Chapter Text
You woke into a scene that felt like something pulled from a fever dream, or worse—a cruel afterlife stitched together by the frayed edges of your longing. Everything was bathed in an almost sacred kind of stillness, so at odds with the agony blooming just beneath your skin. It was too warm. Your body felt swaddled in heat, sunk deep into softness, and for a moment you couldn’t remember why that should feel so strange. Why the warmth felt like betrayal. Why your ribs felt like they were being pried open with every breath.
And then it began to return. Not all at once, but in shattering fragments. The cold tiles, the sting in your side, the dim bathroom light flickering against the red that wouldn't stop coming. And the loneliness. God, the loneliness.
But you weren’t in that tomb of porcelain and mildew anymore. Someone had moved you. Carried you, tended to you. You were in your bed, the edge of your blanket folded over with care, and your pillow fluffed just enough, like a memory from childhood reimagined in a cracked mirror. The surrealism of it nearly brought tears to your eyes, until you turned your head, and saw him.
Your breath caught in your throat. He looked like hell. His jacket was slung over the chair, his gloves were forgotten on your nightstand, and his helmet was nowhere to be seen. But his eyes were the same. Wild and wide and far too human, locking onto yours the moment you blinked.
And then he moved. Bolted upright from his seat as if your gaze had yanked him forward with a chain, and his hand shot out to reach for you before he hesitated, curling his fingers into a fist mid-air, holding himself back.
“You’re awake?” he said hoarsely.
You couldn’t answer, because now you remembered. You remembered everything.
The rain. The sick, spinning cold. The dying.
And him of course.
His silence. His absence. The words he'd left you with, sharp as glass, tearing through you with more cruelty than any dagger to the ribs. The memories hit you like the tail end of a speeding car, and your face twisted as the grief crested again, too exhausted to cry but too full not to break.
Jason watched it happen in your expression, and he flinched like he’d been struck.
“I’m sorry,” he muttered. “I’m—fuck, I’m so sorry. I should’ve never—”
But he didn’t finish. What was there to finish?
He should’ve never left. He should’ve never come back. He should’ve never let you in. He should’ve never pretended you didn’t already live somewhere in his very marrow.
You ignored his words. Your throat burned like you'd swallowed nails. None of this could be real. Not the warmth of the bed. Not the hurt terrorizing in your insides. Not him.
This was a hallucination, you decided, clawed up from the borderlands of death. And none of it mattered. What mattered was water. You needed water.
Gritting your teeth, you shoved the covers off, swinging your legs over the bed in defiance of your own body. The floor was far too cold when your bare feet touched down, and when you stood, your knees buckled. A tremor ran up your spine and you nearly folded in half from the agony that bloomed beneath your ribs. A tear broke loose, trailing your cheek like an apology you didn’t want to give. You told yourself it was from the pain. It had nothing to do with the figure at your bedside.
He was there in an instant. His hands caught your shoulders, steadied you before you could collapse into a heap of stubborn bones and bleeding skin. And you reflexively flinched at his touch.
You didn’t mean to, and you hated the way his face shifted when you did, like you’d just torn something open in him with your recoil.
“Where are you going?” he asked hesitantly. “You should rest—”
“Don’t,” you croaked, voice splintering. A sob caught sharp in your throat like a shard of glass.
Jason blinked. “Don’t what? I was only trying to—”
You shook your head, twisting out of his grasp, something volatile overtaking your features. Whatever mask of patience you usually wore had been peeled away, discarded along with the rest of your composure in some filthy alley.
“Don’t do this.”
His brow knit together. “Do what?”
“Pretend like you care,” you rasped. “Make room for yourself in my life, only to walk out again. I can’t—” The next breath hitched. “I wouldn’t survive it a second time.”
His mouth opened, but you cut him off.
“If you’re going to leave, do it now. Don’t play nurse. Don’t patch me up like it makes things even. Don’t do it for karma points or whatever misplaced guilt brought you here. Don’t do it because you think you owe me something. You don’t.”
"That's not what I—"
“Get out. Get lost. I don't want to be your goddamn charity case. I don't want your pity.”
Each word struck him like a hammer to the chest, and you watched it land. The recoil. The wince. The way the light in his eyes dimmed a little more with each sentence, his own words flung back at him.
But you couldn't stop. You were exhausted and hollowed out, emptied by loneliness and agony and the effort it took to survive when your heart felt like it had been left bleeding beside your body in that alley. And if you were going to be abandoned again, you’d rather be abandoned now. You couldn’t bear the slow unravelling of his presence settling into your world again, only to disappear without warning.
You didn’t want to relearn the shape of him in your life only to lose it all over again. You were already a ghost of yourself. You couldn’t become less.
Jason watched you fold like a dying thing. Quiet and slow, like paper soaked through, caving under its own weight. One second you were standing there, brittle and defiant, and the next, you were crumpled on the floor, your arms around yourself like even your bones didn’t want to stay inside you anymore.
He dropped down with you in an instant. Instinct, more than anything. His hands reached out to anchor you to the moment as if it might save you from whatever abyss you were staring into.
You didn’t fight him. That was the part that hurt the most.
He expected fury. He would’ve welcomed the worst of your vitriol because it was better than this lifeless resignation. As if you'd already decided that you should have died.
Still, he touched you, tentative at first, expecting to be struck. Cradled your cheeks between his scarred palms, thumbs brushing away tears you didn’t even seem to notice you were shedding. He murmured your name like a mantra, forehead pressing to yours, letting his voice tremble with all the apologies he didn’t know how to shape into words.
And you just let him. For one suspended heartbeat, you let him in.
Your stare was empty, gaze sliding past him like a spectre, but then you focused. Met his eyes.
“Red,” you rasped. "Why..."
A name he used to wear like armour. A name you’d once said in jest, in irritation, in sleepy fondness, curled up in the cocoon of your mismatched apartment.
He couldn’t do it anymore.
“Jason,” he whispered. “It’s Jason. Call me Jason.”
He didn’t have anything else to give you. No house with a picket fence. No promises. No future carved from stability or peace. But he could give you this. Himself. Stripped down, unmasked, unhidden.
“I don’t want your pity,” you repeated.
You refused to say his name, and he didn’t let it show, how that sliced clean through him. How it burned like acid in the hollow of his chest. He’d taken bullets more gently than that omission.
He might’ve laughed if his lungs could move. Pity? You thought that’s what this was?
God. If only it were that easy.
No, this wasn’t pity. This wasn’t some obligation born of guilt. If it were, he wouldn’t have kept orbiting your apartment like some tragic satellite. Wouldn’t have looked for excuses to linger at the bodega you liked. Wouldn’t have memorized the light in your kitchen window during certain hours. Wouldn’t have felt the earth tilt whenever he caught you sitting at the table, staring absently at his old chair, a steaming cup left untouched across from you like a shrine.
It wasn’t pity when you handed him a mug, your fingers brushing his, and he spent the next three days wondering if you’d noticed how hard he swallowed. It wasn’t pity when, in the pitch-dark silence of a blood-soaked rooftop, he thought only of you. Your laughter. Your sighs.
It wasn’t pity when he walked past that bookstore you liked, the one with the crooked shelves and sleepy cat in the window, and found himself wishing he'd taken you up on your offer to accompany you on one of your many visits. He still had an annotated copy of your favourite novel, a sticky note with your handwriting in the margins: “This part reminded me of you.”
And it certainly wasn’t pity when every fight he picked, every near-death brawl he barely walked away from felt a little colder without your voice in his ear, grounding him.
It wasn’t pity. It was you.
And he hated that it had taken almost losing you to realize that he was not better off without you in his life.
He reached up again, tucking a stray lock of hair behind your ear with the gentleness of someone afraid you’d shatter if he touched you wrong. His other hand smoothed the wrinkle between your brows as if he could erase even one fraction of your hurt.
Then, forehead to yours, he declared it like a vow. Maybe if he was sincere enough, the universe might spare you both.
“Not pity. Never pity. I swear it.”
Something inside you broke the moment his fingers combed through your hair, like each strand was spun from gold and he feared his touch might undo you entirely. His hands quivered as they cupped your face, and it felt like he was trying to will you whole again through sheer desperation.
Then he gave you his name, and you felt everything go motionless, like the wind outside had paused mid-gust, like the ache in your ribs had dulled just for a moment, stunned into silence.
Jason.
It wasn’t a name you had guessed at. He had always been Red Hood to you, a shadow at your window, never quite real, never entirely yours.
But Jason?
Jason was human. Jason was a name carved in soft syllables, not the hard edges of the mask he wore. It was a name that felt like the sun on concrete after the rain. Solid. Honest. A name you could say in the dark and know someone would answer.
You held the syllables on your tongue like a secret. God, it fit so achingly well, like it had always been stitched into the seams of your life, waiting to be revealed.
And when he said it—“It’s Jason. Call me Jason.”—it wasn’t a demand. It was a gift. His truth, stripped bare, handed to you like an apology wrapped in longing. You hadn’t asked for it, but he had given it anyway, and now you knew it. Now it was yours. You never wanted to let it go.
The tears came hard and fast after that, like a dam rupturing, and you collapsed into him with the weight of it all. Your grief, your fear, the loneliness that had become a second skin. It spilled out in great heaving sobs that made your bruised insides scream in protest. Nonetheless, you sobbed, gasping for breath as though your lungs no longer remembered how to hold air.
Jason, as always, caught you.
His arms wrapped around you like armour, and you felt the tremble in them too. He held you not as if you were fragile, but as if he might fall apart if he let go. You hated yourself for clinging, for staining his shirt with tears, for taking up space in a life like his, like an old ornament someone had meant to throw out. You thought he’d pull away. You thought he should.
But he never did.
“I’m sorry,” you mumbled, choking on the words.
“Hey, none of that, now” he murmured into your hair. “You don’t apologize to me. Ever.”
Your fingers curled tighter into the fabric of his shirt, the scent of smoke and rain and something inherently him grounding you. “I didn’t want to be a bother. You said to let you go.”
Jason pulled back just enough to see your face, his thumb brushing beneath your eyes. His own shone with something terrible and beautiful—grief, regret, reverence. He shook his head, jaw clenched like it hurt to speak.
“You came?” you rasped. “You really came?”
He swallowed. “Of course, I came. You were supposed to call me. That’s what the number was for.” He held up the burner phone like it was a relic.
You looked away, the shame unbearable. “Didn’t want to be… a burden. You said—”
“I know what I said. And I was a goddamn idiot for it. I’m sorry. I can’t be sorry enough.”
“Yeah but—”
“You’re not a bother,” he affirmed, fiercely now. “Not to me. Not ever. You call me—any hour, any day—I will come. In a heartbeat. I don’t care where I am, who I’m with. I will always come for you.”
"Oh."
Held you tighter then, whispering your name like it was holy. Like you were something worthy. Something his.
“I’ve got you,” he professed, over and over again. “I’ve got you. I’ve got you, I swear it.”
And for once you let yourself believe it.
When your breathing finally slowed, you felt his arms move beneath you, one under your legs, the other steady at your back. He lifted you as if you weighed nothing at all, tucking you back into bed with a tenderness that made your chest throb all over again, but this time for a different reason entirely.
You blinked blearily at him, just in time to see him pick up something from the bedside table. A mug, steam curling faintly from the surface.
“Made you tea," he indicated. "Though it’s probably shit.”
You couldn’t help the smile that tugged at the corner of your lips. It felt foreign on your face like it belonged to someone else.
“Thank you.”
He gave you a nod, awkward and a little unsure. Then he turned as if to leave, and you panicked at the sight. You reached out, not even grabbing him properly, just the ghost of your fingers brushing his wrist. Regardless, he stopped like you’d tethered him with chains. The expression on his face was hopeful, like a man on the edge of salvation. It was almost too much to bear.
“Will you stay?”
For a second, he said nothing. You felt the fear rise, a tide ready to swallow you whole. Maybe you’d pushed too far. Maybe this was where he decided it wasn’t worth it after all.
But then, he nodded. His shoulders relaxed, eyes softening as if he couldn’t believe you wanted him here. That you chose him.
He sat beside you, close enough that you could feel the warmth radiating through the space between you. Maybe it was the lingering adrenaline, or maybe it was the rawness still bleeding at the edges of your soul, but the confession spilled out before you could stop it.
“Thank you... I’m glad you came. I didn’t... I didn’t want to die. I was—”
Scared. You were scared. You had been terrified of dying alone, with no one to mourn you, with no one to even remember that you had existed. Just another blemish on the tapestry of the city.
Before you could finish, Jason pulled you gently to him, your head finding the cradle of his shoulder like it had always belonged there. His arm wrapped securely around you, grounding you, steadying your breath. You closed your eyes, lulled by the beat of his heart beneath your cheek, the solid presence of him where the void had been.
And when you were just about to slip into sleep again, you felt it—or thought you did. The softest press of lips against your temple, so light it could’ve been a dream. All of tonight might as well have been a dream, one you never wanted to wake up from.
But his words? Those were real. They etched themselves into your mind with a gravity that no dream could hold.
“I will never let anything happen to you ever again.”