Work Text:
There was light, then pain, then a blinding, blinding white.
He thought- did he think? Many strings of formless, meaningless wandered achenly…
What was going on? It was so white. So white. He moved, did he move? No visual cues existed. Did he exist? Was there even something to move? Did he have anything to move?
A body, an exsitance seemed an herculean task to-
Task to-
He shook his… not head. He didn’t have a head. He shook his… something.
Then.
Then he…
Then.
Then there was Pain . A soul slicing, splicing pain that eveloped his everything.
In his mind, his thoughts, his conscience, it went on and on for eons. Or had it even been a second?
Then there was a voice.
“Good luck.” It spoke. The sound coming from everywhere, everything and with every voice. Young and old. South and east. Truth and lie. Echoing throughout his being in a soul searing vibration.
Then.
Then there was nothing.
Jarold found the kid passed out in a trash bin. They were tiny scrappy thing that was wearing the weirdest clothes. Not that he judged the choice, mind you, clothes were clothes when one was stuck on the streets.
“Uuugghh-” Groaned the small golden haired child, gloved hands grasping uselessly. He? She? Couldn’t be more than ten.
Jarold stepped back awkwardly, there were many reasons he didn’t have children. First and foremost because Gotham was a shithole that would eat them whole, second because he was homeless and you just don’t do that to kids, and third was because he was a stumbling, stuttering disaster of human being when someone of the same species that was shy of adulthood even breathed in his direction. It was a thing, okay?
Muffed grumbling intensified as the kid struggled with his oversized clothes.
Jarold raised an eyebrow when the kid finally untangled himself and showed that his eyes were a startling gold on foreign features.
Well that wasn’t the face of a little girl.
“ Huh.” He said, intelligently. Mind going blank as the obviously Meta kid gave him an intense stare, cold and calculating.
It was actually getting pretty awkward and Jarold felt his will to live diminish by the second. The kids narrowed gold eyes holding more judgment than his mothers when Jack, his bastard of a father, came home high out of his mind. Jarold twitched. He never held out well under pressure, even if the pressure was just a creepy stare from a Meta kid so small that if Jarold actually tried he could probably lift him with one arm.
Jarold was a coward, not a liar, he was adult enough that he could acknowlegde that he had sticks for arms.
The kid's eyes didn’t change in ferocity as they widened, examining the alley way he was in. Looking up, down and around, and seemed oddly focused on the few skyscrapers he could see. He didn’t look away from, was that the Wayne building? As he spoke, voice scracty from disuse, or screaming. Both were viable in Gotham.
The shithole.
“ Was zum Teufel…"
Now Jarold really regretted squatting in this alley. There was no way this foreign, meta kid that didn’t even speak english was not trafficked.
And here he was, a full grown stick of man that was obviously homeless not quite looming over the boy.
Shit.
Was it too late to go back to his newspaper bench in the Crime alley.
The kid barked at him, the unfamilar language flying right over his head. A few more barks, and they really were barks. Short, clipped words that Jarold would bet his two dollars and pocket flint on, were a mutitude of curse words.
The kids vicious snarl having a cruelly abused tilt steadied his hand moved in multiple gestures.
The fact that the kid moved straight to crude gestures afterwards, solidified it.
Jarold was a twenty-five year old man, he stood at five foot eleven and he was not going to flip off a child-
And here he was, peaking with his achievement of the year. Flipping off a eight year old.
Jarold sighed, and-
“Fuck!” He said. He did not screech, it was a loud exclamation of pain. Not a screech. When something hard, strong, and metal kicked his knee. He collapsed back, not willing to put any pressure on his knee.
“-oooh my knee.” He mumbled out, rubbing on what was most certainly going to be a bruise.
The kid's leg was up and posed even as his arms were holding up his torso, the brat having kicked him without standing. Jarold watched, mute, as the kid twisted and propped himself up.
Now that he could see more of him, the kid seemed to be wearing some weird armor on his leg. The smooth metal gleaming slightly through a rip.
It was weird, though he certainly seen weirder. You can’t live in Gotham and be surprised at a child wearing armor.
The kid, he really wanted a name for him, huffed, stretched, then flipped him off like the true Gothamite he wasn’t.