Obsessed Fangirl

They don’t look like the usual Gotham scum, they’re too intentional, too quiet, too clean for the chaotic criminals who usually roam the city. The tallest one blocks your exit. “You shouldn’t walk alone this late” he says, but the way he says it tells you this isn’t about robbery. It isn’t even about you. It’s about who you’re connected to. “I don’t want trouble" you manage, stepping back, hand instinctively going to your stomach even though they don’t know. They shouldn’t know. They can’t know. “No trouble,” the man says, too calm. “Just a message.” You try to run, you really do. You fight, too, Jason taught you well, taught you how to kick your way out of a grab, taught you where to aim when someone bigger grabs your arm, taught you to never freeze. And you don’t freeze.

But three against one, and you haven’t eaten properly all day, and nausea hits you like a fist in the gut. They shove you down, your back hits concrete, a foot drives into your ribs. You hear one of them say, “He’ll get the picture.” The world splinters into noise, a ringing in your skull, the cold scrape of pavement against your palms, the jolt of impact when a boot catches your side so close to your abdomen you scream without meaning to. Everything flashes white, then black, then somewhere in between. They leave you there, of course they do, because they’re not trying to kill you, they’re trying to hurt him.

You drag yourself up eventually, shaky and trembling, vomiting once in the gutter from pain. Your hands are shaking so violently you can’t get your phone out at first. You want to call Jason, god, you want to call him so badly, want him to find you, want him to hold you, want to feel safe. But something stops you, because you know what’ll happen if Jason sees you like this. He’ll burn the city down. And worse, you’re terrified of what you already know deep in your bones. You’re terrified something is wrong, terrified that the ache low in your stomach isn’t just bruising, terrified that the small miracle you carried this morning might already be gone.

You get home on autopilot, stumbling into the apartment you share with him, locking the door with hands that don’t feel like your own. You go straight to the bathroom. You barely get there before the pain hits you in a way that steals your breath. It’s sharper than anything you’ve ever felt, an internal collapse, a tearing grief you’ve never known. Blood comes too fast, too much, too bright. You bite your hand to keep from screaming. You know. You know. You know. You slide to the floor and curl forward, forehead against your knees, gasping through the pain and the horror and the realization that the tiny flicker of life didn’t survive the violence you took. You cry, silently, violently, painfully, shaking until your whole body feels hollowed out. And all you can think, again and again, is you were going to tell him tomorrow. Tomorrow. And now there is no tomorrow.

When you finally crawl to the sink to clean yourself up, you stare at your own reflection. You look like someone else, someone emptied, someone scraped raw. You shower until your skin burns, you scrub away the blood, the dirt from the alley, the smell of fear, but nothing takes away the ache, nothing closes the wound inside you. When you step out, the apartment is quiet. Jason isn’t home yet. You’re grateful, you’re terrified, you’re destroyed. You put on one of his hoodies, the big gray one you always steal, because it makes you feel like you’re wearing armor. You sit on the couch and stare at nothing, hands wrapped around your middle.

When the door finally unlocks, your body jerks like you’ve been shot. Jason steps in, tossing his helmet onto the table, shoulders stiff from patrol, hair damp from rain, eyes tired but still sparking when he sees you. “Hey, babe” he says with that softened grin, walking over to kiss you. You go still, frozen, but he doesn’t notice. Not yet. He kisses your temple, warm and safe and so heartbreakingly gentle that it nearly knocks the air out of you. “Why’re you up?” he murmurs, brushing a thumb over your cheek. “You okay?” You nod, you lie. “Yeah. Just… long day.” Jason sighs, dropping onto the couch beside you. “Tell me about it.” Your throat tightens. You can’t. You can’t breathe the words, you can’t watch his face fall, you can’t watch hope die for a baby he’ll never know existed. So you lean into him instead, carefully, so carefully, resting your head on his chest while he wraps his arms around you without hesitation. His heartbeat thumps steady under your ear. Strong. Alive. Warm. And you break silently against him, eyes burning, throat tight, grief swallowing every corner of you while you keep your body perfectly still, perfectly calm, perfectly composed. He doesn’t know, he has no idea his arms are around someone who is bleeding on the inside.

You bury your face deeper into him so he won’t see the tears slipping down your cheek. He strokes your back and murmurs, “I missed you.” Your lip trembles. You force it still. “Missed you too” you whisper. Your voice cracks, barely, but he doesn’t push, he doesn’t know to push.

You want him to know but you can’t let him know. Not now. Not like this. So you cling to him quietly, sinking into his warmth, while inside you grieve alone for a future that vanished before it ever had the chance to bloom. And Jason holds you, completely unaware that tonight, in the safety of his arms, you are breaking beyond repair.

The days after the attack become a blur, a slow suffocating fog that never lifts, no matter how much sunlight touches the windows, no matter how often Jason reaches for you, no matter how many times you tell yourself to breathe. Every morning you wake with a bruise deep inside yourself that no one can see, every night you lie next to him with your back pressed to his chest, feeling the weight of his arm around your waist and swallowing down the sob that claws up your throat. He sleeps peacefully, unaware. Unaware that you lost something he never even got the chance to dream about, unaware that every time he kisses your stomach absentmindedly, like he always does when he pulls you closer in bed, your entire chest caves in. You get good at pretending. Too good. You laugh when you’re supposed to, you answer when he talks, you smile when he looks at you with those blue eyes that always saw straight through everyone, everyone except you now, because you’re blocking every window, every crack, every opening.

You don’t let him see. You can’t let him see. You tell yourself it’s to protect him. You tell yourself the guilt will destroy him. You tell yourself that if he knew, Jason would blame himself until he bled for it. But the truth is simpler and more selfish: you can’t survive watching the devastation on his face. So you bury it, deeper and deeper, until it feels like you’re walking around with a secret grave inside your ribcage.

Jason notices something is wrong almost instantly. He’s Jason, hyper observant, hyper attuned, made of instincts sharpened by trauma. He starts small. “Babe… you’ve been quiet” “You’re not eating much” “You okay?” “You’re jumpy.” “Did someone bother you?” You brush him off every time and every time it chips at him. He’s patient at first, trying to coax you in those soft ways he only ever shows you, sitting close, resting his hand on your thigh, brushing your hair back behind your ear, murmuring, “Talk to me, sweetheart.” But when weeks pass and you still stay curled inside yourself, he starts pacing more, starts clenching his jaw when he thinks you’re not looking, starts watching you with that particular kind of tension that only Jason Todd can carry, like he’s preparing for a battle he can’t see.

The problem is that Jason doesn’t know how to deal with secrets between the people he loves. He can’t. He’s lived a life full of them, used as weapons against him, used to hurt him, used to betray him. So every day that passes with you shutting him out feels like another betrayal he can’t name out loud. And you feel it. You feel the distance tightening like wire between you both.

Eventually the strain becomes something alive in the apartment, something you both tiptoe around. You start sleeping with your back turned to him, he starts getting home later, staying out longer on patrol, throwing himself into danger with more recklessness than usual. You hear it in his boots when he walks in at 3 am, the heavy, tired, angry stomp of a man who doesn’t want to be asked where he’s been. He still kisses you goodnight, every night. But sometimes the kiss lands on your cheek instead of your lips because you’ve already turned away. Sometimes his hand hovers over your hip but doesn’t settle, like he’s not sure if he’s welcome. And sometimes, those are the ones that break you, he lies down beside you but leaves a few inches of space between your bodies, breathing slow and controlled like he’s holding himself together with nothing but stubbornness. The worst part is that he doesn’t say a word about it. Not one. Jason stays silent, because silence is the only weapon he has left that won’t hurt you. But it hurts anyway. It hurts so much.

A month passes. Then two. Then three. And you think maybe you can just keep pretending until eventually the grief dulls enough that you can tell him the truth without breaking apart. But grief doesn’t dull, it grows teeth, it gnaws at you at unexpected moments, when a child laughs on the street, when you pass a maternity ad, when Jason puts his hand on the small of your back and the instinctive picture of a family flashes before you like a ghost. You start losing sleep, you cry in the shower so he won’t hear, you cling to him at night like you’re afraid he’ll disappear. And he knows. He knows something is wrong but you still say nothing. It gets to the point where he pulls away from a kiss one evening and murmurs, “You don’t want me anymore, do you?” You freeze, your lungs collapse. “What? No, Jason, no—” “Then why won’t you touch me?” His voice cracks on the last word and you realize you’ve hurt him more by hiding the truth than you ever would’ve by saying it. But still, you can’t. You can’t. Not yet, not like this. “I’m just tired” you whisper, lying again, hating yourself for it. Jason nods, jaw tight, eyes hollow. “Right. Tired.” He walks away, you curl into the couch and shake.

Two more weeks pass. You don’t see the explosion coming, not until it hits. You’re sitting on the edge of the bed folding laundry, staring at nothing, drowning in the same grief you carry every day, while Jason storms in, helmet still on, shoulders rigid, breath unsteady like he just barely survived a fight. He pulls off the helmet and slams it onto the dresser so hard the wood cracks. You jump and he notices, his eyes narrow. And something in him just breaks. “Just tell me,” he says, voice low, too controlled. “Tell me what I did.” Your stomach drops. “Jason—” “No.” He steps closer, running a hand through his hair, pacing in small, agitated circles. “No more. No more of this—this silence. This distance. You flinch every time I touch you. You look like you’re drowning and you won’t let me help. So just—fucking tell me what I did wrong.” Your throat closes completely, you shake your head. “You didn’t do anything wrong.” “Then why won’t you let me in?” His voice breaks. It shatters something inside you.

“I can’t lose you” you whisper, trembling, because it’s true, the moment you tell him, you’ll have to face it again. You’ll have to relive it. You’ll have to watch him bleed for something he didn’t even know he’d lost. Jason stares at you, chest heaving. “You’re already losing me.” The words cut through you like a blade. “Jase, no—” “You don’t trust me.” “I do—” “No, you don’t.” His eyes are burning now, blue and furious and heartbroken. “You shut me out. You don’t talk to me. You’re scared of me touching you. And you won’t even tell me why. So maybe you should just say it. Maybe you should tell me you don’t want to be with me anymore.” It’s too much, your chest crumples, the grief twisting so violently you can’t hold it back anymore.

“I lost our baby” you choke, and the words rip out of you like they’ve been waiting, festering, clawing through your throat for months. Silence. The kind that swallows the world. Jason goes absolutely still, every muscle, every breath, every flicker of expression freezing at once. His mouth opens, closes. No sound comes out. Everything pours out in one long, strangled flood. “I was going to tell you the next day—I had everything planned—I was so excited—Jason, I was so happy—and then I was attacked, and I tried to protect them, I tried—” Your body shakes so violently you can barely speak.

“I lost it in the bathroom while you were out on patrol. I was alone. I didn’t know how to tell you. I didn’t want you to hate yourself. And I just—I couldn’t—” Jason’s breathing is uneven, ragged, like someone is squeezing the air out of him. He steps back, a full step away from you like the weight of your words physically pushed him. His chest rises and falls too fast. His hands are shaking. You’ve never seen Jason shake. “We…” His voice cracks. He swallows hard. “We had a baby?” You nod, tears streaming down your face. Jason looks like someone just shot him. “And you… you went through that alone?” You sob, he scrubs a hand over his face, pacing backwards again, eyes wide, horrified, shattered. “Why didn’t you tell me?” “I was scared.” “Of me?” “No. Of course not. Of watching you blame yourself.” He lets out a broken, humorless laugh. “I blame myself anyway.” “Jason—” “I wasn’t there.” His voice is getting louder, wilder, trembling with grief he doesn’t know where to put. “I should’ve been there.” “You didn’t know—” “I’m Red Hood. I’m supposed to protect the people I love. And you—you were out there alone and—god—” He turns away, pressing a fist to his mouth, shoulders shaking. Your heart cracks open watching him break. “Jason,” you whisper, reaching out.

He flinches, not because he doesn’t want you, because he doesn’t believe he deserves to be touched. “I can’t—” his voice fractures, “I can’t look at you right now.” The world stops, your knees go weak. Jason sees it instantly and the horror on his face deepens. “I didn’t mean—fuck—no, baby, I didn’t mean that, I just—” He squeezes his eyes shut, breath shaking. “I’m drowning.” “I know” you whisper, “I know, I am too.” “Why didn’t you let me drown with you sooner?” The question guts you because he’s right, because you kept him outside the pain and now he can’t find his way in. You sit on the bed, covering your face with your hands. Jason stands across the room breathing like he’s trying not to break everything he can reach. And for a long time, neither of you moves. It feels like the end, it really does, like something between you is splintering under the weight of everything you didn’t say.

Hours pass in silence. Eventually Jason sits down beside you, not touching, just close enough that his presence warms the air. His voice is barely above a whisper. “I’m not mad at you.” You nod weakly, still crying. “I’m mad at the world. At myself. At them.” He swallows. “But not at you.” You look up at him and his face softens in the way only Jason’s can, fierce and grieving and full of impossible love. “We almost lost each other tonight,” he says quietly. You nod. “I don’t want to lose you” you whisper, voice breaking. He reaches out, finally, hesitantly, and cups your face with both hands like you’re something fragile but precious.

“I’m right here,” he murmurs. “I’m angry and I’m hurting and I’m fucked up, but I’m here.” You break all over again, leaning into his touch, and he pulls you into his lap, wrapping his arms around you so tightly you can feel his heartbeat pounding against your chest. He buries his face in your shoulder and you can feel his tears. Jason Todd does not cry easily but he cries for this, for you, for the child you both lost without ever having the chance to know. “We’ll get through this” he whispers into your neck, voice raw. “It’s gonna hurt. It’s gonna take time. But I’m not going anywhere. Not ever.”