Chapter Text
Tim was certain this was a bad idea.
He’s been trying to convince the Justice League for the past hour that their plan could use some work. Some rewrites. A peer edit, something. But alas, part of being called the “World’s Greatest Heroes” was that they always thought they knew better than everyone else.
Perhaps if Tim was just with Batman he would be able to make him see reason. But unfortunately they were currently up in the Watchtower, where many members of the JLA had somehow managed to convince Batman that summoning a guy who could destroy their world in moments if he so chose was a good idea.
Tim was disappointed. Batman was supposed to be the smart one. Tim was totally claiming that “World’s Greatest Detective" title for himself after all this went wrong and he told Bruce, “I told you so.”
The logic was this, as far as Tim understood it: Certain members of the Justice League and Justice League Dark, those sensitive to the supernatural mainly, had reported, and Tim was quoting here, “a disturbance in the force.” The force of what was not made clear to Tim. But apparently what it meant was that the afterlife had a new ruler.
Which, alright, that was a couple of concerning revelations to deal with. That the afterlife was real, and that it had a form of government. Sure, why not, don’t mind Tim as he does the mental equivalent of staring up at his bedroom ceiling at two in the morning.
What had been even more shocking though, was that when Batman was informed of the afterlife’s new ruler, his first response had been, “Which afterlife?”
Tim found this completely unfair. How did Batman know more about the supernatural than Tim? Sure, Tim actively avoided it when he could, preferring to deal more with the world of science and reason, but he had thought Batman was the same! There was no reason for him to have this hidden knowledge. He and Bruce would be having words later.
They would have to wait, though, because the disturbing answer to Bruce’s question had been, “All of them.”
And, okay, Tim understood why people were freaking out, now. He thought for a second about how many people had died on Earth, ever. It was a staggering number. Plus, Tim was a little worried that they weren’t just talking about Earth. If other planets were factored in, all the ones that currently or ever did have life on them… Tim had a head for numbers, but this one was too much for even him to picture.
So, Tim got it. He understood being worried. Especially because it turned out that the last ruler had been, to put it gently, “a bloodthirsty tyrant who had to be locked up for eternity so as not to eradicate all life.”
And yes, that was being gentle. Tim had heard the previous ruler described by a few different people now, and that was the nicest of the bunch.
So why, pray tell, did the Justice League, in their infinite wisdom, decide that it would be a good idea to bother the guy who defeated the tyrant?
“It’s been weeks, and the new guy hasn’t done anything,” Tim argued. “Let sleeping dogs lie, don’t poke the bear, and leave undead overpowered monarchs alone. It’s just common sense.”
Batman had shaken his head. “We can’t take that risk, Red Robin. If this new ruler has the same deposition as the last one, then we need to act quickly to destabilize or trap him before he gathers too much power.”
“It’s a bad idea,” Tim insisted. “You’re just going to piss him off and then we won’t have a planet anymore. I happen to be rather attached to our planet. All my stuff is there.”
But of course, they didn’t call Batman “The Most Stubborn Man Alive,” for no reason (and by they, Tim meant his siblings and him).
Which brought Tim to now, standing on the sidelines as the Justice League prepared to summon the Ghost King straight into the Watchtower.
“It’s protected,” they said.
“It’s far away from civilians,” they said.
“We’ll all be right here to stop him if anything goes wrong,” they said.
Sure, bring the guy of infinite power and likely infinite rage right into the heart of their organization, why don’t they? Put all the heroes together in one place so they’re easy to take out. Yeah, that sounded like a great idea.
“You’re muttering to yourself, Replacement.”
Red Hood was leaning against the wall next to Tim. Instead of his classic red helmet, Red Hood had opted for a lower face mask and a domino mask, with a red jacket hood pulled up over his head. Tim believed it was in an attempt to slightly distance himself from his crime lord persona in front of so many heroes.
It was a recent development, having Red Hood in the Watchtower. As in, this was the first time to Tim’s knowledge that it had ever occurred. But the Justice League had wanted as many heroes as possible on standby, and were apparently going to let crime-lords-turned-antiheroes in if it meant one more person on their team. Jason had denied Bruce when he asked if he would come, but when Tim told him he believed that this adventure would end with Bruce getting his ass handed to him or being proved wrong, likely both, Jason was outfitted and ready to go in less than five minutes. Tim had never seen him move that fast before.
“Well excuse me for being stressed!” Tim hissed. “Not like we’re about to risk all of existence or anything! Oh wait.”
“It’ll be okay, Red Robin,” Nightwing said. He was standing on Red Hood’s other side. Unlike Red Hood, who had his arms crossed and was glaring at everyone who stepped too close, Nightwing’s posture was relaxed, casual even. Tim didn’t know how he could stand to be so lackadaisical.
“It’s because I don’t feel the need to control everything,” Nightwing said, and Tim realized he had spoken that last part out loud. “Plus, I have faith in our allies. I mean, we have Superman on our team! Who could possibly beat Superman?”
“A man dressed as a bat,” Tim said instantly and loyally.
“A petty bald man,” Red Hood added.
“The inside of a pencil.”
“A red sun.”
“A rock-”
“Okay, some of those are weaknesses and not people,” Nightwing interjected. “But I get the point. What about Wonder Woman, then? She’s here too.”
Red Hood started to look convinced, but Tim wasn’t about to be. “I don’t think you get it, Nightwing. We are purposefully drawing the attention of the king of the afterlife. Ruler of everything that ever was. He could probably destroy us all before any of us could so much as take a step.”
“Eh, I think it’ll be fine.” Nightwing shrugged nonchalantly, and Tim wanted to strangle him. “Now shh, they’re starting.”
In the center of the largest meeting hall in the Watchtower, several heroes had finished drawing what Tim had been informed was a summoning circle. Tim didn’t care for how big it was, it implied some things about the size of the being about to arrive. Someone, Tim thought it was Zatanna, chanted something, and a burst of white light shot up from the circle, at the same time as the room dropped about twenty degrees in temperature.
Here we go, Tim thought to himself as he inadvertently shivered. No stopping it now.
Nothing happened for a minute, long enough that Tim naively hoped that the whole thing had been a failure and they could go home, apocalypse-free for another day.
There was some mummering from the members of the League closest to the circle, and Zatanna chanted something else, throwing some kind of powder into the circle that made it glow brighter. The room got another ten degrees colder, and now Tim could see some of the other heroes shivering as well.
Only a few seconds later, an ear-piercing shriek echoed out through the room. Tim covered his ears instinctively, but the sound didn’t dampen in the slightest. It was as if he was hearing the cry with his soul rather than his ears.
Just as Tim was about to drop to his knees, the noise stopped, the echoes of it still ringing inside of Tim. The light got darker, then brighter, then darker again, then so bright Tim had to close his eyes, and when he opened them there was something in the circle.
Tim didn’t know what he was looking at. As in, his mind couldn’t comprehend what his eyes were communicating. He knew it was large, filling up the circle and stretching almost to the ceiling. There were wriggling parts that Tim assumed to be limbs, but how many there were changed every time he blinked. There could have been four, or twelve, or a hundred, he had no way of knowing.
He knew it was dark, the way the void of space was. Space was an accurate comparison, actually, because if he looked closely, Tim could see little pinpricks of light that reminded him of distant stars. They seemed more closely grouped by the top of the being, where Tim assumed its head was.
The head itself was the hardest part to look at. Tim knew there were eyes, and a mouth, and teeth, but if he looked longer than a second his eyes started stinging and watering, as if he was looking into the sun. Or, to be more accurate, the absence of a sun. The place where a sun used to be and no longer was, but somehow still hurt to look at. An eclipse.
There was silence in the room for a moment. Not even the waving limbs of the being made any noise. It was unnerving. Tim wanted more than anything for something to break the tension.
Then it spoke, and Tim wanted the silence back.
“Who Dares To Summon Me?”
Just like with the scream, Tim felt that he was hearing these words less with his ears, and more with something deep inside of him. The words were cold. Not cold as in cruel, but cold as in behind them Tim could swear he heard the breaking of ice. It brought to mind the image of walking on a frozen lake, only to step and hear a crack, knowing that you were one wrong move from danger.
Tim was glad he was back-up and not on the welcoming committee. He didn’t think he’d have the nerve to speak.
Superman, the one who they had tasked with the welcome, had to swallow a couple of times before he spoke. “Greetings, Your Majesty. We are the Justice League of Earth.”
“Which Earth?”
And wasn’t that a terrifying question. Tim had considered that the King of the Afterlife might rule over other planets, he hadn’t even considered alternate universes. That was… horrifying.
“Earth-56,” Superman responded evenly.
And that’s why they call him the Man of Steel, Tim thought, somewhat hysterically. He’d need balls of it to interact with this thing so calmly.
The being vibrated for a moment, glitching like a video game before Tim’s eyes. He got the impression that it was humming.
“Why Have You Summoned Me, Justice League Of Earth-56?”
“We wished to meet the new ruler of the Infinite Realms,” Zatanna spoke, her voice only slightly shaking.
“You Wished To Know If I Was A Threat,” the now-confirmed King of the Afterlife said. Good to know they had summoned the right eldritch horror.
“And… are you?” Superman asked.
Impossibly, the king seemed to grow even larger, and when he spoke it was backed by the sound of a racing avalanche. “I Am.”
There was silence in the room. Tim hadn’t ever known some of the assembled heroes to ever shut up, and now Tim couldn’t hear the slightest bit of fidgeting, or even breathing.
Oh, wait, that included him. Tim wasn’t sure when he started holding his breath. He forced his lungs to work. If he was about to meet his end, he wanted to be aware of it, not passed out from lack of oxygen.
It was Batman who finally broke the silence. “To us?” he asked the creature. Its head didn’t move, but Tim got the impression that it was looking at Batman now. “Are you a threat to us? To this planet? To this realm of existence?"
There was a chilling silence, full of tension as the room waited to hear the answer. Tim found that he had again stopped breathing.
The creature breathed out the sound of icicles clinking against each other. And then it spoke.
“No.”
It took a moment for the word to process. As soon as it did Tim found himself breathing in with a gasp.
“You will not harm our world, nor order others to cause it harm?” Batman clarified. Maybe to others he looked casual, but Tim could tell by the set of his shoulders and the occasional twitch of his fingers that he was anything but.
“I Will Not.”
“Could we… have your word on that?” Zatanna asked hesitantly.
Tim winced. Surely the powerful ruler would take offense at such an ask, and they really couldn’t afford to piss it off, not when they were so close to surviving this.
Tim was taken completely by surprise when the being simply responded, “You Have It.”
The summoning circle glowed icy blue for a moment, and then faded back to its normal white light.
Tim could tell he wasn’t the only hero in the room shocked.
“Well… thank you,” Superman said. He seemed to shake off his confusion and offered the king a tentative smile. “Our world appreciates it.”
Was that a nod? It was hard to tell. Tim wasn’t even sure the king had a neck. “Do Not Summon Me Again,” the king ordered frostily. Tim meant that literally- the more the king spoke the more Tim could see edges of frost creeping out from the circle, covering the floor and going up the walls. The frost was almost to where Tim was, and he eyed it warily as it inched its way forward.
Superman and Zatanna glanced at each other. “We can agree to that,” Superman said. Tim was a fan of this agreement as well - he never wanted to see this being again in his life. He didn’t think his heart could take it.
But, as he so often did, Batman had to speak and ruin Tim’s dreams of an easy life. “What if we need to contact you again?”
“Batman!” Zatanna hissed. Batman remained unrepentant, and stared at the king.
The king, for its part, made that vibrating noise again, giving off the impression that it was thinking. It raised one of its wispy limbs, and seemed to reach inside itself. It pulled out something small, and held it out at the very edge of the circle. Batman, ignoring a whispered warning from the others, stepped closer and held out his hand. The king dropped the item, and Batman caught it easily.
He stared at it for a moment, before holding it up for the others to see. It was a flip phone.
“If You Must Reach Me, Call The Number Saved On That,” the king said, much to everyone’s confusion. “Do Not Call Within The Next Three Months.”
“Why not?” Batman asked, ever the detective, ever too curious for his own good.
The creature hissed with the sound of a raging snowstorm, and Tim started shaking, both from cold and from instinctive fear. The frost on the ground surged forward, reaching Tim’s feet. “That Does Not Concern You.”
“You are right,” Batman said quickly. “My apologies. We will not contact you before the end of three months at minimum.”
That seemed to appease the king, who again made that movement that Tim decided to call a nod. “Good. Now, If You’ll Excuse Me…”
The king trailed off, freezing and staring into the distance. It moved its head to the side, as though it was listening to something. The gathered heroes looked at each other with equally confused expressions.
“What is it?” Batman asked.
The king did not respond. Instead, it opened its mouth and made perhaps the most normal noise Tim had heard it make yet - a chirp. It still drew images of a frozen lake, but it could almost be mistaken for the call of a bird.
As could the second, answering noise. But that sound didn’t come from the king. No, it came from right next to Tim.
For the first time since the king was summoned, Tim turned away from it.
There was Red Hood, who just as Tim had been doing a moment ago, was staring forward at the king. He was shivering like Tim was as well. The only differences between them, really, were that Red Hood was holding his hand over his mouth, and that his eyes were wide.
And that he had just made a peeping noise like a little chick.
He did it again, still staring at the creature. If the room hadn’t been so silent, Tim wasn’t sure he would have heard the call, as soft as it was, even with Red Hood standing right next to him.
The king chirped again, and Red Hood responded with a series of frantic peeping noises. Tim had never heard such a sound before. It was certainly not one he would have expected from his ex-crime-lord older brother.
For the first time, the king moved away from the center of the summoning circle. It went right up to the edge of the thing. And then stepped right over it.
By the gasps of Zatanna and the other heroes, that was not supposed to happen. Heroes scrambled out of the way of the king, who did not slow or hesitate for an instant, remaining perfectly focused on its goal.
Which for some reason, seemed to be the Red Hood.
Before Tim could even begin to think of a plan, the king was there, mere feet away from Tim. It couldn’t seem to care less about him, however. It only had eyes for Red Hood, who was staring up at it and shaking.
Red Hood made more of those peeping noises, and the king reached out a wispy tendril, pushing it against Red Hood’s forehead. Tim was close enough to see Red Hood lean into the touch slightly.
The pair stood still for a moment. Tim wished he knew what the king was thinking. What Red Hood was thinking. When the king finally spoke it didn’t help clarify in the slightest.
“Hello There, Young One.”
Tim could see Nightwing over the top of Jason’s back, as Jason nuzzled even more into the king, peeping all the while. Tim cocked his head, and Nightwing just raised one shoulder slightly in response. Neither of them knew what was going on.
In a sudden move that caused Tim to flinch, the king surged forward. Between one blink and the next, Red Hood was wrapped up in several wispy limbs, being held tight to the king’s body in something resembling a bridal carry. Red Hood looked out, his head being one of the only parts of him unobstructed, and Tim could see his eyes through his mask. They were glowing green like he was in the middle of a Pit Episode, and yet this was the calmest Tim could remember seeing him. His body nestled itself into the king, peeping happily.
The only part of Red Hood that showed any other emotion than content was his eyes, which were wide and panicked, and flickering back and forth between Tim and Nightwing, seeking something. Help, perhaps?
Tim didn’t know what to do, and glancing to the side neither did Nightwing. Tim opened his mouth, to say what he was unsure, when the king spoke.
“I Will Be Leaving Now.”
Tim had not noticed Batman coming closer, so distracted with the scene in front of him, and so was startled when he spoke so close by, merely a couple feet away from where Red Hood was being held like a child.
“What will you do with him?” Batman asked, in a voice that Tim knew he was forcing to stay calm. His hands were clenched at his sides.
“I Will Be Taking Him With Me.”
That’s both what Tim figured, and what he was afraid of.
“Why?” Tim asked unthinkingly.
For the first time Tim felt the force of this being’s attention on him. He didn’t know how the others were still standing.
When Tim was a child, he had a bed skirt that went around the bottom of his bed and blocked the underneath from view. His parents liked the idea of keeping mess out of sight. When Tim would get scared, he would crawl under the bed, bringing a blanket with him for extra protection. He would cover himself and hide himself away, fully out of sight of anyone, and he would feel safe.
Tim hadn’t thought about that in years. But right now, he was suddenly feeling the urge to crawl under his bed and hide. Anything to get out of this entity’s cold, piercing, predatory gaze.
The king looked at Tim for what was likely only a couple seconds, but could have been years, and then replied.
“He Is Mine Now.”
“What?” Batman, Nightwing, and Tim all asked at the same time.
Tim’s eyes met Red Hood’s again. He had never seen his older brother so scared.
“He’s MINE,” the king responded, with all the force of a blizzard. Tim tried to take a step away, but just hit the wall.
The king looked around the room again, eyeing all of the heroes, who were tense and confused. Many of them were frozen in fear, but a few of them were starting to inch towards their weapons.
Finally, the being looked at Superman. “Goodbye,” it said. And then it vanished, along with Red Hood.
Even though the disappearance of the king instantly raised the temperature of the room, and the frost was already beginning to melt, Tim felt more frozen than ever.
“Jason,” Dick whispered, staring at the spot where Red Hood had been moments ago. “Jason.”
The other heroes were starting to make noise, in congratulation or confusion, Tim didn’t know. His focus was solely on Batman, who had one arm held out in front of him, as though he had been about to reach for his son when he disappeared.
“Jason,” Dick said again, mournfully.
Tim pulled himself together. His family had already fallen apart over Jason’s disappearance once. He wasn’t about to let them do it again.
“We’re getting him back,” Tim said, then repeated as it failed to get a reaction from the other two. “We’re getting him back.”
Batman and Nightwing looked at him, and Tim raised himself up to his full height, trying to project confidence he didn’t wholly feel. “We’re getting him back,” he said, daring the others to contradict him.
They didn’t. Tim could see the fire returning to their eyes. Good. This was no time to fall apart. So they were going to have to go up against the most powerful being in all of creation? So what? Tim may have been against that an hour ago, but that was before it took his brother.
Now the gloves were coming off.
“Yes,” Batman growled, finally lowering his arm. “We are.”
Nightwing took a step closer to Tim, bumping his shoulder in thanks and solidarity. Tim just nodded at him in response, then nodded at Batman, showing he was ready to get started.
The king wouldn’t know what would hit him.