Chapter Text
When I died, which was very fucking brutal, might I add, I felt a lot of conflicting feelings in that last moment, besides the unbearable pain. I felt like I’d failed Bruce, but at the same time, he’d failed me. He was supposed to protect me, he was gonna save me, he was Batman!
And yet, he just… didn’t. He let it happen or at least, that’s how it felt at the time and when I came back. I felt such intense hatred, so much frustration, at Bruce. He and I had always had some disagreement on the methods, and even when Dick tried to reassure me that the two of us would work things out, it failed. Bruce and I were continents apart, literally.
Being dead was nice though, I didn’t have to worry about anything or think. Imagine what life was like before you were born, so nothing, and that’s about how the experience was. It was an alright break from the chaos of Gotham City. Still, I wasn’t exactly done with my business in the city. I had scores to even, and, particularly, one slimy fucking clown with red lips and green hair to shoot into a million pieces.
Fortunately, or unfortunately depending on your perspective, somebody else had the same feeling I did.
It began with a prickling sensation along my limbs, like how a steamy, hot shower feels as it slams down on your unkempt body, but at the same time, everything felt distant, like my body hadn’t fully connected back feeling in them. It was akin to intense pins and needles in the first ten or so seconds before I felt an overwhelmingly warmth spread throughout my entire body.
Green bubbles scorched my skin like fire and seeped in through my mouth. Paradoxically, I felt my lungs fill with air as I could finally breathe again for the first time in ages. As that occurred, my nose detected the thick putrid smell of death, one I had become unfortunately quite accustomed to. I carefully clenched my hands into fists, testing if what I could feel was truly real. I dug my nails into my skin, nearly drawing blood. My mind was moving at a thousand miles a minute with the bombarding sensations; I couldn’t begin to comprehend what was happening to me.
And in an instant, I felt myself thrust out of the emerald bubbly water and lowered onto a rock. My vision, still a bit blurry, started to come back into focus as I saw several figures standing around me. They were watching intently, their piercing stares focused on one solitary thing: me. But, if I had been dead, which I certainly was, how the hell was I alive again? It didn’t make any sense, and for that matter, who were the people around me!
I pulled myself off of the metal platform that I had been attached to, ripping the leather straps that bound my arms and legs with a loud snap. I glanced down at my arms, their muscles practically bulging, and noticed that the rest of my body was in a similar state. It was a man’s body, which was both horrifying and comforting. I’d look like the men who’d hurt me so badly, in a way nobody ever should to a child, but I’d also be able to make sure that never happened to a kid ever again. It was completely unlike the scrawny, underdeveloped child I’d been when I died. My body looked how I figured it would if I hadn’t grown up the way I had. If I hadn’t been abused… If I hadn’t… If I…
My vision turned blood red as rage coursed into my body. My thoughts turned to everything that had ever gone wrong with my life, all the shit that Bruce had caused me, and I couldn’t take it anymore. I dug my long nails into the skin of my palms, definitely drawing blood this time as I felt it drip down my hands. I screamed out into the cavern, my voice breaking at the sheer intensity of all the pain I felt at once. It was all back in my head, and I couldn’t stand it.
I fell to my knees and pounded on the ground. As I was about to try to hurt myself more, I felt a soft, feminine hand rub my back. The woman touching him said something in a foreign language, Arabic. I could only pull a few words out of it from what Bruce had taught me on our excursions across the world, but what I did catch told me everything I needed to know. I was unharmed. I was alive.
“You are safe,” she repeated in English, a language which I thankfully knew pretty well. “Jason?”
She tilted my head up at her. For a second, it seemed like the ghostly visage of Catherine appeared, but, no, it couldn’t be her. She was dead. Definitely dead. Like… like I was. Like I should’ve been, but fate had other things in store with me. The woman before me was dressed in Middle Eastern garb, made of light, airy white fabric that blew slightly in the wind in the cave, and staring back at me with piercing green eyes. Her thick black hair fell down to her shoulders, giving her a strong appearance: well, that along with the knife stained with blood in her right hand.
I blinked several times at the woman in confusion. It couldn’t be. I-it shouldn’t. I tried to speak but felt my mouth become suddenly dry. I cleared my throat and shook my head. “Talia? Where am I? And why are you…”
She returned a quick smile before it fell into a frown. Her arms pulled me into a careful hug as she rubbed my hair softly. The League Assassins appeared unfazed as they just stood and watched the display. “Habibi,” she said with an undercurrent of love, even if she barely knew me, “you are going to be so wonderful. I’ll always be here for you, my handsome boy.”
She crouched down and gave me a chaste kiss on my forehead. It helped, a bit, but I still had no idea what was going on, other than these people probably threw me into one of Ra’s’ Lazarus Pits for God knows what reason, and evidently, it brought me back to life. Luckily, I was about to receive the five star monologue and exposition treatment from her and Ra’s Al Ghul that would answer every last question I had, including the fact that I’d been dead for five years.
In the months following my ‘glorious’ resurrection, I was trained day-in-day-out to become one of the top members of the League. I trudged through rain, snow, desert, and forest to become invulnerable and taught perfect swordsmanship alongside stealth. It was a hell of a lot of work, especially for a kid grappling with being dead and coming back to life, but I never stopped working hard. I never stopped pushing myself. I always kept what I needed in my mind to get me through it: getting revenge on that clown.
As I became more acclimated to the League, it became very apparent that Talia saw me as her own flesh and blood, even if I wasn’t quite, and accepted me as her son. Despite being so deadly to her enemies, she had a real gentleness to her. I remember late nights where she’d stay close by me as I relived my trauma, even the worst of it. She listened calmly and reassured me that she’d always love me. That I’d always be her son, even if Bruce wouldn’t want me.
It was nice to feel that loved. For the first time in my screwed up life, I really had someone who loved me unconditionally. It wasn’t like it was with Bruce, all his rules and brooding. Hell, I even got to meet Talia’s actual son, Damian. He was a little demon who wouldn’t take no for an answer. I wonder if he takes his arrogance after Bruce. The brat was a real prick, but I couldn’t help but love him, at least a little. Talia definitely helped shape my opinion.
Anyway, beyond the training, murdering, and sappy moments, I found myself yearning for a break. One could only push themselves so far, and I’d far exceeded my limit. Thankfully, we’d ended up in China for some reason or another, in Qinghai to be specific. I think we’d had a target we were after, but we set up camp for the night near one of the many mountain ranges in the province. I figured I’d sneak away, get a quick skinny dip bath, and pop back in like I wasn’t even gone.
Once enough of the camp was asleep or distracted, I tiptoed out onto the dirt road leading away from camp and followed it until I reached somewhere where I could get some peace and quiet. Along my walk, I gazed up at the twilight sky —that time between night and day where neither could quite overpower the other—- and took in the colorful view of lavender and apricot. The stars could only peek through the sky, twinkling like dancers. I’d always been fascinated by the sky, ever since I was a kid, and I couldn’t help but wonder what might be up there. What alien worlds, animals, and incredible sights did the universe have tucked away from the idiotic humans on Earth.
I bit my lip and sighed. “I just… Nah, never mind. That’s stupid.” I kicked a rock out of the path and continued on, trying to ignore the thoughts tickling at my mind.
After about half a mile, I found myself in front of a fantastic view, dozens of springs surrounded by bamboo, greenery and mountains. This was the place. I eagerly stripped off of my clothes, daring not to look at my body though. Try as I might, I couldn’t bear to look at it. It still felt wrong, like I’d become a caricature of myself. It wasn’t quite me, for some inexplicable reason I couldn’t explain. I mean, it was me, but it wasn’t at the same time? Ugh, this is why I hate talking about feelings.
Once I’d put my clothes and gear in a pile next to one of the springs, I rubbed my hands together with the ecstatic energy that ran through me and jumped into the shimmering clear blue spring. At first, nothing seemed out of the ordinary. I felt the water rush around me as it settled from me doing a cannonball into it, but that was when it happened. That was when my situation started.
My entire body shifted in an instant. Parts of my body felt smaller in places while others became much, much bigger. I figured I must've been imagining things, so I jumped up out of the water, only to find that my eyes were covered by hair. It wasn’t black hair either, it was pure red, like as red as an apple, and I could feel it all the way down on my shoulders. I knew my hair had grown a bit since I’d joined the League but not nearly to this extent.
I quickly brushed the hair out of my eyes with my hands before stopping and looking down at them. They were smaller, thinner and definitely not the hands of a man. That was when I really noticed the problem, the, ahem, big problem. I. Had. Tits. Huge ones. Massive! They had to at least be D cups, if not F cups!
“What the fuck!” I screeched in a voice that was several octaves higher than my actual one and sounded 100% like that of a woman.
I quickly hurried out of the spring to notice that it hadn’t just been my voice, hands, and… chest that had been affected. All across my body, it had been completely turned female. If not for my League training, I would’ve passed out on the spot.
I immediately gathered my stuff, threw on the now ill-fitting clothes, and ran back to camp as fast as my new body could take me, which was actually faster than I thought it would. I found Talia in the camp and shook her away, my hands were practically shaking in fear that I was stuck this way forever. “Talia!” I called out to her in my high-pitched voice. “Wake up! I need… help, like now!”
My surrogate mother slowly blinked her eyes up at me and squinted at my face. “Wha—”
I interrupted her, “Look, I don’t know what’s going on, but it’s me, Jason, and I was just taking a dip in one of the nearby springs, and before I knew it, I looked like this!” I vaguely pointed at my body, trying as much as possible not to acknowledge it.
She sat up in an instant. “Show me,” she said, her voice stern, like the one she’d use to discipline Damian, “and make it quick, habibi!”
I helped her up and the two of us jogged over to the springs. Nothing had changed since I’d been there, but a light was on in the tiny building near them. Talia pointed at it and motioned for me to follow her. I did as I was told, and before long, the man inside had explained what had actually happened to me. In a very thick Chinese accent, he laboriously walked us through the history of the Jusenkyo training grounds before eventually getting to what he called the ‘Spring of Drowned Girl’ that I had been in. Apparently, a girl had drowned there a thousand years ago and then cursed whoever fell in to become one.
Once Talia pressed him on how to fix it, he nervously showed that the solution to my sudden gender change had been to splash me with hot water, and in a second, I’d turned back into my usual male form. He then threw cold water onto me, and once again, I was back in my female form. To say it was disconcerting to go from having boobs to no boobs among… other parts would be the understatement of the century.
We’d decided to keep my situation, as we’d started calling it, under wraps, but we eventually had to come clean to Ra’s. Instead of kicking me out of the League, he rather saw it as an opportunity to make me a better assassin. As he put it, “You can eliminate our enemies through persuasion and seduction.” I almost threw up when he said that.
Eventually, I’d hit a year in the League, and I knew that it was time for me to go. It was time to head home. Talia and I shared a tearful goodbye before I traveled back to the city I grew up in through boats, trains, and planes before finally landing down in the good old US of A. With that damn curse thrust upon me, I had decided to alter my plans slightly, but I’d still get my revenge regardless. The people of Gotham would be safe, the children, the forgotten, they’d get looked after while Batman fought an endless, unwinnable crusade against people he refused to ever finish once and for all.
I’d come up with a name for myself, Red Hood. It’s self explanatory for what I’d be wearing over my head, but the rest of my costume I pulled from a few thrift stores, a leather jacket here, a gray shirt and black pants there, and then finally the pistols I’d be carrying on me. Video games and movies always taught me that dual-wielding was badass, so I might as well do it while taking out the worst of the worst of the criminal underground.
All of my gear was tucked neatly in my backpack as I strolled down the Upper East Side of Gotham, ready to kick some ass and make a name for myself. Bruce couldn’t ignore me once I was done. He’d finally have to face me once and for all, I could finally make him realize the errors of his idiotic ways—
Before I could finish my internal ranting, my entire body was engulfed in cold water by a fast driving car hitting a thick puddle, making me shift into my red-headed female form. I threw my hands out in anger when I felt a hand grab me by the shoulder. I turned around to hit whoever the fuck was trying to get the edge of me when I realized who it was.
My body fell limp in disbelief. “What do you want?” I meekly said to the man.
Dick fiddled with his hair. “Oh, I didn’t mean anything bad, miss. Sorry if I startled you,” he said with a cheesy grin, “I just noticed you got totally soaked by that asshole.”
I grunted at my older brother. “Yeah.”
“I just thought I could help you out, I got some clean clothes at my place up ahead? Is that okay with you?” And there it was, that unforgettable Dick Grayson charm. He practically had it coming out of his ass. The second I realized it was him, all the anger, all the tension in my body dissipated. There was no getting out of this.
I begrudgingly nodded my head. “Lead the way,” I said before whispering the last part, “Dick.”
He had already started walking before stopping and turned his head back at me. “Did you say something?”
I smiled smugly at him before shaking my head. I followed him right to his apartment, which was practically a penthouse compared to most of the places in these parts. It was good to be back in Gotham. Now as long as nobody caught onto my curse, everything would go just peachy!