More than nine hundred years in the future there is a planet whose name does not matter. On this planet there is a boy whose name also does not matter in this time.
In another time he was called Superboy-Prime.
In another universe his name was Jon Lane Kent.
He should be dead.
This planet, with no name that matters, has something in common with a planet that existed a long, long time ago.
That planet was called Krypton.
If Superboy-Prime had known that this planet was going to go the way of that long ago Krypton he may not have been there at that time. Maybe, maybe not. It was hard to tell what Superboy-Prime would do anymore. Spending more than two years stuck in the 31st century had not been good for his already damaged psyche, mostly because he had spent that time in nearly complete isolation.
He tended to kill any sentient life-forms he came across and didn't leave much time for them to have long conversations.
Superboy-Prime had chosen to stay behind in the future for reasons known only to him when he had come there with the 21st century team of teenage superheroes known as the Teen Titans. Then he had gone back to the 21st century, killed some people, caused a few time paradoxes, and died.
And that should have been the end of him. But it wasn't. Somehow he'd ended up back in the 31st century. Fast forward two years and he was on a planet whose name did not matter, looking for technology that had been left behind when the planet was evacuated.
Because the planet was going to explode, not that he knew that.
Superboy-Prime flipped over a lab bench. "It should be here!" He growled and tore through a cabinet that was luckily empty of anything radioactive. "Where is it?"
A small sample of the tech that Superboy-Prime was looking for was in the lab, left behind in the rush to get off-planet, but he wouldn't be able to find it before the planet died. However, he was just close enough to it that when the planet tore itself apart from the inside out it did just what Superboy-Prime wanted it for.
Superboy-Prime went tumbling nine hundred years into the past and crash landed very near to the only other human/ Kryptonian hybrid currently in existence.
His name was Conner Kent.
He was called Superboy.
Conner's head shot up. He had been seconds away from falling asleep at the desk in Delilah's new dorm room but something had woken him, and he was pretty sure it wasn't the box that Delilah had dropped absolutely on purpose.
"Cassie and I finished unpacking without you," she said. "Thanks so much for offering to help."
Wasn't it a little early for sarcasm?
"I haven't gotten much sleep with that smuggling ring causing problems," Conner said, looking around. "Did you hear something?"
"It is move-in day, mister super hearing," Delilah said. "Is something wrong?"
That was a somewhat unnecessary question. As members of the Teen Titans in New York City, the answer was almost always, "Yes."
"I'm going to call Tim," Conner said.
Delilah nodded and turned back to Cassie. Thanks to her Wayne Scholarship ("No, Tim, that doesn't mean you can pay for all my schooling.") she'd been able to afford a single room, which was kind of important if she wanted to keep being a superhero a secret, but the space was small enough that any movement that wasn't carefully controlled risked landing someone with bruises. ("Someone" meaning Delilah, the only squishy human in the room.)
"I think you're being haunted," Cassie said.
"Why's that?" Delilah asked.
Cassie pointed to the book lying on the bed. It was one that Delilah had brought with her, a book about ghosts, which was open to a page about White Ladies.
"That book wasn't there a minute ago," Cassie said. "I'm pretty sure it was in the box you said not to touch."
Delilah felt the hair on the back of her neck stand up. "It was."
She knew how to deal with a haunting, in theory. It was similar to an exorcism. She still sucked at exorcisms.
Conner tapped Delilah's shoulder. "Tim wants us in Time Square. Emergency."
Hopefully that emergency had to do with the drug smugglers they were chasing. Conner wasn't the only one losing sleep to those jerks.
Delilah threw on her mask and coat and they left though the nearest open window. The streets below them were filled with people running in the opposite direction in which they were flying. There was so much noise that none of them noticed the whispering wind following them, not even Superboy.
Time Square was painted with blood. There were bodies scattered every which way, torn to pieces, burnt, full of holes and so very dead. There wasn't even a hint of anyone left alive.
Superboy stopped flying at the sight, causing Wallflower to collide with him in midair, which sent them both spinning like tops for several seconds while they got their balance back. Those few seconds was more than enough time for the cause of the carnage to notice them.
"Kon-El!" Superboy-Prime flew straight at them and grabbed Superboy by the shoulders. "Clone," he growled, shaking Superboy with enough force to kill an elephant. "Die."
Superboy-Prime punched Superboy into the ground and was about to fly after him when he was jerked to a stop by Wonder Girl's lasso. He tore uselessly at the burning lariat.
"This was made to stop Trigon," Wonder Girl told him. "You're not getting out."
Superboy-Prime raged. Somehow he was able to work up the anger even as his life was being drained, but the words that made it out of his mouth were indistinct. Wonder Girl and Wallflower looked at each other.
"I'll check on Superboy," Wallflower said.
Wonder Girl nodded. "I've got this."
Wallflower flew down to the crater Superboy's fall had left in the pavement. Superboy was in the process of standing up, rubbing the back of his head.
"Are you alright?" she asked.
"Yeah," Superboy said. "Did you see the others?"
Wallflower shook her head. Superboy frowned. He looked around them like he expected the other Teen Titans to pop up any second.
"We should look for survivors," Wallflower suggested. "I'm sure the others will get here soon."
"I don't hear any heartbeats nearby," Superboy said.
He looked around again, more carefully this time, and his face went white. He flew past Wallflower and started dragging bodies aside. Wallflower went after him and reached his side just as he pulled a black-haired boy out of the pile.
It was Red Robin.
The wind blew the smell of blood in their faces. Wallflower made a sound like a crying kitten. Then, without any warning, she crumbled to the ground. Superboy just managed to catch her before she landed on a body. He left bloody handprints on her coat.
"Wallflower, are you okay?" Superboy asked.
Glowing blue eyes looked up at him. "Sorry, Superboy, Wallflower's not here."
Superboy immediately looked away from those eyes and let go of Wallflower's arm. He knew what possession looked like. Lowering the risk of letting whatever had possessed Wallflower get a hold of Kryptonian powers was a priority, but not the only one. "Get out of her body," he demanded.
"Relax, Superboy. It's Trivia. Wallflower isn't in any condition to function right now."
Wonder Girl landed across from them with the husk of Superboy-Prime dragging behind her. "Is something wrong?"
"Yes," Superboy growled.
Wonder Girl took half a step back when she saw Wallflower's glowing irises.
Wallflower's, no, Trivia's eyes landed on the body at the end of Wonder Girl's lasso. "Is he dead?"
"Who are you?" Wonder Girl asked.
"Call me Trivia," Trivia said. "Is he dead?"
Wonder Girl gave her lasso a shake that caused the barbs on its surface to dig even deeper into Superboy-Prime's flesh. "Almost. Trivia from back in June?"
Trivia gave a sad smile. "In the flesh."
"That's not your body," Superboy said. "Get. Out."
Trivia started laughing. In the middle of a street filled with dead bodies this made her look a lot worse than she was.
"Any universe," she laughed. "You go to any Earth in the multiverse and any version of Superboy has the same berserk button!"
Superboy shook his head. Trivia had said that Wallflower wasn't in good condition, but looking at her Superboy had to wonder if Trivia was doing any better.
Trivia's last laugh turned into a sob. "Tim…Donna…Raven…I've seen all of you die so many times…"
"What?" Wonder Girl said. "Tim is…?" She finally noticed the body that Superboy was standing over. She put a hand over her mouth and a single tear ran down her face.
"They're all dead," Trivia said. "Donna, Raven, Bart, Aqualad, Skitter…I didn't see White Canary though."
"She's with Green Arrow today," Superboy said hoarsely.
The three of them stood looking at Red Robin's body until they heard a helicopter overhead. Trivia looked up and then waved her hand, saying a spell under her breath. The carnage that covered Time Square was almost instantly blanketed in a sea of black body bags. Six such bags were lined up in front of Superboy, Wonder Girl and Trivia.
"We'll take our dead," Trivia said. "And others will come for theirs."
"Where do we go?" Wonder Girl asked. "And what do we do with him?"
They all looked at what was left of Superboy-Prime.
"Isn't he dead yet?" Trivia asked.
"Do we really want to kill him?" Superboy asked.
"Yes," Trivia said.
The Silent Armour's lariat retreated as Superboy-Prime's body crumbled to dust.
Wonder Girl shook her head. "Too late to change our minds now."
None of them were sorry.
Trivia kicked the pile of dust that had been Superboy-Prime. "Burn in hell." She looked at Wonder Girl and Superboy. "Let's get out of here."
"Where are we?" Superboy asked.
Trivia hadn't given them a chance to protest before she whisked them away in a vortex of lights and sounds. Wonder Girl looked like she wanted to punch her through the nearest wall, but she didn't. Wallflower wouldn't be happy if she got sidelined for days with broken bones.
"This is my home," Trivia said. "It is…Well you start from your world and then go sideways. It's sort of between, so don't leave the building."
Wonder Girl scowled. "Or what?"
Trivia shook her head. "I don't know, but it probably won't be good for your health."
Superboy and Wonder Girl looked at each other. So, they didn't have a way out of there and Trivia still had Wallflower's body held hostage even if they had. They were going to have to just go along with what she wanted until something came up.
"Don't we get a tour or something," Superboy asked, "so we know where the doors outside are?"
Glowing blue eyes blinked. Trivia tilted her head. Then she snapped her fingers and they were enveloped in another transporting tornado that deposited them at the top of a very tall staircase.
"We'll start at the top," Trivia said.
Trivia showed them every room in the tower that seemed to be wider at the top than at the bottom judging by the shortening length of the hallways as they went down. There was a library, an infirmary and many, many bedrooms. Most of the bedrooms they saw looked lived in, with clothes scattered on the floor, and books and papers spread over desks, like their occupants were coming back any minute. One room was even lit with floating candles.
"Who else lives here?" Wonder Girl asked.
Trivia sighed. "No one, now."
There were three photos on the bedside table in one bedroom. One was of a large group of people standing in front of a T-shaped tower. Another was a candid photo of four people, three boys and a girl, sitting around a campfire and laughing together. The last photo was of two women and a man with their arms around each other smiling at the camera. Every person in these photos was dressed in some sort of costume.
Superboy immediately recognized the people in the last photo. They had different costumes and they were older, but it was unmistakably him, Wonder Girl and Wallflower.
He spotted Beast Boy's and Donna's faces in the large group photo. There was someone dressed nearly identically to the way Bart dressed when he was being Kid Flash and a boy dressed like a Robin. A girl in the photo was wearing a dark, hooded cloak that wouldn't look out of place in Raven's wardrobe. There was a Kid Flash and a Robin in the last photo too, and Superboy, and Wonder Girl.
Superboy grabbed Trivia's arm just as she was about to close the door and pointed to the photos. "What is that? Some kind of joke?"
"No," Trivia said. "And, ow."
Superboy quickly let go of her arm, which was really Wallflower's arm. "Then what is it?"
"A memory," Trivia said softly. "Can you wait until we get to the ground floor? I'd rather explain everything at once."
They waited.
Once they reached the ground floor, Trivia led them to a large set of double doors and threw them open. "Welcome to the Memorial."
They entered a hall that was lined on both sides with stone statues raised up on plinths. Trivia immediately went to a statue at the other end of the hall of a woman with long hair and looked up at her face. She acted like Superboy and Wonder Girl weren't there, and they got the feeling that this was something she did every time she went into this hall.
It was.
The statue was of the woman who had killed her.
Superboy and Wonder Girl followed Trivia into the hall. Wonder Girl read some of the plaques at the bases of the statues they passed. They didn't get very far before Wonder Girl elbowed Superboy and hissed at him that he had to look at this.
The statue was of a masked woman wearing a jumpsuit and a belt very like Red Robin's. She was signing something with one hand that Wonder Girl didn't know but Superboy recognized as the American Sign Language sign "fly" as in an airplane.
The plaque by her feet read Wallflower.
Superboy cleared his throat loudly. Trivia looked over and saw which statue they were standing in front of.
"Are you going to explain now?" Wonder Girl asked.
Trivia nodded. She joined them in front of the statue of the other Wallflower.
"Do you remember how I said we were family?" she asked Superboy.
Superboy nodded slowly.
"We lived here," Trivia said, "when it was real. This was Titans Tower. We were the Teen Titans, lots of us. We were heroes, but more than that we were a family." She looked up at Wallflower's statue. "I was proud to say I died a Titan."
Wonder Girl gasped. "So you were Wallflower."
Trivia looked at her with wide eyes. "You already knew? How?"
"When you brought me and Wallflower back to life," Wonder Girl said, "you left behind some of your memories. Most of them were about the Black Lanterns but some…We were pretty sure you were some other version of Wallflower."
Trivia nodded. "In another time, practically another world. After I died I got to stick around as a ghost because of a deal I made with Hecate so that I could help fight the Black Lanterns. I did odd jobs for her and sometimes that meant that I had to go to a different universe."
"Multiverse theory," Superboy interrupted.
"Not just a theory." Trivia smiled. "Power Girl is from a different Earth, you know."
They hadn't known. It explained a lot about her powers actually, and was something that Superman and Batman would be interested in knowing.
Batman probably already knew.
"Anyway," Trivia said, "I was on my way back from one of those jobs when the multiverse…reset, for lack of a better word. Someone rebooted it and everything was different. Hecate didn't even remember that I worked for her. She kicked me out."
"Why weren't you affected?" Superboy asked.
"That's what I wanted to know," Trivia said. "I mean, Delilah had been rebooted along with everything else. Eventually I found out that I stayed the same because I wasn't in a universe when the reboot happened. I was between universes but my body was on your Earth so Delilah ended up existing too. I wasn't really interested in not existing anymore so I set up shop here, between universes."
"So when you say you've seen us die before—" Wonder Girl choked before she could go any further, the bodies of their friends that were lying in the entrance hall at the forefront of her mind.
Trivia smiled sadly. "There were some bumps in the road getting this new universe established. When too many 'important' people died there were minor resets that that brought everything back to how it was before it went wrong. Usually it was entire teams, the Justice League, the Justice League of America, the Teen Titans. Sometimes you guys didn't even team up before all of you died, which made the resets faster."
"Do you think there'll be a reset now?" Superboy asked. Their entire team was dead and the universe didn't sound like it liked that.
Trivia frowned. "Maybe. There hasn't been one for almost six years, the way I'm counting, but with the Black Lanterns there have been a lot of important deaths."
"We could get them back," Wonder Girl said. "All of them."
Trivia shook her head. "Maybe, maybe not. It depends on what the universe wants."
"We should go back to Earth then," Superboy said. None of them would be part of the reset if they weren't on Earth.
Trivia shook her head again and told them that they would get plenty of warning if a reset was going to happen so they didn't have to go back just yet. Then she said that they should get some rest and were welcome to use any of the bedrooms. Wallflower's eyes stopped glowing when Trivia left her body. The ghost went out the door and disappeared. Since she didn't have a heartbeat Superboy wasn't able to keep track of her.
Wallflower swayed slightly before catching herself on the base of the other Wallflower's statue. "I can't believe they're dead."
Wonder Girl gave Wallflower a hug, which the other girl gratefully returned. Superboy gulped down tears that would not be helpful at the moment.
"I don't want to believe," Wonder Girl choked out.
"We could get them back," Superboy said. "We could get all of them back."
Wallflower shook her head. "We could but... Guys, while Trivia was in my body...Actually, I guess it's our body. That's messed up. But, anyway, I saw her life. Her team, her Teen Titans, they were more than a team, they were a family. They had been together though so much. We lost all of that."
Wonder Girl stepped back. "Our friends are dead. We could get them back, and you don't want to?"
"That's not what I mean!" Wallflower said. "There are spells, rituals, magical objects. I'll ask Constantine for help if I need to."
Superboy stepped between the two girls before any weapons could be drawn. "Okay, deep breaths. It's been a long day, let's get some rest and we'll figure out what to do tomorrow."
Wonder Girl and Wallflower looked at Superboy and then looked back at each other. Things really were a mess. Superboy was being the voice of reason.
"We're safe enough here," Wallflower said slowly. "Trivia hasn't lied to us about anything but—" She swallowed and continued in sign. "I think she's the one who taught me magic."
All three of them were silent.
"Tomorrow?" Wonder Girl asked.
"Tomorrow," Superboy and Wallflower agreed.
With that procrastination decided, they climbed back up to the fifteenth floor of the tower, chose rooms with the least disturbing décor and quickly fell asleep. Somehow they all slept soundly. Losing teammates was unfortunately not new. They all had coping mechanisms but it was a surprise when they worked.
Everyone in the building was woken up when the entire tower shook violently. Trivia flew through the wall of Wonder Girl's room. There wasn't time to bother with little things like doors.
"We have to leave," the ghost said. "Now."
In seconds the three living Titans had gathered in the hallway.
"What's happening?" Superboy asked as another tremor shook the building.
"A reset," Trivia said.
She flicked the fingers on her right hand and the six body bags appeared beside them. "Brace yourselves, this is going to be a bumpy ride."
Trivia's transportation tornado threw them around until none of them knew which way was up. They landed in a heap on overgrown shrubbery in the middle of nowhere. Trivia was breathing heavily, even though she wasn't supposed to need to breathe.
"That bad?" Wallflower asked.
Trivia nodded. The three Titans pushed themselves to their feet and stood next to the body bags that held their teammates.
"Will you be able to get back in time?" Wonder Girl asked Trivia.
Trivia shook her head. "I'm not going back."
Wonder Girl looked past the white hood that was hanging over Trivia's face and saw her jaw firmly set with determination. "Why not?"
"Six years, Cassie," Trivia said. "Have you ever been completely alone for six years? No, this time I'm staying with you."
Superboy put a hand on Trivia's shoulder and was only slightly surprised when his hand didn't pass right through her. "We aren't the people you knew."
Trivia scoffed. "You are, you've just forgotten."
"If you stay, you'll forget too," Wallflower pointed out.
Trivia shrugged. "Maybe, maybe not. We don't know what will happen. Maybe the universe will do us a favour and forget that Superboy-Prime existed."
She looked up at the sky. There were no clouds but lightning flashed. No thunder followed.
"It's time," Trivia said.
Superboy reached out and took Wonder Girl's hand. In turn, Wonder Girl took Wallflower's hand. Trivia stood next to her, watching the sky.
"I love you guys," Wonder Girl whispered.
Lightning flashed.
End of Part Two