Bad Things
It was all his fault.
If he hadn't been frightened by the actors, if he hadn't been such a baby, if he hadn't insisted that they leave, if he hadn't just stood there and watched… A thousand what ifs and if onlys ran through his head in the time it took for the police to take him from the alleyway to the chair he sat in now, but none of them would bring his parents back.
Thomas and Martha Wayne were dead, and it was all Bruce's fault.
"Did you do something bad?"
Bruce looked up from staring down at his father's jacket to see a young blonde girl standing with her hands tucked behind herself, her back leaning against the closed office door as she stared at him with curious eyes. Her question would have been innocent enough if it hadn't sounded suspiciously like his conscience. "What?"
"This is the room where they put the bad people," she clarified with a shrug before repeating her question. "Did you do something bad?"
Instead of answering her question, unable to give her one even if he wanted to, Bruce fidgeted in the chair as he deflected. "You're in this room too. Did you do something bad?"
"I asked you first," she reasoned.
Damn, that was some impeccable logic right there. "I didn't try to," he settled on saying. "Everyone says that I didn't, but I'm not really sure."
Despite the vagueness of the answer, the girl nodded as if it made perfect sense. Bruce looked back at the jacket in his hands, his grip growing impossibly tighter as he relived the incident in his head for the hundredth time that night.
"I'm sorry."
When Bruce looked up again at the girl interrupting his thoughts, he saw that she had moved away from the door to stand at the edge of the desk he sat by. Her hands folded together on top of the dark wood as she propped her chin on the back of them, her eyes that were an unnerving shade of green piercing his. "What do you have to be sorry for?"
The girl pursed her lips, tilting her head so that her cheek rested on her hands. "I'm sorry that something bad happened to you." She must have seen the confused look Bruce gave her, because she motioned next to her eyes before explaining. "When bad things happen to people, they get this sad look on their face. It's a little different on different people, but mostly they all look the same."
Bruce was very quickly growing uncomfortable with how much this stranger was learning about him in such a short time, especially when he felt so vulnerable. Again, he chose to reverse the situation. "You never answered my question," he said. "Did you do something bad?"
The girl shook her head, lowering her eyes from his for the first time since entering the room as she tapped her fingers against the desk. "They don't only put bad people in here. Sometimes they put the people that the bad things happen to in here."
"You thought I was bad."
"I asked if you did a bad thing," she corrected him with a finger pointed directly at him. "I didn't ask if you were a bad person. It's different."
"You still haven't answered my question."
The girl huffed slightly, rolling her eyes at his persistence. "No, I didn't do anything bad."
"Then did something bad happen to you?" Bruce guessed, wondering if she was in a situation similar to his. He hoped not. Nobody deserved to be in a situation similar to his, let alone a girl who looked to be at least two years younger than him with bags under her eyes and thin, frail limbs.
The girl shrugged in response, paying more attention to her fidgeting fingers than Bruce's gaze on her. "Detective Finch said that a bad thing happened when he came to my house. He said that my mom shouldn't have done what she did, and that we had to come here so they could talk to her. I wanted to stay at home, but Detective Finch said that it wasn't safe at my house. He said that I have to stay here until they figure out what to do with my mom."
"What did your mom do?"
"She killed my dad."
Bruce instinctively leaned away from the girl, his back pressing further into the rough material of the office chair. She had said it so casually, as if mentioning that it was another cloudy day in Gotham. He wasn't really sure what to say, so he chose to say what everyone else – including her – had said to him. "I'm sorry."
The girl shook her head, waving her hand dismissively. "Don't be. I'm glad she did it. He wasn't a very good dad."
It wasn't until then that Bruce seemed to notice the colorful blotches dotted about the girl's arms. Most of the bruises were almost completely healed, the yellow blending with her skin tone. He wondered for a moment if there were more hidden beneath her clothes – if her father had hurt her in places he couldn't see.
"Doing a bad thing doesn't make you a bad person," the girl said, repeating her earlier sentiment. "My dad was a bad person, so my mom made sure he couldn't hurt us anymore. Killing is bad, but if you only do bad things to bad people, does that make you bad? Mommy isn't bad…"
Her eyebrows knit together as she mumbled, so quietly that Bruce wasn't sure if she was even talking to him anymore. It wasn't until her lower lip started to tremble that he chose to intervene.
"It's okay," he said a tad louder than he had meant to, repeating what at least a dozen people had said to him that night. The girl startled at his sudden volume, but at least he had sufficiently distracted her. "Don't be scared. You're okay."
The girl's pinched expression remained the same, her lips pouting as she looked up at him through her dark eyelashes. "It isn't okay. A bad thing happened. How is that okay?"
"Everyone keeps saying that things are okay. All night, the first thing people have said to me is that it's okay or it's going to be okay. Even though something bad happens, things are still okay."
The longer he spoke the clearer the girl's expression became, her previous worried frown quickly being replaced by a sincere smile. "Well, that's silly. You don't actually believe them, do you?"
"I don't know. Things don't feel okay, but… maybe they should?" What was meant to be a statement came out more like a question, as Bruce himself was still unsure as to why everyone would claim that things were okay when they very clearly were anything but okay.
The girl stared at him blankly for a moment before moving once more, standing now on the opposite end of the desk from him as her fingers traced the nameplate on the front. "You never told me about the bad thing that happened to you."
"You didn't ask."
"I'm asking now."
Bruce sighed, his head thumping against the back of the seat. What an exasperating little girl. He didn't want to talk about what had happened – not again. He had already repeated it so many times to so many people… But she had told him what happened to her. It seemed only fair that he should share his story as well.
"My parents died," he whispered, hoping she wouldn't ask him to elaborate. The words that he had been forced to repeat over and over again stuck in his throat, choking him with tears on the brink of being shed once more.
The girl chewed thoughtfully on the inside of her cheek for a moment, her nose scrunching up as she mulled over his words. "My mom tells me that it's okay to be sad sometimes," she began slowly, carefully considered each word before saying it out loud. "She said that it's okay to be mad, or scared. Things don't always have to be okay, as long as we remember that they'll always be okay later. Does that make sense?"
Bruce wasn't given the chance to answer before the office door opened once more, a man whose badge read Detective Gordon stepping into the room. Bruce recognized him as one of the officers who had picked him up in the alley and brought him back here.
"Katrina," Gordon sighed when he spotted the young girl attempting to hide from view by ducking beneath the desk. "I thought I told you to wait for me in the other room."
"It was loud out there," she argued, pointing out the windows. "All those people came in with their cameras and microphones. I just wanted to find somewhere quiet to wait – honest!"
Gordon's lips pressed into a thin line before releasing another sigh. He turned to Bruce then, his expression falling into one that matched every other person who had seen him that night. "Come on, Katrina," he said to the young girl, holding his hand out for her to take. "Let's get you back before the social worker thinks you've gone missing. I'm sorry if she bothered you, Bruce."
Bruce just shook his head as he watched Katrina latch onto Detective Gordon's hand, allowing him to pull her away from the desk. As Gordon opened the door, she glanced back at Bruce over her shoulder with a small smile and a wave goodbye.
The door closed after Gordon telling Bruce that he would be right back, leaving him alone once more with his thoughts. The jacket in his lap felt as heavy as ever, but for some reason, his heart no longer felt like it had jumped into his throat in an attempt to strangle him. It still hurt, but in a way that was almost bearable.
Katrina. The things she said made sense to him in a way that nobody else was able to explain. They didn't take his pain away, but made it okay for him to feel that pain. She didn't tell him that everything was okay, but made him believe that one day it might be.
After only a short conversation with the girl, Bruce found himself wanting to talk to her again. Detective Gordon hadn't mentioned her last name, and Bruce was sure he had never seen her before. Did she go to his school? Did she live in Gotham Heights? Could he see her again soon?
Unfortunately for him, the answer to all three of those questions was a resounding no.
Katrina Scott, a six-year-old resident of the Narrows, most certainly did not attend the same expensive private school Thomas and Martha Wayne had sent Bruce to attend. Her parents weren't doctors or debutantes or owners of enterprises. Her previously-abusive-now-deceased father had unsurprisingly worked for none other than the mob boss Falcone, albeit at a level so low that the big man had undoubtedly never even heard the name Joseph Scott. Her soon-to-be-incarcerated mother was unemployed after being laid off from Arkham Asylum, where she had worked as a desk clerk with a nametag that read Candace Scott.
No, Katrina Scott most certainly did not come from the same world as Bruce Wayne – in fact, she could not have been born under more different circumstances than the Prince of Gotham if she had tried – and the two of them would not meet again anytime soon. That wasn't to say that they would never see each other again, however.
Given enough time, two people who were thrust into the world of orphanhood on the same night, who met by chance in a darkened office to escape the reality that awaited them, who had a mutual friend in the detective that held a soft spot for broken children, and who had a brief conversation that neither would soon forget, were bound to meet again.
I really shouldn't be posting this story since I have two other WIPs, but I just couldn't resist. After re-watching Batman Begins the other day I couldn't get this idea out of my head, and well... Here we are. Although I'll touch on the movies in a few chapters, this story is mostly going to be an original storyline. I won't say about what just yet, because that would spoil the fun!
Let me know what you think of Kat so far. She'll obviously become a more fleshed out character as the story progresses, but I'm curious as to your first impressions of her. Her face claim is Amber Heard, as seen in the picture. See you in the next chapter!
