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You’ve been given a job. It seems easy enough. They could have sent you to do far worse things. You knew that, they told you as much. That doesn’t mean you want to do this, though. You’ve never liked cemeteries. After mom and dad died it felt more like you were buried in the ground than they were. Trapped, alone, suffocating. Sixteen is too young for this, but you don’t have a choice. They gave you a shovel and left you outside the gates once night hit.
Deep breath. Everything will be okay. Just find the headstone and start digging. Not a big deal, right? Anyone could do it. You don’t even need the whole body or anything horrible, just a picture and part of the clothing, give those to them and then you can purge this night from your memory forever. It's good money for just a night of work. You need it, and it's not like you have any other choice, they aren’t the kind to take no for an answer. You don’t even really know who they are, who they really work for, but you saw enough to know there wasn’t any way out of this, and that they wouldn’t take kindly to an unfinished job.
October brought with it a chill that sinks into your bones. Dead leaves fall and are swept up on the whispered wind. They’d given you the name on the grave and a vague location for it so you set off, through the gray tombstones and deeper into the resting place of the dead. This was an upscale graveyard, you’ll give it that. Along with the typical round and squared stones were whole statues of angels and stones shaped like cathedral towers. The little moonlight you have hits those towering stones and casts gloomy shadows that ebb and flow with the cloud cover, making them look alive. You shudder at the thought. There’s nothing alive here. Just you and the trees. You just have to keep reminding yourself of that and this will be over before you know it.
You make it near the back corner of the cemetery where they said it would be and start checking names. Thalia Johnson. Peter Hemingsworth. Eliza Hemingsworth. John Conway. Nope, none of those. More unfamiliar names followed in this row so you move to the next, just disregarding the first grave, Alex Glaspell, when a crack of thunder rolls through the rapidly darkening sky, the first drops of rain following shortly after. You feel urged on by the rain even though you know you’ll be soaked through long before you even reach the coffin. Charlotte Beck. Natalia Van Closen. Rowan Blanchard. Thomas Wayne. Martha Wayne. Jason Todd. There! You glance down at the paper they’d given you, rain peppers it but the steadily bleeding ink is still legible: ‘Jason Todd’. This is it.
A winged statue dwarfs you as you look back up. The angel that guards Jason has a stone hood covering weeping eyes, sobbing even more with the rivulets of rain falling down its weary face. Hands held together in prayer, one of protection, likely. You stand frozen. You’ve never much cared for religion one way or the other but now you hope more than anything that there are no angels of death or vengeful saints to see your sins and wreak their violence. Or if there are beings watching, that they’d see your circumstances and take pity on you. You tear your eyes away from the morose figure and find your target’s name on the statue’s plinth. Jason. He only died in April, about your age too. You feel a tightness in your chest. Did you know him? Of course not, no. You’ve never met anyone rich enough to be buried here, especially not someone your age. Despite the logic and reasoning there, your heart still feels pulled, as if you should know him. Some sort of involuntary affinity for the dead boy. Not long dead either. God you hope he isn’t still decaying, you don’t think you could take seeing that. Shoving down the strange fondness for a name you’ve only just read, and the understandable hesitation you’ve felt since you received the job, you plunge the shovel into the dirt.
The rain is relentless, barely five minutes since you started digging and already the ground is sludge, a pool of water forming in your beginning of a hole. You’re panting from the exertion, at least the exercise keeps you from feeling the chilling rain that you swear is sinking through your skin and into your veins, freezing your blood. What could possibly be so important about this boy? That’s a need to know basis, you guess, and you aren’t making that list. You sigh, pulling the shovel up and sinking it once again. You try not to think about your own death, but it's inevitable here. There isn’t anyone left to bury you. You’ll end up ash, you think, that’s likely what will happen if the cops find you and you end up in a morgue. There would be no funeral, you know that for sure. No mourners to attend so what's the point anyways? You hope this boy had a nice funeral. He deserves it for what you’re having to do to his nice grave now.
This is far more exhausting than you had mentally prepped for, your arms are already screaming at you to stop. Knowing that this is only the beginning to a very long night, you drop the shovel to the side and collapse against the back of a headstone across from your dig site. Heaving breaths barely heard over the whipping wind and thunderous storm around you, you count the seconds between the flashes and the thunder, the lightning seems far enough away to not be any real concern. As if they have minds of their own, your eyes find their way back to his tombstone, the statue with his name carved into the bottom. Was he religious? Maybe that explains the creepy angel lording over his final resting place. Maybe he couldn’t have cared less, like you, and this was all his parents’ decision. Do his parents miss him like you miss yours? You know you would have lived to see their deaths eventually but you never imagined this. This wasn’t fair.
Your eyes are glued to the site as you catch your breath and wait for your arms to feel normal again. You would never have noticed it if you weren’t so focused: that slight shifting of the dirt right next to where you have been digging. Your eyes narrow. That has to have been the wind. Right? Crawling over onto your knees to lean closer, you watch. Waiting for nothing to happen so you can go back to pretending it was the wind. It shifts again! In the same spot, basically, the dirt rises and falls, like breathing. What’s under there? Do moles hang out in graveyards? Closer now. Your hand blindly reaching towards your shovel to find the little animal. Hopefully it isn’t a snake. But you don’t think snakes move like that, the movement looked too large to be a snake. It has to be a-
A hand bursts out of the breathing ground. You scramble backwards, a scream ripping from your lungs. What the fuck? The angel was real. It really did see you desecrating the grave, it’s sent this as its vengeance. The hand grabs onto the ground, clawing for purchase. Is it a zombie? Were those real? You wouldn’t put it past this twisted, nightmare of a city. You’re still screaming, frozen in your place three feet from the wretched hand. It’s ripping into the dirt now, digging even more. This has to be a trick, this is why they sent you here. To fuck with you and make you find some undead horror that will kill you and feast on your flesh. You have to get out. You have to leave now. The thoughts fly through your brain at lightspeed but you can’t move a muscle. Eyes glued to the monstrosity. To your horror, you start to lean in, examining the hand ever so slightly closer.
Holy shit. That’s no zombie hand. Blood coats the nails and knuckles, torn up skin with dirt clinging to it. Alive, torn up skin. Did they bury someone alive here?
Once again you’re moving on instinct, grabbing the shovel and lurching towards the hand, shoveling a few times at your best guess for where their head will end up being before getting on your knees and digging with your hands. Your hand brushes theirs as dirt starts to fall away–your little hole was actually doing some good, an unexpected turn of the night–and they jolt before reaching for you again. You grab onto their hand, squeezing as reassuringly as you can and pulling desperately. The ground breaths again to the right and you dig at the spot, a left hand appearing not long after. Their head will be in between, where the hands are now frantically clawing at. Your nails fill with dirt in the process, the skin of your hands unrecognizable under the layers of mud coating them. How are they holding their breath for this long? You’re starting to worry you won’t get them out in time when their hands break through once again with the boy’s head now unearthed.
It takes a while to get the rest of him out but the hardest part is done and you dig less frantically knowing that he’s alive and breathing. He collapses next to the hole and you both just lay there, catching your breath. Adrenaline and panic finally draining from you, you observe the boy you just pulled from a grave. He looks like he had the shit beat out of him, busted lip, purple bruising around his right eye and cheekbone, blood dripping from cuts all over his face, his hands are torn to shreds but that one, at least, makes sense given what he just got out of, maybe he was fighting skeletons down there. His black suit is as drenched and messy as you are, the button down underneath looks more brown than white now. Despite all that you can’t deny the boyish good looks he has, the kind that made you want to draw nearer. If he weren’t so caked in filth, he’d be gorgeous.
What are you supposed to do now? There’s now way you can just go back empty-handed. And like hell you were doing anything to the guy infront of you, fuck whatever they wanted with him. You can’t do that. Which means–you realize with resigned, saddening acceptance–you have nowhere to go now. Not like you had a home to begin with but they knew all your usual haunts, and anyone you could reach out to would report right back to them.
“You okay?”
His raspy voice interrupts your frantic thought process. Blue eyes stare into your own with concern, your breathing slows to a normal rate as you look at each other. The torrential rain lessens to a drizzle.
“Yeah, I’m okay. Are you?” You wince as soon as the words leave your mouth. Stupid question. He just crawled out of a grave, of course he’s not okay.
He gives a weak laugh and hearing it sparks something deep within you. Your distraught mind soothes once again as he speaks, “I dunno. I guess?” He’s silent for a moment, he looks at the shovel laying next to you, then over to the pit he clawed out of, and back at you, mind putting together the pieces. He’s quiet and you're terrified of the question that will inevitably come out of his mouth. You don't know what you'll say. There isn't any good way around what you were doing. You hold your breath, barely able to keep looking at him. But instead, his look fades and a small smile appears on his lips, “I’m Jason.”
The relief that courses through you is almost overwhelming. You already knew his name, of course, hard not to when he’s sitting right next to his own grave. You give him your name in return and it feels like taking a hammer and chisel to stone, etching yours next to his.
Jason looks around, the confusion falling back into his expression, “Uh- when… What day is it?”
“It's October 12th,” His eyes widen, jaw dropping slightly. “The date on your grave is in April… but that can’t be right. Right?”
His jaw snaps back into place and he schools his expression.“Yeah, uh, I dunno, they musta gotten mixed up or something,” he mumbles, clearly distracted, focused on something in his head. It's a weak excuse and you almost ask about it, there must be something else happening here, something he knows, but you keep your mouth shut.
Jason collects himself again and not-so-artfully changes the subject, “So uh, what have I missed?”
You don’t mind the switch, happy to help him work through whatever he’s going through. “I haven’t been super keyed in but this summer was like- the hottest we’ve had in decades, Batman and Robin stopped some huge bank heist earlier this week, the water supply got contaminated back in August but they fixed that about-”
“Robin? There’s still a Robin?”
“Yeah, of course there’s ‘still a Robin’. Are you not from Gotham? We’ve had Robin for ages now.”
Silence overtakes the graveyard, even the rain sounds muted as it hits the stone and grass. “Never mind. It doesn’t matter.” Jason looks so lost, it's an expression you’ve seen on yourself too many times in the past year. You break the silence, hoping to draw him back to reality, maybe even to something like that laugh he gave you earlier.
“Do you… do you have anywhere to go? Anyone that could help?” That could help us. He doesn’t owe you anything but you can’t help but want to stick with him, if only to soothe your joint isolation, to see him smile again.
Jason is quiet again, his eyes leave you and he stares at the newly-formed pit. His expression is almost unreadable but his eyes are dark, hurt maybe? He stays that way for a long time before finally responding. His voice small, “No. I’ve got no one.”
There’s something in the way he says it that makes you think there is a lot more within that statement, he sounded more bitter than hopeless. You nod in acceptance and give as good a grin as you can muster. “Well, I guess it's just you and me, then.”
Jason smiles in response, it's warm this time, the pain in his eyes disappears as he looks back up at you. “That doesn’t sound so bad.” He braces himself on a corner of his plinth, pulling himself up on shaky legs. He takes a minute to steady himself before holding out a hand towards you. “C’mon, let’s find somewhere out of the rain.”
His words leave you frozen for a second, but you find yourself smiling with equal warmth up at him. Grabbing his calloused hand and getting up to meet him, you stumble briefly but he steadies you. Electricity runs through you from the first moment of contact, you haven’t felt this alive, this real, since your parents died.
You put his arm around your shoulders to take some of his weight and he smiles at you gratefully. You both start your walk out of and away from this haunting graveyard, together, leaving behind the ever-looming angel.