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Tragedies of the Past, chapter 4
Max finished his morning run and showered. He went into the room he shared with Conner and was surprised to see that Conner's bed was empty. He normally needed to nudge him awake.
Max dressed and went downstairs to the kitchen to prepare breakfast. He expected Conner to be looking through the refrigerator. He wasn't there, but a note was on the table. Max read it.
'Not feeling up to anything today. Please cover for me. -- Conner.'
Max prepared coffee for the Kents and breakfast. Ma was the next one down and smiled gratefully, as always, as she took a cup of coffee. She took a look at the note.
"Just tell people at school that he's not feeling well," she told Max.
"Does this happen often?" he asked. "You seem to be taking it in stride."
"It happened a lot before you came. If there's a day when you can't take hiding who you are, we'll cover for you too."
Max nodded and finished cooking. He handed out her breakfast and set aside Pa's before starting to eat his own.
"You're a little different from all the others that Pa and I have raised," she commented. "They all loved their beds, and it took some doing to get them out."
Max nodded. "I noticed that about Conner."
"Clark was even worse," Martha confided. "Sometimes Pa had to dump a bucket of cold water on him to get him out of bed."
Max tried to visualize that and failed. He heard a thump on the porch and got up.
"The paper's here," he explained.
Max retrieved the paper and took a brief scan of the front page. He checked the date again. He realized why Conner needed the day away from everyone.
Conner sat on a large rock in the crater near Smallville that Clark had shown him. He didn't want to be around anyone today.
He sighed. Tana Moon wasn't the first person around him who had died, but she was the first woman that he loved. Maybe it was a little morbid to remember her on the anniversary of her death; perhaps her birthday or the day they met would have been more appropriate.
He took out a pad of paper and a pen from his backpack. Robin had once mentioned that Asian cultures would write letters to the dead and burn them to send them to the afterlife. Neither Tana nor he were from those cultures, but he wanted to do something to talk to her. Even if flying out to Hawaii were feasible, Tana's family had made it clear that they did not want to see him anywhere near her grave.
He stared off into space as he tried to figure out what to write.
Max hadn't realized how lonely school was without Conner.
He was surrounded by people, but their concerns and experiences were so very different from his that he found it jarring. He was a little envious that the greatest hardship that others had ever faced was being grounded for a week. He would have traded his worst experiences for that without hesitation.
Conner had been through more serious hardships. He knew how it felt to be a hair's breadth from death. Max hoped that he'd be back soon. Tana's death was still hard for Conner, and Max felt guilty about his role in helping the Agenda. Spence had been acting of her own accord, but if it hadn't been for the Agenda kidnapping Tana and putting the trap on her, she'd still be alive.
Conner must hate me, Max thought. Especially today.
Conner began writing.
'Dear Tana,
I'm sorry I couldn't save you. I'd give anything to have been able to.
I'll never forget you; you were my first love. What we had was special, and it'll be a part of me for as long as I live.
I've got a new family now. It's my second one since I always considered you, Rex, and Roxy as my first. I think you'd love them; you could swap reporter talk with Lois and Clark, and Jonathan and Martha are just very warm, very caring people. I even have a little brother, Max, who you met. He's nothing like he used to be, but I don't think he gets that yet.
Did you know that I've got new powers? I've added heat vision and the occasional spurt of super-hearing or X-ray vision to my list of powers. I don't just go on about 'tactile telekinesis' anymore. I've gotten my control over that to be able to project barriers consistently now. I wish I had managed that sooner; I might have been able to save you.
I've changed since you last knew me. I'm not the irresponsible glory-seeker that I was. It's a little embarrassing to think of how I used to be. I've grown up.
I also found out where I come from, or rather, who I came from. It's bad, very bad. I could stand being from Westfield. He was a bad guy, but he wasn't out to kill Superman like Lex Luthor. Scary, huh? I'm a mixture of the best man and the worst man on the planet. I don't know what I'm going to do about it. If you were here, I know you'd have advice to tell me. You'd say something to reassure me that it didn't make me a bad person.
I miss you. I'll never forget you.
Your forever,
Superboy, aka Conner Kent'
Conner finished the letter and wiped his eyes. After a moment, he used his heat vision on the paper, watching it burn.
He laid back and stared into the sky, lost in his thoughts.
Max came back from school and looked around. He didn't see Conner. He worked on his homework before stopping and getting dinner ready.
As he was preparing dinner, he looked outside and frowned. Dark clouds were rolling in.
He heard Ma and Pa come in.
Martha came in the kitchen. "That smells wonderful! Is Conner back yet?"
"No," Max answered. "How long does he normally stay out?"
Martha frowned. "He normally came back after school was over. It's unusual for him to stay out this late. Maybe he had to turn into Superboy for an emergency."
Max frowned. "Let's turn on the radio to check."
There were no reports of Superboy appearing in the area. The three grew worried as it began raining and thunder boomed.
"Do you know where he usually goes?" Max asked.
"There's a crater a few miles northeast of here," Jonathan replied. "Clark went there when he needed to get away from it all, and he showed it to Conner."
"I'll go there to search for him. Check with Clark to see if he knows where he is."
"Are you sure?" Martha asked. "You haven't used your powers in a while and the storm's getting pretty nasty."
"There shouldn't be a problem," Max reassured them.
Max flew high, staying out of sight. He was struggling against the wind a bit, frustrated that his powers weren't at the level to make getting there trivial. He had tied his hair into a braid again because the winds were strong enough that his hair would otherwise blow all over the place. It only took a couple of minutes to get to the crater, but Max realized it was going to be more difficult than he thought.
As he landed, he called out, "Conner!"
If Conner replied, he couldn't hear it over the rain, wind, and occasional crash of thunder. Max started going through the forested crater, hoping to find him.
After a few minutes of searching, he grew worried. It was dark and he could barely see anything. He may have passed within twenty feet of Conner and not noticed.
Max tried to concentrate to hear him. Perhaps Conner is making some noise, he thought. He couldn't hear him, but then Max was bombarded with noise. He heard individual raindrops hitting the ground, animals taking shelter in the trees, the wind blowing through the trees, everything. It was overwhelming.
Max sank to his knees and tried to block it all out. That didn't work. He then tried to tune individual sounds out. He wasn't able to completely get rid of them, but he was able to turn them down. In doing this for multiple sounds, he became aware of two heartbeats. One was his, but the other one was coming from the wooded area. He rose to his feet and went there.
He found Conner staring at the sky.
"Conner!" he called out.
He received no response.
Max went and gently shook him. Physical contact seemed to snap him out of whatever trance he was in. Conner blinked and seemed to notice it was raining for the first time. He realized that he was soaked and that Max was as well.
"Let's go home," Conner said.
Max nodded.
Back at the Kents, the two had changed to dry clothes and were eating.
"Why didn't you just keep the rain off of you?" Conner asked.
"I was," Max replied. "I lost my concentration when I started hearing everything."
"You're finally developing some more powers," Conner commented. "That's pretty good."
"I think I'm getting the raw end of the deal," Max said with a half-smile to show he was joking. "I get the enhanced hearing instead of heat-vision."
There was a pause.
"Are you okay?" Max asked.
"I'm fine now," Conner said. "Thank you for coming to get me."
"You looked like you were lost in thought."
"I was."
There was another pause.
Without any prompting, Conner said, "I was thinking of what might have been."
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