24. Under the Hood, Part 2
I first met Jason in middle school, here in Park Row. We were both twelve years old.
Some of the older kids were bullying him because... Well, because of a lot of things.
His dad had just gotten sent to prison for henching for Two-Face, of all people. And his mom...
His mom was a drug addict.
Crack. Pills. Heroin. She turned tricks on the street to get by and feed her habit. Everyone knew about it, and... well, kids can be cruel.
Jason played it cool at first. He knew what the other kids were saying behind his back, and he tried not to let that bother him. But if they ever mocked his parents to his face, he would snap.
Jason got into it with one kid. I don't even remember his name, but I remember Jason laying the kid flat at school.
But whoever that kid was, he had friends. Older, bigger friends, and lots of them.
The next day, that kid and his friends retaliated. They jumped Jason on his way home from school.
They beat him within an inch of his life. Right in the alley behind this bar.
I found him out there, called my dad, and we chased them away.
My uncle Reilly was an EMT, so he checked Jason out and we took him to Leslie's clinic. We couldn't reach his mom, so I stayed with him to make sure he wasn't alone. I helped the nurses clean him up and redress his bandages. That's when I first caught the nursing bug.
When his mom finally came to get him, she met my mom. They got to talking, and a few days later Jason and his mom moved into our building. I started seeing him all the time. I was a bit of a tomboy, so naturally Jason and I became friends.
Best friends. Inseparable.
I leaned on him when my abuela was killed by muggers. He leaned on me when his dad got murdered in prison.
And you know how it goes. Teenage boys and girls can't be best friends for long... Especially when shit gets rough and you have no one to hold on to but each other.
One day... when we were thirteen, Batman caused a city-wide blackout fighting some bad guy or whatever. Without the light pollution, you could see the stars in the sky. Jason and I had never been outside the city, so we had never seen actual stars before. We camped up on the roof, star-gazing.
We held hands. We cuddled.
We kissed for the first time.
One thing led to another, before we knew it, we were dating. All in. Boyfriend and girlfriend.
But a year later, when we were fourteen, Jason's mom overdosed.
She had two strokes and a heart attack, but lingered for a week as her liver and kidneys failed. The withdrawal killed her.
Child Protective Services got a hold of Jason, and he made his rounds through a few shitty foster homes before he decided he was better off on his own. He ran away and lived on the street, doing odd jobs, grifting, and petty theft to get by. We stayed in touch, and I supported him as best I could. I snuck him food and tips from the bar, and let him crash in a vacant flat or the cellar every once in a while.
Eventually, I didn't need to let him squat in the building. He never told me the details, but he had found a place to live. He had to work for his keep, though. Shady work. Illegal stuff.
Now that I think about it, I guess... that's when he started working for Ma Gunn.
To tell you the truth, Rocky, I kind of liked being with a bad boy. My parent's disapproval... the sneaking around, the grifting, the late-night adventures... it only made our bond stronger... for a while.
But I didn't know at the time that Jason was spiraling. He was angry at the world and everyone in it. He hated Gotham. Hated his life. He said the only reason he didn't leave was because of me.
He had always stolen from bad guys, or from people that wouldn't be hurt by what he took. And only ever enough to get by. But then it got worse. He was stealing from the wrong people.
Innocent people.
By that time, I had started volunteering at the Park Row Clinic. I had gotten in deep with Leslie and her mission. I was growing as a person, but Jason wasn't. It was like he was regressing or something, turning into his own deadbeat dad. A thug. A henchman...
And... I admit I was falling out of love with him. I really was.
He wasn't the boy I fell in love with anymore. He was so angry all the time, I couldn't recognize him. He was beginning to scare me.
And then... Jason used me.
Leslie had trusted me with access cards to parts of the clinic. Jason stole them from me. He broke into the clinic and tried to run off with a bunch of narcotic drugs.
Batman, of all people, was the one that caught him.
And that was it. The last straw.
Jason broke my heart, so I broke his. I dumped him. I didn't even have enough heart to be friends with him after what he did.
I guess he took the hint. He completely disappeared from my life.
But then a year later, I heard he was taken in by Bruce Wayne. Of all people. Bruce motherfucking Wayne was Jason's new foster dad, and Jason was his new "ward." Can you believe that?
Bruce Wayne and Leslie were friends because he donated a lot of money to the Clinic. Still does. He's pretty much the reason they're still open after all these years.
Bruce made Jason volunteer at the Clinic to make amends for stealing those drugs...
And I was already spending all my free time there, volunteering myself...
We ran into each other. Again and again. I tried to avoid him, but I couldn't. I tried to stay mad at him, but I couldn't.
I saw that he had changed, and he told me he was sorry. Apparently, Bruce really worked a number on him. Saved him from juvie, gave him Ivy League tutors, and put him through the ringer to get his shit back together.
He was the same boy I had fallen for the first time around, but… his constant sadness had turned into hope… and his anger had turned into righteous passion.
So... well, I couldn't help myself. The Jason I loved was back. He was better, even. We had both grown up a lot. We picked things back up. Nostalgia aside, that was Jason and me at our best.
I loved him more than a shark loves blood. He loved me too.
We were sixteen and everything was sunshine, lollipops, and rainbows. We started making plans, you know? Like high school sweethearts do. For college, and after, and two kids, and a dog, and a house in Kane County with a white picket fence, and till death do us part, and all that sappy romantic bullshit.
But Jason was still Bruce's protégé.
One day, out of nowhere, Jason said he wanted to go to Qurac, of all places, to volunteer for a humanitarian mission. It was to provide aid to the refugees of the war with Bialya. It was a Peace Corps, Habitat for Humanity type thing by the Wayne Foundation. Of course I wanted to go too, but my dad had served two tours in Qurac. He said it was too dangerous, that terrorist rebels still ran amuck in the country.
And my dad was right.
Jason didn't make it back.
He was killed in a bombing by Bialyan terrorists.
They sent his body back, but he was so messed up we had to have a closed casket.
The funeral was small. It was just me, Bruce, his foster brother Dick, and their butler Alfred.
But apparently that was a lie. Some kind of sham.
Because Jason is back in Gotham now, and he's Red Hood. What am I supposed to think? Did he fake his own death?
Jason let me believe that he was dead for eight freaking years.
He lied to me and he now expects me to act like it never happened.
Like my heart didn't break when Bruce told me the news.
Like I didn't feel his loss.
Like I didn't grieve for months, years.
Like I can just forgive him for playing me like a fool this whole time while wearing that fucking mask.
#
Sirens wailed throughout the night.
Dora ran down Park Row as fast as she could, too out of breath to scream for help. Not that anyone would help her. Detectives Bullock and Montoya were chasing her down like a pair of wolves.
While sprinting, Dora passed an alley, cut off by a chain link fence. She skidded to a stop, nearly tripping. Bullock and Montoya were both bigger than her, older than her. Maybe the fence would buy her time and distance.
Gathering up her speed again, she turned the corner back into the alley. The cops saw that and followed, gaining ground.
Knocking over trash bins to slow them down, Dora approached the fence and pumped her legs into a running jump. She cleared a few feet as she hit the chain links and started clambering up.
"Get down!" Bullock ordered as they snatched at her heels. He managed to grab her ankle. Dora kicked at him, yelling in both fear and anger.
"Leave me alone! I did nothing wrong!" Dora's foot caught him in the face and he let go.
She vaulted over the fence and tumbled to the ground, landing harder than she meant to. As she recovered, she could see the cops were climbing the fence themselves and already halfway up. She didn't think Bullock had it in him.
Standing, Dora winced. Pain lanced up her leg, and she realized that she had sprained her ankle. Limping along at first, she forced herself to ignore the pain and step surefooted.
"This is your last chance, Dora!" Montoya called as she landed. "Freeze or we will be forced to shoot you!"
"I didn't know who he was! I swear!" Dora shouted, looking around for cover. There was another fence at the other end of the alley, but it wouldn't break line of sight.
The buildings in the alley she passed by had backdoors. She went to the nearest one, praying it was unlocked.
It was. She shoved it open—PTING, PTING, PTING—just in time for it to catch a hail of bullets.
The sound of gunfire nailed it home.
This was it. All her bad decisions had finally caught up to her. She was either going to prison or going to die.
Dora found herself in the laundry room of an apartment building. She shambled through, tipping over the folding tables, laundry baskets, and ironing boards in hopes of slowing the cops down.
In the hallway, she came upon a fork. Her choices: exit the front of the building back onto the street, or climb the stairs to the roof.
She heard sirens and saw flashing blue lights through the front door's glass windows, so she sprinted up the stairs as fast as she could, her ankle screaming at her to just give up.
The door to the roof burst open and Dora tumbled out, tripping on the gravel. Getting to her feet, she looked around. It was the tallest building on the block.
"Dora, over here!" someone called to her.
Dora looked around but couldn't see who had called her voice. It wasn't the cops.
She limped to the ledge of the building.
Jason stood on the neighboring rooftop, a story below her. He didn't have his helmet or mask on. "Jason!" Dora called to him desperately. "Help me!"
"Dora, come on! You can make it!" Jason shouted, waving her down.
She judged the gap. Jason was so close. She could make it with a good running start and a rolling landing, but her ankle...
She turned around but collided with someone.
Dora screamed and tried to push the man away, but he grabbed her, growling. Struggling to break free, Dora looked up at her captor. It wasn't Bullock.
The man had bloodshot eyes, white with cataracts, and a gaping, bleeding hole in his cheek. His teeth and gums were shattered, and his tongue slithered through the wound like a flesh-eating worm.
It was the thug she had shot a couple months ago.
Behind him, a pack of people shambled out of the stairwell, their bodies riddled with bullet holes and covered in blood. Their eyes had no irises, they were all white.
The man let out a wheezing hiss, demanding Dora's attention. His breath smelled putrid, like mold and shit.
He snapped at her with his shattered jaw. Dora pulled away but could not get out of his grip. She struggled, pushing back against him.
"Jason! Help!" she cried.
But Jason was too far away, on the other rooftop.
The man's jaw unhinged and he tried to bite her again. Dora saved her neck from his fetid maw only by putting her hand in its way. His shard-like teeth sank into her skin and it burned like fire.
Dora screamed and writhed in pain, trying to buck the man off, but his jaws were clamped on her hand like a vise grip. She heard the bones in her fingers snapping.
Then she heard gunshots.
Red Hood was on the rooftop, both his pistols drawn. He was yelling, peppering everybody with bullets. The zombie mauling her crumpled, unmoving. The others collapsed as their heads exploded and splattered blood and viscera everywhere.
"Jason?" Dora asked, confused. How did he make it up to this roof so quickly?
"No, Dora! That's not me!"
She looked in the other direction. Jason climbed over the ledge and onto the roof. He was without his helmet, without his mask.
Dora was standing between two men. Red Hood on one side, Jason Todd on the other.
What was going on?
She limped over to Jason, tears in her eyes, yearning to be in his arms, under his protection.
But she flinched as she heard a gunshot.
POW!
Blood burst from Jason's chest.
He gasped, "Dora?" His blue eyes pleaded, begging for her. He reached out to her as he collapsed to his knees. As he hit the ground, his body dissipated into smoke.
Dora screamed, "Jason, no!" But there was another gunshot.
POW!
She back burned. Her chest ached.
She choked. It hurt to breathe.
She was drowning.
Blood dribbled from her mouth.
Red Hood laughed; his gun pointed at her. Tendrils of inky black sludge poured from the eyes of his helmet. His helmet cracked open to reveal a garish grin of bloodstained teeth. More veins of sludge seeped out of his mouth and slithered up his face until his whole head became a glistening black emaciated skull.
Black Mask now stood in Red Hood's place, grinning and cackling behind his frozen skeletal mask. "He warned you, didn't he?" he growled in a deep rumbling voice.
Suddenly, a flock of bats exploded from the stairwell, fluttering and screeching.
Dora stumbled backward, clutching her chest as blood poured out of her.
Her legs caught the ledge of the roof, and she toppled over.
She didn't have the breath to scream.
Falling into the abyss, she watched the pale moon's fading light.
A shadow followed her on leather wings.
#
Dora jolted awake, feeling like she had fallen from the ceiling.
She gasped for breath desperately, gulping in air. Her head and chest pounded like elephants were stampeding over her. Worse, someone had taken an iron spike and hammered it through her skull, but not before pouring a gallon of acid down her throat and burying hot coals in her gut.
Dora rolled over and recognized the cracked ceiling of Holly's dingy apartment. The sun glared at her through the window. She was lying on a couch with a brain-bursting headache and tight stomach cramp. This was easily her worst hangover in years.
The last thing she remembered was explaining to Rochelle her past with Jason. She thought harder and managed to dig up the memory of breaking down like a sniveling little girl in Rochelle's lap. She had picked up the rum bottle again, then… she couldn't remember going upstairs to Holly's apartment at all.
The chase... being shot... falling off the roof, it was all just a nightmare.
Yet another featuring the zombie cholo with the bullet wound in his face, and his pack of ghoulish friends. He was the man she had killed, and all the people she had seen Red Hood kill.
The two Jasons, or two Red Hoods, or... one Jason and one Red Hood... who turned into Black Mask... one murdering the other... killing her... that was new.
Was this what it was like to be haunted? Not by a literal ghost, but in your dreams by your own guilt and shame and anxiety?
It was him or me, Dora reminded herself. I had to kill that guy, or else he would have killed me, Carla, and Holly.
Her father had killed people, she knew. As a marine, he defended good innocent people from others that meant to hurt them. Sometimes that defense had to be lethal. It was justified.
Was Jason doing the same thing? Was he a soldier now too?
Or had he turned into a murderer in the eight years since she last saw him? Red Hood was just so different from the Jason Todd she knew...
Or maybe they weren't so different at all. Jason always had good intentions, but an utter disregard for rules and authority. Anyone could say the same about Red Hood.
Dora had never been blacked out drunk before. She wondered/wished that if she had drunk even more, she could forget that Red Hood was Jason. Things were complicated enough with Red Hood, but the fact that he was her formerly deceased ex-boyfriend made it an irreconcilable mess.
"You look like shit," someone yelled.
The person had not really yelled, but it sure felt like it to Dora's hungover brain.
"I know that look. Tried to drink your troubles away, huh?" Holly was looking down at her, sipping coffee from a mug labeled "girl boss." There was a cheeky little smirk on her face. "Red Hood, huh?"
Dora groaned in misery and rolled over into the back of the couch. She was not in the mood to deal with Holly's incessant need for gossip.
"I mean," Holly continued. "What else could tear down a strong independent woman such as yourself other than her love life? And who is the only suitor in Little Miss Dora Silva's life? Yep, Mister Red Hood."
Dora grumbled. "Rochelle tell you anything?"
"Nothing, which was annoying. She's zipped up tighter than your pants, cuz Goddess knows you're never going to let anyone take them off."
At that moment Dora felt a surge of love for Rochelle bloom in her chest, making her forget the effects of the hangover for a few blissful seconds. Rochelle was the best friend anyone could ask for.
"Alright, I can tell you're in no state to talk about it, so why don't you sleep this off? Take my bed."
"What time is it?" Dora asked.
"Don't worry about the time," Holly said, helping Dora stand. "Rochelle said she has the bar covered tonight. You can just relax."
With Holly's help, Dora shuffled to the bed and literally collapsed into it. Holly took off Dora's shoes and socks, and pulled the covers over her.
"Everything's going to be okay, Dee. You don't need a man, you have us." Holly leaned down and gave Dora a hug, which she weakly returned.
Then Holly quickly pressed a kiss on Dora's lips before pulling away.
Dora was shocked, but too tired to react. She just blinked.
"There!" Holly laughed. "Now I can say I macked both the Silva sisters in my bed!"
Dora groaned in annoyance as Holly left the apartment.
She drifted off to sleep, thinking she would remind Holly later about their baby sister Mercy, and the fact that Carla's last name was Montgomery, not Silva.
Notes
Lot of stuff happening in this chapter. If you got thrown off and confused by the nightmare sequence... That's what it was supposed to do. It was a nightmare after all. I just wanted to remind you all (and myself) about a few things. (1) Dora is still feels conflicted about killing that man waaaaaaay back in Chapter 6. (2) She's still conflicted about Red Hood/Jason killing people. And (3) she still hates Black Mask for killing her father and ruining her life. Nightmare fuel indeed.
With that out of the way, I hope the momentary switch to first person for the backstory wasn't too jarring. I also hope you like the way I integrated Dora into Jason's past. I didn't really change much about it other than adding her, changing Jason's age of death from 15ish to 16ish, and the time spanning his death to his reappearance from five years to eight years. The bit about Jason stealing drugs from the clinic is an homage to the New 52 retcon, which people didn't like, so they changed it back to stealing the Batmobile's wheels in Rebirth. On my Earth, which I'm dubbing Earth-R109, Jason stole both those things, but that's not mentioned here because Dora doesn't know about that.
Yet.
She obviously doesn't know anything about Jason being Robin. Will she ever find out?
I personally feel it's not a spoiler to say: Yes, Dora will find out that Jason was Robin. But not yet. What I won't spoil is how she reacts to that revelation or how/when exactly it's revealed. You'll just have to wait and see.
Also, the last tidbit with Holly is just a little reminder to my readers that Dora and Carla have different last names, despite being full-blooded sisters. Remember, Dora was born before her parents got married. It happens. Don't judge.
Update: Some people have asked why Dora would out Jason's secret identity almost as soon as she found out. Simple answer is… you, the reader. You all need to know the baggage she has with Jason. How else are you guys supposed to know it, if Dora doesn't dump it all? And how can she dump it, if there's no one to listen? Self-critique, I think Dora already talks to herself too much. Hence, Rochelle.
Version 41.2