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Nadia Averez had not wanted to be a getaway driver for a gang when she grew up. What she had wanted was to get a degree in marine biology and study aquatic life. But life didn’t often give people what they wanted in her experience. So, when her mother got sick, really sick, she dropped out of high school at sixteen and started running with a local gang in order to keep her mother’s prescriptions full and the lights on. That was how life had always been for Nadia, you did what you needed to in order to survive, anything outside of that was nothing more than wishful thinking.
It followed then, when she was twenty-eight and whispers of a new drug lord stirring up trouble in the underbelly of Gotham, she kept an ear out. And, when a duffel bag of heads turned up on the doorstep of Gotham PD, she was more than prepared to jump ship and pledge her allegiance to the mysterious “Red Hood”. It turned out to be the right decision. The Red Hood ruled over Crime Alley with an iron fist. The Red Hood chopped off the hands (and sometimes the more sensitive parts) of would-be rapists.
The Red Hood was fucking weird to work for.
At first, she thought his inquiries about the home lives of his underlings were thinly veiled threats. Nadia had worked for enough assholes to know that, “ And how is your mother? ” was rarely a good thing to hear. But then he would follow up.
“ How did the last treatment go? ”
“ Do you need to leave earlier to take care of her ?”
“ How is she adjusting to bedrest? ”
She didn’t know what it was, but something about Hood made him so easy to talk to. Soon the questions about her mother were peppered with encouragement to get her GED, and then to take a couple classes at Gotham Community, and before she knew it, she had Sundays and Wednesdays off to drive her mom to chemo and Thursday to Saturday she was guaranteed to be off by five to take classes.
However, despite the weirdness of her boss, he was still a druglord and crime was crime. And in Gotham, it was only a matter of time before such activities caught the attention of Batman and his cohort.
It was really a shame when they showed up, the night had been going so well. It was just a pickup from a distributor who had been rumored to be selling to kids. In the end, Hood probably wouldn’t have needed to come with them at all, but Nadia had quickly learned to recognize (and partially enjoy) her boss’ flair for the dramatics. They loaded the shipment into the van and she wondered if she’d manage to get home before her mother fell asleep, when a voice growled from the shadows.
“ Hood .”
Nadia and six other heads whipped around to face the looming figure perched on the brick wall above them.
“ Batman .” Hood’s robot voice sounded even flater than usual.
“I cannot let you continue like this.”
“Want to try to stop me, old man?” There was something in that jab that felt familiar between the two.
“We all know this isn’t who you are, Little Wing.” All seven heads whipped back around to see Nightwing at the other end of the alley. Hood didn’t so much as flinch.
“Oh really?”
“Yes.” Nightwing's escrima crackled with electricity.
“Well then, better try and stop me.”
~~~~~~~~~~~
The ensuing scuffle was less of a fight and more of a mid-speed chase. Nadia bounced around in the back of the truck with the others while Mark drove and Hood hung out of the passenger window firing shots at Nightwing and Batman as they followed along the rooftops. Eventually, they must have lost them, or something more pressing caught the attention of Gotham’s Night, because the two vigilantes eventually disappeared.
“You know the bats?” Nadia finally asked, her tone was more surprised than accusatory.
Hood grunted. “In another life.”
“Oh?” She asked, almost on reflex.
For a few minutes her only answer was silence and Nadia had resigned herself to the fact that she was going to be on late night watch for the next three weeks for daring to disrespect the Red Hood, apparent interest in her mother be damned. So she almost jumped clean out of her seat when he finally spoke.
“I was…a different person then.” The modulator on his voice made it hard to identify his tone but he sounded almost hurt, longing for something gone. “Not,” he gestured to himself, “but that doesn’t matter.” His tone steeled, “That person, that name is dead. And no one can take this from me. Not even him.”
Nadia felt as the meaning of his words washed over them all at the same time. She met Alex’s eyes as they all came to the same conclusion. Oh, Bossman in trans .
Doren turned to face Hood head on. “Of course not, boss. They’ll stay the hell away if they know what’s good for ‘em.”
He only nodded in response and resumed (what she assumed was) pensive staring out the window.
~~~~~~~~~~~
“Do you want help with,” Maggie gestured to the wound on her boss’ torso,” All that? If you take of your shirt, I can—“
“It’s fine,” Hood replied shortly.
“Are you sure?” Maggie really wasn’t one to question orders, but she also really didn’t like the idea of having to drag the Red Hood’s ass through Crime Alley to Dr. Thompson’s if he kept bleeding out.
“Yeah, I’ve got a really fucked up scar on my—” he winced as he tried to readjust himself to get better access to the wound. “Chest.”
Oh. She wanted to give herself a good hit upside the head. Of course.
Of course he might not be comfortable showing his top surgery scars.
“Alright Boss, just give a holler if you need any help.”
~~~~~~~~~~~
Doren fucking hated Poison Ivy.
No, that wasn’t true, he didn’t hate her per se. He was old enough to remember when lushious, almost larger-than-life fruit trees sprouted up overnight on the outskirts of Gotham’s Central Park. And he was young enough that when they did, they made all the difference to his streetkid child self. So, no he didn’t hate Poison Ivy, what he hated was her stupid cuddle-pollen that she doused Gotham in wherever the latest batch of oil was dumped into the harbor or LexCorp lobbied for a particularly environmentally hazardous bill.
He hated the stuff not only because it made him feel cold, and shivery, and generally like shit for at least twenty-four hours, but because of what people used it as an excuse to do. Sickos and creeps who waited for any opportunity to make a move on the working girls or any poor passerby who happened to be on the street. It made Doren’s blood boil. One of the reasons he kept working for Hood was because he’d made it clear that that behavior was not fucking tolerated . So when the news hit that Ivy was dusting Gotham with her latest concoction he expected to be outfitted with a rebreather and sent to patrol around the Alley, ensuring that no one was taken advantage of while under the pollen’s influence. What he had not expected was to round a corner of the warehouse they were using as a semi-permanent base of operations and run into his stumbling crime-boss.
“Uh Boss, you okay?”
Hood turned to him, and Doren immediately knew what was wrong. His helmet was cracked, revealing the domino he wore beneath it. More importantly however, it meant that he had probably gotten a full whiff of pollen before making it inside.
“ Shit .” Doren hissed. “Listen man, we gotta get you to the infirmary.”
“What?” Hood’s voice had a tired, dreamlike quality to it.
So, Ivy decided to introduce hallucinogens to her latest batch of allergens from hell, great. Hood’s legs were already swaying beneath him and Doren had the very real fear that if he left his boss alone, he was going to fall and smash his head open on the concrete floor. So, carefully, he brought his arm up under Hood’s shoulder so he could help him walk. The walk to the makeshift infirmary was painstakingly slow. All the way, Hood kept mumbling under his breath, a one-sided conversation that Doren was not privy to.
By the time he gently distributed Hood onto a cot, he had regained at least some of his facilities. He’d removed his helmet, and Doren suddenly realized that he had never actually seen his boss’ face before. Sure, he still had a domino mask on, but he looked so…young. Hardly more than a kid, really. He had the overwhelming urge to slap the shit out of whoever had hurt this child so bad that he’d become a drug lord.
Just then, Hood let out a low groan. “Damn pollen,” he muttered.
“Hey, Boss. Feel alright? Do you need anything?”
“No. I just–” his voice caught in his throat. “I just wish my family…” he trailed off.
“We could try reaching out to them, if you want,” Doren said, trying to sound as soothing as possible.
Hood scoffed at that. “They’d never want me now. They don’t exactly agree with my, ah, lifestyle choices.”
Doren winced, clearly he had stumbled into some sensitive territory. Hood clearly wasn’t completely in his right mind at the moment, and he didn’t want to prod at what was obviously a very personal matter, but he also didn’t want to leave the poor guy to stew on unpleasant experiences.
“They don’t miss me,” Hood continued, breaking Doren out of his moral dilemma. “They miss who they think I used to be, but I–” his voice broke, “I can’t be that person anymore.”
Doren's heart broke for the poor kid. He’d been out on the streets before he could walk and he’d known plenty of kids who’d gotten thrown out for dressing or acting the way they felt inside. And after that, they rarely ever had safe places to go. Some nights, he’d lay awake and wonder what happened to those kids, the ones who couldn’t find a place to spend the night. Now, he supposed, he was looking at one of them.
“Of course you can’t be that person, boss, and you don’t need to be.”
Hood hummed noncommittally in response, staring up at the cracked ceiling.
“Hey uh, you know you always have us, right?” Doren said. “We’ll always be here. Fuck them, right?”
Hood turned to him and the corner of his mouth quirked up. “Yeah,” he said softly, “Fuck them.”
~~~~~~~~~~~
Jason was honestly a little surprised at how fast the members of his gang were to pledge their absolute loyalty to him. He’d read several books on leadership while planning the best way to take over Gotham’s criminal underworld and it was shocking what building genuine relationships with your employees did for productivity. Not to mention a positive working environment. He walked into his base of operations one morning to find Mark (an older ex-marine with greying hair and grandkids he loved to death– Jason needed to remember to ask about how the eldest’s college hunt was going) and Alex (who was only a few years older than Jason himself– he should ask how his daughter was enjoying kindergarten) up on a ladder hanged a trans flag next to a slightly lopsided pride flag. Nadia was standing a few feet back (Jason needed to ask how her mother’s latest round of chemo went) directing them.
Alex turned as he approached and waved. “Hey Boss!”
“Not that I don’t appreciate the flags, but is there a reason for this happening today?” Jason asked as he made his way closer.
Nadia shrugged, “Well, we Alley folks have to stick together, right? We just thought it would be nice to have a little reminder hanging up here.”
“And trans visibility day is in a week, so we figured we’d decorate a little early.” Alex added, teetering precariously on his ladder.
Jason nodded at their words. Now that he was finally up to the wall he could see that they were all wearing little “Alley Ally” buttons as well. “The buttons are a nice touch.”
Mark smiled at that. “We had a gender reveal party for my oldest grandson last week and my daughter accidentally ordered way more than she should have, so I brought them here for us to share.” He gestured to a bin on the floor
Jason smiled in return at that, not that anyone could see it, and went to get one for himself, before realizing that the kevlar of his armor would not be great for sticking buttons into.
“Well, I’ll leave this in your capable hands,” he looked at Nadia specifically before setting off.
As he turned around, he missed the look of pride the three shared between them.
~~~~~~~~~~~
Alex supposed it was only a matter of time before he ran into a vigilante in the wild. Plenty of the other guys had stories of run-ins with the bats, and he’d even mentioned to Mark how odd it was that he hadn’t come face to face with any of Gotham’s caped crusaders yet.
Which of course meant that his next job was swiftly interrupted by Nightwing landing on the opposite roof he and the rest of the team for the night were stationed on.
After his initial panic, it became clear that Nightwing wasn’t scanning his surroundings for activity, he was waiting for something. Several minutes passed, with nothing, when finally, Hood grappled onto the roof.
“What do you want?” Hood snapped, his voice carrying clearly through the cool night air. “I thought I made myself clear: No. Bats."
“But you’re–”
“No.”
“I just–”
“I said no.”
“Robin, if you’d just let me–”
“How many times do I have to say it before it gets through your thick skull, Dickwing. Robin ,” spat Hood. “Is dead.”
Alex felt a cold pit grow in his stomach as he watched the face-off between the two masked figures on the neighboring roof. They had seen Robin— the boy wonder— swinging through the night, alive as ever not half an hour prior, which meant that the “Robin” they were referring to must be…
Doren turned to him, face matching the disgust Alex felt and mouthed, “ Deadname. ”
Whatever quiet fire had been burning in Alex before was now a raging inferno. Who the fuck yelled a person’s deadname from the roofs of Gotham for the world to hear?
Glancing back over to the showdown on the roof, Nightwing stood still as a statue. “Little Wing—“ he started, extending a hand out towards Hood, but Alex had heard more than enough. He fired two shots at the vigilante’s feet. Nightwing dodged with ease, sending a final pained look at Hood, before swinging off into the night. Hood stormed off soon after, leaving them shocked and disgusted.
Nadia was the first to break the silence. “Well, we already knew his family was shit, but–”
“Shit’s one way to put it,” Mark said darkly.
Maggie shook her head. “As dumb as it sounds now, I never thought the Bats would be so hateful .”
Alex snorted. “Why not? We’re already trash down here. Batman never cared about the Alley. The only one who ever has his Hood. So he is who I’m choosing to follow.”
“Of course,” Maggie said quickly, “I just– how could you do that to someone? Someone you say you care about?”
The silence that followed her words was deafening.
Doren cleared his throat. “ We care about him, not those assholes.”
A murmur of agreement passed through the group.
“Yeah,” Alex said, “We just have to show him.”
~~~~~~~~~~~
Jason would be lying if he said he wasn’t still reeling from his conversation with Dick the previous week. More and more frequently he and Bruce seemed dead set on showing up and wrecking his plans. The only small mercy was that the replacement still had yet to show his face in Jason’s territory, but he still didn’t understand what was so difficult to understand about, “ Stay the fuck out of Crime Alley. ” On top of that Black Mask had been suspiciously quiet lately and it was only a matter of time before he reeled his ugly head.
With all that on his mind, Jason hardly noticed the empty hallways of his base as he made his way into the main area in hopes of taking his bike out for a spin to clear his head. Hardly noticed, until he swung the door open and was greeted with pink, blue, and white ribbons.
“Surprise!”
Jason looked around. The pride flags were still hanging where Mark and Alex had hung them, and everyone had donned the ally pins which had been swiftly circulating all for the past week. There was food and drinks laid out on several fold-out tables, as well as a cake that he was pretty sure said, “Fuck the Bats, we support you”.
“Umm…”
“We noticed that you were pretty…in your head after that whole thing last week,” said Alex, “So, we decided to put a little something together to show you how much we appreciate and support you!”
“Yeah, Happy Trans Visibility Day, Bossman!” said Nadia.
“I don’t–”
Mark clapped a hand on his shoulder. “This is the Alley kid, we have to look out for our own.
And well, damn if that didn’t make Jason tear up just a bit.
“Thanks–thanks.” he said finally
“Of course,” said Mark, “You're one of ours, no matter what.”