trans_9 | Late Night Train to Maudlin City, Now Boarding [open]

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Late Night Train to Maudlin City, Now Boarding [open]

The feeling that he wouldn't be out of Medbay for long was a hard feeling to squash, but he wanted to stay away as long as he could. He hated doctors. That was what he was getting closer to, though, his breakout from Cadmus and the half-remembered times right before it when he'd been poked and prodded and dressed up in a Superman uniform. He felt his life dissolving away like sand through his fingertips. For a while, he tried to ignore it, striking out on his own and trying to have fun. He had a good fly through the city, surfed in the Sensoriums, made the flirty eyes at any girl he happened to pass by in the hallways. He was the Kid. He was young and carefree, right? Not a worry in the world.

It was during one of those lulls where a good portion of the ship's crew was asleep that he left his room. Good ship Stacy's version of Letterman time. (Scratch that: more like Conan-time). He was wearing the sweatpants Rory gave him and a blanket wrapped around his shoulders and not much else.

Taking a seat floating in the air there, he looked outside. The view outside the viewing window really was beautiful. It was dazzling. Distracting.

"Way to go, Superboy! Staring pensively out the viewing window. You're not being a walking cliche at all."

Only angsty people stared pensively out the viewing window. Seriously. He was too cool for pensive viewing window staring. Cliche or not, though, he needed it. Sometimes you needed that perspective. That's what he figured. He needed to see...exactly how small he was compared to the rest of the universe. A universe that'd go on without him, if he shrank away into nothing--

Yeah, okay, maybe this wasn't actually helping him feel some cosmic one-ness that took away his growing fear.

"Now entering Maudlin City. Population: You."

Talking to himself like he was the main character in a comic book or a TV show or something like that was a habit that'd taken him years to break himself out of and thus a habit he'd reverted back to, but hey, who didn't like to pretend sometimes that their life had the kind of stories people would want to read about?

The question was: with this, with something he couldn't fight with his fists, would he still have a story for much longer?

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Rory had been heading back to the TARDIS - Heading home really, as much as a tiny part of him still resisted thinking the of TARDIS as home - it had been a long...week. Yes. Week. Long week, outbreak of possibly contagious time swallowing virus, meeting a werewolf...really, there were times he wondered if perhaps the universe had a set amount of things it meant to show him, and his ability to absorb said things in any graceful manner wasn't often taken into consideration.

Night was strange on the ship, more a clung to hold over of circadian rhythms keeping people set to any sort of pattern than an absolute requirement. He should remember to tell Amy that, when she fussed for him staying up far past when he should have been in bed. Medical hadn't slowed down just because he was tired and wanted to sleep. They were under staffed and someone had to keep watch in case of an emergency.

He paused, having nearly walked past the doorway without noticing that someone was here, the silence of the night making the mutter all the more obvious. He would have left the person too it, but he knew that voice. "Conner? Are you up here?"

"Yeah. S'me." There was the wave of a hand from behind the meat-couch that was blocking him from view. It wasn't so much that he was sitting behind it as floating in front of it, as Rory would find if he came over.

"Tried catchin' some Z's, but couldn't," he said, pulling the blanket tighter around his shoulders. "Crazy dreams."

He really should go to bed. Amy would be wondering where he was and what he was doing. He should have been back hours ago.

But Conner...well, for most people it was simply aging back. For Conner it was losing everything. All that he had worked for and gained.

He'd apologize when he got back. "If you wouldn't burn it off so quickly, I'd offer to give you something to help you sleep." He walked quietly into the room, trainers barely making a sound against the meat floor. "What were you dreaming about?" It was a nice view though strange to think of. It had been one that he had avoided more often than not, keeping his head down in medical and on problems he could fix, not how vast the situation actually was.

He frowned faintly at the pose he found the kid in, disregarding the floating in favor of observing how tightly Conner had wrapped himself in the blanket. He looked like a child. Like a scared child. "Are you cold?"

"I'm fine."

Not cold. It was for comfort, mostly, though he'd never admit it. He wasn't the type to go and ask anyone for a hug exactly.

"I've got what I was on the ship that I still remember, and who I am now. I was havin' these crazy dreams, like... my brain was tryin' filling in the blanks. But just makin' stuff up, I think. None of it fit together right."

The window caught his gaze and kept it.

"And there was this crazy part where I turned invisible and everyone forgot me like I never existed."

He shrugged and smirked, to show how nonchalant he was, or at least how nonchalant he wanted Rory to think he was.

"That's dreams for ya'. Not like they gotta be anything you're actually afraid of, right? Sometimes s'all made up stuff."

Conner had an unhealthy habit of lying to himself about himself. Rory would like to find whoever had told him as a child that it wasn't good to be scared or hurt or feel any sort of negative emotion that wasn't anger and either punch them or explain in no uncertain terms how badly they'd screwed this up. "If you're sure." He settled on the couch, lacing his fingers together and watching the view.

The dream just confirmed it, really. Conner was afraid, legitimately so. "It probably is trying to fill in the blanks. Who you were here and who you were at this stage at home are two very different people. Our brains are funny like that, trying to work around something that is missing." Like over-writing a tape and still catching the occasional pop of data. It never made much sense, but it was still there, just under the surface. Waiting to be discovered.

He grimaced at the second part, feeling terrible for the kid. Yeah, that sounded about right. As wrong as that was, it sounded about right. "No one would ever be able to forget you, Conner. Though that sounds like a nightmare, a proper one. That's worse, I think, than not living at all. Being forgotten. I'm afraid of that." He was so young now, getting younger by the day. At this rate...well, even if he deaged to childhood, Conner wouldn't be forgotten. And they wouldn't let him vanish, the Doctor would find a solution before that.

"Sometimes, what we see in dreams is our emotions trying to make sense of themselves. Maybe not what we think, but what we feel. If we're scared or hurt or feel like we might lose something important, dreams can show that. Can try to put those emotions into a literal situation where they can express themselves properly. It's like putting your emotions and your imagination in a blender and seeing what might pour out. Sometimes it doesn't make sense." And sometimes it did. Conner's dream sound just as he would expect a teenager aging out of existence to feel.

The problem was that no one told him as a child, since he never had been a child, and even if he'd had the chance to be a child, that wouldn't have guaranteed parents to teach him. He'd just watched people. People like Superman and the other heroes he knew never showed their fear. It'd led him to believe they simply didn't have any and he'd tried his best to imitate, even if some self-delusion and tough guy posturing was involved.

"Maybe my head's trying to tell me something, like, tryin' to figure out what it's missing, but I ain't scared of nothin' and nobody," Superboy declared. "I'm Superboy! I'm the super set's Peter flippin' Pan!"

It was just a touch too enthusiastic. He was trying too hard. He drew himself up in the air, the blanket staying on by virtue of his tactile telekinesis, almost like a cape. He leaned down to face Rory, every gesture almost too big and grand for such a little young man.

"You know how it goes. 'To die would be an awfully grand adventure!' So why would I be afraid of anything? Ever?"

It was almost a challenge, but perhaps it was a challenge he wanted to lose. Maybe he wanted to be told it was okay to be afraid by someone. Maybe he needed to hear it.

Edited 2011-05-13 03:23 (UTC)

Rory watched him, resisting the urge to applaud at the overly dramatic show.

It was incredibly sad. Like a little boy who had been badly hurt trying to lock himself up so that nothing hurt him and hiding it behind a blustery crow that really concealed nothing and only illustrated how young he really was. Even if at the moment he didn't look it.

"Peter Pan...but you're aging now."

He watched Conner, quiet and sad, not rising to try to make himself bigger. Letting Conner have the high point. "It's not, actually. A great adventure. It's depressing and sad and frightening. And at the end, there isn't anything. Just a light and you leave everyone behind." He smiled, faint and sad, lacking any real humor, and reached out to grab Conner's wrist. "Come down, you don't need to pretend, Conner. It's alright."

Superboy didn't pull away. For a moment he just floated there, tethered to Rory like he was a zeppelin caught in the wind that wasn't sure which way it wanted to go.

Then there was a gentle slope to his shoulders, and his head dipped ever so slightly. It would've been hard for anyone to notice if they weren't looking for it, but it helped that he floated back down to the ground, too. The blanket wrapped itself even more tightly around his shoulders, his telekinesis reacting to unconscious thoughts and fears. Though he was far from being near crying or anything, his eyes were still glistening just slightly, and there was the smallest tremble to his lower lip that he was also trying hard to suppress.

When he finally spoke, his voice was slightly hoarse, and very quiet, "It's not the possibility of dying. Really, it's not. I deal with that all'a the time. It's that I only have a year an' a half left--I don't wanna forget who I am."

He pressed his lips together, and finally stopped looking at the floor and looked up at Rory.

"Even if I don't die right away and I still have more time after I go before fifteen, what am I going to be?"

A big, blank empty nothing? Like Mei-Xing's clone?

Edited 2011-05-13 04:04 (UTC)

Rory watched, silent and keeping his hand wrapped around Conner's wrist, unwilling to withdraw the comfort now that he had made himself offer it.

It was easy to forget how young some of these kids were, how little experience they had. How quickly that could all be jerked out from under them. Easy until they got like this, hopeless and afraid and afraid of being afraid.

"We will fix it, Conner. And no matter what happens, we'll take care of it. I promise. We're not going to forget about you." He kept his voice soft, firm and level. But not withdrawn, not lacking emotion. He sighed, soft. "I wish I could tell you, Conner. I wish I could give you the answer to that question. I really do." He tightened his hand. "But you won't be alone. You're not going to be alone in facing this, whatever comes."

They were at something of an awkward crossroads. Yeah, they'd talked a good while, yeah, Rory was becoming something of a friend, but he still didn't know him really well yet. Then again, maybe he did, just because of how he was acting through all this. How people treated other people said a lot about them.

He wasn't sure how to react to this, to an adult figuratively (and literally) reaching out their hand, for the first time in as long as he could remember, and telling him it was okay to be afraid.

For a second it looked like he was going to go with a joke, and laugh it off, but the smile that started faded before it became anything else.

So instead, silently, quietly, because he was close anyway, he leaned in and rested his forehead against Rory's shoulder.

Technically, it wasn't a hug. Technically, it wasn't asking for a hug. Technically, it was, uh, a headbutt, right? Yeah. Totally manly headbutt right there. It was a headbutt of friendship, that's what it was.

They didn't know each other that well, not yet. Rory had seen a lonely teenager and had tried to the best of his ability to reach out and help someone. Because he couldn't do much else, but he could talk and he could listen, and Conner need some of both.

He didn't shift when Conner leaned against him, pausing for a second as he processed how...meek the gesture was. How easy Conner had made it to escape, if Rory wanted to leave. How little confidence he must have in his ability to ask for comfort to do it so passively.

He reached out, adjusting the blanket to better cover the child - because that's what he was, even if he was pretending he wasn't, even if he looked like he wasn't - and pulled him into a tight, secure hug.

"Hey, you're my friend now," Kon said, his voice muffled by Rory's shoulder, but still audible. "Just so you know."

He declared it to be so.

"Good to know. Glad I pass muster." He kept his arms tight around the teenager, racking his brain for the right thing to say. But it was hard to think of words that didn't sound hollow to his own ears. Cliched and empty and utterly meaningless.

He tucked the blanket around Conner's head, like his mum used to for him when there was a storm out, blocking out the world for him a gently as possible.

The smallest quirk of a smile played across his face.

"You got any kids? You never mentioned and you're good at this stuff." He added, "At least, I think you are. Dubs is the closest thing I got to a parent, and he's more with the sarcasm and less with the hugs and stuff, so mostly I just got my imagination to go on."

"No." He could still remember the vivid dream, and watching their child grow, and the little sonogram picture he'd remembered keeping in his wallet.

It had only been a dream, but even now it felt real and tangible and desired. His fondest wish, the feeling of a baby kicking his hand and watching Amy's stomach round with pregnancy. "Almost, once. But not just yet. I do want them though." His arms tightened a fraction, protective of the teen. Every child should have a chance to be hugged and held and told they mattered. Conner was a study in all the wrong ways to take care of a little boy.

Superboy pulled away, but only to sit down on one of the meatcouches, leaving room for Rory to sit next to him. He drew his legs up and kept the blanket around his head where Rory'd put it.

There was a good view of the window from there.

"Yeah, well, when all this is over and we fix it all, and you get that chance, your kid's gonna be happy I bet. I feel dadded at and I'm not even your kid."

His gaze was carefully directed at the window, and the lights reflected off his face.

He admitted, "I'm not really used to this. Talking to a grown up like this. But it doesn't seem that weird, somehow, and it's something you're doing to make it that way. Wish I knew what it was."

He turned with a grin and joked, "You're not putting the mind-whammy on me, right? Psychic powers of inducing trust? Didn't slip a brain worm in my ear, did you?"

He let him pull away, settling on the couch and watching the view with him.

"I hope so." And he wished he could use the TARDIS and go back and give Conner and proper go at a childhood, rather than the rushed thing he'd experienced. "Situations like these, sometimes everyone needs a hug and someone to tell them it'll be ok. Glad I could provide it."

He laughed. "Nope. No powers, no brain worms. I haven't got any of that. One hundred percent Ledgeworthian human, no special anything."

There was a question gnawing at him, because of all this, and it wasn't the sort you could just ask anyone. Hell, even the people who knew were norms, like Robin still weren't exactly what you'd call completely normal.

"Perfectly normal guy, huh?" Superboy said. He paused, then asked curiously, "What's it like to be normal?"

He shrugged into the blanket.

"Not that I don't think bein' Superboy is the coolest thing I could be, but I wonder sometimes," he admitted.

Edited 2011-05-13 07:09 (UTC)

Rory paused, considering the question. "Before the Doctor or after the Doctor? Before, well, he was always there. Amy saw him as a child and he was just...there, like an invisible person I could never be see or overcome. It was boring, for the most part. Went to school, got my license, got a job, got a girlfriend, asked her to marry me. Then she got whooshed away on the night of our wedding by a mad man in a blue box and it hasn't really been normal since."

He paused, thinking about Ledgeworth and home and the family that he wanted to start. "It wasn't always perfect, or exciting. But I would give anything to go back to it. It was safe, like crawling under the covers when the storm's roaring outside and knowing that nothing can come in and get you. It was nice. I miss it. Much as I've gotten used to this and everything attached to it, it was nice to not have to worry about space aliens eating me for breakfast or cutting me to bits for science. Or dying, or Amy dying, or the Doctor. Just...living. Nothing special, nothing more exciting than my next shift, and the hospital got rather insane sometimes, new moon or strange alignment of the stars or something. But you could roll with that."

Superboy thought about it.

Then he snorted, and asked, "Why do you think it is that you can't have the excitement going on and the not-nearly-dying-all-the-time at the same time?"

"Some sort of cosmic law of the universe, I assume. Either you're dead board or running for your life, and anything in between is on the way to either extreme." He shrugged, open handed. "And no matter what, whichever extreme you're at, it always seems you're wishing for the other."

"Whoever makes up them cosmic laws needs to get canned. They suck at it. Like there's that law that says if you absolutely need to get to a date on time or else your best babe might leave you, you're gonna get attacked by a supervillain on the way there. I hate that one. Or the on that says that whenever two superteams meet up the first time, they're gonna have to fight for some reason. That one's stupid. Then there's the laws of irony, where--"

Where sometimes in a situation where you just dissed the imaginary person that writes the cosmic laws, he or she decides to have something bad happen.

That was irony for you.

Kon suddenly doubled over. "--Ungh."

Squirmy feelings. He was losing a burst of time again.

"Well, yeah. I think they sort of exist to cause you more trouble than they're really wor- Conner, what's wrong?" He reached for the kid's shoulders, concern waring with professionalism. "Are you feeling sick?"

Or was it another step backwards?

He kept his hand's on Conner's shoulder, protective and ready to drag the kid to medical as quickly as possible.

I've only got a year and a half left.

So what happened when they used up all the time Conner remembered?

Tim didn't need to have heard the entire conversation to be worried about Conner-- he'd only arrived mere moments before, having not been back from the mission for very long, and had paused in silence, listening, before he saw Conner reacting, like he was in pain. At this point, it was easy to assume what that probably meant for him.

"Conner," he said suddenly and began moving forward quickly (still quietly, but stealth wasn't his top priority for the moment, really). He came up the couch, reaching a hand out for his friend.

"The Agenda... they made a clone army from me. Ripped apart my DNA. I think-- that's what's next. It's the last thing I remember, it's--"

He blurred and suddenly, his body was globby, mutated, covered in lesions. He started gasping for breath. He looked like he was almost melting. Sheets of skin were peeling off like he'd gotten the worlds worst sunburn times ten thousand.

"Should pass," he gasped through cracked lips, blinking rheumy eyes. "I wasn't--this way for long. It should pass."

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