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The thing is, Bruce is fully aware how stupid this is.
He knows. He has read the warnings. He has been warned, both by Dick and every other mage he knows.
You do not open the portals between realms. You let the dead rest.
Dick’s parents, that is different. They were mages themselves, and the blood of the Fair Folk still runs in the veins of Graysons. The veils between the worlds are thinner to them.
And even then, even they cannot return to guard their son or guide him. A few moments at a time, that is all they get, even with all their power, even with their son’s power.
A pair of robins, fluttering beside him, chirps and birdcalls the only speech they have – adequate for their son, for the young sorcerer to whom the chirps of a bird is no more difficult to understand than the speech of a Frenchman.
Bruce… Bruce is no mage. Nor were his parents, much as he would like to believe otherwise.
The Waynes can trace their ancestry back to the Mayflower and beyond, but there is naught but human blood anywhere along the line.
A fact that some of them might well have been inordinately proud of.
A fact that Bruce hates a little, sometimes, given it left him with next to no idea how to care for his son who could hear the streams whisper, see the hidden things that moved between the trees.
Bruce Wayne nor Batman will be able to pierce the Veil on his own.
Dick will not help him. He has asked before, and the look of horror that flashed across the boy’s face ensures that he will never ask again.
It is necromancy. Forbidden magic. Worse, magic that leaves a stain upon the soul of a mage like Dick.
It is one thing for mages to return for a few moments, quite another to summon up spirits from Beyond.
No. He cannot ask that of Dick. That doesn’t mean he cannot do it.
Oh, he isn’t insane. Not completely, at any rate. He has come prepared. Well, he has come prepared every year, this night.
Every time, with a separate ritual. None of which has worked. None of which has discouraged him from trying again.
His friends and foes will no doubt be amused to see the pragmatic Dark Knight committing himself to a ridiculous compulsion like this.
After all, the definition of madness… Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result… Well, at least he has enough sanity left to try a different ritual every time.
………………………………
Crime Alley is deserted as he strides along. It is well known that for this one night, the Alley belongs to the Bat.
A couple of times he has gotten ambushed here, by fools who thought it was a chance to take him down when they knew exactly where he would be. Their fate has warned others away from attempting the same.
Park Row. Crime Alley. Names. All Names.
Bruce comes to a stop at the exact spot. It is nowhere he would have forgotten. Even now, even after all the years.
The old Cinema has long since been torn down, converted into tenements that droop in the dirty yellow glare of the streetlights. The stink of trash suffocates the air.
All the same, he can feel himself beginning to see a different road before him, beginning to see Park Row rather than Crime Alley.
Time to do it. Time to begin.
He pulls out the small book – tiny, for a grimoire – out of the folds of his cape. Just a refresher, make sure he has not forgotten or mistaken even a single word.
With Dick, he has found out – often to their misfortune and always to their embarrassment – that a single letter or accent shift can change the very intent of the spell.
Especially when the ritual is being performed by a non mage who has no special senses to warn him should something go wrong.
Well. He has been doing this long enough now, and nothing has killed him yet. Nothing has worked yet, either.
But then again, there’s always a first time for everything. He will have to see which one it will be tonight.
The ritual is pretty simple, for a summoning.
Bruce has learned to not let that be a reason for contempt. Sometimes the most powerful rituals are the simplest.
After all, he has seen Dick bind an eldritch abomination with just a red thread from his suit and a piece of chalk.
So, as he has done every year on this night, Batman steps to that unmistakeable spot in the Crime Alley, the spot where so many years ago a little boy knelt beside the rapidly cooling bodies of his parents.
He begins the ritual.
…………………………………..
Jason Todd knows very well that he is not going to last long here.
He’s too small, for an ifrit. A trace of some other species in him, perhaps whatever his unknown mother was (or is, he has no idea whether she’s still alive, Willis would never say).
Too small, too young. Not much more than an impling. And hell is no kind place for implings.
They are supposed to be hidden in the pack nest, guarded by the Pack. The Packs have their pride, if not love – this is no place to speak of something as soft as love – to motivate them.
A raid on the Nest is not something you can risk unless you believe you can destroy the entire Pack.
Jason is old enough to be allowed out of the Nest, but not out of scent of the Pack. Not out of the aegis of the Pack.
But then again, that hasn’t been an option for a really long time.
Not that Willis was ever all that adept at guarding the Nest either, but he had been better than nothing.
And after Willis was gone, mama had kept them going for a while. Exchanging ‘favours’. Humans, after all, are a delicacy.
Contrary to what humans claim, hell is no punishment ground for human sinners. Well, this hell isn’t. Maybe there’s another one somewhere else, an afterlife, along with the Heaven mama told him about.
Somewhere… maybe that is where demons also go on the very rare occasions they die for real. Who knows, who cares.
The only hell Jason knows is this one, the Netherworld.
As far as he can tell, you don’t have to be much of a sinner to end up here – you just gotta be born.
There are plenty of them born, alright. About one in twenty make it to childhood. In those, one in fifty make it to adulthood. Not really the kind of playground that raises a kind or gentle crop.
It’s no wonder humans still have nightmares about those who crawl out of here – even though nowadays the humans have started to forget, most of them.
But there are always those who are stupid enough. Or those who are desperate enough.
They are the only humans who are dragged down here, whether sinner or sinned against.
The ones who make Deals. The ones who agree to let themselves be a plaything in the Netherworld in exchange for whatever it is they are convinced they simply cannot do without.
A lot of them, Jason knows, never really meant for anything to happen.
Those types are pretty young. Playing around with something that sounded like fun. Getting drunk and deciding to do an old ritual they stumbled across on the internet. Daring each other.
Well, most of those type just end up dead or possessed. Nasty, maybe, but not as nasty as what could otherwise happen.
Only some get dragged down. Those who decide to push through their own disbelief or terror or conscience, whichever is the major obstacle, and make a Deal.
Catherine – Catherine Todd, she was not allowed to speak another name as hers after Willis sealed his deal with her – was one of those.
Catherine. Mama.
Jason doesn’t want to think about her right now. It makes him too weepy and right now he has work to do. Need to scavenge something.
It’s been too long. While mama was there…
Jason doesn’t know what was the Deal Catherine made. What it was that Willis could offer her. Whether Willis had even made good on the deal or simply found some loophole.
Jason has never asked. He doesn’t want to know. And now, of course, he will never know. Unless maybe, just maybe, demons and humans get to share the same afterlife.
Whatever the reason, she became Willis Todd’s property while Jason was still an infant. She became Jason’s mama, mother in all but blood.
He remembers the smiles, the warm arms that held him close like he was something precious, something to be cherished and guarded, the lullabies.
He remembers the stories of the Outer World, the Upper Realms. The world his mama came from.
He remembers asking whether everyone there was as beautiful, as kind, as mama. He remembers her face twisting as she struggled not to cry, her somewhat numb voice explaining how some were just as bad as any of the demons here, but that there were good people, kind people, and that it was beautiful, oh God, so beautiful.
Mama talked about the Upper World a lot. Especially towards the end.
The Netherworld is not kind even to the implings who are born into it. It is even less kind to the humans who wander or are dragged in.
Usually, if a human is considered amusing enough to keep around, the demon who owns them will feed them a bit of their own energy, keep them going. Willis never did that for Catherine.
Maybe because he didn’t care one way or the other how long she lasted – he was already bored with her. Maybe, just maybe, because he didn't actually know how to do it and didn’t want the bother of learning how to.
Catherine had managed to hold on for a few years. But in the end…
She faded. Slowly. Painfully.
And to distract herself, to distract the impling she raised as a son, she told stories of the Upper Realm, of her old homeworld. When that was all that could distract her from the pain.
And near the very end, when she was no longer able to talk, Jason sat beside her and told her the same stories she had once told him.
She painted the picture of a world where people could be kind and cruel, but a world where it was possible to be kind without dying brutally for it.
Jason is not sure how much of the stories he actually believes, but he believes enough of it to know that it is the place he should target. If he wants to live.
He has no illusions about himself. He is a fighter, mama always said so, but he is not strong enough.
He has no magic strong enough to be of use in combat. He is not the spawn of any important Clan. He does not even have a Pack to defend him. He is easy pickings.
Maybe earlier they were willing to more or less ignore him. A scrawny impling, too small to be worth the bother of hunting for a meal. Too weak to be a threat.
But now Jason is growing up. He is not going to be able to escape notice much longer.
He will be old enough to be seen as a potential rival to be eliminated, but not old enough to be able to defend himself.
The end will come, sooner or later. His only hope, if he is to remain here, is that it will be swift when it happens, as painless as it can be.
(He knows better, though – only real threats, the ones that could do actual damage in a drawnout fight, get quick deaths – his end will be last as long as it takes to amuse the lucky scavenger, whoever it is)
If he remains, he is dead.
His only hope is to crawl out. Somehow.
Some demons manage, he knows. But those are usually the most powerful, usually the Pack leaders or mages.
Or the ones who are bound in one way or the other to a human in the Upper Realm. Those can part the veil between the worlds and sneak through.
Sooner or later Hunters might manage to fling them back in, but they rarely stayed in forever. They always found their way out again.
Jason has no chance there. He has seen them battling each other for the chance to get through. He will never survive a direct confrontation like that.
It will have to be different. As of now, he is spending every moment except those spent hunting food, searching for a potential portal.
There are places in the world where the Veil is thin. The places where, if a denizen of either realm tried hard enough, they could worm their way through. There has to be some way.
He just…just needs to find it. Before the coming end. He can’t – won’t – give up. There has to be some place he can sneak through.
The other option is a Summoning.
He has heard all the stories, the war tales they tell. About how they tore the summoners to shreds, about how the fool of a mage who tried to bind them ended up at the bottom of the Marianna Trench.
He doubts most of the stories are true. But if he is summoned, he is not going to bother clawing anyone to death.
If he is summoned… No. No use thinking about that. Being caught in a Summoning is a matter of chance, and chance has never smiled on Jason Todd.
Just keep looking for a Thin place. You aren’t a big name guy, not one of the Elder Ones who are invoked by name.
The only way for you to get grabbed is by sheer freaking chance. You really wanna trust your life to that?
He doesn’t. So he keeps looking.
And then he feels the tug of a Summoning Spell.
…………………………………………..
This time… This time there is something different. Bruce can tell.
He may not be a mage, but he raised one, fights beside one. He knows what it feels like when magic crackles in the air.
Well. Looks like this time the ritual wasn’t a dud.
Now comes the question of negotiation. But then again, Bruce Wayne is no stranger to the techniques of that. He can deal with it. Hopefully.
A form begins to take shape before him, solidifying as the spell worked.
……………………….
Jason blinks.
The air… The air feels so cool on his skin. No smell of rotting flesh. A bit of blood smell, but nowhere near what he is used to.
There are some things rotting, but it doesn’t smell too bad. At all.
He can see the stars overhead, barely visible through the smog cover of the city, but still there.
Mama’s stories. Upper Realm. It… It is as beautiful as mama promised it would be.
Jason is so caught up in taking up the sight, smell and noise of this new world that he plain forgets just how he got here.
That is answered immediately by the Binding Circle that blazes into life around him.
The man before him…he doesn’t look like a sorcerer. He’s dressed weird, but not in sorcerer’s mantle.
And there is no aura about him, no power surrounding him. (But there is something…the hint of a scent, of an aura, that seems to send out a warning…)
And the guy is looking at Jason as if this was the very last thing he expected to happen.
Ah. Okay. An amateur, then.
Of course, no mage worth the name would actually summon some random ifrit impling. Well, not unless they were looking for a sacrifice offering or some demon blood/horn/heart/whatever-the-creeps-used-for-rituals.
Okay, Jason. The impossible happened. You got summoned. By an amateur idiot who likely has no idea what and who he is messing with.
This is your chance. Your one freaking chance. Don’t you dare slip up on this.
“Well, you going to just stand there staring or are we going to get down to business?” he puts as much arrogance into his voice as he can.
Don’t let the guy see how wrongfooted you are. don’t let the guy see that just being here, just breathing the air here, is a dream come true for you. Make him negotiate with all he got.
The man blinks, manages to pull himself together. “I… I wish to make a deal.”
Of fucking course a deal. What is he going to do with this idiot’s soul? Sure, the guy is big, maybe a bit of use as a bodyguard, but not enough.
Jason raises an eyebrow. “What kind of deal?”
“I wish to speak to my deceased parents.”
Ouch. For an instant Jason feels a pang of sympathy for the guy, which he hurriedly quashes. “Your…deceased parents?”
“Thomas and Martha Waynes.”
“Oh…kay.”
Necromancy. Jason is no mage. This is the kind of thing that would require calling up one of the Major League Named demons.
A young ifrit hybrid is not going to stand a chance. But of course, the idiot before him doesn’t know that.
Jason frowns, pretending to think. “Hmm… Interesting wish. I…could try. Depending on whether you will give me what I wish.”
Sure he could try. Doesn’t mean he has any chance of succeeding, but he can definitely try. Like, for one minute each day.
“What do you wish to have?”
Jason shrugs. The man is likely expecting a demand on his soul. Egoistic idiots. Why would any self respecting impling want to be saddled with one of them?
“Nothing much. I’ve taken pity on you, you understand? I will try to get you a few minutes of conversation with your parents. In exchange, you will have to be my anchor in this world as long as it takes me to achieve my side of the deal.”
Anyone would see that this was a fool’s deal.
Jason is basically asking for the right of infinite stay here. And taking away any incentive he might have had towards actually honouring his side of the deal, even if he was capable of doing so.
The man has got to smell a rat here, right?
Clearly, no. The guy’s two brain cells have clearly signed off for the night.
“So you will stay at my home with me? Till your side of the deal is done?”
Jason nods. He has some slight suspicion what the guy might be thinking of. Staying at his home and all…
Duh. Jason has fought off way tougher suitors. Just let the idiot try something. That was never part of their deal.
“Fine!”
“Fine?” Jason blinks.
Surely it can’t be this easy? But apparently, it is that easy.
The man breaks the binding circle, and indicates his car. “Shall we go?”
………………………..
Bruce’s first thought on seeing the demon he has summoned is ‘Hey, that’s a freaking baby!’
Or impling. Whatever they are called.
The kid is tiny, and the expression on his face is one of sheer, childish awe as he takes in the surroundings.
From the kid’s expression, you’d think they are in a grand Swiss mountainscape rather than standing amidst the stinking trash of Crime Alley.
The look of awe vanishes in an instant, though, likely the moment the kid realised he was sporting it. A calculating look takes its place, a swaggering bravado.
The kid even shifts his posture to match, trying to look casual, big and intimidating. It…is likely not intended to be as adorable as it looks, given the kid’s attempted tough-as-nails expression.
It tugs at Bruce’s heartstrings a little.
Well. Maybe not just a little. He has seen too many kids sporting the same expression, reaching for the same shield of ‘toughness’ to hide behind, to hide their terror.
How did he get the kid here, anyway? An impling this young… Should never have been grabbed by a summoning spell.
Should never have been out of his Nest.
Bruce has read up a lot on demons, in the early years before Dick confided in him of his family’s ancestry, when he was still trying to work out what exactly Dick is.
An impling within a nest is safe from any summoning. So, the reason this one could be grabbed is that it – he – is nestless. Homeless.
Dick has been to the Netherworld before, on a mission to rescue some humans who ended up trapped.
He had come back ashen, and spent two hours sobbing and shaking in Bruce’s arms just out of memory of what he had seen.
That was only a swift trip, and Dick a powerful mage whose shields could hold off most of the denizens of the Netherworld.
This kid…impling, whatever… Can’t be more than twelve years old. Implings mature the same rate as human children till later adolescence. Same as mages do.
So this little boy has been wandering around the Netherworld for who knows how long.
There is absolutely no question in Bruce’s mind as to what he should do next. The only question is just how to manage it.
The Summoning Circle is meant to be only a temporary measure, and he very much doubts the boy will trust him enough to accompany him, not after he has basically snatched him from the only home he knew to do who knows what.
Then the kid starts to ‘negotiate’, and it is all Bruce can do to keep a smile off his face.
Thank Heavens. The kid maybe not even into his teens yet, but he knows enough to grab a chance when he’s got one.
Though, Bruce is very thankful he is the one who summoned the boy, not some bastard like Luthor or Sionis.
The kid is clearly improvising, making up the ‘contract’ as he goes.
Fine. As long as he gets to keep the child out of the Netherworld, out of the literal hell which awaits him. That is fine by Bruce.
Good thing he did read all those books on demon parenting when he was starting out with Dick.
And thus the deal is made and sealed. The kid is coming home with him.
He probably should call ahead? Maybe give Alfred time to heat something up for dinner? And…
Oh God. Alfred and Dick are going to kill him, aren’t they.
.