Chapter Text
The little girl was covered in blood.
That was the first thing Jason noticed, when he ran toward the high-pitched scream piercing through the night.
It wasn’t a surprising occurrence in Crime Alley, of course, but it had slowly started to be less and less frequent with Jason’s appearance as Red Hood. It hadn't taken him long to establish himself as a crime lord, although his position in Gotham’s underbelly still required some tweaking, and he was quite proud of how it was going — especially of how he got the Bats running in circles trying to find out whose face hid under the helmet.
Even with Jason constantly enforcing his rules, however, progress wasn't a switch to press to turn the light on or off, and he hadn't been around long enough to take away every scumbag who refused to fall in line. In a few months, maybe.
A few weeks if he was particularly ruthless.
Not quick enough to avoid whatever had made the kid scream.
Jason grappled and ran as fast as he could, an instinct as old as his former role of Robin raising his head when hearing someone in need, and he kept going even when the child no longer made any sound.
Until he arrived in an alley and stopped, breath catching in his throat.
The little girl was covered in blood.
She looked to be around six or seven, but considering the way he could see the bones on her wrists and how her cheeks weren't round with baby fat and instead slightly hollow with hunger, she was probably closer to eight.
Malnutrition had done a number on Jason as well, when he was young; even so many years later he could still remember Bruce’s and Alfred’s voices coming from outside the bathroom door, worrying about him while he puked his guts out — stomach not used to suddenly having so much food.
Jason clenched his jaw, trying to get rid of the memories to focus on the scene in front of his eyes.
The child had dark, messy hair chopped short by a hand clearly inexperienced, and again the fact that they were in Crime Alley said it all; kids were shaved all the time to get rid of lice, and girls usually kept boy haircuts because, while children got taken and hurt every day, it was easier to get snatched as a girl. Those who were lucky enough not to fear any of that, more often than not still couldn’t afford a salon and had to ask someone to grab a pair of scissors and do their best, so the result was usually the same — a mess.
The child’s black waves were barely long enough to cover her ears, and certainly not to hide all the tears running down her cheeks and onto her shirt, and while it was too dark in the alley for Jason to see the color of her eyes, it was impossible for him not to notice how wide they were, how scared, how lost.
Her hands were shaking badly, open in front of her and dripping with blood, and her clothes were just as ruined.
And on the concrete at her feet, still and forever frozen in a metallic-smelling puddle of liquid Jason was almost too used to, a woman.
A prostitute, judging by her clothes. Young, probably mid-twenties, Latina, with the same black, wavy hair as the little girl, and a hand stretched in her direction.
And her throat cut.
The kid was no longer screaming, no, but she was gasping for breath every time she managed to stop the sobs enough to do so, with her eyes glued on what Jason was pretty sure was the dead body of her mom.
At nineteen, he could still picture his own mother, Catherine, pale and smudged with vomit, after overdosing in the bathroom for the last time. Even now, after so long, he dreamed of that memory and woke up in cold sweats.
He was crossing the alley before he realized he was moving.
There were no blades around, no weapons able to cut the skin that way, but there were other details Jason’s detective brain picked up on — like the way the woman’s top left one of her breasts almost exposed and her skirt was cut, or the red, hand-shaped bruises on her naked arms. How the little girl’s shirt had a sleeve torn off. How one of her cheeks was flushed more than the other, almost as if she had been slapped. Hard.
A prostitute protecting her daughter from a client, maybe?
It didn’t matter, of course, not in that moment. Not when the kid was still looking at the body, at the blood, at the trauma of surviving a terrible fate only to pay that safety with the loss of her mother.
Fucking unfair.
And that, in the end, was why Jason had started to take matters into his own hands in Crime Alley, first sending a message with a duffel bag full of heads, and then hunting down traffickers and drug dealers and abusers and anyone who hurt kids in any way.
He just hadn’t been quick enough this time.
He hesitated, not really knowing where to go from there, what to do, how to fix a situation that just couldn’t be fixed… but Jason had been Robin once, and while he had died in the mantle just to be fucking replaced, the part of him that had taken care of scared civilians was still there.
He slowly moved until he was standing right in front of the child. “Hey, kiddo,” he murmured, voice lower than usual and with a tone he hoped sounded kind even through the helmet. “Can you look at me?”
It took a few seconds.
Her eyes flicked up, wide and glassy, then immediately darted back to the body on the ground, as if she was afraid it might disappear if she stopped watching it.
Jason took a step sideways, just enough to block her view — because while he knew it was too late to avoid the trauma, of course, keep staring at it wouldn’t help.
The little girl made a small, broken sound that immediately died in her throat and she stumbled back, tears falling on her cheeks in a way she probably didn’t even register.
“I’m not going to touch you,” Jason promised quickly, knowing how scary it was, as a child in Crime Alley, to get cornered by a stranger. “Unless you want me to,” he added after a beat, just in case she needed a pat on her back or-or a hug, that was what one did in those circumstances, right?
His traitor mind went to Dick and his octopus-hugs, and to B-
He shook his head, trying to keep a lid on the sudden flash of anger flaring in his whole body.
Not the time.
“Can you tell me your name?” he asked just to distract himself.
The kid hesitated, hands still held out in front of her, fingers curled like they wanted to hold onto something. Blood was drying in the lines of her palms and under her nails.
Jason couldn’t be sure the dead woman was her mother, not without questioning the child at least a little bit, and he found himself a little uncomfortable with the fact that he was going to need to push for information and that was probably going to hurt her; of course he didn’t want to force her to relive something so deeply traumatizing, because there was no doubt in his mind that seeing a person bleed to death for a cut throat was horrible no matter what, but he also knew either he did, or the police would.
Maybe Jason could leave it to them, yeah.
And sure, a lot of them were pieces of shit. He could make sure to get Gordon involved, though.
That… would have meant having the Bats snooping around Crime Alley.
Which wasn’t acceptable.
“M-Micaela,” the girl muttered, voice breaking as her lower lip wobbled. A sob followed soon.
And Jason’s heart broke in two. He knew how it felt, how deeply ingrained the instinct to be strong was in anyone born there, and how putting on that facade could hurt; how devastating it was to lose someone important and not have the time to process it, before realizing the world wasn’t going to wait, or show mercy, and to survive meant getting tougher overnight.
He hesitated, moving his weight from one foot to the other. He wanted to get to her level, bend down so he wouldn’t tower over her, so he had to remind himself that he was actually doing good, blocking her view of the body, of the big puddle of blood, of the alley. On her future, in some way, unless… unless he could do something about it.
“I’m Red Hood.”
For a moment, just one, he thought about saying his real name — but he couldn’t, not when she was going to end up being questioned by the police in a short time. He wished he could have taken off the helmet, at least, and he might have if it wasn’t for the annoying knowledge that the Bats were used to either get information directly from Gordon, or hacking everywhere they could.
Jason had a plan. He couldn’t have them finding out his identity just yet.
“I won’t hurt you. I’m here to help," he settled on.
Micaela blinked, making big tears roll down her cheeks, and she nodded with her eyes wide and a faraway stare, probably lost in what had happened. “I know,” she whispered.
The reply stomped him. “You do?”
“Yeah,” she said, like it was obvious. “You protect kids.”
And that… that was unexpected. And probably the greatest thing he had heard since crawling out of his grave.
He took a breath, chest tight. He hadn’t been around for long, not even close to the Bats or even many of the Rogues, and he knew he had ruffled a lot of feathers and there was a lot of money for whoever managed to take him down. He also knew he had made an impression, with his duffel bag filled with heads.
In Gotham, and in Crime Alley especially, so in what Jason had declared as his territory, children often ended badly, in ways he got angry just thinking about. He couldn’t even count how many of his friends, when he was a kid, had ended up working the corners or disappeared altogether, and it wasn’t his ability to steal as much as luck if his fate had been different — until he had gone after the tires of the Batmobile.
He looked down at Micaela, whose certainty hadn’t faltered.
It had been one of Jason’s first goals, since coming back. To hit so hard, so fast, that anyone who even thought about hurting kids in his territory would change his mind out of fear. To have such an impact on the area that the children themselves would spread the word, and no one would doubt they were safe.
And somehow, it had worked.
“I do,” he muttered, barely keeping his emotions in check. “I protect kids.”
Then he put two fingers under Micaela’s chin and raised it gently so that she would look at him. “She your mom?”
It was a hard question, Jason had no doubt, and he didn’t enjoy asking it, especially because he was pretty sure he knew the answer, but he needed to be sure.
The girl nodded, tears filling her eyes again. “Ro-Rosa,” she stuttered.
Okay. It was a good start.
“Do you have someone else? Dad, aunt, grandma?”
She shook her head.
Fuck.
“Did you see who did it?”
A nod, a fearful whimper. Her chin wobbled, making Jason realize he was still holding it.
He let her go and to his surprise she leaned forward, almost as if she wanted to follow his hand.
He swallowed. “I… When I call the police, they'll come and ask questions. About what happened, about you.”
Her eyes widened in a way that could have been comedic, if it weren’t for the amount of tears and the panic clear on her espression, and Jason didn’t even have the time to explain how he wanted her to tell him everything she knew before the cops arrived, before Micaela’s breath hitched, sharp and terryified, and she grabbed his arm.
“No,” she whispered. Louder, then. “No. No, no, no!”
She shook her head hard enough that her hair stuck to her face.
Jason’s muscles tensed.
He already knew what she was going to say before she spoke — because once, not understanding that the “safe place” Batman had been talking about was his own home, he had felt the same panic.
Every Crime Alley kid who lost their parents felt it. Every kid understood the risk.
Jason himself had chosen the streets instead of CPS for a reason.
“They’ll take me,” she cried, words tumbling over each other as she pulled his arm with all of her basically non-existing weight. “I’ll be trafficked!”
The word landed heavy in the air between them and Jason… Jason couldn’t correct her, could he? He couldn’t say that won’t happen, of course they won’t do it, because he understood how deeply that fear ran, and how true it had once been.
Once.
He frowned under his helmet. “Batman cleaned the system.”
It was the first thing the man had done after taking Jason in, he was sure of it. When he was a kid, sure, CPS had been basically a front for traffickers to get their pick of the litter, but as soon as Bruce had found out about it he had fixed it. And the thing was, months of hard work, of long nights between documents, stakeouts and threats had put such a fire under the traffickers’ asses that they had started to make mistake after mistake — until the joined forces of Batman and Nightwing, with at home a young, traumatized Jason slowly starting to trust them, had managed to put a stop to it.
Gotham’s CPS had slowly gotten better and better since then.
Jason was sure of it.
Micaela shook her head, her whole body trembling. “The Bat doesn’t care about what happens in the Alley,” she explained, frantic. “He never comes here.”
“Because I am here,” he tried.
“No, before you! He hasn’t been around since our Robin died!”
Jason froze, something heavy in his throat. For a second, a short moment of warmth, he let himself focus on Micaela’s “our Robin”.
When he had first donned the mantle, everyone in Gotham had been able to tell there was a different person behind the mask, considering how much younger than Dick he was.
But Crime Alley? They had heard his accent. The way he talked to the working girls. The way he could empathize. And they had simply known: he was more than Robin. He was their Robin.
From what Jason had gathered, they now snubbed the new little bird most of the time, letting everyone know how they really felt about the Bat who had abandoned them and, most importantly, who had let their young hero get killed.
Micaela was probably around seven-eight years old. It made sense she thought of him that way.
It just wasn’t enough for Jason to forget everything else.
How the fuck could Bruce have failed so much?! The Alley had always been Jason’s biggest worry, his self-imposed responsibility, and the man had just… stopped caring? Stopped showing up, stopped helping?
How could he have neglected the area so much that traffickers had picked up again, strong in the knowledge that the Dark Knight, the hero of Gotham, didn’t care enough to even show up?!
I died, Jason thought suddenly, and everything rotted again.
He should have come back earlier. He should have done more, acted quicker… before the place he called home ended up in the hands of dirtbags again.
Of course, there was the chance Micaela was just talking out of fear, especially considering how ruthless Jason had been with every trafficker he had heard of, even more with the ones dealing with children. There was always the possibility, however, that someone had slipped him.
He gritted his teeth. All because fucking Bruce.
Jason had died and he… he what, never set foot in Crime Alley again?
That’s grief, a voice in his mind whispered.
No, he corrected himself. That’s bullshit.
“Please,” Micaela hiccupped, still pulling his arm but clearly getting tired, “please don’t let them take me. You help kids, help me! Por favor!”
Jason exhaled slowly through his nose. “Okay,” he said at last. “Okay. Listen to me.”
He covered her hands with one of his. He wanted to crouch down, to bring himself to her level, and even though he couldn’t without showing her her mother, he hoped he could convey the same comfort and care through his body language.
“I still have to make sure your mom is found,” he told her. “But I won’t let the cops or CPS take you.”
Micaela sobbed, lower lip jutting out and wobbling. “The truth.”
“I’m telling the truth,” Jason swore.
“Always," she insisted and raised her little finger. “Promise you won’t lie to me. Promise!”
Vaguely thinking it might end up being a mistake, he nodded and linked his own, gloved finger to hers. “I promise. Only the truth.”
Her eyes searched his helmet like she could see his expression instead, and she made a desperate, suspicious and hopeful sound all at once. Every time she moved, it became clearer that exhaustion was settling in, so Jason wasn’t surprised when she swayed slightly on her feet.
He steadied her with the same hand still in her grasp.
“No CPS?” she asked again.
“No CPS,” he repeated, something tight in his chest making him feel like a kid again and, somehow, older than he actually was at the same time. He thought about himself, for a moment, young and lost and so hungry, facing a man just as physically strong and scary as he was now, and just knowing — in the dejected way only a kid in such a bad situation knew— that he couldn’t do much anyway.
Whether she trusted him or not, her life was in his hands.
Just like his had been in Batman’s.
Micaela nodded, jerky and small, and tears rolled down her cheeks again. “She won’t wake up,” she whispered. “I tried.”
Jason closed his eyes for half a second, nausea swimming in his stomach. When he opened them again, he reached out, slow and deliberate, with the hand she wasn’t holding, and he put it on her shoulder. “I know, kiddo,” he murmured. “This kind of wound…”
“The truth,” Micaela reminded him when his voice died. “I’m eight. I’m old enough to know.”
Right.
This was Crime Alley, after all; at her age he had been capable of taking care of himself and his mother for a while.
“They cut her throat,” he explained quietly. “Usually that’s not something anyone can fix. It’s too quick.”
Her lip trembled. New tears rolled down her cheeks.
And then she was stumbling forward and pushing her face into his belly, hugging him tightly as she shook violently with sobs. Jason squatted without even thinking — just following his instinct as her chest struggled with how hard she was crying — so that she could hug him properly; at that point he wrapped her in his arms to get back to his feet with her in tow.
“I’ve got you,” he murmured, carefully cradling the back of her head so she couldn’t see the body still in the middle of the alley, in a puddle of blood. “You’re safe now.”
And then he was walking.
When he made the call to the police, from the safety of a rooftop three blocks away, and tossed the burner phone behind him, Micaela was already asleep against his shoulder. By the time the sirens started in the distance, Jason and the precious cargo in his arms were almost at his biggest safe house.
And Jason didn’t look back.