dami can't (leavethenest) wrote in doorslogs, @ 2012-11-08 21:48:00 |
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Entry tags: | damian wayne, door: dc comics, stephanie brown |
Who: Damian, Steph, Jason
Where: The cave's Lazarus Pit
When: The night Bats and Jaybird go crazy
What: Raising the dead! WOOO.
Warnings: necromancy, blood, violence
Damian stood at the edge of the Lazarus Pit. He hadn’t visited it in a long time, knowing that frequent trips to the green pool would tempt him to bring some of it along with him on missions to instantly heal wounds and broken bones. What’s wrong with doing that? Jade was there, her voice strong and comforting in a way he was getting used to. She didn’t annoy him like most adults did and while she was prone to embarrassing him in front of the kitty cat, she was good at calming him down. Probably the best. If Damian were to start carrying vials of the Lazarus Pit around in his belt for small injuries, he’d get addicted to it. More than that, it would start eating away at his brain and soon he’d be a raving lunatic like his grandfather. How easy it was for it to make a man crazy he didn’t know. But, with Jason now dead and without most of his blood, Damian had to try.
After Stephanie picked them up, he put Jason in a thick, nylon sheet that was normally used for recreational sailboats. The road up to the Pit was intentionally rocky and confusing, but two people carrying Jason’s body could make it through relatively easily, especially after he bridged a couple of the gaps while he was staying with his father. He even installed a sort of laser security system that had Damian makeshift inventions written all over it. The Lazarus Pit was the equivalent as a normal child getting a puppy. He intended to take care of it all by himself. But, he never thought he’d actually have to use it.
Damian kicked a rock into the green pool below him, watching it slowly sink. “Even if Jason comes back completely sane, he’s going to try and kill me for this.” He turned to look at Stephanie walking back over to Jason’s corpse and opening up the bloodied sheet and sighed. Jade had called the Jaybird a brother of Damian since day one. And, she was right. Even if they weren’t blood brothers, even if they didn’t even train under Batman at the same time, they were still brothers. And, he had to make this right.
Stephanie, who had washed her hands of all the crime fighting Gotham had to offer, could not believe what had just happened in a short matter of hours. Playing Oracle for the night had been hands on enough for her -- she wasn’t donning the cowl, so it didn’t really count, right? But, Damian had needed her, and Damian’s (and the Batfamily’s) safety would always come first before her hang-ups. (And, this didn’t mean that she was back in the game. Not at all. She hadn’t even worn her Batgirl suit when she picked up the boy wonders; only a plain black mask and discreet clothes concealed her identity tonight.)
She had to control the urge to be sick looking down at Jason’s lifeless body, and she felt dizzy dragging the dead weight into the car and, later, around the cave. It was different hearing about Jason’s death -- hearing about anyone’s death, really -- than actually witnessing with her own eyes.
When they finally reached the bottom of the cave where the Pit was, she couldn’t help but stare at the green goop below them. The sight was arresting, paralyzing even. Stephanie Brown had seen a lot of things in her very short life, but this, well, this took the cake. She watched Damian through the corner of her eye, a frown of concern tugging her lips down. Reaching up, she untied the eyemask still attached to her face. “Damian,” she said quietly, so very uncharacteristic of their usual conversation. Before, where there was sibling teasing and ruthless jabs, she could only look at him with silent concern and a worried lip bite. “Are you really sure about this?” The Pit called to her attention again because she couldn’t look away from it, and mostly, because she couldn’t stand the sight of Jason’s pale face and his bloody shroud.
“The alternative is burying him in the backyard again with my grandparents.” Damian gave her a look like that wasn’t an option at all. Shiva’s voice calling him a failure in the back of his head rang over and over like an alarm. He had to make this right. Even if it wasn’t his fault, he had to give Jason one more shot to make things right. And, if this was a mistake, it was in Damian’s blood to make it. He reached into his utility belt and unfolded a black box that turned into a tiny gun. He then attached a blue vial to the top and handed it to her. “Tranquilizers.” Damian gave her a look like he was just past the point of being scared and right onto that stupid, thick-skulled determined demeanor that got him through everything.
He hooked his arms under Jason’s shoulders and slowly dragged him into the pit. He waded a couple feet out and then drifted Jason’s body until it sank down in the middle. Damian always got a strange feeling when he was in the pit, like it was calling for his blood, so he scrambled out of the green liquid as quickly as he could.
There was nothing at all for a few short minutes of bubbling sulfur and silent, viscous stirring of the green waters in the pit.
Nothing. That is what Jason was now - nothing. Just a body, a corpse. If there was such a thing as the soul, his had fled. No movement, for a while, a long time, too long. It seemed as if, this time, it might not be willing to come back. For all the epic powers of the pit, nothing stirred, and nothing lived in it.
The first sign of change was a bubbling from the center of the pit, more vigorous than the thick pops it sometimes gave off. This was a foaming, gentle at first, then more, an overflow of air from under those glowing waters, then screaming.
Screaming. It was a sound that got into the bones by conduction, like the scream was being held against the listener's teeth and rattling around within the bones of the skull. A radiation scream, crawling inside, hollowing out the marrow, living there, comfortable, forever, screaming. There was a flash of movement, and then nothing, again, for another moment.
Jason had dived beneath the surface.
There had been nothing. He had been dying - he had been dead. There had been cold eyes, and a sword, and the sensation he knew now, of death like a freight train coming and closing over him, a long shadow after which nothing followed. And then there was pain. It trickled down limbs he could feel and through lungs that existed, and he was alive, and his brain was on fire, and he began to scream
He dove back under those thick waters because he thought the nothing might be there, down there, the womb-like comfort of knowing for sure that you were dead because you didn’t know or think anything. You were dead. Maybe he had floated up from the nothing, and swimming deeply enough would take him back to it.
In his thrashing panic, some of the water from the pit shoved its way down his throat and into his lungs. Jason kicked, hard, and surfaced. The survival instinct, to live in the face of choking and drowning won out, even against the instinct to stay dead. He coughed up green water that left an acid trail inside him. This was not rejuvenating. This was not healing. Somewhere in the pit he'd lost the tattered shirt he'd been wearing.The wound on his chest was closed up without a trace, but it was inside him now, evil, evil as anything in this world. The voice at the back of his head, the one he wasn't really cognizant of, was screaming too.
It was happening again. It was happening again. He dug his fingers into slick black hair tight enough to draw blood from little crescent wounds that opened and closed like scarlet morning glories and wailed. He had lost something, and no one would ever be able to bring it back. So he stood, slicked with green, hearing a scratchy ringing in his ears, but oh, that wasn't ringing, that was his voice going hoarse with screaming. There was no thought, no contemplation of what had gone before, just the feeling of being wrong, wrong, wrong. Jesus wept, right, when Lazarus returned from the dead? Shortest verse in the bible. No one was weeping now.
Another hacking cough cut off the cry, more sick green fluid from his lungs. He looked up, and his dark hair was wet, and his eyes were empty of anything but flat, black, animal fear, and pain.
He began wading toward them. Fast.
Damian stepped out of the pool, clicking one of the pouches on his massive utility belt and pulling out what looked like a small, compact version of Catwoman’s bolas. They had the liquid nitro that was based on what Freeze developed that not only trapped, but chilled most people to a sluggish pace. The tranquilizers were what would put Jason down, but Damian had to slow the Jaybird down before getting a good shot in. Once Jason stepped foot outside of the pool, the bolas whipped through the air towards him, wrapping around his legs as it unleashed the cooling gel.
“First priority is knocking him out.” Damian shouted to Stephanie, recognizing the blankness in Jason’s eyes as something he saw in the Talons. He backed up a little for a running start and then rushed towards Jason as fast as he could, slamming against his torso to try and bring him down.
Jason just wanted out. Like the last time, he wanted to run, to get away from the pool and its sucking, sticky liquid, its burn inside him, and run for as long as he could. And whoever stood between him and the exit wouldn't live long.
It was likely a good thing, then, that Damian tossed the bolas, which Jason neither expected nor quite registered. His mind was overloaded with fear, panic, pain, and rage. Getting out, getting away, getting anywhere other than the pit, was so important that he didn't even realize the bolas were around his legs until his next step forward tripped him. Then Damian tackled him to the ground. Jason hit the stone floor hard, and there was a soft crack - one of his ribs. It was likely to swiftly mend, since he was still soaked with the waters of the pit, but the pain and his slowly numbing legs hindered his otherwise violent struggling. He tried to lash out, gnashing teeth, reaching back against the pain in his chest to grab Damian by the hair. His strength, enhanced by the pit, was incredible, and if his legs hadn't been useless, it was likely nothing could have held him.
Being a member of the costumed crusaders affectionately know as the Batfamily, you had to learn to keep a level head about some of the most ludicrous things. And, tonight, for Stephanie, that included watching a fellow former Robin rise from the dead. The nausea of before caused by looking at Jason’s dead, marred body doubled when she heard that blood curdling scream, and she couldn’t help jumping in horror. The tranquilizer gun still hung in her head, ignored completely because Steph could only focus on the bubbling in the pool, and then that scream, and then Jason Todd, their own Lazarus, speeding towards she and Damian. She panicked, fumbling for the gun as Damian tackled him down, and she chased after both men. Still distant enough to avoid Jason’s trashings , she hesitated with gun pointed and hand shaking.
“I can’t get a clear shot!” she shouted, panicked voice echoing through the cave and hands still shaking violently. She didn’t want to hit Damian with the tranquilizer, and the two former boy wonders were moving around too much for her to get a shot where she was. So, after a second, she risked being within reach of Jason’s merciless grasp and stepped closer. And, when close enough, she shot the dart towards his arm, the one with fingers ripping into Damian’s hair. “Sorry, Jason,” she said. She still had the gun in her hand, and she closed in to help subdue him, grabbing for the arm she just shot the dart at.
The dart hit home, yet another sting barely felt. Jason's fingers closed around Damian's hair, and he was going to pull, pull hard, hard enough to yank the spine free of its moorings and leave his unrecognized assailant a boneless mess of flesh on the ground, when his fingers began to slacken. Rising panic struggled with numbness that was now spreading beyond his legs, and this was death again, yet again, a third time. His eyes rolled back, and he slumped to the floor with a vague whimper of fear. No more.
Damian found himself close to screaming, the inhuman force of Jason and Steph’s panicked shouting getting to his nerves. But, he kept a grip around Jason, trying his best to keep the man still even when he threatened to pull his scalp off hair by hair. Finally, the struggling slowed and Jason fell still in his arms again. This time, however, there was a sense of success. “Okay.” Damian got to his feet, looking down at the now very alive Jason and then up at Stephanie. “Good work. Now we just need to get in contact with Catwoman. I don’t know if the Lazarus Pit cured him of the Scarecrow poison, but it’s her problem now.”
He looked down at Jason again, at the green liquid that clung to his own boots and without a second thought, drug his feathered brother back into the cloth stained with blood. Maybe he hesitated, maybe for a second he thought it would have been right to let the dead stay dead, but his gut told him he was doing the right thing. And, Damian was the sort of man who always followed his instincts.