Description: "Roy," Koriand'r almost whispers when she believes Jason is out of earshot. The two exchange a look, faces worn in deep with rivers of pain and lines of guilt. She bows her head and shakes it,"I believe I know what Jason's deepest desire was."

Request: this request might be weird but a jason todd x reader x jason todd where jason from another world somehow ends up in the regular world. i guess jason 2.0 is trying to figure out where he is and then he bumps into the reader and he recognizes her because the reader is in his world and he's in love with her. reader just casually talks with him since she has no idea that he's from another world until the original jason (who's also in love with her)calls her or shows up and they're all confused

Words: 2457

Notes: I left out the second Jason because it didn't fit my idea for angst. Yes, ANGST. Good luck, you guys.

_

Everything happens so quickly. He hears the repetitive tish tish tish sing and explode as Kori's starblasts singe the forcefield around the sorceress, feels the air go hot around him with the force of the witch's pull and Kori's energy. He feels an arrow hit his chest, the mechanisms in its head grabbing his chest plate and Roy straining as he tries to fight against gravity. But even if this has all happened in the span of two seconds, Jason's mind slows down.

The night before, he had woken from a nightmare. While he usually forgot his dreams minutes after he had them, this one stayed with him, rooted deeply in his lungs and blocking his airways. The dread wrapped it's way around the column of his throat until he was choking on panic and lack of air. His sheets spent the next hour clutched in his hands while he desperately strived for leveled breathing. It was like reaching for the moon from Earth, knowing you'll never get there, your hand hanging in the heavens but never, ever close enough to graze its rocky face. His thoughts were everywhere; the fading remnants of his dream, which had begun with blinding like and ended the same way, rocking him away with a deafening, throttling boom that shook the very foundations of his cracked conscience; sucking the dry air into lungs through his teeth, gulping it down like a cold glass of water after days of thirst; and you, always, always you.

It was in those moments that thoughts of your comforted him the most. As he laid in the hospital bed after climbing out of his own grave, you... he didn't even know your name. All he knew as he drifted in and out of awakening was that a beautiful [girl/boy] haunted him—like the moon, always out of reach but still in his sights. As Talia retold the stories to him, scrubbing the Lazarus Pit off his skin, he thought of you. When he sat among his men as the Red Hood, he thought of you. While fighting Bruce: you. When healing himself—you, always, always you.

When his breathing had finally started to fill his lungs again, he glanced over at his phone. Before he died, the first thing he would have done after a nightmare was call you. Then, you'd sprint to Manor in your pajamas if you had to, throw your arms around him and kiss the nightmares away. Now, you wouldn't do that. You couldn't do that. Because you had found someone else while he was gone. And you were still with them now. So, Jason does what he does best as he lies alone; he suffers.

Sometime after that, Roy had called him for a quick mission since he was in the area. Something about a massive energy spike on Arkham Island. He parked his bike in some alley by the Westward bridge, grappled across, and met with Roy and Kori in the caves below Intensive Treatment. A couple minutes of tracking the energy source and talking to the head administrator, the Outlaws had found an escaped inmate. Worse, a little girl, possessed by some magical being packing too much punch for the host body to take. That meant The Witch was overflowing with power, and currently trying to throw Jason Todd halfway across the universe.

She succeeds. Maybe not about the location bit, as Jason Todd is certainly not beneath Arkham Island. But still, she's succeeded.

He helmet collides with a wooden floor, his body tossed through the threshold and sent sprawling into the moon-lit hall of an apartment. The wire held to the end of Roy's arrow coils, and then is abruptly torn from Jason's armor and sent zipping through the portal. He doesn't have enough time to right himself before it's gone, the wind and noise all fading with a single snap!

Jason Todd is left to stare, panting and holding himself up on an elbow, as he observes the window in which the portal had deposited him in front of. The moon is high and heavy, fat and weighted like a dumpling. Gotham glows neon under its light, and from the buildings outside Jason knows exactly where he is. The G.C.P.D headquarters is a couple streets over and standing tall. The Clocktower Oracle and The Birds of Prey operate out of sprouts from between a bunch of smaller buildings stacked up like toy blocks in the distance. The red lights of the Grand Avenue Station glare down at Jason, and that huge damned billboard you hate sits across from him on the other side of the street, displaying flying designs of cherry blossoms and women's shampoo. Jason Todd is in your apartment in the East End of Gotham City. So, of course, it makes sense that you would be here.

"Jason!" You breathed in relief, landing on your knees beside him. You cup each side of his helmet, pressing your index fingers in those two key spots, causing the releasing mechanisms to hiss. The protective padding in Jason's helmet unclasps from his neck, pulled from his face so he can view you with his own eyes. You are as beautiful as ever, charming eyes and charming lips and charming everything right there in front of him, painted a greyed pink by that stupid billboard struck by the rain.

"Y/N?" He has only seconds to gasp, before there's a sharp sting of something cold meeting his skin, your hands bracing against each side of his neck and pulling him in for an intense kiss. Your lips are so soft and chapped against his, warm and comforting. Suddenly he's got the moon held in both his hands, and the moon is worriedly looking over him, stroking his face and furrowing their brows.

"You're dating someone," He inhales sharply, pushing your lips off his. Jason is almost proud of himself in that moment. You couldn't cheat on your partner, you wouldn't—and especially with him. Jason had never deserved what you had given him. But regardless, he tries to repeat that thought as his eyes drop your lips, regretting pulling away. How long had it been since you last kissed? When you said goodbye when he left to find his mother? Or had he never said it at all, leaving you to whisper your parting words to a gravestone?

"No, I'm married to someone." You said, a twitch of a smile finding the corner of your mouth. Your hands continuously ran through his hair worriedly, and with every stroke, Jason was drowning again. Drowning, drowning, drowning, the last of his breath rising through the water and popping atop the surface he could never reach. He would never reach. No matter how hard he had tried, no matter much he wanted to, he couldn't reach out to you in the way his feelings were screaming at him too. Because you weren't in love with him anymore. You were in love with someone else, who you deserved more than you ever deserved him.

You raised your hand and wiggled your ring finger near his face, smiling,"Mx. Todd, remember?"

Jason's mind swims for an explanation, and he finds it in The Witch's words. Before the portal had opened, before he'd been dragged into this heavenly hell, she'd said,"Hmm. Jason Todd. I wonder what you desire most. Oh, what? You don't know? Here, I'll tell you—better yet, this other world will show you."

Another world.

"Yes, of course," Jason said. Even if he had been trained to be the perfect liar, the smile he made was possibly the hardest he would ever create."I'm your husband."

"You're my husband," You repeated with a musical laugh, that rung in Jason's ears like the sweetest bell. Guiding him to a better sitting position, you held one side of his neck, questioning,"You okay, Jay?"

"Yeah, uh, I just got hit really hard by this one guy," Jason lied. His body's reaction to your care was automatic, his fingers entwining with yours on your thigh,"And it made me mess up on my grapple in. I just needed to stop by for a short break before I get out there again."

"Okay," You smiled, squeezing his fingers and gazing up at him like he was your moon. You released his fingers and Jason almost reached out for you, rushing to follow you when you began to stand. You pat his chest,"What are you out of? Because those extra bullets you ordered came this morning, and we have twice what you usually need when it comes to smoke bombs."

"Oh, no, I'll be fine," Jason waved you off quickly, taking your hand and pulling you toward his chest again,"I just wanted to stop by to check on you."

"Patrol that rough?" You laughed,"Because this is the third time you've stopped in tonight."

Jason dared to venture forward. God, you were so intoxicating. You step closer to him and his face flares, igniting when you lay your hands on his chest and trace the shape of a bat on his armor. He couldn't hide the adoration in his eyes, the way his heart beat harder, succumbing to the warmth he had desired for so long. This was, out of everything the Witch could have done to him, the worst thing. Give him a taste of the paradise he thought and dreamed of every night, then tear him from his own heaven and forcing him to look back on it. Like getting him high for the first time in years, but leaving him empty-handed and starving without it. And if you were a drug, then after this he would be having withdrawal symptoms for months—years. So Jason guiltily submerged himself in your bliss, indulging in your touch and your kiss and the way you look at him like he's your everything when he isn't.

"Maybe I just miss you too much for my own good," Jason whispered. The way you blush and duck your head brings back thoughts of his teenage years, where he'd toss his arm over your shoulder and kiss the shell of your ear, cooing against your cheek,"So this has been where my best [girl/guy] has been hiding. You miss me, doll?"

"More than anything." You'd tell him in response.

You laid your head against his shoulder, huffing a flustered breath into his neck, smiling against his jaw. It feels like an eternity has gone by as you stand there and embrace, but maybe it's only been a minute or even less when his arms come to wind around your back. You sigh dreamily, tired and worried and married to him—stuck with this life that will do you no good. Stuck with him, the boy with all the dead loved ones or none at all. And if Jason Todd loves one thing overall, it is you.

"Maybe I just love you too much for my own good," You responded sweetly, sleepily.

"Yeah," Jason said too truthfully.

Again, you pressed your hand to his cheek, tilting him downward and smiling up at him like what you just said was just a joke. But it isn't, because this version of you is going to realize too late what you've gotten yourself into. You're going to realize what kind of man Jason is, you're not going to like it, and then you'll be plunged into the hell he manages to put everyone through. He wishes that he could shake you awake and chant until you understand, I don't deserve you, you deserve better, you deserve better, even if you weren't his Y/N. He could only pray that this Jason was good to you—no, better than good, because you are more than just some person who lives in Gotham, but Jason Todd's entire world.

"I love you, Y/N," Jason said, pulling you as close as he can,"So damn much."

You giggle pleasantly in his ear, squishing your cheek affectionately into his. You're so happy with that ring on your finger. Jason wonders what this version of you is like, how they live, how their Jason treats them and why they're together and you and he aren't. He gives himself ten seconds. He holds your face for two, admires it for three, and then kisses you for five and tries to hold in his tears and the pain for all of it. It ends up lasting 15 instead with your arms coiling around his neck. For those 15 seconds, Jason sinks and falls—harder and harder until he doesn't remember what it was like to not be in love with you.

"I love you too, Jason. I always will," You said, your lip tilted in the way where he knows that you've figured out something is off. He can't give you any more time, because he imagines that if he stays one more second you'll know and he'll fall too far to ever recover. But he's lying to himself. He's so far past the point of no return that it's not even on the horizon anymore. And Jason spends too much time staring at that horizon, waiting for the moon so he can outstretch his hand and hope it grasps his with its own.

Jason hides it all, burying it under thoughts of how he's going to get back home—something involving the Batcave Bruce has under Robinson park. And when he does, smoking in the center of a ring of the League's best sorcerers, he brushes past Roy and Kori.

"You okay, man?" Roy asks, placing a hand on Jason's shoulder.

With heavy feet and a heavier heart (if he has one left), Jason can't respond. He wants to. He wants to look at Roy and shake his head, then collapse against his friend and spill it all. But he can't, because your voice keeps ringing in his ears,"I love you, Jason. I always will." But that's a lie, because this world's Y/N has only loved him once, and they're never going to do it again. So he stalks off without another word.

"Roy," Koriand'r almost whispers when she believes Jason is out of earshot. The two exchange a look, faces worn in deep with rivers of pain and lines of guilt. She bows her head and shakes it,"I believe I know what Jason's deepest desire was."

Roy just nods, because he doesn't know what else to do. Somewhere in the back of his mind, he remembers a [girl/boy] rushing from the crowds and into the rubble after a large Justice League battle, throwing their arms around Robin and sobbing in relief. He remembered that same [girl/boy] from last week, holding a hand that was not Robin's, that wasn't Jason Todd.

"Oh," Roy said.