Chapter Text
Corpses aren't supposed to breathe again, especially not when they've been dead for months.
Gasping, Jason blinks against the darkness, willing his eyes to adjust. But there's nothing—only pitch blackness consuming the world around him. His pupils dilate uselessly, searching for any hint of light that doesn't exist. The absolute void presses against his eyeballs like a physical weight.
The silence is deafening. Not the comfortable quiet of a sleeping house, but the oppressive, suffocating silence of a tomb. No distant traffic, no wind, no settling creaks—just the thunderous sound of his own heartbeat hammering in his ears and the rasp of his breathing echoing in the confined space. Even the smallest sound he makes seems to be swallowed by the darkness, as if the void is hungry for any sign of life.
He tries to move, and every muscle screams in protest. His limbs feel foreign, disconnected, as if he's wearing someone else's body. When he flexes his fingers, they respond a half-second too late, stiff and clumsy. His joints creak like old hinges, and there's a strange coldness in his bones that has nothing to do with temperature.
The air tastes wrong—stale and metallic, with an underlying sweetness that makes his stomach lurch. Each breath feels like swallowing cotton, thick and suffocating. His tongue explores his mouth and finds it dry as parchment, his lips cracked and peeling.
Jason tries to sit up and immediately regrets it. His head spins violently, and nausea crashes over him in waves. The world tilts sideways even though he can't see it. He feels hollowed out, like something essential has been scooped away and replaced with emptiness.
What's wrong with me? The thought cuts through the disorientation.
He squints harder, desperate for his vision to adjust, but the darkness remains absolute. His hand reaches up to massage his temples when his fingers brush against something impossibly soft. Silky.
Turning his hand, he traces the surface directly above his face, following the edges until he finds where they connect to the bed beneath him. What happened? The thought cuts through the fog in his mind.
He pushes against the barrier. His breathing accelerates as it refuses to give way. Desperately, he tries to remember the last place he was before this suffocating confinement. "Bruce."
The name scrapes against his raw throat. He realizes he's spoken his protector's name aloud. Like breaking a dam, desperation pours through his actions. He pounds harder against the soft walls, gasping. "Bruce, please, I—"
Jason stills as memories flood back.
He'd fought with Bruce. The arguments had become more frequent in recent months—Bruce claiming he was becoming too violent, too unstable. Threatening to bench him. But this fight was different from all the others.
Because someone died this time.
The details swim murky in his head, but something was said. Something happened. Whatever it was left Jason feeling insecure about his place in the manor, under Bruce's care. It drove him to seek out his birth mother, hoping for acceptance.
Jason gasps at the stabbing pain in his skull, trying to remember what came next.
He had... he had...
Jason can't breathe.
Did I die?
His breathing becomes shallow, quickened. You're panicking. Bruce's voice echoes in his mind.
It's okay, Jaylad. Breathe with me. In for four.
Jason feels his chest inflate. Hold for seven. And out for eight.
His chest deflates. Good. Now again.
After what feels like hours of wrestling his breathing back under control, Jason catalogs what he understands about his situation.
First: He'd left a note and run away. Sought out the name listed under "mother" on his birth certificate, only to be betrayed once again by someone who should have been his guardian.
Sheila probably died too.
The thought brings him morbid satisfaction.
Second: Because of that betrayal, Jason was held captive. Tortured. And... exploded. He remembers the heat from the blast, pieces of hot shrapnel slicing his skin. Worse than the explosion's agony was how his crowbar-broken body left him unable to escape before suffocating on dense smoke. He remembers the relief as consciousness faded, knowing the pain would finally end.
The Joker. He... he...
Jason swallows hard, forcing the thought away. No time for that now. He needs to focus.
Third: He's alone in a box. His coffin, most likely.
How long has it been? Days? Weeks? Months?
No one is coming to help you. The vicious voice in his head snarls. No one knows you're alive, and honestly? No one cares. Bruce probably threw a party when they lowered your worthless corpse into the ground. One less disappointment to deal with.
Jason blinks back tears.
Let's face it, you pathetic little worm, the voice hisses with malicious glee. You've always been expendable. A street rat playing dress-up as a hero. Bruce only kept you around out of pity, and even that ran out. Your own mother sold you out for pocket change—what does that tell you about your worth?
Jason curls his fingers into fists around the soft satin lid of his death box.
Face the truth, Robin, the voice drips with contempt. You failed. You got yourself killed like the reckless, stupid child you've always been. And now you're going to die again, alone and forgotten, just like you deserve. The only difference is this time, no one will even bother to bury what's left.
"Where are your parents?" The Dark Knight had asked, holding the hoodie of the small thief.
"I've got none," the boy had yelled despite his disadvantaged circumstances. "I don't need no one. Just got myself, and myself is all I need."
Jason tears through the fabric. Time is running out. He pulls and rips at the satin until smooth wood is all he feels. Pushing down bile, he runs his nails along the polished surface—scratching lightly at first, then harder with each pass.
I won't need fingernails to live.
Eventually, through splinters and warm blood on his hands, he feels his belt buckle slide through a barrier. Dirt trickles onto his face.
Finding the sliver of opening he's created with raw fingertips, he works with delicate fervor. First weakening the surrounding wood, then steeling himself to pull at the gap.
Let's see how long you can hold your breath, failure, the voice hisses with sadistic anticipation. Maybe you'll last longer than you did with the Joker. Oh wait—you didn't last at all, did you? Pathetic.
In one semi-smooth motion, he tears through the opening. Dirt and mud spill onto his face as he blindly pushes it back, creating space large enough to push through. Adrenaline pumps through his veins. He inhales his last breath of coffin air, then begins his slow, methodical swim to the surface.
The earth above him is a living weight, pressing down from all sides. Each handful of dirt he claws away seems to be replaced by two more, as if the grave itself is fighting to keep him. His fingernails tear and split against rocks and roots, leaving bloody trails in the mud. The taste of soil floods his mouth—gritty, metallic, with the decay of worms and rotting leaves.
His lungs begin to burn. The urge to breathe becomes a screaming need that drowns out everything else. Panic claws at his chest as he realizes he's moving too slowly. The darkness above him could stretch on forever for all he knows. What if he's digging in the wrong direction? What if he's trapped in an endless maze of earth and stone?
A root catches his wrist, and for a terrifying moment he thinks something has grabbed him. He thrashes wildly, using precious energy to free himself, dirt cascading into his eyes and nose. His movements become more frantic, less controlled. He's not swimming anymore—he's drowning in solid ground.
His vision starts to blur at the edges, black spots dancing in the already pitch-black world. His body screams for oxygen, muscles cramping and seizing. The weight of six feet of earth presses down on him like a crushing fist.
But then—impossibly—his fingers break through into something different. Not the dense, packed earth he's been fighting, but loose soil that crumbles away easily. Cool air touches his fingertips.
Are you going to give up again? The voice sneers with vicious satisfaction. Of course you are. That's what you do—you fold under pressure, you disappoint everyone, and then you die. Bruce was right to want you off the streets. You're nothing but a liability, a broken toy that should have stayed in the gutter where it belongs.
Jason ignores the voice's venomous assault and pushes harder, deeper into the blackness above.
His hand emerges from the mud up to the elbow. Jason screams out his last air, pulling himself topside.
Jason Todd takes his first deep breath of new life after death.