dami/holly Who: Holly R and Damian W What: saving from a goon When: before Carnage Where: Gotham Warnings: bb!hooker, there will be mention. Violence.
Everyone she’d spoken to, journals and at that wedding had taken great care to tell her that this? Wasn’t her Gotham. And okay, the safe-house she’d committed to memory when she’d lifted the wrong wallet that one time, that wasn’t in the same place and there were different faces on the patches in the East End, different girls with different shadows lurking waiting to run her off a street that was taken, places that were a leetle bit more dangerous now than they used to be and places that were safe enough that she could curl up and take a nap.
But Gotham wasn’t people, and it wasn’t territories. It was the thick, soupy smog that rolled off the docks in the early morning, and the electric run of acknowledgment up her spine. It was not trusting the cops to be cops and the shadows to stay shadows, and that the East End would pulse slowly with people struggling with Gotham but still aware enough to know what to see and look for. It was watching your back when you ducked into alleys, and not being stupid enough to carry cash. It was moments where people were trying to carve out lives along with the corruption and the damage, the criminals and the madness and she wasn’t sentimental. But all of that? Was exactly the way she remembered it.
And this Gotham’s streets worked exactly the same way.
Without a pimp, it was more difficult. She leaned against the brickwork of the back-alley with the latest john beating a retreat back to his car and the tight, short lycra rucked high across her thighs and a kleenex in her hand. She was practical, short was easy access and easy clean up, and she wasn’t pretending to be anything but what she was, the short skirt over knee high stripes and a shirt cut down far enough in front that she was a walking advert, and a jacket over the top, with pockets for the rubbers and the stash of cash. (See? Practical).
But working the streets without someone there to watch your back? Hard. You picked the streets that weren’t taken, and you stuck together with the other girls out late, and when the scream broke, high and clear and panicked, Holly didn’t think. She peeled herself away from brickwork, and she ran in the direction of the girl’s shriek in the dark.
Damian knew that the protocol for being Robin was vastly different from being Batman. Instead of lurking in the shadows, he was there to be seen with his yellow cape and blood red vest. He was there to humiliate criminals that underestimated him and inspire younger people into believing that one day Gotham wouldn’t be Gotham. Damian accepted part of that. He never thought Gotham would change, that childhood dream was over, but he did want to make goons of all shapes and sizes fear him. He wanted to dismantle the mob by cutting open their operations like a dead swine. He wanted that piece of hope Grayson and Stephanie had tried to instill in him.
That’s why he was here. This street brewed crime and cops didn’t even bother trying to stop it anymore. Damian used to fixate, used to get upset about petty theft and prostitution, but he was older now and he knew how to prioritize. Surprisingly enough, he was mostly here to make the harmless criminals feel safer. To make them less likely to run or fight him if he came back here for a favor or information. That was something he had learned from Grayson and his father. Something he wouldn’t have bothered learning as a ten year old or a ten year old living in a teenager’s body.
The little bird couldn’t stop thinking about how glad he was to be here and not a child. The anger was still there, it would never go away, but it was no longer seething over his entire being.
He crouched on an overhead balcony made of rusted, rickety metal that threatened to fall apart the moment he swooped off it. Damian waited for trouble that was worth his time. Most people didn’t want do-gooders getting in the way of basic territorial signs of power. He was here for the freaks, for the people that no one knew how to deal with except other freaks. Damian watched and waited until an ex-clown thug wandered down the street. His face was smeared with makeup and he was carrying a bat covered in barbed wire. It reminded the little bird of an insect that was the last of its colony, wildly zigzagging and following orders that were long since dead.
The goon cackled something hellish. He was bored and looking to make someone bleed. Everyone could smell the crazy on him and tried to avoid him the best he could. But, the clown went right up to Holly and swung his bat back and forth in the air. “How much?” His eyes said danger, they said blood stains on the wall in the formation of a smile and Damian got ready to pounce.
She stuttered to a stop on sneakers. The scream? Was going to have to wait, because when they looked like that they weren’t going to stop coming at you and two was so not better than one when both of you were scared of what would happen next. This street was a curb-crawler’s paradise, there was a store across the way with the flitter of neon that said it was open late but the minute Bozo here looked in that direction, the lights? Flipped off. Nice. So much for everyone’s in it together Gotham.
“Too much,” she said, looking up and up, not at the look in his eyes that was danger in a back-alley and the reason so many Gotham girls chose a pimp and paying out most of their take for something that felt like safety. No, Holly watched the bat, danger wafted back and forth in front of her face. They were two streets away from the girls who had protection, two streets (far enough to not blur lines, close enough that if there was real trouble? She had a direction in which to run, she wasn’t stupid) but she wasn’t bringing Bozo with her. “I’m expensive. Way out of your price-range.” She smiled, lips curled into a brash mask over quickening fear: she fluttered her eyelashes in what she thought was a pretty good imitation of standard practice, with ice in her veins.
“But if you’re nice - are you nice? - and put the bat down, maybe I’ll give you something on the house.” Deal with the bat first. She’d figure out escape after.
The goon wasn’t nice. He practically drooled crazy and swung the bat again. “Come on. I thought you girls did wild. Don’t you like it wild?” The insanity stenched off him, the paint on his face made it look like his skin was melting and that barbed wired bat kept getting really close to her head. She wasn’t going to make it anywhere safe. This was a fight or flight and clown looked fast.
Robin made his choice and swooped down. His cape made a lot of noise, a woosh of military grade fabric that turned the goon’s head.
“I like it wild.” Robin muttered as he brandished his blades that glimmered under the amber Gotham light. The goon did his best Joker impression, a laugh that cracked like fire. He wanted a fight and that was more than fine with Robin. Everyone underestimated a 20-something in bright yellow, green and red. Especially idiot clown wannabees. That was how Robin needed it to go.
He didn’t wait for the clown to change his mind or use Holly as a hostage. Damian kicked the bat out of his hand, slashed him across the chest and then kicked the goon unconscious. It was all over in a matter of seconds and if she blinked, she’d miss it. “You okay?” Robin asked Holly, his voice surprisingly low and gravelly for a man dressed the way he was. The goon was grabbed by his slashed shirt and then wrapped up with rope to a nearby street post. People didn’t take kindly to a clown and Robin intended to let Gotham decide this idiot’s fate.
Wild? She did wild. Crazy wild. Stupid wild. Deliberate, danger-with-a-side-of-bat? Nope. Done. But Holly didn’t get a chance to explain the difference between the kind of wild she loved and the kind of wild she so did not (preferably? Four letter words) because somebody interrupted this dance and she was nothing if not grateful. The snap of the cape said incoming, with speed and she yelped. Backing the hell up and out of the way and maybe for a minute, what with the red and yellow and green, it looked like Bozo had a friend, but Bozo? Stayed lashed to a street post and the boy in the cape wasn’t exactly a little kid.
“Never better,” she said, voice wavering only a little and recovering in seconds. Weird, Gotham had weird, and it wasn’t exactly as if Gotham’s weird hadn’t come out of the dark before. Her Gotham? The weird was a little less obviously weird. She looked at Bozo, tied to the pole, head cocked. “It suits him. Can we leave? I’m good with leaving him there.” And then she looked at the guy in the bright suit, and lifted an eyebrow, all smirk as her heart stopped pounding hard enough to break a rib.
“Nice cape.”
“We can leave. Do you have somewhere safe to be?” Robin said with that boyscout echo that was not his own. It sounded more like how a cop had protocol to follow whether he liked it or not. But, Robin was dutiful and honestly didn’t want to leave her alone on the now deserted street. Who knew if there were other clowns were wandering around, following this one’s lead? Damian gave another look back at the passed out goon. He made a mental note to see if Joker’s gang still had any weight in the city.
Her comment about the cape caught his attention again and he looked at the yellow thing that was bright as rain galoshes. “It’s a target.” He explained and then suddenly felt the need to hop up on a light post or walk along a catwalk above her. Damian hated being on the ground while he was in costume and walking down the street? He hated that even more.
Did she have somewhere safe to be? Her Gotham wasn’t safe. Not even the people who could afford nice things and locks on doors were safe. She inched the lycra lower on her thighs with a pinch of finger and thumb and offered him a blithe smile. “No. Do you? I have a place, ” Holly allowed with a look at the clown lashed to the post, because Boy Scout might be all dressed up like a moving bullseye but that? Wasn’t going to hold forever and she didn’t want to be around when it broke.
There was an eyeroll from the tiny blond, “Of course it’s a target,” she said starting to walk. He could follow her or he could babysit Bozo, but now Holly wanted clean clothes and to pretend Bozo had never appeared at all. The night was so done. She’d never learned grace or slink, but she moved inside her own skin like she was comfortable being there and that? Was more adult than the boobs that had never come in. “You’re practically calling their names and begging them to come and say hello.” The blue eyes slanted sideways to his face behind the mask, “It’s very …boy wonder.”
Damian looked up and jumped up the brick wall to grab a nearby catwalk. He hanged and then flipped over, walking along the metal bars and steps above her. Sure the cape was a target, but he still felt the need to stick to the shadows. “Hah hah.” Damian rolled his eyes at the boy wonder thing and jumped to the next catwalk. “Attracting attention means Batman can get more work done. And, I don’t mind being underestimated by those ass clowns.” He said proudly and kept up with her lazily. He could have stayed with the clown mook, but seeing her home was important in that chivalrous way some young men felt the urge to be.
“Besides, look at you. No way to defend yourself. Do you have a switchblade on you at least? You can borrow one of mine.” Damian had so many knives on him it wasn’t even funny.
She watched the acrobatic display with a tilt of the chin and eyes too bright to be blase. And okay, that wasn’t cool but the jumping around thing? Was way more athletic than Holly could pull off and even she could appreciate a floor-show. Whoever Boy Wonder was, despite the lame cape and colors, he had power or he couldn’t flip around like that, and that was new Gotham, people who flanked the Bat like the shadows had tripled in size when the mob weren’t looking, and she was all in favor of tripping the mob up.
“I have a knife,” she said, because she’d been carrying a switchblade since she was five and the first asshole had taken her teddy-bear and shoved her in a direction and pointed, keep quiet, and smile and be good, when being good got you precisely nowhere in Gotham. The blade was worn, and dull but the handle had weight to it that she liked, and it was folded up and tucked in the elastic of her sock, ribbed up around her thigh. She produced it, a flick of bright metal beneath faint streetlight, and it danced out between her fingers and disappeared again, a party trick.
“And I know how to use it,” she said, all confidence and youth with a smile for the boy-scout who was so walking her home, even if he hadn’t said as much.
It was hard to believe that someone dressed the way Damian was could out knife anyone in this city, but he could. Ninja training plus years and years of constantly striving to be better. He was intelligent, sure, but that was never his real focus. Damian believed in honing his true skill: fighting. He watched her knife dance in her hand and rolled his eyes with a -tt that was lost in the sound of Gotham. “That’s something, I guess.” The littlest bat didn’t sound impressed, but he also wasn’t in the mood to test her theory of how good she was. He wasn’t in the mood to teach her new tricks, either.
“This is far enough.” Robin could see people again and it’d be easy for her to slip away safely without being cornered by another psychopath that night. “Do you have a journal? If you see any more clowns in this area, message me.”
Yeah, she got the distinct impression that you didn’t run around dressed like a target if you didn’t know what to do with a little attention. And the switchblade? That was for being cornered in a back-alley only, no tricks. Holly didn’t pick fights she couldn’t win. But she could hear voices, carefree enough that there were no asshole clowns close enough by to care for, and she smiled, trouble forgotten easily in the slant of her grin.
“I have a journal. What do I call you if Bozo shows up, Boy Wonder or Boy Scout?” The knife had gone, disappeared into worn elastic and striped socks hitched to her thighs and she looked like jailbait, like someone’s kid or someone’s niece and any number of someones’ dirty secret. She found gum from a pocket, and she folded a strip into her mouth with her tongue, and she grinned, wide and bright and mischief. “Or do you only white-knight part-time?”
“Robin.” Damian said simply and his eyes narrowed behind his mask in a way that was very Bat, despite the bright colors it was shrouded in. He thought she reminded him of someone feline and that disturbed him, knowing that were possibly two of them, three if he counted Helena. She wasn’t as wound up as Selina, though and that was a lot easier for Damian to be around. He was a serious little bat that needed people who took trouble much easier.
He didn’t say anything else and lifted his arm, shooting out a grapple hook into the smoggy sky before flying away.