"Oh, this is beautiful!" the Joker shrieked. "The little bird came back to peck out Daddy’s eyes! I knew you had it in you, Jason. I made you!"
"The way I see it, Bruce, you have two choices," Jason said, panting. "Let me kill him, and we walk away. Or stop me. But if you stop me… you have to do it permanently. Because I will never stop. I will break out of every prison. I will hunt him to the ends of the earth. And every time you save him, you’re choosing a monster over a son."
He pulled a pistol from his holster and pressed it to the Joker’s temple. The Joker began to giggle through the gag. batman under the red hood
"Who are you?" Batman asked, scanning the helmet’s seams.
That night, Batman ran a spectral analysis on the Hood’s voice patterns. The computer took three hours. When it finished, the results were so impossible that Bruce Wayne poured himself a glass of water with trembling hands. "Oh, this is beautiful
Batman remembered every detail: the crowbar, the warehouse, the explosion that turned a fifteen-year-old boy’s laughter into silence. He had stood in the ashes, holding a shredded uniform, and made a vow. No more Robins. The pain was too sharp a tool to give to a child.
The warehouse. The same rusted beams, the same shattered windows overlooking the Gotham River. But this time, the Joker was tied to a chair in the center, gagged, his eyes wide with a mixture of terror and delight. And standing over him was the Red Hood, who removed his helmet for the first time. I made you
Years ago, Ra’s al Ghul, the Demon’s Head, had been intrigued by Batman’s grief. To curry favor, he had used a Lazarus Pit—a mystical resurrection pool—to restore Jason Todd to life. But resurrection had a cost. The Pit’s green fire heals the body but scalds the soul. Jason clawed his way out of the earth, feral and confused. He wandered Gotham’s streets for a year, a ghost without a memory, until Talia al Ghul found him and helped him rebuild. She trained him, sharpened his fury into a weapon. And when he finally remembered everything—the crowbar, the warehouse, the laughter of the Joker—he understood one terrible truth.
Batman’s hand went to his belt. "Put the gun down, Jason."
Then the Red Hood appeared.