Chapter 29: School Days.
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Robert Dupuis and his wife Marietta knew what they were doing when they adopted two grown children. Many of his friends would ask him, with a raised eyebrow, why them and not some younger kids. Rob would always smile, raise an eyebrow and dismiss the questions with acasual wave of the hand, as if he was wafting away an odour. There were reasons why he and Mary had gone down this particular route, hard and uncomfortable reasons he didn't like to discuss over the water cooler.
Right now though, none of those reasons mattered. Because right now, at 5:54am he was stood in the doorway of their kitchen, looking at the elder of their adopted children. Kenny was slouched at the table like a boxer who'd just gone five rounds with a gorilla. No matter the exam stress, girl trouble, or just general teenage angst, Robert didn't think any kid had the right to look that tired. Still, he knew what Kenny and Karen had been through. It was part of the reason he and Mary had adopted them over anyone else. The cameradeirie of tragedy. Misery loves company and so on.
"You're up early, Kenneth." Rob asked, in a voice deliberately withholding any chipper mood. Sometimes when you were going through what he morosely called 'the stuff' the last thing you wanted was a happy Larry chiming in. The lack of closeness, both emotionally and physically, caused Rob to also maintain his formal fatherly tone. One he would readily admit he'd simply parroted from his own father. Maybe if his and Mary's first attempt at child rearing had persisted, Rob would have developed his own version of fatherly concern, but alas, no. So he settled for a folding of the arms and a worried furrowing of the brow.
"Oh, hey." Kenneth's reply was grey and tired, the boy barely raising his head from where it lulled. Robert, a frown coming upon his face, hid the expression by walking over to the kitchen counter and rifling through the cupboards. Looking briefly over his shoulder he could see Kenneth hadn't even shifted his eyes to look up.
Silence loomed over them, even as it was jostled by the sound of Robert's movements. As he busied himself grabbing two mugs and a teaspoon, his mind was more occupied with how to breach that awkward quiet. Water hissed from the faucet as he filled the kettle, yet still no idea for conversational topics came to him. What should he do, could he do, to lift Kenneth's spirits?
"Schoolwork going well?" Robert could have kicked himself, what a foolish line of inquiry, what teenager enjoyed talking about school, let alone to their parents, let alone let alone their adoptive parents.
"Yeah." Was the predicatably monosyllabic reply. The button on the electric kettle was flicked, and a subtle hiss of heat siphoned into the soundscape of the room.
As silence pushed back into the room, Robert sidled over to the refrigerator, and with a clunk-clunk opened the door, retrieving a carton of semi-skimmed milk. "Up early. Couldn't sleep?" He tried conversation again.
"Hm, no." The affirmative hum and negative reply, yes I am up early, no I couldn't sleep, was obvious. Robert once again kicked himself mentally, what on Earth was he thinking? What sort of conversation could emerge from such talk, nothing interesting. Goodness he was out of touch. He scolded himself as he took out the sugar pot and set all the accoutrements out on the side. This was what they had let themselves in for, it wasn't going to be easy giving these troubled kids a home, but but it sure wasn't looking like he knew how to go about things.
"I've got a busy day today too… The board want a new report on our first quarter projections… Mr. Fox is a nice enough boss but one doesn't like to disappoint…" Throwing caution to the wind, Robert just started rambling, getting little response from the exhausted teenager. Even as the kettle started to boil he continued his bland blabbering. "Honestly I don't know where half of the money goes… The report is on our international markets however… Had to talk with our folks over in East Asia… Tried to learn a bit of Japanese to ingratiate myself… Sounded like a buffoon I can tell you…" The kettle switch clicked off and the loud hissing died down. Absent mindedly Robert poured, pressed, and then stirred the coffee. Looking down at the two mugs he broke off from his ramblings to ask. "Cream and sugar by the way?"
"Oh… Yes, thanks. Little bit of each." Kenneth, with more syllables than he'd so far shared, looked up and gave an appreciative nod to Robert. Somehow that one motion made the middle-aged man smile.
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"We're both going to laugh about this one day!" The short kid let go of Artemis' shoulder, and retreated with his phone. Eyes still dazzled from the flash of the photograph he'd just taken of the two of them, the blonde archer didn't know what to do. No sooner had she stepped through the gates of Gotham Academy had her day taken a turn for the weird. It's not as if she didn't have enough clouding her mind already.
Distracted and disgruntled as she was, she decided not to chase the kid down and make him delete the photo. Instead she shouldered her bag and strode away from him, heading into the main school building. Stalling only slightly to fish her timetable out of her bag.
She had only beens stationary for a few seconds, when something else accosted her. Another student, taller by far than the last guy, bumped into her. She stumbled to the side, catching her footing quickly and sending a scathing look at the boy who had collided with her.
"Watch where you're going, jackass!" She called after him, the jerk not even having stopped.
The guy, with a threadbare orange coat over his uniform, spun halfway around to look back at her. Artemis caught the profile of a bedraggled, blue eyed student about her age. He had that half-starved hangdog look. In the one instant he looked at her his expression started to shift, no doubt realising the person he'd whacked aside was a girl. Her dad had warned her against guys like this, among the million other things he'd warned her over.
The boy's face went from a hazy, tired apathy, to a strange curiosity in only a few moments. It looked less like he was checking her out, and more like he recognised her.
"Take a picture, it'll last longer." She snapped, trying to knock the guy out of his daze and get rid of him. Adding under her breath. "That's what most of the weirdoes at this school do apparently."
"Sorry." His voice was not as deep as she had expected, containing within it a boyish note that was only halfway buried beneath a heap of seeming exhaustion. "You're new here?" He asked, only remembering to make the statement a question towards the end of the last word.
"Yeah, so what." She retorted, readjusting her bag where its strap hung awkwardly from where it had been knocked askew.
The guy blinked owlishly, then shrugged his shoulders and said. "Uh… welcome to school, I guess." Then he turned back into the hallway and began walking away, calling over his shoulder with a tone of humour only he seemed to find. "See you around."
She watched him go with confusion. "Are all the guys in this school freaking nuts?" She asked no one in particular.
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She clattered her - of all things - lunch tray down on the cafeteria table. Gotham Academy served some of the best free school meals in the entire school district, but somehow to Loretta Inzerillo it just felt poor. Gone were the days when her mother and father could provide her with artisanal, home cooked meals for her to take with her. Their chef had certainly been a sight better than whoever they had managing the grease fire fry pit - or whatever it was called - behind the kitchen door at the academy.
Across from her, was a mop of blonde hair. A slouching shadow who hovered over his own lunch tray like a gargoyle. He - the first symptom of her fall from grace - was far from his usual smug, aloof, cool self.
"What has you looking like shit?" She snapped as Loretta took the seat across from him. She brushed her skirt down neatly, and even flicked her own blonde locks over a shoulder. The meticulously crimped wavy strands tickling the back of her neck. She reflexively readjusted her sitting position, and in doing so snuck a look out of the corner of her eye towards a distant table.
Her old cohort of hangers on were sat there yakking away like always. Not for the first time Loretta wondered how they had anything to talk about without her there. Even as a pang of nauseous nostalgia washed over her, the expression on her face curdled slightly to notice that they hadn't so much as glanced her way. How was she supposed to regain her status if none of them saw her efforts? She was sitting with the academy rebel for crying out loud, his parents - as rumour would have it - were crack dealers or even ex-supervillains. He had punched her - her - in the face for goodness sake. Yet here she was eating her lunch with the mysterious blonde.
Sure, he had no friends, and was verging more on the weird side of the mysterious stranger vibe, but why did that matter. It should show them that even without her trust fund, and even with her father's slandered reputation, she herself was still someone of note. She still mattered.
"Neither do you though, so fuck it."
The voice of the delinquent brought her attention skittering back round. She turn her head back to look at him quizzically. "What?" She asked, not understanding his response.
"You said I look like shit… I said I don't care… then you spaced out staring over there." He finished his explanation with a prod of his plastic fork in the given direction.
"Huh?" Brought up short, Loretta unintentionally let out a rather uncouth sound of confusion.
This caused Kenny to roll his eyes and sigh, still acting like he was too tired for life. "As in, you don't care either, right?"
"Ugh, forget about it." She dismissed, taking up her own cutlery and investigating the braised steak with her fork's flimsy porongs. "You still look like crap. What happened?"
"Why do you care?" He retorted, seemingly skeptical that anyone would bother asking or believing his justification.
"First I don't care, now I do, fuck off with your sanctimonious B.S." She sneered, eyebrows arching in distaste. If he wasn't going to appreciate her lowering herself to his level, then she wasn't going to treat him with decorum. "I came over her to start a conversation and eat my lunch. If you're going to be like that then…" She came up short, losing the thread of her reasoning. She cast another surupticious glance over to where her old crowd sat, still none of them seemed to care that she was even in the same room as them. "Nevermind."
There was a long stretch of silence, as both of them looked at each other, then an even longer silence as they turned their eyes down to the lunch trays. Loretta filled the time by trying some of the dauphinoise potatoes. She might never admit it, but they were pretty good.
"I didn't get much sleep last night." The silence had become so natural that his speaking didn't surprise her. She chewed and ate, then took time to respond. If she was transparent with herself, the thing that did actually surprise her was that he seemed to be being honest. It wasn't hard to see the bags under his eyes, but something about how he said it made her think that this wasn't your usual sleepless night. She knew something about that personally, there had been a fair few things as of late that had kept her from sleeping. Errant thoughts and loose anxieties. That or the sound of her mother drinking, then crying, then the unnatural quiet.
Not to bring down the mood, Loretta snarked. "I didn't get good sleep either, and I still look good."
To her surprise he wasn't there with a verbal jab back at her sly comment. Instead he just made a sound halfway between a solitary laugh and a quick breath.
"What kept you up…" She continued.
He looked at her just then, and his blue eyes weren't distant, however they did contain within them a million miles. Like looking into his eyes granted her a view down a long winding road. For a second she didn't breath, waiting to hear what he said next.
Then Kenny blinked, and said…
"Two foxes were fucking outside my window."
She recoiled.
"Ever heard two foxes getting it on?"
Loretta twisted her plastic cutlery in her grip, imagining how deeply the shitty little knife and fork could penetrate Kenny's stupid face.
"Imagine a crying baby scraping a rusty nail down a chalkboard, that's pretty close to how unpleasant it is."
His stupid, stupid, face.
At least he looked a little more awake now.
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"Hey, Richard, are you alright?"
Dick's attention was drawn to one of the only people he knew who called him by that name. Strangely, it was one of the newer people he had met, but knowing her gentler nature it was obvious why she didn't use his nickname.
As they left the classroom, he slowed his pace to walk alongside her. Karen McCormick was staring at him from under her light brown fringe, a look of concern drawn across her small features.
"What? Yeah, I'm fine." He replied, giving her a smile as well.
"Okay…" After a small moment of consideration she seemed to steel herself and press with another question. "I'm sorry, you can tell me to go away if you don't want to talk, but… Every time you think no one is looking today… you go all sad."
Dick's smile faltered only a little. It wasn't easy to hide everything, especially when one of their team had gone missing. Bruce had schooled him on how to keep his personal and heroic life separate, but often Dick found himself feeling like such a feat of emotional gymnastics was impossible.
"Oh… you know, it's nothing. Just a…" He fished around for some sort of excuse. "Bad night sleep?"
Karen made a sound of pure understanding, then looked back up at him. "You should talk to my brother about that, he has trouble sleeping."
As they headed from history over to math, Dick made a mental note to be more careful when schooling his expressions. Especially when Karen was around, as she seemed more perceptive than the quiet girl let on.
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It was times like these that Kenny was glad he was so attached to his parka.
Almost as soon as school let out, the skies opened up. Rain came down in bullets, breaking a torrent of water over the heads of Gotham's populace. The fleet of wealthy parents ferrying their children home in black sedan's passed by on the road, and Kenny folded in with the relatively few students of the academy who were consigned to walking.
Karen had some sort of club meet with her friends. Come to think on it, he didn't actually know what it was. Something gymnastic, but he'd not kept up with her school life so much recently. Part of him thought it was good to let her spread her own wings, take off from under the watchful eye of her guardian angel.
He got a third of the way home without thinking about the previous night. A whole third of his walk without any issue, thoughts of school and home filling his head instead. A pleasant change of pace if he was honest. But he couldn't keep the images of what he had seen from flooding back into his mind, and with them came a thousand other thoughts. What was he going to do, what did it all mean. It was overwhelming, to say the least.
It was at the corner of Boxhill Street and Colber Avenue, waiting for the lights to turn green, that his attention was drawn away from everything by the sound of a busker. Kenny, half-soaked in rain, squinted at the figure who was only partially saved from the downpour by an old awning hanging out beside a flower shop.
A pale faced teenager, dirty jeans and a threadbare coat. Someone who looked like they'd been turned out onto the street. The kind of face that turned over and over every time you turned a corner in Gotham, musicians, actors, artists, young hopefuls. Or even just kids who needed to get out of wherever they were. It was a common sight, stopping off in Gotham before they realised it was a bad idea. Often realising too late. This kid, with his sad eyes and matted hair looked like he was on the edge of that realisation. Yet still, he sat at the side of the road and sang, played guitar, busked for the few coins that Gotham's masses could bother to throw his way.
"And everything is not the same now.
It feels like all our lives have changed."
Something about him seemed familiar to Kenny, but he couldn't place it. Passing by, he dropped a few coins in the guy's open guitar case. The amateur musician nodded in thanks, and kept playing.
"Maybe when I'm older, it'll all calm down.
But it's killin' me now."
It wasn't Kenny's kind of music, but everyone deserved a little kindness.
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A/N: Long time no see, huh? Not quite a year since the last update, but I'll take the wins where I can get them. It's hard to find time to write fan fiction tbh, especially since my current work has me doing a lot of writing. But I have a big place in my heart for any and all fanfic, my own included! I still read a lot, but I don't have nearly any time to write, so for that I apologise. But I can promise, as I always have, that when the time and inspiration strike, I will always try to remember this fic (and my others too ofc).
I had the idea/concept for this chapter planned out pretty far in advance, and I know the outline of how the next arc of the story progresses. But planning and writing are two different beasts! It was really fun to finally get some other perspectives all messed into one chapter, felt like it was needed to see how everyone is reacting to events both recent and from many chapters ago.
Let me know what you thought in a review! And if you've stuck with this story (and even fan fiction in general) for this long, know that I appreciate you so much.
— Faff