Hope leaves that night, after her parents have gone to bed. She has never done something so singularly daring in her life—she doesn't consider what happened in the hospital with Bruce to have been daring, just what had to be done. Her heart beats so loud in her ears that she swears it could wake either of her parents (and unlike other children and teenagers, this happens to be something that might, under many circumstances, be a possibility). What she takes is a backpack with roughly a hundred dollars (she could take more, but something more adventurous in her decides that if she ends up spending all of that or losing it, then she can devise a way to get some more money), a couple clean shirts, shorts, a pair of jeans, a few pairs of underwear, and socks. It isn't well planned or well put-together, and the fact that it's so rushed and uncoordinated helps Hope feel more and more like she's going on an adventure.
Once outside (keys in hand, her cell phone left on her bedroom dresser, so that she can't be tracked by satellite and whatnot), the teenager seems puzzled at first: how to get the car far away from the house, so that her parents won't hear the engine (being what it is, the engine isn't exactly quiet). Deciding that she can forgive herself to use her powers, Hope bites her bottom lip, puts her hands to the smooth, slightly cool surface of the back bumper. For a moment she hesitates, doesn't know if she can really move a car, even if she is fortunate enough to where the mostly flat ground slopes very gently downhill from her home. You're the daughter of Wonder Woman and Superman, she peps herself, braces her arms. You're practically made for this kind of stuff. At first she lifts and pushes, and the weight seems insurmountable, and she wonders for the briefest of seconds, if maybe she's lost all her powers, if maybe she's human now.
The idea doesn't distress her, but she does feel a flutter of panic in her stomach.
This time she lifts with the strength she knows she has, strength coming up from her knees and back, as if wriggling itself up through her from the ground. Her teeth grind, and the back end of the car comes up easy, almost eerily so. Hope stops, actually shifts the weight all to one hand, and brushes her dark hair quickly from her face so that she can think. The car lurches forward (Superman's daughter or not, she is out of practice) and she hurries to catch it again, her molars grinding down hard against one another. With a half shrug and a short glance back, Hope starts down the long road that leads away from her house, half-rolling and half-carrying her new Ferrari.
By the time she thinks she is far enough from the house (but she never really thinks that she is, so it's rather whenever she can muster up the courage to make herself set down the car and climb in) Hope starts the engine, and with only the smallest fraction of a second of what-have-I-gotten-myself-into, she floors the gas pedal. With the windows down and night air blowing across her shoulders and chest (the top is not down—she figures she can learn how to do that sometime on the road), the teenager imagines that for once she may actually be grateful that her parents are such influential people. Hope has had her Kansas unrestricted driver's license for all of three days now—her mother had simply scheduled her driving test three days before her 16 year mark, and no one had argued: if it wasn't for that piece of plastic with her picture stamped on it (in which even the daughter of two superheroes manages to look less than perfect), even she, with her new found sense of freedom, would not have the guts to go cross-country in a new—highly expensive—car, without telling her parents.
They'll get my note, Hope thinks, both smiling and cringing at once at the idea of such unabashed teenage rebellion. The note was nothing but a couple of hastily scrawled sentences on some scrap paper or another, left on the kitchen countertop: 'Gone to Gotham, will stay with Bruce. I'll call sometime, and DON'T WORRY, I'm your daughter, aren't I?' Signed, of course, 'Love, Hope.'
The truth was, she hadn't known where she was going until she started writing the note: after all, it isn't the destination that matters, it's all in the going, the getting there. But then, as if there could never be any question of it at all, Hope had known exactly where to go: to Bruce (this also conveniently got her out of doing thank-you letters, for a time). The car runs like silk over the long stretches of dark highway, and it is only very rarely that Hope passes another car—she figures she has to go as far as she can before she stops, just to deter her parents from possibly following.
She drives for roughly eight hours before she drags herself into a motel (praying that no one will destroy or steal her car—and she is lucky, no one seems to want to touch it, as if it's some kind of joke and believing in it makes you a fool). The excitement has completely gone from her, and all the girl thinks of is a bed, and once that is in order, she barely has time to lock the door behind her and kick her shoes off, before she falls into a deep, deep sleep.
Hope wakes the next morning, and for a few terrorizing seconds, isn't quite sure where she is. The bed and sheets she's nestled in feel too hard, uncomfortable, and foreign to her skin. When she realizes where she is (or more so, where she is going and what happened the night before) the feeling of sickness in her stomach does not subside, but rather doubles. For a few minutes all she can bear to do is toss and turn on her slightly itchy bed, feeling stupid and ultimately homesick.
Well, you can't go running back now, she insists to herself, even if the more sensible part of her mind disagrees immensely, doesn't see anything wrong with heading back as soon as possible. Hope shuffles a hand through her thick, slept-in hair, finds a hair band to tie it back with, and then goes about inspecting her hotel room—more or less she is seeing the place for the first time, as she dropped off to sleep within moments of arriving. This short walk-around is not impressive at all, and she almost wonders how she could let herself sleep in such a dump. It was cheap, she tries to justify, but she already wonders if she's going to run out of money by the time she gets to Gotham: gas, of course, being the single-most important and expensive thing of all.
When the teenaged girl stops before a mirror (which is relatively small, from her chest up), she is almost startled at the face looking back at her: the slightly pinched set of her jaw, and most of all, the way her eyes seem to be different from when she last took the time to look. The sharpness that has been there since she was old enough to look isn't necessarily gone, but it appears to have turned more inward, as if Hope is seeing the world clearly and openly, but secretly analyzing all of it from the corner's of her eyes. Suddenly, the steel that she longs for, that gives her comfort in her uncertainties, is there supporting her: she cannot go home, she need not go home—This is my adventure, right?
Quickly she slips into a grimy shower and spends as little time as possible amongst the mildewed and discolored tiles that suggest mold. When that is finished she dries up as well as possible, and slips into a different change of clothes, putting the old ones in a plastic bag that she had brought for the purpose, and then sticking the bag into her backpack. Within thirty minutes of waking, Hope is down at the lobby, and then out on the road again, this time with a map (before she had just known to head east, knew that it was going to be too early to really pick and choose highways yet). The day is unbearably hot, and the girl feels almost nauseas in her car, which reminds her more of an oven than a car at that point. Hope drives.
It takes a day or so more before she realizes that without a doubt, she is going to run out of money for gas, whether she sleeps in her car or in a sleazy motel. This irritates her greatly, to be caught so unprepared. I won't fly, Hope assures herself. And I won't call for help unless absolutely necessary.
Hope sets a stubbornly (and optimistically maybe, an odd combination) firm resolve, deciding that she will go as far as she can, and that if she keeps her eyes open, opportunities would present themselves. As her gas money situation becomes more and more desperate (and there were at least four days between her and Gotham, after a day that she had to spend off the road during an immense thunderstorm), the teenager realizes that she might well be doing dishes in some roach-infested fast-food joint, if she doesn't find anything else.
Another option (in the way she knew it would) eventually presents itself to her. She is sitting on the hood of her car, eating a customary burger and fries (Hope might be inclined to sleep in her car when money is tight, but she refuses to go hungry) when two men, each holding a fair amount of alcohol in his system, stumble past her. The teenager is wrapped in her own thoughts, and pays the two passing humans no mind—until they are practically next to her; with a start she at once hears their jeering, slurred voices.
"Danserz shouldnn' et such badh foodh," One man says, pointing between Hope and what's left of her fries. Part of her itches for sunlight, can feel the lack of it on her skin (night has fallen on wherever she is, somewhere where the Midwestern and the Eastern states merge). The other part of her, more habitual and trained than the other, can taste the shadows, and easily spots where to slip to if need be.
Not that you can't handle two drunks, she thinks, smirking darkly.
The man starts jabbering again, and a snarl begins to rise on Hope's lips as he comes closer. His buddy is laughing and shaking his head. A growl builds in her chest, rumbling almost impossibly deep for a girl her age—impressive coming from her vocal chords, but of course, only a pale imitation of the man she imagines as she musters it.
"Dude," The second man says to his friend, pulling him back. And best you should, Hope thinks, frightened because she doesn't know how to handle the situation efficiently. "I dun think sshee's a danzer." He smiles at her, gives her a thumbs up. "Nicze car though!" They walk away without further incident, and she breathes a sigh of relief.
Dancer? Hope thinks. Where the hell do people dance around here?
Her eyes wander, and she focuses them into a more than hawk-like intensity, scanning over the adjacent buildings, lined up next to each other. Her eyes pass over the somehow amazingly bright (thanks to numerous tubes of neon lighting) and yet dark outline of a certain building—and then, invariably return to it. Even from her distance, a good 500 feet, across the dark parking lot, she can read the sign perfectly: topless dancing.
Oh, she thinks, with a stunning brutality. I can't believe you didn't get that faster—you must be getting dense. Why else would two drunk guys be talking about 'dancers'? Her mouth curls into a thin grimace, but she can't pull her eyes away.
"You wouldn't," She whispers her own disbelief, eyes wide in the face of such sheer boldness. And then there is a creeping sensation that crawls into her gut. I would. She feels like she is shedding something that has bound her, but at the same time, kept her warm and safe. It doesn't occur to her that she is slipping out of her childhood, like a change of clothes; it doesn't occur to her that snakes can't put back on their old skins—to be finished with all childhood, to fully step into the realm of in-between, is a permanent deal.
And like so many others (so many perfectly human others) she throws aside her childhood, and plunges with ready anxiety—if a bit of reedy fear—into the gray area between child and adult without half a backward glance. Though her parents, nor her Godfather for that matter, would certainly disapprove of this kind of situation, it can be said that at least she was not forced out of her childhood. At eight she revived her 'uncle' (whom she will never, ever call uncle) from death—even that, however, was not a brutal enough shock to rip her youth away from her, unlike the man himself. And so, nearly on tiptoes, and moving quickly, before she can allow her fear to erode her sudden courage, Hope skitters to the door of the topless bar.
There is a moment were she braces herself, hands tightening into fists that could bend steel, and then her lips drawn back into the fierce grin-snarl of one who doesn't know what to find behind the next door.
She enters, and the smoky, dim air passes over her.
