Chapter Text
Anna Elizabeth Wayne was an accident, in every sense of the word. No one wanted her, no one asked for her. She had been alive for seven years, but she knew she had only been a part of the family for five.
She was a burden—her own mother abandoned her on a stranger’s footstep. The woman who gave birth to Anna hadn’t even bothered to reveal her name, let alone name her daughter. It was Bruce Wayne who gave her everything.
But everything can be taken away just as fast.
Two years ago, her older brother, Jason, died. He was killed by one of the many villains in the city they lived in. That day, she discovered the truth of what her father was. Bruce Wayne was Batman, which meant that Dick was Nightwing and Jason was Robin. No one trusted her enough to tell her this.
Two years ago, the spiders sensed her despair and began to hunt her down. Every night, she screamed and, every night, she would be ignored. Dick came back for a couple of days and hope lit up Anna’s eyes. He’d help her, right? Dick knew Anna wouldn’t lie about something like this. That week, like so many before, she was woken up by ferocious spiders feasting on her flesh and crawling in her hair. She screamed, as she always did, but her brother never came. He’d left her alone, too.
Her brother, who taught her how to read and climbed trees with her, ignored her cries for help. Anna realized that the brother who would go to the ends of the earth for her was gone. He had died along with Jason in Ethiopia. In the end, she fell asleep with tears streaming down her face and spiders crawling on her skin.
Anna lived in denial for another two months. She chased her father around the house whenever he wasn’t busy, even if he never gave her the smallest sliver of his attention. When she realized that didn’t work, she went to Alfred. That worked for a while, until she realized that he was literally paid not to ignore her. Not to mention the fact that Dick hadn’t visited nor contacted her since the night he ignored her. Her patience waned and her anger grew those two months.
Still, Anna was a spiteful kid. She’d put her family to the test one final time.
Anna stole an old note from the Joker that her dad had kept in his office down in the basement. Maybe he’d think the Joker took her and then, he’d be really worried. She analyzed the villain’s writing style and wore gloves while writing her note. Her plan was in action. She stole about a week’s worth of food and water from the kitchen, and an old sleeping bag from Dick’s room. If she was going to fake her kidnapping, her bed needed to look like she hadn’t slept in it.
Finally, the day had come. She was excited, in a way, to see her family pay. She even dirtied up the same clothes she’d worn that day beforehand, to wear on the final day of her experiment. She had her whole story sorted out, and she made sure to make it believable. This was the first time Anna had planned something this elaborate, but it felt like she’d been doing it her whole life. She had, Anna said to herself. After all, she’s been playing chess her whole life and she was the Batman’s daughter; this was in her blood.
Anna was still trying to convince herself that this was revenge for how they’ve been treating her, but hope shined in her heart when she laid the note carefully on her bed and plucked a few hairs from her head to leave on the note. The clock read 1:32 A.M. when the spiders came. She hadn’t planned for them to come. But, when Anna screamed as hard as she could, yelling at her wall to leave her alone, her scream was as horrified as could be. She opened the window in hopes that the spiders would leave her alone and locked herself in her closet. It’s finally begun.
It’s been three days and no one’s even entered her room. Maybe they think it’s an intense study session for a new hyperfixation. She’s had them before, right? Even though they’ve never lasted more than a day, it wouldn’t be too unreasonable to believe it. Still, it was weird that Alfred hadn’t even knocked to ask her down to dinner.
It dawned on her that Alfred hasn’t looked for her in over a year.
Dick was coming home tomorrow, wasn’t he? Surely, he’ll knock on her door to greet her. He was her brother and he cared about her. Anna smiled fondly as she thought of how Dick would reprimand their father. She trusted that her brother, who found her on that porch and convinced their father to take her in, would still love her. He cared.
Dick didn’t care.
Tears slid down Anna’s face as the grandfather clock announced midnight. He arrived around 9 A.M. She heard him greet Alfred and head into her father’s office, parallel to her own room. She heard him slam the office door and slam his room’s a few minutes later. He didn’t knock.
He was her last hope.
She was finally able to accept that this little experiment of hers had nothing to do with revenge, rather it was loneliness that led her to, what she could now accept were, extreme measures.
Her father always told her that a Wayne never gave up. Clearly, he was wrong since everyone’s given up on her.
Anna didn’t bother hiding her sobs. She knew no one would hear her anyway. Maybe they did hear her, and they just didn’t care.
On the sixth day, Anna finally left her room. She needed more supplies, since she was extending her experiment.
In a duffel bag, Anna dropped enough food to last her at least three weeks, two leftover daggers that Dick had left in his room, a big blanket she could use to sleep in, and a flashlight. The daggers were the hardest item to sneak in, and she accidentally cut her arm a little on the way back. Anna swallowed her scream as a brilliant idea came to mind. Wouldn’t the note be a little more believable if it had her blood? They wouldn’t know when she was kidnapped, since they were clueless last week. Holding the note with her good hand, Anna smeared the open cut on the note, leaving it almost illegible thanks to the smudges of red.
Anna grabbed her duffel bag, opened her window as she had on Monday and made her escape.