Jason Todd never thought of himself as the kind of guy who’d want kids.

Hell, he’d barely wrapped his head around surviving, let alone raising anything that couldn't feed itself or hold a gun. His whole life had been chaos, fire, fists, and survival — the idea of a baby had always seemed like something from someone else’s world. Softer. Calmer. Safer.

But that was before tonight.

Before 3AM.

Before he found himself sitting in the dim, quiet living room of your shared apartment, lit only by the soft glow of a streetlamp through the blinds, watching you rock a three-month-old baby girl in your arms.

Not your baby. Not his.

She was your sister’s — the sister who’d vanished more times than anyone could count, caught up in a self-destructive orbit of alcohol, drugs, and bad decisions that had finally reached its peak tonight.

You hadn’t even heard her knock.

Jason had woken up first — jolted by the pounding on the door, instinctively reaching for the gun in the drawer before shaking the sleep from his head. And when you both opened it… nothing. No figure. No voice. Just the cold hallway and a small wooden basket on the welcome mat, holding a wailing infant bundled in mismatched blankets and a worn onesie.

Now, an hour later, the crying hadn’t stopped.

You were on the couch, cradling the baby with a kind of gentleness Jason didn’t know people could just have. You didn’t look scared. Tired, maybe. Heartbroken, definitely. But even in your exhaustion, your hands were steady, your voice soft, murmuring quiet things he couldn’t hear as you pressed kisses to the baby's fragile forehead.

She was still crying. Wailing like her world had been ripped out from under her.

Because it had.

Jason leaned back against the armchair, elbows on his knees, scrubbing a hand over his face. The baby’s cries pierced something deep in his chest — not annoyance, not frustration.

Something else.

Something he didn’t like admitting.

You looked up at him for just a second — not asking for help, just letting him in on the moment. The dark circles under your eyes made you look older, wiser, more tired than anyone should have to be at 3AM.

And yet, in that second, Jason felt something shift.

It hit him like a freight train.

This suits you.

He didn’t mean to say it aloud. But it came out anyway, a low murmur, barely above the baby’s cries.

You blinked, caught off guard. “What?”

He gestured vaguely toward you, the baby, the whole moment.

“This,” he said, his voice rough. “You. The baby. Being…motherly, or whatever. It suits you.”

You let out a breath that might’ve been a laugh, or maybe a sigh. You looked down at the baby in your arms again, her tiny fists clenched near her face, her cheeks red from crying. She was still inconsolable, but you didn’t stop. Didn’t waver. You just held her closer.

Jason swallowed thickly and looked away, but the words kept echoing in his skull.

It did suit you.

And the worst part — no, the real kicker — was that now he couldn’t unsee it. You with a baby. Not someone else’s. His.

He’d never imagined it before. Never let himself.

But here you were, glowing in the moonlight, exhausted and brave and beautiful in a way he didn’t know existed until now. And something in him — something buried deep and scarred and terrified — whispered that maybe he wanted this. With you. The soft parts of life. The safe things.

He didn’t know if he’d say it out loud. Not yet.

But he knew this: if you ever looked at him one day and said you wanted this — really wanted it — he’d say yes without thinking.

He’d give it to you. All of it.

Even the pieces of him he never thought could be soft.