Batman was back at the console, eyes locked on the screen, bathed in the cold blue light from the monitors. The Batcave around him was dead quiet, save for the low hum of servers and the occasional mechanical buzz from the Batcomputer cycling through data. Somewhere above, the manor slept. 

But Bruce hadn’t rested. Couldn’t. Not with this nagging feeling gnawing at the back of his mind like a splinter he couldn’t reach.

He reloaded the footage from the other night—the rooftop chase. The one where he, Dick, and Damian had Red Hood cornered for a moment before he pulled that clean getaway. 

It had been bothering Bruce since the second it happened. Something about the way he moved. The precision in his steps. The rhythm of his escape.

He leaned in as the footage played. Red Hood was fast, chaotic, but not careless. Everything was deliberate. He watched him sever the cable mid-swing, descend that building, and disappear right before the train thundered by and blocked the view.

Bruce usually stopped reviewing there. Same point every time. But tonight, something held him. He played that last second a few more times. Then he caught it.

Right before the train screeched past and swallowed the scene, Red Hood’s head tilted slightly. He said something.

Bruce narrowed his eyes. “Pause.”

He scrubbed back and watched it again. Slower.

Red Hood was saying something.

The words weren’t clear through the train’s rumble, but Bruce could hear something. Just barely.

“You’re a bit rusty, but you haven’t lost your touch, Bru—” The clip cut off right as the train screamed past.

Bruce sat back slowly, brows furrowed. That wasn’t just some snide remark. That was personal. The way he said “Bru—”—not Batman, not Bats. It felt… familiar.

Too familiar. 

With a grunt, he leaned forward again and began isolating the audio. He activated the Batcomputer’s forensic software and separated the sound channels, filtering out the noise pollution from the train.

He enhanced Red Hood’s vocal frequency, amped it up, cleared background distortion, and ran the sequence again.

“You’re a bit rusty, but you haven’t lost your touch, Bruce.”

He froze.

The voice echoed through the speakers—clear, distinct, deliberate.

Since the incident with the factory, he came as no surprise that Red Hood knew his identity. But the question was, how?

Without wasting a second, he ran the voice through the Batcomputer’s vocal recognition system. The program buzzed to life, comparing it against thousands of samples in the archives. He stood up now, his eyes locked on the screen, hands gripping the edge of the console.

The result popped up.

MATCH FOUND: JASON TODD.

A photo of Jason as a teenager, his file photo—flickered onto the screen. That cocky, mischievous smirk staring back at him like a ghost from another life. The name Jason Todd was stamped underneath in bold white letters.

Bruce’s breath caught.

Bruce stared at the screen, stunned. His heart thudded once, hard, and then settled into a colder rhythm.

“No,” he muttered.

There was no way.

And then—crash.

Behind him, the sharp clatter of broken ceramic rang out. He spun around to see Alfred standing at the bottom of the staircase, a shattered teacup at his feet. His face was pale, eyes wide, mouth slightly open.

He’d seen the screen.

He’d heard the name.

“How… how is this possible?” Alfred asked, his voice soft and cracked in a way Bruce hadn’t heard in years.

He didn’t have to say much else. Jason wasn’t just Bruce’s loss—he was Alfred’s too. The boy had lived under their roof. Eaten Alfred’s meals, wore the suits he pressed, and learned lessons from him when Bruce couldn’t. Alfred had helped raise him like one of his own.

Bruce looked at him, jaw tense. “Alfred…”

“Are you saying—Jason… he’s alive?” The older man’s voice was trembling. “Red Hood… that’s him?”

Bruce didn’t respond directly. He just turned back toward the locker where he kept emergency gear, tugging on a black jacket over his shoulders and grabbing a long, dirt-worn shovel from its rack. His face had changed.

The guilt was still there, but it had shifted. Now it was blended with something sharper. Focused. Determined.

“There’s only one way to be sure,” he said as he walked past Alfred, heading toward the exit that led outside.

The graveyard behind Wayne Manor was quiet and still. The air was cool, thick with moisture from an earlier drizzle, and the ground was soft beneath Bruce’s boots. 

Tall oaks lined the perimeter, casting long shadows under the dim moonlight barely breaking through the clouds.

He moved with purpose, not bothering with gloves or gadgets. Just him and a shovel.

And a name.

He walked past the graves of the Waynes—his parents, until he reached the smaller headstone a little farther down the hill. It was simple. Clean. 

Jason Todd.

The date of birth. The date of death. Flowers long since dried lay at the base of the stone, their stems brittle from time.

Bruce shrugged off his jacket, folded it carefully, and laid it on top of the gravestone. Then he rolled up his sleeves and pressed the shovel into the dirt.

The first scoop hit with a heavy thud.

He worked quietly, slowly, methodically. 

His breath was calm, focused, but beneath the surface, thoughts raced. Every memory. Every moment he’d failed Jason—all of it bubbled to the surface with every shove of the blade.

He had to know.

He needed to know.

Inside the manor, Damian stirred.

He had gone to bed early after the conversation with his father. No patrol tonight. But somewhere around 2 a.m., he woke with a dry throat and an itch in his gut that something was off.

He threw on his robe and padded down the dark hallway barefoot, heading to the kitchen. As he poured himself a glass of water, his eyes drifted to the window.

He stopped mid-sip.

There, in the distance, he saw the beam of a flashlight cutting through the mist over the graveyard. And beneath it—his father. 

Digging.

“What the—” he muttered, setting the glass down. 

By the time Damian reached the yard, Bruce had already uncovered the coffin.

Alfred stood a few feet away, flashlight in his hand, his expression pale and worried.

“Master Bruce,” he said quietly, “Are you absolutely sure about this? What if you… what if you see something you’re not ready for?”

Bruce didn’t hesitate. “I have to be sure. This is the only way.”

He crouched down, brushed dirt from the edge of the coffin lid, and unlatched it.

A sudden voice cut through the still night.

“I didn’t take you for a grave robber,” Damian said, standing just behind Alfred with his arms folded, clearly unimpressed but deeply confused.

Bruce didn’t answer him. He took a deep breath and opened the lid.

All three of them leaned over.

And froze.

Jason lay there—untouched. His body hadn’t decomposed. He hadn’t aged. He looked exactly the same as the day they buried him. Peaceful. Still. Like he was just… sleeping.

Damian’s brow furrowed. “Okay… that’s creepy.” It looked just like the Jason he knew from the League. It looked exactly the same as the time he first met him. But he held on to this realization, not wanting to draw conclusions until he got an explanation.

Alfred’s lips parted in disbelief. “He hasn’t changed,” he whispered. “Not even a day.”

Damian stepped forward and read the date on the gravestone again. “This was years ago… How is this possible?” The same year Jason came into their lives in the mountains.

Bruce stared down at Jason’s body, fists clenched at his sides. “I should’ve known.”

Damian raised an eyebrow. “You mind explaining what that means, or should I start guessing?”

Bruce didn’t answer. He just reached up and grabbed Alfred’s hand, letting the older man help him climb out of the grave.

“I’ll explain when I get back,” Bruce said, brushing dirt from his shirt and grabbing his jacket from the headstone.

Damian rolled his eyes. “That’s not an answer, that’s a plot dodge. Where are you going?”

Bruce pulled on the jacket and turned back toward the manor, his tone dead serious.

“To get answers.”

There was no hesitation. No doubt. Just a cold, focused certainty in his voice.

He didn’t say it out loud, but he knew who could’ve pulled this off. 

Who had the knowledge. The resources. The means to bring back the dead.

Jason hadn’t just come back on his own.

Someone brought him back.

He was going to find out exactly how it happened, even if he had to dig deeper than any grave to do it.

– – –

Bruce, now fully suited in the Bat costume, piloted the Batwing high above the clouds, slicing through the cold air of the mountain range like a predator in the dark. Below him, nestled into the jagged cliffs like a fortress built into the bones of the Earth, was the new home base of the League of Assassins.

With a few taps on the console, the Batwing engaged its cloaking tech—light-bending camouflage that rendered it invisible even to infrared scans. It shimmered once, then vanished completely from sight. Batman guided the craft into a hidden ridge just outside the compound, setting it down without a whisper.

Once on foot, he moved like smoke—silent, shapeless, invisible. The cold mountain wind bit through the narrow paths, howling between ancient stone walls and sleek, modern architecture reinforced with brutal precision. League guards patrolled the outer grounds in pairs, but none noticed the shadow weaving between them.

He slipped past infrared beams, ducked under security cams, and ghosted through pressure-triggered corridors. Not a single step echoed. Not a breath gave him away.

Like a phantom, he glided through the dark belly of the base, deeper and deeper toward the main building—toward her. The woman who complicated his life more than any villain he’d ever faced. The mother of his son. 

The woman who raised more questions than she ever answered.

Talia al Ghul.

The mother of his arrogant, infuriating, brilliant, prideful little menace who gave him more headaches than Gotham’s entire rogues’ gallery. 

Honestly, Bruce had started using the city’s criminals as punching bags just to blow off the stress Damian caused on a weekly basis.

He came to a pair of tall, ancient doors, ornate, carved with symbols older than any modern tongue. Silent as death, he cracked one open just enough to peer through.

There she was.

Talia sat behind a desk of polished obsidian, legs crossed, reading a leather-bound book with that same calm, unreadable expression she always wore—like she was trying to channel the wisdom of her father through posture alone. Now that she’d inherited his title, she dressed the part. Regal. Cold. Timeless.

The room was dim, illuminated only by a few candles and the pale light of the moon pouring through the high arched windows. Shadows painted the walls like old ghosts. He slipped inside, melting into those shadows, moving without a sound.

He didn’t come here for closure or pleasantries. He was here for answers. The kind you don’t ask nicely for.

He crept behind her, careful and precise. This was her domain, and the element of surprise was his only advantage.

But Talia wasn’t just anyone. In one swift motion, she sensed the shift in air behind her, reached for her desk, and spun around.

Their weapons met at each other’s throats. His Batarang pressed tight against her skin, while her hidden pen-knife gleamed inches from his own.

She smirked.

“You know,” she said in that familiar and soul soothing voice, calm and sharp like a dagger in silk, “a romantic lover might present a flower. Not a murdering tool.” Bruce didn’t even blink.

He ignored the bait, eyes hard beneath the cowl. “Tell me what you and that sociopathic father of yours did to my son.”

Talia tilted her head, eyes narrowing. “Your son?” She played dumb, but there was a flicker—an ever-so-slight falter.

“Did something happen to Damian?”

“Not Damian.” Batman’s voice was low, heavy. “His predecessor. Robin. The one who died.”

Her gaze shifted. The lie lingered on her tongue, but she didn’t speak it.

“I don’t know what you mean, Bruce. I have no ide—”

“Cut the crap and give me answers.” He leaned in, the Batarang pressing into her neck. His jaw was tight, fury simmering behind those sharp, cold eyes. It wasn’t rage. It was pain. Raw and volcanic.

Talia held his gaze, unblinking, and slowly eased her arm down. The pen clattered softly on the desk. “Fine,” she said, voice quiet but steady. “But if I talk, you’ll listen.”

He stepped back and lowered his weapon—but not his guard. “Start at the beginning.”

She took her time, walking to a nearby counter where a crystal decanter of wine sat with two glasses. The movement was deliberate, graceful, all part of her control.

“Care for one as well?” she asked, holding up a glass.

His silence was answer enough.

She poured herself a drink anyway. “Suit yourself.”

Talia swirled the wine, took a sip, then began.

“Five years ago, you were closing in on my father. You were a thorn in his side. Getting too close to things you shouldn’t. So he made what I would call a rare mistake, he tried outsourcing the distraction.” Batman didn’t flinch.

“He hired the Joker.”

Her voice thinned. “Of course, that clown went rogue. Took it too far. And Robin—Jason—paid the price for it.”

She said it plainly, without drama. But she wasn’t unaffected. Not completely.

“My father tried to make amends in the only way he knew how. 

We swapped the real body with a replica and buried the double. You were grieving too hard to notice. We flew the real one out of Bosnia.”

Bruce stared at her, every word like a gut punch. He hadn’t noticed. Not the switch, not the weight difference. Nothing. He’d been too broken.

“You used the pit,” he said, eyes locking onto hers.

“Yes,” she said without hesitation. “But what came out wasn’t Jason. It was… something else. An empty shell. Wild. Feral. He came out screaming and ran straight off a cliff before we could catch him. Not before killing a few of our men.”

She paced now, glass in hand. “We thought he died again. My father chose not to tell you. He said reopening that wound would be cruel.”

Bruce’s expression was unreadable beneath the mask, but his silence spoke volumes. Doubt. Shame. Anger. All swirling behind those eyes.

“We searched for days,” she continued. 

“Eventually, we found him. He killed and injured few of my men before we could subdue him. But when he woke up… something had changed. He remembered nothing. Not his name. Not you. Nothing from his life before.”

There it was. The confirmation. Jason had survived. And Red Hood was not a delusion.

“Why hide it?” Batman asked, voice low and rough.

“Because it wasn’t my secret to tell.” She turned to face him fully now, glass cradled in her palm. “Jason became Ra’s’ personal apprentice. My father saw something in him. A successor, maybe.”

She looked down at her wine. “I wanted to tell you. I thought… maybe it would help ease your pain. But betraying my father wasn’t something I could bring myself to do.”

Bruce didn’t snap. Didn’t yell. He just waited. Watching. Processing.

Talia’s lips pressed together, but she went on.

“After Ra’s died, the League went to war with Deathstroke’s mercenaries. Jason fought in that war. He wanted revenge.”

That surprised him.

Now there were two sons loyal to Ra’s al Ghul.

“Three years ago, on the island of Lian Yu, Jason and Slade fought. The others found only blood. Jason and Deathstroke vanished. No bodies. Just a trail. A lot of blood at the cliff’s edge. One spot looked like the victim almost bled out before dropping to the sea. The other? Drag marks. Someone moved the body.”

Batman’s jaw clenched under the cowl. Talia wasn’t lying. Or if she was, she was too good to catch.

“You haven’t seen him since?” he asked.

“Not a word. Nothing. He’s presumed dead. Again.”

She walked to the window, letting the moonlight bathe her face. She looked different now. Tired. Maybe even remorseful.

“You could’ve told me when your father died,” he said quietly. “Or when you brought Damian to me. You had plenty of chances.”

“I—” She turned back.

But he was already gone. No cape. No shadow. No whisper of movement.

Talia stood in the moonlit silence, alone with her wine and the truth she’d finally spoken. She opened her mouth, maybe to defend herself. Maybe to ask for understanding.

But Batman had vanished, just like the ghost he’d arrived as. And he left behind only questions.

– – –

A/N:—

While working on this latest chapter—where I really leaned into the emotional weight between Bruce and Jason, and peeled back some of the layers of DC’s most emotionally repressed family of heroes—I had a random thought that completely derailed me.

Imagine this:

You’re just some low-level grave thief or wannabe tomb raider. Middle of the night. Graveyard’s quiet. You’re doing your shady little thing, maybe looking for jewelry or whatever your creepy hustle is.

Then you see him. Batman. Full gear. Cape. Cowl. No Batmobile. Just a shovel, digging up a grave like it’s his side hustle.

And before you can nope your way out of there, he turns—slowly—makes full eye contact with you from the shadows.

No words. No context. Just that soul-punching Batman glare while holding a shovel like he’s about to bury your entire existence.

I had to stop writing for a full minute because the image had me laughing like I had briefly gone insane. 

Like, the emotional intensity in this chapter was so high… and then my brain was like: “But what if ‘Batman Grave Digger Mode’?”

Anyway—hope y’all enjoy the chapter. Let me know what cursed Batman image your brain cooks up after reading it. 

Source: Webnovel.com, updated by NovelKeep