Ten Years Later…

I pulled the hood onto my head as I walked down the streets of Gotham. After my "incident" ten years ago, I left the loud city of Chicago and moved to Gotham. The first thing I ran into there was trouble. I had been near jumped and who-knows-what-else by a few drunkards when a boy not much older than me stepped in to help a damsel in distress.

I grudgingly accepted his hand when he offered to help me off the ground. "You didn't have to do that," I mumbled, "I could've handled them on my own."

He laughed, ruffling my hair in the painfully familiar way my sister used to. Used to…

I forced back the tears that threatened to fall over, realizing he had said something while I took an unwanted trip down memory lane. "Huh?" I said dumbly.

He frowned, worry creasing his brow. "I said, what's a kid like you doing in the Narrows this late at night?" he repeated.

I let my eyes wander, wondering whether or not I could trust this stranger. "It's nothing. I have to go." I said, turning to run away from the stranger.

"Hey," he grabbed my arm, but then let it go when I flinched. "At least let me walk you home. These streets aren't safe…"

His voice trailed off at the blank look on my face. "What home?" the words were barely audible to my ears, but somehow he caught them.

"Oh." He said awkwardly. "Well, at least let me—"

"No!" I nearly shouted, roughly tearing myself away from him. Once I had a grip on my emotions, I tried it again. "Thank you for your help, but I'll be fine on my own."

I turned away, but stopped at the hand on my shoulder. "At least take this."

He took my hand and put something in it, closing my fist around it. "It's not much, but you should be able to get yourself something to eat and a place to stay for the night." He took my other hand and a pen out of his pocket before writing something on it. "That's my number. Call me if you need anything."

I gazed down at the money in my hand, then at the messily written number on the other one. "Why?" I asked him just as he turned to leave.

He stopped, then looked back at me with a small smile. "You remind me of my little sister. She died last year because of something like what happened to you."

I nodded in empathy. "I'm Jade, you?"

His smile widened. "James."

After that night, I slowly began to rely on James. Over time, he grew into a brother figure, teaching me the wonders of technology. I had learned along the way that he was into shady business, but it was ok. After all, wasn't I technically a criminal too? I had killed my own father…

As I reached my destination, I brought myself back to the present and opened the door to the bank. Luckily, there weren't many people there, so I was able to quickly withdraw the amount I needed and turned to the exit. As I walked up to the glass doors, I saw a white van pull up across the street, and multiple me with colorful clown masks jumped out.

My eyes widened before I made the split decision to turn and try to run out of the back. Just as I made to the other side of the ridiculously large bank, the doors opened and gunshots were fired. I dived into the room on my right, which just so happened to be a stairwell. I ignored the shouting behind me as I let the door slam shut and went up, determined to take the fun way out. Not so long later, the door opened behind me and I cursed under my breath.

Bursting out onto the roof, I quickly scanned the area around me and cursed again when I noticed two more men with clown masks. They'd looked up from what they were doing and started towards me. I darted behind a vent as a spray of bullets hit the space I'd just preoccupied. I lunged towards the edge and gripped the it before I looked down.

Another building stood not too far from the one I currently clung to, so without much hesitation I threw my weight away from it and landed roughly on my left shoulder on the slightly shorter building. I rolled and sprang to my feet, running to the other side were there was a fire escape a few stories below. Without checking to see if the men had followed me, I jumped down onto it, climbing over the railing and falling the remaining two stories to the ground. I looked up at the roof of the building and sighed in relief when I saw that the men hadn't followed me. I turned and jogged to the end of the alley before walking calmly out and pulling my hood back over my head as I left the scene.

"James," I groaned as I entered the small apartment. A half-attempted grunt was my only reply as I flopped on the couch. "Gimme an icepack, would ya?"

A few moments later and James walked into the room, carrying a towel full of ice. I gratefully accepted it and put it on my sore shoulder. "What happened?" he asked with a raised brow.

I sighed as the coldness soothed the burning of the scrape on the back of my shoulder. I stretched my neck to look at the gaping hole in my hoodie. "Ah, dammit! Frickin' Joker…" I mumbled in irritation. "Joker decided to rob the bank. I didn't want to give up the cash I'd just taken out from the McBryan case— you know how hard that one was— so I ran out the back and jumped off the roof basically. I haven't practiced parkouring in a while." I winced.

James tutted. "I told you, you should have kept in shape. But no, someone's been a bit too lazy—" he laughed as he dodged the couch pillow I threw at him.

"Shut up, prick." I mumbled grouchily, turning my face into the cushion beneath me.

Once I had taken a shower and stole some of James's clothes, I left and went to my own apartment, which wasn't too far away.

After James had helped me learn computer genius stuff, aka: coding, then hacking, he had helped me get my first customer. It started off as basic info-gathering type of jobs, but as my abilities grew, so did the complexity of my "assignments". Eventually, I was making enough to support myself, but since I was technically still a kid at the time (I was seventeen), I had to wait to move out of James's apartment, though it was pretty much like I still lived there since I spent so much time with him.

Over the years, I had learned that he had come from a pretty well off family, but after his sister had been killed, he had stopped caring about school. He'd dropped out and started making a living as a hacker before he ran into me. I'd told him that I was an orphan because I'd killed my father, so he helped me build a new identity. I no longer went by the name of Jade; my new (fake) government name was Alex, though my handle was L3x.

The first thing I did once I got comfortable was crack open my laptop and check my email. I had three new assignment requests and one unlabeled one. Frowning, I ignored the requests and checked the unlabeled one. 'Customers know how to label their assignments, so who could this be?' I wondered to myself. Business email had a strict set of rules, and my customers knew that. Opening the email, my frown deepened when I realized that it was a video clip. It was of me jumping down from the building; then it froze on my face when I glanced back up. At the end, there was a single line of text reading, "I know who you are, Jade." With the text, there was a picture of the Joker card.

My heart dropped to the floor as I stared at the screen. Numbly, I reached for the phone, dialing James's number. "I need you here. Now." I whispered past the lump in my throat.

So, there's the first chapter. Let me know if I should continue this or not. See you soon. (: