Chapter Text
Strange House We Must Keep and Fill
Bruce feels the cold on his skin the moment he walks into the cavernous room. It settles over him like a fog, raises goosebumps under his suit. Where the temperature had just been pretty nice, if a little wet, outside, the room is significantly colder, and it even seeps through his boots. He sees Robin shiver slightly beside him, and then scowl at the display. Damian’s reactions usually bring a subtle smile to Bruce’s face, but this place seems to grab hold of any positive emotion and suck it out—or, at least, that’s what Bruce would say if he was being slightly less logical about it all. It’s not the place, it’s not even the obnoxious and persistent cold. It’s the small orb in the center of the room.
Dr. Fate has assured him and the rest of the League that the orb is dormant and can’t do much more than cause a slight chill to the room, but Bruce still feels his wariness increase the closer they get to the strange object. Superman doesn’t seem to be faring much better, sitting at a table off to the side of the room, writing in a notepad and sending occasional frowns towards the orb. Wonder woman isn’t in the room. Must be doing another perimeter check, Bruce muses as he gives the orb a wide berth and heads towards Clark. Dr. Fate isn’t in the room either, but Bruce isn’t surprised. The sorcerer had been incredibly tense the entire time he’d been there, halfway out the door the minute he finished his inspections. When Dr. Fate felt uneasy about something, Bruce became doubly so.
“Nothing’s changed.” Clark says as Bruce and Robin approach, cutting Bruce off before he could ask. He scowls in response.
“Any word from Constantine?”
“He should be here by the time the rest of the League arrives.”
“I’m still not sure how I feel about bringing so many members here to debrief, instead of doing so at the station.” Diana’s voice echoes across the room as she enters, cutting Bruce off before he could say something similar.
“Well, we can’t move the Orb, and Constantine said he needed to be in the same room, so…” Clark trails off, eyes on the orb again. He seemed almost drawn to it, even more than Bruce and Diana were. Damian, too, flicked his gaze across it every so often, but had only scoffed when Bruce had asked him about it. (“It’s an annoyance.” The young Wayne had said, hands fisted at his side. He would say nothing else, and the restlessness in Bruce only increased).
“It’s a liability to leave it unprotected, and it’s a liability to be too close. We’re stuck.” Bruce admitted, turning back to the orb.
The orb itself was, upon first glance, rather unremarkable. It was roughly the size of a human head and looked similar to the kind of crystal ball you’d find at a circus. It looked dark and a little murky, like the glass had been blown with a few dark shades of green and blue when the orb was formed. It was only when you looked closer that things started to feel weird. What was a normal ball began to look immeasurable, like the entire universe was contained within it. The longer Bruce looked at it, the further into this universe he could see, stars and galaxies swirling past him. The room he stood in started to disappear, darkness edging in, tinges of green taking over. Every time he looked at it, his breath would catch and he would feel, suddenly, as if he was being looked into as well.
“Batman.” Robin’s tug on the edge of Bruce’s cloak brings him out again, and he has to blink away the star lust. He hated how much the orb made him want to lie down inside of it and just breathe.
Diana and Clark were still discussing the arriving League members, even though the three had already agreed that bringing in a small group of the Justice League and the Justice League dark was for the best. They were uneasy, and Bruce couldn’t blame them.
“We’ll take over now.” Bruce says, motioning towards the door. Robin nodded his understanding and headed out to complete a perimeter check. “You two should get some sleep.”
At this Bruce’s two companions share a dark look, one Bruce understands too well. Nightmares. They’d all been having them, ever since the fucking orb had been found. Tim had been using them (and their clear origin in some kind of magic) as another excuse not to sleep, and Alfred was making more tea than usual. Batman had noticed that Diana and Clark were sleeping less, exhaustion clear on their faces each time they met.
“It’s just one more night.” He adds reassuringly. Clark nods as if steeling himself, and then rises to leave.
“Let us know if anything changes.”
Bruce gives him a single nod in response, and then a second nod to Diana when she smiles at him. The two leave out the single entrance to the room, and Batman is alone with the orb. He does not look at it.
Look, Barry has had his fair share of encounters with weirdness, okay? Aliens, metahumans, time travel, lightning-strike-caused-speed-and-abs, whatever Batman and that one cat burglar were up to the time Barry had gotten stuck in Gotham—the list goes on. Magic is on it several times over, and he hates it every single time. Give him some good old quantum physics any day, but bring in fucking “cosmic duct tape of the universe” and you lost him. It was just a little too much sometimes, and he didn’t like facing anything he couldn’t test and write out. And no, whatever wacky shit Constantine and the rest of the Dark recorded did not count as “science”.
That said, walking into “the Orb Room”, as (the fun) half of the League had been calling it, was a trip. The temperature dropped, right along with Wally’s heart and pretty much all of his energy. He probably couldn’t run to Central and back right now if he wanted to, his feet felt so heavy. That was before he even saw the Orb, since he was standing behind Green Arrow who was stacked these days. The second he could see it though?
Barry remembers turning the world back. He remembers running so fast that the fabric of realty started to tear, the sound like nails on a chalkboard, the wind practically ripping his skin off his face. He remembers the swoop he had felt in his belly as his abilities ached with the strain. He remembers the light dancing through his eyes, the manic excitement he couldn’t quite contain. It had been the best feeling he’d ever had, and he hated how often he thought of that high. Looking into the orb is…kind of like that, but slowed down and soft. Less a storm, more a soft fall of snow. That same manic light seems to dance inside the orb, except tinged more green than red and yellow. And as his eyes try to track that light, it stops and turns to him, and stares him down. Suddenly he isn’t the one with the power, turning everything back as he likes. He was being turned.
Batman says something and Barry finally pulled his eyes away to find that Green Arrow, the Martian, Aquaman, Ragman, and Zatanna all in similar states. Whatever the orb was, it had an affect on everyone who saw it, even people used to dealing with the crazy shit, like Zatanna.
Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman, and Robin are already in room, facing the newcomers. Superman looks sympathetic, but it’s Batman that draws Barry’s eye. He’s watching Zatanna and Ragman specifically, checking their reactions.
“This power…it’s…” Zatanna trails off, hand reaching out towards the Orb, though she is still at least 10 feet from it.
Ragman nods his agreement, though he doesn’t look at the Orb again. “Yeah, I haven’t felt anything like this in…gods, not since the amulet. Maybe ever.”
Which is, you know, a great sign.
“Is it malevolent? Is it a weapon? Can you tell anything?” Batman demands, sounding frustrated.
Zatanna shakes her head, slowly walking closer. “There is malevolence, but it’s not coming from the orb. It’s…surrounding it. What did Fate say?”
“Very little.” Diana responds. “He said it felt like something powerful was hidden inside it, unable to get out, but there was little else he could say.”
“Yeah, this isn’t his usual kind of magic.” Ragman states. He still won’t look at it.
“You good?” Barry asks lowly, not wanting to draw attention to it. The room is so quiet though (almost oppressively so, as if everything that should be there, all ambient noise and movement, is stopped, waiting) that everyone hears, and turns sharply to Ragman, who nods.
“Fine. It’s just a little hard to look directly at. There’s something really powerful in there, but it’s really not my kind of magic either. Tanna?”
“Nor mine.” She responds, finally looking away. “I have no trouble looking at it, though. Actually, I kind of don’t want to stop looking at it.”
“That seems to be the two main reactions.” Superman adds. Barry notes he is very purposefully not looking at the orb, but he is clearly drawn to it.
“Okay, okay, great. Whatever it is, it’s really fucking powerful and everyone has a really strong reaction to it. Why aren’t we just throwing it in the ocean and calling it a great day?” Green Arrow finally speaks up, and Barry is half inclined to agree.
“You will not be throwing a mystical item into my oceans.” Aquaman says lowly. “We can drop it somewhere in the arctic, maybe.”
“And if it causes all the ice to melt, thus putting it in the ocean and making it your problem after all?” Barry asks before he can stop himself.
Aquaman is not amused. Batman is even less so.
“We’re not throwing it anywhere. We’re going to figure out what it is, and then figure out what we need to do with it.” Superman says firmly and really, there isn’t much else to say. They’re waiting on Constantine and Captain Marvel to show and awkwardly avoiding the orb-shaped elephant in the room.
Except for Zatanna, who is still staring at it.
It must be twenty minutes later when Zatanna finally speaks up, and Robin is impressed it took her so long. If she had looked at the orb much longer, especially with an expression bordering on longing, Robin was going to forcibly knock her out, Bruce’s ire be damned. A possessed or mind-controlled magic user was the last thing they needed.
“It feels familiar. I’ve been trying to figure out why I know it this whole time but it’s…” She shakes her head, purses her lips. She’s annoyed, frustrated. Damian understands the feeling. He was avoiding staring at the object out of pure force of will, but it reminded him of something, too. It was familiar. Homely.
He flicks himself in the thigh to shake the thought loose, angry it had popped up again. He hadn’t been able to rid himself of the almost affectionate feeling he’d had for the Orb since he first saw it, and it was making him very irate.
“Familiar?” Batman presses, and Damian tries to refocus.
“Yes. Very familiar. But remember that malevolence I mentioned earlier? The one surrounding it? I think it’s more than just something bad. I think it’s acting like a…cloak, almost. It’s hiding something about the Orb, dimming it or silencing it. I can’t say for sure, but without it I would be able to tell a lot more about the orb.”
“A defense mechanism? A trap? Or magic someone placed upon it to keep it out of seeking hands?” And that was Wonder Woman, once again asking good questions that led to no answers. Zatanna merely shakes her head and turns bodily away from the object, as if to take away the temptation to look. It won’t work, Damian thinks bitterly. I’ve tried.
He can almost feel the orb reaching out to him again, like a friend. He wants to snap his teeth at it, but there’s nothing actually there. It’s very frustrating.
“Deadman, if we walk into that fucking room and you start spouting your bullshit and make the bat pissed at me, I’m going to kill you again.”
Constantine is pissed. This isn’t a new feeling to him. He feels it pretty often. It’s not even that new to be pissed at Deadman, despite the ghost being pretty useful and relatively cheerful. Actually, it’s probably the cheer that makes John so pissed, especially if he hasn’t had a smoke in a while.
God, he hasn’t had a smoke in a while. He’s been non-stop since Supes and the others called to tell him about a magical orb that had them all freaking out. If it ended up being a scrying stone or something that benign, he was going to kill them all. Though, the way Deadman was racing towards the Orb with a singular focus John had never seen from him was giving the man second thoughts. It probably was not a simple artifact at all, but until John sees it, he can pretend all he wants.
Just like the last several times John had threatened the ghost, he is ignored. He mumbles under his breath and reaches for a cig again, only to remember as his hand folds into an empty pocket that he’d used his last one two days ago, hence his incredible annoyance at the entire world.
God, this better be worth it. Actually, scratch that. This better be the most fucking inane thing in the world so that John can glare at everyone, say a few words, and go home.
They’re nearing the half-buried building when John first feels it, and it’s only as he looked up from the ground he had been so focused on second ago that he sees what is probably causing the intense feeling in his chest.
Ghosts. Dozens of them, perfectly still, all staring at the building. They’re gathered around it in a circle, not even moving. John slows to a creep, eying the specters suspiciously. This is…very not good.
“Deadman, what the fuck.” He whispers, but the ghost is still (though much more slowly) pushing his way towards the building.
“This is big, John.” He says. It’s the only thing John’s been able to get out of him, and now they’re at the entrance to the building and there’s even more ghosts inside and whatever is in there, besides the ghost, is giving off so much power John almost chokes on it.
What the fuck has the league gotten into this time?
He slows down as he enters the building, taking stock of the ghosts around. The ones inside are more fully formed than the ones outside, stronger, too. He sees two ghosts floating next to a motorcycle which seems to have its own displaced shadow. Another ghost holds a guitar. There are more, each fully realized and powerful in their own rights. But they’re not moving, or fighting, or even speaking. They’re all perfectly still.
They enter the door to the room, and John knows the orb is inside there. He can already see it, but only its negative, every time he closes his eyes. His breaths feel shallow like his chest is weighed down, and suddenly he isn’t just feeling the power of the orb, or the presence of the ghost. He feels anticipation, hungry and heavy and dripping from the atmosphere. Underneath it, he feels…grief. It’s soft, almost soothing, and it makes a lump form in his throat. He wants to cry, out of pain and out of relief, but he doesn’t know why, so he pushes it back and opens the door.
The others turn to face him when he walks in. He’s already done the spell to make Deadman visible, and he sees them watch him fly in with a hint of confusion on their faces.
“God, even you lot have to feel this, right? Any of them visible?” He chokes out. Batman scowls at him, and opens his mouth to say something (probably a very angry question). But John finally sees it.
Oh god.
It’s thousands of pounds of pressure on every part of him. No, not him, it’s pressure on the entire universe, on the very reality they’re in. It’s heavy and cloying and it’s so fucking sad and John wants to weep and he wants to rage and he wants to tear the building down brick by brick. He’s looking into the center of this orb and he can’t see anything but his own reflection and a pair of eyes, closed as if sleeping, of someone he recognizes instinctually. He opens his mouth (to do or say something), but it’s not him who speaks next.
“My King.” Deadman says, on the ground before the Orb, kneeling and shaking. He begins to speak in an old language, a dead language even John doesn’t know, but he knows what it means.
I offer you my fealty, my undying loyalty, and my core. I will aid you and release you from this prison, O great King of the Infinite Realms, O King Phantom.