In honour of the new series, Gotham that comes out on TV in the near future, I decided to create my own little Gotham: Origins story. It will be based around the simplest of ideas, what if the Wayne's hadn't been walking down the street alone that night.

A young Pamela Isley, determined to do more than just protest the minor environmental causes that she can escape from her abusive father to go to, followed the Wayne's to the cinema to approach them and ask for support and assistance with her latest big cause. Her cause however, saving one of Gotham's largest parks from being turned into another metropolitan slum, is forgotten as she follows the family through the streets from the cinema, wrapped up in her own childish wistfulness of the family scene she had never experienced herself playing out in front of her. The events that follow will change her forever, and with it the future of Gotham City itself…

Chapter 1: A Hopeful Tragedy

Pamela Islay, or Ivy as she preferred to be called by her few friends outside of the protest groups she was a member of, knew that if she was honest with herself that following the Wayne family was probably a bad idea from the start. Especially as she was probably being the least subtle tail in history, as she ducked quickly behind another dumpster whilst tucking another errant lock of her bright red hair back under the large hat she was wearing in an attempt to make herself less obvious to her targets. The Wayne's were folk legends in the city of Gotham, they were the richest family in Gotham after all and had been for generations, and that wealth as always seemed to place them a level above those that they walked amongst now. But Ivy had to admit from what she had seen thus far that they did not seem like some of the other rich and famous people in Gotham she had seen or had approached for help previously.

The trio talked to each other loudly and honestly, the young boy in the middle throwing out jokes and points that the parents laughed at and carried on for him, though his mother seemed more exasperated by the two male's comments than anything else. They had just been for their weekly trip to the Monarch Theatre, a routine the trio had followed long enough that when Ivy had asked around about how to contact them one of her friends had brought it up. She was surprised there were no bodyguards with them, but she supposed having large musclebound men stood around kind of ruined the warm atmosphere the trio had generated amongst themselves.

Such interactions made Ivy's stomach flutter a little, her father had never been the kindest of people and since her mother died four years before after a prolonged period of illness he had turned to drink and gotten to the point of lashing out at her if she tried to take the half full bottles from him before he drank himself into a full stupor. Having no warm family memories of her own to cherish Ivy had found herself a bit hesitant to approach the Wayne's whilst they were so obviously happy with each other's company, given their wealth and renown they were probably sick of people coming to them with problems like her own, but Ivy had no other idea of who to turn too.

Since she had little to no desire to stay at home longer than absolutely necessary, a ten year old Ivy had found herself travelling more and more of Gotham's neighbourhoods in an effort to find something to do to entertain herself during the summer break that year. Anything would do to keep herself away from home until the evening when she was to bring home food, cook it for her father and her when he got in from working on the docks and then wash up before bed. It was on one of these walks that she had come across an environmental protest being undertaken to protect the habitat of a group of nesting birds of prey inside a defunct factory, the group trying to stop it from being demolished to make way for some new high rise flats, the developers ignoring the factories other use, serving as the birds hunting grounds and nesting area for their chicks.

At once Ivy had been enamoured by the groups' goals, approaching one of the protestors and asking for more information. Luckily for her Ivy looked older than she was and the man enthusiastically had divulged a wave of information about the habitat inside the factory, how suitable it was for the birds and so on. For the next two weeks Ivy continued to turn up to that factory and join in with the protests, her unique flame red hair and small stature generating quite a lot of attention for the group, to the point that a local reporter had asked to interview her on the protest and why she had joined up with it. The day of the interview though Ivy saw another side of Gotham that she hadn't seen before, the police arriving in force to break up the protest, despite the fact that the protestors had a writ from the mayor's office allowing them to protest peacefully for the rest of the week.

The chaos that followed was something that still gave Ivy nightmares to this day, four years after the event, armed SWAT teams charging into the protestors with batons and riot shields and lashing out at any who tried to stand in their way. Ivy hadn't escaped unscathed of course, she had been caught with a bone breaking smash to the face by one of the truncheons as the SWAT members lashed out with impunity through the tear gas that had also been released to disperse the crowds. She had fallen to the ground at the blow only to be trampled by the fleeing protesters and police. The next thing Ivy remembered was waking up in hospital surrounded by people who she didn't recognise and only able to see out of one eye, including some of the leaders of the protest group.

It turned out that the police force hospitalising a ten year old girl, who had been recorded on camera as being part of a peaceful protest before being beaten and trampled with no provocation, was a far better story for the news crew than the one they had originally planned on running. The footage exploded throughout the news industry and had been reported throughout Gotham both on TV and in the newspapers. In this dark and troubled city the derision of what had happened was probably the only thing that the people, good or bad inclined, agreed upon. Whilst Ivy spent the next week recovering from the mild fracture just above her orbital socket, paid for by the city of course, and if that was not enough she had been visited by the mayor, several senior police officers and government officials who were all profoundly apologetic that she had been caught up in the middle of what had been 'a regrettable incident'.

But what had truly pulled at her heart strings was the face of the first protester she had talked to that first day she had seen the protest, a large African American in his late forties with dreadlocks and a well maintained moustache and goatee, sweeping in with tears pouring down his face as he jumbled up apologies with questions about was she okay, was there anything she needed and so on. Such a display of emotion about her and her wellbeing was something that Ivy had only fuzzy memories of her mother giving her and had brought tears to her eyes even as more of the protest group entered, allowing her to feel like part of a group, a family, for the first time in memory.

It turned out that the publicity from her attack generated a huge wave of negative public opinion against the developers and the construction project was dropped, meaning that Ivy had helped the group win their first big victory in years. However, with her true age revealed they couldn't allow her to keep on protesting with them as it was illegal and could invalidate any future protests they did. Not being able to act on the front lines didn't dampen Ivy's new found determination or passion, nor did the forty minutes of screaming she received when she returned home to her father, who didn't care that she had been injured but that she hadn't been around to sort the house out and cook him dinner.

She gladly took minor roles within the group that they could offer her, sending letters to officials and companies asking for support, delivering pamphlets and leaflets out on the street with some of the other protestors when she could during the school holidays. But people seemed to care less and less these days and the opposition to the group became more and more violent, several key members being attacked and put into hospital with heavy injuries. Which was why she had decided to approach the Wayne's unofficially, if she could persuade them to help back the group a little then with such high profile backers perhaps the group would be taken a little more seriously once more.

That was her hope anyways as she shifted to the base of a fire escape as the elder Wayne's laughed at something the younger Wayne said. As she thought when she first spotted them leaving the theatre, the Wayne's seemed a lot nicer than the other rich people in the city. She didn't remember this but supposedly the elder Wayne's had visited her when she had been unconscious in the hospital after the police attack, leaving her a card that whilst simple had been surprisingly touching to read. Ivy was drawn from her hopeful musings by a sudden shout from up ahead, peeking out from behind her cover Ivy saw the three Wayne's stood stock still as a big burly man in leathers and a balaclava pointed a gun at the three of them, shouting out hoarsely for them to hand over their money.

Ivy was too far to hear what the what the Wayne's said as they tried to appease the man, but the first pair of gunshots was clear enough, the elder male Wayne falling to the floor as the woman screamed. The piercing noise was cut off a moment later by another gunshot, the gunman turning and sprinting away even as the young boy's cries burst out into the night as his mother collapsed backwards with a grunt. Ivy's mind struggling to comprehend what was happening for a moment, she had just witnessed the shooting of two of the most powerful people in Gotham City... That thought clicked a moment later and she sprinted out from where she had been hiding up to where the Wayne's now laid, grabbing her mobile phone from her pocket as she did so.

The Wayne boy seemed completely lost to the world as he sat by his mother's body, so Ivy couldn't rely on him even as she checked the two Wayne's injuries even as her trembling fingers typed in 911 into her phone before hitting the dial button. The male Wayne had been shot twice and wasn't breathing, but the boy's mother had been shot in the abdomen rather than the chest and was breathing though in obviously great pain doing so. Even as Ivy tried to work out what to do, there was a tired male voice that reverberated from the phone next to her ear.

"Gotham emergency services, what service do you need this evening?" The shock that was still enveloping Ivy's system at the scene before her almost made her drop the phone at the voice, fumbling with it for a moment before she managed to find her voice to speak once more.

"T-there's been a shooting, back alley by third and twenty second street... It's the Wayne's, I don't, what do I do..." The was a momentary pause before the voice replied, his voice a lot more alert and concerned as he spoke to her.

"Okay miss, units are on their way and ambulances are on the way. You said it was the Wayne's, what are their injuries?" Ivy did her best to relay what she could see on the elder Wayne's, as well as the younger Wayne's almost comatose condition, and she could hear a muttered conversation being held on the other end of the phone for a moment before the police officer gave her instructions to treat the female Wayne's wound, continuing to talk to her about what was going on even as she tore off her scarf to press on the wound in front of her. That drew a pained gasp from the woman but the officer on the other end of the phone told her to press it in regardless of how much pain it seemed to cause.

Even as she heard the approaching sirens from behind her, Ivy's panic rose as the woman she was trying to treat gave one last heaving breath before falling silent. Doing her best to remember what she had been taught about CPR at school, Ivy grabbed the youngest Wayne and made him place his hands on the wound in his mother's stomach before she checked the woman's neck for a heartbeat. What happened next was a blur to her, only remembering being dragged from doing CPR on the female Wayne by a police officer to allow the ambulance officers to step in and take the woman away to the hospital.

The only other thing she remembered was the feeling of the shivering boy leaning against her shoulder as the adults bustled around in front of them. The rain that started to fall from the sky seemed to be poetically ironic as it washed some of the blood that had seeped out onto the floor from the bodies directly in front of them, as well covering up the shocked tears that slowly started to fall from her eyes as she truly comprehended what had just happened...

A/N: Well there it is, my own AU of the Wayne family shooting with the twist of having Pamela there as well. This story is about setting up how I think Pamela should be before she turned into Poison Ivy, and it's a combination of several of her origin stories mixed together with my own little flair of events. She is a passionate person with a solid set of beliefs and ideals that she believes is right, has experienced harshness and abusiveness in her home life and as part of the protest group but has remained the idealistic and positive person that would eventually crack under the weight of the world's wrongs to become the Poison Ivy we all know from the batman comics.

To reiterate, this is not going to be a 'Poison Ivy joins the Batman straight away and the world is full of flowers and rainbows'. There will be darkness, there will be grittiness and downright horrible things that will make you question your faith in humanity, because that is what Batman is all about and to try and do it differently would take everything away from that. But the two characters, with such an event to bind them together, should interact in an interesting and dynamic manner that should help them grow differently than how they do in most of the canon material, as well as providing James Gordon with more to work with as I intend to base this fic if I continue it off the series when it comes out.

What do people think? Should I continue with this? Or am I trying to sell a story that doesn't need to be out there? If you think it should continue, should Martha Wayne live or die thanks to the efforts of Pamela? Please review and let me know as I will use the reviews to decide whether to bother continuing or not...