Red Dust Rising

The first thing I broke was a coffee mug. Not on purpose. My hand just forgot how to hold things for a second, and the mug was there, and then it was on the floor in six pieces with coffee spreading across the tile like a dark stain I'd never get out.

M'gann stood in the doorway with her arms crossed. She didn't flinch. Didn't even look at the mess.

"You need to eat something," she said.

"I ate."

"That was yesterday."

I stared at the coffee creeping toward the grout line. The kitchen in Titans Tower had always felt too big for the six of us, all that stainless steel and granite and the huge window looking out over the bay. Now it felt like a cathedral built for a congregation that had died off. Nobody came down here anymore. Not together.

"I'm not hungry," I said.

"You're never hungry. That's the problem." She walked past me, grabbed a towel from the drawer, and started soaking up the coffee. Her movements were precise. Controlled. She'd been like that for weeks now, every gesture measured like she was afraid of what might happen if she let go.

I should have helped her. I should have gotten down on the floor and cleaned up my own mess. Instead I watched her do it.

"He's not coming back," I said.

M'gann's hands stopped moving. Just for a second. Then she kept wiping.

"I know."

"Do you?"

She stood up and dropped the towel in the sink. When she turned around, her face was blank in that way that used to scare me when we first met. Martians can make themselves look like anything. M'gann could make herself look like nothing at all.

"What do you want me to say, Gar?" she asked. "That I'm fine? That we're all fine? That Conner made his choice and we should respect it and move on?"

"Something like that."

"Well, I'm not going to lie to you."

The window behind her showed the bay, gray water under a gray sky. I used to love that view. Now it just looked cold.

Here's what nobody tells you about a breakup in a superhero team: there's no such thing as distance. You can't avoid the person. You can't delete their number and pretend they don't exist. You live in the same building, fight the same enemies, sit in the same briefings. Every room has their ghost in it.

And Conner Kent had been in every room.

I found him two weeks ago in the training room, punching a hole through a reinforced wall. Not an accident. He wound up and drove his fist straight through six inches of steel alloy like it was drywall. Then he stood there, breathing hard, staring at the damage.

I'd never seen him like that. Conner was always the steady one. The anchor. When the rest of us were falling apart, he was the guy who'd put his hand on your shoulder and say something dumb and simple that somehow made everything okay.

He didn't say anything that night. He just looked at me, and I looked at him, and then he walked out.

M'gann and Conner had been together for two years. Two years of the kind of relationship that made the rest of us feel like we were doing it wrong. They didn't fight. They didn't have drama. They were just good together, steady and solid, the kind of couple you assume will last forever because you can't imagine them apart.

That was the thing about Conner. He made you believe in forever. It was in his nature. He was built to be unbreakable, and for a while we all thought that meant the things he touched couldn't break either.

But M'gann wasn't a thing. And forever isn't a promise anyone can actually keep.

I don't know what happened. That's the truth. I was there for all of it, living in the same tower, eating meals at the same table, and I still don't know what actually went wrong. One day they were fine. The next day M'gann was crying in her room with the door locked, and Conner was gone, and nobody would tell me anything.

I asked. God, I asked everyone. Kaldur gave me this look like I was a kid asking why the sky was blue. Cassie told me to mind my own business. Tim just shook his head and said, "It's complicated."

Complicated. That's what people say when they don't want to explain. Or when they can't.

The worst part is that I saw it coming. Not the breakup, not specifically. But something. There were signs I ignored because I didn't want to see them. M'gann started spending more time in the meditation room, alone. Conner started taking solo patrols, staying out later and later. They stopped touching each other. Not in a dramatic way, just small things. His hand on her back when he walked past. Her fingers brushing his arm. The little physical language couples develop over time, the shorthand that says we're okay, we're us, we're together.

That language disappeared. And I noticed. I just didn't say anything.

Because what was I supposed to say? Hey, you two seem off lately? Hey, is everything okay? They would have lied. Or worse, they would have told me the truth, and then I would have had to carry it around, and I was already carrying enough.

I'm not proud of that.

Now the tower is quiet in a way that feels permanent. Kaldur spends most of his time in Atlantis. Cassie's been talking about going back to Gateway City. Tim buries himself in case files and doesn't come out. We're not a team anymore. We're just people who used to be one.

M'gann finished cleaning the coffee. She stood by the sink with her back to me, and I could see the tension in her shoulders, the way she was holding herself together through sheer force of will.

"I'm going to talk to him," I said.

She turned around. "What?"

"Conner. I'm going to find him and talk to him."

"Gar, that's not a good idea."

"Why not?"

"Because it's not your job to fix this."

"I'm not trying to fix it. I just want to understand."

She looked at me for a long moment. There was something in her eyes I couldn't read, something old and tired and sad.

"Understanding won't help," she said. "Trust me."

But I was already walking out the door.

The thing about Conner is that he doesn't hide. He's not built for it. He's too big, too visible, too honest. When he wants to disappear, he just goes somewhere he knows no one will look.

I knew exactly where to find him.