Chapter Text
A long time ago, in a stuffy lecture hall that smelled faintly of old paper and stale coffee, Peter Parker had stared at a blank white screen.
The prompt was glowing in stark black font: What is Life After Death?
For twenty minutes, his pen had hovered uselessly over his notebook. It was a philosophy elective—supposed to be an easy GPA booster to balance out a brutal semester of other advanced subjects. Instead, their Professor had thrown a grenade into a room full of heavily caffeinated STEM majors.
To Peter, the laws of the universe were absolute. Conservation of energy. Entropy. Biology. When a biological system ceased to function, it terminated. Death was the ultimate, unyielding period at the end of a very short sentence. There were no commas, no semicolons, and certainly no epilogues. So how could there be life after death? It felt like asking for the mathematical value of a color.
He had thought about Uncle Ben, then. Not with the sharp, breathless panic that usually accompanied the memory, but with a quiet, hollow ache. He thought about the empty seat at the kitchen table, the way Aunt May still subconsciously set out two mugs of coffee in the morning, and how Ben’s old toolbox sat untouched on the highest shelf of the closet.
That was when an answer hit him.
The question wasn't a biological one. It wasn't about ghosts, or souls, or heaven, or whatever multi-verse theories physicists liked to dream up over late-night pizza. It was a sociological and emotional question. He hoped.
But anyway.
Life after death isn’t for the person who died, he had written, his handwriting cramped and furious as the words poured out. It’s for the people who were left behind.
It was about the echo. The ripple effect of a life that kept moving the water long after the stone had sunk. It was the recipes passed down, the shared laughter in old photographs, the sudden, sharp grief of hearing a favorite song, and the way someone’s values survived in the choices made by the people they loved.
He had turned the essay in half-expecting a failing grade, thinking that he had completely sidestepped the intent of the prompt. Instead, it had come back a week later with a rare, bold A+ scrawled across the top.
As a STEM major, he considered that as one of the highlights in his school career, that is why he remembered it so vividly.
So now, he remembered, what is Life after Death?
Well, Peter could answer that question directly now. Because he died.
He had disintegrated into dust, a proud and unwilling statistic of the unlucky 50% that the universe had deemed entirely redundant the moment a purple megalomaniac snapped his fingers.
Going back, he had genuinely thought that was the absolute end. The pain he felt as his physical form unraveled was entirely, horrifyingly real. In fact, he was pretty sure his head was still ringing from the way his Spider-Sense had blared at him, screaming in a chaotic, deafening frequency to let him know he was in super-duper grave danger.
Gee, thanks, Mr. Obvious, he thought bitterly. He knew that. He could literally feel his own feet disappearing first.
Amidst the panic, his primary concern had thankfully shifted to something deeply humiliating: he desperately hoped he’d managed to say a proper, coherent goodbye instead of just leaving Tony Stark with a breathless, panicked string of gibberish. Dying was one thing, but dying while leaving an embarrassing last impression on his mentor? Unforgivable.
And then, his consciousness had simply gone under. Before he died.
...Or, well. Did he actually die?
Or, more importantly, was he even considered alive right now?
Hmm. That was, without a doubt, a fantastic question.
He mentally checked himself over, though the exercise was entirely futile since he couldn't actually distinguish his own newly reassembled dust self from the surrounding space dust, alien rubble, and assorted debris.
Still, he was conscious. That had to count for something, right? Descartes said cogito, ergo sum—I think, therefore I am—and right now, Peter was thinking very loudly.
And, to look on the bright side, the view from wherever the hell he was happened to be absolute perfection.
Space looked breathtaking when you were seeing it live and in person, completely uninhibited by a spaceship window, a helmet visor, or the glass of a telescope. The stars weren't just distant pinpricks of light; they were a sprawling, violent, magnificent ocean of color, glowing with nebulas that looked like splashed watercolors across a velvet canvas.
Instantly, a cold, icy spike of terror threatened to stab through his chest. What if this is it? What if this floating, infinite expanse of nothingness is my eternity?
Nope. Nope, nope, nope.
Peter violently shoved that terrifying thought deep, deep, DEEP down into the darkest corner of his mind. Panicking wasn't going to help him, it wasn't going to get him back to Earth, and it would definitely just make him profoundly, overwhelmingly sad. And he refused to be sad right now.
Happy thoughts. Happy thoughts.
You can't think of anything but happy thoughts.
Red Hood thought this was completely, utterly stupid.
Why were they even wasting time standing around in this glorified space temple when they should have left the exact second the shooting stopped? They were already miles behind schedule as it was, and Jason Todd had zero patience for cosmic ceremonies.
The whole mess started because the Outlaws had accidentally stumbled into saving an entire alien civilization while out on a routine deep-space contract. As a token of immense gratitude, the civilization's leader had offered them a rare reward: a chance to use a mysterious, highly coveted stone of unimaginable power.
It turned out this exact artifact was the very reason the civilization had been targeted by intergalactic warlords in the first place. But according to the leader, the stone was considered deeply sacred. Its true function? It acted as a bridge—a direct line of communication between the living and the dead.
The catch was specific: as long as a deceased soul held onto a lingering, powerful obsession regarding the person calling them, the stone could briefly pull them back across the threshold to speak. The locals used it for closure, or to extract vital information from loved ones who had passed away unexpectedly.
To the locals, it was a profound spiritual lifeline.
To Jason Todd, it was a ridiculous distraction that smelled entirely of trouble.
Around the ancient stone pedestal, the rest of the Outlaws reacted with a stark contrast to Jason’s brooding hostility.
Starfire was radiant with a mix of gentle curiosity and profound anticipation, her green eyes shimmering as she thought softly of those she had lost along the road of her turbulent life. Beside her, Roy Harper—Arsenal—was bouncing slightly on his heels. While he shared a flicker of that same emotional yearning for the people he’d missed, Roy’s trademark scientific and mechanics-obsessed brain was firing on all cylinders. He wanted to see how the cosmic alien tech actually worked under the hood.
Bizarro, for his part, didn't care much about the philosophical or metaphysical implications at all. He had simply tagged along because the others were moving, humming happily to himself as he admired the strange glowing carvings on the temple walls.
Meanwhile, Jason was entirely, fiercely against the whole operation.
They should let the dead rest, for fuck's sake.
As someone who was previously and very unpleasantly dead himself, Jason felt strongly that he possessed top-tier, firsthand credentials on the subject. Surely, that meant the rest of them ought to listen to his expert opinion.
Beneath his helmet, however, a darker, sharper thought tried to claw its way to the surface—one he shoved down just as fast as it appeared. He ignored the gnawing, quiet insecurity whispering that if he actually tried to use the stone, nobody would probably even answer. He didn't have anyone waiting. Would Catherine, the only real mother he’d ever known, answer? Would Willis, his deadbeat, abusive father? Or, worse yet, would it be Sheila?
Fuck. His mood plummeted straight into an abyss, the bitter irony of the situation tasting like ash in his mouth. The sudden, bleak humor of it all caught him off guard so sharply that a dark, dry chuckle accidentally slipped past his lips.
The sound broke the heavy air, causing the others to abruptly pause their conversation and turn to stare at him.
Shedding his distinctive red helmet to reveal just a domino mask framing a tense, sharp jawline, Jason gave everyone a cold, flat grin.
“What if it was little old me who answered?” he challenged, his voice dripping with defensive irony.
When no one answered, he finally let out a loud laugh, but it was cold, hard, and thoroughly mocking. Who he was actually mocking—the alien priests, the superstitious nonsense of the stone, or himself for even caring—nobody could quite tell.
The walk down the grand corridor toward the chamber where the sacred stone was housed fell into a heavy, suffocating silence. Underneath his domino mask, a sharp twinge of guilt pricked at Jason for snapping, but he clamped his jaw shut and kept his mouth firmly locked. Apologizing wasn't really his style, anyway.
They soon arrived at their destination, stepping through a grand archway to finally lay eyes on the sacred stone.
Only it wasn't a stone at all—not by any normal definition. It was massive, looming like a jagged, ominous boulder in the center of the chamber. Pitch black and entirely light-absorbent, it seemed to actively devour every beam of light that dared to shine upon its surface, casting an unnatural shadow that gave the entire room a deeply unsettling, suffocating feel.
The alien leader stepped forward, gesturing toward the looming, light-swallowing mass with a solemn expression as he explained the activation process. It was simple, he claimed: they just needed to place their bare palm flat against the stone's surface and recite the ancient, rhythmic incantation etched into the floor beneath them.
The Outlaws exchanged a series of wary, hesitant glances. Nobody was particularly eager to touch a cosmic artifact that looked like it belonged in a horror movie, but Bizarro solved the dilemma for them. With a cheerful grunt, he stepped right up to the front.
It was a smart move, logistically speaking. While Kryptonian physiology notoriously lacked resistance to magic, Bizarro's biological makeup was still drastically sturdier than an ordinary human's. If the stone decided to backfire and blow up in their faces, his nearly indestructible body would act as a fleshy, giant-sized shield for the rest of them.
Bizarro planted his large hand firmly against the pitch-black boulder and opened his mouth to recite the incantation.
Only, due to his own uniquely backwards way of processing things, he recited the entire sequence completely in reverse.
The rest of the Outlaws reacted instantly, scrambling forward with shouts of alarm to pull him away, fully expecting a catastrophic magical detonation. But the alien leader threw his arms out, blocking them with a calm wave. "Wait, stop! It is alright—the intent matters far more than the exact arrangement of the words!"
True to his word, nothing exploded. In fact, nothing happened at all.
The stone pulsed with a brief, lazy flicker of light before dimming back into its absolute, light-devouring void.
The alien leader blinked, tilting his head in open confusion. He turned back to the group, explaining that the stone was undoubtedly active and functional, yet somehow, nothing had been summoned. He looked up at Bizarro. "Is... is that normal for you?"
The Outlaws didn't need a moment to think about it. They already completely expected the failure. Bizarro was an artificial clone, an experimental lab-grown subject engineered by LexCorp and twisted by science. Who on earth was supposed to answer his call? The sadistic white-coat scientists who had poked and prodded him in a sterile laboratory?
That, Jason thought with a grimace, would be a special kind of hell.
Arsenal stepped up next, rolling his shoulders before pressing his palm flat against the cold surface of the pitch-black boulder. He recited the incantation clearly, his voice steady despite the nerves humming in his veins.
This time, the stone responded with a much brighter, warmer glow. The light rippled outward, particles of golden illumination gathering in the air before solidifying into the translucent, ethereal shape of an older man.
Arsenal froze. His expression melted instantly into pure, unadulterated awe. Breath hitching, he whispered the man’s name like he was afraid the sound would shatter the illusion:
“Brave Bow.”
Sensing the intimate weight of the moment, Red Hood deliberately turned away to give his friend some privacy. Jason knew who Brave Bow was—he’d heard the name drop enough times in passing, the mentor who had taken Roy in, taught him survival, and trained him after his father died—even if Jason had never met the man himself. Respecting the unspoken boundary, Jason tuned out the murmur of their conversation, focusing instead on the eerie acoustics of the stone chamber.
After a few minutes, the golden glow began to flicker and fade. Jason glanced back just in time to see Arsenal pulling the fading apparition into a tight, desperate hug, holding on until the old man dissolved completely back into stardust and light.
When Roy finally turned around, a massive, brilliant smile stretched across his face, though the eyes behind his sunglasses shimmered with unshed tears.
Without a word, Jason stepped forward and gave Roy’s shoulder a firm, grounding clap of comfort. In true Arsenal fashion, Roy immediately weaponized the gesture, turning the pat into a full, suffocating bear hug.
Jason let out a heavy, dramatic groan of absolute annoyance—though he didn't actually push him away—while Roy just laughed right in his ear.
A second later, Starfire swept in with a glowing, fond smile to join the pile-up, followed eagerly by Bizarro, who didn't bother with half-measures. With a joyful shout, Bizarro wrapped his massive arms around all of them, lifting the entire cluster of Outlaws completely off the ground and spinning them around a few dizzying times before setting them gently back down.
The other three immediately burst into a chorus of dizzy complaints and protests, but Bizarro just threw his head back and laughed them all off, his bright, child-like happiness filling the ancient chamber.
Soon, it was Starfire’s turn.
She stepped up to the massive boulder, her expression composed yet laced with a deep, quiet vulnerability. As she pressed her palm to the cold surface and murmured the incantation, the stone responded immediately. It flared with a blinding, fierce radiance—far brighter than Arsenal's turn—and from the cascade of shimmering particles, two distinct figures materialized.
Myand'r and Luand'r. Starfire’s parents.
True to etiquette and respect, Red Hood, Arsenal, and Bizarro tactfully turned away, giving their friend the space and privacy she desperately deserved to speak with her parents after a tragically long and painful separation.
Left alone with his own thoughts, Jason found his mind drifting back to the dangerous territory he had tried so hard to avoid. Who would answer his call, when it was his turn? A strange, unfamiliar tightness bloomed in his chest—a sudden, fragile flutter of eagerness. Beneath all his cynicism and anger, he found himself actually hoping, just a little bit, that Catherine would answer. He wanted to show her that he’d survived. That he’d grown up. He desperately wanted to see her again, just to prove to himself that she really had cared beneath the fog of the drugs, that she had kept thinking of him even after all these years.
A sharp nudge to his side snapped him abruptly out of his spiral.
Jason blinked, looking over at Roy, and then past him toward Starfire. Her parents had already faded back into the ether, and Starfire was turning toward her teammates, her chosen family, wrapping each of them in a fierce, breathless hug while tears still tracked down her glowing cheeks.
Caught off guard, Jason and Roy exchanged an awkward, helpless look before awkwardly patting her back in clumsy comfort.
Then, the terrifying realization hit Jason with the weight of an anvil: Starfire was done. Bizarro had gone. Roy was done.
It would soon be his turn.
He walked decisively toward the boulder, his boots clicking sharply against the ancient stone floor, pushing down the thick coil of doubt and faint, clawing fear winding tight in his chest.
He stopped right in front of the artifact. He took a single, deliberate deep breath to steady his racing pulse, pressed his bare palm flat against the cold surface, and began to recite the incantation.
And despite everything—despite every cynical thought, every defensive wall he had built, every time he had sworn to himself that he didn't care—he still harbored a faint, quiet ember of expectation. A foolish, desperate little hope that someone out there had kept his memory alive.
The stone responded. But it didn't flare with warmth or brilliant light.
It just gave a pathetic, sputtering pulse, a glow so faint and anemic it was even dimmer than Bizarro’s failed attempt.
Jason’s chest dropped straight down to his stomach. The heavy, crushing weight of validation slammed into him. No one. No one thought of him.
Heat prickled hot and angry behind his eyes, humiliation stinging sharper than any physical wound. He immediately moved to jerk his hand away from the stone, desperate to end this pathetic, cruel farce and retreat back behind his mask—
When a sound cut through the silence.
It wasn't the deep, familiar cadence of Catherine, or Willis, or anyone he recognized. It was a faint voice, carried on a phantom breeze from across the cosmos. Young. Weak. Utterly uncertain.
"Hello?"
It was a voice he didn't recognize. Young, male, probably somewhere around his late teens or early twenties, or maybe even younger. Instinctively, the tactical part of his brain began spinning up a profile, cataloging tone, pitch, and hesitation.
Yet, unlike the others, no physical manifestation materialized. There was no golden silhouette, no ghostly apparition standing before him. Just a voice floating out of the dim stone.
Jason’s mind raced through a frantic catalog of possibilities. Who could it possibly be? Some random kid from Crime Alley he’d tried to help? A former classmate from his old life as Jason Todd? A die-hard fan of Robin? Hell, he even rapidly considered if it was some young acolyte or trainee he had crossed paths with during his brutal days at the League of Assassins.
He ran through every option, every name, every face—and ended up with absolutely nothing. None of it made sense.
Deciding he was done guessing in the dark, he opened his mouth and spoke directly into the void.
“Who are you?”
His voice, raspy and sharp in the quiet chamber, instantly broke the stillness and caught the sharp attention of his teammates—Arsenal, Starfire, and Bizarro—as well as the alien leader, who all turned to stare at him in sudden surprise.
The boy—and the voice definitely belonged to a boy, or at least a very young man—seemed to hesitate for a long, agonizing moment, as if chewing on the words before finally offering them up.
"I'm Peter."
Peter. It was a pretty common name. Jason could instantly mentally check off a handful of Peters he'd crossed paths with over the years: a low-level thug currently working the door at the Iceberg Lounge, a grizzled old dockworker down by the harbor, a little kid he’d personally dropped off at a safe orphanage after a botched trafficking run. Hell, Peter was literally Jason's own middle name, for fuck's sake.
None of them matched the voice echoing out of the stone.
And more importantly, Jason definitely didn't know any dead Peters—aside from himself, of course, and he was currently standing right here with a pulse and a headache. Whoever was on the other side of this connection, this stranger didn't sound anything like him.
Frowning beneath his domino mask, Jason turned sharply away from the massive boulder and looked directly at the alien leader for answers.
The leader’s expression twisted into one of deep, troubled concentration. He stroked his chin, choosing his words carefully before speaking.
“The stone does not make mistakes,” the leader explained, his voice echoing softly in the chamber. “It acts as a beacon to the veil. Only those who truly knew you, those who share a deep, profound connection to your soul, can detect the signal. And even then, it is entirely their choice whether or not to answer and make the connection.”
Jason stared at him, his mind grinding to a screeching halt.
Which basically meant fucking nothing, because he didn't recognize this kid at all! He didn't know any Peters who fit this voice, let alone someone with a "deep, profound connection" to him.
“Okay, this is fucking useless,” Jason scoffed, shaking his head in disgust as he started to pull his hand away from the cold surface.
"Wh-what? Why? Don't leave!"
The voice spilled out of the stone, pitching upward in sudden, unadulterated panic. The sheer desperation in the young man's voice was impossible to hide, clinging to the words like a lifeline about to snap.
Jason paused mid-motion, his hand hovering just an inch away from the cold, pitch-black surface of the boulder, halting his attempt to sever the connection entirely.
He had heard it, and judging by the quiet rustle behind him, he was entirely sure everyone else in the chamber had heard it too: the raw, cracking desperation bleeding through the boy's voice.
His mind immediately shifted gears, old detective habits kicking in despite his initial cynicism. He remembered what the alien leader had explained earlier about how the locals used the artifact—how it served as a lifeline to connect with those who had passed away accidentally, often used to uncover vital information, expose secrets, or help solve the mystery of who had murdered them.
And considering Jason's usual line of work as the Red Hood, dealing daily with the brutal underbelly of the city, a distressingly high percentage of the people who died around him met sudden, gruesome ends.
Looking at the situation through that grim lens, Jason figured this kid was no different. He assumed the boy was just another tragic victim of a violent crime, reaching out across the veil because his life had been cut short and he needed answers. Or a resolution.
Jason took a slow, deliberate breath, forcing his irritation back down as his protective, crime-fighting instincts took the wheel.
“Okay, kid, let's make this quick,” Jason said, his voice dropping into a steady, interrogator's rhythm. “Where did you die? How did you die? Did you see your killer?”
Silence.
The pause stretched out so agonizingly long that Jason figured the connection had snapped and the kid had already hung up.
“I died on Titan. I got dusted,” the voice finally answered, sounding uncomfortably hesitant. “And I guess my killer is... Thanos?”
The kid didn't sound confident in the slightest. And honestly, Jason was even more confused.
“The Titans' Tower?” Jason tried to clarify, his brow furrowing beneath his domino mask. There was no fucking way this random kid was somehow tied to the Teen Titans.
“Ummm, no? I mean the Titan planet. Thanos's home planet?” the kid added, as if that bizarre piece of cosmic geography was supposed to clear everything right up.
Jason stood there, silently trying to connect the dots of the utterly insane information he had just received.
Okay. Dead kid. Dead kid killed by some guy named Thanos on an alien planet.
Jason blinked, entirely baffled. “You an alien, kid? Where's your home planet?”
Even more silence on the other end, heavier this time.
“Umm. I'm human. My home planet is Earth.”
Jason inhaled a sharp, rattling breath. Okay. Deep breath. In and out. Calm down, keep his cool, and just ask the right questions so he could figure out exactly who he needed to track down and shoot right in the face.
“Okay. Earth. I'm from Earth, too,” Jason said, his voice flat with disbelief. “So what are you doing on Titan? That seems really, really far from home.”
The kid had the absolute audacity to let out a short, nervous laugh.
“Yeah, it was! I was on my way to a museum field trip and then an alien invasion happened, and I tried to help, but they kidnapped Dr. Strange, so I got on a spaceship to save him. And we did, but we lost control of the ship and couldn't return to Earth because the main control was smashed during the fighting, and we don't know how to pilot an alien spaceship, obviously—and it was so cool, by the way—but it was on autopilot to return to Titan, so we decided to go ahead and attack the enemy home base anyway, and that's why I'm on Titan.”
Jason took an even deeper, shuddering breath. The more this kid talked, the more he could feel his blood pressure spiking into dangerous, lethal territory.
An alien invasion on Earth? When the hell did that happen? They should have received an alert the absolute second it hit, and their comms networks were definitely peaceful—or at least they were supposed to be!
And what kind of lunatic parent or guardian let a kid run outside during an alien invasion to chase spaceships?!
Jason opened his mouth and demanded as much, his tone sharp enough to cut glass.
The kid let out a nervous, yet unmistakably proud chuckle over the cosmic connection.
“I'm sort of a hero myself,” Peter announced, the pride shining clear through his voice. “Well, a hero in training, but I've got a guaranteed position on the best superhero team on Earth once I graduate!”
The sheer, unbridled excitement and youthful optimism radiating from the boy was heartbreaking. Listening to it, Jason couldn't help a sudden, heavy wave of crushing sadness and deep despair crashing over him for the kid's sake.
Because no matter how bright the boy’s future sounded, no matter how many high school milestones or superhero dreams he had waiting for him back on Earth—the only reason they were talking right now was because Peter was dead.
Jason swallowed hard, his throat tightening. He forced his voice to steady, dropping all the interrogation sharpness as he asked the question he suddenly dreading answering.
“And how old are you now, Peter?” he asked slowly, as gently as he possibly could.
A brief pause echoed from the stone.
“I'm... I just turned 16 this year.”
Behind his domino mask, Jason closed his eyes tight, biting down hard on the inside of his cheek as he desperately fought to push back the hot, violent surge of the Lazarus Pit green threatening to flood his vision.
Jesus. Fucking. Christ.