THE SHADOWS OF SINNERS → BRUCE WAYNE

00 | through a child's eye

0000. PROLOGUE
— through a child's eye

CHILDREN HAVE A PARTICULAR WAY OF LOOKING AT THE WORLD, IT'S ONE FILLED WITH OPTIMISM AND THE COLOR YELLOW. They have that youthful innocence adults wish to have. Children make promises with no care if they complete them; because nothing is holding them to their words. When children grow up, they begin to read into the things they say, the things others say. Promises become something that can be broken, a reason to mistrust someone. But a child will throw out their pinky finger, saying they swear to something they don't even understand. It's innocence you can never regain once it's lost — once you stop viewing the world with the shade of yellow and those rose-colored glasses, the world turns to a shade of gray. Harlow Finley couldn't remember a time when the world was in color for her. Things existed in a medley of grays now that color was almost, overwhelming? That sense of positivity and hope was almost too much for Harlow Finley to have. To expect anything good out of life. It was too much at one time to deal with. A world existed around her, she knew that. People saw colors all the time, but certain ones were too much. When colors are vibrant, they shift the way people view the world. But when the colors are gone? The world is void of anything, hopeless, where all people see are the bad things.

And Gotham City had plenty of bad things for Harlow Finley to focus on.

She grew up in the city, surrounded by the people who once made it a much better place. Her heart bled vibrant colors, she had hopes and aspirations to take that color and paint the entirety of Gotham City with it. But as she grew up, the more she noticed how the color faded away. After the deaths of Thomas and Martha Wayne, Gotham City changed, it became even more void of color. And she understood it, they were two people dedicated to helping the city. To make it a better place. To bring Gotham City back to what it once was. Her parents tried, they did something, but it was never enough. No one did enough to change Gotham. No one wanted to. Especially after Thomas and Martha, their deaths served as a reminder of why no one wants to change Gotham. Fight against the system set in place and you'll end up right where they are, six feet underground. Gotham City was nothing more than a cover for the crime that ran it, the few good people that existed in the city were practically kicked out. Or, in the Finley family's case, kept in so the city could look nice from an outsider's perspective. Two booming companies (Finley Incorporated and Wayne Enterprises) practically provided the city with its economy, half of the people living in Gotham worked a job under one of the companies or their many shell companies. The criminal underworld of Gotham couldn't lose the people that brought new customers into the city.

So, Harlow Finley stayed put as a child in a city that snubbed her of her colors. A city that only knew how to take and take, but never give anything back. It's why she wanted to get the hell out of Gotham City the first chance she had. It didn't matter to her that she would be leaving people behind, including her best friend who only had a few people he spoke to. She had to do something to put herself first, that meant leaving Gotham City. But, then again, Bruce Wayne had a similar idea. He told her that the night of their graduation day, how he planned on leaving for college. Getting out of the city. Trying to leave the shadow of his parents, and give himself a chance to breathe outside of the city limits. Harlow confessed a similar ideology, telling him of her plans to attend Princeton in the fall. That was her way of escaping, Princeton was only an hour and a half from Gotham, and she would be close enough for her parents to visit. For Bruce to visit. But far enough away she would be able to remove the shackles that Gotham City had put around her.