[After a while into the beating…]

  It was quiet. Too quiet.

  The kind of silehat seemed to seep into the bones, chilling the marrow, as though the world itself had decided to hold its breath. The only sound that cut through the stillness was the frantic, pounding thrum of Jason Todd’s heartbeat. It hammered in his skull, relentless, a grim remihat life was slipping from him with each tortured beat.

  His vision was a crimson blur—his blood, thid sticky, dripping steadily from the gash on his forehead. His face felt cold, but the pain was an inferno. His limbs ached like they were being torn apart, each breath a struggle, ragged and shallow as if his lungs were too broken to draw in air properly. He could feel the weight of his own body, the oppressive pressure of his wounds, a, all that registered in his mind was the pounding of his heart, each throb louder tha, louder thahing else.

  Somewhere, far away but painfully close, there was the sound of footsteps, slow and deliberate, eg in the hollow vastness of the abandoned warehouse. The fai hint of a presehat Jason could not escape. His eyes, barely open, flicked toward the source, but his blurred vision offered little crity. What he could make out, though, was enough.

  The Joker stood over Jason like a predator iing its prey, a wide, siing grin stretched across his face. Bloodied and battered, Jason could barely lift his head to aowledge him, but the Joker didn’t seem to mind.

  “Been fun, hasn’t it, kiddo?” The Joker’s voice was disturbingly casual, as though he were speaking to an old acquaintanot someone he’d just beaten within an inch of their life. His eyes sparkled with perverse delight as he casually twirled a bloodied crowbar between his gloved fingers. The sound of it scraping against the floor made Jason’s skin crawl, but there was nth left in him to even flinch.

  Joker’s ugh—high-pitched and unnervingly cheerful—rang through the warehouse. “Aw, don’t be like that, Boy Blivihe cold shoulder already?” His grin deepened, araightened his tie with exaggerated fir, sav the moment like it was a fine wine. “Maybe this wasn’t as fun for you as it was for me, but hey, you ’t win ‘em all.”

  Jason’s body was a wreck. His limbs were stiff, his muscles screaming in agony with every slow, deliberate move he mao make. He couldn’t feel his fingers anymore, only the dull throb of the brutal hits to his chest and ribs. His breath came in strained, panicked gasps, a struggle to stay scious.

  Jnored him now, his hands moving to adjust his coat, speaking as though Jason were simply an afterthought. “Anyway, be a good little soldier. Finish your homework, and don’t fet to brush your teeth before bed. Oh, and tell Batsy I said… hello.” His words were soaked in mog affe, as though he were a ed, twisted father bidding his son farewell. The ughter bubbled up again, eg off the crumbling walls, boung around the cold, empty space like a maniacal choir.

  With a theatrical flourish, Joker swept his coat over his shoulders, the fabric swirling dramatically in the air. His steps toward the door were slow and deliberate, eae a final punctuation mark to the twisted performance. And then, just as quickly, the heavy door smmed shut, and the sound of footsteps faded away into nothingness, leaving Jason alone iark, cold silence.

  Jason’s body trembled as he struggled to push himself up, the effort overwhelming his senses. His hands, still cuffed behind his back, scraped against the cold crete floor. Every inch of him felt like it was unraveling, but still, he fought against the overwhelming fatigue, the pain that threateo crush him.

  He rolled onto his side, gasping for air, eaent sending shockwaves through his ravaged body. His right hand reached for the cuffs, twisting painfully as he tried t them to the front. His face, streaked with blood, was a mask of exhaustion aermination. He would not die here. Not like this.

  Every movement was ay. Jason mao get his hands in front of him and pushed himself to his feet, his legs shaky, like they might colpse at any moment. His mind raced, desperate for a pn, for a way out, but his body betrayed him. He stumbled, barely able to catch his bance, before crashing to the ground with a siing thud, his head smming against the cold crete.

  But Jason Todd was nothing if not stubborn. He dragged himself, inch by inch, his arms trembling with the effort. Eaent was a struggle, his blood poolih him as he left a crimson trail across the warehouse floor. Every inch forward felt like it could be his st, but he refused to stop. Not when the man who had dohis to him was still out there. Not when there was still a ce to survive.

  Through the haze of pain, a faint sound reached his ears—a low, meical beeping. His eyes, unfocused and blurry, darted around the room. He couldn’t see it at first, but then… a faint shape, hidden under a tarp, caught his attention. A crate. And with it, the tig of a timer.

  His blood ran cold as he crawled toward the source. With trembling hands, he yanked away the tarp, revealing a cluster of dynamite sticks, wired to a timer ting down—ten seds. Jason’s heart skipped a beat.

  He froze. Time seemed to stretch out around him, each sed stretg iernity, mog him with its iability. His hands trembled as he reached for the timer, but there was nothing he could do. He couldn’t disarm it. He couldn’t escape.

  Closing his eyes, Jaso out a shuddering breath, as if willing the pain to disappear, willing the world to stop spinning. He had fought. He had givehing. And now, there was nothi but the iable.

  Outside, Batman’s motorcycle roared to a halt in front of the warehouse, its tires skidding on the icy ground. His cowl hidden the grimace of worry etched on his face, but his eyes were locked oracker blinking in his radar, showing him Jason’s st known location. He was close—he had to be close.

  He sprioward the door, urgency driving every step, but just as he reached for the hahe ground shook beh him. The explosion was deafening, a violent roar that ripped through the night and tore the building apart. The heat of the bst burhrough the cold air, and the shockwave sent Batman crashing backward, his body smming into the snow.

  The warehouse erupted ihe sky now illuminated by the inferno, the fire curling up into the bess above, r as though the very heavens themselves had opened in fury. For a moment, everything was still. Silent.

  But then, slowly, the sound of debris settling and the crag of fire was all that remained. Jason Todd was gone.

  “Jason!” Batman’s voice cut through the stillness, ragged and desperate, as he leapt to his feet and charged toward the charred remnants of the warehouse. His cape billowed behind him, but it was the sound of his boots striking the debris that filled the air—the only sign of his presen the midst of the r fmes.

  The fire crackled, sending waves of heat into the night, but Bruce paid it no mind. His hands bled as he dug through the wreckage, recklessly scraping at the broken beams. His gloves were slick with soot and blood—his own, perhaps, but more so from the boy he had failed to save. His heart thudded in his chest with every passing sed, each beat pulling him deeper into the vortex of guilt that seemed to threaten to swallow him whole.

  “Jason!” he called again, his voice hoarse with emotion. The fmes hissed and popped around him, but he couldn’t stop. He wouldn’t stop.

  And then, through the smoke and chaos, he found him.

  Jason’s body y limp beh a pile of twisted metal and shattered crete. His face was ghostly pale, streaked with blood, his eyes closed iernal stillness. His once vibrant, rebellious spirit was now a faint echo in the shadows. Batman’s breath caught in his throat as he k beside him, his hands trembling as they gently cradled the boy who had once been his son.

  “Oh no…” The words slipped from Bruce’s lips in a broken whisper. The weight of his failure pressed down on him like a leaden cloak. He had failed to protect him, to keep him safe, and now there was nothi but the crushiy of loss.

  He lifted Jason’s body with the careful tenderness of a father, his owions threatening to tear him apart. “Jason…” His voice cracked, the sound raw and filled with an anguish he had buried for so long. It was too much. It was always too much.

  ***

  Later, Bruce stood outside the mue, the night heavy with the st of rain. He had brought Jason’s body there uhe guise of his civiliay, Bruce Wayne—donating a rge sum to ensure no questions were asked, ails revealed. The cause of death was registered simply as “explosion.” The world would never know the truth of what had happened. But Bruew. And that knowledge, that brutal truth, would haunt him forever.

  At Wayne Manor, Alfred, Barbara, and Dick gathered iudy, their faces grim, their hearts heavy with the weight of the tragedy. Bruce sat in silence, his head bowed, his hands pressed against his face. The clock ticked on, indifferent to the storm of emotions brewing within him.

  Alfred, ever the steady presence, pced a gentle hand on Bruce’s shoulder, the only fort he could. “There was nothing you could have done,” he said softly, his voice full of quiet uanding. “You didn’t know he would be in Bosnia.”

  Bruce shook his head slowly, his voice barely a whisper as he spoke through ched teeth. “For someone who’s lost so many, you’d think I’d be used to it by now. But I’m not.” His chest tightened with the weight of his grief, his failure. “I failed him, Alfred. I should’ve protected him.”

  Alfred said nothing more, simply allowing the sileo settle around them. Sometimes, there were no words that could ease the pain.

  Dick, restless and torween his own grief and the need for answers, stepped forward, his face a mixture of fusion and barely tained anger. “What exactly happened in Bosnia?” His voice was sharp, his frustration evident. “How did a mission trag Ra’s al Ghul lead to... this?”

  Barbara, her eyes fierce despite her wheelchair, rolled closer to Bruce, her haing lightly on the arm of his chair. Her voice was calm but firm, a remio them all of the strength that remained even in the face of overwhelming loss. “Not now, Dick,” she said, her words cutting through the tension that had thied in the room. “This isn’t your fault, Bruce. You did everything you could.”

  Bruce didn’t respond. He couldn’t. He didn’t have the strength to expin, to front the questions that g him. He stood in silehe weight of his failure settling deeper within him, suffog him in the shadows of his own mind.

  Without a word, he turned and walked toward the staircase. The quiet hum of the house, the faint murmur of his family behind him—none of it could drown out the voices in his head, the haunting echo of the Joker’s ughter that still reverberated in his ears. The ughter that had led them here. To this point of urn.

  As he asded the stairs, his footsteps heavy with guilt and grief, the voices below him faded into a distant hum, drowned out by the cold, relentless sound of his owbeat.

  And Jason’s absence, more deafening than any ugh, echoed through the hollow halls of Wayne Manor.

  .......

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