SPIFFY DISCLAIMER THINGIE!!

Ah don't own them (more's the pity!) DC does! And if'n y'all sue moi, Clark and Lar are gonna be right *peeved*
Rated R for explicit m/m sex. So if'n that offends y'all, skedaddle:):)
Obviously, Ah have ignored current DC cannon regarding both Superboy (now non-existent) and Mon-El (now known as Valor) and other matters regarding the Legion Of Super Heroes! Truth to tell Ah am so confused, what with all the retcons and such that Ah have fallen back on the continuity that Ah know; the Pre-Crisis Earth 2 Universe where Superboy rescued Mon-El from his drifting spaceship, befriended him and then accidentally gave him a fatal dose of lead poisoning. This forced The Boy of Steel to project him into The Phantom Zone where poor Lar languished for a thousand years until Brainiac 5 invented a cure for lead poisoning sometime toward the end of the 30th Century. Ah crave yawls indulgence:):) Ah hope this little tale is worth that sacrifice.
This story was more or less inspired by ace SF author Larry Niven's now classic (and hysterical!) exploration of the ins and outs of Superman's sex life, "Man Of Steel, Woman Of Kleenex". Therein, Mr. Niven, gentleman that he is, discreetly says that in the course of trying to figure out how Clark can get his ashes hauled he shall ignore the existence of Supergirl ... After all, she's his cousin! Mercy! Of course it occurred to slashy-minded moi that Kara isn't the only one who could handily survive young Kal-El's passion:):) *snicker* And Clark met *him* a long time before he even knew of the existence of Kara and Argo City or the Bottle City of Kandor (all of which might be handy solutions to his sexual frustrat - er - dilemma!) In fact he met *him* at just about the right age to be open to experimentation ...
Feedback is always appreciated:):)

Mon-El

A Legion Of Superheroes Tale by Dannell Lites

Why must I always be the bearer of bad news? The one who points out the obvious, saying the things that no one wants to hear?

My name is Querl Dox and I am a Legionnaire. I am, perhaps, better known as Brainiac 5. But my *name* is Querl. I am not a cruel man. No, I am *not*. It disturbs me to do these things. I take no pleasure in always being right. Please believe that. I am *not* unfeeling. But I *am* practical. It was the Terran philosopher Nietche who asked, "Who will accomplish the hard tasks? The ones that no else wants to soil their hands with?"

He who can, of course. In this instance that would be me. Again.

"Kal-El," I said quietly, "May I speak with you?"

With a smile he broke off his conversation with Element Lad and trotted to my side. Jan is a bit ... odd ... much too reclusive; it was good to see him enjoying something as social as a simple conversation. And Superboy always trots. He is forever in motion as if time were a finite enemy he could outdistance with his great power.

"Call me Clark, Brainy," he invited.

I forced myself not to frown. I am a learned man, skilled in many scientific disciplines and I do not enjoy being reduced to less than I am by so demeaning a thing as a "nickname". But I said nothing. Among humans the acquisition of such a diminutive soubriquet is a mark of affection and I have always treated it as such.

But I do not enjoy it.

"Clark." I amended.

"What can I do for you?" he wanted to know. I hesitated. For all my encyclopedic knowledge I am not a diplomat. There seemed no gentle way to begin.

"Have you seen Tasmia today?" I asked. My voice was as neutral as I could make it.

From the look on his face, it was plain that he had. His lips thinned into an angry thin white line, then he looked away. As I said; the hard things no one else wishes to face. But time was running out.

"Something must be done," I said. He bit his lip and if he had not been invulnerable he would have bled. He shut his eyes, a literal interpretation of the psychology of his reply.

"I - don't know what you mean," he stammered. I sighed. He was not going to allow me to be kind.

"Yes," I replied carefully, "you *do*. Or am I mistaken in my belief that the flesh colored makeup and long sleeves that Tasmia is wearing today means that she and Mon-El have had another ... accident?"

His shoulders slumped in defeat and he leaned imperceptibly against the wall at his back for support. He began to bite at his nails. Futilely, of course. His fingernails are as invulnerable as the rest of him. The only part of Superboy that is not immune to pain is his heart. In that, at least, he is like all the rest of us.

"Something must be done," I said again and I saw the line of his jaw set then harden. I was about to lose him and there was too much at stake to allow that to happen. It began to seem as if I would be forced to fall back on an emotional appeal. This was disturbing. I am not good at such things. But I had to try.

"Clark," I said, laying my hand on his shoulder in sympathy, "I know how difficult this must be for you ... " His wide blue eyes regarded me for long moments. For an instant it was like floating on the surface of Earth's ocean; there are signs and portents of the depths beneath, but they are well guarded.

"Do you, Brainy?" he asked. He shook his head and the unruly curl on his forehead bounced merrily. "No, I don't think so." I tried another tact.

"He's dangerous, Clark ... "

At his side, his hands, those hands that can move mountains, lay waste to cities and continents, knotted into spasmodic fists.

"Don't you think I *know* that!" he cried. "I've told myself over and over and over again that when you're as strong as Lar it's easy to ... misjudge. And *I* should know! You don't understand what that's like! Everything is so ... so ... fragile ... " His voice trailed away. And though my heart ached for him I was relentless.

"Have *you* ever ... misjudged?" I demanded.

"N-no," he admitted. I persevered in my unwanted mission.

"Neither has Jo. But unless I am very much mistaken, and I am not, this is the second time this month that Mon-El has ... misjudged ... Tasmia." Clark looked very much as if he wanted to cry, which was quite startling.

"It's getting worse." I pointed out, shifting uneasily on my feet.

This was true. In the beginning there had only been the occasional loud, vociferous argument. Heads turned and tongues wagged but official silence reigned. No one wants to involve themselves in a private lovers quarrel, after all. And then Tasmia began having ... accidents. She fell coming in or out of the transport tube and my wasn't that an odd place for a door? Nothing definitive or life threatening. Small things. An odd bruise or two, a painfully jammed finger, an inconvenient sprained wrist. Mon-El was very solicitous. "If I get any clumsier," quipped Shadow Lass, "I'll be ready for the Retirement Asteroid!" We all laughed.

It took quite some time for us to realize the truth, I'm sad to say. No one wanted to believe that Mon-El could do such a thing. But, on the day that Tasmia came to Dr. Gym'll with two cracked ribs, we stopped laughing and began to believe. I think Violet tried to help her. Salu is a kind soul.

"It was an accident!" Tasmia kept firmly insisting. "Mon would never intentionally hurt me. Never!" But, she had two more accidents that month.

"Mon-El needs help - " I began, but Superboy cut me off with an abrupt gesture.

"Lar!" he was virtually shouting at me, "Lar Gand! He has a name! It's Lar! Lar Gand!" This was not going well. I had to find some way to reach him. But how?

"Clark, please ... " I let an air of pleading touch my voice. "He might listen to you." By now we were alone. The others had discreetly withdrawn and left me to my unpleasant task. I found my courage again although it was not easy. "And if he doesn't ... "

"And if he doesn't - WHAT?" Clark hissed. I steeled myself and said what was necessary.

"And if he doesn't," I continued carefully but very plainly, "then *you* are the only the one who can stop him," I told him. He turned pale as a rain washed bone beneath the healthy glow of his golden skin. He looked so stricken that I almost stilled my voice and left him in peace, then, despite the consequences.

Almost.

I hardened my heart, but my stomach was not so kind. It clenched and spasmed. A vague queasiness seized me when I gazed into his despairing eyes. I said that I am not unfeeling; why would I lie about such a thing?

"No! You don't know what you're asking! No!" Painfully, he groped for a chair and fell heavily into it. Like a great oak felled by a persistent woodsman's ax, his head slumped forward onto the plasticene of the great meeting table of the Legion Conference Room as if it's weight were too great a burden for him to bear just now. Head cradled in his arms, he began to weep then; softly, from the heart as if he might never stop, but without any great bother. Almost as if he hoped it would go unnoticed. Clark does not like to make a fuss.

It is not often that I am at a loss for words though I use them sparingly. I am not a physical person, however. I dislike to be touched without my permission. But for all his Kryptonian genes, Clark is human and humans have a need to be touched and comforted when they suffer pain. I stroked his hair, murmuring inarticulately. The words did not matter, I think. It was enough that I was willing to say them. After a moment he quieted and wiped his eyes on his sleeve. Pain, I have discovered, whether of the body or of the mind, is frequently messy and indelicate.

"Would - would you like to talk about this?" I asked awkwardly.

Fervently, I wished for Kara. She would know what to do. My lovely Supergirl has guided me though many an emotional travail. It was obvious that her young cousin had great need of her now. But since Kara was a thousand years away in her home century, there was only me. I must suffice. And I, of course, had no idea how to proceed. For many long moments he said nothing, held his silence, lying very still. I had almost given up hope of reaching him, when he stirred, lifting his head and regarding me with a level gaze from out of now dry eyes. When he spoke at last his voice was so soft I almost missed it. But not quite.

"When I was fifteen years old," he said clearly, "I found out that I wasn't a person. Not human. See, up until then I always thought that I was. Not a normal human, no. But human, anyway. I was wrong. I found out that I wasn't ever going to have a normal life; never get married or have kids like everybody else. I found out a lot of bad things that summer." He stared off into the distance. The corners of his mobile usually smiling mouth tugged downward as if they had weights dangling from them.

"There aren't any other like me, you know. I'm the last of my kind."

For some odd reason it had never occurred to me before how lonely he must be. He has always seemed so happy, he made it difficult to see him in any other light. But he was correct. Search among the stars (and he has), you will not find his like anywhere. With the exception of Kara he is the last Kryptonian. There are no others. They are all dead. And for a young boy to discover that he is an alien and the last survivor of his people must have been crushing. It must have seemed like the end of the world. Why had so few of us ever realized that before, I wondered? Surely we are not so insular and thoughtless. Are we?

Apparently so.

"And then, suddenly, I wasn't alone," Clark continued, his voice low and quiet. He stared down at the table. "There was Lar. It was like waking up from a nightmare. We played baseball on the Moon and I took him to all my special places. The ones I hadn't had anyone to share with before." He tucked his hands into the safety of his armpits, perhaps to warm them or to still them.

"There's a giant crystal cave near the edge of the Earth's mantle that's one of the most beautiful things I've ever seen. It sparkles and shines so gloriously it's hard to breathe when you gaze at it. It's like being inside a huge jewel. But normal people can't see it. You have to be able to see into the infrared and the ultraviolet." He closed his eyes at the joyous memory. He was almost smiling now.

"Did you know that orchids talk to one another with scent signals? They do. But normal people can't understand them, because they don't have a sense of smell that's keen enough to detect the esters they release. And paramecium dance when they bud to make another paramecium. They're almost as graceful as birds. But you need microscopic vision to watch them." He ran his fingers through his hair, looked up at me pleadingly.

"Do you understand? I finally had someone to talk to. Someone who could share with me all the extraordinary things about my life. And - and - and the sad things, too." He stumbled over the words like a runner at the end of a long race who is very tired but who, nevertheless, must finish the course. I was afraid he might cry again but he did not.

"There aren't many people I can ... I can be ... close ... to," he murmured. His embarrassed flush caught me by surprise. What ...?

I must admit that it took me a moment to grasp the entirety of his meaning. He was not talking about emotional closeness, now. My skin tone does not readily lend itself to easy detection of emotions the way fairer human skin does. I do not think Clark saw me blush. But he may have.

I am, of course, one of the first persons to which something of this nature should have occurred. My experiences with Kara have been all too few, but most instructional. Pain usually is. Kara is always quite careful not to injure me when we make love. While in the grip of passion she could quite literally kill me. Were it not for my invulnerable force shield she might indeed have done so.

And the same holds even truer for Clark. For a 15 year old boy to face such a thing is a most unpleasant thought. My eyes widened unbidden when I realized precisely what Clark was trying to tell me. He is not a telepath like Imra so I know that he did not read my mind. But it seemed as if he did. He nodded.

"Lar was the first," he admitted. He blushed, furiously. "And so far, the only one. I've never ... I've never been with anyone else."

"I didn't know," I said.

For long moments he hung his head and I could think of nothing to say. After all, how does one tell a lonely youth that the only person with whom he has been able to share his body and his deepest passions may now have become someone dangerous whom he may be forced to hurt? A moot question, actually. I seemed to have found a way. That was never in question.

The question was: Was he listening?

Silently, I brought him a glass of my favorite beverage, Kono juice. I doubt that he even paused long enough to savor the flavor of this rare drink. Only the wine they call Lacrima Astera, the Star's Tears, is more costly or scarce. He drank it down without comment and stood staring at the glass. Another oddity. The glass is made of transparent syntho-viridium, the same material as the viewports on the great Interstellar Cruise ships that ply tourist between the stars at such exorbitant prices. It was designed and created to withstand the tremendous pressures of space; virtually indestructible. Small pressure fractures began to radiate outward from the tips of his fingers where they touched the glass.

Gently, I lay my hands on his and he allowed me to extract the glass from his grasp and I set it carefully aside. He gazed down at his hands almost as though he didn't recognize them. As if they were suddenly alien things that had somehow betrayed him.

Feeling suddenly very tired, I sat down and regarded him for a moment. This next would be difficult for me to admit, but I knew that I must. Failure is always such a humiliating thing, is it not?

"If it makes things any easier for you," I said, my voice low and quiet, "it isn't his fault. He's not responsible." Confusion warred with hope in his eyes.

"What do you mean," he demanded. "If Lar's not to blame who is?" I took a deep cleansing preparatory breath and steeled myself against the tide of guilt that threatened to overwhelm me.

"I am," I admitted.

This site is dedicated to the memory of Dannell Lites, who died unceremoniously on 16 September, 2002, in Kansas City, MO. Other than characters, place names, etc., which are ©DC Comics, Marvel Comics, Warner Bros., WGBS or any other television/movie owner, or Wizard Magazine, all content is ©2002 Dannell Lites. Background set ©2002 by SleepyHead. Please do not use without her permission. Site url= http://dannfan.50megs.com/