Chapter Text
Gothamites drank an ungodly amount of crappy coffee, Sabine found.
She flicked off the cafe’s neon softly buzzing sign as soon as the last customer shuffled out, the door bell jingling like a funeral dirge in their wake.
Outside the cafe tucked away between brick buildings, Gotham loomed, overcast and bleak. Shadows of gargantuan old buildings stretched, deep and long, coiling around the streets and alleys.
Sabine took a moment to lean against the counter and exhale. Her eyes swept over the deserted tables, taking in the disarray of used and chipped mugs, plates covered in crumbs, and wadded paper napkins. It had been a relatively easy night shift, all things considered. In a city riddled with crime, any day that slid by without incident was a small blessing.
With practiced routine, she began to tidy up: flipping the OPEN sign to CLOSE, locking the doors, shuttering the storefront, closing the register, wiping down surfaces, moving chairs.
And then from behind, the dreaded words drifted over her, sealing her fate:
“You’re on trash duty tonight.”
Sabine tipped her head back and groaned.
The dumpster was in back alley in a dark patch that was shielded from most of the streetlights. All the flood lights had their bulbs shot out last week, their shattered bits of glass still littering the ground. She shuddered at the thought. It didn't feel safe, it may as well be a death trap if you didn't stay alert. Dark corners were not your friend in Gotham.
“Trash duty,” Marie reminded her again. The woman squeezed past Sabine behind the counter.
“I know, I know,” Sabine muttered, corners of her mouth curving down into a frown as she finished restocking the napkin dispensers.
She pulled the register and handed it off to Marie, so she could take it into the back room and count it.
Marie stood still for a movement, one hand of manicured nails clicking against the countertop in a rhythmic fashion while watching as the tired graduate student hefted an overflowing trash bag out of a can by the condiment station, where the cream, sugar, and other confections were kept for customers to add to their drinks.
“You might want to take a broom out there too,” Marie said, finally pivoting on her heel to walk away.
“Why?”
“Heard a bit of a scuffle out there earlier. Raccoons might be back…,” Marie added before she disappeared into the back room with the register.
Sighing, Sabine knotted the top of the bag and half-dragged, half-carried it down the short hallway to the back door that lead out to the alley. She twisted the door handle and used her butt to push the door open as she struggled with the weight of the bag, worried that it might tear and spill open.
In just a three-quarter sleeve shirt and apron, goosebumps erupted over her arms as her skin greeted the chilly evening air. It was early fall and the temperature was already frosty once the sun dipped below the horizon. The cold air and wind cleaved through all the layers of clothing you wore, seeping into your bones.
With a huff, Sabine kicked the door stopper down with her heel so she wouldn’t get locked outside.
The dark alley was veiled in shadows. The pitter-patter of many tiny clawed feet scurried away as the light from inside the café poured out, casting a long, illuminated rectangle on the concrete ground. Long and billowy gusts of wind carried the muffled sounds of the city in the distance over the rooftops and into the night, the typical Gotham symphony.
Sabine scuttled over to the dumpster. She heaved the trash bag on her back, found her footing, then flung it over her shoulder before releasing it so it flew over the rim. It landed with a wet crunching noise and a resounding thump.
“Ow.”
Eyes widening, Sabine froze, still as a stone statue.
Did...did the dumpster just speak?
She heard a long, rumbly groan.
Shuffling noises.
The crinkling of plastic bags.
Several seconds of tense silence slithered by, heart pounding against her ribcage.
She swallowed the bile rising in her throat with an audible gulp.
She dug deep for a fragment of courage, and she plugged her nose between her thumb and index finger. Rising to her tiptoes at the smelly edge of the dumpster, she peered into its depths.
Light scarce, it took her eyes a few seconds to adjust to the darkness.
Beneath the lumpy black trash bags, she made out the faint outlines of long, thick limbs, spread out like a defeated starfish, and something red.
Sabine quickly walked over to the supply closet, opened it, grabbed the broom, and shut it, all while muttering numerous curses under her breath.
Marie poked her head out from the back room. “Are the raccoons back?”
“Yup.”
“I told you they were big.”
“You weren’t kidding.”
Sabine dragged a stool outside with her in addition to the broom. She pulled the stool up to the side of the dumpster and climbed on top of it. She poked at the large lump beneath the trash bag with the broom handle.
It wasn’t too unusual to find someone passed out in the alley, usually strung out from drugs or falling-over-themselves-drunk, but someone passed out inside the dumpster? That was a new kind of crazy, even in Gotham. Her co-workers would want to hear about this tomorrow.
Another pained moan fractured through the air.
“Hey buddy,” she said, “you don’t have to go home, but you can’t stay here." A smidge of concern filtered into her voice when there wasn’t an immediate answer. "Are you...all right?”
She poked the lump again.
A warbled voice eventually came through, cutting the tense silence. “Ow-shit, those are my ribs…”
An arm shot up through the trash bags like a hand bursting out of grave dirt in a cemetery, and Sabine yelped.
A large figure slowly sat up, clutching at their right side.
She didn’t know if her eyes were playing tricks on her because their entire head looked red. Like blood. A shudder ran through her.
Then a car sped by the alley, its headlights flooded the creepy liminal space with blinding white light. In that terrible split second, she snatched a glimpse of the person buried under all the thrown out and half-eaten food, crumbled paper bags, and dinky take-out drink cups.
A dark brown leather jacket.
Gauntlets.
Guns strapped to thighs.
Body armor.
A red V-shaped bat on the chest.
And a shiny, cracked red helmet.
The headlights faded, coming and going as dramatically as a lightning strike, letting blurry and shadowy shapes swim in her vision again.
Her stomach didn’t just drop, it fucking somersaulted. The broom in her hand slipped to the ground with a loud clatter.
She slammed the lid of the dumpster down and backed away. Fear seized her throat and she almost choked.
Sabine had heard stories about him, read the headlines, saw the reports on flickering television screens— the fucking Red Hood.
He had always sounded like some fabricated urban legend. She had been lucky enough to scrape by without seeing any of the famed Gotham vigilantes for several years. Had never wanted to. They were like omens, following the trail of corruption and trouble through the city like blood hounds.
“Hey-hey,” the robotic voice said weakly, muffled, “you find an injured guy in a trash heap and shut the lid on him? Not cool.”
She immediately conceded that he did, indeed, have a good point.
Quickly, she found herself propping the lid back up and leaning over the side of the dumpster. She looked at Red Hood and he stared back at her through the white slits in his unreadable mask.
Sabine blinked. She didn’t know what else to do as she offered a trembling hand to Red Hood and muttered a pathetic, “S-sorry.”
”It’s fine,” he grunted with a weak wave of his hand. “I have that effect on people.”
He looked up at her. It was impossible to read him with the smooth helmet obscuring his face, there were no visible facial expressions to interpret. After a moment, his gloved hand reached up and grabbed her forearm, completely ignoring her outstretched much smaller fingers and palm. His grip bordered on painful and bruising as he used his other arm to push himself up.
Sabine strained to help get him on his feet.
“Geez,” she huffed, face unflatteringly red from the exertion from feeling like her arm was going to rip out of its socket from the strain. “What do you weigh? Two-hundred pounds?”
“Heh,” he chuckled and tried not to wince in discomfort, “that and some change.”
It was difficult for him to get his footing in the middle of the trash heap. Everything was slimy and slippery, but once he finally stood up, he immediately doubled-over in pain. Judging from the sharp, burning feeling in his side, several of his ribs were cracked. Great.
The vision in his right eye was blurry and red. Less great.
His chin tipped up and he gazed up the side of the building, estimating that it had been a thirty foot drop. At least the heaps of garbage had cushioned his landing or else his friends might be scraping him from the ground with a spatula. He'd been lucky to hit trash, and not hard, unforgiving pavement.
Red Hood vaulted over the side of the dumpster and stumbled, catching himself.
Sabine took a few steps back and eyed him warily. He was large, a good head and a half taller than herself, and built like a goddam human wrecking ball. She took notice of the thick torso and the muscular, bulging arms under his jacket. She felt like a tiny mouse in his shadow.
Slowly, she crouched down and picked up the broom. She held it with two hands, like it was a broadsword, while her eyes stayed locked on the vigilante.
Red Hood gingerly clutched his ribs and turned around, thinking to thank her. If he wasn’t wearing his helmet, she would have seen him raising his eyebrows in amusement at how ridiculous she looked; she was a slip of a thing, small and scrawny, with no muscle to speak of. However, he was keenly aware that he wasn’t in the best shape to comment. She’d probably heard terrifying stories about him, and here he was in front of her—needing her help to get out of a stupid dumpster, of all things—and, judging from the amount of blood that was leaking into his eye, nursing a serious head wound. He didn’t look cool at all right now.
“Relax, Donuts, I’m not gonna hurt ya,” he murmured. He lifted his empty hands to show her he wasn’t a threat.
“Donuts?” Sabine tilted her head, hands tightening around the broom’s shaft.
Red Hood took a few haggard steps to the side, leaned his shoulder against a brick wall, and then loosely gestured at the apron she was wearing with a lazy hand wave. One of white slits in his helmet turned red with blood.
Sabine eyes slipped down to the large, embroidered donut with pink frosting and sprinkles on the front of her coffee-splattered work apron.
“Oh, right,” she muttered.
Her grip on the broom loosened and she began to feel a tad silly. Did she really think she was going to fend off a deadly vigilante with a broom? He had guns and probably knew a hundred different ways to kill her with his pinky and she had what?— a piece of wood with prickly bristles on the end. Although a good smack with the broom was probably what he deserved after calling her ‘Donuts’.
“Really though, a broom?” He felt his knees buckle, it wasn’t the searing pain in his torso that was getting to him, it was the blood loss. The lightheadedness was coming on, which he found mildly concerning. Everything was starting to look…fuzzy and dark. One of Penguin’s men had whacked him with that bat embedded with nails harder than he initially thought.
“It’s for the raccoons,” Sabine explained away quietly, hands twisting loosely around the handle in an anxious manner.
“Ha…ha,” Red Hood laughed lamely. His head lolled to the side and his body slid down the wall.
Not a good sign, was his last thought as he sunk into a crumpled mess on the floor and passed out cold.
“Oh, shit,” Sabine’s eyes bugged out when the vigilante slumped down and fell over on his side, a pool of dark liquid was leaking out of his helmet and spreading on the ground. “Oh, shit oh shit oh shi—“
She didn’t have time to process the situation before she heard a beeping sound. She patted her pockets, thinking that the source was her phone at first before she remembered she had left that in her bag in her work locker. She looked at Red Hood and realized that a band around his wrist was actually a watch of sorts, or maybe some other type of small electronic device. He didn’t seem like the type to own a Fit Bit though, but who was she to judge.
The small screen on the wrist device was flashing a blue light as it beeped. Her ears picked up on a very distorted female-sounding voice.
“-Hood, come in. Red Hood, come in.”
Sabine knew she could easily hurry back inside the café and pretend she hadn’t seen anything. It wasn’t her responsibility to make sure he was okay, but she knew the guilt would gnaw away at her if she just left him. It seemed like an unspoken rule in Gotham to mind one’s own business, but passed out, he seemed so helpless. It was easy to forget that the defenders of Gotham were only human too.
“-Red, your heart rate and blood pressure dropped. Is everything all right?” The distorted voice asked with an urgent tone.
Sabine sighed as she moved closer to Red Hood and crouched down next to him. She could barely hear his slow, shallow breaths over the sound of her thumping heartbeat as she knelt beside him.
“Sorry, I’m gonna have to touch you,” she said meekly as she grabbed his right forearm and inspected the beeping device on his wrist. She jabbed at the tiny screen with her index finger in the small hope that fiddling with it would put her in contact with whoever was trying to contact him. Maybe they could help him.
“H-hey, sorry, I’m not your—err—friend, but he looks injured.”
“Come in again, Red?”
“H-hi, your friend—I mean Red Hood—fell into a dumpster then passed out behind C&D Café. He, uhh, doesn’t look too good.”
Her words were met with static then…silence. She wondered if whoever was on the other side of the communication device had heard her at all.
One minute passed by.
Then another.
She didn’t know what she was waiting for; maybe for another one of the infamous vigilantes to swing by overhead and pick up their partner? Or for the Batmobile to suddenly materialize? The Batmobile was real, right? She had only heard stories of the mythical black tank that flattened any vehicle in its way.
“Oh, fuck it,” Sabine hissed as she ran inside to grab her cellphone to call an ambulance. Why hadn’t she done this as soon as she found him? She dialed 911 and held her phone to her ear as she dashed back outside.
But as soon as she returned to the alley, Red Hood was gone and Sabine lapsed into panic. Even the puddle of blood had been wiped away, leaving no trace that the vigilante had been there. The ambient noise of sirens in the distance drowned out the dispatcher’s voice on the other end of the line as Sabine looked around frantically for any sign of Red Hood. She combed over the alley, looking into all the dark corners.
Eventually giving up, she tapped the red icon on her phone screen to end the call. She shoved her phone in her back pocket and then slowly picked the broom off the ground.
She swiveled her head around one last time—left and right, and then up and down—but Red Hood had vanished.
Utterly confused but appreciative that Red Hood was no longer her problem for now, she went back into the café. She closed the door behind her, locked it, and hoped that would be the only and last time she ran into one of Gotham’s infamous crime fighters.
One second, the hidden cavernous expanse under Wayne Manor was quiet, undisturbed. The beating heart of the Batcave glowed, a towering, multi-screened commander center with an array of maps, schematics, and live surveillance feeds. Data pulsed across the monitors, harsh blue and white lights reflected off nearby surfaces. Machines hummed and whirred quietly.
The next, two figures burst in, dragging in a third.
Damian crinkled his nose as he helped Dick set Red Hood—Jason—down on a sterile surgical table.
Dick peeled and tossed his domino mask somewhere on the floor and assessed the damage. He turned on the nearby surgical light. The bright bulb burned dramatically, ensconcing them in a cone of light, and maneuvered it closer to the table.
“He smells like garbage,” Damian said with a thinly veiled sneer, shoving his cowl back. He lifted his chin and crossed his arms over his chest, “—which is fitting.”
Dick’s gaze, sky blue and filled with equal parts brotherly annoyance and exhaustion, slanted back to Damian. “Not funny,” he scolded, tone leaving no room for nonsense. He shooed him away with a flapping of his hand. “And get Alf.”
Damian lingered as he tore off his gauntlets, something close to concern whirled inside his gut for a moment as he stared at the spot where Jason’s enormous unconscious figure lay. But he masked his concern with a scowl.
Jaw tightly clenched, Dick examined the shattered part of the hard material. Autopilot took over and he leant over Jason and got to work. He carefully removed the helmet to reveal dried blood matted into Jason’s face and dark hair.
It made his stomach feel sick to see Jason like this. Unconscious and unmoving. But he held it together.
Green eyes shut. Pale skin. Not good.
His fingers pressed on a soft and hollow pulse point on Jason’s neck, just below his jaw.
Still breathing. Pulse strong. Good.
Calm took over his expression as he rifled through a drawer for medical supplies. He hastily yanked on a pair of blue surgical gloves and began to clean the wound.
Dick didn’t even turn when he issued his next command, “And tell him we’ll need to pull Jay’s vaccinations records because we might need to administer a tetanus shot as well.”
Silence filled the cave as Damian stomped up the stairs.