Chapter Text
The silence shared between Bruce and Talia as they traverse deeper into the Chambers’ depths is accompanied by the sounds of an ethereal place, frozen in a moment of impossibility. Birds flutter between the trees, mountains and rooftops but he never catches sight of more than their shadows. The beats of their wings are loud and unnerving in the absence of their birdsong. A continuous rustling in the underbrush and skitters over concrete allude to the presence of other creatures roaming this place, but Bruce has yet to lay eyes on any of them. The cracks of footsteps on concrete, the howling of wind he rarely truly feels waft over his skin. Nothing that should be seems to actually exist here. Not in the true sense of the word at least.
Talia glances around them with the same unnerved energy that Bruce feels itching in his fingertips.
“This is your first time here too?” He asks, watching another bodiless shadow flit over the path. Not a creature in sight.
She throws a glance back at him. “I’ve heard much about this place but never had the... privilege to set foot in it.” Her eyes roam the vast, seemingly endless space around them with a grousing gleam. They’re in a mix of an overgrown forest – claiming old ruins he can’t quite place, except that they seem to be of southern Asian design – and the roads of a metropolitan city. Skyscrapers intersperse the crumbling ruins, dark alleys beckoning them into their depths with the echo of faint whispers. There’s nothing but more mazes at the end of them though, as they discovered after venturing closer to one of them.
Bruce doesn’t really see why it would be a privilege to enter a maze like this either. Making sense of this place is a losing battle. It’s an amalgamation of everything and nothing it seems, without order or purpose. Yet every stone they find seems to be placed there intently.
“What exactly is this place,” Bruce mutters when they pass the abandoned storefront of a bookshop he recognizes from Metropolis. On their many visits to the city, Jason would often spend a fair amount of time in that store.
Talia follows his gaze curiously, as if she could parse the significance of the shop by mere inspection. And maybe she can, if she truly knows Jason as well as she seems to. Her features soften faintly. “It is a place between—”
“Reality and dream,” he cuts her off. “I know. That’s not what I mean. What’s its purpose?”
She hums and, with only a fleeting, biting look at him, turns away from the shopfront and continues their search. “It doesn’t exist in a fixed space or time. A place in obscurity said to be the key to one’s desires. To the aches of the heart and the thirst of the soul.” Her gaze wanders about once more. “Although I do begin to understand the many warnings I’ve heard about it.”
They don’t have much choice in their being here if they want to help Jason. Bruce still wonders why she kept such information to herself until now. Maybe he shouldn’t though. It’s not exactly surprising considering their circumstances. It doesn’t truly make a difference now either.
“Warnings?” He asks anyway.
“Those desires might lead you deeper than you’re able to return from. Desperation and temptation rarely go well together, as you surely know, Beloved. And only the most desperate of man undertake this perilous journey to the Chambers for uncertain answers.”
“Desperate,” Bruce echoes quietly. He thinks of Jason. Wonders how he managed to parse through these planes on his own and find what he was looking for before losing himself. He’s always been persistent though.
“Why did you send him here then?”
Her next step falters, a singular admittance in immediate response. A spoken one is more hesitantly given and only after several moments. Another whisper reaches their ears by then. A whine, long and deep. Almost growling in its vehemence.
“It wasn’t out of—” Talia regards the wafting fog in the alley where the sound originates with a furrow. She takes a deep breath. “Choice.” The sound echoes, dampens, then fades fully. “Father had his eyes on Jason ever since I discovered him. And ever since he came into contact with the Lazarus Pit, his interest only grew. I didn’t want to take more risks, so I brought him here. What little I knew of the Caste’s teaching at the time made me certain it was the right path for Jason as well. And after a while, he agreed and chose to stay.”
Bruce thinks back to what he’s seen of the Acres so far. Of the endless horizon, the mountains and the homes carved into them. Imagines the lives that have been shared here. Jason being one of them. He’d always been an inquisitive child, eager to learn and just as eager to please. Maybe a place among a spiritual tribe – such as the Caste seems to have been – was indeed the right path.
That is, if it weren’t for their violent deaths.
“I didn’t dare risk more than I already had at that point. My father’s patience has grown...brittle.”
Bruce bites down the urge to scoff at that. Because he’s been telling her to leave Ra’s side for years. Before he even learned of Damian and realized how much more insistent he should have been. He still fixes her with a sharp glare, hidden by his cowl except for the downturn of his lips.
A rumbling of the earth disrupts them then. At first, it is a distant thing, another growl that he expects to fade into nothing among the other countless incorporeal noises. After a few moments though it starts to grow in intensity. Then, the ground starts to quake in tandem to the sound. The buildings around them shake and gravel tumbles to the ground.
Before Bruce has a chance to react to the sudden earthquake, it ceases swiftly.
“It’s gotten louder,” Talia observes once they’ve both regained their footing.
“Hn.” This time it was much easier to distinguish where the sound came from. Bruce turns towards an alley, discovering the fog that usually greets them there dislodged and revealing a way out from this mishmash of a city scape, forests and century old ruins.
Bruce reaches for the grappling gun at his utility belt. “I’ll take a look.”
Before he can release the hook, Talia steps up to him, slinging her arms around his neck and chest. “We shouldn’t split up, not in a place like this.” Her breath is hot on the bits of skin not covered by his suit and cowl.
Wordlessly, he aims the gun at the nearest building. When they land, he discovers the rooftop to be covered in sand. A quick glance around reveals that their elevated position won’t allow them a better survey of the area like he hoped. Because there is no rooftop. There is no below, in front of them. There’s only the endlessness of a sandy desert.
“Great,” he huffs, unable to curb the annoyance in his tone.
Talia chuckles. “What else did you expect from a place called ‘Chambers of All’, Beloved?”
“A little less ‘All’, and a bit more ‘Chambers’,” he replies dryly. The street below is still there at least and hasn’t vanished upon their departure like he feared. “We can’t keep walking around blindly like this and waste more time.”
“What other choice do we have.” Her hand comes to rest on her hip, the clinch in the corner of her eyes the only hint at her own irritation.
“I thought you’d have an idea on how to find his memory.” Bruce debates on whether to give into his displeasure and speak his next words. But the silence, the uncertainty and the fear are slowly sinking their teeth into his skin and he’s not above admitting that to himself. So he stops his faltering and swiftly adds, “Jason was with you after he came back. I expected you to know more.”
That crinkle in the corner of her eyes deepens. She doesn’t betray any other reaction to his words aside from that. She opens her mouth but is cut off by another rumbling growl, followed by a shaking of the earth. It’s not as unstable as Bruce feared, considering they’re standing on the roof of a brittle building. The sand beneath their feet dances at the vibrations, shifting endlessly and almost sends both of them to their knees when it finally stops again.
Bruce rights himself, gaze following the echo of the growling voice into the distant desert. “It was stronger this time.”
“It was,” Talia says, trailing off as she follows his line of sight. Whatever she wanted to say before, she chooses to keep it to herself and starts towards the voice, stepping into the desert.
“Talia.”
She turns, a single brow raised in a silent question.
“Are you sure?” He eyes the dunes behind her, worry worming its way into his chest. He didn’t expect to find a whole supernatural ecosystem in these Chambers and they’re certainly not prepared to cross a desert and whatever lies beyond it.
He recalls the alley below that almost seems to have beckoned him, in a way.
A frown settles on her features. “Do you not feel it?” She raises her hand, regarding it almost reverently, curls it into a fist and opens it again several times. “It’s as if we’re... called.”
He does, but he also doesn’t like what that means for them. “Someone knows we’re here. Or rather, something.”
She smiles coolly. That small upturn of her lip he used to find so endearing. “And whatever it is might know where to find what we’re looking for.”
Reluctance keeps Bruce rooted to the spot even as Talia seems more than ready to go look for whatever is lurking out there. It’s the first thing that stands out against the eerie solitude of the Chambers since they entered. Their only lead after spending an uncertain amount of time wandering aimlessly already.
“Fine,” he finally relents.
Fighting their way through the slippery sands of the seemingly endless desert dunes is an peculiar experience. The cityscape slowly vanishes into the distance as they trudge forward, swallowed by the mist and haze of the heat. Heat from a sun that should not exist in an enclosed space inside a mountain range. A sun that is framed by forests growing downwards and pathways connecting islands hovering in the sky.
Although the sunbeams are beating down on them, something feels off. Bruce has been in many deserts before, the dangers and difficulties of such a journey not unfamiliar to him. Thus he’s experienced the unstable ground and the never-ending horizon before, the sweltering heat that settles on their shoulders here is different though.
It’s not like the hazy heat he’s used to. It’s oppressing in a different way. Unreal. Stifling. An unbidden memory of a chase that led him to the ruins of a warehouse resurfaces at the feeling. As unbidden as the churning in his stomach at the recollection is, he notes that it might not be without merit that it comes to him now, of all times.
He tries to shake off the eerie feeling ghosting over his skin as they follow the steady swell of rumblings and quakes through the earth. They are, without a doubt, getting closer to whatever is calling them.
Neither of them is keen to try and force another conversation, luckily. He doesn’t want to hear more excuses from Talia. More ways she tries to explain her carelessness and her lies to him. And he has no desire to confront his own failures either. Not here, where he feels one wrong thought might spell their doom in more ways than he’s willing to imagine.
Another growl resounds, oppressing in its sheer volume. The force of it seems to pull at their shoulders. It is unnatural, like everything has been ever since he’s entered the mountains. The silence between them could’ve lasted between mere minutes and an eternity, he couldn’t tell, when the horizon is broken up by a lonely structure in the distance.
“Is that...?” Talia’s voice trails off, slightly breathless from the long trek, unguarded from the blazing sun. Bruce is quite drained by the journey as well, the dark, thick leather and armor of his suit doing him no favors here. The fatigue is still not the same as it would be in a real desert.
He squints at the structure, the lenses of his cowl allowing him a much better view than with his naked eyes alone. It’s an unassuming building, reminding him of the smaller apartment buildings in the Bowery. Small, nondescript and rundown. Cracks crisscross over the surface. Concrete, brittle and rough, eroded by time that doesn’t pass here.
Not like it should at least.
“Hn,” he grumbles in way of an answer and eyes the lone number 178 next to the door, almost unreadable in its weathered state. The number is faintly familiar.
Talia huffs next to him, a retort no doubt burning on her tongue.
Bruce merely trudges onward. He manages but a few steps when the rumbling grows loud enough to finally truly force him to his knees. It booms across the desert, a deep, all-encompassing sound that reverberates through his bones. He grunts when the vibrations finally cease, the tingling in his teeth remaining for another fleeting second, and stands. “This must be it.”
“Seems like it,” agrees Talia, though she looks just as excited as Bruce feels at the prospect of entering the house. He remembers the strange feeling that has settled into the pits of his stomach ever since entering the desert. Like he’s missing something.
A tingle, the barest ghost of a touch on his neck, makes him turn quickly. The desert stretches out all around them, dead and silent.
“What is it?” He hears Talia ask.
Bruce keeps watch of the distant haze for a moment longer before shaking the daze that settled over him off with a shake. “Nothing.”
This place is feeding off their memories. The parts of themselves they don’t want to confront. He recognized the bits and pieces of Nanda Parbat before and then the deserted streets of Gotham. Places both he and Talia are familiar with. Places Jason is familiar with.
Talia studies him but doesn’t probe further.
Instead, they approach the building ahead. He knows he’s familiar with it. That he’s seen it somewhere before. As they reach the front door he finally remembers where. There, on the bell system is a list of family names. Most of them he’s never heard before. One, however, sends a chill down his spine.
Todd.
“This is Jason’s old home,” he notes aloud. He’s never been inside the building before, only visited once, shortly, to see if any of Jason’s old things were still there when he took the boy in. But he’d been too late. The landlord had already taken care of any traces left behind by the Todds.
He doesn’t recall the building being this weathered.
The front door creaks open slowly as they step up to it.
“How forthcoming.” Talia reaches for the scimitar at her hip.
“Hn.”
They both stand back, taking in the entrance hall before daring to enter it. It’s shrouded in darkness, the sunlight from outside snuffed out the moment it reaches the threshold. As if it simply ceased to exist upon crossing the doorway. What little he can make out in the hallway ahead of them is mostly obscured by a low hanging mist, unmoving. There are no doors and no diverging hallways. Only the deep, black darkness before them.
Bruce huffs.
“You did say you wanted more Chambers, Beloved.”
The glare he sends her must be too obscured by his cowl, because she merely chuckles in response.
“Let’s keep going,” he says and steps into the house.
As soon as they enter, the darkness shifts and breaks open just as the light outside brightens to an unbearable intensity. There’s another rumble, this time from outside though. And it doesn’t sound like the deep growl they heard before. This is like the crisp thunder of a blast. Like the flash of a fire, quick and hot, and gone again before there’s any time to react. The door clicks shut again and they’re left in silence.
“I’m growing very tired of this hide-and-seek game,” Talia murmurs into the darkened hallway.
“Unsurprising.” He almost regrets the jab the moment he says it. But there’s an irritation unfurling in Bruce’s gut he can’t quite tame at that moment. An ugly thing that he supposes is born from anger and frustration as well, something that they both must share in spades at this moment. It’s a needling thing that he shouldn’t allow any room. But this place, he relents, would likely even make Alfred lose his composure.
And as expected, Talia doesn’t simply allow the remark to settle between them, with all the other hurt they threw at each other over the years. They wouldn’t have lasted long together if she did.
“Ah yes, because you are known for your unending patience, Bruce.” A biting glare is the last courtesy she grants him before she moves on ahead of him.
“We both know the answer to that,” he replies drily, eyes peeled on the hallway.
At least his children are still with him, he thinks bitterly. At least he didn’t push them away despite his shortcomings. Not all of them at least and he hopes when this is over, once all the misunderstandings are cleared, Jason will reconsider his choice to stay away. To force himself into seclusion.
He doesn’t understand what drove Jason to that decision. He most likely never will, at least not fully. There are circumstances in his son’s life that he doesn’t delude himself into thinking he’ll ever remotely comprehend.
But he cares for him, always has and always will. Losing him once tore him apart. He doesn’t want to know what a second time will do to him. He can feel the edges of the staggering helplessness already eating at his frayed nerves.
He releases a long, deep breath through his nose, some of the tension easing with it.
“Do you think we’re getting closer?”
The hallway before them hasn’t changed since they entered. No branches, no doors, no windows. Just a long, dark path that continues to lead them deeper into a house that is much too small for such a path. They should have reached the halls end a while ago.
There’s no answer for a long moment. Talia merely marches onward, sparing him not even a short glance, until, finally, “I suspect so. Though I suppose that’s all we can do right now.” Then, she gives him a quick look over her shoulder. “Unless you have—”
A thud from deeper in the hallway cuts her off. Over the top of Talia’s shoulder Bruce glimpses a faint shift of movement. The waving of a hand, the shifting of fabric, black hair melting into the darkness. He blinks, and the figure is gone.
They both immediately shift to the others’ side at the ready, eyes peeled on the source of the noise. But the hallway is empty. His sensors didn’t pick up any movement. He knows what he saw though.
They remain still for a few more beats, but the silence persists. No more shifting, no more noises.
“I saw something,” he finally says when it’s clear they’re alone again.
“What was it?”
“I—” He falters. It was a mere glimpse, a faint mirage that was gone again too quick to make out anything more than the silhouette. But that’s all he needed. He’d recognize him anywhere. And he’s not foolish enough to stay ignorant of the truth. He swallows the dryness from his throat. “It was Jason.”
Talia stays undeterred, but he feels her muscles tense where their shoulders are touching. “Are you certain?”
Before Bruce gets the chance to say anything, another whisper from deeper in the darkness interrupts him.
“B?”
The voice is like a stab to his chest. It’s been so long.
He throws Talia a quick glance, lips pressed into a thin line. “Yes.”
“Evidently,” she mutters, gripping her scimitar tighter.
The hallway returns back to silence. Whatever just showed itself to Bruce is gone now, though he wonders how certain that truly is. He can still see next to nothing through the mist and darkness. Only the never-ending path ahead of them.
In unison, they both begin to cautiously move forward again. The batarang in his hand feels much heavier than Bruce is used to. He’s unsure whether he can truly raise it against whatever is lying in wait for them here if it wears Jason’s face. He did that once and could barely live in his own skin afterwards. The tight noose of guilt and remorse around his chest should have been lifted when he realized that it wasn’t Jason back then. But does it really matter in the end?
He was still certain it was his son when he almost killed him.
“Stuck in your head again, old man?”
He sucks in a sharp breath.
Another image peels away from the darkness. Another wave of a hand, beckoning him further along.
Tentatively, Bruce calls out. “Jason, is that you?”
But his only answer is the echo of a chuckle and a thickening of the darkness.
“Bruce,” Talia hisses, stepping in front of him and blocking his view from the apparition. “Don’t.”
He grunts, but doesn’t avert his eyes from where he saw Jason a moment before. This must mean they’re on the right path, hopefully. Either that, or there’s something lurking in these Chambers that simply wants to play tricks on their minds.
A widening of Talia’s eyes pulls his attention away from what lies in front of him and he follows her gaze. When he turns, all he sees is a wall. The same peeling tapestry that covers the rest of the hallway looks back at him. The path they’d travelled for the past minutes, or however long they’ve been here, is gone.
“Whether we want to or not,” he starts through the tightening of his throat. “It seems forward is the only way.”
Talia doesn’t seem particularly ecstatic about the prospect. Neither of them are, truly. But it’s not like either of them is willing to leave this place without Jason’s memory anyway.
“So it does,” she mutters.
They proceed along the hallway, keeping their eyes open for any more movement and their ears sharp for any more whispers. Though they likely didn’t have to pay special attention to that. The darkness seems set on keeping whatever is lurking in its depths hidden from their eyes, but the whispers are much more persistent.
Jason’s voice echoes through the hallway several times, calling for him, taunting him, whichever the case he isn’t sure. But it’s young, much younger than the one he’s used to from the Hood and, most importantly, from the little exchange he had with Jason on that rooftop two nights ago.
He grits his teeth when he recalls his own words. His own racing heart and jumbled thoughts that drove him to splintering what little trust he might have had left from Jason. Cassandra had laid into him after she’d lowered Jason’s unconscious body to the ground with so much tender care. And he knows she was right to do so, but all he could think of in that moment was where he went wrong. Where he made the wrong choice that led Jason to run away from him, to look at him with fear and panic instead of the adoration and love he remembers.
This place seems fond of torturing him with that memory. The words he now hears calling for him from the darkness are a painful imitation of that time.
And they taunt him, remind him of different times in his life, when he thought he’d put all the pain of loss behind and would be safe from it for a long time. Talia is correct in that he can’t allow himself to be fooled by this taunting, but his chest clenches at the possibility.
His steps echo on the hardwood floor beneath solitarily. His eyes are focused on the few mirages he makes out on the far end of the hall. So much so, that he doesn’t notice Talia’s absence for a long moment. She’s a few feet behind him, frozen and turned towards a door that he must have missed when he passed that spot.
“Talia?”
Her eyes are wide and the grip on her scimitar loosened where she’s lowered it to her side. Whatever she sees in the room past the door, it’s drawn all of her attention. Through the mix of whispers Bruce hears behind him, vying for his own attention, he suddenly hears something new. Laughter, full of youthful delight and childish wonder. Two sets of voices that he both recognizes and yet is sure he has never heard. Not in unison like this.
He watches as Talia takes a step forward, crossing the threshold of the room and a murmur follows her, “Habibi?”
“Talia!” He rushes after her, reaching the door in a few steps. The last he sees of her is a pair of widened eyes as she stares back at him, the shadowy figure of a tall lanky teen that squeezes his chest behind her.
Then the door falls shut with a deafening bang.
“No,” he yells and reaches for the handle, but the door is gone after another blink. His hand merely meets the cold, solid paper of the tapestry that’s slightly wet with mold.
He nearly loses his footing when he tries to step back from shock, his feet unmoving. Bruce glances down to find them swallowed by the floor and the unnatural mist. He tries futilely to pull them out.
“Just relax, you’ll be fine.”
His grappling gun finds no purchase on the ceiling when he fires it. The hook simply sinks into the black nothingness above before falling back to the ground with a damning thud.
There’s a crack, from somewhere deeper down the hallway, loud and deafening. When Bruce looks up, he sees the floor up ahead slowly start to crumble. Melting into the darkness and eating its way towards him.
“Jas—”
His plea is swallowed, the strange mist reaching his chest, his neck, his face, and before he fully understands what is happening, the ringing in his ears grows incessant and his vision is shrouded in darkness.