Batman watched in horror as the Graysons fell, his grapnel firing toward them a fraction of a second too late. The angle was wrong, the distance too great. He couldn't save them. Just as he couldn't save his own parents all those years ago.
The memory flashed unbidden—pearls scattering across wet pavement, his mother's scream cutting through the night air, his father's blood pooling on the alley floor. The same helplessness. The same finality.
Batman's attention snapped back to Deathstroke, rage building behind the cowl's expressionless exterior. But the assassin was already retreating, using the chaos and screaming to cover his escape through a service exit in the tent's upper structure.
For a split second, Batman was torn between pursuit and the boy left alone on the platform above a scene of unimaginable tragedy. The decision made itself—he couldn't leave Richard Grayson alone in that moment, not when his own memories of childhood trauma were seared so permanently into his psyche.
Dick didn't remember descending the ladder. One moment he was on the platform, the next he was pushing through the crowd that had gathered around his parents' broken bodies. Someone tried to hold him back—a security guard, maybe, or one of the other performers. He broke free with the agility that made him a star performer, slipping between bodies until he reached the center ring.
Medical personnel were already there, but their movements lacked urgency. Dick knew what that meant, even as his mind refused to accept it. They weren't rushing, weren't calling for stretchers or ambulances, because there was no point. Nothing to be done.
"Mom? Dad?" His voice sounded strange to his own ears—small, broken, nothing like the confident young performer who had climbed the ladder just minutes earlier.
He fell to his knees between them, hands hovering over their still forms, afraid to touch, afraid to confirm what he already knew. His father lay face up, eyes open but unseeing, limbs at unnatural angles. His mother had landed partially on her side, one arm outstretched as if still reaching for her husband.
Dick touched his mother's hand. It was still warm.
"Please," he whispered, though he didn't know who he was pleading with. "Please, no."
The sound that escaped him then wasn't a sob or a scream but something more primal—a howl of pure anguish that seemed to come from somewhere beyond himself. Tears blurred his vision as he collapsed across his parents' bodies, his small frame shaking with grief.
Around him, the chaos continued—people shouting, sirens approaching, camera flashes adding a macabre strobe effect to the scene. But for Dick, the world had narrowed to this small circle of sawdust now stained with his parents' blood.
He didn't notice the dark figure that descended silently from above, landing just outside the ring of onlookers. Didn't see how the crowd parted instinctively for Batman, their fear of the vigilante momentarily overriding their morbid fascination with the tragedy.
Not until a gentle hand touched his shoulder did Dick become aware of another presence. He looked up through tear-filled eyes to see the Dark Knight kneeling beside him, the fearsome cowl somehow less frightening up close.
"Richard," Batman said, his voice gentler than the rumors suggested it could be. "You shouldn't see this. Come with me."
Dick stared at him, recognition slowly dawning through his grief. "Batman? My parents—they—the cable—"
"I know," Batman replied, his voice carrying an unexpected understanding. "I was trying to stop it."
Something in those words penetrated Dick's shock. "Then it wasn't an accident?" The question emerged half-strangled, horror mingling with the first spark of anger.
"No," Batman confirmed, the single word carrying the weight of absolute certainty. "It wasn't."
Dick's gaze darted toward the exit where he'd last seen Wilson. "There was a man—with white hair and an eye patch. He was watching, and he didn't—he knew—"
Batman followed his gaze, eyes narrowing behind the cowl's lenses. "Deathstroke."
"Is that his name?" Dick asked, the anger flaring hotter now, giving him something to cling to amid the overwhelming grief. "He's the one who did this?"
Before Batman could answer, circus security and the first GCPD officers began pushing through the crowd. He had seconds at most before he would need to disappear or face uncomfortable questions about his presence.
"I will find him," Batman promised, the words carrying the weight of absolute conviction. "But right now, you need to go with the police. They'll keep you safe."
Dick looked back at his parents, uncomprehending. Go with the police? Leave his parents here? But they were his family, his whole world. How could he just walk away?
As if reading his thoughts, Batman spoke again. "I know this feels impossible. I know you don't want to leave them." A pause, something unidentifiable shifting in his voice. "I've been where you are."
Dick looked up sharply, fresh tears spilling down his cheeks. "You have?"
Batman nodded once, the movement barely perceptible. "Yes. And I promise you this—I will find who did this, and they will face justice."
Dick nodded numbly, shock beginning to set in as the reality of what he'd witnessed took firmer hold. Batman stepped back as the first police officer reached them.
"Take care of him," Batman instructed the startled officer. "GCPD will want to place him in protective custody. Make sure they understand there may be additional threats."
The officer nodded, clearly intimidated by the vigilante's presence. "Y-yes, sir."
Before Batman could leave, Dick reached out, catching the edge of his cape. "Batman?"
The Dark Knight paused, looking back at the small hand gripping the armored material.
"Make him pay," Dick whispered, his young voice suddenly hard with conviction. "Please."
Something flashed behind the white lenses of the cowl—recognition, perhaps, or memory. Batman nodded once more, a solemn vow without words. Then he fired his grapnel upward and vanished into the shadows of the tent's upper reaches, leaving Dick alone among strangers.
The police officer knelt awkwardly beside Dick. "Son, we need to get you out of here. Come with me, okay?"
Dick barely heard him. His eyes remained fixed on his parents' bodies as paramedics finally covered them with sheets. The white fabric bloomed with red where it touched his father's head, his mother's side. Final confirmation of what his heart already knew.
They were gone. Forever.
As the officer gently guided him away, Dick looked back one last time. The image seared itself into his memory—two sheet-covered forms on the sawdust, surrounded by strangers, abandoned in a place that had once been filled with laughter and applause. The last moment of his childhood, captured in a tableau of stark finality.
He thought of his father's words from earlier that evening:"Home isn't a place, son. It's people. And as long as we're together—you, me, and your mother—we're home."
But they weren't together anymore. And Dick Grayson was suddenly, irrevocably, homeless.
—
Batman emerged onto the circus grounds, moving silently through the chaos of panicked spectators and responding emergency vehicles. He tapped his comm. "Alfred, I was too late. The Graysons are dead. Their son witnessed everything."
"Dear God," Alfred's response was barely audible. "History repeating itself in the cruelest way imaginable."
"Deathstroke escaped during the chaos. I need you to monitor all GCPD channels—make sure the boy gets proper protection. He identified Deathstroke in the crowd. If the assassin realizes this, he might decide to eliminate the witness despite his instructions."
"Understood, sir. And what about the other assassins?"
Batman's jaw clenched as he moved toward where he'd left the Batmobile, his presence concealed by the commotion surrounding the tragedy. "This is coordinated. Seven assassins with contracts spread throughout the week leading up to the trial, each targeting a different piece of the case against the Falcones. Alberto is systematically dismantling his father's prosecution, starting with the Graysons tonight."
"Then perhaps you should return to the cave, sir. Regroup, assess the threat matrix—"
"No," Batman cut him off, his voice hard with determination. "I won't let another child grow up like I did. Not if I can prevent it."
He reached the Batmobile, the vehicle opening automatically as he approached. "Track the other targets on Falcone's hit list. Judge Hargrove, District Attorney Dent, Detective Montoya—anyone connected to Carmine Falcone's prosecution. They're all in danger tonight."
"And what will you be doing, sir?"
Batman settled into the Batmobile, the engines roaring to life as the canopy sealed around him. His expression set into grim determination, illuminated by the vehicle's internal lighting.
"Hunting Deathstroke. This ends tonight."
As the Batmobile accelerated away from the circus grounds, Batman's mind filled with the image of young Richard Grayson kneeling between his parents' bodies. The boy's grief was a mirror to his own, reflecting across the chasm of years that separated their tragedies.
He remembered standing in Crime Alley, his parents' blood soaking into his shoes, pearls scattered around him like tears. The helplessness. The confusion. The moment when grief crystallized into rage and purpose.
Make him pay. Please.
The boy's words echoed in his mind, uncomfortably similar to the silent vow Bruce himself had made at his parents' graveside. Batman had recognized something in Richard Grayson's eyes—the same spark that had ignited in his own soul on that rainy night in Crime Alley. The beginning of a fire that could either consume or forge.
"The world won't make sense again for a long time,"Batman thought, words he wished someone had told him all those years ago."But you will survive this. You will find purpose beyond the pain."
He pushed the Batmobile faster, rain streaking across the windshield as he headed back toward Gotham proper. Deadshot's information had given him a starting point—seven assassins, seven targets, all converging on one night.
Behind him, emergency lights still flashed at Haly's Circus, too late for the Flying Graysons but perhaps not too late for their son. Batman had failed to save the parents, just as no one had saved Thomas and Martha Wayne. But perhaps he could still save the child—not just from physical threats, but from the consuming darkness of vengeance without purpose.
It wouldn't bring back John and Mary Grayson. Nothing could. But it might prevent Richard Grayson from traveling the same lonely path Bruce Wayne had walked for so many years.
Seven assassins. Seven targets. A week of carefully orchestrated assassinations beginning tonight.
The game had only just begun.