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chronicbatfictioner · 5 years

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Exchanges and Compromises - Chapter 1

a/n: So I found a fic that has more than a dozen chapters and is finished. Kind of. It’s going to be part one of an alternate universe. But as far as part one goes, it’s finished. So I’m posting it and fixing it as I go. Yay.

A fated night, 20 years ago - so everybody thought and believed. A fated night that brought Dr Thomas and Mrs Martha Wayne, along with their 10-year-old son, Bruce, to the Cinema at Park Row to watch an old movie rerun. A fated night in which Dr Wayne had forgotten his wallet at the concession stand, and the concession attendant had chased him as they got out of the theater to head back home. It was fate that had stopped Dr Wayne to praise the 17-year-old Lucius Fox who had taken the schedule from his coworker who had played truant for the night - and handed him a thank you speech and a fifty out of said wallet along with his business card and offer for Lucius to come over to Wayne Enterprises whenever he could. Dr Wayne commented that honest man was too rare in Gotham City for him to not grab hold of one it as soon as he saw Fox.

The delays thus made it possible for Alfred Pennyworth, their butler, to arrive just in time to pick them up, just as they were held under gunpoint by a junkie who was trying to rob them. Alfred, a war veteran, had not hesitated in drawing his own gun when he saw the procession, and shot the man who were going to rob Dr and Mrs Wayne.

A fateful night of young Bruce Wayne's first introduction to crime, and the realization that his city - Gotham City - was fully invested with petty crimes. And as his father had said some minutes earlier: an honest man is rare in Gotham.

Alfred's' gun did not kill the wannabe-robber. Yet it shocked Bruce enough to understand that his life has been one of privilege. They did not have to wait in the chilly night or at the precinct for the cops, instead the cops - a young Detective James Gordon - went to their manor for their statements. Joe Chill, the robber, was arrested by the paramedics and police summoned by Alfred. At the trial, he had cried and told the court he was sorry, and that he was rehabilitated while in prison. He was to serve three years for attempted robbery with deadly force.

Bruce Wayne understood well just how lucky he was. He went on to follow his mother's footstep into business school instead of his father, because the blood spurting out of Chill's wound as he had gotten shot had traumatized him. He would not tell his father, but the medical profession is not something he trusted. He was even younger when he had watched his mother lost the infant that was to be his little brother and got hospitalized for it; followed by the death of their older butler, Jarvis, due to heart attack not long after. When Jarvis' son arrived at the manor, he barely could contain his delight. To the then-four-year-old, Alfred looked young enough to play with - albeit having just as cool and stern mannerism as Jarvis. Apparently, he had worked in theaters. Bruce was excited then. And Alfred became his closest companion through the years.

Ten years after that fated night, Gotham City had continued to deteriorate. It has held the position of the worst city to live in in the US for ten years in a row, regardless of everything Dr Thomas Wayne has done to fix it. Bruce, now in business school, has offered ideas that were quickly implemented by his father; his mother's brother, uncle Philip; and everyone at Wayne Enterprises. Some of the ideas rooted and sprouted, only to be killed a little while later by Gotham's own citizens who had claimed that they do not trust people like the Waynes. One of the ideas was to send Lucius Fox to college, and then hire him by the time he finished his engineering studies. Fox was one of Bruce's ideas that hit the jackpot but nearly got drowned by Fox's own colleagues.

The rich people are all corrupt, they had said during a random polling done by an external agency. Regardless of how much money the Waynes owned, or the fact that if it hadn't been for the Waynes, at least 70 percent of Gothamites would not have had a job.

"They are rebelling through crime just for the sake of pettiness," Dr Wayne commented dryly, as news about a robbery that was done by the Red Hood Gang blared on TV. "They seriously thought that robbing banks could distribute wealth instead of working hard for it."

Bruce just sighed. He couldn't understand it, either, how people were robbing banks and thought they would make a change. "Obviously, their simple minds only think that when you rob a bank belonging to one of The Families, we would be poor. They obviously has no notions of insurances and the fact that they were only stealing from their own neighbors." he commented.

The Waynes had come from a very long line of riches, all the way back to the Old World. It had been the Waynes who initially came up with the plans to build Gotham. The other families; the Kanes, a.k.a. his mother's forefathers; the Cobblepotts; the Dumases, and Crownes - all had acquired their immense wealth only after Gotham had stood.

There are only three families remaining out of Gotham's original founding families, with the rest diluted or got themselves renamed with lack of successors. Like the Dumases - now Galavan; Crownes - now Elliotts. Other families would rise, such as the Drakes, previously unknown and inventors of new medicines and amateur archaeologist - also in-laws of the Galavan; the Belmont family, who made their money in banking; the Arkham family who founded the Asylum for the Psychologically Impaired just at the outskirts of the city and so on. They truly made Bruce believe that with hard work and perseverance, anyone could get rich in Gotham.

He wondered, often, what would it take to turn a common man to change - be it for the better or worse. The criminals who got caught would blame it on a 'really bad day', and ignored the fact that their crime would make another person get a bad day; and thus perpetuate the circle.

There were still good people in Gotham, Bruce knew. People like his father, who would keep trying to open new manufacturing facilities. He would often be hindered by the anti-monopoly law that barred him from owning every manufacturing facilities that supply to Wayne Enterprises' own manufacturing line. But he would try, anyway, by making alliances with a number of the other business owners; establishing schools so that kids could grow up to be business owners; establishing free training seminars to allow people to get certifications for their skills; and so on and so forth.

Still, Gotham, the city with the highest job-hazard related incidents, seemed to want to resist him. The factories owned by unscrupulous people would continue to neglect their employees' safety, and caused incidents, that in the long run, prevented said factory to get the safety certification needed to supply Wayne Enterprises, and therefore would end up with the factory going bankrupt.

Then there were people like Dr Leslie Thompkins, a physician who was a classmate of Dr Wayne's. She opened a free clinic at the worst part of Gotham, Crime Alley. Dr Wayne would provide the supplies free of charge for her. And then people would try to rob the clinic. Bruce couldn't understand that, nor could he understand Dr Thompkins' insistence to remain there and use no security measures.

He understood the needs, alright. Wayne Enterprises has built a number of hospitals for low-income people. They have hired numerous good physicians - only to have said physicians quit or killed when gangs after gangs tried to rob the hospital. The ones remaining in those hospitals are the ones with bare minimum training or couldn't care less. Not good enough. Never good enough. None of them were Leslie Thompkins, who had skills and heart to do good all the way, by any means possible.

None of them was James Gordon, either - the Detective that was sent to question the Waynes and Alfred following the robbery. Bruce came to knew Gordon's background when he again met the man after being held at gunpoint for a robbery of his car. The one thing Gordon said had struck a note in Bruce's heart; "Just because you're wealthy, Bruce, doesn't mean you deserve to be robbed. Justice is justice, wherever levels of society you're in."

Gordon, Bruce knew, had come from Chicago; where he was 'boxed' - being sent to a boxed corner office cut off from the rest of his squad - for being too honest and refusing to let go of an investigation that involved the city's bigwigs. Gordon has two children; one biological son called James Junior, the other a daughter he had adopted when his brother and wife passed away. Her name is Barbara, and her redhead matched Gordon's, making people believed she was Gordon's biological child instead of the blond James Junior.

Gordon and his family seemed happy being in Gotham, much to Bruce's confusion. He noted that while visitors often found happiness in Gotham, most of its born-and-bred residents seemed to feel otherwise. Again, Gordon's comment - as he and Bruce started to befriend each other - made sense, "Some people just don't have it in them to appreciate what they have and think that the grass is always greener everywhere else; except in their own ignored pastures."

Bruce had often quietly promised himself that he would keep trying to help Gotham, so the city can live beautifully; and the people residing within her will realize that their home is beautiful and thus needs to be loved. With that in mind, he turned his focus in his school. There has got to be some way to keep Gotham's people happy, safe, and maybe even grateful.

#Bruce Wayne #Thomas Wayne #Martha Wayne #James Gordon #alfred pennyworth #Barbara Gordon #Dick Grayson #Jason Todd #Tim Drake #Damian Wayne #Twist of Fate!AU #JayTim #Batman

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