Chapter Text
Wayne is five when his mother leaves him.
She leaves him and his father in a loud roar, car zipping away, random man in the driver's seat. He wouldn't find out until later that she had cheated on his father with that same man. He only knew, at the prime age of five-years-old, that the man in question was large, bald, and had the most hideous mustache he had ever seen.
Wayne doesn't think of her much.
He has better things to do. More important things to do. Like pack up his room. Wayne's dad had decided one day, a few weeks after mom's departure, that they were moving. Too many memories this damn place he had said when Wayne came back in from the front steps.
Wayne didn't ask if they had the money to move.
Wayne didn't ask how they were going to get there.
Wayne simply nodded and followed his father's lead when packing up their things.
— — — — — — — —
Spinner's End was…a place. It had snootier neighbors and greyer houses, but the same scruffy kids loitered around corners and at the shops. Kids with too much anger and cuts and bruises that couldn't be explained by a tumble.
Wayne is seven when he meets the shadow man at the end of the cul-de-sac or whatever. He's not dressed like the other adults. Black everything, and Wayne could've sworn he saw the man wear a cape like Batman once. He had read about this Batman guy over a kid's shoulder on the bus once. That was one of the only times Wayne ever stepped foot on one.
But the shadow man was strange.
Strange in the way the kids called him strange at school.
He didn't seem to live in the house very often, and he never seemed to close the curtains, even at night. He carries something around and the plants in his front yard don't look like anything he's ever seen before in all his seven years of life.
The shadow man was strange.
Wayne liked strange.
He finally walked up to the shadow man's house one random Saturday afternoon, sometime in mid-July. The heat was bearing down, and his old man was out again working an overtime shift. He pushed open the gate and climbed up the few steps to the front door. Raising his hand, he gave the door a knock.
Wayne knew the man was home. He had watched him pick some plants or something from his front lawn before heading inside. He could've sworn he heard some pots and pans or something before he knocked.
The sudden silence was interesting. Wayne waited a heartbeat more before raising his hand again to knock.
Just before he could rap his knuckles against the wood, the door swung open.
Shadow man looked shocked for a moment before his face went blank again.
"Can I help you?"
Wayne craned his head back to get a better look at the man's face. His crooked nose and longish hair was something he'd never seen on any of the neighbors. His hair was slicked with something, but it seemed to be losing strength since there were strands falling into the man's face. He–
"Where are your parents?"
Wayne blinked.
"I dunno were my mom went, but my dad's at work."
Shadow man huffed.
"And what, pray tell, are you doing here?"
Wayne glanced at his shoes, scuffing the porch before looking back up at him.
"People say you're a weirdo who's never home, but others say you eat naughty kids for standing on your lawn. I wanted to see if that was true."
Shadow man snorted before seeming to collect himself.
"I am a busy man with no time to waste on small children. Off with you boy."
Wayne continued to look around the man's porch. Up in the rafters there seemed to be a glowing ball of light. He squinted at it. It didn't seem to be connected to anything.
Shadow man seemed to remember that he could simply walk away and spun around fully intending, it seemed, to go back inside.
"What's the matter with your light?"
The man paused. Turning slowly he looked down at him and then up where Wayne was looking.
"Nothing. It is simply a light."
"But it ain't hooked up to anythin'."
Wayne's eyes drifted back to the man's face and he was startled to see a frown. Was the floaty light a secret? Should Wayne not have mentioned it?
"What do you see boy?"
"It's just a light. It don't got no wires or nothin' comin' out've it so I dunno how you're powerin' it."
"Hmm…"
The shadow man's face was different now. What was he thinkin'?
"Leave. Do not come knocking on my door again. Only if it is an emergency, and you have tried every other door may you come back."
The man abruptly spun back around and headed inside. The door closed with a resounding slam.
Weird.
Wayne shrugged before wandering back down the street. His footsteps guide him down the hill before picking up a scent he then discovers three houses down.
— — — — — — — —
Wayne is eight when he is almost tackled to the ground by his soon-to-be best friend.
It was an odd sort of day. Wayne's dad had gone off to work and Wayne was once again at home alone on a Saturday morning. Scraping together a quick buttered burnt toast, Wayne pops outside for his customary walk around the hellhole he called a neighborhood. His dad's words echoed in his ear:
Be smart boy. Don't pick fights you can't win.
Wayne remembered the rule. He never picked fights he couldn't win. He never picked fights at all. Fights found him, and Wayne finished them. Pretty simple. Today it sounded like another fight had found him.
Wayne had just turned the corner closer to the cookie cutter houses up the block when he hears it. The grating laughter of a pack of boys who clearly were, as the teachers at school would say, "up to no good."
Wayned walks a little faster towards the sound when suddenly something comes barreling into him. Wayne stumbles back with an oompfh, catching whatever or whoever it was by the sides. The blur looks up and Wayne gets a full look into vibrant green eyes.
Green eyes quickly mutters a sorry and tries to get around him, but Wayne holds firm. Green eyes looks up confused, and shrinks back at the murderous look that Wayne's face should have.
"Who ya runnin' from?"
But Wayne's question answers itself when three giant boys appear. Well, one giant boy and two twig lookin schmoes.
"Gotcha Potter!"
The big one comes closer and Wayne does what he always does and puts Green eyes, Potter, behind him. The big one stops.
"Who the hell are you?"
Wayne simply looks at him. This seems to piss him off more than anything Wayne could have thought to say.
"Get out the way before you hurt yourself."
Wayne looks down at the big one's bloody knuckles, to twig one's scraped leg, then twig two's shiner.
Wayne makes a choice.