Robin's Shadow (Batman OC)

Chapter 61: Epilogue, Part 2

I open my eyes to darkness. Moving, pulsating, heavy darkness. I know this darkness, I've seen it before.

"Death?!" I call out in despair. "Death, no... no, send me back. I'm not done there! I'm not ready!" I beg into the darkness.

"You cannot go back, you know this." Death forms themselves in front of me again, their voice echoing everywhere. "You died, your life there is over." They say with finality.

"My family." I cry out, tears forming in my eyes. "I can't leave my family, they need me. I need them."

"So you finally learned the lesson." Death says stoically. "Tell me, why did I send you there? What did your soul learn?"

I don't answer. I instead just scream in broken hearted agony, sobbing down on my hands and knees. The grief hits me hard when I realize that I'm dead, and that I just lost all of my family. I love them so much, and now I just left them. My brothers and Bruce and Alfred. My Jason. They all love me so much, my death is going to do nothing but cause them pain. I don't want to cause them pain. I wasn't ready to go. I wasn't done there. 

It's not fair.

"I wasn't ready to go." I whimper sadly when I finally stop crying after several long minutes. "I had so much more to do. I wasn't done protecting them all. I wasn't ready."

"You were more ready than you know." Death says to me. "Now, answer the question. What did your soul learn?"

"Family." I whisper out in sorrow after several more minutes of my heart breaking. Finally though, I had to accept it. "I learned how important family is. I learned how to make a family, how to keep a family, how to love a family. It hurts so much, Death." I cry as I grab my chest over my heart.

"Yes. With learning to love a family, you also must learn to lose that family." Death says and I scoff.

"I did lose one, I lost Jason for years." I counter angrily.

"You knew he would return." Death counters evenly. "It was not a true loss."

"Why send me to a world, to give me family, if only to take me away from them?" I ask angrily. I've never been mad at Death like this before. I spent years hating them for sending me to Gotham at the beginning of my life there, and now they're taking me away from what I love.

"To teach you." Death says simply. "If you are unsatisfied, I can take away all memories of your life there and start over, pick a different family." They offer out, and I can almost picture a cruel look on them if they had a face.

"No!" I scream desperately. "No, don't take away my family again! Please." I plead to them.

"I will not, do not worry." Death answers plainly. "That fight, that desperation to hold onto your family, that is now a component of your soul. It is unbreakable now, and shining strongly. You learned the hardest lesson in this world." They continue on, and I feel the small relief that they won't take my memories of that world away. "Normally, the love of one's family is learned naturally in a young soul's first life, but without that love the first time, it is then the hardest lesson to teach."

"What if... what if they resurrect me? They have the means to, what if they use a Lazarus Pit?" I ask quietly to the floating being. "Will I go back?"

"They will not." Death answers solemnly. "Your brother Jason decides against it. You would be broken if you returned, your mind would be as fractured as your soul was when it started, and it is still not whole. You would not have survived. Your brother did not want you to be subject to the torment he went through." They say, and while it hurts, I know it's what Jason would do. I know it's what I would want, I wouldn't be able to handle it if I hurt my family on accident. "Would you like to see what happened after you died?"