enduring enthusiast

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NO ONE KNEW ANYTHING ABOUT JOHN WHITTAKER.

He was one of those rich people that were written about in novels — mysterious, cryptic, looming figures that never really spoke to anyone but seemed to know everything anyway. No one in Drew knew how he’d become so rich. No one knew what he did for work. He was never seen out drinking with colleagues, or on the sidewalk talking on his phone, or driving back from conferences or office blocks. He had always just sort of been there, in a big house on the outskirts of Drew; a shadow that lingered, unseen, because nobody cared to look hard enough.

He liked it that way. It was better for no one to know him. He preferred to stay in his home and deal with life from there; like a puppet master hidden in the shadows while he pulled strings, unseen, the effects rippling through businesses and corporations with no clear origin. 

He had no friends. He had no family besides the single child that slept in a closet on the other side of the house. He didn’t mind it. People were a weakness — connection, relationship, companionship and friendship, each and every one, destined someone like him for failure. He knew that. 

That’s why no one knew him; his past, or where he came from, what his family was like, his true personality.

No one… besides one person. One man he’d rather have forgotten, a ghost from his past. John wasn’t worried about him. They hadn’t spoken in years — it would be a stretch to say that he even remembered him from all those years ago. It was the one loose end he never tied up because he had another plan for dealing with him.

Bruce Wayne was the only person alive who had ever been friends with John Whittaker. Real friends. He was the only one — not counting the Wayne’s old housekeeper, who John was sure had to be dead by now — who knew the truth behind the shady businessman who lived in Drew. Bruce Wayne was the only living being who knew of the past he tried so hard to hide.

For example, Bruce Wayne knew that John Whittaker’s name hadn’t actually been John Whittaker until he was eighteen, and had had it legally changed. 

Before that, his name was Dmitriy Aleksandr Sokolova. But back when he still went by that dreaded name, he liked to be called Dima.

Somewhere in the back of his mind, Bruce had recognized Bentley Whittaker the second he saw him, the first time Dick had brought him to the Manor. He knew the past had a way of cruelly repeating itself… He just hadn’t expected it to do so in the terrible way it did.

That fateful night when Bentley Whittaker and his father had driven from Drew to Gotham — to set in motion the plan that would ruin John’s entire life — the child hadn’t known that almost twenty years earlier, a similar thing had taken place on the same exact street. Different circumstances, but the same general feeling, like seeing your reflection contorted in a funhouse mirror.

There was a small boy, too small for his age, sitting curled in the passenger's seat of an unassuming Ford with chipping blue paint and torn seats. The glass had been broken out of the back left window and it was covered with a blue tarp that flapped in the wind. The boy was almost ten (only a few weeks left before double digits!), with deep red hair that hung down toward his big brown eyes that always seemed too wary and calculating for his age. 

It was drizzling in Gotham, and cold. It was December. The man in the driver's seat of the vehicle was scruffy, with an uncut beard and unkept brown hair, his eyes a shiny blue. He wore the same stained clothes almost every day just because he hated working to change them. Artyom Sokolova was an angry, lazy man. He seemed to enjoy nothing, besides watching television and screaming through his one room studio apartment in downtown Gotham: “Katastrofa! Bring me another beer!” 

Katastrofa translated loosely to disaster, and that’s the name he’d settled on calling his son almost four years ago, now. Since the very day his wife, a pretty girl from Gotham — the only reason Artyom had moved there from Moscow fifteen years before — got mugged and killed in Crime Alley.

Dmitriy — Dima — had his legs drawn up to his chest in the passenger’s seat next to his father. His right temple was resting against the cool glass and he was drifting in and out of sleep, the movement of the car only working to rock him into a slumber. It was probably three in the morning and he was very tired. He wasn’t really sure what they were doing out so late, but he didn’t dare disobey or question his father. It never got him very far; he knew that all too well. Face down on the floor with a bloody nose, or shut in the dark four-by-four pantry for hours where shelves jabbed into his back and he barely had room to sit. 

He watched streetlamps and buildings pass, vaguely illuminated by the headlights. There were hardly any cars out on the streets tonight. Dima might’ve been worried, but he knew based on the look of the place that they were near Crime Alley. There were never really cars out there at this time. If there were, they weren’t up to any good.

Dima’s eyes drifted closed. He enjoyed riding in the car with his father — they kept the radio up and hardy spoke, hardly looked at each other. At home, his father was unpredictable, in a strangely predictable type of way. Dima knew that if anything pissed him off, from the downstairs neighbor to the hockey game on tv, he was likely the one to end up bleeding or locked away, but he never knew when it would come. It hadn’t always been like that. Artyom had been a good father and a nice man, once…

“Katastrofa. Our journey ends here,” 

Dima’s big brown eyes fluttered open just as quickly as they’d closed. His father’s Russian accent was thick, thicker than his own, which was a strange mixture of Russian with the faintest Gotham drawl, courtesy of his late mother and the area where they lived. 

He was surprised to see that the car had come to a complete stop. He didn’t think he’d been fully asleep, but he hadn’t even felt the vehicle slow. He must’ve been more tired than he thought.

He peered out the car windows. He was greeted by the dark streets of Crime Alley, a light drizzle falling from the sky, alleyways spider-webbing out around them filled with trash and debris. There was one working streetlight in their vicinity that flickered every now and then. His father had pulled over on the side of the street and was parked close to a brick wall, not caring that he was still blocking most of the narrow road. Dima looked around — searching for maybe a door, a building, another car that they could be meeting, but there was nothing. 

The nine year old furrowed his brow. A faint, unsettled feeling made it's home in the pit of his stomach, but he wasn’t really sure why. 

“Where are we?” His voice was light and hoarse — rarely used, like an instrument that needed to be tuned and broken in before it sounded right. 

His father looked down at the steering wheel, his gaze far, almost glazed over. “I have been thinking a lot about our situation, Dmitriy.”

The child didn’t speak. It wasn’t often his father used his actual name, preferring to call him insults or swears in his native language over anything else. Dima may have been alarmed by it, if he were smart. But back then he wasn’t, not really. His father using his actual name for perhaps the fifth time in the last four years did nothing more than make him want to cry a little.

Dima blinked blankly, staring at his father with doe eyes that held an unmatched innocence.

“I think it would be in everyone’s best interest if we made a few changes,” The man explained quietly. Then his hand drifted up. Dima flinched away harshly, but he wasn’t struck — instead, his father’s hand came up to Dima’s face and rested there, a thumb stroking across his cheek.

Dima was so caught off-guard he was pretty sure he wasn’t breathing. He couldn’t remember the last time his father had touched him without causing pain; without being angry. The child was almost ashamed of the tears that immediately sprung into his eyes, trying his hardest to keep them away so he didn’t make a fool of himself.

“Father…”

His father didn’t let him speak further. “You know I love you, don’t you, Dima?”

Dima stared blankly at him. 

He hadn’t heard those words in so long. Now, he seemed to question that simple fact in every waking moment, wondering if his father ever had loved him. 

Dima felt his eyes burn, but he shoved it away. His father always hated when he cried. “I love you, father.” His voice was hardly a whisper.

A moment passed where both of them let the words linger, where they sat quietly in the atmosphere of the cold car.

And then, Dima’s father pulled his hand back, leaving him feeling utterly cold. He spoke softly: “Get out of the car.”

Dima blinked away the wetness in his eyes. “What?”

“Get out of the car, Dima,” His father replied, just as soft, his gaze just about as gentle as the child had ever felt it. Slowly, with a questioning glance, Dima popped the door open. The freezing air rushed over him as he stepped out, standing in the threshold.

He turned back to look at his father. “Why?”

“Close the door,”

Dima took a step back so he was in front of the door, pushing it until it was almost completely closed, but still ajar. “Father?”

“Close the door, Dima,” The man ordered, harsher.

“Father-“

Suddenly, Dima’s father moved with shocking speed. One of his legs came up from the floor of the car and he slammed the heel of his foot into the passenger's side door. It slammed open, directly into Dima’s chest, so hard it flattened him on the ground. He hit the concrete so hard his ears rang, and his vision blurred.

He was utterly stunned by the shift, and for a second, he just laid on the concrete. He could feel warmth blooming in his hands and on his forehead; blood.

The car door slammed, and there was a click that signaled the doors locking.

Dima managed to push himself off the ground just as the passenger's side window rolled down.

 “Don’t come home, Dima.”

Dima blinked, his mind racing to keep up with everything. “Father?”

“Don’t come home!” The man repeated, sterner this time, and then the window slid up.

Suddenly, a wave of panic crashed over him, and Dima jumped forward, his too small hands slapping against the glass with urgency. “Father, wait! Don’t leave me here!”

The car jerked forward and then rolled. Dima shuffled along to keep up with it, his eyes burning spectacularly. He knocked on the glass hard, a repetitive, desperate sound.

“Please, father…” He begged, cold tears streaming down his face along with the drizzle that was dampening his hair. “Pozhaluysta, papa! Pozhaluysta, ne ostavlyay menya, zdes' kholodno… Mne strashno!” (Please, dad! Please don't leave me, it's cold out here… I'm scared!)

With a loud growl of the engine, the car lurched forward too fast for Dima to follow, continuing down the alley before screeching into a turn. He jogged to the end of the alley, but it was no use — the car was nowhere in sight by the time he made it there.

The drizzle had turned into a downpour in the chaos. The raindrops worked to make Dima look nothing short of miserable, soaking wet with streaks of red from his gashed forehead, his chest heaving so violently he could barely draw in a full breath. It was dark back there. Dark and dirty, lined with trash. Thunder rumbled above him and he flinched away from it, his right side coming in rough contact with a brick wall.

There was no way he’d just been left. Thrown away. Like the trash against the alley walls.

With a little choked sound, Dima covered his face and sat down next to the brick wall. The alley felt freakishly huge now that he was in it alone, and lots more scary. Darker without the headlights. Didn’t people die in these alleys? Maybe the cold would keep the bad guys away… but it would also keep the good guys away. And Dima desperately needed a good guy right then.

His head was throbbing where it had hit the ground, and he could still feel it bleeding. He wiped at it with the sleeve of his blue hoodie and startled at the amount of red that came off on it. 

He was going to die out here, wasn’t he?

With a pitiful noise, he pulled his knees up and buried his face there against the rain, pressing his bleeding forehead into his arm.

He couldn’t die out here in the cold. Hurt. Alone. He was turning ten in a few weeks. He’d been excited to see how he felt having two numbers in his age…

The storm raged on, and the rain poured against him with a terrible white noise, soaking him to the bone. He was shaking like no one’s business, plus the crying. It had to be freezing or worse outside. How was he going to make it to the morning?

The answer was simple. But he didn’t really want to think about it.

He didn’t move. For minutes, maybe hours. Once he heard a dog bark. Getting mauled by a dog would sure be a terrible way to go, especially a dog from crime alley that probably had trash and blood in it's teeth. He heard voices once too. What were the chances it was one of those people that liked to hurt other people? Like the ones that carried knives? According to the news, people were stabbed in crime alley all the time. 

Would they stab a kid who didn’t even have two digits in his age?

They probably wouldn’t ask his age first anyhow.

He was too busy deciding whether or not he should pretend not to speak English if someone came up to kill him that, when he heard something in the distance, it took his mind several moments to process it.

Shoes. Someone walking. Kind of quick, probably from the rain. 

Toward him.

What should he do? Probably run, but he decided to just curl up tighter. Maybe if he was small enough they’d go away. Or maybe they wouldn’t see him.

The sound continued, wet and quick. Squelch, squelch, squelch, getting louder and louder. The rain seemed to be slowing because he could hear it well. Or maybe the person was really close. Was now a good time for all those bad words his father used?

“… hey,”

Actually, now sounded like a great time for oh shit.

Dima flinched like someone had pulled a gun on him, his head flying up, eyes wide and still watery. His red hair was plastered to his bloody forehead and now his whole sleeve was turned a gross brown. 

Standing a few feet from him, backpack on his back and a curious look on his face, was a boy.

He looked maybe fifteen or sixteen. He was soaked too, but he didn’t seem to mind it. He looked like he was walking home from school even though Dima thought school ended when the sun was still up. His hair was a deep black, wet and stringy in his face, and his eyes a steel gray that trailed over the child one too many times.

“Is that blood?” He asked, crouching to get a closer look, his face twisting. “Jesus.”

Dima shuffled backwards a little in the trash against the wall, trying to put some distance between them, but there was a sudden sharp pain in his hand that made him yelp. He whipped his hand into his face only to see a bloody piece of glass sticking out from his already torn up palm.

“Hey, careful, I’m not going to mug you,” The older boy stated, holding his hands out like that would calm Dima down. “Are you- Jesus. What happened? Why are you crying? Did someone…”

“My dad left me here,” Dima choked out, pushing on his palm until the glass came out of it along with a steady stream of blood. He wasn’t sure why he was saying that. Or saying anything. Maybe he was desperate. 

“He left-“ The boy wiped a hand over his wet face and sighed, glancing at Dima’s bloody hand. “Stop, don’t touch that. You’ll make it worse.”

Dima wiped at his eyes futilely with his sleeve. The older boy stood and looked around, as if he would find the answer to the whole situation displayed somewhere among the rain and brick. He ran a hand through his hair. Sighed. He was stressed.

“Look, okay,” He sighed, kneeling again. “What’s your name? Let’s start with that. That’s easy, yeah?”

Dima merely looked at him. Did this boy want to kill him? Why was he out in the middle of the night, walking around the most dangerous part of town? 

“Okay, I’ll tell you mine, then,” He sighed. “ My name is Bruce. Bruce Wayne. I’m, uh… fifteen. But almost sixteen. What about you?”

Dima blinked once, then twice. “Dima. I’m… nine.”

“Nine,” Bruce Wayne echoed. “Okay. That’s cool.”

Suddenly, a song pierced the air loud enough to make Dima jump out of his skin. Bruce Wayne shoved his hands down in the pocket of his pants and retrieved a silver flip phone, similar to the one Dima’s father had, but nicer looking. 

“Just a second…” He continued, bringing the phone to his ear. “Yeah, Alfred, hey. No, I know, I’m on my way-“

Dima looked down at his shoes, bringing his legs in a little tighter. If he was going to run, he should do it while Bruce Wayne was on the phone. 

But…did he want to?

Asking for his name and age didn’t seem like something a killer would do before killing him. And he wasn't an adult. It was less likely for a teenager to kill someone than an adult, wasn’t it?

Dima glanced back up at Bruce, watching him pace the alleys slightly. He heard him say something faintly “-but there’s a boy out here-“ 

He should run. 

Dima knew it. He knew that whoever Bruce was talking to was coming to kill him or take him, and he knew he should run. But something made his legs not work. Something made his body freeze up. Was it fear? Or was it hope? That Bruce Wayne might be the good guy he needed?

He was too late. Bruce closed the flip phone and came back over with the posture of one trying not to scare off a wild animal. 

“So my housekeeper just called — he’s the one I live with — he’s going to come out here and get me. I think you should come. He won’t mind at all, I swear.”

Dima immediately shook his head. “No.”

He was smart enough not to go places with strangers.

“Oh, come on,” Bruce sighed, crouching down again. “You’re bleeding all over the place and it’s like thirty degrees out here. You’ll get sick. I’m not trying to kidnap you. Promise.”

Dima stared at him. At the way he was shivering too, despite wearing a big jacket. Bruce was soaked through just like he was, and yet he was still standing there, trying to get Dima to go with him.

He swallowed thickly, then looked down. “I’m scared.”

“Yeah. Yeah, I bet,” Bruce continued, his tone softening a little, still a little awkward. “But we’re not gonna hurt you or anything, I swear. You just- you can’t stay here. It’s too cold, and you’re bleeding.”

Dima blinked two or three times, and he couldn’t tell if the wetness on his face was rain or tears or blood anymore. All of the above, probably. 

Bruce Wayne didn’t seem like a bad guy. He seemed like he cared. At least enough to stop in the pouring rain and try to get Dima to come with him. Would it be stupid to trust him?

Would it be worse to die out here in the cold?

He guessed his chances with Bruce Wayne might be a little better than a wet alley.

So, like any other nine year old who wished so badly for the person in front of them to be the good guy they so desperately needed…

Dima reached for him.

And Bruce reached back.

die."

—

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