Chapter Text
Crime Alley didn’t see a lot of newcomers. It was a section of Gotham that people avoided like the plague, practically quarantining it. Sure, some people passed through, found themselves there, runaways, criminals, those particularly down on their luck, but they came and went, and for the most part the same crowd remained, the ones that had always lived there, the ones he tasked himself with protecting.
So when Isa offhandedly mentioned an odd new girl she’d bumped into, Hood didn’t put too much thought into it. Chances were that the girl would be gone within the week, and Isa would move onto other things. She was a good informant, but she jumped from topic to topic like it was an Olympic sport. The ‘sharp eyed girl’ was one observation among hundreds that Isa offered. He had to prioritize the immediately pressing information, while the rest got filtered out.
His next chat with Isa, a week later, was just a bit more informative. Standing just inside the doorway of the place she shared with about a half-dozen other girls. She’d had information on a weapons distributor that was trying to encroach on his territory, had spotted a guy he knew was involved talking about a meeting, more than enough for him to make a plan of his own.
Stepping out of the doorway with purpose, he caught sight of a woman flinching away from a man placing a hand on her upper arm. She froze where she was for a long moment, and he could see the moment her expression shifted, the moment the man sealed his fate.
Grabbing his arm and wrenching it off her arm, she twisted his arm behind his back, putting him on his knees. A guttural scream escaped him as she twisted further and presumably snapped his arm, then abruptly let go of him, shoving him forward onto the concrete and bolting the other direction.
Isa peered over his shoulder at the commotion and exclaimed, “That’s the sharp eyed girl! Seems like she might be sticking around.” Observing the scene, she hummed to herself, “It was about time, that guy’s a fucking creep.”
He considered pursuing the girl for all of half a second. If Isa believed the man deserved it, who was he to argue, and besides, he had a weapons distributor to hunt down. Bigger fish to fry. He’d consider what to do about the sharp eyed arm breaker of a girl if she ever became a problem, but at the moment, she was just making his job easier. Isa would have one less thing to complain about during their chats.
—
The next time he saw the arm breaker was in a higher intensity situation. Harvey Dent had gotten restless, and his damned coin had led him back to Crime Alley. A diner, of all places, and one Jason happened to like at that. Pinned down behind an upturned table by fire from Dent’s goons, and without either of his guns, it was certainly some sort of situation, one he would really like to get the hell out of.
As he scanned the diner for options, he spotted a bit of movement beneath one of the tables, brown eyes peered out at him, not nearly as terrified as they should have been. A Gothamite, then, one well used to the violence. A bit too used to it, he decided, sharply gesturing for them to stop as they moved out from under the table where they’d taken cover, sliding into view like a moron and… oh, arm breaker was kicking his gun back to him, metal sliding against beat up linoleum tile.
He snatched it up and disabled the goons, ending their barrage of bullets and surveying the scene for any remaining opponents. When he found none, he looked back towards the table arm breaker had tucked herself beneath, and found no one there. All together not that weird, but with the limp he’d seen from her, it was impressive that she could move fast enough to get the hell out of dodge like that.
As he stepped out of the bullet riddled diner, he decided she fit right in with the Gothamites, pulling a move like that, kicking a gun to a bat in the middle of an active firefight was something even some gothamites wouldn’t risk. If she chose to stick around Crime Alley he might need to keep an eye on her, if only to make sure she didn’t get herself killed.
No. He’d be lying if he said he wasn’t curious. She was almost too levelheaded, as if she was front seat to firefights quite frequently. The set of her jaw, that hadn’t been fear, but simple determination, maybe a bit of annoyance, and thinking back, she’d subdued that man with smooth skill, paused, and then broken his arm anyways, but she’d also flinched, and frozen, maybe the pause had been hesitation.
The facts he had now didn’t paint a full picture, of that he was sure. With what he had, he had to assume she was trained, and had likely been exposed to combat, she didn’t so much as flinch at gunfire (but then again that didn’t mean much for a Crime Alley resident).
Whoever she was, he would puzzle out, but she didn’t seem malicious and he had bigger issues, always had bigger issues.
Bigger issues that landed him stumbling across the rooftops of Crime Alley with his hand pressed against his abdomen, trying to staunch the flow of blood and largely failing. His issues were dead, but that didn’t mean they couldn’t still take him with them.
His nearest safehouse was blocks away, and he wasn’t entirely sure he could make it that far, but an old memory surfaced. Safehouse would be an overly generous word for it, but it should still have a medkit and a couch from his early days back in Gotham, and it was only the next building over.
Climbing through the window after he disabled the security measures (wildly outdated, he’d have to get Tim on that), he collapsed onto the floor just inside as the world spun around him. Footsteps snapped him back into action, and he pulled a gun from it’s holster on his leg and trained it on the hazy figure a few feet away. The figure just brought her hands up in surrender, sharp brown eyes studying him faster than he could even track in his state.
“Whoa big boy, lower the gun, I can help,” Arm breaker said, not bothering to wait for him to move the gun before she moved quickly across the room and pulled a first aid kit from the cabinet, his first aid kit. Why the hell was she here?
“I’m staying here,” She answered as she set the medkit down by his head. Ah, he’d said that outloud. Bringing a hand up, he thought she might push away the gun still trained on her, now just inches from her head as she knelt at his side, but she just put a hand on his torso, feeling out the wound, strange.
“I’m gonna remove the body armor,” She said, not a question, just a firm announcement. He slid the gun back into its holster just before another wave of pain hit him and black tinged the edges of his vision.
“Didn’t realize this was somebody’s place, was empty, so I stayed.” Arm breaker spoke as she worked, likely an attempt to keep him focused and conscious, she certainly knew her field medicine, he’d think more about that later. She deftly found the seams and buckles of his armor, swiftly undoing them before peeling the main section off and setting it aside on the floor.
Ripping fabric, and everything seemed to blend and blur, and he just focused on the streetlights out the window, an ocean of colorful stars.
He swam back into full consciousness to realize she was stitching the wound shut, the only sounds the occasional snip of scissors and her humming some Frank Sinatra song.
Plastic gauze packets crinkled as she methodically pried them open, and then the soft tearing sound of medical tape as she finished covering the main wound. He dragged his focus off the open window and watched her as she sat back and studied him again. She’d left the helmet on, which he was thankful for, maybe she thought he was unconscious.
“Can’t leave you on the floor,” She spoke aloud, possibly to him, more likely for herself as she stood up and steadied herself. The limp was a bad ankle, he determined as he watched her adjust her stance. “Come on,” She nudged him lightly with her foot, “Then you can take a nice long nap on the couch, I assume you want to keep the helmet on so that means no concussion check.” So she knew he was awake.
She was stronger than she looked, he discovered as she helped him drag himself off the floor and into the next room, where he promptly dropped himself onto the couch with little regard for his injury. Whether he trusted her or not was still to be seen, but she wasn’t gonna be trying anything by the looks of it, and he needed to sleep, so he decided to waive the interrogation and just go straight to sleep.
When he woke up, it was at least noon, judging by the light that streamed into the room through the moth eaten, and probably bullet hole riddled, attempt at curtains. He looked around the room as he cracked his stiff neck, a by-product of sleeping with the helmet on. Arm breaker was nowhere to be seen, until there was movement in the doorway and she appeared, a water bottle and a bowl of something in hand.
Upon seeing him sitting up, awake, she tensed, then stepped into the room despite it. A dedicated caretaker then, as she brought the bowl and water over to him, holding them out wordlessly. In the bowl was clearly canned chili, but it had been heated, at least. Sorting out his thoughts, he observed her as he accepted the food and water and she left again, disguising her limp quite well.
Perhaps she had been a combat medic of sorts, it would suit her familiarity with firefights, the speed with which she’d removed his body armor, and skill with which she treated the wound meant practice, familiarity. But upon seeing her up close, she wasn’t nearly old enough for that formal training much less the experience she demonstrated. She was his age, if that.
A mystery, wrapped in a bundle of contradicting information. Tim would have a field day with her if he got wind of any of it. Jason decided he wouldn’t let him, wouldn’t bring the situation to his family unless he absolutely needed to, they were rabid when faced with a puzzle, and that’s precisely what arm breaker was, a puzzle, and he was going to figure out if the pieces spelled danger or not, right after he scarfed down the poor excuse for food.
She was sitting at a table in the next room, the breastplate of his body armor laid out on the table, alongside a few metal dishes and tools. Looking up, she seemed surprised, whether to see him up and about or without his helmet, he wasn’t sure. He still had his domino on, but he’d taken the helmet off to eat, and just decided to leave it off for now.
“Whoa what the hell are you doing with my armor?” He asked, taking a quick step forward, too quick a step. Bracing his hands against the table to support his weight, he heard metal rattling and looked down to see the dish of extracted shrapnel.
Focusing on arm breaker again, he waited for an answer, watching the way she froze. Her muscles tensed, but she’d clearly long since suppressed the urge to bolt from danger, instead her jaw flexed and something flashed through her eyes. Isa was right, they could be sharp, but they dulled considerably and she glanced down at the body armor on the table.
“I cleaned it.” Her accent briefly caught him off guard. It sounded so perfectly Gotham, like she’d been raised in Crime Alley, and he almost doubted himself, maybe she was a native, coming back, but who the hell would come back to Crime Alley once they’d escaped?
“You cleaned it,” He couldn’t keep the skepticism from his tone, but upon looking down, he realized she had done exactly that. Not a speck of dried blood, no viscera, just clean armor, if clearly damaged where he’d been injured.
A single sharp nod from her, and his thoughts drifted back to the combat medic idea. Maybe she just had a baby face. So, she’d cleaned it, but that didn’t explain the toolbox, filled with a worn collection of scavenged tools.
“I’m a mechanic.” She answered before he could ask, setting her jaw and looking up at him with eyes that dared him to argue. There, some personality, so he was headed in the right direction.
“Really?” He picked the stool that was most likely to hold his weight and sat down, “I’m not a machine, and you patched me up pretty well.”
“I specialize in machines,” She specified, clutching a small screwdriver in one hand but keeping her hands still and in clear sight on the table. “I picked up a skill, and used it to help you. I can remove the stitches if you don’t want them.”
“Nah, I kinda like to keep my internal organs, y’know, internal,” He said with a wave of his hand, “But thanks,” She was silent, and he gestured to the body armor, “So you’re, what, taking the chance to check out Bat tech? Tinker? Steal?”
“I cleaned it,” She ground out, “Then ensured all the surviving tech was operational, and was starting on repairs.” God she sounded like Tim, now he really couldn’t let them meet. Luckily, her Gotham accent was slipping, anger could have that effect, but he couldn’t quite pin down what accent hid beneath it.
“Don’t bother, I do my own repairs,” Despite having reconnected with his family, he liked to keep his job to himself, and they fussed too much when they found out about certain aspects of it, which his suit tended to give away. Tim was seriously too smart for his own damn good. She snorted.
“What?” He asked, a little more harshly than he meant to, given the way she stiffened and subtly curved in on herself, a common effort to appear smaller. Now he had a new question; who the hell had instilled that response in her? He adjusted his tone, just a bit, she didn’t seem like the type to take well to pity, “You have a better way to repair it?”
“Ideas,” She responded, voice monotone, and he internally cursed his sharp temper. Clearly she was tough, but the situation had to have her on edge. A vigilante crime lord coming in through the window in the middle of the night and bleeding all over the floor would be enough to make anybody a little stressed.
Now that he thought about it, he didn’t smell nearly enough blood in the room. Sure, he’d gotten used to the smell, but not that much, had he? Glancing over at the spot below the window where he was certain he’d collapsed the night before, he saw that there wasn’t a speck of blood on the floor. So that was the faint chemical smell. A neat freak, then, or a stress cleaner. A mechanic that had just ‘picked up’ combat medics skills, even for Gotham, that sounded odd.
“So, back at the diner, that stunt you pulled,” He regarded her, “Was that just, what? Another skill you picked up somewhere?”
“Yeah, actually,” Her eyes darted down to his neck for just a split second. The screwdriver clanked lightly against the other tools as she dropped it into the toolbox, then placed her hands back on the tabletop.
He wasn’t going to kill her, but she seemed to believe the jury was still out on it, making herself as little of a threat as possible. Half of it seemed like habit, the way she held herself, the hands always visible and now pointedly removing a possible weapon from the equation, and her focus had been on him since he’d entered the room, probably well before that, he’d put money on it. She was hypervigilant, competent, and secretive.
An idea came to mind, a truly terrible idea if he listened to the logic that sprung up to point out the flaws. But that voice of reason sounded a little too much like Bruce with his endless contingencies and resistances to change, and he was no contrarian (okay so maybe he was, but somebody had to be), but he refused to become his father.
“You need a job?”