THE DESK was the same one you've had for three miserable years. Same scratch on the left corner where someone had once dropped a stapler and nearly blinded you. Same coffee stain that you’ve stared at long enough to realize it’s shaped vaguely like Ohio. Same view of a brick wall that got less and less interesting every single day you sat this job.
Your boss’ office had the good view. Naturally.
Harold Fisk was a man who'd built his career on other people's misery. Not the dramatic kind—no wars or famines or anything of the sort. It was the small kind. The kind that fit in a clickable headline with a question mark at the end. Is This Gotham's Most Miserable Block? What Happened to the Boy Who Never Had a Chance?
You'd written three of those articles yourself. Each one made you feel like you needed a shower afterward.
But right now, you'd kill for even that.
"You're a good writer," Fisk said, not looking up from his computer. "I'll give you that. Clean. Efficient. No flair, but efficient."
"It wasn't a compliment." He finally looked at you. Small eyes, smaller mouth, big mustache—the kind of face that had never once been described as "warm." "The problem is, efficient doesn't sell. Efficient gets you a desk. It doesn't keep you one."
You opened your mouth. Sighed when you realized you had nothing to say. Closed it again.
He slid a piece of paper across his desk. Your name was at the top. Below it, a list of your last ten articles and their click-through rates.
They were not good numbers.
"I'm giving you two weeks," he said. "Find me something with teeth. A crooked cop. A cold case that's not actually cold. A ghost story, I don't care. Just make people want to read it."
"Two weeks is generous." He leaned back. "There's a kid out there, fresh out of college, who'd kill for your desk. Don't make me give it to them."
You stared at the paper. Your numbers stared back. It was almost like they were going to materialize out of thin air and start dancing while singing “you’re about to be unemployed!”
"Fine," you said. "Two weeks."
Fisk nodded, already looking back at his screen. "Close the door on your way out."
You did. And then you stood in the hallway for a full thirty seconds, trying to remember how to breathe.
You thought about your rent. Your grocery bill. The way your phone had started buzzing with "payment due" reminders that you couldn't afford to answer.
You thought about the city outside—Gotham, a place that produced misery like a factory produced smoke. Somewhere out there, someone had a story. Someone worth writing about.
You just had to find them before your deadline found you.
THE BODEGA on Clancy Street had been robbed four times in the last year.
Jason Todd knew this because he'd read the shitty graffiti on the wall next to the dumpster. "RIP old man Chen's cash register. We hardly knew ye." Something like that, anyway. Gotham had a sick sense of humor and he’d gotten the gist of it a while ago.
Tonight, the robber was a guy in a ski mask who'd clearly never held a knife before. His grip was all wrong. His stance was even worse. It made Jason want to face-palm. And the way he was waving the blade at the guy behind the counter—some kid who couldn't have been older than nineteen—suggested he was one wrong move away from stabbing himself.
Jason could’ve walked away.
Could have… but he didn't.
Not because he was a hero. He was nothing of the sort. Legend says he’d tried that once, in another life, and it hadn't stuck there, so it wouldn’t stick here. But there was something about watching someone small get pushed around by someone stupid that made his knuckles itch.
The bell on the door jingled as he walked in.
Ski Mask turned. "Don't—don't come any closer, man, I swear to God—"
"You swear to God?" Jason tilted his head. "Which one? There's a few."
The kid behind the counter was already backing toward the stockroom. Smart kid.
He was slow. Stupidly untrained. The kind of guy who'd watched too many movies and thought swinging a knife was the same as knowing how to use one.
Jason sidestepped, caught his wrist, and twisted. Something cracked and the knife clattered to the floor. A second later, Ski Mask followed it, his face meeting the linoleum with a sound that was deeply satisfying.
"Stay down," Jason said, not because he expected the guy to listen, but because it felt like the right thing to say in a situation like this.
Safe to say the guy did not stay down.
So, Jason put him down again. Harder this time.
By the time the cops arrived—slow as always, because this is Gotham we’re talking about—Ski Mask was whimpering into the floor and Jason was already halfway out the door, his knuckles split and bleeding and he had absolutely no regrets about it.
He was lighting a cigarette behind the dumpster, watching the kid get dragged into the back of a cop car, when the old man found him.
Jason looked up. Gray hair. Long-term scowl. He could tell. A face that had been punched more times than Jason had had hot meals.
"You a cop?" Jason asked.
"Didn't say you did." The old man—Vince, Jason would learn later—leaned against the wall like he owned it. "Saw you in there. You're raw. Sloppy. You telegraph your right hook."
"I didn't telegraph anything."
"You leaned. That's telegraphing." Vince pulled a card from his jacket pocket and held it out. The Corner Gym. Train like you mean it. "My last prospect got his face caved in six months ago. Kid's done. Maybe forever. I need a replacement."
Jason didn't take the card. "I'm not a replacement,” he scoffed, pocketing his lighter and blowing out a cloud of smoke.
"No. You're a kid with good hands and nowhere to put them." Vince tucked the card into Jason's jacket pocket anyway. "Come by the gym. I'll train you for free. You fight in tournaments, I take a cut. You win, you get paid. And you will win."
"What makes you so sure?"
Vince smiled. It wasn't a nice smile—not by a mile. It was the smile of a man who'd seen too many hungry fighters and knew exactly what they looked like. And that he was staring right at one.
"Because you're angry," he said. "And angry fighters don't quit. They just run out of things to hit." He pushed off the wall. "Thursday. Be there or don't. I don't care."
Jason pulled the card out and stared at it. Thought about the money—or lack of it—in his own bank account. Thought about the room he was renting that didn't have a working heater. Thought about the last time someone had offered him something that wasn't a shitty joke or a lie.
He put out his cigarette, crushing it under the heel of his shoe and lit another and didn't say yes.
But he didn't say no, either.
YOU DIDN’T KNOW it yet, but your story had a name.
Not the one on the poster—The Red Hood, which was stupid and he hated it and he'd told Vince as much, but Vince had just laughed and said "the idiots love a nickname" and that had been that.
His real name was Jason Todd.
And three days before you saw that ugly poster stapled to a telephone pole, Jason Todd walked into The Corner Gym for the first time, on a Thursday, wrapped his hands in tape that smelled like someone else's sweat, and hit a heavy bag until his knuckles bled through the cotton.
Vince watched from a folding chair. Didn't say a word. Just watched. He had plans for Jason—none he’d tell him of just yet. But they were money-making plans. And by the looks of it, the kid needed the money.
After an hour, Jason stopped. His chest heaved. His hands ached. And for the first time in a long time, he felt something that wasn't anger or exhaustion.
"It's a bag. Anyone can hit a bag."
"Anyone can hit a bag. Not anyone can hit it like they’ve got a personal vendetta against it." Vince stood up, stretched his back, and walked toward the ring. "Tomorrow, we work on your footwork. Day after, your defense. By the end of the month, I'm putting you in a tournament."
Jason paused, the motion of unwrapping the tape stopped for a second. "I didn't agree to that."
"You will." Vince ducked between the ropes. "You need the money. I need a fighter. That's how this works."
Jason didn't argue. Because he knew Vince was right. He wasn’t a dumbass, unfortunately. Being a dumbass would make being poor easier.
He always needed money. That was the problem with being born with nothing. You spent your whole life running just to stay in place.
He looked down at his hands. Split knuckles. Old scars. The kind of hands that had never held anything soft for very long.
Money, he thought. Tournament and money.
It wasn't hope. He didn't do hope anymore.
But it was something that wasn’t a dead end. He hadn’t had that for a very long time.
And somewhere across the city, you were staring at your own ceiling, running out of time, and wondering if the universe was about to hand you a miracle or just another slow Tuesday.
You'd find out in three days.
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