Disclaimer: Jason Todd and Cassandra Cain belong to DC Comics

A/N: Birthday present for batchink on Tumblr :)

Sunlight and Spring

They had happened upon the playground by chance after patrol—or at least that was the assumption Cass was under when Jason "gave chase" to "something" he saw "out of the corner of his eye".

And then there he was, perched on the archway of a yellow swirling plastic slide like a childhood king, his silhouette melting into the dim constellations.

Cass walked towards him, her steps making melodious swooshing noises as the tiny grains of sand tumbled underneath her boots. She came to a stop at the end of the slide, where his red helmet lay like a stranded pirate's skull. She could just barely make out the gleam of his teeth as he grinned at her, right before he suddenly dropped and coasted down the slide with a clank of metal, a scrape of leather, and a jumble of oversized limbs. The slide spat him out, and he landed on his feet, his face inches away from hers.

She gazed at him with a mixture of amusement and bemusement wrapped in her perpetual outwards appearance of calmness—the ABC's of Cassandra Cain's current emotional state.

Jason, however, was only basking in the first letter of the alphabet. He reached his arms around to encircle her, but she was as fleeting as a firefly. He turned towards the breeze she created and saw her swing onto the jungle gym's platform, her black cape silkily rustling past the painted gates. He followed her by grabbing the railing to a nearby spiral staircase. He leaped skillfully over the stairs, and landed in a crouched position next to her.

Without warning, he closed the gap between them and pressed a flitting kiss on her lips.

"Tag," Jason whispered teasingly, "you're it."

He lingered long enough to see the corners of her lips twitch upwards, and then he raced through the jungle gym—leaping over bridges, swinging over bars, and surfing down slides. Cass intermittently let out her rare and soft bursts of laughter as she followed him—slipping and jumping and chasing—in every attempt to be one-step ahead. But every time her hands reached out to grab an arm or jacket corner, he would escape—like an agile salmon zipping through the clear streams of summer, its powerful tail ripping through the waters with raucous splashes of laughter.

Jason swung under a monkey bar and agilely landed in the sand. Cass grabbed the same bar and let her body drop and her muscles stretch, but she hung on, and the night reclaimed its silence.

Truthfully though, it was because she didn't want to catch him—not yet. She would never confess such a notion, but their impromptu game of clambering and chasing across the jungle gym at midnight was…fun.

It felt like a dream—something ephemeral and distant—a childhood she could have experienced; a childhood both of them could have experienced—but never did.

She somberly recalled using abandoned parks as night-time hideaways—an impromptu hotel that rose from her desperate imagination…

But playgrounds weren't meant for hiding; they were meant for…playing.

A curious yet quiet Jason strode through the sand and stood in front her. He reached towards her face and slipped off her mask, his eyes wondering and wandering, losing himself—and finding himself—in the delicate features of her face and the intensity of her eyes that still drilled through his resolve. On their own accord, his hands floated their way to rest around the curves of her waist, and he swung her towards him. Her legs wrapped around his torso, and she lowered her arms from the bar to circle around his shoulders.

Cass touched his forehead with hers, and caught his lips as he raised himself to her. She felt her body weaken and melt into his, and her memories of hardships and pain were replaced with a sensory cascade of Jason's warm touch and eager breath.

"Got you," she finally murmured through her smile, her lips brushing across his and tingling like sunlight and spring at the darkest winter hour.

That night, Jason had pursued something he had caught in his peripheral vision—a past they never had, but could now create—together.