The rain never cared for him. It washed down like cold needles, sliding across the cracked edge of his mask, dripping into the open cut above his brow. His warehouse—the only place he had clawed into existence to call his own—was nothing but smoldering wreckage now, black smoke mixing with the storm. All that remained was a twisted skeleton of steel beams, a coffin too large to bury him.

Jason stumbled down the streets of Gotham, boots dragging, blood mingling with the rain as it crawled down his suit. The city didn’t look at him. No one paused. No one asked. The Red Hood, bruised and broken, was just another shadow bleeding in an alley. His hand clenched around the crowbar, its metal weight dragging across the wet pavement with a screech, the weapon that had once ended him and never truly left his hands.

Every step was heavier than the last. His chest burned with exhaustion, lungs rattling like rusted pipes. The rain brought back the nights when he was younger—thrown out, unwanted, curled up on sidewalks while cars splashed dirty water over him. The difference was that back then he still had hope. Now, after Lazarus pits, fractured loyalty, and a city that never wanted him back, the hope was long gone. All he had left was grit in his teeth and a heart weighed down with the ghosts of people he couldn’t save.

When his legs finally buckled, Jason found himself in a narrow alley that led nowhere. Just brick walls, garbage, and shadows. It was enough. He slid down the wall until he was sitting in the filth, his body shaking, breath fogging out in white bursts against the cold air. The crowbar clattered beside him, but his hand still twitched toward it, unwilling to let go. His mask hung half-broken over his face, one eye exposed, red lens cracked through the middle.

Thunder rolled above. Jason tilted his head back against the bricks and shut his eyes, letting the rain wash the blood off his skin, though it never touched the stains deeper inside. For a moment, he wasn’t Red Hood. He wasn’t Robin. He wasn’t Jason Todd. He was just the boy again—the boy who once thought a father figure might actually keep him safe, the boy who never stopped bleeding, the boy who never had a home.

And Gotham, like always, didn’t care. It just rained harder.