WHO: Jason Todd and Dick Grayson
WHAT: Paying their respects to a friend.
WHERE: Paris
WHEN: Backdated to Sunday Evening (July 21)
WARNING: Discussion of death and addiction

The shift of location itself didn’t hit Jason as hard as it should have. It was something that had lost its impact the sixth or seventh or however-many-th time it happened. Eventually, you just accepted that reality wasn’t as strictly defined as most people would have liked. It either fit into some cosmic order beyond the grasp of mere mortals or it didn’t and there was still nothing they could do about it. What did hit him was how familiar the sight outside of his window was when he pushed the curtains out of the way and looked down. The glowing city beneath the apartment reflected lights back onto the panes that were beautiful in a way Gotham’s tacky flashing signs never were.

It hadn’t been so long ago that he’d been here with Roy, marvelling over the exact same thing.

At the time, Jason hadn’t really appreciated the moment like he should have. He hadn’t realized it would be one of the last times things they would do together. He’d been too focused on staving off the threat of approaching intimacy, and he’d missed some of the details because of that. The speed at which he could put up his walls hadn’t shaken Roy, though. It never did. He’d still talked him out to the eiffel tower, bought them a bottle of champagne, and watched Jason drink it for both of them. He’d held his own glass full throughout the night, watched it get flat, and then put it aside. The testament to his ability to overcome. They’d talked about their future together in ways that made Jason’s heart ache now, knowing he would be the one to walk away.

Maybe that was just what growing up with someone like Oliver Queen did to a person; it made them accept a worse love than they deserved and put it on a pedestal. The same way growing up with Bruce had made the mere thought of giving himself over in reciprocation overwhelm Jason with fear. Or maybe that was just what being a sidekick at all did and it didn’t matter who you’d been the ‘and’ of or who you’d strived desperately to please. They would always leave you heartbroken in the end when you outgrew the costume and failed to live up to the role you’d been assigned. Then you’d stumble your way through life unable to figure out what the point was without them because you were an ‘and.’

Which was why Jason had found himself putting on his boots and heading towards Dick’s apartment. That was something that they had all suffered their own ways through, fighting against the same forces and losing spectacularly in their own unique ways. He could have done this on his own and quietly had his moment alone with Roy’s memory but it seemed wrong to keep it to himself. It seemed selfish when Dick had played his own important role in Roy’s life before Jason had ever been in the picture. So he knocked and he waited.