AN: Inspired by the Law and Order: SVU episode "Totem," and a small speech from We're Back: A Dinosaur's Story.
Trigger warning: graphic implications of child abuse but no actual description of said abuse
Disclaimer: I wouldn't get the approval to write for a children's show.
Monster
Connor stands off to the side, arms crossed over his chest as his teammates give an animated testimony to the news reporters clamoring around them. It's not that he's forbidden from speaking, but after the Team's first ambush by the media included a low-blow question about Superman and a broken camera, it was unanimously decided that it would probably be best if he kept silent. Not that he minds, really, because he has nothing to say.
He feels a sudden, frantic tugging on his shirt, so he looks down to see a little girl tightly gripping the black fabric. "Uh, hi?"
"You're Superboy," she states, voice hushed.
"Yeah." Shifting uncomfortably, he suddenly wishes he'd taken Wally and Robin up on those "socializing" classes. It's not that he's terrible with kids, but he's certainly no expert. "And you're...?"
"Becky."
"So, um, you, uh, want an autograph?"
She shakes her head solemnly. "I need a hero. You can save me, can't you?"
Well, this took a much more drastic turn than he expected.
"Save you?" he repeats. "I...what? Why do you need to be saved?"
Bright amber eyes bore into his, and he wonders how she got that look, the one he sometimes sees on his friends, the one he's sure he's worn himself, when missions have gone wrong and wounds won't heal and everything just seems so hopeless. "I'm not supposed to tell," she murmurs.
"You need to," he insists, hoping to sound calm and reassuring like he's sure Megan would, but the girl still flinches, and it's strange, how of all the situations he's been through, this is the only time he's desperate for backup. Trying again, he says, "I can't help you unless I know how. So, please?"
She rocks on her heels and stares at the ground. Finally, she whispers, "There's a monster."
"A monster?"
"Yeah."
"What kind of monster?"
Face flushing, she shakes her head furiously. "I can't say. But...but you gotta save me. I can't..." She turns her attention to the ground. "Everything hurts too bad, all the time, and I just want it to stop." When she looks at him again, tears gather along her eyelids. "You gotta save me, please. Amanda tries, but the monster doesn't like that."
Connor just stares at her, processing the information and imagining what could cause someone so tiny to sound so old. "I can save you," he manages after a moment.
"Do you promise?" Her teeth gnaw nervously on her lower lip as she releases her grip on his shirt and raises one hand toward his chest, pinky extended. "Do you promise?"
"I promise," he assures her, taking her pinky in his.
A small, fragile kind of smile crosses her face. "Okay, let's go."
"Go?"
"Uh-ha. To my house. To face the monster."
"Uhhh..." He glances back to his friends, notices Wally and Raquel, in almost perfect unison, pantomiming their actions during battle, and decides he has plenty of time before he's missed. "Yeah, let's go."
They walk in silence, her hand clutching his tightly, like she's afraid he's suddenly going to disappear. It's not long before she's leading him up the steps to a small house and pushing open the door. "'Manda, I'm home!" she calls. Turning to Conner, she explains, "She gets home earlier than me 'cause she's a middle schooler."
"Becky, you're almost twenty minutes late! I was getting worried." A girl around fourteen starts making her way down stairs. "You promised if I let you walk home alone you..." For the first time, she notices the Kryptonian, and she freezes, mouth snapping open. "What...what is he doing here?"
"He here to save us."
"There's nothing to save us from," her sister responds curtly. Addressing the hero, she continues, "I'm sorry that Becky dragged you over for nothing, but she has a wild imagination, and there's nothing wrong."
"But Amanda-"
"No buts. You know better than to be telling your stories to people, especially people like him."
"Look, it really wasn't a problem," Connor says, slightly uncomfortably and more than slightly confused. "Becky said she needed my help. Something about a monster."
Amanda rolls her eyes. "Like I said, wild imagination. Thanks for coming out of your way, but I can assure you, there is nothing wrong." Having regained her composure, she'd finished her walk down the steps and now gestures towards the door. "But I'm sure you have real people to help."
The clone glances between her and Becky, unsure of what to do. Both of their heartbeats are pounding in his ears, and yet neither matches that of someone who is lying. After a moment, he reluctantly releases Becky's hand. "I, I guess I'll leave, then."
"Wait!" the little girl cries, reaching for him, but Amanda intercepts her. "Superboy, wait!"
He pauses, but Amanda just shakes her head. "We're fine, I promise. Don't worry."
With a small nod, he forces himself to go. As he closes the door, he hears Becky shout, "The monster comes out at night!"
It takes a few moments before he's able to will himself off of their doorstep, but there's nothing else he can do but return to his teammates. Unfortunately, by the time he gets back, they've already left the scene, and he groans in annoyance as he makes his way to the nearest zeta tube. He'd been hoping that his absence would have gone unnoticed.
"Dude, what happened to you?" Wally's voice reaches his ears before he even finishes materializing. "I know you don't like interviews, but you had us worried."
"I'm fine," he grunts. Despite Amanda's assurance, he can't shake the feeling that something's wrong.
"Where'd you go?" Megan flies to his side to rest a hand on his shoulder.
"Nowhere."
"Nowhere?" Raquel repeats, eyebrow raised.
"Yup. Now if we're done playing twenty questions..." He tries to walk away, but Megan's grip tightens.
"Connor, where'd you go?"
Everyone has their eyes trained on him, and he knows there is no chance of him getting to his room without providing an explanation. "This girl asked for my help."
"With what?" Zatanna asks. "What was wrong?"
With a shake of his head, he continues, "She said, she said there was a monster. That she needed to be saved. So I went over, but her older sister was there, and she said there was no monster, and..." Trailing off, he stares at the ground; hearing it out loud, he realizes how ridiculous it sounds. "She has an active imagination, I guess."
"You think she is telling the truth," Kaldur objects softly. "Or you would not be this upset."
"I'm not upset," he retorts quickly. "And she couldn't have been telling the truth. Monsters aren't real."
It doesn't convince himself, and he can tell it doesn't convince his friends, either. "Did she give you anything else?" Robin inquires. "Other than it was a monster?"
"It comes out at night. That's the last thing she said."
"So maybe she has sleep paralysis," Wally offers. "To her, the monster is real, but her sister knows it's just a hallucination."
"Yeah, must be it."
They don't move, just stand there expectantly, but he's done talking, so he gently pulls away from Megan's grasp and heads to his room. For hours he just lays on his bed, staring at the ceiling and thinking about Becky, her quiet, "Do you promise?" and the feel of her pinky within his.
"She's just a kid. They make up stories," he murmurs sometimes, just to fill the silence, but they're empty words that ring like lies, and no matter how he twists and turns, the weight that seems to rest on his stomach refuses to go away.
Maybe that's why, at half past eight, he finds himself standing on the porch and staring up at the one light-filled window. Leaning back on his heels, he watches the shadows flicking across the room. It's probably nothing, he thinks, activating his super-hearing. I'm overreacting-
"Lie down, Becky."
"No, no, it's my turn. Remember, Mama?"
"No, Amanda, it is not. Now, you stay on your knees and you-" There's a small squeak of pain "-lie down, or you're both going to get punished."
Anger rages in Connor's chest, and he reaches for the doorknob, ready to wrest the door off its hinges, only to find that it's unlocked. Racing inside, he takes the stairs two at a time, trying to balance speed with silence because he has no idea what this woman is capable of, and he doesn't want to find out.
A sharp yelp reaches his ears, and rage overrides caution as he kicks down the bedroom door.
Amanda, kneeling at the foot of the bed, whips her head around, mouth snapping open in disbelief, and she hastily scrunches herself as small as possible, trying to cover what the thin, practically see-through nightshirt doesn't. Her mother, positioned over Becky, tenses like a cat about to strike and slowly turns to face him. Eyes wide, mouth twisting in a snarl, she demands, "What the Hell are you doing here? Get out of my house!"
"Get away from her," is all he whispers, clenching and unclenching his fingers, mentally begging this woman to make one wrong move.
"She's my child!"
"Three seconds, or I'm putting you through the wall." He takes a step closer, punches a hole in the nearby dresser, just to emphasize his point. "Don't test me."
Because the genomorphs had taught him about the crimes he'd be fighting, leaving no details hidden, and their lecture on child sexual abuse is crawling from the dark recesses of his mind and flooding his thoughts with images he never wanted to see again, images that are all but playing out before him right now.
The woman never breaks eye contact as she slowly stands. Becky, wearing the same thing as Amanda, brings her knees to her chest and rests her head against her thighs. "What are you doing in my house?" she growls, as though that's the only issue. "You have no right to be here."
Connor wants nothing more than to punch the sneer off her face, but he inhales sharply through his nose and returns, "And you have no right to be doing what you're doing to your daughters. So they are going to change, you are going to stand right there, and I am going to call the police. Is that clear?"
"And tell them what? My girls, they won't say anything. Right, girls?"
She looks at them, but Amanda just glares and Becky doesn't even move. "Right, girls?" she repeats expectantly.
"He believes us," Becky sniffles, peeking out at her mother. "You, you said people wouldn't believe us, that no one would stop you, but, but he believes us. He's going to save us from you."
"I am your mother and you do not need to be saved from me!" She throws out her arm and embeds her fingers in her daughter's hair. "Now you take-"
The half-Kryptonian throws himself at her, one hand jerking her away from her daughter and the other around her throat. And he knows this is dangerous, he could snap her neck without even trying, and she's already choking and flailing but he can't bring himself to stop because he's so angry and disgusted, and it would look just like an accident, her fighting when he intervened, no one would blame him-
"Please stop."
His grip slackens, just the tiniest bit, as he glances down at Becky, hugging his leg. "Please stop, Superboy. Don't do it." The tears are dripping down her face. "Don't do this because you're mad. You're a hero. H-heroes don't hurt people. P-please, please put her down. You're my hero. Please. Please, put her down."
Seconds tick by before he gently sets the limp, unconscious woman onto the floor. "Go get changed, Becky," he manages, resting a hand on top of her head. "And when you're done, we'll wait for the police together, and you and your sister will never get hurt again. Okay?"
With a sniffle, she nods and goes. A lump settles deep in his throat, and he's so consumed with thinking about what would have happened, what would have kept happening had he not arrived, that he almost jumps when Amanda murmurs, "Is it bad that I wanted you to kill her?"
He turns to the fourteen-year-old, who's still struggling to conceal herself, and he tosses her one of the pillows that has fallen off the bed. She hugs it to her chest, obvious relief on her face. "Is it bad that I wanted to kill her?"
"Well, she's a sadistic, psychotic bitch, so no, I wouldn't call that a bad thing." There's a slight pause, then a sigh. "You must think I'm a horrible person."
"What?" He sits across from her. "Why?"
"I told you to go away," she whispers. "Becky told you, and, and I made you leave. It's, it's just...she's been doing this since I was six." With a small shake of her head, she starts to stand, mumbling, "But you don't want to hear about that."
"I do," he protests. "I mean, you can talk to me about it. If you want."
Because if he's learned anything from Dinah, it's that sometimes, all a person needs is someone else to listen.
Eyeing him for a moment, she takes her seat and continues softly, "It didn't start out this horrible. Just little things. Her coming into my room at night, to watch me sleep, and making me wear these stupid undersized nightshirts instead of pajamas, and getting way too involved in bathing me..." Her voice hitches. "And then it just got worse, and Dad was either blind or just didn't care because he certainly didn't stop her, and then he just skipped out all together after Becky was born." She hugs the pillow tighter. "I tried. I tried so hard to keep her from hurting Becky. I got in her way, I pissed her off, I distracted her, but she wanted us both, and I couldn't..."
"It wasn't your job to save Becky," he objects softly. "Your mother is a twisted woman, and everything that she did, to Becky and to you, was wrong. And I know why you tried to send me away."
A child will likely be filled with shame due to the abuse that he or she suffers, he recalls the genomorph's lecture. They will typically go to extremes to conceal or deny what is happening to them because they fear they will not be believed or will be blamed for what has happened. Additionally, abusers go to great lengths to convince their victims that no one will believe them about the abuse.
"You don't know the half of it. She had herself some sick punishments," Amanda mutters darkly. Her eyes have left the floor and are now trained on her mother. "She made me her perfect little pet, never daring to reach out to anyone. Not Becky, though." A bitter, triumphant kind of smile crosses her face. "She's tough."
"So are you."
"If only." Standing once more, she tells him, "I'll meet you in the living room; I don't want to spend anymore time with her than I have to. But when you talk to the police, tell them that the toys are in the top drawer of the nightstand and that the pictures are in the manila envelop in the back of her closet-Mom, thankfully, was never good with technology. It should be all the evidence they need."
Nothing left to say, she retreats, leaving Connor with the taste of bile in his mouth. He's faced thieves and criminal masterminds and murderers, and yet he's never wanted to hurt anyone as much as he does the prone woman lying a few feet away.
"Superboy?"
Becky is back, wearing a sweatshirt and jeans. "Are the police coming?"
"I was just going to call them." Getting to his feet, he extends a hand to her, and she quickly takes it. "Look, about earlier-"
"It's alright. Amanda told me why she did that. She was just scared, 'cause of all the bad things Mama does when she becomes the monster. Besides, I knew you'd come back. That's why I made sure the front door was unlocked."
It takes an awful lot of swallowing before he dares to trust his voice enough to make the call.
Police and paramedics arrive on the scene just as their mother is coming to, and Connor quickly steers the girls into the back of the ambulance. Before he can climb in after them, though, one of the paramedics steps in front of him and murmurs, "I don't think you should come."
"Why not?" he demands hotly, not in the mood for bureaucratic intervention.
Voice dropping to a low whisper, the paramedic continues, "These girls are going to have to get rape kits done, and they're going to have to speak to the police, and it's going to be a long, chaotic evening that would involve you spending a lot of time in the waiting room with virtually no contact with them. If you want to see them, tomorrow is better. They'll need time."
Connor nods slowly, not wanting to listen but knowing it's for the best. "Becky, Amanda," he manages, despite the dryness of his throat. "I, I'll see you tomorrow, okay?"
Amanda nods, but Becky stretches out her hand, pinky extended. "Promise?"
"Promise."
And then he's gone, getting back to the Cave as fast as he can so that he can destroy punching bags, ripping them off their chains and tearing through the leather. Five bags are tattered on the floor and his fist is through the sixth when he hears a timid, "Connor?"
Megan is standing in the doorway of the gym, eyes sad. "What's going on? Are you okay?"
"I went back," he states curtly.
"To that little girl's house?"
"Her mother is a paedophile." It's not the most diplomatic approach, but there's no real way to ease into this conversation. "She was about to rape Becky. The way she did, I'm guessing, every night. The way she had been doing to her older sister since she was a little kid." He wipes at the sweat beading along his forehead. "I almost didn't go back. I almost left them with her."
"You didn't know." She's kneeling beside him. "And you did go back. You saved them."
"But I almost didn't. And how many other kids are out there? Waiting for someone to come and save them." His fingers dig deeper into the punching bag. "They're out there, right now, and what am I doing? Nothing!" A growl building in his throat, he throws the shredded leather across the room.
Megan wraps her arms around his shoulders. "You can't do this to yourself," she whispers. "You can't possibly save everyone. But you did save Becky and her sister. And you've saved so many people before this. That's all you can do, Connor."
"It's not enough. I'm a hero. There shouldn't be people out there that I can't save."
His girlfriend just hugs him tighter, and he's glad she doesn't try to calm him because there's nothing she can say to make him stop thinking about Becky and Amanda, splayed out before doctors documenting their injuries for evidence, or the millions of other kids suffering the same or similar fate.
Logically, he knows he can't save everyone. That doesn't make it hurt any less.
So he does what he can. He visits Becky and Amanda every day, stays with them through the trial, pulls an absurd amount of strings to keep them together in foster care. And every night he stays out until the early morning, patrolling throughout the country, ears and eyes wide open.
The monsters come out at night.
Child abuse is very real. In America alone, five child will die today, tomorrow, and each day to come because of the abuse they suffer. Millions are suffering every day, and those that do get the help they so desperately need are left with emotional and physical detriments that social services and foster care are not equipped to handle.
Any child can be a victim. Any adult can be a perpetrator. If you have any suspicion, any suspicion at all, alert authority.
If you are a victim, or have been a victim, you are in my thoughts are prayers always. Get help, no matter how long it takes. Someone will believe you. I believe you.
To help, donate to ChildHelp or write to your local legislators demanding stronger laws against child abuse and an improvement in the foster care system.
No more concrete angels.