“Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls,” Haley’s voice rang bright and practiced beneath the big top, “prepare yourselves for the most daring aerialists you will ever see—give a warm welcome to the Flying Graysons!”

The crowd erupted.

High above the ring, John and Mary Grayson flew like they always had—effortless, smiling, fearless. Nine-year-old Dick watched from the platform with his hands clenched around the rail, heart pounding with pride and excitement. This was home. This was family. This was safe.

Until it wasn’t.

The rope snapped with a sound like a gunshot.

Time fractured. The cheers twisted into gasps, then screams. Dick’s breath vanished as he watched his parents fall—hands grasping at nothing, faces frozen in shock—plummeting toward the ring below. He screamed their names, his voice tearing raw from his throat, but gravity didn’t listen. The sickening thud echoed through the tent, followed by silence so loud it hurt.

Dick didn’t move. He couldn’t.

He only stared down, eyes wide and unblinking, the world reduced to blood, broken bodies, and the sudden, brutal understanding that everything he loved was gone.

Bruce Wayne woke days later in the dark quiet of Wayne Manor, breath catching painfully in his chest. The memory clung to him like smoke—the circus lights, the fall, the child left alone. It was impossible to separate it from his own past: another boy, another night, another pair of parents stolen by violence. Gotham had a cruel symmetry.

Bruce sat up slowly, jaw tight.

By morning, he had made calls.

He learned where the boy had been placed. A youth center. Temporary. Forgotten too easily.

Bruce dressed with deliberate care, trading the shadows of the Batcave for a tailored black suit, crisp and immaculate. The drive was silent, rain streaking across the windshield like tears Gotham never stopped shedding.

Inside the center, a tired woman looked up from her desk as Bruce introduced himself. He spoke calmly, respectfully, but with purpose—explaining that he wished to see Richard Grayson. That he was interested in taking him in.

She hesitated, then nodded.

Bruce walked down the narrow hallway, footsteps quiet. When he reached the doorway, he slowed, peering gently around the corner.

Dick sat on the bed, small and folded in on himself, clutching a worn stuffed elephant to his chest like a lifeline. His shoulders trembled, though he made no sound.

Bruce’s chest tightened.

He stepped into the room carefully, lowering himself to one knee so he wouldn’t loom. His voice, when he spoke, was soft—gentler than Gotham ever allowed him to be.

“Hello, Dick,” Bruce said. “My name is Bruce Wayne. I was hoping… we could talk.”