Disclaimer: I don't own any of these characters, please don't sue me. I'm a student!

Notes: I wasn't happy with the way things left off at the end of the Young Justice series for poor little Slo-bo, so I decided he needed a fic written for him. It's not just for him though, since I also have a strange obsession with Remy (Gambit) and the other X-men, but large parts of the story do involve Slo-bo. Also… possibly a few of the weirdest pairings ever, and this is my first fic for any of these characters so if any details are wrong forgive me.

No Leaf Clover is a song by Metallica.

Warnings: Angst, spoilers for the end of the Young Justice comic series and parts of the X-men comics involving Gambit, Slash, Crossover between Young Justice (only Slo-bo), X-Men and Lobo.

No Leaf Clover

Young Justice One Million: The Garden of Statues.

His cells had been degenerating, but they weren't anymore. He'd had time to suffer through going blind and the humiliation of having to admit that he was dying to the rest of the Young Justice team, but before he could actually go ahead and have his body crumble to nothing like the defective clone he was, Darkseid had turned up again. An entire army of teenage Lobo clones hadn't been able to stop him the first time around, but it was a chance to die in battle so he'd leapt at it. Better than waiting for his hearing to go, then his sense of touch, then his strength, then… Then what? He wasn't sure how it would have happened, had his cells continued to break down. Maybe it would have been long, drawn-out and painful, or maybe he'd just have woken up dead one day. It didn't matter anyway. That was what he got for being from the shallow end of the gene pool.

Lobo created a clone from each drop of blood he spilled, and all the others had been the spitting image of him. Perfect clones, with all his memories, his strength, his psychotic bloodlust.

Not Slo-bo, though. He'd been smaller, slower and weaker than the rest. He was still stronger than a human, but he hadn't stood a chance against the army of Lobo clones running around on Apokalyps, destroying everything they could find.

There was some sort of built-in failsafe with them, to stop the galaxy being flooded with thousands of Main Man clones. After they'd done whatever they were created to do, they always turned on each other and ended up fighting until there was only one left. Nobody was ever sure if that last one was the original Lobo or one of the clones, but Slo-bo didn't suppose it mattered.

They'd all been attacking each other and he'd hidden inside Impulse's ship because he'd known he'd be ripped to pieces in a fight against Lobo. The Young Justice team had taken him back to earth and he'd joined up with them, and everything had been fine until he'd started to go blind and realised what that meant. He'd told them he was dying and he didn't want their pity. He'd told them he was blind, and that if any of them dared to feel sorry for him he'd kill them. Cissie, the former Arrowette, had just laughed and said 'what are you going to do, trip over us?'

That had hurt, and he'd been scared. He didn't want to die. But, most of all, he didn't want to die like that. When Darkseid had shown up again he'd just jumped right in there, ready to go out in battle and at least not have to suffer a slow and tortured death at the hands of his defective genes. Darkseid hadn't even flinched at his attack, but he hadn't really expected to do any damage. That red beam shot out – the Omega Effect – and hit him, and he'd expected that to be the end. Everything had gone black, and he'd been thinking about what happened to clones when they died, even defective ones.

But he hadn't died. He'd woken up, sort of. Frozen in exactly the same position he'd been in when the beam hit, unable to see anything but able to hear just fine. His cells had stopped breaking down but he couldn't move, and he could hear voices wondering if that statue had been there before.

Where was he? When was he? What had he been turned into? He had no idea, and he didn't even know how long ago that had been. Every day was the same wherever he was, and he was trapped, unmoving and wishing Darkseid had just killed him. How long was he going to be like this? Would he die, eventually? Or would he go on living forever? He hoped not. Ever day he heard the voices of people walking around him, but nobody ever touched him. He was sure if someone just touched him they'd know he wasn't a statue, but nobody ever did.

It seemed like years passed and still he stood there, filling up with despair and bitterness because nobody could hear him and he wanted it to end. He

wondered if the rest of Young Justice had forgotten about him yet, and knew that they must think that blast had killed him. Did they care? Had they felt anything? Had they even survived? Probably, they tended to survive whatever came at them. Well, except him, but he wasn't really one of them anyway. He wasn't even from Earth.

Technically he wasn't really from anywhere.

"You know, I really do think there's something weird about that statue." A voice said nearby, snapping Slo-bo out of his thoughts.

"I think there's something weird around here, and it isn't the statue." Another voice said, and Slo-bo thought it sounded like Kon and Robin. He couldn't see them, though. Frustration boiled up inside him and he couldn't even clench his fists, so he did the only thing he could. He screamed, in his mind, as loud and as long as he could.

"LET ME OUT!"

"Did you hear something?" The first voice asked while Slo-bo willed them to come closer.

"Uh, no." The second voice said flippantly, clearly not believing anything the other said.

"I guess it must have been the wind," the first said with a sigh, and Slo-bo wanted to scream again but knew there was no point. He was going to stand there, frozen for eternity, not even knowing where he was. It hurt so much to be forgotten and ignored, to have people walk past him and have no clue that he was alive in there. Then… Something brushed against his leg. The owner of the second voice had just leant on him!

"Argh!" Voice #2 exclaimed, jumping away from Slo-bo in fright. "It's warm!"

"I told you there was something odd about it." The first voice said, and Slo-bo felt them touching his leg again tentatively, confirming the fact that he was indeed warm and alive.

"We need to find out who this guy is. Take a picture, we can look through Red Tornado's files back at the base, he might be in there." The second voice decided, and Slo-bo felt his heart pounding in his chest. Finally! Someone knew he wasn't just another statue! They might be able to help him, even if it meant destroying him – anything was better than this. He just prayed Red Tornado had left some sort of file on him so these people knew what had happened to him. They might be able to work it out for themselves from there, they had to. He couldn't bear this, they couldn't leave him there forever. He was losing his mind, even the slow death he'd had to look forward to before would have been better.

XxXxX

He didn't really know what was happening, since he still couldn't see. He heard the words 'New Genesis' and felt himself being moved, but other than that everything was a mystery to him. He didn't care much, as long as things were changing. They seemed to understand that he was alive, and that was enough.

It was days – maybe even weeks – before someone finally stood before him and actually spoke to him, which felt strange considering he couldn't respond in any way.

"We're sending you back, ok?" The voice, which sounded like Robin but with a metallic tint to it, told him. It turned away then, and addressed someone else. "Ok, go for it."

Back? They were going to send him back to Young Justice? They could actually do that? But even if they were going to un-freeze him first, he didn't want to go back there. Not after the way he'd left, after what Cissie had said to him. They didn't want him there, and so he didn't want to be there. But clearly they didn't want him here, either, so where did he have to go? Nowhere.

He felt warm, as though an intense light was shining on him, and then suddenly he hurt. Every single nerve in his body shrieked at him and he gave a choked growl of pain, arching up from whatever he was laying on. Before it hit him that he could move again he was falling, but he still couldn't see. It was a dizzy sort of falling, and every few moments air currents seemed to push at him. Was this a slipstream? They really were sending him back, blind and useless.

The pain was wearing off to a dull ache, and after what seemed an eternity of falling through emptiness something finally seemed to be happening. He felt himself being dragged towards the left side of whatever he was falling through, and he knew he was almost at the end of the journey. Gritting his sharp teeth and snarling, he reached towards the right and clawed at anything he could. His fingers touched something that felt like a wall of electricity, sending shocks up his arms and alerting him to the fact that he'd probably just found one wall of whatever tunnel he was falling through. Narrowing his sightless, black eyes, Slo-bo drew back his fist and punched the wall as hard as he could. He felt it give and a new avenue opened up before him, a new tunnel splitting off from the main stream. That was good enough for him, and he felt it dragging him down in the opposite direction from where he was supposed to be going. Anything was better than facing the rest of Young Justice again, even if he ended up back on Apokalyps.

XxXxX

He woke up on the ground. That was the only thing he could really tell, to begin with. There was dry earth beneath him and cold, clean air around him, and he ached. Must've hit the ground hard, felt like there were a few nice, deep gashes down his leg and on one shoulder. Stung when he moved, but just being able to do that again was a blessing. He was still blind when he opened his eyes and found the familiar darkness waiting for him, and something else had changed now. That same constant, deep-down pain in his bones was back from before he'd been frozen in the statue. He was back to dying again, slow and painful.

Growling because it felt like the thing to do at the time, he sat up and stared straight forward into darkness. The land sloped slightly so he was on a hill, or a mountain judging from the chill in the air and the fresh, crisp scent of it. He could smell trees and water nearby, no fumes from cars or smoke from houses. Must be a long way from civilization, then. He didn't have his bike or Robin's to call for here, so he wondered how in Feetal's name he was supposed to find his way down to a city. And what would he do then, he wondered? He didn't even know which planet he was on.

Slo-bo wondered what the original Lobo would have done in this situation. A small smirk crossed his pale lips as he found the answer. He'd start destroying things until someone turned up, then probably threaten them until they did what he wanted. Lobo was never the type to give in to despair. He didn't generally angst over things, but that was something that set Slo-bo apart from him. When Slo-bo had first been bought back to Earth by Young Justice he'd locked himself in his room for days, hating himself for running away from the other, stronger clones. Hating himself for being afraid to die. And where had that gotten him? Perhaps it was time to try the Lobo method.

Picking himself up surprisingly steadily for someone who was completely blinded, dying and had no idea where he was, Slo-bo walked forward with his arms outstretched, fingers waiting to touch whatever he found in front of him. He didn't stumble, having grown fairly accustomed to being unable to see during his last few weeks with Young Justice. Eventually his ghostly white fingertips brushed against the bark of a tree and he stopped close to it, lips curling upward in a smirk. It was gonna feel real good to frag somethin' again, even a tree. Drawing back his first, he let out a feral growl and let loose on the pine blocking his path.

XxXxX

After the splintering explosion died down from the sixth tree he'd reduced to toothpicks, Slo-bo panted and grinned at the same time. The aching in his bones had gotten worse and he was starting to feel dizzy, but he didn't care. There was nothing like some mindless violence to clear his head, and sooner or later either someone would hear him or he'd just keel over and die. Either way was better than sitting on the ground feeling sorry for himself.

Placing his hands on the trunk of the latest tree he'd destroyed, Slo-bo vaulted gracefully over it and reached out for the next one. His fingers touched bark and he drew back his fist again to punch a hole in it, but paused and narrowed his sightless black eyes. A growl behind him, at least a few meters away, had him turning and growling himself.

"Yer frightenin' all the critters away, an' I'm gettin' mighty hungry." A deep, rumbling voice informed him. Slo-bo could tell that whoever was there had to be huge just by the voice. Strong, too. He could practically feel the power coming off the guy.

"So go get yerself a drive through." The clone growled back, sensing that this guy wasn't the type of person he should ask for help. Not that he really wanted to ask anyone for help, he was starting to enjoy just being free, destroying whatever inanimate objects happened to be in his path until his cells degraded so far that he couldn't move anymore.

"Locals don't take real kind to mutants 'round here. You ain't from 'round here though. Y' ain't a mutant, either. Y' ain't even human." The rumbling voice declared, and Slo-bo could hear the guy sniffing at the air and moving a little closer then stopping. He guessed he'd taken a seat on one of the logs now littering the ground.

Humans. So he was on Earth. Mutants, though?

"I ain't no mutant, an' I ain't from around here. What're ya gunna do 'bout it?" Slo-bo grinned, hoping suddenly that this guy wanted a fight. Going out in battle, now that'd be a better way to die. Shoulda done that in the first place.

"I get real unhappy when I ain't eaten', kid. Figure I might just take it out on yer lily-white hide." The voice held an amused edge to the growl now, and Slo-bo suddenly felt better than he had in as long as he could remember.

"Bring it on," he said, dropping to a fighting crouch like an animal.

XxXxX

"X-men, please gather in my office." The mental voice of Charles Xavier echoed simultaneously in the minds of everyone concerned. Logan, polishing the chrome on his bike, threw down the cloth he was using and wiped the grease off his hands onto his faded jeans. Heading up to Xavier's office from the garages, Wolverine ran a hand through his spiky hair and then wondered why he bothered. Wasn't going to make him look any more presentable, after all. Not that he cared much about looking pretty.

Opening the door, he stepped inside the comfortable office to find Jean, Scott, Storm, Rogue and Kurt already there. They all turned to look at him, and he sighed.

"Y' found Creed, I take it?" He guessed, judging from the looks on their faces.

"Yes, Logan. Cerebro has located Sabretooth in the mountains to the north, there appears to be another mutant with him." Xavier explained calmly. "Although, the other mutant has slightly…odd readings."

Logan cocked an eyebrow.

"Odd?" He asked, already thinking about how badly he was going to pound Sabretooth before they handed him over to S.H.I.E.L.D. and Nick Fury.

"As you know, average humans appear as white, glowing outlines within Cerebro. Mutants appear red, usually. This one, though, is grey." Xavier seemed mildly troubled by this, but Logan assumed it was because he hated not knowing things that could potentially be a danger to his students. He knew the feeling.

"Guess we'll find out all we need to know when we get there," Logan shrugged, keeping his desire to rip Sabretooth to shreds well hidden at the back of his mind. After the last few weeks he needed a little stress relief, and carving Creed into a few pieces sounded just about perfect.

"I'll ready the jet." Storm said in her calm, regal voice, heading out to take care of that. As Cyclops, Jean Grey, Rogue and Nightcrawler hurried out to change into their uniforms, Xavier stopped Wolverine.

"Be careful, Logan. This other mutant… I get the feeling they're familiar, somehow." The professor frowned.

"That ain't usually a good thing, in our case. I'll watch out for 'em." Logan promised, before heading out himself.

XxXxX

Rogue sat in the back of the jet as it headed towards Sabretooth, looking forward to the impending fight. She'd been feeling out of sorts lately, hadn't been thinking right. Ever since the trial, when they'd found out that Gambit had inadvertently led the Marauders to the Morlocks and caused their massacre. For the deaths of the Morlocks, they'd found him guilty and she'd left him in the frozen wastes of Antarctica to die. She never thought she'd be able to do something like that to the man who loved her, but it hadn't even been that hard. Remy had deserved it, it was his fault they all died. Still, somewhere in the back of her mind she knew that wasn't the way she should be thinking.

The jet approached the mountainside Xavier had indicated, and she unbuckled her seatbelt to stride up beside Jean and Scott at the front of the plane. Straight away she could see where Sabretooth must be. Trees were lying torn from the ground and snapped like twigs around a makeshift clearing, where the huge figure of Victor Creed was just visible from the air. Someone else was down there too, much smaller and a stark black and white against the ground. She couldn't see well enough yet, and Logan was next to her growling something about landing the jet on top of Sabretooth. It was strange to have Wolverine standing next to her for once – he'd been avoiding her as much as possible since he returned to the mansion a few weeks ago and found out Remy had been left in the Antarctic. She'd heard he was even planning to head out there and search for him, if only to give him a proper burial. As though he deserved it after what he'd done.

Dragging her mind back to the present, Rogue realised they'd landed already and everyone was rushing out of the jet to where Logan was already throwing himself at the other feral. She followed, eager for a fight, and saw Sabretooth turn away from a smaller figure in time to be slammed back by Wolverine leaping at him. The two of them crashed through a pile of uprooted trees with a shared roar, and Rogue joined the other X-men taking up positions to join the fight when the two of them emerged from the close-quarters battle of teeth and claws they were currently engaged in. Jean had hurried over to the other mutant Sabretooth had been with, and Rogue glanced at it while she waited for the fight to come her way. She could end the battle any time she felt like with a simple touch, this was mostly for Logan to take out some stress anyway.

The kid – since he was only eighteen at the most – was out cold. She had to wonder why Sabretooth had only knocked him out and not killed him. He had pure white skin and black markings around his closed eyes, matching his black nails, spiky black hair and biker-looking clothes. He was small and slim, but from the destruction around the place he'd obviously been able to hold his own against Sabretooth, at least for a while. He didn't look like much of a threat to her, though.

Sabretooth came crashing back her way a moment later, Logan in hot pursuit. Storm was pushing the huge, blonde feral back with a fierce gust of wind, and Cyclops was hitting him full in the chest with his optic lasers. It was slowing him down, but not much. Nightcrawler teleported in and swept his legs out from under him, quickly porting away again before Sabretooth could fall on him. With surprising agility for his frame, Creed caught himself and flipped back up in time to dodge a swipe of Wolverine's lethal claws. They tore through his shoulder instead of his chest, and he roared in fury, about to pounce at the smaller feral.

Taking off her gloves, Rogue flew forward and caught Sabretooth by surprise as he advanced on the snarling Wolverine. She pressed the bare skin of her palm to his shoulder where his coat and shirt had been torn by Logan's claws, and felt his power draining into her. It was exhilarating to feel another person's life being sucked into her, and she almost didn't want to let go. The others were watching her now that Creed had howled in pain and fallen to the floor, though. She let him go and stood up, pushing down the feeling of Sabretooth's animal emotions leeching into her. She wanted to kill him now that he was laid out cold in front of her. She stepped back though, blaming it on having touched the feral. It was his emotions that made her want to kill, not her own.

"Good job, Rogue." Scott was saying, and she just shrugged and slipped her gloves back on.

"Any time, shugah." She said, lifting the much larger form of Sabretooth and easily dragging him into the cage that waited for him in the back of the jet. The others followed, Logan taking his time because he could still feel the animal inside him wishing Rogue hadn't stepped in and ended the fight so soon. He'd needed it. The others were inspecting the new mutant, who Scott was carrying into the jet as well. Finally Logan seemed to shake himself out of it and strode in last. Only when the exit ramp had locked in place did he glance over at the unconscious teenager in the chair behind him, his eyes widening in shock.

"Oh, hell no!" He growled savagely, recognising the scent and sight of the new arrival instantly.

TBC

To clear a couple of things up that some might not know: Lobo and Wolverine have fought before. Wolvie won, due to popular demand.

Gambit was left in Antarctica because he led the bad guys to a group of mutants living in underground tunnels, called the Morlocks. The bad guys killed the Morlocks, and Gambit claimed he didn't know they were going to. For the full story, check Wikipedia.

This is more leaning towards the X-men comics, rather than the movies, although I'm going by what Sabretooth looks like in X-men Evolution because short hair really doesn't suit him.

This is a change from what I usually write. O.o There's a lot of different characters with accents in this one, too. Sorry for any inconsistencies on that note, they're pretty hard to write. Anyway, anything that seems unclear will probably be cleared up over the next few chapters.

Next time: Mistaken identities, and someone Wolvie missed returns to the mansion.