Chapter Text
Dick Grayson was nine years old when he went into the foster care system. Nine, with trembling hands, watering blue eyes, and a nose rubbed red and raw from how harshly he had scrubbed at it with his sleeve in a constant attempt to wipe away the remnants of his hysteria.
He was sitting on a cold bench in the Gotham City Police Department Precinct. It was four in the morning, and he had been there for... a while. Too long. He had no shoes on, just thick socks that stopped just under his knees. A black and yellow blanket had been wrapped loosely around his shoulders. An orange soda sat on the floor, abandoned alongside the assortment of mindless, brain-numbing activities that he’d been given to occupy himself while he waited.
And wait, he did. For seconds that seemed to stretch into an eternity, Dick desperately tried to rub the warmth from the blanket into his icicle bones. The social worker that had been keeping him company had left over half an hour ago to take care of whatever it was that an adult needed to talk to another adult about when it came to his recent status as an orphan.
He was told another police officer would come by and ask him more questions about what had happened that night. Questions he didn’t want to—or had the means to—answer.
There was a lot he couldn't remember, despite how much the police wanted him to. He knew it frustrated them because it frustrated him, too. The night was riddled with too many holes. It rushed in some places, slow as a snail in others. Dick couldn't really tell where a spotlight began and a police light ended. What chatter in the background was the crowd cheering, and what was the bustle of the police station.
It was nothing to worry about, though. His brain had just set to work, blocking out the trauma to keep him safe. Dick knew this—or at least, he was told this by the kind social worker with warm skin and thick, curly hair—but it wasn't exactly reassuring.
Some memories were vivid, which he thought was weird. Dick could recall a conversation between two men. Talking about Haly. About money, or the lack of. Dick remembered shrugging it off, telling himself that he'd go straight to the ringmaster after he and his parents had finished with their act.
Dick remembered the fact that his father had given him a granola bar before they went on, because swinging on an empty stomach made him woozy. His mother had paired it with a kiss to his temple and whispered a warm, "You got this, little Robin."
The nerves of performing had been a stone in his throat, something he’d been unable to swallow as he powdered his hands off to the side. He was getting ready to leap into his mom's arms once more when there was a vicious squeal of taut, woven steel suddenly coming unbound.
Still. Dick could not, for the life of him, recall the faces of the men who had been slinking around the back before the show.
He couldn't even remember the color of the new Flying Grayson uniforms after the Gotham Police peeled the tights and tunic off of him, even though he had been excited for weeks to wear them. They’d taken the uniform with gloved hands, wrapped it in plastic, and left him alone in the middle of the bustling police station wearing a navy blue pullover that read Honorary Junior Detective! across the back and matching cotton drawstring pants.
Nobody paid him much mind as they swarmed the station, a buzz of noise and movement. Dress shoes and work boots tapped across the floor, not unlike that clatter of horse hooves against packed dirt. It was a never-ending line of officer, detective, witness, witness, officer.
Dick took a breath. Then another, because the first hardly registered, didn’t really fill his lungs. His chin fell, and he peered down at the squishy, neon yellow lizard that had been pressed into his palm by the social worker before she had left him by himself. Her smile was nice. Warm. Her hair had been curly, flaring around her like a halo of brown, the way that his mother’s did after a long night of it being secured in a tight knot, out of her face.
He blinked, flexed his fingers, and squeezed the object until the ruffle around its neck popped outward and its eyes bulged. Its arms wiggled and flailed, like it was trying to catch itself, as if bracing itself for the bone-shattering fall.
Dick dropped the toy. It hit the linoleum floor with a sticky smack, rubber limbs flattening and splaying. He pressed the heel of his palms in his eyes, inhaling rapid, shaking breaths.
Some memories were vivid, some were nearly forgotten, and it was the worst that stayed embedded in his mind.
A hand settled on his shoulder—heavy and grounding. “Breathe, son,” the increasingly familiar, hoarse voice urged.
Dick choked on air, struggling to follow the instructions given to him. In, hold, out. In, hold, out. In, hold—
The panic tangled in his chest, making it impossible to inhale air, no matter how hard he tried. His nose was stuffy with snot. He didn’t like crying; he didn’t like how it made him feel, but he couldn’t stop.
The hand on his shoulder shifted, but it did not pull away.
The familiar stranger, instead, used their free hand to gently coax his face out from behind his hands. When Dick opened his eyes, lined with red and swollen from all his tears, he was face-to-face with the Commissioner—Gordon, his badge said—kneeling in front of him.
“Do you need to speak to Miss Cynthia, Richard?” Commissioner Gordon asked softly.
Dick hesitated, his brows furrowing as he slumped in his seat, shivering and struggling to regulate his breathing. Cynthia was the name of the nice woman who had given him the clothes before leaving him alone in the precinct with orange soda, books, and a sticky lizard to occupy himself with. Dick liked her. Really, he did.
But he didn’t want to speak to her. He wanted his mom.
He wanted her to push his hair back from his forehead and press a kiss to his temple so that he could soak in her love instead of scrunching his nose and pretending to be disgusted at the action. Dick wanted his dad to lift him up under the shoulders and spin him in the air, laughing loudly and unabashedly as he whined, kicked, and begged to be put down.
“No.” His voice cracked, and Dick sniffled. “I w’nna go home.”
Gordon flinched, as if he had spit in his face. When the commissioner recovered, there was a foreign emotion in his eyes.
There was pity, like everyone else who had looked at the young orphan—pity was something he couldn’t escape. Not since the moment he dropped the last several rungs hammered into the post of the big-top’s tent, breaking his toenails and landing in a pool of his father’s blood.
That wasn’t it, though. Not entirely. Dick was learning quickly that pity didn’t come with a tense jaw and level gaze. There was something else in the commissioner’s eyes. Something hard as rock, and it didn’t waiver when he gave Dick’s shoulder a reassuring squeeze. “I know, son,” he said. “And you can go home soon.”
Gordon paused for a moment and then scooped up the lizard from the floor. Slowly, the toy began to reshape itself in his palm. He held it out, his voice cautious. "I just need to ask you some questions first."
Dick carefully took the lizard. He shook his head, clasping his hands in front of him and resting them on his lap. With that, it started. In a polite tone (on the verge of tears, hands shaking, but polite), the young boy told Commissioner Gordon everything he needed to know.
His name was Richard John Grayson. No, he did not know if he had any living relatives. “At least, not in America,” Dick backtracked when he saw Gordon’s pity return.
His birthday was the first of December. He was nine (barely), and he started joining performances last year, but he’s been on the trapeze since before he could crawl.
He was an orphan being questioned by police in a city he hadn't been in for more than three weeks.
He didn't know what happened. It wasn't an accident, though. It was a routine they've done so many times before, to the point where they didn't need a net.
He was alone, and the lights were so bright. Everything looked blurry. His uniform had been itchy, but this—this sweater was making him hot.
No, there was no way Haly was the one who did this, so someone had to find the men who actually killed his parents, please, because it wasn't an accident; he knew that much.
Commissioner Gordon thanked him and apologized again in a soft voice. It was obvious he didn't believe a word out of the young boy's mouth—not about the murder, not about Haly’s lack of involvement—and Dick couldn't help but feel angry because why was no one listening to him?
Dick’s nails dug into his palms as he balled his fists. With a promise of hot chocolate, the commissioner left him to his own devices. His bottom lip trembled, and Dick took a deep breath. Then he pressed his head into his hands.
He was tired, crashing like a slow train wreck. He wanted his bed—the soft fur blanket at the foot of the mattress, the thick quilts, and his mountain of pillows.
“Dick?”
His head jerked up at the first call of his name all night, his eyes wide. His brain had muddled the tone—the female voice becoming higher, more familiar. But while his brain may have warped her voice to suit his wants, the woman standing in front of him was Mary Grayson’s antithesis.
Her eyes were piercing in a way his mother’s never were. They were angular, rimmed with black makeup that was nice to look at, and not purposely dramatized so the audience could make her out from under the harsh spotlight. She was small, with narrow shoulders, which were bad for the trapeze. She looked more like a ballerina than anything. Or the stray cat he had taken to sneaking food every day at the same time, behind his family’s vardo.
She was even looking at him like that cat did, all assessing and suspicious as it prowled closer.
The woman cocked her head, and for the first time since looking up, Dick noticed Ms. Cynthia at her side.
“Thank you again, Cynthia.” Her voice was honeyed—the same kind of light tone that performers would use to coax someone into their individual stalls, or booths. “I’d like to talk to him alone, if that’s alright?”
Cynthia looked between the two, gnawing on her bottom lip, before nodding—never once realizing that she had been manipulated by the woman’s deceptively small stature and saccharine voice.
If anything, Dick had to acknowledge that Ballerina-Lady knew how to work a crowd.
Striding forward, the woman settled into one of the seats beside Dick instead of kneeling on the floor in front of him like everyone else had. She crossed one leg over the other, clasped her hands over her knee, and quietly observed the police bustling around them.
“Everyone’s called you Richard,” she noted, not once taking her eyes off the cops. “And you haven’t corrected them. But everyone in the circus has called you Dick. Why’s that?”
Dick hesitated, his mind running in circles. Had she been at the circus? Had she seen what had happened to him—his parents—and that is why she wasn’t looking at him, in fear he’d see her pity, too? Or did she mean that the police were interrogating his family at the circus, trying to find the murderer amongst the innocent people that had helped raise him?
Then her question...
It was definitely not the kind he expected, not after he'd been interrogated all night about the deaths of his parents. He reached out for the lizard, giving it a tight squeeze.
“It‘s not important,” he finally said.
“It’s your name,” she corrected. “If anything’s important, it would be your name.”
Dick shrunk inward on himself. From the corner of his eye, he could see the woman glance at him, waiting for him to reply. If he even could. It was something he didn’t know how to explain without sounding like he was crazy, or overly sensitive, or whatever other words the adults around him were accusing him of being, as if he couldn’t hear them.
Before they even came to Gotham, when they were mapping out their tour route, Dick had been talking to Haly about where they’d be going. He had asked about what the black pin on the map meant. Haley had told him that Gotham was a city that takes, and takes, and takes.
It needed extra attention and entertainment. And if you’re not careful, it will eat you alive.
Haly, it turns out, was right. Gotham had already taken his parents. His life. His energy. And it could have it. Gotham could take Richard Grayson and gouge all the fight out of him, but it would not take Dick Grayson. It would not ruin his father’s last word, mouthed up to him in a moment of sudden realization, acceptance giving way to nothing with a sickening crunch.
Dick said nothing. Exhaling through her nose, the tension leaving her shoulders, the woman relented.
“Okay,” she said. “Okay. Richard it is, then.”
Then, languidly, she rose to her feet. She adjusted the coat around her shoulders and smoothed down her already immaculate front. He tilted his head, following her as she moved, as she turned—like a dancer on her toes—to outstretch her hand for him to take.
“I’m Selina Kyle,” the woman finally introduced herself. She waited for Dick to shake her hand for her to continue and gave him a wry smile when he didn’t. “Cynthia is an old friend of mine. She asked a favor of me. She doesn’t want you to get lost in the system—it’s not kind to people like us.”
Tilting his head, Dick tried to make sense of her. She had a glimmer in her eyes, not unlike the one within Commissioner Gordon’s. Determined, hard as stone. Only Selina's eyes looked deeper within him. She looked through him.
He was silent for a moment too long. Selina spoke again, under the assumption he didn’t understand what she was trying to say. Which, truthfully, he didn’t.
“Richard,” she said gently, “I’m going to be your legal guardian while you’re in Gotham. Until we can find you a suitable home."