Pretend your character is the exact opposite of who they are now. How does this affect their friends and families, the important events in their lives? Do they lose someone they love dearly? Or is it for the better?

Tim Drake ran at a fast pace, weaving through the streets of Gotham City. Anyone that didn't know them inside and out would have tumbled into a dead end, tripped over one of the piles of garbage stacked throughout the city, a bench, people, anything, but he moved with a knowing agile speed through the crowd, dodging any obstacle.

All without losing the back pack of food he'd just stolen out of that monthly farmer's market in the park square, an attempt to bring the 'natural' back to Gotham.

What a joke. Just look at the place, while it felt like home to him, most people looked at the smog filled, overpopulated, crime riddled Gotham City with a sneer or a slight, suppressed shiver. Unless you were the well to do business people, moving around like the people in the middle class, the poor class, the class that didn't have a class because they were too poor and likely bums on the street.

But that worked just fine by Tim, it meant nobody gave him two glances. It all lead up to him not being seen or having to worry about unwanted light cast on him. It made his life easier, he could steal what he needed to, pull what he had to pull, without having to triple check over his shoulder. As it was he always looked twice.

That was one thing his old man taught him that wasn't something he'd argue with. To always look at it twice. Check twice, glance twice, and always look twice if you were missing some opportunity.

It was pretty much the only sound advice his father had ever offered him, but Shifty Drake wasn't really a great role model to start with. Drunk most days, gambled every cent he had, and ran Two Face's dirty work. So… of course as his living son, Tim was roped into and more importantly expected to run the game too.

At first when he was a kid, it almost bothered him, especially the more obvious things, that effected people. Bothered him a little that he felt like he had more potential in him than petty thievery for a psychotic, bi-polar man…
But Tim had gotten over that within a year or two. Now he knew that… well life didn't work that way. Even if you were smart, charming, or any other trait, you were cast into your lot in life. His lot was these second rate mobsters, scared of a bats shadow or a coin landing on the wrong side. Police didn't even mean anything in this city.

Even now, every criminal in Gotham City, ever stunt puller, every heist was, willingly or not, thinking in the back of their head about the infamous Batman. Sometimes people laughed and kids thought that maybe it was a joke.
But it wasn't. Tim knew that, he'd tracked him. When he was a kid he was obsessed with Batman. Not obsessed but he followed all his activities, tracked his launch against crime with the boy wonder Robin.

It'd been excited and a challenge, a little sport and interest in the otherwise dark and glum world that surrounded him. It didn't take long for Batman to turn from a bit of a idol figure to the same, menacing threat ever thief, assassin, or wrong doer felt he was for Tim. It had been after all his ideas for himself and when he realized this was just his life.

It wasn't the best life, but eh, it was living.

"Finally," His father's beer-lathered breath made his nose protest and he ducked away and let him snatch the bag out of his hand. It was okay, he had eaten some on his run over here and there was a sandwich crammed into his left back pocket. He definitely didn't rely on what was in the bag anymore. Too many chances you lost it, or his father took it from him and did whatever it was he did.

Tim wasn't going to starve off of faith in outside sources alone. Instead he made his way to his room in the beaten up, tattered down apartment in the lower side of Gotham. Usually he didn't, ended up having to hear about something his father had to say, a job that needed doing, or something like that.

Apparently it would come later in the night though, Tim was glad for the trade-off. Right now his mind seemed full and he laid out on his bed, folding his hands behind his unruly hair to stare up at the familiar cracked and leaking ceiling.

Tim's thoughts were strangely still on the bat. It felt like to him, that after his sidekick was killed in that warehouse, he lost a certain rightness in his actions. Maybe that was what Tim had shied from when he was dealing with his father's expectations. Because he had enough going on in life, that searching out and watching his childhood hero falter in a way, without Robin by his side, it seemed darker. Like Batman had needed Robin or something.

Tim let out a slight laugh to himself, sitting up on his bed. Yup, pondering the universe again in his leaky bedroom. He never really did change, but he couldn't help himself, had to do something with his brain in his free time and the school work was easy enough on its own. He tugged the mushed ham sandwich from his back pocket, blue eyes glancing to the door once to listen for his father before pulling off the ceran wrap and taking a hungry bite from it.