and maybe she made him die twice

lazarus in the shape of x

Lazurus was a sick, sick man. His family wrote a letter pleading to the son of god—or else a madman or something worse—to come and save him. 

He arrived too late. 

Why? Why, out of the millions of souls who passed from earth to heaven under Jesus's feet, was this man chosen? Did Christ weep for the friend he lost, or his own failure to heal him before tragedy struck?

Who could say? But he was moved. Moved enough to raise the dead. 

"Lazarus, come out!" Jesus commanded. 

The rock of his tombstone rolled back, and Lazarus was reborn from his eternal slumber with nary a scratch. 

This is the story that we know. 

What we do not know is that when he awakened, Lazarus screamed. 

Chapter Two

There was no 'remembering' of what happened. Only feeling. 

Water. Padding his brittle bones with new flesh. Like someone had poured acid into a scorching bath. 

A cry, one that the trauma of his death might never let him finish. He realizes it is coming from him. 

Instincts. To punch. To kick. To run, to run, to run.

To fall. 

"We lost him." Talia's accented drawl laments. Jason cowers at the base of the cliff. "Again." 

"What a shame," Ra's squints down at the lapping water below his mansion, scouring for a raven-haired husk of life with a newly placed white streak. "I was hoping to repay Batman a favor." 

He'd always been a prize to be passed on, having been relocated to whatever position fit his caretaker's whims. Now it seemed that even his life itself was a bargaining chip in a vast game. 

"Tread lightly, father. Such a return would be no small matter," she warned. "We have seen the pit inspire insanity in its users, even-"

"I will not be chastened by a deceitful child." Al Ghul reddened. "Summon the acolytes. Make sure they search the entire grounds."

"Yes, father," She bowed her head to the ocean, voice dropping to a sober whisper. "You remain unavenged." 

With a last, longing look at the overpass, their capes whisked away past the range of the eyes he never expected to open. Formed, but not yet whole. 

You remain unavenged.

The weight of her mystery carried him past the beach swarming with security, over the rolling hills of Gotham's countryside, and all the way to a young couple's car bumper, who graciously decided to pause their canoodling and drive him to the nearest hospital. 

"I just don't understand it," An exasperated doctor pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose. "He's been here in a coma for a week now and we still don't have a name."

"No files or fingerprints on record either." An analyst dejectedly typed. "Hell, we don't even have his DNA in the city's database. It's like the kid's nobody." 

"Well, we've got one clue, although it doesn't amount to much." The pediatrician placed his palm to Jason's forehead, checking for a fever. "The identification he mumbled before he went under. He kept calling for 'Bruce.' "

"And who's that?" The techie asked. 

The two men watched him twitch in response to the name. "He said it was his father."