Chapter Text
Jason wakes up in a tank top and his boxers with chains binding him to a chair.
To the average human, this might be an alarming situation to come into consciousness in, but unfortunately, Jason is not the average human.
Actually, he’s not even sure if he counts as human anymore, but details.
He takes stock of himself and his surroundings, keeping his body lax and his breathing deep so as not to alert potential unfriendlies that he’s awake. He’s surprisingly uninjured as far as kidnappings go in his line of work, though there is an ache in his neck. He vaguely remembers hearing something from a side alley on his way back from the corner store, and feeling the sharp pinch of a needle shortly after going in to investigate. Damnit, the ice-cream he bought has definitely melted by now.
Jason will have to buy more as soon as he gets out of wherever the hell he’s ended up.
There’s multiple voices echoing around him as if bouncing off walls and a ceiling far larger than an average room. Alright, so probably a warehouse of some sort, if Jason has to guess. He can also make out the rustling of clothes, and some light scraping, along with the flash of fire on the backs of his eyelids. It’s a low flicker and he doesn’t feel any heat, so he’s not worried about that at the moment.
For now, he tunes into the conversation, hoping to glean some information about what the hell he’s gotten himself into this time.
“-the entire set! At this rate, we’ll be ready for the ritual in a little under an hour, My Lord!” A high, nasally voice proclaims.
“Make it thirty minutes.” A deeper tone snaps, “The hour of Thin Veil is approaching and our Almighty has waited long enough.”
Oh great. Jason’s been abducted by a cult.
It takes an absurd amount of willpower not to roll his eyes and give himself away. Ever since his return to Gotham (and the living world), he’s been dodging getting snatched by various occult groups looking to use him to summon one thing or another every few weeks.
They’ve never been successful before, so this is a new one, but quite frankly, Jason’s already sick of it.
“Unhand me at once!” A voice calls out, and Jason goes stiff, adrenaline flooding his system in a rush of sudden panic. He’d know that obnoxiously petulant tone anywhere.
“Damian, chill. Don’t piss off the guy with a knife.” Tim’s exasperated tone chastises, and Jason’s eyes fly open. To hell with being discrete, he needs to know what's going on now.
He’s sitting on the edge of a massive circle carved with an old script and littered with candles. Various people in crimson robes mill about, putting the finishing touches on the floor and dragging seemingly random objects onto key parts of the spell. Jason pays them no mind though, fully focused on his brothers, spread out equal distance from him on the circle, in the same hog-tied position as him.
There’s a man in red robes in front of Damian holding a wickedly sharp knife. Tim watches the cultist with apprehension as he ties a piece of fabric around Damian’s mouth, and Dick is still unconscious.
Fuck.
If Jason had been abducted alone, he could play ‘scared civilian’ and let the cult spill their secrets as he figured out a way to escape. But his brothers being a part of the scheme led him to believe this was a bigger operation than the standard run-of-the-mill idiots who happened across a spell book and thought they could gain a power-up in their free time.
“Hey!” Jason calls out, feeling smug when the knife-wielding cultist pauses and turns to him.
“Leave the brat alone, and pick on someone your own size.”
Damian shoots him a sour look for the interruption, probably disgruntled to have the man’s attention so easily turned from him -kid has serious issues- but Jason ignores him in favor of doing exactly what Tim said not to do.
Antagonize the guy with the knife.
“What’s up with the Cult Of The Lamb robes? Sale at Spirit Halloween?”
The guy’s lip curls, “Silence sacrifice! You understand little of the gravity of which we’re undertaking here today.”
“Well, we didn’t exactly get around to introductions before you went waving a knife around like a kid with a bubble wand.” Jason drawls, “How about I go first? I’m Jason Todd and I'd say it’s nice to meet you, but-”
The man abandons his position next to Damian and marches up to Jason, shoving the pointy end of the knife in his face. “I said, silence. Or shall I begin early with cutting out your tongue?”
Jason opens his mouth, about to say something that will probably get him de-tongued -but will be absolutely worth it if you ask him- when another voice joins the fray.
"What in the world is going on?”
Just his luck. Mr. Golden Child is awake.
“Oh you know, kidnapped by a cult for another go at sacrificial bullshit. Just a regular old Tuesday evening.” Jason snarks, taking great pleasure in the way Dick’s eyes narrow and he subtly flexes against his chains, testing their weight.
Good. Nightwing activated.
The knife near Jason’s face digs into his cheek, and he hisses. He wasn't unaware enough to forget about the nasally lackey, but damn, can a man have a conversation around here?
“I said. Silence.”
Jason decides that he’s tested his luck enough, and shuts his mouth.
The cultist smiles patronizingly at him and moves to walk along the exterior of the circle. “Now! Let me enlighten your dull, unknowledgeable minds. We have brought you here, four children of the most influential man in Gotham, to have the great honor of summoning our Almighty and freeing him from his prison of forever slumber. Rejoice! For this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity and once he is free, the Almighty will give us great strength!”
Yeah right. Sounds to Jason like they’re gonna drain him and his brothers dry for some eldritch being to go on a rampage and flatten half of the city.
Not on his watch.
Jason turns his attention to the circle, and blinks in surprise. The writing is in Ancient -something he’s honestly a little surprised he still remembers how to read- and he scans the spell with a growing sense of horror.
"The runes are wrong."
"What?" Tim hisses over the beginnings of a dozen voices rising in chant.
"They've got the wrong spell."
Damian shuffles in his chair, having spit out the gag and seemingly trying to get a better look at the floor. "Since when have you dabbled in the occult, Todd?"
Yeah. Jason’s not about to get into that. He’s kept his time in the Infinite Realms a secret for this long and he’s not giving that up so easily.
"What does that mean for us?" Dick cuts in, and Jason eyes the circle warily.
"Nothing good."
They fall silent, watching the floor begin to glow a faint, sickly green as the sound of chanting rises in volume.
Jason's heart begins to race as The Pits respond to whatever the fuck is being summoned, and he frantically racks his brain for any way out of this. He’d never admit it, but contrary to popular belief, he does give a fuck about the gaggle of wayward idiots adopted by Bruce Wane, and whatever entity is about to come out of this circle is likely to be baring a fate worse than death.
Jason would know. He’s been dead.
…Actually speaking of being dead. Jason does know someone from the Ghost Zone with enough sheer audacity to help him fight what very well could be worse than an actual demon. It’s been years since they last spoke -with Jason being resurrected, trained by the League, and then sent out on a misguided rampage- but this particular ghost is one of the few people Jason will genuinely and unabashedly call a friend.
He figures it’s worth a shot, and with a mental ‘fuck it’, Jason begins to chant.
The feeling of The Pit rising in him grows to a dull roar, and judging by his fully greened-out vision, he can only assume his eyes are glowing. But he doesn't stop, desperate and willing to put all his energy into the last ace he has up his sleeve.
Slowly, the light around the summoning circle changes from that sickly green, to an electric neon. The temperature drops, an arctic chill blowing through the room, extinguishing the candles and sending frosty patterns crawling over the floors and walls.
Ectoplasm bubbles out of the runes, stopping right on the line of the circle, creating a perfectly round pool of green liquid. The entire thing ripples violently, sending little splashes of goop onto Jason’s legs, but he keeps chanting.
Spots are starting to form in his vision when a shape begins to rise out of the pool, dark and writhing. It glitches like it can't decide on a form, the only clear feature is a pair of glowing eyes, the same color as Jason's own.
Jason finally falls silent, gasping in heaving breaths, and allowing himself to slump forward and blink rapidly as his strength begins to return to him.
"Who dares summon the Ghost King?" The apparition speaks in a hundred overlapping voices, distorted and grating on the ears.
One of the cultists steps forward, you know. Like an idiot.
“Almighty! We have brought you to this plane and freed you from your prison of eternal slumber! Grant us your power and you can rule this mortal realm with us as your faithful servants at your si-”
The apparition waves a too-long limb and the man’s mouth freezes shut. The cultist’s eyes widen, but the others take the frozen mouth of their fellow practitioner as an invitation to surge forward toward the hulking mass like a group of kindergarteners rushing an ice cream truck.
“Oh, this’ll be good.” Jason chuckles just as the apparition loses its patience and sends out a wave of freezing wind, blowing the ridiculous cloaks right off the practitioners. They finally take the hint and scatter, leaving Jason and his brothers tied down with an eldritch nightmare.
In any other circumstance, they might be fucked, but Jason knows this particular cryptid and their penchant for dramatics.
"Thanks for the save Phantom, but do you think you could get me out of these chains?” Jason says in as much of a monotone as he can muster white shivering violently. “And maybe find my clothes? It’s a little chilly in here for boxers, yah know?”
"Wait, Jason?” The chill fades abruptly, frost melting into little puddles, and the apparition condenses into a dark cloud of smoke which Danny pops through, eagerly coming to hover in front of him. “Ancients, I thought you’d passed on!"
Jason grins, accepting the pat on the shoulder, and stretching his sore arms once he’s been phased through his chains.
Dick his somehow managed to contort himself out of his bindings -Jason is half convinced the guy doesn’t have bones- and is helping his other two brothers, so Jason takes the chance to study his friend.
He notes that the eternal teenager’s white hair didn’t use to float like that, and his canines are definitely sharper than the last time he saw the guy. His clothes have changed as well, though he’s still got the black same suit, a cape that looks like it’s made of the stars themselves has been added, and hovering over his hair is an ever-shifting crown. Jason’s best guess is that it’s modeled after the northern lights.
Dick and Damian have disappeared, probably off to find the kid’s sword -brat is weird about his weapons- and Tim seems to be tapping away at a phone that Jason assumes he swiped from another cult member. They’ll be getting a rescue soon, then.
Brothers secured, Jason turns back to Danny. “Nope, got thrown right back into the living world like a bat out of hell.”
Danny snorts at the pun.
“But what about you?” Jason gives him an obvious once-over, letting the teenager know that he’s noticed the changes, “Last time we talked you were complaining about fighting off the Box Ghost, but it looks like you got a promotion.”
Danny rubs the back of his neck sheepishly. “Yeah, Pariah Dark pulled my town into the Zone, and I was technically the one to put him away, so the Observants ruled that defeating him in single combat…”
Jason whistles, impressed. “Damn, good one Your Majesty. ” He emphasizes the title just to watch Danny squirm. The ghost has never been a fan of attention, and Jason laughs when Danny blushes green.
“Jason,” Tim cuts in, a cautious note to his tone, “Who is this?”
Jason blinks. He’d honestly forgotten they had an audience, too caught up in seeing his old friend again.
He gestures loosely at Danny who’s floating a foot off the ground beside him, “Meet Phantom, an old friend of mine, and apparently the current Ghost King. Phantom, this is one of my brothers, Tim. The other two are probably searching for whatever weapon the brat managed to smuggle onto his person. He’s weirdly protective about his knives.”
“Huh. Didn’t realise Jason had it in him to be friendly.” Tim shoots Jason a sharp grin, but he’s serious when he re-focuses on Danny. “Nice to meet you.”
“Oh yeah, Jason and I go way back.” Danny grins, “We both make killer jokes about dying, and have really shit luck like, all of the time. Which apparently hasn’t changed in the two years I haven't seen you.” He elbows Jason, throwing him off balance. Jeez, the kid has gotta be packing a serious punch now if a playful nudge is enough to rock the 220 pounds of muscle Jason’s built of.
“Oh fuck off, you’re not any better.” Jason grumbles, batting the ghost and his unnaturally cold elbows away from him.
“Touché.”
“How did you meet?” Tim asks, deliberately casual, but Jason can see the calculating glint in his eyes, and Jason sighs, resigning himself to having to explain this half a dozen times by the end of the night.
“We met in the Infinite Realms when I was freshly dead. I was in the middle of uh… hijacking an interesting looking bike-"
"Jonny's. You were stealing Jonny's bike. The guy with a rampaging shadow core and an emotional attachment to said motorcycle." Danny interrupts, exasperated.
Jason flaps his hand in dismissal, "Details. I was hijacking a sick-ass bike ‘cause I was bored when Danny just walked up and thanked me. I thought he was out of his fucking mind and I told him so, and we've been friends ever since."
Danny rolls his eyes, "That was the fastest and most un-detailed version of that story I’ve ever heard. Did you lose your dramatic flair with the return of your heartbeat?"
"Hey!” Jason rounds on the snarky teen, “I’ll have you know -Mr. Eldritch Nightmare- that I’ve still got it, but if you think that was oh so terrible, I’d like to see you try."
Danny grins and leans in as if about to spill a particularly juicy secret, and Jason snorts at the way Tim mimics the action. "Okay so, there's this city I haunt, and it's kinda overrun by ghosts. Not all of them are obnoxious, but a few cause issues for the humans, so I try to send them back into the Zone when I can. Jonny's generally chill unless he has a fallout with his partner, Kitty, and they had a massive fight. So I went into the Zone to try and do some damage control before they moved their argument into the living dimension. They didn't listen though, and I was on my way out when I saw this scrappy kid stealing Jonny's bike and thought he'd heard the fight too and was trying to help, so I thanked him. Turns out he just wanted to take a joyride and since Jonny won't be seen in public without his bike and I was really tired of playing mediator, I offered to steal the keys."
“I- don’t even know where to start with that.” Tim admits, surreptitiously typing behind his back.
Jason rolls his eyes, far too used to his brother’s borderline obsessive note-taking on anything vaguely interesting.
To be fair, finding out your previously dead older brother is friends with the Ghost King who apparently also steals motorcycles does count as a little more than vaguely interesting, but he digresses.
“What language were you chanting in? Was it the same as the spell written?” Tim glances at the sigil and starts when he realizes there’s nothing but dirty concrete left.
Jason shrugs, not surprised to see it gone. The energy from a summoning circle tends to absorb back into the Realms after it’s used, and it was fucked up anyway, so probably a good thing no one will make a copy of it.
“Most of the Zone just calls it Ancient.”
“And it was set to call Phantom?”
“Ha!” The laugh is startled out of him. “No. The being they wanted to summon is better off left alone. I just took the liberty of hijacking the cultist's circle for Phantom as a last resort.”
“And you knew how to summon Phantom because of your friendship with him?”
Danny perks up, “Sorta! Every ghost has an Echo, which is essentially a calling card, kinda like a pager. Most summoning spells include them, which is why they work in the first place.”
“So correct me if I’ve gotten this wrong, but you paged the Ghost King with an incorrect summoning circle to save our lives.” Tim marvels, looking at Jason like he’s never seen him before. “Damn Jason, I didn’t know you cared so much-”
“I don’t give a fuck about you.” Jason immediately defends, hearing Danny chuckling next to him. “I was saving my own ass. Now where the hell is Batman? There’s no goddamn way you three chuckleheads got snatched without him getting wind of it.”
“On the way. I texted him as soon as I hacked past the signal jammer.”
“Batman? Are we in Gotham right now?” Danny cuts in, looking to Jason in alarm. “Shit, then that’s my cue. I’ve heard about the ‘no metas’ thing Batman has going, and I’m not sticking around to find out if that includes me.”
“Wait, Danny he wouldn't-” Jason tries to reassure him, but the teenager’s already gone.
Damian and Dick choose that moment to walk back in, fully dressed with arms full of Jason and Tim’s stuff.
“Get dressed. Todd, your cloak looks stupid. Drake, your Batman boxers are an affront on fashion.”
Tim squawks in indignation.