Chapter Text
Gotham. The city was both a safe haven and a death trap for its newest arrival.
Nathaniel gripped his duffle bag with one hand and his newest ID with his other as he walked down the street looking for a drugstore. He desperately needed some hair dye and contacts, Nathaniel glanced down at the ID he held in his hand. ‘Neil Josten’ was supposed to have brown hair and brown eyes. Perfectly ordinary. Unfortunately for him Nathaniel did not have brown hair or brown eyes. But that could be fixed.
The city was the definition of gloomy and Nathaniel kept his eye on the roofs he walked past. It wasn’t night but the vigilantes that made this city so famous had been known to go out during the day too. To most of the people in Gotham they were heroes but to Nathaniel they were going to be the biggest problem he had in this city.
After his mother’s death in California Nathaniel needed somewhere to lie low for a few months to let everything die down a bit. He could have just gone to some back water town in the middle of nowhere but they’d find him pretty quickly. Nathaniel needed a few months away from Moriyama bullshit and where better to do that than the city they weren’t welcome? The only issue with that was that Nathaniel was, by proxy, also not welcome here.
Nathaniel shook his head slightly and pushed open the door into one of the city’s drugstores. The bell above it jingled and the cashier sent him a warm smile. Nathaniel matched it as best he could and headed straight for the cosmetics aisle.
He picked out a random bottle of brown hair dye, he turned it over and pretended to read the ingredients, he figured it probably wouldn’t give him chemical burns and moved onto the color contacts. He had, thankfully, been able to get him a prescription. It would be incredibly annoying to explain to someone why his ID showed him with brown eyes when he actually had blue.
Nathaniel was also incredibly thankful he didn’t have his number tattoo on his cheekbone like he was supposed to at this point. Riko and Kevin had gotten theirs when they officially became Ravens two years ago, Jean had gotten his last year, and Nathaniel’s mother had taken him and ran before he’d gotten the chance to play an actual game.
The public had thought it odd, at first, that Riko and Kevin were 1 and 2 respectively but Jean had been 4. They had speculated non stop for months about where this elusive number 3 could be and Nathaniel had almost scoffed when he’d seen Jean’s tattoo. Had Riko been so convinced that Nathaniel would come back that he’d left his spot open? Apparently the answer was yes. And honestly Nathaniel should have seen it coming from that cocky bastard.
Nathaniel paid with cash which got him an odd look from the cashier but they didn’t question it beyond that. He shoved his new supplies in his duffle bag and headed off to find a motel for the time being.
—
Nathaniel sighed as he closed the window behind him and clicked the deadbolt on the door into place. He’d found a quite frankly sketchy motel on the edge of what the locals called ‘crime alley’. He figured most people steered well clear of this place so Nathaniel wasn’t too concerned about someone actually paying for the room he decided to squat in. He didn’t care too much about supposed crime in the area, he was a bit more concerned about the vigilante that roamed the alley.
The water in this place was freezing and the lights in the bathroom flickered like something straight out of a horror movie but he’d had seen worse. The Nest back in Evermore had objectively better facilities but this place automatically felt a thousand times better simply by not having any Moriyamas in it.
Nathaniel winced as the cold water ran over his head, he relaxed slightly as he got used to it. He read the instructions on the back of the dye box probably a hundred times in both English and French. He hadn’t done this alone before and his fingers were unsteady as he coated his bright auburn hair in the dark brown liquid.
He only looked in the mirror once half his head had been covered and had to turn at impossible angles to make sure he got the back of his head.
It took about an hour of struggling but he managed to coat all of his hair and he left it to sit, the familiar weight of the dye giving what little comfort he could feel at this point. Nathaniel pulled his binder out of his duffle bag and flipped to his page of contacts. He crossed Kaila Elterman’s name off the list. He now officially had more used contacts than new ones.
He sighed and shut the binder as he tried not to think about what would happen when he ran out of contacts. His fingers itched to hold a cigarette. He’d figured out on the long trip here that the scent calmed him, but his ID said he was 19 so he wouldn’t be getting any legal cigarettes anytime soon.
—
Washing the dye off was just as cold as putting it on had been but it was well worth it. Nathaniel stood in front of the mirror and ruffled his now dark brown hair a bit. He allowed himself to feel a moment of relief before heading back into the main room of the motel.
He then pulled the pistol he carried out of the bottom of his bag. Checked to make sure the safety was off and tucked it under his pillow before trying to get some sleep.
It took probably close to an hour of the simple city noises before Nathaniel felt comfortable enough to close his eyes. Sleep took him almost immediately, it wouldn’t be good sleep but at least it was something.
—
Nathaniel woke around 7 AM to something tapping on his window. He shot up, heart pounding, aimed his pistol at the window and saw that it was just a seagull. Nathaniel sighed and set down the gun. He got up and shooed the seagull away, cursing it in French for scaring him like that. French curses were so much more interesting than English ones. Though he supposed he should be thanking the seagull for testing his reflexes.
Nathaniel glanced back at the bed, he had slept on top of the blankets so he could just fluff them up a bit and leave. He grabbed the container for his new contacts and stepped back in front of the mirror.
He hadn’t done it in a while so it took a second but eventually he managed to get the brown contacts in. He blinked at his reflection and stepped back to make sure he hadn’t missed anything. Once satisfied he packed his duffle bag back up and Neil clambered back out of the window.
Neil didn’t particularly know what to do with his day after he grabbed a cheap breakfast from a gas station, he didn’t have that much money left over from his trip across the country, despite hitchhiking the whole way it was never cheap to travel that much. He could go find the stash his mother had hidden down in Atlantic City but he’d have to actually have a death wish to go into that Moriyama infested city, and contrary to popular belief, he didn’t actually want to die. He eventually decided to get to know the city. He didn’t want to be chased through a city he didn’t know. He’d done that in Seattle and god knows that had gone horribly so this time he’d be prepared.
—
Neil was pretty exhausted from a full day of strategically wandering the city by the time he made it back to crime alley, the sun had dipped behind the buildings so it was starting to get dark. So far he hadn’t been robbed or anything so he took that as a win. He couldn’t really tell if it was because he just looked like he wouldn’t have anything of value or if it was something else but considering everything he owned was in the bag currently slung across his shoulder he figured it was the first option.
As he neared the motel Neil felt as if something, or someone was watching him. He knew better than to look around so he took a random turn. As he passed some discarded mirror on the side of the alley Neil tried to get a glimpse of who was following him but all he saw was a figure obscured by shadows that had run off the second Neil’s eyes locked onto them.
With the weird stalker now not following him anymore Neil took a moment to take in his surroundings. He had a vague idea of where he was and there was a pretty nice abandoned factory right there that he could crash in for the night so this wasn’t the end of the world. But what fought his eye the most was poster that read:
‘Leslie Thompkins, now hiring
Assistant with background medical knowledge
$10.54 an hour’
Neil took the flyer and stared at it for a second before shoving it in his duffle bag, he decided he’d stop into the address given on the flyer to see if whoever the ‘Leslie Thompkins’ was, was still hiring, he had background medical knowledge that would probably be enough, just as long as no one asked too many questions. If the add was posted in crime alley of all places he figured it wasn’t exactly a legal, or highly regarded job so he could probably actually request to be paid in cash.
He walked across the alley to the abandoned factory and quickly found a corner he could keep his back to as he slept. He kept his hand discreetly in his duffle bag though, index finger gently wrapped around the trigger.
—
Neil walked into what looked like a mini doctor’s office. Neil tried not to look too tense as he walked up to the woman who was there.
“Hello,” she greeted “I’m Dr. Thompkins, what can I do for you?”
The woman seemed to be studying Neil as if trying to figure out what was wrong with him just by looking. Neil told himself that it wasn’t anything to get nervous about, she was a doctor, that was literally her job. She wasn't going to figure out every small detail about his life simply by looking at him for five seconds.
Neil mentally shook off his internal panic and said, “I’m Neil Josten, I saw your flyer.”