Summary: After Lauren's family was killed by the Joker she tries to hide from the police to avoid abusive foster parents or group homes. But when batman finds her she is adopted by Bruce Wayne who feels duty to the young girl. Lauren is a little too observant and quickly figures out just who Bruce Wayne is. Now Lauren is trying to find her voice again in a world gone mad, learn her part in Bruce's charade, and preferably not get killed by a crazed clown. Post Batman Begins, Pre- and during the Dark Knight. First of a series.
Disclaimer: I do not own Batman. Also, I do not own CSI (if you get why I said this at the end of the chapter you may have a cookie and pat yourself on the back.)
A.N.: this is completely un-Beta'ed, sorry. I just had this idea while playing Mahjong, and had to write it. I'm not great at writing children, but I have a definite idea of who Lauren is. If you think she is too intelligent for a seven-year-old I'm sorry, but she spends most of her time around older people or reading. Plus, her family is made up of some really smart people, so… But if you think she is not acting like a seven-year-old, tell me. This chapter is mostly set up. I promise it will get better.
Thoughts
∞time or place change∞
Sign language (not direct translation)
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Written stuff
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Gotham's Saddest Daughter
Prologue
Lauren stared in horror at the laughing clown as he cut her father once more with his knife, red with her mother's blood. The clown turned to taunt her brothers once more before finally killing the man who had chased away the monsters for the seven short years of her life. Beside her, Sarah, her older sister sobbed freely; Lauren, however, was silent as tears slipped down her face.
"What's wrong?" Mr. Clown laughed. "Now is no time for tears. Wouldn't you agree,…" he waved his hand at Lauren's oldest brother, Andrew. "What is your name?"
"…."
"Cat got your tongue or just no name?"
"…"
" Well, what ever will we put on the stone! I know…I'll give you a name," he smiled viciously fingering his knife. "How about," he grabbed Andrew's hair and pulled his head back hard before putting the knife to his forehead. "J…," Andrew screamed as the deranged clown carved the letter into his forehead. "A…C…K, Jack. Because, I'm the Joker."
"Bastard!" screamed Daniel from where he was struggling with the clown who was holding him.
He let go of Andrew's head, turning his attention to Daniel. "Bastard. How did you know." He grabbed Daniel's face and held it close to his own. "Do you see these scars? Do you know how I got them, hmmm?...My mother…"he licked his lips. "Was a whore. Every night, strange men would come to our…apartment, and she…well, you know. When these men paid her, she was suppose to give the money to her pimp. But one night, she didn't….and the night after that, and the night after that. She spent it on crack. Well her pimp…he got mad. So as a warning,…he took razor blade, and put it in my mouth…and then he," the clown yanked his hand to the side suddenly, slitting Daniel's throat.
"Argh!" Andrew suddenly threw off the clown holding him and jumped towards the head clown. Beside Lauren, Sarah followed his example, kicking her clown in the groin. The clown holding Lauren let go of her, opting instead to try to control the teenage girl now trying to strangle his partner. Lauren backed away from the free for all, until she felt the cool metal of the chain blocking the opening in the boat's railing against her back. She could no longer see where her brother and sister where in the fray. Suddenly, she heard a maniacal laughter; she whipped to her left to find the head clown bearing down on her.
"Looks like Little Goldie is next," he lunged forward, knife in hand. Lauren couldn't move as the sharp object came closer. He's going to cut my throat. I'm going to die. She felt the sharp point hit her neck, but just then, a far worse for wear Andrew slammed into the clown and her, throwing off his aim. The knife sliced through her skin leaving a nasty, but non mortal, gash that ran from her throat on the left up to her jaw bone on the right. The clown growled, and turning shoved his knife deep into Andrew's chest.
Had one of the other clowns not chosen that moment to shot Sarah, Lauren would have died there. But the sound of the gun started the seven year old girl, who promptly fell over the flimsy chain.
Once in the water, instinct took over. Lauren kicked out; swimming faster then she could ever remember swimming before. Her neck ached and she felt fatigue pulling her down but she didn't stop. The distance from the boat her family had been forced onto earlier that night and the shore was no small one and by the time she reached it she wanted nothing more then to pass out on the blessed land. Something inside, however, told her that was not the best course of action. Instead, she pulled off her sopping wet jacket and wrapped it tightly around her neck to steam the bleeding, before stumbling off towards her house.
∞Later At the Ericson Residence∞
Lauren stood on a stool, in front of the bathroom mirror. Carefully, she sprayed the cut on her throat with Bactine, before butterflying it closed. Then, she applied Neosporen to gauze which she placed over the cut and the bandages. Somehow, the Ericson's had run out of surgical tape (most likely do to her brothers) so she gently wrapped the ace bandage her mother used on her bad knee in the winter around her neck to hold the gauze in place. Both Andrew and Daniel tended to get themselves injured at an extremely high rate. The twins had loved skateboarding, and had often required their younger sister's aid in bandaging up after their escapes. Secretly Lauren thought they were just trying to convert her. The twins had been pre-med at Gotham University, and Lauren was the only one of her siblings who was going to the Liberal Arts Magnet instead of the Math and Science Magnet.
She was always different from her siblings; Lauren stared at her reflection silently. She looked little like her brothers and sister, who had their father's dark hair. Her hair was blonde and curled gently down to her waist. Her eyes were gray most days, and had bit of blue when the weather was right. Daddy's eyes. A cold feeling rose in her too young chest at the thought. Mommy's hair.
She felt numb inside at the thought of them. She embraced the numbness. So long as she was numb she wasn't lonely or afraid. She knew she was alone whether she felt lonely or not, and thanks to her mother she knew what happened to children without Ericson, her mother, had been a social worker in the Narrows. Lauren had heard the horror stories of orphaned children, shipped from abusive house to abusive house, or worse…a group house.
Lauren shot out of the bathroom and down the hall to the closet. Reaching inside she pulled out her father's rolling suit case. She ran back to the room she had shared with Sarah only earlier that day pulling the case behind her. Quickly, she opened drawers on her dresser placing the necessities into the case: two pairs of pants, three shirts, six pairs of underwear, and four pairs of socks. Then she ran to her closet: her three favorite skirts, two sweaters, and a coat. Next, she went to the bookshelf where she grabbed Alice in Wonderland and her sister's box of jewelry. Before leaving her room, she also added the warmest blanket she had that would fit in the case, and her stuffed Mad Hatter.
She dragged the rolling case to her parent's room next. Lying down on her stomach she reached under the bed and pulled out a silver metal box the size of lunch box. She was too inexperienced to truly understand what a lock box was, but she did know it was important and what was in it. Her father, Mathew, had been sure to impress upon his children that should anything happen they were to make sure the box stayed with them. The box contained all of the family's important documents: birth certificates, bank information, and even the Ericson's will. Lauren placed the box in the case and grabbed the purse her mother had forgotten to bring, the purse that had gotten them into this mess. Lauren glared at the hateful purse before pulling out her mother's wallet containing some lose money, but more importantly, her ATM card. Her mother's pin number was in the lock box. Blue notebook, on the page marked with the pink tab. Lauren recalled from Sarah's ear infection the year before.
∞Flashback∞
Mathew and Mattie Ericson had gone on a week long trip to celebrate their twentieth anniversary, leaving Sarah and Lauren with the now eighteen-year-old twins.
"It's around here somewhere." Andrew said more to himself then anyone else as he dug through their parent's closet.
"Well I know that." Daniel shot back.
In the living room Sarah sat on the couch with a heating pad pressed to her ear. Lauren alternated between watching her brother's searching for the lock box and reading Gulliver's Travels.
"Found it!" Daniel carried the silver box to the living room were the key was hidden under a rather ugly, fat Buddha statue. He opened the box and pulled out a blue notebook, flipping through the pages. He wrote something on his palm and placed the notebook back in the box. "I'll be back in few, the pharmacy is on Reed, right?"
∞End Flashback∞
Lauren suddenly realized she was still wearing wet clothing. She ran back to her room and changed into a pair of paints, a shirt, and her sneakers. She stopped at the door on the way out and tried to memorize the room. Her bed, desk, bookcase, dresser all sat where they had always sat and on the other half the room her sisters bed, desk and dresser were sitting. A picture of her family, now gone, sat on her desk. She walked slowly this time and picked it up. They're smiling. She left the room for the last time.
She dragged the suit case to the living room. She grabbed her father's laptop and the lock box key and put them in the case. Beside the door, her bike sat with the rest of her families. Grabbing her brother's chain she zipped the suit case, leaving the Mad Hatter out, and chained the handle to the seat support. She placed the Mad Hatter in her basket and then walked into the kitchen to retrieve the most important thing.
On the counter sat a fish bowl with a blue, male beta named Sasha swimming lazily around a green and purple mushroom. Lauren snapped the plastic lid on the bowl and, after collecting Sasha's food, she returned to the living room and placed him securely in the Mad Hatter's lap and was off into the Gotham night.
Chapter 1
The Problem
∞One week, two days later: GPD, Lt. Gordon's office∞
Jim Gordon sighed as he looked at the report, five dead, a whole family with the exception of the daughter who was still missing. The boat they had been found on had been reported stolen two days after the corrinor had estimated the time of their deaths. It had taken the police three additional days to find the boat, which had been abandoned to drift with the current. The police had been looking for Lauren Ericson for four days with no luck. The only reason they even knew she was alive was because the family's lock box had been taken, as well as many of Lauren's personal effects. They had tried to track her ATM use, but her pattern was random and yet very intelligent.
Since the day her parents had gone missing she had been withdrawing varying amounts of money from ATMs without a pattern. She had started at a hundred dollars and every withdraw had increased in amount. Basically, she knew there was a limit to how much money one could withdraw at once, she just didn't know what it was. At the current count she had retrieved nearly 8,000 dollars over the past ten days. Gordon sighed again. She had all of her parent's bank codes, and had been transferring money from their other accounts to their checking account via the internet. Jim couldn't think she was spending all of that money. No, she was stalking up for when they cut her off. They had not found her, because she didn't want to be found.
More then once, they had thought they were close to finding the girl only to have her disappear. A seven-year-old on the streets of Gotham alone; Gordon hated to think of how scared she must be. Her blood was found on the boat. To watch her family die, be injured herself, and escape to live on the streets. Gordon's heart ached at it as he thought of his own little Barbara.
He looked back at the file. It was no surprise she was hiding, really.
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Mattie Carol Ericson
Age: 42
Profession: Social Worker (Narrows)
Education: Lower Gotham Primary
Lower Gotham High School
Gotham University, Psychology Major
Married
Found on the Peter's boat at 12:56 p.m. Estimated time of death: 9:45 p.m. Sustained seven cuts to the back and arms and one fatal cut with the abdominal with a single sided 5 inch knife. Cause of death: blood loss.
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Who knew the stories the poor girl had heard about children in the Narrows. A fourth of the crimes investigated by SVU and Vice usually involved foster parents there. That was one thing Batman had not helped stem, not that Gordon blamed him. The man was busy dealing with the mob and more recently this Joker that had cropped up, the same Joker that had left his card on the boat with the Ericsons.
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Mathew Edward Ericson
Legally Deaf
Age: 44
Profession: Professor of History, Gotham University for the Hearing Impaired and Mute
Education: Green Hill School for the Hearing Impaired
Gotham University for the Hearing Impaired and Mute
Married
Found on the Peter's boat at 12:56 p.m. Estimated time of death: 10: 01 p.m. Sustained three stab wounds to the right shoulder, defensive wounds to the hands, and a broken femur. Puncture wounds where inflicted with a single sided 5 inch knife. Cause of death: blood loss.
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Daniel Kyle Ericson
Age: 19
Education: Lower Gotham Primary
Gotham Math and Science Magnet (Middle & High School)
Gotham University: Pre-Med
Found on the Peter's boat at 12:56 p.m. Estimated time of death: 10: 19 p.m. Sustained cuts to the forehead spelling "JACK". Had numerous defensive and offensive wounds including: two broken fingers (right forefinger and middle), a broken nose, cuts on hands and arms, and a sprained ankle. Cause of death: single stab to the heart sustained from a single sided 5 inch knife.
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Andrew Walter Ericson
Age: 19
Education: Lower Gotham Primary
Gotham Math and Science Magnet (Middle & High School)
Gotham University: Pre-Med
Found on the Peter's boat at 12:56 p.m.. Estimated time of death: 10: 06 p.m. Sustained one deep cut to the throat and carotid artery. Cause of death: asphyxiation.
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Sarah Andra Ericson
Age: 18
Education: Lower Gotham Primary
Lower Gotham Middle
Gotham Math and Science Magnet (High School)
Gotham University: Undeclared
Found on the Peter's boat at 12:56 p.m. Estimated time of death: 10:20 p.m. Sustained both offensive and defensive wounds including: cuts to the hands and arms, extensive bruising of the right elbow, and a dislocated finger (left pinkie). Cause of death: single gun shot wound to the head with a nine millimeter bullet.
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All three of the Ericson siblings had received full-ride scholarships to the city's University. What a waste. Gordon removed his glasses and rubbed his eyes tiredly. It was becomeing obvious the police wouldn't be able to find the youngest of the Ericson siblings and Gordon felt a little silly for what he was about to do. Normally, he only called in Batman when the situation was dire ad involved a dangerous suspect, but what else could he do?
Jim stood slowly, stretching out muscles that had been in the same position for far to long, damn paperwork, and headed for the door. Lauren Ericson didn't trust the police, maybe she would trust Batman. Children where odd like that.
∞On the Roof∞
Gordon stood beside the lit bat signal waiting for one of Gotham's most unusual inhabitants to jump out of the shadows and give him a heart attack.
"Lieutenant Gordon?" the man in question kept himself from jumping at the gravelly voice.
"I need your help with something."
"I gathered that. More of the Joker?"
"More of the same actually." The batman came closer at Gordon's reply. "We still haven't found the youngest Ericson girl. We know she's alive and we have a general concept of what area she's in, but she's hiding from us."
"Hiding? Why would she do that?"
"The late Mrs. Ericson was a social worker in the Narrows. I'm assuming she is trying to avoid getting put into the system. She's smart for a seven-year old. She took her father's laptop and the family lock box with her when she ran. According to a friend of the family, the Ericson's trusted their children explicitly. All of their bank information was in the lock box and the children knew where the key was. She's withdrawing as much money as she can. I think she is preparing to hide until she's an adult."
Batman nodded, "she was on the boat when her family was killed, wasn't she?"
"Her blood was the deck near the side and on the chain where the…Batman?" Gordon suddenly realized he was talking to himself. "I hate it when he does that."
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