Oh hey, I wrote something.
Oh, my. Fanfic. I ... don't know if I like it. The next section, well.. that should be fun. The chase is on!
DCU/AU, PG-13-ish for implied content, the first of many. 1364 words.
By his eighth birthday, Tim had solved the biggest mystery in Gotham. He might have even been satisfied, if he hadn't known that he couldn't tell anyone about it. Jack, his father, might have noticed that something had taken his son's interest when the boy asked, tentatively, if the two of them could go to the park.
Tim had not yet shown an affinity for the outdoors.
Normally, he boarded himself up in his room with the newspaper and endless piles of books, always hungry to know a little more. Jack, though he was thrilled with his son's boundless curiosity and capability to simply absorb knowledge, found himself relieved. His boy wasn't a freak, just slow on the uptake. At least, that was what Jack thought. Tim went out of his way to ensure that his father never had reason to think otherwise, even though he found himself wrapped more and more tightly up in obsession with What He'd Found Out.
Tim was ten when his mother died. She'd slipped away while he was hiding under her bed, shoved there and told in a terrified, hushed voice not to dare move or breathe or do so much as sneeze. The man who had forced his way into their home killed her quickly, at least, once he was done violating her in her own bedroom. The smell of blood, Tim discovered, was different in large amounts than in small - oddly sweet and sticky in his nostrils in a way that the stuff that came out of scraped knees never had been. It had soaked through the mattress by the time his father came home. It wasn't until Tim was quite certain that those footsteps in the front hallway were familiar ones that he crawled out from beneath the bed, all tearstained cheeks and trembling apologies.
Watching the police case the scene and gather evidence was comforting - he observed their mistakes and made a running tally in his head of everything they'd missed and what they would get wrong. Tim wasn't concerned with what the police would do, because of that mystery he'd solved two years before; he knew that mystery had the power to bring his mother's killer to justice.
So Tim waited. He watched the news with razor-sharp interest, snuck from his window at night and left his grief-riddled father to his cigarettes and brandy, to watch the Dark Knight and his new more burly companion wreak vengeance down on the city.
Tim thought, those first months, that Mr Wayne was only taking his time to be absolutely sure it was the tall man with the gravelly voice and the thinning mouse-brown hair who killed her. The one that drove the cable company's repair truck. He couldn't fault the Bat for biding his time and give the man the sensation that just maybe he'd gotten away with what he'd done, before swooping down on him and throwing him away into a cell to rot. And Tim waited.
Tim thought, after an excruciating one hundred and seventy-two days had gone by, that the Bat perhaps had realized that he was being followed and spied on night after night, and was punishing him for his curiosity. But he remained unphased in his nightly movements, seemingly unaware of the pair of crisp blue eyes that spied on he and the Todd boy. Tim was growing impatient.
When one year rolled by on the calendar and still Gotham's vigilante had done nothing, Tim realized that his mother's death had gone by unnoticed. The police, impotent as always, had left the case to grow cold. Batman wasn't going to pick it up.
Tim set about taking care of the problem, all the while making top marks in school, convincing his father he was only slightly above average by bringing home the occasional 94 and playing soccer some afternoons with a group of boys who were unimportant enough to make halfway-friends with.
Tim didn't kill the man, or even go out of his way to set the series of events which caused his death in motion. "Accidentally" stumbling into an alley where a drug deal was going sour and dropping a business card that didn't belong to him was easy. Planting a few seeds of discord among the no-doubt equally disgusting characters his mother's killer spent his recreational time with had taken little more than a phone call in a sweet, feminine lilt saying that no, there was no message, the police department would call back later.
A great swelling of pride settled into Tim's stomach when he heard the police scanner buzz to life, reporting that two men, apparantly in the process of robbing an empty house, began to argue and killed one another. The pictures on the news websites confirmed and reinforced his sense of satisfaction at what he'd done, and Tim was able to take a deep breath and relax. Sort of.
He realized, two days later, that not only was he furious with the Bat for leaving him to take matters into his own hands, he needed another mystery to solve. Without his mind working constantly, attacking a dozen problems at once, Tim had to consider that he had only meant for the man to be caught doing something illegal, perhaps ratted out and put in jail. His death, Tim told himself, should not have made him feel nearly so smug.
The mystery Tim chose next was not unlike his first solve, but required a more long-distance style of information gathering. Tim was twelve, by the time Jason Todd died, and had taken interest in the behavior of one big blue boyscout that reigned over Metropolis' golden skyline.
When he realized just who was fooling the world with a slouch and a pair of glasses, Tim felt oddly disappointed in himself for not figuring it out sooner. He also made a note to himself, for future use; poor posture can be enough of a disguise.
Still, Tim felt unsatisfied.
While Gotham's night watchman began to put himself in more and more danger, and Metropolis' alien defender attempted to clean up both of their messes, Tim found himself distracted by the political endeavors of a green-party candidate in Star City.
By his thirteenth birthday, he had compiled an entire closet's worth of information on various members of the so-called "Justice League", neatly organized and written in cypher. He had also developed a plan.
Tim found that the vigilante community was something of a joke, picking and choosing which crimes to stop and which to allow for the sake of their own survival. By prolonging the necessity for a Batman in Gotham, Mr Wayne had assured himself warm welcome in spite of all that he'd done wrong. By ensuring political turmoil in Star City, Ollie Queen had set the stage for Green Arrow to make a few carefully-planned, heroic endeavors to endear himself to the populous. By driving fear of what no human could overcome into the heart of each citizen in Metropolis, Clark Kent had secured Superman's role as savior with little more than a few choice editorials.
Self-preservation, rather than the thrill of doing what was right, was all that Tim could see driving their good deeds. How hypocritical, he thought. How disappointing.
To set his plan in motion, the boy knew that he would have to draw attention to himself - the right kind of attention, from the right people. He found that it wasn't difficult at all to break through the layers on layers of security coding, to burrow his way into one particular corporation's personnel files. He made sure to only do this sort of work from public access computers, so as not to make himself too easy to trace. He made sure to leave one or two hints of his presence, just enough to raise a flag in the mind of one brilliant individual.
He created a document, which only That Man could access, and first left him a simple note to open their playful correspondence.
Mr Luthor, the text said plainly, you ought to think about improving your network's security.
And then, all Tim had to do was wait.
DCU/AU, PG-13-ish for implied content, the first of many. 1364 words.
By his eighth birthday, Tim had solved the biggest mystery in Gotham. He might have even been satisfied, if he hadn't known that he couldn't tell anyone about it. Jack, his father, might have noticed that something had taken his son's interest when the boy asked, tentatively, if the two of them could go to the park.
Tim had not yet shown an affinity for the outdoors.
Normally, he boarded himself up in his room with the newspaper and endless piles of books, always hungry to know a little more. Jack, though he was thrilled with his son's boundless curiosity and capability to simply absorb knowledge, found himself relieved. His boy wasn't a freak, just slow on the uptake. At least, that was what Jack thought. Tim went out of his way to ensure that his father never had reason to think otherwise, even though he found himself wrapped more and more tightly up in obsession with What He'd Found Out.
Tim was ten when his mother died. She'd slipped away while he was hiding under her bed, shoved there and told in a terrified, hushed voice not to dare move or breathe or do so much as sneeze. The man who had forced his way into their home killed her quickly, at least, once he was done violating her in her own bedroom. The smell of blood, Tim discovered, was different in large amounts than in small - oddly sweet and sticky in his nostrils in a way that the stuff that came out of scraped knees never had been. It had soaked through the mattress by the time his father came home. It wasn't until Tim was quite certain that those footsteps in the front hallway were familiar ones that he crawled out from beneath the bed, all tearstained cheeks and trembling apologies.
Watching the police case the scene and gather evidence was comforting - he observed their mistakes and made a running tally in his head of everything they'd missed and what they would get wrong. Tim wasn't concerned with what the police would do, because of that mystery he'd solved two years before; he knew that mystery had the power to bring his mother's killer to justice.
So Tim waited. He watched the news with razor-sharp interest, snuck from his window at night and left his grief-riddled father to his cigarettes and brandy, to watch the Dark Knight and his new more burly companion wreak vengeance down on the city.
Tim thought, those first months, that Mr Wayne was only taking his time to be absolutely sure it was the tall man with the gravelly voice and the thinning mouse-brown hair who killed her. The one that drove the cable company's repair truck. He couldn't fault the Bat for biding his time and give the man the sensation that just maybe he'd gotten away with what he'd done, before swooping down on him and throwing him away into a cell to rot. And Tim waited.
Tim thought, after an excruciating one hundred and seventy-two days had gone by, that the Bat perhaps had realized that he was being followed and spied on night after night, and was punishing him for his curiosity. But he remained unphased in his nightly movements, seemingly unaware of the pair of crisp blue eyes that spied on he and the Todd boy. Tim was growing impatient.
When one year rolled by on the calendar and still Gotham's vigilante had done nothing, Tim realized that his mother's death had gone by unnoticed. The police, impotent as always, had left the case to grow cold. Batman wasn't going to pick it up.
Tim set about taking care of the problem, all the while making top marks in school, convincing his father he was only slightly above average by bringing home the occasional 94 and playing soccer some afternoons with a group of boys who were unimportant enough to make halfway-friends with.
Tim didn't kill the man, or even go out of his way to set the series of events which caused his death in motion. "Accidentally" stumbling into an alley where a drug deal was going sour and dropping a business card that didn't belong to him was easy. Planting a few seeds of discord among the no-doubt equally disgusting characters his mother's killer spent his recreational time with had taken little more than a phone call in a sweet, feminine lilt saying that no, there was no message, the police department would call back later.
A great swelling of pride settled into Tim's stomach when he heard the police scanner buzz to life, reporting that two men, apparantly in the process of robbing an empty house, began to argue and killed one another. The pictures on the news websites confirmed and reinforced his sense of satisfaction at what he'd done, and Tim was able to take a deep breath and relax. Sort of.
He realized, two days later, that not only was he furious with the Bat for leaving him to take matters into his own hands, he needed another mystery to solve. Without his mind working constantly, attacking a dozen problems at once, Tim had to consider that he had only meant for the man to be caught doing something illegal, perhaps ratted out and put in jail. His death, Tim told himself, should not have made him feel nearly so smug.
The mystery Tim chose next was not unlike his first solve, but required a more long-distance style of information gathering. Tim was twelve, by the time Jason Todd died, and had taken interest in the behavior of one big blue boyscout that reigned over Metropolis' golden skyline.
When he realized just who was fooling the world with a slouch and a pair of glasses, Tim felt oddly disappointed in himself for not figuring it out sooner. He also made a note to himself, for future use; poor posture can be enough of a disguise.
Still, Tim felt unsatisfied.
While Gotham's night watchman began to put himself in more and more danger, and Metropolis' alien defender attempted to clean up both of their messes, Tim found himself distracted by the political endeavors of a green-party candidate in Star City.
By his thirteenth birthday, he had compiled an entire closet's worth of information on various members of the so-called "Justice League", neatly organized and written in cypher. He had also developed a plan.
Tim found that the vigilante community was something of a joke, picking and choosing which crimes to stop and which to allow for the sake of their own survival. By prolonging the necessity for a Batman in Gotham, Mr Wayne had assured himself warm welcome in spite of all that he'd done wrong. By ensuring political turmoil in Star City, Ollie Queen had set the stage for Green Arrow to make a few carefully-planned, heroic endeavors to endear himself to the populous. By driving fear of what no human could overcome into the heart of each citizen in Metropolis, Clark Kent had secured Superman's role as savior with little more than a few choice editorials.
Self-preservation, rather than the thrill of doing what was right, was all that Tim could see driving their good deeds. How hypocritical, he thought. How disappointing.
To set his plan in motion, the boy knew that he would have to draw attention to himself - the right kind of attention, from the right people. He found that it wasn't difficult at all to break through the layers on layers of security coding, to burrow his way into one particular corporation's personnel files. He made sure to only do this sort of work from public access computers, so as not to make himself too easy to trace. He made sure to leave one or two hints of his presence, just enough to raise a flag in the mind of one brilliant individual.
He created a document, which only That Man could access, and first left him a simple note to open their playful correspondence.
Mr Luthor, the text said plainly, you ought to think about improving your network's security.
And then, all Tim had to do was wait.