"Here you are, sir," the waiter said as he stopped at the table in the private room Colby Ledford had booked. Ledford was already sitting at the table with some muscle standing behind him and a trio of young women seated next to him.
"Hood! Good to see you," he said, standing up to shake Red Hood's hand before sitting back down and pulling the blonde into his lap. "Please have a seat."
"Can I get you anything?" the waiter asked.
"I'm good," Hood grunted and sat down opposite Ledford.
"Come on, Hood, relax a little before we get to business! Drinks are on me!" Ledford jeered, toasting him.
"I'm good."
The waiter quickly nodded and left.
"Well at least enjoy one of the girls."
The ladies, who'd looked bored behind their working smiles, perked up at the suggestion. The brunette even winked at him while the one with silver hair shifted a little closer.
Before he could object, a voice - a familiar voice, one that shouldn't have been there - said, "I believe that seat's mine."
He turned to glare at Olivia, knowing his helmet would hide the expression.
She was dolled up even more than normal with makeup and an updo befitting a semi-formal engagement. She was wearing a high-necked red cocktail dress that fitted in perfectly with the high society women that dotted the tables of the Iceberg Lounge's main floor above them. She had a champagne glass in hand, though he assumed it only held club soda given she took a sip from it as she slipped into his lap.
She batted her eyes at him, wearing a smile that leaned a little too close to smug to pass as flirtatious for anyone who knew better. "Sorry for slipping away. I just wanted to grab something from the bar since I knew you wouldn't be drinking. At least," she stroked the cheek of his helmet, "not until later."
Was this karma? Was this the universe punishing him for that time he'd taken Robin for a joyride before Dick had given him the title? Because if so the universe needed to mind its business and stop endangering kids.
Ledford sat forward to leer at Olivia. "And who's this?"
"My Little Red. Don't mind her, she's just a bit clingy. Couldn't bear to be away from me for even an hour."
He chuckled, still leering. "No hardship for you, huh?"
Hood wrapped his arm around her. "Let's just get to business already."
As he'd assumed, there wasn't much to the meeting. He'd successfully talked in circles enough to make Ledford think he was learning something without actually learning anything. In return, he gave Hood a few details on a deal Thorne was working on with Black mask as well as some weapons coming into Dixon Docks. The latter probably meant more to Olivia since he never went that far south, but he did make a note to keep an eye out for any extra weapons making it onto the streets in his territory.
Then Ledford leaned forward and the atmosphere of the room shifted. It wasn't obvious, and the women didn't notice, but Hood could see the change in the men's posture. Ledford was about to get to real business and the muscle knew it.
Olivia yawned and slid off his lap. "All this talk is booooooring! And my drink's empty. I'm going to go grab another drink. Maybe dance a little." She pressed a kiss to his helmet. "Feel free to join me when you get done here."
"Don't go too far," he grunted.
She winked, then turned to the ladies. "You three wanna leave these guys to their man talk and have some fun?"
They looked less than thrilled, then the silver-haired one glanced down. Her eyes immediately shot back up and she smiled. "Sounds fun!"
Confused, but hiding it well, the blonde and brunette took their friend's lead and followed Olivia out.
"Hurry back, ladies," Ledford called after them before turning back to Hood. "Women. Anyways, I was hoping we could talk about Ricardo Street. Mr. Thorne's not happy your little takeover has pushed our guys out. I'm hoping we can come to a… compromise."
Hood flicked the safety off on the gun Olivia had slipped out of his holster.
She was gone when he went looking after Penguin's men broke up the meeting. He headed to her apartment to find she was in her bathroom. He waited on the couch until she came out, her hair pulled up in a towel with a pair of baggy sweatpants and a t-shirt hanging off her thin frame.
"I figured you'd be here," she huffed, but otherwise ignored him as she went to the kitchen.
"I told you you couldn't come tonight."
"I'm pretty sure you told me you'd like to see me come."
He rolled his eyes. "You know that's not what I meant."
"Not my fault you underestimated me." She came back carrying a mug. "Maybe next time you'll just bring me with you."
"There won't be a next time. What you did was reckless? You nearly ended up in a shootout." Shit, he really was becoming Bruce.
She raised an eyebrow as she sipped from the mug. "No, I didn't. I left the moment things started to go sideways. I was perfectly safe. I even got Gemma, Stacy, and Lisa out with me."
"And what if Ledford hadn't let you leave? He could have tried to use you as a hostage or hurt you to try to get at me."
"Please. He's an idiot and a sexist one at that. I knew it wouldn't occur to him that you'd care what happened to your arm candy because he wouldn't care what happened to his. That's why I got them out."
"Kid," he growled.
"Don't kid me. I had everything under control."
"You are not doing that again."
"You can't stop me."
"Oh yeah?"
Hood scowled as an arm linked with his just as the doors to the warehouse opened.
"I'm going to kill Derek this time," he muttered once they were past the guards.
"Please don't. And if it helps his case, I didn't manage to sneak past him this time. Turns out my friend spiked my tea bags with sleeping pills. I noticed in time, but my babysitter didn't."
"Your friend tried to drug you?"
"Calm down. I have insomnia and that was the tea I only drink when I've been up for more than thirty-six hours."
"How long have you been up?"
Olivia just patted his arm.
"I tied you up!" Hood snapped after their latest meeting.
Olivia rolled his eyes. "You need better knots."
He'd learned those knots while training with the League of Assassins.
"Also, you tied me up too close to the knife drawer."
He sighed. "This needs to stop."
Crossing his arms, Olivia leaned against Hood's bike. "Well I'm not going to stop collecting information, so are you going to stop vouching for me?"
"No." He couldn't, and Olivia knew that. He wasn't safe on Hood's arm, but he was safer than he'd be without Hood. "But something needs to change or you're going to end up -" In a warehouse, beaten, with a timer ticking down until… "- dead."
"I'm -"
"Careful. So you've said."
"He's just worried, Tim. You're spending a lot of time around Red Hood's territory."
"And I told him there's nothing to worry about."
"Hood has threatened you."
"Hood threatened Robin, not Olivia." And Tim wasn't entirely convinced Hood's threats were actually as threatening as Bruce and Dick were making them out to be. Hood didn't hurt kids, which everyone knew Robin was. If anything, the threats were probably just another example of Hood's mother-henning. Like how Hood had kidnapped her last night - and by that, she meant Hood had stayed at her apartment for the night so she couldn't go anywhere.
Unfortunately anywhere hadn't been information gathering as Olivia, but patrol as Robin, which meant Tim had had to call Bruce and tell him she couldn't go out. That led to an argument about her going out as Olivia too often, especially so near the Narrows. As a result, Dick felt the need to call and make sure she was okay. And she was. She knew Bruce was just worried. He and the others only saw the dead bodies, the fights with Black Mask, and the threats against all the Bats.
They hadn't seen how kind Hood was with the prostitues and how protective he was of the kids in his territory. They hadn't seen Hood nerd out while trying to talk Olivia into joining an online school or the way he fretted every time someone so much as looked at a weapon while she was nearby. They hadn't seen firsthand how protective his rules could be. She wasn't stupid enough to think Hood was a good guy (he was a crime lord who had gift-wrapped heads in a duffle bag), but that didn't mean he was one of the bad ones.
"Hood knows a lot of things he shouldn't Tim. Probably more than Bruce has even told me. He knows about Matches, so he could know about Olivia."
Tim doubted it, but if Hood did know, then either he was being bizarrely patient or he wasn't going to do anything about it. "I'm fine."
There was a moment of silence, then Dick asked, "Is it… Tim, if this is about wanting to be more feminine, you know we'll support you. You don't have to be Olivia for it. "
"Thanks, Dick, but that's not what this is about. Promise. I've just been getting a lot of good information lately."
"No information - no matter how good - is worth you being in danger."
A click sounded behind her and she turned to see Hood pulling open her window. "I know. I've got to go now."
"Alright. Be careful, little sibling. Talk to you later."
"You too," Tim said and hung up.
"Am I interrupting something?" Hood asked as he reached back through the window he'd climbed through to grab a duffle bag off the fire escape.
She hoped the bag of heads wasn't getting a sequel.
"No, just my co-worker calling to hassle me over not showing up last night." When Hood's posture shifted into something protective, she quickly added, "Not in a bad way. He's kind of like my big brother. He and the others are worried I'm working too hard. I couldn't exactly tell them you'd placed me on house arrest so I told them I had a job last night."
"Why didn't you just tell them you were taking the night off?"
"Because then at least one of them would have assumed I'd been forced to say that at gunpoint and come running over here."
Hood snorted and set his bag on the coffee table in front of her.
"Shut up."
"That should tell you something about your work ethic, kid."
"I don't like not working. If I don't have anything to do, my head goes all," she made a vague motion.
"Then get a hobby."
"Information is my hobby." She loved putting facts and numbers together. If she didn't have a case, she had true crimes, mystery and strategy games, and cold cases. And if that failed, she had mission and patrol reports as well as all sorts of Drake Industries files. Bruce and Lucius even let her look through some of Bruce's work for WE sometimes.
"And yet you don't want to go to school."
"Give me a textbook and access to the internet and I'll learn more in a few nights than I would in an entire semester of school." She'd done it before.
Hood shook his head and unzipped the bag. "You're just like my brother and d-the old man."
"Really?" she asked, leaning forward. Hood had never mentioned something as personal as his family before.
"My brother couldn't sit still if it meant the fate of the world. He's smart enough to have steamrolled through any major he wanted, but he just didn't have the patience for all the schoolwork and ended up dropping out of college early on. And the old man goes crazy if he doesn't have something to do. Gets all paranoid and everything."
She filed the information away and opened her mouth to ask for more information, only to have a bundle of fabric thrown in her face. She pulled it off her head to see it was a black motorcycle jacket with brown detailing and a red lining. "What's this?"
"Put it on. With these." He dropped a larger bundle into her lap. "I want to make sure everything fits."
Frowning, she ran her fingers over the fabric. "Are these armored?"
They were. She recognized it as one of the better lightweight protective fabrics. It wasn't as good as the kinds LexArms and S.T.A.R. Labs sold nor as good as the kind GRC designed for the Bats, but it was still high quality and she'd come across it a lot. The League of Assassins and other similar mercenaries especially liked to use it. Which was why it was strange that Hood's suit was made of the stuff. Black Mask, Penguin, and Two-Face might have been able to get ahold of the fabric if they ever tried, but Hood was new blood. He shouldn't have had the connections or money to kit himself out, let alone what he'd need for replacements and repairs. He certainly shouldn't have been able to randomly gift her with some.
"Yup. Now go."
The full outfit lived up to her Little Red nickname. Black pants tucked into brown motorcycle boots that matched both Hood's jacket and hers. A red tank top fit under the jacket while a red scarf wrapped around her neck over it as a nod to his helmet. The scarf had a rebreather hidden in it, allowing her to seal it to her face under the guise of pulling the scarf over her nose.
"Why does this scarf have a gas mask built into it?" she asked, coming out of her room.
"Because we live in a city that frequently experiences chemical warfare." Hood came over to check the outfit, zipping the jacket up all the way and fitting the mask over her face. The clothes were a little loose, but not enough to be unsafe, and the mask sealed correctly.
"Are you going to explain what all this is about now?" she asked, pushing the mask down.
Hood crossed his arms and gestured for her to sit down on the couch, which she did. "You're not going to stop showing up."
"Nope."
"And I can't babysit you every night nor can I trust anyone else to do it."
"Derek, Anya, and Min tried their best."
"So we're going to make a deal. I'll bring you with me to meetings, but you have to do everything I tell you to while we're there. Immediately."
"Alright, deal," she shrugged.
He moved in front of her and knelt so they were face-to-face. He grabbed her shoulders and said, "I'm serious. If I tell you to stay somewhere, you stay there. If I tell you to go, you leave. No arguments. I need to trust that you'll get to safety the moment things go bad and be where I need you to be in case of an emergency. I-I need to be sure if I tell you to stay out of somewhere, you will. No matter the circumstances. So you're going to promise to do everything I say - and mean it - or I'll have to take drastic measures."
"Drastic measures?" she asked with a frown. What would that mean? She knew Hood wouldn't hurt her and he didn't trust the police or CP&P.
His grip on her shoulders tightened. "I'll hand you over to Batman."
That was not what she was expecting. "What?"
"He's a bastard, but he'll at least make sure you get placed somewhere safe and can ensure you stay there."
"Unless he makes me a Robin," she joked out of lack of anything else to say. Because she'd be in more trouble than Hood realized if he dragged her to Batman.
Bruce would be ticked if he found out she'd not only ignored his order to keep her distance from Hood but had actively been working with him. Olivia would be burned for sure and Robin would be benched indefinitely. Being benched meant not being able to hang out with the Titans in person. It meant limited cave time.
It meant Dick wouldn't visit as often without the excuse of patrolling with her. Or worse, he'd visit more to assure her she was still part of the family even while benched. Then either his day job, his vigilante work, or his health would end up neglected (most likely his health) and it would be Tim's fault.
It meant Stephanie would get weird about hanging out with her like she always did whenever Tim was benched.
It meant Cass might even feel obliged to come back early to watch Bruce's back since Robin wasn't doing it, and she was having such a good time in Hong Kong. Tim couldn't ruin that.
Bruce could not find out and bench Tim. That meant she had to make sure Hood didn't try to hand her over to Batman, which wasn't something she'd ever planned for given the stories Dick and Bruce had told her made it seem like he hated Batman.
Before she could start plotting, he abruptly stood. His hands fell to his side in painful-looking fists, twitching towards his holsters. "I won't let that happen. I'll put a bullet through his head if he even thinks about trying to put another kid in those colors, especially you."
Oh. Oh yeah. She was right. Hood's threats against Robin were just mother henning. Even worse, he was one of those people who seemed to think Batman press-ganged them into being Robins and Batgirls. As if Bruce had control over any of them. As if she and the girls hadn't been out there getting into trouble before he ever took them under his cape.
She swallowed down her usual response to those kinds of comments and grabbed Hood's wrist. "I'm just kidding, Hood. Chill. I'll be good."
He stared down at her for a moment before stepping back with a breath that was loud enough to sound through the helmet. His fists clenched and unclenched as he slowly calmed down. Voice hard, he said, "You'll follow my every order."
"I will," she agreed with all the sincerity she had.
He nodded and took another step back.
Deciding to lighten the mood, she leaned forward and pointed at one of his holsters. "So does the outfit come with a gun?"
"So you can accidentally shoot yourself?" he snorted.
"I know how to shoot a gun! My dad taught me." Alfred had actually taught her, but not for lack of trying on her dad's part. A year back, he had decided to take her to the range for a Father-Son Day. It'd been a nice day out, even if she'd had to fake inexperience. He'd even taken her out for ice cream afterward.
"Do you know real gun safety or Crime Alley gun safety?"
"Oh shut up," she said and he laughed.
Mission accomplished.