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The Jaws of Life

Jason Todd x Gender Neutral Reader

I live in the vacant and the dark spaces

In between beats of your heart -

Hiding in the places that you thought were empty.

I’m having the time of my life - rotting in the sun.

We’re inside The Jaws of Life.

Part Two: Twin Size Mattress

Summary:

Gotham is a shithole, but you have come to love it. You get to help people, you know the streets well... and though it may not be healthy living in the shadow of Jason's ghost, you are mourning in your own way.

And that mourning is disrupted one night when a freak in a red helmet breaks into your apartment, shaking your whole world to its core.

Jason Todd x GN!Powered!Reader. Friends With Benefits to Lovers/Lovers Reunited. Smut, Extreme Emotional Angst, Hurt and Comfort. Set during Season 3.

Word Count: 28,600

DC Titans Masterlist | AO3 Link | Series Masterlist

Detailed warnings and author's notes below the cut.

Warnings: this fic has a lot of warnings, so strap in - the reader character is completely gender neutral - the main pronouns used for the bulk of the fic are you/yours and there is one scene where Jason is talking to someone else about the reader and uses they/them pronouns for the reader and there is absolutely no descriptions of what genitals the reader character has (I like all my GN fics to be interpreted so that the character could be trans, or cis, or nonbinary, and that they could have a penis or a vagina); there are implications of the reader being trans or nonbinary (something I threw in last minute cause it felt like it fit the fic well), but like with my fat reader fics - if you're cis then just ignore it, roll with it, and remember that most fics are catered specifically for you; once again, Jason has ‘schrodinger’s sexuality’ - Jason is queer, but it’s never outrated stated if he’s gay, bi, or something else, because he is undeclared and because the reader’s gender is never stated; some people in the fic openly speculate about Jason’s sexuality; this fic DOES use Y/N (as do all of my fics); the reader character has meta powers - the reader character can form ice crystals out of nothing and can freeze pretty much any substance; mentions of the reader having a backstory similar to Jason's - the reader grew up in severe poverty and neglect and was homeless for the majority of their young life, and also had a parent who had issues with substance abuse; mentions of purchase and consumption of alcohol underage - but it’s America and Jason and Reader are both 18/19 (also they don’t get drunk, reader had a single beer in Jason’s honor due to nostalgia); mentions of canon deaths, including mentions of Jason killing people as Red Hood; mentions of Jason being injured from a fight, some descriptions of blood and non-graphic descriptions of wounds, including a bullet wound; Jason calls the reader 'babe' and ‘baby’ (but as I said with the previous fic, I think this is a genderless nickname and Jason would call anyone this when flirting and being affectionate); mentions of Jason's canon kidnapping and canon interactions with Deathstroke (and the trauma those incidents likely caused for him); this fic does contain a smut scene - once again, the reader character’s genitals are not described, this is totally gender neutral smut; majorly possessive Jason; marking kink; finger sucking; spit used as lube and actual lube is used; lots of dirty talk; unprotected sex; penetrative sex that could be anal or vaginal (it’s a choose your own adventure and the way it’s implied, it could be either); Schrondinger’s Cream Pie - a tag I have been wanting to use forever aka the concept that the reader may or may not be able to get pregnant from this unprotected sex because their gender is ambiguous; undernegotiated kink (with the fact that the unprotected sex is undernegotiated and unexpected) - but both parties are having a lot of fun; cockwarming (post orgasm); generally lots of whump and emotional stuff.

A/N: This fic is such a long time coming, and I do apologize that it has taken me so long to get the second part up. It was a lot to edit, and if I had done this all at once, I might have cut the parts a bit differently, but I do love the impact of Part One ending with Jason's death. Anyway, please do enjoy, and know that there is one more fic coming (which will likely be in multiple parts) which will end up making this a trilogy. I love this story and these characters so much, and I hope you love them as much as I do.

...

‘U up?’

‘Don’t come in here with that fuckboy attitude unless you’re bringing snacks.’

Jason grinned at you as he burst into your bedroom at Titans Tower, his arms filled to the brim with stuff - so full that he had to kick the door shut behind himself, not having an arm to spare. The two of you were lucky that Dick slept with white noise playing in his headphones and usually took a sleeping pill before going to bed, because Jason was not being quiet.

“You’re lucky I’ve been hiding these, otherwise Tiger Boy would have gotten to them by now,” Jason announced, seemingly very proud of his haul.

You couldn’t help but to let out a laugh and shake your head as Jason spilled the snacks into your bed - a few smaller bags of chips, a few candy bars, and surprisingly - a very large pink donut box. You flipped up the lid to find it still half-full, which was a shock considering that most of the sweet treats in the Tower (especially baked goods) didn’t make it past the front door without being seized and devoured.

“Oh my god, if this is lemon filled, you have won yourself some privileges,” You said, eyeing up one of the powdered donuts - something that you had been craving.

Jason’s grin widened - he felt a certain sense of joy that he hadn’t felt in a long time. That heroic pride tickling his insides at the ability to make you smile so easily, even if it was just by bringing you snacks.

“This one is that chocolate chip thing you said you loved last time,” He said, pointing to another donut that you had yet to notice.

You let out a ravenous moan - partially excited for the food, and partially due to growing lust for him. You were all too pleased at the fact that he had saved it just for you, rather than eating it out of spite to piss you off, which is something that Jason from a few months ago would have done. The Old Jason would have eaten your favourite donut right in front of you even if it was one he didn’t like just to have some kind of victory over you.

Wait - why had he saved these for you? Why did he seem so keen on pleasing you?

Before you could think about it too much, Jason slammed the lid of the donut box closed in your face.

“These are for later, though,” He said, smirking at you in the most ‘fuckboy’ way that you had ever seen. “I get my treat first, babe.”

He put the box aside and then peeled his shirt off over his head. You swore you caught him flexing his muscles, showing off his tight body and making you stubbornly bitter at the fact that you drank in every single inch of him with growing lust.

“You’re so terrible,” You chuckled, nonetheless crawling to the edge of the bed and then sitting up tall on your knees so that you could kiss him, moaning delightfully into the skilled, smooth kiss.

“Yeah, but you love it, babe,” He mumbled against your lips.

Having sex with Jason was so comfortable and natural. And oddly enough, it was growing more comfortable over time for the two of you to linger in bed together after it happened instead of rushing away.

Sometime later, the two of you were laying in bed together, tangled under the sheets, still slightly messy with cum and too lazy to get up and truly get cleaned, sharing the snacks that he had brought.

The late night junkfood binge had inspired a conversation about your favourite childhood snacks.

“No, no, Twinkies are far superior,” You argued, your words partially muffled by the donut you were chewing on. “The Hostess ranking is: Twinkies, cupcakes, snowballs, Honeybuns, and then all the other crap nobody cares about,”

You explained it carefully, motioning in the air with the hand that wasn’t holding your half-finished donut, making a chart in your mind.

“Seriously?!” Jason practically yelled, clearly shocked by your opinions. “You put snowballs - that fucking jelly coconut crap - above Honeybuns? Honeybuns are the goddamn shit. Honeybuns are my life blood!”

“Then you can have all the Honeybuns you want, princess.” You said, shrugging and shoving the rest of your donut in your mouth. “Leaves more of the good stuff for me.”

Jason sharply rolled his eyes.

“Okay, but, have you ever put Honeybuns in the microwave? When they-”

“See, you seem to forget,” You said, swallowing down your food and rushing to cut off his words. “I didn’t have a microwave growing up.” You smirked at him, loving the way his expression dropped into shock for a moment.

He often pulled the ‘I was a poor foster kid’ card when talking to Gar and Rachel. And you loved pulling it on him. You were homeless for most of your childhood, and often, you joked around that your childhood was worse off than his. Of course, you were never truly trying to measure traumas. Ultimately, you were unsure whether it was true or not, unsure about what his childhood had actually been like. You just liked to pull the rug out from underneath him when he was so damn dramatic all the time.

“I ate my food standing out in the freezing cold, and-”

“Yeah, yeah. Here comes the Oliver Twist routine,” Jason rolled his eyes and you nearly choked when you couldn’t hold back a laugh. “What? Were you so poor that you slept in a cardboard box and wore old newspapers for clothing?”

You held back telling him a very serious story about how you had slept in a cardboard box for a few nights once. You didn’t want to ruin his joke or make things too sappy.

“Hey, newspapers would have been a privilege,” You replied. “I spent most of my life naked. I didn’t even know what clothing was until-”

“Funny,” Jason scoffed, shaking his head. “But seriously - you didn’t have fosters?”

It was a question that burned him up with curiosity. Since he had been a ward of the state, passed around so often, it did make him wonder why things hadn’t been the same for you.

You shook your head in the negative, being honest this time.

“No.” You told him, taking on a more serious tone as you began to explain. “My mom ran away from home with me when I was a baby. She was a teenager, but they couldn’t track her down. And ya know, she was legally my parent, so it’s not like they could call the cops on her for kidnapping me or whatever. And she did try to take care of me so I never got put in the system.”

Jason’s eyes floated with a mixture of pain and curiosity, remembering his own mother. Distant, blurred memories of barely being able to see over the counter and trying to make meals for himself. Having to clean liquor bottles off the floor around her unconscious form. His dinner most nights consisting of the aforementioned microwaved Honeybuns or whatever else he could get his hands on. A lot of nights, not eating at all.

“Tried to?” He echoed back, sounding unsure.

Your stomach twisted, hating how serious the conversation was getting.

But still, a completely honest answer flowed from your lips. Those lips loosened, perhaps by the sweetness of his gifts toward you, feeding you your favourite treats. Or by the way he had kissed you and fucked you, making you feel treasured and safe. Or perhaps it was something in the way he was looking at you right then - his eyes lingering with pity, but not a single ounce of judgement. The fact that he clearly knew everything you had gone through, even if his story hadn’t been exactly the same.

“You know how it is,”

You said, edging on that - the idea that his life had been like yours. It was a lifeline you held onto, something that kept you from drifting back out into those terrible memories.

“I just wasn’t really that important when her next fix was on her mind. Sometimes it was ‘oh baby, come here, Mommy got you a gift’ - and she would give me twenty dollars for food, or give me a toy that I was way too old for because she had been so blasted out of her mind that she didn’t realized she missed like… four of my birthdays.”

Jason’s heart crumbled at this. Unfortunately, it was something he understood all too well.

“And eventually - one day, I found her… gone. I thought she had just passed out again, but the vomit, and the - the smell. And her eyes -” Your throat clenched around your words, and you took a sharp breath. “And I realized that she wouldn’t wake up this time.”

Your voice croaked harshly as you remembered it - how cold she had been, her eyes wide open and so damn lifeless. Jason’s hands flexed, and though it felt strange, he gave into the natural instinct to comfort you, placing a hand on your knee through the sheet. He was glad when you placed your hand on top of his, accepting the simple, affectionate touch. One that the two of you had never really shared before, as much as you had touched each other.

He stayed silent and let you simply speak - knowing how important it was to have someone just listen. Especially when that person was someone who understood as well as he did.

“It’s so weird.” You sighed, still trying to catch your breath. “That moment - realizing that you’re all alone in the world.”

Those words punched Jason in the gut harder than he expected. It was something he related to on such a deep level… he didn’t think that anybody else had ever felt like that. But he supposed that’s what loneliness was. And maybe that was the cure for it - finding the one person who went through the same type of aloneness that you had, and sticking to them so tight that they could never let go.

‘You’re not alone anymore.’ The words lingered on his tongue. ‘You have me now.’

But instead, he said something else.

“I didn’t find my mom.” Jason said, unable to hold the words back. “I just came home from school one day and there was a caseworker waiting for me. One of the neighbors had called it in because they saw me going to school in the same stupid unwashed American Pie tee shirt for the tenth day in a row.”

“You went to school?” You said, an air of joking to your tone - but it was clear that you were somewhat serious.

You had learned to read because a nun at the local church (where you commonly went for free hot meals) took pity on you. You picked up a lot of useful skills, like fixing cars, and lock picking, and basic math, from people you knew on the street. When Dick had looked into your file and saw that you were never registered at any public school because of your mother’s history - he doubled down on your study time, and became like a private tutor to you.

Jason let out a dead chuckle, and you wondered something else.

“What happened to your mom?” You asked.

“She was arrested for possession.” He said. “She died in lock up when I was with my third foster. Overdose. That lovely Gotham prison system - you can still get whatever you want on the inside. But I didn’t really have the room to care because I was sleeping in a moldy corner on a cold floor in a room shared with six other kids. The case worker told me about her death like I should’ve already known - just dropped it so damn casually in conversation.”

That caused a twist in your gut. His life was a lot more similar to yours than you had originally thought. Different, but so damn similar at the same time.

“What about your dad?” You wondered aloud.

“Hardly knew the guy.” Jason shrugged. “He spent pretty much my entire life in lock-up. I only know his name - and I’ve seen his mugshot a few times.” He tried to laugh it off, but there was still pain in his voice. “But he’s dead too now. So it doesn’t even fucking matter.”

“Same.” You said, nodding. “I mean - I didn’t even see my dad’s mugshot. I have no clue who he even is.” You reached over into Jason’s lap, and took one of the chips that he had from the open bag. “Cheers to absentee fathers.”

“I guess,” He sighed.

“Well, in my opinion, it’s better than having another random asshole trying to rule my life.” You remarked. “I’ve always been better on my own. I can take care of myself.”

“Oh yeah? And what do you think Dick Grayson is?” Jason replied, sounding all too cocky about out-smarting you.

You rolled your eyes.

“You know, when Dick rolled up, in the middle of nowhere with his little minivan full of freaks-” You began to explain.

“Says the freak,” Jason grinned, cutting you off.

You tightened your jaw, giving him a small glare, but continued.

“The only reason I quit my perfectly calm diner job to go with him was because he said he could help me with my ‘special abilities’ - and nobody else ever could.” You explained, perfectly content with this.

“Yeah, he’s really good at making promises, isn’t he?” Jason said, his voice scorching with a unique scorn towards Dick.

You sighed. You definitely weren’t ready to get into an argument with Jason about Dick. Instead, you were glad to change the subject.

“It’s not his fault that your only superpower is kicking things,” You replied sarcastically.

“Ugh, fuck off.” Jason ground out, clearly annoyed. “You know what, just for that, I’m taking the last one!”

He triumphantly reached into the donut box and snatched up the last donut, and took a large bite out of it while smirking at you.

“It’s a honey cruller. You can have your honey bullshit, I don’t care.” You smirked right back at him.

He rolled his eyes, and you let out a bright laugh. A sound that secretly made him even happier as he continued to eat the sweet treat.

…

The gunshot. It kept playing in your mind, over and over again.

“I made a mistake.”

The pure fear in his voice.

What mistake? What mistake had he made?

The gunshot.

Jason? Jason!

“Now, it’s time for the little birdie to go bye-bye.”

Bye-bye. Birdie going bye-bye.

You couldn’t breathe.

You checked the news multiple times and it still didn’t sink in.

‘Robin found dead in Gotham’s old Amusement Mile tonight - more details to come’.

The gunshot. A single gunshot to the head.

“I’m - I’m so sorry, Y/N. Jason’s - he’s gone.”

Sorry? He’s sorry?

You would make them all fucking sorry.

…

You didn’t come out of your bedroom that night, sobbing over the news of Jason’s death until you fell into a fitful sleep, trying to figure out how to tell your grandmother that you would be leaving for Gotham. When you went downstairs for breakfast the next morning, still shaking, tears still streaking down your face, one of her assistants was standing at the head of the table, an unpleasant look etched into her face.

She informed you that your grandmother died during the night.

You were still numb, and you could barely comprehend that your only living family, the woman you had started to see as a friend, was now also dead. You were being compounded by loss, smothered under the fist of a terrible, stupid god that you didn’t even believe in.

You sat through the will reading like a zombie - and it barely registered in your mind that she had given all of her earthly possessions to you. Apparently everyone else - cousins and distant relatives that you didn’t know, had all been fighting like cats and dogs for her wealth the minute that they had found out about the tumor. And she sought you out because she thought you were the only ‘good’ one left, especially when she saw you on the news with the Titans.

She wanted to give it all to you to spite everyone else who would have shaken her corpse for a few loose pennies.

But you couldn’t even bring yourself to care about the newfound wealth, or those glaring at you as you signed the release forms for the estate. You were too damn numb.

You left the grossly large house that you now owned, and as you headed to the airport on your way to Gotham, you were down two friends, filled to the brim with crippling grief, and somehow - millions of dollars richer. You felt dead inside. Naturally, you would have traded that money for your grandmother and Jason back in a heartbeat. But there was nobody you could trade it to.

Nobody could give you back the people you missed.

…

Dick picked you up from the airport.

He was driving one of Bruce’s fancy cars - he took your suitcase without a word, and opened the passenger’s side door for you. The minute that he got a look at your face - vacant expression, tear tracked cheeks, he wasn’t sure what to say.

From all the arguing, he thought that you and Jason didn’t even like each other. He was puzzled as to why you were so torn up about his death. He didn’t understand why you insisted on coming to Gotham - what type of closure you expected to find there.

“So…” Dick breathed out, looking through the front windshield as he drove, taking awkward sideways glances at you as you sat in the passenger’s seat, huddled into yourself. “Do you wanna talk about it?”

“Do I wanna talk about it?” You spat back, a natural defensive rudeness flaring off you. You saw Dick tense up beside you and you felt a small pang of guilt. It wasn’t his fault. He was just trying to be comforting. “I - sorry. Just - what’s there to talk about?”

Dick let out a harsh breath through his nose. You were someone that he never really knew how to talk to. Rachel and Gar had always been far more approachable to him - softer, more understanding. But you and Jason had always been rougher around the edges. A lot more independent. And he never was sure how to deal with that.

“I… I didn’t even know that you and Jason were so… close.” Dick said, choosing his words very carefully.

You didn’t know how to broach the subject either.

“I… ” You sighed. “I don’t know how to explain it.”

‘We weren’t friends. We used to have sex. Then we kind of became friends, or maybe we fell in love. Then he fucking died. There - happy?’

But you weren’t going to just say all of that to Dick. Definitely not.

“Shit’s complicated.” You huffed out.

“I get it.” Dick shrugged. “You have every right to be upset.”

You rolled your eyes sharply. You didn’t need him telling you that you had the right to mourn.

“What happened?” Dick asked suddenly.

This confused you.

“What?”

“You called me, sobbing, saying that Jason was dead. And you turned out to be right. But… how did you know?” He asked, seeming weary of his own words.

A deadly silence befell the two of you.

You swallowed sharply, not wanting to talk about it. You hadn’t even wanted to think about it since it had happened. You didn’t want to admit that the Joker had likely read your recent texts with Jason - that the bastard had crawled into your relationship with Jason and invaded your sacred privacy as a part of his stupid little game. It was the only way he knew that hearing his death live would hurt you the most. Because your pain would amuse him.

When you didn’t say anything, and he glanced over and saw that sickly expression on your face, Dick spoke up again.

“Look, I know… I know what the Joker does. He has a reputation. And when I was Robin, I saw a lot of it firsthand.” He said quietly. “Did - did he send you pictures? Because if he did, those count as police evidence-”

Of course. The cop in him just couldn’t stop.

“No.” You said, quickly cutting him off, shuddering at the thought. It was one thing you were glad you had been spared from.

Dick remained silent, waiting.

You took a deep breath, and then finally spilled the truth.

“A phone call.” You admitted quietly. “The Joker called me. And he - he made me listen. He made Jason talk to me right before it happened. I was the last person he spoke to, I-”

Your voice cracked off weakly and you couldn’t bear to continue. You swallowed down more sobs, hiding your face in your hands as tears inevitably wet your palms.

“I’m sorry.” Dick said quietly, his voice thick with his own grief - if not for Jason, then for you. For your innocence. He did know how close you had been to death previously in your young life, but the Joker had ways of making death more twisted, even if you thought you knew it well.

If he had questioned your closeness with Jason, he wouldn’t further question your grief.

You were more than relieved that the conversation ended there. The rest of the car ride droned on in silence as he drove past the edge of the city and out toward the more secluded Wayne Manor.

Even after spending a few weeks surrounded by the generational wealth that your grandmother had introduced you to, you were shocked to see the large, imposing Manor. It cast a huge shadow over the elaborate driveway as Dick pulled past a wrought-iron gate. It looked more like a small castle than a house, and you could never truly imagine Jason living there - even if he did, you could never truly imagine him feeling comfortable there and calling it home.

No wonder he was so eager to flee back to Gotham’s slums and fix-up a shithole apartment there. He probably felt like just another out of place trinket in Bruce’s collection while in this massive place.

You could have easily gotten lost there, and you were glad when Dick guided you up the stairs, still carrying your suitcase. He took you to a random, clean guest room - dressed in fancy linens and more expensive furniture that you felt entirely out of place even sitting on. It was your grandmother’s house all over again. (And in the back of your mind, you had to remind yourself that it was your house now.)

Dick put your suitcase down and then quietly muttered:

“I’ll let you get settled, and you can rest for a bit, and then-”

“I wanna see Jason’s room.” You said, interrupting him.

Dick looked conflicted. There was a gentle warring on his face, and then, after a moment -

“Okay.” He finally decided, nodding gently.

He led you to that room, and he made the first brave steps inside. You followed him in on shaking legs, forcing yourself to breathe. You weren’t sure if it was entirely psychological, but you felt the presence of an oppressive, dark ghost there. You could still hear Jason’s cries in your ears - the last words he had ever spoken to you. The gunshot as it rang out through the air.

“I made a mistake. I - I never should have gotten you involved in this.”

The room smelled vaguely of weed and had a general air of uncleanliness to it, the oppressive, old scent of dust and sweat settled over everything.

You were sure that if Jason had known you were coming, as the two of you had discussed, he would have made an effort to clean up for you. Which likely would have consisted of stuffing all of his dirty clothing under the bed and spraying a thick layer of air fresher or that shitty Axe body spray that he loved in an attempt to cover up the general funk instead of actually cleaning. But you almost found the mess to be comforting. Especially because, aside from the complex wooden paneling on the walls and a few pieces of fancy modern art that Jason definitely hadn’t put there - everything in the room was so damn Jason.

Somehow, in the huge fancy mansion, this room wasn’t fancy, wealthy and oppressive - it felt lived in. It felt like home.

He had clearly slept in the old oak bed enough times to thoroughly coat the sheets in his smell, left them tossed and unmade in the morning when he had gotten up without a care. Across from the foot of the bed, there was a large TV on a stand with a few different gaming stations (likely a bid from Bruce to buy his affection) and video games, a well-worn bean bag chair that he had sat in to play those games. A mess of take-out containers and different cups scattered around the room, and naturally - a calendar in the corner showing off an oiled-up, ‘sexy’ bikini model. You weren’t sure if that was something Jason was actually interested in, or just a display on his part to prove to Bruce that he was aggressively straight - something to throw his guardian off the trail of his true interests.

But that didn’t matter now. Jason’s sexuality had mattered little when he was alive, and mattered to no one now that he was dead.

With Dick watching you carefully, you moved to sit on the bed, and a distinct waft of Jason’s scent spiked from the sheets as you moved them. An underlying tone of musk and sweat, mixed with the strong aftershave that he always used. One that you used to hate because you thought it was too masculine. You resisted the urge to lay down and shove your face into the sheets, greedy for more of that scent.

Your throat clenched tightly and a few tears came to your eyes.

“Should I leave you alone?” Dick asked, clearly feeling awkward, unsure how to handle you and your emotions.

You responded with an entirely different question.

“What about the funeral?” You wondered aloud, your throat clenched by tears.

Naturally, you wanted to pay your respects to Jason. Even if he would think it was cheesy and ‘too typical’. His idea of paying respects to him after his death would probably be… masturbating on top of his grave, or graffitying a cop car, or something like that.

“Bruce already had Jason buried. Privately.” Dick answered.

You were a bit shocked by this.

You knew that Bruce wasn’t the kindest person, or the most socially conventional. But why wouldn’t he want to have a funeral for someone that he supposedly considered to be his son? Why wouldn’t he at least let the people who loved Jason mourn him? Did he think that Jason didn’t have anybody to attend a funeral just because he had come from the foster care system? (You knew that was factually wrong - the Titans would have attended, and Jason had spoken to you about other friends he had before Robin that he hoped to get back in touch with when he returned to Gotham. Bruce was being so damn selfish.)

“Okay.”

You choked out, trying desperately to keep all those ranting words to yourself. You didn’t know how Dick would respond, and you didn’t want to be kicked out of Wayne Manor so soon after being welcomed inside.

“You can visit him if you’d like.” Dick added on, knowing that it wasn’t much of a consolation. “He’s in the family plot.”

You nodded at this, needing more time to process.

“What - what about the Joker?” You asked. It was the next logical thing you wanted to know. Unfortunately, you had a lot of time to conjure these questions during the flight.

“He’s in the ICU.” Dick explained. “Batman did quite a number on him.”

“He’s still alive?” You gasped.

You couldn’t help but to feel personally insulted at this. To an extent, you could understand Bruce’s policy about not killing for the sake of not killing. It was a stance that he needed to stand on morally. In his mind, he couldn’t sink to their level. But the Joker was someone who had killed so many, harmed hundreds more. And he had taken Jason, someone who was determined to make the world better. Where the fuck did Bruce draw the line?

“I highly doubt that he’s going to be able to get up to his old antics ever again with the state that he’s in.” Dick added on.

You glared at him.

He sighed. “Okay. Okay. I’m just gonna leave you alone for a while. I understand that this is all still fresh. Come and find me when you want dinner, okay?”

You wanted to make a joke about getting lost in the obnoxiously large house, but you held back. Maybe it was because you didn’t have the energy, or maybe it was because you knew that it wouldn’t have been the same without Jason there to laugh.

Either way, you felt a sense of relief when Dick retreated.

You got up and decided to nose around Jason’s room. It was something he would have detested if he was alive, but you figured - hey, who’s gonna stop me?

And you knew that it was something he would have done to your room in a heartbeat if given the chance.

‘You don’t have a room, Oliver Twist. Just a cardboard box, remember?’ You could hear his voice in the back of your head remarking. You smiled, and more tears poured from your eyes.

“Yeah well, my cardboard box was cleaner than this, asswipe.” You mumbled in return.

You hated how crazy this whole thing had already made you. It had been twenty-four hours and you were already talking to his ghost.

You were more than amused to find a drawer with a few sex toys in his nightstand. Lube, a pocket pussy, and a sizable dildo. It made you laugh for the first time in what felt like forever and made you wish that you would have known that secret sooner. Another pang of mourning came through your chest as you realized that you would never get to explore more of your sex life with him. It felt so strange - having lustful cravings for a dead man. Knowing that it went so much deeper than lust. You wanted to cry again as you imagined the feeling of his hands running over you, and you quickly slammed the drawer shut.

In another one of the drawers, you found a pair of your underwear and a frequently worn tee shirt that you had forgotten to pack for your trip. Seeing it made your heart pang hard, thinking that he had taken those things from your room, clearly wanting to have pieces of you close by.

You also found some scraps of paper with notes that you had Jason had exchanged during Dick’s many winding lectures back at The Tower - dumb little drawings on them, including stick figures that were supposed to be each other, with speech bubbles saying stupid things that of course, the other person would never say. One of them was one you had made - a cartoonish, poorly drawn picture of him in his Robin suit with a large, bubble butt, and he had written beside it: ‘so you do think about my ass?’

You had no clue that he treasured these enough to keep them.

Your throat quivered with another horrible sob.

You hated the haunted feeling. The lingering of his presence, that thing in the back of your mind, like you were expecting him to walk in the door any second, make a quippy remark about you going through his stuff. He couldn’t possibly be dead, right? The same Jason who had drawn a dumb cartoon of you with devil horns and written an acrostic poem of your name with crappy middle school insults couldn’t possibly be gone, could he?

You walked across the room, seeing that he had a few CDs stacked up beside a fancy slim CD player. That shocked you. You figured that he would have been the ‘digital only’ type of guy. Among the music itself, there was nothing super surprising. Hollywood Undead, Pierce The Veil, Bring Me The Horizon, Panic! At The Disco, Coldplay, Fall Out Boy…

But then you dug a little deeper, and you were surprised to find some Britney Spears in the mix. Even from beyond the grave, Jason kept showing you new sides of himself, in the most beautiful ways. You picked an album you didn’t recognize - something with a green cover and some kind of large metal claws on it - The Jaws of Life - out of the pile, and put it into the player, and listened to the melancholic music as you continued your snooping.

You didn’t find much else of note. Dirty laundry, more takeout containers, an old used bong in a shitty hiding place because it was too big to hide anywhere else.

You grabbed one of Jason’s tee shirts and walked back over to his bed, practically getting high off the smell, nauseous at the idea that the scent wasn’t going to last as long as you needed it to. You sat back on the bed and picked up a notebook that he had sitting on his nightstand when it caught your eye. You never thought of Jason as much of a writer - he told you himself that he was more of the physical type, someone who liked action more than being inside his own head. He much preferred using sex and exercise so that he wouldn’t have to think and be inside his mind too much. So you wondered what would peak his interest enough for him to write it down.

There was a certain page that had a ‘bookmark’ on it - that bookmark being a piece of printer paper that had been folded in half. When you opened the book, a separate, much smaller piece of paper fell out into your lap first. You picked it up and read what was on it.

It was a scrap of a page from some novel (you could tell due to the softer texture of the paper), the edges frayed away, but purposefully torn, according to the words that had been left behind. It was a quote specifically chosen by Jason, some of the words among the chosen passage had been highlighted by him, firmly underlined with a blue pen.

‘You see I usually find myself among strangers because I drift here and there trying to forget the sad things that happened to me.’

Because it was only part of a page, you couldn’t see any indications of what book it was from, and that made you intensely curious. You found it interesting that Jason had highlighted this passage. That he found it personal enough to rip it out of the book and keep it close by. You slid it into your pocket - you would look it up later, if you remembered to.

The bigger page of printer paper was a printed out real estate listing. The real estate listing that Jason had sent you. On the page of the notebook that it had been marking, he had written down a large heading in his slightly messy handwriting.

‘SHITHOLE TOUR’

That caused you to let out another tearful laugh. You couldn’t contain a cheek-splitting smile that overtook you as you began to read all the things he had written.

It was a bunch of Downtown Gotham addresses, some of them crossed out with little notes written beside them, very mindfully assessed by Jason. Things like ‘ROACHES’ in all capitals as a warning, or ‘the old lady on the first floor seems like a perv - weird’, and ‘guy with the mustache on third floor might be running a drug den - but weirdly nice? Maybe’.

You laughed more with each thing you read, loving the glimpse into his unfiltered thoughts. It brought you more to the beautifully heart-breaking conclusion - Jason had really been trying to find the two of you an apartment. It wasn’t just a joke or a theory to him. It was a reality that he wanted to bring to life for you the minute that you stepped foot in Gotham.

And now - he was gone.

You were crying freely now as you flipped more pages. You came across some numbers and formulas that you didn’t understand at all. You had no clue what Jason was doing with them, but you could only assume that it was something in an attempt to help Bruce with a case. Something to try and get back on his good side.

And then you came across something that somehow broke your heart even more than the shattered, tiny pieces that already existed inside your hollow chest.

The heading said: ‘LESLIE’S HOMEWORK’

You distinctly remembered the name, and you had to wrack your exhausted brain for a moment to remember why. Jason said that it was the shrink Bruce had been forcing him to see. So she had given him ‘homework’?

Your stomach clenched when you saw your name near the top of the page.

‘Dear Y/N,

I know this is incredibly stupid, and I feel like an idiot even doing this. But I am writing you a letter that you’re never supposed to read.’

Okay, so that was the assignment. You knew it was a common therapy technique - you used to watch a lot of daytime TV when you didn’t go to school and you had heard about it on Oprah. It was supposed to be healthy, writing someone a letter that you would never show them, never send it to them, expressing yourself openly ‘to’ them without them ever knowing what you had said. So that you could get grievances off your back, get some kind of closure. Wait - what fucking closure did Jason need from you?

You likely should have slammed the notebook shut, tossed it aside and just ran. You never should have read on, because he was right. It was something that you were never supposed to read. It was the biggest breach of privacy that you ever could have performed.

But he was dead. Who was going to stop you? Who was going to care? Who the fuck was ever going to find out?

You were too damn curious and you were looking for your own closure. You needed this. Even if it was going to hurt like hell - even if he had nothing but bad things to say about you here. You needed this. You needed to know what had been on his mind. You needed something so that you could attempt to heal.

So you took a breath, and you read on.

‘Leslie says the whole point is that I’m not supposed to feel stupid. Well, that feeling stupid means it’s working, or something. That this is about “opening up more” and “being honest with myself about my feelings” - therapy bullshit. I wasn’t even gonna do this. Who the fuck gets homework from their therapist? I didn’t even do homework from my teachers. I didn’t have time for that shit. But whatever, I’m trying.’

Those last two words were harshly underlined, and it made you swell with an ache of pride for Jason.

He had been trying. You had seen so much of that. He had been trying so hard to put his life back together. Trying so hard to put himself back on the right path, to give himself a fucking future. A future with you.

And the Joker had stolen all of that away.

You felt another wicked sting of rage toward the man - that thing who was now in a comfortable ICU bed instead of in the morgue. But you pushed down that rage in order to keep reading.

‘I was laying in bed just now. I couldn’t sleep, and I couldn’t stop thinking about you, but I couldn’t work up the fucking nerve to text you. Because I keep thinking that I’m gonna fuck up and tell you how I really feel. And Leslie says that’s a good thing, but -’

It abruptly cut off there and started a new paragraph.

‘The whole point of this is that I’m supposed to be more honest. More honest with myself. Which feels stupid. How am I not being honest with myself? I live in my own goddamn head. How the fuck could I lie to myself? Apparently I’m not being “honest enough” because I can’t be fucking honest with you. Because I’m such a goddamn coward. Well, there’s the first point:

I’m afraid. I’m terrified.

I’m terrified that I’m gonna lose you.

You are one of the best-’

This last line was scratched out in favor of something else.

‘You are THE BEST person in my life.’

You ran your fingers over the words. You hated that you were finding this out too damn late.

‘You’re funny, you’re gorgeous, you’re smart. You call me on my bullshit. And I would still say all this stuff even if you didn’t let me fuck you, cause it’s always been true. And it’s a wonder that you do let me fuck you - the fact that you let a medicore guy like me in your bed still amazes me.’

You found your eyes blurring with more tears, and you had to stiffly wipe them away before you kept reading.

‘I just keep waiting to trip. I keep waiting to fuck things up with you - because that’s what I do. I fuck things up. I break good things until they’re unrecognizable. I don’t want that to happen to you. I know it’s stupid and dumb and selfish to keep you in my life because eventually I’m gonna fuck you over. Forever.’

Is this really what Jason thought of himself? What he thought about his relationship with you?

Your chest ached as you tried to hold back the sobs that wanted out past your weak lungs. For now, you tried your best to hold it back. You wiped away more tears, and kept reading.

‘You are so fucking important to me. You are the most important person in my life.’

There was something else there. You could have sworn it said ‘I lov-’ - leading to that big terrifying thing, those horrible scarring words. But it had been heavily scribbled out before he had written something else.

‘I am a poison. And you don’t deserve to die because of me.’

That was the last thing he had written. The rest of the notebook was blank.

You tossed it aside in frustration and curled into the bed, sobbing, stuffing your face into the pillow and woefully basking in Jason’s smell.

Eventually, the half-baked illusion that he was there in bed with you lulled you into a restless sleep.

…

Later, when you woke from that fitful sleep (one filled with more of Jason’s cries and echoes of that gunshot) - the music from the CD player had stopped and the dull sunlight pouring through the curtains had faded into blackness. You had no clue exactly how long you had been asleep, and you didn’t bother to check what time it was as you got up.

You wandered through the needlessly large house and eventually, you found Dick in the kitchen. He asked if you were hungry and instead of answering, you had him direct you toward the ‘family plot’ that he had spoken about. Once he did, you grabbed a beer out of the nearby fridge - it was some fancy craft beer that Jason would have hated, but it would work nonetheless. And then, you made the walk to his grave in darkness.

Seeing Jason’s name carved into the stone made your stomach clench and brought on another wave of harsh nausea. You hated that this made it all the more real. He was truly gone.

When you looked at the beer bottle in your hand, you realized that you didn’t have anything to pop open the crimped metal edge of the cap. Without hesitation, you reached over and propped it against the stiff stony edge of his headstone, and bumped your hand down against the top - essentially using his grave to open the beer. The ironic fact that he would have done something like this himself and he would have found it so utterly amusing caused you to burst into maniacal laughter - laughter that quickly stole your breath and forced you to your knees, purely from how tired you were from the events of the last world-rocking days.

“You - you’re an asshole.” You wheezed out.

You were speaking to the stone as though it were him. The more your eyes burned into the words, the more you focused on it - Jason - the less you could comprehend that you were kneeling on dirt that actually covered up his body. You took a swig of the beer and nearly spit out the bitter liquid. But you forced yourself to swallow, imagining that if he were there, he would call you a pussy for not being able to get it down.

“And this shit is disgusting. I was right.”

You then poured a healthy amount of it onto the still freshly upturned soil, and it easily began to soak into the dirt. It was a way of honoring him, of course - but you still felt no closer to getting closure.

You took another swig and choked it down.

“You weren’t supposed to leave me.” You choked out, quickly shifting from that bizarre laughter back to tears. “You weren’t supposed to leave me. We were supposed to-”

‘We were supposed to be together.’

You couldn’t even bring yourself to say it before you completely broke down. With a shaking hand, you poured the rest of the beer into the soil, and you found yourself clutching at his gravestone for a good long while, letting those sobs exorcise from your lungs. Some part of you believed that letting yourself cry as loudly as possible might help.

Eventually, Dick came out to get you when it started to rain.

…

It wasn’t long before the Joker was moved from the ICU wing at Gotham Memorial into Arkham. He had made some miraculous recovery, and his condition was actually improving. You wanted to scorn Dick - wanted to yell, scream, throw things. But you were tired. And you guessed that your sideways glare toward him over the news coverage was more than enough for him to get your point.

That, and you were putting your energy toward something else.

From the moment you found out that the Joker was back in Arkham, your mind began churning. You knew it was a bad idea. But - Jason loved bad ideas. What better way to honor him than with your own ill conceived, fucked up plan?

You weren’t used to having money. You were someone who knew how to get things in life by stealing, scamming, or exploiting loopholes for freebies. But one thing you did know: money can get you things easily. Especially illegal things.

Finding a hacker who was willing to do the job when your budget was near limitless wasn’t hard. Especially when you knew where to start - frequenting shady bars in Gotham, skulking around like a criminal, looking for tips on who to hire. When you gave the guy the money and told him what you wanted, he wondered why. You weren’t in the mood for answering questions. Turns out that money shuts people up too.

It was a simple plan: hack into the system, create a fake prisoner transfer file for The Joker. When the transfer was set to take place…

You watched, you waited. You knew that this wasn’t what Dick wanted you to use your training for, but everything he had taught you made it all so much easier. You could have made it quick. A sniper rifle from a rooftop would have ended things in seconds. But you wanted him to suffer. You wanted him to know who you were. You wanted him to know why this was happening to him.

He was a clown, and he likely wouldn’t even care. He had killed so many, he might not even remember the details. But you needed to look into his eyes. This was for you.

You took out the guards, uncaring if they ended up dead or simply injured in the process. His laughter in the background, taunting you the whole time, finding amusement in your violence - it only fueled you. When there were half a dozen bodies on the ground, a mere roadblock in getting to your real goal, you finally turned to him.

The Joker was clutching his stomach, nearly bent over with laughter, his movement only restricted by the shackles he was wearing, a dozen more chains than they would have put on any other prisoner, even with his freshly healing injuries. He seemed to find the whole thing very amusing.

“My, that was fun-!” He complimented you, and you sharply cut off his words by grabbing the front of his orange jumpsuit and throwing him to the ground.

“Shut up, clown.” You ground out, purposefully deepening your voice, trying your best to sound intimidating.

He was thin, on the emaciated side; even with the array of heavy chains jingling around him, it wasn’t difficult to take him down. It was no wonder that he needed a group of goons, some good muscle, to get anything done. In the back of your mind, you had a terrible thought - it was because you were used to sparring with Jason. Used to a challenge. Ironically enough, he had prepared you for this.

You kicked him in the stomach. One, twice, three times - the harder you kicked, the harder he laughed. It only pissed you off more. You knew that you wouldn’t have long before someone discovered you. You wanted this to be personal, but you didn’t have too much time.

You got down on his level, down on your knees beside his prone body, and you turned him over, forcing him to face you as he continued to cackle. In order to silence him, you put a hand around his throat - squeezing just hard enough to cut off some air, but not hard enough to cause him to black out. Not yet.

“Listen.” You said harshly. “Listen well.”

The Joker grinned. You pressed down on his throat harder.

“You took from me.” You said, heavy emotions almost choking off your own throat. “Not Batman, not Gotham - me.” You took a breath. “Robin, Jason Todd. He was mine. And you took him from me.”

You thought nothing of giving out his ‘secret’ identity now, knowing that the Joker wouldn’t be able to share the information. He wouldn’t live long enough for it to be an issue.

“You-” He choked out the word, and you released your grip slightly, giving him the mercy of last words. “You’re the one from birdie’s phone. The pretty one.” He laughed at this.

“I am.” You grinned, feeling your own sickening kind of joy take over. “I’m the one who’s gonna kill you.”

You put your hand in the middle of his chest, and then - you used your powers in a way that you never had before. You formed small, miniscule ice crystals, injecting them deep into his flesh. You flash-froze him from the inside-out, watching as his face twisted in horrible, inconceivable pain - his eyes popping with bright red blood vessels and his eye sockets turning blue.

He had the most painful heart attack imaginable as his heart muscles were frozen solid in moments, his heart turning to ice inside of his chest. It was something that he would never recover from. And it was a message - he had stolen your heart, and you had shown the world what his was truly meant to be.

By the time the guards found him, you were long gone. The medical examiner who did the autopsy on his body couldn’t explain why his heart had frostbite on it, some large ice crystals formed on the muscles in places.

The official statement released to the press stated that he died of a heart attack while in holding, likely due to ‘long-term stress’. Nobody felt brave enough to declare it a murder.

…

A while later, you were moving into your new apartment.

Of course, it was one of the apartments on Jason’s list.

You had viewed all of the ones he had written fairly positive notes beside, and it turned out - the listing he had sent you originally was the best fit for you. The building it was in was one of the newest (built in the late 80s) so the apartment itself didn’t need too much work aside from cosmetic touches. The other people living in the building seemed nice enough, and none of them seemed outright criminal. And, just as Jason had wanted - it was high up, and gave an overall view of the neighborhood. It was a protective perch over one of the lower income, higher crime areas of Gotham. In his honor, you were going to do your best to protect the people there.

You had no intention to return to The Tower. Maybe only to collect some of your things, and some more of Jason’s things that you wanted to keep. Ultimately, this would be your home now. You were going to honor him in your own way.

Dick and Dawn (who had freshly arrived from D.C.) were helping you move in. All of your personal belongings were already there and ready to be unpacked - the few things that you did have, seeing as you were used to living out of a single backpack. Having a place of your own was definitely going to be new. They were helping you bring in some things from a shopping trip - the first load of groceries that you needed for your new home, along with some other critical things like toilet paper and fresh sheets, and curtains that you had to venture hanging up by yourself.

“I think that’s everything.” Dawn announced as she placed one last bag on the crowded counter.

“Thanks, guys.” You said, giving them a small, forced smile.

Even though it had been a few weeks, you still felt Jason’s death so heavy on you. You knew that it would take time - but you felt like there would never be enough. You felt like you would wake up every single day with the heavy shock pouring over you, the horrible realization that you were never going to see him again.

“You gonna be good?” Dawn posed. “You sure you don’t wanna come with us for dinner? Or we could stay and make-”

“No.” You quickly shook your head. “No thanks. That’s a really sweet offer, but…” You hesitated for a moment. “Honestly, I’d just prefer some alone time. That’s why I bought the apartment.”

Dick let out a harsh sigh and Dawn gave you a look of pure pity. She stepped toward you, and you dreaded the hug that you knew was incoming. She was a very touchy person, and you - not so much.

“You know you don’t have to be alone right now.” She told you, using her usual soothing, motherly voice. “We are here for you - we’re all here for you.”

Even if she also didn’t understand the strange, unconventional relationship that you had with Jason, she would be there to comfort you if you needed it.

She gently grasped your shoulders, and then - there it was. She pulled you into a tight hug, and you forced yourself to gently pat her back in return, even though you were feeling dull and concrete and unreceptive of the affection.

“Thanks.” You mumbled into her flowing hair. When she pulled away, you spoke again, wanting to make sure she heard you. “Yeah - thank you.” You forced another smile, and Dawn nodded as she gave you another look of pure pity.

“Dawn, why don’t you go pull the car around - I wanna talk to Y/N for a minute. Then I’ll meet you downstairs, okay?” Dick said, holding out his keys toward her.

She speared a look of pure skepticism between you and Dick. It was an entirely strange occurance for him to let anyone else drive the Porsche, and he was offering up this privilege freely to her. You must have done something troubling to warrant this as a way to distract her away from the conversation.

“O-kay.” Dawn slugged out. She hesitated, but then she took the keys and gave you one last heavy glance before she left, closing the apartment door behind her.

“I have a little gift for you.” Dick said.

You knew that wasn’t the entire reason he had sent Dawn away. Instead of outright asking, you waited patiently to see whatever it was you were in trouble for. You hoped that it wasn’t the fact that you had raided Jason’s room and taken quite a few things before you had left. But you guessed that Bruce and Dick weren’t keeping track of Jason’s tee shirts and CDs with a fucking inventory.

He went into one of the bags, obviously looking for something that he had put in there at the store - likely the reason that he had insisted on paying.

He came out with two items - a baseball bat, and something else smaller that you didn’t see at first. He handed you the smaller item - which turned out to be an additional deadbolt with a chain for you to install on your front door.

“You can never be too careful.” He told you.

“Thank you.” You replied, putting it off to the side. “I do have an appointment with an alarm company next week.”

“Smart.” He said, nodding.

“Yeah - Jason wrote down the number for the alarm company on the back of the real estate listing.” You said. “He’s good like that.”

You hated that you found yourself using present tense to refer to him, unable to stop it. Your words were unintentionally sharp, as though you were trying to snub Dick, trying to argue against the way he had spoken about Jason in the past, when you were truly just thick with grief.

He gave you an awkward look, and nodded, and then moved on.

“And this was Hank’s idea.” He said, handing you the bat. “He doesn’t like the idea of you living on your own either.”

“I’m gonna be fine,” You pressed, reaching out to take the baseball bat anyway. “You guys do remember that I have superpowers, right?” You added on, giving a fake chuckle to try and lighten the mood.

You wanted to say ‘I could just kill anybody who breaks in here’ - but that might be a little incriminating. It definitely wasn’t something that Dick would like hearing.

You hated that Dick was already on the same mental track. Being the precise, suspicious detective that he was, he could practically read the words in your eyes even though you didn’t dare to speak them.

“There was one more thing.” He spoke quietly, approaching you like you were a shady, nervous suspect.

Like a deer in headlights, you didn’t dare to move. You knew this was it - this was the thing you were in trouble for. The reason he had wanted to get you alone. You knew that he was tracking every single movement now - every single muscle twitch, every single micro-shadow in your facial expression. You couldn’t afford to give anything away.

“What is it?” You asked, trying your hardest to sound casual.

“There was a police report that came across my desk the other day… Barbara wanted help with something.” He said, very clearly trying to sound casual himself. “The coroner had a real head-scratcher when the Joker came across his table. Apparently he had severe frostbite on his heart muscles, and that was what caused him to have a heart attack.”

You couldn’t stand the observation anymore. You moved around him and put the items down, pretending to care about unloading the groceries, purposefully busying yourself under the scrutiny of his eye. It only made you look more guilty, but you didn’t entirely care.

If he was going to say that you did it, he would have just said it plainly. He might as well have. But he was waiting for you to admit to it. Waiting for you to profess your guilt and await punishment like someone who actually cared about the moral penance. But you didn’t. If Dick Grayson wanted to slap cuffs on you and haul you into The GCPD, he had more than enough evidence to do so. He was one of the only people in Gotham who knew about your powers. He was one of the only people who could connect you to the mysterious death.

But it seemed like he wasn’t going to do that.

He wanted you to say the words.

“I heard on the news that it was natural causes.” You remarked, putting on a bored tone.

“Listen, Y/N-”

“I don’t have time for the sermon, Dick.” You said harshly, not even turning to face him. He let out another harsh sigh. “Thank you for everything you’ve done for me, but I’d like to be left alone now.”

Surprisingly - Dick didn’t move to arrest you. Instead, he left the apartment with nothing more than a petulant huff and a door slam.

…

Jason was panicking. Again, stupidly, that fear was getting to him.

Don’t be afraid. Don’t be afraid. Don’t be afraid.

He had to find you.

You had gone missing. He wasn’t even entirely sure where he was, but he knew that he had to find you. He was rushing through the maze of - wherever this place was. It was concrete and brick, tight alleyways that all looked the same and never felt familiar.

Soon, he came to a bright red door that was suspiciously wide open in front of him - though it felt like a trap, he rushed inside.

It led to a tight stairwell. Letting his horrible panic fuel him, he rushed upward. More stairs. More stairs. More stairs.

His panic chased the air out of his lungs. His chest tightened, and his muscles were crying out for oxygen. Though he had no clue how long he had been climbing, he felt entirely too breathless. He felt like he should have been in better shape than this.

He needed to be strong if he was going to save you.

And he was going to save you.

You’re weak. You’re weak. You’re weak.

Finally, after what felt like far too long, he burst out of the stairwell and into the room. It was a skeleton - steel beams and unfinished concrete, tall metal window frames with no glass panes in them. It looked suspiciously like the place that Dick had confronted Deathstroke. Like the place that Jason had taken that too-many-stories fall that had nearly killed him.

“Robin!”

Someone called out to him - a terrified voice that was far too familiar.

His head whipped around and his gut dropped.

There you were, standing in one of those tall window panes, your feet balanced right on the edge, with the Joker standing near you. A gun poised to your chest. He was going to shoot you, he was going to kill you, he was going to push you right off the edge -

This is all your fault. This is all your fault. This is all your fault.

“Y/N!”

Jason raced to get to you, and before he made it halfway across the impossibly large space, a gunshot sounded off. The Joker let out a cackle. And you were blown backward, knocked out of the window.

Jason made a dive, and luckily, he caught your hand just in time. You were bleeding from a wound in the middle of your chest, but still conscious enough to look up at him with bleary eyes. He held on bitterly tight, desperately trying to pull you up-

“Jason, you have to let me go.” You said, your breath weak as you continued to bleed from the wound.

“What? No!” He screamed back, entirely appalled by the idea. “I’m gonna pull you up! I-”

“Jason - you have to let me go.”

Jason felt a sting - something as harsh as being plunged into a frozen lake without warning. And then, before his very eyes, his black gloved hands became encased in ice, beginning to freeze solid. Before he could move or scream out in protest, his fingertips crumbled away, bringing his whole hands with them, causing him to lose his grip on you as his hands broke off into nothingness.

He opened his mouth to scream, but nothing came out. All he could do was watch as you fell thousands of feet into nothingness, being consumed by the pitch black pit that was Gotham City.

You were gone.

He couldn’t save you.

…

Jason awoke with a gasp.

“Y/N?”

Your name was the first thing that rocketed from his cold lips.

He was inclined to believe that the whole thing was nothing more than a terrible nightmare. He had to believe that he would wake up in bed next to you in The Tower with your cool hands running over his body, telling him to go back to sleep. The two of you would laugh it off together.

But he had no such luck.

There was a dark chuckle from the other side of the room that did nothing for Jason’s horrible disorientation. He tried his hardest to take in his surroundings past the rapid beating in his chest and the general feeling of intense panic.

Between the semi-darkness, the stony ceiling, the general freezing cold that made his bare skin numb and the dripping wetness he could hear distantly - maybe the sound of old pipes? He had no fucking clue where he was.

“No, no. Just me.” A strange voice replied - leaving Jason even more confused.

His eyes whipped toward the sound of the voice and soon his eyes landed upon the bright yellow jumpsuit and the thick beard surrounding that unsettling grin-

Crane.

But why?

Jason was still unsettled with panic and trying to piece together what the hell had happened. The last thing he remembered…

“The Joker… he…” He couldn’t even bring himself to say it. Because it couldn’t possibly be true.

The Joker had tortured him for days, forced him to speak to you on the phone… forced him to say goodbye, and then he had shot Jason in the head. He should be dead, shouldn’t he?

Jason took another calculated, slow breath, trying to keep himself from hyperventilating completely.

“Where am I?”

A flurry of other questions came to mind, but he chose this one first. Didn’t I die? Why the fuck are you here? Shouldn’t I be in a hospital?

He looked down at his body and noticed his skin was pristine. Completely free of any of the wounds that the Joker had inflicted into him, even free of any scars to evidence that it had happened, Jason was left further confused.

Had it all been a dream?

“Shh… breathe. Just breathe.” Crane insisted, coming over to put a very non-comforting hand onto Jason’s shoulder. “Stay calm.” Something that didn’t make it any easier for Jason to calm down with this array of questions pinging around inside of his head. “You’re safe, okay?” He wasn’t entirely sure of that. Not yet. “You’re in the only place in Arkham that a fella can get a modicum of privacy.”

Well, at least Crane had answered his question.

He was inside of Arkham somehow after he had been shot in the head by the Joker. That was fucking weird. And it brought up even more questions for him.

“What happened to me?” Jason pressed.

Had Crane poisoned him with Fear Gas and caused him to hallucinate the entire thing? Was that why Crane seemed so calm and almost… amused?

Crane walked across the room and began fiddling with an old record player, and Jason followed with his eyes, glaring at the man’s back when he remained silent, delaying his answer for several bloated moments.

“Well… long and short… you were dead, I brought you back.” He finally announced. “The Joker killed you.”

Jason had been dead?

Jason had died.

He couldn’t even conceive of it. He barely even felt shock in those moments. It felt so unreal that he couldn’t even process the information.

But the longer he thought about it, the more it made sense. He had been shot in the fucking head. Logically, nobody should survive that. And his body didn’t have any evidence of the days long torture he had experienced. It was almost as if he had a completely new body. But still, this left him with so many questions.

Before he could even begin to cook those up, Crane finally got the music started, some creepy slow rock tune, and then he turned to Jason with a look bordering on snobbish disgust.

“You’re welcome.” He said pointedly.

Clearly, he had been expecting Jason to say ‘thank you’ for this strange miracle - even though Jason still wasn’t sure that he was happy about it. Perhaps he would have been better off dead.

Jason didn’t say anything, and Crane rolled his eyes before he brushed right past the point and continued on.

“But you know, speaking of the Joker. And your icy friend - Y/N, was it?”

Jason’s whole body stiffened up at the mention of your name.

You were perhaps the one singular highlight to being alive again. He would get another chance with you. If he knew the way out of here, he would have been running out at top speed, trying to get back to you.

But what did Crane want with you? How the fuck did Crane even know your name?

Jason gave him nothing more than a stiff-jawed glare, and Crane turned back to the record player, picking up something from beside it - a manila folder file with the GCPD logo stamped on the front. Jason remembered something about Crane being a consultant for the police force, and he wondered why they allowed him to keep copies of the files.

“You know, it wasn’t long after you kicked the bucket that the old J-Man got his ticket punched, too.” Crane told him. “There was a big hoody-ha going on between Babs and her crew about whether or not it should be ruled a homicide.” He gave a wicked grin. “It was the first time the coroner had ever seen a human heart with frost-bite.”

He tossed the file down beside Jason, letting it fall open and causing some of the photos to splay out.

Jason’s stomach twisted when he saw the Joker’s old mugshot. The image caused his mind to tick back. Some of that night played in his mind. The Joker laughing in his face, mocking his pain as he came up with new ways to torture Jason. He picked up one of the photos behind it, pulling it out to get a better look. It was a picture of the Joker’s dead body, laying on the cold metal table in the morgue. Something that made it all the more real. The fucker truly was dead. Hopefully, unlike Jason, he would stay dead. He had been beaten bloody, but surely enough, the center of his chest was blue and black necrotic with a signature targeted frost-bite that he had only seen come from one place before.

It had definitely been you.

Jason had never had the chance to see you in action before, but he had seen photos like this on your file - one that Dick had put together about you. A file that he had been all too curious to look up when left alone with the computer at The Tower. You had never killed anybody before, but Dick found quite a few cases of criminals going to the ER with severe frostbite, even in the middle of summer, and he had traced those back to you.

It had always been self defense, especially when you had been living on the street, and he had warned you not to use your powers ‘without thought’. Jason thought it was cool that you could literally freeze off people’s dicks if you wanted to, and that threat always sat deeply with him when you made it. He vowed to himself that he would never hurt you in a way that caused you to use your powers. And in a way, he had broken that promise - you had only killed the Joker because of him.

Among all the emotional chaos - waking up in a strange place, finding out that he had fucking died - it gave him a strange sense of comfort. Knowing that you hadn’t hesitated to go after the man who had killed him. Especially because it was something he would have done for you. He would have killed any fucker who dared to touch you.

“Your friend is pretty… cool.” Crane chuckled at his own terrible pun, and Jason was broken away from this sense of comfort, reminded that the man was still there. “I will say ‘friend’. I won’t pretend I know which way you like to hang - though you seem to play in a different part of the cave than the other Bats -”

“Shut up.” Jason hissed, unsure why he was so defensive. It’s not like he cared if Crane knew about his sexuality. He was just protective of you, as always.

“Oooh. Touchy.” Crane chuckled, sucking sharply through his teeth. “See, I wouldn’t get so upset. I’d be proud if I were you. Cause if I were so inclined, I would say that your ice cold friend is pretty hot-”

“Don’t make me hit you.” Jason cut off Crane’s words yet again, his voice far too dull and tired to make it sound like any true threat.

Crane shrugged, and thankfully, dropped the subject.

He gave Crane another stiff glare, and then finally asked the question that he had been wanting to.

“What do you want with Y/N?”

“You must know that I didn’t just yank you out of your grave for funsies,” Crane replied, a horrible grin on his lips. “I have something much grander in mind. A grand design for Gotham that means chopping off its current head and replacing it with someone - or, multiple someones who are much more adept for the job,”

Jason stirred with nerves. What the hell did that have to do with you?

“You and I both know that the Bat has to go.” Crane continued. “And I think that someone who can do things like this,” He said, picking up the photo of the Joker’s dead body to further prove his point. “Would be perfect for our cause.”

“No.” Jason was quick to stamp out that little idea.

Jason was unsure of a lot of things. He had no clue what Crane’s plans were or how they involved him. He had no clue how the fuck he had ended up here. But he knew he owed Crane a debt. And he knew that anything he would get you involved in was dangerous. So he wasn’t going to drag you down with him.

“Again - touchy.” Crane hissed through his teeth, shaking his head. “Perhaps we’ll come back to that idea later, when you’re a bit less-”

“No.” Jason repeated, firmer now. “Whatever it is that you’re doing, I’ll be on board,” He hated to promise this now, but he knew that it would lay a better ground for him to speak his next words. “But you have to leave Y/N out of it. This is business, our business. And if you bring Y/N into it, then you’re touching my personal shit, and I won’t be afraid to fuck up yours.”

There was a moment - the air was tense and Jason was afraid that he had made a threat too large without anything to back it up. Even slightly weakened from a literal trip to the grave and not having any weapons on his person, he did think that he could beat Crane up with his bare hands to escape if necessary. But he wasn’t sure what kind of chemically induced nightmares the man had up his sleeve as insurance.

After a beat too long, Crane let out a laugh.

“I like that energy.” He grinned.

Jason let out a breath, slightly relieved.

“Now, let’s talk logistics.”

…

You soon became well-established in your new neighborhood.

You decorated your apartment to your liking - fixed up the cosmetic things that needed to be fixed, got your alarm system installed, and it wasn’t long before it became a cozy new home for you. Though you were still heartbroken and still mourning, you now had a comfortable place to do so. Like a cat crawling into a hole to lick your wounds, at least you had somewhere nice to lay down every night before crying yourself to sleep. You had taken the shithole and fixed it up to be a decent place that you knew Jason would have loved.

Which was one of the worst parts. You knew he would have loved it, and you knew that he deserved to be happy there. But people don't always get what they deserve.

You became functional in your mourning.

During the daytime, you volunteered at a youth center in the neighborhood that Jason grew up in. It felt like a fitting way to honor him. Spending your time at a place he would have frequented when he was younger, helping out forgotten, at-risk kids like he once was. You donated a fair amount of money there when they complained about not having enough resources for the children, or said they needed repairs to the building. It felt like the least you could do with your stupid, new-found wealth.

Some of the other people working there wondered what a ‘rich snob’ like you was doing in Downtown Gotham, and you didn't answer many of their questions or go out to socialize with them after work. But soon, they came to welcome you into the fold when you showed up every single day to do volunteer work, even the messy kind that everyone hated, and when you managed to bond with some of the kids.

You filled your nighttime hours with patrols of the neighborhood, using your powers to help those in need and to scare off those with unkind intentions who would prey on the weak and the vulnerable. You went through the motions, but your heart wasn't always truly in it. Not without Robin by your side. Every single night, you collapsed into bed exhausted and cried for a while, maybe getting a blink of sleep before your early morning alarm went off and you were at the youth center once again.

It became an easy routine that often made you too tired to think about Jason - but at the same time, you knew that you weren’t truly processing his death and what it had meant to you.

You looked up the quote from the scrap of paper in Jason’s notebook, and you found out it was from The Great Gatsby. You purchased a copy and read it, and you almost laughed when you realized it was about a man named Jay who had inherited wealth from a random rich man who took him in. Someone who threw parties, trying to attract the attention of a lover he thought would never be worthy of him. When Jay drowned himself in the pool, you threw the book across the room, stomped on it, and wondered if Jason was laughing at you - wherever he was.

You cursed on him and called him an asshole as you had your shower that night, and you couldn't stop thinking about holding onto him as he dangled off that building, so high off the ground. Why was he so hell bent on self destruction?

Now, you would truly never know.

You had heard about Red Hood on the news - a new fierce adversary of the Titans since Batman had fled town. The Bat up and left, apparently believing that he could no longer protect the true balance of good and evil within Gotham with Robin and the Joker both dead, two things so entirely out of his control. Although Dick had asked for your help with the Red Hood case, you chose to stay far away from it. Something about it just didn't feel right. And you weren't ready to work with the Titans again. Not yet.

Especially considering a woman who introduced herself as Molly came into the youth center with a missing young boy, unsure where else to take him. She had been tearful and panicked, recounting a tale of how Red Hood had ‘returned’ the missing boy to her without a word.

You thought that someone who went out of his way to commit such an act couldn’t possibly be all bad. Dick talked about him like he was pure evil incarnate, but as far as you knew, he only seemed to only be murdering drug dealers and those loyal to the ex Clown Prince. Why put a stop to a good thing?

You didn't need to have an argument with Dick about the whole thing, so you just stayed away.

Sometimes, when walking the streets on your patrols late at night, you felt eyes on you. Naturally, you ignored the feeling. You filed it away, brushed it off as paranoia or lack of sleep - generally unfounded. No one ever snuck up on you that you couldn’t handle, so why worry?

And when someone anonymously dropped off a large bag of goods to the youth center and addressed it as a gift to you, you did not consider the two things to be related. You found it lucky and unremarkable - you wanted to blame it on Dick, at the very least. You thought maybe it was his emotionally constipated apology for the way the two of you had left things when he had dropped you off at your apartment. You found yourself tired and uncurious.

You tried your best to carry on with your newly established life.

It's not like that life was going to change anytime soon.

…

It was a shithole.

It was a shithole, and you should have known better. Of course you weren’t going to be immune to the streak of crime in Gotham - especially not downtown. Especially not after the Bat disappeared from the skies and every half-cocked crackhead was getting more brazen by the minute.

You woke up to the sound of someone’s heavy footsteps on the floor. In your haze of sleep, maybe one of the first good sleeps you had gotten in weeks, you could have been convinced that it was someone in the apartment above you, the sound of boots heavy upstairs as someone settled home for the night. But after years of being on the streets, fending for yourself, your ears were more well trained than that. Your body was much more wary of potential threats.

You heard wincing, a sound of pain. The tapping of wood against itself. It almost sounded like someone sifting through the cupboards, opening and closing them in quick succession? Someone rapidly rifling through your cupboards, looking for something.

And it was definitely coming from inside your apartment.

Holy fuck.

Being such a light sleeper was paranoia and trauma knit into you, and for once – that feeling of alarm bells was right.

Within seconds of the realization, you sat upright in bed, your hands fumbling around in the dark for the baseball bat that Dick had given you. Yes, you had powers, but there was nothing wrong with a good old-fashioned knock to the noggin. And it looked more threatening on sight. Your hand found the stiff handle of the bat in the darkness and you forcefully pried your sleep-drunk eyes open, your heart pounding with anxiety in your chest – an odd contrast to the tired, sluggish nature of your limbs as you untangled yourself from the covers and got out of bed.

You were only wearing an oversized tee shirt and a pair of boxer briefs, your bare feet cold against the floor, but you were ready to take down whoever it was with pure adrenaline and spite.

As soon as you emerged from the hallway into the main living area, a chilling breeze brushed against your bare thighs, shocking you further awake. You forced your eyes open even wider, staring into the darkness, surveying the scene, and you quickly found that one of your main windows was wide open. The one connected to the fire escape. Which shouldn’t have even been possible without the alarm going off, the blaring sound of that happening should have woken you up first.

So at least you knew how the perp got in – they had disabled the alarm somehow.

And that very perp was standing at the kitchen sink, with the tap on, running a stream of water that seemed way too loud in the quiet of the night. The only other sound being the quiet roar of traffic and the odd beep of horns that poured in from the open window, even this late. But you had grown up in the city, so all those sounds easily fell to the back of your mind.

He had his back turned to you, bulked up and broad with some armored tactical gear on (a very odd choice for a burglar), topped off with a mop of curly dark hair that twinged familiarity in your gut. You hated how the sight made your hands shake against your will.

In the middle of your kitchen island, there was a bright red helmet with a full face covering mask. One he seemed to have taken off and placed there - almost as if he was relaxing and making himself at home. Though it had a large crack in it, a large gap missing where one of the eyes was supposed to be. In the darkness, with the deforming crack, it took you a moment to recognize the helmet as belonging to Red Hood.

What the hell did he want with you?

If he sensed your presence, he wasn’t eager to turn around and fight you. He didn’t seem like he was trying to attack you. Maybe he just wanted to take whatever he had stolen and get out. Did he know that you had come into money? Was he interested in that?

“Listen here, asshole, I’ll give you two minutes to get the hell out before I’m calling for back-up!” You shouted, gripping the bat tighter now, trying to spite your own shaking hands.

Because he didn’t seem hostile, it did seem appropriate to give him a warning.

The man shut off the tap, and then finally, after a moment that felt too long – he turned to you.

You felt your stomach swell up into your throat when you saw that face. Even beaten up and bruised, blood dripping down his brow, taking sharp gulps from a glass of water that he had clearly gotten himself from the sink – it was so startlingly him.

He was dead. He was dead. He was supposed to be dead...

“Jason.” You gasped it out so quietly that he couldn't have heard you, the name trapped tightly in your now tear-flooded throat.

Your arms became weak as you wielded the bat, and you easily lowered it. You were surprised that you didn’t drop the damn thing altogether.

“It’s nice to know that I’m still your asshole.” Jason said, throwing you a smirk over the top of the glass before he continued chugging the water, finishing it before he put it aside with a hollow ‘clink’. “And when you say ‘back-up’, I hope you don’t mean Dickie. He already kicked my ass once tonight, and I’m not in perfect shape to get him back just yet.”

Jason groaned, stretching in an odd way as if he was just feeling his body for the first time.

It felt like an illusion – a hallucination. Your feet were numb and you were torn between racing across the room to pull him into your arms and screaming at him. You wanted to call him names, you wanted to be angry at him for dying. Perhaps you wanted to yell at him to leave so the taunting specter would be banished. Maybe this was a test from a God you didn't believe in, some temptation into an afterlife that you never thought you deserved.

With your chest heavy and your head light, you finally managed to choke out:

“J-Jason?”

The word more solid on your tongue this time, finally making it across the room to his ears.

He looked at you with terror dancing in his eyes then, as though realizing for the first time that this sudden break-in might have scared you. Finally, it occurred in his mind that his sudden appearance, back from the dead, wasn’t the beautiful reunion that he could have hoped for.

Your eyes flickered around the room once again, a hand pressing tightly against your forehead as you frantically tried to take in all the information. Unfortunately, Jason stalled for words.

Jason was standing in your kitchen. Jason had come in through the window. Jason was beat-up – supposedly by Dick Grayson, of all people. Jason was wearing Red Hood’s helmet?

Jason was alive.

Jason saw your eyes flicker between his face and the empty cracked head of Red Hood where it sat in the middle of the counter, and his stomach churned.

Surely Dick had told you how many Red Hood had killed by now. Would you hate him for it? Would you be afraid? Would you consider him to be a monster?

“It’s not as bad as it looks.” Jason murmured quietly.

This could be taken as a double meaning – a statement regarding his injuries, the blood currently dripping off his brow, or an assessment of the general state of his renewed life.

You felt another whip of the cool breeze brush over you, and suddenly, through all the mental chaos, an entirely different line of questioning became important to you.

“How the hell did you get in here?”

You asked, your voice mousy and unstable compared to the usual fire that you used with Jason. Still too shocked by his presence to have any firmness, barely able to take your eyes off him for long enough to look toward the open window.

Unconsciously, you feared that if you let him out of your sight, he would dissolve into nothingness and be gone once again.

“The system works on a magnet trip.” Jason told you. “If you use something to trick the magnet, the alarm doesn’t go off.”

You forced your legs to move, and when you walked over to the window, your attention was drawn to an aluminum can that Jason had crumpled up and stuck to the magnet that wired into the bottom of the window. The magnet that would trigger the alarm system if the window was opened after the alarm was set for the night. The window panes were lined with aluminum, so when the system was armed, as long as the magnet was active, fully touching the pane, the system sensed that the window was shut. And it kept the alarm from going off.

It was likely that Jason had figured out the system in a few minutes and picked up the can in the alley to pull this off. You plucked the can off and the system gave a warning chirp as you tossed it out the window, back into the filthy alley, and then slammed the window shut, shutting out the cool air and the low buzz of the outside noise. It suddenly felt suffocating, being locked inside with Jason.

You weren’t sure if he was a stranger or someone you yearned to welcome into your arms again. You weren't even sure what the hell was going on.

Jason grunted with pain and when you looked over at him, he was struggling to peel himself out of the thick leather jacket that he wore as an outer later. You crossed your arms over your chest and pressed your fingers into your own skin, your nails making a sharp, stressful bite as you resisted the urge to rush over and help him.

You hated to think it, but rushing to be with him again was opening yourself up to more hurt. What if, somehow, this wasn’t even the real Jason? What if this was all some cruel trick? How could this be real?

“You got a first aid kit around here, babe?” He grunted out, that word rolling off his tongue so naturally.

It stung you like a whip across your bare back – babe. Like not a day had passed since you had last seen him. Like you hadn’t wept for him, like you hadn’t collapsed at the sight of his fucking gravestone.

“I mean, you kinda owe me. Right?” He smirked at you in the same way he always had, and fuck – if this was a fake, it was a damn good one.

Of course. He was talking about the fact that he had so diligently patched you up after you had been shot by Deathstroke.

You did owe him.

“You’re the one who’s stupid enough to drink the tap water in Gotham, so you’re gonna need more than just a first aid kit. And unfortunately, I don’t have the cure for e-coli just sitting on my nightstand.” You sighed, your voice full of light sarcasm.

Whether it was a conscious choice or not, you were thankful to have him back. You couldn’t help but to fall into the natural rhythm of having him back in your life. You couldn’t help but to cling onto him for comfort like a newly hatched turtle battling toward the lapping shoreline – even if you would be killed along the way, it was just your nature.

You needed Jason Todd. You couldn’t deny that now.

You knew it even more when Jason let out a low, tired chuckle at your words. You felt it in that small laughter – he had missed you too.

“Good point.” He sighed.

Still facing the window, you heard the distinct low buzz of the fridge door opening, and you saw the flash of light reflected into the glass in front of you. Leave it to Jason to barge into your apartment in the middle of the night and then invite himself into your fucking fridge. You felt a trademark twinge of annoyance bubbling up, and somehow, even that was something you had missed. You sighed and rolled your eyes when you next heard him rooting through one of your kitchen drawers, and then you heard the crack of a metal top as he popped it off.

He had found the beer.

“Fuck, this is stale. How long has this shit even been in there?” Jason coughed and sputtered, and you wanted to go on some sarcastic rant about him not checking dates and labels and finally getting his comeuppance for it.

It had been there since you had moved in. You had bought it on a whim, thinking of Jason, still deep in mourning, glad when the cashier at the corner store didn’t card you for it. (There was some perks to living in Downtown Gotham.) You thought that you would drink all of them and finally get a good night’s sleep, but you only got a few sips off the first one before you realized how truly vile the taste was. You had always been right about that. Instead, you kept the open bottle around for a few days because it reminded you of Jason. As much as you hated the smell, it still reminded you of that first day the two of you had met.

And every now and then, you would open one and keep it on your night stand just for the smell, because strangely enough – you found the foul, yeasty smell to be a comfort, simply because it reminded you of him.

There were still five left in the twelve pack you and bought, and yes, they were fucking stale.

“Of course they’re stale.” You said, trying your hardest to steady your voice as more of that grief came flooding back to you.

You turned around then, crossing the room with purpose as you marched toward him, moving to snatch the bottle out of his hands as he, surprisingly, held the drink that he had complained about back up to his lips.

“Beer is disgusting, why the hell would I drink that shit?” You snapped, your voice definitely not as strong as you needed it to be.

Jason paused before the lip of the bottle got to his mouth, looking at you with intense confusion, not understanding your words. Then, as he took in the tears dancing in your eyes, the deep hurt knit across your face – a flash of understanding came across his features.

Your words so closely mirrored what you had said to him on the day you had met, and he couldn’t help but to wonder if you had the beer in your fridge because of him.

Before he could question it too much, prod at your grief like an open wound, you reached up and glided your fingers across his bottle, flashing it cold and freezing the drink inside – making it useless to him. Just like you had on the day the two of you had met. This time, he didn’t have to investigate too closely to know what you had done.

“I hate it when you do that.” He sighed, very little malice in the comment, a type of fondness breaching his words as he put the now frozen beer aside.

This left the two of you without any real distractions, just staring at each other, now much closer than before. Tension grew in the air as it finally became tangible in your mind. Jason was in front of you. You could reach out and touch him if you wanted to. But somehow, that felt like the most dangerous thing you could have done. What if that was the moment it all came crashing down? What if that was the moment you woke up from this dream, only to realize that none of it had been real at all?

You crossed your arms over your chest and squeezed your fists tight, and Jason’s eyes glistened with hurt as he noticed it. He thought that perhaps you were disgusted by him. That you hated knowing that he had changed. You must have hated that he had been touched by death now, inside and out. That was why you didn’t want to touch him.

But it was the exact opposite. You worried that if you laid your hands on him, you would be pulled into the void – you would be whisked off into some impossible daydream and never recover. You would be opening up that wound, ready to lose him all over again.

“You’re hurt.” You said, your eyes flickering from the large gash on his forehead, down to his shoulder where his jacket was glistening with wetness – blood, near the shoulder area. “I – I owe you, right?”

Maybe it was inevitable. Falling into the void, being hurt by your love for him. Maybe it was just another form of grief. Maybe it was like everything in the past few weeks of your life: thinking that you had finally been starting to heal only to have the wound ripped open again, to have the pain renewed so harshly that you sobbed until you couldn’t breathe, until your chest felt like it was going to cave in.

Maybe that was just what loving Jason was.

Even if it was a hallucination, you found yourself far too tempted by the comfort of it.

You found yourself far too tempted by him.

You reached out with shaking hands, feeling as nervous as if you were about to stick your hands into a fire pit even though you weren’t yet touching his bare skin. You grabbed both sides of his leather jacket, helping him work it down his arms as he poorly concealed winces and grunts of pain through tightly pressed lips.

When he finally managed to get the jacket off, his arms were bared to you. With the armor being mostly central to his torso, you saw a pretty nasty wound on his right shoulder. Immediately, it made you cringe. You couldn't stand the sight of him being hurt, even if you still weren't all too sure that he was real. You could immediately tell what had happened by the sight alone.

The round, deep, small wound indicated to you:

“You were shot?” You gaped, irritation and worry ripe in your voice.

You had to wonder how he was so stony against the pain. How had he come limping to you only asking for painkillers? Jason was a stubborn asshole, even when it came to forcing down his body's own reaction to things, it seemed.

“Not really.” He replied, clearly resisting the urge to literally shrug it off because it would have hurt his shoulder too much, a horrible grin forming on his face as he got the opportunity to repeat back your own past words to you. “It was just a ricochet.”

Smug asshole. You weren't sure if it was just a clever opportunity that he had taken advantage of or if he had been waiting for this.

You let out a tense breath, hating that he could still be so annoying at a time like this, balling your fists tight as you resisted the urge to smack him. You knew that he was already hurting and he didn’t need the collision of your palm against his face, as much as you wanted to wipe that grin off him. But it was something you would have done to him any other time for being so damn snarky.

“You’re an asshole.” You sighed, the words sounding far too fond and not nearly as angry as you wanted them to.

He stared back at you with nothing but affection in his eyes. Those words meant the world to him now. Especially after he believed that he had missed out on ever hearing you say them ever again.

“Maybe.” He replied, a light whisper, afraid to touch the air.

‘But I’m yours.’

He reserved this part, just barely opening his mouth for words that never came. It would have felt too vulnerable and too soft, unlike the earlier joke he had made. He was afraid that you would tell him it was no longer true. He was terrified that he had lost the chance to be yours the second that he had stepped up to the Joker with the Anti-Fear Gas running through his system.

You hated the look in his eyes - part sadness, part terror, part dreadful longing. You wanted to soothe him and scream at him at the same time. You were angry at him for disappearing, but more than anything: you loved him. And that hurt so much that it caused you to circle back around to almost hating him again.

You had to resist the urge to lean forward and kiss him in that moment. You knew that it would truly seal things; that pressing your lips to his would ensure your fate forever. It would either mean that you had truly resigned yourself to the fantasy, whatever brain tumor hallucination this was, or it would mean that you were completely open to the pain of losing him again. (If he somehow really was back.)

You held back for now.

You had to tell yourself that it wasn’t because you were weak. It wasn't because you weren’t ready, not because you were protecting yourself from your own stupid feelings. No, it was because he was hurt, and you knew that if you kissed him then, you wouldn’t be able to stop. You weren't protecting yourself. You weren't protecting your frail grieving mind from this fantasy. You were protecting him from whatever you were going to do to him after being forced to go without for so long.

But no - he needed his injuries attended to first.

“Come on.” You said, turning around and walking back toward the bedroom.

Jason followed a moment later. You heard those heavy boots clunking behind you, and now, somehow you felt an odd sense of comfort in it. It was such an odd shift from the panic you had felt just a few minutes ago when you had woken up to the sound, not knowing who that it was Jason who had disrupted your sleep.

You walked into the bedroom, turned on a lamp you had sitting on the nightstand for some gentle light, and then you went straight to the bathroom for the first aid kit that you had stashed under the sink. When you came back into the room with it, you were surprised to find Jason awkwardly hovering in the doorway, his eyes studying the room carefully. It seemed as though he were afraid to enter, afraid to touch anything within the room or disturb the peace.

In a moment that felt all too familiar, like deja vu, the universe repeating in some creepy loop, you gestured toward the bed.

“Sit.” You told him firmly, no real emotion coming through your voice.

“Look, I really don’t wanna bother you, so you can just give me a couple of Advils or somethin’ and I’ll be on my way.” He replied, somehow suddenly shy about calling in this favor.

It caused a flare of anger through you. He had barrelled in here in the middle of the night, disturbed you, rocked your whole world with the realization that he was alive - and now he wanted to run. Again.

Perhaps he was the one feeling too vulnerable now. Perhaps he was as scared as you were to face this strange thing between the two of you. Either way, you weren’t having it. He had already opened you up to this, and you weren’t going to let him get away that easy.

“Sit.” You told him, firmer, glaring at him with a tight jaw and the most intense stare you could muster.

If he left the room without your permission, you would chase him. And he knew you too well to know that the silent threat was hanging in the air above his head. Horribly, you could imagine yourself tackling him and sticking a finger into his bullet hole just to prove a point. Perhaps as way of trying to make him hurt just as much as you had when he had disappeared the first time.

He let out a sigh and shuffled into the room, and after another hesitant moment of hovering around, he finally took a seat on your bed. He crumpled himself down, collapsing like a house of cards that a rogue breeze had blown a bit too hard, all the tension releasing from him at once. He looked dull among your unmade bed; the covers tossed up and messy where you had frantically gotten up to investigate the noises he had been making when he had broken in.

“This is cozy.” He remarked, his voice oddly sincere rather than sarcastic for once.

You had to wonder if he knew that it was the very place that he had picked out. Had he come looking for you at the address from the listing on purpose knowing that you might be there? Or had he followed you home not even realizing that he had hand-picked this apartment for you?

You placed the first aid kit down on the bed beside him. You weren’t even sure where to start with attending to his wounds. Your hands were still shaking, and the more you thought about touching him, the more your stomach curled into a tight fist. Something deep in your mind still said that if you touched him, surely he would dissolve into nothingness. Surely, he was not real.

But you tried not to focus on that for now.

You knew that he was commenting on the way you had decorated the apartment, so you picked up on the conversation to avoid the inevitable. It was nice to have some conversation in order to distract yourself.

“Well, you picked it out.” You replied, your voice shaking much more than you would have liked. “I know you thought it was a shithole-”

“You’re the one who called it a shithole.” He easily corrected you, sounding as smug as ever.

“Yeah. Sure.” You tiredly agreed. Sadly, you didn't have any energy left to argue. “But, you know, I tried to make it nice for us.”

Those words hit Jason particularly hard.

Us.

He knew that you weren’t saying it simply because he was sitting in front of you now - it was something that you had been considering the whole time. You had wanted to build a home for him, even when he was dead and gone. You had fallen asleep on the same side of a double bed each night, cozying up to a ghost, keeping stale beer in the fridge for someone who was never going to be around to drink them.

A large lump formed in his throat and he held back tears.

You busied yourself from speaking any further on the subject by reaching for the shoulder straps of his chest armor. You weren’t sure why, but suddenly, you felt the need to see him fully. Perhaps to further confirm that he was real, perhaps to fully inspect him for injuries. It just felt natural. You needed to peel this away and see the living flesh underneath.

“What are you doing?” He asked, breathless, terrified, his voice barely reaching above a whisper.

Your fingers shook on the straps, his questioning of you causing you to freeze your moments. What if he wasn't real somehow? What if this was the moment that you discovered that it was all a terrible trick?

“Checking.” You told him, your voice shaking horribly around the word. You swallowed sharply, trying to rid yourself of the tightness in your throat. You took a breath before you tried speaking again. “Checking. I have to - I have to check and make sure you don’t have any other injuries.”

You figured this was a better excuse than ‘I have to make sure that you’re real’. It definitely made you sound less insane. So you went with it, trying your best not to sound too off-the-walls crazy. Even though the fact that he was sitting in front of you after being fatally shot, declared dead, and buried in a grave that you had seen was enough to drive anyone crazy. You should be thanked for having such a very sane, rational response to all of this.

“You’re just looking for an excuse to get me naked - aren’t you, babe?” He asked, looking at you with a cheeky expression, not disguising the fatally pure yearning deep in his eyes.

He was looking for that old banter - the fire, the flirtation. The thing that your entire relationship had been built on. The old spark. Something to say that your relationship hadn’t changed. Some anchor he could hang onto in this horrible chaos.

Sadly, you didn’t have it in you. Not right now. You were far too exhausted for anything close to playful banter. You couldn’t conjure any cleverness or wit. You wanted things to feel normal again just as badly as he did - but you both knew that this was far from a normal night.

At least when you started undoing the buckles again, Jason didn’t stop you this time. It's not like he was embarrassed to let you see his body. Nothing you hadn't seen before. Though it did feel strange in this context - not heated, not rushing to rip each other's clothes off, eager for sex. But soft, quiet, calculating. You examining him like he was something to discover, something special. Like he was something that you had somehow missed.

It was a few moments of heavy silence. Nothing to cut through it except for Jason's heavy breathing and the sound of the armor rustling as you moved it. With another pained groan from him as you pulled the thick chest piece over his head and tossed it away, he was completely bare from the waist up. Pure flesh, a real man, seemingly more and more unlikely to be a hallucination as the moments ticked on.

He had plenty of bruises littering his torso - blows landed from the fight he had talked about. There was some other general roughness - red scrapes, bright scratches. But there didn’t seem to be any other major injuries, aside from the glaring bullet wound in his shoulder. With his arms at his sides, stiffly holding himself up with his palms flat on the bed, he stared up at you. With anxiety shifting through his face, gently biting his lower lip, tears dancing in his eyes - he was clearly waiting for you to say something or do something as you stood there in silence.

You were waiting too. Waiting for the earth to shatter this all apart once again.

You just couldn’t believe that he was really here. You couldn’t believe that it was him.

So with breath still in your lungs, held there like it would be your last, much like it had been on the night you had last heard his voice over the phone during that fatal goodbye – you finally reached out to touch him. You reached out and tentatively brushed your fingertips across his forehead on the side that wasn’t bleeding.

Warm flesh. A bit damp and clammy with sweat underneath your fingertips...

Something so damn impossible, happening right in front of you. Somehow, he was real.

Jason let out a stiff breath, nearly choking on the air, resisting a gasp that wanted to escape him. Fuck, he had missed your touch so damn badly. As fast as he could, he leaned into the touch. Upon instinct, you became greedy, furled by his reaction, the way he closed his eyes, like this was the most heavenly thing he had ever experienced. You fisted a hand into the back of his hair, feeling it all - warm and soft, slightly mused with sweat from being under that stupid helmet.

He couldn’t help but to reach out with his non-injured arm, now more than greedy to touch you in return – and oh-so-naturally, as if nothing had changed, he gripped onto your waist. His hand, so big and warm, quickly smoothed around your lower back and pulled you closer to him. Though you hated it, knowing how damn dangerous it was to fall into the magnetism of the familiar touch, you stepped between his spread legs, letting him rest his head on the softness of your stomach. Your muscles quaked as you felt him take in a sharp breath against you, and you continued to palm across his head, petting his hair, simply enjoying the feeling of him being safe underneath your touch.

It was a moment of solace. Likely the first one that he'd had since he had one up in that god forsaken basement in Arkham.

Naturally, it didn't last long.

“Shit.” Jason hissed quietly.

You realized it was finally hitting him, then, too. All of it. The fact that he had died and nearly been gone from your life forever. The fact that he had nearly lost you in the same way that you had lost him. It became radically clear as he tightly fisted the back of your shirt, as if terrified to let you go.

You could only imagine how terrifying the whole thing had been for him. He had died and somehow came back from it. He had been shot in the head and then... woken up somehow.

“It’s okay.” You choked out.

Of course, you were massively struggling with the words for yourself.

You weren’t sure it was the truth - you weren’t even sure who you were trying to comfort when saying this; if it was for yourself or for Jason. But you knew that speaking the words aloud felt good.

“It’s okay.” You repeated it again, trying your best to force your tears down as you moved your hand to rub across his back. Feeling his beating heart beneath your palm made you feel better.

The seconds ticked on like hours, and you hesitated to be the first one to pull away. But you knew Jason too well, and you knew that he would keep freely bleeding onto your sheets before he would ever move away from the tight hold. You pulled away, and Jason kept his hand on your hip, very possessive, not wanting to let you go.

You didn’t make him.

You didn’t speak a word to him as you opened the first aid kit and got the supplies – you weren't sure what more there was to say. You simply began cleaning his small forehead wound. It didn’t need much more than a simple bandage, which you gave him.

Jason didn’t bother with sparking up another conversation and you let the silence roll on as you concentrated on cleaning his bullet wound. Luckily, there didn't seem to be any fragments or anything like that left inside it. So you cleaned it and bandaged it in silence, and after you had secured the tape and gauze in a thick square on both sides of his shoulder, you finally managed to find words once again.

It was the one question that had been plaguing your mind since the moment you had let yourself realize that he was truly real.

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

Jason looked up at you with intense guilt painting all of his features, his mouth wired shut, his lips stiff – for once in his life, marinating in a careful silence.

Knowing that he had been out there, operating as Red Hood for weeks now and he hadn’t told you that he was alive – it hurt you. It hurt you badly. Surely he had to have some reason for not telling you. Some good reason why.

“Why didn’t you come to me?” You added on, your voice beginning to crack with unformed tears. You had cried so much in the past weeks – you weren't sure that you had anymore tears left. “Why didn’t you come home?”

Home.

That word stung Jason particularly hard. It was never something he had in life, and he knew you never had either. The fact that you now considered this shithole apartment to be your home only because you wanted him to be there...

His chin quivered as he held back his own tears. The emotionally numbing Anti-Fear Gas that he had used for the night’s mission was most definitely wearing off, leaving him aching for another hit, terrified to appear so weak in front of you. And of course, that left him feeling even weaker, knowing that he relied on it to escape exactly this – all of the raw, weak emotions that you made him feel.

“Answer me!” You barked, the demand a terrible sharp hiss, wettened down by your tears, not nearly as fiery as things you had yelled at Jason during your arguments of the past. The sadness was what truly sharpened the knife – what made it sting more than any back-handed insult ever could have.

It hurt more knowing that he had hurt you.

Jason held back what he truly wanted to say. That he didn’t deserve you – that coming back to you after rising from the grave would only be cursing you with his presence twice. And you didn’t deserve that burden the first time, let alone a second.

He found a different way to phrase it.

“It gave you a second chance.” He said, trying to muster a strong tone past the terrible trembling of his throat. Trying his best to sound certain about something he was so damn unsure about.

All the while, you stared him down with an utterly alien look on your features, not understanding the intention of his words – not one bit. You had absolutely no clue what he meant. This was your second chance. This – him being alive again – that was your miracle.

He cleared his throat sharply, and tried again, stronger this time.

“It was like – a fresh start for you. You deserved a new beginning. A chance to live your life – a better life – without being weighed down by me and all my bullshit.”

The second you understood what he was saying, the second you truly absorbed it, every ounce of sadness or pity within you shifted. You immediately became enraged by the idea of it, the concept that your life would somehow be better off without him in it. Everything inside of you boiled red hot and shifted into some of the most intense anger you had ever felt in your life.

This time it took a Herculean effort not to slap him.

Before, in your old life, during other petty arguments the two of you had, you used to combat him for sport over being wrong about grammar or textbook facts that he refused to look up because he simply wanted to be right without trying. Those times, you had called him ‘stupid’ as a joke.

But right now, at this moment, you truly, deeply thought that he was stupid. You thought he was the biggest idiot on earth.

How else could you explain him genuinely believing the words that were coming out of his mouth? How else could you explain him stringing them together and speaking them?

“You utter fucking moron,” You muttered under your breath, tired frustration ripe in your words.

Jason’s uninjured shoulder became tense under your hand, his touch gripping harder onto your hip by instinct, frustration rippling through him like a mirror. He opened his mouth to argue, which only caused you to snap.

No. No, no, no. Now was the time for him to shut up.

“How dare you!” You snapped at him, raising your voice like a whip through the late night quiet.

His eyes widened with shock and he jumped back slightly, not far enough to release his touch from you, not even close to willingly give that up, but clearly disturbed by your sudden rise in volume in the otherwise quiet room.

“How fucking dare you!”

Upon instinct, (as much as he didn’t want to leave you) Jason moved to run. He didn’t need another conflict in his life. Not right now. He didn't have the energy or the will to fight this battle.

But all that training Dick had given you easily kicked in, and the second he tried to evade you, you put both your hands on his shoulders, unintentionally taking advantage of that weak spot where he was injured, and you shoved him back down onto the bed with a fury. He let out a small grunt of pain at the feeling of your thumb digging into his wound ever-so-slightly, a small kiss of revenge for all the pain he had dealt to you for not rushing home when he had magically awoken from death.

Before he could fight back or try to flee again, you shoved him flat onto his back against the mattress with a hand in the middle of his chest, using the leverage of standing against him to keep him down. And for good measure, wanting to keep him there, you climbed on top of him, straddling his pelvis with your whole body to further pin him down.

It was only a small coincidence in the back of your mind that this move could be deemed sexual in nature – especially by someone as filthy minded as Jason Todd, and especially with your joint history. But in that moment, you were too blinded by fury to come close to thinking about sex. Too damn intent to get him to shut up and listen to you for once. Too blinded to even see the way he was looking up at you – with a mixture of lust and longing in his eyes, any sense of sadness long chased away as your furious passion overtook the situation, reminding him of the person he had missed so much, reminding him of exactly why he had missed you so damn much.

“You are so fucking stupid!” You yelled in his face, driven mad with anger, almost to the point of tears. “You're such a goddamn idiot, Jason!”

“Tell me something I don’t know, babe.” He returned, still bolstering and bantering, causing more frustration to flare up within you, like red hot bile, sickly in your stomach. It made you so bitterly frustrated that you reached down and shoved a palm tightly across his mouth in an attempt to get him to shut up.

“Shut the fuck up and listen!” You replied, anger burning hot tears at the corner of your eyes as you glared down at him. “The fact that you would dare to insist that I’m better off without you -” Your voice broke around these words, hating the thought so much, resenting him for believing it. “And on top of that, the fact that you would think you choose what I want – is just so incredibly stupid!”

Jason gave you a distinct look, something behind his eyes that said he wanted to argue. It only made you madder.

“I was a fucking mess without you!” You admitted, raving on, trying to prove your point. “You – you don’t get to do that! You don’t get to come into my life, fuck my brains out, fuck up my emotions, and make me a stupid mess with you, and then make me a stupid mess witho-out y-you!”

Your words dissolved off into a sob, and you reached up to wipe your eyes, hating that the mess you truly were broke through to show in front of him.

You gently slipped your hand off his mouth, needing it to wipe your tears, finally giving him a chance to speak.

“I thought… I thought I was doing you a favour.” He said, his tone meek – as he was though finally realizing the damage he had done. “I thought I was helping you get over me.”

“You really think I would stay in a shithole like Gotham if I was over you?”

The only answer he gave you was surging up, feeling a stinging protest in his injured shoulder as he did the one thing he had been dying to do since the moment he had first laid eyes on you in the kitchen – he pressed his mouth tightly to yours in a kiss that was like no other the two of you had ever shared before. This wasn’t sexy or heated or passionate with the intention of impressing a partner. This wasn’t skilled foreplay. This wasn’t even a kiss that was comforting or sweet or loving like the one that the two of you had shared on the night that he had nearly died because of Deathstroke.

This kiss was utterly feral.

It was hot breath, gnashing teeth – two people battling to consume the other because that other was their only source of life. It was soft moans and grunts consumed in a tight space as the two of you refused to part, fighting to be closer than ever after far too long apart, nearly separated by death. Viciously grappling with each other, your hands in his hair and smoothing over his skin, tracing each injury that you had seen earlier, once again seeking confirmation that he was real.

Soft, tender human flesh that could be nicked and scarred, all the more real under your hands. His hands gripping at your shirt, desperate to rip it off you but not wanting to part from your mouth in order to do so. Hands possessively groping your flesh, praying that he wouldn’t find any new scars, thankful that your body was just as kind and warm as he remembered it. Thankful that you were the one pillar of normalcy in a harsh world that hadn't changed. Somehow, bitter sarcasm and a harsh reality check being a warm welcome to him.

This kiss said ‘I love you, I missed you, and I hate myself for it’.

This kiss said ‘Don’t you dare leave ever again’.

This kiss said ‘Next time you die, take me with you’.

You moaned hotly into his mouth and Jason could only return the sound, both of you turning into an echo-chamber of desperation and mourning for lost time. You weren’t even close to being surprised when his hand was up the back of your shirt, a hot, large palm flat against your skin, as if trying to burrow into your lungs from behind and steal your breath just to feel more of you. And then of course, the fabric was being whipped over your head the second that you pulled away when those lungs began to shrivel in the wake of his greedy kiss.

And he continued to be greedy, continued to consume – his teeth ripping down your neck, tearing at your flesh with a chaotic hunger, sucking harsh marks into your neck, clearly more possessive than he ever had been. Now that he had you back in his grip, he didn't seem so uncertain about the status of the relationship or how soon he would be letting you go. He panted against your skin in hot, ragged puffs of air only further assuring you that he was real, he was alive underneath you, his fingers digging into your flesh with that same possessive flare, surely digging matching marks onto your hips that would assure you tomorrow that this most certainly hadn't been a dream.

“Jason. Jay – fuck. Oh my god.”

You couldn’t hold back the sounds you were making, repetitions of his name, intense sounds of pleasure that easily overwhelmed you and snuck through your lips.

Ironically, in the weeks previous, this room had been filled with sobs and whimpering cries as you mourned him. An endless stream of tears as you couldn’t keep your thoughts from straying to him every single night that you laid in this bed, alone, thinking of him, dreaming of him, imagining what your life in this apartment together should have been like. Anger and grief haunting you as you felt screwed over by life.

Now, the sounds bouncing off the walls were downright filthy. Your moans, your gasps, Jason’s grunts against your skin as he scrambled for more. He raced to taste as much of your skin as possible, rushed to mark as much of you as possible. He desperately wanted to reclaim what he had missed. The potential of returning to you being the only reason he hadn’t raised a gun to his temple mere hours after finding out that he had been stolen from his own grave.

He let out a deeper moan against your chest when you began grinding yourself against him - the pants he was wearing creating an intense friction on his quickly hardening cock as you did this, only making him more needy for you. He was quickly flooded by everything – all the emotions and physical needs that he had been pushing down since his unnatural return. How badly he had missed you, how badly he needed to get his cock inside of you because he hadn't cum in so damn long.

“Need you. Holy fuck, babe. Need you so badly.”

Your body was on fire, everything between your thighs alight with a burning need for him, everything in your body rapidly dissolving down to your baser instincts just because Jason was underneath you. He was the only person on earth who could make you this insane with lust, and having him back in your bedroom again was driving you all the more insane with every emotion – making you want to cry, scream, and demand to be fucked all the same time.

And it only felt all the more natural to fuck yourself against him, grinding against him like a needy animal in heat. Your thin cotton boxers felt like the harshest barrier, keeping you from him, keeping you from getting any real friction where you needed it most. A horrible prison keeping you from feeling the parts of Jason that you could say you had missed the most. But you were too mindlessly horny to just simply stand up and take them off. Instead, instinctively, you kept grinding yourself against him, kept whining under your breath when it didn’t fully satisfy you.

“Jason!” You cried out, growing more desperate by the minute when his teeth bit into a spot above your nipple, creating another feral angry mark into the delicate skin. And then adding onto the feeling with intense vibrations as he moaned from deep in the back of his throat. “Jay! Fuck, fuck, I need-”

You choked on a gasp and he soothed an assuring, strong hand down your back, warm and certain, groping your ass tightly through your underwear where he landed. This encouraged more deep, full movements of your hips as you ground yourself into the hard bulge of his cock through his pants. He was torn, wanting to keep dry-humping against you in deep, full, strokes, the caveman part of his brain determined to fuck you through your clothes, believing that his cock was strong enough to get you just like this. But the smarter, more conscious part of him knowing that in order to be satisfied at all, he would have to take of your clothes and his own first.

“I know, babe.” He rumbled against your skin, that nickname causing another tight gasp through you. “I know. Me too.”

“Then, please-” You choked on another sound when he laid an entirely gentle kiss on your nipple, contrasting all the earlier roughness in his movements, silently praising your body and promising a thousand silent, sacred promises to you.

He then reached for the waistband of your boxers, pulling down and encouraging your hips upward now with that hand on your ass.

You followed his lead, no longer too stubborn to say that he was in charge for certain - and you weren’t off the bed for even a second to get the fabric off your ankles before he pulled you back in, making sure that you resumed your seat right across his thighs.

Jason’s eyes became sharply distracted, and when you followed down to reach his gaze, you realized that he was staring, stiff-jawed and tense at a long-healed scar on your stomach.

The spot where the bullet had hit you on the night that you had come to save him from Deathstroke.

Before you could say anything, he reached out with a shaking hand, gently grazing the broken pattern of raised skin there, inhaling sharply under his breath.

“Jason-”

You had no clue what to even say.

You could tell that he was thinking too much about it. That he was worrying too much. That he wanted to say too much.

That was the night that had changed everything for the two of you, and you wouldn’t have changed it for the world.

“Now we’re even, right?” You posed, nodding toward the bandage on his shoulder.

He shook his head in reply. “No.”

Of course he didn’t think of it that way.

“But I’m never gonna let you get hurt again. Never.” He vowed, a tense passion so ripe in his quiet voice that it made every inch of you quake. It made the lustful urge between your thighs even more ripe and demanding. “If anybody comes near you, I’ll tear them apart with my fucking teeth.”

“You think I can't handle myself?” You bit back, trying to hide your lust with that posturing bitterness, hating how turned on you were by his protective macho act. Especially knowing that for the most part, it wasn't an act. He would hate to see anyone hurt you, and he would likely bring harsh consequences upon them if given the chance.

“I know you can.” He smirked in return. “That's why I like you, babe. But I'm still gonna protect you either way.”

That sentiment, and the loving warmth it was delivered with – sent even more deadly heat rolling through your body.

Growing more intense with aching need, you let out a whine, and you finally reached for his zipper.

“Yours, too.” You declared, staring him right in the eye, assuring him what you meant as you hauled the zipper down, taking a quick glance down toward his cock – swallowing hotly, pleasantly surprised when your eyes were met with nothing but dark pubic hair and the flushed, thick base of his cock. No underwear. “I need to see what returning from the dead did to your dick. I need to make sure it’s still working fine.”

Were you making jokes because you had finally gone insane? Maybe.

Jason scoffed and rolled his eyes, but nonetheless, he reached for his own waistband, shimmying his pants down and letting you yank the fabric off the rest of the way.

“Babe, I can assure you, of all the fucked up and broken parts of me – my dick is definitely not one of them.”

You let out a small chuckle at this, happy to know that it wasn’t entirely gone – the sense of stupid dark humor that the two of you shared. The thing that had bonded the two of you in the first place. It was a relief to feel it flowing in the air so easily now.

Before you could reach for his boots to untie them and untangle the mess of his pants from around his ankles, wanting to strip him completely naked, he reached over and grabbed you by the upper arm, hauling you toward him in an entirely greedy fashion once again.

“Fuck, Jay!”

You couldn’t contain the moan you let out when your knees bracketed around his hips, unintentionally causing his hard cock to brush against your most sensitive parts. You looked down and found his throbbing dick bobbing between your thighs, flushed, hard, veiny – seemingly bigger than the last time you had seen it? No. That had to be a trick of the light. Or simply a factor of nostalgia – the fact that you had spent so long dreaming of him, believing that you would never get to have this again, and now you simply felt lucky to have him here with you.

Before you could ponder on it too much, mesmerized by the way his precum was smearing against your inner thigh, of course, Jason 'big mouth' Todd had to go and ruin the moment.

“Like what you see, babe?”

“Shut up.” You hissed, more out of instinct than anything else.

But yeah, you definitely liked what you were seeing.

When Jason poised two fingers at your lips, surprisingly, you didn't gnash your teeth and bite him purely out of fiendish spite. But instead, you dropped your jaw and openly invited the touch in, your eyes finding his once again as you bobbed your head forward to take those fingers down to the root. You found an instant satisfaction at his touch filling your mouth, warm and full, and you let yourself moan greedily around them, sucking on the digits with vigour, an essence of gunpowder and leather from the gloves he had been wearing dangling in your nose.

“That’s it, babe.” He moaned, watching you with intent while his other hand came up to squeeze your hip fondly. “Get ‘em nice and wet for me – gotta fuck you open, get you ready to take my cock. I want you so bad, wanna fuck you right now – but I can’t have you hurting, can I, babe? No – gotta treat my baby good. Gotta get you nice 'n wet for my cock, huh? Gonna make sure you feel so good that you cum on my cock,”

Of course – Jason still had a filthy mouth. That was something that would never change.

With his cock desperately dribbling between his thighs, throbbing and needy, and his brain consumed with everything that was you, he couldn’t keep the dirty words from spilling out of his lips. You were driven a bit more insane when he said ‘my baby’, so easily calling you his, naturally possessing you a bit more. In the past, he had claimed your body as his, or claimed that he could fuck you better than anyone else could, but this was the first time that he had ever outright called you his.

The first time that he had seemingly wanted to claim you as whole person, and not just as a set of holes to fuck.

By the time he pulled his fingers back, they were well-coated, drool dribbling down your chin that he made a hast effort to get with a single swipe of his thumb – seemingly more out of fondness for you than actually trying to clean you up. The action warmed you with affection, but this was quickly torn apart by the ragged moan you let out when his hand descended below and he shoved the first finger inside of you.

It was slick and easy, a familiar slide that both of you were more than comfortable with from your many nights together. And he didn’t hesitate to add another, finding you open and fluttering around him, even if it had been so long since the two of you had done this.

(You wouldn’t tell him that you had fallen asleep that night fucking yourself to thoughts of him, and only hastily cleaned yourself up with some tissues before letting the sleepiness of your post-orgasm take you. You wouldn't say that there was still likely traces of lube now mingling with the spit on his fingers – hell, he probably already knew from touch alone.)

“Jason, oh my god,”

You planted your hands in the middle of his chest, careful not to touch the bandage, seeing as you weren't a total menace. Instead, you lovingly stroked across his skin while he fucked his fingers up into you with an expert touch – flicking his wrist and curling those fingers in an utterly maddening way so that they hit just the right spot inside of you.

“Fuck! Fuck, Jason!”

“Yeah, fuck yeah, babe, keep saying my name,” He growled lowly, breathing hotly into your shoulder. He absolutely loved the feeling of your heat clenching around his fingers, his cock twitching at the thought that he would soon get to be inside of you once again. “Fuck, baby – holy fuck, I missed you so much.”

“God, Jay – missed you too,” You moaned out weakly, bucking your hips toward him, a distinct heat already curling in your gut from the touch of his fingers alone.

That nearly broke him.

The sweet sound of your voice, the pure vulnerability of your words.

You had missed him too.

He knew that he wouldn’t be able to hold out much longer, he needed to be inside of you, and this quickly sparked him into a rush. When he removed his fingers from you, it was sudden and harsh, and he felt a slight pang of guilt at the sound you made – a slight whimper of pain that he wanted to apologize for.

But he knew you were just as eager as he was, and still, he continued on, holding a tight arm around your waist so you wouldn’t be jostled off his lap while he instinctively reached for your nightstand, thankful for the feeling of routine, so grounding on this chaotic night. He felt eased and skilful as he opened the drawer blindly and quickly found the large bottle of lube that you had stashed in there, and then, after a moment of shuffling, and fumbling, he had to ask:

“Condoms?”

You inhaled a stiff breath.

You had bought the lube – along with a toy that you thought reassembled Jason – as a present for yourself shortly after you moved in. Nights were sleepless and lonely and long and you really couldn’t picture yourself moving on to another partner, even a casual one, anytime soon. (Even if Gar had offered to be there for ‘whatever you might need’, you didn’t think that he meant providing sexual favours. And you knew that it wouldn’t be the same as it had been with Jason.) So you took to fucking yourself when you couldn’t sleep, and you cleaned your toy thoroughly.

So you had never needed condoms. There had never been anyone else.

“I – I never bought any.” You admitted meekly, your voice entirely small, lacking all of the usual confidence and spite that you had whenever you were in bed with Jason. You hated feeling shy instead of bantering and stubborn as you fucked yourself on his cock. “I never needed them.”

This was an epic answer to a silent question that he didn’t even know he had up until that moment. Perhaps a large part of the reason that he had been so eager to trail you, hiding in the shadows with his red helmet on, following you each night when you went to work shifts at the shelter or went on your patrols.

There was no one else.

You hadn’t even considered bringing someone else into your life – not even as a mindless fuck buddy to release some of the sexual frustration in his absence. You truly had stayed in a shithole like Gotham just for him. And not even for the fully alive version of him that had come back. You had stayed in Gotham, settling for the presence of his ghost, lingering in the footsteps of his past, just trying to get a taste of him. You had been living for the ‘what if’s of an apartment that he had picked out for you. You had married yourself to a dead man, looking for an ‘I love you’ from dead lips that would never come.

You wondered if you should ask further about it. You wondered if he had one in the many pockets of that new suit he had been sporting. You were feeling regretful of being unprepared while your mind churned with the logistics behind a piece of latex, unknowing that he was romping with intense mourning the past and future.

Jason’s eyes went dark and feral once again.

“Fuck it.”

He mumbled quietly, popping the cap on the lube and spreading some over his cock with a few stiff jerks from a tight, tired arm. It was too much, sloppy and desperate, some of it spilling onto the bed below him, making a stain. You watched the movements, utterly mesmerized as he pumped his cock once, twice, three times with a tight fist and then – he used that grip on your waist to haul you tightly toward him, and you followed easily like a numb, lustful puppet, rag-dolling in his lap and going exactly where he wanted you to. He positioned his cock at your waiting, fluttering, needy hole and then pushed inside without hesitation, the remnants of your own spit spread there by him now mixing with the lube as you quaked and quivered to accommodate the sudden intrusion of his steel-hard girth.

“Jay-”

Your breath easily stilled in your lungs as a beautiful sting of pain shot through you, quickly mingling with the intense, hard, hot pleasure. The most wonderful feeling you could have imagined. Jason pushed his mouth onto yours in another demanding kiss, and though his cock was only halfway inside of you, splitting you open with a fat leaking head, you soon shoved your hips downward in a greedy movement, wanting all of him faster than his tender heart was willing to give it to you. You took the entirety of his thick length inside of you with a wet smack, forcing his hips tight to yours in a way that made him moan against your tongue and grip the back of your head tightly, a sharp ‘fuck’ echoing from him to your lips. He was melting at how eager you were, having never seen you so desperate for his cock, as much as he teased you about it before, he had never seen you this horny, not ever.

You probably should have been upset that he pushed inside you without a condom. Especially without asking first. But something inside your soul, something stupid and needy said that it made things even hotter. It reminded you of why you had missed Jason. It made it so much better because he had insisted that instead of asking, instead of treading and being cautious. Part of you believed that like breaking into your apartment, coming back to the home he had picked out for you, he should get to just take.

It made you believe that you were truly his now because he was going to fuck you raw and leave you so utterly marked by him. That little voice in the back of your head was even further fuelled by the feeling of his cock raw inside of you. Feeling every single vein, feeling the hot pulse of each breath he took, feeling the spurts of needy precum flowing out of him freely, feeling the pure heat of skin on skin.

The two of you were truly reunited, and there was no doubts about your relationship now. No more treading around the words now, no more being scared.

“Fuck, babe.”

His voice was breathy and ragged, so perfect, something you had missed so damn much.

It was already driving you insane and you knew that you weren’t going to last much longer. And you were determined to take him down with you.

Driven on by pure spite, by the idea that he should fall apart just as badly as you had when he had left you so empty, left you without warning – you dug your nails into the skin of his pecs and began pumping your hips wildly, fucking yourself on top of him, riding his cock with an intense fury, determined to make him cum. You were ready to let out all the emotions that had built up over the weeks since you had been forced to kneel on top of his grave and weep for him. All the anger, all the grief, all the madness – you let it roll through your muscles as you dug your nails into him tighter, determined to never let him go again.

It was a pace that instantly had Jason sweating, groaning and moaning hotly himself as he held tightly onto your hips, attempting to guide your movements somewhat, an impossible task at that point. And it quickly morphed into him desperately attempting to just hold on.

“I guess - I guess you’re right,” You choked out, already breathless. “Your cock still works fine,”

“Fine?” He replied, a grin forming on his lips that looked all too familiar – cocky, definitely a warning. “Babe, I’ll show you ‘fine’.”

He wrapped his non-injured arm across your back, forcing you down, pinning you tightly to his body with you still on top of him. It was a hold that he might have learned during the many hours that Dick had locked everyone in the training room at Titans Tower, using the thought process of taking advantage of your enemy being distracted. It made you weak and immobile against his warm, sweaty, muscled body and left you completely weak to his whims.

You let out a small whimper and before you could truly complain, he began to move his hips, pistoning up inside of you harshly, fucking you from below in a way that made you absolutely breathless. His movements forced you to feel every inch of his cock, hammering so deep inside of you, drawing out just enough of his cock to make you mourn the emptiness before he fucked back inside, even deeper somehow.

“Jason! Jason, fuck! Fuck me!”

“God, fucking dammit,” He mumbled in return, leaning to bite harshly at your neck again. “Scream for me, baby. Scream my fuckin’ name, Y/N.”

“Jason, Jason, Jay!”

He was fucking so deep into your guts, driving the air out of your lungs while barely giving you enough room to breathe back in with your chest pinned so tightly against his. So perfectly trapped, forcing you to feel the beat of his hammering heart right up against your exhausted muscles - still worn out from crying, sobbing for him, feeling each breath he took to fuel his rampant battering of your guts. The more you tried to escape him, the more you felt him, leaning into the tight grip of his arm on your back and only further appreciating his tight muscled hold on you and how utterly safe it made you feel.

You felt wetness on your cheeks before you realized that you were crying yet again, and Jason licked it up without hesitation, still moaning into your skin, a silent apology for all the tears he had ever made you cry. He laid kisses far too gentle across your cheeks and your temple as he continued his furious assault between your legs.

“Gonna cum for me?” He asked, pure ragged passion fuelling his voice.

He was tired, already worn out from the fighting he had done that night, his muscles weeping with exhaustion. And it was a difficult thing to do, to fuck you from underneath and hold you in place, especially after the tiring fight he had endured. But he would do it for hours more until he got what he needed, until he got you falling apart on his dick, until he felt you squeezing him and saw that blissed out orgasm face, until he was able to finally cum inside of you for the first time.

“Cum on my dick, please,” He begged, his voice warbling with a desperation that you had never heard from him before. Every other time the two of you fucked, he had been so in control – so cool, so practiced, even when you were ready to fall apart for him. This shift in him was something that drove you so much closer to the edge, throbbing around his cock in seconds, right there. “Cum on my cock, cum for me. Please baby, please, fuck, please, Y/N,”

Right as you went tumbling into the abyss, your mouth opened and you spilled something that truly drove him insane.

“Missed you so much,” You choked out, your words mostly spit, almost drunken from his cock pounding into you. “Missed this dick so much, Jay-”

You spasmed into your orgasm then, finally giving him what he wanted.

And with those fatal words, he let out a deep grunt as his body was punched with the most powerful orgasm he had ever experienced in his life. The all consuming power of you. His fingers dug into your shoulder tight enough to leave bruises as he held you so tightly to him, pinning you in place while his hips stilled, shoving his cock up inside of you so damn deep. Deep enough that you thought you might be split apart on the perfect thickness, your body thrumming and sensitive around the intrusion.

It was a second before hot, thick spurts of cum began spilling inside of you – a feeling that only deeply intensified the rocking waves of your orgasm as you twitched and thrashed on top of him, absolutely overwhelmed by the sensations. You were moaning hotly into his ear as you became downright dizzy and detached from reality, your hands clenching onto him, your ears rumbling with blood, and everything in your being begging for Jason to never leave you again.

You greedily gasped for air and Jason did too, both of you so utterly breathless from the earth-rattling sensations. He kissed so sweetly along your skin as he rocked his hips into yours a few final times, truly milking out the last of his orgasm while he indulged in the feeling of your bare skin on his.

The mind-numbing orgasm soon crashed into a melancholic ending.

Feeling Jason’s hot cum dribble down between your thighs for the first time while his body quivered against yours in the aftershocks of his orgasm, well and truly sated, his arms tight around you, holding onto you with trembling agony, as though you might slip away the second that he let you go. Your breath hitched in your chest with the knowledge that he had likely gotten everything he had come here for: medical care for his wounds, the knowledge that you were pathetic and alone without him, a good fuck to satisfy him.

He had no greater reason to stay.

Didn’t he?

He let out a few more huffed breaths as he fell back onto the bed, taking you with him while his softening cock was still inside of you, still warm and presently reminding you of just how much you had missed being close to him. Your body unconsciously clenched around him – still needy, even if it wasn’t exactly that demanding now, definitely not horny outright anymore. He let out a sharp breath beside your ear in response, and the hand of his injured arm remained comfortably splayed across your ass and the other smoothed up your back, coming to oh-so-gently cradle the back of your head. It was a delicate treatment. One that you had never received in your life. He was treating you like you were something so precious, so sweet – as if he hadn’t just flooded you with his cum only moments ago.

You couldn’t help but to relax into the touch, laying down on his chest and closing your eyes, truly enjoying it. Tears pricked at your eyes once again, thinking about the last time you had been in bed with him, thinking about everything that had happened since then. Thinking about how stupid you had been to let him go. You wouldn’t let yourself get into the ‘what ifs’ again. You couldn't let yourself go over all the details about if you could have saved him or not. Especially not now that he was right here with you, his heart beating steadily right under your ear.

But it was a damn cruel world to put you through all that pain.

Jason began to shift, seemingly moving to roll you off of him so that he could get away, and you put a hand on his chest, shoving him downward in protest.

“Not yet.” You croaked out weakly, your throat worn out from all the noises you had made earlier - something that Jason from a few months ago would have mocked you endlessly for. “Please.”

He was struck by the look in your eyes – wide, truly frightened, desperate.

You genuinely didn’t want to let him go.

It was that alone that caused him to sag back into the mattress, running his hand soothingly up and down your back as you continued to warm his sagging cock, laying your head down on his chest once again.

The two of you ruminated in the silence for a while longer, and when Jason spoke up again, what he chose to say truly surprised you.

“You killed the Joker?”

He posed it as a question. Not accusatory, not angry. But instead – quiet, thoughtful, contemplative.

You were curious about how he had found out what you had done. How had he come to suspect you in order to bring it up in conversation?

With him, you felt entirely comfortable, and you didn’t feel the need to deny it.

“Yeah.” You said, a whisper soft in the air. Jason didn’t reflect with any major reaction. He simply continued to meditatively pet your skin, so you continued. “I just – I couldn’t live in a world where your killer was still alive.”

Jason made a strange sound – what you realized a moment later was him choking on his own spit. He seemed shocked, burdened with more intense emotions. He couldn’t gather more words. He wasn’t sure if he was supposed to thank you or not.

“How did you know?” You wondered aloud, your voice a bit firmer, a bit louder this time.

“The autopsy report said that his heart muscles had frostbite.” Jason replied, informative and truthful. “I didn’t think the bastard even had a heart, but… whatever.”

You did have to wonder how he got his hands on the autopsy report, but you didn’t bother to ask. Instead, you chose to turn your mind off then. You wanted to simply enjoy the company of the person you had missed so much. Unintentionally, the feeling of Jason’s alive warmth underneath you, his arms encasing you in a calm safety that you hadn’t felt in too long, it lulled you into a gentle sleep before he had the chance to make his escape.

…

Jason felt slightly bad about it – leaving while you were unconscious.

He knew that he should feel bad about it.

He felt slightly bad about it, but not bad enough to actually stick around until you woke up. Eventually, for you, the post-orgasm bliss would pass, and you would get angry at him again. You would be pissed off that he had killed so many people as Red Hood. You would be pissed off that he was working with Crane. You would find a reason to turn him in to Dick, and everything that Jason had been working on would fall apart.

Him leaving was for the better. If you got too involved in this, then Crane would come after you next. Maybe it would end in your death this time – one that couldn’t be reversed because your body would be too mutilated, too far gone. Crane was a vengeful bastard, that much Jason knew.

Jason shuddered at the thought.

It was a stupid, weak choice to come and see you that night. He couldn’t let his own selfish instincts screw everything up. Not again.

He rolled you off him, into the middle of the bed, finally parting your two bodies, and he made sure that you were nicely tucked under the warm covers before he got dressed again. And before he turned to leave out the bedroom forever, intending to leave the apartment out the same window that he came in, he took one last greedy look at your peaceful, sleeping form.

He was so utterly fucked.

If he stayed here with you, Crane would come for him eventually. Crane would weed you out as his one weakness and he would kill you slow just to make sure that Jason suffered for it. If he avoided going back to Crane, he would have to die again eventually. He would be disposed of as the useless pawn that he was. If he went grovelling back to Dick, he would never be accepted back into the Titans family.

He truly was Gastby, wading into the pool, waiting for his own demise to swallow him whole – opening his mouth to accept the stinging chlorine water into his lungs.

But he refused to let you watch it unfold.

Jason leaned down with one knee on the bed, careful not to wake you, and leaned across your sleeping form. He placed a gentle kiss on your temple, sure that you were unconscious enough not to hear him, he whispered the words that had single-handedly sealed his fate, still too cowardly to say them when you could actually hear them:

“I love you, too.”

Then he gathered the rest of his things, and left.

…

When you woke up alone, you began to panic.

A range of different terrors went through your mind – the idea that all of it had been a dream, the idea that you were truly going insane with grief.

When you moved out of bed to go to the bathroom and your body had a distinct soreness to it, and you felt the unique stickiness of half-dried cum between your thighs, though, your heart stilled inside your chest. Your eyes flickered over to your bedside table, where you had abandoned the half-opened first-aid kit, some pieces of bloody gauze still left inside of it. And then, you felt some entirely new things.

Sadness. Regret. Disbelief. Anger.

You were entirely enraged by the fact that Jason could come in, fuck you, and then abandoned you as if you meant nothing to him.

You wrapped yourself in a simple robe, storming out into the kitchen to see if his helmet was still on the counter, needing to see if there was any trace of him left in the apartment.

You were once again shocked by what you found.

A bright pink box. A very stereotypical donut box. Clearly, a gift that had been left there for you. With a small square card propped on the top – a note.

Instinctively, staring at it apprehensively, you shuffled into the kitchen on weak legs and picked up the note. You were surprised when you lifted up the small paper and revealed underneath – a cellphone? A small, plain black flip phone – one like you hadn’t seen in years and hadn’t used during the time they were popular.

You flipped it open, and it was operational. But you went through the contacts and there were none listed, so Jason hadn’t left this here with the intention of you communicating with him. Perhaps he was going to call you.

You then opened the note.

You prayed it was something good.

'Hey babe,

Sorry I couldn’t be there to make breakfast for you. Hope this makes up for it.’

You rolled your eyes at this.

‘Usually I don’t like to hit and run, but I had business to take care of.’

Him being apologetic put an odd pang through your heart.

‘If you really wanna keep being a mess with me, hit redial on the phone. I’ll be the one to pick up. It’s a burner, and it’ll be active for another week – gives you some time to think about all this. But if you want – you can forget I came by last night. Snap the phone in half and leave it in a dumpster somewhere. I won’t call you.

You can find someone else who won’t mess you up so bad. You’re a good person – you deserve better.

-J’

Of course. After you had screamed at him last night, after everything you had told him – he was giving you a choice this time.

But for you, there was truly only one option.

...

Jason hated Gotham.

He hated everything from the grimy streets to the smoggy air to the frequency of gutter rats – both literal and human.

He hated that shortly after leaving your apartment, he found himself in a twenty-four hour diner trying to get his head on straight, sipping on stale black coffee and glaring at a tired waitress who was clearly swooning around, trying to chat him up for tips. He hated that he found himself staring into an old, neon lit donut case, thinking of you.

It was nothing like San Francisco, where everything was 'artisanal' and 'farm fresh' and 'vegan'. It was all day-old overly processed crap. Most people who frequented downtown Gotham were druggies, drunks, or just plain starving, living on the poverty line and they didn't care what they put into their bodies. To them, food was food. And frankly, Jason agreed. And soon, Jason found himself ordering a dozen, mostly the powdered, red jelly filled ones that weren't really similar to any specific fruit. The kind that you loved and he hated, and he found himself picking up another metal can in the alleyway again, knowing how to perfectly hack the alarm this time.

Gotham was the shithole he should have never asked you to step foot into, but now he hoped you would never leave.

...

That's all for now!

I highly appreciate comments, but I do find it rude or stressful when people comment asking for more immediately after reading something rather than commenting about the material at hand.

I would love to discuss the characters, the themes, the story here, but I don't just want comments asking for more, especially when I do have more of this story in mind and I would eventually like to make it a trilogy. You definitely do have more to look forward to with this story, and if you haven't read it already for some reason, go back and read the original oneshot that sparked this series: Emergency Contact, and checkout the Series Masterlist.

And if you want something else to read in the mean time, check out my DC Titans Masterlist, or the Masterlist of everything I have ever written for every fandom that I write for.

I hope you guys enjoyed reading, please consider reblogging, and thank you so much for reading this far!

-Sunny ☀️

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