Chapter Text
Chapter 1: The Boy at the Window
The young ward of Bruce Wayne sat on a windowsill in the darkened room, looking out. The room was one of the many left shrouded and unused throughout the manor; it had no specific importance to him. He didn’t know what time it was, but it was deep into the night. He didn’t know how long he had been sitting there, but no one would come looking for him again that night. He could sit, at least for a few hours. Nothing further would be expected of him until morning.
The expansive grounds isolated the manor from the rest of Gotham City. The lawns and gardens were a rolling black sea tossing trees like driftwood, crashing against the house where the ivy climbed like foam up a cliff as the waves broke. The city was a distant, sparkling harbour, casting a glow on the sky above it that shamed the stars into hiding.
Dick might as well have been on a desert island, and he knew it.
The wind pulled at the dark shapes of the trees, bending their tips and hauling on their branches, but Dick couldn’t feel a thing from inside. The glass of the window wasn’t even cold, protected by the vacuum layer of double glazing between the two panes. The inside kept separate from the outside.
Dick was weak with a sadness he’d had for so long it had grown onto him like a second skin. He didn’t pay as much attention to it as it warranted because he knew from experience that if he did, he wouldn’t be able to function. He’d break down. He’d scream and cry. He’d probably end up hurting himself, and he’d be kept home as a result. A chilled numbness sedated his mind, but his upper body was stone, and his face a grimace unnatural on someone his age. Another gargoyle to glorify the Wayne estate.
Some small part of him had the urge to put his fist through the glass, to make some kind of mark on the place, some outward evidence of the damage he felt, but it would be pointless. He could see the city, but he knew the city couldn’t see him. He was too small. No one would notice one broken window. That was what his mind told him, but what was left of his hope insisted that maybe someone, some kind someone, would notice that one broken pane and think for a moment about Wayne Manor and the people that lived there.
But that was ridiculous. He knew what would happen. He’d hurt his hand, gets some cuts, maybe even break a few of the finer bones… and Alfred would have it all cleaned up by morning, with a new sheet of glass so nobody would be able to tell the difference. Bruce would be angry... but Dick still felt like doing it. The blood would add some much needed colour to the night, and the pain in his hand would distract him from other pains for a while.
Bruce would be asleep, upstairs in his big bed. Dick knew better than to think his guardian might spare an extra thought for the boy at the window. He wondered if Alfred was asleep though. He had to sleep sometime, even if the capable butler always seemed to be available to clean up, erase every trace with a professional silence. If anyone was aware of him as he sat in the dark, it would be Alfred. The man seemed to have a sixth sense for everything that went on in the mansion, as if the shadows and stone were his breath and bone.
Looking out at the city, Dick felt like he could still somehow be a part of the human race. He could feel their rules and conventions tickle his conscience and whisper ‘This is wrong.’ They told him that it couldn’t be allowed to continue. He felt supported, justified, in his solution. He hadn’t wanted to do it, he had fought it, but they insisted. The world had told him how to escape and the insidious idea had forced itself into the sunlight from the seed buried in his mind. Nobody could blame him for what he was going to do, and just imagine the smiles on their faces as they opened their arms to him. When they knew the truth, he would be forgiven.
There would be a media frenzy, headlines and an arduous legal battle, he knew that; but to be free of Wayne Manor, and to leave it to rot without a master, he would endure it. The house was intimidating enough now, but very soon children would walk past its gates with a shudder and say “That’s where Bruce Wayne lived.”
But even if he didn’t have their support, he would do it anyway. In so many ways, it was the only thing to do. He had it coming to him. Every time Alfred had carried him to bed, Dick had been paying deposits on his revenge and it would soon be his to own. He had no plan, no realistic idea of how he would commit the act, but he had conviction. He knew, the same way he knew when to let go of the trapeze, the way he knew he was a Grayson and not a Wayne. It was instinctive, unquestionable. He knew it was coming. He would be a hero.
The boy who killed Bruce Wayne.