ya_assemble | "You have to start out learning to believe the little lies to believe the big ones."

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"You have to start out learning to believe the little lies to believe the big ones."

They had to try their best to do this thing incognito. After all, the plan was get in, get the shard, get out, and while several of them were total unknowns in this world, three of them ran the risk of being recognized by some of the resident superheroes and supervillains since they were from a similar dimension and had equivalents here.

Nightwing, not so much since he usually wore a mask, but Cassie and Kon didn't wear masks as part of their costumes, and Kon especially wore a very familiar face. He was younger than Kal but still approaching adulthood now and that meant his cloney resemblance to the current de facto ruler of the world was pretty uncanny now.

That was why Kon was in disguise. He was wearing his usual jeans, black long-sleeved shirt, black boots, and black gloves. But he had a dumpy, shapeless, brown jacket over top of it all, a blue baseball cap, and a pair of dorky, large-framed glasses. Fortunately, spring was only just starting in this world and hadn't quite chased away the chill of winter so they could all bundle up with clothes that made them look innocuous.

The magical door had appeared in an alley, against a nondescript wall. As soon as they were all through and had closed it behind then, Kon peered around a corner to see if he could recognize where they were by the city's night-time skyline.

"Looks like Gotham." A pause. "It's hardly recognizable, though. I've never seen Gotham this clean."

He squinted instinctually, trying to peer around some more with his X-ray vision and found it working in full when he usually struggled with it back in the Guardians' universe. He held up his hand and poured on the teke, creating a field around it.

"My powers seem to be stronger here for some reason. The ones that are limited in the Guardians' universe are back, like my teke. You guys feeling the same? Most of us are superheroes or equivalents in our worlds. Being in a superhero universe might be amping up our powers or something. Maybe making the belief stronger."

It all ran on narratives, right? Stories? This was a story superheroes were supposed to be in.

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He took a deep breath right before he knocked.

Pa was the one that answered the door and for just a second, the surprise on his face made Kon worry that he might cause him to have a heart attack.

"Conner?"

His eyes widened and he turned back to his wife.

"Martha! Come here, quick!"

His voice wasn't raised that loud, almost as if he was wary of rousing the attention of his son, wherever he was in the world right now.

Then he looked back to Kon, looking as if he might pull him into his arms, but then froze.

"But why do you look older?"

"Land sakes, don't raise your voice like that, you know he might hear and get - oh my good Lord."

Ma Kent dropped her mug of coffee to the floor, her expression wondering and hopeful.

"Conner? You're alive? Is that really you?"

"The reason I'm older is I'm not your Conner. It's an alternate dimension kinda thing - you know how it is. But he is alive and I know where he is. That's why I'm here. Me and Cass here came with Nightwing and some other heroes from another dimension. We got wrapped up in some things here."

Kon looked at them with concern.

"And I just wanted to make sure you were okay. Once I found out about this place, about everything going on...well, you might not be my Ma and Pa, but I wanted to check in on you and tell you where your Conner is, since I figured you probably thought he was dead or were worried sick. Is it okay if we come in?"

Edited 2015-06-30 05:04 (UTC)

Cassie waggled her fingers at the Kents from behind Kon, doing her best to look non-threatening and not like a crazy person. Not that alternate realities would be something the Kents were skeptical of, but the situation might still be a little weird.

But they weren't shouting for Superman -- and they didn't seem very likely to -- so she relaxed a hair and didn't immediately look away to the horizon again.

It took a moment for that to absorb, but then Ma smiled at them both, and said, "You get in here right now and after I clean this up, I'll get you some lemonade."

Then she bustled back to the kitchen to get a dust pan to clean up the broken glass, while Jonathan ushered them in, looking outside at the horizon, fearfully.

Kon smiled at them both.

"Don't worry, Ma, I got it."

In a blur of superspeed he cleaned up the mess, only slowing down when he put the brush and dustpan away in their usual place under the kitchen sink.

Then he took a seat at the kitchen table.

"I don't even know where to start so I'll start with 'it's good to see you.' Cass and I have been bouncing around the multiverse on a little adventure. I haven't seen my Ma in ages."

A pause, and his breath caught in his throat a little.

"And we, uh, we lost our Pa a few years back. His heart." he said, his voice breaking slightly, Kon looked at Uncle Jon and thumped his own chest lightly. "You better be taking care of that ticker and if you're not, start doing it. I wanna know there's at least one universe where you both made it to a hundred and five."

Edited 2015-06-30 05:26 (UTC)

"Guess a lot of people are doing that these days, huh?" Cassie asked Mr. Kent, corner of her mouth ticking upward in a smile that really wasn't. "He doesn't know that we've popped up, he won't be listening for our voices. He knows where our counterparts are and that they're not going to be causing him trouble without some serious intervention on someone else's part."

"Had a scare a few years back and I've been taking a daily aspirin ever since, if that puts your mind at ease," Pa said to Kon with a little smile, clearly touched by his concern.

But what Cassie said made him frown and get right to the point.

"What do you mean by that? Where is our Conner? Clark said the Titans disappeared and that whatever villains killed them were likely too scared to take credit. Possibly that Deathstroke fella."

"We didn't want to believe it," Ma said, her voice somewhat brittle. "There's time travel, different dimensions - they could've even been abducted to space, for all we knew. We wouldn't - couldn't accept it, so we've just been...we've been leaving it to hope," said Martha, putting a tray of glasses and a pitcher of lemonade on the table. Then she stood there, next to Pa, reaching for his hand, unconsciously.

She had a feeling They both would need support for the answer to the questions she asked next.

"What happened to him? Is he alright?"

"He's alive," Kon reassured him, "and there's a way of getting him back. I'll start with that. Mostly because I have no idea how to tell you the rest."

He drew in a deep breath, tapping his fingers on the table.

"See, Cass and I are from a world a lot like yours. It's still a bit of a mess because we had one of those big crises but it was getting better."

Even if it hadn't been getting better for Kon personally, the return of the heroes had been helping.

"Lois is still alive there. But otherwise, it's...all the people, they're the same. Except Kal. Kal's...our Kal would never do this. And if he ever lost it so much he'd try, he'd have most of the League and most of the S-family tackling him, not helping him."

He waved a hand.

"Anyway, Cass and I got pulled away from our world to this dimension that's in trouble. Big evil dark god thing trying to destroy all of existence. We've been working with a lot of other heroes to stop it and sometimes that means going into other dimensions to get these shards of that reality that broke off. That's why we're here now and - and one thing we have in that dimension is this sort of...magical way of seeing things in other worlds we're going into. Sometimes things that there were not witnesses for, 'cause magic."

He wanted them to understand this wasn't coming from nowhere and also knew "I read it in a comic" wasn't going to fly. Not with an accusation like this.

"Using that, I saw. I saw what he did to your Conner and the Titans. Conner confronted him about him starting all the killing and the Titans backed him up and - and Clark hurt your Superboy real bad. Like, he needed medical attention right away, that kind of bad. Made it so a rib punctured his heart. And to save his life he put him in the Phantom Zone - but he only agreed to do it if the Titans would surrender and go with him. He wanted them out of the way for..."

He waved vaguely to the world outside.

"Your Conner's alive and if there's someone that can give him medical attention when he's taken out of the Phantom Zone, he has a chance. We even have some friends with magic back in the dimension we've been fighting evil in that we can maybe bring through here so they're right on hand when he's freed."

It was pretty much every parents' worst fear, and not one of the normal ones that seemed reasonable. It was one of those things you weren't afraid of until it happened, and then it became something you never knew you'd been afraid of all along.

No parent in the history of parenthood wanted to hear that their one child had done something horrible to their other child.

"Oh, Jonathan," said Ma, squeezing his hand, her other hand covering her mouth with horror. "How could he?"

She took a seat next to her husband, gratefully accepting his comfort as he wrapped an arm around her.

Edited 2015-06-30 06:05 (UTC)

Pa shook his head.

"We should have known," he said. "He's done so much - so many horrible things. Lied sometimes to get his way with all this."

A pause.

"To himself more than anyone. He probably got it in his head that he was doing Conner a favor, keeping him out of the fight so he didn't get hurt."

The expression on Pa's face made it clear how disgusted he was at that. And how angry. His anger was quiet but not less ferocious because of it.

"How could we have not figured it out sooner?" she looked to Kon and Cassie, her eyes glassy. "Conner said he was going to confront Clark, but Clark said he'd convinced him to drop it. And then the Titans disappear right after? Clark was the one that came up with the story about their enemies, suggested it might be Deathstroke."

She hung her head.

"I just - I just didn't want to think that he'd -"

A tear dripped down her cheek.

"But why not? He's already hurt and killed so many of his friends. What was to stop him from doing the same to family?"

She leaned closer to her husband, leaning her head into his shoulder.

Kon couldn't help himself, he stood up and went over to her, leaning down to give her a hug. She hugged him back gratefully with one arm.

Then Pa even joined in, hugging them both.

"I'm so sorry, Ma, Pa. I wish it wasn't true."

After the hug, he settled back in his chair, still gently holding her hand in his massive ones.

"Everything about this world, it's - I mean ours is cleaning up from the world's worst natural disaster, but at least everyone's on the same team, you know? Working together. Nobody's been fighting anyone else, doing crazy stuff like he's been doing. The only ones trying to mess up the world like that are supervillains. I'm so sorry you have to deal with this."

Cassie's memory flashed briefly back to when she, her mother, and Diana had gone to talk to Julia Kapatelis about her daughter and how she might have come to become the new Silver Swan. She hadn't been much help and comforting Julia, but she had found some useful information snooping through Vanessa's room and diary. That wasn't going to be an option here. But she could do better now.

"It's perfectly understandable that you'd believe him," she said softly. "No one wants to think someone they love could do something like to someone they're supposed care about and want to protect, even if they're doing awful things to other people."

She took a deep breath and let it out in a sigh. "I really wish we could just magically wave a wand and fix all this. I really do."

"What do you plan to do?" asked Pa. "If you're anything like the Conner and Cassie we know, I know you won't stand for this."

He looked afraid to hear the answer but also hopeful, like he was desperate to hear something would be done.

Kon pressed his lips together for a moment.

"If I tell you our plans, you can't tell him. And I know that's a tough choice, knowing it might hurt him. I know it's asking a lot when I'm not your Conner. But this is...this is fate of the world stuff, and we gotta do what we gotta. If you tell him and ruin our odds, you're going to make it so this world doesn't have a chance. And if Cass and I can't get back to the dimension we came from, with the reality shard we came for...that could doom all of existence."

He shook his head.

"This is us taking a side-trip, helping out, because we can't just look away. But we have huge responsibilities we're dealing with on top of this. We screw that up - or die so we can't do our jobs - and we're looking at a potential multiversal apocalypse. You can't tell him anything we're telling you. You can't tell him you know about what happened to the Titans and your Conner. You can't even tell him we were here."

"We barely even sit for this," Cassie quipped before sobering again. "We came here because we wanted to make sure you were safe. We just told you what he did to your Conner, and this one-" she jerked her thumb at Kon, "-knows you two well enough to know that you wouldn't stand for this kind of thing either. So we wanted to check in and make sure you were staying safe while trying to talk him down...and help keep you safe, if we can."

Which they damn well couldn't do in Superman's childhood home.

"We won't tell him," Ma promised. "Even if - I know you might have to do something drastic. Lord knows what he'd do to you if he were warned, and you're - well, you're family, even if you're from another world."

She was still crying, because she had to say the words and actually admit her son might kill them.

Pa was far colder.

"As far as I'm concerned, at this point, anything that happens to Clark, he brought down on his own head."

There was no reasoning with his son and he refused to admit anything he'd done was wrong.

"He's our son and nothing'll change that, but he's dug himself into this hole he's in. I won't do anything that helps him hurt more people so he digs himself deeper."

He could trust them. He could feel it. They were just so...so much the same. Every single good thing this Clark could've been. Should've been.

"We're working with Batman. We don't like it. Guy's been a monumental dick, but he's the only one organized, that has any resources and we can't do it alone. We, uh, have a few options open, to maybe overpower or depower him. We do plan on freeing the Titans from the Phantom Zone. Getting your Conner out will have to wait until we can get a hold of some of our friends back in the universe that we came from to heal him, and that'll probably have to wait for the end of all this. But we plan on sneaking into the Fortress and getting the Phantom Zone projector out and freeing the other Titans. So we have more firepower. And so we can get Conner out after the fighting's over."

He went on, "We have some people we brought in with us, like Nightwing and some other superheroes, and there's a few heroes Bats thinks our guys can talk out of retirement. They're doing that right now."

He looked at the table.

"We're gonna try to take him in alive, that's what I want you to understand. We'll do whatever we can to bring him in alive, to make it so he faces justice, and, I don't know, has time to think about it in jail. Maybe in time he'll actually have some remorse."

He drew in another deep breath.

"But if we can't bring him in alive, we do have a...a magical option. Last ditch. We're not using it unless there's no other way and even then we're still - we're still working out how far we're willing to go. You know? It's not easy. Even after all he's done, none of us really wants to..."

Cassie put a hand on Kon's forearm and squeezed it reassuringly before looking at the Kents again.

"We want you to come with us, if you're willing," she said softly. "I won't pretend that we didn't consider that having you somewhere he can't find would be a substantial psychological blow, but we mostly want you along because we want you to be safe." She smile humorlessly. "I'm sure he promised you safety too, but if you feel at all inclined, we'd like to have you along."

"Please consider it. We don't know how this is going to trip him off. And I could hear your heartbeats when you were getting us inside, looking out on the horizon..."

Kon's expression was almost anguished.

"You're afraid of him, and you have good reason to be. We don't know that he won't snap and if he does -"

He couldn't bear the thought of that.

"You may not be my Ma and Pa but I can't stand the thought of something happening to you." He looked to Pa. "I wasn't there when my Pa needed it. I was...incapacitated, is a good way of putting it. It wasn't just his heart, it was Brainiac, he attacked the farm and Pa just - it was the shock. His heart gave out."

He shook his head frantically.

"But I can be here for you two right now. We can take you to Batman's bunker - at least until it's all over. I mean, either we'll win and you can come right back to the farm, or we'll lose and this world won't have another chance, and you can leave and pretend it was all under duress or whatever. And hell, if you want a chance to talk to him and say what you really think without risk of him losing it, we can arrange that. You can talk to him and wouldn't have to dance around it or mince words. You could maybe shake some sense into him."

Edited 2015-06-30 09:08 (UTC)

"We can't," Martha said, shaking her head furiously, looking at her husband. "Oh Jonathan, we can't. We just can't."

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"You have to start out learning to believe the little lies to believe the big ones."

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