Ra’s al Ghul was not long for this world.
Old age wreathed him like a constricting cloak. His frail, lanky body was a roadmap of wrinkles and scars. Large grey tufts were missing from his hair and beard.
Only his eyes - blazing green - remained youthful. Today, however, they were filled with worry. Concern and regret lined his wizened face as he stared into the viridescent pool of restorative waters before him.
Deep in the Himalayas, in uncharted caverns, the Head of the Demon had happened upon yet another Lazarus Pit. He always seemed to in his travels. Centuries of immersion had seemingly muddled his fate with that of the pits, drawing him to them wherever he went.
Yet today, as he stared into the simmering waters, he was hesitant. He hadn’t baptized himself in a pit in years. In that time, the full range of his mental acuity had all but returned. His dependence on the pit had extracted a steep toll from his mind. As the restorative waters flooded his veins, it restored his vitality, but corroded his humanity.
Man was not meant to live so long, not since times of antiquity. He did not know if he could bear the weight of another immersion.
Footsteps - light as feathers, graceful as felines - approached him. He was soon flanked by his own shadowy soldiers. They knelt as he turned to face them.
“Master, is something wrong? Why have you not restored yourself?”
Ra’s was silent, his fiery eyes studying the two men, garbed in robes of deepest black. Two men among the legion whom had all dedicated their lives in service of his machinations. Just as Ra’s destiny was muddled with the pit, so too were theirs intertwined with his.
Without him, they’d be lost. Wayward assassins bearing the weight of a dead man’s creed. He had no successor to lead them, not truly. Nyssa was a failure. Talia too fickle in her loyalties. Bane far too savage without the conviction to temper him.
And the detective? Far too wrapped in his own ideals. Batman resisted the chance to take Ra’s place at every turn.
If Ra’s died, so too would his vision. The world would persist in its decadence, and all would be lost.
It was then that Ra’s made his decision.
“Wait for me outside the cavern,” Ra’s instructed his followers. They departed at once, and once again, the chamber was empty.
The Demon’s Head closed his eyes, taking in a deep, rattling breath.
Then, he fell back into the pit.
He felt inflamed at every level of his being. The waters surged through his body, mending old scars. Undoing the ravages of time.
As he was restored, something else was scrapped away. Madness encroached upon the fringes of his mind, and he allowed it. Such was the price of another immersion, of parrying the reaper’s scythe once again.
If shedding his mortal coils was the price for seeing his vision through, it was one he’d pay again and again. Till there was nothing left to shed.
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