He’d told himself it wouldn’t come to this.

You weren’t supposed to get that close - to see through the helmet, the voice modulator, the armor - to him. But there you stood, eyes burning with questions, words like knives slicing through the walls he’d built.

Jason's fists clenched, gauntlets creaking.

“Stop calling me that,” he growled. “Jason Todd is dead.”

Your silence made it worse. You looked at him like you still saw a flicker of that name - of that boy who used to believe in right and wrong. It made something inside him twist violently.

Jason Todd had died in Arkham. That name, that person - it was a corpse in a clown’s tomb. What stood here now in a scorched suit of metal and fury wasn’t a boy who used to laugh or hope. It was something else.

And yet, here you were. Asking. Prying. Pushing him.

He snapped.

“I’m not a hero!” Jason roared, the modulator in his helmet distorting the words into something guttural, almost inhuman. His voice cracked mid-sentence. “I’ll never be him again!”

He tore the helmet off and hurled it across the room. It hit the wall with a sharp, ringing crack and clattered to the floor.

“I’m not Jason,” he growled, breath shaking. “Jason Todd is dead. He died in that damn Arkham cell, screaming, while no one came.”

His chest heaved as silence fell, thick and bitter. His armor felt suffocating now. Too heavy. His hands trembled, flexing uselessly at his sides.

“I’m the Arkham Knight,” he said quieter, almost like he needed to remind himself. “I don’t get to be anything else.”