Chapter Text
Dick moaned. His head was pounding, his body felt sore. Had it been a long night?
His brain registered voices in the background. What were people doing in his apartment?
"So we're stuck on some alternate dimension all because we tripped on the Lazarus Pit, coincidentally?” Red Hood. And he sounded pissed.
Wait, what?
He registered that he was not, in fact, lying in the familiar comfort of his bed. It was not comfortable at all. Instead, he was lying on what seemed to be hard ground with dirt and soil. An earthy smell reached into his nostrils.
When Dick finally managed to open his eyes, clearing the dizzy sensations, he was surprised at the sight in front of him. The first thing he noted was that it was green everywhere. And he wasn’t talking about the trees that seemed to stretch miles away surrounding them, so tall that it was hard to get a sense of direction, but not so tall that it didn’t block Dick's view of the unnatural green sky.
So, not Earth then.
"We were pushed, NOT tripped!" Tim protested.
Nightwing sighed as he brushed away the metaphorical dust on his thighs, taking in his surroundings while ignoring the sounds of his brothers' bickering in the background. If they had the energy to argue, then that meant his siblings were okay.
Lazarus Pit-like sky continued to stare at him, green and eerie with floating doors around him. Curiosity lulled him as his mind tried to think of a way to reach those doors that high.
“What happened?” Nightwing asked, cutting the two off as he faced them.
Despite the domino mask, Dick could tell the expression of relief that came over Tim’s face. “Nightwing!” his brother cried out.
Behind him, Jason had his arms crossed. It was only because of his vigilante training and years of knowing his brother that Dick managed to pick off a bit of tension leaving his brother’s shoulder.
“Dickiebird, glad to see you’re awake,” Hood grunted, trying to sound unaffected. Dick held back the smile, knowing that it would only irritate Jason.
“What happened?” he repeated.
“You don’t remember?” Red Robin’s tone was worried. His brows scrunched together as he took a step towards him, hands reaching. “Maybe you do have a concussion.”
“I’m fine,” Nightwing waved it off. It’s not the worst migraine. Barely made it to the top 10 worst one ever. “What happened?”
“Richard, I see you have finally awakened,” a familiar snotty voice spoke up. Robin walked towards him, chin raised.
Dick frowned. “Did you just come from there?” He nodded towards the forest. Unease prickled his senses the more he stared at it. Darkness and shadows linger in there. It’s as if the forest was alive, waiting for its prey. But that was impossible, right?
“Scouting the area. We are in an unfamiliar environment that seems to have its own laws of physics,” Damian said, irritated.
“Well, duhh. In case you haven’t noticed, brat, it’s clear that we got swallowed by the Lazarus Pit.” Hood said in a tone that said “are you dumb?”.
Robin lunged towards him, but Dick already anticipated that, snatching him from thin hair. Ignoring the growling sounds while doing the familiar motions of keeping a steady grip of his little brother, Dick continued the conversation. “Lazarus Pit?” And wasn’t that concerning?
“I thought we established that we were pushed?” Tim said challengingly, eyebrows raised.
Hood looked one second away from strangling him, so Dick cuts in, “A Lazarus Pit can teleport us now? Since when?”
“It’s not supposed to,” Damian grunted, now calming down, arms limping. Dick let him go.
“Well, more like a Lazarus Pit-like portal opened up out of nowhere,” Tim corrected.
Dick was confused. “I don’t remember that.” He had a vague recollection of fighting the League.
“So four of us are trapped in this place?”
“Thanks for the fucking recap, dickhead. Way to state the obvious.”
He ignored that. “How long ago was it since we landed here?”
“I don’t know? Maybe an hour or two,” Red Robin sounded frustrated, his eyes on the wrist monitor. “I can’t get a signal from here or anywhere. I tried.”
Shit. That was a problem. Panic started to sink in, but Dick pushed through, “Trackers?”
“We’re not sure about that with this weird place. For all we know, we could be in another universe that we don’t know about,” Hood said, annoyed.
“We have protocols about that. Oracle would have notified the JL of our disappearance,” Tim said.
“So it’s a waiting game,” Hood concluded. Robin looked unhappy about that as well.
“Cheer up!” Dick clapped his hands, ignoring the dirty looks sent in his way. “Help is on the way.” Keeping calm was important. Panicking would get him nowhere. And most importantly, his siblings needed him. He can’t fall apart at this moment.
“We just need to survive this strange place till help arrives and everything will be fine,” Dick said with a forceful cheer.
It was certainly NOT fine.
Jason was tempted to spit curses. It was bad enough that they were in some weird ass dimension that screamed Lazarus Pit, the bane of his everything. His ever-living hell that set him further down his path as Red Hood.
To where it all started.
He didn’t need the reminder. Jason never liked to think of the time he got resurrected. He barely remembered it, to be honest. The clarity of his resurrection eluded him sometimes - one minute he was clawing his way through soil, searching for air desperately as the feeling of claustrophobia seemed to close in on him, and the next thing he knew was swimming in a world of bright green, his body burning him inside and out, skin crawling like he had been dunked in a hot boiling water, before taking his first breath into the world. His vision turned green after that even though he had left the pools.
His family liked to blame his “murder spree” on the Pits. They’d like to tell themselves comforting lies with that as the reason for his “personality change”. Sure, Jason didn’t feel like the person he once was. Who wouldn’t after being murdered? But Jason knew his own anger. He knew his own rage. He recognized it.
Everything may have changed because of the Pits. But his rage wasn’t one of them.
“It could be a long while, so we might as well explore this place,” Tim spoke up, interrupting Jason’s thoughts as he blinked back to the present.
Judging by the glint in Tim’s eyes despite the mask, Jason had a feeling that any self-preservation was thrown out of the window as Tim continued to eye those strange glowing green plants in the distance.
And considering there’s an eerie resemblance to a Venus fly trap laying there, seemingly innocent, except it was glowing green and a fucking giant about a size that could swallow a human, Jason was tempted to say fuck it and just let “curiosity killed the bird” for once.
Ivy would love this place, Jason thought. He ignored the sounds of Tim's squawks of protests from behind on what was no doubt Big Brother Dickie to the rescue from Tim’s suicide mission.
The sound of footsteps grew louder before it stopped next to him. Jason looked down and was surprised to see Damian joining in with him.
“What do you think?” Jason didn’t know why he was asking, but something about that contemplative look on the brat’s face, the way he seemed to observe the place silently, told Jason that the kid might have some idea about this place, he’d just been unwilling to share it with others.
Damian seemed to hesitate before he spoke reluctantly, “Grandfather had always spoken of the Pits more than its healing properties. That its secrets and potential just hasn’t been unlocked.”
“Until now,” he concluded.
“Until now,” Damian agreed.
Jason wasn’t sure what to say. The idea of the Pits being more than usual bothered him greatly.
How much price would they have to pay this time if the Pits were at its full potential? What consequences would they be dealing with?
“I suspect this place is the original source of the Lazarus Pits,” Damian said.
I was afraid you might say that, Jason grimly thought.
“The origins of the Pits had always mystified Grandfather. Who’s to say this was Grandfather’s intention all along?”
Jason could feel his heart dropped at the moment. “You think Ra’s intentionally set us up to be stuck in this creepy ass place?” It wouldn’t surprise him, but considering four of them managed to land here accidentally made him think otherwise.
“What would he have to gain with us here?”
“I don’t know,” Damian sounded frustrated now. “The last time someone tried to study the waters…it didn’t end well for him.”
Jason’s interest perked up at the odd tone. “He? What happened?”
Damian’s face shut down at that. “Nothing good happened,” he snapped.
Before Jason could prod further, a loud yelp followed by the sound of a thud echoed in their vicinity. He turned in that direction and was met with Dickiebird wrestling Tim to the ground, just a few feet away from that glowing-looking Venus fly trap.
“Idiots,” Damian scoffed, yet there was no heat behind those words.
Jason watched as the kid marched in that direction before staring up at the Lazarus sky, so hypnotizing.
He quickly shook his head. Only a few seconds and this place was already giving him creeps.
His senses prickled, feeling eyes staring at him. But when Jason looked back, nobody was there. The only living thing here were his brothers were too busy squabbling over there. And the more Jason looked at the forest, the more he felt something was calling out to him. Singing to him, really, like a siren call.
He shivered, forcing himself to plant his feet on the ground while doing his best to ignore the whispers in his head that felt familiar.
He had only felt this once, and that was whenever he was near his grave.
I’m just imagining things, that’s what he told himself. Probably some PTSD shit or something.
Yet, if he was wrong, and god he hoped that he was wrong about this place, then Jason’s gonna do his damn hardest to make it not easier for whatever was going on out there.
If the Lazarus Pit wanted to claim him again, he’s not going to let it have him.
Never again.
“Outsiders with any peculiarities may experience certain…side-effects.”
Phantom raised an eyebrow at his subject, sensing there was more to that statement. “How so?”
His subject seemed to shrink at his tone. “I…w-well, your Majesty,” he stuttered. And Phantom did not have time for this.
“Well? Speak clearly.” He ordered.
The ghost gulped. “Let’s just say I fear for their health.”
“You fear for hypothetical outsider’s health and wellbeing?” Phantom deadpanned. A ludicrous statement coming from a ghost. Generally, most of his subjects did not care for the living, which used to annoy Phantom greatly before resigning to himself that’s just how Ghost was.
The ghost looked like he immediately regretted saying his concerns before Phantom’s patience started to thin the way his subject started to babble nonsense at him. To be fair, Phantom wasn’t in a great mood considering as soon as dinner time had finished, he was immediately called to the Ghost Zone to fix the matters about the Realm’s delicate state.
As far as Phantom was concerned, this didn’t feel like a warrant for his presence since he was not sure what he could do on what seemed to be a natural and once-in-a-lifetime event when the line between realities become thinner, allowing natural portals to open up across multiple dimensions.
…Yeah that sounded bad, actually. But excuse him, he would like to go to bed now, please and thank you.
“Enough!” Phantom cut off the ramblings and was met with alarmed eyes at him, the fear was so clear in those eyes. The Halfa resisted the urge to pinch the bridge of his nose.
“You’re assuming we would have a living entered to the Ghost Zone already?”
“Y-yes?”
Phantom sighed. He knew the chances of it were high, but he was SO not ready to go looking for that poor sucker. He’d already told his subjects if they’d spotted any of them, then they should do their best to guide them back to the right dimension, to wherever they came from. He already set up a team for that!
…Whether they would actually listen to him remained to be seen. Whatever. He already had too much on his plate at the moment.
“I guess I could talk to Clockwork and hear what he would have to say about this,” was what Phantom settled on.
Hopefully, Clockwork could confirm that no humans were in the Ghost Zone. Right?