Life in the manor was odd to Hailey. She wasn't sure how she was supposed to act. Where she could or couldn't go. She remembered following Alfred around the place a few days after she arrived but she didn't hear a single word he said. The place was huge but Hailey only knew her way to and from the kitchen and her room. Jason chatted with her a lot at breakfast but Hailey didn't participate in the conversations. The world just seemed to buzz with electricity in her ears. She never felt anything. Not hungry. Not tired. Not sad. Nothing at all until she went to the funeral. When she saw Mrs. Saurez—her previous neighbor and occasional babysitter—and the older women hugged her that was the first time the world around her made any sense.
Bruce had been holding her hand but Hailey let go when she saw Mrs. Saurez. She hugged her very tight and cried and cried. It was the first time she realized that her dad was truly dead. Mrs. Saurez managed to calm her down and together they walked up to the casket where Hailey saw her dad for the last time and said goodbye.
Mrs. Saurez along with a few other people that had known her dad had gone to the manor after the burial but they left soon after. Hailey had fallen asleep behind the sofa where she'd been hiding. She didn't want to talk to anyone. Jason sat next to her but he didn't say anything. He only kept her company until she fell asleep.
When Hailey woke up the following morning, she was in her room. She just lay there until Bruce came into the room to talk to her. He told her about school and asked how much longer she wanted to wait. She said she didn't want to wait, but he told her to take another week. Hailey nodded and he left her alone so that she could get ready. She showered and dressed just as he asked her to so that they could meet with the social worker downstairs after breakfast. Hailey heard everything the woman said and answered whatever it was that the woman wanted to hear. Or what Hailey assumed the woman wanted to hear. Then she had to speak to a police officer.
The conversation about the night her dad died made her stomach hurt. She answered all his questions without protest and an odd sense of detachment. When he asked her about speaking in court, Bruce said he wouldn't allow her to do that. Hailey looked at Bruce curiously but when the police officer agreed it was for the best, Hailey decided not to dwell on the matter. She didn't really care what happened to the man who killed her dad.
"He's not coming back anyway so it doesn't matter," Hailey said softly with tears slowly making their way down her face and then ran back to her room.
Bruce didn't go look for her. And she stayed in her room until the next day when Jason woke her up for breakfast.
"I'm sorry," Hailey said when she saw Bruce at the breakfast table.
He looked at her with his eyebrows raised. "What are you apologizing for?"
"I was rude to you and the policeman yesterday," she said looking at her shoes.
"No, you were not," Bruce said sternly. "What you said was perfectly fine."
"Even though I ran off?" she said looking at him curiously. She didn't want him to be upset with her.
"There was nothing wrong with that either," Bruce told her and gave her a small smile. Hailey nodded and took a seat adjacent to Bruce's.
"Okay," she said and smiled back. A small tenous smile but it was there all the same.
It was the first sign of her moving forward since she'd arrived at the manor. Hailey kept up the pretense of nothing being wrong around the Bruce. But Jason could see that she was faking it. She spoke just enough and only came down for meals. Otherwise, she was holed up in her room. He could tell that she wasn't happy. But he didn't know what to do about it.
Hailey was pleased that the buzzing in her ears had stopped. That she was able to hear what people were saying. And that she could act according to what was expected. The last thing she wanted was to be sent away. Living in the manor was better than living with Lynn. Though she didn't know that Lynn was taken into custody for conspiring the murder of her husband with his killer. Hailey had assumed that Lynn had given her away because the woman had made it a point for Hailey to know that she didn't like her. Even went as far as to tell her that if it hadn't been for Jasper, her dad, she would've been sent away to an orphanage. So she felt very lucky to be living in the manor. Even though it was scary and huge and lonely. It was better than living with Lynn or with people who hated kids. Because Lynn had told her that orphanages were run by people who hated kids and beat them whenever they were bad.
Of all the changes that had come about in Hailey's life abruptly, the private school had been the most daunting. Her classmates had to know that she could hear them, right? And the things they said as she passed by them...it made her shiver. The teachers, the classrooms, and everything other than her classmates was a dull background. Colorless. Lifeless. Surreal. But her classmates loomed over her. She felt like she was in a thick forest with no way out. Their chatter suffocated her like the air of a hot humid day.
"Did you hear? Bruce Wayne is her legal guardian—"
"Man, she has a daddy-bucks—"
"She's in that house with those good looking men—"
"Jason has to sleep near that—"
"You think she could get me a shot of Dick Grayson coming out of the shower—?"
"I want a shot of her com—"
"You're a freak—"
"Not my fault she's got a decent—"
"She's kind of weird—"
"Pretty, sort of—"
"Ew, she's plain—"
"I said sort of—!"
"She's too quiet—"
"Hasn't said two words since her first day—"
"Maybe she's mute—"
"She's probably foreign—"
"A mail-in bride?"
"For his son?"
"Wayne can get any woman he wants."
"Or man—"
"Man, I wish my parents were dead—"
"Adopted by a billionaire—"
"Lucky girl—"
"Stuck-up bitch—"
"Fake-ass—"
"Street trash—"
"She can hear—"
"Whatever—"
She was a novelty. And novelties always wore out. She couldn't help but think that Jason heard what their classmates said about her. About him. And most definitely about Bruce. At least they weren't claiming that Bruce wanted her that way. Gross. He was seen in enough papers with actresses and models and any woman over the age of twenty who was beautiful. And Hailey, she was still a kid. And they never saw her with him. And if they were in the same room, it was Jason who stood closest to Hailey. Except at school. Maybe he was embarrassed by her.
They rode to school together, thanks to Alfred. But once they arrived, Jason didn't bother looking her way. Not to mention the fact that they were in separate buildings. Hailey was in fifth grade after all. And Jason was a sophomore. The private school, lucky for her, had the fifth grade as part of middle school. The elementary school was a separate school altogether. But the junior high and high school buildings shared a common area where the lockers were located. Hailey's happened to be next to Jason's since the Waynes owned their own section in the locker room. Four tall lockers separated from all the others with the Wayne family nameplate. And yet, Jason pretended she didn't exist. He grabbed his things and walked away without a word or even a glance in her direction. Hailey didn't take it as a slight. If anything, she was too embarrassed about the situation itself to care whether or not Jason acknowledged her during the menial task of gathering her books for morning classes.
The teachers and assignments weren't much different from her previous school and even though she missed almost a month of school, Hailey was able to get caught up fairly quickly. She had always been a fast learner and had a good memory. Bruce seemed to be happy that she was doing well in school so she never mentioned how the kids treated her. She hadn't made any friends at all. But that was fine with her. She didn't need any. She preferred to be alone since she didn't feel like talking to anyone. Not even the therapist the social worker recommended.
As a matter of fact, she didn't speak during her sessions with the therapist outside of answering that she was fine and that she liked living in the manor with Bruce and Jason and Alfred. She even told her therapist that she liked her new school. But she never went into details about any of it. If the therapist tried to get more information out of her, Hailey tightened her lips and refused to speak. She didn't talk about Lynn. She didn't talk about her dad. And especially not about the night he died. Instead, she drew. And the therapist was perfectly content with that. Or she had to be. Though neither Hailey nor the therapist knew that what she drew during her session was her first memory in which she was saved from a snowy death by a boy named Robin.
"Do you believe she remembers, sir?" Alfred asked Bruce while he was handing him a cup of tea down in the Batcave.
"No," Bruce said while still researching a company for a recent case. "It's been five years. In that time, she never showed any recognition of anybody from her previous lives."
"I hope it remains that way," Alfred said and sighed. "I would hate for any of us to be forced to witness any recurrence of past inclinations."
"Hnh."
Bruce didn't want to comment on what had happened the last time Hailey had been under his roof. She had decided to give Bruce an account of all her previous lives but having to remember all the horrors of her past lives was too much for her mentally and emotionally. Bruce could have never guessed the guilt she felt over accidentally causing the deaths of a few people whose lives she'd interjected herself into for the sake of survival. She felt like she was a walking time bomb of disastrous events. But Bruce had been too late to figure out that she was on an emotional brink that they wouldn't be able to bring her back from before letting her know that everything that she'd experienced was more or less her being in the wrong place at the wrong time though mostly being right where she needed to be. She saved more people than those who died in her wake.
It was Dick that tried to literally talk her off the ledge. But Hailey was too fast and smart to have her suicide thwarted by anyone even the boy wonder. And having to watch her fall to her death before his eyes triggered Dick's past trauma of having witnessed his parents death.
When Hailey returned into another body, she walked in front of a bus. She survived the accident in critical condition and asked the policewoman who was questioning her actions for a one on one with Batman. He arrived in the hospital without anyone taking notice and Hailey begged him to erase her memories. Batman complied seeing that she would continue to hurt herself if she had to continue to live and die with all the memories of previous lives. He contacted Zatanna and asked her to perform a spell that would help her. He then told Hailey that Zatanna wouldn't do anything until she talked to Dick. Hailey complied and apologized to Dick profusely for what she had done. She explained to him that she had horrible nightmares of her past lives and that she had too much information about the past and the future to keep her from ever having a normal life. Dick said he understood and stayed at her side while Zatanna placed a spell on the girl.
After her memories were erased she breathed a sigh of relief because a metaphorical weight had been lifted off her shoulders. She felt at peace for the first time in as many lives and died with a content look on her face. It seemed that it was only sheer will that was keeping her alive. Because even the doctors had no idea how she'd survived not only being hit by a bus but being dragged along for close to two blocks.
Batman who was aware that there was only one living female member of Patricia Todd's family line left alive kept an eye on the little girl's situation. And after a tragic accident with over a ten-car pileup on the highway, the young Helena Gadd had become an orphan and went missing. Only to be found close to three days later buried in the snow without any memories except the knowledge of her own name. Hailey Thomas. The psychiatrist on call who knew the girl's real name chose to allow her to hold on to the only semblance of memory—no matter how false—she had by having her name changed on her records. Hailey's biological father, Jasper Collins, took the psychiatrists advice and never spoke to the girl of the accident that had taken her family since she couldn't remember anything about her life prior to being found. He went so far as to tell her that he'd adopted her to maintain the facade. His daughter was only six years old after all and hadn't known prior to the accident that the man who'd raised her so far was not her real father. Hailey's life began with a fresh start and a new name.
It wasn't a coincidence that at as soon as Batman heard about the girl over police frequency that he dropped everything to go save her. He arrived too late to save her dad but he saved the girl's life. And he decided to take her under his roof hoping that it would be for the best. However, he was absolutely certain that even though she seemed comfortable in the manor with him and the others that she had no recollection of ever being at the property or around him and Alfred before. That took a weight off his shoulders in regards to the girl. He knew it was for the best not to burden her with his mission. He even warned Jason that he had to keep his Robin persona and his civilian identity completely separate in front of Hailey. Jason thought the rule was stupid but agreed to keep the secret from his new sort-of sister to ensure he wasn't benched as Robin.
However, Jason wouldn't keep Hailey from figuring out on her own. Not to mention, he had to do something to break the girl out of her goody-goody act. There was more to Hailey Thomas than polite words and constant acquiescence toward Bruce and Alfred. And he was just the person to make her show her true colors.
