"It hurts when it rains." Thad didn't look her in the eye when she saw his confusion. A few moments ago she watched his reaction to the rain that soaked his skin and his costume. But he didn't speed away, he took out part of the metal on his costume to show her. Bree only heard stories about what the Batman left behind, but what Thad had on his shoulder used to be known as 'the bat brand of justice.'.

Thad tried to keeping the memories, the truth and the pain from spilling out but he failed reliving parts at a time, confessing to what left him like that.

One moment he stopped to pluck the batarang out of the air, planning on showing his father the souvenir.  That's when the grappling hook, the bat-claw clamped down on his knee easily breaking the bone, putting just enough pressure to prevent him from speed healing right away or enough support to stand. He was dragged into the shadows by the elder vigilante.  Thad didn't understand despite the warning he hears about this timeline, the belief father's 'care' for him. He assumed his father would rush in to aid home, that there was mercy, intervention on his behalf.

Instead he watched his father leave him behind, as the GCPD just stood around in fear and acceptance..  The Dark Knight speaking in a amalgam of a animal like growl, joy and cold blooded killer. Dragging a  batarang across his elbows, slamming his head against the ground after having ribs cracked.. "You could run again... If your lucky." Thad tried to scream when he saw the needles between the man's fist.. Injected at all once left him numb to what would've been inhumane literal  burning  pain on his skin.

The story was never made public. He spent months neglected in Arkham Asylum overwhelmed by the fear, the pain and the anger that filled every part of him. No one helped him, no one wanted to. He would wake up, he would dream of the Dark Knight finishing him off with one of his weapons every night and day. He would scream and no one would listen..

He learned how awful this earth at least the city was its core. His own father was a coward, and the one he couldn't escape was a monster.. As he waited, as he learned he knew he needed an echo chamber for it all. A way to make Gothamites pay, to change or see something else.

With the minimal conditions at the asylum, the negative speed force kept him standing and surviving. When he knew the Batman was truly gone he could have targeted the entire city, wiping it out. But to him a better revenge would have been completing the mission Wayne failed at, to stick to a cold and make the a good difference.

He escaped raiding the cave, destroying every cowl and car to scraps.  Altering the costume of of Robin, of the boy solider of the man's war on crime for himself. Making it his own, taking the name from the memory of the court of owl." A talon for your head." He repeated that rhyme countless times. To the GCPD he appeared as a copycat, another monster. But he refused to stop.

When he finally stopped she just looked at him. She wanted to hug him, but she knew he wasn't ready for a comfort like that..  The next night he saw her she was slamming an axe into the covered signal that once brought light and fear into the city. Staring at her destruction of the bat signal, he smiled his eyes flickering from glowing red to tearfully grateful.

////A little inspired by the romance in Batman forever between Bruce and the psychiatrist.