All recognizable characters and elements belong to their respective owners (Cartoon Network, BBC, EA). Written for a prompt on YJ_Anon_Meme.
I apologise for the wonky formatting; does not like breaks or italics, apparently.
as i was going up the stairs
i met a man who wasn't there
he wasn't there again today
oh how i wish he'd stay away
There's a saying, a warning, that the kids sing in the streets, sometimes. "Arkham, Arkham, dark and sweet/To keep the loonies off the street/They'll lock you in, and toss the key/That is, of course, unless you're me." It's a simple ditty to skip to, but also a warning.
Because for every occupied cell in "dark and sweet" Arkham, three of "me" roam the night.
And you never can tell, exactly, what will set a "me" off.
hush little baby don't say a word
mama's gonna buy you a mocking bird
and if that mocking bird won't sing
mama's gonna rip off it's little wing
The first time he hears a nursery rhyme, it isn't what he thinks it is. Robin's playing mind games with the poor man, who's hiding and weeping and as fragile as trust. Robin tells the man about a magic spell, one that will make everything better.
He sings it out, quiet and with cadence. It sends a thrill up Superboy's spine, listening to the waterfall words that can take away hurt and loneliness. He can almost see his fear, exhaled with his breath on the morning air.
The old man sighs, slumps, and falls off the wall.
Superboy is there, barely in time, and the man's toothpick leg still snaps like raw spaghetti. They load him onto the bioship in silence, before Wally asks what Superboy's been dying to know.
"What was that spell you were chanting?"
Robin smirks. "Basically? Hickory Dickory Dock."
Everyone absorbs that, and Wally slaps Robin on the back, and M'Gann laughs like starlight, and Kaldur engages Robin in a discussion of linguistics, semantics, and the rhyme that was a spell.
And Superboy feels a little bit crushed inside, because it wasn't a spell, was it? It hadn't worked, and he's still the broken cloned shell of the perfect man who didn't need anyone.
He exhales again, but can't see his breath in the bioship's automated and filtered atmosphere, and the fear crawls back into his belly.
At least it's familiar.
hush-a-bye baby in the treetop
when the wind blows the cradle will rock
when the bough breaks the cradle will fall
and down will come baby cradle and all
He asks Artemis, who looks at him all sneaky-sliding-sideways, but she tells him of the rhymes and the rhythms and the meanings of what children learn in their cradles. She tells him they teach lessons, lessons he thinks are best forgotten, and she says they tell stories, but they're stories he doesn't want to know.
But now, at least, he knows of the songs, and knowledge is a weapon. Knowledge he can sharpen and polish and whet well into the night, when the moon beams down and the stars laugh, or when the rain tries to press through his window with damp and dragging hands. He takes his knowledge and holds it tight, bringing it to bear against falling babies and cracked eggs and people who aren't there except in the shadows of words.
He doesn't see why the songs of death and plague and monsters don't frighten the others, but he writes it off as just another defect in his highly-flawed self.
And then the thunder crashes and lightning flashes, or the moon never beams without bringing him dreams, and he's left to huddle with his pillow and blanket and his precious, precious knowledge.
Knowledge that he'd trade for heat vision in a single slippery second.
they say he sits inside your head
they say he lives among the dead
they say he sees you in your bed
and eats you while you're sleeping
hello, breathes his nightmare, and he greets it like the old friend it is. It crawls in through his eyes, and roots around in his head, scratching and kneading and digging until it has a nice little bloody nest, and it settles down and stays. Sometimes it leaves in the morning. Sometimes he can make it go away, though it laughs at him and promises see you soon i'll be waiting.
But in the end, it doesn't really matter, because the furrows of it's claws scab over and get infected and ooze more fears and worries, and he'll never heal, not with the bells rolling-tolling and moaning-groaning in his head. Not while the raven calls and the shadows answer in a rhythmic give-and-take from his eyes to his ears, and round and back again.
He's not broken, he promises himself. He may be held together with expectations and hopes and dreams, but they're fading fast, and, to be honest, they weren't really that strong to begin with. But he's not broken.
Not yet.
humpty dumpty sat on a wall
humpty dumpty had a great fall
and all the king's horses and all the king's men
couldn't put humpty together again
He clings to his friends, almost too hard. And he knows this, and so he pulls away, only it doesn't help, because when he reaches back out, they say he's being moody and they slap his hand away. He watches the poison spread from their contact, dark and creeping, betrayal crawling up his arm. The shimmering protection that was trust shattered a long time ago, but it's oh so pretty in pieces on the floor. And then the expectations fall, and break among the dreams, and he takes the time to admire the contrasting patterns before hope can drop and break him for good.
i don't understand, he tells his nightmares, and they bare their fangs and smile. we know they say, and come with us and we'll never leave you and we'll be in your head ever and ever until the world dies.
It's comforting, actually.
But Superman smiled at him the other day. It was an accident, Superman thinking he was someone else approaching from the periphery, but it was a smile, and it was happy.
Hope is ever so small, but very hard to kill. Like a cockroach.
So he sits in his darkness, and tries to reassemble his broken puzzle pieces, gluing his friends back together with lies and smiles, and welding his dreams into new shapes.
And he clings to the rhythm pounding along inside his head, because he can use it as a crutch, a wall to pull himself up. He clings to the one-two-three-four, one-two-three-four, and holds it tight, close and tight, for now.
Because this one piece hasn't broken yet. And maybe that piece is him. So if he holds it gentle and cups it and feeds it and covers it and lets it grow, to release it into the sky like a firefly in autumn, then maybe he'll be okay.
Because he hasn't broken yet.
And because maybe someday...
.
ring around the rosie
pocket full of posies
ashes, ashes
we all fall down
.
...if he can just...
.
ring around the rosie
what do you suppose we
can do to fight the darkness
in which we drown?
.
...then maybe...
.
ring around the rosie
this evil thing, it knows me
so many ghosts surround me
i can't fall down...
.
...he won't.