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They stood at the edge of the cliff.
Talia.
Jason.
And dozens of League of Assassins killers.
Masked assassins had drawn their swords, encircling the glowing, toxic green miracle. The Lazarus Pit.
Not one assassin shifted. Not one lowered a blade. Their faces remained unreadable behind the masks. They had been trained to purge themselves of all emotion. Hardened by relentless physical and psychological torture, they had been sculpted into magnificent soldiers driven by nothing but duty, their weaknesses completely stripped away.
Now, they waited in a sacred cavern they were normally forbidden from entering, swords drawn and ready for combat. They were prepared to clash with Talia, the woman who commanded them, the woman they were forced to respect, and the woman they had learned to fear. After all, you must kiss the hand you cannot break.
Talia was a woman who always calculated her moves. She knew exactly what she was doing to these desperate men who hungered for power.
She knew the devastating toll her father’s empire had taken on the world, and across three realms. Her family’s legacy and responsibilities were seared into her mind like a brand upon skin. She had carried her father’s heritage with pride, executing his commands with a profound sense of devotion.
Even if it meant losing the only man she had ever loved.
After willingly giving up the one person she would have cast everything aside for, nothing else truly mattered. Bruce would never trust her again. Everything had played out exactly as they wanted.
Talia looked down once more from the rocky ledge where she stood, perched high near the cave ceiling. She looked at the assassins she had broken, shattered, and reshaped with her own hands.
They had bared their blades against the young boy who had served as their commander, and against Talia, whose orders they were supposed to obey without question. There was only one reason such defiance could exist.
Ra's al Ghul stood near the opposite side of the cave, arms wrapped tightly around his wounded abdomen, trying to maintain his posture as he called out to his daughter across the expanse:
"You will ruin everything Talia. What do you think you are doing?"
Talia looked across the cavern at her father, nearly fifty meters away, whom she had stabbed only moments prior. Like Talia and Jason, Ra's stood high above the Lazarus Pit on one of the upper ledges near the ceiling.
Even though the assassins lived in Nanda Parbat, they were oblivious to the hidden passages leading to the upper tiers, as they were banned from entering the cavern under normal circumstances.
Ra's spent most of his days in this cave like an obsessed, broken man, bathing in the sinister green glow of the Lazarus waters. So that, Talia, having grown up alongside this pit of pure rage, could lock eyes with him even across the crowded, tense cavern.
"He cannot handle it" Ra's warned. "The boy has no will to protect him. He will lose his mind beneath the weight of his own hatred."
Talia turned toward the unmoving boy beside her. At her father's words, she noticed several of the assassins stealing fleeting glances at Jason.
They were looking at their silent commander. A commander who had saved their lives countless times on the battlefield, who possessed a tenderness and compassion unexpected of an assassin, yet who never uttered a single word.
"Even if he still possessed a soul, returning from death is an agonizing ordeal for a vessel so damaged," the old man pleaded, his voice carrying a rare, desperate edge as he tried to reason with his daughter. "The boy doesn't even have a soul, Talia. You are going to pour all the fury of the Lazarus Pit into an empty shell."
Talia felt a sudden flutter in her chest. It had been a long time since she had felt the presence of her own heart, and the sensation startled her. She reached out, her fingers brushing through the hair of the boy who stood as unresponsive as ever.
Under normal circumstances, Jason was sensitive to touch. Anyone but her approaching him would instantly trigger his lifeless body into motion. His movements were sharp, rigid, and deeply ingrained. He had learned his lessons so thoroughly that he could fight even after dying, being buried, and being forgotten.
‘My forgotten fledgling’, Talia thought bitterly.
She gently caressed his raven-black hair, watching his absolute lack of reaction. In her mind, she apologized to him a thousand times over. It broke her heart that she was one of the only two people Jason still trusted.
Talia smoothed the hair at the nape of his neck. It pained her that even without a will of his own, from the very first day, Jason had instinctively disregarded his own wounded body to protect Damian, never even knowing the boy was his little brother. Even if she were to tell him, the concept would mean nothing to his unfortunately hollow mind.
He was protecting her baby. He trusted the daughter of the Demon’s Head, a monster in her own right. He trusted her so deeply that as they stood at the edge of a cliff, dozens of meters in the air, when Talia slid her hand from his hair down to his chest, and he remained entirely compliant.
Jason was a good boy. And for a long time, they had exploited that goodness for their own cruel ambitions. Talia apologized silently once more for what she was about to put him through.
But no words left her lips. She simply gazed at him. The boy stared back with dull eyes that had once been as blue as the sky, now clouded by a sickly yellow film. He was calm. As he always was.
Talia leaned in close, her lips lightly brushing against his ear.
"My little secret."
***
Talia was sitting in the cavern they used as an infirmary, reviewing the reports laid out before her. They had only just emerged from a bloody skirmish. Damian was tending to the fresh wounds on his tiny body, while Jason sat on a chair, staring blankly into the void as he always did.
He sat hunched over, his elbows resting on his knees, his head slumped forward. The rhythmic sound of his own blood dripping from his wounds onto the ground echoed through the empty, dark, and gloomy room.
It was difficult for anyone in the League to comprehend that the commander who, just half an hour ago, had decimated an army with the effortless grace of a professional dancer to protect both Talia and Damian, was the exact same lifeless shell sitting before them now, showing no signs of vitality, not even flinching as he bled.
Which was why Talia felt no surprise when she saw Damian finish his bandages, hop down from the chair where his feet couldn't even reach the ground, and walk over to Jason.
Damian peered intently at the boy, entirely unaware that this was his older brother.
"Mother?" the young boy asked.
"Yes, dear?" Talia answered, without drawing her full attention away from the reports.
"Why Akhi doesn't move?"
Talia turned to her son, knowing he was far more intelligent than average children his age. She forced a gentle, understanding smile onto her face.
"Darling," Talia explained softly, "it is because he doesn't have a soul."
Damian wrinkled his nose, his eyes never leaving Jason. It was as though he couldn't make any sense of his mother's words.
"Then why is he crying?"
***
Talia snapped back to the very memory that had brought her to this moment.
Yes, it was going to be difficult.
Yes, it would take time.
Yes, it would inflict unimaginable agony upon the boy.
But she was granting a second chance, both to him and to herself.
Talia pressed a tender kiss against Jason’s cheek.
"Bring him back to me."
With a sudden, forceful shove against his chest, Talia pushed Jason over the edge. She watched the boy plunge from dozens of meters in the air, his unblinking, vacant eyes fixed on her the entire way down.
The long-dead body hit the glowing waters of the Lazarus Pit with a colossal splash.
One second.
Two seconds.
Five seconds.
Fifteen seconds.
Then, a blood-curdling, agonizing shriek tore through the cave, echoing violently against the stone walls.