AN This fanfic. Was nothing. But stress. Even though it really shouldn't have. BECAUSE I GUESS THERE'S GENUINELY NOTHING BETTER THAN WRITING FOR A NEW CHARACTERS IN A NEW SHIP IN A NEW FANDOM AS A GIFT FOR SOMEONE YOU WANT TO IMPRESS.

I wrote this for the lovely qualapec as part of The Beta Branch Secret Santa. I had no idea what I would write at first, but then I saw that they liked this, and I wanted an excuse to listen to more of Jensen Ackles, and then my angst and pain ran away from me and left me with this behemoth.

Side note: I haven't read anything involving Barbara before, so I'm basing her entirely off of what I've seen from various cartoons. Also, she never officially became Oracle in my story, she just dabbled here and there in that field while she was half paralyzed.

For all of his contingency plans, Jason didn't really know what he'd do next. Oh, sure, he'd thought about what might happen after the potential outcomes of his plan to kill the Joker. He had bought a train ticket, plane ticket, and even stolen a car (but did it really count as stealing if the owner was a dead man?) in case he needed to skip town, but if he was honest, he'd never really planned on using them. Jason had literally injected his master plan with five years of his blood, sweat, and tears, and somehow the grand scale of things kept him from thinking too much about what would happen if his great be-all-end-all
did
not
work.

There really was no next step for when he went beyond That Point, when everything drew to an end and decisions had been made and the dust finally settled. And that was very...disconcerting,to say the least.

Instead of moving on, Jason hung around Gotham. He felt bitter and defeated, waiting for that flash of purpose he'd felt just a few seconds, hours, days before. Jason really had nothing, no home, no family, no ideas as to what came next, which was really, really depressing.

Maybe that was why he let Barbara break into his apartment one day. He just stood there, half dressed and hanging out the window as she stared at him from the doorway for a few seconds. She was either going to say something or try to attack him, both of which he could handle without turning around.

"You know, a few years back, you would have been smoking."

"Yeah?" Jason asked, not even bothering to drag up his typical half rabid, entirely sarcastic manner.

"Yep. All a part of the teen rebellion thing."

"What? No. My body's a temple."

She laughed, which he sensed was a good sign. Jason turned around to look at Barbara, and tried not to be shocked. Five years looked good on her. Her figure had filled out, her hair was shorter and not the obnoxious red it had been when they were kids, but her light blue eyes were still determined and that dimple she got when she pursed her lips was still there. Plus she wasn't in a…well. She looked good.

She didn't seem at all surprised to see how he'd changed in return. Barbara took in the couple of scars on his face, the still purple bruises all over his torso, and the utterly dead look in his green eyes, and didn't even flinch. All she said was "You look tired, Jay."

He rolled his eyes, not having heard the name since he was a freakin' thirteen year old.

"Ruling Gotham's drug ring kind of takes it out of a person."

"So…that was all you, then?" she asked, leaning against the doorway to his bedroom. It was absolutely bizarre, looking at her in her cute pink sweater and dark blue capris, with a clip in her hair that was the same sort of boho chic as the bag on her shoulder. She was the Commissioner's daughter, allowed a slightly brighter version of Gotham, yet she was there, dragging herself through the muck and looking completely comfortable with it.

"What do you think?" he asked, walking over to the bed to pull on a shirt.

"I think there's a lot here that needs to be sorted out, but that Bruce is too hurt over or too emotionally constipated to deal with it."

Jason barked out a tight laugh, nodding. As ever, Barbara had managed to pin down the truth of the matter with a colorfully blunt view of things. Though that two parts sunshine, two parts break-your-arm-for-your-own-good, and one part good old fashioned ass kicking attitude wasn't what he needed or wanted just then.

"What, Bruce couldn't beat sense into me, so you're here to come be my friend and appeal to my inner humanity? Wow, you really are your father's daughter."

"Yep. 'Good cop' runs through my bones. Wanna humor me?"

"Not really."

"Then this is gonna be a long night." She perched on the edge of the small worn dresser by the door, crossing her legs like she intended to stay there as long as necessary. He shrugged as if to say he didn't really give a flying shit, and didn't move to stop her.

"Aren't they all?"

"Some are longer than others," Barbara said, glancing around the dirt stain that he was using to rest his head.

Jason swallowed, remembering her accident and how those few minutes while she was rushed to the hospital had seemed like a handful of lifetimes.

(well, it hadn't really been an accident)

"So what, you're just gonna hang around here until your very presence makes me fold and undo all the bad I've done? Bring those scumbag drug dealers back, send Bruce a plate of cookies and a sorry note, sponsor Black Mask as he gets back his corner of the criminal market? That sound like what I should do?"

"Apologize to Bruce, Jason. Never mind how much you hurt him physically, you took every single thing he taught you and threw it in his face. Jason, that's not just something you can wing away from! He—"

"He spat on my grave, Barbara! He may have mourned and regretted and hurt for me, but when he let that psychopath keep breathing, keep walking on the earth he thought I was stuck under, he dishonored everything I was to him."

"So we're acting like children, now? Eye for an eye, dishonor for dishonor?"

"I didn't do it to dishonor him," Jason said, and he sounded a bit like a petulant child, his defense sounding a bit like an afterthought. "I did it—"

"To right the wrongs, to avenge yourself, to wipe the Joker's stain off the earth, whatever, I get it, but Jason...was it worth it?"

He stared at her, trying not to rage and scream and break things to get her to understand. Jason closed his eyes, wondering why she had come here, why she had felt the need to go kick him when he was broken and down, to tell him why he was so horribly wrong after he had just lived through all of it.

"It would have been, had Bruce just had the grit to do what needed to be done."

"Jason, you've stripped your soul and traumatized the only people you can call family, all for something you had to know wouldn't work. I know Bruce said that you were messed up when Ra's brought you back or something, but I refuse to believe that you lost everything that made you Jason Todd. You didn't let those dealers sell to children, you took out one of the biggest, baddest criminals in the block when there were definitely other ways to spring the Joker. There has to be something of him left inside of you!"

"Barbara, go home. There is nothing you can say to me that will fix or change things."

Barbara stared at him, falling back a step. There was enough ice in his voice to make even him feel cold, but that wouldn't really stop her if she was determined. They stared at each other for a moment, and he wondered if she would start yelling at him again, but she just shook her head. The disappointment in her smile was a whole hell of a lot worse than anything she could have said.

"Barbara..." Jason trailed off, words catching in his throat and making him feel like he was about to vomit, which was stupid. He could talk shit to a room full of ruthless drug lords without his stomach doing a single turn (granted, he had a giant gun and a bag full of their lieutenants' heads to terrorize them with, but still), but when it came to just talking to a girl that he had once considered to be more or less family, his intestines felt like doing the damn conga.

She was watching him, waiting, hopeful, wondering if maybe he would change his sorry ways and go into the light. Jason sighed, knowing that he wouldn't and didn't even want to do that.

So he said the first thing that popped into his head, because apparently a few traumatizing events, a brutal defeat by his kinda sorta father, and a great big sulk fest was enough to turn him into a stupid thirteen year old again.

"You can walk."

"And you can breathe. Crazy how the world has these sort of miracles stocked up for a rainy day."

"I just…I heard about it, the new technology, the surgery that let it happen, and I'm…I'm glad, is all. I'm happy you got your life back."

"You know, Jason, that's the crazy thing about losing the use of my legs. I realized that I didn't actually lose my life. I just found a different way to live it."

Barbara paused, turning her eyes from him to the floor. He knew that stance, the way she held her breath and just barely bit her lower lip. She was skipping over the consideration part of a decision and was diving right in, and to hell with the consequences.

"Do you wanna try to get a life back?"

"You mean you want to put me through therapy, read a few self-help books, take long walks in the city to realize just what good there is left in life?"

"No. That stuff sucks and everyone hates it. I'm proposing a road trip."

Jason stared at her, convinced she was absolutely shitting him.

"You want to take a road trip with a slightly psychotic murderer with sociopathic tendencies to help him go discover the meaning of life and start afresh?"

"Yes. I mean, hey, I've only been talking to you for a few minutes and you've already addressed several severe personality disorders you may be harboring. Admitting the problem is the first step to recovery."

"No."

"What, you think I can't handle it?"

"No, I think it's stupid and a waste of time."

"Because moping around this dump is so much more productive."

"There are other things I need to be doing. There are bad guys out there—"

"That can be caught by other people. Jason, the world doesn't rest on your shoulders alone. Gotham doesn't really need two vigilantes running around saving people. I seem to recall that it only ended up as a general act of terror for just about everyone involved."

"I'm not doing it, Barbie. I really appreciate the guts it must have taken to even suggest that idea, but I'm going to have to pass."

Barbara pursed her lips and put her hands on her hips. She was staring him down, trying to get a read on him. After a few long moments, she nodded, straightening.

"Okay. Okay, Jason. I get it. At least I can go home knowing that I really, really tried."

"…You're not giving this up, are you?"

"Oh, nope, I'm done. I came down here, I said what I had to say, and clearly you're not interested in listening, so I might as well go. Must be some half finished container of ice cream and new episode of Doctor Sexy laying around my apartment that I can spend my time with."

Barbara waltzed out of the room, holding her hands out as if she were truly giving up. He narrowed his eyes at her, because dammit, he did not have time for this.

"I'm not going on this stupid high school field trip with you!" he called after her, wishing that she had adopted a few more of Bruce's social mannerisms, rather than his justice related ones. Those he could knock aside with hardly even an eye blink.

"I got it, you're not doing it," she called, which was quickly followed by the door slamming.

Shit. He was doing it.

After a week of her pestering him and just popping by! and making pointed comments about how he was really doing wonders for the city, staying cooped up in his mold filled mansion all day, Jason finally caved.

He really didn't know how she did it. He had overcome the crazy ass mind games every single one of his mentors had pulled, and yet a week of that girl's mental terrorism had made him flop like a damn rag doll.

Jason really hated Barbara for that.

But still, he'd be a liar if he said that he didn't appreciate the billion watt smile she gave him when he finally said yes, for the love of everything yes, if she would just shut up.

(of course, Jason's number one plan was to ditch her and the road trip as soon as possible, even if it meant diving out of the car, off a bridge, and into a white water rapid. suffice to say, his love for this trip was very, very low)

He made a point of rolling his eyes nearly out of his head when he dropped his bag in the car when she pulled up, which had little effect on her. Barbara was clearly delighted at his willingness to drive down the highway of catharsis with her, no matter how much he had been coerced into it. But that was only if the huge rev she had given the engine as he hopped in was any indicator.

"Excited much?"

"You do not understand how much I love driving now," she said in answer, pulling away from the curb. "I mean, it's not like it's my motorcycle or anything, but damn, it's empowering."

"You should try overturning an international crime syndicate sometime," Jason said, the words just tumbling out while he stared moodily at the skyline.

"Who says I haven't?" she asked, raising an eyebrow at him. He pursed his lips, recalling her stint as the scary, behind-the-scenes computer techie overlord that made things mysteriously fall into place when she had been confined to a wheelchair. Her career in that field had been impressive, but it really wasn't the same.

"You ever do it from the inside, watched the bastards' faces as they realized they had been set out to fry?"

"Nope, can't say I have. Strangely, I don't have any regrets."

Jason scoffed a little to himself, but didn't push the matter.

It had been a few hours, and still he hadn't jumped out of the window. It might have gone back to the whole shit I don't have a plan thing, but there was also the fact that he didn't want to have to play hide and seek with her after he got away. It may have been five years, but Jason knew that Barbara would probably be damned before she let him jump out of a car to avoid her.

It wasn't awful, being there with her. She didn't try to walk him through just what had been wrong with his whole plan of setting Gotham on fire just to get his vengeance and to teach Bruce a lesson, or why trying to become the criminal to stop the criminals had been such a bad idea. She also didn't try to drag his past out of him, which he had been expecting from the word 'go'. Had it been Dick in the car with him, the guy would have pestered him and pestered him and pummeled him with questions to understand why, until Jason was forced to punch his teeth out, just to get some peace. And if it was Bruce…

Well, that would have been even less pretty.

Instead, Barbara made casual conversation and sang along with Elvis every time he came on.

"Do you really not have any music that is more recent than the fifties?" Jason asked as the fifth big band song of the hour came on.

"I do, but the vast majority of it is hilariously embarrassing boy band pop from when I was about fourteen. How do you feel about listening to saccharine songs involving sunshine and artificial heartbreak?"

"I would rather spoon my eyes out," he grumbled, glaring out the window. They had left the East Coast behind awhile ago, and were now trucking through Ohio, which was a delightful stretch of nothingness.

"Exactly. So on Count Basie plays."

"What happens now?" he asked, staring up at the ceiling. It was almost two in the morning, he hadn't eaten since seven, they were in the first motel that still had a vacant room, and neither of them could sleep, even though they were both exhausted.

"I'm not going to have a bunch of angry sex with you to help you deal with your feelings, if that's what you're asking."

"It's not. Why's that off the table, though?" He looked at her, more curious than suggestive.

"I learned a while ago that having relationships with people you consider to be practically family is just a bad idea."

"What? Who with? Was it Dick?"

"Everyone, Jason. It was everyone. You were gone for five years and we all sort of figured 'why not?'"

"You can be such a bitch, you know that?"

"Back at you, Jaybird."

Okay, so he was pretty much back on track for the abort-at-all-costs plan. Jason wasn't really sure what he had expected when he hopped into the passenger seat and let himself be carried away with Barbara's bright eyed optimism, but it had probably been something more fruitful than this.

The next thing he was aware of was screaming. Then someone slapping a hand over his face, and then it was a series of blows and holds and grit teeth and a bed post being smacked into his back and the dull sound of breath being knocked out of a body as he slammed them against the floor. He didn't even think, it was just raw instinct jerking his body from place to place. He couldn't see, he couldn't tell where he was or who he was even fighting, and he really didn't care. All Jason knew was that he had his hands around someone's throat and they were bucking underneath him and his side throbbed and then suddenly a bible was being smacked in his face.

A beat later, the person had yanked themselves from beneath him, hooked an arm around his neck, and was holding him tight in some sort of grip. Their arms were wrapped around his neck and their legs were clamped around his waist, and he could barely breathe and he couldn't move without them dislocating his leg and then they were hissing something into his ear.

"Jason, stop yelling in Arabic."

He paused, not having realized that he had been speaking at all. Then he realized he was in a crappy motel in Kentucky or something with Barbara, who was not interested in killing him or taking him hostage or torturing him. So that was something.

"How the hell do you have the lower body strength for this," he grunted, which made her laugh.

"Lots of practice. I never stopped being a run-before-you-walk person, Jason."

"Can you…let me go?"

"Promise not to throttle me again?"

"Sure."

She let him go, and he gasped in a breath. Now that he was actually thinking, shards of his dream kept stabbing into his brain. He rolled away from Barbara, panting and pressing a hand into his side. She was staring at him like he was a wild animal, but he didn't care because there was (green swirling around him, tearing into his mouth and through his muscles and drowning out the shriek that was coming from his very bones) nothing in the world that could save him.

"Jason."

He didn't answer, forehead pressed against the carpet like he was praying for (rocks stabbing into his hands and feet, but he couldn't stop because his brain was humming as he processed everything everything everything far too fast) some sort of higher being's mercy.

"Jason, are you alright?"

Barbara's voice sounded calm and steady, the voice he assumed she used when (people were screaming at him, trying to get him back, but he was a monster given all the strength in the world, and he was not going to be locked up in a cage) she was faced with someone suffering, someone who had walked along with death and sorrow and clawed their way to the other side. He closed his eyes, breathing in the carpet's smell of dust and a questionable history, thinking that this, this thing he called a life,
was not
what he had
ever
asked for.

"Jason, please," she said, sounding worried now. She leaned over to him and set a hand on his shoulder, and they both pretended that he didn't flinch at the touch. "Can you tell me what just happened here?"

"Barbara don't press this."

"You just tried to strangle me because of some nightmare you had. I think that deserves (some shelter. he needed some shelter, somewhere to hide from the agony that ripped through his skin and his mind. he was on fire, everything was on fire even though he couldn't see it, even though he had just crawled from the water, he burned and he wanted it to stop) an explanation."

He looked at her, and gave a flat smile. Her hair looked like old bloodstains in the dark, an image only reinforced by how deathly pale she looked. He probably looked about the same.

(though he'd had more than his fair share of looking like and being death warmed over)

Some sort of resignation clicked into place, a dull acceptance caused by failing and suffering and being lost and then failing some more.

"Five years, Barbara," he said, and his voice sounded like it had gone through a grater before it came out. "What do you think I was doing that whole time?"

"I don't know. But I hoped it was something better than the rest of us got."

He laughed at that. It sounded like a sob.

They were fine until they got to Chicago. They had been zigzagging through states according to whatever they felt like doing, going to museums, special floral gardens, or odd tourist traps. They'd been on the road for about two weeks, bouncing from place to place, and okay, Jason didn't mind. It had been a while since he'd been somewhere just to be somewhere, mask off, dark vigilante impulses stowed, angst put on hold for the time being.

Barbara had practically demanded that they go to Chicago, babbling something about 20s gangsters and pizza, and Jason didn't really care either way, so everything was good. They rented another room, saw the sights lesser seen, and celebrated Jason's first slice of pizza in five years (though he thought Gotham's pizza was the better of the two). He wasn't sure how long they'd been in town (and by 'he didn't know', it was meant that he wasn't compulsively checking the date and time. He knew very well that they had been in the city for four days and seventeen hours) when he found the child slave ring.

Jason honestly hadn't been looking for crime to stop. He had been minding his own business, but that hadn't seemed to matter. After kicking ass and taking names at a poker game downstairs from their hotel room, Jason made some friends who knew somebody who had a cousin who could hook him up for a good time. And, hell, while he knew how to work hard, Jason also knew how to enjoy himself.

Exactly three days, five shots of vodka, two well placed misdirects for Barbara, and one child prostitute that only spoke Hindi later, Jason found himself back in the red helmet. He was holding an empty gun, three corpses were soaking blood into his boots, Barbara was glaring at him, and a bunch of Indian girls were huddled in a back room, sobbing. Not a good night, but…not a strictly bad one, either.

"What—the hell—Robin," Barbara huffed, collapsing a fighting stick she had brought along. He just looked at her, knowing she'd sense his ambivalent sneer through the helmet.

Jason riffled through the men's pockets, lifted them of their larger bills and credit cards. He also grabbed a pen, which he used to scribble down a phone number and a name on a piece of paper he'd found on the floor.

"Robin."

"I'm not Robin anymore, Batgirl."

"And you really expect me to call you 'Red Hood'?"

"If you want me to answer."

He walked past her to the door hiding the girls, and pulled it open. The girls' crying became louder, as they shied away, terrified he was going to kill them as well. He watched them for a second, knowing he probably looked like a modern version of their devil, bathed in red and standing with a confidence that only came from killing men.

"Door's open, you're free to go," he said in Hindi. "Call the number up front if you wanna get a real start in America."

He turned around and walked past Barbara, who never took her eyes off him. He climbed in the car and waited for her, tapping his fingers on the steering wheel. After a few moments she followed after. She still had the black headscarf wrapped around her face, and her auburn hair was tucked up in a beanie. Like him, she didn't remove the disguise until a few blocks away from where they had ditched the car. She didn't speak until they were in the hotel and he was rinsing the blood from under his fingernails.

"You killed them."

"Yes. I did."

"Why?"

"Because they were child selling low-lives that leeched off of others. You think a stint in jail would purge them of their evil-doer ways?"

"Maybe! Now we'll never know, and now we've gotta freaking go on the run because your disgusting, perverted sense of piety got away from you!" She hissed the last bit at him, the words nearly ground to nothing from how tightly she was gritting her teeth. She was livid and looked like she was falling apart, which was an extremely bad sign. Barbara always made a point of looking nice, even when she was tearing bad guys to pieces.

Her hair was falling out of the sloppy bun she had tugged it into, and she had a bit of blood smeared on her cheekbone (not her own, of course). She was standing in just her bra and black pants, as she had thrown her torn and bloodstained black shirt in the trash almost the moment she got home. A bruise was starting to form on her ribs from where she had been kicked into the table, plus a couple other injuries, but she really didn't seem to care as she stared him down. Her light blue eyes were all ice as she stood in the doorway, promising him hell.

"You could have done anything else. Sent them to jail, broke their legs, hang them up for the world to see and scorn, but for shit's sake, Jason, you didn't have to kill them!"

"It's not something I can do anything about now, Barb. New act, new scene."

"Look," she snarled, grabbing his arm and yanking him towards her (it was very difficult not to break her arm in three places on reflex, but hey, he did it), "I'm not above taking lives if that is absolutely the last, best choice. You know that, everyone who knows us knows that Bruce and I have argued over that, but those guys? They were nothing, lackeys, monkeys, a step up from bottom feeders! If we killed everyone in the world like that there'd be no one left."

"So I'm a monkey as well? I'm hurt. Besides, they knew the game was dangerous when they threw in with monsters."

"That's just it, Jason!" she screamed, slamming her hands against his chest. "You don't care about life, or whether there's a different option, because this is a giant disgusting game to you! Everything you're fighting for, you're sapping all of the meaning from it because you don't care about the actual human aspect of it!"

"Glad someone's catching on," he snarled, because he was riding the high of the night's work, and because he hadn't made someone hurt and shudder and feel like nothing in forever.

She stared at him, viciously angry but unable to speak. Jason glared at her, taunting her, begging her to lash out at him because he needed the burn, needed to feel the thrill that was worth the damage he was leaving behind.

Barbara turned around, stalking out of the bathroom. And in that second, Jason felt scared, because she wasn't giving him the satisfaction, she was denying the validation of his sick little thrill. Jason had lived his entire life with agony seared into his brain, he just wanted a break, wanted something that overwhelmed the hurt.

He jerked forward and grabbed Barbara's arm. She spun around, angry and ready to lash out, but he grabbed her closer and kissed her, because if he couldn't get a kick out of making her hurt, he would get it the only other way he knew how.

He kissed her mouth and her jaw and her neck. Each kiss was hot, fast, and completely devoid of the right kind of desire. It wasn't some desire for her that made him act, it was a selfish and desperate need to feel okay.

Barbara tore herself away, shocked and speechless as she wiped at her mouth, as if that would do any good. She stared at him as if she had never seen a being so pathetic and low as him, torn apart by circumstances he had never had a hope of trying to control. Jason watched at her, hating her and hating himself. Here she was, offering him some sort of personal, near familial friendship, and he couldn't even make it work the way it was supposed to. Instead, Jason had gone and perverted it to get a cheap reassurance of his place in life. Because all he could make was a relationship that was broken and ugly, something that was stitched together out of stubbornness and masochistic need to cling to other people.

Jason honestly expected Barbara to start screaming again, or to throw something at him, or to just leave. Instead she looked at him with all of the pity and disgust and anger a person could, and said, "I didn't think a person could break themselves. I always thought it was someone else, something else, outside pressures that makes people snap. But then, I suppose you always did have a talent for defying the norm."

Jason didn't say anything as she pulled on a shirt and left the hotel room. There wasn't all that much he could say. He was more stunned at the whole situation, because there had been a lot of people in his life that had come on running back, trying to save him, trying to catch him before he was gone. But she was probably the first one that had
ever
gone and walked
out
on him.

It was a little miracle, therefore, that she unlocked the door and came in around dawn. She didn't say anything, merely walked over to her bed and went to sleep. Jason listened to her toss and turn for a few moments, feeling his stomach flip because, somehow, he was glad she wasn't gone for good.

Barbara didn't talk to Jason all the way through the rest of Illinois, through Missouri, and into part of Kansas. She spoke to him, of course, to grit out that he had to pump the gas, or bark at him that she was tired and that it was his turn to drive. Jason told himself that he didn't really care, he had begged for quiet until they had been half way through Pennsylvania, but he hadn't wanted the dead air that hung between them. Admittedly, he could have broken the silence between them, but she had gotten the last word, and it was now her right to the first.

Everything was flat, dead, and depressing shades of brown or washed out green when she finally spoke.

"Do you want to drive through the night?" she asked, and he turned to look at her. She had her eyes on the road, and her hands were clenched around the wheel, like she was nervous or still a bit angry, but she was speaking.

Jason glanced down the highway, considering things. He didn't want to stop for the night, because he was tired of crappy, side of the road hotels and nightmares and staring at the ceiling for hours and pretending that he actually rested when he got up the next morning. But he shrugged, gave a quick nah, and then they were pulling off the highway a few minutes later.

Barbara found a place that wasn't too atrocious, he paid for a room (he paid for everything, these days), and then they were settling down.

Getting ready for bed was awkward, because even though they had just spent all day crammed in a car together, they still were uncomfortable around each other after the fight.

(he probably should have thought about the aftermath when he had been dumping gasoline over their relationship)

When he had the nightmares, Barbara woke him up. This had been happening every few days, memories and their twisted cousins all twirling inside of his head until he was gasping and tossing around on his bed. Usually Barbara ignored him unless he started yelling or lashing out, but tonight she woke him up.

He didn't try to kill her this time, but he did nearly take her eye out when he jerked away. She didn't seem to mind, though, elbow on the bed as she set her cheek in her hand. The bags under her eyes looked more like bruises, flat, ugly things that would hopefully go away with some patience and time. Maybe he hadn't been the only one with sleep troubles lately.

"It's alright," she mumbled, and he nodded, brushing his bangs away from his forehead.

"Night-nightmare?" he panted, and she nodded.

"Nightmare. Wanna talk about it?"

He shook his head, running a hand over his face. Not only did Jason abhor the idea of giving voice to the horrors he had lived and then just relived, but he also didn't want Barbara have to bear them along with him.

She sighed, and then tugged the blankets back from him. He stared at her, not sure what to expect when she climbed in beside him.

Barbara settled next to him, one arm slung around his waist, the other tucked up against her chest. Jason couldn't help but stare at her, because he kept thinking about when he had kissed her, and how she looked like he had just shoved dirt into her face. And yet here she was, curled up against his chest, completely relaxed, like he hadn't smashed everything they had at her feet just two days before.

"If you try anything, I have knives and I will hurt you," she mumbled, quickly shattering any kind thoughts he had in his head.

"Why put yourself in this situation if you have to threaten me?" he asked, and he thought she broke into a smile.

"Because maybe you need this more than me. When was the last time you let someone touch you, Jay?"

"You don't have to do this. Ever think that you care too much about people?"

They were both quiet for a while, and Jason began to think that maybe she had fallen asleep. He relaxed, wanting to claw back at least a couple more hours of sleep.

"Jason?" He opened his eyes, too worn to be annoyed.

"What?"

"How do you teach yourself to not care? Because…I just don't understand how you can just not, after years and years of taking care of a city's worth of people."

Jason sighed through his nose, not sure he could explain just how much of a person's soul needed to be stripped away for such a thing.

"It is very, very hard, and it takes a long time. You suffer and hurt and tell yourself that fixing people's problems won't change things."

"And when you do want to fix them?"

She sounded scared of the thought of losing the damnably big heart that made her Barbara Gordon. Jason put his hand on her hair, because he knew that was something people did when they wanted to comfort others. And, for the first time in forever, it made him uncomfortable, thinking about how poorly compassion fit on him.

"You don't fix them. You stop problems from being problems. You don't fix."

"And what about saving people?"

Jason laughed, closing his eyes.

"I suppose that's still on the table."

"Good. A month ago you never would have said that."

"Guess not. Go to sleep, Barbie."

"Don't tell me what to do, Jay," she mumbled, sounding half asleep even as she spoke. He rolled his eyes, because it was just like her to be bossy and annoying when she was doing something incredibly selfless and noble.

Jason closed his eyes, and slept for the next six hours.

The next day, they continued on. They swept through the fly over states, filling the car with the Dell-Vikings and casual conversation as they went. About a week later, they ended up in Coast City. Barbara beamed at him as she leaned out over the edge of the boardwalk, hair tugged back in a ponytail. He guessed that they would stay there for a few days, then go on to where ever. Barbara said that she didn't have a solid plan as to where she was going, but he had the distinct feeling that they would ultimately end up back in Gotham.

"You know, you haven't exactly made good on your promise of getting me a life back," he told her once, as they drove around downtown, trying to find some legendary bakery. Barbara shot him a look, pursing her lips.

"You look me in the eye and tell me that this, what we are doing right now, is not living."

"Getting stuck in traffic? Yeah, totally, I don't know what I've been doing all my life."

Barbara scoffed and smacked his arm, because they hailed from a city whose name could have been Hellish Traffic, and this slow, confused, and inexorably polite mess was nothing but mild tedium.

"We have been on a spontaneous road trip for a month. We have been just two normal people, screwing around with no rules, having a good time. Not two kids sponsored by the great Bruce Wayne, not tortured heroes, just people. If that is not the height of living, Jason Todd, I do not know what is."

Jason hid a smile (because every group needed the resident grump, and Barbara wasn't about to dim her personal sunshine anytime soon). That was something he really liked about Barbara. Out of all the vigilante hero types he had ever met, she was just about the only one that was a normal person underneath the mask. There was no weird god complex, no compulsion to look down on others for succumbing to darker impulses, no need to make herself pointlessly suffer. She just did whatever she could to make things better, for everyone. And when she was faced with a problem that she couldn't fix, she did anything to make things better.

That was probably why she had dragged him under her wing. Barbara couldn't fix him, and she had probably known that the moment Bruce had told her about Jason's plot. No one could ever fix him, not without changing what had made him Jason Todd. She just…helped him cope, and got him through the day, and everything else was left to him. Which, if he was really being honest, wasn't that bad of a plan.