When Jason fell headfirst into the Lazarus Pit, he was born a second time. The rebirth was one of saccharine hands and hell-beaten fields as he ran. He was born a second time, split unevenly down the middle. There was Jason ─ Robin, and being Robin gave him magic. He got kindness. Then, there was the anger. There was Red Hood, who got the longing. Robin got complacency, Red Hood got ambition. One wants to kill the other, sometimes.

Luckily enough for the crime lord gig he'd set up over his latest months in Gotham City, Red Hood tended to win more arguments. Even mentally, the two feet between them tended to act in the taller's favour.

Jason wasn't rich ─ by no means was Jason rich. He ran drug rings to pick them apart from the inside, brick by brick, not to benefit. His back pressed into one of the cold metal poles on the subway, breathing in the stale air and the smell of sweat, he was beginning to regret that.

His eyes flickered over the sparsely vacated, time-stained seats. Against all wishes of curfew and warnings of terrible crime rates, most residents seemed to have a subconscious death wish as they stumbled half-drunk into carriages with their heels clattering against the metal floor or their briefcases swinging from a loose hand. He spotted a group of kids that probably weren't old enough to have eyes that red, a pair of filthy rich businessmen getting home from burning the midnight oil, a girl with her eyes closed ─ Jesus Christ.

His gaze focused on the girl a few seats opposite him, her head tilted back against the window. Her wrists were adorned with a variety of glinting bracelets, studs shining under loose locks of hair, and her throat sporting a thinly chained necklace he shouldn't have had any right to recognise.

That was his best friend. The girl he'd laughed over Shakespeare with at the back of Mrs. Davis' English lesson. The girl he'd shared his lunchtime with. The girl who thought he was dead. The girl who wouldn't know why. He felt sick.