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It’s taken months of painstaking work to cut out his corner of Gotham and build his empire, but it’s been worth all the effort. Crime Alley is the safest it’s been in decades, he has near complete control of the drug trade, and he’s slowly but surely forcing Black Mask, Maroni, and other gang leaders to take him as a serious threat. It’s all going according to plan.
What he hadn’t planned for though was the almost frightening level of adoration his underlings felt towards him. Jason hadn't even been trying to earn their respect. He would’ve settled for fear and an inkling of begrudging respect. Instead, he managed to earn an almost cult-like devotion. All he did was treat them decently and care about their well-being.
If someone got hurt, he gave them time off to recover. One of his guys got kidnapped by a rival gang to be used as a bargaining chip? He rescued them with extreme prejudice. Someone’s kid had a big recital? He gave their parents the night off and a couple bars of chocolate to pass off to the kiddo. You know, things any half decent employer would do. It wasn’t anything he deserved adoration for.
It was weird. Confusing…but shockingly nice. He didn’t have to threaten his guys in order to make them obey him. If someone did question him, it was out of genuine concern or curiosity rather than trying to challenge him. They trusted him to do what was best for them and the Alley and did their utmost to carry his orders out to the letter.
Of course, there were a few guys in the mix who didn’t like him and had merely joined because the Hood paid relatively well. Jason had also been lucky by primarily attracting gangsters who had a basic moral code, but that wasn’t the case for all his employees. Those ones he had to keep an eye on. You never know when they may try to sell whatever they’ve learned to one of his enemies.
He was alerted to one such new hire by Levia, his right hand woman. She was practically the steward of the Red Wraiths (a name he protested, but was ignored due to Levia insisting he can’t just call his empire ‘his gang’ forever). She achingly reminded him of Alfred a professional crime butler with how good she was at her job. Whether it was logistics, money laundering, or coordinating a strike on an enemy hideout, she could do it near flawlessly. While she didn’t have Jaosn’s training or expertise, she was no slack and could take just about anything off of Jason’s plate. It was something she’d been doing more and more often recently since he kept trying to forego sleep in order to patrol and carry out other aspects of his plan.
The folder Levia placed on his desk was for one Johnny Giroux. A recent recruit who’d only turned to crime in order to support his little brother. According to the information carefully recorded in the file, he had a strong distaste for Red Hood and had been overheard speaking out harshly against his actions. One of his lieutenants suspected he may be trying to stir up an insurrection or may be working for one of his enemies and was doing a crappy job of keeping it on the lowdown.
Staring at the picture before him, Jason committed the man’s features to memory. Black hair, tanned skin, and a nasty-looking scar running down half of his face. According to Levia’s informants, he received it in the Joker attack that destroyed his family’s business. Jason felt a pang of sympathy for the guy as a phantom pain shot through his hand. He should dismiss the guy right away and find a replacement for the warehouse he was working out of, but his stupid bleeding heart didn’t want to let him go quite yet. Not without seeing how he got along with his coworkers and how well he did his job.
Grumbling to himself, he decided to do some field work on this guy. After all, if he was indeed a spy for the enemy, he might have some useful information for Hood too. Rubbing a hand over his face, Jason called, “Levia, tell the head of warehouse 13 to prepare for an assault. Tomorrow night I’ll head over there and lead an assault on the new False Facer base.”
Levia merely cocked an eyebrow at him before stalking over to the desk and roughly setting a water bottle on the red-toned wood of the desk. It used to be a walnut brown before Levia eviscerated some creep who’d tried to assault her on it when the gang was still new and not yet known for its morally upright individuals.
“You’re not doing anything before you drink this and get a minimum of seven hours of sleep. I’m not going to let you get yourself killed just to find out if this guy’s a spy or not.” The young woman’s words were stern, but Jason could still detect the affection. She’s only six years older than him but she mother hens the hell out of him sometimes.
After rubbing his eyes tiredly and grumbling half-heartedly, Jason snatches up the water bottle and chugs it down so fast he nearly chokes. Slamming it back on the desk, he retorts almost teasingly, “Better?”
“Much,” she snarks back before gathering up every single paper on his desk. “You rest up while I take care of the logistics for the assault. I’m assuming I’ll be in charge of the gang while you’re predisposed per usual?” After receiving a nod from her boss, she says, “Perfect. I’ll see you in seven to ten hours after you’re fully rested.” With that, she disappears out the office door to probably terrorize some other poor crime lord.
Bemoaning the loss of excuse to stay up, Jason drags himself out of his chair before climbing the walls up into the hidden loft that served as his bedroom in the gang’s main headquarters. It was rather utilitarian, but warm and well-stocked nonetheless. With a sigh, Jason collapses into his warm bed, feeling safe despite the relatively minimal security between himself and his underlings. But only the vetted and loyal gangsters were stationed here, so it wasn’t a problem.
However, sleep eluded him because his mind kept trailing back to the Johnny fellow. Something about the older man seemed familiar, but Jason couldn’t put his finger on it. The uncertainty was unsettling, and he’s not even sure why, a fact that was bugging him to no end.
Rolling over and cuddling deeper into his blankets, he tries to sleep again. To force his mind to be blank and stop thinking of an oddly familiar smile. One that dredges up the aching pain in his very soul from a life he lost so long ago.
Safe to say, Jason didn’t sleep for a long while.
_______
He should’ve listened to Levia. She was right. He hadn’t gotten anywhere near enough sleep to offset the exhaustion caused by too many days of running himself into the ground. And now? Now he was paying for it.
The bust, overall, was going well. Very few of his people had gotten hurt and there were no casualties on their side as of yet. However, that didn’t mean things were going well for Jason himself. He could tell his reaction time was slower than it should be, and he’d gotten into a few scuffles that left him more battered than he should’ve been. His leg twinges painfully right then, reminding him of the baseball bat that’d crashed into it not long ago.
Cursing himself for letting his exhaustion get this bad before jumping headfirst into this, he wades through the battle once more, keeping an eye out for any enemies he can quickly dispatch and any of his people who may be in danger.
Everything was going well until Jason caught sight of Johnny. The man was distracted, probably by his teammate’s concern despite Henry not getting hit by the grenade, and didn’t see the false facer moments away from making a kill shot.
Adrenaline floods Jason’s system as fear floods his system. He had to save Dick Johnny (that’s not Nightwing. There were sightings of him in Bludhaven an hour ago afterall). He couldn’t let one of his men die on his watch despite being a potential spy.
Jason didn’t even have to think for his body to move. Before Jason could have another coherent thought, Johnny was sprawled on the floor and a bullet was buried in his chest. Stumbling at the impact, he breathes through the pain that seemed to spread throughout his entire chest. It made every breath burn, but he had to pull himself together. He was in the middle of a firefight, and Johnny was just sitting on the floor staring at him in shock.
Growling, Jason grabs the man and hauls him into cover. As more bullets flew his way, Jason felt the familiar rage bubble up in him. He just got shot by some pathetic no-name in front of his crew. There was no way in hell he was going to let the guy live long enough to tell the tale. After barking at Carlton to keep an eye on Johnny, who seemed like he was trapped between feeling shocked and wanting to take action, Jason stormed off to finish cleaning out the vermin.
With enraged green flickering in his veins, it didn’t take long to dispatch the rest of his enemies. In fact, it was too easy. Something that was far from cathartic for him because he wanted more fight from the guy who injured him so badly. What wasn’t easy though was staying on his feet after his targets were dead once the adrenaline wore off.
He’s more than a little embarrassed that he showed so much weakness in front of his underlings who weren’t in his inner circle. He struggled to even let them in, so it was mortifying to be so blatantly struggling in front of those he wasn’t remotely close with. He’d much rather find a quiet corner to fix himself up, but he couldn’t with the frantic gangsters milling about him. When Johnny volunteered his skills, Jason begrudgingly accepted. Besides, it’d be difficult to treat the bullet wound because it was so high on his chest he could barely even see the area.
Jason took full advantage of this situation to intimidate Johnny to the full extent of his abilities. When he told the guy he had a bomb in his helmet, the man turned an appropriate shade of gray in response. But when he revealed the scars marring his torso, Johnny started looking green around the gills and his expression screamed horror. However, to his credit, he forced himself into action far faster than Jason had expected.
Throughout the whole process, Jason refused to so much as flinch. He wasn’t going to be showing any more weakness in front of a potential spy. However, the guy was remarkably gentle and thorough for someone possibly treating their enemy. Once again, there was a niggling at the back of his mind of a time long past. No one’s been this gentle treating him since he died. Sure, the doctors at the League were efficient and good at what they did, but they didn’t care if they caused you pain in the process. And as for his gang, he didn’t have any doctors in his employ. They were in too high of demand in Gotham, and he’d barely managed to snag a few nurses who were down on their luck.
Which only made him more suspicious of Johnny. Why was this guy so good at treating bullet wounds? Even career criminals who’d been shot dozens of times couldn’t do it this well, if at all.
After Johnny boi was finished treating him, Jason gave him an abrupt ‘good job’ before leaving him behind. First thing he did was make an appearance at being completely unphased since word was sure to have gotten out that he’d been hit.
Sure enough, Mark, one of the guys in his inner circle and practically a friend at this point, came rushing over frantically. After checking him over and grilling him on what happened, Jason decided to distract him by giving him a frankly critical job.
Placing his hands on Mark’s shoulders, he says as gently as he can through the helmet, “Mark, I’m fine, but I need you to do something for me. Levia informed you about Johnny, correct?” At Mark’s eager nod, Jason continued. “He patched me up, and I’m still not certain whether or not he’s a spy. Make sure he doesn’t run off with any of my DNA, got it?”
Without so much as another word, Mark rushes off to track down Johnny and protect Jason’s identity with all his might. Jason didn’t expect any rival bosses to care about his identity, but it’d be an invaluable bargaining chip to the Bats with everything Jason’s been up to. Even if you ignore the way he’s been antagonizing them, conquering Crime Alley and gifting a duffle bag of heads to the police was sure to get you pretty high up on their list. So, it never hurts to be cautious.
Once he made his rounds, dolled out some more orders, and dumped cleanup on someone else’s far too eager shoulders, Jason made his way back to the main base…where he was immediately assaulted by Levia’s unimpressed glare.
“I know,” he groaned out as he removed his helmet and pulled off his domino. “But I swear it wasn’t my fault! Johnny, the freaking idiot, would’ve gotten one between the eyes if I hadn’t intervened.”
Levia merely cocked her eyebrow, a silent demand for him to keep going. “It’s fine! Johnny patched me up and Mark made sure he didn’t pawn my DNA off to the Bats. Now, I swear I’ll go to sleep right now if you don’t chew me out for something I couldn’t change.”
Rolling her eyes, Levia marched over to the far end of the office where a tray with stew and sandwiches was residing that Jason hadn’t noticed earlier. Moving the tray to his desk, she said gently, “Fine, but eat first. We can’t have you keeling over on us, Jay.”
“I know, I know,” he chuckled out as he heavily sat down at his desk. “Thanks L, you always know just what I need.”
With a smirk, she replies, “That’s why you pay me so much.” Before Jason had a chance to reply, the jerk slipped out the door and locked it behind her. Sighing good-naturedly, Jason dug into his dinner while he mulled over the mystery that was Johnny and what the Wraith’s next steps would be.