Talia stares in disbelief at the ripples in the waters of the Lazarus Pit. Never has she seen or heard of a person dipped in the Lazarus Pit diving back in after their initial emergence. The waters are caustic and painful to mind, body, and soul, and even the individuals driven to utter madness make a point to exit the Pit as quickly as possible.
Even half brain-dead from his unexplained resurrection in his grave, Jason Todd defies all expectations.
"A failure," her father declares disdainfully as the Waters begin to still. In his mind, no doubt, it was inevitable. Despite it being in an unexpected fashion, no street rat – even one taken in and acknowledged by Batman – could dare hope to emerge from the Waters with his mind intact.
But then, to the surprise of Talia, Ra's, and all present attendants, Jason Todd surfaces again. He is howling in anger and agony, a truly wretched sound, and he flounders as he attempts to strike for the shore. The center of the Pit is deceptively deep; not even Ra's knows where its bottom is. Talia frowns; the boy had been able to swim without issue even while in a waking vegetative state. That he is struggling now is not a good sign. He has switched from screaming to grunting, harsh sounds that seem like they could barely be produced by a human throat.
But he makes it to the shallower part, gets his feet underneath him, and hauls himself upright.
Talia gasps and reflexively takes a couple startled steps toward the Pit before forcing herself still. She can hear surprised noises from the other attendants; her lapse in control is at least shared.
Never has a person dived back under the surface of the Lazarus Pit after their initial emergence.
Never has a person brought someone else back with them.
People have disappeared in the Pit before, sinking beneath the Waters and simply… not coming back up. But Talia cannot imagine the Pit not wholly devouring any bodies abandoned in its depths – and Ra's, for all his centuries of using this Pit and observing who else has used it, does not recognize the face of the boy whom Jason has pulled from the Pit, either.
Ra's is utterly fascinated by this development. Talia is assured that he will not lose interest in Jason for a long time and, thus, he is safe from Ra's ordering his disposal, like Ra's was so close to doing before Talia convinced him to allow her to use the Pit for the boy.
No, now Jason, and the other boy he hauled from the Pit, have the opposite problem. Ra's full interest in a person is as dangerous as his disinterest.
There's not much anyone, even Ra's, can do with Jason right now, though. The boy returned from the Pit fully aware and responsive, but caught deep within the throes of Pit Madness. He is more beast than man, and they were forced to thoroughly restrain him, for both his safety and their own. The boy he pulled from the Pit is, curiously, exempt from his violence.
The "Lazarus Boy," as he is now being called in hushed whispers, does not seem to suffer from Pit Madness, but he is barely more cognizant than Jason was before the Pit. He has rudimentary knowledge of self-defense when pressed, and whenever he is separated from Jason – something that always prompts Jason into horrendous protest – he somehow finds his way back to Jason's side, no matter how many restraints or guards are put on him. Ra's is displeased by this, because he wants the Boy and all the unknown possibilities that he represents all to himself. But not too displeased, because he has plenty of samples to entertain himself with while he figures out how to permanently peel the Lazarus Boy away from Jason without killing either of them. Jason is of lesser interest, but he still pulled the Boy from the Pit in the first place, which Ra's takes to mean there must be something special about him.
There are rumors among their foot soldiers that the Lazarus Boy is the Pit given form, a creature meant to bring hellfire and suffering upon the Earth. Talia is skeptical, because the Boy hardly seems to have any desire to do anything aside from staying by Jason. But she will admit, only in the most private recesses of her mind, that the Boy is unnerving. Between his unearthly countenance of white hair, glowing green eyes, and too-pale skin, and the fact that he bleeds the same green as the Lazarus Pit, though without any of its healing properties… he is an otherworldly figure.
Talia is not sure if she wants the Lazarus Boy to regain his mind or not.
When Jason's condition improves, on the other hand, Talia is glad – she had been unsure if he would regain any measure of sanity, given how long he'd been in the Pit. His restraints are removed, though the Pit Madness is just barely controlled at any given moment. Talia begins his training immediately on orders from Ra's, though she has her own plans for the boy once he's ready, Lazarus Boy or no Lazarus Boy practically attached at the hip. In the meantime, she wisely decides to forbid him from sparring until he can be reasonably trusted to not tear his sparring partner apart.
The Lazarus Boy mindlessly mimics all of the training Jason is put through. He is sloppy, but gradually becomes more precise. He is the only sparring partner Talia will allow Jason to have, because he is the only one who seems completely safe from Jason's wrath. However, because of the Boy's lack of experience, he is not a very challenging opponent for Jason. Their "sparring matches" are more Jason teaching the Boy the rhythms of a fight than actual sparring.
There is a mind buried somewhere, Talia thinks as she observes the Boy and considers the progress he has made. If he were truly mindless, he would be incapable of learning at the rate he is doing so.
Throwing him in the Pit to restore his mind is not an option, given that he emerged from it. Ra's is pushing to find a way to restore him, and despite her misgivings, Talia cannot defy him on this without raising suspicion. There are a few options to try, and one of them would be almost perfect. They are almost certain to have something to help, and they would keep the boys safe from Ra's, too; Ra's wouldn't even be able to complain because it would be under the guise of something that he wants. She is less concerned for their wellbeing (though she is, to some extent), and more concerned because Ra's turning them into weapons to do his bidding would be… less than ideal, when she is in the beginning stages of rebelling against him and cannot afford for high-potential individuals like Jason Todd and the Lazarus Boy to fall under Ra's thrall.
But first, she would have to test Jason for aptitude for a certain skill. It is unlikely he has talent for this skill, given that humans seem to lack a certain necessary something to use the techniques (and oh, how Talia has tried with little success), but perhaps the All-Caste will be willing to do her a favor, anyway.
"He has talent for soul manipulation like I've never seen before," Talia argues, later, still amazed by the discovery. Jason only had to watch her complete the beginning stages of the technique before he was figuring out and using the completed version himself.
"I don't give a shit what kind of talent he has. I will not train him while he is soul-bound to that… thing you've defiled the Acres of All with," Ducra replies disdainfully, gesturing to the Lazarus Boy.
Soul-bound, Talia thinks, tucking that little tidbit away for later. "I should think that your order would have no trouble breaking such a bond."
"Not at all. But I imagine your boy would fight us every step of the way. The separation would be a mess. Unless you want him back damaged, like his creature there."
"The creature is damaged?" Talia asks.
"His soul's in tatters. I'm amazed that thing is alive, let alone partially functional," Ducra admits.
"Teach me how to heal him, you bloody hag!" Jason demands from where he's been utterly pinned by All-Caste members from the first time Ducra insulted the Boy and, thus far, has been silently seething.
"No way, you brat." Ducra rolls her eyes so hard, it's a wonder they don't pop from her wizened skull. "The All-Caste's mission is to eliminate creatures like him. In fact," she snaps her fingers and approaches the Lazarus Boy, "I should get right on that."
Jason nearly kills himself on All-Caste spears while trying to claw Ducra's eyes from their sockets in a rage. It takes four monks to hold him down.
Talia closes her eyes and breathes out slowly. This had not gone nearly as well as she'd hoped. A regrettable mistake.
But Ducra, miraculously, stops once she holds the Boy's head in her hands. Surprise flickers across the crone's face. Talia doesn't think she's ever seen Ducra surprised before.
"Well fuck," Ducra murmurs, her hands dropping away. "Settle down, boy, I've changed my mind," she snaps to Jason.
"You bitch!" Jason howls, nearly inconsolable.
Ducra grunts. "We kill evil, and monsters that twist and prey on humans. That—" she jabs her walking stick at the Boy, "—may be the body of such a monster, but his soul – or what remains of it – is pure human. And innocent. We do not harm the innocent." Ducra sighs. "I want to know what idiot shoved a soul like that into such a body, because there is no natural way for such a thing to occur. Need to beat them over the head."
"Will you take Jason for training?" Talia asks again, her heart in her throat as she steers the encounter back to its original purpose. Maybe this will work out.
"Ugh, fine," Ducra complains. She whacks Jason, helpless under a pile of monks, with her walking stick. "If you think you can behave, boy, I'll even show you how to help out that friend of yours."
"Don't you dare think about separating me from him," Jason snarls. Well, that answers the question of if he was aware of his bond.
Ducra walks away without answering. Talia winces internally. She is still not sure if bringing Jason and the Boy to the Acres of All was a mistake. At least, for now, Ra's cannot touch them.
Talia has her answer a scant six months later – much too short to finish training, not nearly long enough to direct Ra's attention to other projects – when Jason returns to the League of Assassins, the Boy at his side.
"Danny," Jason corrects brusquely. "His name is Danny."
Talia raises an eyebrow and studies the newly-christened "Danny." From the name "Daniel," of Hebrew origin, meaning "God is my judge." Talia wonders if the name choice is intentional, somehow. But only time will tell. His time at the All-Caste seems to have done him a world of good. The blankness of his eyes has been replaced by the sharp awareness of an intelligent being.
It seems to have done Jason good, too. He is more settled in his skin, though the scorching fury in his eyes has not abated. His bond with Danny is likely still intact, given that he has not gone on a murderous frenzy in the All-Caste and gotten himself killed for it.
"Didn't complete their training," Jason answers without being prompted. "I got what I needed from them."
Talia raises an eyebrow, communicating her disappointment with his lack of commitment without uttering a word. Jason scoffs.
"Just because their training was useful doesn't mean it was aligned with my goals," he spits, his eyes blazing. "I need teachers who have their feet on the ground, in the mud, not ones that have their heads buried in the mystical clouds up their asses."
Danny snorts quietly. It is the first time Talia has known him to respond to something that has been said.
Talia does not sigh in exasperation, but she wants to. It will be infinitely harder to keep Ra's away from Jason and Danny if they are not with the All-Caste.
They cannot stay at Nanda Parbat. That much is obvious. Ra's obsession with the two has only grown more dangerous in their absence. He is becoming more convinced that the Lazarus Boy holds the key to fulfilling his plans of world domination. They cannot stay long in one place, either, or Ra's will track them down.
Keeping Jason under her thumb by catering to his wishes and goals, to ultimately control his movements and therefore keep him away from Ra's, is a delicate balancing act. Both Ra's and Jason are extremely touchy individuals, sensitive to attempts at manipulation and unforgiving of those attempts. But at least they both have some manner of affection for her – Ra's in his own twisted way, and Jason's in gratitude (not that he shows it often) and perhaps even some misguided affection for a maternal figure.
She is the Demon's Daughter. She will prevail.
She had initially planned for Jason to train with some of the League's best and brightest before returning to Gotham, but there is no help for it now. Gotham is the only place in the world where Ra's cannot touch.
Jason is not ready to return to Gotham and take on the Bat. But perhaps if she sends trainers to him, instead of the other way around…
Convincing some of them to take a trip to Gotham just to train someone will not be easy. But Talia will manage.
When Jason murders the first one, Talia quietly realizes that she has an opportunity. Send Jason certain League-aligned warriors for teaching – specifically, ones that are the kind of despicable that Jason would have no qualms killing – and she can rid herself of some of Ra's most vicious warriors without raising suspicion.
Two birds with one stone.
Jason eventually loses his patience with milking his abhorrent teachers dry and then killing them. Talia has seen this day coming for a long time. It is less time, perhaps, than she would have hoped for him, but being in Gotham, even if he never leaves the underground bunker-turned-training facility, has worn his patience paper thin.
"I'm not waiting any longer," Jason declares. "I'm ready."
He has become a fearsome warrior, Talia admits to herself, and the Lazarus Boy is no slouch, either. They should have no problem taking Gotham by storm, both making it safer for her son and clearing his way for entrance into Batman's growing clan.
Selfishly, she hopes they both survive painting targets on their backs in the most dangerous city in the world.
Red Hood and Wraith. Talia does not know much about the Lazarus Boy as a person, other than that he follows Jason's lead on just about everything, but she knows there will be no better partner for Red Hood than he.
Good luck, she thinks.
It is extraordinarily frustrating, Jason reflects, when you're trying to speed-build a criminal empire to drag Batman and the Joker out of the shadows, and Ra's al fucking Ghul just won't stop sending teams of assassins to drag you back to the League. They inevitably muck up Jason's operations whenever they show up and draw more attention from the Bats than Jason is ready for, because the Bats get squirrely whenever the League of Assassins shows up in Gotham and breaks their uneasy truce.
Talia had overestimated the extent to which Ra's would honor his deal with Batman, if he's willing to so flagrantly break it in pursuit of Jason and Danny.
The only reason they haven't already been caught and dragged back is because none of them (still alive, at least) know that Danny is capable of turning intangible, along with a whole slew of other abilities and enhancements. And whatever powers Danny has, they are available to Jason through the Lazarus bond they share. They learned this once Danny recovered his mind in the All-Caste and have been hiding it ever since, training their powers and connection only in stolen moments where they are sure the information won't get back to the League.
Spending so much time learning more mundane skills from the League of Assassins may have been overkill when Jason had access to a powerset that most assassins would die for, but better to be overprepared than underprepared, and to leave Danny's abilities as an ace in the hole.
Jason still thinks that Danny got the raw end of the deal with their bond. Jason gets powers and enhancements and badass kidneys that leave him virtually immune to any toxin (though they took their sweet time filtering out the gunk from the Lazarus Pit to return his sanity), and Danny gets… the mental and physical skills honed from years of being a vigilante and then an assassin in training. Skills he may have already had, because while the only thing he definitively remembers of his past is his name, strange tidbits and skills pop up at odd moments.
Shows how much the League of Assassins knows, Jason snorts. They think Danny was born from the Pit itself, but there is absolutely a "before the Pit" past buried somewhere in Danny's noggin.
(At least, Jason hopes it's buried, because there is a distinct possibility that he doesn't want to acknowledge that the fragments that Danny has aren't the tip of the iceberg… they're all he has left. He didn't have the courage to ask the All-Caste to check.)
They both wish they knew how Danny got into the Pit in the first place. Jason barely remembers pulling him out, with much of that time and the next few months drowned out in green rage pain. But he does remember – drowning, but also knowing that someone else needed help help help—
Diving back into the Pit was as excruciating as dragging his broken body to try to save his traitorous birth mother in Ethiopia. But he'd done that, so surely he could've done this, too.
And he did.
Jason doesn't know how deep Danny was, and Danny's only memories before the All-Caste helped his soul regenerate into something semi-functional are either fragmented or are of the connection with Jason they somehow forged in the Pit. But something tells Jason that the Pit – maybe all the Pits – run a lot deeper than anyone would imagine. It's a scary thought.
"So what's our next move?" Danny asks, sliding his arms around Jason from behind. With the bond they share, affection comes naturally and easily.
Jason hugs Danny's arms close and leans back into his embrace. He's so grateful that Danny supports him unconditionally, even though he doesn't quite understand why provoking Batman to kill the Joker is so important to Jason. Jason doesn't know if this is because he has no memories of parents anymore, or if the lingering damage to his soul means he's missing some fundamental functions.
At least it's better than the catatonia he was trapped in before the All-Caste. Of knowing that someone was there, but that that someone was so painfully lost that he couldn't help them…
"Dinner," Jason replies, before he can get lost in memories.
Jason can feel Danny quirk a rueful grin against the back of his neck. Not quite what Danny was asking about, Jason is sure.
But the details of the plan for next of Black Mask's territory they're targeting can wait. Jason wants to spend a little time in peace, listening to their souls hum in harmony like he learned in the All-Caste, before plunging his hands back into the belly of the beast that is Gotham.
Somehow, they're able to keep the plan on track, though they've had to move up the timetable a bit. Batman has been baited, and Black Mask has just broken the Joker out of Arkham. Nightwing is still in commission, providing backup for Batman, but Robin has been largely out of Gotham ever since Ra's showed up.
Everything is lining up perfectly. Jason knocks out and captures the Joker, then taunts Batman to follow if he can. Danny is a beacon in his mind, waiting at the abandoned building Jason chose for the inevitable confrontation. Jason knows that Danny will have already set up the bombs.
Now, somewhere in the back of his mind, Jason is aware that Ra's is inevitably getting fed up with his inability to capture Jason and Danny. But it's far down his list of current concerns – the top one currently being the soon-to-be-dead Rogue he's got slung over his shoulder.
Unfortunately, Ra's forces don't have the decency to wait until after Jason is finished with his current engagement. A flash in the corner of his eye has him dodging a throwing knife of a style that Jason recognizes as primarily used in the League. In moments, he's surrounded by five figures. They wear poorly-fitted League uniforms with cloaks that conceal their faces but do nothing to conceal their physical deformities: malformed limbs and hunched, crooked backs and strange lumps under their clothes.
Jason's first instinct is to kill them all, like all of the other League teams Ra's has sent after them, and be done with it. Sending these… beings instead of regular assassins is new, but it doesn't matter. They will die all the same. He doesn't care what tricks they have hidden up their sleeves.
He's incandescently furious that they have showed up now, of all times.
One of them lurches close in nauseating movements that have Jason pumping it full of lead before it can get within arm's reach. The other beings surprisingly back off, as if intimidated by his immediate choice for lethal force. Unusual for Ra's forces. One whimpers.
"Ra's sends his regards," the dying one breathes before it slumps, dead. Its flesh loses its shape, collapsing in a saggy pile. Jason makes the mistake of glancing down at the corpse. It has started to decompose already and will likely be nothing more than a pile of bones within a day, at the rate it's going.
But Jason's attention catches and stays on its exposed face.
It has his face.
A little younger and less hardened and sporting a bunch of moles, to be sure. But there is no mistaking it.
"What is this," Jason hisses. Some sort of trick with magic or plastic surgery?
"Ra's al Ghul wishes for you to return to Nanda Parbat," one of the figures rasps. "He grows impatient with your refusal to return. He sent us to ensure your cooperation."
"Who are you," Jason barks, training his gun on the speaker. He doesn't care who they are. They're dead men walking. He just wants to know why one of them has his face.
"Ra's grew impatient for your return," the same figure rasps, pulling back its hood. Jason's face stares back at him again, though one half of the face slumps like it's partially melted. "He made us from your genetic material to try to unlock the secrets of yourself and the Lazarus Boy."
Jason's utter shock isn't enough to kill his situational awareness, and he fends off clumsy attacks from a couple other figures while his mind whirls. The man with his face can't be implying what he thinks he's implying, right? He blurts, "Don't tell me you're freaking clones?"
The figure who's designated himself spokesperson replies, with damning confirmation, "What's left of the first batch. Ra's was impatient enough to speed up our growth, with some… unsatisfying results."
"First batch?!" Jason repeats, not hearing much beyond that. "Are you fucking kidding me?"
He doesn't have time to deal with fucking clones when he's got an unconscious Joker slung across his back, ready for the final confrontation.
Or a not-so-unconscious Joker, since he hears the clown start to giggle. These clones have wasted too much of his time already. Of course Joker would think it's a marvelous joke that his kidnapping has been interrupted, by clones of his captor, no less. Jason hits him over the head again to shut him up.
Clones. He has clones. He can't get past that. Only Superman has clones of himself running around, and now Jason Todd has joined his lone ranks in the "people in the superhero/vigilante community who have been cloned." It's fucking bizarre. More people have come back from the dead (like Jason has also done) than have been cloned.
"Fucking Ra's!" Jason seethes out loud. "What am I supposed to do with them?"
"Cooperate with us, ideally," the lead clone replies.
Jason spares a moment to laugh, harshly. Cooperate? With knock-off Jason Todds who bow to Ra's while he's in in the middle of his endgame?
He shoots the speaking clone straight in the center of the forehead. "There's only one of me, and that's me," he snarls as the clone collapses.
He doesn't have time for this now, but unfortunately, it looks like he doesn't have a choice but to take care of this now.
One of the remaining three clones starts to laugh as all three lunge at him. It's a shrieking, high-pitched noise that is the furthest thing from amusement. A Joker laugh. Jason can't help cringing, hearing that laugh in something similar to his own voice. It's worse when that clone flips his hood back – it's his face, twisted into the Joker's ever-present sneer.
"HahaHAhAhAHahaH—" the laughter cuts off with a gurgle as Jason shoots the abomination in the throat.
"I'm nothing like him," Jason says. He's not sure who he's saying it to, or who he's trying to convince.
It shakes him more than he wants to admit that one of his misshapen clones looked and acted like the Joker.
His distraction costs him. One of the two remaining clones, the one that is the approximate shape and size of Bane except far lumpier, attempts to crush him into the roof and almost succeeds, except for the batarang that buries itself in the clone's back and distracts him. Some sort of massive pustule pops and sends some gross fluid – it's definitely not blood – spilling across the clone's back.
Fuck. Batman's here. Ahead of schedule, and not at the location Jason had planned for them to be. Green fury surges in Jason's veins for the first time in months. (He thought it was gone, but maybe it was just in hibernation for a big enough trigger.)
This isn't how this was supposed to go! He howls his rage and empties his clip into the big clone, ignoring Batman's dismayed shout.
His fury switches targets when the unconscious Joker is yanked away from him. Jason tosses the empty handgun aside and draws two more, now that one of his hands is free. He unerringly aims at Batman, ignoring the clone lump he thought was dead until two massive hands wrap around his helmet and squeeze. The clone isn't strong enough to dent the metal – all that bulk and it seems like not a lot of it is muscle – but Jason can't fight like this. He quickly pushes the latches on his helmet and slips out and down, leaving the helmet in the clone's hands. He rolls a minimum distance away and detonates the helmet before the clone has the chance to put it down.
Survive that, Jason thinks viciously. It will bleed out from its arm stumps in less than a minute. Serves it right, for so thoroughly fucking up Jason's plans.
"Jason?" Batman says, in a tone that sounds like the man has his heart in his throat. Jason has been dropping hints to his return that he knows Batman has picked up on, but it seems like Batman can't believe his eyes.
"Old man," Jason greets through gritted teeth before lunging at Batman, intent on retrieving the Joker and maybe getting this confrontation back on track. He can adapt and make this work, though he has to give up his plan to beat the Joker with a crowbar. His disappointment that he won't be able to give the Joker a taste of his own medicine fuels the acid rage in his veins.
He doesn't have a chance to do more than punch Batman in the jaw – which is, expectedly, blocked, since this is only Jason's opening move – when the Joker slips off of Batman's shoulder. It takes Jason a moment to realize that the clown hadn't woken up, and that the final clone is absconding with Joker, likely in an attempt to get Jason to follow and walk right into a League trap to take him back to Ra's.
Jason hates to admit that the gambit is working. He yells and disengages with Batman to follow, but Batman fucking tackles him before he can get far, and the last clone has almost made it to the next roof, and the fucking Joker is getting away again—
There's the sound of a singular gunshot. Jason freezes as the Joker's unconscious body jerks with the force of a high-caliber rifle bullet tearing through his head, just above his left eye.
"No!" Batman shouts. He's echoed by Nightwing's voice, a few buildings over. The other vigilante is pursuing the only person who could and would have done this.
Wraith. Danny.
"You killed him," Jason says softly, stunned, despite that Danny is way too far away to hear him. "He's dead." Jason turns his attention to the corpse of the Joker, which the clone had dumped in favor of fleeing the moment it became apparent that the Joker was indeed dead.
People can survive being shot in the head. But not from a gunshot wound like that, not from a high-caliber bullet shot from a 338 Lapua rifle. The bullet would have gone straight through the Joker's head and shredded a good chunk of the entire left hemisphere of his brain, and probably left some fragments of bullet and bone from the skull in other areas too.
The Joker is dead, and Jason still doesn't have his answer, if his father cares enough to put his son over his mission and rules.
"You killed him!" tears out of Jason's throat without permission. He already knows that Danny cares enough to kill for him!
"I'm sorry," Danny says as he reaches Jason and hovers protectively between him and Batman. Jason can't see his expression behind the blank white mask he chose as part of his gear, but he knows his partner is remorseful. "I know you wanted Batman to kill him for you. But the risk of the League successfully making off with the Joker was just too high."
Jason screams wordlessly and pounds on the roof. What is he supposed to do now?
"I'm sorry, you wanted Batman to do what?" Nightwing calls incredulously from where he's examining the Joker's body. "Hate to break it to you, but he doesn't do that kind of thing."
"I thought he'd do it for me!" Jason howls. "Because he took me away from him! Because I was his son!"
How am I supposed to know if he cared for me for real, now? Jason thinks but doesn't say aloud.
Nightwing goes deadly still as his attention lasers in on Jason. From his reaction, it seems like Daddy Bats didn't deem Nightwing fit to share his suspicions with about Hood's identity.
"Jason? Little Wing?" Nightwing murmurs, stunned. Jason barely hears him from all the way across the roof.
"You don't understand. I'm not sure you ever understood," Batman says, and Jason has had it up to here with this entire situation and Batman's fucking bullshit.
All of the carefully planned words Jason had agonized over to try to break through Batman's thick skull fly out of Jason's head. He scrambles to his feet and lunges past Danny to go for Batman's throat. "I understand perfectly! You put his life over mine!" In fairness, Jason didn't manage to force Batman to make that choice. But Jason isn't feeling like being fair.
Deep down, he knows Batman wouldn't have done it. But he wanted to be proven wrong. Now, he never will.
"Do you think I didn't want to kill him? It would be too easy!" Batman grunts as Jason collides with him. In his periphery, Jason is aware of Nightwing scrambling to back up Bruce – the perfect soldier – but Danny intercepts Nightwing before he can interfere.
"That's just an excuse you tell yourself to wash your hands of the guilt of every victim he's created while you've let him live to keep hurting people! I should have been the last!" Jason shrieks, doing his level best to maim the man he once saw as a father.
A hand on the back of his jacket yanks him away from Batman, and the only reason Jason doesn't attack and break the arm is because he can sense that it's Danny.
"Sirens incoming," Danny says quietly. Jason wants to scream to the heavens and tear the entire city down, because this disastrous encounter has just been one interruption after another, leading to nothing.
"Please, turn yourself in, we can figure this out," Batman pleads.
Jason laughs. It's not a pretty sound. It reminds him of the clone of him that acted like the Joker, and he feels sick.
He doesn't want to be here anymore.
Danny reacts without him needing to say anything, like always. He laces his fingers with Jason's and tugs them away from Batman and Nightwing. Both vigilantes pursue, of course, but it's not long before he and Danny duck into an abandoned building, out of sight of vigilantes and cameras alike, and Danny pulls them straight down through ten floors and then into the basement connected to the sewers. By the time Batman and Nightwing figure out where they went, they will be long gone.
Jason doesn't let himself break down and cry until after they make it back to their nearest safehouse.
Beneath everything else, the core reason for everything he's done since his emergence as the Red Hood… he doesn't know if his father really, truly loved him or not. And now, he'll never find out.
He can't hate Danny for making the shot. The Joker getting away would have only created more victims. And Danny is pretty much his literal soulmate. But it still hurts.
Jason wakes up tucked into Danny's arms, one of the few places he feels truly safe, and the only one outside of the Acres of All. Danny feels him stirring and pets his hair.
"So what's our next move?" Danny asks gently, after some time. Jason appreciates that he isn't giving Jason much time to wallow and self-destruct.
"Ra's," Jason growls. He's going to destroy the entire League of Assassins, if that's what it takes to kill Ra's. It's his fault and those fucking clones that his plans crashed and burned around his ears.
Danny nods, content to follow his lead, like always. Jason wishes he could have healed his partner's soul further; it's in moments like this that the lingering damage is still evident.
"There's more than just Ra's and his assassins to worry about. There might only be one left that can fight, but I bet there's more of them at Nanda Parbat…"
Two days later, they're on the small private jet they "borrowed" from a multinational company, en route to Pakistan, when Danny says uncertainly, "I think I had a clone once?"
Jason sputters. "That's not the kind of information you just drop out of nowhere!"
This ends now.
It's not hard to get into Nanda Parbat. Ra's wants them there, after all.
Jason is going to find and destroy those cloning labs and wring Ra's neck and he doesn't care how much damage he's going to cause in the meantime. He's packing a veritable arsenal of weapons and explosives, including the rocket launcher he used with great effect on Black Mask. Danny isn't quite so weighed down, but the array of knives and other sharp objects he has tucked into his white and gray costume is truly impressive.
Jason announces his arrival by blowing up the front gates with his rocket launcher. He knows his approach is reckless, but with Danny at his side, he can afford to be reckless. Wanton damage is part of why he's here, after all, and the more attention he gets, the more of Ra's people he gets to kill.
"Tell Ra's I got his message!" Red Hood roars at a fleeing assassin. "And that I'm here to pay him back, with interest!"
Jason spent a lot of time here while he was essentially comatose, and more after he regained his mind. Talia had kept him and Danny away from Nanda Parbat as much as possible, but he'd still picked up a knowledge of which hallways went where between his conscious and subconscious memories.
He knows that the Lazarus Pit is at very lowest level of the compound. Ra's laboratories are also on the lower levels, close to the Pit. It's the most likely place for the cloning labs.
With that in mind, once he and Danny breach the compound and a tsunami of assassins rises to meet them, Jason grabs Danny's hand and yanks them both through the floor and down several levels, leaving several bombs and grenades behind as presents for their welcoming committee. The sound of the resulting explosion, even muffled through several stories, is satisfying.
He and Danny agreed not to hide their abilities (well, Danny's abilities, shared with Jason) anymore. He knows their abilities will be necessary, otherwise the sheer numbers of the League will overwhelm them. It's also a massive taunt for Ra's: here's what you've been looking for. Come and get it.
Jason and Danny split up to comb the second lowest level, taking out each assassin in their path. Not that there are many, right now – their flashy entrance drew the bulk of the residents of Nanda Parbat to the aboveground levels.
Jason freezes when he finds what is undoubtedly the cloning lab. He recognizes his face on the figures floating in the tubes – are those Cadmus cloning tubes? – even on the clones that are babies and small children. Most of them have some sort of deformity, no doubt from the accelerated growth. Either that, or Ra's can't use the tubes correctly.
His stomach revolts, and he feels violated. It isn't the clones' fault they've been made, he knows, but for Ra's to make so many of them, and to be so careless with their physical development—!
It takes him a moment to realize that there are two figures in the lab. One is the last clone from Gotham, without his cloak. He has a fairly good approximation of Jason's body, but it seems as if all color has been leached from him, from his skin to his eyes to his hair. The other figure is Nightwing.
What the fuck is Nightwing doing here? he wonders.
"Red Hood," the last adult clone greets in a voice that sounds like he's been gargling glass. No wonder he'd let another clone take the lead to speak. Nightwing spins around.
"What are you doing here, Dickface?" Jason demands.
"Tracking back the origins of your clones," Nightwing replies uncertainly, off-balance from Jason's sudden appearance.
"Well, you found them. Now fuck off. I'm putting a stop to this," Jason announces, grateful that the voice distorter in his helmet prevents the waver in his voice from being heard.
"Jason," Nightwing says warily.
"My orders are to protect these tubes. But as you demonstrated on my brothers, I am no match for you," the clone says. "Please be quick about it."
Jason tugs on his bond with Danny to call him to the lab, then says to Nightwing, "You can either help me destroy this place or get out of my way."
Nightwing grimaces. "I know, this is super weird and violating, but you can't destroy them just for existing."
"So, what, I should just continue to let Ra's have his way with my genetic material?" Jason snaps, incensed.
"Ra's process is incomplete. Most of them cannot survive for long outside of the tubes, even fully grown," the clone intones. "The ones that can will lead unhappy, cursed lives." The clone looks down.
No wonder he's so indifferent about the idea that Jason will kill him. Jason is getting the impression that the clone doesn't want to exist, and hadn't even wanted to exist in the first place. "What has Ra's done with you?" he whispers, a horror he cannot describe washing over him.
The clone does not raise his gaze. "Dozens of us were part of the first batch. He sent the final five of us to Gotham. We were the only ones to survive the Lazarus Pit."
Jason feels sick. He knows exactly what it's like to be tossed into those green waters, to be remade while acid and rage burn through one's body. It's worse that these are clonesof Jason that Ra's has been using for his experiments; it's like he's been vicariously tossed into the Pit over and over and over.
"He was always disappointed with us. We came up with nothing. He wanted his own Lazarus Boy, but he has yet to figure out how to clone him, so he was left with us fetching him another one," the clone explains.
Nightwing makes a desperate noise. Jason had half-forgotten that he is here, too. It seems that he is as discomfited with the idea of Ra's dumping a bunch of Jason copies in the Pit as Jason himself is.
"I should have known you'd find your way straight here," a smooth voice says from the doorway. Jason whirls and immediately starts shooting at Ra's, but the man ducks back behind the shelter of the doorway.
"Ra's! What the fuck do you think you're doing, here?!" Jason bellows.
"This could have been avoided if you and the Boy had simply stayed here!" Ra's calls as assassins start to pour through the doorway. Jason curses and starts shooting. There's too many of them; he can't hit them all before he's forced to switch to his kris at close range.
As if the current chaos wasn't enough, Jason hears Ra's purr, "Why, Detective! What a surprise, finding you here!" Great, Batman's here. Of course. The gang's all here, except… Where's Danny?
As if summoned, Danny materializes at his side and hauls him straight into the air, then swoops to grab Nightwing by an arm. Nightwing almost whacks Danny with an escrima, startled.
Just in time. Jason hears several explosions go off beneath him, and then a hole opens in the floor, dumping several cloning tubes and screaming assassins into the Lazarus Pit chamber. One unlucky assassin falls straight into the Lazarus Pit and doesn't resurface.
"What is this?" Ra's howls. Half of the laboratory is straight-up gone, and the other half looks fit to collapse.
"Talia," Danny murmurs in explanation, his lips brushing Jason's ear. He's lost his mask somewhere along the way. "I helped her set it up." She must have been utterly appalled by this place, if she was resorting to bombing her own home to get rid of it.
Danny floats them down to the Lazarus Pit chamber and gently sets them on their feet. The remaining assassins follow them down from the lab. It sounds like Batman and Ra's are still fighting each other up there.
"Not much room to fight," Nightwing warns. "Better not slip."
"You're the one who bounces every which way," Jason points out, preparing to fight. He's appalled that he's forced to fight by Nightwing's side.
(He's lying to himself. Nostalgia clogs his throat at the thought of fighting by his big brother's Nightwing's side again.)
Before the first assassin can lunge – they're as wary of fighting in this chamber as Jason is – there's clamor from above as more of the laboratory collapses, bringing Batman and Ra's down with it. Batman saves himself with a grapple embedded in the lab's ceiling, while Ra's rolls off the momentum and splashes straight into the Pit. He emerges, snarling.
Well, that's one person who's not afraid to fall in the Pit by accident, Jason thinks sardonically.
"ENOUGH!" Ra's roars. More assassins pour into the chamber from the entrance – likely the rest of the force that hadn't made it into the lab.
"Hoo boy," Nightwing mutters.
But Jason has to agree with Ra's. Jason has had enough of this nonsense. He needs to end this quickly, or someone's going to retrieve the equipment and material from the lab before Jason can destroy it. If he ever runs into another clone of himself in the future, it will be far too soon.
Not to mention that the longer this takes, the more likely it is that someone will accidentally fall in the Pit. Knowing Jason's luck, it would probably be him.
"Hold them off for me for a couple seconds," he orders Nightwing as he grabs Danny's hand and tugs him to land on the ground, not float.
"Help me finish this quickly?" he breathes to his partner as he removes his helmet, ignoring Nightwing's protests and then yelps as assassins set upon him.
Danny cups his face and presses their foreheads together. "Of course," he whispers. Jason holds Danny's face back, echoing his posture, and closes his eyes.
They've only done this once before, with the All-Caste, and not for very long. But Jason doesn't think they'll need very long at all.
The hairs at the back of Dick's neck stand straight up and he whips his attention from the assassins who are doing their level best to kill him to his resurrected younger brother, who is standing beside his partner Wraith. He almost thinks they're kissing, from their posture – which, are you serious, Jason, now is not the time! – except their lips aren't touching, and their heads suddenly snap up and toward the assassins.
Their eyes are glowing the exact same toxic green as the Lazarus Pit.
Then they vanish.
Dick doesn't have time to wonder about it, because he has an entire hoard to fight while avoiding a fall into the Pit. His heart sinks; he never thought Jason, even as Hood, would abandon him to such a bad situation, but—
Green fire blooms in front of Dick, and he jerks back defensively, but it doesn't touch him. Agonized screams reach him as the fire spreads – blasts – corrals—
Jason is floating in front of him, several feet off the ground, wreathed in green fire. His hair has turned completely white. Dick doesn't have time to guess how Jason's pulled this off when Jason is moving, flying over the heads of assassins and blasting with fire. Dimly, Dick realizes that Wraith has somehow gotten to the other end of the chamber and is working with Jason to herd the assassins into one group.
Neither of them seem particularly concerned with keeping all of the assassins alive in the process. Dick does his level best to shield assassins from the worst of the fire, because it dies down whenever he gets close. He takes heart at this sign that Jason still cares about him.
"What is this," Ra's shrieks. It catches the attention of both Jason and Wraith, and they move simultaneously to attack Ra's with a ferocity that immediately forces the man on the defensive.
The surviving assassins seem to have lost interest in Dick. Some of them straight-up flee the chamber, but the rest attempt to help Ra's fend off Jason and Wraith. The way the two are moving is mesmerizing, in total synchronization. It's like they're one person in two bodies.
"That power…" Ra's trembles. "That power should belong to me!"
"Tough," Jason and Wraith say with one voice. "It's not."
Dick contributes by knocking out assassins on the fringes of the fight, picking them off one by one, but it seems like Jason and Wraith don't really need the help. The abilities they display – enhanced speed and strength, flight, that fire, invisibility, and Dick could swear he saw them phase shift like a Martian – are the kind that any fighter would dream for.
An outcry rises from the handful of remaining assassins. Ra's is down. Judging by the hole in his chest, he's very dead.
"No!" Dick stiffens with a flashback to a rainy roof and a sultry voice whispering in his ear, of being right there and standing aside and letting someone being murdered— But no, he wasn't just standing there, he was actively working to get to Ra's, he couldn't just fly over all of the assassin heads (you didn't try as hard as you should have, as you could have, his conscience whispers); not to mention that the Lazarus Pit is right there so Ra's will be fine—
Jason and Wraith set Ra's corpse on fire, burning bright and hard enough that all that's left of Ra's is charred bones within a few moments. The Lazarus Pit can heal a lot, but it can't heal that much.
Dick whimpers.
The League will be in disarray because of this, never mind that Dick just witnessed a murder twice over and failed to stop it both times. Even though there had been a bunch of assassins who were actively blocking him in the way.
Bruce will be so mad.
Speak of the devil. Batman grapples down from the remains of the cloning lab, way too late to stop this from happening.
"What were you doing?" Dick hisses. "I could have used your help down here!"
"There was someone I needed to help in the lab," Bruce replies as he assesses the situation.
"Are you seriously implying any of the League of Assassins—"
"None of them. The last clone." Dick's breath catches in his throat as his mind flashes to the skinny, pale figure. It was like looking straight at one of Dick's nightmares of a corpse Jason, come to life to blame Dick for all his sins and failures.
The remaining assassins finally snap out of their shock and attack Jason and Wraith, howling in fury. These ones must have been very loyal to Ra's. Dick is relieved that, between his and Batman's efforts, none of them are killed by Jason and Wraith, just knocked out. …Maybe lightly maimed.
Finally, it's just the four of them remaining standing (or floating). Jason and Wraith eerily have the exact same facial expression and stance.
"He didn't have to die," Batman barks. But he doesn't try to subdue the other two. Clearly, he'd seen at least some of the fight, and was aware that he had no way to capture the two, not without specific equipment that he didn't have.
"You don't understand. I'm not sure you ever understood," the two reply in complete synch, echoing their earlier confrontation on the roof in Gotham. Dick shivers; it's creepy, seeing his Little Wing act like this.
Their attention turns up to the clone lab as they apparently lose interest in Batman and Nightwing. Rude. Dick and Bruce lunge in tandem; if they can knock out the two in this moment of distraction – but the two just phase shift. Dick shudders as he passes straight through Wraith. He feels like someone just walked over his grave. Definitely different from walking through a phase-shifted Martian.
"Couldn't help yourselves, could you?" they mock.
"The lab has been completely destroyed. The unfinished clones are all dead, and all samples of donor DNA on-site have been destroyed," Bruce informs them in a gambit to hold their attention and keep them here.
"And the living one?"
Bruce remains silent. They all know that Bruce would never kill, especially not someone wearing his son's face. Especially not someone who's not fighting back.
"Maybe… we can live with just one, and no more," they murmur thoughtfully.
"Jason," Bruce's voice breaks. It must be getting to him too, whatever this… uncanny coordination is. "Please. Are you okay?"
Jason and Wraith blink, as if surprised by Bruce's concern. "We're fine, old man."
Dick lurches forward, struck with the terrible premonition that the two are about to leave. They've left behind so many bodies, and maybe Bruce can't forgive them for that. (Maybe Jason killed just under Wraith's influence, given their obvious connection; it needs research – but no, Dick understands all too well why Jason has crossed that line under his own power.) Maybe Dick can't either, maybe he can – but having his little brother back is more important right now.
"Will you come home?" he asks, his heart in his throat.
"No," they respond immediately. Dick feels like he's been punched in the solar plexus.
"But maybe we'll see you around," they add before winking out. Dick immediately switches over to infrared on the lens in his domino. It takes him a couple of moments to find their heat signatures – they're not as warm as they should be what? – in the remains of the cloning lab, no doubt verifying what Bruce said earlier. And then they ascend straight through the ceiling and out of sight.
"They're gone," Dick whispers. The mission feels like more of a failure than it actually was. Jason isn't coming home.
But he's not gone forever. Probably. Dick has to hold on to that.
They definitely need to know a lot more about Wraith, and how he and Jason are connected, though. That's something Dick can do in the meantime.
Later, once they're safely back at the Cave, Dick has to know. "Did you…?" he prods.
Bruce knows what he's asking immediately; they know each other so well from so long working together. "No. The last clone destroyed his brothers himself. Said they didn't deserve the same kind of suffering he and the others of his batch endured." Bruce sighs. "I can respect that. I took care of the rest of the equipment and the donor… Jason's samples."
"So, what will the clone do now?"
"Whatever he wants. He's free."
Separating back into two people once they're in a safe place (a secret, blocked room above ground in Nanda Parbat; they couldn't make it far) hits them (him, it's just him now) harder than he was expecting. He hits the ground, wheezing for breath in the stale air. It takes him a few seconds to settle back into his bones, to feel like he's fully "Jason" again.
"You alright there?" he gasps, looking over at Danny, who's collapsed facedown on the floor.
Danny gives him a thumbs-up but doesn't make a move to roll over. Good enough.
"I can see why Ducra warned us not to stay like that for too long," Jason pants. "Holy shit."
Being one person, in two bodies, made from two people… it's a little overwhelming.
Danny groans. Jason is content to stay here until they recover, someone finds them somehow, or they run out of air. Lingering reverberations through their bond are helping stave off flashbacks to his grave. The stale air and no exit hit a little too close to home.
As Jason recovers, insight from the extended experience becomes clearer to him. He feels like an idiot for not realizing it earlier. Ducra was right to call him a bonehead, stubborn fool, and all sorts of other unflattering names.
"Hey… c'mere a sec…" he beckons, grunting as he crawls over to where Danny's collapsed.
Danny rolls over, which seems to be the full extent of his ability to move right now. Jason collapses on Danny's chest, his ear pressed right over his ribcage. Jason allows the slow but steady heartbeat to lull him into a meditative trance, one of the kinds he was taught in the All-Caste, until he can feel their bond clearly.
No wonder he felt their connection was unbalanced, like Danny was getting the raw end of the deal, because he was. Jason was getting Danny's power, but Danny wasn't getting much in return.
But I've had something to offer you all along, Jason thinks, focusing on the connection. I just need to open up more.
Danny's soul is damaged beyond repair. Jason and the All-Caste already did all they could to restore it, but some of the damage just… couldn't be fixed.
But it doesn't need to be fixed. Jason has a soul, his soul, right here, that he can share to fill in Danny's missing pieces. Maybe if he didn't have any training in soul manipulation from the All-Caste, he'd just be giving Danny the pieces he was missing and leaving himself a mess, but Jason's soul is strong enough to take on the burden of more than just one person without giving away pieces of itself.
Danny jerks beneath him, and Jason falls out of the trance. But he can already feel the change that he wrought.
"What did you do?" Danny breathes, his eyes wide. Jason can already tell that his partner is fully present in a way he's never been before in all the time Jason has known him.
"What I should've known to do a long time ago."
"I…" Danny blinks and stares at his hands like he's never seen them before. "I remember this feeling. I didn't even realize it was missing." He blinks, his eyes suspiciously shiny.
Jason relaxes and lets Danny have his moment of discovery. He had something similar at the All-Caste when his consciousness returned; it was super cute.
Jason is less pleased when Danny says, "I remember. Someone took it away on purpose. I was bad; I wasn't supposed to have it." He pauses. "I'm not supposed to have it."
"Why?" Jason snarls at the thought that anyone would want to hurt Danny to that extent. "Something tells me that someone didn't know what the fuck they were talking about." If Jason ever finds them, he's going to shoot them in the face.
But Danny's not listening. It sounds like he's working his way up to a panic attack, which is new. A good sign, though it's from an absolutely sucky circumstance. "Maybe I should have returned to where I came from. Crawl right back in the Pit. I'm just… a blight; I shouldn't exist—"
Jason claps him hard on the cheeks and holds him there, squishing his lips. "Danny, I don't give a fuck if you should've or shouldn't've – you exist here and now, and don't you fuckin' dare listen to those fuckers in your memory if you don't want to!" Not his most eloquent pep talk, but it'll do.
"But – what if I hurt—"
"So fucking what? I've hurt a crapton of people. Do you hate me? Want to erase my existence?"
"Of course not—"
"There's your answer. You don't deserve to be erased just for hurting someone. Certainly not for just existing. Anyone says otherwise, I'll shoot their knees out. Maybe put a bullet in their skull, too, if they're being particularly stupid about it."
Danny huffs a laugh and falls quiet, conceding. Jason nods to himself; of course he's right.
They need to leave this hidden room and Nanda Parbat eventually; Jason is tired of assassin bullshit. But they can afford to take a little more time to rest.
Danny finally breaks the silence. "So, what's our next move?"
Jason laughs. Some things never change. "Well, as I see it, we're outlaws. Let's do whatever the hell we want!"
A/N:
Figured now was a good time to port some fics over from AO3 given the current (7/10/2023) DDoS attack.
Disclaimer: with regards to the clones, this fic is not meant to relate to real-world issues about abortion.
The last remaining clone eventually names himself Jaycen and decides to wander the world to find his purpose and generally experience life. Somewhere in there, he runs into Dani and the two become fast friends.
The League splinters into several factions following Ra's demise. Talia drops off Damian at Bruce's doorstep early, because it is absolutely not safe for him with all the other factions gunning for his head.
Me, trying to fit a whole-ass longfic AU into a oneshot: well it's time to do the exact opposite of what writing professors say and do a bunch of telling, not showing
Notes about Danny's situation, hope you like the lore for this AU:
-So how did Danny get in the Pits? The Lazarus Pits connect to the GZ at the bottom, which no one knows because they can't swim that deep without the Pit eating them, and Danny pretty much floated into one with extremely good timing. Ghosts, meanwhile, don't use the Pits as portals because they reek.
-Can Danny get his memories back? It's up to you.
-Danny was wrecked so hard that his two forms collapsed into one to try to keep him alive. He figures out how to switch his hair and eye and skin colors with his original human colors, but his insides don't change.
-Why did the Pit make a soul bond? Similar to above: because Danny was so badly injured, his soul wrecked and in a hugely vulnerable state, it was extremely sensitive to outside influences. The Pit was in the process of melting Danny completely because it's just Like That when Jason got tossed in and the melted Danny parts became one with his body, along with regular Pit juice. Danny's soul latches onto this other body that has parts of it and badabing, badaboom, soul bond.
Yes, Jason can use Danny's powers without Danny actually being there. He just doesn't show it here because Danny's better at using his powers (shocker) so he prefers to rely on Danny when he can, and he's been trying to be incognito about the powers in the first place.
So apparently in the comics, Nightwing isn't there for most of Jason's big comeback because he's dealing with the threat of Chemo destroying Blüdhaven? And then Chemo is dropped during the confrontation between Batman, Jason, and the Joker? And Jason forces Batman to choose between going to Dick or leaving and letting Joker die, and Batman stays? Jfc after that it's no surprise that Batman chooses the Joker's life over another son because he already had to make that choice earlier? Fuck's sake, the comic is ridiculous, there is no justification that can make me believe that Bruce Wayne would choose the Joker's life over the lives of not one, but TWO of his sons. Just one of many examples why comics canon is ridiculous and why I opt to mostly ignore it.