Chapter Text
On paper, Gotham was always so easily typecast. If you asked Jason, it was hard not to.
It’s dark. It’s always foggy. Even when the sun’s out, it’s either slightly overcast or so overly bright that you start waiting for the other shoe to drop. Because something always drops when the sun goes down.
And that’s without factoring in the city’s habit of birthing crime like it’s an ecosystem requirement. A key port, an old smuggling route from the Prohibition days—every inch of this place was built on dirty money and grimy, blood-stained ambition. The bones of Gotham were rotten long before Batman ever showed up.
Jason had always thought of it as a living thing. Something with a pulse. Something mean and half-starved, with teeth, Alf would say he had the soul of a poet.
But to its people, Gotham had its own dark, terrible beauty. Grit layered over history, survival baked into every breath. People here didn’t bend easily; they cracked, patched themselves back together, and kept moving. That’s what he loved about them. What he hated too.
He shifted his weight, boots scuffing against the wet sidewalk, and caught his reflection in the bookshop window. The neon flicker turned his hood a ghostly red.
He’d been back three days. Long enough for his bones to start recognizing the city again, the rhythm of traffic, the sound of sirens, the way people muttered and kept their heads down when they passed someone who moved with purpose.
He hadn’t planned on stepping inside the shop. It just sort of happened.
The bell above the door gave a small, muted ring when he pushed it open. The place smelled of paper and something vanilla and cheap coffee, the kind of cozy hidden corner of Gotham that only the locals knew about. He moved between the aisles without looking for anything in particular, until his fingers brushed a spine he knew by heart: The Count of Monte Cristo.
A revenge story. Predictable. Human. Eternal.
He flipped it open, the old paper whispering against his thumb, and felt the corners of his mouth twitch. The irony wasn’t lost on him.
Then he saw it—a small display of journals near the counter. Half off. The leather-bound kind, soft and worn, that could fit in a jacket pocket. He picked one up, turned it over, thumb brushing the stitching.
“For your own thoughts, Master Jason.”
The voice came unbidden, clear as day. Alfred’s voice.
He could see it all if he let himself, the bright kitchen lights, polished cutlery, the faint smell of lemon polish and butter. Alfred, patient as ever, offering tea while Bruce lectured him about patrol prep. Alfred was the one who’d made the Manor bearable. The one who’d understood how strange it felt to sleep in sheets that weren’t secondhand, how heavy silence could be when you weren’t used to peace.
He remembered how Alfred once took him aside and gave him a journal with his name on the side, a gift he said, for his grandson, Jason had taken it in stride and then that night, cried his heart out under the covers, in the too-big bedroom, it was his first Christmas present from Alfred.
Jason swallowed hard. He set the journal down. Then, after a moment, he picked it back up and bought it.
The rain was heavier by the time he reached the Narrows.
He crouched on the edge of a rooftop, the city stretching beneath him in a thousand shades of gray and decay.
The League had trained him to see everything; they had worked on what Bruce had already drilled into him, but they made it sharper, deadlier, without mercy. His eyes scanned for movement, breath, the small shift of air before a strike. Anticipate, eliminate, disappear.
Talia had called him her poisoned blade, her weapon reborn from the ashes. He’d laugh if it didn’t still sting. At the end of the day, to her, he was only a tool to pave the path for Damian, in her mind, Batman's true heir.
I wonder how Ol’ Bruce is going to take that one.
Sure, she’d given him purpose. Direction. A way to harness the fury that burned through his blood after the Pit.
But she’d made one mistake.
She’d forgotten that Jason Todd was from Gotham. From Crime Alley, to be exact. He’d known how to survive long before the League, before Batman, before Bruce Wayne.
He wasn’t a weapon. He was a choice.
The League taught him to obey. Gotham had taught him to adapt. And if the Pit was a curse, he’d make it a tool. He’d use it to carve the city clean. He wouldn’t let it use him. Batman has his mission and his weapons; Jason would make the Pit his weapon, and he had his own mission.
He watched the alley below, where three men huddled around a crate. Their voices carried, low and with an undercurrent of impatient annoyance.
“Black Mask says we move in tonight.”
“Penguin’s not gonna like that.”
“Not our problem. Orders are orders.”
Jason shifted, gaze narrowing.
It’s not what Bruce wants, he thought. It’s what the city needs.
The first man didn’t see him move. A blur, a crack, and he hit the ground before the others could even react. Jason’s movements were clean, efficient. No wasted motion, no hesitation.
The second man drew a gun; Jason’s boot came down on his wrist. Bone cracked. The third ran. Jason let him get three steps before a knife pinned his sleeve to the wall.
When the alley went quiet again, Jason crouched beside the man still breathing.
“Tell your boss,” he said, growling, the voice modulator on his helmet adding an almost mechanical edge to it. “There’s a new face in town. Penguin, Black Mask, whoever thinks they run Gotham—they stay out of my way. Or I’ll start collecting souvenirs.”
He stood, shaking blood off his glove.
That was when he heard it, the soft, mechanical thwip of a grapple line.
Jason froze. Looked up. A silhouette on the far roof, cape shifting against the wind. Not close enough to identify, but close enough to recognize the shape.
He smiled under the helmet, sharp and humorless.
“Too slow, B,” he murmured, and slipped back into the dark.
The sound of rain drowned the city again.