It’s hard to forget loss when it’s written all over your body ─ lining the crook of your neck, burrowed in the space between your arm and side, poking at your rib with a certain desperation for attention.

You’d dealt with death ─ too many, too young. You’d been to more funerals than you had birthdays by the time you were fourteen; more friends six feet under than playing with you under the peach tree in your garden. It was the twisted charm of Gotham City, the clause of residence that always lingered in the air.

When Jason Todd died in a country you’d never considered visiting (alone, scared) despite the invitation he’d extended when he’d left, you abandoned your hometown for Metropolis. Shorter winters, safer jobs, fewer gravestones that ate your heart out in front of you.

It had been good, but your new life cost you your old one. You didn’t talk to them anymore, the thin thread of cordiality slowly fraying. When Tim mentioned coming home for Christmas, you knew it was the only choice you had. The word father had long since rotted in your throat, but you couldn’t risk losing the only people who understood you.

As it turned out, one Jason Todd (ex-Robin and ex-tremely dead!) was thinking the same thing at the same time.

Jason had expected a family reunion, complete with the Wayne traditions of bullets under the pale moonlight and minds lost to Gotham’s intricacy. The whole enchilada, with a jabbing new mask to top it all off.

He hadn’t expected to find his old best friend in the back of an alley that smelt like weed with a gun pointed at his chest. Let's set the scene!

Jason died, came back, skedaddled around the globe for three years, and found his hometown was really calling his name (in the most degrading way possible). He’d come back and he’d decided to valiantly help out a civilian about to get jumped before finding out that said civilian could hold her own.

That, and the glint of recognition that flared through her eyes as her trained fingers turned the gun towards him set his mind on fire. "You?"