hotmtlnovel CHAPTER 140: The Todd Who Never Was
CHAPTER 140: The Todd Who Never Was
The wind rolled across the rooftops of Gotham City in cold uneven gusts, carrying distant sirens and the hum of late-night traffic far below. Rain from earlier still clung to the stone gargoyles and steel fire escapes, leaving the city slick beneath the pale glow of neon and moonlight.Batman stood at the edge of a rooftop with his cape hanging heavy behind him, unmoving despite the wind. That alone told her enough.
Something was wrong.
Selina Kyle landed silently behind him, boots touching concrete with barely a whisper. She straightened from her crouch and brushed rainwater from one glove.
“Funny,” she murmured. “Usually when you’re lurking on rooftops at three in the morning, there’s at least a dramatic thunderstorm involved.”
She got no response.
Selina’s eyes narrowed slightly beneath her goggles. “Well that’s never a good sign.”
Bruce remained motionless, staring out over Gotham like he was trying to hold the entire city together through sheer force of will.
“That bad, huh?”
A long silence followed before he finally spoke.
“Red Hood killed three men tonight.” Bruce finally spoke up.
Selina’s expression softened almost imperceptibly. “He really is one of yours.” She had speculated that the Red Hood was one of Batman’s, but she just got her confirmation tonight.
“Was.” Batman emphasized.
“Figures.” She said as she moved beside him slowly, leaning her elbows against the rooftop ledge.
“Organized crime?” She asked, choosing not to probe into that matter but help with his brooding.
“Yes.”
“Human traffickers?”
Bruce’s jaw tightened.
“Yes.”
“And I’m guessing Gotham PD suddenly discovered they were tragically unable to arrest men with their spines shattered, or with a broken kneecap?”
“They were executed,” Batman said, his voice low and heavy as his eyes narrowed beneath the cowl.
Selina glanced sideways at him. “You say that like you’re surprised.”
“He’s escalating, beyond when he first showed up.”
“No,” she corrected calmly. “He’s continuing.”
Bruce finally turned toward her then, the white lenses narrowing slightly.
“This is what he’s always done,” she explained evenly. “The only difference now is the pace. And yes, he is escalating faster than he ever did before.”
“He’s turning parts of the city into war zones.” Batman replied.
“And yet crime in those neighborhoods dropped.” Her words hit exactly where she intended them to.
She saw it immediately in the subtle tension in his shoulders. As difficult as it was to read him, she could tell it was anger, but conflict.
That was always the real wound when it came to Jason. Not that Jason was wrong all the time.
But that sometimes… Gotham responded to him.
Bruce looked away again.
“He nearly beat a man to death in front of his family.”
Selina sighed softly through her nose.
“There’s the part that bothers you.”
“It should bother everyone.”
“It does.” She tilted her head slightly. “But that’s not the part eating at you.”
Once again, silence filled the space.
Selina studied him for a moment before speaking more quietly.
“You think this is your fault.”
Bruce didn’t answer.
Which was answer enough.
The city lights reflected faintly off the wet armor plating across his gauntlets as his hands curled into fists.
“I trained him,” he said finally. “I brought him into this life. Every line he crosses—”
“Is still his decision.” She interrupted, choosing to help him finish his sentence with her own words of advice.
“He was a child.”
“And now he’s a grown man making ugly choices in an uglier city.”
Bruce’s voice lowered. “He’s becoming exactly what I never wanted him to be.”
Selina gave a faint humorless smile. “A man who’s tired of watching monsters walk away?”
Bruce’s head snapped slightly toward her.
“You don’t approve of this.”
“No,” she admitted. “But I understand it.”
That was the difference between them sometimes.
Bruce viewed Gotham like something that could still be saved completely.
Selina viewed it like an alley cat with broken bones and missing teeth that still somehow survived winter.
“You know what your problem is, Bats?” she asked softly.
“I already know your opinion.”
“Oh, I’m sure you do.” She smirked faintly. “You collect psychological profiles like other people collect wine. And as a detective—slash—vigilante, you send them to jail which I guess in this case would be the wine cellar." The last part of her sentence fit the image she was trying to project, yet there was still something subtly off about it.
He didn’t rise to it.
Selina looked back over the city.
“Maybe this Red Hood is just trying to scare criminals so much that they would fear even their own shadow when they think of engaging in criminal activities.” Those words were strange coming from her.
“And your way creates repeat offenders, not like I am complaining or anything. Bottom line, you both have your way of doing things. Though he leaves corpses at his wake, the goal of making Gotham safer seems to be within sight.”
The words lingered heavily between them.
Below, somewhere deep in the city, another siren wailed.
Bruce’s voice became quieter than before.
“He enjoys hurting them.”
Selina considered that carefully.
“Sometimes,” she admitted. “I think Red Hood enjoys making them afraid. No way would you create a psychotic killer.”
“Well, he's changed since then.” He muttered, but it was audible enough for her to catch his words as he refused to mention the whole deal with the Lazarus pit and how it changed the kid.
“That doesn’t concern you?” He asked in reference to her previous words.
“Oh it absolutely concerns me.” She crossed her arms. “But fear’s practically the family business at this point.”
That actually earned the smallest reaction from him. Barely visible. A slight exhale through the nose.
Close enough to a laugh.
Selina noticed.
“There he is.”
Bruce ignored the comment.
“He’s isolating himself.”
“Well,” she said dryly, “he did learn from the best.”
Bruce’s cape shifted as he turned fully toward her now.
“He's pushing everyone away. And Robin is caught in a dilemma because of him.”
“Like father, like son.” She replied.
“That’s not funny.”
“It a little is.”
Another silence settled between them, though lighter this time. Selina’s expression softened as she watched him.
For all the terrifying mythology surrounding Batman, moments like this reminded her that beneath the armor was still just Bruce. Exhausted. Guilty. Trying to carry people who refused to be carried.
Especially Red Hood.
“You miss him,” she said quietly.
Bruce’s eyes lowered slightly.
“I failed him.”
Selina stepped closer then, close enough that her shoulder brushed lightly against the armored plating of his arm.
“Knowing you, I'd say you did what you took him as your son, you loved him,” she corrected. “That’s not the same thing.”
The wind swept between them again.
Far below, Gotham continued breathing its polluted, violent breath.
Bruce finally spoke after a long while. “He killed Joker and shows no sign of stopping this purge anytime soon, I fear he might…”
He left Selena with guesses as to what the rest of the sentence could possibly be.
Everything had changed, especially after Joker’s death. Somewhere deep down, Bruce feared what that change meant—not just for Gotham, but for himself. Because no matter how much he despised Red Hood’s methods, part of him could see the results. Crime had shifted and taken on a different wave.
The city’s worst predators were suddenly afraid. And buried beneath all the anger and moral outrage was the uncomfortable realization that Jason’s brutal treatment of Gotham’s chronic illness was, in many ways, proving far more effective than his own.
She leaned against him lightly.
“You know,” she murmured, “for someone called the World’s Greatest Detective…”
Bruce glanced at her.
“You’re still terrible at solving your own problems, Bats.”
For the first time that night, the tension in his shoulders eased. Though only slightly. But it was enough.
- - -
[Red Hood’s POV]
Our memories, choices, environment, and decisions shape the course of our lives. Right before Jason was resurrected from the dead, while drifting through that vast, empty void between life and oblivion, he had been shown a what-if scenario—one so vivid and disturbingly real that it transcended the boundaries of mere vision. It was a possibility of what his life would have become had he survived the warehouse incident with Joker back in Bosnia.
But he hadn’t simply witnessed it from afar alone. He had been forced to live through it, placed directly into the skin and body of that version of himself as though reality itself had bent to perfectly simulate the experience. Every emotion, every thought, every ounce of suffering had been real enough to carve itself deep into his soul.
And what it left behind was rage. Immense, suffocating rage. Hatred and dread twisted together inside him until the desire for vengeance became something far beyond emotion—it became instinct.
A permanent scar etched into the very core of his being. The Lazarus Pit had not only resurrected Jason, but something else alongside him. That fractured possibility of himself, born from pain and darkness, had been drawn to the corruption festering within his soul. Birth from both a severely mental and physical trauma.
It clung to him like a parasite, blurring the line between identity and madness until the two versions of Jason began bleeding into one another, creating a chronic and horrifying case of identity dissociation.
But this personality of his had only begun to develop an identity and only taking shape during the three missing years—an empty stretch of time blanked out from Jason’s memory, leaving behind only fragments he could no longer trust or fully grasp.
And now, that vengeful aspect of him—the one forged entirely from agony, fury, and an unrelenting hunger for revenge—had taken the wheel. But Joker was already dead.
It wore Jason’s face, moved his body, and whispered endlessly within his mind, steering him further and further down a path of ruin. Every action, every thought, every drop of blood spilled pushed his soul closer to damnation, while the part of Jason that once existed beneath it all slowly drowned beneath the weight of hatred.
The intense hate and blood lust which came as a courtesy from the Lazarus pit, warped this version of Jason into such a sinister state.
The bandages that Jason often saw wrapped all over his body during each of their encounters, were from the moment he had woken up wrapped up in bandages.
Seventy-two days bead ridden. Every breath felt like broken glass grinding around inside his chest, and there was a reason for that. Three cracked ribs. A fractured collarbone. Internal bleeding severe enough that the doctors hadn’t been sure he would survive the night.
The burns were worse than he remembered. Funny thing about explosions — the mind usually softened the details afterward. His hadn’t. Second-degree burns stretched across his shoulder, side, and part of his back. Skin grafts had been necessary along his neck and shoulder blade where the flesh had been burned badly enough to peel away completely. Every time the bandages were changed, the sharp scent of antiseptic filled the room. Beneath it lingered something far worse—the faint, sickening smell of burnt skin.
They pulled shrapnel from his arm, thigh, and chest over the course of two separate surgeries. The doctors called him lucky because none of the metal fragments had struck anything vital. Lucky. One piece had missed his lung by less than an inch.
Another had buried itself deep into his shoulder badly enough to leave nerve damage that made his left hand tremble for weeks afterward. He had lost three teeth. His right knee had been damaged so severely that he had to relearn how to walk without a limp.
And then there was the head trauma.
The concussion had been severe enough that when Jason first opened his eyes, he couldn’t properly remember his own name. Some memories returned in fragments. Others never came back at all. But one thing remained painfully clear in his mind.
The sound of the crowbar.
Again.
And again.
And again.
The doctors kept calling it recovery as if the word still meant something. But as Jason lay there wrapped in enough bandages to resemble a corpse, staring blankly at the people standing around his bed, the look in his eyes turned fierce as he came to a realization.
Everything that had befallen himself and the others had been one man's fault. Bruce Wayne. And the butler was responsible for raising such a demented human.
Among the criminals unfortunate enough to have crossed paths with the Red Hood over the past few weeks—and fortunate enough to survive the encounter—not a single one described him as human.
They spoke of him the way terrified men spoke of monsters lurking in the dark, their voices unsteady as they recalled the suffocating weight of his presence. It wasn’t just the brutality or the violence that unsettled them, but the emptiness behind the helmet. The coldness. As though there was nothing human left beneath it anymore, only rage wrapped in flesh and armor, stalking Gotham’s underworld with relentless purpose.
And tonight, that same version of the Red Hood—burning with vengeance and consumed by an overwhelming hatred for Batman and the rotten scum of the city that had wronged him—had arrived at the doorstep of a crime lord desperately clinging to the illusion of respectability.
A man trying to preserve the corpse of the man he once was.
Harvey Dent’s current hideout was an underground casino buried beneath Gotham’s rotting underbelly, a place where money, fear, and desperation flowed in equal measure. It served as both sanctuary and throne room, allowing him to operate from the shadows while rarely making appearances above ground unless absolutely necessary.
The deeper one ventured into the structure, the quieter it became, until the noise of slot machines and drunken laughter faded into an oppressive silence that seemed to cling to the concrete walls themselves.
The office where Harvey spent most of his time was perhaps the clearest reflection of the war raging inside his fractured mind. Contradictory in every possible sense, the room looked as though it had been split apart by two entirely different men fighting endlessly for control over the same space.
One half remained immaculate, almost painfully refined. Dark mahogany furniture gleamed beneath the light, polished to a near mirror shine. Crystal decanters filled with expensive liquor rested untouched on pristine shelves, while rows of legal books stood in perfect alignment beside neatly organized case files.
Brass desk lamps cast a warm golden glow over the clean surface, preserving the illusion of sophistication and authority. It was the lingering ghost of Harvey Dent—Gotham’s once respected district attorney—clawing desperately at the remains of his former identity.
The other half of the office looked infected, as though decay itself had taken physical form. The wallpaper peeled from nicotine-stained walls in long curling strips, exposing cracked concrete beneath. Filing cabinets sat dented and warped from bullet impacts, while overflowing ashtrays littered every available surface.
Water stains crept downward like veins across the ceiling and walls, and black scorch marks from gunfire and explosions scarred the room in jagged patterns. Even the air felt different on that side—heavier, sour with mildew, stale cigarette smoke, and the faint metallic scent of old blood that never truly washed away.
The lighting mirrored the divide perfectly. One half bathed in warm amber light, the other illuminated by flickering fluorescent bulbs that buzzed endlessly overhead like trapped insects slowly dying.
At the center of it all sat Harvey himself, frozen in place between both worlds. The expressions on either side of his face did not match, as though the man had physically split apart along with the room around him. One side twisted with restrained panic while the ruined half simmered with fury beneath clenched teeth. Red Hood had driven a crowbar clean through the back of both his hands and into the desk beneath, pinning him there like a grotesque display piece. Blood pooled slowly across the polished wood, dripping from his fingers while the metallic groan of the embedded crowbar echoed faintly through the suffocating space.
As Red Hood examined the coin he had taken from Black Mask, the low crackle of jazz music drifted through the office from an old radio sitting somewhere in the corner. The slow trumpet and muffled piano notes echoed eerily through the room, blending with the occasional sound of droplets hitting the floor.
It was difficult to tell whether the noise came from leaking pipes hidden within the walls or from the blood steadily dripping off the corpses of the men Red Hood had butchered on his way down there. Either way, the sound added to the suffocating tension hanging over the room like thick smoke.
“You cheeky bastard,” the ruined half of Harvey’s face spat bitterly as Red Hood continued flipping the coin between his gloved fingers, studying it with unsettling calm as though genuinely lost in thought.
“I’ve done nothing to earn this kind of wrath,” the cleaner side muttered next, his tone strained beneath the pain. “I stayed out of your way all this time. Why this?” Unlike the scarred half, that side sounded less angry and more desperate, as though realizing far too late that crossing paths with Red Hood had never truly been avoidable.
“Why? Hmm…” Red Hood caught the coin neatly in his palm before slowly turning toward Harvey and the blood-soaked desk pinning him in place. The glossy red stain spreading across the mahogany reflected faintly against the lenses of his crimson helmet.
“Call it karma. Call it fate. Doesn’t really matter to me.” His voice remained low and disturbingly composed. “I’m simply the angel of death here to pass judgement on this forsaken shithole of a city.”
“Karma my ass,” the warped half snapped immediately. “You’re just another lunatic in a mask, so deep in your own delusions you’re calling yourself an angel of death.” A crooked grin tugged at the ruined side of his face despite the pain. “Now I see why you’re an even bigger whack job than Batman.”
The insult barely finished leaving his mouth before the sharp whistle of steel slicing through the air cut across the room.
“Aghhh!”
Harvey’s scream tore free as Red Hood’s blade flashed past, severing two fingers from each hand in one brutal motion. Blood sprayed across the desk while the mangled stumps twitched violently around the crowbar still pinning his hands in place.
“You son of a—agh!” Both sides of his voice collapsed into muffled agony the moment Red Hood seized his jaw with a gloved hand. His grip tightened hard enough to force Harvey’s mouth open while blood dripped steadily from the blade in his other hand.
“If I were you, you rotting cock-gobbler,” Red Hood growled coldly, “I’d learn when to shut the hell up before I give you something to really choke on.”
The barrel of a pistol was suddenly shoved into Harvey’s mouth, silencing him instantly. The jazz music continued playing softly in the background while Harvey’s frantic breathing rattled around the gunmetal forced between his teeth.
“You know what’s funny?” Red Hood tilted his head slightly as he studied him, almost like a predator examining roadkill. “You used to represent Gotham’s justice system. A lawyer. A district attorney. Hell, you even ran for mayor once.” His voice carried a faint trace of mock amusement beneath the venom. “And now look at you… a decaying piece of shit dependent on a coin to help you make decisions.”
With the same hand that had gripped Harvey’s face moments ago, Red Hood rolled the scarred coin effortlessly across his fingers in a smooth practiced motion, the metal clicking softly against his armored glove.
“So how about this?” he murmured. “Let’s take one final gamble with your life as the stake, and see what fate has to say.”
The coin flipped high into the air, spinning beneath the dim office lights before Red Hood caught it cleanly out of midair.
Red Hood never revealed the result of the coin toss. Instead, he casually flicked the coin onto the bloodstained desk before gripping the crowbar lodged through Harvey’s hands and yanking it free in one violent pull.
The sound that escaped Harvey was somewhere between a scream and a gasp as blood splattered across the desk once more. Freed from being pinned down, Two-Face slumped forward in his chair, breathing heavily through clenched teeth. Relief washed across both halves of his face in uneven waves, a desperate relief similar to that worn by a man who had just narrowly survived a fatal car crash.
For a brief moment, Harvey genuinely believed he might live.
Then Red Hood tilted his head slightly, and something about the stillness radiating from him shifted. Even without seeing the man’s face beneath the helmet, Harvey felt a sinister sense of amusement rolling off him like cold smoke. The delight of a predator savoring the final moments before the kill. Harvey’s expression faltered instantly, relief dissolving into raw fear as his heart hammered violently against his ribs.
“May your eternal punishment in hell be decided with a coin toss.”
The modulated voice carried a heavy, almost demonic weight that made Harvey’s stomach drop. Panic exploded across his features as muffled pleas struggled uselessly around the pistol still lodged in his mouth, but Red Hood gave him no time to beg, bargain, or scream. Without ceremony, he ripped the gun free and immediately pulled the trigger.
The gunshot thundered through the office.
Blood and gray matter erupted across the split wall behind Harvey’s chair, splattering over both the pristine side of the room and the rotting half alike. For a second, the jazz music from the old radio continued playing beneath the ringing silence left behind by the shot, the soft trumpet somehow making the scene feel even more grotesque.
“Phase one complete,” Red Hood muttered coldly.
By the time he returned to one of his hideouts later that night, the adrenaline from the massacre had settled into a dull simmer beneath his skin. The safehouse itself was quiet, dimly lit, and surprisingly cozy compared to the carnage he had left behind.
He pulled the helmet from his head and casually tossed it onto the portable bed shoved against the corner of the room before dragging a tired hand across his face. The kill had calmed his nerves somewhat, leaving him feeling strangely refreshed, almost lighter. He started toward the sink to wash his face when sudden dizziness slammed into him without warning.
“What the fuck…?”
The words barely left his mouth before a violent headache struck him hard enough to make his vision blur. His knees buckled instantly as the room tilted around him, the floor seeming to rise unnaturally fast to meet his collapsing body. He caught himself against the wall with a strained grunt, breathing unevenly while pain pulsed through his skull like something clawing its way through his mind from the inside.
“Hah… not yet,” he muttered through gritted teeth, shaking violently as though fighting against something far deeper than exhaustion. “Stop fighting me and stay asleep, you dumbfuck… let me finish my work…”
His voice sounded strained now, almost fractured, as if two conflicting wills were battling for control inside the same body. He staggered forward another step, desperately trying to remain conscious, but the strength drained from his limbs faster with each passing second.
“I still… have to fi—finish the… the work…”
The sentence died halfway through as darkness finally swallowed him whole. His body hit the floor moments later, motionless beneath the dim glow of the room’s flickering lights.
- - -
Patrn/Da_suprememaverick