How Fate Plays Her Game
Chapter 1: The Bat, the Cat, and the Threads of Fate
Fate tsked. This wasn't right. This wasn't what she had planned.
She stood before her work, millions and millions of threads, so entwined and complicated on her loom that only she had the true understanding of what they meant and where they go. Or, so she thought.
The threads were the lifetimes of mortals and their destinies. Mortals believed that her threads were single pieces, beginning to end, but no, that wasn't true. They divided and expand to show different paths they had opportunities to take and the connections they could have with others. They had the gift to choose who to become, what to be, and where to go, if they had the mind to do it. The threads also show their affinity: white, grey, and black, as well as good or evil. Silly mortals believed that their world was all just two sides, black and white. It would make it all easier to judge humanity, but it was more than that. White wasn't always good and black didn't mean evil. All people had good and evil in them, but it was up them where their path would lead in shades of grey.
Fate had plans for one particular soul who was shrouded by the dark of the night but admitted light soft as the moon and just as precious. Yet, someone went behind her back and shifted a good handful of threads, prepared the snipping of three when they shouldn't be snip (one where it was sadly too soon to be fair even in her standards),changing history than what she planned.
She noticed the shifts too late. Now that soul would be muted and disaster would reek havoc on the mortal plane in the future. This person, whoever he or she was, caused for the course of a certain and important genetics project involving a Dark Knight, parents of the soul, and the soul himself to start decades earlier than planned.
This wasn't right. The way she set it that the project would fail and shut down, freeing the soul from the true path of becoming another Dark Knight, a warrior of justice who fought of the greater good but with a soul of darkness. She would have knocked him around to later don the Dark Knight's cowl and carry the legacy but the heart and destiny would be different, lighter.
Now, any light within the soul would dowse, and any dark would be nothingness. The soul would become an empty soldier, no will or heart, with only orders to drive him with absolute obedience. Broken, he would barely be a soul at all when it was done.
It was too late to change the threads back. The parents were adults and ready to have their first child, the soul in concern, and the first stages of the project were about to set stage.
It was too late to go back. It wasn't too late to change the threads further. She was Fate. She could be kind, cruel, destructive, or hopeful, but it was on her terms, not some sneak messing with her threads. She would do what must be done to save that soul.
Looking carefully at related threads, Fate tried to find the right one to change courses for the better.
Her eyes glinted with mischief as she spotted the perfect threads; two threads, two people, who were actually fated to become unhappy before their own ends, one shorter than the other. Their hearts were compatible to the soul in their own ways.
Fate gave it a whirl. She place fingertips on the first thread, the color of a lovely onyx, pulling and forming a branch to the soul's thread. She made the connection, smiling when the soul's awful, inky black thread that before had been an attractive metal grey became light in shades, becoming grey again but a lovely, shining silver. She repeated the process with the second, the shorter one of a rare shade of blue, of hope, who needed more of what the soul could provide. Her smile huge, her eyes gleeful when the soul's life thread gain a tint of rich violet. The soul's light like moonbeams return better than ever.
Beautiful, glorious, Fate laughed in triumph, watching other threads rearrange to accommodate the new changes. The blue thread grew longer and brighter. New matches, new connections were open. More threads were getting brighter.
She liked this. This was better than what she had originally planned. She would have thank the perpetrator while severely punishing him or her.
There would be tragedy. There would be pain. But there would be hope and freedom that would lead to better chances.
Lead to Faith.
The tears just kept coming. He couldn't stop crying, and he didn't want to. Big boys were meant to be strong, shouldn't cry. But this, this was a reason to cry.
Inside a parking garage as it rained outside, Terry kneeled over the cooling bodies of his parents, Warren and Mary McGinnis, dripping wet from just running out and around in that weather for his own survival. He didn't know how this could've happened. He didn't know why there wasn't anyone here to find them and get the police. He did know that this city, his home, Gotham, was mean. He was eight years old, and he knew something wasn't right.
Only a couple hours ago, Terry and his parents were having a day of fun, spending it at the park, then dinner, and finally a movie. They had been leaving the movie theater after watching the latest Zorro movie. He had been excited, running and swinging with an imaginary sword in play battles with imaginary bad guys. Then they had entered the parking garage where the car was. They were almost to the vehicle when a giant man jumped with a gun, shooting a warning shot that had hit Mary's leg and threatening them to give him money.
After that, it was almost a blur. This man did not want money. He wanted blood, and his parents knew it. Warren went to fight him off as Mary yelled for Terry to run.
"Run! Run, Terry!"
"Go, Terry! Keep going!"
Their voices ranged in his hand as he did run, escaped into the allies of lower Gotham, the rougher side of the city that he knew like the back of his little hand, having once been Warren's neighborhood before university. He heard footsteps after him, chasing him, but he was slippery as a snake and thankfully lost the stranger, whoever he was, for now.
Terry went back to the garage an hour later. It was pouring now. He prayed that everything was okay. That he was would return to the car with his parents okay, talking to the police about the man that may and may have mugged them.
His prayers were not answered.
Instead, he came back to a scene that would induce nightmares. Warren and Mary were on the dirty floor in pools of their own blood, dead. Trying to get help, he found that his parents' cell phones as well as wallets and purse were gone.
Hopeless, Terry just collapsed. Tears pouring from his light blue eyes as rain water dripped from his black hair. He was scared, devastated, and anxious. His parents were gone, and even in his young mind, he knew that whoever was chasing after him would come back for him. He could feel it but couldn't bring himself to leave his parents again, leave their bodies on this filthy floor.
"They're gone," he whispered as that fact sunk into his head.
"I'm afraid so, Kitten." At the sound of the new voice, Terry turned around to see a woman standing behind him. She was beautiful with long, dark hair; sympathetic, jeweled green eyes, and a long, lithe form dressed in a rich black trench coat over a luxurious evening dress, complete with jewelry of the highest quality. She looked at him with sadness and kindness, yet she was alert and vigilante to the surroundings.
"Who are you?" Terry asked, sniffing.
"You can call me Selina," she told him, taking a step forwards before Terry slid back another, "Don't be afraid. I'm not going to hurt you. I want to help you. We need to get out of here, Kitten." She saw the scene for what it was. Her instincts were screaming at her that the boy in front of her was in danger, in far more danger that it was usual for even Gotham City with her high criminal rates. And in rare times in life, she wanted to protect that boy, a helpless child sitting in his murdered parents' blood. He called to her like only a few others did.
"I-I can't leave them," Terry protested.
"You have to. I'll take you somewhere safe, I promise. I called the police. They'll be coming for your mom and dad," Selina told him, walking up to the boy now that she knew he wasn't going to run from her.
Without a second thought, she stripped off her coat, placing in over Terry's small shoulders, not caring in the least blood would get on it or her dress. She cradled him in her arms and slipped into the shadows before cops finally arrived on the scene.
Now, Selina was taking him home.