This is how with his armored suit he walked quietly through those streets corroded with dirt, the occasional addict would see him with unfocused eyes, but he knew they would not bother him. No one would, and not because he was the same crime lord known as Red Hood, but because they were all so lost in their worlds that his presence was nonexistent. He would hear a scream followed by a gunshot from time to time, but that didn't matter to him. Jason knew how to choose his battles and downtown Gotham was not a battlefield.
He walked directly to the establishment that saw him grow up: the Aimra'at Naqia Brothel. When he was a child he could not recognize the irony in the name, he thought it was just a name that the brothel owner got straight from some dictionary in the hope that it would highlight his establishment. Now with the languages that Batman made her learn under his tutelage, he recognized the hidden Arabic within his name. Aimra'at naqia meant "pure woman", but apparently the owner was not proficient enough in the language to use the correct alphabet.
Red Hood looked up when he saw the old neon sign indicating the location. Clearly, that poster had seen better times, times when downtown Gotham was not synonymous with hell. He ignored the prostitute who tried to flirt with him and went inside.
The place was flooded with smoke even though there was a no smoking sign at the entrance. Jason knew exactly where he should go to order a woman, go straight to the bar on the premises and order any woman on the menu. The owner of the place already knew him, so he didn't even give him that nasty catalog and instead sent him with whatever woman was available, probably the woman who hadn't been requested yet on the night.
The woman was twice his age, her lips were chapped and dry, but they had a thin layer of cheap lipstick that tried to hide it. Her face was wrinkled, blotchy and scaly, perhaps from years of drug addiction. Her dark circles were so deep that her makeup couldn't hide them. She was not a healthy weight, Jason recognized it with the naked eye, her ribs were marked and her dress, so short that he could see her panties, she showed weak legs covered with varicose veins.
Jason recognized her as Amelia, a woman who had been trapped in that brothel since she was twenty. He guided her into the room farthest from the plaintive moans that some rooms let through the door openings, and only when they both sat on the bed of dirty covers did she allow herself to smile. They talked, because it was easy to talk when you knew someone for so long.
He hated the place, but understood that it was the only safe haven women could have. When he was Robin he naively believed that dismantling the brothel was the only way to give all these women (and the children they had) a solution, but most of them did not want to be helped. They did not want to get out of that hole they had gotten into, take away the brothel all he did was leave them vulnerable. A drug addict if he wanted to remain one, he would never change even if you offer him a mansion.
So all he did was talk. Provide them for a few hours a safe space in which they are treated as women, not as a sexual object. Some days he met women who wanted to get out of there, they begged for help they felt they did not deserve. He helped them escape by abusing their condition as an important part of the crime, but he did not always succeed. Sometimes the girls who escaped would wake up dead in the rehab room, finding the killer was always the easy part, but he couldn't always exact revenge.
And yet he came back every week. He never gave them money, because he knew they could make a hundred dollars in the hands of a drug addict, instead he brought small gifts, things so insignificant that other people found it ridiculous. He sometimes brought sweets, other times makeup packages, other times a toy for the children lived in the brothel (none as part of the catalog, if it were he himself would be in charge of killing each person involved). That day he offered Amelia a packet of chocolates that she was moved to receive.
They continued chatting until the alarm sounded indicating that he had ended the time for his visit. He got up and said goodbye to her, he doesn't hug her because Jason wasn't a hugger. She left right at midnight, after paying the owner the exact amount for his visit. Maybe Red Hood wasn't a hero, maybe he didn't mind murdering when it was due, but that didn't make him the monster Batman struggled to make him.
Jason Todd grew up in those streets marginalized by the world, among women forced to sell his body to satisfy his addictions, among men killed by some stabbing, among children who did not see a future. It was enough for him to be the hero of those rejected people, and for him, the rest of the world could go to hell itself, because in the center of Gotham there was only moral ambiguity.