schizoauthoress: (I Read Your Fanfic -- The Shining)
[personal profile] schizoauthoress
Title: And If You Wrong Us
Author: D.L.SchizoAuthoress
Rating: R
Spoilers: Superboy v3 #74, scenes and dialogue taken from Sins of Youth #2 (the conclusion)
Warnings: character death, murder, AU, violence, blood
Word Count: 2236
Summary: Kon and Tana have been wronged. Two wrongs don't make a right, but it almost makes the hurt go away...
Word of the Day: brisance, noun:
The shattering effect of a high explosive.

Note: I don't know if things would be better this way, but they'd certainly be different.

And If You Wrong Us

"Ah." I cut myself off, and my voice goes quiet. The battle against the Agenda's troops is now the furthest thing from my mind -- this is personal... this will not be taken from me again. "Just who I was looking for."

I superspeed away, thankful for the power upgrade that comes with my new physical maturity. I hear Cassie's adult voice, uncertain, saying "Super... uh... guy?" as though she were speaking right into my ear, and there was not already several dozen yards of pitched battle between us. This is how I should have been. This is how I was meant to be, from the moment I was released from my cloning tube. This is how Tana should have met--

No, I can't think of her now. I can't think of her now because I can't see her face anymore -- when I think of her now, I just see... what Spence did to her. It hurts so bad I want to scream my throat raw, but I don't do that. Instead, I focus -- draw in a deep breath and focus hard, straining with my superhearing to pinpoint Spence's location exactly. She's already put a flight of stairs between us, and she's muttering to herself.

"This whole thing is a disaster," she says, "when I get my hands on the Contessa--"

And it's like my brain shuts off. Because I remember -- I will never forget -- what happened to Tana when Spence "got her hands" on her. In the space of a heartbeat, I'm up near the ceiling, and then I'm down through the floor, that deep breath bursting out of me in a bellow,

"Hello, Mandy! Ready to die?"

Spence screams, "Superboy!" as the rain of rubble knocks her off her feet.

I land, and the floor shakes under the force. My TTK rushes forward in an invisible wave and snares Spence, pins her to the floor so that she can't move. She can't crawl away like the vermin she is, not when I've got a hold on her. "I'm glad you managed to get away from your captors and wind up here," I snarl fiercely. I pick up a huge chunk of concrete and dig my fingers in, hefting it over my head with barely any effort. Only a few more steps bring me right over Spence's prone form. "Because now I get to do you what you did to Tana!"

At this moment, there could be no sweeter sight than the one I am seeing now -- Amanda Spence, cowering before me with a look of sheer terror on her face; Amanda Spence, knowing that vengeance for her murderous ways has come...

"Kon!" Cassie shrieks. "No!"

Damn it all. She's followed me. Of course she followed me.

"Stay outta this, Wondy!" I yell, not taking my eyes from Spence. The murderer -- the coward -- closes her eyes rather than look at me. "This ends here!"

"Wrong!" Cassie shouts, and for a moment I consider that she might fight me to stop me. But she doesn't -- she flies to place herself between me and Spence, and she tries to talk me down. "You kill her and it starts here! Or have you forgotten when you were there... for Arrowette?"

I haven't forgotten, Cassie. But you know that, you know or you wouldn't have brought it up. I wait, silent, for you to finish talking. It's not even a strain to keep this concrete lifted over my head.

"She walked away from us, from her identity. Her name. Are you going to give up what your name stands for?" When I don't reply immediately, Cassie narrows her eyes and demands, "Well?"

And I find... I don't want to argue. I can't really argue with Cassie, for all the practice I got trying to debate things with Dub and the Guardian. Words are her best weapon, just like Wonder Woman. I cast aside the slab. I release my TTK hold, and Cassie lands beside me -- I'm sure she's ready to take Spence away.

Then Spence speaks.

Not really speaks, I suppose. But she makes a sound, an amused, triumphant sound. She opens her eyes and goes "Heh."

"'Heh' this, witch!" I yell, over her sudden scream of terror as I grab her. I lift her over my head, boiling with rage -- she killed Tana, and she escaped my revenge not once, but twice. She thinks she will always escape.

"Noooooo!" she howls, and I think maybe Cassie is yelling the same thing at the same time.

Flesh, cartilage, bone -- I hear it all snap and pulverize as I slam Amanda Spence face-first into the concrete floor. Blood puddles from the ruin of her head and spreads to nearly touch my left boot before I move it.

"If I have to live with Tana's death," I say to Spence's corpse, "then you don't get to live."

"Kon, how could--"

"Save it, Cassie!" I snap, holding up a hand. "I don't justify myself to you." It's the work of but a thought to lift Spence's corpse with my TTK and bring the collar of her Agenda-issue jumpsuit into grabbing range. I wrap the body in telekinetic energy so it doesn't splash blood or brain around as I move it. I look to Cassie and meet her wide, horrified blue eyes. I feel no remorse, not even at that sight -- not even with the reminder that all my friends will look at me the same way. "Let's go stop the fighting."

****

As I thought, the sight of Spence's broken body takes the fight out of the Agenda. I doubt she actually was the leader -- she wasn't when I first made her acquaintance, and she's always seemed more like a general who was happy to be in the thick of the fighting than in the upper tier of the organization. But I can't think of anything else to shout but "I killed your leader!" as I hold her corpse up for everyone to see.

There's a hell of an argument on all sides of the heroic faction at that, after the surviving Agenda troops surrender, after they are all rounded up. And it only gets worse when Robin, Batboy, and Secret bring in Klarion the Witch-Boy. Batboy is looking like he wants to whip out some kryptonite on me.

Kal is looking at me, too. But I can't tell if he's disappointed or sad.

I try to tell myself that I don't care.

"Suzie, what do you mean, you don't want to go back to being a teen?!" Cassie demands in a voice gone shrill with stress. "You've... you've got to!"

Secret folds her arms and turns her back to Cassie. "I don't "got to" do anything, Cassie. No one tells me what to do, ever!"

"That's a lie," I mutter, in a voice pitched only for Kryptonian ears. Kal snorts, and tries to cover it up quickly.

"I'm done hiding." Secret declares. "I don't ever want to go back to that childlike feeling of helpless, of people hurting me... ever."

"If she won't change back, it's not 'everyone' and I'm off the hook. Time is ticking..." Klarion, that smarmy little gnome, says in his nasally voice.

Secret glances over to me. "I don't understand how you want to go back to being a teen, Kon. You've--"

"...done something that Superman can't... and still be Superman." I interrupt her, nudging at Spence's still body to draw Secret's eye down, so she knows exactly what I'm talking about. "You think you're ready to be an adult, Secret? A hero responsible for the whole world? You think we have the right to rob everybody else of years of their life, of their adult lives and the people who l-love them?"

I'm proud of myself. I only stumbled once. Secret scowls at me, and I wonder if she's going to lash out, when Robin speaks.

"Secret... not wanting to be hurt... that never goes away, whether you're an adult or a teen. But 'hurt' can be handled... if you've got friends who are going to stick with you. Be there for you, as we will be."

"And you promise you'll be there for me, Robin... always?"

"Absolutely," Robin replies. There's something about Secret's tone that worries me, though, and I hear Merry and Doiby murmuring as much to each other, just before Doiby and Klarion hit us with the ray gun and the magic again. They must want to work quickly to make sure that Secret has no chance to change her mind.

I walk out of the room as most of the other kids (and some of the adults) celebrate their return to the proper ages, before anyone can say anything else to me.

****

I can't hide for long, though. I don't know if I'm even really hiding from him when he finds me. He seems even taller than before, even after accounting for his hover. I wonder if he's even aware of how imposing a figure he cuts.

"You shouldn't have killed Ms. Spence," Kal says quietly, "I know how you must f--"

"What if it was Lois?"

He stops, startled and dismayed by the question. So I elaborate,

"What if Spence had killed Lois? You think about that, and then you'll know how I feel, Superman."

That came out more bitter than I was expecting, and Kal frowns. His arms remain crossed over his chest. "That doesn't change the fact that when you had powers as strong as mine, you used them to be Spence's judge, jury, and executioner." I almost roll my eyes, expecting that our little heart-to-heart while age-switched has already slipped his mind, when he says something that startles me. Kal closes his eyes for a moment as he says, "I know how much an action like that can weigh on a soul. I would never call what I did to those who ruined Matrix's home world a mistake, but it's something I regretted for a long time afterward. Still regret, sometimes."

Did Superman -- the Superman -- just admit to killing someone? And did he just admit that to me?!

"You?!" is all that I can force out after that revelation. I think I might faint when I see him nod, solemnly, in confirmation.

"They were Kryptonian criminals from the Phantom Zone, and when they broke out, they laid waste to Earth in that dimension. In the end, the three of them and Matrix were the only ones left. And I... I couldn't take the chance that they would figure out how to get into our dimension." Kal looks pained, and he floats downward until his feet touch the ground, uncrossing his arms at the same time. He lays a hand on my shoulder after he lands. "But I also wanted to punish them for their crimes. They were killed by exposure to green kryptonite."

I shudder a little at the thought. Kryptonite exposure is no picnic on the beach -- it feels like all your insides have caught fire and your stomach is trying to crawl out of your mouth. It steals your powers and, if you're under it long enough, makes you too weak to move. And then you can't get away as it kills you, slowly.

"You stopped them from destroying our world, though. They would have followed you. Bad guys like that always do."

Kal smiles a little, but his eyes still look sad. "And you stopped an evil woman who probably would have killed again and again to realize her twisted goals. In my experience, the end result doesn't stop the guilt over the means."

Then he gives my shoulder a squeeze and I nearly black out, yelping, "Pain?!"

He releases me instantly. "Kon?"

"Ow! Oh god. What the hell was that for?!" I demand, cradling my other palm against my throbbing shoulder.

"I didn't... I touched you with the same amount of force I normally would..." Kal protests. He furrows his brow and hovers back up into the air. Nearly a foot up and half that backward, away from me, and then he says, "Come up here."

"Why the hell would I want to follow around the guy who tried to crush me handful by handful?" It's half a joke, half sincere protest, as I float up to meet him.

As I float up to meet him.

As I...

Stay stuck on the ground.

"My powers!" I cry, stunned, "What's happened to my powers?"

****

It's weird, and I guess maybe Alanis Morissette would call it ironic (I have no idea if it really is, I just remember Robin making faces when Cassie listened to her CDs and saying that Alanis didn't know how to use the word properly). I used my powers to kill someone, and now they've been taken away.

Superman flies me back to the Fortress of Solitude and his robots get to work on figuring out what went wrong with me. And he insists that nothing is wrong with me, but I'm a little too busy worrying that I'm going to be stuck in a tank to melt (all over again) to be reassured.

"It was worth it..." I whisper. For the first time since it happened, I can see Tana other than how she died. Because her murderer won't hurt anyone else.

It was worth everything.

on 2012-03-30 05:22 (UTC)
Posted by [identity profile] http://users.livejournal.com/_sephet_/
I will say again, you are very, very skilled at crafting a tone. We feel Kon's pain, anger, bitterness, and acceptance throughout this in very real ways, as well even Kal's acceptance and his own deep guilt. I like the twist, that, while this is a thing that happens in the comics regardless, it feels very much like Kon losing his powers is a story tool of redemption? "I used my powers to kill someone, and now they've been taken away." is a very good line.

All in all, very good, and very haunting. Very well done <3

on 2012-03-30 05:34 (UTC)
Posted by [identity profile] schizoauthoress.livejournal.com
I am totally of the opinion that Kon's powers going away was an attempt to make his character grow up.

But also I think he needed to find out about Kal being a killer (though I think Kal was justified, and he did a space exile to atone) so that he wouldn't spiral into guilt too far.

I'm glad you liked it!

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