Chapter Text
The peculiar thing about graduating from grim reaper school at the age of twenty-one was that nobody threw a party. There was no cake, no awkward small talk with relatives, no pretending to be delighted about receiving socks. There was merely a sense of quiet completion, like finishing a book that had taken thirteen years to read, and then being handed a scythe that felt surprisingly light in hands that had been dead since childhood.
Bruce remembered dying.
Everybody sometimes asked, in that morbidly curious way the living had, whether it hurt.
The answer… was no.
Getting shot did not hurt at all, which seemed to contradict everything one might expect. What hurt—what truly hurt, in a way that death itself could not touch—was watching his father fall to his knees in that alley, screaming Bruce’s name until his voice broke. What hurt was his mother’s face, the way it crumpled when she understood, the sound she made that was not quite a word and not quite a scream but something worse than both.
Bruce had tried to comfort them.
He had reached out with small, eight-year-old hands, had tried to say I’m here, I’m still here, but they could not hear him. And then death had taken him properly, gently, like drifting to sleep in front of a warm fire after a long day.
Now, standing at the edge of the Lazarus Pit, watching its green depths churn with unnatural energy, Bruce found himself thinking of that alley again. Perhaps because Ra’s al Ghul, in his centuries of existence, had never quite understood that death was not the enemy.
“You are quiet today,” Ra’s said, appearing at Bruce’s side with that effortless grace he had perfected over hundreds of years. The man moved like water, like shadow, like something that had forgotten what it meant to be truly alive. “More quiet than usual, which is saying a great deal.”
Bruce did not look at him. “I have nothing to say.”
“And yet your silence speaks volumes.”
Ra’s folded his hands behind his back, his gaze fixed on the swirling green below. The pit hummed with a frequency that set Bruce’s teeth on edge, a constant reminder of why he had been summoned here in the first place.
Five years ago, Ra’s had found a way to call a grim reaper—not many could—and had bound Bruce to a contract. Ra’s wanted power, wanted to enhance the Lazarus Pits with the very essence of death itself and Bruce had been the tool he selected for the job.
The irony was not lost on Bruce. A man so terrified of dying, so desperate to cheat the natural order, had invited death into his home and called it a guest.
“You will be leaving soon,” Ra’s said. It was not a question.
“My business here is finished.”
“Indeed.” Ra’s turned slightly.
Bruce could feel the weight of his gaze without meeting it.
There was something in the old man’s eyes that Bruce had never quite understood—a glimmer of something that looked almost like fondness, though that could not possibly be correct. Bruce was not Ra’s servant, not his ally, not anything attached to this mortal world at all. He was a reaper, and reapers did not inspire fondness in the living. They inspired fear, or respect, or desperate bargaining. Never fondness.
“I shall miss you,” Ra’s said. And in Ra’s speak style, even something as simple as I shall miss you sounded like a declaration of war or a marriage vow, depending on the day.
Bruce finally looked at him. “You will not. You will find another reaper to exploit, another power to drain, another way to pretend that you are not afraid of dying.”
Ra’s laughed, and it was genuine—warm, even.
The man was amused by his own impending abandonment, by the insults Bruce had lobbed at him for five years, by the fundamental truth that everything Ra’s built would eventually crumble to dust while Bruce simply moved on to the next soul, the next death, the next century of watching people fail to understand that dying was not the worst thing that could happen to a person.
“Perhaps,” Ra’s said. “But I have enjoyed our arrangement. You have been... refreshing.”
Bruce said nothing.
There was nothing to say.
In a few hours, he would step out of this realm and back into the currents of time and space that connected the worlds of the living and the dead. He would return to the afterworld, file his reports, and wait for his next assignment. Ra’s al Ghul would become a memory, another name in a very long list of names that meant nothing.
The pit churned below them, green and hungry and wrong.
Bruce turned away from it.
“And then what?” Ra’s asked. “When you return to this afterworld of yours. What will you do?”
Bruce paused but did not turn back.
The question was mundane, almost conversational, and yet something in Ra’s tone suggested genuine curiosity. Perhaps the old man truly did want to understand. Perhaps he was simply bored. With Ra’s, it was impossible to tell.
Bruce shrugged. “Work. Probably.”
“Work,” Ra’s repeated, as though the word were foreign to him. “You have spent five years working for me. Surely you deserve a rest.”
“There is no rest.” Bruce did turn now, meeting Ra’s gaze across the space between them. The pit’s green light cast strange shadows across the ancient face, making him look almost corpse-like himself. “There is only work. Different work. I was thinking perhaps some office work this time. A change of scenery.”
Ra’s raised an eyebrow—a small movement.
“Office work. You, a grim reaper, wish to do office work.”
“Just... administrative. Processing paperwork. Reviewing cases. Someone has to do it.”
For a long moment, Ra’s simply looked at him. Then he laughed—that same warm, genuine laugh that Bruce had never learned to expect. “You are a strange creature, Bruce. A strange grim reaper indeed. But I suppose it is only natural, given the circumstances.”
Bruce did not answer.
He did not need to ask what circumstances Ra’s meant. They both knew.
A child. Bruce had been a child when he died.
Eight years old, small and scared and reaching for parents who could not see him. That was the shape of his death, the outline that would never change no matter how many years passed in the afterworld. He had been a child, and now he was not, and the strangeness of that fact followed him everywhere like a shadow.
His parents had not been religious. They had believed in karma, in cause and effect, in the idea that actions rippled outward and eventually returned. They had spoken of hell and heaven the way they spoke of mythology—interesting stories, useful metaphors, but not literal truths. Bruce had grown up with that gentle agnosticism, had absorbed it without question.
And then he had died, and found himself in a train station.
It was absurd.
Even now, thirteen years later, Bruce could acknowledge the absurdity of it.
There had been a queue—a proper queue, the kind his mother had always insisted on joining because queues exist for a reason, Bruce, do not push—and at the front of it, a ticket booth. Two signs hung above the booth: one pointing left, towards something labelled HEAVEN in elegant calligraphy, and one pointing right, towards HELL in blocky red letters.
Bruce had stood in that queue, eight years old and freshly dead, and he had felt... nothing. No fear. No sadness. No desperate urge to run back to the world he had left. Just a strange, hollow calm, as though someone had reached inside him and switched off all the emotions that might have overwhelmed him.
At the time, he had simply stood there, waiting his turn.
And then someone had poked his shoulder.
Bruce had turned to find a figure behind him—tall, indistinct, wearing what looked like a very ordinary suit. The face had been difficult to focus on, shifting slightly each time Bruce tried to look directly at it, but the voice had been clear enough.
Interested in skipping the queue?
Bruce had blinked. What?
The queue, the figure had said, gesturing at the long line of souls stretching back into the mist. Takes ages. Years, sometimes. But there is an alternative, if you are interested.
What alternative?
The figure had smiled—or Bruce thought it had smiled; the face was still difficult to read. Grim reaper academy. We train our own, you see. Take promising souls, teach them the trade, set them to work. It’s not for everyone, but you look... adaptable.
Bruce had looked at the queue. He had looked at the figure. He had thought about his parents, about everything they had taught him—knowledge is power, Bruce. The more you learn, the more you understand. Never stop asking questions.
Hell yeah, he had said. I accept.
The figure had laughed, and then the train station had dissolved into mist, and Bruce had found himself somewhere else entirely.
He had aced it.
That was the part that still surprised him, if he allowed himself to think about it.
Grim reaper academy was not easy—the other souls in his intake had been there for decades, sometimes centuries, still struggling with the basics while Bruce moved through the curriculum like a raccoon through an unsecured trash can — unstoppable.
He absorbed everything. He mastered everything.
By the time he reached his twenty-first year—his human year, measured in the strange way the afterworld tracked such things—he had graduated, fully formed, with a body that matched his age and a scythe that felt like it had always belonged in his hands.
The other souls had stared. Some had resented him. Most had simply been baffled.
How? they had asked. How are you so good at this?
Bruce had not known how to answer.
Perhaps it was because he had died young, before the world had shaped him into something rigid and unchangeable. Perhaps it was because his parents had raised him to question everything, to never accept the surface of things. Perhaps it was simply luck, or chance, or the strange alchemy of death and personality that no one fully understood.
Whatever the reason, he had graduated. Twenty-one years old, in a body that looked exactly as he would have looked if he had lived, standing at the edge of a new existence while the other souls from his intake continued to struggle through their first year.
Show-off, one of them had muttered, and Bruce had almost smiled.
He did not smile now, standing across from Ra’s al Ghul with the Lazarus Pit churning behind him. He simply looked at the ancient immortal and waited for whatever came next.
“Office work,” Ra’s said again. “I confess, I had imagined something more... dramatic.”
“Dramatic is overrated,” Bruce said.
Ra’s laughed once more, and the sound echoed across the green-lit chamber, bouncing off walls that had stood for centuries and would stand for centuries more. Bruce turned away from it, from him, from all of it.
In a few hours, he would leave.
In a few hours, none of this would matter.
“If you are seeking a change of scenery,” Ra’s said thoughtfully, and Bruce could hear the smile in his voice, “you could always stay. Here, I mean. In the living world. There are... arrangements that could be made.”
Bruce did not turn around. “What arrangements?”
“Marriage, for instance.” Ra’s paused. “My daughter Talia is unmarried. She is intelligent, capable, beautiful. You would make an interesting match.”
This time, Bruce did turn—not because he was interested, but because he needed to see if Ra’s was serious. The old man’s face was unreadable, as always, but there was a glint in his eyes that suggested he knew exactly how absurd the suggestion was.
“Talia,” Bruce repeated flatly.
“Indeed.”
“Your daughter Talia.”
“The same.”
Bruce stared at him for a long moment. Then, before he could stop himself, he let out a sound that was almost a laugh. “I think not. Your daughter’s fascination is mostly reserved for the mirror.” He adjusted his cuffs. “‘Father, must we keep that ghastly, grey-skinned creature in the east wing? He is positively hideous to look at.’”
Dropping the impression, Bruce looked Ra’s dead in the eye. “She thinks I am an eyesore. Besides, even if I were interested—which I’m not, let me be clear—I would have concerns about the League’s approach to these matters. Very progressive society you have here. Very modern. All that ancient wisdom and not a single conversation about consent.”
Ra’s threw his head back, his laughter booming. “Precisely why I shall miss you, Detective.”
They stood in silence for a moment. Bruce could feel the weight of Ra’s gaze, the strange fondness that had persisted through five years of insults and dismissals. It should have been uncomfortable. It should have been unwelcome. It was, maybe, both of those things.
“You’re creepy,” Bruce said flatly. “You know that, right? Standing there, smiling at me like I’m your favourite pet. It’s creepy as hell.” Ra’s laughed again, and the sound followed Bruce as he turned away, as he walked towards the exit, as he left the chamber behind.
The afterworld was a bureaucracy of distance.
One of the first things Bruce had learnt at the academy was that a reaper’s duty required absolute detachment, which meant he was strictly forbidden from any contact with his former life. He could never guide his parents’ souls to the other side, and any attempt to haunt their sleep or manifest in their world was met with immediate, painful redirection.
Bruce was often told that reapers didn’t have room for sentiment, but that was a lie.
He carried the ache of his parents’ absence in every fold of his soul.
He pulled his thoughts away from the past and looked at himself in the mirror of the dim hotel room. He ran a hand over his hair, noting the height and the lean build he possessed. He looked remarkably like his father—the same brow, the same steady gaze—but when he let a genuine smile break across his face, the transformation was startling. The warmth in his eyes and the curve of his lips were all his mother.
The shower had helped.
Some grim reapers let themselves go, forgetting what it meant to inhabit a body, but Bruce had always been particular about hygiene. It was not vanity—he had been dead too long for vanity—but something closer to discipline. A physical form required maintenance, and Bruce believed in doing things properly or not at all.
Besides, manifesting a body at all was a skill. Most reapers could not do it. The ones who could were considered geniuses, the elite of their profession, capable of walking among the living for brief periods when the job required it. Bruce had mastered the technique within his first year at the academy, and the instructors had stopped being surprised by him after that.
But… this was different.
He had been in this physical form for four hours now, and he did not feel tired at all. Not even slightly. In his own world, a manifestation this long would have drained him significantly—the living world had a way of pushing back against the dead, wearing them down, reminding them they did not belong. Here, though, the energy was different. Death energy hung in the air like fog. It was everywhere. It was abundant and it felt almost like home.
Here, Bruce thought, looking at his reflection. Not my world.
After parting from Ra’s and the League, Bruce had stepped into the timestream as he had done a hundred times before. The currents should have carried him back to the afterworld, back to his desk and his reports and the comfortable routine of administrative work. Instead, something had gone wrong—a turbulence he had never encountered, a rip in the fabric between dimensions—and he had emerged here.
Wherever here was.
Bruce had spent the first three hours researching.
It was what he did, what he had always done.
The hotel room was generic—beige walls, floral prints, a television bolted to the dresser—but the materials on the nightstand told a story. A local newspaper, dated correctly for this world’s calendar. A phone book, thick with listings. A map of the city, folded to show the downtown core.
Bruce had read them all.
The first thing he had noticed. No Gotham City. He had searched for it instinctively, the way a person checks for their own reflection, and found nothing. No Gotham. No Metropolis. No Star City. The familiar geography of his world simply did not exist here.
And the second thing. This city, the one where he had landed, was called Raccoon City.
Bruce had never heard of it. This place, apparently, was significant—a midwestern American city with a population of around one hundred thousand, nestled in the Arklay Mountains. The newspaper described it as a thriving industrial town, proud of its recent growth and its connection to a major pharmaceutical company called the Umbrella Corporation.
Umbrella employed nearly half the city’s workforce, according to the articles. They funded public projects, supported the police department, and generally acted as the benevolent benefactor that had dragged Raccoon City into the modern era
The mayor, a man named Michael Warren, spoke glowingly of their partnership in every interview.
Bruce had read those interviews three times.
Something was wrong here. He could feel it, the way he had always felt things that did not quite fit. A pharmaceutical company that controlled an entire city. A corporate headquarters that no journalist seemed to have ever visited. A sense of something hidden.
But that was not his concern. He was a reaper, not a detective, not really. His job was to process souls, not to investigate the living. He had gotten lost in the timestream, that was all. Eventually, he would find his way back.
Eventually.