Title: the dying of the year
Disclaimer: not my characters
Warnings: spoilers for movie
Pairings: none
Rating: PG
Wordcount: 210
Point of view: third
Prompt: Any, any, when they knew they were an adult
The home turns him out the day he turns eighteen (the day he's pretty sure is his birthday, the day the system has listed, but Dad was drunk all the time, out gambling and losing every penny to his name, so John isn't sure because they never celebrated anything).
John's good with computers, good with math and logic, good with rules and guidelines. He can be charming. He's efficient.
He finishes high-school by the skin of his teeth and gets a scholarship to college, and then he goes to the police academy.
He's popular, once the stigma of being a foster kid is gone. His teachers love him. His classmates laugh at his jokes and invite him to every party.
He's given a gun by the Gotham PD, and it's not the first one he's ever held. Not the first he's ever fired. He looks down at it and remembers his father – remembers Bruce Wayne, seeing that mask, the mask he's still wearing himself, and knowing/.
Batman doesn't like guns. Everyone's figured that out, which makes the murders he supposedly committed a bit odder.
But. John looks down at the gun and wonders if this is what means to be grown.
He's twenty-three years old.
(He's still not sure when his birthday is.)