Chapter Text
No little girl deserves to be abandoned to the streets, especially in a treacherous place like Gotham.
But for Lyla this was all she knew.
She had a few faded memories from before, other kids from the orphanage, tight living spaces, a fire. That was all so long ago it felt like a different life.
At only seven years old, Lyla had sat outside that burned down orphanage waiting for someone to come back for her, but they never did. So she set out into the streets of Gotham city. She quickly had learned she needed money to get by, and stealing was harder than it seemed, but she was determined the god-forsaken city wouldn’t take her so easily.
But there was a problem in no one would hire a seven year old.
But there was a loophole in the rule that you can’t hire kids, show business, they needed kids, to sing, dance and act. So for the last eight years, Lyla spent almost every night in a theater. When she couldn’t land a role she’d sneak in (most of these places had roof access) to watch the shows, to take mental notes, to get better.
Theater was extremely competitive and it turns out she wasn’t the only kid in Gotham getting by this way. As she got older rolls where harder and harder to come by.
Apparently there is something more appealing about a seven year old than a fifteen year old, at least to the sick bastards that ran the theaters. Which meant the last few years had been hard, Lyla was nearly ready to cave in.
She had been sleeping in the same fire escape for a while now. She didn’t really know why she kept coming back here. At first there was a sweet old lady on the third floor who would let her use her shower, but she had passed away months ago.
Yet she kept coming back.
She didn’t have enough to really say she was living here, just a small box containing a few articles of clothing, a coat and a blanket and a bucket she took from a construction site, all shoved into the corner of the ally. All of the things in her box she would be grateful for tonight, October had arrived with a bitter chill in Gotham.
Many of the things in her box she had had for several years. During her early years on her own she choose to stay close to other street kids. The shelters where worse than the alleys they’d slept in, so they had no choice but to stay together. Lyla wouldn’t have survived with out them, they had shown her the best places to find things the rich people threw out, the places with the most shelter for rainy nights, how to easily get around the cops, and even a pizza place that sat their leftovers next to he dumpster, but all these years later Lyla couldn’t even remember their names.
She had spent well over a year with this rag-tag group of kids trying their best to survive with the cruel hand they had been dealt.
One boy, the one who found her sleeping next to a dumpster had constantly repeated some silly little line about ‘sticking together because on one else was looking out for them.’
On the most lonely nights his words would haunt her away from sleep.
The thing about street kids is, by their nature, they are thieves. Which was okay, until she was no longer learning how to steal, and instead being stolen from.
So the day she finally felt ready, she left. She left, and had been alone since. She saw the others running around Gotham but after a while their names and faces faded. She didn’t need them anymore. Lyla always felt differently than they did, she had never quite felt right about the stealing and rummaging.
Taking what didn’t belong to her as if she deserved it.
The memories of her old companions haunted her as Lyla bundled into the clothes from her box, she reached up to touch the necklace sitting against her collarbone, something she did whenever she was deep in thought. The necklace was beautiful and the only thing she really owned. She had worn it for as long as she could remember, since before the other kids, before the fire, she had always had it.
Lyla liked to think it belonged to mother, but she couldn’t remember her mom so who knows. The necklace was a sliver chain, with a black bat pendent. The black metal had two out stretched wings with a small red stone set in the center of the creature.
Her mind slipped back to reality as her hands found the cold metal of the fire escape. It was to cold tonight to sleep very high up, but sleeping on in the escape made her less visible to anyone passing the ally, and she would need her rest tonight.
Lyla had an audition tomorrow and she had a good feeling about this one.