gann asks, the incredulity in her tone making Conner wince. “B-because I… I wouldn’t mind,” she adds lowly, and Conner’s eyes shoot back up to hers. “I know the link is usually for missions,” she says, brow furrowed, “o-or for 'covert' conversations–”
“–I know,” Conner says fast, eyes back to her hand. “S’only just us here, ‘less Tornado comes down.” His free hand goes to the back of his neck. “So, weird as it probably sounds, coming from me, anyway, I’m just… asking you to…”
His own touch on the back of his neck becomes double–one is hers. Warmth sinks past his skull. [Keep you… company in your mind for a while?] her mental voice asks in a murmur, pattering against the floor of his mind like quick, careful footsteps.
Conner closes his eyes. For a moment, he sees white. The rock walls beyond her are dark and dull. His hands are hers–aren’t what he’s ever held, just seen, just like this. It’s a memory, his of hers. In hers, she draws her claws up to her chest and curls herself into a shadow. In his, she glows.
She doesn’t see it. He knows he was never supposed to. If it was him, he knows what having it addressed would feel like: salt in the wound of what he is. No one needs to make him face it–he already does, every day.
Conner opens his eyes.
She's happy, just like this, freckle-skinned and amber-eyed and pink-cheeked, pink-lipped. Her white teeth only peek out in a smile. Someday, she'll show him all of her on purpose–in his mind, it's an inevitability. She's a fountain of herself, love and every other feeling effortlessly bubbling up through her, trickling out of her. She knows how to do it. All he has to do is be good enough to receive it. To be good enough for her.
M'gann's smile starts to slip. Whatever it is, it's him, he knows. Psychic fingers tapped into the surface of his mind turn and brush against it instead. [Like… this?] she asks.
Right. Duh. [Yeah,] Conner finally answers her, realizing that he hadn’t. [That.]
M'gann's psychic touch broadens and deepens again. Conner's eyes close on reflex to pull the feeling even closer. For a moment, the sound of her heartbeat is a distraction, then the pulse joins the warmth, and on the other side of his eyelids, she could be in any form, and he'd know her. Know this. Want this.
His head finds her shoulder even with his eyes closed. M'gann lets out a tiny gasp over the thump of her heart. Conner lifts his head back off her shoulder, avoiding her eyes. M'gann's hand brushes the top of his ear then runs down to the side of his neck, her thumb pinning itself to the corner of his jaw. Conner glances up, but M’gann’s expression doesn’t register. His head is already set on what to say.
[Sorry if… this is, y'know. Weird,] he mutters psychically, staring at disheveled hair over her shoulder.
A wave kicks up in his mind like a breeze. [Well, for Martians, at least,] M’gann says, [a psychic link, that is, is, um…] She stirs, spins in his mind, a broad swoop along the edges. [Even one like this is… normal, really, a-and that really is true, I promise.]
[Huh. I guess that's some kind of normal, then,] Conner's brain fires back, loud and clear. His eyes pick then to take him right up to M'gann's face as she frowns. [I mean that–about me, I mean–] The dent his words make in her brow and the flicker her presence gives in his mind tell him that’s not any better. [I didn’t mean it,] he then says. [Just kinda slipped out.]
[If you… change your mind at any–]
[–No.]
[How can someone say 'no' so much and always make it sound so sweet?]
A rush of heat to Conner’s cheeks makes him bite his teeth and swallow; no tears wait in his head. There’s just light. M’gann’s eyes widen, and her hand leaves Conner’s neck to go to her own, pawing at hair. [That… slipped out, too!] she says with an out-loud giggle and a shrug of her shoulders. [I'm… not exactly ‘normal’ for a Martian, myself.]
Conner hmphs his own reminder that out loud still exists, and a smirk finds its way onto his face. [Too bad for Martians,] he says.
M’gann scoffs through a smile. [Con-ner!] Her hand flies to her face. It's a hand over the sun. The light of her smile still shines through and around her splayed fingers, and the warmth is still in his head. The wave of her presence reaches a crest, and if it was his jump taking him that far up, the fall would start, but it–he–never hits the ground. [We really should get dinner going. We still have school tomorrow!] M’gann wraps both her arms around his arm and pulls his body up, too, as she stands. [Not that we aren’t used to that by now, but we are–not just superheroes, of course.] With them both on their feet, she releases his arm to dust off his shoulders–they’re already clean–and then takes his hand.
Of course swims around in his head as a response even as her feet and his own take him off the rug and through the doorway. The thought never breaks the threshold into the link. Normalcy creeping back in leaves a hole for his thoughts to sink into instead. This is what it’s going to be. This is me. I’m as dangerous as I thought I was. I’m weaker than I knew. M’gann’s fingers thread through his. He lets them, no resistance, no response. I don’t like it. Doesn’t matter. He looks down at his hand in M’gann’s. You do.
[Yes?] M’gann asks, turning around to look at him.
[Nothin’,] Conner replies, squeezing her hand. [Hungry.]
M’gann grins, and her feet leave the ground. A lead becomes a pull, forcing Conner’s feet faster.
Guess I don’t get to sulk anymore, long as this is up, he manages to keep just below his mental voice.
Flight kicks M’gann’s hair up in a soft breeze as they turn the corner. Wolf raises his head. Static still buzzes. M’gann pulls him straight past the sofa, and out of any reflex to let go of her hand, rush to the remote, and turn the TV off. To hide. The crackle, her heartbeat–everything settles in his head, and all around it is just her. Her mental embrace. He can still look at her and think of everything that’s wrong about himself–he just tries now as he watches her eye the refrigerator and the microwave, watches her think, feels her think, watches her exist, and it doesn’t work. He doesn’t want to.
Works for me.
