Chapter Text
Only once the last lingering patrons trickled out to the closing strains of 'Bridge Over Troubled Water' did the musician fall silent.
His fingers were stinging from the strings, he realized, and he smiled as he shook them out, arched his back until it cracked, and dropped over the edge of the little corner stage. There was a thin scattering of ones and a few fives and an assortment of change in his open guitar case, and he raked it together and thrust it into a pants pocket before unslinging his instrument from his shoulders and setting it carefully into its place. Only then did he reach into the hidden pocket in the lining and draw out a long, red scarf.
He could have left hours ago. Really, besides what people threw in the case, he'd only been paid to be here til eleven. But there was something so compelling about an audience, an audience that was listening and enjoying the show, and he didn't have anywhere else to be for another forty minutes or so. No reason not to keep playing until the bartenders closed up shop. (They used to get mad if he didn't stop at least half an hour before that, because it made people stay later at no profit and they had to wait around to lock up, but now he had a key.)
Jack—provisional name only; he was still John to Edna and Jim to his friends at the university, and because Alonzo was a butthead he wouldn't drop Jamie, but he was test-driving Jack at the moment and liked the feel of it—gave the wooden face of the guitar a fond little pat before zipping up its case. He wasn't especially good, not really, and he knew it, but the instrument was by far his most valued possession.
When he'd saved up a couple hundred dollars by the end of his first year in Gotham, through the kind of stubborn scrimping you could only manage when you were youngish, healthy, had no dependents, it had been a choice between getting a set of fake ID good enough to maybe get him a regular, legal minimum-wage job, or putting about half in for the nice acoustic guitar somebody had pawned at Rico's, and chipping the rest into the pot to pay for Kate's baby daughter's cleft-palate surgery. He'd decided the ID could wait.
Three months later he wasn't sorry, even though he was really wanting to get off the docks.
Currently-Jack didn't mind manual labor or anything, but when you didn't have any kind of ID you could only work under the table, which meant either extremely terrible pay or seriously illegal stuff. Since he was kind of uncomfortable unloading crates of guns that might wind up shooting people he knew, he was mostly stuck with the terrible pay, and he wasn't liking this for the long term.
The guitar, though. It was its own way out.
From the very beginning, he'd spent more time than he could really afford dawdling around listening to buskers playing their streetcorners and train stations, and his friends kept telling him things like he ought to be on the stage, get his own comedy act, go on TV, and these things together had led him to the discovery of the other poorly-regulated field he was slightly qualified for: live entertainment. He'd polished his act up at a series of parties and open mic nights, kept cadging music lessons and doggedly plucking away at borrowed instruments until he got his own, and even before he'd started to get any money, he'd known this was the best idea ever. Hey-presto, Jack-has-a-trade!
Doctor Thompkins at the Park Row clinic said he must have been the kind of kid who found the tallest thing to stand on, anywhere he went, and shouted look at me, everybody! Look at me! She'd said this after he fell out of a tree in Robinson Park and cracked his ulna, and he'd sort of shrugged because who knew, but she was probably right.
…he kind of hoped she was right.
His buddy Roman had gotten him this steady Friday night gig in his uncle's bar—fifty dollars a night plus whatever people were inspired to donate, for four hours of live music and a stand-up comedy routine at eight that was starting to draw an actual crowd, these last few weeks.
It was two AM and everybody had gone home, and it was just him and Roman and Roman's half-empty bottle of vodka.
Jack smiled. It was now time to get on with his third job, the one that paid absolutely zilch. With the smoothness of a lot of practice, he started wrapping the scarf around his face, brilliantly crimson and delightfully soft. Roman watched and sipped at his glass as Jack-at-the-moment covered his slightly-distinctive eyebrows, and then passed a fold of cotton over the bridge of his nose.
His face wasn't that memorable, or recorded in any databases anywhere, but just because he was nobody didn't mean he wanted the people he pissed off to get a good look at him. He was a nobody with friends, and anyway, Nobody was much more impressive with no face at all.
"You know you can't change anything, right?" Roman asked suddenly, rocking his chair back onto its rear legs. "With your mask and your fancy stunts."
Roman was nineteen and bitter with the growing knowledge that he was never getting out of the East End, that if he was lucky he'd probably take over his uncle's bar when the old man retired. He was sharp as a tack, and had big dreams and a big heart, and none of that mattered if you'd taken the fall for a buddy in middle school and had grand larceny on your record.
Jack worried about him.
"It all makes a difference to someone," he answered, as he tied the scarf tightly under his left ear. That was all he'd ever really wanted, anyway.
Roman shrugged. "Not making any real difference, though," he reiterated. "Not at the bottom of things. You're a Band-Aid. You can talk a good line, but you can't bring hope to Crime Alley."
"No," Jack agreed, wriggling into the heavy, deep-red hoodie he'd found in Marcie's thrift store and gotten half off because she thought he was sweet. (He'd also convinced her to adopt a kitten, but that probably shouldn't be considered a form of payment.) "That's something we've all gotta do together."
Roman snorted, but Jack didn't give him time to say whatever negative thing he had in mind. "Besides," he continued, straightening his hood and grinning wide as wide through the muffling layers of scarf, "root causes are really hard to punch in the face."
Roman snorted again, but it was in amusement this time, and when he shook his head he only said, "Nutcase," and made a little toast before knocking back the rest of his drink. J-is-for-Jack stowed his guitar behind the bar, and continued through the kitchen toward the back door.
"Hey, Jack," Roman called out from the front room, made Jack stop with a hand on the doorknob. Roman fiddled with his empty glass. "…take care of yourself."
"You know it," he called back, and then the Red Hood hit the streets.