AN: Thanks everyone for the reviews! Please enjoy the new chapter. :)

Chapter Nineteen: Remembering

When Billy Batson came to, he found himself standing on the bank of a great river. The river was so wide, he could barely see the other side, only faint shadows shifting. The water was dark and murky, and under a lead grey sky the river was positively evil looking.

Er, what?

Billy blinked a few times and took a deep breath, before looking around. The river bank was crowded, full of people shuffling and milling about restlessly. All those people looked strange, grey and drab and indistinct, almost as if unreal. Even as Billy wrecked his brain trying to remember exactly what happened, he heard the sound of waves breaking open, then the fog horn of a great ship. The people on the river bank began to form into messy lines while grumbling and muttering. So Billy ended up being a part of line-up as well, even though he had no idea why.

Someone was shouting from far up ahead, "Get in line, get in line, boarding begins shortly! Have your ticket out! If you have no ticket, have your most valued possession in hand! No fare no boarding, no exception!"

"Ticket? What ticket?" Billy murmured, utterly confused.

"Check your pocket, my boy, you should have one," A gentle looking old lady ahead of him said with a kind voice, "Everyone who had a proper burial would have a ticket automatically generated."

"Uh, okay, let me check…"

Billy stuck his hands in his empty pockets, but froze mid-motion and gasped, and not because he didn't have a ticket. Wait, burial? At the proper key word memories rushed back like a flood. Right, the invasion by the Crime Syndicate, trying to take down Grid, that fight with Ultraman, and then… He threw himself into the sun's core. Right.

"You really don't have a ticket? Oh you poor sweetheart." The old lady looked at him with pity and even gave him a hug, before continuing, "Don't worry, sweet, I am sure there are people up there who loved you; it must be a terrible accident that they couldn't offer you a proper burial. Check your pockets again, you must have something to pay for the fare, a gadget, a toy, or something."

Here someone interrupted, speaking in a snarky voice, "Unless you don't, then you might be stuck on this side of the river for a while."

Billy spun around and found himself staring at a face that looked so much like his own that he couldn't help but jump backward. A boy with black hair and blue eyes, probably ten or eleven years old, stood right in front of him. Billy stared for a few moments, and then tentatively waved his hand. Seeing that the other boy didn't wave back he released a sigh of relief.

"Good, I thought I was looking at a mirror or losing my mind or something," Billy murmured.

"Don't flatter yourself," The mirror-image boy bit back sharply with a severe frown, "We don't look that much alike; you are much too pale and too weak. In any case, given how many people come by, it's not that unusual to find someone who look a bit like yourself. Speaking of which, do you have something to pay for that ship or not?"

Billy noticed that line of people starting to move. The ship had docked, and someone was shouting up ahead, "All aboard! All aboard!"

Billy searched himself up and down and of course he found nothing, not even a penny. He sighed dejectedly and said, "I guess I won't be getting on that ship, not that unexpected."

"Good, you can keep me company," Said the mirror-image boy, almost smugly, "You don't often find someone who can't pay for the ride across the river, especially a kid. I thought… Actually, I don't know why people like us don't have anything to pay with."

"Probably because our remains didn't get the proper treatment," Billy said distractedly.

The other boy gave him a strange look and asked, "How would you know that?"

"What? Oh, I was into myth stories for a while, and I read it in books," Billy shrugged, "You need to have a proper funeral, or at least your remains have to be collected properly, in order to gain passage into afterlife. Otherwise you wander the bank of Acheron for a hundred years before you are admitted to the realm of the dead. Well, assuming that's where we are, right? By the river Acheron?" Billy did not have Captain Marvel's vast store of knowledge, but morbid trivia information like this tends to stick.

The other boy's face fell and he murmured, "Why would father not even give me a proper funeral? Unless he…And the others…"

Upon seeing his companion's darkened expression Billy could not help but feel sympathetic. He said quietly, "Hey, it's okay, I am sure your father and your family are fine. It's been a little, well, hectic up there, alien invasion type of hectic. But the last I know things are getting better. So it will work out, I am sure."

"Alien invasion, really."

"Okay I know it sounds crazy, but I mean it happened before right? Like the time when the Justice League first showed up," Billy went on, not noticing the other boy hardly needed any convincing, "But anyway, it's really looking better as far as I know; I think we will win."

The other boy said with a sharp turn of his head, "You don't have to console me, I am not a child. In fact, I am probably older than you. And what happened to you? What blocked your passage into the afterlife?"

Billy's face twisted into a wry look of exasperation, and he murmured in reply, "Yeah, that's a long story. I kinda... Melted?" Billy was not well-read enough to know that the proper term would be "ionized".

"Melted? You mean died in a fire?"

"Something like that, I guess," Billy sighed, "Hey, can we not talk about this? It's not exactly the happiest moment of my life."

The mirror-image boy stared at him for a few moments, before making a small "tt" sound and turning his head away. "Alright, what should we talk about?" He asked, "We are stuck here for a long time if you are right."

"Yeah," Billy drew a deep breath and tried to forget for a while his worries. He was dead after all, and there was little he could do to help the Justice League now from the shades of Hades. He gave the other boy a smile and said, "My name is Billy Batson, what's yours?"

The mirror-image boy seemed to hesitate for a while, but eventually he shrugged his shoulders and said, "I guess I can tell you; we are all dead, so it hardly matters. I am Damian, Damian Wayne."

Billy froze in his spot.

"What?" Damian asked with a skip of his eyebrow.

"Damian Wayne, as in son of Bruce Wayne?"

"Yeah yeah I know," Damian waved a hand, "Yes I am the son of Bruce Wayne and I am dead. What you said before, let's not talk about this and move on to the next topic."

Mist gathered in Billy's eyes. He murmured in a shaky voice, "I thought I could save you. I thought I could bring you back to Mr. Wayne and make the whole family happy again. It was only a few days ago and you were still alive, but here you are now, here you are. Mr. Wayne will be so devastated. And what happened to your body! Why can't you go across the Acheron…"

Damian took a subtle step backward and his body shifted into a battle stance almost instinctively. "I died many days ago, and no one could have saved me. I think I would know about something like this," Damian said slowly, "And who are you?"

"I'm… I mean it's a crazy story, I'm…"

Billy was still hesitating when Damian slammed into him. Before he could even realize what was happening he was already on the ground, Damian's knee was on his chest, and an arm pressed into his neck. "Who the hell are you?" Damian growled, "And what do you want?!"

Billy never got a chance to answer, for suddenly they were both assailed by a torrent of visions. Billy saw a beautiful woman looking down at him with her arms outstretched, and then a pool and a cave and a dojo. He saw Batman in front of him, battered and vulnerable, and he heard himself say in a strange voice, "I thought you would be taller, father." He saw unending scenes of skyscrapers under the night sky, gun fires and roaring police cars, and the maggot infested mask of the Joker. He saw a menacing figured wrapped in white, and a long gleaming sword being thrust his way and piercing his chest. Pain swallowed his world for a moment and he screamed. He didn't even know it was possible to feel more pain now that he was dead!

Those were Damian's memories; memories of Robin and of his brother.

Damian was screaming too and rolled off to the side. He managed to get up before Billy could, and barked out ferociously while panting, "Seriously, you make me go through that again, I am going to snap off your head and feed it to Cerberus."

"What did I do to you?" Billy scrambled up too, now actually feeling upset, "You are the one running around as Robin, getting beat up by criminals left and right, and then giving me all those bad memories!"

"You ionized in the goddamn sun!"

"Well, we did both die, otherwise we wouldn't be here."

"I died instantly with a sword to the heart; you took two minutes and some becoming nuclear fusion material in the sun's core!"

Billy was faintly aware that this debate was becoming rather ridiculous, but he could not help himself and rebutted, "That was not two minutes! I could move at the speed of light; if I had that long I would have gotten out of the sun already, or at least I would've tried."

"While trying to kill a Superman counterpart?" Damian gave him a nasty look, "Hardly. And just so you know, I counted."

"Okay now you are just being mean; you couldn't positively have counted the time passed in a memory and that was not two minutes."

"Was too!"

"Was not!"

The two boys stared at each other, nostrils flaring and cheeks puffing, but the next moment Billy suddenly broke out laughing. Why, he was arguing with his own brother about how he died while standing on the bank of river Acheron. Now that was actually funny, just a little. Damian first stared, then eventually he scoffed and said, "I guess we are technically brothers then. And seriously, your adoptive father's last name was Batson? Is this some kind of a joke?"

"What? Oh…" Billy shrugged helplessly, "Um, I guess it's just chance? It really doesn't mean anything. And dad was a great guy; he really loved me, and I loved him too."

Damian raised an eyebrow again, "You call that man 'dad', then what do you call my father?"

"Er, I call him Mr. Wayne?"

Damian stared at him with that intense look for a long time, before saying, "I suppose you do not consider him father, nor do you consider me a brother. That's perfectly fine. You should know Bruce Wayne only has one real son and that is me."

"I, I do think you a brother," Billy said while blinking owlishly, "I have wanted to meet you ever since moving into the manor."

Damian scoffed again and said, "Tt, if I were there I would not have wanted to meet you. And the circumstances of our current meeting definitely can be better."

"Yeah, I was hoping I could find you and bring you home alive," Billy muttered.

"And for that purpose you brought about a world invasion," Damian sounded like he was exasperated, "Brilliant, Batson, simply brilliant. Be foolish, for all I care, but try not to be foolish in my name. That is just degrading."

"I know that was dumb," Billy hung his head, feeling that sense of failure and dread wash over him all over again, "This mess is all my fault, but I tried my best to make it right, I really did."

Damian fell silent once more, lips pursed into a thin line and blue eyes glowing with a sudden anger. The next thing he did was shoving his new-found brother to the ground, followed by a punch to the guts.

"That is not making things right," Damian snarled, "You killed someone; worse still, you killed yourself. You are supposed to be Captain Marvel of the Justice League, not some suicide bomber! And do you have any idea what you have done to my father?! God, you are such a hopeless idiot."

Billy almost shot back, "Do you have any idea what you did to him and to everyone else in the family?" But in the end he swallowed those words and stood up, dusting himself off silently. He was okay with ridiculous banter, but this was different; he really should not start this kind of argument with his brother.

He took another deep breath and was about to say something to change to topic, when he suddenly felt a force tugging at his back, almost as if trying to drag him away physically. The scenery around him seemed to fade; the sky was becoming darker, and the river bank and the murky water more indistinct. Even Damian's face was beginning to blur. What was going on? Was he somehow dying again in this realm of the dead, or was this all just yet another illusion?

Billy didn't have time to ponder the situation, he just grabbed Damian's hand and held on with all his might. No way in hell was he going to let go of his brother, no pun intended.

Everything around him continued to fade, the lead-gray sky and the murky river now melded into a formless blob of darkness. Even Damian was gone, but Billy thought he could still feel Damian's hand in his own.

And then he saw the surface of the sun beneath his sandaled feet, stretching out like an infinite sea of hellfire.