-38-
"Destiny"
"Daniel brought all the dreamers together, and asked the superheroes of the Justice League to speak to them. Then we all woke up," said my mother Rose, "to the new Reality."
"Wow," said Matthew the Raven. "Just like that?"
My mother nodded. "There was no transition. I just blinked, looked around, and everything was changed.
Barbara Gordon was gone. All the refugees of Coast City were nowhere to be found.
Paul was still there with me, but he acted like he had no clue about anything I was going on about.
According to him, we weren't married. We were not in Coast City - we were just on a date, sitting together on a beach in California.
Apparently I had never run away and lived in London, only visited - it was Paul who was the transplant from across the pond, not me.
None of the crazy shit at our apartment, or the country house, had ever taken place.
There was no World War III going on, no brainchip implants, no cyborg army.
He had never heard of Hal Jordan, and told me that we'd never had a 'President Luthor'.
I was flabbergasted. "You've never heard of Lex Luthor?" I asked him.
He blinked. "You mean the 'Superman' villain?"
I was relieved that he at least knew who Superman was, but was confused when he started laughing and calling me 'such a geek'.
Paul insisted that I must have nodded off and had a very interesting dream. He asked me to describe it to him - so he could tell me what it all meant, no doubt.
I refused, and had Paul take me home.
He knew how to get there, thank goodness.
It was slowly coming back to me, one little flash of disconnected memory at a time, about this new Reality… like trying to remember a disjointed dream you had the night before. But my brain was still pretty scrambled - it had all these little jigsaw puzzle fragments of information and memory that it was trying to collect up, unable to even begin to figure out how all the pieces fit together.
My foster-mom, Miranda Walker, was there, as was my little brother Jed.
They acted like I never left.
In fact, they acted like I'd always been with them my whole life, instead of being adopted by them only a few years prior.
There were pictures of me on the walls, and on the shelves - pictures of me as a kid, and pictures of me as a baby, that I had never seen before. Some of the pictures included Miranda, Burt and even Jed, even though that was impossible - by the time I met the Walkers I looked like I was a teenager. They never held me in their arms when I was a baby, and they weren't around for any birthdays when I was a kid.
Besides, I was older than any of them.
Amongst the pictures, I saw my mother Unity… and there was one picture that showed the three of us together: me, Unity, and Miranda Walker.
The timeline just wasn't adding up, and being this disoriented in time and space was giving me a headache.
I asked them about Hal Jordan, and only Jed recognized the name. He babbled excitedly about Green Lantern, happy that I was 'into that stuff' as well.
Huh? I thought, confused. I brought up the Justice League, and my mom shook her head and said we could talk about pretend stuff after dinner.
It was all really surreal. Dreamlike.
I went to bed early, and willed myself here." Rose looked at Death. "You brought them all to the Sunless Lands, didn't you? The superheroes."
Death nodded. "And the cities, like Metropolis and Gotham. You have no idea how moody cities can get, when they pass on."
"Metropolis and Gotham are gone too?"
"Yup. Got their own afterlife and everything - though they ended up sharing them with the supers who loved them the most."
"So they all died."
"In a way, yeah - there never were any flesh-and-blood superheroes in your new Reality, Rose," she said, "ditto for their villains, like 'World Leader' Lex Luthor. They were always fictional characters. And their stomping grounds, the dark and moody Gotham and the shiny Metropolis, never properly existed either."
"So… what exists in their place?"
"New York City," answered Death. "It's like a combination of both."
"New York… like the state?" asked my mother Rose.
"Uh-huh," chirped Death.
"People actually list their address as New York, New York?"
"Yeah, bunches of them. You never heard the song? Just think about it a little, and you'll remember that you have."
"Huh," said my mother Rose, marveling. "Is there still a Green Lantern statue in the harbor?"
"Nope. It's always been Lady Liberty standing out there, holding up her torch."
"Her torch…" My mother's mind wandered. "I don't know why, but I was always kinda partial to the lantern. It sucks that it doesn't exist anymore."
"But it does exist," intoned a dry voice, which belonged to my brother Destiny. He walked toward us from the grey wastes, carrying what appeared to be a new large tome chained to his wrists.
"Destiny, eldest and most elusive of the Endless! What an honor!" exclaimed Cain excitedly, bowing in grand fashion to my brother as he passed by. "We are greatly pleased to at last make your acquaintance, my good sir. I assume you know who I am?"
Destiny made no effort to acknowledge Cain, or any of the others for that matter, as he made his way into the centre of our little gathering.
What any of us could see of Destiny's face that was not obscured by the hood of his long grey robe was mysteriously impassive, and betrayed no emotion. "Show them, Dream," the elder's mouth demanded, with an attitude that would brook no argument.
I drew the pendant from the inside of my robes - the jewel which hung suspended from the chain was a large, glowing Emerald Dreamstone.
Everyone gazed at it in awe. "Is that a Dreamstone?" my mother asked.
"It is now," I answered. I looked at my brother Destiny. "Will you explain, or shall I?"
"I journeyed here for no other reason than to tell you the tale, from my own lips," answered Destiny.
"Are you g-going to t-tell the suh-secret?" asked Abel.
"Yes," answered Destiny.
"Wow, finally - a straight answer from my big bro," said Death, with a gently teasing smile. "This oughta be good!"
"Be sure not to spill the beans all at once," urged Cain. "Draw it out, build up the suspense-"
"I have no interest in building suspense," said Destiny, dry as a dusty old tome. "I have neither the skill nor the inclination to do so. Therefore, without further ado, I shall confess: it was I who was the first, original Green Lantern.
-Destiny's Tale-
Whereas my brother Dream, also known as Morpheus, proposed to enter the purely fictional realms of Hell, I knew the time had come to take drastic action in Reality.
The Endless can be many places at once, and the effects of their persons and their Realms ripple across the vast expanses of eternity.
Yet some Endless are more adept at splitting their attention than others.
My sister Death, for example, is highly capable of being present for all those who die, at the moment of their demise, even though countless deaths occur simultaneously; my brother Dream's ability to divide his attention, however, is abysmal.
This is due to the fact that those accessing his Realm do not require his attention; he is therefore spoiled in that he may concentrate all his focus on a single matter at any given time, and moreover prefers to do so.
After the tauntings of our sibling Desire, my brother Morpheus' mind was troubled; the sole subject that occupied it was the woman Nada, and his part in arranging her unjust incarceration in Hell.
It is said that Destiny is blind; this is true, in part. I can see no further than anything that currently is, as I read the happenings of the universe at nearly the same time as they occur. I am as blind to the future as anything that exists.
This is by choice, mind you: I could, of course, cheat. I could simply turn the page to the next one, or the next, or the one after; I could skip to the very end if I wished, to see how the story of the universe ends.
But I do not wish it; for the knowledge would lock this incarnation into one of the infinite multitude of branching pathways that I, as Destiny, may take.
Time, you see, is an illusion - that which is to happen has already happened, and will continue to happen for the rest of eternity.
The book is already written in its entirety; the film has already been shot; the game's levels and ultimate outcomes have been designed, its parameters are set, awaiting only the player's input to determine which sequence is displayed and when.
Time exists only in the mind, as the process by which one experiences and makes sense of existence. You may replay certain memories, perceive things as they happen, and imagine the future by way of my brother Dream, but ultimately this is all mere fantasy; perception is subjective, but what is, IS, and forever will be.
That is Destiny.
So you see, if I were to read further into the future than what is currently happening, I would be intruding upon and unduly influencing my brother Dream's Realm; and by doing so, I would risk distorting time itself in a way unfavorable to all.
However, because I am able to see all the workings of the now, and I am able to remember everything that is past, I have much information to draw upon in order to make extrapolations.
When one understands the inner workings of things, it is not hard to identify the likely path of cause and effect. The more educated the guess, the more chance of that guess being correct.
Of all the beings in the universe capable of making predictions about the future, I am the most educated; and therefore, I am the one most likely to be right.
This is all to say that when my brother left my realm to venture into Hell, and his attention was diverted away from the disastrous situation brewing on the planet Krypton while my wayward brother Destruction refused to manage his realm, I was all but certain as to the events that would follow as a consequence.
I may not be unduly troubled by the course charted by most beings or things, but that is not to say that I am completely impartial to the events that surround me - as a thinking and feeling being, I have my preferences.
I prefer things to exist, for example, rather than to not exist; I suppose one could say that this sets me somewhat at odds with my sister Death in most circumstances, though I respect her position and function in the grand scheme of things.
So too do I prefer that which is, over that which is imagined or may be, thus setting me somewhat at odds with my brother Dream in a similar manner, though I also understand his role in shaping destiny and do not begrudge him his due credit in the slightest.
Finally, I tend to favor the continued existence of living, thinking beings over that which is inanimate or dead.
As such, I was greatly disturbed by that which was occurring in regards to Krypton and my two brother's dereliction of their duties. I foresaw the destruction, death and the unmaking of the real into that which is only dreamt of, and I watched with horror as nearly the entire population of Krypton was brought to Death's door.
With one notable exception: the tiny infant Kal-El.
Dream was able to do that much, at least.
The space-pod ship cradling the Kryptonian infant was sent hurtling through the cosmos toward the planet Earth; following in its wake, on the same trajectory but at a much slower pace, was the life-destroying creature of Doomsday.
Not that the people of Earth needed any help in destroying life upon their planet. They were just like the Kryptonians: proud, foolish, and short-sighted.
And I could tell, without cheating and skipping ahead in my book, that the end of their story would be much the same as Krypton's.
My brothers and sisters were clearly going to be of no use: Dream was imprisoned, Destruction had abandoned his Realm, and the others were trapped within their most negative and destructive forms without their older brothers to keep them in check.
And that's when I thought of it.
My brother's rescue of the last son of Krypton inspired my next course of action.
I would intervene.
I could not make myself known, or make their choices for them, as that would be tampering with free will - but I could certainly help nudge them in the right direction.
I would change the course of history, and guide it toward a better future.
I would give them an alternate Destiny.
Several, in fact.
"Oh what's this now?" mocked Desire. "Thou-Shalt-Not-Meddle Destiny, the sanctimonious high-and-mighty lecturer always schooling us on proper Endless behavior, INTERVENING in mortal affairs? YOU?"
"Hush," said Destiny. "I have already told you my reasoning; it was not for my own selfish amusement that I intervened. I would have much preferred to let each of the Endless perform their rightful function instead of having to take over for all of you myself.
I should be an observer only; that is my place. I would have been quite content to stay within the confines of my Realm. But we all do as we must; there is no use arguing with what is, and what must be.
Thus I shed the raiment of Destiny of the Endless, leaving my labyrinth gardens behind to walk the Earth in mortal flesh...
The first identity I took on was that of Alan Scott.
He was the first masked and caped superhero of Earth.
With the steadfast glow of his Green Lantern, he would light the path and show the people of Earth a way out of the dark and twisted maze they had built for themselves.
He was a symbol of hope, to counteract my sister Despair.
He was a symbol of truth and sense, to counteract my sister Delirium.
He was a symbol of selflessness and bravery, to counteract my sister-brother Desire.
He was a symbol of creation, to counteract my brother Destruction.
He was a symbol of life, to counteract my sister Death.
And he was a symbol to teach the people of Earth how to make their dreams reality, in the absence of my imprisoned brother Dream.
The Green Lantern also served as an inspiration, creator, and mentor for the superheroes to come.
It was the first spark of what I hoped would catch fire, and become a raging inferno.
But there was a problem.
It wouldn't do much good in the service of my goals if people simply abdicated all responsibility over their lives to a superpowered being.
And the superheroes would do little to inspire people, if all their enemies were small-time crooks that needed only a fraction of their powers and strength to defeat.
If superheroes existed, then so too did supervillains have to exist - so that people could learn from the ultimate triumphs of the superheroes that even the strongest and most fearsome supervillains could be beaten.
My sister Despair, by creating her monster Solomon Grundy to defeat the Green Lantern, fortuitously provided me with a template to start from.
But a lumbering brute with obvious weaknesses was not good enough - villains needed strength, intelligence, cunning, and unusual skills if they were to be worthy opponents for my growing crop of superheroes.
So when the human mortal body of Alan Scott would have begun to decay, I took it to a portal of the Sunless Lands, where my sister Death kept her pools of life-giving elixir.
Newly reborn as an immortal, I took on the shadowy persona of Ra's Al Ghul, the Demon's Head, and did whatever I could to plant the seeds of supervillainy.
Meanwhile, a fraction of my soul resided in another individual: the butler of the Wayne family.
I knew that the Waynes were an important aspect to this entire charade - I had plenty of plucky, relatable do-gooders who represented the lighter aspects of superheroism, but I needed someone to represent the darkness; someone who represented tragedy, loss, and the cruel darker edge of privilege and power.
When the Waynes were shot by Joe Chill, all three of them died.
But I, as Alfred Pennyworth, loyal and unassuming butler of the Waynes, carried the young boy to the Lazarus Pits for revival.
I brought him back to life, giving him a strength and vitality that was above that of mortal men. This slowed his aging considerably, and allowed him to both survive otherwise lethal injuries and battles with metahumans.
Afterwards I appeared to him as the spectre Ra's Al Ghul, in order to begin his training.
I made him what he became: I made him into Batman.
"Hey wait a sec," said Death, looking surprised and perturbed at Destiny. "You used my Lazarus Pits?"
"You never used them," said Destiny, flatly. "I, at least, had reason to put them to good use; you never used your power to confer life for anything other than idle curiosity, as was the case when you made the braggart Hob Gadling an immortal."
"That is so UTTERLY not the point, big bro," said Death, hands on her hips. "You owe me, BIG TIME."
"If that is so, then Destruction and Desire owe you equally as much," replied Destiny, "for they used the power of the Lazarus Pits for their botched creation. But we shall settle issues of territorial sovereignty in due time: first, I must tell of the Wayne boy's fate."
"Yes, I should very much like to know," said Lucien the Librarian, "Whatever happened to the Caped Crusader?"
"It ended where it all began," said Destiny, "in the underground cavern of the Lazarus Pits…
My siblings had tried and failed to fashion the mortal Steve Trevor as a 'superhero' based on misguided and faulty reasoning, creating instead the abominable supervillain known as The Joker.
Robin Wayne had been the vigilante Red Hood, and was now transformed into the Green Arrow persona following the attempted assassination of Superman with Kryptonite-tipped arrows. He wished for revenge upon the Joker, for the vicious savagery the Clown Prince of Crime visited upon the young Barbara Gordon.
Robin pursued him through Gotham, and to the lair of Ra's Al Ghul that the Joker knew well.
Batman attempted to stop the boy from getting himself killed at the Joker's hands, but his pleas fell on deaf ears: for Robin wanted revenge upon him as well, for failing to protect his beloved. Batman had always refrained from killing The Joker, battling him time and time again, always resulting in The Joker's arrest, his committal to Arkham Asylum, and subsequent escape.
Robin perceived this as letting a madman terrorize Gotham, and blamed Batman for Barbara Gordon's fate nearly as much as he blamed The Joker himself.
Robin began fighting the Caped Crusader as well, and The Joker used this diversion to his advantage: he managed to break the boy's back, snapping his spine in two and instantly killing him.
The Joker unmasked the dead boy in front of Batman, greatly amused that Batman recognized the boy as his own son; and even more so that he, Batman's arch nemesis, could offer a solution.
Down into the dark depths of Ra's Al Ghul's lair The Joker led Batman, carrying the body of his dead child.
The Joker revealed to the Dark Knight the secret of the Lazarus Pits; he described them as the 'womb' that they both shared, making them, essentially, brothers.
The information that Ra's Al Ghul - that is, myself - saved young Bruce from death and not his parents, brought the man's psyche to the brink of ruin.
The body of Robin Wayne was submerged in the Pit; and when he was brought forth from it his life and strength returned to him, his injuries healed.
Robin was still bent on revenge on The Joker and Batman, and attempted to continue the fight.
Batman, in a last act of desperation, pulled off his cowl; he unmasked himself, revealing a face that Robin knew well.
Bruce Wayne. His father.
Robin broke down in distraught anger and grief.
The Joker found this to be the very height of hilarity, of course.
Batman offered The Joker an ultimatum: as he did not want to kill him, and Arkham Asylum was clearly not keeping him contained, Batman offered The Joker a place by his side. Batman would help to rehabilitate him, and teach him to harness his inexorable power for good.
The Joker listened to his offer very seriously, but then laughed maniacally. He said this situation reminded him of a 'real killer joke'.
"See, there were these two guys in a lunatic asylum," The Joker began. "And one night, they decide they don't like living in an asylum any more. They decide they're going to escape!
So, like, they get up onto the roof - and there, just across this narrow gap, they see the rooftops of the town, stretching away in the moonlight… stretching away to freedom.
Now, the first guy, he jumps right across with no problem. But his friend, his friend didn't dare make the leap. Y'see… y'see, he's afraid of falling. So then, the first guy has an idea: he says "Hey! I have my flashlight with me! I'll shine it across the gap between the buildings. You can walk along the beam and join me!"
But the second guy just shakes his head, and he says "What do you think I am, crazy? You'd turn it off when I was half way across!"
Batman gave a short exhale of a laugh at first, for the joke was not a terribly funny one - but then, he slowly began to realize the truth that lay at the heart of it.
Batman and The Joker were at least equally insane.
But perhaps Batman was more so, for believing that The Joker could be redeemed.
Batman began to laugh then, in earnest; the joke was on them.
Robin watched in horror as his father, who was also the Batman, laughed until tears streamed down his face, as his arch-nemesis The Joker slipped away into the night.
"A most tragic tale," sighed the fairy Nuala. "Poor Robin!"
"Indeed," said Destiny. "One might feel sorry for all of them."
"I don't," said my mother Rose. "Batman was being a dick. He let a guy who did horrible things to Barbara get off scot-free, all to keep playing his little games with The Joker because he just couldn't bear to let it go. It's sick."
"I believe that was the point, mother," I told her. "But moreover, what would you have preferred that he do? Take revenge? Kill The Joker?"
"...No," admitted Rose, unhappily. "Revenge isn't a good thing either. I don't believe in it or support it. I just… I don't know. The whole thing makes me mad."
"dO yoU meAn thE anGry kiNd oF maD oR thE crazy oNe?" asked Delirium.
"Both," grumped Rose.
"You are justified to be in a bleak mood about it all," said Destiny. "I myself shared your sentiment, especially as the clock counted down to the hour of blackest night…and the arrival of Doomsday.
The world was in turmoil, and my superhero project was in tatters.
Kal-El, who was also Superman, was captured by Luthor's lackeys following the attempted assassination by Green Arrow. The Man of Steel languished in a secret LexCorps facility underground, surrounded by blinding lead and kept weakened by the close proximity of Kryptonite. His friend, The Flash, rescued him and brought him to the Fortress of Solitude in the icy north to recover, but he never would; instead he who was Superman waited there, alone, to die - either from the effects of exposure to the Kryptonite radiation, or at the hands of Doomsday.
Bruce Wayne, who was once Batman, checked himself into Arkham Asylum, The Joker having obliterated whatever sanity remained left in his traumatized psyche.
Diana Prince, who was Wonder Woman, hung up her mantle for good; she hid herself away on Paradise Island to rule over the Amazons, and left Man's World to its fate.
Jay Garrick, the superhero who styled himself The Flash after becoming my first apprentice, was as good as dead - after his rescue of Superman, Luthor's army pursued The Flash for capture. He ran so fast that he created a time distortion, running straight into the past and never looking back.
Hal Jordan, the last Green Lantern that remained alive on Earth, was insane, attempting to live in his own version of the past.
Garth Ceridian, known as Aquaman, was suffering the fate of a hopelessly beached whale, rotting away and gasping his last breaths, torn away and parched of the life-giving water he so loved.
Victor Stone, the Cyborg, was used as an unwitting pawn by the Brainiac AI. Convinced to enter an alliance with LexCorps, Victor set about creating a race of mechanized humans - codenamed the OMACS - as well as a unique, customized biomechanoid body for Brainiac himself.
Brainiac, however, ran like a computer virus throughout the cyborg population, bringing them all together into a sort of hive-mind collective.
He also reneged on an agreement to leave Victor's body once his aims were accomplished: Brainiac left a backdoor for himself in the programming of Victor's cybernetics. When Victor fought against the OMAC project - and gave aid to The Flash, allowing Superman to escape imprisonment from the LexCorps facility - Brainiac, to use the common parlance, 'bricked' him, leaving him unable to operate his own cybernetic limbs and thus functionally paralyzed.
My only hope lay in my other project, which was the replacement of my brother with a new - and hopefully, better - Dream."
"Hold up now!" cried my mother Rose. "You PLANNED to have your own brother killed, and for me to give birth to a new Dream?!"
"Yes," said Destiny. "It was I who set events into motion for you to be born and to cross paths with Morpheus, in too many ways to count: suffice it to say that I ensured that Roderick Burgess knew of Hob Gadling, spurring him to desire the capture of my sister Death, and then ensured that the means to capture my brother Morpheus came into his possession.
I felt it necessary for the new Dream to have a human, Earthling mother, so that he would have the proper perspective and investment in humanity's survival.
I could not guarantee that you would develop the needed feelings for my brother, or he for you, due to the nature of free will and the infinite possibilities of the multiverse, of which this Destiny is but one variation; however, I stacked the deck in my favor, by encouraging Desire to plant the seed for me."
Desire looked scandalized. "You USED me, brother?! Color me shocked! No wonder you were so adamantly dead-set against a plan to fix Morphy's love life, even before I'd thought of such a thing. When someone tells me not to do something, I want to do it all the more - you knew that, didn't you? You impregnated my mind with your little scheme, and knew that a little sprinkling of reverse-psychology would do the trick to get me going!"
"Destruction, in spite of himself, also took part," said Destiny, "when he hid himself away on that island to be 'Creation'. He never managed to successfully channel that creativity into his pieces of art, but his creative influence was nevertheless greatly impactful; I had to borrow his power in order to make a new Dream possible."
"BORROW, eh? You are the BEST!" laughed Desire.
"Or the worst," said Rose, shaking her head at Destiny. "Here I was, not sure of who or what to blame, and it was you the whole time. The grand puppetmaster, the head of the 7 Endless dicks: Destiny himself."
"I do not care what you think of me," said Destiny, without emotion. "For what it is worth, you did manage to surprise me: I was despairing of Earth's people getting anything sorted enough to save themselves, and of your son understanding his duties as the Lord of Dreams in time. I had given up, thinking that the loss of life on Earth would serve only as yet another harsh and bitter lesson for Dream, and the first such lesson for the new Endless that was known as Daniel.
But I was wrong: you fortuitously encountered one of my champions, Barbara Gordon, and used her to talk some sense into your son.
And your son did something unprecedented and rather novel - he caused, in essence, another vortex, on purpose. He brought together the perspectives into an almost-singularity… and rather than this vortex collapsing in on itself, destroying the Dreaming and the Dreamers within as Morpheus feared, it gave Reality a reboot. A fresh start, another chance at avoiding annihilation."