Chapter Text
Dana Winters was sixteen years old when her sister died in front of her in a robbery gone wrong. She hadn’t been Dana Winters then, of course. She was David Walker, the son of two long-dead tech millionaires, tragically forced to live with his estranged older sister from age five. It had been easy to fake David’s death and take Dana’s identity.
Dana’s coworkers noticed, of course, when she showed up at work fourteen years younger with a scratchy voice and shaggy, barely grown-out hair. But Gotham was Gotham, and none of them were going to acknowledge it if Dana—the new Dana—didn’t. They showed her how to work the cash register.
Dee—the old Dana—certainly didn’t need to work, especially not at a convenience store. She and Dana had inherited more than enough money to live lavishly forever if they so pleased. But Dee liked it. The routine. Feeling useful. She’d always hated the Walkers’ money. If it weren’t for Dana, Dee would be living in some studio apartment in the Village with the other hippies and artists and bohemians. That was always her crowd. It’s why she changed her name—Winters, to be more connected to nature, and Dana, meaning “God is my judge”. Dee had explained to Dana once that her old name, Liat, meant “you belong to me”, and Dee belonged to no one but herself. No one could judge her but God. Too bad for Dee and her hippie friends, she was saddled with a kid, and their parents’ will explicitly said they had to stay in the mansion in Crest Hill.
Dana hardly remembered her parents, but Dee did everything a parent should have done. To lose her was like losing a mother more than losing her mother had been.
Dana buried Dee’s body in the backyard. It would have been hard, was she not so strong. The earth was heavy and wet with rain, and it took all the muscle she’d built up to dig a grave ten feet deep. She planted flowers over it. Forget-me-nots. Dana would never forget. Dee, with her bottle-blonde hair and her paint-stained fingertips and the overalls she was always mending. She was unforgettable. Like a ray of light in the darkness. Dana would do everything she could to be that light.
Back to the original point— it isn’t hard to steal an identity. Some frantic, panicked phone calls to banks and credit card companies and government agencies saying she’d forgotten her email and her account number and all manner of other things, and suddenly Dana had access to everything she could possibly need to live as a thirty-year-old woman. She didn’t need to handle any documents, really, she was rich enough to have people to do that for her. Everything could be handled digitally or over the phone these days, so there was no need for anyone to see her in person and get suspicious, either. She figured some day or another Dana Winters would need to show up for something, but by then she’d have grown her hair out, trained her voice, learned to do Dee’s heavy makeup, and gotten her hands on a consistent supply of E, whether it was through a legal route or not.
Faking a death is even easier than stealing an identity. Having been five years old at the time of the Walkers’ deaths, David had not inherited anything, and therefore there was no appointment with a lawyer to Dana to go to about what to do with the money. Everything belonged to Dee, and Dee was Dana, and David was Dana was Dee. David didn’t have any friends at school, and it was easy to message all his friends online telling them that he had died. David just… faded away. No one reported his disappearance, and no one investigated the death certificate that just showed up one day courtesy of Dana’s less-than-expert Photoshop skills.
The first time Dana was working while the convenience store got robbed was less than a week after Dee died. The second time was three days after that. The third time was the very next day. The place was hemorrhaging money and most of the employees were terrified. Apparently, this was a regular occurrence. Tonight, Dana was walking up the street on the way to the store, ready to work the night shift, when she spotted the same assholes from the last few times. They were wearing those dumb ski masks, and they had their knives out, and—and Dana was pissed, okay? She wouldn’t have done it if she wasn’t so mad. She was behind them, and she ran up as quickly and as quietly as possible, and she jumped on one of their backs, and it was like dominos. She heard crunching sounds, like bones breaking, as she hit and kicked him. The other guys ran, she thought. She wasn’t paying attention to them. She was paying attention to this guy’s nose breaking as she punched him over and over again. He was laying on the ground, begging, pleading for her to stop. She wasn’t listening. She only let up when the cries stopped. She checked for a pulse. Still alive. Heart still beating. Finally, she stood up, and spoke to him for the first time.
“Stay away from my fucking store,” Dana said, as loud as she could manage. It was hardly more than a whisper.
She went inside and clocked in for her shift.
It felt good to hurt someone like that. Like how Dee had been hurt. Like how it felt like Dana had been hurt.
Dana wasn’t about to start running around fighting monsters like the Batman did. Him and his weird kid sidekick. But maybe—maybe the real monsters were all around her. Maybe that’s who she could fight.
She lasted a month doing her thing alone, beating up drug dealers and thieves and murderers and depositing them on the doorsteps of the police station or the hospital, depending how bad it was, before someone took notice. She was standing on a street corner, about to take a bite of an apple she’d bought at a fruit stand down the street earlier that day, when she heard someone say “You should really wear a mask, you know.”
“Jesus!” Dana jumped, and nearly dropped her apple. That was a close one. She looked over and— damnit. Robin. The Girl Blunder. “What are you doing here?”
Robin smiled, revealing a chipped front tooth and—God—dimples. Illuminated by the yellow streetlight, Dana could see her hair, falling in dark waves that perfectly framed her face. “I’m the welcome wagon for new heroes. If you give me your address, I’ll send you a muffin basket.” Robin winked—or Dana thought she did. She couldn’t really see through the lenses of the mask, but her cheek crinkled up in the way that a person’s does when they wink.
Dana snorted. “Nice try, but you’re not getting me that easy.” She took a bite of her apple.
A couple seconds of silence passed before Robin asked her “What do you call yourself?”
The question made no sense. Why not just ask her name? “Dana.”
Robin smirked. Asshole. “You need a better code name.” Oh, that’s why.
“Dana could be my code name. My first name could be something entirely different,” Dana said, just to be annoying.
“But it’s not, is it? Your first name’s really Dana.”
“...Yeah. And I’m not a hero. I’m just doing what’s right. Or something.” Dana took a second bite. It wasn’t good. They were out of Honeycrisp, so she’d had to get Red Delicious. Delicious, her ass. This was not delicious. It was mealy and flavorless, like eating coffee grounds in a leather glove. “You guys are busy fighting Clayface and Two-Face and— and other faces, I guess, and meanwhile there’s twenty robberies every night that you aren’t catching that the cops don’t care about. Something’s gotta give, you know?”
Robin hesitated. “We’re just three people. The villains are big threats.”
“And the criminals aren’t?”
Dana could hear Robin breathing, and the cicadas singing loud, and the distant honking of cars a few blocks away. The city was so loud sometimes, and she hardly remembered living out in the country with her parents, but she remembered it being much quieter. Or at least having much nicer sounds. Still cicadas, but crickets too, and owls, and frogs. When was the last time Dana saw a frog? Forever ago. Probably six months ago, when she was at a classmate’s house for a partner project, they kept a frog as a pet. A White’s tree frog, they’d explained. One of the best frogs to keep as a pet. They’d let Dana hold it. It was slimy. “That’s why there’s people like you,” Robin finally said. “Me and Batman and Batgirl deal with the big guys while you, like, hold down the fort and stuff.”
“Batman and Batgirl and I,” Dana corrected, without thinking.
Robin rolled her eyes. “Whatever. Either way— I’m kinda glad you’re doing this. Even though Batman’s kinda pissed. He really sent me here to tell you to stop. But I was thinking, y’know, maybe I could train you, or something. So you could be safer. You’re strong and all, but you’re sloppy. I’ve seen you.”
“What, are you stalking me or something? Enough to know how I fight? Listen, man, I’m not a part of your little club.” Belatedly, she remembered that she was supposed to be thirty years old. “I don’t need a kid to train me, besides.”
“A kid? Me?” Robin scoffed. “How old’re you, sixteen? You’re barely older than I am.”
“I’m thirty,” Dana insisted. “And I’m perfectly capable of training myself. I’ve been going to the gym every day since I was a teenager. I’m plenty strong, and I’m plenty good at fighting. I—I take karate classes. Once a week.” A lie.
Robin raised her eyebrows. “Yeah? Karate? Wanna show off some moves?”
“...No. I have to go. I have work tomorrow.” Another lie. Dana put her helmet on and hopped on her motorcycle—people who are legally thirty-year-olds can buy motorcycles!-and waved goodbye before Robin said anything else. She’d probably given her enough info to figure out her identity, but she didn’t particularly care. Maybe she’d get that muffin basket after all.