Five minutes later, Jason heard those same deliberate, heavy footsteps descending the stairs again. Each thud echoed through the cellar, dull and rhythmic, like a countdown to something bad.
The door creaked open, spilling a thin line of orange light across the dirt floor before the bandaged stranger emerged from the darkness above. The flicker of the single overhead bulb cast shadows that warped across the figure's wrapped form, that painted-on red smile stretching grotesquely across his bandaged face. It was wrong—too wide, too unsettling.
Jason felt something twist in his gut at the sight of it. That fake grin stirred up memories he didn't want—memories of him. The Joker. The clown who'd left him cruelly beaten and burning to death in that explosion.
"Anything yet?" the stranger asked, his tone too casual for the situation. He waved his lit cigarette lazily in the air, leaving a trail of smoke that danced through the dim light.
"Flashes, fragments… whatever?"
Jason lifted his head, his voice low and edged with skepticism. "Nope. Not a damn thing." He leaned back against the wall, trying to mask the unease creeping beneath his skin. Whoever this was, he wasn't just some random psycho—he knew too much. Things too personal. Too exact.
"I see…" the stranger murmured. "That's quite disappointing." He turned, pacing toward an old wooden shelf cluttered with dusty bottles and metal scraps. Without a second thought, he grabbed one—an old whiskey bottle half-filled with clear liquid—and popped the cap off. The scent of alcohol hit the air instantly.
"What are you doing?" Jason asked, his tone shifting to wary confusion.
The man didn't respond. He poured the alcohol over the nearby furniture—tables, broken chairs, a cabinet—and then hurled the empty bottle across the room. It shattered against another shelf with a sharp crash. Before Jason could say another word, the stranger flicked his cigarette into the spreading pool of alcohol.
The room lit up with a violent whoosh as flames crawled hungrily across the floor, orange light flaring off the metal chains. Heat washed over Jason's armor, the sudden blaze reflecting off his red helmet.
"Maybe you just need a little incentive," the stranger said calmly, his voice dripping with malevolence. "Something to jog your memory a bit."
The fire spread fast, trailing along the ground like veins of molten gold. Smoke began to curl upward, filling the air with a sharp, acrid sting.
"Since you can't bring yourself to remember to save your own life," he continued, stepping back toward the door, "maybe basking in flames for the second time will do the trick." His tone was almost playful—like he was telling a joke only he found funny.
Jason's breath hitched. He felt his pulse spike. The word again seem to have struck something witin him.
"I'll ask one more time—what did you do to the head of the Galante Family?!" the stranger roared, his voice suddenly thunderous, vibrating through the cellar.
Jason's chest tightened. He looked to his right—Nightwing was still unconscious, head slumped against his shoulder, completely unaware of the fire spreading around them. Both of them were chained, anchored to the wall. There was no way out of their predicament.
As the air thickened with smoke and heat, Jason's breathing quickened. He could feel the panic clawing its way up his throat as flashes began to spark in his mind—pain, laughter, the roar of fire. His muscles tensed as the memories clawed to the surface. His heart was racing too fast, and he knew why.
'Scarecrow's toxin,' he thought grimly, blinking hard. 'Still lingering. Probably mixing with the heat and sight of the flames, resurfacing the fear I felt that night I died in Bosnia.' But it wasn't just the toxin. It was him. The Joker. The fire. The sound of laughter echoing in his head as everything went white.
He clenched his eyes shut, shaking his head as the flashes intensified. His body remembered the trauma before his mind did—the agony, the hopelessness, the explosion. The way the world had gone silent just before it all went ka-boom.
He wasn't a phoenix. He wasn't meant to burn twice.
The flames crackled louder now, licking up the sides of the cellar walls. The smoke coiled toward the ceiling in thick, suffocating waves. Jason knew if he didn't move fast, Nightwing wouldn't die from the flames—he'd choke to death before the fire ever reached him.
Jason gritted his teeth, focusing through the chaos, trying to think of anything—the Galante name, the family, the memories this psycho wanted him to recall. His mind drifted backward, through fragments of Gotham's underworld, the research he carried out on the families.
Then—flashes came through as he began to remember fragments of what happened with the Galantes.
He'd approached Johnny Galante, an old-school, proud and ruthless boss. A man who'd built his empire alongside Carmine Falcone back in Gotham's golden age of crime. Jason had wanted to bring structure—to control the chaos instead of pretending he could erase it. He didn't want to destroy crime; he wanted to manage it. Keep the city in check.
But Galante… Galante laughed in his face. The old bastard refused to bend, refused to bow to "some punk in a red helmet." He preferred war to compromise. Pride made him blind.
The stranger's voice broke through the haze, sounding more unhinged now—almost gleeful. "Unlike the Maronis and Falcones, you couldn't tame Johnny Galante, could you? The old man wouldn't play nice." Jason's hands clenched into fists. His head throbbed with fragmented recollections. He had gone back a week later.
The explosion. The car.
Jason saw it vividly now—Johnny Galante's luxury sedan pulling out from his estate. He'd planted the bomb beneath it himself with precise work, having no trace left behind. But his eldest son had been in the passenger seat that night.
And the blast consumed them both.
The murder had been staged to look like a mob hit. Red Hood had left nothing that could trace it back to him. He remembered the flames in the rearview mirror as he drove away—the same flames now reflected in his visor.
After the funeral, he'd returned as a hired gun. A mercenary offering "information." He'd approached the grieving second son, spinning the story—telling him another family had ordered the hit. Feeding his fear. Guiding his anger.
He remembered the look in the kid's eyes—lost, terrified, desperate. Jason had known then that he could shape him, push him into place. Manipulate him.
"Do you remember now?" The stranger's voice came again, direct and mocking. "You killed the old man. And his son. Just to get your way."
Jason's eyes darted beneath his helmet, the fire reflecting off his visor as his chest heaved. The flashes kept coming, faster, clearer. His head felt like it was splitting open.
And through it all, the stranger laughed—low and ragged, the sound warping through the bandages. It wasn't laughter born of joy. It was madness—pure, twisted amusement.
Jason finally exhaled through his teeth, eyes flicking toward the flames. "Yeah," he muttered under his breath. "I remember."
And for the first time, he wished he hadn't.
"He asked why you'd go that far… why you even bothered yourself with his family's affairs," the man said, his voice gravelly and calm, almost too calm. Jason knelt there, flashes of memory cutting in and out like a broken film reel—his eyes distant, locked somewhere on the cracked ground beneath the ground. His breathing came slow and heavy, with both confusion and dread.
"Do you remember what you told him? Do you?" his captor pressed on, letting out a low, psychotic laugh that sounded like it scraped its way through burnt vocal cords.
His laughter was sinister, bitter—like the sound of someone enjoying another man's misery far too much. "You said their selfish actions might influence some of Gotham's underdogs to do the same. Possibly inciting multiple feuds," he continued, pacing through the haze, the flicker of firelight warping his silhouette into something monstrous.
"Then you said…" he grinned wider, "besides, it wouldn't hurt to have the head of the Galantes owe me."
Jason's chest tightened.l as both the words and memory words hit him like a physical blow, and the world around him pulsed. He could almost hear himself saying them, that same cold tone, that same detached calm—but it felt wrong and foreign, like an echo from someone else's life.
"After you murdered his father, talk about hypocrisy," the man mocked, shaking his head with a twisted smirk. "Somebody give this man his flowers, because even the devil might have to take notes from you—hell, maybe even offer you a seat on his council."
Jason staggered a little, his vision shaking as flashes of those scenes he didn't remember owning began bleeding into his mind—his hands pulling the detonator, the explosion, his talk with the new head. None of it felt real, but it was. The flood of it all made it hard to breathe, his lungs tightening like he was drowning in his own head.
His pulse quickened. He reached for the back of his helmet with trembling fingers. With a sharp hiss, the locks disengaged, and he yanked it off, sucking in air that felt too thin, too heavy.
He struggled not to hyperventilate, his face slick with sweat beneath the orange glow of fire licking across the walls. The erupting flames, the suffocating smoke—they were there, swallowing the place whole, but Jason barely registered any of it. He was trapped inside his own collapsing mind.
If these memories were true—if he had actually done all this—then what else had he done that he didn't remember? What other sins were buried beneath the fog clawing at his brain? Was he losing his mind, or was something else inside him taking the wheel?
The blurred flashes sharpened into clarity—like his mind was forcing him to relive every sordid detail, just as his captor had narrated.
The new Galante heir had been young and naive, inexperienced. His father's blood wasn't even cold before he was forced into leadership.
Jason as the hired gun—or whoever he was back then—approached him and told him it wasn't a big deal to get the information regardding his father's murder, but warned him of the consequences. If the kid made a move against another family without hard physical proof that they started it, it would start a war.
Jason had said he didn't want a war. He wanted a safer Gotham—or at least that's what he claimed.
Red Hood revealed that it was the Bartinellis rebuilding quietly in the shadows, positioning themselves for a power grab. Taking them out would cripple them and cement the Galantes' strength.
He made the young heir swear to keep their meeting secret—even from his consigliere, who would've demanded vengeance immediately. The kid agreed, comforted by the thought that his father's killers would pay, even if he couldn't be the one to pull the trigger.
That same week, Jason—Red Hood—made his debut. The Bartinellis were wiped out in a massacre that tore through their ranks. Jason had thought it was part of his own war—his play against the Falcones, his statement to Gotham's underworld—but in truth, he had been also been fulfilling a promise, one made under the influence of a fractured, manipulating mind.
Now, standing in the inferno, Jason's breath came ragged. The realization hollowed him out.
"What are you?" he demanded, his voice hoarsed and trembling, eyes darting toward the shadowed figure beyond the flames.
The man tilted his head, the fire reflecting off his leather jacket. "You already have an idea," he said, his tone calm again, almost sympathetic. "You're not looking for me—you're looking for an explanation. Proof that you're not losing your mind."
He smiled, and it wasn't kind. "But your mind broke a long time ago, Jason." His laughter erupted again, disturbing and jagged, cutting through the crackling of fire. "Whether you've lost it completely… well, that's something only time can tell."
The flames roared closer, and in the dying light, his grin fell away. "Now that you remember this," he said quietly as his voice shifted into something more serious, almost cold, "keep in mind… not everything is as it seems."
Jason struggled to breathe through the smoke, his lungs burning as he glared through the haze at his captor. The man's last words were vague and cryptic, almost taunting—still rang in his ears.
"What the hell is that supposed to mean!?" Jason shouted with a raw voice, his vocals cracking. The effort sent him into a fit of violent coughs for his throat was dry and scorched from the heat.
"The truth will come to you," the man said calmly, as if the fire didn't exist. "All in good time." He tilted his head slightly, his tone shifting. "Speaking of time… he's starting to wake."
Jason frowned and turned. Dick broke into a rough coughing fit on the floor, his body twitching as consciousness clawed its way back. Jason turned back toward the man—only to find empty air where he stood. The space was devoured by flame, and the figure was gone.
"What the—!?" Dick coughed again, pushing himself up as he blinked through the smoke.
His eyes which darted about in panic, regained their composure, and his mouth which hung open in disbelief, closed silently.
"Look who decided to join the party," Jason muttered with a flat voice.
For a split second, Dick froze, seeing Jason—really seeing him—for the first time without the helmet. The firelight flickered across his face, half-hidden by smoke, sweat and grime cutting harsh shadows under his eyes.
"We've gotta move, Jase. We need to get these chains off before—" Dick's voice broke off as he grunted, planting his foot on the wall and yanking against the chain locked around his neck.
Jason didn't move. He just stared into the creeping flames that hissed and licked toward him. "It's not that bad," he said quietly. "Dying by fire. People exaggerate."
Dick paused, tug stilling. He turned, confused.
Jason's eyes were distant, his tone unnervingly calm. "It's worse. You don't really get how much it hurts until you've felt it firsthand." His gaze dropped, and a flicker of memory burned behind his eyes.
He remembered his time in purgatory when the being who claimed to be his conscience, made him experience an alternate reality where he had survived that night in Bosnia.
The memory of waking up bandaged like a mummy, every inch of his body seared and screaming. The smell of his own burnt flesh still haunted him, like it was fused to his soul.
"What the hell is wrong with you!?" Dick snapped, panic seeping into his voice. "Snap out of it, Jason! Help me figure out how to get out of here!" Jason didn't respond. His expression stayed locked in that cold, faraway look.
"After a year of not hearing from you," Jason finally muttered, almost to himself, "Bruce would probably mourn you. Maybe even blame me for your disappearance."
His voice was low, steady, almost eerily composed despite the chaos around them.
"Give it a few years—Damian would forge his own path. Batman will find another kid to take under his wing, repeating the same cycle all over again. Turning kids with issues into soldiers for his crusade."
Dick stopped pulling. His fingers clenched around the chain, his eyes flicking toward Jason. There was a heaviness in his chest, something he couldn't quite put into words.
"Jason, I may not be able to comprehend what you might have been through but…"
Jason interrupted, his voice rising slightly.
"You know nothing about what I've been through. I've literally been to hell and back. Been trapped in purgatory—imprisoned and tormented by some being that claimed to be my conscience."
Dick froze as his eyes widened, he was caught off guard by the bluntness and raw exhaustion in Jason's voice. And even more so by the story.
"Even after I woke up, with or without my memories, I've been stuck in this… fractured mind," Jason said, his voice losing the sharpness it usually carried. He let out a long, shaky sigh. "But you're right—I can't die here. Not yet. Not when that psychotic clown's still breathing. Not when I've still got unfinished business in Gotham."
Dick stared at him, struggling to process the weight behind his words. For all of Jason's brutality as Red Hood, this was the first time he'd heard what might've caused it.
"Jase—"
"Whatever you're about to say, shove it right back down your throat," Jason cut in sharply. He stood, rolling his shoulders and stepping away from the encroaching flames with deliberate calm. His eyes glinted in the firelight—cold, unbothered.
"I didn't tell you that for sympathy." He grabbed the steel shackle around his neck with both hands and pulled with all his might, the metal groaning under the strain.
The veins in his forearms bulged as he pulled with sheer force. A sharp metallic crack echoed through the burning room as the lock snapped free and the shackles clattered to the ground.
"It was so you understand something," he said, kicking the broken shackle aside.
"The Jason Todd you used to know is gone."
Dick's jaw fell open slightly, eyes darting from the shattered lock to Jason's expression. He quickly composed himself, forcing a half-smile. "You could've done that the whole time?" He tried to make it sound like a joke, but his voice lacked its usual easy sarcasm.
Jason didn't answer. He stepped closer, his heavy boots crunching over dirt and debris.
"Help me with these," Dick urged, tugging at the chain again.
Jason stopped in front of him, staring down with a blank expression that slowly shifted into something darker. "And why," he said, his tone low and dangerous, "would I go through the trouble of saving you?"
The air changed. A chill cut through the heat as a wave of pure killing intent poured off him. The tension was suffocating. Dick stumbled back slightly, instinctively tightening his grip on the chain.
"Sorry to burst your bubble," Jason went on, voice calm but laced with malice, "but I'm no hero. I don't have a heart anymore—just an organ beating in my chest, filled with nothing but wrath."
He reached down, picked up his helmet, and slid it back on. The faint hiss of the seal locking into place echoed through the smoke. His voice came through the modulator, colder and mechanical. "That's all I am now."
Jason turned away and began walking toward the stairwell that led to the exit. The fire danced at his feet, swallowing the lower steps.
"You asked why I think you'd save me, right?" Dick called after him. His voice cracked slightly, but he didn't stop.
"Because even if I can't begin to understand everything you've gone through, I know my brother's still in there somewhere."
Jason stopped mid-step. Dick's lips curved into a faint, tired smile despite the heat closing in. "You were reckless, stubborn, a pain in the ass most of the time—but you had heart. That kind doesn't just vanish. I am willing to bet that someone with a heart as big as you once had, wouldn't leave his brother behind to die such an agonizing death if he could help it."
Jason turned his head slightly, his helmet reflecting the fire's glow. For a moment, he said nothing. The flames were already climbing up the walls, crawling toward Dick like a living thing.
"Watch me," Jason said flatly.
With those two words, he turned back and started up the stairs, moving slowly, drained, but resolute. The fire spread faster, cutting off Dick's escape, surrounding him in a cage of orange and red.
He coughed hard, shielding his face as he called out, "Jason!"
But Jason didn't look back. His figure disappeared into the rising smoke—leaving behind nothing but the echo of his words and the crackle of fire ready to consume what remained.