Bruce Wayne, Dipper Pines, Peter Parker, and Odysseus walk into a bar.

Insane story, I’m the bartender. They walk up to the table in unorderly fashion, throwing suspicious gazes this way and that at the empty bar around them.

“What would you like to drink?” I finally emerge behind the table, shaking two metal cups in one hand. Odysseus is in front of me in a quick stride or two, barely at the end of my sentence.

“By the gods, what have you wrought?” he towers over me, his voice like a harsh whisper. He looks down at the table, his focus captured by the sound of wine that pours from my metal cups into a goblet between us.

“The world’s best tasting wine, I suppose?” the sound slows, and he sits. The rest follow suit with more curiosity than wariness.

I turn to Bruce. “No.” He stops me, holding up his palm. “I’ll be fine without a drink.” I smile, then turn to Peter “Uh.. yeah nothing for me either” But I catch the slight regret in his eyes when Bruce pulls out a small metal alcohol container from the inner pocket of his suit jacket. My gaze falls on Dipper, he doesn’t look back, glued to the journal he’s been writing on since he started. I place a can of Pitt cola on the table in front of him.

“Did Strange put you up to this?” No, and no it wasn’t Athena or Bill or… anyone else. I just had a question.

“What would you do if the world suddenly ended?” I asked, jumping from one person to the next.

“Would I be with my wife?” Odysseus, his wine still untouched. Yes, and he would embrace it he said.

“I’m sure there would be some way to stop it, somewhere in the journal.” Dipper, touching the glass windows of the bar as if he could slip through into the ether that stared back at him at the other side of the glass, dark and moving, instead of the town that should surround the room he intended to enter.

“Yeah, I’m sure the guys would already be on it.” Peter chimed in.

“No, not like… apocalyptic ending, what if your world ended.” I paused “If you died?”

“Would I be with my wife?” Odysseus, his wine still untouched. Yes, and he would embrace it he said.

“Who would take care of Gotham if you died?” Bruce froze, and then eased his tension, professional. “The city can carry on.”

“What if there was no more crime in Gotham.” I pushed. “A peaceful city is one I’d love to live in.” He laughed.

“But what would you do then? What meaning will there be?” He took another swig from his flask. “If I lived in the city of my dreams, then I would rest in it.”

What happens when your journey is over?

“Would my wife be there?” Odysseus raised his cup. “Yes, waiting right at home.” He drank from it. “Then what else is there to look for?”

Peter’s silence was the loudest, to see a wife? To rid a city of crime? Such specific goal hadn’t come up before, there was always some bigger badder guy enamored for some reason with interrupting his everyday continuance. There was always some grander scale, some deeper, more philosophical battle to face. Could it ever end? If it did, then what? If he somehow simply got his life back to himself, or balanced his lives, what then?

“What about you?” Dipper asked me, Pitt cola half empty. “What are you?”

The way he held his pen with eagerness let me know he hoped my answer would be to reveal by what sorcery I conjured up this philosophical bar. So I indulge him, subverted. “I’m a writer, and I’m trying to finish my story.”

“One of your stories?” no, my story. The one I’m living in. what do I do at the end of it.

Dipper looked to me, and me to Odysseus, and Odysseus to Bruce and Bruce to Peter.

What do I do when the story is over?

#prowriterschallenge24