Close Quarters (A Young Justice/Superboy fanfiction)

A day Together

After her chat with Clark, Martha Kent was finished packing up for tomorrow's farmer's market and went along to milk the cattle. She hired a few local youths to help most days, but on this Friday Maribeth, a sweet young girl of only 20, was busy with school; so, she donned the gloves and pulled the stool up for herself. Martha was in remarkably good shape for her age, but there was no denying that farm work was a young woman's job.

As she hissed in pain of her aching back, Martha couldn't help missing the help from when Clark was around. She and Jonathan could only keep up so much, but whenever Clark came by he more than made up for their slowness. Whatever bothered superman, she wished would go away so her son could come home.

Entering the old farmhouse to wash up, she paused by the entry table; musing, she lifted a picture frame. It was a very old photo of Clark, a mere few weeks after he came into their lives. She chuckled, remembering how the pod had eviscerated their garden beds. With next to no crops that year and severe property damage, they almost had the farm foreclosed on... but with a little help from the community they'd scraped by. In those early days Jonathan used to hold the baby and joke that they should try to pass him off as cauliflower and sell him at the market. Above all that strife though, there was nothing in the world that could ever compare to the light Clark brought into their lives.

Nothing, no light nor joy could compare to the stress and shame that the clone had brought into his life.
and yet, watching the boy shovel dry cereal into his mouth with his hands, Clark felt... something. it wasn't the something he felt when saving an innocent, nor was it the feeling of sparing a baddie. this was more neutral, it was like passing a deer in the forest and knowing you won't kill it, even if you have the power to: merciful indifference. He didn't hate the clone as much as he didn't like it--him-- Clark corrected himself for the hundredth time. He and the kid were just different. They were not family, but both from roughly the same area (Metaphorically, that is). He'd let the kid be if the kid left him be. Conner, he remembered; the kid had a name now: Conner.

It was nice to have something to call him besides 'The kid', but Clark felt a strange pang of something, envy? pity? regret? It just felt strange that the kid had named himself. Conner had proudly admitted to him after Lois left that he'd named himself after a dog, and something about that was just  rubbed him the wrong way. Like after a lifetime as an inanimate object the clone had to pick his own name, a person decision,  and the only thing he could conceive was to name himself after an animal. It felt... pitiful? wrong? Whatever it was, Clark couldn't help remembering when he was little and would name their livestock after cartoons and comic book characters. 

The boy-- Conner-- was dropped into the world with a childish mind like that, regardless of how severe and mature he tried to look.

"WHAT?" Clark was drawn out of his consideration to realize he'd been staring at Conner. "STOP LOOKING!" The boy ordered, voice wavering into falsetto as it wasn't fully dropped. He curled like a cornered animal, guarding the cereal from him.

Clark looked away, and after a few seconds he heard the kid start to eat again.

On saturday, Clark woke up. This was a surprise because he'd spent the past few nights sleepless, watching the kid obsessively, only sleeping in short, accidental segments. But last night he'd slept, he'd slept well, and he was surprised to say he felt good.

His new tenent emerged from the shower, blanket draped around his shoulders like a cape, and made a B-line for the cereal, which he took to the furthest corner to eat.

 Clark showered and ate toast, he would have had cereal, but Conner seemed to like it and he didn't want to take that away.

This morning 'until the end of the week' didn't seem so bad. He'd tolerate the boy for five-ish days and then he'd go home for the weekend and cool off in smallville until things were normal again. What 'normal' meant was unclear, it's not like the clone would disappear back into his pod, but maybe he'd leave Clark's house. Then things wouldn't be so awkward at work, he and the kid could nod in passing and never have to involve in each others lives.