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“There has to be a way out.”
Jason turned away from the clay wall and glanced at Dick, who was facing a wall of his own on the other side of the enclosed space that had them trapped in.
A single torchlight illuminated the tomb room, and Jason could see his predecessor tapping the wall with his escrima stick, like he was a plumber assessing the structural integrity of the building. Professional. Methodical. Almost a little enthralled by the piping mystery hiding behind the wall itself.
“Yeah I don’t think so, Dickie.”
Dick didn’t slow his inscrutable process of wall diagnosis, “Don’t be so negative, Jay.”
“Centuries. Nobody made it to the tomb room for centuries. You know why?”
“Cause they all died?”
“Cause they all died. There are enough skeletons out there to assemble an orchestra. We’re so deep underground I’m pretty sure we’re halfway to Australia.” Jason huffed in frustration, “We’re in the middle of fucking nowhere.”
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Dick pause at that. Great, pay attention. Jason thought.
“Comms are down. No surprise, since there’s like twenty layers of rocks in the way. No one knew where we were. Oxygen running out because some genius managed to blow up the supporting beams.”
Dick turned to look at him. “So this is my fault?”
“What?” Jason frowned. “No, I meant the amateurs who rigged the tunnels. Jesus, I haven’t even started yet and you’re already getting defensive.”
“Yeah, and you’re just the least passive aggressive person I’ve ever known.”
“Man, you even hear yourself?” Jason shook his head. “The irony is gonna kill me before the hypoxia does.”
He sank down against the wall with a thud. This had been a poorly planned and executed mission that relied too much on luck and on-the-spot reaction. They didn’t have the time or opportunity to lay down the proper groundwork to prepare for unexpected turn of events, which occurred more often than not.
Don’t take any chances, Batman always said. Otherwise you risk putting yourself and others in danger. But that’s exactly what they did. It really was no surprise that they found themselves in this less-than-ideal predicament.
God, is there anything more annoying than unintentionally proving Batman is right?
After the tunnel collapse forced them to take refuge in their current position, the rocks above fell conveniently over the exit, blocking it so perfectly like two puzzle pieces fitting together. The tomb room was about the size of a bathroom, if you could imagine the coffin as the bathtub placed in the middle of it. It really wasn’t that spacious. One would think whichever king or noble buried here would want a bigger chamber than this, but apparently not.
Speaking of coffin…
Jason closed his eyes. Not a big fan of a certain kind of box. Rectangle. Cuboid.
Behind his eyelids, he could imagine himself being in a large room, with nothing but light and boundless space. He could travel in any direction, with nothing holding him back. He could move, and as long as he’s moving, it’s all good.
“Jason? You okay?”
Jason opened his eyes to Dick hovering worriedly over him.
“Sit down, idiot.”
Dick did. His back against the wall, right next to him.
“I was handling just fine before you showed up.”
“Yeah I don’t think so, Jay,” Dick parroted. “Unless you’ve got some internship experience with Lara Croft that I didn’t know about, I don’t think this is your scene either.”
“Internship? I could be Lara Croft, for all you know, which is not much.”
He heard Dick chuckle beside him. It was a strange sound to hear in the dim lighting, without seeing the expression clear on his face.
They argued plenty when the mission first started. It was Jason’s case, and Dick was so insistent on coming with in that annoying way of his. Working together was still new, and it was a little distracting, inefficient even, how they had to negotiate with each other on everything in order to progress.
Maybe that’s why they were here, trapped. Maybe if he did it on his own, this wouldn’t have happened.
“Oxygen will hold for an hour, I reckon,” Dick said.
“We’re fucked.”
“You don’t know that,” Dick replied, voice a little irritated. “What do you have in your utility belt?”
“Bullets and smoke grenades.”
“You have bullets left? Jesus, why do you pack so many of them? That’s really useful for our situation.”
“Fuck you.”
“Yeah, insulting me is gonna make this any better,” Dick said bitterly.
“Doesn’t take a structural engineer to figure out this place is on the verge of collapse,” Jason said, patiently and cruelly. “The tomb was lousily built. Why else did you think so many grave robbers died here?”
“You know what?” he continued, voice taut. “I’m glad the tunnel collapsed, killing those assholes we were chasing after. Even if it took us with them.”
“You don’t really mean that,” Dick replied hastily, then he started talking. Some regular bullshit that Jason had learned to tune out.
If this really was the end, he just wanted to sit here quietly. To conserve oxygen. To gain a peace of mind. Sensible and gratifying. Visualize the room filled with light. Open space. He could be on the cloud top. Field of flowers. Panoramic ocean. But he couldn’t stay here. The raft was tiny. Water leaking in. It’s going down. He’s sinking.
Jason snapped his eyes open. The torch had burnt out. The room was in full darkness.
“Are you sure you’re okay?” Dick asked, full of concern.
“Fine.”
He could feel Dick’s eyes on him, studying him like something in a dish. And he was suddenly thankful for the darkness that enveloped them.
There were a million things he could say in that moment. All of them would be unacceptable to different degree, because silence was the only correct answer; his brain, treacherous little thing, ended up feeding him the worst line of thought he could blab out.
“Did I ever tell you that I’ve seen the future?”
“Um, no? You have powers now?” Dick sounded a little puzzled, a little surprised.
That made two of them. Bad, bad brain. That was meant to stay in the back of his mind. Not spoken out loud.
“Not power. The multiverse. All of the futures,” Jason said. Are we really committing? Why? He asked his brain a little helplessly.
“That’s…nice,” Dick replied, not knowing what to expect from this line of dialogue. Again, that made two of them. “I think I have too? A couple of them, at least.”
“Most of them were pretty messed up, some of them were just weird. A couple looked a little too perfect, there’s probably something really dark going on there.”
“What about you?”
“Me?”
“Did you get to see what you become?” Dick asked, calm and cool.
Sometimes Jason forgot how Dick had that Bat training to see right through him. One of the many reasons to dislike any interactions between them.
“I think one of me became Batman. And Donna was Wonder Woman.”
“Wow, really? I mean, I could imagine that,” Dick sounded a little amused, delighted even. “I think you two have similar temperament, actually. She’s got a bit of a potty mouth too. Huh. Maybe we should put you two on a team more often.”
That’s not the point, Jason wanted to say. It’s only one universe out of billions. A tiny fraction of possibility where he managed to survive. In so many others, he had seen himself being killed at the hand of the Joker over and over again. In most of them, he never even came back to life. He existed so briefly, on an infinite canvas where he was just a blip, flickered off as if he was never there to begin with.
It's quite something to be told—to be shown just how small and insignificant you were, that the universe not only didn’t care about your wellbeing, but it was literally trying to get rid of you like some vermin.
“Jesus Christ, Jason,” Dick said, startled.
Oh brain, did you make me say all that out loud? Jason thought weakly. You little rascal.
“Really put things into perspective, huh?”
“Ja—”
“Shut up. I don’t want to talk about it.”
“But—”
“No. I’ll strangle you if you say a word more. I can justify it as mercy killing.”
They sat in silence. For twenty seconds.
“Tim and Damian will find us,” Dick said, always comforting people. “Everything will be okay. We can talk after we get back to Gotham.” Always making assumptions too.
These days, Jason almost envied the other man for his never depleted optimism.
“You know what else I saw on my great multiverse adventure?” he made himself sound sincere. “You and Babs together. Living your happy-ever-after. Pity this is not one of those realities, huh? How does it feel being a loser?”
Dick was quiet for a moment. Jason could feel the heat radiating off him dangerously.
“I’m not an idiot, Jason.”
“Whatever,” Jason mumbled, closing his eyes. “Just let me die in peace.”
“Are you suicidal?”
“Wow, give a guy a heads-up before you drop a bomb like that.”
“Do you want to live?”
“Of course I do! Why are you even asking me that?”
“I have to be sure. I don’t know if you’re just having an existential crisis, or—”
“Please just shut up for a second. You’re giving me a headache.”
He hadn’t thought much about death before his departure from life, which was a little odd, since he was no stranger to it by that time—he had witnessed his mother’s passing, heard of his father’s demise, and with the job he had, he had certainly seen plenty of death and its aftermath.
Bruce took the subject matter very seriously. It was one of the topics he insisted on lecturing him about. Looking back, his speech was well-thought out and well-rehearsed. The words were deep and personal, not too obscure or too bleak for a thirteen-year-old. At the time, he nodded his understanding, and it was genuine. But as he recalled it now, it was almost as though a veil was there, between Bruce’s words and himself.
He didn’t dwell on his death after he was first resurrected. Dealing vengeance to the living who deserved retribution, for they themselves barely had any respect for life—that was enough to occupy his mind with.
His own death, not the circumstance surrounding it, but the concept, the simple fact of it, didn’t occur to him until more recently, like it had finally caught up. And for once, he didn’t know what to make of it, didn’t know what conclusion he meant to draw from this unnamed feeling, like he had been dead longer than he was alive.
“Any idea who this guy is?”
“What guy?” Jason sighed tiredly. “What are you on about?”
“The guy buried here?”
“Not a clue. Some rich asshole, probably.”
“Yeah, probably. I think I saw some fancy pots and pans,” Dick paused. “Really makes you think.”
“Think what?”
“How you can’t take anything with you when you die. Gold, silver—it’s worthless to the dead. How everybody becomes equal in death.”
Jason snorted. “I don’t know what’s funnier. You sounding like an angsty high schooler, or how it isn’t remotely true in the world we live in—how many mysterious resurrections, time stream travelling have you witnessed so far?”
“I don’t know, Jason,” Dick said quietly. “Sometimes I feel like death is more about the living than the dead. It’s almost a little, I dunno, solipsistic, when I think about it.”
“Big word,” Jason muttered.
And maybe this was supposed to be the take-away, if there even was some point to this, that his notion of death was fucked up because the world they lived in was a little fucked up about it. Death wasn’t fair on the living just as it wasn’t fair on the dead; its impact was just as devastating, if not more. So what if it’s solipsistic? Why should he, or Dick feel bad about thinking about death the way they did?
“You wanna know a secret?”
“Sure, why not.”
“I can tell the future too,” Dick said, all seriousness. “You wanna know what it will be like?”
“What will it be like.”
“Tim and Damian will come and rescue us. We’re gonna get out of here. We’re gonna go home. Get a good night of sleep. And we’re going to have breakfast, together. Alfred will make you that breakfast plate you like.”
“I don’t—”
“You know why? Because I have enough optimism to carry both of us out of here. Also because I turned on the beacon like two hours ago when shit hit the fan. There’s a pretty good chance the signal got through.”
“Fucking asshole. You couldn’t tell me that before?”
“And you know what I think about this multiverse, the whole future sold separately, battery not included thing? I think it’s almost a little liberating. You can make any choices you want. There are so many possibilities open to you—”
“Dick,” Jason breathed. “You feeling a little light-headed?”
“Yeah.”
“Me too. Let’s just not talk for a while. I mean, I appreciate the speech. But let’s just—”
“—stay quiet for a little bit,” Dick inhaled. “Yeah, that’s probably for the best.”
Jason unfolded his arms, and reached to squeeze Dick’s hand. The heaviness in his chest lifted a little when he felt him squeezing back.
It’s unclear to him how long they had stayed like that. He might have passed out, he wasn’t sure. The environmental darkness was very easy to get used to. So he was immediately jolted awake when the first beam of light came on. He cracked open an eye, and had to close it because it was too bright.
“I found them!” A voice shouted, then a little closer to his ear, “Nice seeing you here. Hope you two had fun playing Indiana Jones.”
Jason mumbled something back, his brain feeling like it was trying to untangle all the mysteries of the universe.
The voice chuckled, then an arm slipped under his shoulder to help him stand up.
“Can you walk? Let’s get you home.”
The thought was encouraging enough for him to channel the strength he had, and came back to the world again.