Chapter Text
Jason Wakes Up
For those precious moments, after everything goes dark, he’s drifting. That fear and pain and resentment dissipates into something numb that lingers in the corners of his mind. Jason is familiar with this. He’s been on the brink of Death - and has greeted it multiple times since childhood - for years. Before he was Robin and before he could fight, Jason was fighting Death during the days he found his mother on the floor with a discarded needle by her arm.
Jason Todd was fighting death from a very young age. That was probably why he’d welcomed it. It was familiar.
He, however, was not lucky enough to be left alone after dying. No one would care enough to grant him a reprieve. Wasn’t the entire point of dying to Rest In Peace?
It’s hard to remember what he was thinking of when he died. Every moment that Jason spends trying to piece together those last few precious moments of life usually led back to goodness. Electric blue eyes and soft laughter and the amber aura of lit candles illuminated the book in his hands while he watched her paint. The curve of a smile belonging to a father who no longer exists and the smell of his grandfather’s cookies-
Waking up brings nothing but fury. Fury and pain and fear as he scrambled out of the depths of the Lazarus Pit to get out. There are League Assassins everywhere - and at the very least, Jason can identify a threat when he sees one - while Talia and Ra’s lingering on the water’s edge behind him.
Waking up doesn’t bring goodness. It just brings resurfaced memories of Batman not getting there fast enough, of a broken little bird who had his wings clipped as he was beaten to death, of those last flickering embers of whom Robin had used to be dying out until there was just… this.
Darkness.
Time is not something he follows well after the escape from the Lazarus Pit. All there is consuming his mind, his very being, is the fury. Fury and despair and a consuming need to kill.
He’d learn later that was The Pit. No matter how hard he tried to fight it, The Lazarus Pit was the puppet master, and he was at its command.
No matter how much it hurts or how much he screamed, Jason was at its mercy.
Jason Finds Out About Tim
His return to Gotham leads him into the lone oak tree that stands vigil in Wayne Manor Graveyard. The harsh winds are threatening to send him face-first into the ground dampened by the rain that just came through.
Wayne Manor is just visible in the distance, its windows dimmed aside from the two closest to where he’d lived during his tenure as Robin. The one furthest down the hall toward the center is Sarah’s. He knows that. The other one, however, is not too far from his old abode, and there’s a slim silhouette inside he doesn’t recognize. Who’s living in my house with my girl?
He shook his head. Not his anymore.
Lifting the binoculars to his eyes, Jason braced himself against the tree and watched as the boy - who bore a remarkable resemblance to him and Dick - hastened in slipping into his Robin uniform. A uniform that Jason was once proud to wear, the Robin outfit now looks different. Does this new Robin know what it means? What it stands for? And did Bruce go out of his way to make him a proper uniform that would keep this little bird from getting his wings clipped too?
Replacement. A thin, little thing barely big enough to hold that bo-staff he’s got strapped to his back. The warehouse wasn’t even done smoking yet before Big Bad Bat swept in and took himself another bird to put into the costume and play his role. A little bird who looks like you and Dick. He didn’t mourn you. He didn’t avenge you. He just left you.
Green tinged the edges of his vision. He’d expect this from Bruce. Did Sarah mourn him? Did Dick? He knew he didn’t have the greatest relationship with his older brother, but Jason loved Dick. He loved Alfred. He loved his family.
Maybe Bruce just couldn’t find it in him to love Jason the way he’d loved his eldest two children.
Jason grinds his teeth so hard that the sound makes his whole body shiver. He really should not have been shocked that Bruce so easily cast him aside for another Robin, someone else who would obey Batman’s orders and wouldn’t die for disobeying. Someone who could hold the mantle that Dick had so graciously given.
The hatred for Tim starts right there, sheltered against Gotham’s cruel winds in a jacket two sizes too big against a tree that stands apart from all the others on the Wayne Manor grounds.
Ironic. Jason Todd is the one now standing alone.
Again.
He’d almost forgotten what this felt like.
Jason Becomes Red Hood
The next several months are a struggle. Jason was more than aware of the overall goal: He was going to take Gotham out from under Batman’s nose with his militia, and the end of the night - when it came time, it always came down to time - would be Bruce’s death.
Batman’s death.
Jason knows better than to believe that his proteges won’t take over once Bruce dies. He’ll still have a Robin, a Nightwing, an Oracle, and a Spectral. His sweet little Knights.
His Gotham Knights.
Finding a new moniker that has no connection to the Bats is harder than expected until he finds out from one of the many contacts he makes over the course of the next six months what The Joker used to go as before he’d chosen his name.
Red Hood.
It fits. Red Hood is not a hero, he is not someone to be praised. He’s killed people. More people than he cared to admit, but being a vigilante in a city like Gotham meant compromising your morals for the sake of protecting the city.
Jason had already sacrificed. He was willing to sacrifice more to keep this. To keep his reputation, to keep this name, to make it into something - to make himself into something - he could’ve never been before he died.
Red Hood.
Anti-Hero.
Lost.
Haunted.
Angry.
Maybe doing this, being this, would help Jason find himself again.
Red Hood Finds Out About The Joker (Post Arkham City)
They’re so close. Weeks away, even. Jason has been working tirelessly for well over a year - with the assistance of Deathstroke, whom he’d hired early on - on building the militia that would take Gotham out from under Bruce’s nose. He knew exactly which buttons to press: His weaknesses, his strengths, the chinks in his armor, and how to properly hurt him.
That’s what all of this was, wasn’t it? Jason’s pent-up desire to make Bruce pay for the pain he’d suffered. Both before and after death.
It was rare to catch him off guard. After the rigorous training he’d gone through to get into shape after the Pit, his heightened senses and strengthened combat abilities had made him a formidable opponent in the field.
So for one of his men to catch him off guard with news like this was unexpected.
One of his top lieutenants, a man fifteen years Jason’s senior with broad shoulders and sharp eyes, rushed into the office where he’d spent the last hour meticulously organizing their funds and cleaning his guns until they shone. “Sir!” He exclaimed, bracing his hands against his knees to catch his breath. “I’ve got the news. Important news.”
“News that made you that breathless, Duke?”
“I raced across the entire compound to bring this to you, sir.” Duke was one of his best. One of the first militiamen he’d picked, Jason had sympathized with his story about needing to provide for his family currently living in a one-room hut in the village neighboring the compound. It had reminded him too much of a tiny apartment off the alley in Gotham where he’d been born and raised with Catherine Todd, the first and only mother he’d ever loved. “Me and the boys were watching the news, and it got tuned into the Gotham News. You know.. with the blonde anchor?”
Jason nodded. Vicki Vale was pretty distinguishable among the common Gotham reporters.
“And you felt this was important why?” He asked.
“Batman just left Arkham City with the Joker’s body just laying on the hood of one of the cop cars,” Duke replied. He slowly rolled himself upward and straightened his spine as Jason tipped his helmeted head in the general direction of his Lieutenant. “One of the Bats delivered the killing blow. It wasn’t him.”
Now, this I have to see.
Red Hood gave a curt nod and reached for the TV remote in the corner drawer. “Thank you for bringing me this information, Duke.” He said. “Dismissed.”
Duke jogging out the door and back into the main hangar allowed Slade to slip inside, leaning against the doorframe as the news footage of Vicki Vale began to roll across the screen.
Jason took those moments to analyze the details. She seemed to be standing in front of the Monarch Theater. The same theater where Bruce’s parents had died.
Poetic justice, old man.
“Gotham citizens are praising the actions of one of Batman’s partners for delivering the killing blow to criminal mastermind, The Joker, within the abandoned theater you see behind me.” She motioned to it with a flick of her hand. “Sources say this may be Spectral herself donning a new persona, but many claim that Gotham’s princess would never dare do such a thing. Crime Alley residents have commented the opposite. What are we meant to believe? Has Batman trained a partner who is willing to deliver the shot if he refuses to do so?”
The image shifted to footage from a CCTV camera on the building across from the theater. It was grainy, providing little other than a silhouette dressed in kevlar, but he noticed those precious seconds she removed her domino and slowly slid down the door to the roof to catch her breath.
Jason paused the footage and reached for his laptop. He’d installed facial recognition software quite a while ago for exactly this purpose. “Well, well,” Deathstroke remarked, brow raised as he shut the door, interest piqued. “What do we have here?”
“One of the Bats finally grew a pair and offed the Joker.” Jason idly replied as he began running his facial recognition software on the photo.
“Really now? We both know it wasn’t Batman or Robin-“
“No.” He said. “But I have a feeling I do know who it is.”
It wasn’t much later when the recognition software was completed: FACIAL RECOGNITION CONFIRMED - SARAH WAYNE.
Oh, she was gonna be kicking herself for those three seconds she’d taken her domino off.
“Is that… Is that Grayson’s kid sister?”
“The one and only.”
“Why would it be her who killed the Joker? She’s the last person I’d expect to be carrying guns, much less firing one.”
He hadn’t quite expected her to have been so deeply affected by his passing, even years after the fact, but that lingering innocent part of Jason Todd knows deep down why she shot Joker in the head.
For him. She’d done it for him.
Jason ran a finger across the screen of his laptop. After the image had cleared, he was finally graced with the new armor that Spectral had donned — a reinforced kevlar similar to Batman that was now black and orange instead of black and purple — that included a blazing bird that stretched across her chest.
It almost looked like a phoenix.
She was also toting her signature escrima sticks and newly acquired silenced pistols on either hip. Jason whistled lowly at the sight. He hadn’t quite expected her to have been so deeply affected by his passing, even years after the fact, but that lingering innocent part of Jason Todd knows deep down why she shot Joker in the head.
For him. She’d done it for him.
“She fired that bullet for someone who couldn’t quite do it themselves,” He replied, slamming the lid of his laptop shut before turning around to face Deathstroke. “Now, back to work. We’ve got a lot to get done.”
Jason tried not to act as if the image of Sarah Grayson-Wayne killing The Joker in his memory wouldn’t distract him for the rest of the day. Week. Month. Year.
She wasn’t his priority anymore. He was going back to Gotham to take it away from the Bat and kill him.
Just because you’re not that broken little bird anymore doesn’t mean you stopped loving the girl who fixed and mended your clipped wings and fractured heart, Todd.
Jason roughly shook his head and hit the side of his helmet repeatedly as he and Slade entered the warehouse for their next training regimen with the militia.
Just like the lingering parts of whom he used to be, the memory of Sarah Grayson-Wayne and everything he’d ever loved about her fell into the corners of his mind too.
The Pit kept it hidden. Contained.
It kept her safe.
That was enough.