So, my life has been pretty crazy, and I haven't been able to update Four Blue Eyes. I promise that I will complete the story (it will likely take years because I have mapped out a long plot for it). In the meantime, I wrote this little one shot about Jason Todd inspired in part by the Greek myth Calypso. Hope y'all enjoy!

Jason's eyes were completely crusted over. Everything was a haze, and everything hurt. As he forced his eyes open, he heard a melodic voice whisper, "It's okay. You're safe now. Close your eyes."

Two brilliant hazel eyes accompanied the voice, and he complied with the whisperer's command.

Some time later he awoke again. This time, his body felt weightless. Healed. Perfect. His eyes fluttered open, and he was confronted with a picture he had only seen in postcards: a Carrbiean-esque beach scape with glittering blue waves and sand that looked almost translucent. He, covered in bandages and salves, was sitting on a bamboo bed.

It felt wrong. It felt like a trick. Something Joker would concoct.

Rushing to his feet, Jason snapped a sharp edge off of the bamboo bed and wielded it as a weapon. He assessed his surroundings while also trying to recall how he had gotten here. The last thing he could remember before the hazel eyes was being beaten with that damned crowbar. He shivered involuntarily.

"You're awake," the same melodic voice stated.

He swerved around to catch the voice's owner. How had he not heard her coming? How weak was he, truly?

"Who are you?" he demanded.

"I'm not your enemy."

"Sounds exactly like something an enemy would say," Jason growled. He edged closer to her, his bamboo weapon held like a sword, and hissed, "Who are you?"

"…My name is Cara."

"Where are we, Cara?"

"We are in a purgatory of sorts… You are in between life and death, Jason. The gods are unsure of whether or not to release you back to the land of the living or to the afterlife."

"The gods?" Jason guffawed. "The gods? Really, you expect me to believe you? Huh, Cara?"

"Yes. They are as real as you or I."

"Prove it. Prove that everything you've told me is true."

Cara gave Jason a rueful smile and murmured, "I am sorry, but I cannot. They will reveal themselves to you when they have come to a decision regarding your fate."

…

For the next several days, Jason slept with his eyes open, still reluctant to believe that this was not an elaborate trick created by the Joker. Throw him on an island with a pretty girl, make Jason comfortable, and then kill both the girl and him in a brutal, violent, horrible way. It wouldn't be the craziest thing the Joker had done. Not by a long shot.

So, Jason, in spite of Cara's musings that he "could not leave the island until the gods have decided," spent his time building a boat of bamboo and doing his best to ignore her.

She, meanwhile, had other plans. She always tried to talk to him. Get to know and him and connect with him (she asked him about random, stupid things, and he often responded with a huff... Occasionally, he'd throw an answer her way to quell her incessant questions). Tried to make him laugh (she told stories and jokes, not cruel ones like Joker, but ones that sometimes made him fight to suppress his laughter and other times led him to roll his eyes). Make him smile (with her smile, which he did not at all under any circumstances find incredibly beautiful and genuine and oh god what was wrong with him?). She left food out for him for breakfast, lunch, dinner, and dessert (sometimes he secretly wished dessert went beyond food). She provided him with salves and bandages for his wounds as well as hand-sewn bedding and clothes.

Initially, he took her gifts without acknowledgement. But, eventually, she wore him down like the waves rolling up the shore.

And it just happened one night. She handed him some sweet, tart-like dessert, and the moonlight was shining down on her just right, and he had never had a moment that felt this perfect. He pulled her down to him, onto his lap, and their night was spent together as one on the downy, white sand of the shore.

…

Of course, nothing so perfect and magical was meant to last. At least not for Jason Todd. The gods came down to his island. His home with her. And they, the gods, told him that his life was not over. He was to go back to his mortal life and be resurrected. Without Cara.