Disclaimer: I do not own either Young Justice or its related characters. Such are the property of DC Comics, Warner Bros. Entertainment and Cartoon Network. I'm just borrowing them for some non-profit entertainment.
Lucidity
Chapter One: Good Morning Sunshine
He soared through the air as if it were the most natural thing in the world. He and his opponent both. The afternoon sun was dipping low behind the skyline, entering that ambiguous period between afternoon and evening and casting long shadows over the city streets. Wind ruffled his hair –their hair- as they grappled several stories above the ground.
Below them cars slowed, pedestrians paused in their steps, pointing up at the pair of combatants. There was the obligatory shout of "Look up in the sky!" and several other exclamations for a chorus accompaniment.
Then he finally got the upper hand of his opponent, slamming the older man through the nearest building. The man lay prostrate on a bed of splintered and broken office furniture and drywall. His crystal-blue eyes staring up –lifeless and unseeing. His red cape rumpled beneath his body. One blue-clad arm thrown up at an odd angle, as if the bones in it were wrong.
Superman lay dead.
'Wait. This isn't right!'
"You saved us!" Someone said.
People surrounded him. They slapped him on the back. Thanked him. Congratulated him. Told him he was great. There was something morbidly familiar about all of this, but he could not put his finger on it. It was as if this had happened before… Déjà vu. But it couldn't have because Superman was still very much alive. Off-planet, but alive! He had had dinner with the Man of Steel and his wife before he left for Rimbor.
So, what the hell was this?
'Cadmus program.'
Right… this was one of the false scenarios he had been programmed with. One of many. He hadn't thought about this –any of this- in years. This was a dream –now, a lucid dream. He lifted his eyes to study the people around him, the wrecked office, the sun setting over Hobs Bay outside.
The office was the Daily Planet, but it was how the Planet had looked five years ago. The computers were outdated, the furniture old, the floors the wrong color. Outside the sun was setting, but it was setting over the Bay, over the water, over the coast –the East Coast. He hadn't noticed before. Everything makes sense in dreams. That's why you don't know you're dreaming until you wake-up –or become lucid. He rarely dreamed anymore, but when he did it was usually lucid and he never dreamed about his implanted scenarios.
"I'm going to wake-up now." He told the dream-constructs.
Then he did.
…Except, what he woke-up to didn't seem right either!
He was in a hospital bed. Not his blissfully small room at the Cave. He was lying down. Not standing at an acute angle. There was an EKG machine next to his bed, measuring his heartbeats and confirming to the world that he was still alive. He sat up and reached a hand up to his head, only to wince at the stab of sudden pain inside his elbow. He looked down and saw an IV in his arm. In his arm!
That was the most alarming thing of all.
That was not supposed to happen. He was invulnerable! Needles were not supposed to penetrate his skin! What had happened? Where was the Team? Why was he in a civilian hospital instead of the Cave's infirmary? How had the med-techs managed to penetrate his skin? What was going on?
'Calm down!'
Asking questions would only get him so far. Think. The last thing he remembered before going to sleep was… well, that should have been going to sleep! Or, rather, given the sate he was waking up in, more likely an explosion of a battle or something like that. He had an edict memory –he remembered everything- except he didn't remember what he'd done before waking up here. Focus. Keep going back. In the Cave… a mission briefing… He was to lead a team on a mission. Just a small team. Three people. Surveillance.
The irritating beeping of the EKG was annoying. It was hard to think. Outside someone was shouting angrily. The voice was male. But it was so muffled by the door that he could neither recognize it nor understand the words. Then, in a glittering stab of horror, he realized that the sound was muffled. He couldn't hear it clearly. But… he could hear everything –he had super-hearing. Except… the angry voices –yes, there were two of them now- were just on the other side of the door and they were muffled. To him. To his super-hearing.
He couldn't hear as well as he should.
He couldn't remember yet he was supposed to have an edict memory.
There was a needle in his invulnerable flesh!
Something was not right.
'What was your first clue?'
The door was finally opened, gifting him with the first clear words he heard since waking up. "…I don't give a damn about your 'visiting hours'! I want to see my son, so I am going to see my son! And so help me! If you get in my way I will sue you and this entire establishment for everything its worth!"
From his angle, all he saw at first was a hand on the door-handle –clutching it with angry tension. The middle finger sported a large silver man's ring with an unusually bright green stone set in it. The wrist was obscured by the white sleeve of a slightly wrinkled, but very fine quality Italian dress-shirt. The door opened the rest of the way.
The man became fully visible.
"Luthor!" Was all he could snarl.
His eyes once again returned to the man's hand and the silver right with its bright green stone –his krypnonite ring. At this proximity he should be feeling its effects. He may not absorb the radiation as readily as Superman, but it still affected him. It still hurt him. Except now it didn't. He felt fine. Wait a moment. Hadn't the ring given Luthor cancer a couple years back? Yes. Yes it had! It had driven him to cut off his own hand to prevent the cancer from spreading.
He gave the man's hands another critical examination. They were both natural, not prosthetic and they were whole.
Lex Luthor seemed utterly oblivious to the vehemence in his voice or the critical gaze of his eyes as he rushed to the boy's side –stricken relief painted over his face. "Alex!" He said. "Thank god you're alright!"
'What?'
So taken aback was he that he could do nothing more than simply stare, dumbfounded, as if Luthor had suddenly grown a second head, sprouted wings for ears and started singing Prima's Aria. Forget his supposed 'edict' memory being spotty. Forget his hearing suddenly becoming simply 'average'. Forget his invulnerable flesh being pierced by a needle. This! This was the single most shocking thing thus far.
His eyes narrowed suspiciously at the man –studying him critically. Yes, it was indeed Lex Luthor that now leaned over him with nothing but concern on his face. There was the slightly pointed chin, the high cheek-bones, the strait nose, green eyes and, of course, his iconic baled head. He saw that it was Lex. He just couldn't believe that it was Lex. What new game was his 'father' playing?
Or, maybe it was Mxyzptlk? With Superman off planet, would the imp bother him instead? Or would Mxy follow the Man of Steel to Rimbor? This didn't really feel like a Mxy prank. It was absurd, but not at all absurd in the same way. No… this had to be something else.
He glared up at Luthor; his crystal-blue irises meeting the other's forest green ones. "What's going on?"
"You don't remember?" Luthor's concern shifted to outright worry, then anger. He turned around to, once again, face the person he'd been arguing with before. They wore OR scrubs, but it was difficult to tell if they were a nurse of or a doctor. "Why doesn't he remember!"
"Mr. Luthor, please, your son has only just regained consciousness. Some short-term memory loss is natural."
Luthor growled, a low, threatening, guttural sound from the back of his throat. He knew humans could make such sounds, but the never imagined such a noise coming from someone as starched and groomed as Luthor! "For your sake, Doctor, that better be true. Now get the hell out! I want to talk to my son!"
Luthor glared at the man until he finally went away. Muttering to himself about billionaires and how they thought they owned the world. When the door was finally shut firmly behind him, Luthor's attention returned to the boy on the bed.
"How are you feeling, Alex? Do you remember the accident? Don't bother asking about your bike. It was totaled, and even if it hadn't been I would have made sure it was. You're never getting on another one of those death-traps again!"
'What?'
He just continued to stare at the man. It probably would have made more sense if he had suddenly sprouted a second head, wings for ears and began singing Prima's Aria. Nothing Luthor was doing, saying or implying was making sense. Especially when compared against his past experiences with the man. Unless of course, this was just some new and obscenely large-scale ploy of some kind to get him to do something. It was absurd and seemed a little impractical. But after five years, he had come to expect just about anything from the man. Really, Luthor's schemes knew no bounds.
So, when he finally did speak, he said the only thing that made sense to him in that moment. "Alright, what's the game this time?"
For a moment, Luthor looked disappointed and perhaps even a little… sad? No! Surely he was reading the expression wrong.
"Not everything between us has to have a hidden agenda, son."
'Oh, really!'
That was an out-and-out lie if he ever heard one. Everything between them had hidden agendas and double meanings. It was the single consistent characteristic of their non-relationship. He held Luthor's gaze a moment longer. Glaring contests were the smallest and most common form their battles of will took. They usually ended in stalemates, only drawing to a close when they were interrupted by secretaries bearing shady documents or intercontinental ballistic missiles armed with neurotoxic warheads heading for major population centers. But in this instance, he gave in, lowering his gaze and ceding to his genetic donor.
His eyes once again fell on his IV.
"How'd you get the needle in my arm?"
Luthor tilted his head to the side, raising one eyebrow and regarding him soberly for a long moment. Finally, he said, "Alex, you're starting to worry me."
"Why do you keep calling me that!"
Head-games were nothing new when dealing with Luthor. He was just an average human when it came to things like strength, speed, or endurance. The man could never threaten, match or overpower him physically. But Luthor did have one weapon that he kept well honed and never hesitated to use. His mind. Loath though he was to admit it, Luthor did have a brilliant mind. He was quick, adaptable, cleaver, analytical, strategic and never failed to run him in circles until something finally broke to let him get away. He never won a conversation against Luthor, he just left –or resorted to physical retaliation (as was more often the case).
But neither of those seemed to be options at present. He could neither bolt from this hospital bed, nor could he threaten to put Luthor's brilliant baled head through a wall. At least… not until he got some answers. Preferably, answers that made some semblance of sense.
"Alex…?"
Yes, that was indeed concern permeating Luthor's face and voice. But what was it doing there? Things weren't right. His apparent absence of powers aside, he suddenly and inexplicably seemed to be immune to the ring Luthor wore, a ring that was supposed to have driven him to amputate his hand. But the hand was still there, just as lily-white and finely manicured as it had been before the cancer. He ignored, for the moment, the fact that Luthor was seeming to care. He filed that under the explanation of 'an act' and pushed it aside. There were other things that needed explaining.
A parallel universe could explain the presence of his natural hand. But it did not explain why the ring no longer bothered him. A red sun could explain the absence of his powers, but he was pretty sure this was an Earth hospital and (unless he had also been flung thirty-eight trillion years into the future) Earth's sun was still yellow. He looked to the window. Outside it was raining. The clouds were thick and dark. The sun was veiled.
He looked back down at his hands –thinking.
His hands! He had noticed the IV in his arm. He had not noticed the hospital band around his wrist on the opposite hand. Slowly, almost hesitantly, he turned the steral blue plastic band until the name on it was visible. He froze at what he read.
The tag proclaimed him to be 'Luthor, Alexander K.'
His head swam and he felt bile rise in his throat. He swallowed it down. He would not show weakness in front of Lex. He took several calming breaths. When he was sure he finally had his body under control again, he said, "I want to know what's going on, and I want to know now!"
…
He was in Paris.
The lights of Île Saint-Louis reflected off the dark waters of the Seine River, illuminating the night in a way that the Gotham River never could have. He was in pursuit of a target. The unlikely ally of Lady Shiva was somewhere about. Not anywhere he could see, but he knew she was there. He had lost track of Clyde. The three of them were in pursuit of the notorious drug trafficker King Snake.
Except…
Hadn't that already happened?
Yes. It had.
Batman had sent him to Paris as the first stop on a world tour of training. He was supposed to meet up with a man named… something. Rahul Lama. That was it! He was a martial arts master of sorts. He was supposed to study with him. But he got sidetracked. That tended to happen a lot with this job.
But that was a little over a year ago.
He stopped.
Just stopped. In mid-swing. He hung from his grapple-line, examining the city around him. The skyline was that of Île Saint-Louis, as were the lights. But the building faces didn't look right. The architecture was wrong. The walls themselves to dirty to be Île Saint-Louis. True, any urban center had its fair share of filth, but this was more-so. This was a level of grime that would look more at home, well, at home! His home –Gotham.
The river looked off too. It was also to dirty. The water to dark. The shape of the bank cut wrong. And it flowed in the wrong direction! He hung there a moment longer, pondering these oddities and their possible causes. Delusion or hallucination were the first two and most obvious explanations. But these didn't feel quite like delusions, they were to clear and well defined. The lines were sharp, the colors vivid. It wasn't at all distorted or blurry. Not abstract or ambiguous.
Except, it was ambiguous.
At least, as far pinning down a name for this location. It looked like Île Saint-Louis, but the river it sat on was not the Seine but rather looked more like Gotham's Finger River. Then, in a burst of sparkling clarity, he understood.
"This is a memory. I'm dreaming."
All he had to do was wake up. Hanging there, still in the air, suspended only by his think grappling line, he closed his eyes…
…and opened them again.
His bedroom ceiling stared back at him. His bedroom ceiling from the house in the suburbs he and his father had lived in before the 'No Man's Land' fiasco. But they had moved out of this house to an inner-city apartment. …Hadn't they? Him, his father and Dana. Right? He had no idea what was going on, but he was damn sure going to find out!
After all, he was apprentice to the World's Greatest Detective.
Waking up in his former suburban home was odd enough as it was, but that had been nothing compared to the shock he'd received upon walking downstairs and entering the kitchen. Janet Drake –his mother- stood over the stove, turning over an omelet and poking a pan of bacon. That was when Tim decided something was good and truly off. His mother had passed away during a vacation in the Caribbean. She had been taken hostage and poisoned… or something like that. Hadn't she?
She must have, because his father remarried. A woman named… he had just thought about her a moment ago upstairs. What had her name been? This was frustrating, he knew this, he had just thought about her. Something 'Winters'… he was sure of it.
Except…
That didn't make any since. Why would his father remarry when his mother was right here? He knew they weren't divorced. Something wasn't right.
All these thoughts, however, were forgotten the instant his mother turned around, a plate of eggs and bacon in her hand and a smile on her face. He had the sudden urge to run up and hug her. But he didn't. Instead, Tim stood rooted to the spot. Every lesson learned since… since what? Since something, told him that this wasn't right. That he needed to stop and think. Something was off and he needed to find out what and –if possible- fix it.
"Well, good morning, sleepy-head." She said. "Nice to see you're finally up."
She set two plates of omelet and bacon on the kitchen table. Tim recognized obnoxiously bright yellow tablecloth with white flowers. There was an old ketchup stain where he was sure a bleach stain was supposed to be. Or had that just been his imagination?
They sat down to breakfast. His mother chattered away about her plans for the day, what the neighbors were doing. Iis father would be home late this evening, things at work were getting tense. There was a PTA meeting this Saturday, did Tim have any issues he wanted her to bring up? For one so young he always did have good insights.
He offered non-committal responses to all her questions or attempts to engage him in conversation. Most of Tim's attention was focused on studying his surroundings and analyzing what he saw. This was his home. The house in the sub-urbs his family had lived in before… before what? They had moved. He thought he remembered, but why? Or had that just been a dream? Jeez, some dream.
Outside he heard the next-door neighbor mowing their lawn. The seductive melody of an ice-cream truck tinkled in through the open kitchen window. It was a little early in the morning to be selling ice-cream, wasn't it?
He looked back down at his food. It was good. The eggs were a bit bland, but that was just the way Janet made them and it was nothing a little salt couldn't fix. The plate was a solid white Corelle plate, Corelle was supposed to be unbreakable china. They had the set since before he was born; it had been a wedding gift (or something) to his parents. Tim could recall having broken a grand total of three pieces of the set in his lifetime –nothing was 'unbreakable'.
After breakfast, he barricaded himself in his room. Tim fished under the bed for… something. When he didn't find it there he checked the closet. It wasn't there either. He tapped his ear, thinking he should call… someone. And when his finger impacted lightly on his naked ear-lobe Tim had to stop and realize just how ridiculous that was. If he was going to call someone, he would use the phone not… not something in his ear? A blue-tooth? But he didn't have a blue-tooth, his father was afraid it would get lost or stolen at school. Tim was responsible, but things happen.
He sat down at his desk and booted up his computer. Opening a blank window, he began to type in the appropriate passwords to allow him to interface with… another computer… A rather large, highly advance and highly secure computer by the looks of the code he'd just typed. He had no idea what he was doing or trying to do. Tim closed the window. He searched his room again for that thing he'd been looking for, but still could neither remember what it was he had lost or why he wanted it. All he knew was that he did not want to leave the house without it.
Tim sat on his bed, more confused than he'd ever been in all his thirteen years.
Something was up with him. That much he knew. He also knew that he had to get to the bottom of whatever it was. After all, he was a detective.
…
He woke up on the beach.
There were paramedics on one side of him and a pair of police on the other. He couldn't recall how he'd gotten there. The hot sun beat down on him. The sand under his back was dry and slightly itchy. Yet, he had no trouble breathing. The air was humid and thick. The sun was hot, but not deathly unforgiving. He was thirsty though.
His attention shifted to the paramedics. Why were they here? Where was his Team? The mission… what had the mission been? He didn't know. He couldn't remember. He tried to sit up.
He froze.
It was not the fact that he was utterly and completely naked that startled him. No, that was just a minor oddity he noted and then quickly forgot in light of the far more startling and utterly horrifying realization. His skin… skin, not scales… His beautiful blue-green scales were gone and in their place he looked down on a pair of darkly tanned but very human looking legs. Complete with sun-blemishes and leg-hairs. His feet… the toes were not webbed, they were also normal human toes. An inverted V of a tan-line told him that he wore flip-flop sandals more often then perhaps he should.
But… that couldn't be right. He didn't wear shoes at all because of the webbing between his toes. …Except the webbing wasn't there.
He would have reached a hand up to feel his ear. To make sure it was still fin-shaped as it should be. But he was reprimanded by the paramedic.
"Try not to make any sudden movements, sir."
He turned his attention to the man, and stared bemusedly at him –as if not really seeing him or perhaps doubting the reality of his existence. "My scales are gone."
The paramedics and the police both exchanged a look. He recognized it because it was the same look he and Robin had exchanged one mission in response to noting how Blue Beetle talked to –neh, argued- with himself. It was a look that said only one thing, 'Oy vey, this one's a nutter.' Or, to voice it more politely, 'He's a bit of an odd fish.'
One of the policemen cleared his throat, commanding attention. He had his cop's notebook in his hands, a pen poised at the read. "What's your name, son?"
He looked suspiciously up at the man. Where was his Team? The mission… it had been a squad of three men. He was sure of that. At the briefing… he had been distracted at the briefing. M'gann had been filling his head with images of what she wanted to do to him after he got back. It made it hard to concentrate on what Nightwing had been saying. But… this man was an officer of the law, a peacekeeper of the surface. They were on the same side… right?
So, he answered cautiously, "Lagoon Boy."
The officer sighed and tapped his badge. "Kid, this is the Miami Police Department. When this asks for your name, we want your real name."
…
