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When Tim first realized that the red hood was in titan’s tower, he felt fear, sure, but even more than that, he felt exasperation. All that he wanted was a quiet evening alone, so much so that he had left Gotham entirely, and he was still getting harassed by rogues all the way across the country? It was plainly unfair. The heavy boots thudding as he walked down the hallway, the comms being cut off, the plain physical intimidation of being faced in combat much larger than himself was certainly frightening on a deep, animal level; but tim had dealt with enough of the antics of rogues to recognize and become desensitized to the song and dance of intimidation tactics that they tended to cycle through. Joker had his horrible, echoing laugh and disturbing jokes, Two-Face his ever-changing demeanor, flipping between cool and collected business man to completely psychotic criminal, Ivy, her femme fatale facade coupled with her legions of plans that could all kill you in seven different ways. Apparently this was Red Hood’s calling card: isolation and long, drawn out approaches to get you sweating. It wasn’t working very well on Tim so far.
It took a while for Tim to come face to face with Red Hood. He met him in one of the many long corridors snaking their way through Titan's tower, bo staff ready and positioned for a fight. Unfortunately, the man had apparently decided that he was going to be a talker. They all loved monologuing so much. At this point Tim mostly tuned it out. This one was something about Tim being a terrible Robin compared to his predecessors (which he already knew), that he should never have been given the mantle of Robin, that he was a greedy freeloader taking something that wasn’t his (he also knew that, and ouch, man.), that he could never fill the shoes left behind by the second Robin (and yeah, he knew that too. Villain monologues didn’t usually get this personal.).
Tim stayed in his fighting stance while he waited for Hood to tire himself out. Eventually, the speech seemed to start to draw to a close as Hood reached up and started unlatching his helmet, and ooh, big reveal time, thought Tim. He was positively shaking in his boots. Maybe there was a second helmet under there and he’d remove that one, too, and then the next one and the next one until he revealed a really tiny head, like Russian nesting dolls, thought Tim.
Okay, maybe he was getting a little bit distracted. He snapped his thoughts back to the present moment just as the Red Hood pulled the helmet off of his head, revealing a face that Tim knew all too well. Tim’s face dropped into a mask of pure shock. Hood’s eyes were still covered by a domino mask under the helmet, but that only helped Tim recognize him all the more. It was the same face that Tim had looked up to for years, the face that he had seen fly through the skies of Gotham, shrouded in glorious red, yellow, and green, the face that he had slugged through the cold, dark nights in the city just to catch a glimpse of, the face that he had thousands of photographs of stashed under his bed.
It was the same face that had been plastered on the front page of every Gotham newspaper for a week with the words, “Jason Todd-Wayne, Dead at Fifteen” printed in stark black and white right next to it. It was the face that he pictured while he cried his eyes out in grief for a boy lost too young, for a city without its light. It was the face that he had pictured while he walked up to Bruce Wayne’s door and demanded to help, the face that he’d pictured trained and worked and hoped and wished that he could attain an ounce, a fraction of what his predecessor had been. That he could be, magic, too.
Jason Todd was standing right in front of Tim, and the universe was caving in around him.
He was still talking, still telling him what a terrible job he’d done, how he’d never deserved to be Robin in the first place, and he was right, he was right! Tim had always known it himself, but hearing it right from Jason, it was the irrefutable, gospel truth. He was frozen stock-still in shock and shame. He didn’t know why Jason was here, didn’t know how it was even possible, in fact, he knew that it probably wasn’t possible, but he somehow knew, deep down, that this was really happening. He knew wasn’t a trick, or a dream, or a clone, or a robot, because this was an older, more mature version of Jason that had never existed before, thus an image that couldn’t be copied, and more than that, Tim had spent years worth of nights following after Jason, watching him, observing his every move. Tim was probably one of the most qualified people in the world to say who was or wasn’t Jason. This was him. His voice had finally settled past the awkward cracking phase of adolescence, his eyes had lost most of their light, his body language was slightly different to accommodate his new, larger frame, but it was still him, fully and truly.
When Jason was done talking, he started circling Tim, ready for a fight. Tim barely considered it for a second before he dropped his bo staff. He refused to wield it against his idol, his hero, Jason. Tim couldn’t fight him if he tried. And on top of that, he was so tired. He knew that he had never deserved what he had, so if Jason had come to take it back, let him. Tim would go back to his empty house and finish high school and move on to college and inherit his parent’s company and live his life as a CEO rather than a crime fighter, and try not to ever think about the pure joy that flooded his chest whenever he flew high above the city streets or the pride when a civilian he had rescued said, “Thank you, Robin” or the satisfaction when Bruce gave him a rare sign of approval. Or Jason would just kill him right now. Either way.
Tim hung his head and readied himself for the blows to start coming. Jason taunted him, jeered at him, tried to get him to fight back. When he didn’t, it only seemed to anger him even more. He punched him square in the jaw, hard, and he staggered backwards a few steps and spat blood onto the pristine tile floor. Still, he didn’t fight. Jason punched him in the stomach, and while he was doubled over he kicked him in the shin with his steel toed boots so that he fell to the ground in a heap.
“Get up.” He said. “Get up!”
Tim didn’t move. Jason seethed and his eyes glowed electric-neon green through the domino mask, and oh, that was how he was back, thought Tim, just before a bullet ripped through his shoulder, and then he couldn’t think of anything but the pain, white hot and screaming for his attention. Tim distantly registered that he was probably screaming, too.
Then the blows started coming fast and they didn’t stop. Tim retreated into himself. He hardly registered any of the individual hits through the cocoon of pain that his body was quickly becoming, though he did notice when his arm snapped, then his ankle, and when another bullet ripped into his abdomen. He barely noticed the shouting coming from Jason, urging him to get up, fight back, do something . Eventually it got to a point where he was pretty sure he wasn’t physically able to do any of that, but Jason didn’t care and just kept hurting him. He felt wetness trailing down his cheek, and he realized then that he was crying, and it wasn’t from the pain.
At some point, after a long time, Jason got bored, or tired, or just decided he was done with Tim and got up and left. He paused on his way out to write something on the wall with some kind of red liquid that Tim was not going to think about, and then he left, just like that. Tim sat still for a while, barely able to think around the concussion he probably had, and beyond that, he just felt so very tired. Not just physically, but mentally and spiritually. He was sapped down to his very core, drained of all signs of life. He wanted to scream and cry and bring down the walls of the tower around him. He wanted to stay right there and melt into the floor of it. Anything was better than how he felt at that moment.
He got the idea after a while to try and call for help. Reaching into his pocket to extract the communicator was like torture on his broken fingers and bruised hands, but he got it out, just to see that the comm signal was still out. He should’ve remembered that, how stupid. He couldn’t even call for help correctly.
He thought about other ways he could call for help, but he couldn’t move. He just had to hope that eventually someone would come looking for him here, someone would come save him. Or maybe hope that they didn’t. Maybe he could just slip away right there on the tile floor and he would never have to feel pain like this again, never have to think about his hero beating to death’s door, all the while telling him how worthless and awful he was.
Eventually he slipped out of consciousness. He dreamed of walking down the barren hallways of a cold, empty house, trapped inside until Batman burst in through one of the shrouded windows and picked Tim up and took him out into the bright sunlight and brought him home with him to be loved and taken care of. He dreamed of Bruce being his dad, who never yelled or hit him and was always there for him when the nightmares came; of Dick and Jason being his brothers who were also his best friends and would play with him every day and help him with his homework. He dreamed that he lived in a home filled with light and warmth.
He used to have the exact same dream almost every night when he was a kid. It always crushed him when he woke up in the morning, back in the cold, empty house once again.
At one point in the dream, he could swear he felt arms around him, lifting him up and cradling him, and wasn’t that nice?
Tim woke up in the medbay of the Batcave. He could tell immediately based on the cool air surrounding him and the strange hard-yet-soft texture of the hospital bed which he was laying on. Slowly, with difficulty, he fluttered his eyes open. There were bright lights shining into his eyes and beeping noises coming from the many machines hooked up to him. There was a hand lightly carding through his hair, and it felt good. Tim couldn’t quite tell who it belonged to. He felt loopy. He was probably on a lot of pain meds. His whole body felt like it was one dull ache.
“Tim, you’re awake! Thank God!” Said a voice that his brain took a few seconds to recognize as belonging to Dick Grayson. The hand on his head, which had since been removed, unfortunately, also probably belonged to him.
Tim tried to respond but just ended up gagging around a tube that was in his throat.
“Sorry, I know, it sucks. You were having a lot of trouble breathing when we brought you in, and with the amount of injuries you had, it was hard to tell exactly what was causing it, so we put you on the respirator for safety.” Dick said with a sympathetic wince, “We can try to take it out now if you feel like breathing on your own.”
Tim nodded his assent.
Dick pulled the tube out while Tim breathed out. As soon as it was out, Tim started coughing, which jostled the many injuries he’d sustained to his chest. When that finally subsided, he decided he needed some questions answered.
“How long was I out?” Tim asked, raspily.
“About three days.” Answered dick.
“How bad is it?”
Dick hesitated, and winced in sympathy before he started rattling off the injuries that Tim had received. “Well, you have two gunshot wounds, eleven broken bones, a severe concussion, internal bleeding, bruising and cuts over most of your body, and a missing tooth.”
Tim grimaced. It was going to be a long recovery. “Did you find him?”
A sad look fell over Dick’s face. “Red Hood? Not yet, but Bruce has been working nonstop on catching him ever since we got you stabilized. Don’t worry, we will never let something like this happen to you ever again. I am so, so sorry Tim. If you need to talk to anyone-”
“Dick.” Tim interrupted, suddenly needing to tell someone else the information that he’d learned that day. “Dick, it’s Jason.”
Dick looked confused. “What’s Jason?”
“The Red Hood. Jason is the Red Hood.” Tim said, gravely serious.
Concern, shock, and pain washed over Dick’s face in equal measure, warring with each other before eventually concern won out. “Oh, Tim…” He said, trailing off.
Tim stared at him desperately. “Dick, I’m not crazy. This is not the concussion talking. It was him . I know it was. I saw his face. He talked to me. He told me who he was, and it was true! Dick, it was him! ” He said, each word more difficult to get past his lips as he broke down into sobs, “It was him.”
Dick reached out and pulled Tim into a hug, careful to avoid his extensive injuries. “Okay, it’s okay, shhhh, we’ll catch him, it’s okay.” He said, attempting to comfort Tim as he kept sobbing. Eventually, he grew tired and fell into a fitful sleep, as the drugs slowly leaving his system no longer gave him the comfort of their dark blanket of nothingness. All night Tim dreamed of Jason’s face, leering over him as he delivered blow after crushing blow. Not even waking saved him from the nightmare, as every blow he received in the dream, he felt all the more potently as he woke.
Across the Batcave, Bruce was picking through Tim’s torn-up clothes for any evidence he could find to use against the Red Hood. Eventually, he came across a spot of blood that didn’t appear to come from any of Tim’s wounds, and deducing that it must have been where his attacker’s knuckles had split while raining down blows on him (which made Bruce burn with rage for the man who did this to his son), he ran the sample through the Cave’s DNA sequencer. And then ran it again, because that couldn’t be right, it was impossible. And a third time, because maybe this thing was broken? And a fourth time on the Watchtower’s sequencer, because there was no way this was correct, the Cave’s must be broken. And a fifth time, to make completely sure.
Every single test turned up a 100% match with one Jason Peter Todd.