Arabella | Red Hood and Batgirl | Zero Year Flashback

Jason hated domestic crimes. 

There was the inherent deplorableness of them, men hurting those weaker than themselves. There were the memories of Willis Todd tossing his son across the room when he stepped in front of his mother, at age three. He’d broken his arm then. Catherine had cried over his crumpled body until Willis left, off to get shitfaced before returning to pass out in a heap against the deadbolted front door.

He wasn’t good at handling hysterical women and children, and even in the cases where they were semi-calm, they were loathe to trust him immediately after Jason had put a stop to the man (or men) who had hurt them. He was just too big, too rough around the edges. He lacked a polish, an inherent trustworthiness that connected him with victims.

It was with that mindset that the Red Hood was standing above the Batsignal on the Major Crimes building, watching as the light cut through fog and smog, casting a purple light onto a low flying cloud. Purple, because he wasn’t looking for the lesser Batman tonight. A five eighths thick sheet of plum colored plexiglass was clamped onto the spotlight, and the result was a distinctly different type of call for help. 

If everything worked according to plan, Batgirl would show up.

Eighteen hours earlier, Jason had received a call from Ilya Katsalapov, the CEO of Redstone Security, and one of Jason’s oldest and closest friends. His brother-in-law, Boris Ilyinykh, had a daughter who hadn’t been heard from in three days. In Gotham, that meant you were dead. However, the girl had been involved with some Russian mobsters lately, some kid she’d been seeing. Boris didn’t know his name, just that his father had been big in the Dimitrov family. They were a nasty group, making their bones on human trafficking and the sex trade. Foul play was always suspected when they were involved.

Normally, Jason would have asked one of the Outlaws to back him up, but Kory wasn’t exactly patient when it came to human traffickers. If it were up to her, she’d go in guns-hands, really-blazing, and level their hideout in Uptown. Roy would do whatever she said. Besides, they were new at the vigilante game, and Jason had been itching to see Batgirl again. Their last meeting had ended a little darker than he’d intended, and he’d been trying without avail to run into her in the seven or so weeks following that.

So, with a basic lead about where the Dimitrovs kept their slaves, the Red Hood waited in the shadow of the Bat, hand on his revolver at the small of his back. Ready, watching, waiting.