The money he stole was exhausted in record time, it turns out pickpocketing wasn't as lucrative one might think especially in Gotham.
Oh and those watches? Quite literally useless cheap fakes he barely got any money for. Nolan, at this point was lost. There was no way he was going to rob a bank again, he saw his photo in a news paper, and it was far to risky to do anything in the open right now. He felt trapped beyond belief. ɴᴇᴡ ɴᴏᴠᴇʟ ᴄʜᴀᴘᴛᴇʀs ᴀʀᴇ ᴘᴜʙʟɪsʜᴇᴅ ᴏɴ Novᴇ(l)Fɪre .ɴᴇt
The rain had stopped sometime before dawn, leaving the streets slick and silver beneath the orange streetlights. Nolan sat beneath a concrete overpass, wrapped in a thin, torn blanket he'd pulled from a dumpster earlier that day. His breath fogged in the cold air. Every muscle ached, and exhaustion clung to him like the damp.
The alley behind the precinct had vanished behind him. He hadn't looked back. Now, all that mattered was surviving.
At first, he stayed quiet. He found a spot near the edge of a park where a few others were camped out — bundled in sleeping bags, tarps strung between fence posts. No one spoke to him. No one asked questions. That was the rule in places .
Under the weight of his exhaustion Nolan decided to close his eyes just for a bit.
Sleep claimed him instantly.
By the second day, someone tossed him a half-eaten bagel without a word. Nolan nodded in thanks, barely able to get the word out through his cracked lips.
The man who gave it to him was maybe fifty, with a tangled beard and eyes like weathered steel. People called him Griggs. He'd been homeless for nearly a decade and knew every safe alley, abandoned building, and church shelter from Park Row to the Narrows.
"You new to the streets?" Griggs asked, puffing on a cigarette and not looking at Nolan directly.
"Sort of," Nolan muttered.
Griggs nodded. "Stick close. Not everyone out here plays nice."
Over the next few days, Nolan started to blend in. They showed him where to sleep that didn't reek of urine, where the soup kitchens were, which street corners to avoid. One guy showed him how to insulate his shoes with newspaper. Another told him which trash bins behind the nicer cafes still had edible leftovers.
He listened. He stayed quiet. He followed.
The conversations were simple: trades, tips, warnings. But even those left Nolan drained. He felt like a ghost among them, drifting in and out of focus. The stress of staying hidden, of not knowing what came next, of the cold and hunger and uncertainty — it pulled at the edges of his mind.
By the fourth day, he was sitting around a small barrel fire with three others, nodding along to stories about broken families, lost jobs, jail time — all the paths that led them here. One of them, a woman named Sherry, nudged him and asked where he was from.
Nolan blinked. His throat tightened. "I don't— I mean, I guess… here."
She raised an eyebrow. "You guess?"
He lowered his eyes. The fire's crackle filled the space between them.
Kieran, Nolan thought quietly. This is too much. I can't do this right now.
There was no hesitation.
The shift was seamless. A subtle change in posture, in the way he looked up. His expression smoothed, his eyes grew sharper. The slump of Nolan's shoulders lifted into Kieran's casual ease. He smiled.
"You'll have to forgive him," Kieran said to Sherry, his tone warmer, smoother. "He's shy. Spent too long on his own."
The others chuckled. Even Griggs cracked a half-smile.
"Name's Kieran," he added, shaking hands around the fire, drawing them in with little jokes, smooth small talk, asking just the right questions to get them to open up — not prying, but showing interest. They responded well. They liked Kieran. People always did.
That night, they offered to share more than just stories. A can of baked beans. An extra blanket. Even a clean pair of socks.
Kieran accepted everything graciously, with a twinkle in his eye and a thank-you that didn't feel forced.
By the fifth day, it wasn't just survival. It was community — rough, bruised, makeshift, but real. They didn't know who he really was, but it didn't matter. He was just another ghost in the cracks of Gotham.
As Kieran sat on the sidewalk, passing around a cigarette with Griggs and Sherry and another man named Leo, he looked up at the skyline. Beyond the rooftops, beyond the towers — the city loomed, alive and pulsing with secrets.
"Y'know," he said, more to himself than the others, "there's something valuable in knowing the places no one else wants to see."
Griggs nodded. "That's the trick. Everyone else looks up. We look down."
Kieran smiled faintly. The gears in his mind were already turning.
But for now — just for now — he let himself live here.
Nolan had never imagined that silence could be so loud. Not the silence of peace, but the quiet hum daily survival— the rustle of trash bags, the clink of metal spoons in half-empty soup cups, the tired coughs of people who'd been sleeping rough for years.
The first night, he'd slept half-sitting against a brick wall, shivering beneath a thin sheet of cardboard. The second night, he'd found a spot behind an old car garage where a small cluster of tents had been pitched — patched-up fabric, tarps held together with duct tape, shopping carts full of everything someone owned. They didn't ask questions. They didn't care who he was.
By the third day Nolan was back in the seat the eighth day in total, he had a rhythm. Wake early, follow the others to a mission near 5th for bread and watery soup. If there was extra, he took it. If not, he went hungry. During the day, he trailed behind a man named Curtis who showed him where to find bottles worth the deposit and cans that could be sold in bulk. It wasn't much, but it was something.
He still didn't speak much. The faces changed daily — some people left, others joined, some vanished without explanation. Everyone had a story, but no one told the full truth. Nolan blended in by keeping his eyes down, listening more than talking. His body ached from the cold nights, from the constant walking, from the weight of being hunted. But for the first time, no one expected anything from him.
One afternoon, Sherry found him trying to stitch up a hole in his jacket with a paperclip and thread pulled from a fraying blanket.
"You're gonna bleed yourself trying that," she said, sitting beside him. She handed him a pair of worn gloves and smiled. "They're yours now. Found 'em behind St. Mary's. Better than nothing."
Nolan took them slowly. "Thanks."
"Your an odd kid you know? Don't talk much one day they next your chatting our ears off."
He shrugged. "Yeah I have my moments."
"Well," she said, patting his shoulder, "just means you listen better than most."
It was a quiet kindness. And it unnerved him more than anything else had in days.
That night, he sat by the barrel fire with the others again. Griggs shared stories about working docks before the economy tanked, Curtis talked about the dog he used to have. Someone passed around a dented thermos of cheap whiskey. Nolan barely drank, but he accepted the warmth when offered.
As the flames flickered, and the conversations blurred into night sounds, he felt something inside him buckling — like a wall giving way.
Kieran, he thought. Can you… just handle this for a bit?
The switch was gentle this time. Nolan's shoulders relaxed, his posture straightened slightly, and then Kieran was there — folding himself into the space like he'd always belonged.
"Alright," Kieran said, clapping his hands and rubbing them together. "Someone tell me where to find the best spot to panhandle in this city. I'm done freezing my ass off for coins."
Laughter spread around the circle. Griggs pointed out a few good places — near the GCPD when there weren't protests, outside the Wayne Foundation if security was light. Sherry added, "Avoid the subway entrance near 8th. Turf war with some guys living under the platform."
Kieran made mental notes. He joked, asked questions, helped one guy adjust the tarp over his tent. In exchange, someone shared a stale sandwich. Another gave him an old scarf.
Day turned into night. Night into another day. Kieran helped a man carry his cart across an icy curb, patched up a tent for a woman named Jo, and sweet-talked a security guard into letting them warm up in a building lobby for ten minutes before getting kicked out.
It wasn't a plan. Not yet. But it was something.
He was building something.
By the end of the eighth day, Kieran sat by the fire again, watching embers glow in the dark. The camp had accepted him. Trusted him, even. These people — the invisible ones — knew more about Gotham than most would believe. Which alleys were safe. Which places still had power after midnight. Which cops took bribes and which ones didn't.
It was an entire underground city, if you knew how to see it.
He looked up at the stars peeking through the clouds, then closed his eyes.
Inside, in the quiet of his mind, Nolan stirred.
"I'm tired," Nolan whispered.
"I know," Kieran murmured.
There was a long pause. Nolan said nothing else. But Kieran could feel him waiting.
And so, with a slight grin, he replied softly — only for Nolan to hear:
"I got a plan to get us out of this mess. So stop moping around. You might have actually brought us to somewhere profitable in all of this self pity."
A/N: I will not go the cliche gang route with the homeless, I do use them though but in a different sort of way.