Rites of Passage | Damian x OC

16. All Too Well

cw: death

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"How can you miss someone you've never met?

'Cause I need you now, but I don't know you yet

But can you find me soon because I'm in my head?

Yeah, I need you now, but I don't know you yet"

~ Alexander 23, "IDK You Yet"

~~~~~~~

Jess had never really been the confrontational type.

A few times, she'd been the one to bring up a difficult subject or address a sensitive issue before someone else did, but more often than not, she kept her mouth shut and waited for the other party to make a move. Disagreement with her parents? Wait it out and see if they approached her about it. Pissed off a friend? Give them space and maybe they'll forget.

Time spent on her own as a runaway after her parents' deaths had changed that a little. Being on her own, not knowing who exactly to trust, and trying to survive had hardened her in ways she didn't think were possible... not after she'd already been broken. So when she'd woken up in an unrecognizable apartment earlier this week with a dark-haired stranger, all her instincts had kicked in despite the heavy hangover, and every part of her body had gone into survival mode.

Feeling his heartbeat and blood pressure from across the dim living room had told her he was telling the truth about how she'd ended up in his private home—that or he was very good at monitoring his vitals when lying and could easily pass a lie detector. Still, Jess had given him a very small benefit of the doubt, which hung solely on the red helmet he'd pointed out to her. If there was anything she could remember from her night, it was seeing that unfamiliar mask right before she'd blacked out.

And apparently this Jason Todd didn't care to keep his identity a secret.

He'd crossed her mind a few times since then as she wondered if she'd ever heard of him as one of Gotham's heroes, as "Red Hood." Was he less-known? Was he a new vigilante? Did he know Batman and Robin? How did he manage to do what he did while living an apartment that was a lot less impressive than she'd assumed most vigilantes would have? Would she end up running in to him again, either under his heroic identity or as Jason? And if that wasn't enough to mull over, there was the fact that the situation had prompted her to use her powers again after she'd decided she wouldn't... not for as long as she could. Yet feeling in danger and resorting to them to protect herself was nothing new, considering everything she had been through in the last few years.

It was nearly an instinct, a reflex, now to use her abilities when she was anxious, frightened, threatened... and she hated it.

But the most pressing thing on her mind lately had been the fact that she'd managed to let herself become so inebriated that night, and she'd had to avoid telling Damian the truth. After he'd allowed her to rest at his place that day, he dropped her off at the same bookstore he'd taken her to several times before, neither of them mentioning her night again. Guilt and hesitation had haunted her since then, making Jess torn between being open with him and keeping him shut out. The few times they'd seen each other since then, they both acted normally, Damian not acting out of the ordinary, but that didn't mean Jess was able to get the nagging feeling out of her head that she should say something.

So before he'd left for the day after only an hour at the library, she'd stopped him in the storage room after several minutes debating with herself.