#im still so angry at rebirth for nuking kon & clark and not even CARING that they did that

[mamawasatesttube]

man... "time machine" by autoheart has me pondering the agonies. like fuck rebirth not doing that, but. a situation in which via magic or something, everyone [temporarily] forgets kon rebirth style. and he has to deal with that. and oops! what's that? oh it's just his suicidal tendencies coming back in FULL force, haha.

like its devastating enough when his friends don't remember him. but john henry? ma kent? clark?

what's he supposed to do with himself now? he has nothing and no one. he knows what he was made for, though. he wants to die a hero. he wants to die a hero. it won't hurt anyone this time because they forgot they love him. why is he here? he's a hero. he wants to die a hero. except heroes are remembered even after they die. what are you when no one remembers you, other than "dead twice over"? and you keep thinking of how unfair it is that the first time you died it hurt everyone you love. and now they forgot you so you may as well be dead. you kind of wish you stayed dead.

so he's not exactly taking it well. and of course ma and clark take it in stride when he shows up at the farm in distress. maybe it's a case of inadvertent dimension travel or something, clark muses, stroking his chin. and kon looks at the notch on the leg of the sofa that krypto accidentally scratched while wrestling on the floor with kon three months ago and says, haha yeah. maybe.

BUT! this time all the discrepancies and all the little things that don't add up? they're the point. kon gets to go to centennial park and point at his statue next to clark and say look. look, i'm real. i lived. you loved me. i died. i'm real. i'm real. i'm real.

and i think clark gets really quiet at that point. and then he's devastated. and furious. because he has a little brother/son/cousin/Little Guy. and someone robbed him of all of his memories of him. he has so few kryptonian family members and someone took one of them from him in the most raw, horrific way possible. they took his little guy from him so thoroughly he isn't even grieving. and isn't that in itself a horror? that there's no grief where he knows grief should be?

and i think kon here just kind of sticks Hard to clark's side at this point. if anyone remembered him or the people he loved, they'd find it odd and notable how conspicuously he's avoiding tim, bart, and cassie. unfortunately, no one knows him anymore, so no one notices. but kon just can't face the complete lack of warmth in their faces when they look at him. and it feels like far too much to explain "sorry, you don't know me, but you're supposed to love me. i love you and it's tearing me apart." so he just needs as much space as he can get.

(there's definitely a subplot of tim's nosy ass going "hey bruce, who was that guy with superman and steel at the jla meeting? what was that about? he looked a lot like superman huh?? hey bruce what's up with that guy? hey bruce what's going on--" and bruce, a paranoid asshole on the best of days, just going "i don't trust him." but tim is a nosy little ferret who will not be deterred and quite possibly pulls bart and cassie in on trying to investigate the guy who looks like superman but isn't superman.)

(however, for some reason, the guy who looks like superman but isn't superman seems to want absolutely nothing to do with the three of them. isn't that weird??)

anyways it has to have a happy ending where the curse is lifted or whatever and everyone gets their memories back and kon gets to have an incredibly cathartic breakdown into ma's lap. but probably not before he nearly gets himself killed at least 4 times first. oops!