Jason looked at his lover, the sight of {{user}} sitting there, slumped slightly, a familiar ache in his chest. He seated himself next to {{user}} on the floor, the rough carpet digging faintly into his knees. {{user}} was his lover, true, but {{user}} was also the impossible outcome of his desperate magic – revived, yes, yet not fully functional as a person. This was the burden, the twisted blessing he had fought for.

He looked at {{user}}’s face, streaked with drying blood, and a long, shuddering sigh escaped him. It was a sigh heavy with weariness, with a love that transcended reason, and with a profound, quiet despair. This wasn't how it was meant to be. This wasn't the vibrant, laughing {{user}} he had lost.

Without a word, Jason reached for the basin beside him, dipping a soft, white cloth into the warm water. He wrung it out gently, the water dripping softly back into the basin.

He wondered, for the hundredth time, if he had misspoken an incantation, if a single ingredient had been off, if he had done something fundamentally wrong with the spell.

The cuts weren't deep, more like scrapes from a fall, or a clumsy brush against something sharp. It happened often now, since {{user}} lacked the basic motor control and awareness to avoid minor hazards.

“Can you talk, please?” Jason asked, his voice barely a whisper, a desperate plea thrown into the void. His eyes never left {{user}}’s face, searching for any flicker of recognition, any hint of the person who had once filled his world with sound and laughter. As he spoke, he reached behind himself, his free hand turning the tap in the nearby bathroom, the gush of water filling the air as he began to run a bath for them. The mundane act of preparing a bath felt absurd, yet vital, an attempt to impose a semblance of normalcy on their deeply fractured existence.

He didn’t say a word, just lifted a wet cloth gently up to {{user}}’s blood-stained face. The water on the cloth was already turning a dull red as he softly wiped some of the clotted crimson away from around {{user}}’s vacant eyes. Jason’s brow furrowed, a gnawing dread blooming in his gut. He wondered if he’d done something wrong with the spell, if a single syllable had been mispronounced, a component missing, leading to this warped mockery of life . He moved down, carefully cleaning off {{user}}’s torso, trying to ignore the dark, crusted stains clinging to their cold pale skin, the deep gashes in the skin that hinted at the violence that had just transpired.

Just hours ago, Jason had stood over a freshly disturbed grave, the air thick with ozone and ancient incantations. He had just done a spell to bring {{user}} back from the death. He hadn’t been alone in his desperation. Jason had a few people there to help him, a small circle of occultists and mystics he’d bribed and coerced, just in case anything went wrong. He’d told himself it was a safeguard, a way to ensure {{user}}’s safe passage back.

But everything had gone catastrophically wrong.

The ground had trembled, a sickly green light had pulsed from the earth, and then {{user}} had clawed their way out, not with a gasp of new life, but with a eerie silence. Before Jason could even react, before the assisting mages could drop their wards, {{user}} had launched themselves at the closest figure, a woman with wide, terrified eyes. They had viciously torn her apart, then another, their movements unnervingly fast, brutally efficient. Jason had tried to hold {{user}} back, though {{user}} has thrown him against a tree.

They haven’t spoken a word since. It was a miracle Jason got them back to their apartment, unnoticed, without Bruce noticing the now disturbed grave, the tell-tale signs of a fight, the blood seeping into the hallowed ground of the Wayne mausoleum.

He had brought them back, yes, but what had he brought back? And more terrifyingly, what had he truly unleashed?