The Struggle {ON PERMANENT HIATUS}

Chapter Six, "I've always had a thing for lunatics in leather."

“Hey, Red! Eyes on the prize!” Her voice whispered to me through our comms link, knowing I’d lost concentration while we were planning our attack. Sometimes my hatred for these kind of people consumed me.

“I’m focused.”

“Well good, cause I’m not. I mean, I know that guy is dealing, but damn! That shirt is working hard against those abs!”

I didn’t laugh. This wasn’t a game, or a teenage sleepover, or the playground. This was real life. One decision was all it took. One bad decision could end one of our lives. One good decision could stop that eighteen year old gang banger  from dealing to twelve year old kids who steal from off licences, post offices and small convenience stores to buy crack mixed with crushed glass, talcum powder and god knows what else. 

These kind of people made my skin crawl. 

These kind of people were destroying Gotham. 

These kind of people killed my mother.

“He’s the enemy, ‘Kenzie. You either get your head into the game or I’ll send you packing. Got that?” I whispered, but I knew she’d understand the authority in my voice.

I had been doing this longer than she had. Harleen Quinzel, codename Mackenzie, was a blonde sixteen year old; the same age I started donning a costume to fight the darkness that consumed the night. So she acknowledged my seniority and authority and didn’t complain at being told what to do by someone who was only two years older. 

She was my partner, mostly because she would get herself killed otherwise, and because we made a good team, most of the time, also because she hated the title ‘sidekick’.

“What’s the guy’s name anyway? And why are we targeting him, in particular? There are thirty seven drug dealers dealing in the Narrows tonight, and there’ll be more tomorrow.”

“He was a friend.”

“Of yours? You have other friends? I mean, here I was thinking I was special! How is a drug dealer friends with Gotham’s beloved masked hero?” She questioned, her strong Brooklyn accent asked me.

“Even the best of us can be deceived.”

“What’s his name?” She asked me, her voice softer as she understood the sadness in my voice.

“Fletcher. Joel Fletcher.”

……………………………….................................................................................................................................

I stood on the same rooftop where I had stood all those years ago, glaring down at my ex-friend who had turned drug dealer. I had always thought we were on the same page; we had both wanted a fair, just legal system, a city that didn’t belong to the corrupt and the dangerous, and justice for the people we had lost. His little sister had been brutally knifed to death when she was ten. 

I found out that he was the dealer when I’d been beating the snot out of a junkie. I needed information, so why not go to a customer. Sometimes I wish I hadn’t. Fletch was my best friend. I’d never had romantic feelings for him, mainly because I had been with Oliver at the time, and I had loved him.

I had sent Fletch away. When me and Harleen had done what she liked to call ‘a vigilante arrest’, I sent him away instead of to the police station. I made sure he got himself a new name, a new place to live far away from Gotham and that he got help. I haven’t spoken to him since that day, and he’ll never know it was me that was the girl under the mask.