Grey King Chapter 2

[icarus_chained]

I shouldn't but here you go.

Title:  In the Hall of the Grey King
Chapter:  2
Rating:  PG-13
Characters:  J'onn, Charon
Chpt summary:  The Shores of the Lost and the River of Tears
Warnings:  ghosts

In the Hall of the Grey King

Chapter 2

The Shores of the Lost and the River of Tears

 

 

The tunnel was long and dark as night, but that didn't worry J'onn. He'd never been afraid of the darkness, and since Bruce ... the night was a friend and his lover's playground. It held no fears for him.

The emptiness, however, was a different thing. He had not often walked in such utter silence. On Mars, there had been the warmth of the communion around him, and on Earth and many other planets, there was a constant wall of sound in every direction. A dull, chattering roar of unnamed voices. It was overwhelming at times, but he had grown almost to like it. The only places of silence were the depths between the stars, and ... Mars had been silent, afterwards. Like this place. The underworld. Where only the mute souls of the dead walked. But not yet. He had not yet come to that place.

It was a long time, he thought, before he finally emerged from the darkness. It was hard to tell. Time here did not seem to mean the same thing. But he did emerge, eventually. Though not to sunlight. Sunlight is not grey, and there can be no sun underground anyway. It wouldn't have made sense.

J'onn smiled a little at Bruce's memory in the thought, and paused to look around.

The grey plain stretched in every direction. Even, impossibly, behind. The tunnel sat blackly in it's midst, and even though you knew it should look so very out-of-place, it seemed natural. It was a part of the fabric of this place, though that sat uneasily with mortal senses. J'onn didn't mind it, though out of curiosity he reached out to try and touch the edges where the two things met. As expected, he couldn't grasp it, and smiled a little. That must have frustrated Bruce no end.

Suddenly, he turned his head, as if catching some far off sound. And it was a sound, a physical one. Like the lapping of waves against a shore, except not. Beneath those watery noises, there was something else. A kind of wailing that was almost human in tone, a hollow keening just on the edge of hearing. J'onn stared in its direction, a hollow feeling in the pit of his stomach. It was the sound of raw misery. And it was exactly where he knew he had to go. Diana had been specific.

To the Acheron. The River of Tears, and the Shore of the Lost that lay alongside it, where those who could not pass into the next realm waited in vain for the Dark God's mercy. His path lay through the ranks of ghosts that lined that grey shore.

For one moment, he hesitated. He could not hear the thoughts of the dead, could not feel their emotions. But he could feel the influence of that river. It's wailing pierced beyond his defenses, straight into his empathic core in a hollow singing of endless grief, and touched every echo of every loss he had ever suffered. The thought of stepping closer was ... abhorent.

But even as he stared at the grim horizon in trepidation, he felt it. The warmth of hands clasped gently around his heart, a liquid weight of love in his chest. A fierce and adamantine fire poured slowly through him, the compass needle of his heart aligned without pause on some distant thing beyond that wailing barrier. J'onn sighed then, a smiling exhalation. Bruce lay on the other side of that river. Against that knowledge, the tears of a million lost souls were quiet between them. He started to walk, into the funeral swell of their keening, and wasn't afraid.

They came upon him soon enough. The serried ranks of the forgotten. Those spirits who could not pay the fare across that impenetrable barrier. They watched him as he passed among them with grey faces empty of hope, and J'onn's heart faltered at every pale and longing stare that rested on him. But he kept walking.

The throng grew thicker as he came down to the shore itself, and he flinched beneath the weight of their regard. Who knew how long some of these souls had stood here, staring in longing despair out into the mists towards the peace of the other side. There were children among them, lost and orphaned souls, pale eyes blankly confused. J'onn ached to help them. But he had only enough for his own fare.

He came to the pier, a rotten ediface of crumbling dark wood stretching out into the crying mists. The ghosts were thickest here, and newest. Faces still in some small way animated turned towards him as he strode through them. Pale hands brushed his chest hopefully, hunger in their milky eyes. His hand closed tighter around the small coins Diana had given him. He was two feet from the first black plank of the jetty, when two children stepped in his path, and opened their mouths to pour a silent scream at him. He staggered to a halt.

He couldn't hear them. The dead do not speak. But their smalls mouths shaped the word please, over and over again, and their desperation was clear in every spare and insubstantial limb. That soundless plea hit J'onn like a fist in the gut, and he found his hand instinctively loosening, extending forward.

"I would not, were I you, mortal."

J'onn started, hand refirming around his only link to the next world. He turned his head out towards the river, and finally saw it. The boat, floating in eerie silence on the lapping waves, it's dim lantern bobbing in the mists beside the jetty. And inside it, barely visible, the bent and gnarled figure of a man. Charon. The ferryman of Hades.

"What?" the Martian asked, his voice a harsh slap in the weeping silence. The figure cackled, the motion hunching it over, twisted limbs shaking spasmodically in glee. J'onn frowned at it, and said nothing.

"I said, mortal," the figure answered, with hitching breath, "that I would not hand away my fare if I were you. Not unless you wish to walk these shores for the next hundred years. That is your fare, is it not?" J'onn nodded warily, walking out onto the swaying jetty to stand beside the boat and stare down at it's occupant, who held out a filthy hand imperiously, head still bowed in grim himour. "Give it to me, then," Charon demanded, and looked up at him.

The shock that passed through the dirty little god at the sight of the Martian set his skeletal limbs jerking with a hollow crackle of abused joints. The filthy beard swung as the scrawy throat gulped in revulsion, and Hades' ferryman snapped his hand away from the one J'onn stretched out in offering. J'onn froze.

"Get away!" the boatman snarled, disgust thick in his aged voice. "Alien get, begone! Your kind are not for here!"

J'onn shook his head. "I can pay my fare," he said, softly but firmly. "You may not turn me away."

"I can!" He was spitting in anger, but there was something like fear in his burning eyes. "Your gods are old and distant, alien, and have no authority over me! This is not for you! You may not pass!"

J'onn only stared calmly at him. "My gods are not here, it is true. I am. I may pass. I must pass, ferryman. And by your oath and your duty, you must bear me across." He put no threat in his tone, only simple certainty.

Charon stiffened, staring at him with something like loathing, and drew himself up to a chorus of snapping joints. His lined and greasy face twisted with hate. "Do not try me, alien," he warned softly. "I know my duty, and I know my powers. I have ferried the black souls bound for Tartarus. I have borne their ranting, suffered their abuse, rejected their offers of violence. I will not bow before your strength, alien. Do not think to try me."

J'onn nodded gently. "And yet, I must pass," he explained softly, and held out his coins once more. Charon paused in his rant, and looked at him properly for the first time.

"You ... are searching for someone, aren't you?" he asked shrewdly. "You hunt one of the dead."

J'onn shook his head. "Not hunt. But I seek someone, yes. I was told he passed this way. I must find him."

The boatman frowned up at him warily. "What's he like?" he asked suddenly. "Might have seen him. If he's not in that lot, that is." He gestured contemptuously towards the lost souls on the shore.

"He is not," J'onn answered, without hesitation. "His name is Bruce. He ..." But Charon held up a hand with a sudden cackle.

"Him!" the little god crowed, lined face splitting with renewed glee. "That one, yes. Oh, I saw him, alright. Proud as a prince. I remember. Proud as the ancient kings, and as worn as their statues in the lands of the living. He passed, alright. And left pieces of his heart littered along the shore for that pack of vultures to taste!" He gestured out at the grey throng. "He looked at their faces, the fool."

J'onn looked back out at them, the forgotten dead, left waiting on the shores of eternity, and wondered how many had died in Gotham alleys. How many of their shattered faces had the Batman stood over, their features etched forever in the trained memory of their belated guardian. No wonder it had hurt Bruce.

He turned back to face the burning, curious eyes of the sordid little god, and held his gaze as he stepped, slowly and calmly, into the ferry. Charon bared his rotten teeth, but made no move to reject him.

"Your fare buys you passage," he snapped, abruptly. "But I do not ferry the children of foreign gods." He stepped slowly to one side of the tiller, his sleeves pulled back to bare his grubby knuckles where they were clenched around the worn wood. "If you want to reach the other side," he sneered, "you'll have to ferry yourself."

J'onn walked slowly towards him, halting on the opposite side of the tiller. He reached slowly towards the wood, and Charon's sneer of anticipation widened. Then the green hand halted, a bare inch away, and the god looked up in sudden fear into J'onn's wry little smile.

"I do know who you are," he admonished gently. "I know the price of letting my hand touch the wood. I do not wish to spend eternity ferrying souls across this accursed river."

Charon's face crumpled.

J'onn looked down in sudden pity on the dirty figure. The ferryman's disappointment, his utter weariness, were all too apparent. The old man shrank into himself, tucking his sharp chin into his bony chest, and sighed. And J'onn let his hand fall the rest of the way, to rest gently on top of the worn knuckles, carefully not touching the wood. The god's head snapped up to stare at him in shock, and J'onn smiled gently.

"I am," he murmured, "willing to help you carry my own weight, however. I owe you that much, old one."

The boatman looked up at him with wary awe for a long moment, something like gratitude flitting over his twisted features. J'onn didn't flinch from the stare, and did not lift the careful weight of his hand. And finally, Charon looked away, nodding huffily.

"This doesn't mean I like you, alien whelp," he snarled halfheartedly. J'onn smiled.

"Of course not," he murmured, and the old man cackled sharply.

"Hang on, whelp. The Acheron may not take kindly to you."

"I trust your skill." And J'onn could have sworn a tinge of red stained those cracked cheeks. "But wait a second. I need to do something."

The ferryman looked up at him blankly as he removed his hand long enough to step up to the prow of the boat, and stare back at the silent ranks of the dead. He paid no heed to the god's confusion, and focused on paying them the last service the living could grant the dead,

"I will remember you," he said softly, and his voice carried in sonerous promise through the mists. "You are not forgotten."

And they stared after him as he helped Charon pull the boat out over the River of Tears, and there may have been a shade more life in their pale and haunted eyes.