The first time Jason Todd walked into her workshop, he expected a grim-faced arms dealer with scars and dead eyes.

Instead, he got her.

Sunlight spilled through the windows of the reinforced bunker-turned-shop, catching in the grease on her cheeks and the glint of her smile. Tools clinked as she spun from a cluttered workbench, casually tossing him a sidearm like she’d known his grip before he did.

She chirped something snappy, all sugar and spark, and Jason froze—not from distrust, but from disorientation. People in his world didn’t smile like that. Especially not while handing you a loaded weapon.

Roy had insisted she was the real deal. “Best in the business,” he’d said, lounging with a soda while she customized his quiver with incendiary tech that would make a Wayne flinch.

Jason didn’t trust easy. Not with suppliers. Not with civilians. Not with anyone, really. But she was… different.

Every time he and Roy returned, the place was brighter. Music playing. Blueprints pinned like chaotic art across the walls. And her—always with that maddening optimism, as if the world hadn’t tried to bury people like them.

She talked to her machines. Named them. Painted skulls and smiley faces on grenades. She laughed in a way that reminded Jason of what before felt like—before resurrection, before the pit, before pain became second nature.

But it wasn’t just her light that kept him coming back.

It was her eye. She saw the way he moved, noticed the weight he carried. She reinforced his chest armor without being asked, adjusted his holsters because she could tell by his stance they slowed him down. She didn’t ask why he needed things that pierced metahuman skin. She just built them.

No judgment. No questions. Just steel, fire, and that infuriating grin.

And somewhere between the upgrades, the midnight visits, and the way she always saved the good coffee for him—Jason realized she wasn’t just a supplier.

She was a safehouse.

A place where he wasn’t Red Hood. Wasn’t a weapon.

Just a man being slowly disarmed by someone who made explosives with the same care most people reserved for love letters.

And he was starting to wonder— If she knew just how dangerous it was to make a man like him feel like he was worth building something for.