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Published:
2018-01-25
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2018-08-16
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Verdant

Summary:

Talia puts Jason in the Lazarus pit to restore his mind.

Then she takes him home.

Notes:

Not gonna lie, I am super-excited about this story. I've been working on it for awhile, exploring an idea I've always wanted to see - namely, what it would have looked like if Talia had brought a freshly Lazarus-dipped Jason-cone back to Bruce, instead of all the manipulation and betrayal we got in canon.

I’m normally hesitant to post WIPs in case I don’t finish them - but with a hefty chunk of the story done already, and a clear idea of where it’s going, I’m giving into the impulse to share a work while it’s ongoing, for once. (Fun fact: I developed the entire first two chapters, as well as a potential last chapter, during a particularly bad bout of insomnia one night. Then I got up the next day and banged out 5k in one sitting. LIVING THE DREAM.)

Posting schedule will be either every week, or every other week, depending on life, and how hard it lifes.

Many thanks to audreycritter for workshopping and encouragement.

Chapter 1

Chapter Text

Jason’s eyes shot open, and all he could see, through a liquid swirl of green, was Talia al Ghul looking down intently over him. He burst up out of the water, and something primal in him tried to struggle, tried to scream, but Talia wrestled him out of the water and held him down, one hand firmly clamped over his mouth. “Shh,” she said. “Shh. You must make no noise.”

After a few minutes, the worst of whatever it was passed, and Jason merely lay in her arms, shaking. Talia pulled a towel from somewhere Jason couldn’t see, and began to briskly dry him off. It felt like knives scraping his skin. “Can you stand now?” she whispered, or at least he thought she whispered; it was sybillent, but seemed loud, as did every echoing noise throughout the dark cavern they were in. Jason nodded weakly. She stood, helping him to his feet, and thrust a heavy robe over his head, and ill-fitting sandals onto his feet. The clothes and the shoes burned his skin. “Quickly. Quickly and quietly.” Talia took his hand in hers and guided him into a dark passage.

They had no light, but Talia seemed to know her way, and Jason and Bruce had done training drills like this—blindfolded, not in natural darkness, but he was able to follow her guiding touch without stumbling too badly. After some interminable distance, they emerged from what turned out to be a cave entrance. There was no moon, but the stars were so brilliant—bright enough to hurt his eyes somehow—that after the utter darkness of the tunnel, it was if someone had thrown on a floodlight. He couldn’t help as a tiny mewl escaped his lips.

Talia turned and assessed him. “It will be better soon. But you must stay quiet. There are men on this island not loyal to me. Come now. There’s a boat.”

“Where’s—where’s B?” Jason asked in low voice, unsure which name to use in front of Talia, who knew both of them, in this strange place. He realized it was the first thing he’d actually said since he regained consciousness.

“As far as I know, he is in Gotham. More answers for your questions later, I promise. But we cannot talk here, and we must go now.”

Jason remained rooted to the spot. Talia wasn’t necessarily an enemy, but she wasn’t necessarily a friend, either, depending on how things were between Bruce and her father.

“Jason. Look at me.” Talia squeezed his hand gently. “Do you trust me?”

And Jason did look at her, and for no reason he could name, he felt that he did trust her. He nodded.

“Then let us go.”

Things after that were a blur. The night air was cold, and despite the exertion and the warm robe Talia had given him, he was shivering by the time they made it down to the shore. Talia pursed her lips and whistled like a bird. Not a bird Jason had ever heard, but then again, he’d hardly spent any time out of Gotham, so Bruce had mainly stuck to teaching him the calls of the kind of birds you’d find in the city, to use as signals.

There was an answering call from farther down the shore, and they ventured out of the cover of the woods and onto the open shore. In the starlight, Jason could see that there was indeed, a boat—a rowboat. He looked at Talia disbelievingly. “Really?”

She raised her finger to her lips, but Jason thought there was a hint of a smile on them. She shooed him towards the boat, and he grudgingly, but quietly, clambered aboard, and Talia climbed in afterwards. The man on the shore, the one who had presumably answered Talia’s signal, untied the mooring line from where it was looped around a large rock on shore, and tossed it into the boat. He gave it a strong shove deeper into the water, then waded out and hauled himself in, taking immediately to the oars, with powerful, near-silent strokes.

Jason wasn’t sure how long they were on the water. It felt like hours, and his shivering intensified, now that he wasn’t moving, and was getting damp from the light fog they were passing through. Jason had no idea how the oarsman was navigating, without starlight or the apparent use of a compass, but neither he nor Talia seemed concerned.

Talia noticed him shivering, and dug a thick woolen blanket from underneath her seat, and wrapped it around him. After a few minutes, he started to relax into it. She’d given him no indication that they could talk, so he merely nodded his thanks.

Finally, they made a landing on another shore, one just as unfamiliar to Jason as the one they’d left from, although this one had a proper dock. Talia climbed out first, and helped Jason out. She put an arm around his shoulder and guided him towards what looked like a real road—okay, not much of a road, but still, a road—where there was a car waiting, and a woman in a chauffeur’s uniform next to it. She pulled the rear passenger door open, and Talia gently prodded him to climb inside.

Jason was too tired and too cold and too confused to think of much of anything, but the woman in the uniform opening the car door for him made him think of Alfred doing the same, and he was struck by a sudden, intense, and utterly inexplicable wave of homesickness.

Talia climbed after him into the car. The seating was generous, enough that Jason probably could have lain down, if Talia hadn’t gotten into the back with him.

“We can talk here, if you’d like,” Talia told him. “I think it would be best if we were completely alone, for both our sakes, when we did, but our driver is trustworthy. Or you prefer, you can sleep for now. We’ll be driving for quite some time before we reach our destination.”

“Which is?”

“Somewhere safe.”

Jason wanted answers so badly it made his teeth hurt, but he could barely keep his eyes open. “Later,” he said, and leaned against the car door, asleep almost instantly.

***

When he awoke, he already felt much better, although there was a strange underlying tug of exhaustion that told him he still needed a lot more sleep in the future. He felt warm, and slightly cramped from being partially curled up and not moving for hours, but his head was resting on something soft. As he opened his eyes, he realized his head was pillowed on Talia’s lap, and she had one arm gently curled over his shoulder, over the blanket which had been readjusted to cover his whole body. Her other arm was propped against the window pane, and she was staring distantly out the window. Jason wondered if she’d dared to sleep or even doze herself, trustworthy driver or no.

Talia noticed Jason’s movements and looked down at him. “Good morning.”

“Good morning,” Jason said. “Is it actually morning?”

Talia glanced at her wrist. “Fifteen hundred hours, local time. You slept about ten hours, but you deserved it. You did very well.”

“Thank you,” he said. “Even if I have no idea what I did well at. Are we almost there? Because I really need to pee.”

“Twenty minutes,” the driver said, from the front of the car.

“‘Kay,” he said. His bladder was protesting, but he could hold out that much longer, and he wasn’t going to ask them to stop the car between now and promised safety, when he didn’t even know what the danger was yet.

Finally, they pulled up in front of a small cottage in a style Jason couldn’t place. What the heck. Either Talia would tell him where they were (and what was going on already), or she wouldn’t, and he’d have to take matters into his own hands. They climbed out of the car, Talia snagging a couple of large bags Jason hadn’t noticed earlier in his exhaustion. Talia bent over the driver’s side window and said something Jason couldn’t hear to the driver. The woman bowed her head respectfully, and drove off.

As Talia unlocked the front door, Jason said, “This is the somewhere safe?”

“Yes,” she replied. “Only our driver and I know the location of this particular house. And now you,” she added, eyes crinkling with humor, “if you had the first idea where we were.”

“About that…”

Talia gestured him in, and pulled the door shut behind him. She held up one finger for silence as she did what Jason recognized as a quick, perfunctory sweep of the cottage for bugs, disappearing for a short while into unseen rooms. After he found the bathroom (where a welcome change of clothing awaited him), Jason took the time to look around the main room, which was actually pretty cozy. There was electric lighting—although based on the pile of firewood in the front of the cottage, Jason had a feeling that was a wood burning stove over against the wall, next to a large, divided porcelain sink. There was food in the pantry: bread just losing oven warmth, cured olives, slabs of cheese, and a huge bowl of fresh cherries. Jason suddenly realized upon seeing them that he was ravenously hungry, and he couldn’t help but grab a handful and start chewing on them, spitting cherry pits into his palm.

Talia laughed as she re-entered the room and found him spitting cherry pits into his palm, looking for somewhere to dump them out. “Well, you are a growing boy, I suppose,” she said. “The cottage is clean. I wouldn’t have brought you here if I had any reason to believe this place was compromised, but as your father would surely be the first to tell you, you can never be too careful.” She walked over to the pantry and pulled out the bread and an unmarked bottle of something viscous and pale yellow, carrying them over to a broad wooden table with a scarred surface. “If you’ll get the cheese and the olives and the fruit out, we can eat while we talk,” she said. She produced a large knife from somewhere and began slicing the bread.

When they were sitting on either sides of the corner of the table, dipping bread into a dish of glossy yellow olive oil, Talia said, “To answer perhaps your first question, we’re in Greece. Specifically, we’re outside of a small town some distance from Athens. We just came from an island whose name you’re better off not knowing.”

“Why’s that?”

“Because it contains a Lazarus Pit, and my father guards the locations of those so fiercely he would kill you if you knew it. Even I shouldn’t have known it. He would certainly kill the boatman who took us there, even if I never told the pilot the reason for taking us there.”

“I don’t remember going there,” Jason said, uncertain.

“I didn’t expect you would,” Talia said, regarding him solemnly. “You’ve been terribly unwell for a long time, Jason.”

”Did you put me in the Lazarus Pit?”

“Yes, Jason. It was not my first choice, but my hand was forced.”

“Does Bruce know I’m here?”

“No.”

Jason swallowed. “So this wasn’t his idea or anything. He has no idea where I am.”

“No.”

“How did I end up with you, then?”

“Do you trust me, Jason?” Talia asked him again.

And again, somehow, the answer was still yes. He nodded.

“The simplest version was that we found you...wandering. You were ill. We took you in.”

“How could—he would never—” but as Jason tried to remember anything concrete before opening his eyes in the Pit, all he could think of was a terrible fight with Bruce about something. And leaving. He’d left, hadn’t he? He couldn’t remember why, but he was almost certain he’d left of his own volition. And surely Bruce would never throw him out, but he might let Jason leave…

“I’m afraid that it gets considerably more complicated, Jason. It would help to know what you remember.”

Jason closed his eyes. Mad laughter, fear, terrible fear, bitter regret… “The Joker,” he choked. “I was in a warehouse with the Joker. He was beating me.” He hunched over himself, appetite thoroughly lost.

Talia grazed a touch along his back. “I don’t have all the details of the story, but the broad outline, as I understand it, is that somehow, the two of you—you and my beloved—found yourselves in Ethiopia, where you unexpectedly encountered the Joker while he was orchestrating a terrorist attack. You were separated, and while my beloved was away thwarting the attack, the Joker got you alone.”

Jason was shuddering now. “There was a bomb,” he keened. “He beat me until I couldn’t move and then locked me inside with a bomb…”

“Ah,” Talia breathed, sounding sad. “So that was how it happened.”

The thought of a yellow-haired woman with bright blue eyes suddenly wormed its way into the front of his head. “There was a woman there, too,” he said, confused.

“Oh?” Talia said. “I had no word of a woman there. If she was there, it was nothing our people found noteworthy enough to pass along.”

“Maybe she helped me get out?” But the thought of her made him feel nauseous. Maybe she’d been trapped there with him, someone he hadn’t saved.

“Jason,” Talia said. “Look at me.” Jason reluctantly dragged his head up to meet her eyes. “You didn’t make it out.”

Jason’s throat went dry, and he could barely croak out his next words. “What do you mean?”

“You died in that warehouse, Jason.”

And the world went green.

***

The next coherent memory Jason had was of waking up, stretched out on a soft bed, each hand clenched full of the folds of the thin quilt underneath him. Talia was sitting in a chair by the bed, sipping from a steaming cup. “There you are,” she said. “Would you like some tea?”

“What was that?” Jason asked, addressing the ceiling. A moment later, he said, “Sure.” Talia rose and returned a minute later with a second mug in her hand. Jason pushed himself into a sitting position against the headboard, and took it from her. Jason wondered if they drank Assam tea in Greece, or if Talia had brought this with her specially. “Was that a joke? Me dying?”

“It was not a joke. And that episode was an unfortunate side effect of the Pit. One of several reasons it was my last resort. It will wear off eventually.”

“So am I dead now? Am I being escorted into the afterlife by a simulacrum of...freaking Talia al Ghul?”

“I assure you, you’re very much alive, Jason. More so now than any point since…well.”

“The Pit?” But that didn’t quite make sense. “You said you found me wandering around, sick.”

“That’s correct.”

“And you used the Pit to cure me of that.”

“Also correct.”

“And Bruce doesn’t know where I am.”

“No.”

“Does he even know I’m alive?”

Talia shook her head.

“Why didn’t you tell him?!” Jason shouted, nearly spilling his tea onto the bed. “Does he—was he that angry?” Jason stumbled off the bed, tripping over his own feet. “Talia—” his heart was in his throat, and he stopped dead in his tracks—“did he change his mind about me?”

“Shh,” Talia said, seizing Jason by the arm and guiding him back into the bed. She cupped his face with a hand and Jason sagged against the headboard, trembling. “Listen to me. You’ve been with us—my father and me—for over a year, now. When we found you, you were wandering the streets of Gotham, with little evidence of consciousness. We weren’t looking for you—no one was looking for you. It was an accident. You were recognized as Robin by a low-level street thug with enough wit to sell that information to someone above him in the fetid food chain of Gotham’s criminal class. My father was—curious. He’s interested in all forms of life extension. And there you were, alive, physically intact, despite having died and been buried a year prior.”

“So you took me in, to, to what, experiment on me?” The word buried made him shudder.

“To observe you. That was my father’s reason, yes. I had my own reasons.”

“Like what?” Jason said, bitterness creeping up his throat.

“You are my beloved’s son,” Talia said simply. “I was explicitly ordered to stay away from him, and I dared not go against my father’s wishes. Not then. But I could watch over you. And that is what I did.”

“But you broke ranks now—why?”

“My father gradually lost hope that you would ever recover yourself enough to provide insight into the nature of your resurrection. He was prepared to—” Talia stopped. “He had no interest in you beyond what he hoped to learn from your return from death. I do.”

“Because I’m Bruce’s son.”

“Yes. And because I have cared for you for a year, Jason, and I find myself unprepared to stop now.” Talia took Jason’s hand in hers. “I am sorry to have subjected you to the Pit. I would have preferred to wait—unlike my father, I saw signs of improvement in you, no matter how halting. But when I made the decision to flee with you, I knew this was the only chance we would ever have at the Pit. And if I was wrong, and had passed up that single chance—if I was wrong, no one would ever thank me for refusing it. No one would be able to.”

Jason sighed raggedly and closed his eyes, but left his hand in Talia’s. “What now?” he said. “Do we have to keep running and hiding from Ra’s forever?”

“What do you want to do, Jason?”

“I want to go home,” he said in a small voice, feeling tears welling up behind his eyelids. “I want Bruce. I want my dad.”

“Then that is what we will do,” Talia said, squeezing Jason's hand. “We go to Gotham.”