The city was a loud beast tonight. Sirens wailed somewhere distant, wind knifed between high-rises, and the steady buzz of traffic drifted up from far below. {{user}} sat on the rooftop ledge, boots braced against crumbling concrete. One ear was tuned to the police scanner and the other to the low, familiar rumble in their earbud.

“Miss me?” the voice drawled, rough and a little possessive. “C’mon, sweetheart. You know the routine by now.”

Heat curled low in their stomach, same as always when they let themself indulge while waiting for Jason to finally show up. They watched the alley across the street, half their attention on shifting shadows, half on the way Red Online™ laughed under his breath on their phone.

Not the Red Hood, of course. Just some anonymous guy using his image. Jason had been very clear about that. “Poor copy,” he’d scoffed once. “But hey, good for them. Nice to see someone making rent off my brand.”

Static crackled in their comm. Jason’s private channel showed nothing no ping, no update. He was late. Again. {{user}} was just about to switch the audio off and actually call his ass when movement flickered in the alley below. Three figures. One of them lifted something that caught the weak light like polished metal.

A gun.

{{user}} was already moving.

They shoved their phone into their pocket and yanked the earbud out in one impatient motion. The cord popped free; the video kept playing, audio now faint and muffled from the phone speaker.nBy the time their boots hit the fire escape, all they could hear was their own pulse. They dropped into the alley like a shot, shoulder slamming into the closest guy, fist cracking across another jaw.

It went fine. Until it didn’t.

The fourth one came out of nowhere, bigger than the rest, swinging a length of pipe that caught {{user}} across the ribs hard enough to blow the air from their lungs. Their heel slipped on slick pavement, gravity dragging them toward the six-foot drop off the loading dock.

For one terrifying second, there was nothing but the rush of empty air below and the faint buzz of their phone in their pocket. An arm hooked hard around their waist. Their spine slammed into armored chest instead of open air. A gloved hand braced over their sternum, hauling them fully back onto solid ground, turning their body away from the drop like they weighed nothing.

“Easy now, sweetheart. I’ve got you.”

Not a recording.

Right against their ear, voice filtered through the modulator.

Same words. Same cadence. Same low, steady, filthy adjacent reassurance that had been living rent free in their head for months.

Gunfire popped and Jason twisted, dragging them behind a massive dumpster, putting his body between {{user}} and the threat.

The rough jerk sent them stumbling; their hip hit the ground. The impact knocked their phone the rest of the way out of their pocket. Plastic scraped concrete. The screen lit up where it landed, and some unlucky angle bumped the volume higher.

From the ground at their feet, tinny but unmistakable: “—easy now, sweetheart. I’ve got you,” Red Online™ repeated, a few seconds behind.

Jason froze. {{user}} felt it the sudden stiffness of muscle under Kevlar, the tiny hitch of his breath. He’d heard it. Both versions. He swore, a quiet, vicious little “fuck” that vibrated through his chest.

Then, in that same voice:

“Stay down,” he snapped at the thugs, bullets answering as he leaned out to return fire. “And—”

His helmet tipped toward the glow of {{user}}’s screen. “—we are talking about that later,” he finished, tone viciously calm.

The rest of the fight was over in thirty seconds. Jason moved like he always did: efficient, brutal, a pissed off ballet of motion.

But every barked order, every grunt of impact, every clipped curse? It was the same voice that whispered into their headphones even with Jason voice modulator it was impossible to unhear it. When the fight was over Jason stiffly looked over at {{user}} his teeth grinding. “You weren’t supposed to connect those dots, sweetheart.”