Lost Boys // By Slipstream

Author LJ: slipstream_chan
Author e-mail:slipstream_chan@hotmail. com
Rating: PG (one swear)
Spoilers: None. Just general messing with the Dreaming and SB's origin.
Summary: Superboy's about to be pushed.
Disclaimer: Not mine. I'm just playing and not getting paid.
Pairing / genre: Tim+Kon-El, philosophically angsty mixing of Superboy canon and the Sandman universe
Story notes: Unfortunately, I've never seen a copy of the story where we get to see Kon's origin, I've only read the basics (that he was kept in a tube, had memories and knowledge implanted according to his physical age, and that he was freed by the Newsboy Legion. I'm kind of guessing at the details, so forgive me if I get them completely wrong. And if it bothers you too much, chalk it up to the AUness of the story.

"But where do you live mostly now?"

"With the lost boys."

"Who are they?"

"They are the children who fall out of their perambulators when the nurse is looking the other way. If they are not claimed in seven days they are sent far away to Neverland to defray expenses. I'm captain."

--J. M. Barrie, The Adventures of Peter Pan

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Today's feed is an especially boring one, though you're not exactly sure why or how you know this as you don't have much to compare it with. It's something called "algebra," and though you're not paying particular attention, you can feel the knowledge seeping into your being. This is the way it always is. If you concentrate hard enough, you can visualize the feeds as moving pictures, get an image to go along with the ideas, but it doesn't matter. You learn it one way or the other.

The only real advantage to this skill is that on the really interesting feeds, you get all sorts of juicy stuff. You especially liked the one on human physiology and the basics of sex, though you aren't sure why. And there are periodic feeds on this thing called "television," which you find amusing, despite only having the vaguest idea of what a TV actually is .

You aren't sure when you figured out that these feeds aren't "real" per se, but it sure has made things much more complicated and head-ache inducing since you did. You think it might have had to do with the feed you once got about taste, touch, and smell, things you realize that you have yet to experience, unlike sight and sound. So you watch, and learn, and wonder exactly what the end result of all of this will be.

Until then, you're stuck with algebra. You've already concluded that it sucks and has nothing to do with you (You ignore the resulting question, "What does have to do with me?"), and now you're experiencing this thing you've come to know as "boredom." Your mind drifts, and you're day-dreaming (What is day? What is dreaming?) and maybe that's what does it, what gives him access into your little world.

It's such a bizarre sight, to see a portion of your field of vision (numbers and equations, written out in white letters on a black surface, like those blackboards you know about but have never touched or smelt the chalk of, though you know that these are distinct sensations. ) suddenly swing open like a door. You focus on it quizzically (Is this some new feed?) and gawk as slowly, carefully, a boy steps through the door and shuts it behind him. The boy dusts off his jeans, cranes his neck back and up as if to see what it was he stepped through (the feed continues to explain something called a trinomial), and grins devilishly at you. You feel cut to pieces by his gaze.

"Math, huh? Man, no wonder you were bored. Good things those bastards decided that today wasn't a good day to show you The Matrix. "

You gape. "What?! How?Where... that thing that you came out of!What?"

He tsks, shaking his head at you disapprovingly. He's pale and wiry with a shock of black hair and blue eyes that give the distinct impression that they can and might very well eat you alive. He's dressed simply:a white t-shirt, blue jeans, grey sneakers. But something about him seems wrong, doesn't compute with anything you've been taught by the feeds.

He looks at the world around you and smirks. "Poor, confused little clone. But what do you know, trapped here where you can't even see the curtain, much less realize that there's a man behind it." He waves his hand, and for a moment the feed wavers, flickers and becomes translucent for the briefest of moments, and you are shocked to find that there are things out there behind it, looming shapes, all staring at you, staring...

"W-who are you?" you stammer, and for the first time in your existence, you feel fear.

He smiles, the flash of white like the stabbing of a knife (something else you've never seen or touched, but know about). "Good question, kid."

He nods cordially, spreading out his hands, and between them you can see the flow of images, ideas, twists of shadow with no particular shape and yet completely different from each other. You think you can tell what they are, but you aren't sure. A flute, an open window, a strangely shaped R, a small brown and red bird. The feed (information, umbilical cord of data teaching you about things you have yet to really know) rumbles steadily on in the background.

"I have many names, all of which are somewhat relative, but not quite good enough to describe all that I am. Story calls me Pied Piper, He Who Lures Children. A man in England called me Lost Boy, Cradle Robber, Infant Pusher, the One Who Points Towards The Second Star On The Right, sometimes Peter. A man in Gotham calls me Robin, and in his nightmares he gives me the names of other boys he has lost in one way or another. There are even some who call me Freedom, though I think they wouldn't confuse me with her if they actually met her. She has the most distinctive ankh necklace..."

He stops, seems to realize that he's rambling, and shrugs in apology. "My creator on the other hand, well, he just calls me Tim for simplicity's sake." The shadows disappear, and Tim extends his right hand in greeting.

You pause a moment in confusion, remembering your vocabulary feed from a week ago. It takes you a little longer to remember the one on politeness, and by the time you remember that you're supposed to return the...handshake?. . . Tim's already tucked his hand away. " Your...creator? Do you mean your father?"

Tim laughs, though it's less a chuckle and more of a short cough. "No. My creator. Oh, don't look so perplexed, kid, it isn't that unusual. You yourself have a creator—creators— not parents."

You stew over this a moment and nearly miss the rest of Tim's little speech. "Actually, he is partially to blame for my ambiguous nature. While he was making me he couldn't decide whether or not I should be a figment of dream or of nightmare. So he made me a little of both. Every eight-year-old boy's dream, every mother's nightmare."

"Dude," you say. "You aren't making a bit of sense."

Tim snorts, but it's more in frustration than contempt. "Open your mind a little, kid. I thought that you'd figured out that this whole place isn't real, at least, not by human standards."

Before you can protest, he waves his hand, conjuring up another figment of shadow. This one looks like a person, or something at least shaped like a person. It's draped in black robes that hide all of its body except for its pale, long-fingered hands, one clutching a ruby, the other a small bag, and where its head should be there's a helmet shaped vaguely like some nightmarish insect. You feel as if you should recognize him, but you don't know from where.

"Lord Morpheus. Dream of the Endless. He is the master of this realm you exist in. You may think of it as reality, but it is the realm of dreams, or close enough that he can lay claim to it. My creator, like your creators, controls what makes up this reality, the reality of dreaming. Your creators may have found a way to have limited access to it with their crude manner of educating you, but his power far overrules their programming. Thus my ability to come here and to have this little chat with you."

The feed moves on to factoring. You force yourself to calm down, to breathe, to try and absorb all that's being said and all that's not being said. "I still don't understand what you want."

Tim cocks his head to the side, and the slice of almost-smile is gleefully wicked. "You've forgotten one of my names, kid. Lost Boy. Despite what you think, you are an infant, trapped in this pram of a womb. And very soon your nurses are going to look the other way, and I will push you out."

"Soon?" you say. "How soon?"

He digs out some sort of complicated-looking pocket watch attached by a golden fob to one of the belt-loops of his jeans and makes a show of checking it. "Less than a minute, actually. So if you have any final questions you'd like to ask, you'd better get them out of the way fast."

You have a moment of panic. This, this thing in the shape of a boy but with the feeling of some sort of god has just burst into your world and informed you in a very matter-of-fact tone that you're only going to exist in it for another 60 seconds.

Tim's smirk is genuinely amused this time. "I'm not a god," he says as he tossed the watch casually from one had to the other. "I just work for one."

The door in the feed is back, taking the place of (3x+2), and Tim gives you a little farewell bow before turning towards the door. "Now, if you're just going to sit there in mute, slack-jawed wonder and not get any use out of this rare opportunity to converse with that which you don't understand, I need to be getting on my way. I have other appointments to keep."

"Wait!" you shout, and Tim stops. "Does this mean that I get to know what...what being real is like?"

Tim turns to face you. The look on his face is gentle, almost...loving? "Yes. Yes it does. Kid..." A brief flash of frustration flits across his face. "Aw, fuck it. Knowing you, you probably aren't going to remember this anyway. Kon-El. Superboy. You're leaving your cage and going out into the real, physical world. I'm not going to lie to you, though. There are going to be times in your life that you'll wish you'd never left this place. It may not all be real, but it's simple and easy to handle. The real world isn't going to be like that. My creator's brothers and sisters make it all so frustratingly complex. Most of those I push are much younger, and unlike you, they get the opportunity to grow into the world, to accept it and appear normal within its context. You aren't going to get that, and it'll be a real shock."

You're beginning to get worried. Tim gives you a reassuring smile (well, not a smile, more of a quirk of the mouth and a light raise of the right eyebrow, but it feels reassuring).

"My next appointment is with a toddler named Bart Allen. He's only two, but he'll look like he's the same physical age as you. Find him, in due time. The two of you could learn a lot from each other. "Tim checks his watch again, flicking the cover open and shut rapidly. "Two seconds. Goodbye, Kon-El."

You want to call out to him, to ask him more, but he's walking back through the door, and the feed is fading, you are fading, and then there's nothing but you, the darkness, and the distinct feeling of being shoved from behind.

You wake up to sight, sound, touch, taste, and smell.

You're wet. The floor beneath you is gritty with broken glass. The world has a distinctly chemical smell to it.

You look up and see a gang of boys in old-fashioned clothing staring down at you. The one with the baseball bat grins and offers you his hand.

"Hey, Supes," he says. "We're the Newsboy Legion."

-fin