Chapter Text
Jack-pro-tempore left Nickolaos Sionis' Beacon Street bar through its back door, sporting a look that had been judged intimidating by eight out of ten persons polled, although Alonzo called it the 'casual-Friday mummy impersonating a stop sign' costume.
Even he admitted it was appropriately red and hooded, though.
Red Hood was a big responsibility that the man presently called Jack had just sort of stumbled into one night—like most things, really—fortuitous stumblings and the kindness of strangers, that was his life in a nutshell—it hadn't been a long life so far, so it fit in a very small shell—anyway, he'd been wearing his red hoodie when he'd gotten involved in what he'd thought was a mugging, but turned out to be Darcy Leadworth's dealer losing patience.
The Hood was Gotham lore at its finest. Everybody said they were Red Hood if they wanted to duck credit for a favor or reckless good deed, out of manners or caution; it was a name you hid behind, had always been that before anything else, and Darcy had been quick to hand it to him before he could be stupid and fail to think of hiding.
But, well, once you fell into a role like that…why stop playing? If the shoe fits…
Edna said that back in the thirties, the Red Hood was a trio who stole bankroll from every major crime outfit in Gotham at least once, exposed dozens of corrupt police, ran a series of bizarre stings, and got away with it all for nine years straight. One of them was a cop, it turned out in the end, one of them had ties to the Sicilian mob, and the last was never caught.
(There were a lot of theories. A big one was that it'd been a dame, because the third Hood had been kind of skinny and none of the investigators had even thought of that, so if it was it would have been so easy for her to not be tracked down.)
Alonzo said that in the fifties there'd been two separate Red Hoods—one guy whose focus was avenging crimes against blacks that white juries had allowed to go unpunished and one guy who, according to legend, had known everything that happened, anywhere in the city, and made sure news got where it needed to. Reporters and police alike had gotten bundles of tip-offs from that Red Hood, and ordinary people tended to get anonymous midnight warnings just when they needed them most. Once or twice, the two had come into conflict. Other times, they'd coordinated. Neither had been caught, ever.
There'd been a Chinatown Red Hood as recently as the late seventies, but whoever it was seemed to have vanished without a trace, and Lei Bao had told him the best advice he could take from that one was to always have more than one exit from anywhere he slept. Lei was a chef, and a really good one, but Jack was pretty sure she'd been something else before that.
Ted, who was studying history and music theory at Gotham U, said the first recorded appearance of Red Hood in Gotham was shortly after the War of 1812, when veterans were agitating for their long-overdue back pay, but that the figure had really established itself indelibly (ooh, good word) in the city's folklore during unionization, when the Kanes and Waynes had hired private muscle to go after picketers, and picketers had gone after workers who broke the strike lines, and at least seven people in red masks had been right in the thick of things. Mostly for the best.
They were big shoes to fill, was the point, and well broken-in. Jack wasn't fussed; he'd never owned anything in his life that wasn't second-hand. He could make a legend fit him, or grow to fit it. It had never mattered much anyway, who was under Red Hood's mask.
Masking red didn't do much to keep skin and bone together, but it worked. Jack was a naturally happy person—or if he hadn't been before, now that he couldn't remember differently he was a happy person, assuming he'd been a person at all before the day he'd woken up in Gotham Harbor—and the only thing that had been stopping him from being thoroughly contented with his life of surviving and exploring and making friends had been that he couldn't help.
It had taken a year to save enough to help with that one surgery. People needed more than someone to help them put up shelving, and look for things and pets and people they'd lost, and keep an eye on the kids while they ran an urgent errand, and help stretch dinner with an extra can of beans, and give them a momentary reason to smile. Something more than just another neighbor, important as good neighbors were, and John-Jim-Jamie-Jack couldn't be that more.
Red Hood could.
Could be that was a selfish reason to go into vigilantism, that it made him feel good, feel better about the world and his place in it, but the point was, he was happy now. Content. Roman's point about not being able to punch the root causes of social whoseewhatsis in the face notwithstanding.
The only problem, if you could call it that, was that once you started taking on responsibility it was hard to stop. So now he didn't just keep track of gang politics (or real politics, for that matter) because it might come in handy to know, and made good gossip even if it didn't; he kept track because it was his business to know who was likely to do what where, and what the fallout was going to look like. If he didn't, how could he be where he was needed?
He slipped from Burnt Row through the Chopsides and cut through an alley into the narrow, winding streets of Old Town. Gentrification had taken hold in a lot of the area over the last twenty years—a lot of his Crime Alley friends used to live in parts of Old Town that had gone all up-market—but he knew it pretty well, all the same. Refurbished or not, Old Town wasn't one of the late-night parts of Gotham; except for some of the bars and an all-night laundry or so, most businesses were closed by nine. The construction crews all cleared out by dark.
A lot of construction went along with gentrification; old buildings too far gone to save being torn down and replaced, which people got really emotional about. Jack tried to stay out of it. He didn't see how things were worth more for being old, but a lot of people did; he didn't have the average point of view on permanence or even how long counted as 'a while;' not his place to judge.
Besides, sometimes he got it just fine. There was a new player on the crime scene these days. Now, when Jack said new here, he still meant something that had been around since before he could remember, but this was only the second summer of his whole life, so that wasn't saying much. The Owl's group had busted in out of nowhere like five years ago (from Chicago, from Italy, from Colombia, from Hell; everybody had a theory) and started swallowing up the littler families and nibbling away at the margins of the others, and it didn't seem like it intended to stop growing. They carried military-grade weaponry, treated disobedience like treason, and even the ones who were local boys acted more like conquerors than part of the community.
'The boss is crazy,' was the word on the street. Some rumors said he thought he was an actual owl, and ate small animals whole. Other people said he ate human hearts. During meetings. You could see the bloodstains on his gloves, they said.
Jack had learned by now not to believe everything he heard, but the note of fear people got when they talked about the Owls, that stuck with him.
Everyone who grew up in Gotham knew about the Court of Owls; even he knew the rhyme and he couldn't remember ever being a child anywhere, but that was a bogey-story, an urban legend. It wasn't real. (Probably. Edna thought it was, and Edna had lived in Gotham for eighty-seven years and ought to be paid attention to, but a pretty massive chunk of 'everybody' knew there was no such thing as the Court of Owls—which was what the Court of Owls would want you to think, said Edna. Point.) Except here was this gang, using the myth, well-funded and ruthless and peeling away the loyalists from other groups like the flaking layers of muscle from a well-cooked fish.
Now, on the whole Jack wasn't in favor of organized crime. They did some good, especially for people like him who fell into the cracks, but they also did some things he really couldn't forgive, and they got downright mean when people didn't give them what they wanted.
He did like them better, the smaller they were, even if that did mean more fighting; little territories meant every street corner was precious, and the local don (or whatever) would usually do important things for a neighborhood that you could wait a million years for the city government to get around to, and still be disappointed. Ted said feudal reciprocity was a valid form of social contract. Maria said the smart crime bosses knew not to piss where they ate.
Cobblepot's group was Jack's favorite, possibly because the Penguins were kind of crazy and all wore spats and carried umbrellas or canes, and didn't deal hard drugs, but mostly because Oswald Cobblepot took his sense of honor really, really seriously, and honor in his terms had a lot more to do with keeping his word and not dragging outsiders into his problems than with avenging insults.
His least favorite was definitely the Owls. They were so…businesslike. They made everything worse for everyone, and they weren't even having fun. And every single member of the outfit he'd encountered had either had no imagination at all or…been scared all the time, he guessed was what you'd call it. Not twitching-at-noises scared, or not usually, at least not until after he'd pulled the poltergeist routine for a bit that one time, but just walking around under a constant pall of fear that they'd screw up, and then...something bad. Heart made a snack of at next morning's meeting, possibly.
Jack-for-now felt quite strongly that if his city was going to be conquered, it should be by someone preferable to Bruce Wayne, not somebody even worse.
He reached the address he'd been given and squinted up into the looming frame of a half-finished office complex, all steely bones and new flooring. One of Wayne's projects.
Jack liked buildings under construction; they were life and activity and bright yellow hardhats, and he felt a sort of kinship with them. He was a human-under-construction, in a way. Of course, generally the buildings had blueprints and things all set up before they began, but did the buildings know that? Or did they wait eagerly to see what they were going to be?
No sign of a light, but—there! Eleventh floor, as arranged. Distinct motion. Only one, unless the others were standing well back. He'd gotten here early…but the other guy was even earlier. Gotta get up early in the morning to get the jump on this guy, was the saying, except nocturnal, so the early bird got up…what? Around sunset? Jack grinned to himself.
Time to crash a party.
He stole up the stairs to the eleventh floor as quietly as he could. Stopped on the last flight with his eyes just above the level of the floor, getting the lay of the land and taking in the lone looming figure gazing out at the Gotham skyline.
At first glance, you might have really thought it was a giant owl nesting in the structure, all bronzy flash of cruel hooked beak and huge flat eyes and jagged feathers, but there was a human underneath. Here was a guy with a bit of flair for presentation, Jack-of-the-moment thought, as he crept a little higher. Too bad he was a titanic jerk.
(Psychotic, too, but Jack had been informed by people he counted friends that so was he, so he maybe couldn't point fingers there.)
He couldn't make out any bloodstains on the gloves, but they were mostly black, so it might not show.
"Do ya really eat live mice?"
He didn't choose that as an opener just to be a good distraction; he seriously wanted to know. He stepped up onto the eleventh floor and stood by the top of the steps.
The Owl's head snapped around—not completely independently of his shoulders, so there went the human/bird hybrid idea; he owed Kate five bucks. The cape flared with the motion, and its edges really were worked like feathers…if he pounced on you, you'd go down feeling just like a little mouse.
Jack was prepared for that. It was kind of the whole reason he was here. Some of Cobblepot's guys had turned, under the pressure of owlish expansion, and as proof of their loyalty they'd been asked to double cross their former boss and bring him before the Owl, to either submit or die.
The foundation in the construction site, next lot over, was still wet, and Jack knew Ozzie and his sense of honor. He knew how this was going to play out, between one bird and another.
Cobblepot's loyal guys had managed to find out the arranged meeting place and were planning to stage what they knew was a suicidal rescue, and Red Hood had dropped in early this morning to offer his assistance. He'd distract the Owl, they'd move in and extract their boss. Owl minions were already notorious for their reluctance to take any action without orders. Even if they had prior orders to shoot down anyone who interfered, which was likely, they'd still be less effective without his direct supervision.
(The Penguins were probably going to kill any of the traitors they could, and Jack didn't like that, but he liked it marginally better than the other way around, and…he was tired of letting this guy do whatever he wanted.)
"Huh?" he prompted. "Come on, I got money riding on this."
The Owl said nothing. He had a strong, blunt jaw—a bruiser's chin—but his lips were thin and humorless—a judge's mouth. Even without his reputation, Jack didn't think he'd like him much.
"Look, if you don't want people saying things like that, don't dress like a bird. Themes are nice and all, but you've gotta elaborate enough on the basic idea people know what direction to take it." Nothing. "You don't wanna hear the owl pellet theories." Wow, nothing. Silent glaring from behind goggles was surprisingly effective. "Look, whatcha want in Gotham anyway?"
Finally, the bad guy said something—deep, scornful voice, not a hoot or a screech; hell, that bass-baritone made Jack feel screechy.
"I am the King of Owls. This city belongs to me."
"Really?" Jack rubbed at the bridge of his nose through crimson fabric, squinting thoughtfully at the man he'd heard so much about. He was fairly impressive in person. Broad shoulders, brawny chest to match the voice, hands that could wrap around the average neck and crush any chance of breathing, never mind a skinny one like Jack's. "Cuz I have to point out, most of the people who live here…they ain't owls. Kinda outside your jurisdiction, right?"
"Gotham is the City of Owls." His attention, and presumably his hidden eyes, flicked over Jack's mask and hood, and he must have heard there was a new Red Hood because there was something like recognition there. "You are merely the scum in its gutters."
Jack pulled a face no one could actually see. "Owch. That gets me, you know? Right here." He tapped himself over the heart. It was pounding, and he wondered if this was what fear felt like. He didn't think so. He was angry, and he was excited, and he was brimming with hilarity, but nothing in him was sorry for getting himself into this.
He hated bullies.
Already Jack could say with some certainty that this Owl character wasn't anything so ordinary as mafia. Even a batshit crazy Mafioso had some sense of connection to the man on the street, no matter how high he climbed. No, this guy really meant it literally when he called himself a king of a mythical conspiracy.
…it seemed kind of like a waste of insanity. He should go into painting, or something.
Giant-Owl-Man loomed. "Are you trying to be funny?"
"I am being funny. Not my fault if you don't have a sense of humor. It's okay, though, I knew that going in, cuz you're meeting Mob guys in half a building dressed up as a bird and you're not smiling. Did your parents have it surgically removed when you were a kid?"
King Bird had already been bristling, but at the last bit he managed to draw himself up another inch. The feathers at his neck spiked just like on a real bird. What was that made of? "Watch your tongue," he bit out.
"Is it the surgery thing or the parents thing? I promise, I won't make any your-mom jokes; I'm above that. You can, though; I never knew my mother, so I won't take it personally—"
He had to stop talking for a second to lean sharply backward out of the way of a hand grasping for his throat. Looked like the Owl had noticed the same thing he had about their relative sizes. Ooor maybe he was just the strangling type. "That's just harsh," he tutted, as he took a step or so back to get his feet under his head again, and straightened up. "I guess it's not really good form to mock people's disabilities, though," he acknowledged. "Sorry about that."
The big man closed the new distance with a single heavy step and then swung an equally heavy fist at J's face, one he wove away from just enough that it passed over his shoulder. "Whoops, eheh."
The next blow was faster, lower, and he caught it with both hands an inch from his gut. Ducked backward out of the way of the other fist. "Oh, come on, you're not even trying," he clucked. Did the Owl think he'd slugged his way through every slum in Gotham with a 90%+ victory rate on a base of incompetence?
The next punch was a jab like lightning that he saw coming for his face but couldn't completely dodge. He smirked in defiance of an aching cheekbone. "That all ya got?"
The King In Feathers was silent a second, as though he thought he could stare J's secrets out through his muffled face. "Is there some reason you want me to kill you?" he asked at last, and right then, giving in to curiosity, for the first time he was human. Jack could almost see the actual person showing through under the mask.
But even if he didn't eat human hearts, the person underneath was still a coldblooded murderer who, if he'd ever had a reason Jack could have understood, must have forgotten it a long time ago. Because all he'd ever done as the Owl showed only an all-consuming need to bring everything he could see or touch under his control, and rule over it. And Red Hood's goal tonight was to get his undivided attention.
"I'm not afraid of you," he spelled out, carefully, as if he thought the other man was a little slow.
The Owl lashed out, rode through his block, laid him out flat on his back at the edge of the floor, with the city stretching out behind him, through the gap where a wall did not yet exist. "You should be."
Jack-tonight looked up, daubing a trickle of blood from his lip with the bit of scarf wrapped over it, grinning, and shrugged. "Hehe. Probably," he admitted. "But I've always been a bit…screwloose." With that, he rolled backward, out over the long drop to the pavement, infinitely rewarded by an instant of shock on his enemy's masked face.
For a moment he twisted through empty air, and then just as his toes pointed to the ground he seized the exposed girder with both hands, put a little extra spin into his fall, swung, and dropped neatly onto the floor below, through its identical lack of outer wall.
From overhead he heard a wordless growl of frustration, and he whooped aloud as he scrambled for the nearest stairs, knowing the shadow of death would be following him.
Hunt me, birdie, he thought, grinning under his scarf as he pounded down metal steps, incautious of noise. Keep those big cold eyes on me and don't think about anybody else. Look at me!
I can take it.