Hey, guys!

Sorry it's been so long! It's been a super busy month. I went on vacation, then my neice was born, then we went and visited her, then we had VBS at our church this week, and my family will be visiting this upcoming week. No rest for me this summer, lol. xD I hope you're all having a great time though!

I hope you enjoy!

Chapter Twenty Two

Jon-El tried to trust the Kents, but it was harder than he ever could have expected it to be.

Every time Jordan walked into the room, Jon-El expected harsh words and glowing eyes, but it never happened.

Whenever his pain medications began to wear off, he began to worry he would have to steal the medication or go without. But then Lois would walk in, she didn't forget the same way his mother had.

He expected Jon to hate him. They shared a face, it kept his girlfriend away. He didn't know why Jon didn't just give up on him. But instead, he smiled and offered to spend time with him any chance he could.

And Clark… It would be easier if he just hit him. Every kind word felt like acid, every gentle touch burned like fire. When Jon-El saw Clark's face, he saw the face of his father, not the gentle man who he was living with.

They were always there, they were always ready to help, they were always ready to love… And Jon-El didn't understand why. He couldn't.

On his other world, no one was like this with him. No one was there when he needed something, no one came when he called… He knew better than to think he was loved.

So why did the Kents love him? Why did they trust him? He was a criminal, a murderer. No one had loved him before he was that way. Why did he deserve it now?

And his past would never go away, it followed him like his own shadow. The blemishes of what he had done would stay there. He would always be marked as a murderer, the right-hand man to a cult leader. He would still be Jon-El.

But then things changed.

Lois walked up to him and smiled. "Hey, got a second?" she asked, her voice as sweet as always.

Jon-El nodded and put down his book. "Yeah."

She sat down beside him, and only then did he notice the laptop in her arms.

"So, how do you feel about starting school up today?"

In a way, the world stopped. For a moment, Jon-El had no idea how to respond.

He had always been good at school, though he knew it was because of the kryptonian brain he had inherited. Admittedly, he hadn't been in a long time… After he became a superhero, things changed a lot.

But this was his chance to change again, to become normal.

"How did you..?" Was all he could ask.

Lois gave him a smile, but her eyes glittered with mischievousness. "I pulled a few strings," she said. "Plus, it's the same online school that Jon used after the X-K, so I already had everyone's contact information."

Jon-El still didn't really know what to say. School was something so mundane, so normal… He remembered begging not to go when he was little. Now all he wanted was it back.

"Thank you," he whispered.

Lois wrapped her arm around his shoulder and brought him in for a gentle side hug. "I'm your guardian. I gotta make you do school, just like the twins."

"I know," he said. "But thank you."

"Let me show you how to log in," she told him.

Jon-El watched as Lois opened up the laptop and went onto the school's website.

As soon as she entered his login details, he froze and his blood ran cold.

She didn't enter his name, she entered something else.

Jay Kent.

Before he could stop himself, he spoke up. "That's not my name," he told her. "I'm not a Kent."

Lois looked over at him, and her eyes flashed with sympathy. "I'm sorry, but you can't use your real name here. People know that Superman is named Kal-El, and if they find out you have the same last name, that could be bad…"

Jon-El swallowed. He understood that, and he had known that it would have to happen, but… He didn't expect it to happen so soon, or to hurt so much.

Like ripping off a bandaid, his last connection to his birth world was gone. Until today, Jay had been a nickname, it wasn't living a lie, it wasn't starting a new life, it had just been something the twins called him.

Now it was real.

He did his placement tests wordlessly and mindlessly. He tried not to think about the name change, the lies he would have to tell the world to fit in.

He tried not to think about his name. Since the day he was born, he had been Jonathan-El, son of Kal-El, and now… Now he was Jay Kent.

How far did the lie extend? Were Clark and Lois now his birth parents? Did they say he was adopted? Was he a triplet to the twins? He wanted to ask, but he didn't know if he could…

Once he finished his tests, he took the laptop back to Lois, then retreated to his room. He rarely missed his powers, but today, he wished he could just fly away and hide from everything that had changed.

His room seemed to smother him though, a reminder of the house he had once lived in, but still slightly different. The perfect door frame and unsinged wallpaper mocked his past.

Just like the change in his name, it overwhelmed him. It filled his stomach with dread and nausea.

So he grabbed his leather jacket and opened the window.

He climbed out of the hole, then sat down on the roof. He doubted anyone would find him here. He didn't want to run this time, he just wanted to think.

If he listened carefully, he could hear the sounds of the corn leaves rustling in the cold wind. It was a relaxing, yet foreign, sound to him.

He sat in silence, trying to think through everything that had happened, but he couldn't.

The changes were overwhelming. Just like they had been when he had exposed his powers to the world.

Once again, he was losing control, and he had no idea what to do.

And that was when Jordan's head popped out of the open window.

"Jay? What are you doing out here?" he asked.

Upon hearing the nickname, Jon-El burst into tears.

Jordan's eyes widened and he climbed out the window and sat beside him. "What's wrong?" he asked. "Is it something I said?"

Jon-El shook his head as he tried to get the tears to stop. He wiped at his eyes, but it didn't seem to do much.

"Hey, talk to me," Jordan said as he wrapped his arm around Jon-El's shoulder. It felt so much like Jordan-El's comforting touch, that another round of tears started and the weight on Jon-El's chest only grew.

Jordan held tightly until Jon-El was finally able to get control of himself, but even after that he didn't let go.

"Wanna talk about it?" he asked awkwardly.

Jon-El looked down at the roof, refusing to look at the person who looked so much like his twin. "I started online school today," he said. "Well, uh… I did the placement tests."

"That's good!" Jordan said.

Jon-El nodded. "I… I know, but… We couldn't use my real name," he explained. "So Lois put in Jay Kent."

"Oh…"

Before Jon-El could stop it, he found himself pouring his heart to his twin's doppelganger. "It's not that I don't like Jay, but it was a nickname, something you and Jon call me. Until today, it wasn't anything real, it wasn't my name, and I wasn't a Kent. I'm not a Kent…"

Jordan frowned. "You don't want to be a Kent?" he asked.

Jon-El shook his head. "It's not that…" he said softly. "You guys are just so perfect. I don't belong here… You know what I am. I'm a criminal, a cultist, a… a murderer."

Jordan winced. "You were manipulated," he said.

Jon-El didn't know what to say to that, he didn't know how to respond to Jordan. It hadn't been that long since Jordan had called him those things. Instead, he leaned against the side of the house.

"My name was the last thing I still had," he told Jordan. "I was Jon-El, son of Kal-El. I didn't have to have a fake identity. And yeah, things weren't great over there, but…"

"But everything's changed now?" Jordan said.

Jon-El nodded and looked at the boy who was his twin's doppelganger. Jordan Kent could never replace his twin, but maybe he wouldn't mind being his triplet. "Nothing's the same, and it's scary."

Jordan nodded in return, the hesitated for a second. "When I was younger, we lived in Metropolis. I was bullied, I didn't have the powers I have now, and my anxiety was really bad," he said. "But then we moved here, and things have been a lot better. It was like a new chance at life. Maybe this is yours."

Jon-El thought about it for a minute. He would have two brothers who spent time with him and came to check on him, guardians that were there for him and hadn't hurt him yet.

Maybe it had taken getting off that world to get a new chance at life, just like it had taken Jordan leaving Metropolis.

He could leave everything in the past, even his own name, and start fresh. No one would know he had killed someone, no one would know that he was a part of a cult, no one would know that his father was Superman.

It was a chance to change.

And maybe it was time for that change.

"Thanks, Jordan," he said. "For everything."

I hope you enjoyed! Thanks for reading!