2675/Flashback: Superman Returns, Titan's Tower.

Flashback: Superman Returns, Titan's Tower.
Date of Scene:	29 July 2020
Location:	Roof - Titan's Tower
Synopsis:	Shortly after his return to 'life', Caitlin Fairchild informs Superman of the existence of Conner-- the 'Lost Son' of Krypton.
Cast of Characters:	Caitlin Fairchild, Clark Kent

---

Caitlin Fairchild has posed:
Earlier in 2020:

The queue to meet the returned Superman was a long one, and Caitlin was patient. There were many who wanted to see the Man of Steel. To speak to him, and wish him well, and to catch him up on current events. Friends and family. There had been a briefer visit to the Tower before; a moment for all the Titans to visit and congratulate him on his return, to express their happiness and to hear his story.

The tears of happiness that had been shed were shed then. This visit, though, was for Caitlin alone, because of a story of *hers* that Superman needed to hear. The Titan communication system knew how to send messages along old lines to old allies, and the text he'd recieved was simple: 'Caitlin@Titans, need to talk to u about something, please come by if you can soon'.

So she stood on the roof of the Tower. It's an intimidating drop for someone who can't fly or bounce from that height; no guardrails, either, at least none worth worrying about. A little wind tugs at her hair, pushing the loose ponytail around. Black leggings with angled mesh slashes of green and a sky-blue tee-shirt were paired with a well-loved pink hoodie, with 'Columbia' nearly washed out across the chest.

She was patient, and while waiting for Superman to arrive, contented herself with watching the city flow around the outline of the tower.

Clark Kent has posed:
Superman isn't the type to keep people waiting -- quite the opposite, if anything -- but that doesn't mean he doesn't occasionally have to prioritize tasks. A wayward fishing vessel lost in a storm near Mumbai; a passenger plane experiencing an engine fire over the Atlantic; a suicidal teenager at a building's edge in Baltimore. Superman can't be everywhere, but he does his level best to be where he is most needed. Caitlin has to wait a solid 20 minutes before she hears the distant thud of a sonic boom, then sees a streak of crimson over the West River, pulling through a wide arc toward the distinctive T of Titans Tower.

When Superman comes to a halt facing her, just over the swimming pool, it's with a jarring final deceleration, from still-blurred motion to a near-perfect halt. His cape streams away in the direction he was moving before descending to rest, and the water ripples a little bit in his wake. "Caitlin?" he calls, in a clear but gentle voice. "You wanted to speak with me?" He quickly drifts downward at an angle to the pool's edge, his boots landing gently on the concrete.

Caitlin Fairchild has posed:
Caitlin beams up at Superman when he arrives, and moves to meet him on safe ground. Once he lands, the Titan extends her arms to give him a warm hug of welcome. "Hi Kal," she says, returning his greeting. Her smile expands and she steps back. "I'm still getting over you being back. Alive," she amends. "Still feels a little unreal."

She turns a shoulder away, inviting him with a swing of her hand. "Y'wanna sit out in the sun? Or go inside? I've got some, um, snacks, and stuff, if you wanna eat," she offers, and makes a dithering pace towards the picnic table near the stairwell access. Her happiness is sincere but there's a defensiveness in her body language; arms folded over her stomach, shoulders hunched just a little. Evasive, the way some people are before broaching uncomfortable topics.

Clark Kent has posed:
Superman walks straight into Caitlin's arms and returns the embrace with a warm smile. "I'm not quite over it myself," the Kryptonian admits quietly, before stepping back from the hug. "It's been a long time... and I know those years haven't been easy for you or the rest of your team." His voice and expression are tinged with regret, but his smile returns at her hospitable offer. "The sun sounds great, and I won't turn down snacks, either. Being alive is hungry work, I find."

He follows her to the picnic table, keeping pace and standing alongside her. He gives a quick X-ray glance into the nearby stairwell, worried for a moment that this might be some kind of 'welcome back' surprise party. He certainly wouldn't put it past the Titans. But the empty stairwell, and more importantly Caitlin's demeanor, make it very clear that this is not a festive visit. As the guest, he takes a seat first, and watches the woman patiently. She has something to say, and he leaves a silence for her to fill rather than pressing her with questions.

Caitlin Fairchild has posed:
The mundane task of setting food out gives Caitlin a little space to calm herself down and organize her thoughts. Few things of a professional nature really upset her; it doesn't take a psychoanalyst to guess that this is something that's personal, then.

Food's set out on paper plates. It's nothing spectacular, but some recipes Caitlin's learned well enough. Cold fried chicken and Ma Kent's famous potato salad. Comfort food for the Man from Krypton.

"Um... so this is... kind of an awkward thing, and I don't know how else to say it but just to jump right in," Caitlin said once she settled across from him. "It's a long story. It started before you... died."

It's not a long story, but there are a lot of details. A surprise internship at NOWHERE. Working on her doctoral thesis. Being hand-picked for a special, highly classified project with seemingly limitless funding and mysterious oversight.

"That's, um... that's when I found out that I was working on what they called 'Project: Match'," she said. "The name really didn't make sense to me at first. It was just... cloning. But the gene sequences were weird. Chromosomal maps that made no sense. DNA that was *absolutely* not human. It was..." she tugs her ear, grimacing, and pulls her ponytail through her hand in consternation.

"Well, it took me a while to figure out what it was. After I saw him. In the accelerated growth incubator." She takes a deep breath. "Conner, I mean. I, uh... I realized I was helping to clone... you."

Clark Kent has posed:
Superman smiles at the choice of snacks, and enjoys them in the sunlight, giving Caitlin time to work up to what she has to say. He tackles the potato salad first, but has never had the patience to leave fried chicken waiting for long. He still listens, actively, making occasional eye contact and giving encouraging nods at appropriate moments, as she works through her preamble and sits down.

His eating starts to slow when she first mentions cloning, and his eyes lock onto hers when she brings up nonhuman DNA. He is almost entirely still, hands resting on either side of his plate, when she finally finishes her last sentence, letting the confessed identity of her cloned subject ring in the air.

After a second or two, he finally asks, "How would that be possible?" His voice is as even as ever, betraying not a trace of the chilliness she might expect. "You would have to have a genetic sample. That would not be easy to get," he continues, conversationally, as though he's telling her something she might not already know. After a slow, but not especially long breath, he adds, "There's a very strong taboo against cloning in Kryptonian culture." His informative calm remains implacable, his emotional reaction frustratingly difficult to pin down.

Caitlin Fairchild has posed:
Caitlin winces, and shakes her heaad. "I don't-- I don't know where they got it. Maybe some of your hair, or some blood. Spit contains a lot of epithelial cells."

"I-- please, you gotta understand, it took me a while to put it all together. They told me it wasn't a perfect copy. We were trying to use Kryptonian DNA to repair damaged components of human genetic code. They had-- they told me-- that there were a bunch of kids with genetic aberrations. Missing chromosomal sequences. They told me that I could help stop things like cerebral palsy, or blindness, or encephalitis."

She rests her elbows on the table and palms back her hair, and her hands clasp behind her neck. It leaves her staring at the tabletop. "It... didn't seem like such a bad idea. I've got a lot of... engineered DNA in me, too. I saw the reports of all the nonviable embryos, all the stillbirths and SIDS rates. The deeper I got, I... I didn't know what to do. It was horrifying, but they were-- they said-- they were trying to save lives. That's when they convinced me, they said... they said I should shift off genetic therapy, and assist on a cloning program. The DNa samples were too unfamiliar. I didn't know what I was looking at. So we engineered a blank gamete, an ova. Blanked the DNA. Injected it with Kryptonian RNA assemblers. We used some human ones to fill in the gaps that occurred. A few months later..." She gestured. "I was so excited that we'd succeeded, I didn't stop to think about what it meant. That'd we'd cloned a living person and then created another, living person."

Clark Kent has posed:
"I don't go around spitting on people," Superman says disapprovingly, as though chiding the hypothetical version of himself that would. As though that's anywhere near the point at issue here. "Still." He lifts a piece of unfinished chicken and looks at it, as though peering directly at the residual genetic material he just left behind and daring it to blink. "I take your point."

He sits back in his chair, and there's a slight shift in his expression along with the one in his weight, and for just a fraction of a heartbeat Caitlin can see in his eyes the truth of what Kal is feeling: vulnerability. It's gone quickly, back into the unflappable calm of Superman.

"So you joined what you thought was a therapeutic project, and the therapies showed real promise? Or was that a ruse?" If anyone can get away with a completely unwinking use of the word 'ruse' in this age, it's the man before her. "Why were they creating this Conner? A convenient source of more samples? Or a mindless, living weapon with Kryptonian powers?" The first is personally horrifying to anyone's sense of empathy. The second is one of Superman's deepest fears for humanity. These are not great options he's considering.

Finally he picks up his fork, spears another chunk in the potato salad, and asks, "And what happened to this living person you created?"

Caitlin Fairchild has posed:
"They weree trying to *heal* Conner," Caitlin corrected. "I should have stopped. It was horrific. But I was in too deep. They showed me Conner down in the sub-basement. It was top-top-secret, they said. I don't-- I don't know where they got him. If he was a clone, or just something they found in space." Her eyes go distant, and a little damp, and she looks out over the bay. "The machinery keeping him alive, some of it was way beyond Earth tech. I was working on an organ farm that was trying to rebuild missing pieces of his DNA."

"So I stayed on a while longer. I kept thinking 'It'll all be OK once you get him well, you can make up for all of it once he's walking'." She looks back at Kal. "I'm Catholic, Kal, I ... I know I'm a scientist and I'm helping people, but I can't help but feel like we crossed a line. It still eats at me to think about."

"The clincher was when I found out what they were doing with him. What he was for. They weren't just repairing his DNA to heal him. They wanted a perfect DNA sample so they could clone *him*. Repeatedly. Use him as a source of gametes to create more Kryptonian men. I broke in. Found the neuro-training inductors, the grow labs. Conner was getting healthier but they were never going to wake him. So I added a command-kill function to his neural inhibitor controls. I stole every bit of data I could get. And I went to the Pentagon to blow the whistle."

"By the time anyone in Congress could be bothered to go investigate, the facility had been deserted. They all but stripped the copper from the walls. That was the last I heard about it. I spent weeks trying to work up the courage to come talk to you directly, but... but I was too ashamed to do it," she admits. "And then... Doomsday, and..." She swallows. "And then it was too late."

Clark Kent has posed:
"But when you saw him, he looked like me," Clark says, looking at Caitlin to confirm that's the case. "I have heard I have one of those faces that's impossible to mistake for someone else." He pauses for a second, trying to find a spark of amusement in the private joke, but it's just not there at the moment. So he continues, "It would be nice to imagine that all Kryptonians look alike, but I guess I can hope he might be another relative, like Supergirl. There are so few of us."

He shakes his head. "But you were working in a cloning laboratory on a subject with genetic abnormalities. That doesn't sound like another refugee. It sounds like a botched experiment." He glances at her, once again, to confirm his read on the situation. She's the scientist here, after all.

"So after all that time spent repairing his body, you took the shackles off his mind, but then he disappeared, along with the lab." He crosses his arms and stares up into the sky, unblinking. "So there's a Kryptonian being out there somewhere, once imprisoned but potentially free. We don't know where his is or what his state of mind might be." His broad shoulders sag as he looks back down at his unfinished food. "I wish you had told me sooner, Caitlin. Even if I weren't there to look into it, someone could have. Kara, maybe, or Batman or one of the others." He takes several breaths before continuing, "Still, I'm very grateful to know now."

Caitlin Fairchild has posed:
"Um...."

Caitlin hedges. "This is the part where you probably -are- gonna get mad," she says, regretfully. "Remember... well, no, you wouldn't. After you died, a lot of people tried to claim to be you. I was gone for most of three months after; Diana brought me to Paradise Island to recover and heal from the ... fight."

"I came home for a few days and I saw a cell phone shot of a kid in a black shirt with the Hose of El on it." She doodles an 'S' over her chest. "He didn't move like you, and he was still pretty young. I don't know. ...twenty, maybe," she guessed. "But he was telling everyone that he was Superman."

Her phone comes up out of her pocket and she turns it on, flips through videos, and turns it around for Clark to see. The video's dated around three months after his disappearance-- and sure enough, there's a young man with disturbingly familiar features wearing the iconic crest and battering down some kind of marauding robot.

"That's Conner. I... we haven't talked since he got out. I've made overtures but I only know him through some friends of friends. I try to keep an eye out and make sure he's OK," she says. "As far as I know, he is."

Clark Kent has posed:
Kal stares at the image. It's impossible not to see the resemblance, especially since he knows what he himself looked like at that age. And something about seeing the image of the boy causes his legendary composure, which he has so far maintained throughout what has been one of the most difficult conversations of his life, to finally crack. Not in anger, as Caitlin predicted, but in sadness. He leans forward, pushing his hands up past his temples, as he confirms with a miserable expression, "He's either a very close relative or... something else." He sits back in his chair -- slumps, even -- and braces for a very bad answer as he asks, "What was he doing? While he was pretending to be me?" There's an inevitable follow-up, delivered from behind a hand pinching the bridge of his nose: "Who did he hurt?"

He doesn't even get to the question of Conner's contacts yet -- he has to know what has been done in his name before he can even think about hunting down the person responsible.

Caitlin Fairchild has posed:
"It's all here, Kal," Caitlin says, and holds her phone up while a file transfer took effect-- 'ConnerFile', sent via a secure communications line to Superman's private number. Titans take their technology and security as seriously as anyone; after all, Batmans' proteges helped build it.

"As far as I've seen, he's... been trying to live up to your reputation." Caitlin's tone is gently reassuring. "He's made some mistakes. But he tends to charge in when there's danger. Looks out for people who are weak or in peril. Maybe a little hotheaded, but... as far as I know, he's only a few years old. I'm not sure you can really blame him for that," she says, with a smile.

"But he's been trying to be *you* for the world while you were gone, Kal. I don't know who he is to you, or what, but... he definitely isn't taking shortcuts."

Clark Kent has posed:
Again, the Superman composure is absent, but this time, what registers so obviously on Kal's face is surprise. As Caitlin continues her answer, he even allows himself a guarded moment of that emotion he has always wanted to inspire in others: hope. "Mistakes happen. I've made plenty," he says readily and without false modesty, but in defiance of the reputation that has built up around him. "He wasn't just taking the name for his own benefit, or to sound impressive? You think he might want to be a force for good?"

Kal blinks twice and sits up straighter, the metaphorical mantle that goes along with the physical cape visibly settling over him again. "That's not something the Kryptonian culture would have considered possible," he says, thoughtful and even once again. "But if the Kryptonians were always right, I wouldn't be here."

He turns his head and tilts it slightly to one side. "You mentioned friends of friends. I don't want to crowd in on him as soon as I'm back; better to give him a chance to come to terms with my return, and contact me when he's ready. Still, it couldn't hurt to keep an eye on him in the meantime; are there contacts of his I could look in on?"

Caitlin Fairchild has posed:
"A one-eyed girl named Rose," Caitlin says. "And I think Nightwing's ... um. Sidekick? Junior partner? The Red Robin. I've heard he's been seen with them. You might ask R-- Nightwing, or Batman directly. They can probably find him a lot faster than I can."

She looks at Kal with a thoughtful expression; it turns into a chagrined, lopsided smile and her hands lifting to shoulder height to imitate scales, then flopping down. "As for the rest, I don't know," she says, with total candor. "Haven't seen him going after endorsement deals or mugging for the 'Grams. But maybe that kind of fame isn't what he's after, either. But, uh... just from what I've seen and heard...."

She hesitates, eyes flickering in thought, then looks at Kal again and nods. "Yeah. Yeah, I think he wants to do good. To make the world a better place. It's just my intuition there, but there it is." She looks down at the meal, points at the potato salad. "I made a bunch of this, I know it's your favorite," she says. "Someday you'll have to tell me where it's from, 'cause it's better than Boston Market. Y'want me to make you a to-go plate or something?"

Clark Kent has posed:
A smile grows on Kal's face, at first hesitantly, but then he answers, "Well, I can ask Batman to find /anybody/. I was trying to make it a challenge." The good-hearted joke seems to give him strength, re-energizing the trademark Superman positivity, and he takes a deep breath to solidify the feeling.

"I take your intuition seriously, Caitlin," he tells her sincerely. "It sounds like you should learn to trust it a little more, too." The suggestion is delivered with a gentle smile, to defuse any sting it might otherwise carry.

Then, her question about the food causes him to glance back down at the plate again and laugh. "Leave the table without cleaning my plate? I was dead, not raised in a barn," he says with mock gravitas.

He lifts his fork from the plate, holds up the index finger of his other hand, and then devours all of the remaining food in a single seconds-long burst of speed. When he returns to the timeframe of mere mortals, he's dabbing at his mouth with a napkin. "Don't tell the younger Titans I did that. It's terrible for your digestion." He smiles at her, just a tiny bit tightly, and then pushes his chair back from the table and stands.

Caitlin Fairchild has posed:
Caitlin just laughs behind her hand as Kal wolfs his food down, and she shakes her head at him with mock consternation. "Kal, you've *met* Wally," she reminds him with a mock-severe tone. "We had him *and* Bart for dinner once or twice. I don't think manners exist at super-speed."

She rises and gathers some of the plates, packing the food up and cleaning the table. "I'll deal with this," she says, gesturing, and walks around the table to Superman. "I'm sorry for dropping the bombshell on you," she tells the Man of Steel. "I know it's gotta be a shocker. But I didn't want to wait any longer than I had to, this time. I hope you find him. When you do..." She tucks a few stray hairs behind her ear, looks away, looks back. "Tell him... tell him I'm sorry I didn't do more for him, sooner."

Clark Kent has posed:
"It was a shock," Kal admits, taking a serious breath, "but it's better to know. Thank you for confiding in me, Caitlin. And for the delicious food, as usual." He wraps one blue-clad arm around her shoulder for another gentle hug -- although he's not happy about this news he just heard, by any stretch, he genuinely doesn't seem to be holding any of what she has said against her.

"I'll tell him when I meet him," he promises her. "And you just keep doing everything you do for the young people here. Take care, Caitlin."

With that said, he releases her and drops his arms to his side, levitating gradually, then raising one fist and accelerating up and over into a dive that carries him around the stem of the Titans T, under the crossbar, and away into Metropolis.