Black Mask stirred once more, consciousness clawing its way back through a dense fog of disorientation. His vision swam in a haze of blurred shapes and faded light, every attempt to focus only deepening the dull throb behind his eyes.
A heavy drowsiness clung to him, weighing down his thoughts, slowing his reactions—until pain soared through it all. It erupted from his midsection, forcing a strained groan from his throat as he instinctively tried to lift his head. The motion barely began before it was stopped. A firm strap held him down, tight across his forehead, forcing him back against whatever surface he had been restrained to.
The pain didn't stay contained to a single point. It spread—crawling from his lower chest, dragging downward across his abdomen, and wrapping cruelly toward his sides. His breath hitched as the sensation intensified, his body tensing instinctively against the restraints that held him.
There were no words for it—no way to rationalize or compartmentalize the agony.
Through the haze clouding his senses, a voice began to surface. Faint at first, and seeming distant, like it was bleeding in from another room.
But as he regained himself, he realized something was off—there was only one voice. There weren't any replies, nor did it sound like an actual conversation. Just a single, calm tone speaking into the silence as if the other party existed somewhere far beyond the room.
Forcing his sluggish body to respond, Black Mask turned his head slightly with a slow and unsteady motion, like dragging himself through water. His vision tilted with the movement until it landed on a figure seated not far from him.
The man had one hand raised to his ear, and with a relaxed posture. "I am glad you're alright, the news report gave me quite a scare," the man said, his voice sounding unfamiliar.
The world around Black Mask gradually sharpened into clarity. Edges became defined as everything settled into place, and the figure across the room took on detail. He wasn't facing him—his back was turned slightly, attention still on the call. But that wasn't what caught his attention.
It was the helmet.
Resting on the table nearby, unmistakable in its design, was the red helmet he had come to know all too well.
Black Mask's pupils shrank, a flicker of clarity breaking through the mix of both his pain and haze as realization set in. As much as he wished it had been, it turns out he wasn't having a nightmare but had really been captured by the Red Hood.
For months, the man had been a thorn at his side, a relentless vigilante who popped out of nowhere and had since tormented him and his business.
Earlier when Red Hood had his face concealed, he had thought there could possibly be room for negotiations, or a deal of some sort. If so, then it meant he might get out of there alive. Tortured to the brink of death, but alive.
But now… the man wasn't wearing his helmet, his face was exposed. This made Black Mask shudder a personally knows that kidnappers who let their faces be seen, didn't intend to leave witnesses.
The thought settled heavily in his chest, colder than the restraints biting into his skin. Whatever slim, calculated hope he might have entertained—the possibility of survival, of negotiation, of submission—faded almost instantly. Seeing Red Hood's face didn't grant him leverage, especially in his current predicament. It erased it entirely.
His gaze shifted away, jaw tightening as his limbs began to stir weakly against their bindings. The restraints held firm, but he still tried—driven by instinct more than logic. The effort sent another surge of pain ripping through the surface of his midsection, feeling as though he had sustained a large wound. His body betrayed him, locking up as a strained expression twisted across his face.
And then the memories from before he blacked out came to him in fragments. Sensations. The cold press of metal. The uneasy calm in Red Hood's movements.
A scalpel to his guts.
He remembered it now. The way it had pressed against his stomach, the slow, controlled motion as it methodically carved into flesh. The incision had trailed around his midsection… forming something like a circle.
The memory settled in fully, and with it came a deeper, more horrifying understanding of the pain he was now feeling.
Since he hadn't been able to see what was being done to him, his mind clung only to the sensation of it. The memory came back to him in fragments, jagged and incomplete, yet vivid enough to make his stomach twist. The feeling had been unbearable, as though his skin was being slowly peeled away, layer by layer, then rolled back with unsettling care. And the worst part hadn't even been the pain itself, but the helplessness that came with it.
He hadn't been able to scream.
His body had been completely unresponsive, locked in place by whatever drug had coursed through his veins. His throat had refused to obey him, his limbs useless, his voice stolen. Only his eyes had remained free—wide and bloodshot, trembling as tears gathered and spilled over, trailing down the sides of his face in silent testimony to the agony he endured.
He remembered the way his vision had blurred, the room folding in on itself as the pain climbed higher and higher until his mind simply… gave out. Darkness had taken him then, as an escape.
Now, as awareness settled back into his body, he could feel the difference immediately. Weak—yes, but not paralyzed. There was movement again, faint and sluggish, like his limbs no longer belonged entirely to him but were slowly being returned piece by piece. The realization crept in gradually, followed by a more pressing thought that coiled in the back of his mind.
How long had he been out?
The question lingered in his head, unanswered, as his breathing steadied into something more controlled, though still strained by the lingering pain in his abdomen.
Across the room, the man responsible for it all remained seated, voice sounding calm and almost absurdly casual as it carried through the quiet space. "Okay sweetheart, get some rest. Leave the police to do their job, and hopefully they find your boss alive—even though I hear he can be quite a dick."
There was a faint warmth to the tone—light, teasing even—and through the small speaker of the phone, it drew a soft, smile from Li on the other end. A moment later, the call ended and the room fell quiet.
"Good, you are awake."
The words came immediately after, perfect in their timing. Black Mask flinched despite himself, the sudden shift in attention snapping his focus fully back to the present.
Jason didn't turn right away. With his back still partially facing his restrained captive, he reached for the helmet resting on the table—the same red helm that had become synonymous with fear across Gotham's underworld.
His fingers closed around it with familiarity before lifting it smoothly into place over his head. The soft click of it sealing into position echoed faintly in the room, and when he spoke again, his voice carried that distorted, mechanical edge due to the modulator.
"Was wondering how long you were going to be out for," he said, rising to his feet with unhurried ease. "Had to give you a little something to speed things up."
He turned then, with slow and deliberate pace in his movements, the full weight of his presence shifting toward Black Mask.
"On the other hand," he continued, taking a step forward, "I hoped you'd be out for much longer. I could use a snack."
The words were delivered so casually they almost felt out of place, and yet there was something underneath them—something predatory—that made the air feel heavier.
Despite the fear tightening in his chest, Black Mask found a strange, fleeting sense of relief settle over him as the helmet concealed the man's face once more. It was irrational, perhaps, but it mattered.
Because a man who hides his face might still leave you alive.
A man who shows it… wouldn't consider the thought of sparing a life.
"I wouldn't give you the honor of seeing my face so you could curse at me from behind the grave," Red Hood went on, with slow and measured steps, each one echoing faintly against the floor. "You don't deserve it."
He spoke like someone who already knew the thoughts running through his captive's mind.
Black Mask swallowed hard, his seeming throat dry and uncooperative. The movement alone sent a faint ripple of discomfort through his body, but he forced himself to push past it. His muscles, tense from instinct and fear, gradually loosened just enough for him to speak.
"How…" The word scraped out of him, hoarse and uneven, barely holding together. He paused, drawing in a shallow breath before trying again. "How long was I out…?"
Another swallow, another flicker of hesitation, before the more pressing question forced its way free.
"…What have you done to me?"
"It's morning. You were out for just a couple hours… so relax." Red Hood's reply came easily, sounding almost dismissive, as though the state Black Mask found himself in was nothing more than a minor inconvenience.
There was no urgency in his tone, no weight behind the words that might suggest concern. He moved as he spoke, stepping away from his captive and toward the adjacent surgical table—a cold, metallic surface lined with neatly arranged instruments that gleamed faintly under the overhead light. The quiet clink of metal accompanied his movements.
"I had barely gone halfway when I noticed your weeping ass had blacked out on me." There was a note of irritation in his voice now, like a craftsman dissatisfied with an interrupted process. It wasn't anger—it was disappointment. As if Black Mask had failed him in some small, inconvenient way.
That tone alone drew a look from Black Mask, one laced with confusion and something bordering on disbelief. Beneath the pain and fear, an unsettling thought surfaced. Was this man… stable? Or was he dealing with someone just as unhinged as the Joker?
"As for what I did to you…"
Red Hood's voice trailed slightly as he reached for the steel tray resting atop the surgical table. His gloved fingers hovered for only a moment before selecting something. The faint scrape of metal against metal echoed as he lifted it, turning back toward his restrained audience with slow, measured steps.
"Might have to get a house with a fireplace soon. Your pelt would look good as my foot mat when I seek warmth by the fire."
There was something disturbingly casual about the way he said it, as though discussing interior decoration rather than something grotesque and inhuman. In his hands, what had initially appeared to be a folded leather wrap began to unfurl.
And then Black Mask saw it clearly.
His pupils shrank violently, his breath catching in his throat as his gaze locked onto the object Red Hood held up for him to see.
"Yeah," Red Hood added, almost conversationally, "it's exactly what you think it is. Your pelt."
For a moment, Black Mask couldn't respond. His mind stalled, caught between denial and comprehension, neither fully taking hold. He simply stared, his body frozen not by drugs this time, but by the sheer weight of realization pressing down on him.
Panic surged soon after, rising fast and violent in his chest. He had suspected such a thing from Red Hood's earlier words—his story about skinning animals in the woods—resurfaced with grim clarity.
Even if he survived this encounter, the damage alone would be enough to kill him. The wound was a big one and has remained exposed and untreated, it was a death sentence in itself. Infection would set in, slow and painfully. There would be no saving him from that.
"Joker might have been insanely messed up in the head… and indescribably twisted…"
The name barely left his lips before the atmosphere in the room shifted. Though it was subtle and almost imperceptible, but it was there. Red Hood stilled just for a fraction of a second. His helmet slowly tilted as he turned to face his captive.
"…If I were you," Red Hood cut in with a calm voice, sounding controlled to an almost unnatural degree, "I would choose my next words carefully."
There was no rage in it, nor immediate threat. And yet, despite the warning, despite the tension swirling in the air between them, Black Mask wasn't done.
'I'm a dead man anyway…' The thought came with clarity, seeming resolute. 'Might as well let it out than die with it buried.'
Death, which had once loomed as something to fear, now felt almost… merciful. Compared to what stood before him, what had already been done to him, it was beginning to look like the better outcome.
"I'd say…" he continued, his voice sounding rough but steady enough to carry his meaning, "you outrank that crazed clown in that department."
The words hung in the air, weighted and were irreversible.
For a brief moment, nothing happened.
Then—
A crushing, suffocating pressure seemed to flood the space between them, thick with something primal and violent. It washed over Black Mask without warning, slamming into him with enough force to make his chest tighten and his breath falter.
Bloodlust.
An overwhelming and lustful desire for his life
The courage he had forced himself to gather fractured instantly under its weight. Fear, which he had managed to suppress, came roaring back with renewed intensity, clawing its way up his spine and settling deep in his chest.
And in that moment, something far worse than death made itself known.
Because the way Red Hood stood there—silent, unmoving, yet radiating that barely-contained violence—made one thing painfully clear.
Death might not be the worst thing waiting for him.
Red Hood let out a slow, measured exhale, one that suggested restraint rather than calm, as though he were deliberately easing something coiled tight beneath the surface. When he spoke, his voice carried that same controlled edge—steady, yet unmistakably laced with something darker.
"Now that you're awake, we might as well start off from where we left off."
"And when you wake up in hell… why don't you tell the clown yourself."
Every word landed with placid finality, dripping with intent that didn't need to be raised in volume to be felt. It was there in the delivery, in the stillness that followed, in the way the air seemed to tighten around them.
Black Mask shuddered despite himself, the reaction involuntary as the weight of those words sank in. Fear crept back into his bones, settling deeper this time, less frantic and more suffocating.
Across from him, Red Hood moved with unsettling composure. With a smooth motion, he disengaged the mechanism holding the surgical table in place and began to roll it forward, guiding both table and captive along with him as if repositioning a piece on a board. His pace was unhurried, almost casual, as though none of this required urgency.
He stopped near a desk set off to the side of the room, its surface cluttered just enough to suggest preparation rather than disorder. Turning his back briefly to Black Mask, he reached for a couple of items—tools, though their exact purpose wasn't immediately clear—and carried them back to the surgical setup.
The faint scrape of metal against metal echoed as he set them down. Moments later, he returned again, this time dragging along a steel bucket that gave a soft, hollow sound as it shifted across the floor.
He then placed it beside the table with care.
Black Mask's eyes flickered toward it, dread building in slow, inevitable waves. Every instinct told him he didn't want to know. That whatever came next would only make things worse. And yet, the question forced its way out anyway, pulled from him by something between desperation and morbid curiosity.
"What… are you going to do?"
Red Hood didn't answer immediately. Instead, he reached for the bucket and removed its lid. The moment it came free, a faint but unmistakable sound slipped into the air—a frantic, scratching rustle accompanied by the high, nervous squeaks of something alive and confined.
"Something I'm sure you're quite familiar with," he replied at last, his tone seeming even, almost reflective. "Something you've probably done to some of your own victims." He said as if stating fact.
"But I'll explain as we go."
He crouched slightly and reached into the bucket without hesitation, his gloved hand disappearing briefly before emerging with a rat held firmly by the tail. The creature writhed immediately, its small body twisting and squirming in panicked resistance, claws scraping uselessly against the air.
Red Hood held it up just enough, angling it deliberately so Black Mask couldn't miss a single detail—the frantic movement, the sharp, glinting teeth, the pure instinctual terror radiating from it.
For a brief moment, their eyes met.
Then, just as calmly, he lowered it back into the bucket.
Black Mask's breath hitched as the implications settled in instantly. Panic surged up his throat as words—pleas, bargains, anything—rushed to the forefront of his mind. But before he could get a single one out, Red Hood took action. The damp cloth—his own sweat towel—was shoved harshly into his mouth, cutting him off mid-breath, forcing his jaw open just enough to wedge it in place. The taste of salt and fabric filled his senses as his muffled sounds died against it.
"Better you stay quiet," Red Hood said, almost mildly, "and enjoy the show." There was something disturbingly deliberate about the phrasing.
He worked quickly after that. A piece of cardboard was slipped over the open top of the bucket, sealing the rodents inside.
Then, with careful precision, he inverted it and pressed it down onto Black Mask's torso—just above the area where his skin had already been flayed, but close enough that the proximity alone sent a fresh wave of dread crashing through him.
The cardboard was then pulled free from beneath, leaving only the steel bucket pressed firmly against his chest, trapping the rat inside.
One gloved hand came down on the base of the bucket, holding it firmly in place. With the other, Red Hood reached for the blowtorch resting nearby.
"There's a rat trapped in there, right?" he said, almost conversationally. "We both know what happens when I do this."
The torch ignited with a sudden hiss, a burst of blue flame roaring to life at its tip. The heat radiating from it was immediate, even from a distance.
Black Mask's eyes widened, panic erupting in full force now as he began to thrash weakly against his restraints. His voice, muffled by the cloth in his mouth, came out as desperate, unintelligible sounds—pleas that never fully formed.
Red Hood ignored them completely.
He brought the flame beneath the steel bucket, letting the heat build gradually, deliberately. The metal began to respond almost instantly, the temperature climbing as the flame licked across its surface.
Then, almost as an afterthought, he reached up and loosened the strap that had been holding Black Mask's head in place. The belt gave way, allowing him to lift it slightly—to see.
"Trapped," Red Hood began, his voice steady, and sounding almost instructive now, "with an increase in temperature… our friend in there will instinctively look for an escape."
Inside the bucket, the sounds escalated. Scratching turned frantic. Scraping. Clawing. The panicked movement of a rodent trapped within heated metal with nowhere to go.
And beneath it all, the heat began to transfer. The steel warmed rapidly as the rising temperature bled through the surface and into Black Mask's exposed flesh.
This time… there would be no blacking out before it began.
Black Mask's body jerked violently against the restraints, every muscle straining in a desperate, futile attempt to escape what was happening to him.
His muffled cries pressed uselessly against the cloth stuffed into his mouth, reduced to broken, guttural sounds that barely carried beyond the table. His torso twisted as much as the bindings allowed, but there was nowhere to go—no relief, no escape from the agony that had begun to burrow its way deeper beneath his skin.
"Right on cue… the little guy clearly knows the script."
Red Hood's voice came through with an almost reserved calm, his tone sounding detached, observational—as though he were watching a predictable outcome unfold rather than orchestrating it. There was no urgency in him, no sign of hesitation. If anything, there was a strange patience in the way he stood there, watching the reactions of his captive.
"Since your flesh is the only soft surface," he continued, "it'll claw and eat its way into you… searching for an escape from being cooked alive."
The way he spoke made it feel less like cruelty and more like a demonstration. Like a lesson being delivered by an observer and a participant.
His cold and methodical narration seemed to belonged in a classroom experiment—not here, not now, not with a man slowly being torn apart from the inside.
Black Mask writhed beneath the bucket, his movements growing more frantic as the reality of the situation escalated beyond comprehension. The scratching—God, the scratching—became something else entirely.
The invasive sensation. His body reacted violently, spasming as the creature forced its way through flesh, each movement sending waves of unbearable pain radiating through him. His cries became more desperate, more broken, but they still went unheard—swallowed by the room, ignored by the one man who could end it.
And then, there was a subtle shift.
Red Hood saw the tension in Black Mask's body change. The way his movements faltered, then spiked again with renewed horror. That expression—eyes blown wide, face contorted beyond restraint—said everything.
The rat was inside him now.
"With our friend inside," Red Hood said with a steady and almost thoughtful voice, "it's only a matter of time before it starts chewing through organs… looking for a way out."
Black Mask's gaze snapped to him, locking on with raw desperation. His eyes pleaded—no words, no pride left, just a silent, frantic begging for it to end. For a bullet. A blade. Anything. Death, in that moment, was mercy.
But none came.
Red Hood didn't even pause.
"Your lungs… liver… spleen… kidneys…" he went on, listing them with indifference, as if naming items on a checklist. "No telling where it starts. Well—no telling for me. You, on the other hand…" There was the faintest tilt of his helmet, like amusement that never quite surfaced.
"…you'll feel every step of its journey."
The words sank in just as another wave of pain tore through Black Mask's body. His back arched against the table, restraints digging into his limbs as his body convulsed under the strain. His breathing broke apart into uneven, choking bursts, each one laced with wet, ragged undertones.
"And as an added bonus," Red Hood added, almost casually, "I gave you something earlier to wake you up. Now that you are, it will keep you awake."
"Wouldn't want you passing out and missing the experience."
Black Mask's body began to betray him completely as a violent cough tore through him, thick and wet, and this time it didn't stop. Blood followed—dark and heavy as it spilled past the cloth in his mouth, trailing down the sides of his face, soaking into the surface beneath him. His chest spasmed with each labored breath, the internal damage becoming impossible to ignore.
"Enjoy your playtime with little Timmy," Red Hood said, finally stepping back. There was a faint shift in his posture as he powered down the blowtorch, setting it aside with the same care he'd shown throughout. "I'm starving. Might as well grab a bite."
He removed his apron slowly, peeling it off with a fluid motion before letting it fall aside. For a moment, he just stood there, looking down at the man on the table—the writhing, broken figure whose body was beginning to shut down under the weight of what had been done to him.
The convulsions had started now. Subtle at first, then more pronounced, his limbs twitching uncontrollably as blood continued to slip from his mouth.
"Almost forgot…"
Red Hood tilted his head slightly, as if remembering something trivial.
"Happy New Year's Eve."
There was something almost darkly ironic about it. The timing. The delivery. The way the words landed in a room that reeked of blood, fear, and finality. Behind the obsidian skull mask, Black Mask's eyes remained wide—unnaturally so—frozen in a state of terror that bordered on permanent.
For a brief second, something flickered in Jason's mind. A passing thought. 'Halloween would've suited the expression better.' Then it was gone.
"Well… that's that."
He turned without ceremony and began walking toward the exit, steadily and unhurried.
"Now… the clean up." He wasn't referring to this mess alone, but for the wave that could possibly befall Gotham city.
- - -
Patrn/Da_suprememaverick