Jason Morgan was not used to being a peeping tom.

He wasn't sure when or how exactly it happened, but this wasn't the first time he'd found himself outside of Kelly's like this. Hiding in the shadows, with his face pressed up against the glass, as he watched the tiny brunette go about her nightly routine. He knew that she would wipe the counter and tables down one final time and check to make sure all the kitchen appliances were off. Then she would check the coffee pots that she had already filled and prepped for the morning. She backtracked a lot, but Jason could understand why.

Okay, in all seriousness, he wasn't always a peeping tom.

He usually made it to Kelly's before the diner closed, choosing the table closest to the door. And he usually ordered a double cheeseburger, heavy on the cheese, and two orders of fries. Neither of which made him a peeping tom. They made him a customer, but tonight he'd been late. He'd gotten caught up at a work, and he was pissed. He really wanted that double order of fries. And maybe a little conversation with the brunette behind the counter.

He liked watching her work. Liked how she had a set way of taking orders and cleaning up. Jason was drawn to routine. Maybe because he had so many of them himself. Or maybe because he understood why she did things the way she did. It made something hers, and after what she'd been through, she didn't own much of anything. He'd been there before, and he knew that though she had so many people around her, she was also very alone.

He smiled to himself as she attempted to pull the buss bucket from beneath the counter. It was almost too wide for her to hold and obviously weighed more than she did. She furrowed her brow in determination, like she often did when dealing with a rude customer. Somehow she managed to heave it against her body and make her way back to the kitchen.

Slipping his cell phone from his pocket, he checked the time, noticing it was much later than she usually stayed. She was always out the door, no later than nine thirty. Always closing just minutes after he paid his bill and left. Something about the break in her routine bothered him.

Instinctively, he moved to the door, pausing when he saw the closed signed hanging against the glass. "Closed: Don't disturb a sleeping diner. It's bad for your food." Mike told him it had been her idea. She found Mike's, "Closed: Go away and come back-if you have to," sign relatively offensive. She said it wasn't good for patrons and Mike probably disagreed, but went along just for her sake. Everyone seemed to be doing that for her.

Except for Jason.

He kept his distance and would have stayed away completely if he could, but he needed to make sure she was okay. She didn't know anything about him. No name or occupation, both of which were good things. Had she known he was Jason Morgan, alleged professional criminal, she probably would have spat in his food and told him to stay away from her. She may have even felt compelled to put Mike's old sign back up.

Then again, that was if she even noticed him. He was a customer just like anyone else, so she was supposed to make small talk about the weather or the latest town headlines. She was never overly nice to him the way she was to everyone else. Jason couldn't help but notice the way her eyes softened when she spoke to him and how the tension seemed to leave her body. He wondered if perhaps she remembered him. She came off more real and personable-more of the person she may have been before?

Like everyone, he was rather curious about her; the girl who had come to town with no strings attached one day and ended up nearly dead the next. She held no ties to Port Charles, and the police found no family or friends. Her past was as empty to her as it was to everyone else, so there were no leads. She was a spectacle; a testament that bad things happened to good people and everyone reached out to help her in some way.

The second she woke up, Bobbie, a nurse at the hospital, offered her a place to stay. Mike offered her a job at Kelly's. Not to mention the dozens and dozens of flowers that poured into her hospital room. People sent checks and made donations in her name, all of which she turned down. The only contribution to her new life that she'd taken was the job, turning down Bobby's offer for a free room. Instead she lived in a tiny studio near the docks. Not many people knew where she lived, but Jason figured that was the point.

Damn, he really had become a peeping tom.

In defense of his own actions, he only knew about the art studio because he'd followed her home after her first closing shift. She hadn't come into a good closing routine yet and didn't get out of the diner till nearly twelve. That was far too late for a young, attractive woman to be walking home in the dark-especially down near the docks where the worst of all things had happened to her.

Several trustworthy customers had offered to walk her home that night, but she refused. Jason knew they were trustworthy because they worked for him and he told them to watch out for her. He tried not to let her stubborn ways bother him when it was so clear that she didn't want the help from those around her.

That was where they were alike. She wasn't so focused on pleasing everyone around her. But she also didn't have people around her to remind her that she wasn't the same person before and that she had changed. Was it wrong that part of him envied her for that?

Or maybe it was plain empathy.

He wasn't used to feeling this way. His life didn't usually tie him to other people unless they were criminals. Most of the time he kept a distance, and he would have here too. He would have never batted an eye had he read this story in the paper or seen it on the news, but he found her.

A crumpled body hanging over the edge of the docks as if someone had forgotten to roll her into the water. Her hair had been matted to her face from blood and tears. Her clothes were tattered and torn to the point that he didn't have to guess what had happened to her. And the blow to the back of her head, presumably from a fall of some kind, had left her barely conscious, but breathing.

And when he saw that she was breathing, he did everything he could to make sure she didn't stop.

He was, as the papers called him, the unidentified hero. He'd done his best to stay away from the media and thankfully the nurses at General Hospital helped him as much as possible. It had taken the police nearly a week to find her purse, which had been thrown into the harbor.They matched her battered face to the one on her license.

Sure, crimes happened as much in this town as any other, but this was different. This wasn't one that Jason could bury at the bottom of the harbor. This was one he was forever connected to, whether he liked it or not.

And sadly, regardless of circumstance, part of him liked it.