Interlude: Change of Heart
FORTRESS OF SOLITUDE
JULY,8, 2010 11:00 PM
"Do you think we should put him down? Do you want me to take your burden in that task also?"
It had been a very good question. What did he think exactly about the clones? If he was honest with himself, Superman had to admit he didn't know. He felt some kind of ill-defined disgust for the two boys. Even the terms "boys" was difficult to use in regards to these things and after this afternoon, the Man of Steel wondered why he couldn't think of the clones as sentient. Was it because he wanted them to die and dehumanize them was a good way to accustom himself to the idea? Perhaps. In this case what was he, what was Superman if he meditated the death of thinking beings?
He sunk in a chair. He couldn't think of that in Metropolis or DC. Here there would be nothing to push him to destroy buildings or excite his wrath. He couldn't escape the cold fact. Even if he hadn't tried to kill his clones, he had wished them simply to disappear of his life and die. And for what? For the violation of his intimacy, of his very flesh to breed weapons, perhaps to be used against him? For this insane mingling of his genes with those of his archenemy? Both of these reasons or perhaps neither of them. He didn't know. There was a part of his mind that screamed the boys were unnatural and he thought it was a normal reaction to vat-grown organisms. Dante couldn't fault him for this, he who had killed because he thought he was facing animals.
He couldn't tell which one of them disturbed him the most. Was it Match with his raging personality? There was something terrifying to look at the clone's youthful face and imagine it twisted in a grimace of rage, to see these younger hands and imagine them having the strength to break his neck. Bruce was right, it was the perfect weapon to use against him, it would take a fortitude he was not sure to possess to slay a mirror image of his youth. Superboy was more insidious. He looked more human, having a personality did miracles to make a good first impression, but his more advanced programming gave Kal-El pause. This was a creature created to replace it, perhaps even to fool the world once he would have killed him. That didn't explain why CADMUS had created him as a hybrid but Superman had no doubts Luthor would have found a way to exploit even a weakened Superman.
So he was unnerved by Superboy. It was normal he thought. Bruce or Diana could perhaps gaze without fear or contempt on a weapon designed specially to kill them but he was not able to do so. Still Dante was right. Either Superboy was dangerous and should be disposed of, or he was good and would rise from his destined programming to stand among the League. There were no other options. If the clone was able to have good intentions, he should be taught to act on them. If he was irremediably led to evil, he should be taken care of.
For a brief and terrible moment, he had wavered. For an instant he was tempted to answer yes to Dante's proposition and seal the boy's fate. Of course, after the training session, Superman had little doubt such an answer would have left him maimed or even killed. One does not propose you to assassinate someone then fight a superior opponent for their sake and protection. To have the young hero who had previously declared himself afraid to fight Superman take the initiative to engage him a training bout had been surprising. Still he had wavered and thought about killing the clones and solving the problem once and for all.
It was the image that stopped him. Seeing his own youthful face with a dead smiling face, blood marking their throats. For a moment he had thought Dante more inclined to slay them peacefully but then remembered how himself would fight against a determined and capable opponent. To see himself, a younger version of himself but still pretty much a mirror, limbs cracked by battle, throat gouged open or head cleanly cut off was too harsh a vision. There had been also the realization of delegating the murder to someone, not because Superman himself was unable to commit it but because he couldn't bother to do so while wishing it, would have been acting the way Luthor acted. It would have been murderous hypocrisy at its finest.
So Kal-El asked himself the only question that mattered now: Did the two clones deserved to join their brothers in the grave? He didn't think so. Firstly, he was, as most of the League, a stanch abolitionist and he could not wish the clones submit, just for the crime of existence, to a fate he refused to visit on murderers. Secondly, the clones had not asked to be grown and exist. If murderous rampage it should be, this rampage should target scientists and CADMUS' employees not the products of their fault. He considered the taking of his DNA like a rape but he knew it was wrong to blame the children born of the crime for the sins of their creators.
Still it chilled him to the bones he had been willing, even for a moment, to approve the murders of two boys because he couldn't be bothered to sort his feelings out. Worse, considering the age and inexperience of Superboy and Match… He had been willing to murder children or stand while a subordinate took care of the problems for him. Forget Superman the hero, Clark Kent simple farmer's son was appalled at what he considered.
Why had he not thought of this sooner? Because no Leaguer would have laid the possibility of making the clones "disappear" before him. None of his friends would have thought to kill them, Dante, who had argued the League should kill Match rather than leaving him a mindless berserker, had n such scruples.
In the sanctum of his wintry home, Superman thought about the meaning of his epiphany. If he couldn't kill his clones, it meant he should be closer to them. Not as a father for he was not their father but like the young hero had mentioned as a fellow Kryptonian. He knew only bits and pieces of his destroyed planet's history and most of it came from the Green Lanterns' rings database. Still if what he remembered was correct, Superboy was destined to attend high school. That meant he would need a lesson or two on controlling his strength. It had taken most of a summer for Pa to teach him how to not break something or someone in P.E.
Superman knew duty and knew what was his concerning at least the sentient clone. For Match, things would have to wait.