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Conner “Kon-El” Kent thought he was pretty good at holding himself together.
Kon knew he was good at shoving things down deep and ignoring them—burying them where even he couldn’t reach. He could take it. He was invulnerable to most things—bullets, fire, impact—and maybe, if he tried hard enough, emotions too. He could lock it all away and pretend it didn’t exist. Pretend he didn’t feel it.
“I’ll finish up the report,” Tim said, turning to face the group.
Bart let out a long, theatrical sigh. “Oh, thank god. Cleaning up all those evil robots has me starving.”
Kon almost smiled. The sound of Bart’s voice, the usual chaos, helped fill the silence in his head. Joking around helped. It made everything quieter—less sharp around the edges.
He was capable. He didn’t need to talk about his feelings if he could laugh instead. Clark thought it was a stupid way to cope, but what did Clark know about being a clone? About being made instead of born—about existing because someone else had an agenda? About having to build yourself from the wreckage of someone else’s design?
“When are you not starving?” Cassie snorted. “I can’t wait to take a shower and steal all the hot water before Tim can.”
“I’m just glad Luthor didn’t kill anyone—and that no one was severely injured,” Tim said as he started typing. The steady click of the keys sounded too calm. Too normal.
Kon swallowed. The name Luthor scraped down his spine like rusted metal.
He could condense it. Pack it tight. Press it into something small and manageable. Use it as glue to keep himself together. He’d done it before—he could do it again. Because if he didn’t think about it, it couldn’t hurt him.
He’s invulnerable.
He’s invulnerable.
He has to be.
Bart leaned back in his chair, tossing a crushed soda can toward the trash with a lazy flick. “Man, I still can’t believe Luthor got that close to Jump City again. You’d think after the last time—”
“Yeah,” Cassie cut in quickly, sharper than she meant to. “You’d think.”
The room went still. The hum of the computers filled the silence, low and steady, like background noise for a moment no one wanted to acknowledge.
Kon felt the air shift—thin and brittle. It wasn’t their fault. No one meant anything by it. But the name hung there anyway, heavy and electric, vibrating somewhere behind his ribs, like it was trying to get out.
Tim didn’t look up from his laptop. “We’ll need to flag it for the Watchtower,” he said, voice even. “LexCorp’s been popping up in too many places lately.”
Kon forced a laugh that scraped his throat raw. “Guess the guy’s just got a bad habit of sticking his nose where it doesn’t belong.” His arms folded over his chest, the movement too stiff to be casual. “Classic billionaire move, right?”
Cassie’s faint smile didn’t reach her eyes. Her gaze flickered over him like she could see the fault lines spiderwebbing under his skin.
Bart grinned, oblivious. “Maybe he just needs a hobby. Crocheting, maybe. Villainy’s getting kinda old for him.”
Kon barked out a laugh that came out wrong—too loud, too sharp, like static caught in his lungs. “Yeah. Sure. Maybe I’ll buy him some yarn.”
Tim’s fingers hesitated over the keys. He looked up—just once—and that was enough. Not pity, not really, but something close enough to make Kon’s stomach twist.
He stood abruptly, stretching his arms with exaggerated ease. “Hey, I’m gonna, uh… head back to my room. Take a shower or something before Cassie steals all the hot water.”
Cassie lifted her hands in mock surrender. “Fair warning, you’ve got five minutes tops before I come kick you out.”
“Then I’d better hurry.” His grin was paper-thin, already starting to tear at the edges.
He turned before anyone could say anything else. Before Cassie could ask if he was okay, before Bart could drag him off to play video games, before Tim could tilt his head in that way that meant he knew.
The door hissed shut behind him, the sound too final, too soft. The hallway lights dimmed to their evening glow, and the Tower’s hum filled the silence—a mechanical heartbeat, steady and alive in a way he didn’t feel.
Each step away from the mission room felt heavier, slower. Like gravity had finally remembered it was allowed to touch him.
The hallway stretched ahead of him in muted gold light, the soft glow of the Tower’s nighttime cycle brushing across steel walls and smooth glass. The air was cooler here—colder than the mission room—and the hum of the security systems vibrated faintly through the floor, grounding and alien all at once.
Kon walked slowly, his boots heavy against the tile, trying not to think about the name echoing in his head. Luthor. It clung to him like smoke, sour and metallic, impossible to wash off.
He shoved his hands into his jacket pockets, shoulders hunched. The Tower’s corridors curved in subtle arcs, lined with the occasional window overlooking the ocean below. The water was dark tonight, still, broken only by the pulse of red warning lights along the Tower’s base. From up here, it looked endless.
“Invulnerable,” he muttered under his breath, the word almost catching in his throat.
He didn’t feel invulnerable. He felt hollow.
When he reached his door, he hesitated for a second before pressing his palm to the sensor. The panel chirped, and the door slid open with a quiet hiss.
The room beyond was dim, lit only by the faint glow of the city in the distance through the floor-length window. His space wasn’t exactly neat.
There were clothes half-folded on the chair near the bed, a heap of mission gear tossed onto the floor, and a few comic books scattered across the small desk by the wall.
The air smelled faintly like salt and laundry detergent—the cheap kind Cassie kept stocked in the common room.
The walls weren’t bare, though. For all his mess, Kon had covered them with scraps of life he didn’t always know how to explain. A poster of Metropolis from some charity event Clark had dragged him to years ago. A cracked photo frame with a picture of the team—Cassie with her arm around Bart, Tim awkwardly trying to look like he wasn’t smiling. And another, smaller photo stuck to the edge of his mirror: Jon, beaming up at him in his Superboy hoodie, hair sticking up in every direction.
The floor-length mirror stood across from the bed, leaned slightly against the wall. Around its frame, small snapshots were tucked in—little moments frozen in glossy color. Cassie mid-laugh, Bart with a half-eaten donut, a blurred photo of a Young Justice cookout. And Tim.
Mostly Tim.
Tim smiling, Tim at his laptop, Tim pretending not to notice when Kon was watching him. One of the photos was taken by Cassie—Tim half-turned, sunlight caught in his hair, Kon’s hand barely visible on his shoulder.
Kon hadn’t meant to keep that one. He just… never took it down.
He shrugged off his jacket, letting it fall onto the unmade bed, and dropped onto the mattress with a heavy sigh. For a few seconds, he just stared at the ceiling, listening to the hum of the Tower through the walls.
His reflection was visible in the corner of his vision—just the edge of his face, the faint gleam of his eyes in the mirror. He turned his head away.
He didn’t want to look at himself. Not tonight.
He leaned back on his elbows, staring at the ceiling vent, forcing his breathing to slow. He could feel the weight of the day pressing against his ribs—the fight, the mission, the sound of Luthor’s voice over the comms. It had been months since he’d heard that voice in person, and still, it crawled under his skin like static electricity.
"You’re not much like Superman at all, are you?"
The memory hit like a pulse of heat through his chest, and he clenched his jaw.
“Shut up,” he muttered to the ceiling.
He rolled off the bed, rubbing a hand through his hair. Maybe a shower would help. Or sleep. Or something. Anything that didn’t involve thinking.
He stepped toward the dresser, pulling out a clean T-shirt, but the movement drew his gaze—just slightly—toward the mirror.
And there it was.
His reflection, pale in the dim light.
His breath hitched.
For a long second, he couldn’t move. He just stared at the face looking back at him—the curve of his mouth, the sharpness of his jaw, the exact shade of blue in his eyes.
He looked like Clark, sure. But there was something else in the shape of his expression. Something colder, something that caught the light wrong.
Something that looked too much like him.
Luthor.
The thought came uninvited, sharp and sudden, and Kon’s chest constricted around it. His throat burned.
“No,” he whispered again, quieter this time. “That’s not— I’m not—”
But the mirror didn’t care. The face looking back at him didn’t care.
The shadows carved his features in cruel ways—the faint red tinge behind his eyes, the stiff line of his mouth. He could almost see it, the ghost of that smirk, the same tilt of arrogance he’d spent years fighting to unlearn.
His hands curled into fists.
He wasn’t supposed to be like him.
He was supposed to be better.
He was supposed to be Superman’s clone, not the other one’s.
And yet—when he tilted his head, the reflection did the same, perfect and cruel and silent.
“Stop looking at me,” he muttered, stepping closer. His voice shook, low and uneven. “Stop—”
It wasn’t fair. Clark didn’t have to see himself every time he thought about his enemy. Clark didn’t have to wonder if maybe, deep down, there was something rotten built into himself. Some echo of the man who had designed him, mixed in with all the borrowed heroics and false ideals.
“You’re not him,” he whispered, but the words felt weak in his mouth.
He dragged a hand down his face, catching on the edge of a tear he hadn’t realized was there.
God. He was so tired.
His eyes flicked up again, unwillingly, and he saw it—the flicker of red in his irises, faint but there. Kryptonian heat vision, a spark of power. It glowed for a heartbeat, just long enough to catch on the photos pinned around the mirror frame, the faces of his friends, his family.
Cassie. Bart. Jon. Clark.
Tim.
His chest tightened so suddenly it hurt.
They saw him as him. They didn’t flinch. They didn’t question what part of him came from who. They just saw Kon.
But what if that was a lie? What if they just hadn’t looked close enough?
He exhaled sharply, stepping back, shaking his head.
“Don’t look at me,” he said to the reflection, voice barely audible.
The words tasted bitter, cracked open in his throat.
He wanted to punch the mirror—to shatter the glass and silence the image staring back—but he didn’t. His hands trembled instead, caught between strength and restraint.
He lowered himself to the floor, knees hitting the carpet with a dull thud.
His breath came unevenly now. Shallow. Quick.
He didn’t cry—not really. But his vision blurred, and his chest heaved with the effort of holding everything in. His fingers twisted in the fabric of his jeans, gripping hard enough to leave creases.
He’d fought aliens, monsters, gods. He’d taken hits that would’ve leveled buildings. But this—this small, quiet thing, this moment of seeing himself and not liking what he saw—it broke him in a way nothing else could.
He pressed the heels of his palms into his eyes. The silence in the room was unbearable—thick, pressing, too full of everything he didn’t want to feel.
His voice came out rough. “You’re not him. You’re not him. You’re not—”
The words faltered, collapsing in on themselves.
He drew in a breath that shuddered. The mirror was still there when he opened his eyes, still reflecting that same impossible mixture of faces—Superman’s strength and Luthor’s cunning stitched together in the shape of a boy who didn’t know where he belonged.
“I didn’t ask for this,” he said quietly.
The reflection said nothing.
He reached out, fingertips brushing the glass. It was cold. Smooth. Solid.
For a moment, he imagined it giving way—that he could reach through, pull out the part of him that looked wrong, the part that made people hesitate when they remembered who he came from. But the glass stayed whole, and he stayed him.
He sat there for a long time, his reflection staring back.
The photos around the mirror blurred through his tears—bright smears of color in the dim light. He focused on one of them. Tim’s photo, the one Cassie had taken. The corners were curling from age, the colors soft from too many times he’d touched it without meaning to.
Tim looked calm in it, his smile small and genuine. The kind of smile that had always made Kon feel steadier, like he didn’t have to explain himself.
He reached up and brushed his thumb over the edge of that photo.
For a moment, the pressure in his chest eased. Just a little.
He leaned his forehead against the cool surface of the mirror, eyes squeezed shut.
“I don’t want to look like him,” he whispered.
The words trembled out, almost too quiet to hear.
He stayed like that, breathing unevenly, his reflection blurred beneath the fog of his breath. The silence of the room was heavy, almost suffocating, pressing against his ears until the faint hum of the Tower’s systems was all he could hear. His chest ached, tight and unfamiliar. Kryptonian lungs weren’t supposed to tremble like that, weren’t supposed to feel this small.
He didn’t know how long he sat there—minutes, maybe longer— until the sting behind his eyes dulled into something quieter, something hollow.
Then came the soft hiss of the door.
A whisper of motion.
The click of boots on metal flooring.
“Kon?” Tim’s voice, low, uncertain. Not the crisp cadence of mission debriefs or late-night plans—this was gentler, hesitant in a way that made something twist in Kon’s chest.
Kon’s head snapped up, too fast. “Tim—” His voice cracked, rough and unsteady. He turned slightly, but not enough to face him. “Don’t—” he swallowed hard, the word catching on the breath he couldn’t quite take. “Don’t look at me. Please.”
The plea fell into the air, small and raw.
Tim froze in the doorway. He didn’t move for a long moment, the sound of the Tower’s vents filling the silence between them. Kon could almost see him thinking—calculating, assessing like he always did—but this time the sharp edges of logic were softened by something else. Concern, maybe. Care.
Tim finally spoke, voice barely above a whisper. “Okay. I won’t.”
The door shut quietly behind him, sealing them off from the rest of the Tower. Footsteps, slow and deliberate, drew closer—not enough to crowd him, but close enough that Kon could feel the faint change in air pressure, the warmth of another heartbeat in the room, and the softness of Tim’s face even with Tim’s eyes closed.
Kon kept his eyes fixed on the floor-length mirror. The fog on the glass had thinned, revealing the faint outline of his face again. He looked at it and hated that he did. The curve of his jaw, the angle of his mouth—there were days it looked like his own, but tonight all he saw were traces of someone else. The same sharp lines, the same cold precision in the features that weren’t supposed to belong to him.
“Why are you here?” Kon asked, voice quieter this time. He hated how small it sounded, how far from his usual easy confidence.
“I needed to ask about the report,” Tim said. The faintest hesitation. “But that can wait.”
Kon laughed under his breath, the sound hollow. “Yeah, guess it can.”
A beat passed—one of those fragile silences that could either break or hold if you handled it carefully enough. Tim didn’t fill it with words. He stayed still, letting the quiet stretch until Kon almost wanted him to speak.
When Tim finally did, his tone was careful. “Do you want me to go?”
Kon should’ve said yes. It would’ve been easier. He didn’t want to be seen like this—cracked open, shaking, the perfect weapon stripped down to something human and breakable. He wanted to tell Tim to leave, to keep pretending everything was fine. But the words didn’t come.
He shook his head, just once. Barely a motion. “No. Just—stay there.”
Tim did.
The room settled into a fragile equilibrium—two heartbeats, two breaths, the faint hum of electricity weaving through the quiet. Kon stared at his reflection until it blurred again, eyes unfocused. His voice came out softer this time, almost an echo of itself. “I hate looking at him.”
Tim didn’t ask who he meant. He didn’t have to.
Kon’s reflection looked back, eyes rimmed red. “It’s like he’s still here. In my face. In my skin. I keep thinking I’ve—” he stopped, jaw tightening. “I keep thinking I’ve moved past it, but every time I see him, it’s just—”
He didn’t finish the sentence. He didn’t have to.
Tim shifted, a quiet rustle of fabric, but didn’t step closer. “You’re not him,” he said, steady and sure, like it was a fact he’d memorized.
Kon let out a shaky breath that might’ve been a laugh. “Tell that to the mirror.”
The words trembled on the air, brittle and sharp. The kind of joke meant to cover a wound that wouldn’t stop bleeding. He looked down at his hands—broad, scarred knuckles from training, not battle—and flexed them, watching the faint tremor in his fingers. “He made me,” he said, quieter now. “He put me together, piece by piece, like Frankenstein. Like a mistake he wanted to fix.”
Tim didn’t respond right away. Kon could almost hear the careful spin of thoughts behind his silence. When he finally spoke, it was barely audible. “He made something he couldn’t control.”
Kon’s eyes flicked up in the mirror, catching Tim’s reflection now, behind himself— a half shadow, half light. His arms were crossed with a tablet between them, but the tension in his shoulders was soft, and his eyes were still closed. “That’s what scares him,” Tim said. “You’re everything he wanted to build, and you don’t belong to him.”
The words hit harder than Kon expected. His chest tightened, something raw catching behind his ribs. He wanted to believe that. He wanted to.
The mirror didn’t change, though. The face still stared back at him with that same sharp edge, the same impossible resemblance. “Sometimes I think maybe I do,” Kon whispered. “Maybe I’ll never really be free of him. Maybe there’s something in me that’s just—wrong.”
Tim took a small step forward. Not enough to touch, but enough to be felt. “Kon.”
It wasn’t a question. It was an anchor, soft and certain.
Kon closed his eyes. He didn’t move when he felt Tim’s presence settle beside him, close enough that their shoulders almost brushed. He didn’t flinch when Tim spoke again, quieter now, a thread of warmth beneath the calm.
“You’re allowed to break,” Tim said. “Even if you can’t be hurt.”
Kon’s breath caught. For a second, he thought about saying something—anything—but the words stayed tangled in his throat. All that came out was a quiet, “I don’t know how.”
Tim was silent for a long moment. Then, gently, “You don’t have to.”
The room felt smaller then—not in a suffocating way, but in a way that made it feel contained, safe. The kind of smallness that meant he wasn’t alone.
Kon’s reflection blurred again as his vision stung. He exhaled, long and uneven, and let himself lean—just slightly—against the solid warmth beside him. He could feel the hesitation in Tim’s stillness, the unspoken question in the air, and then, slowly, Tim’s hand brushed against his hair. Barely a touch. A quiet offer.
Kon didn’t pull away.
He stayed there, eyes fixed on the mirror, until he could almost see past the resemblance—to the faint curve of a smile, the cluster of photos taped along the edge of the glass: Cassie mid-laugh, Bart mid-blur, Clark with Jon on his shoulders, Tim with that crooked half-smile that looked like it was meant only for him.
“I hate this,” he said finally, his voice breaking the silence like a confession. “I hate that he still has this much of me. I hate that every time I look in the mirror, I see him. Not me. Just him.”
Tim’s reflection stayed quiet for a moment, then turned slightly down toward him. “You’re not him,” he said again, softly, “You’re not even close.”
Kon huffed a shaky laugh. “Yeah? Tell that to my DNA.”
“I would,” Tim said, “if I thought it’d make a difference. But you already know that’s not what defines you.”
Kon shook his head, staring down at his hands again. “Easy for you to say.”
Tim tilted his head. “You think so?”
“You weren’t made to be someone else.” Kon’s tone was flat, but underneath it was something sharper — envy, maybe. “You were born, you were raised, you—you had a chance to decide who you were.”
Tim was quiet. “That’s not entirely true.”
Kon glanced up at that, surprised. “What?”
Tim’s gaze was distant, unfocused, like he was searching for something in the reflection that wasn’t there. “Sometimes,” he said slowly, “I think being raised to be something is just as heavy as being made for it.”
Kon blinked, uncertain how to respond. Tim’s voice was steady, but there was a small crack in it that Kon had never noticed before. A small truth slipping through the cracks of his calm exterior.
“I spent a long time trying to live up to someone else’s idea of me,” Tim continued. “My parents, Bruce, the team—hell, even me. I thought if I was smart enough, good enough, useful enough, I’d matter.” He let out a breath that trembled just slightly. “Sometimes I still think that.”
Kon stared at him through the mirror. “You make it sound like we’re the same.”
“Maybe we are,” Tim said simply. “Just… different versions of the same mistake.”
The words hit something deep in Kon, something that ached in a way he couldn’t name. He looked down, throat tight. “You’re not a mistake.”
“Neither are you.”
The response came without hesitation. Immediate. Firm. It caught Kon off guard. He turned his head up, finally looking at Tim directly for the first time since he’d walked in. Tim’s expression was open, unguarded in a way that was rare for him. He was looking down at Kon, his bangs falling into his face, his eyes were open now, revealing that shocking blue that sent little butterflies in Kon’s stomach. It was like seeing sunlight through glass for the first time.
Kon felt something in his chest give way.
“I don’t know how you do that,” he said quietly. “Say things like that and make me believe them, even for a second.”
Tim shrugged one shoulder. “Maybe I’m just telling the truth.”
Kon let out a small, unsteady laugh. “Yeah. Maybe.”
They fell into silence again, but it was different this time. Softer. Not the heavy, suffocating quiet from before, but something that settled between them like a blanket. The kind of silence that said it was okay not to talk.
Kon leaned his head back against Tim’s thighs, eyes closing. He could still feel the faint warmth of Tim’s. It grounded him. Reminded him that he wasn’t floating too far away from the world.
After a while, he murmured, “You shouldn’t have to see me like this.”
“I don’t mind,” Tim said.
“You say that like it’s nothing.”
“It’s not nothing,” Tim replied. “But it’s not bad, either. You’re allowed to be human sometimes, you know.”
Kon cracked one eye open, looking sideways at him. “You’re terrible at following your own advice.”
Tim smiled faintly. “Maybe I’m trying to get better at it.”
The corner of Kon’s mouth twitched upward. “Good luck with that.”
Tim hummed softly, the sound almost like a laugh. “Thanks.”
A moment passed. Then another. Kon realized his breathing had evened out without him noticing. His hands had stopped shaking. The mirror still reflected his face— Lex’s angles, Clark’s eyes— but it didn’t look so foreign now. The photos along the edges grounded the reflection, framed it with color and warmth. Cassie’s grin. Bart’s blur. Jon’s small hands gripping his cape. Tim’s steady gaze.
Maybe it didn’t matter who he looked like. Maybe it only mattered who he looked at.
“Hey, Tim?” he said quietly.
“Yeah?”
“Thanks. For staying.”
Tim turned his head just enough that their eyes met in the glass. “Always.”
The word hung there, simple and sincere, and Kon’s heart stuttered. There was something in the way Tim said it— not as a promise, but as a truth that had already been decided.
Kon swallowed hard, trying to play it off with a soft laugh. “Careful, that sounded dangerously close to feelings.”
Tim’s mouth twitched. “Would that be so bad?”
Kon froze. The question wasn’t teasing. It wasn’t even rhetorical. It was gentle, steady— a thread of vulnerability laid bare. He turned toward Tim, searching his face for something, anything, but all he found was sincerity.
“I don’t—” His voice faltered. “I don’t think it would be bad.”
Tim smiled then, small but real, the kind that made the corners of his eyes crinkle. “Good.”
Something quiet settled in Kon’s chest, something that wasn’t panic or self-loathing or guilt. It was smaller, warmer. Hope, maybe. The first fragile shape of it, delicate and real.
He let out a breath, and it didn’t shake this time. “You know,” he said softly, “you’re kind of good at this.”
Tim arched an eyebrow. “At what?”
“Fixing things.”
“That’s cause you’re the one who fixes things with your fists.”
Kon snorted. “Yeah, well, you fix people with words and your little smarty-ness. It’s annoying.”
“I’ll take that as a compliment.”
“You should.”
Tim’s smile lingered as his gaze flicked back toward the mirror. The two of them, reflections overlapping — not perfect, not symmetrical, but somehow balanced. Two halves of something unspoken.
Kon followed his gaze, watching the faint fog fade from the glass. His reflection looked the same as it always had— Lex’s jaw, Clark’s eyes, his own exhaustion— but there was something else now, too. The faint echo of Tim behind him, grounding him in the present. The faint glint of light catching on the edge of the photo beside his face— Tim’s smile, the one Kon had taken months ago when he wasn’t looking.
It didn’t erase everything. It didn’t fix it all. But it made the image a little easier to look at.
“I think,” Kon said after a while, voice soft but steady, “I’m gonna be okay.”
Tim nodded, eyes still on the glass. “I know.”
Kon breathed out slowly, the last of the tension leaving his shoulders. “You staying a while?”
“If you want me to.”
“Yeah,” Kon said. “I do.”
Tim leaned back against the bed behind him, Kon falling back against Tim’s knees now. His gaze stayed on the mirror, but Kon could feel the weight of it shift— not studying, not assessing, just being there. The warmth of it sank in slow and steady, anchoring him in a way nothing else did.
The mirror caught the image— the faint overlap of movement, the smallest trace of a smile on both their faces.
And when Kon looked at himself, he didn’t see Lex Luthor at all.
He saw himself.