Chapter Text
The world came back in pieces, like a shattered vase hastily glued together. First, there was the smell—damp earth, rot, and the coppery tang of blood. Then, the feeling of cold, wet soil under his fingernails, the ache in his lungs as they screamed for a breath they hadn’t taken in months. Finally, the light, a painful, stabbing grey through the cracks in a cheap pine lid.
Jason Todd had dug his way out of his own grave with bare, bleeding hands. The memory was a film reel with burned edges and missing frames. The climb. The rain. The alley. The pain. Then, nothing. A long, empty silence.
He’d been catatonic, they told him later. A hollowed-out thing found shivering in the filth of the Gotham gutters, a ghost boy with no voice and dead eyes. That was how she found him. Talia al Ghul.
She hadn’t meant to. She’d been on business, something to do with her father’s endless, convoluted schemes. But her sharp eyes, so like the Batman’s in their intensity, had caught a glimpse of a familiar set of shoulders, a shock of black hair on a too-thin frame. A ghost she recognized.
She’d taken him. Not to Gotham, not to him, but away. To the one place on Earth equipped to deal with the walking dead.
The Lazarus Pit was not a gentle awakening. It was a supernova behind his eyes, a green, screaming torrent that scoured the emptiness from his mind and filled it with a fire that was equal parts rage and sentience. It gave him back his words, his memories, his self, but it left the edges charred and sizzling. He remembered everything. The crowbar. The laugh. The explosion. The cold.
When he could finally form a coherent thought that wasn’t pure, undiluted agony, he was lying on a divan in a room that smelled of incense and old money. Ra’s al Ghul stood over him, looking profoundly unimpressed.
“My daughter has developed a regrettable habit of collecting strays,” the Demon’s Head had said, his voice like dry leaves scraping over stone. “She insists you have… potential. That you are a resource. Very well. You may stay. You may be considered… family. But resources must be utilized, boy. Your unique… condition… makes you a fascinating subject for my research.”
Jason, who had quite literally been to hell and back, who had felt his own bones break and been buried alive, had simply looked the centuries-old master assassin in the eye. The fire of the Pit was already banking, leaving behind a deep, marrow-weary exhaustion. He was so very tired.
“Frankly, oh mighty one,” Jason had rasped, his voice unfamiliar to his own ears, “I don’t care if you want to use me as a paperweight. Just point me to a bed that doesn’t have six inches of dirt on it.”
Ra’s had almost smiled. It was a terrifying sight. And so, Jason settled into the strange, suspended animation of life within the League of Shadows.
He trained. His body remembered the acrobatics Batman had drilled into him, the muscle memory of combat. The League’s style was deadlier, more efficient, and he absorbed it with the grim focus of someone with nothing left to lose.
He followed Ra’s around the stronghold, offering unsolicited and sarcastic commentary on everything from his strategic plans to his choice of decorative scimitars. It was, Jason found, immensely entertaining to watch an immortal demon prince try to maintain his regal composure while a teenage zombie quoted Mary Shelley at him.
And he spent a great deal of time in the labs. It became a morbid routine. Every Tuesday, he’d amble down, roll up his sleeve, and let them take vials of his blood. He’d watch the strange, alchemical machines hum and whir, analyzing the essence of a boy who should be dead.
“Any luck?” he’d ask the lead researcher, a severe woman named Dr. Shihara. “Figured out the secret ingredient yet? Is it spite? I’m pretty sure it’s spite.”
They never found an answer. The mystery of his resurrection was a locked door, and Jason held the only key, and he had no intention of using it. The sheer, baffled frustration on the faces of the world’s greatest scientific and mystical minds was a balm to his battered soul. It was the one thing in this nightmare that was genuinely funny.
It was on one such Tuesday, waiting for the latest batch of tests to render their inconclusive results, that he grew bored. The main lab was all polished steel and glowing holograms. He’d seen it all. So he wandered, pushing through a heavy, non-descript door into a colder, quieter corridor he’d never bothered to explore.
The air here was different. Sterile. Humming with a low, powerful energy. He followed the sound, his soft-soled boots making no noise on the metallic floor. The corridor ended in a vast, circular chamber, dominated by a single, colossal apparatus in its center.
It was a cultivation tube, massive, filled with a faintly glowing amber fluid. And suspended within it, connected by a series of delicate tubes and wires, was a child.
A toddler, no more than two years old. Perfectly formed, with a shock of black hair and skin that held a healthy glow even in the viscous solution. He floated in a peaceful slumber, oblivious to the world.
Jason stopped. He tilted his head, a scholar considering a strange new text. There was no shock, no immediate horror. He was long past such simple reactions. This was just another bizarre exhibit in the museum of madness his life had become.
He noticed a League technician monitoring a bank of screens nearby, her focus absolute. Jason approached her with a calm he didn't feel.
“Pardon the interruption,” he began, his tone polite, almost academic. “But what, precisely, is that?” He gestured with his thumb towards the tube.
The technician, a young woman with sharp features, looked up, startled. Her eyes widened slightly in recognition. “Al-Khadym,” she said, using the title Ra’s had bestowed upon him with dripping sarcasm. ‘The Resource.’ She seemed confused. “That is the progeny of the Demon’s daughter. Are you not aware? Your own genetic material was utilized in his final developmental sequence. I was told you had been consulted.”
Jason absorbed this information with the same detached interest he’d applied to Ra’s’s treatise on fourteenth-century poisons. He turned back to the child, his eyes tracing the lines of the small face. His genetic material. Used. Like a library book checked out for a interesting chapter.
A memory, sharp and unwelcome, flashed behind his eyes. Not of the Pit, or the grave, but of before. Of Bruce, in the Cave, taking a blood sample after a rough patrol. “Just a precaution, chum. In case you need a transfusion. I’ll always have something for you.” A gesture of protection. Of love.
This was the opposite. This was being used as a spare parts kit for… for what?
The pieces clicked together in his mind with an almost audible snap. Talia. A son. A new vessel for Ra’s. Created before she’d found her stray. A project put on hold when a ready-made, already-resurrected grandson fell into her lap. But they’d kept the project. And they’d added a variable. Him.
The green fire of the Pit, so carefully banked, flickered at the edges of his vision. The weariness was burned away, replaced by a cold, clarifying fury.
“Huh,” Jason said, his voice dangerously even. “Okay.”
He turned on his heel and walked, not with haste, but with a terrible, deliberate purpose. He pushed back through the doors, down the sterile corridor, through the main lab. Technicians scattered out of his path, sensing the storm rolling off him.
He found her in the eastern conservatory, tending to a rare, blood-red orchid. Talia al Ghul was the picture of poised elegance, a dagger sheathed in silk.
Jason didn’t shout. He didn’t run. He simply stopped at the entrance, his frame blocking the light from the hall.
“Talia,” he said, and his voice was low, layered with a venom that could have felled a elephant. It was the tone of the boy who had faced the Joker and not backed down. It was the tone of the man who had crawled from his own coffin.
She turned, her expression one of mild inquiry that quickly shifted to wariness as she saw his face.
He didn’t raise his voice. He let the words hang in the perfumed air, each one dripping with betrayed fury.
“What, in the name of every sacred and profane thing you hold dear, is the meaning of that?”
The silence in the conservatory was absolute, broken only by the gentle trickle of a distant water feature. Talia’s face, a masterpiece of controlled composure, did not flicker. She placed her gardening shears down on a marble bench with a soft, definitive click.
“I see you found the Western Genetic Archives,” she said, her voice as smooth and cool as the orchid’s petals. She did not look guilty. She looked… mildly inconvenienced.
“‘Archives’,” Jason repeated, the word a dry, brittle thing in his mouth.
“Is that what we’re calling it? I’d have gone with ‘Creche of Future Horrors’, but I suppose your branding is more discreet.” He took a step forward, the green at the edge of his vision receding, replaced by a cold, analytical fury. He was a scholar presented with a deeply flawed thesis, and he was going to tear it apart. “Let’s review the facts, shall we? You’re building a son. A spare parts kit for the Demon’s Head. Started the project before you decided to fish me out of the Gotham sewer. Then, you find me—a pre-resurrected, pit-maddened bonus grandson—and little… what’s his name? The kid in the jar?”
“Damian,” Talia supplied, almost automatically.
“Right. Damian gets put on the back burner. A science fair project that didn’t win first prize. But you’re all still so terribly curious about little old me. Why did I get the express ticket back to the land of the living? So you think, ‘Why not mix the two projects? Let’s see what happens!’” He spread his hands wide in a gesture of mock revelation.
“And you used my DNA. Without asking. Which, incidentally, makes that child in there…” He trailed off, doing the mental genealogy with a theatrical tilt of his head. “My brother? My nephew? My… son? The terminology is a bit vague when you’re playing God in a test tube.”
He finally let the full weight of his glare settle on her. “And let’s not ignore the other donor. The one whose DNA was presumably the main ingredient. Bruce Wayne. My adopted father.”
The word hung in the air, ugly and profound.
Jason’s voice dropped to a razor-sharp whisper, laced with a disgust so deep it was almost awe. “Talia. That is a spectacularly depraved level of Freudian entanglement. What kind of deranged, hypothetical ménage à trois were you attempting to genetically engineer? This goes beyond issues of consent and veers straight into territory that would make a Victorian gothic novelist blush and demand a rewrite.”
A faint, almost imperceptible twitch at the corner of Talia’s mouth was his only reward. “Jason,” she said, her tone warning. “Do not be vulgar. It’s beneath you. The process was purely scientific. My father was satisfied with you as a… living heir. Your combat prowess is exceptional. Your strategic mind, when you choose to apply it, is… sharp.”
Her eyes flicked over him, a dismissive assessment. “Your personality, however, leaves much to be desired. Regardless, the Damian project was rendered functionally obsolete. He is of no consequence.”
The fire, so carefully banked, roared back to life.
“No consequence?” Jason’s voice didn’t yell. It amplified, becoming something else entirely—the low, thunderous rumble of collapsing architecture. In the distant courtyard, a squad of assassins mid-drill faltered, their synchronized movements breaking as heads turned toward the conservatory. “He’s floating in a giant vat of liquefied aspic! He is a person, not a forgotten casserole at the back of the fridge! You don’t get to be an absent mother just because he hasn’t technically left the laboratory! That is a parenting loophole that does not exist!”
He took another step forward, planting his feet and jutting his chin out with a confidence that was half Pit-fueled madness and half sheer, unadulterated teenage indignation. “Wake him up.”
Talia’s patience, a deep but finite well, finally ran dry. “Jason, I am not going to indulge this hysterical–”
“Ah-ah-ah!” he interrupted, holding up a finger. The shift in his demeanor was sudden and unnerving, the storm clearing for a moment of sunny, calculated mischief. “Let’s recall a previous conversation. My seventeenth birthday. Next week. You stated, and I quote, ‘Given your satisfactory progress in metaphysical philosophy and advanced poisons, you may select a gift of some significance.’”
He paused, letting the memory hang between them. Talia’s eyes narrowed, sensing a trap she hadn’t seen him lay.
“Well,” Jason said, a slow, wicked grin spreading across his face. “I’ve selected. I want him.”
Talia stared at him. The silence stretched. Somewhere, a bird called. “You want me to… to decant your lab-grown, genetically redundant pseudo-sibling… as a birthday gift?”
“No need for a bow,” Jason said with a magnanimous wave. Then he paused, considering. “Well. Actually, do give him some clothes. A birthday suit is traditional, but I’d prefer he have an actual suit. Or a tunic. Something. I’m not a barbarian.”
He watched the calculations flicker behind her eyes. The cost-benefit analysis of his demand. The sheer, unmitigated absurdity of it. The potential nuisance of it all weighed against his value as her father’s ‘resource’ and her… well, her stray.
A long, weary sigh escaped her lips. She brought a hand up to massage her temple, a gesture of such profound human exhaustion it seemed utterly out of place in the heart of the League of Shadows.
“Sometimes, Jason,” she murmured, her voice low enough that it was almost to herself, “I am forced to reconsider the Pit’s restorative properties. Perhaps it did not add anything to your mind. Perhaps it merely… rehydrated the insanity that was already there.”
Jason’s grin didn’t falter. “You love it. Admit it. I’m the most interesting thing to happen to this dustbowl since someone discovered you could sharpen both ends of a sword.” He crossed his arms. “So? Do we have a deal? Do I get my little brother-nephewinator?”
Talia’s gaze was flat. “And what, precisely, would you do with a toddler grown from the DNA of the Dark Knight and… you?”
“Oh, I don’t want the toddler model,” Jason said, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. “What am I going to do, teach him patty-cake? No. If he’s going to be my birthday present, I want the full experience. Accelerate his growth. I don’t need him to be my age, just… you know. Speaking age. Twelve seems good. Old enough for decent conversation, young enough to still be molded by my superior intellect and excellent taste in literature.”
The sheer audacity of the request left even Talia momentarily speechless. She simply stared at him, her expression utterly unreadable.
Jason leaned forward, his voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper. “Come on, Talia. What’s the alternative? You leave him in the jar forever? A monument to your abandoned plans? That’s just sad. This way, you get to see what your little science experiment can do. And I…” His grin turned, for just a second, into something softer, something far more genuine and terrifying. “I get a brother who didn’t have to die first.”
The words hung in the perfumed air, stark and undeniable. It was the first true thing he’d said since entering the room, a glimpse of the raw nerve beneath the sarcasm and the rage.
Talia al Ghul looked at the resurrected boy, this impossible creature of grief and green fire who quoted poetry and demanded a genetically engineered sibling for his birthday. She saw the ghost of the child Bruce had loved, the shadow of the weapon her father wanted, and the sharp, brilliant, infuriating young man she had, against all odds, somehow grown fond of.
She let out another, even longer sigh. It was the sound of someone surrendering to the inevitable tide of chaos.
“I will… speak with the scientists,” she said finally, her voice devoid of all emotion. It was neither a yes nor a no. It was a capitulation to the madness.
Jason’s answering smile was brilliant and triumphant. “Excellent. Tell them to aim for a twelve-year-old with a working knowledge of sarcasm. It’s a family trait.”
The two months that followed were, by League of Shadows standards, a period of unprecedented and deeply irritating chaos. It was a quiet chaos, which was somehow worse. It was the chaos of a meticulously ordered universe discovering a new, confounding law of physics.
For Jason, it was the most fun he’d had since… well, ever.
Damian, accelerated to a biological age of twelve, was a marvel of genetic engineering and a disaster of social conditioning. He emerged from the accelerated growth chambers with the posture of a king, the vocabulary of a scholar, and the emotional intelligence of a particularly sharp spoon. He was, in essence, a tiny, deadly, and profoundly confused old man in a pre-teen’s body.
Jason adored him immediately.
He took to his self-appointed role of older brother with the fervor of a missionary, which mostly involved dragging Damian into increasingly bizarre situations while providing a running commentary.
“Observe,” Jason had said on the first day, steering a stiff-backed Damian into the palace kitchens. “This is a refrigerator. It keeps things cold. That is an ice cream maker. It makes frozen dairy confections. Our mission is to combine the two without the head chef noticing. This is called ‘procurement’.”
Damian, who had been programmed with the tactical knowledge of Sun Tzu and the culinary knowledge of a rock, had frowned. “This is theft, is it not?”
“It’s redistribution of assets,” Jason corrected, already jimmying the lock on the freezer with a dagger. “A vital skill for any aspiring revolutionary. Or little brother.”
Their existence became a tandem nuisance. Where once there was one set of footsteps following Ra’s al Ghul to critique his geopolitical strategies, there were now two.
“—and furthermore,” Jason was saying, perched on the edge of Ra’s’s desk as the Demon’s Head tried to review trade routes, “your reliance on 19th-century mercantilism in the face of a global digital economy is not just archaic, it’s embarrassing. It’s like bringing a trebuchet to a drone strike.”
Ra’s, who had long since given up on having the boy physically removed (the last guard to try had found his boots filled with maple syrup), merely pinched the bridge of his nose.
A small, clear voice piped up from the other side of the desk. “He is correct, Grandfather. Your logistical networks are vulnerable to cyber-attack on at least seventeen distinct fronts. I have drafted a preliminary security proposal.” Damian placed a neatly handwritten scroll on top of the map Ra’s was studying.
Ra’s stared at the scroll, then at the second grandson he had only just become aware existed. He said nothing.
This was how it went. They were a package deal. Jason, the brash, sarcastic instigator, and Damian, his eerily serious, lethally competent lieutenant. They were in the training yards, where Damian would dismantle seasoned assassins with effortless grace while Jason shouted unsolicited advice like a demented sports coach. They were in the library, where Jason would read aloud from Hunter S. Thompson just to watch Damian’s nose wrinkle in profound confusion. And they were, most perplexingly to Ra’s, always in his private chambers.
It was the horse that finally broke him.
Ra’s al Ghul enjoyed a specific breed of Arabian stallion—proud, fiery, and intolerant of fools. One in particular, a jet-black beast named Shaitan, shared his master’s temperament and a particular disdain for a certain resurrected teenager. Jason, for reasons known only to himself, had decided Shaitan was a misunderstood soul and was determined to befriend him. This resulted in near-daily attempts that usually ended with Jason vaulting over the stable wall, swearing creatively in four languages, while Shaitan kicked the stall door behind him.
On this particular afternoon, Ra’s had retired to his inner sanctum for a moment of precious solitude. He was meditating, focusing his ancient consciousness on the flow of eternal life, when the doors to his chamber burst open.
Jason strode in, covered in straw and what smelled distinctly of horse saliva. Trailing behind him, with the serene expression of a child visiting a museum, was the smaller one. Damian.
“I’m telling you, Dames, it’s a cry for help,” Jason announced to the room, apparently addressing his brother and not caring that he was interrupting a millennia-old demon prince’s communion with the universe. “It’s not anger. It’s a profound existential ennui. He’s trapped in a world he never made, forced to carry around pompous old men who don’t appreciate his spirit.”
“The stallion Shaitan is a quadrupedal creature of limited cognitive function,” Damian stated, folding his hands behind his back. “His ‘spirit’, as you poetically mislabel it, is a simple response to stimulus. You are an aversive stimulus. He attempts to remove you. The solution is to cease presenting yourself.”
“See? That’s your problem. No poetry. No soul.” Jason slumped into Ra’s’s favorite chair, propping his muddy boots on an ottoman that was older than most countries. “We need a new approach. Bribery. I’m thinking apples. Or maybe a nice hat.”
Damian considered this. “The nutritional value of an apple is acceptable. A hat would serve no practical purpose for the animal and would likely be chewed and ingested, leading to digestive complications.”
They both sat there, on the desk and in the chair, regarding Ra’s with identical expressions of casual curiosity, as if he were a television they were waiting to turn on.
Ra’s slowly opened his eyes. The flow of eternal life was gone, replaced by the flow of a potent migraine. He looked from the straw-covered, ranting teenager to the pristine, analytical child. Two sets of Bruce Wayne’s eyes, one set alight with Pit-fire and mischief, the other cold and assessing. It was deeply unsettling.
He turned his head a fraction, addressing his personal guard, Ubu, who was standing rigidly by the door, trying to become one with the wall.
“Ubu,” Ra’s said, his voice dangerously calm. “Why does my irritating shadow…” He gestured vaguely at Jason, who was now trying to shake a piece of straw out of his boot. “…have another, smaller irritating shadow?” He finished, his gaze landing on Damian.
Ubu shifted his immense weight. “My Lord… that is Damian, sir.”
Ra’s continued to stare. The name meant something, a flicker of memory from a project proposal he’d half-approved years ago. A vessel. A spare. Something that had been made redundant.
“Damian,” he repeated slowly. He looked at the boy. “I thought we had discarded that particular concept.”
Damian, utterly unfazed by being referred to as a discarded concept, slid off the desk and stood at a perfect, formal parade rest. “I was retained as a birthday gift,” he informed the most feared man on Earth, his tone as flat as a news bulletin.
Ra’s al Ghul, who had toppled empires and cheated death for centuries, simply blinked. The words ‘birthday gift’ did not compute. They belonged to a universe of cake and paper hats, not one of ancient assassination cults and Lazarus Pits.
“A… gift,” he echoed, the word feeling strange and childish in his mouth.
“For me,” Jason added helpfully from the chair. “Best one I ever got. Way better than the time Bruce got me a book on macroeconomic theory. Though to be fair, that was also a pretty solid read.”
Damian took a precise step forward and extended his hand toward Ra’s. “It is a pleasure to finally make your formal acquaintance, Grandfather.”
Ra’s looked at the offered hand as if it were a venomous snake. Physical greetings were for lesser men; they involved touch, and germs, and implied a fellowship he did not feel. He was a being of will and power, not of… handshakes.
But the child’s expectant gaze was unwavering. It was, Ra’s realized with a strange sinking feeling, a look he had seen before. It was the same unblinking, unnervingly direct stare that Bruce Wayne employed when he knew he was right.
With a sense of profound resignation, Ra’s al Ghul reached out and gingerly accepted the handshake. The boy’s grip was firm, confident. It was, Ra’s noted with a distant part of his mind, an excellent shake.
“Pleased to make your acquaintance,” Ra’s said, the words ash in his mouth. “…Grandchild number two.”
Jason beamed from his chair, a picture of pride. “Good, good. Excellent form, Dames. Nice and firm. Establishes dominance.” He then leaned forward, a wicked glint in his eye, and stage-whispered to his brother. “Now tell him he has a receding hairline.”
The silence that followed was absolute. Ubu stiffened, his eyes wide with horror. The very air in the room seemed to freeze.
Damian, however, simply turned his head back to Ra’s, his expression one of pure, clinical assessment. He looked at the Demon’s Head’s magnificent, though admittedly high, forehead.
“The observation is factually accurate,” Damian stated, his voice clear and devoid of any malice. It was a simple report of findings. “The hairline has receded approximately two point three inches from its likely original position based on cranial structure. This is a common characteristic of male-pattern baldness, often linked to genetic predisposition and stress. Given your advanced age, its progression is statistically probable and to be expected. Are you perhaps informed of a chemical called midoxil?”
He finished his analysis and looked back at Jason, as if awaiting a grade.
Ra’s al Ghul sat perfectly still. Centuries of perfect composure threatened to fracture. A muscle in his jaw twitched. He had been insulted by kings, mocked by heroes, and cursed by dying men. But never, in all his long, long life, had he been the subject of a prepubescent, genetically engineered child’s dermatological assessment delivered with the passion of a spreadsheet.
Jason was clutching his sides, laughing soundlessly, tears streaming down his face.
Ra’s slowly released Damian’s hand. He looked at Jason, the source of this plague, then back at Damian, its newest vector. He saw the future of the League of Shadows, and it was two smart-mouthed grandchildren analyzing his bald spot.
He closed his eyes. For a fleeting moment, he longed for the sweet, simple silence of his own coffin.
When he opened them again, he pointed a single, trembling finger toward the door.
“Out,” he said, his voice a low, thunderous rumble. “Both of you.”
Jason, still wheezing with laughter, slung an arm around Damian’s shoulders. “Come on, kid. Grandfather’s got to moisturize his scalp. It’s a whole thing. Very time-consuming.”
As they left, Ra’s could hear Jason’s voice echoing down the hall. “—and then you tell him the part about the stress! Brilliant! The clinical delivery is what sells it! We are gonna get so much mileage out of this…”
Ra’s al Ghul, the Demon’s Head, leaned back in his throne and for the first time in six hundred years, seriously considered retirement.