Chapter fourteen
Conner looked a lot bigger in Martha's comparatively small arms. But he didn't look better. And Clark wasn't sure he'd ever seen his mother's face so grim.
"Doesn't seem normal. Not like a regular fever. Something's not right with him," she whispered in the dim light of the kitchen, seated at the table. Clark clenched his fists and felt like his heart had dropped through the floor.
"I never had anything like this?" he asked, hearing desperation tug at his voice. Martha, tissue in hand, gently wiped blood from Conner's nose and shook her head.
"Never. Clark, is there anything..."
"Unusual I know about him?" Clark sat down at the table, not as heavily as he wanted to. Even in times of crisis, he had been trained it was never acceptable to break the kitchen chairs. He reached out and touched a hand to Conner's ashen face, wishing he was as steel as superman. Wishing, briefly, in some unformed thought, that he was normal. Just a regular baby. Nothing special about him. "I'm his real father. His actual father. He has human and kryptonian DNA," Clark said.
"But then who…?"
"Lex Luthor."
"Oh my. Maybe he's had something like this. Maybe he'd know, with all his fancy machines—"
"Ma, I can't."
"Maybe the fortress then," Martha said. Clark stood up and she handed Conner back to him. He was about to step out the door when she put a hand on his shoulder.
"Hold on a moment," she whispered, and vanished up the stairs. She returned minutes later with a small blanket. One Clark recognized. "You liked this one a lot, especially when you couldn't sleep," she said, exchanging Conner's blanket for the one she held. Clark nodded solemnly, and left the house. Martha had been his first idea, but she was hardly his last hope.
"Just hold on, okay," Clark said softly, as the night air pulled at his hair and he hugged Conner to his chest. Conner made no sound. He barely even stirred. Superman was hoping, at least, trying to hope that the fortress of solitude would hold an answer. And as it happened, the diagnostics at the fortress did have an answer. But they didn't have a solution.
Superman scanned the results four times before dropping onto the floor. Above him, on a table built for a full-grown kryptonian, Conner lay, barely breathing. Human and kryptonian DNA, never meant to mix, tearing apart from one another. He had never realized that having kids wasn't an option because, well, he'd never really thought about having kids. The mechanics of it all had seemed too far off, a "maybe one day" idea. And then, one fell right into his lap. And now he was falling right back out again. Superman stood up, hands gripping the table on the verge of crushing the metal but restraining just that much.
"Conner," he whispered. The fortress was silent in answer. In desperation, he called Batman.
"Maybe if we had weeks. Or it was fifty years in the future. I don't know what to tell you," Batman said.
"I don't know what to do," Superman told him. It was Bruce Wayne who answered him in reply.
"There is still someone you can call. Even if it seems terrible," he said.
"I can't! How can I trust Lex?" Clark cried. "In Luthor's hands, he's just a weapon. An object."
"You'd rather have a dead son than a live one in the hands of Lex Luthor?" That stopped Clark cold. He looked down at his son, struggling to draw breath on the table. Such a short time ago he'd wanted nothing to do with the boy. And now, it was like the sun had fallen from the sky. There was nothing that mattered but Conner. Protecting him was everything.
"You're right," Clark said, quietly. He hung up. Then he gently picked up Conner from the table, and he flew back to Metropolis, landing softly, almost imperceptibly on the roof of the Lex Corp building. Almost imperceptibly, because when it came to Lex, he always knew when Superman had arrived. Which is why he was hardly surprised, didn't even turn around in his chair when Superman entered.
"Superman. To what do I owe the pleasure? If it's about our legal proceedings—" Lex stopped cold as he spun the chair around from the window, eyebrows rising. "You brought him. Why?" he asked. Superman approached the desk, holding Conner out in his arms, not offering him so much as lifting him desperately.
"He's dying," Superman said, and the words tasted like poison on his tongue, like swallowing shards of kryptonite even saying them, like out loud, it suddenly became true. Lex blinked, but said nothing.