"I don't know where you're going

But do you got room for one more troubled soul?

I don't know where I'm going

But I don't think I'm coming home and I said

I'll check in tomorrow if I don't wake up dead

This is the road to ruin

And we're starting at the end"

- Fall Out Boy, "Alone Together"

December nights meant colder patrols, long johns under the armored pants and handwarmers built into my gloves. Under the red hood, insulated plates kept my face from freezing. A whole three degrees on these rooftops and I remained toasty, if a bit sweaty along my spine.

I used to think "be careful what you wish for" was stupid because it never applied to me. Wishing for anything was for people who could have what they wanted. I didn't think in terms of "I wish", I thought in terms of "I need". I never waited around for what I needed to fall into my lap, either. I went out and got it.

Out here, all I needed was a spot of warmth.

One heavy boot on the edge, I was seconds away from firing my grappler into my kitchen window when her Subaru zoomed around the corner and screeched to a halt in front of my engine bay. Gail scrambled out of the driver's side, her breath a misty halo around her head. She had someone in the back, but it was the blood drenched into the front of her shirt, the deep crimson caught by the streetlight, that lurched my heart into my throat. I tapped a button on my gauntlet, the emergency pre-programmed text sent to Roy's phone to have Kori take Lian into the dorms and to bring medical supplies to my workbench.

I switched aim to the corner of my firehouse, and stepped off the ledge. I swung around front, disengaged the grappler and landed rough by the patched hole in the engine bay.

"Gail, what-"

I didn't see her back seat until her boyfriend, bleeding from his ribs and didn't look like it'd stopped yet. His skin was clammy, pale, and Gail shivered as she tried to help him out.

I bit back a thousand snide comments and moved her out of the way, crouched to slide my arms under his legs and back. I gritted my teeth, sucked in a breath and exhaled sharply lifting him into my arms. "Get the door."

Gail slammed her car door shut and ran ahead of me, teeth chattering in the cold, to the side entrance. Frederick wasn't any big labor to lift, but he didn't appreciate looking at my tactical mask when he opened his eyes to see who carried him.

"Th' hell?" He said, squirming as I got him inside. Roy was setting up a cot, eyeing Gail and Frederick before rolling out the medical kits.

"Shut it and you'll live." I laid him on the cot, and Gail started to work his shirt off. Frederick clung to her forearms, tried to hold her hand but she swatted him away, said something low.

Roy whispered to me as he pried open packs of curved stitching needles, "Is it cool if he sees me?"

I shook my head and told him to get upstairs. I've got this. Roy nodded, but patted my back, looked at me as if he could see through the mask and read between the teeth I had clamped on my lower lip. He jogged upstairs and out of sight.

I turned back to Gail and Frederick with a pair of tweezers. She already had the wound cleaned as best she could, and given him a towel to bite down on. I resisted the urge to cheer.

"What happened?" I sat on a stool, switched on detective vision. The bullet was a round consistent with the usual suspects: mercenaries and hired hitmen. I stripped off my gloves and rolled on a pair of rubber ones for sterility's sake.

"Went to interview Lex Luthor, probably pissed him off and when I got the my car afterward, one of his security guards attempted to give me a facial with my shattered car window," Gail said and I tried to focus on the bullet wound as she finally held his hand. "I was dealing with the guard when he pulled a gun and shot Frederick trying to help me."

He glared at me over the towel as I felt into the bullet wound to get the dimensions of the entry wound. It's close to his rib. "The hell was he doing there?"

"He followed me." Gail tightened her grip on his hand. "He thought I was actually coming to see you."

Oh, this was hilarious. He thought she'd make up an appointment with Lex Luthor just to come see me. Goodness gracious, Freddy. Despite the stupid-ass grin concealed by the helmet, I cleared my throat and gave him the verdict on his boo-boo. "Bullet ricocheted off bone but it's not lodged in bone. I can get it out for you but it's not gonna tickle."

"Is there any kind of painkiller he can take?" Gail asked.

"Yeah, some goddamn sense," I said and a flat look from her prompted me to elaborate, "If anyone needed help in that situation, if I know you, it was the guard."

I went in with the tweezers, followed the metal through the hole to the bullet. Frederick twitched with every centimeter, groaned into the towel and she whispered to him, gripping his hand. I grumbled, "Can you keep him still? Only gonna do more damage if you squirm."

He flexed under my hands with the effort, and as much as I wanted to hammer the point home that flexing didn't help matters, I was tired of this. I pinched the bullet in the tweezers and pulled it out. I dropped it in his open hand, a souvenir from Gotham City.

The stitches weren't exactly necessary. The wound wasn't wide enough to warrant them and an airtight occlusive bandage would have done the job just as well, but a gut feeling warned me that he'd be an unruly patient. I sutured him anyways, to make sure they healed and Gail wouldn't be back in a week begging me to stitch him up again.

He relaxed by the time I was done, eyes boring into the front of my mask and his hand between both of hers. He spit out the towel, licked dry lips and asked, "Would anyone like to tell me why Lex Luthor tried to kill my girlfriend?"

I was closing the last stitch, twirling the thread over the needlenose scissors and pulled it tight. "It's called politics. Gail ruffled the wrong feathers in the right way, and he wasn't about to take it lying down."

"Only now I can't use a bit of that interview," Gail sighed, mouth drooped in a frown. "I killed one of his guards. If I dare to use the interview, he'll blow the whistle on me."

I looked up from Frederick's wound, snipping the excess thread and chewing my lip. "He knew. He knew you'd kill the guard. He knew you'd be a better fighter."

"About that," Frederick said, glaring between us. "How in the hell did you do that? How do you know how to fight?"

Fat stretched silence spread out in the engine bay to the walls. I stood up, peeled off the gloves into the trash. Stifled in my coat, I took it off and stripped down to my wife beater and my armored pants and boots. I felt both their eyes on the whipping scars on my arms.

When she spoke again, it was with the same voice she used to tell me how long they'd been together. Like an admission to smoking in the girls' room or theft. "He trained me."

I didn't take off the tactical mask, but I turned to see her face. She watched him take his hand out of hers and he sat up in his cot against her protests, wincing as he sputtered, "You taught her how to fight?"

"You heard her," I said. "She was being targeted by the Falcone family, so she spent months here with me while I dealt with them. She asked for training and I gave it to her."

Frederick looked from me to her, and her eyes confirmed it in avoiding his. "Is that true? Is that why you...have nightmares? Abigail. Look at me."

When she did, his eyebrows lifted. Her mouth a hard line, one corner curled down. Her hair hung around her face in damp gold, and at the same time, they looked down to her hands. The pink-red bruises around her knuckles.

"Yeah," She said. "It's true."

"And why am I hearing this from a mass murderer instead of from you?" He demanded, and I crossed my arms.

Gail's jaw tightened, standing. "Because you ask questions like that. You don't care about the answer. You've already determined what it should be." She asked me without looking. "Do you have clothes we can borrow for the night?"

I took no pleasure in this, none whatsoever. She deserved better than this back in Gotham, back where she was raised. "Yeah, I'll set some clothes out and find you somewhere to sleep while they're in the machine."

From the duffel I kept my emergency clothes for unforeseen stakeouts away from home, I pulled out a pair of sweats and a Gotham Knights tee for spite. Metropolis boy in a Gotham shirt, be still my beating heart. I tossed them to her.

She threw her hair up into a messy bun. "I'll get him out of these clothes and cleaned up. Then I'll shower."

I nodded and left them alone. I heard raised voices halfway up the stairs but didn't turn back.

My heart rattled in my chest, a hollow thumping to remind me I had one or maybe to turn around. Roy peeked out at me from the dorms down the hall as I tapped my mask and took it off on the landing.

"Jason," His voice was quiet. Worried. "Everything okay?"

I bit my lip hard and shrugged. "I don't know, man. Guy's gonna be fine. But she's not."

"Why?" Roy left the dorms and jogged down to me.

"She killed somebody tonight, defending her own life and his, and all he can ask her is how and why I trained her to fight. He doesn't ask her if she's okay," My hands balled to fists, growling through my teeth, "He doesn't ask if she needs anything, he doesn't thank her for saving his life bringing him here...He doesn't care. Roy, it was all I could do to just...focus on the wound instead of throttling an apology and a thank you out of him."

"He's probably mad that she kept secrets from him," Roy said, maybe trying to figure out where Frederick was coming from but even he scoffed. "And so what if she did at this point? She saved him and got out in one piece. It isn't like she was never going to tell him. A little patience, and-"

"She's keeping a lot more than her training from him, but that's not the issue," He followed me as I walked to the bathroom to tidy it up for her shower. I put my mask on the counter and switched the towels. "She killed someone in front of him in self-defense, and he's looking at her like she did it in cold blood."

"That sucks, dude. I want to say I hope they work it out, but...yeah, no," Roy shook his head, unhitching from the doorframe. "Hey, uh...I'll ask Kori if she's got clothes Gail can borrow."

"Do that. And set up the washer for a load of darks," I grumbled, mask under my arm. "I'm on laundry duty."

I waited in the laundry room for twenty minutes with Kori's clothes on the washer before Gail came up with Frederick's.

She wiped her hand under her eyelashes walking in, and handed me the bloody bundle of fabric without looking at me. Her hand shook before she faintly smiled at the clothes I handed her.

"Thank you."

I started flipping his shirt the right way, shrugging. "Don't thank me. Kori's down the hall."

Her fingers moved to the silvery buttons of her blood-soaked shirt and I turned my back. She asked, voice detached and distant. "Kori's here?"

"Dick and her broke up a month ago. She's been bunking here with Roy and me, helping out with the job." I tossed his shirt in the washer and started emptying his jacket onto the top. Keys and chapstick.

She hummed, and I heard her clothes drop one by one to the floor. The soft rustling of sweats prompted my question.

"You two okay?" I didn't want to pry because of where it might lead but I needed to know she'll be alright. "I...didn't like the way he looked at you."

"Never you mind how he looks at me," She said it quick, a harsh inflection on her voice. The hot, angry kind. "We're fine."

"Don't sound fine," I unrolled his socks, and after I heard the hoodie zip, I asked, "Can I turn around?"

"Yeah."

I did and leaned against the front of the washer, his jeans at my feet yet to go in. Kori's clothes were big on her, too much length on the sweats and her hoodie hit the top of Gail's thighs, but she was in clean clothes. Her bloody ones went to the wash. No blood on her but she rubbed the back of her neck with pain twisting on her features.

"Are you okay?" I've wanted to ask her that since she got here. "I mean, do I need to look you over too?"

"Guard slammed me into the asphalt," She said, "Think I got a bit of whiplash."

"That'll do it." I crossed the room and cupped her jaw on my hands, eyes focused on her neck. "Tell me when it hurts."

Her range of motion was impaired more to the front and back, not to the sides. After I got her ice for it, she asked me, "Why did you agree to help us?"

"I didn't," I said, hips against the front of the washer. Still needed to load his jeans but I milked the seconds with her for all they were worth. "I saw you and reacted. What did you expect me to do? Hand you a bandaid and tell you to get lost?"

Gail's lips pursed, switching hands on the ice. "After the way our last conversation went, yeah...sort of."

"You never called me," I said, arms crossed. "We're not strangers. If you would've called me, I…" I trailed off and then started again, my heart in my throat. "If you would've called me, any time of day, I would have answered. Even if you were just calling to talk about him."

"Really?" She asked, unconvinced.

I tutted my tongue, "I wouldn't have been thrilled but...I'd bear it."

"I wouldn't, for the record," She pointed her toes in and looked down at them, her bangs shielding her eyes. "I wouldn't call you to talk about him."

"I appreciate it. I know you two are serious."

"Will you stop with that?" Her eyes snapped up to me, her hands bunched in her pockets. "Just stop. We just had a fight and I came up here to talk to you."

"Fine, fine," I conceded. She'd had a rough night. "I won't bring it up. I just…" I scrubbed a hand down my face, "I hate how he looks at you. How he talks to you. You don't get so much as a thank you for dragging his ass here. I don't even care if I get one, but the way he talks to you, Gail…"

"I've kept a lot from him and it's a lot to find out at once about who you're dating," Gail said, stern and steely.

"Don't defend him to me. That's bullshit. Yeah, you kept a lot from him. Probably to protect him, probably so you wouldn't freak him out. But you don't deserve that. Killing someone in self-defense? That's small shit."

"And what about the other times, Jason?" She asked, the heated inflection in her voice again and she stepped closer, a finger pointed to herself. "With Falcone? What am I supposed to tell him? How?"

"The way you told me," I said, "Open and honest. No matter how it hurts."

"I can't," She sucked in a breath, a hand against her chest. "Jason, I'm scared."

"Do you love him?" I asked, low and soft and wishing I hadn't. Maybe as a last resort so she didn't have to answer, I added, "If you do, you have to tell him."

Gail's eyes panned to meet mine, and I couldn't read them. Some things never changed. She read me like a book but I couldn't read a page of her.

She sighed, and her gaze fell to the laundry piles I put on hold for her. "When did it all get so damn hard?"

A peal of laughter rang from the cage in my head, and I shook it to quiet the clown. I gave her a more prudent version of the right answer. "Nobody said any of this was easy. I knew it wasn't for me."

"Jason," She whispered my name, "I'm not in love with him...I care, and for the most part, we've been happy, but...I'm not in love with him."

I swallowed, hard, and looked away. My heart wouldn't go down. I didn't want to get any ideas. She stared at my back, the hairs on the nape of my neck tingling.

The jeans in my floor still needed to be put in the washer. I went through the pockets and found his wallet, packed full of cards. Something stiff in his other pocket, the tiny coin one. I jammed a finger in and pulled it out.

My eyes burned. It couldn't have been too expensive. Simple silver band, single diamond. Probably something passed down. Sentimental. I held it in my palm and showed her, gaze hot on her face.

"Does he know that?"

Gail was pale already, but her skin turned even whiter before an angry flush filled her back in. She'd had no clue.

"He probably hoped to win you over with this, and said he'd only marry you if you opened up to him. Or maybe he wanted to wait until you did and then propose," I dropped the engagement ring into her hand. "Either way, it's sweet."

I spun on my heel and chucked the jeans into the washer, the metal button clanging loud off the inside. I slammed the front and started it. "You know where the blankets are. Goodni-"

"-Jay, stop," I tried to move past her but she stopped me, the ring in her pocket and hands on my chest. "Jason, dammit, stop."

I flinched away like she'd electrocuted me, and the pain registered in her face as her arms fell numbly to her sides. A crease between her brows, her freckles muted under the red in her cheeks.

"What's wrong?" She demanded, "It's more than this, I know it is. You've been off since I came back and I know it's more than what's happening here," A finger jerked in a circle between us. "You look like you're on the verge of tears half the time, and the other half, vibrating with rage. And none of that's at me, so Jason Peter Todd, unless you tell me right now what is going on I will call Barbara and find out myself."

I clenched my fists so tight my nails split my palms. The laughter got louder from the cage, my back and chest tingling, the ghosts of the lashes on my arms. It felt like a year hadn't elapsed, it felt like the bad magic never left. I didn't want to say it out loud. "Call Barbara then."

"She doesn't have to."

Gail and I both turned to the doorway. Roy Harper, with his hair back and pulled through a Star City cap, stood with his shoulder against the hinge. He stared at me, light eyes humorless. "You lie plenty to yourself. I won't let you lie to her."

"If I tell her, she'll get wrapped up in this again and that's the last thing I want."

"I'm already wrapped up in this, Jason," Gail slouched on a hip. "Luthor tried to kill me over an interview. He's evidently got something to hide and he knows Clark and I can find it. And by the look on your faces, you both know what it is."

They were both right. I knew they were, but the fire in my ankle and the jackhammer headache having a field day didn't make me enthused to admit it. I waved a hand, ground my teeth. "Roy, you tell her. I'm going to bed."

Gail tried to stop me, but Roy shook his head at her as I passed him and stormed down the hall. Kori poked her head out of the dorms, Lian on her hip. Kori frowned, reached out to touch my shoulder. I avoided her hand without thinking, and Lian whined around her pacifier.

My hand was on the knob to my room when I heard my precious niece crying, and I stopped. Air heaved through my nose, my chest working. I shut my eyes tight.

"Juh...Juh...Jaaaay!" She squealed as she squirmed in Kori's arms. Gail and Roy were in the hall, his sad eyes on his daughter. Hers were on me, and watered at how, when Kori put Lian down, the little girl ran to wrap her chubby toddler's arms around my leg.

"Be okay, be okay, be okay…" The little girl chanted into my leg, like a spell. I let go of the knob and pried her off to swoop her up into my arms.

She drooled and wailed, baby hands out to me, to fist in my hair when I cradled her to my chest. The way her father showed me. I finger-combed her hair, the same slow strokes administered after nightmares and spiders. My own tears were restrained by biting my tongue hard enough to taste blood.

"I'm okay, little lady," I whispered to her, "You've got me."

Roy walked up, hands laced in front of him. He waited until she released on her own, when she was sure. Her doe eyes brightened with my brief smile. I never had to force them for Lian.

She held onto my finger, even when I transferred her to her daddy's arms. I waggled my finger, and she held on, eyes puffy. She wasn't attuned to Kori yet, but she wasn't stupid. Lian knew whenever her father and I were upset, and did her best to calm us, make us feel better. She wouldn't let go of me until she was sure I was okay. Gail put her hand over her mouth in the corner of my eye.

"I'm okay, Li," I leaned in to kiss her forehead.

With every reluctance and no trace of comfort, she freed my finger. Roy bounced her as he walked away, her hair jostling as she looked over his shoulder. He and Kori both moved back into the dorms. Gail and I were alone in the hall.

I didn't look at her, kept my eyes ahead. I turned to my room, opened the door and heard her take a step before I closed it behind me.

A knock on my door at three in the morning didn't wake me. For hours I laid in my hammock, sleepless, gaze unfocused into the ceiling and counting the miniature stalactites in the plaster. A leg over the side, shirtless to let my scars breathe and no blanket so I could breathe.

A second knock told me who it was. Roy knocked once and if I didn't answer he left to try again later. Kori walked in without so much as a 'hello' or a reason.

"Come in," My throat was dry and hoarse. Talking hurt.

The door opened, and the expensive perfume she usually wore was drowned out by my own shampoo in her hair. She'd showered. The latch locked behind her.

"I called Barbara after all. I know."

My toe rocked me, as if we were outside in the breeze. My branded cheek swayed in and out of the moonlight slanting in from the window. One hand on my stomach, and the other, which I kept on the gun under my back when I slept, moved to rest behind my head.

"About Joker." His name seared the knife scar on my chest.

"Yes," She said, "And Roy told me about how you were...after."

The wind beat against the window, howls whirred and rattled the panes. The tigers were out tonight, ravenous and stalking. We all knew what they planned now. The wool was pulled back and the curtain drawn. The show was starting.

"His daughter really loves you." She stepped closer, bare feet on a concrete floor. She should be careful. Could get sick. "He told me how you saved her, when someone got in. Told me how you planted yourself between two brick walls, hand down to reach for her and kept your foothold as three bullets went into you. He told me how you walked off a plastique arrow in the confines of an elevator. He told me how you walked into a trap with Dick, Talia and Joker right there, and how you had to be guided back to the Clocktower." Her voice was thick with tears, quiet and crumpled. "Barbara told me...how you found out they'd been keeping a secret from you. She didn't tell me what it was, just that it hurt you. Badly."

Badly. It was a great word, 'badly'. I was hurt badly. I was hurting bad. I was hurting bad people. Bad people hurt me. Bad people hurt others. Bad people hurt others bad.

"She told me what you said, too. That the job was going to kill you sooner or later, and that...you thought there was no reason why it shouldn't be sooner. She told me you said you were dead. You thought you were dead." Her sobs well and truly came. Her reflection in the windows showed the silhouette of her face. Hand over her mouth, eyes hidden under her bangs and her clothes shook with the force of her crying. She gasped a deep breath. "I understand now, Jason. You don't want to let me in because you're afraid. You don't want him to get anyone...like he got you."

Strangled air fought its way out of my lungs. Cold spilled onto the tingling branded skin, slid down the other cheek. The rays of moonlight blurred and my whispers barely hit the octave she could hear, "I want you to be happy...and healthy...and alive. Even if it means you end up with someone else. Even if it means you end up with that ungrateful, arrogant, self-important…"

"I don't want to talk about him." She said, and approached my hammock, slow and cautious. As if I could ever be capable of hurting her, even in a fit of blind rage. "Please, just...let me be here with you."

I rolled away from her, the light on my whipped back. "Might be best if we don't…" My head felt floaty and dazed. Feverish. "Abigail, I appreciate you...coming in here. But if you come near me, I don't think I'll be able to stop in the morning. You'll go back to him and it's better if it stays that way."

"No, it isn't," Gail said. "You said you'd never let me walk away. You'd never let anyone hurt us. Well neither will I. I'm not letting you push me away again."

"Watch me." She padded a step closer still, and I scrambled out of my hammock, gun clattering to the floor with the sudden shift. I rose to my full height, scraped my forearms at my wet face. I held my hands out, warning her. "You know why I'm pushing you away now. You know why."

"And where would I be pushed to?" Gail asked, stormy gaze on me. "I have spent a year suffocating in Metropolis, away from everything I know, for you. So that you can do the work I believe you can do and protect my home."

I closed the space and put my hands on her shoulders, my shaking seeped into hers. "What do you plan to do if the Joker does get his hands on you, Gail? What am I going to do if he kills you?"

"I came for you when you were captured," She said, indignant and brave as she ever was. "Maybe it would be damn time you returned the favor. Maybe I could lead you right to the Joker, two birds - one stone."

"You're speaking in hypotheticals, Abigail-"

"My potential kidnapping and-or torture is also hypothetical," Gail snapped, shrugging out of my hands. "Look. I don't have to go through you to be a part of this fight. I'd rather I do it on good terms, but I am not above going to the Clocktower and asking Barbara and Dick to let me in the loop. Or Clark."

I straightened, nostrils flared and jaw tight. "I will sabotage any attempt you make in the direction of becoming a vigilante if necessary to get through your thick, idealistic head that you will not be another of his victims. I won't have it, Wednesday Winters. It will not happen as long as I breathe." I leaned in, shoulders flexed and nose-to-nose, snarling, "You so much as smell spandex and kevlar, and I'll be there to ziptie you to a pipe to keep you out of this, all winter if that's what it takes."

"You may try," Gail pressed her forehead to mine, pushing back. "But I'm not above fighting you for it either, Jason Todd."

"You know you can't beat me."

"And you know you can't stop me."

I turned away, hands combing through my hair in frustration. "Get out. I'm done having this conversation with you. Like talking to a brick wall."

"Oh, this conversation is over because you say it is?" Gail crossed her arms, narrowed her eyes. "Where have I heard that before? About a year ago, I remember perfectly."

"You done, sunshine?" I jerked my chin to the far wall. "Door's that way. So's your boyfriend."

"He's not my goddamned boyfriend," She growled, nose wrinkled.

My tirade yanked back to a burnt-rubber stop. My heart started to pound again, and the sweat collecting at the small of my back ran cold. "...Come again?"

Gail didn't tear up. Her voice didn't quiver. Rather, she sounded tired, like she'd just come inside from a long day working in the winter freeze. "I was just down there, made him explain the ring. Said he planned to give me that if I ever opened up, then...in the same breath, gave me an ultimatum. Either I tell him everything right that minute, or the relationship wasn't going to continue on false pretenses. I asked him to give me time and he refused."

I blinked, gears folding over each other in my head. My hands itched. It was like seeing her for the gala, what felt like a lifetime ago. Red dress exchanged for sweats and an oversize hoodie that fell off one shoulder. Curled hair switched out for freshly showered dark gold pulled back and a line of bangs above her eyebrows, and her makeup was gone.

Abigail was still every bit as beautiful, but there was something different now. A hardness in soft features, titanium in storm-blue eyes. My training didn't give her that. I didn't do a thing. She did it all on her own, under her own power which was by no means in short supply.

Lex Luthor felt threatened by her in an interview, and decided that she couldn't leave the building alive. She never let me believe for one second she wasn't capable of destroying me, and over time, I'd grown to think I might like it. And I never let her believe she was alone.

"Like I said," She put her hands on her hips. "I was already planning to expose Luthor and keep your neck out of prison, but now that he's tried to kill me? I'm going to rain down on him. Whether you help me in that pursuit is beside the point, but at least I don't need to explain myself to anyone. Not anymore."

My hands slid into my pockets. "Let me guess. You plan to tell Clark that you'll be reporting out of my firehouse, he's going to put my track record in flashing neon lights for you, you'll tell him to suck it and Frederick too, and then you'll give me frequent, ridiculous heart attacks by putting on a costume and running around on rooftops with the rest of us by night."

"Sums it up, yeah," Gail rubbed the back of her neck, peeking up at me through her eyelashes. "Look...I don't feel right leaving you, period, let alone this new business with Joker. I want to stay with you. I'm done with the bullshit...The safest place I can be is with you. As partners."

"You're…" My mouth ran dry and the corners tugged back. I was fighting one hell of a grin. "You're serious? You completely understand what you're asking for here?"

"Jason," Gail sighed, and then said with a bored look, "A year ago we were nearly tortured to death, blackmailed, shot at, hunted and fought in a city-wide gang war. If anyone gets the dangers of this job, it's you and me."

"And there's no way I can talk you out of this?"

"You keep trying and I'll really start throwing punches."

I stepped closer to her. "My nose still aches from the last time you popped me during training."

She nodded, eyes down and smiling. After a moment, she reached out to take my hand and I let her. I squeezed her fingers, and she had the same strong grip. I made my way up her arm, lean with muscle, to her shoulder. Her collarbones and the base of her throat flushed, her pulse quickening under her porcelain skin. Her lips, the lower fuller than the top and knicked by a thin scar in the corner, parted to sigh again.

"It's late, Gail," I glanced at the clock. "It's nearly four...you've got work in the morning."

"First appointment isn't till two in the afternoon, Clark has been doing the morning running. He likes to go back to Lois in the evenings and I'm more than comfortable with night shift," She said, "Besides, where am I going to sleep?"

"I'll find you a mattress tomorrow and you can pick a bed in the dorms."

"Tonight, I mean," Gail ran the tip of her thumb along mine.

"There's a recliner in the records room, warm and sometimes it's even comfortable," I said. Her smile made me wish night was longer.

"Okay, Jason," She started to turn away, and our joined hands stretched between us, the connection unbroken. "Thank you."

"Wait…"

She kept my hand a second longer and she hummed in reply, looking at me sideways. I knew she was fresh off a breakup. I knew that. My heart coursed in my ears and warmth spread out from the center of my bare chest, the first spot of it I'd felt all winter. December first, and the sun was out.

It finally hit me, all at once like a great flood. She came back here. I pushed her away and let her go and told her to leave, and she kept coming back. No matter how many layers of facade I threw over my feelings to obscure their depth or smother their size, she ripped every one. Gail was here, and she seemed determined to stay here.

My eyes burned again, hotter than last time and I bit my lip. I bridged the gap in a second, tucked her hair behind her ear. I bent and pressed my lips to her cheek, inhaled a strong waft of soap and mint toothpaste from her breath.

Her cheek inverted into mine, our noses touching. The dark enveloped us, the same way it had in what should have been our first kiss. When we teetered on the brink of death by heat stroke and our only comfort came with the idea of dying together.

She rose up on her tiptoes, which melted something I thought long dead inside me. A whole network of thoughts, rusted with disuse, raced to life as her hands came to my hips. Lightheaded and brimmed with wild hope, I whispered to her, "What are you thinking about, sunshine?"

Her mouth touched mine with her shy smile, and she leaned away, eyes to her toes. "Sorry. It's bad timing. I came in here to comfort you, let you know I'm not going anywhere...not to…"

She trailed off, and headed to the door. Gail paused, before glancing over her shoulder to say, "Goodnight, Jason."

The fever broke. "Abigail."

I crossed the room in a second and she saw me coming. She closed the door from where she'd slightly opened it, planted her back to it. My hand braced to the door with a hard smack, the other slipped around her waist. I'd only ever seen this done in the movies, but something more than patchy memory guided me. I loved her.

Her arms looped around my neck, and her forehead touched mine. Our gaze met. I moved the hand braced to the door to cup her jaw, thumb on her lower lip. Her lazy eyelashes fluttered. A hot blush hit my cheeks as she stole the first peck on my lips, eyes open and impulsive. My bravado crumbled and the only thought crackling through my short-circuited brain was this: dear God, here comes trouble.

I stole one back, mirrored her and she returned my flushed shock to the nervous system. Her lips were so soft, vanilla chapstick smoothed them into a red-pink velvet I'd dreamed about a thousand times.

The third one stuck, and our eyes closed. My fingers tightened on her jaw as the seam of her lips moved against mine, cold fingers carding into my hair. A shiver dripped down my spine as she closed her hand, the light tugs on the strands. A low 'mmm' vibrated at the back of my throat, and the intimate noise of her lips leaving mine made me lean into her without thinking.

We gasped together, her cheek against my neck. I wanted to pinch myself, to make sure I was real and she was real and the moment was real. Jesus Christ. Her hand on my face confirmed it. I kissed the inside of her wrist, high on her.

She strained on her tiptoes, least I could do was oblige. I squatted to clamp my hands under her thighs, pinning her to the wall with my hips and lifting her till our mouths leveled.

"Jason!" She squeaked, eyes wide and I laughed.

"What?" I kissed her nose. "Not my fault you're so tiny, sunshine."

She rubbed her thumb over the stubble on my jaw, a sleepy smile smeared on her face. "Jay, put me down."

I froze, and did as she asked, a note of worry behind my teeth. The words needed to call it off ready, she unzipped her hoodie and underneath was a tank top-bra hybrid that had to be Kori's. It was black and fit her torso in the ways I thought about alone.

"G-Gail, you…" I stuttered, and forgot the rest of the sentence as her fingers touched my lower stomach. The fine strip of hair under her palms going to the thicker scars left me grasping for words made of smoke.

Her mouth peppered kisses on my chest. The sensitive, raised scars shuddered under her touch as she guided me, and my breath hitched as my hammock swept my shoulder blades.

Wordlessly, I got in and flopped onto my back. I held the side down, helped her lay on top of me. She climbed her way up to kiss me again, bangs tickling my face. My hand followed her spine to slide my fingers into her hair, the other draped over her waist. She tasted like vanilla and toothpaste, Gail consuming every sense and I drowned. She wrought the pain out of my body leftover from patrol, kissed the scars on my face and I made noises I've never shared with anyone else as they migrated to my neck.

"Gail," I panted, blowing her hair with every breath. "H-Hold on."

She looked up from my neck, and folded her arms on my chest, propped her chin on them. "Too much?"

"N-No, God no, I'm just…" I licked my lips and tasted chapstick. "This is all new."

"Kissing or...the other stuff?" She said, unable to resist the cocky glint to her eyes.

I squinted at her, "I've kissed before, but I…" I twirled a strand of her hair over a finger, blush only reddening at the thought. "I've never trusted anyone this much. I've never trusted anyone with my body like that before. For obvious reasons."

Gail's cockiness evaporated. Her brows knitted and her voice was so steady, so earnest. "Jason, you're beautiful to me."

Anyone else and I'd have scoffed. Something about how she said it, how she'd kissed my scars moments before, made me believe she meant it.

"You're too beautiful, that's your problem," I whispered, throat thick, and watched her freckles disappear in another feverish flush. "I don't want to rush this."

"Me neither," Gail agreed. She locked our hands together over my chest and part of me felt like crying in disbelief. "We made it here. We just have to stay together."

"I'm tired of fighting you, Gail. I want it to be you and me against the world. I...want to treat you how you should be, and…"

"What, Jay?" She asked.

I flipped us on our sides, her in the circle of my arms with her head on my bicep like a pillow. Her leg thrown over my hip, I kissed her but wasted no time repaying the favor on her neck. The tip of my tongue traced the hollow at the bottom of her throat. She sucked air through her teeth, and her fingers curled at my side.

"I know we're both exhausted…" Her nail bit into my ribs as my breath washed over her skin. "But I've spent two years having vivid dreams about kissing you like this and...I don't want to stop yet."

She lined her body up with mine, her nails sliding to my lower back. "Then don't."