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The Red Hood is an...interesting new player in Gotham. He first established himself with a body count high enough to make him the Bats' new priority, for all the good that had done their investigation. Hood's bloody opening gambit was also his first move in taking over the Crime Alley drug trade and eliminating Black Mask, extremely ambitious for a newcomer. The scary part was that it actually worked. He had Sionis so freaked the gangster thought it was a good idea to break the Joker out of Arkham.
And two days later, the Joker was found dead with a single gunshot wound through the center of his forehead.
Maybe Sionis actually being willing to go that far scared Red Hood in turn, because he eased off shockingly fast after that. He still controls a large portion of the drug trade in Gotham, all of Crime Alley, but his kill count has dropped drastically. And the people he does kill...
Dick can't pretend to disapprove of taking those people off the streets permanently. Bruce can, of course, but there is very little Bruce doesn't disapprove of, and those are usually all things Tim is doing. It hasn't been the case recently. Dick's baby brother has been avidly watching the Red Hood's activities since he came to town, for no particular reason Dick can see, but he's learned to take Tim's unexpected hyperfixations in stride. He's the one who informed Dick when the Red Hood stepped back further from being a crime lord and was quite obviously taking up a more vigilante role in the Alley. People he kills now are human traffickers, rapists, child abusers. Most of the latter two are cases where there's no other recourse besides Red Hood's form of help. Bruce would argue, of course, but in addition to disapproving of things, Bruce is also often wrong. The Bats couldn't have kept them in jail, with enough evidence or without it (and it was always without it), nor kept a close enough eye on every case to enforce a panopticon.
Naturally, this activity has brought Red Hood into contact or at least proximity to the Bats when they aren't trying to arrest him (which they really aren't anymore, since Red Hood now kills fewer people than the average mafia enforcer on the street). He still shoots at Batman (all nonlethal if any would have landed, which Dick knows for a fact they could have), freezes for a moment at the sight of Robin, and gives Nightwing an odd jerk of his head.
Dick starts picking up cases that will likely bleed into Crime Alley. Just out of curiosity.
Of course, Tim notices. Rather than criticize Dick for trying to make an ally out of a drug lord (honestly, Dick is surprised Tim didn't try befriending the Red Hood much earlier than this) he says something much worse, because it's Tim. "I think you should also know when you and I patrol together, sometimes he follows us. And just me a few times when it was a bad night," Tim tells him, like it isn't - like any of that isn't horrible information he should have disclosed immediately.
Once again, he's Tim, so Dick counts himself lucky he disclosed it at all.
"I don't think he follows you alone, though, I checked," Tim adds absently.
Dick pinches his nose in preparation, tragically aware of where he picked up the mannerism and unable to feel anything but retroactive sympathy. "How?"
Tim gives him that your-idiocy-astounds-me look that is so much worse than a normal fourteen-year-old's, and says, "Because I followed you, duh. And no one else was." He smiles. "I actually got some really great shots of you, Alfie mentioned blowing one up for the Cave."
With some difficulty, Dick sets his vanity aside. With significantly more difficulty, he sets aside the idea of Tim dressed as a civilian roaming the streets behind Nightwing while he, a vigilante of ten years' experience, was none the wiser and Tim was also risking an up close encounter with a murderous drug lord who might be stalking them all.
Then again, Tim obviously wouldn't see the last thing as a red flag.
Dick rubs his hand down his face rather than be too obvious by doing another patented Bruce™ nose pinch. "Civvies? What if the Red Hood was following me? What would you have done then?"
"Uh...wave?" Tim shrugs. "Unless he didn't notice me either, and I really doubt he would have," this is fair, since none of them detected Tim even before he was Bat-trained, so the Red Hood certainly wouldn't now unless Tim wanted him to - which itself is not out of the question but Dick has to hold on to some sanity here, "so I'd get pictures of him, too!"
"Those aren't going up in the Cave," Dick says for lack of any other response to that. He's honestly grateful he didn't know about all of this when Tim actually was a tiny defenseless child armed with nothing but his camera and blithe disregard for danger, because he'd be unable to prevent himself from burritoing his baby brother in pillows and bubble wrap.
Tim rolls his eyes. "I didn't get any, because he isn't following you."
Of course the kid is correct about that, but it doesn't matter, because Nightwing does start running into Red Hood a lot. A few of those Crime Alley-adjacent cases do pan out, and Nightwing starts crossing over into Hood's territory sometimes. He might summarily kick him out, especially if he's already onto this part of the case, or he might...chat.
"Hey, Dickwing," Hood says through his vocoder. "Busted outta the bird cage?"
"I'm here on a case, Hood," Nightwing says evenly. "Fourteen eight-year-old boys-"
"Are currently being held in a shipping container down at Tricorner Docks, I know. I was just on my way there."
Nightwing hadn't actually gotten that far before he came to investigate in the Alley tonight. He gives Hood his sunniest grin. "Mind if I tag along?"
His snort is audible through the vocoder. "Like you'd listen to me if I said no."
Nightwing's grin doesn't falter, and soon the crime lord and the former Robin are sailing over the rooftops. Nightwing can't help noticing how strangely in sync they are, the way they swing their grapples and leap across roofs. Hood's are more controlled and less graceful (and he never adds so much as a cartwheel, the nerd) but his rhythm matches perfectly with Nightwing's, the way Batman's and Robin's do.
They arrive at the shipping yard and Nightwing doesn't have time to think about it anymore. "Okay," Hood says. "Mission right now is just free those kids and get em somewhere safe - not somewhere else they'll just be trafficked - but if we see any of the motherfuckers who are doing this, I ain't sending em to jail."
"Didn't imagine you would," Nightwing murmurs, and doesn't miss how the red helmet in his peripheral vision tilts his way. "Go on three?"
"Three," Hood says, and drops down.
Nightwing finds himself responding with no more annoyance than an eye roll before he follows.
When it's all cleaned up - kids sent to Hood-approved shelters, only the one trafficker guarding the door dead, shh don't tell Bruce - Nightwing holds out a hand to Hood. "Good working with you," he says honestly.
Hood scoffs and looks down, and Nightwing can imagine him scowling self-consciously under that helmet. The action reminds him of Tim, or Jas... "I guess I can say the same, Bird Brain."
"Is it really so hard to call me Nightwing?" he asks, bemused.
"Yes," Hood answers gravely, making Nightwing laugh.
"God, that's just like how my brother couldn't -" Dick's voice cuts off.
Hood is quiet. "You mean the little Robin?"
"No, I, um." Nightwing makes a gesture to wave this off. "Sorry. Forget I said anything."
"Barely bothered to remember in the first place," Hood says flippantly. "G'night, dickface." Only long practice prevents him from reacting to it like he's heard his civilian name.
"Oh, come on!" Nightwing calls after him as he swings away. "What did I do to deserve that one?" His only answer is Hood's laughter, unobscured by a vocoder, carrying back through the night.
When Dick gets back to the Cave, Batman and Robin have already returned from their patrol. Tim is doing a cooldown routine on the mats while Bruce has become one with the Batchair. He approaches his adoptive father first, still unsure how to explain the way his mission just played out.
But Bruce speaks first. "Nice work on that trafficking case tonight, chum. Some of the children have families who'll be getting them back soon."
The light glancing off Hood's chromed helmet flashes through Dick's mind. "Check out the families," he says immediately. "We don't know who may have trafficked those kids in the first place."
Bruce's face grays. "Good thinking. I'll get on that. Nothing else to report about freeing them?"
"Nope!" Dick lies brightly. "Nothing."
He meanders over to the only other person he knows who can lie to Batman. And for Dick it's a skill he's only acquired since becoming Nightwing. Tim has been lying to Bruce since the day they met. And the kid keeps all his secrets locked up tighter than a Justice League detention cell. Hell, if Dick remembers correctly, a few months ago Tim designed a new Justice League detention cell.
Usually that's a bad thing for Tim, but right now it's a good thing for Dick. He plops down on the mats to begin his own cooldown next to his baby brother.
In a low voice, pitched just so to avoid the strange way sound echoes through the Cave, Dick fills Tim in on how the bust really went.
Tim frowns at the end, thoughtful. "He kept calling you...nicknames?"
"Yeah!" Dick complains. "Well, no. Insults mostly. He called me a dick twice and a couple of bird ones."
"Huh," Tim says. "Do you think you'll work with him again?"
Dick shrugs. "If the opportunity arises, sure."
It does.
Nightwing's narcotics case out of the Diamond District somehow leads to the very heart of Crime Alley, where Nightwing helps Hood break up the rogue operation that sprang up in his territory. Hood is mostly recruiting, not shooting, until they reach the boss-looking one who sees Red Hood and Nightwing and immediately confesses to being the one demanding they sell fentanyl to middle schoolers.
Without waiting for a cue Nightwing wanders over to examine the merchandise stored here. He hears the gunshot, but he can honestly say he has no idea what it was aimed at.
He's not quite expecting a clap on the shoulder from Hood, but doesn't flinch. It feels... familiar, in a way he can't grasp.
"Alright, Golden Boy, my guys are gonna be here to handle this, so you better fly away home."
"Golden Boy?" Dick says in a strangled voice.
Hood waves this off. "Yeah, like, the gold standard vigilante. You don't want to watch all the crimes happening," he says with a knowing smirk in his voice. How can Dick hear that? That's not something you hear, and yet it's all he can picture underneath the red helmet.
"Right," he says hoarsely. "I'll leave you to it."
He doesn't tell Tim about that one, but not because of the crimes.
Next time, it's the Tricorner Docks again, intercepting a shipment of diamonds that are actually crystalline anthrax.
"They're so shiny, though," Nightwing laments. Yes he is the son of a billionaire and could buy enough shiny real diamonds (ethically sourced ones, even!) to fill an Olympic swimming pool and pretend he's Katie Ledecky, but Dick has always longed for the world's forbidden fruits.
The one time Dick has ever been glad Jason was dead is when people were eating those edible-looking bath bombs, because Jason would have dared Dick to try eating one himself, and Dick would have absolutely done it, and then they'd all have been very sad. Dick because he ate glitter soap, Jason because Dick made him eat some too, and Bruce because these are his children.
Dick is drawn out of his painful daydream by Hood's gloved fingers snapping in front of his face. "Hey, dick-for-brains," he snaps. "Anybody in there?"
Hearing that not-nickname startles Dick badly at that moment. Red Hood seems to pause for a moment. "If you're not one hundred percent tonight, I don't really need help on the rest of this op," Hood says, almost gently, or gently as he can with the mechanized voice.
"Sorry," Dick rasps. "Yeah, I'm - my head's not in the game tonight, Hood. Sorry."
"S'no problem," Hood replies breezily. "Fly on back to the nest, Big Bird."
"It's a cave, actually," Dick blurts out.
Red Hood pauses again. "Birds don't belong in caves."
Dick gives him a weak smile. "That's why we always come out and fly."
Back at the aforementioned Cave, Dick tells the other bird in there about the team-up and the latest nickname insult. He can't stop musing on the strange familiarity he feels with Red Hood, and absently says as much to Tim. He doesn't notice the way the boy's face goes pale and his eyes go bright.
"He's Jason."
The way he keeps triggering memories Dick believed buried. How synchronized they are across the rooftops.
"Dick?"
And all those nicknames! Each one twangs on a heartstring Dick thought snapped.
"Dick, he's Jason."
He'll have to keep himself together enough to spend more time working with Hood and figure out why the hell Dick feels like he knows him, and vice-versa. "What were you saying, Tim?" he asks, turning back to his brother.
Tim looks at him. "I was wondering what other substances could be converted into a crystalline matrix for camouflage."
"Oh, yeah, you should talk to Bruce about that..."
He works with Red Hood more and more often, enough that it almost makes him wonder if Hood is also trying to work with him. Maybe he feels the weird connection, too?
"Basic arms dealing," Hood informs him when they're standing one rooftop over from his bust that night. "Except their main buyer is Black Mask."
"So you brought me into a territorial dispute?" Nightwing says, more amused than he should be.
Hood rolls his eyes. He can't see them but he knows he does. "If you wanna call it that, sure. I prefer 'keeping Crime Alley as safe as I can make it'."
"Fair enough," Dick says mildly. They approach the skylight they will crash down through. Honestly, who always replaces the glass in these. Who keeps installing these. "On three?"
This time, when Hood says 'three' immediately, Nightwing jumps with him.
The momentum from his drop lets Nightwing take out his half of the goons without his feet ever touching the floor. He flies from arms dealer to arms dealer.
Hood has taken his down in a similar if more heavy-handed way. He doesn't need to kill arms dealers, even if they are selling to Sionis. "Nicely done, Big Wing," he says appreciatively.
"Back at ya, Little Wing," Dick replies, happily and without the slightest thought.
They both freeze.
Dick can feel his heartbeat in his face and his palms going clammy. All their interactions, the strange response Dick has to him, the mannerisms, the half a dozen other nicknames, ones with his name -
"Little Wing?" he whispers. "Jay? Is that you?"
Hood curses, just once, and takes off his helmet.
"Hey, Dickhead," Jason says.
Dick's feet leave the ground once more as he hurls himself across the warehouse at his little brother. His Little Wing. He clutches him tight, or as tight as he can. Seeing Hood's height and bulk and realizing that's his Jaybird now is jarring, but he clings on anyway. "It's you, it's really you, isn't it?"
"It's really me," Jason says. "The baby bird already made me take a DNA test and ran all kinds of checks. I'm me, one hundred percent bona fide Jason."
"Baby bird?" Dick splutters. "You mean - Tim? Tim knows?"
"I'm pretty sure that kid knows everything, all the time. He figured it out weeks ago and apparently decided you wouldn't believe him, so he came and found me - found my own actual goddamn apartment, what the fuck - and did all that shit to verify my identity and then he asked why I wasn't telling you the truth and even about the nicknames." He starts snickering. "We agreed it was much funnier to see how long it took you to figure out on your own."
Ah. Tim's little punishment for not listening to him, clearly.
"Well, now I have," Dick says finally. "What about Bruce? Also, please stop shooting at him. It makes it really awkward when I have to admit you helped me on a case."
Jason tosses his head dismissively. "Even if one of my shots went wide and actually hit him - which it wouldn't - I only do it with guns of too low caliber to penetrate the suit. Hasn't B noticed that?"
"Not really," Dick says. "He just thinks you can't get high enough caliber weapons for whatever reasons, which, they would need to be very high, so it's not a totally unreasonable assumption. You know, for him."
"All of my other guns are at least that high," Jason deadpans. "But, I think I will stop shooting at him now."
"And what? Just come home and tell him the truth?" Not that Dick even knows it yet himself. He has a feeling he won't enjoy that conversation, so for now he's just embracing the miracle. Literally, he still hasn't let go of Jason completely.
"Of course not." Jason grins the shit-eating grin Dick terribly missed. "I'm gonna see how many times I have to call him 'old man'."
Dick cackles. "You'll be waiting a while."
"Maybe I'll throw a few 'Dad's in there to give him a fighting chance. Or Timmers will probably make me put him out of his misery eventually," Jason sighs.
"How long do you think you could have fooled Tim?"
Jason gives him a deadpan look. "Timbo figured me out just by hearing about me from you and my Crime Alley activities. The time would be exactly zero seconds."
Baby bird, Timmers, Timbo... "Ha! You won't call Tim by his name either!"
"Correct," Jason drawls. "It's brother privilege. Now let's get out of here. Come on, Dickiebird." He shoots his grapple and swings off.
Grinning, Dick follows. "Right behind ya, Jaybird."