Title: No blinding lights to the gates of white
Summary: Superboy-Prime never touches his grave. Jason Todd is resurrected as a Black Lantern.
Rating: PG13
Pairing: None
Notes: See end. Title from Death Cab For Cutie's "I Will Follow You Into the Dark".
Characters: Jason Todd, Death/Black Entity (oc), Hawkman, Hawkgirl, Superman, Richard Grayson, Damien Al Ghul, Talia Al Ghul, et al.
Warnings: Taking mass liberties with the Blackest Night storyline, as in like I take the barest minimum and run with it. Just try to keep an open mind and this story will go down smoother. The term 'cannon' in any given comic book universe is pretty much obsolete anyway. Unbetaed, all mistakes are mine.
Word count: 2000+

.

A point of light

Lines

Then shapes

It takes him a long time or maybe not quite so long. He doesn't know. Time is irrelevant when you can see nothing, feel nothing and hear nothing.

Maybe he is in a coma.

Maybe he is dead.

He doesn't feel dead.

Darkness has always been a friend. It allows him to hide, to steal, to survive, beat up bad guys and save the world, that sort of thing.

Darkness is Batman personified. But the blackness surrounding him is stifling and cold even as it gently coaxes him into the unknown. Maybe he is walking around in circles and people are laughing at him from the outside, looking in. He doesn't know. The black isn't like Batman's cowl and cape, the carefully tailored suit that Bruce wears for social gatherings.

Jason waves a hand and from the abyss, he thinks something waves back.

.

'So what are you?'

A pause and, 'Who are you.'

'I am... all that has yet to come, the borders of what the seven spectrums have yet to touch. I am the blackness without the light. I am the end, the future, your mirror image—I am death.'

'I got to tell ya, being my mirror would make you life. Isn't Death supposed to be a girl?'

'Sometimes.' It answers, staring at him with lamp-lit eyes that aren't really there. 'Sometimes Death is a fish.'

'A fish' Jason repeats in disbelief.

'Sometimes, sometimes, sometimes...' It echoes, all around him like it's a novelty, being able to speak, to communicate. It whispers in his ear as though sharing a secret. 'Sometimes others use my name.'

'So you're not the one behind the Dawn of the Dead thing?'

It pulsates, the first spark of reaction Jason's been able to detect. He flinches back at its thrashes, the shadows threatening to swallow him whole. It's too strong to be denial—if he could call it that. The darkness almost feels like it is trying to reject the idea entirely from its body, from script, from reality.

'My brother' it hisses, coiling around him like a snake. 'He touched him, hurt him, with my name!'

Family, Jason can relate.

'So do something'

'I cannot'

'Well why not?' Jason starts to get frustrated talking to the thing, not even a voice because he is not sure he hears it so much as it touches his mind. He still sees nothing and feels nothing other than his errant anger. 'You're the almighty Death aren't you?'

'I am blackness, he is light. I may not tread where he has passed.'

'That's just a fancy way of saying you're not going'

'I cannot' it concedes. 'But you will'.

.

It feels like the time when he was ten, before his mother died, before Batman found him taking wheels off the batmobile. He was hungry and there hadn't been anything in the small decrepit apartment except for the flask of strong smelling liquid that his father always warned him away from. His stomach rumbled and he swallowed what few mouthfuls there was left. He spent the rest of the night stuck between awake and unconsciousness, seeing things differently at different times, always disjointed like a puzzle he was supposed to figure out.

He feels like that now with Death holding him in its palms.

His mouth is dry. 'What?'

'You will save him. My brother, your Earth, your universe.'

'I'm pretty sure I'm greatly underqualified for whatever the hell you're trying to ask me. I mean what?'

'You are Jason Todd of Earth. You are...'

'Ex-Robin, formerly living, now dead. Shouldn't you find anyone, I don't know...' An edge of hysteria creeps into his voice. 'Older? Like Superman, yeah.' But his hopes are dashed even before they're born, Death squeezing him like a makeshift Raggedy Ann doll.

'Superman is dead'

Something freezes inside his chest.

'As is Wonder Woman'

'Flash'

Green Arrow

Batman

Jason howls and throws a fist at the cloying shadows, hitting nothing, feeling nothing. He kicks when he sees movement at the corner of his eye but that is only his shoulder, strange and foreign looking after so many hours in the dark. He screams at Death, calling it a liar and a cheat, never taking those who deserve it the most, always the innocents.

It snags him by the throat, pins or hangs him by a rope—who knew if gravity worked in this place?

'I am not justice, I am not good.'

It speaks through him. 'But you will do this Jason Todd.'

He wrenches free.

He thinks he might hear laughter.

'Why me?'

Oddly, it seems genuinely surprised by the question. It pets him, straightening him up and fussing over him.

Jason is disturbed.

'You are cumulation.' It answers, matter-of-fact. 'You are all the Jasons that have died and live.'

'That makes no sense!'

'Doesn't it? It does. It will. Every universe you die. But you are alive. You will be the death of many.'

'Listen here you son-of-a...'

.

Jason blinks at the sluice of rain slapping his cheeks. He is standing in the middle of nowhere but with actual scenery, glowing like he's downed a barrel of plutonium and turned meta. Reality is rarely that kind and he knows that he was dead. A memory tickles him and he blinks, moving shutter-quick, jumping to a street inundated with staggering corpses, a man he tries to save from being eaten by a hoard of zombies, the remains of the Justice League, obituaries, his brothers fighting a losing war, and a graveyard emptied of bones.

He is staring at a tombstone but it doesn't make sense because the name is obviously wrong and so are the dates and the Alfred he knew would have never allowed the plot to go to seed and...

Jason screams.

"Help! Somebody! Anybody!"

"You!"

"What? No, Jason? No, no, no, nonono..."

The hawks are staring at him warily—like he's a crazy person. Jason chokes on laughter and sinks to his knees. Fuck if he doesn't feel sympathy for the Joker at this moment. He bends and squeezes his head between his knees, trying to beat himself senseless, beat himself to death if it will make the world make sense again.

"I remember." Hawkman says, his bass tone rumbling. "You were dead."

"I still am I think." He snorts and Hawkgirl bristles, ready to launch herself at him if necessary.

"You're a Black Lantern, but you cured us. Why?"

"I don't know." Jason answers helplessly, "I don't even know how I got here."

"Do you remember where to go next?"

He squeezes his eyes shut, a boy all but sixteen.

"Yes"

.

"Jason?"

The little one turns around sharply, his lips pulled into steep frown.

"Jason Todd? The failure?"

He lets out a hiss.

"I'm no failure."

.

He blinks

"Sometimes words are simply words child."

He lets Hawkman approach close, allowing the hands on his shoulder, words washing over him like a soothing lullaby. He manages a hopeful grin at the two not-Lanterns, his eyes tearing a little.

"Got to go, save the universe and all that."

"Fair winds" Hawkgirl says solemnly, raising her mace in salute.

He rises.

.

There isn't a way to describe how he feels, the death of his fifty-one counterparts rolling beneath his skin. The boy who died on Earth-Prime, Father Todd who was always repainting the shattered windows in his tiny chapel, listening to Bruce's confessions like an old friend. The redhead with Dickie-Bird's backstory, a Jason who is batman, the little girl who grew up to be Flamebird. Their deaths and their lives empower him, the herald of Death and all that lies in the dark beyond the reaches of light.

Death joins him as he spins past the atmosphere, embracing him from behind like a lover, even as its collar of bones rasps against his nape.

'Final words?' It asks, catching the attention of other lanterns, the false ones and the herald of Necron.

"I do this, will you bring me back?"

'No'

"Worth a try right?"

Death looks at him curiously, a bug under the microscope, insignificant and tiny in the grand scheme of things. It tickles his jaw, tilting his face up towards the moon.

'Did you want anything else?'

Too many thoughts stampede across his mind—yes, take me back, kill the Joker, don't let him hurt anyone else, give Babs back her legs, tell me everything gets better, show me a universe where our lives aren't a clusterfuck of intergalactic disasters.

"Bruce"

Death doesn't smile.

Not exactly.

Death is a composite of things, a chimera of parts like its brother Entity. But he gets the sense of feeling that Death does it anyway, like he's passed a test.

'Go Jason Todd. Your universe awaits.'

.

He has seen the Lanterns before, heard of their exploits and know how their rings are hammered of will. His runs on the death of fifty-one other Jasons lined up behind him. His ring does not glow but absorbs light, deflects it so his surroundings look dull while the white highlights in his new uniform look bright. It is useless against the seven spectrums and the white entity but the Black Lanterns, of which there are many, those he can hurt.

Those he can put back in the ground.

There are heroes whose deaths he can lift with a single thought and beyond that, Necron, the Lord of the Undying, seethes at his interference like a cartoon villain thwarted. The Black Lanterns turn away from their battles and swarm towards him, them, the fifty-two Jasons who are dead but live inside the multiverse, the good soldiers, never forgotten.

The first to reach him explodes into dust, scattering across the expanse of space like a handful of marbles across the pavement. In time the Entity would have lent his powers in cleansing the unnatural beings of their foul taint, but the Black Entity Death loves the brother he cannot touch and loathes the one who stole his name.

Jason breathes.

All hell breaks loose.

.

Later, he may remember it like the blessings that Father Todd used to give to the dredges of Gotham, what Hawkman tried to do for him. Black Lantern rings shatter across multitudes of space, their powers absorbed by his, the Death's ring, as they flounder, momentarily suspended in a rictus of disbelief.

They die in droves and truly, it is starting to look like the end of a zombie apocalypse. Superman is there, confused at his present state, Dick's idol and his too even if he would never say it out loud.

"Jason?" He says in surprise when the pale shroud of death lifts from his face.

Jason does not stop.

The Lanterns, realizing that he is not a threat, gets behind to help. But Jason is no longer Jason but a linchpin, a gateway from which Death reaches out and reaps its lost children. One by one, they are taken aside, their souls judged, returned to their beds in the dirt or to help them save Earth. The last one he takes is Bruce and he is relieved, he is so very relieved.

.

"You're not real"

.

The Hawks' words rise from the black depths, calling him back, following him down. He sees Kyle Rayner, a hand outstretched, not much older than him he thinks, the gaudy purple ring encircling one finger. But Jason is tired to be honest and he deserves it after saving the universe from inside his grave.

He'd say he turns to Death's warm embrace but that is untrue. Death is as callous as it ever was, even when demanding Jason do its bidding.

How's that—he asks smug as Kyle's hand passes through him.

Not bad for a dead Robin.

Death blinks at him owlishly, the enormous eyes like the bright corona of a sun.

Maybe he is simply seeing things again.

'You will be missed Jason Todd.' It says solemnly.

Jason can't help but smile.

Then everything turns black.

.

Three months later, Talia hears through the grapevine of a boy living on the streets, one who moves like a bat, one who should have died. She doesn't know the exact details of the event, only that her beloved was dead and little else. But she has heard of Jason's name tossed around several times among the living, attached with sorrow and grudging respect.

The last Black Lantern, the herald of Death.

His expression never changes as he delivers a debilitating chop to a man's knees, a clean sweep of his leg knocking over an ambitious two. When he knocks out the last of her men with an elbow to his generous gut, she steps out of the van herself, a gun holstered to her side but a hand patiently welcoming.

Jason stares at her, no recognition. Nothing in his eyes save for an inexplicable loss she feels piercing deep, a body with no mind behind it, a burnt out husk.

Then he grabs her hand like he's been waiting for a long time.

.

End notes: So you have seven + one entity and the one that represents death is inherently evil? The life entity itself isn't exactly hugs and kisses you know. Also, this is already something that's been floating around the interwebs for a bit but they could have really done a better job of reviving Jason. Like cloning. Or you know, having the Black Lanterns do it instead of Superboy-Prime's punch shattering the multi-verse.

Wow, this ended up being one, big mindfuck.