Young Writers Society

After some time, Jason and Steph decided they were done with the party. The interactions with practical strangers wasn't jogging his memory, and neither Jason or Steph really liked the party itself.

They left together. For the briefest of moments, Jason felt like he shouldn't be leaving. Something about the place felt familiar, but he didn't know what.

They hung out for a little longer, but it was a school night - he left Steph at her apartment and returned to the streets of Crime Alley. He didn't have his Red Hood suit with him; he made due with an old hoodie he had left at Steph's place and kept forgetting to take with him before now.

One or two uncomfortable comments from partially-intoxicated teenagers later, Megara left. The headache was killing her and the urge to snap a creepy boy's wrist was getting to be too much to resist.

She took to wandering the streets, managing to avoid any other unsavory individuals dumb, or, she guessed, unlucky enough to pick a fight with her. Here she didn't have the kind of reputation she had in her home, and here people didn't seem to fear the same things. The attitudes, markers of status, and other little hints that she wasn't someone to mess with just didn't have the same effect here as it did back home.

Gods, she had to get back there.

She turned to cut through an alley, momentarily distracted by a shouting match starting up outside a run-down looking apartment building. She bumped into someone.

Just as she was muttering her apologies, she realized who that someone was, and she froze.

A hulking figure, twice her size, sneered down at her and she got a good look at his face for the first time. The twisted expression of realization and rage that he wore made her wish she hadn't

Before a word could be spoken, she darted past him into the dark. He bellowed something after her, but between her pounding headache and the echo, his words were lost in the air. She could, however, hear his footsteps racing after her, and a second set gaining on her.

Damn.

This was why she stopped slitting throats whenever it was convenient.

She ran into someone else, nearly bowling him over. Luckily, she managed to catch her footing and steady him. Unluckily, that was around the time the pair of - admittedly rightfully - angry goons caught up to her.

She pulled out her knife and spun it into her preferred grip, turning to fight. Running was getting old anyway.

Jason didn't get a chance to see who had gone running into him. The alleyway was too dark to. But he did see who she was running from, and quickly decided that she was the one who needed the help.

Jason wasn't Red Hood right now. He didn't even have his guns. But that was the thing about Crime Alley - self-defense and fighting abilities weren't anything special. He gave a well-aimed kick to knees of the man closest to him. It wasn't enough to knock him down, but it did make him stumble right into the man running up behind him.

Which was just the distraction Jason needed.

Before the girl could even try to fight them, he grabbed onto her wrist and started running down the alleyway. Memories that weren't really his flickered through his head. He slipped down a crack between two buildings that was really too tight for him now that he was taller and more muscular, but was too small for the men chasing after her to even fit in.

They'd figure out a way around.

Guys like that always did.

But Jason had a safe place to go that was right in front of them.

"I'm taking you to a safe place," he said. "Just until those two go away. They'll get bored after a few minutes."

He lead her up the stairs of the fire escape, slipping in through the window that he had left open when he left that afternoon. For once, he was grateful for forgetting to close it.

Once he had led her inside, he made a beeline for where he hid his Red Hood outfit. He made sure to keep the assorted parts of his outfit hidden from view, only pulling out a regular old gun that no one would suspect belonged to Red Hood.

He returned to the window and looked out below.

And as he did so, the hood to his hoodie fell off - casting his face into bright moonlight.

Megara didn't know what prevented her from wrenching her hand free from the boy's grip as he dragged her along, but she didn't. She tucked away her knife as they ran. She wouldn't be needing it, apparently.

Once they finally stopped in the apartment, Megara looked around. It was modest. She hadn't been...well, she guessed the right word from his perspective would be 'saved', by anyone particularly wealthy. That was a good sign, she supposed.

Then she turned around, and she froze.

"...Jason?" she said quietly.

He turned from the window.

Before he made eye contact with her, he thought - for just a moment - that he was looking at someone who had known him from before he went to live with Batman. But then the voice clicked, and he realized he had just saved someone who probably didn't need saving in the first place.

"Megara?" he whispered.

A second later, he caught movement outside of the window. The two men were on the ground below. Neither one of them had noticed the apartment, but Jason still played things safe - he slipped off his jacket, hid his gun, and casually closed the blinds like he wasn't trying to hide.

He turned back to Megara.

They were safe - at least for now, anyways.

She swallowed the lump in her throat. This was a worst-case scenario. She was suddenly embarrassed. How was she supposed to explain why those guys were chasing her? This was why she gave up her past methods. She got some fucking shame to go with her responsibility and grew up.

She drew a shaky breath. "I...I should go," she said, her volume barely raising at all.

"It's not a good idea to go yet," Jason said. He was surprised that he could even find the words to say - every part of him was threatening to break down again. Like he had the last time they had met, and the last time before that.

...And the time before that.

Jason was beginning to realize that their entire friendship had been spent crying over what could have been. He also knew that he was just thinking that because he was trying to avoid the obvious. He had thought he would never see Megara again. Something told him she didn't plan on seeing him, either. But a split second decision led to him facing the situation he had kept trying to ignore.

He lowered the gun and rubbed his wrist with his free hand.

"...I know you want to go," he added, his voice a little quieter. "But they're probably still looking for you. You...You need to wait a little longer."

She shifted uncomfortably, "They aren't exactly...They're not going to stop looking for me. It doesn't make much difference when I leave." It did. The longer she waited for the men to wander away in search of her the further they'd be.

He looked back towards the blinds, still methodically rubbing his wrist.

"...I've lived here for awhile," he said. He didn't say the year like he might have before. He didn't even give a point of reference. Everything was becoming so jumbled in his memories thees days, now that Jason Todd's memories were starting to mix with his own. "They'll still be looking for you, but they'll be looking for you in the wrong places..."

She hesitated. "I guess..." her voice trailed off, vanishing into the thick fog of silence between them. Joining the unsaid words that were weighing on her chest, making it hard to breathe.

The silence stretched, woven words like a rope meant to hang her. A rope she wove. A rope she was tying now into her noose.

Last chance to repair this.

The finality of that thought hurt like a blow to the chest.

An suddenly, she snapped. She couldn't. She couldn't let herself destroy another good thing.

"I'm sorry," she said suddenly, and without giving him time to respond continued, "I-I didn't mean what I said. I mean, at the time, I did. I did and I'm sorry. I know...I know I hurt you and I meant to and I am so, so sorry. I wanted you gone and I didn't want you to come back because I thought it would be...safer? I guess, for Eddie and me. It...it was stupid and I'm sorry. I want to take it back but that's up to you if you want to let me. I'm sorry."

The nagging feeling that she was guilting him into giving her what she wanted persisted in her mind. She prayed she wasn't. It wasn't what she wanted to be doing.

For the first moment, all that Jason did was stare.

Those were the words he had been waiting an eternity for. He might have enjoyed the time he had spent with Steph lately, but he couldn't help but think of Megara every time he went home. She was one of his first real friends. He had other friends, too, but she was the first friend he remembered making for himself. Not the first friend Jason Todd made. Not one he ended up making because he was reincarnated as Jason Todd.

The one he ended up making because he was Jaylin Cope, and the one he ended up making because she liked Jaylin Cope.

He didn't give a verbal reply. He wasn't sure what words he could or was supposed to say. But he did bridge the little distance between them and pull her into a hug - hoping that she got what that meant.