Chapter Text
The Red Hood stood in the middle of Louise' storage room, looking over the stacked bags of product. The harsh lighting glared against a smooth and shiny helmet with no expression, only blank white lenses in place of eyes.
Her workers stood around, frozen in their work, and trying not to stare. Just kids really, all teens who needed some extra cash. She paid them to move things and not ask any questions. It was funny. Louise thought of them as kids and they called her ‘boss’, but she was barely older than them. Confidence made all the difference.
“Mr the Red Hood.” She plastered on a smile. “So good to meet you. I had no idea you were getting into the garden supplies market.”
The helmet turned.
“What?”
The crunchy modulated voice was completely flat.
The words ‘eight heads in a duffel bag’ floated in the back of her mind. Were they all neatly lined up? Or did he have to stack them? Face up, or scalp up? Surely face up to maximise the shock. That couldn’t be very stable, what if some of them rolled around in there?
“Top soil,” she said. Her smile felt a little strained. She patted a tightly packed plastic bag at the top of a crate.
She knew how it looked. That was how she’d gotten it through the harbour without paying any fees. Every customs officer in Gotham knew drugs were Black Mask’s business and asked no further questions, charged no further fees. That was the case last week, at least. Things changed fast.
He cocked his head. “Is that what you’ve got kids moving?”
The hairs on the back of her neck stood on end.
“Everybody out,” she called.
The kids looked between her and Gotham’s newest crime lord. She whistled sharply and jerked her head.
They scuttled out with sudden urgency. The door banged closed noisily behind them.
There was a silver flash of a knife. Her breath hitched.
Dirt spilled onto the concrete floor. The split plastic slowly deflated as the stream of dark and loamy earth slowed. Red Hood stared at it. She stared at him staring at it.
He coughed a laugh, then flipped the knife around and propped his hand on his hip.
“Why are you smuggling dirt?”
She shrugged. “Ever tried to grow anything in Gotham’s soil? It’s heavy metals and toxins all the way down to the water table. Terrible for flowers, worse for food.” She wasn’t into gardening but a buyer was a buyer.
“Huh. Learn something new every day. There good money in it?”
“Some money,” she hedged. “I wouldn’t call it good.”
“Uh-huh.” He strolled casually around the stacks of crates. Prowled, more like. She lost sight of him and wished she hadn’t. “And it's just dirt,” he called.
She leaned against the nearest crate and crossed her ankles. “Just dirt.”
“You’re not about to become some kind of dirt themed villain, are you?” he asked, suddenly behind her and making her jump. How was he so quiet in heavy, combat boots? “Doctor Dirt? Dirtula?”
“The Soiler,” she replied, straight faced. “It’s like Spoiler, but, you know.” Her lip twitched at her own joke. “Soil.”
The helmet stared.
“I’m kidding!”
“Alright, Soiler . You can smuggle your dirt through my territory, under my protection.”
“That’s very gracious of you.” She smiled winningly. “...Five percent?”
“Twenty.”
“You’re killing me. Just how much demand do you think there is for gardening supplies in a city with no sunlight? I can do seven percent. Final offer.”
He cocked his head. She could see her own calculating expression reflected on the shiny red surface.
“I’ll throw in a free crate of my finest potting mix. You can set up a nice bonsai garden. A cent more and I’m going out of business.”
He stepped forward. He loomed over her. He was very good at it. She was tall and lanky and couldn’t pull off a good loom to save her life.
“Do I look like I’m in the market for a nice bonsai garden?”
“I wouldn’t dare assume,” she replied and crossed her arms.
He stared her down. Then scoffed a laugh. “Ten percent. And I’ll be in touch.”
He disappeared into the gloom around the back. There was the sound of the back door opening and swinging shut.
“Great to meet you,” she said into the empty warehouse, with a shaky laugh. “Let’s do this again sometime.”
The next morning, after her shift at her morning job, Louise found an unfamiliar teen standing outside her warehouse. He looked about fifteen, with greasy blond hair and a surly expression that never rose from the ground. He stood awkwardly by the wall next to the padlocked roller door.
“Who are you?” she asked, swirling her takeaway coffee in its paper cup. She always took the plastic lid off and idly considered throwing it in his face if he tried anything. It was still hot enough to do some damage.
“Marcus.” He shrugged. “Hood sent me.”
“...Did he just. What for?”
“Said I was s’posed to help.” He had both his hands buried in his pockets and a slouch in his soul as well as his posture.
“Help with what?”
“Dunno. Whatever you want.”
She hummed and put her coffee down.
She fiddled with the lock and it clicked open. In this part of Gotham a padlock was really just there to keep the amateurs away. Pros would just put an axe through the door.
She rolled up the door and ushered the kid in. She got him moving some heavy stuff around and doing busy work while her regulars drifted in and out. He slouched about, doing nothing terribly alarming.
She had always made a point of staying low. Keeping her head down whenever the big dogs were barking. Sure, she flirted with danger, but she wasn’t bringing it home with her. At most she let it take her out for dinner. Maybe a kiss on the cheek at the end of the night.
Through the blinds of her office she watched Red Hood’s blatant mole sweep up around her stock.
The same Red Hood who was openly challenging Black Mask. Hell, he was spitting in his ashy misshapen face.
She wasn’t flirting with danger, she was in bed with it.
The gang wars weren’t all that long ago, and there was no reason things couldn’t go tits up again. That mess that killed the short-lived girl robin. Red Hood had missed all of that. He had no reputation before last week. He was murderous and fearless and Black Mask wanted him dead. She didn’t know what his idea of ‘protection’ actually looked like.
She was just some small fry smuggler. Easily forgotten. Easily stamped out when nobody was looking.
She drummed her fingers along her crooked desk.
The kids who worked for her were going to be painted with the same brush she was, for whatever choices she made. If things went really bad then the consequences would fall on her grandpa. He had nobody else to look after him.
Was Red Hood really the horse she wanted to bet on?
Some other Gothamite might think she had no choice in the matter, but she was born in Falcone’s Gotham, grew up in Penguin’s city, then got wise under Two Face. Black Mask was the power today. Maybe Red Hood was tomorrow. The wind changed. Gotham stayed the same.
Marcus opened one of the bags of topsoil. He put something in it.
“Hey!” She yelled.
His head whipped around.
She ran into the storage space.
“What the hell are you doing? Trying to make me a mule for Hood’s product, is that what this is?”
He held his hands up and shook his head mulishly.
“It’s not! I’m just– it’s not. I’m not doing drugs anymore. I’m taking a sample. He said to, it’s to test it for stuff.”
“What?” Her brow furrowed. “Why would I hide drugs in a product disguised as drugs? What kind of stupid double bluff is that?”
He only shook his head again. “Um. Ammonium nitrate.”
“Why would– oh.” She pouted. “Well.” Yeah, that made some sense. Joker had that whole thing with fertiliser bombs a couple of years back. And the weapons black market paid way more than dirt, no matter how good the dirt game looked.
“Don’t yell at me,” Marcus said, staring at the floor.
She sighed. “You can just take the bag back to Red Hood for testing.”
He shook his head. “He said just a sample.”
There was no way this would fly anywhere else in Gotham. This kid would get eaten alive. He looked a little chewed up already. What was Hood thinking?
“What are you doing here, Marcus?”
“Told you. Hood sent me.”
“Yeah? And where’d he find you?”
“Cooking for some guys in the Narrows.”
She looked to the ceiling. She didn’t think he meant as a line cook. He was so young . “Go nuts then. Get your samples. And take a break.”
“What for?”
“Lunch, genius,” she said, and stalked back into her office.
Two weeks later she had wrapped up a major deal with a landscaping company and gotten Marcus set up washing dishes at the Indian restaurant across the road. He seemed much happier there with Mrs Chauhan badgering him to eat more.
Red Hood hadn’t said anything. Not to her at least. The sample must have cleared any suspicions. Some of his guys showed up asking for his cut the day she wrapped up her deal. They knew exactly how much was owed too, which showed an attention to detail she didn’t like.
Maybe it was time to get out of garden supplies. She was getting steady shifts and the cafe and the underground fighting rings always picked up this time of year. It was enough to keep the lights on. If things got really dicey she could sell her car.
She still had the number of that guy from the window manufacturing plant though. Skylights were expensive but short-lived, or so she heard. That might be something. If she only supplied the glass and didn’t do instals then she could keep costs low and dodge complaints when vigilantes immediately smashed through them.
Red Hood could take the remaining topsoil business and God bless him.
She was not choosing his side, she was choosing no side.
Gotham was a mean old lady who ate any of her kids that stood still long enough to get caught. Louise wasn’t getting caught today.
She walked up the steps to her grandpa’s apartment as the afternoon turned to evening. Technically her apartment, despite his bitching about it. He was getting weaker, since a fall last year. She could pay for his nurse and medication or she could pay her own rent on top of his. Moving back in was the smart play. She repeated that to herself a few times a week.
She opened the door to yelling. She sighed, stretched a jaunty smile across her lips and strode home.
The nurse, Rachel, was holding her own with strained patience. Louise intercepted the yelling by being loud and annoying, and let the poor woman have a break.
“Thanks,” Rachel mouthed at her, with a hand to her temple.
Grandpa had never taken being powerless well. When Louise was little he used to hit her. She learned to hit back. These days he just threw bitter insults and all she could do was take them. Sometimes she missed how it used to be. It felt more honest.
That probably said something depressing about her. Who cared? Therapists were expensive.
She was packing up the leftovers from dinner. Their kitchen window overlooked the cramped alley behind the apartment block. She had a fine view of the neighbouring buildings’ wall mounted HVAC units. And for a couple of weeks in late January they got to see the sunset sneaking down in the thin slice of horizon between two other buildings. At this time of year all the light they got came from other apartment’s windows. There was someone higher up who never took down his Christmas lights, so they got red, green, and gold flashes year round.
The red light blinked off. The green never came. She looked up from clipping shut tupperware.
There was a shadow over the kitchen window.
There should not have been a shadow by the window.
Rachel was helping Grandpa to bed. She could hear the cantankerous mutterings from the other room. Louise crossed the room backwards, always facing the window, and shut the kitchen door. The muffled voices cut off.
The shadow by the window moved slightly.
She eyed the pantry, where they kept a shotgun. It wasn’t loaded. The ammo was in the cupboard above the fridge. Would she have time?
Her eyes darted to the steel baseball bat leaning against the wall by the window. It was very close to whoever was out there.
She edged around the room towards the window. She wasn’t trying to be quiet, just casual.
She caught a glare of golden Christmas lights on a shiny red surface. The helmet was facing her.
She froze.
He leaned against the brick wall casually, sitting on the balcony railing.
“What are you doing here?” she whispered.
She should have gone for the shotgun. His gun was on his right hip. Had he drawn it? She couldn’t see. Fuck. Fuck . She hadn’t broken any of his rules. Had she? She didn’t even deal in drugs.
“I’m not here for you,” he said quietly.
“There’s no one else here. I think you’ve got the wrong address,” her mouth said without any input from her brain.
The helmet turned.
“The nurse.”
“What?”
“She’s been selling prescription painkillers. She’s not getting them from the pharmacy.”
“What?” Her voice came out loud and flat.
“You didn’t notice anything?”
She didn’t move for a moment.
Her grandpa took a lot of things. Opioids among them. It was a high dosage. Upped three times. Getting him to admit he needed it had been almost as difficult as getting a doctor to prescribe it. He couldn’t just say it. He got mean when he had no power.
Yeah. That figured.
She had the bat in her hands.
She wrenched the kitchen door open and stormed down the corridor.
Hands grabbed her and pulled her back. She struggled like a wild cat, fury so white hot in her veins she felt disconnected from the rest of her body. Hood pulled her into the kitchen.
“Whoa, hey, wait,” a modulated voice crackled near her ear. He closed the door with a kick.
She tried to hit him with the bat. He wrenched it from her hands and threw it away. Strong arms held her still.
“Calm down.”
“Let go,” she hissed.
“Look–”
“He’s in pain! All this time he was in pain! And she –”
“Louise. She’s hurting others too. I get it, I do, she can go directly to hell, but if you cave her head in I can't find out who else she’s doing this to. And a few other things besides,” he added darkly. “I need to know who she’s working with.”
She hauled in a couple of deep breaths. He didn’t move. She came back to herself.
The flash of blind fury passed. Grim steady anger settled in its place. Her elbow ached from smashing it into unyielding helmet.
“Fine,” she said.
“You gonna try to hit me if I let you go?”
“No.”
He let go. She shook him off and rolled her shoulders. She eyed the bat on the floor and intentionally looked away. Focus on the present danger. The crime lord in her kitchen. Red Hood watched her patiently. She assumed. Who knew what he was thinking under that helmet.
Just what the hell kind of kingpin was he?
“Why are you here?” she demanded. “You’ve got guys, they couldn’t just grab her off the street?”
“You needed to know what was happening. Talk to his doctor. If she ever actually gave him anything, he could be going through withdrawals.”
She stared at him, long and hard.
“...But I don’t get to turn her brain into chunky passata.”
“No passata for you. But don’t worry,” he said, with a coldness that wasn’t just the modulator. “She’s not getting away with it.”
He disappeared back out the window.
The Christmas lights winked their usual pattern. She could faintly hear mumbling from the corridor. The leftovers still needed to go in the fridge.
There was a boot print from a crime lord on her kitchen door.
A minute later Rachel got a phone call and hurried out of the apartment, yelling her apologies.
Was she going to die?
Did she have grandpa’s meds in her bag?
Louise drifted into the bathroom and opened the medicine cabinet. She cracked open one of the labelled bottles and looked at the little white pills of what should have been the good stuff. She turned the bottle, letting them rattle around.
She threw one in her mouth.
It was very sweet. The realisation that this was a tremendously stupid thing to do didn’t get distant and pleasantly hazy, but instead got more pointed.
Ten, fifteen minutes passed. Her elbow did not stop hurting.
She hoped Rachel was in pain. If Louise ever saw her again, she would be. Something told her she wouldn’t get the chance.
She sat on the toilet lid.
Looked like she was on team Red Hood after all.