between the good and bad's where you'll find me

Summary: Diana grew up in Gotham's harshest streets. She knows better than to trust any man over Her. One then can imagine her surprise when Gotham starts sending some of the corner girls and the street kids to the Red Hood.

Notes: please read the first in this series! while i think you should be able to read this without that, reading the first in the series gives more context to the verse i think also this was inspired by the gotham curse by letpeterparksayfck! if you like neal caffrey is [a bat] please check out their series! (it's a neal caffrey is jason and it's amazing! please go and read it!) sentient gotham and gotham in the shadows is from that verse (so big brain!), and i've put my own spin on it title is from i'm alive! by becca

OC POV!

Jason

Sometimes Diana feels so old. She's barely even entered her thirties and she feels like she's lived an entire lifetime already, wise but not yet wrinkled. She thinks it's all her disadvantages boiled together in a gallon pot that gives her the edge: brown, hispanic, woman, poor, queer. The list goes on.

All of that and she's from the Narrows. Gotham already is a city where the weak are eaten and only those with enough smarts or gumption survive. Diana wouldn't say she's dumb but she's sure her continued existence has more to do with the spite carbonating her veins than smarts. Like hell she'd let any one of these Alley fuckers screw her over.

Diana grew up in Gotham's harshest streets. She knows better than to trust any man over Her.

One then can imagine her surprise when Gotham starts sending some of the corner girls and the street kids to the Red Hood. She's wary of course, wary for a long while - one doesn't survive Gotham's worst and come out trusting - especially when the duffel bags of heads were more than confirmed. But eventually, Diana can admit to herself that if there's one man to trust, it's the Red Hood.

He's violent and snarky and has a dirtier mouth than some of the working girls. He also treats those same working girls with respect and walks them home and shoots their rapists dead in the balls and then in the forehead, front and center, Gotham purring all the while. This usually isn't enough to get Diana and much of the Alley to fully trust - why run from one crime lord to another?

The Red Hood has one thing others don't though: the blood red Bat spanning across his chest.

There's dumb and then there's dead and no one in Gotham is stupid enough to pretend to be a Bat. Besides, it's obvious the Red Hood is a Bat. With the way Gotham follows him around, how could he be anything but?

There is a rumor going around that the Red Hood was the second Robin, the one that died. Everyone agrees that it makes sense: the second Robin is the one that got killed by the Joker, who else would have the balls big enough to come back using the "Red Hood" moniker? Only the Crime Alley Robin as far as anyone knows. No one would really be surprised if Gotham pulled him back from the grave; She always favored the Bats.

There's a lot that pretty much proves this theory. What he did then is similar to what he does now. He gives piggy back rides and candy to the kids and delivers groceries to their families. He curses in Spanish and knows all his prayers and walks around with a chip on his shoulder, speaking and swaggering around like a Crime Alley kid. Growls like one too.

Diana will never forget that growl, not until the day she dies, and maybe not even after that. It's not something the hindbrain is likely to forget once heard, intuition sensing a predator and all that. She had been walking home with some of the kids a little later in the evening than she would have liked, but Leo had gotten lost from the group and Javier, one of the older kids along with the rest of the group asked her to help find him. They were a few minutes away from the complex they all lived in before Diana noticed they were being trailed - she'd just come back after a twelve hour swift but she still cursed her inattention. By the time she noticed, it was already too late.

A few messily suited mobsters start to surround the group from the side and in front swaggering closer, chains and crowbars clanging and dangling from their hands. Diana pushes the youngest children behind her as she straightens and squares her shoulders, putting on her fiercest glare.

She angles her mouth slightly to the oldest in the group, "At the first chance, take the kids and run."

Javier's shoulders tremble slightly but he nods with fierce eyes anyway, hands holding the younger kids' behind him.

Diana's plan was to throw something and distract but something stops her. There's a prickling in the back of Diana's neck, a primal animal reaction. As her eyes dart around, she can't help but notice it's eerily, distinctly quiet. The kind of quiet the forest gets with a wolf nearby.

It happens in the middle of a breath - a quick schtk! of metal hitting brick, a body swooping suddenly from the skies and rolling to a thud in front of them. The shadowed mass rises steadily like a building wave before solidifying into the broad edges of Red Hood's shoulders.

Red Hood prowls a few steps from where he landed, coming to a stop right in front of Diana and the kids, a hand reaching out to signal to them to stay behind him. The other twirls one of his gleaming black pistols.

"Laurentis, s'been a while. Whatcha doing in my part of town?"

"We were just passing by Hood, really-"

"Ah, lips that say one thing while the heart clearly thinks a-fucking-nother. You know my rules, Laurentis. Women and children are off limits."[1]

"Hood-"

Red Hood growls low and deep in his throat when a few of the men take a step forward. Diana feels it reverberate in her bones, that low register somehow making the summer air feel colder, her hair standing on end. She can't imagine being on the end of that growl, instead of being protected by it. It's not a human sound.

Diana only notices because she's running on adrenaline and is hyper aware of everything happening but the second Red Hood growls the shadows stop being benign swirls dancing around their ankles like alley cats and start to bend and twist like malevolent vines, growing miasmic and thorny around the legs of the men surrounding them.

"I don't want to have to do this in front of the kids, Laurentis." The Red Hood's hand that was pressing them behind him slowly reaches for his other holster, sliding deftly into the leather to palm the grip of his other pistol. Diana never liked the sounds of gunshots (no one who grew up in the Alley does) but she feels safer already. It's one man against a group of them, but everyone in the Narrows knows the only person that could maybe out-shoot Hood is Deadshot.

Diana sees in her peripheral vision one of the men fish something out of his pocket but Red Hood is faster, grunting out a "¡Cubre los!" before Diana's sight is completely blacked out, like the curtain suddenly snapping shut on stage. She freezes in animal fear for a few seconds before she blinks and then she and the children are lit up by the yellowing light of the city lamps once again. She hears Gotham's faint purring echoing in the back of her head, Bloodthirst and Satisfaction reverbing around them.

Javier's head is turned to the side, and she spots Red Hood roughly shoving a slumped over body into a shadow, the slowly growing blood trail gradually turning black and fading into the pavement.

This is another thing Diana will take to her grave.

It's at that moment she gets it. Red Hood is one of them, but also isn't. He's special - just like the other Bats are special.

Diana is too old to not know the universe has its favorites, and the Red Hood is one of Gotham's.

End Notes:

1Dumas, Alexandre, 1802-1870. The Count of Monte Cristo. New York, N.Y., U.S.A. :Penguin Books, 2001. (it's from chap 2; slightly reworded lol)[return to text]

¡Cubre los! - Cover them!

thanks for reading!

hc: jason works in tandem with Gotham to protect those taken advantage of; he'll ask Gotham to make him look scarier to the bad guys and to shield women and children if they're in his fighting zone also yes, jason is a lit nerd in my mind and flings quotes at villains he fights twitter