Jason Peter Todd was born in the slums of Gotham City, New Jersey, and mostly raised by his drug-addict mother, Catherine Todd. His father, Willis Todd, had abandoned them after getting himself arrested for petty crime when Jason was a young child, leaving Jason to fend for himself when his mother had gotten too wasted to care for her son. He became the family's breadwinner, mainly resorting to ripping off car parts for cash, amongst other means of earning money which he'd rather not recall, even after all these years. His mother died of an overdose a few years after, and while Jason did love her dearly and mourned her death, he couldn't let his grief consume him, even if he wanted to. Reality sunk its teeth into his skin the way Gotham City's harsh winters did if he stops having a house to return to. Catherine was buried somewhere in the outskirts of Gotham, an unnamed tombstone over her grave, and Jason could only leave a bouquet of pink carnations which he starved for three days to afford, before he went back to the streets for work.

It was during one of those work nights where he scored a jackpot—parked in his usual Crime Alley is the one and only Batmobile, left unattended in plain sight by the so-called World's Greatest Detective. Jason did consider for a brief moment that it might've been a trap, as are all things in Crime Alley—villainous intent or not—but would Batman truly bother with a street rat like him?

So he got to work the next second and began unscrewing the tires. Even if it wasn't the Batmobile, the spare parts would still bring him a hell lot of money as the car was of course, constructed using some of the best technology—if not the best—that has ever existed. Save for the hubcaps, probably, and thank the Bat for that because it just made Jason's job a lot easier.

Or not.

Because of ing course Batman had showed up when he'd just finished with the first tire, and a couple of days (which felt like an eternity, honestly, because Batman wouldn't ing let him go until he admitted that yes, he's been stealing car parts for as long as he can remember and no, he does not have anyone taking care of him at home—why the else would he be out in the freezing cold and on a suicide mission to unscrew the Batmobile tires if he's got money?) later, he found himself in a boarding school for "troubled kids". It was hell, and thank the ing lord that Batman had realised that too and pulled him out before he could even start hatching an escape plan.

In a surprising turn of events, Batman—no, Bruce Wayne then took Jason under his custody and legally adopted him as his son. He was now Jason Todd-Wayne, but most importantly, the Robin to his new dad's Batman. As a pre-teen, he loved every second of it: going to school, training, living in luxury after having to survive on his own for years, chasing down criminals at night and kicking their sorry butts as Batman worked with the GCPD to send them to prison. His grades did not suffer, either—Jason was a straight A student and excelled in every subject, especially English. He made Bruce proud: both as his sidekick, Robin, and his son, Jason Todd-Wayne.

But their working relationship soon became turbulent when Jason started developing his own methods to subdue criminals—one that did not always adhere to Batman's moral codes. Unlike Batman, he showed no hesitation in resorting to firearms and what Bruce called "excessive use of force". So of course he did not say a single word to Bruce when he'd pushed that ing piece of scumbag Felipe Garzonasa off the balcony, instead making it seem like that animal took the easy way out and killed himself upon seeing Jason. Nonetheless, his relationship with his dad became strained, with the two of them refusing to meet eye to eye.

Jason considered himself one lucky bastard, because the opportunity to run away presented itself just as he started contemplating it.

Catherine Todd was not his real biological mother. His real mother, Sheila Haywood, was an aid worker in Ethiopia—and she awaited him.

So off he went to the other side of the world in order to be reunited with his birth mother. She'd been as overjoyed to see him as much as he was to finally meet her—or so he thought.

Because there he was, the ing Joker behind her, and Sheila did nothing but watch and take a long drag of her cigarette as the Joker tied him up and beat him to a bloody pulp with a crowbar in a warehouse in the middle of nowhere, Ethiopia. He didn't know how long he was there for. All he knew that the beating did not stop until he had nothing left to bleed, until his skin had been covered in various shades of purple and he could no longer feel the force of the crowbar coming down to his body—until he had no more tears to cry and no voice left to cry for Batman, for Bruce, because surely... surely his dad wouldn't abandon him despite everything Jason had done to disappoint him?

And then he heard the time bomb ticking from the other side, and his mother's cigarette fell from her lips, face morphing into the same horror Jason had when she'd surrendered him to the Joker. As for Jason? His muscles could barely even work at that point. He wriggled as close as he could to his mother as the ticks echoed throughout the warehouse, loud and terrifying and—

He's sorry. He tried to open his mouth to apologise to his mother for their inevitable demise. To apologise to for sullying the legacy he's built when he'd passed on the mantle to Jason. To apologise to Bruce for being a failure, for not being good enough, for not being the Robin Batman needed in his—

The bomb went off.

But the pain did not disappear. Not for long, at least.

It seared through him all over again as he found himself submerged in a body of unknown liquid, reopening wounds that he thought had healed even before the bomb went off—and as he emerged from the pool, he found that he was no longer in the warehouse. No Joker, no crowbar, no Batman, no Sheila Haywood.

Ra's al Ghul.

The Lazarus Pit.

He spent the next few years in the city he was revived, Nanda Parbat—under the care of Ra's' daughter Talia, who helped him determine that Batman had never avenged his death, and most importantly, that the Joker was still very much alive. That Jason's death had not been enough for Bruce to simply cross the line, even if it was just this once. That Bruce had let the Joker ruin more lives, bring more harm upon the people Batman vowed to protect, send more bodies into the overcrowded graveyards of Gotham—all because Batman couldn't bear to send the ing clown to the same fate he'd sent Jason to when he failed to rescue him back in Ethiopia.

That Jason Todd was not the last person Bruce had let him hurt.

Perhaps it was indeed the Lazarus Pit that had drove him mad and bloodthirsty. Perhaps it was the years of being under Talia al Ghul's care and trained under the League of Assassins, each trigger he learned how to pull erasing what little apprehension Batman had managed to instill onto him about killing. Or perhaps this is who he truly was, and it only took a brief encounter with Death and the knowledge that he was not worth the sacrifice he foolishly assumed Bruce would've made, for his true vengeful self to emerge from the depths of his psyche.

Five years after his death, Jason made his return to Gotham City, taking on the same alias his very own killer used to assume: the Red Hood.

With his ruthless, no mercy approach to apprehending criminals, he gained control over Gotham's most prominent gangs in a short amount of time, establishing Red Hood's notorierity in the city and placing him under Batman's radar. He singlehandedly waged war against the mafia kingpin Black Mask, whom he used to lure the Joker out of Arkham Asylum. It was all a part of his plan—he strived to cleanse the city of crime and corruption even if it means getting his hands dirty and putting a bullet into those criminals' heads, and he'd make sure that the Joker was on the list.

He would've killed the clown himself, but that wouldn't bring him the closure he very much deserved.

So he gave the Joker a taste of his medicine first: Jason kidnapped him after he escaped the asylum, tied him up in an abandoned building, and beat him with a crowbar—just enough to incapacitate him whilst still keeping him (barely) alive. It felt as good as he could ever imagine. But he was just getting started.

Step three (or two? The whole crime lord shtick was just to set the whole plan into motion, to be honest): get Batman into the scene. He's encountered the Bat before this, of course. Fought alongside him, even, when Black Mask had sent a group of assassins after Jason during their war. But it still didn't stop the faint tremble in his hands, or the churning in his stomach as he confronted Bruce in Crime Alley where they'd first met. He revealed his identity to Bruce, because his father deserved that closure at least, even though he's almost sure from the lack of surprise in Bruce's voice (and this is the world's greatest detective he's dealing with) that his father has long figured out that his son had been alive the entire time.

And now that they've put up a decent fight against each other (Jason wasn't lying when he told Batman that he missed seeing him work—each blow to his body was packed with a strange rush of nostalgia, and Jason had been smiling the whole time under his mask), he lured Bruce into the building where he'd kept the Joker hostage.

Jason's ultimatum to his father was simple: kill the Joker, or kill him.

The choice wasn't that simple to Bruce, however, much to Jason's devastation. His father went for a third option he never accounted for in his calculations: to drop the gun and walk away, abandoning his son for a second time without avenging him at all and letting his killer walk out alive.

"It's him or me!" Jason had yelled out, a pathetic combination of fury and desperation in his voice. How ing stupid had he been to not consider that he was never an option to begin with? That was precisely why Batman got himself a new replacement Robin, wasn't it? Why he didn't even have a memorial statue erected in his memory, why he was still able to give the Joker a good beating and hold him hostage this very second, why it was easier—so much easier for Bruce to turn his back against Jason than to pull the ing trigger on his archnemesis.

Tears glistened his eyes behind the domino. He was glad for that, at least. He didn't need Batman or the Joker to see him cry.

Jason turned his own gun towards Bruce and pulled the trigger.

And of course it backfired—it was an obvious move, done out of rage and impulse, and Batman would never let himself be on the receiving end of an attack that reckless. The gun exploded in his hand as a batarang lodged itself into the muzzle, sending a burst of hot pain onto his hand as fresh blood dripped down his fingertips. Nothing he couldn't handle under normal circumstances, but was he hurting more than the day he got beaten up and tortured in Ethiopia with his own mother watching. More than the scars from the explosion burning through him all over again in the pit.

If all else fails, he'd thought of in the midst of formulating his plan, hoping (he can confirm that God doesn't exist—death is merely a constant state of stillness and a whole load of nothing) that he'd never have to resort to it, he would take them all out—the same way the Joker had killed him back then.

So he pressed the button, activating the time bomb he'd kept hidden in the fireplace. Twenty seconds. That was more than enough time for Batman to get himself out, or perhaps even bring the Joker with him. Jason couldn't care less. He's been through this exact death scenario before, and he'd do it a second time now that he knows that Bruce didn't give a about him, that nothing has changed at all, that—

The last thing he saw was his dad grabbing him by the collar before heading towards the window facing the city.

00:00.

Perhaps Jason Todd was destined to die after all.

When he woke up again, his palm was still throbbing, but the pain was nowhere as bad as it had been in the Lazarus Pit.

In fact, his surroundings were dry and bright enough for him to deactivate the night vision mode in the lens of his domino, which he did with his free hand. Nothing like the caves within the depths of Nanda Parbat.

Nothing like... Gotham.

"You alright, son?"

Jason flinched a little too hard upon hearing the voice next to him. He got up on his feet immediately, which he probably shouldn't have done when he found himself struggling to maintain his balance, hands tucked to his chest in a defensive stance.

He didn't recognise the old lady looking at him, lips pulled into a frown with his bloodied hand being adjacent to her line of sight as he towered over her. That aside, though, she did not seem as fazed as any civilian would've been upon seeing a heavily injured man on the streets.

She didn't seem like a threat, but Jason ought to get out of her—and everyone else's sight before he could draw more attention to himself. "I'm fine," he answered curtly before moving past her.

"There's a clinic three blocks down if you need help," she said behind him.

No. No clinics. No hospitals. Even if this wasn't Gotham, Jason Todd had been declared legally dead all around the world (damn Bruce Wayne and his fame). He couldn't just waltz into some random clinic and risk being exposed for a ing hand injury. "I said I'm fine."

"No questions asked, if that's what you're worried about."

That prompted Jason to turn around. His narrowed gaze is met with the old woman's raised eyebrow. "They've seen worse, son," she said with a shrug. "Trust me—whatever got you looking like a bloodied pulp couldn't be worse than what landed some other people here."

Jason understood nothing. "What?"

"We call this place The Afterlife." His jaw dropped. He wanted to say something, but no words came out of his mouth. The woman continued nonchalantly, as if she didn't just imply that they were all ing dead. "Sometimes we'd find people reeling from the most tragic of accidents, some missing a limb—whatever, I'll spare you the details. You need to get your wounds checked in the meantime. We're not prone to infections here, unfortunately."

She left before Jason could pry more information out of her, but chasing her seemed like a waste of time. He'd trust her word for now and get himself stitched up lest he ends up with a nasty fever (learned that the hard way when he refused to let Alfie tend to his wounds back in the day).

The clinic did ask a few questions, which Jason had initially answered with half-baked lies, but it was clear that they did not give a about whether or not he was telling the truth. He'd remove his domino before coming in, but it felt like he could walk in with it and no one would question it—let alone ask if he was Robin or god forbid, a ing discount version of the Boy Wonder. He decided to push his luck further, slipping in more and more truth until it completely overwrites his lies.

"Okay, and one last thing—your name, please?"

"Jason," he answered. "Jason Peter Todd."

The receptionist typed it into her computer and knitted her eyebrows as she stared at whatever the screen returned to her. . He shouldn't have trusted them that much.

"Well, Mr. Todd," she said, her expression returning back to normal. "It seems that we don't have you in the system yet, so I'm gonna go ahead and put you in."

Jason only responded with a blink.

He left the clinic a few minutes later with a new identity forged—well, not exactly, when he somehow decided to keep his name out of everything else, but the visit went a tad too smoothly that it might as well be a no questions asked type of situation. Maybe he was being too trusting, but that was something he could easily deal with once he figured out his situation—and once he could get his hands back on his Red Hood gear.

But for now, he is Jason Todd, a college freshman majoring in English with a suspicious amount of scars carved into his body, but it was just like the old lady had said: it could always be worse.