36. Shepherd of Fire
A bullet caught Dora in the chest and literally took her breath away. Shocked and lightheaded, she crumpled to the ground.
The pain arrived a second later. It was piercing, lancing throughout her chest and even her arm, but she bit it down, and pushed herself back onto her feet. Wincing, she signaled the people in the van to get down as low as they could, then crawled behind it as bullets shattered the van's taillight.
It felt like her whole breast had been replaced by a molten ball of iron, but she wasn't dead.
Wait... she had been shot and she wasn't dead.
In fact, she wasn't even bleeding.
Pressing tight against the van for cover, she unbuttoned her top and checked herself. There was a huge red welt on her left breast, but she wasn't bleeding. The outside of her leather biker vest had a hole in it, but the inside did not. She reached into the hole and pulled out a bullet, smashed flat. "Holy shit," Dora cursed, not believing it.
She peaked inside the hole in her vest… it was lined with ballistic fabric. This must have been the real reason why Jason wanted her to wear a prospect's vest. Laughing hysterically, Dora zipped it up to her throat.
Mentally packing the pain away let her tune back into reality. Jason's strained voice was giving orders over the radio in English. She breathed a sigh of relief, knowing he was okay.
But then Jason said, "I'm breaking the line! Cover me!"
Dora cursed and peaked out of cover. Both sides exchanged fire across the shipyard, with the Demonz taking cover behind the containers, motorcycles, and vans, and the traffickers in position behind the cranes, tractors, and their SUVs.
"Get your ass back over here, Red!" Reilly shouted.
Jason sprinted across no-man's-land, dual wielding his pistols. The Demonz fired past him, forcing most of the traffickers under cover. The few that weren't in cover caught Jason's bullets with their faces. He leapt onto the hood of an SUV, and in one fluid motion holstered his guns and drew twin knives. Then he pounced on the group of traffickers behind it.
Dora watched, amazed. It was insane, but… the tactic was somehow working. Jason breaking the frontline and getting behind the traffickers forced them to turn around and expose themselves to deal with him… and then they were picked off by the Demonz at their backs.
Jason literally mauled his way through the traffickers, a tornado of blades, boots, elbows, and knees. A few thugs shot him… but his gear must have been more bulletproof than Dora's because he just. Kept. Going.
"Tango breaking for the Impala!" Reilly shouted over the radio.
Dora's eyes snapped to her car. She knew the man was going for another duffel of money in the trunk, or possibly Jason's gear. The past few weeks' training took over. Dora drew and chambered her Glock.
She had gotten her draws down to a single second, but her aim still needed work. The first shot grazed the trafficker, making him stagger, causing Dora to miss the next two.
But that was her father's car, the one Jason had refurbished just for her. Nobody was going to lay a finger on it unless she said so.
Praying the traffickers aimed for center-mass where she was most protected, she holstered her weapon, broke away from the van, and sprinted to the Impala. Her feet pounded the pavement as she ran the hardest she ever had in her life and tried to keep a container between her and the rest of the firefight. The thug saw her coming and fired at her. She dived to evade. Not getting hit, she rolled back to her feet and closed the distance.
The thug swung a fist at Dora, but she ducked and rammed her shoulder into his gut. His back hit the car and he bounced off; the wind knocked out of him. She grabbed his arm and took his momentum, throwing him over her shoulder and to the ground. Not letting go, she stomped on his neck and twisted his arm. Something snapped, his fingers loosened, and the gun dropped. As he cried in pain, Dora let go and stomped the back of his head, knocking him out cold.
Holy shit. I just took down an armed man, she reeled. Jiu jistu lessons are paying off. The rush was exhilarating. It was like being back in the ER.
"We got two tangos pulling for the vans!" Reilly announced.
"I got 'em!" Jessie responded.
"Careful! They're huge!"
Dora looked back at the Demonz' caravan.
Two traffickers had made it across the shipyard to the vans, but Jessie was ready to meet them. She launched herself at the first man, hooking her elbow around his neck. Using him as a pole to vault, she barrel-kicked his friend bringing up the rear. As they tried to recover, Jessie spun on the ground like a street dancer, sweeping out their legs with capoeira kicks. She hopped nimbly to her feet, drew her gun, and shot each thug in the head, twice, point blank.
"Everyone to Rally Point Bravo!" Jason ordered over the radio, heaving. "Jessie, take my bike!"
"What about you?" she asked.
"I'll cover your exfil and clean up the bad guys! I'll make it out on my own. Go, go, go!"
An explosion erupted by one of the cranes. Metal screeched and it came crashing down. Mehrad's men screamed and scattered while Jason hopped up on a tractor and picked them off with a stolen AK-47.
The Demonz scrambled out of cover, going to their bikes or vans, occasionally sending shots at the traffickers to cover each other. Dora followed suit, climbing into the Impala.
"They're loading the SUVs to follow us!" Jessie announced.
Dora thought quickly. The Impala was the Demonz vehicle at the rear of the caravan and farthest from the exit. It was also the most agile. And she had barely fired her weapon.
"I got it!" Dora said.
"What?" Jessie, Reilly, and Jason all said in unison.
Dora didn't wait for their approval; the SUVs were already moving. She got out of the car and used the door as a mount to steady her pistol. She focused her breath… and pretended the SUVs' tires were basketballs.
As they rolled across the lot, she fired. Shot, after shot, after shot. When the Glock clicked empty, she reloaded, chambered, and kept shooting.
Tires popped, and SUVs started lurching, slowing down, veering off course.
"Woo!" Jessie shouted. "Good shooting!"
"Demonz, roll out!" Reilly ordered.
Dora watched as the motorcycles roared and the vans growled, their tires screeching as headed for the security gate.
"Dora, don't just sit there!" Jason barked. "Follow them! The rally point is on your HUD!"
She scanned the shipyard. "I'm not leaving without you! Come here!" She found Jason directly across the frontline, in a melee with four men.
"I can't!" Jason grunted as he fought. "Mehrad still has a hostage! I gotta save her!"
A green chevron flashed on the visor's HUD, showing Dora where Jason was talking about. Mehrad was taking cover behind a flat-tired SUV at the end of the dock.
"Take him out and I'll meet you there!" she said.
"Fine!" Jason said, tossing a man aside. He drew his guns.
Dora jumped into the Impala, kicked the clutch and punched it into gear. The tires screeched, and the car launched forward.
Jason sprinted across the yard, vaulting over crates, juking around vehicles, and shooting everyone that got in his way.
The Impala skidded to a halt at the end of the dock, closer to the edge than Dora intended—she had nearly slid into the water. She looked out the window and saw Mehrad, a thug, and a woman taking cover behind an SUV—with Dora at his flank. Furious, both men turned their weapons on her. Dora froze. She had no cover. This was it. Her number was up.
Then Jason vaulted off the roof of the SUV, somersaulting through the air.
A split second turned into an eternity.
Jason floated upside down, pointing his guns at the traffickers.
Two simultaneous shots pierced the chests of Mehrad and his man.
Blood splattered the SUV behind them.
Twisting like a gymnast, Jason landed on his feet, crouched. He holstered his weapons.
The young woman screamed, her face and scarf covered in Mehrad's blood. Jason grabbed her arm and pulled her toward the Impala. Dora reached back to open the door and the woman jumped in the backseat. Jason slid across the hood and hopped into the shotgun seat.
"Drive!" he shouted.
Dora stomped on the throttle, and the Impala fishtailed away. But then something in her ear beeped, and the edge of the visor flashed. Looking in the rearview mirror, she saw that Mehrad was wounded, but not dead.
And he was aiming a grenade launcher at them.
"Jason!"
"I know, don't worry!" he said, pulling down his sleeve to reveal a metal gauntlet. He pressed a button, and Dora both heard and felt an explosion.
A ball of fire bloomed in the rearview mirror, almost blinding her. The shipyard was in ruins. Containers were riddled with holes, SUVs slumped and leaked fluids, the container ship seemed to be sinking… and there were bodies everywhere.
"Eyes on the road!" Jason barked and Dora obeyed, her gaze snapping straight ahead.
"Shit!" She jerked the steering wheel, sending the Impala flying through the right side of the security gate, avoiding the spike strip on the left side.
"Sorry!" Dora said.
Jason reached over and squeezed her thigh. "Don't be sorry, you were amazing back there."
Dora held his hand, trying to fight the mad hysteria she felt for not only surviving the encounter, but also being part of the reason others survived as well.
But as she calmed down, something bothered her.
Causing mayhem, death, and destruction was kind of fun.
What the fuck had she just done?
#
Everyone stayed silent for most of the ride. The woman in the backseat was crying; Dora could tell because of the quiet sniffling. Jason kept his helmet on, so for a while Dora couldn't tell if he had fallen asleep or lost consciousness. Nonetheless, his breathing was slow and his jacket was riddled with bullet holes… and covered in blood. When Dora had offered to pull over to see to his and the woman's wounds, Jason promised her the blood wasn't his and that the woman was unharmed. Thankfully, the visor's HUD navigated her to a private airfield on the other side of Blüdhaven's harbor that was only fifteen minutes away. Although she heard sirens in the distance, nobody followed them.
A pair of Demonz flagged her down and guided her into a closed hangar, letting her drive inside through a garage door.
It was well lit inside, with the front serving as a parking lot for the vans and motorcycles. The back looked like a disaster relief staging area, with large plastic-wrapped palettes of food, water, and tons of other products Dora couldn't see the labels of. The people the Demonz had taken from the traffickers were huddled around cots in the back.
Some Demonz led her to a parking spot near a small jet plane that was apparently reserved for her—or rather Jason. Reilly came jogging over and wrapped Dora in a hug as soon she got out of the car.
"Thank god," he said. "You had me worried sick, mija!"
Dora winced, the welt on her breast sending a bolt of pain throughout her chest and arm.
Reilly noticed and pulled back. He saw the bullet hole on her vest and felt its lapel. "Smart bastard, that Red. This special cut saved your life. Are you okay?"
She peeled off the mask and clipped the strap onto her belt. "Don't worry, tio. I'll live," she said in Spanish. She looked back and saw Jason helping the woman out of the Impala and leading her to the rest of the trafficking victims. Jason had saved her life, but he wouldn't have had to if she hadn't insisted on coming in the first place. If Reilly was worried sick, she couldn't imagine how Jason felt for putting her at risk.
Jessie walked up to Dora and gave her a careful one-armed hug and a kiss on the forehead. The embrace was genuine, but she knew the kiss was just for appearances.
"You really had Reilly worried sick," Jessie said, smiling. "The anxiety made him so nauseous, he lost his dinner."
"You think Ma Gunn is a scary bitch, but Dora's ma is no joke either," Reilly said. "She would skin me alive if something happened to her."
"I'm okay only thanks to you guys. All that training came in handy." Dora quickly replayed the battle. "What even happened back there? Red told me it was supposed to be like a business meeting. A transaction."
Reilly huffed and rolled his eyes. "It was."
"Who are all these people?" she asked, gesturing at them. "Please don't tell me you guys bought them to cook your fucking drugs or assemble your guns. That's human trafficking, slavery."
Jessie shook her head. "We didn't 'buy' them. They're Golatian refugees Red Hood paid those Quraci traffickers to smuggle into the US. He wanted it to be a regular thing. This was supposed to be the pilot run. Don't know why Red had to shoot that one guy. I only speak English and French. And a little Spanish."
"Isn't it obvious? That little girl Dora scooped up was separated from her parents by the traffickers," Reilly explained. "It was a month-long voyage, from Port Said in Egypt, through the Med, and across the Atlantic to here." He spat, shaking his head. "To make things even worse, he admitted the crew sexually abused some of the women."
"Really?" Dora asked. She looked at the refugees, her heart aching. They seemed more bleak than ever.
"Yeah. Was proud of it too. That pissed Red off, so he killed that guy," Reilly said, apparently rubbing off a headache. "That crazy red-faced bastard fucking knew it would start a firefight. He wanted us to kill all the traffickers. Make them pay for the way they treated the refugees. I don't know if we're lucky all our guys survived with minimal injuries, or if Red Hood knew we could take out Mehrad's men without spending our lives."
Dora scanned the hangar and found Jason by the supply palettes. He had taken off his helmet to drink some water, but even through the small red mask, Dora could see he had a thousand-yard stare. "What's the deal with the woman he stayed behind to save? The one that arrived with us. Wasn't she with the traffickers?"
Reilly scowled. "No. That woman was Mehrad's sex slave."
"Wait, I thought she was his wife," Jessie said.
He looked at her soberly. "What difference does that make to a man like Mehrad?"
She hesitated, chewing on that thought. "I guess you're right. What a creep."
"Putting it lightly, kid."
Jessie folded her arms. "Makes me wonder if this whole thing was a wash from the start. Maybe Red set up this whole thing just to assassinate Mehrad and cripple his gang."
Reilly just shrugged, saying, "Doesn't matter. What's done is done, and we still have work to do. Jess, the care packages."
Jessie nodded and went to the Impala's trunk. Reilly gestured for Dora to follow him and he led her to the black van the Demonz had brought from Gotham. He opened the rear doors and Dora stared.
The service van had been repurposed as a make-shift ambulance. Inside, she saw almost everything a team of paramedics would need to practice first aid and triage in the field: a wheeled cot, a folding stretcher, EMS bags, oxygen tanks and masks, IV bags, defibrillators and pacers, dressings and gauze, splints, tools, and a literal hoard of medication.
Reilly pulled out a pump jug of hand sanitizer and started washing his hands. Dora immediately knew what do. She rolled up her sleeves and did the same.
While washing her hands, she looked at Reilly and said, "I didn't know you spoke Arabic."
"I know enough to get by, plus some Russian. Learned while in the Marines with your pop. Not sure where Rojito picked up his languages though." He looked up at her. "Let me guess. He was a soldier. Maybe a marine?"
Dora stared back at Reilly, not sure how or even if she should answer. Jason had been a member of an ancient order of assassins, spending the majority of the last eight years doing exactly what he'd done tonight. Was that the same as being a soldier? "Sorta."
"Mercenary, then," Reilly concluded, handing her some vinyl gloves. "Some organized group of professional wetworkers taught that kid how to kill—and kill well."
Reilly had guessed correctly; it unnerved her. She felt like she could trust him, but the more people knew about Jason, the more anxious she got. Uncomfortable, Dora shrugged and snapped her gloves on, not wanting to commit an answer…
Shaking his head with a smile, Reilly took an EMS bag and handed another to Dora. "Alright, let's go, kid."
Dora and Reilly spent next few hours making rounds throughout the refugees, checking on each person. They were all over-exhausted, malnourished, and dehydrated. The Demonz had given each person food and water, but there were some cases of severe dehydration that required Dora and Reilly to set up the patient with an IV fluid bag. Mostly, however, it was cleaning and dressing scrapes from being manhandled by the traffickers and bounced around the inside of rusting shipping containers while at sea. Dora gave tetanus shots to nearly everyone with a scratch if they let her. To the women willing to admit being abused, they gave the address of the Leslie's clinic, hoping they would pass it along to the ones too afraid to.
While she and Reilly worked, Dora noticed Jessie lugging around a duffel bag she had taken from the Impala's trunk, and handing out stacks of money to families. Reilly said Red Hood was trying to give refugees a good start in America.
"I've been passing along that Red has people willing to take them to their families further inland, if they have them there. If they want to stick around Blüdhaven or Gotham, he knows of places they can live and work. All he really wants to do is give these people a fresh start, away from the crossfire between Qurac and Bialya."
"All this must be expensive," Dora said. "How does he pay for all this?"
"Some of it's from his cut," Reilly answered. "Of course you know most gang bosses take huge cuts for themselves and live like royalty. After all, that's why people get into organized crime, to get rich, right? But you know Red. Kid chooses to live in a garage and ride around on a second-hand Harley, then funnels all the profit back into this… fucking machine he's created. The high-end whores, bougie drugs, money laundering, underground casinos and bookies… The vices of the rich feed the poor—instead of preying on them. It only works because he's not greedy. It's a fucking socialist's dream. Robin Hood, eat your heart out. Probably where he got the name, huh?"
Dora and Reilly finally arrived at the couple that had been separated from their daughter. The girl had fallen asleep in her mother's lap and had latched on to her skirt, gripping tight even as she rested. After Dora gave them a check-up and passed along the address to Leslie's Clinic, the mother enveloped Dora in a tight hug. She told her in a very thick accent, her eyes glistening, "Thank you."
The hug felt so good, Dora almost didn't feel her injured chest—but she did feel it, and it reminded her of Jason.
She scanned the hangar and found him watching her from the steps of the small jet plane by the Impala, smoking a joint, his small red mask still on. Excusing herself from the refugee mother, she grabbed her EMS bag and made her way over to Jason.
"Thanks for your help," he said, taking a deep pull from his cigarette.
Dora smiled. "Don't thank me just yet, I'm not done."
"You're not?"
She pointed at his jacket riddled with bullet holes and stained with blood. "You were shot at by nearly every bad guy back there."
Jason looked down at himself and shrugged. "I'm fine. My gear is bulletproof."
She took his joint and pulled from it, knowing it would help with the pain in her chest. After having tried it a few times over the past few weeks, she knew it was a strain that didn't really get you high—it dosed you more with CBD than THC. If this was how Jason felt all over, night in and night out, as he did his vigilante/crime-boss/whatever mission, then she more than understood why he smoked it so often.
"I'll be the judge of that, let's go." She led him up the steps and into the jet's cabin, hoping the Demonz wouldn't read too much into it. Pulling the curtain closed, she said, "Strip."
Jason removed his mask first, smiling at her. "Yes, ma'am. Always loved playing doctor with you." Winking, he shrugged off his motorcycle jacket, and it landed on the floor with a heavy smack, a few bullets rolling away as they came loose from the fabric.
Dora noticed him struggle with straps of his flak vest underneath and helped him unclip and remove it. The thing weighed at least ten pounds on its own and had caught more bullets than Dora could count. Next came the pants, which had ballistic fabric chaps sewn on so they were extraordinarily heavy too. Dora finally had to say, "Jesus fucking Christ, how the hell do you move in this stuff, let alone fight?"
"Practice," Jason, peeling off his undershirt.
Dora hissed looking at him. Just as she had feared. While she had suffered only a singular welt to her breast... Jason's arms, torso, and thighs were riddled with them. Some bullets had even gotten through the armor. There were entry wounds on his shoulder, his upper back, and this thigh. Thankfully, the armor had slowed the bullets down enough that the open wounds weren't too deep or bleeding too badly.
"Alright, when it comes to assault rifle rounds, my gear might be more bullet-resistant than bulletproof," Jason admitted, still trying to smile. He reclined onto a seat. "This stuff stops handgun fire just fine, though."
Grabbing saline syringes and gauze first, Dora set to work on cleaning the wounds so she could see what she was doing.
"So, how'd you like 'Take Your Girlfriend to Work Day?'" Jason asked. "Was it everything you hoped it'd be?"
Not looking away from her work, she said, "I knew you were taking over criminal enterprises from other gangs in Gotham. I also know you have good intentions despite all the bad things you do."
"Yeah, road to hell and so on," Jason sighed, closing his eyes.
"I've seen the benefits of what you're doing." Dora picked up a clamp and forceps. "With my bar, with Holly, with the women that work for Ma Gunn. But yeah… I guess it was… cool? Seeing you do the work that makes those things happen. It's just… I don't know…"
She pulled out a bullet from Jason's shoulder and he didn't even wince, let alone move. He looked relaxed, like she was giving him a massage. In all her time as a nursing student, she had never met anyone who managed pain so well. He certainly felt it… but it was as if she was doing nothing more than pinching him.
After the second bullet was removed from his shoulder, Jason eyes fluttered open. "Tell me what you really think," he said.
"What do you mean?"
"I just killed over a dozen men." Jason was impassive, not looking away from her eyes. "In cold blood. No investigation. No judge. No jury. Just swift execution."
Dora stared back at him. Her throat dried up and she couldn't speak.
Jason sighed, and said, "Bruce once told me that the line between good and evil cuts through the hearts of all of us. We're all capable of both. I do evil things to save good people, Dora. I sell my soul, piece by piece, so they don't have to." He cupped her cheek. His hand was rough, but warm. "Are you okay with that?"
A little ball of worry and uncertainty in her chest bloomed and panged. "I don't know, Jay," she said. "If you keep doing that, what's left for me?"
Notes
Warning: long note ahead.
TLDR: Going on hiatus again. Thanks for reading! I'll start posting again in December!
I hope you liked Dora finally putting her combat training to use. That action scene was exciting to write, but it took me like two weeks to iron it out. Fights are probably the most difficult thing for me to write, with erotic scenes a close second. I try hard to make them good, because bad fight scenes ruin other fanfics for me. Lol, bad sex scenes ruin fanfics for me too.
Speaking of tough things to write, it's also difficult writing Dora when she puts on her nurse hat. I know nothing offhand about medical practice and its industry. I click around Wikipedia, WebMD, and YouTube, ask my nurse friends, then just hope and pray I'm writing something vaguely realistic.
And let's keep rolling with the difficulties! I want to give a special shoutout to those of you who called me out on my really bad Spanish. This gives me an opportunity to talk about something important.
I know the Spanish is atrocious! I'm doing the best I can without a human editor. And to make it worse (and downright shameful), the reason why I go ahead and put bad Spanish in the story is because I'm Latino myself. I'm a disgrace to my people for not being good at Spanish, but I also want Latin people to have more representation as main characters in entertainment media. (And if you didn't catch the hints, Lily is Brazilian.) In my mind, Dora's Santa Priscan heritage is an amalgamation of both Cuban and Puerto Rican cultures. I really wanted my main character to be authentic and realistic and unique and not your typical lily-white middle-class Plain Jane Mary Sue… so I made her Latinx, like me.
I was born in Puerto Rico. Spanish was my first language, but then I moved to the States when I was like five years old and was whitewashed in school. While they crammed English down my throat, I didn't learn any more Spanish. I could've learned it at home, but let's just say… my parents were remarkably similar to Jason's parents, so I was taken away from them. Which is why I love him and relate to him so much. I can understand Spanish when it's spoken, but I can't speak it fluently. My extended family makes fun of me for all my mistakes and my American accent when I speak it. A while back in Chapter 6, I hinted that Carla is a bit whitewashed like me. In Chapter 31, I mentioned that Dora and her mom were trying to make sure that doesn't happen to Mercy. Paying attention, (I hope) you can gather details and conclude that Dora is fluent in Spanish (despite my bad translations) because she spoke it with her mom, grandmother, and Uncle Reilly. Little subtle details like that don't really stand out, I guess. I just sprinkle them in for flavor.
Finally, sadly, it is with a heavy heart I have to announce that I'm going on hiatus again. As some of you may know, I'm a teacher and school in the US is starting up again. Teachers work like 50-60 hours a week, so I simply won't have time to write (could be more because of the COVID pandemic). Consider this the end of what I've been calling the "Honeymoon Arc." Expect new chapters to resume in December… I think the next arc will be called… "Dissent."
Thanks for reading!
P.S. They announced another animated movie starring Jason Todd! Batman: Death in the Family! I desperately want it to be good, because Killing Joke and Hush sucked for me.
Song Reference: "Shepherd of Fire" by Avenged Sevenfold
Version 41.1