Author: thecivilunrest

Fandom: DCU

Story Title: "Oh, the Places You'll Go"

Summary: All roads lead to Gotham.

Character/Relationship(s): Sasha, Jason Todd

Rating: T

Warnings: Hints of violence.

Story Word Count: 500+

Disclaimer: I don't own anything recognizable.

Notes: I've worked on this for a long, long time. I don't know anymore.

Oh, the Places You'll Go

You come back to Gotham. If anyone knew your secrets, about the dirt beneath your fingernails, they would have told you not to come.

But you don't have anyone like that because you wouldn't dare let anyone know about what happened in Gotham all those years ago. After your new face peeled off, revealing your old one once again, you let the rest of you peel off too, shedding that part of yourself—and Gotham—like an ill fitting second skin.

That's when Sasha resurfaced once again, and everything that came with her.

You saved up enough money for a hotel in a decent part of town. This trip, it isn't an accident. Nothing in Gotham ever is.

For some reason you want to put off the reason that you came here, so you decide to walk around the streets.

Streets that you remember being unsafe, the people living there forever locking and double locking their doors and being distrustful of their neighbors, are cleaner now. The streetlights don't flicker and normal people are walking about, however tentatively, after dark.

Where you remember an apartment building standing, a posh hotel is instead. That couldn't have been fun for the tenants living there; they probably had little notice before they were kicked out in the hopes that the new owner would make more money than the last.

In contrast, places that used to be relatively nice are now covered in grim. The brightest things there are the sharp gleams that come from the doorways; shiny new locks freshly screwed onto each of them.

Crime, filth, is an ever-changing beast. It goes from one section of Gotham, marking new territory and abandoning the old when it has sucked the marrow of every piece that it can.

You aren't afraid, not even in the parts of town that have become darker and more dangerous. You can feel the eyes on you from those who are trying to decide if you have something worth keeping. You know that you can protect yourself. The only weapon that you have is a small; slightly dull pocketknife, but sometimes that is all a person needs. Anything can be a weapon, in the right hands.

You haven't forgotten the things that Jason taught you.

You're not entirely surprised when you have to use your weapon on a particularly dark street. They hardly know what they're doing, using their brute strength and size alone. You slide the knife in between the tines of their ribs easily, and they drop to the ground, howling.

You walk away unscathed, not even bloody, and it's like nothing even happened.

Put one foot in front of the other, you tell yourself. Just one in front of the other.

You know where you're going, hope that he still haunts there. Jason Todd was a very paranoid person, on the run for every other day until he was going to reveal who Batman and Robin were. Then he'd had to stay permanent. Until that had failed.

He had moved on again, you know that the way that you know that Batman and Robin still protect the city, how you know that he still haunts them like a ghost that they never can exorcise.

You find him where you expect to, and it surprises you that he doesn't shoot you the moment that you walk through the door.

He pauses, his hood off and you can see his blue eyes sparkle in the dim light of the lantern behind him. He has a knife in his hand as he asks you, "Back for one more round?"

You pause, and your heart jumps into your throat for safe keeping before you answer. "No. I just… wanted to see."

"Wanted to see if I was still around. Well, sweetheart, I am. And you can always come back, if you want to."

"I… don't. I'm in college now. I work at Wal-Mart. In Metropolis."

He gets up, and you tense. Your pocketknife feels heavy in your pocket, but simultaneously too light. He isn't someone that you can stab and be done with. He isn't even someone you can stab. He's dangerous, someone that you wouldn't want to get into a fight with, because if you do you most likely aren't getting out alive.

"It never leaves you, you know," he says conversationally. Casual. As if he is just shooting the breeze with a friend. "No matter how hard you scrub, the bloodstains never come out."

And then he leaves, and this time he is the one leaving someone behind. Just like he always wanted.

You know you won't see him again, and that does not bother you. You just had to see him once, to know that Scarlet was real and that you hadn't made her up in your head.

You leave the his hideout, weaving your way through the old neighborhoods, and you get to your hotel as quickly as possible.

As you make your way back you swear you can hear the wings of a Bat.