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 Four: "I Know You"
Nightwing stepped out of the zetta-tube's golden glow. Striding up to where Mal stood surround by his array of holo-screens with the air of confidence and control every leader was expected to project. It was a confidence and control he did not actually feel. Not sense Mal had messaged him in the middle of dinner with Barbara (a dinner that took months of wheedling to finally get her to agree to without ending her sentence with the phrase '…as friends.') and told him that Superboy's squad seemed to have –for lack of a better descriptive verb- disappeared.
Dick did not bite the inside of his cheek with tension when he thought about Tim and how devastated Bruce would be when he returned and learned that yet another Robin had been lost. Or Jack Drake. How would Tim's sudden disappearance –or possible death- be explained to his father and stepmother? Where was Kon? The Superboy was supposed to be squad leader. It was just an easy surveillance mission. How had they managed to get into trouble?
One thing. The Nightwing had pulled the Superboy aside after the briefing and asked him for one thing: Keep an eye on Robin. Instead, the whole squad up and falls off the radar. If he hadn't already fallen off the face of the planet, Dick would just kill him.
–And La'gaan too. If the whole squad was missing then the Lagoon Boy was too. M'gann would be pissed and probably also want to kill the Superboy. Hm, best to keep this under the metaphorical hat until he had a better idea of just what exactly was going on. The last thing he needed was a pissed-off martian ridding his ass while he tried to figure this out.
"Okay, Mal, what do you mean 'they disappeared'?" He asked, entering the semi-circle of luminous floating screens.
"I mean," Mal began, "they have not checked-in in the last three hours. One hour, I can understand because its Kon, and he's never been much of a stickler for procedure. But after two hours I figured something was up. That's when I called you. –Why'd it take you so long to get here?"
"Not relevant." Dick's white eye-slits narrowed reprimandingly at the communications tech. "Do you have the recorded feeds from their comms up to the point where they fell off the grid?"
"Of course." He nodded. "Kon may not be much for procedure, but I am."
The appropriate screen was already up and waiting. All Mal did was flick a finger over one glowing immaterial button and the audio-feed began its playback. Three separate bars scrolled across the screen, each flashing 'History: Comm Link, Audio Only'. The recording began with a yawn. Always a good sign while on a mission –sarcasm.
Then Tim's voice played over the channel. "Um, to whoever's yawning… Do you know you're comm is on?"
"All of your comms should be on." The Superboy's voice grumbled in response. "This seems like as good a time as any for a status report."
"Nothing going on over here." The Robin replied.
"Figures." Grumbled the Superboy. "Lagoon Boy, how are things by the docs?"
Silence.
"Yo, La'gaan, you fall asleep on the job?"
Standing there in the haloed light of the holo-screens, Dick resisted the urge to face-palm. Kon had just given the atlantian the perfect set-up for 'Yeah, I'm so tired from banging your ex-girlfriend' come back. If this mission went south because those two couldn't work for one night without killing each other, he was going to kill them!
"I'm under water." The Lagoon Boy's voice growled, as clear and understandable as everyone else's. "Can't talk under water."
"No you're not." Tim's voice scoffed.
"Who's side are you on!" La'gaan shot back.
Kon only growled low in the back of his throat. It wasn't so much an actual sound as it was a vibration picked up by his comm's sub-harmonic sensor.
"We're on a mission. There are no 'sides' on a mission! We're all on the same Team here."
"Enough." The Superboy's voice cut in. "Rob, if there's nothing going on your end, move to the west side. Lagoon Boy, get back in the water. I need to know the moment the boat arrives."
"I told you, I am in the water. Ya know, you're not much of a leader if you can't trust your people."
'Oh, Kon, please don't say "you're not 'my people'".' Dick pleaded silently. What had ever possessed him to send those two on a mission unsupervised? Right. It was supposed to be an easy mission. A real no-brainer with no action. Something to log some more experience for Tim and La'gaan and a way to force the Lagoon Boy and the Superboy to work together until they could separate their personal issue from their work. Apparently, it was not working.
"I. Can. See. You." Was Kon's flat reply. "You're sitting on the doc. …And now you're flipping me the bird. Oh, yeah, real mature!"
"Robin to squad leader." Tim's voice cut in before the Lagoon Boy could give a reply. "We've got activity by west loading doc. Two figures. Looks like… one man, one woman."
"Ugly and Whisper?" Kon asked.
"Negative. Wrong body-types. These two look more incline to the desk-jocky mad scientist persuasion." The Robin replied. "Besides, I thought Ugly and Whisper were still flying the veggie sails."
"Yeah, that's what Nightwing thought about Psimon."
"Noted."
"I'm moving to the west-side to help Rob." La'gaan said.
"Negative." The Superboy commanded. "Maintain current position. I need someone at the waterfront. Rob, keep an eye on the pair. Any suspicious behavior?"
"Negative. They're having a smoke."
"Of course they are…" Kon muttered. Then added with a groan. "Gawd, I hate surveillance. So damn boring."
Later, after everyone was rescued and the crisis was averted, Dick would be reviewing these recordings and identify the next words La'gaan spoke as the point where everything went wrong. It was the point where Kon, where the team leader, stopped paying attention.
"Well," Nightwing could practically hear the contemptuous smirk in the atlantian's voice. "If you think its so boring, why don't you just dump it and go home. I can take over for you."
"What's that supposed to mean!" The Superboy roared over the channel.
The two then launched into one of the most incomprehensible shouting matches Dick had ever heard. It was more than just an argument or a fight. It was a roe of titanic proportions not seen since biblical days. Their onslaughts were diverse, ranging from M'gann, to Team work, to deportment, to origin stories, to sexual prowess vs. virginity and everything else imaginable under sun and sea. Their attacks were vicious. Some of their insults even multi-lingual, with La'gann cursing in his home dialect and Kon flinging insult in every language Cadmus had programmed him with plus a few choice phrases in Kryptonese.
The fight ended only when both paused for breath at the same time and there was silence over the channel long enough for Kon to notice…
"Where's Robin?" There was a pause. "Team leader to Robin, please acknowledge."
There was only silence.
"Yo, Boy Wonder, you still awake?" La'gaan asked.
Still, Robin's comm remained silent. Then, on the Cave's tracking monitors, Nightwing saw the boy's comm signal disappear completely, Tim's audio bar suddenly flashing 'No Signal'.
"Something's wrong." Kon's voice was serious and grave, he was back in mission-mode, his argument with La'gaan momentarily placed on pause. "Lagoon Boy, you circle around the north end, I'll take the south. Meet in the middle."
The dialogue vanished. There was just the sound of movement. The soft slap of a wet webbed-foot over concrete. The rush of air and then a soft ThUMP of the Superboy's jump and landing.
Kon exclaimed, "Robin!"
There were the sounds of a struggle. Various exclamations from various voices, not all of them La'gaan or Kon. Some other noises Dick couldn't recognize. La'gaan grunted then went quiet. Supey continued to grunt and snarl for several minuets after that, then there was a jolt and the Superboy was also silenced.
A few minuets later, their comms also disappeared off the grid.
The glowing holo-screen flashed three separate sets of the words 'No Signal…' at them for several minuets before the Nightwing finally said, "Okay, turn it off."
He pinched the bridge of his nose and fought the urge to groan.
"Call in the rest of the Team." He ordered. "I need to put together a rescue squad. Recommend stealth suits."
…
Alex was supposed to know how to tie his own tie. He was pretty sure a blue-blooded sonofabitch like himself would have learned to tie a simple Half-Windsor at the same time he was learning to walk. …And yet, this was Alex's sixteenth try at it and all he seemed to get was a simple and unsightly square knot.
Happersen waited behind him, arms crossed over his chest. Not impatiently, just observing. "Your father's waiting for you downstairs."
"I'm aware of that." Alex snarled.
Happersen crossed the room and placed a hand on the young Luthor's shoulder, a silent request for the boy to turn around. When he did, Happersen untied Alex's square knot and began to tie a Half-Windsor for him. "You've been forgetting a lot since your accident."
It wasn't a question.
"So?"
"Oh, nothing. Just stating an observation." He brought the wide end of the tie over the narrow end and curled it under to the right. "Your father wants me to discreetly arrange for you to see a specialist."
"I don't like people messing with my head!" Alex snarled with a sudden vehement passion, more than was necessary. He wasn't sure where such strong feelings had come from; all he knew was that he couldn't let anyone play in his brain.
Happersne paused, regarding the young Luthor for a moment. Then, as if nothing happened, he returned his attention to the tie. He said no more as he finished the Half-Windsor. When it was done, he slapped the boy on the shoulder as if they were old friends. "C'mon. We should have left an hour ago if we were gonna get to Gotham on time."
Ah, yes, to Gotham.
Fellow billionaire, well known philanthropist, Gotham Prince and (in his father's words) 'magnificent idiot' was hosting a charity dinner for… Actually, Alex wasn't sure his father had actually said what the dinner was supposed to benefit. Only that it was good public relations for Lex Corp to contribute. So, here he was, dressed in a monkey suit making his way down stairs to meet his very annoyed father to make the five-hour drive to a party that neither of them really wanted to attend.
'I hate monkey suits…'
Alex paused on the chessboard floor. D8. The space reserved for the king, a piece that could only move one space at a time. It was the most important piece on the board, take the king and you win the game. Yet, it could only move one space at a time. One thing at a time…
"Alex!" Lex snapped at him.
"Right. Coming." He followed his father out to the car.
…
Tim entered with a tray containing chicken soup and hot tea. He placed this on the bedside table for this mother to take at her convenience.
Janet Drake blew her nose into a soft lotion-filled tissue and looked up from where she lay bed-ridden with a cold. Red-nosed, pink-cheeked and slightly blurry-eyed, she smiled apologetically at he and Jack. "Sorry I can't go to the benefit tonight. Why don't you take Tim instead?"
"Take me where?" Young Drake blinked in confusion. This was the first he was hearing of any 'benefit' his parents planned to attend.
Jack straitened and cleared his throat. "It's a charity diner hosted by Mr. Wayne. I had bought two plates several weeks ago. Thought it would be good PR for the company."
"And the money benefits those in need, too, dear." Janet reminded him with a patient smile.
Tim wasn't listening anymore. His brain had stopped at 'hosted by Wayne'. For some reason unknown to him, every fiber of his being suddenly screamed at him to take his father up on the invitation, get inside Wayne Manor, speak to Mr. Wayne. He had no idea why. But Tim was confident that everything would just make so much more sense if he could just sit down and talk to Bruce Wayne.
"I'll go!" He said, with perhaps a bit more vigor than was necessary. Tim then dashed out of his parents bedroom, muttering a quick, "I'll just throw on my suit."
A quick shower, a change and a short drive (relatively short, Wayne Manor was technically outside of town) later Jack was handing his keys over to the valet while a footman, hired for the evening, helped Tim out of the front passenger seat.
Wayne Manor was a wash of lights and activity. It looked nothing like the dreary and foreboding old mansion it had seemed the previous day from the road. Now the driveway was lined with LED solar-lamps that cast a slight blue glow over everything that passed within their light. The front steps were lined with bright and cheerful looking floral arrangements in hues of red, yellow and green.
The doors were held open for them and the Drakes were shown into the formal ballroom. Ladies in elegant dresses stood with gentlemen in fine tailored suits, conversing on matters of finance, or social gossip –occasionally they were one and the same. The serving staff made regular circuits of the room, offering trays of hors d'oeuvre or fresh glasses of champagne. Tim found himself scanning the crowd for Bruce Wayne, but Gotham's richest citizen seemed to be playing least-in-sight at the moment.
Jack steered them to a group and began mingling. Tim recognized a few of the faces as business partners of his father's or owners of other companies that, while they were technically competition professionally, Jack counted among his friends in his personal life. Young Drake smiled as he was forced to endure their exclamations of, 'Oh, this young man here couldn't possibly be little Timmy!', or 'My god, Jack, he'll be running the company before you know it.', or other such comments on how much he had grown since these people had seen him last. Tim grew very board very fast.
He once again scanned the room for Bruce Wayne. But his attention was caught by someone else just entering the ballroom. He was tall, a little over six feet, but young –sixteen, maybe. He was dressed in the same black suit and black tie as everyone else, but it seemed wrong on him to Tim's eyes. He imagined the boy in cargo-pants and a T-shirt, casual wear. But with combat boots, action wear. He didn't know where the idea came from, the same place his feeling that he needed to 'find' something came from, the same place his instinct to come here to Wayne Manor had come from. Something deep and subconscious that was acting on his conscious mind. –Like something out of a half-remembered dream.
Tim suddenly found himself disentangling himself from his father's group and crossing the room to the newcomer.
"You have no idea how glad I am to see you!" He blurted out without thinking. Then instantly regretted it when he was fixed with a crystal-blue stare of utter bewilderment.
"Excuse me?" He asked, crystal eyes looking Tim over with a critical gaze that was as much a staple of a shrewd businessman as it was a hardened soldier. That was an odd comparison. (Tim wondered why he'd thought of it.) "Do I know you?"
"Sorry." Tim said, feeling very much the idiot. "You reminded me of someone… Someone I met in a dream. It's stupid. Sorry to bother you."
If there was a sudden flash of abstract recognition in those unearthly blue eyes, Tim didn't see it. He was already retreating. Behind him, he heard someone ask, "Alex, who was that?"
And then Alex's slow, almost thoughtful reply, "I'm not sure…"
'Stupid!' Tim reprimanded himself. 'Stupid, stupid, stupid!' What in the world could have possessed him to go up to a complete stranger and tell them they had met in a dream? Gawd! He must have sounded insane! Hopefully, because of his young age, 'Alex' would just think it was some stupid juvenile game and nothing more. One to many Disney movies.
Tim did not return to Jack Drake's side after his hasty retreat from his embarrassing outburst. Instead, he found himself wandering the halls of Wayne Manor. Thought he was pretty sure he'd never been inside the nearly ancient mansion before, Tim walked the corridors as if they were as familiar to him as those of his own home. He quickly found Wayne's personal study, a cozy room on the ground floor with a large bay window overlooking the back of the grounds. Tim looked out and down and saw the same cliff face he had stood before wondering what he was doing no more than one day ago. He suddenly felt like he had accomplished something simply be being in this room, like he'd made headway in the mystery that surrounded him.
There was something significant in this room. …Or about this room. He wasn't quite sure.
Tim cast a hesitant glance towards the desk. Mr. Wayne's private desk…
No. He would not riffle through Mr. Wayne's personal correspondences and business ventures. Besides, Tim felt that the answer to his puzzle wouldn't be found in there. He was looking for something else. In this room, yes. In the desk, no. He cast his eyes about, searching for something –anything- that stood out to him.
There was an old grandfather clock set against one wall. The old sort with a long pendulum that went tock-tock like the beat of a heart. Except that this pendulum was still, the clock frozen. Tim crossed the room to it. Opening the small glass door of its front, he wrapped his fingers around the pendulums shaft and gave it a firm (but gentle, this was an antique) yank.
Nothing happened.
What did he expect? The clock to slide to the side and reveal a hidden passageway leading down into a deep dark secret cave?
'Yes…'
That was exactly what he had expected to happen. Exactly. The idea was absurd! And yet… as ridiculous as it was, it seemed right to Tim. Like that is what should have happened and it was wrong that it hadn't. But that was just another absurd idea! He tried to mentally reprimand himself for thinking something so utterly improbable. But he just couldn't. Tim believed in Occam's Razor –the simplest explanation is likely the right one. But in this case it just didn't seem right.
He stood there, in front of the clock, contemplating his dilemma and his own stupidity until the Wayne family butler, Alfred Pennyworth, found him. The old man gave him a very polite but no less firm reprimand for straying from the party, worrying his father and tampering with a very old family heirloom of the Waynes'. All the while steering him out the room, down the corridor and back to the ballroom. He was reunited with his father, whom gave him a second, far less polished, reprimand and asked Mr. Pennyworth to apologize profusely to Mr. Wayne for him.
…
The actual dinner was held in the grand dinning room.
Alex barely noticed his food as each new course was placed in front of him and the remnants of the preceding one taken away. His attention was focused on studying another guest of the party. The boy whom had come up to him just as he and his father had been entered the manor sat at another table diagonally across from where he sat and –so long as the serving staff was out of the way- Alex had an unobstructed view of him.
Timothy Drake, he had learned, was the only son of an unremarkable local businessman here in Gotham. His father knew Bruce Wayne personally, but aside from that there was nothing overtly special about either of them. Tim did not look familiar in the least. Alex was fairly confident he hadn't ever seen the boy's face before in his life. Yet, after the mention of reminding him of someone he met in a dream, Alex couldn't shake the feeling that he had also met him in a half-remembered dream. He certainly seemed more familiar to the young Luthor than his so-called girlfriend had.
After dinner, the guest's all returned to the ballroom for more mingling and social gossip. A string quartet had set up on a temporary stage and a few couples occupied the center of the floor in a dance. Tim Drake stood on the opposite end of the room from him.
Alex lifted one hand and, from his perspective, covered the upper half of Tim's face. Yes. He did look familiar after all. It wasn't his whole face, just that nose, the mouth, that chin… Alex was sure he'd seen that half of face before. Somewhere… Once upon a dream? Ha! The notion was ridiculous! Better suited to adolescent girls swooning over a crush. Another life then? Yes, lets go with that. They had been acquainted in another life, and that was the life that Alex was familiar with. That was the life he remembered –somewhat.
…And so, that was the reason why he suddenly found himself crossing the dance floor to tap young Timothy Drake on the shoulder.
Tim turned around and blinked up at him as if in shock that they were once again face-to-face after such an awkward first meeting. Alex wasted no time on pleasantries. His father always said such niceties were a superfluous chore that got in the way of real business, and for once, Alex was inclined to agree.
"That dream, tell me about it." He demanded with all the pompous entitlement of a true Luthor son.
"Uh, what?" Tim stuttered in dumbfounded amazement. His cheeks colored only just noticeably and he lowered his eyes when he continued, "I don't want to. You'll think its stupid –or crazy."
"Or both." Alex agreed. "But I want to hear it anyway."
Across the room, on their temporary stage, the string quartet finished the set they had been playing and struck up a new tune. The waltz from Tchaikovsky's 'Spyashchaya Krasavitsa' (more commonly know as the Sleeping Beauty Waltz). Tim and Alex failed to notice the music, however. They were preoccupied with other matters.
"Its so silly." Tim insisted. "I don't even remember most of it. There were these people in costumes, and… something to do with bats and birds… and justice."
"Missions." Alex blurted out suddenly.
"Yes…" Tim nodded slowly, an abstract memory gaining clarity and one small piece of this puzzle becoming better defined. "There was a group of us and we went on missions for… someone…"
"Your costume was red and black." Alex supplied, an image forming in his own mind. "You wore a mask, and when you weren't wearing your mask you wore dark glasses so that no one could get a good look at your face no matter what. …And a cape. You had a cape, too."
"And you… you didn't wear a costume." Tim's eyes closed, trying to remember. "But you did wear a symbol on your chest. In red. Like a… like an S inside of a triangle."
"Yes…" Alex breathed. It all sounded so right! With every word one spoke, the other remembered more. If they could just keep talking… together they might get a full picture. "My name, what was my name in the dream? I know I wasn't Alexander Luthor the Second."
"I don't know." Tim shook his head. "Do you know my name?"
"No…" Alex had to agree.
The ballroom waltz flowed around them. It was not the only sound in the room, but in the silence between the two men it managed to drown out all other conversations. '…I know it's true that visions are seldom all they seem. But if I know you, I know what you'll do. You'll (trust) me at once, the way you did once upon a dream…'
"Do you have a card?" Tim asked suddenly. This was a charity event, but it was a charity event full of businessmen and what was the one thing all businessmen carried with them at all times besides their cell phones? Business cards.
Alex withdrew a silver case from his lapel and, opening it, produced a single calling card on expensive stock. This he handed to Tim.
"And a pen?" The boy added.
"Haven't got one." Said Alex.
"Alright, then I'll text you my number. We should stay in contact."
"Agreed."
Tim returned his attention to the card he held. "What does the K stand for?"
"Kent." Alex supplied.
"Kent…" Tim echoed. He gave Alex a good long, hard look. "May I call you 'Kent' instead of 'Alex'? It just seems… to fit you better."
"I couldn't agree more… Tim." Kent nodded.
…