Blood spilled from Jason’s lips in thick, dark rivulets as he spit defiantly onto the floor, glaring up at the monster in front of him through one swollen eye. His voice was gravel, cracked and wet: “Go to hell.”

The Joker just grinned wider—like Jason’s pain was a symphony, and every scream a note in his favorite song. He left without a word, humming something twisted as his laughter echoed down the corridor, leaving the air colder in his absence.

The silence afterward was somehow worse.

Jason’s head drooped, neck trembling from exhaustion and blood loss. Heavy iron chains hung from the ceiling, bolted tight around his raw, bloodied wrists, forcing his arms upward at a cruel angle. A second set of rusted chains anchored his ankles to the cracked concrete floor, preventing him from collapsing or even shifting without pain. His entire body was stretched, suspended in a cruel mockery of control—straining muscles, torn joints, skin rubbed raw from metal biting deep with every twitch.

His shoulders throbbed, raw flesh exposed where skin had been peeled away. The muscles no longer obeyed him, fingers twitching uselessly at his sides, crusted in dried blood and filth. His wrists were mangled, bruised to the bone, skin cut so deep the barbed wire had become part of him. A dull throb pulsed through his shattered ankle, bent at such a sickening angle it looked dislocated and broken in three places.

He hadn't felt hunger in days—his body had long since turned to gnawing on pain and hopelessness instead. His ribs ached with every breath, each one too shallow, too painful, like breathing through shards of glass. He wondered if they’d cracked—no, more likely shattered beneath the Joker’s crowbar days ago.

A goon lingered nearby, silent, watching.

Jason groaned, barely lifting his head. “Do it,” he rasped, voice nearly gone. “Kill me, you coward. Put me out of this.”

The thug didn’t move. Just stared. Maybe she was new. Maybe she still had a soul left to be disgusted with all this.

Jason chuckled bitterly through the pain, blood bubbling at the corners of his mouth. “No? Thought so…”

No rescue. No footsteps in the dark. No cape in the night.

Bruce wasn’t coming.

No one was.