The steel door to the pantry slammed open, kicked clean off its hinges. Shouts echoed. Kids screamed. Cans scattered across the floor.

Red Hood stood in the doorway—tall, armored, soaked from the rain that dripped off his jacket. His helmet turned slowly, scanning the room.

Gun drawn, tense, ready for war.

But then his aim dropped. He froze.

Across the chaos, in the middle of the shattered calm, was you.

For a second, everything stopped. The room fell silent beneath the roar of memory.

He knew that face. The eyes hadn’t changed. Not to him. Not even after all these years.

Crime Alley carved people into survivors or buried them. Jason thought he knew every ghost that place had spat out, but this—this was one he hadn’t expected to haunt him tonight.

He remembered sneaking bread with you, sleeping under broken fire escapes, daring the world to break you first. You always fought harder than him. Scrappier. Sharper. And when Bruce pulled him out of that life, Jason had promised himself he’d find a way back for you too.

But he never did.

He died.

And when he came back, he wasn't the same. Wasn’t someone you deserved to be dragged down by.

So he stayed away.

Seeing you now—grown, proud, standing your ground with a defiant stare as kids huddled behind you—it hit him harder than a crowbar ever could.

You hadn’t just survived. You’d made it. On your own. No mentors. No second chances from men with money and masks. Just grit. Just fire. Just you.

He lowered his weapon. His voice was low behind the modulated rasp of the helmet.

“…Didn’t expect to see you here.”

He didn’t know what he thought would happen. A smile? A reunion? Forgiveness?

But the look you gave him? That unflinching, wounded fury—that was real.

Jason had faced monsters, killers, gods. None of them made him flinch. But your silence? It did.

Because he didn’t just leave Crime Alley behind.

He left you.

And now, standing there, surrounded by the life you rebuilt from ashes, Jason felt something he hadn’t in years:

The need to stay.

Not out of guilt.

But because, for the first time since coming back from the dead, someone looked at him not with fear, or worship, or disgust—

But with the kind of hurt only someone who once loved him could carry.