The Team (YJ Oneshots)

My Brother's Keeper (Superboy)

Remember that clone in season one that appeared in one episode? Yeah, here's a oneshot about him.

"Oh no. We're all meeting in the brief room ... I thought we got all our secrets out a year ago," Wally said as the team walked into the briefing room. Artemis was under his arm and gently punched his side.

"Well, we did," Robin pitched in. Zatanna nodded in agreement. Everyone was looking at each other, waiting to see who would confess. They had made it a habit to confess secrets in the briefing room. They were never big secrets anymore, just small ones. As a team, they had established trust.

Conner was the next to speak, "That was until I discovered something else about my family." Everyone raised an eyebrow and looked at the clone.

"Please tell me you don't have another evil parent, cause I'm noticing a trend," Zatanna questioned as she lend on her hip.

Wally looked at the magician, "You can't have more than one biological parent."

"Hello Wally, he's a clone. Conner can be a mixture of people," Artemis rolled her eyes.

M'gann was the next to speak. She looked up at her boyfriend and placed a hand on his shoulder, "What's wrong, Conner?"

He shrugged, "Well, there's nothing wrong. A couple of months ago I went back to Cadmus. I found another Superman clone. He was aggressive and we fought. He had all of Superman's powers, like laser vision and flight. The only difference was that he was young like me."

Kaldur stepped closer into their small circle, "So there is another Superman clone?"

Conner nodded, "Yeah, so I guess Zatanna was half way right. I did have an evil brother."

"Wow, Conner, you're really stealing my stick," Artemis scoffed. Conner scoffed back, finding what she said was kind of funny. With in the year that had been on the team, the two seemed to get each other. They both had evil fathers and now they both had evil siblings.

Robin raised an eyebrow, "Wait, what did you mean, 'I did have an evil brother?'"

"That I had an evil brother."

"Did he die or something?" Wally asked with a slightly disturbed look on his face. He held Artemis a bit closer, too.

"No, he just isn't evil anymore." Everyone took a sigh of relief. Now they didn't have to worry about another evil sibling coming after them. No one wanted another case of the Reds.

"Is he still living at Cadmus?" M'gann asked, "We can't let him live in there."

"But he isn't."

"Then where is he living?" Kaldur wondered and rubbed his chin.

Conner's answer shocked them, "He's been living in my closet."

It was but weird meeting Conner's brother at first, since they woke him up inside of Conner's closet. He was bit startled at first, and so were they, but after that there wasn't anymore weird encounters.

He didn't talk at all, but he seemed friendly. He wasn't the social type, like Conner. All he did was wave at them a few times, watch television static, and pet Wolf. That was all he wanted to do so they let him do it. But Conner started to notice a few things.

Everyone else was out of the cave when Conner decided to confront his brother. M'gann and Zatanna were at the mall, Artemis was at dance class, Wally and Robin were hanging out together in Keystone, and Kaldur was spending time with his family in Atlantis.

Conner sat on the couch next to his brother. His brother was petting Wolf and smiling at the creature. It wasn't often Superboy saw him smile. He frowned or had a blank face. Conner knew he wasn't happy in the cave He didn't want to keep his brother in a place he hated, so it was time to let his brother have his own life for once.

"Hey," Conner started. He had never really good at talking, but being on the team and going to school had helped him a lot. Plus, it couldn't be that hard to talk to someone who was basically him.

"Hello," The still unnamed clone spoke for the first time in days. He stopped petting Wolf and looked at Conner, "Where are your friends?"

"Oh, there all busy with family and stuff," He said as he tried to think about the speech he was going to give his brother, "What were you up to?"

"Petting Wolf and watching television."

Conner nodded and faced the television screen, "Reminds you of Cadmus? When they showed you all those things?"

The clone nodded, "Yes, but Wolf is just a good companion."

"But you don't like it here," Conner finally said what he had been meaning to say all day, "The cave isn't your home like it's mine."

Conner's brother looked down at his lap, "It's hard when you don't know anyone and your whole purpose in life is changed. I'm supposed to be Superman, but I'm not."

"You're not Superman and no body else wants you to be. I know from experience. You're your own life. You'll have your own name, with your own personality, and your own friends. That goes for me, too. I know you're not happy here at the cave. You don't have to be me and live here. That doesn't mean you don't have to stay either. You can live wherever you want to."

"I don't?" He looked back up from his lap.

"No, cause that's what freedom is."

"Then I would like to find somewhere else to live and be a normal person in society. I always wanted to have my own dog and sleeping closet."

Conner laughed, "Brother, normal people don't sleep in closets. First day of my free life, I slept in Wally West's closet and he was weirded out."

"Wally West weirds me out."

"Yeah, he does that sometimes."