Child of Gotham
By: CJM
Disclaimer: Batman and other related characters are owned and copyright of DC Comics. They are being used here for non-profit entertainment only.
Part I: Fear
The Narrows:
"You're drunk, Frank. I've told you not to come home like that again."
"Shut up, bitch!"
"Don't talk to me like that!"
Dick Grayson tries to cover his ears, but he can still hear them. Once again, his mom's boyfriend is drunk and taking out his frustrations on Dick's mom. Dick wishes they could go, leave the damn brute once and for all. But he knows that his mom has no money, and at least the man does not come home drunk every day.
Things were not always like this. Dick Grayson is the son of two circus acrobats: John and Mary Grayson. They taught their son the trade early on, and by the time he was seven, he had joined them in their shows. They travelled with the circus to many cities performing their trapeze act. Two years ago, the circus reached Gotham City. Then, something terrible happened. During the first show, the high wire snapped while Dick's dad was doing his "no net" routine. Dick could only watch as his father plunged to his death.
Overcome with grief, Mary Grayson was unable to perform again. With nowhere else to go, she and Dick settled in Gotham City. The little money she had ran out before she could get a decent job. About that time, she met Frank, and eventually they moved in to his apartment. Dick does not like the man, the feeling being mutual, but realizes that his mom has little choice but to stay with him.
The shouting continues and Dick cannot take it any longer. He runs to the dining room, opens the window and crawls out to the fire escape stairs. Suddenly, he feels someone looking at him. He turns, and just a few feet from him is a man dressed in black, with a cowl and a black cape.
"It's you, isn't it? Everybody's been talking about you." Dick tells the Batman. Inside the apartment, the man shouts to him "You, get in here!" Dick ignores the man.
"The other kids won't believe me", he tells Batman. The Batman takes a long black object, folds it, and throws it to Dick. The boy smiles, but Batman does not smile back. He climbs up and in a second, is out of sight.
"Boy, I said get in here! Get me a beer from the fridge." The man shouts from inside.
"Leave him alone!" Dick hears his mom say, but he is not paying attention.
"Cool", he says to himself, as he examines the object in his hands.
"You are so full of it, Grayson."
"I'm telling you guys, I saw him!", Dick repeated, "And I can prove it!".
Dick Grayson opened his backpack and took out a black object.
"He gave me this." He handed it to Billy. The other two boys got closer to take a look. After a minute, John gave Dick a puzzled look.
"What is it?"
"I think it's a special camera or something." Dick responded. Just then, Brad barged in, as usual.
"What are you losers up to?"
Before Dick could tell his friends to be quiet, Billy opened his mouth.
"Grayson here says he saw the batman, and that he gave him this thing here."
"Billy, shut up…" Dick scolded him. Brad smiled and took the strange object from Billy's hands.
"What this?" he said amused.
"Give it back, Brad!" Dick tried to grab it, but Brad pushed him towards the wall.
He examined the object for a second, then threw it to the ground, laughing.
"I think it's broken."
Dick glared at him, then lunged towards Brad. The other kids stepped aside and started shouting.
"Fight!" Billy shouted. The two boys rolled on the ground, hitting each other. Brad was bigger in size than Dick, and soon was on top of him, slapping his face.
"Give up yet?" Brad said.
"Uh-uh" Dick replied, grabbing Brad and rolling him over until Dick was on top of him. Dick started slapping him.
"Give up? Gonna cry, big guy?' Dick teased.
Suddenly. Mr. Watkins arrived.
'Break it up! What are you boys doing?" He grabbed Dick in one arm, and Brad in another.
"Brad Jones, I should have known. But you, Mr. Grayson? You disappoint me."
"He started it!" Dick screamed.
"Did not!" Brad responded.
"Enough! You are both going to the principal's office, and I'm calling your parents."
Dick's face changed from anger to fear.
"Please, Mr. Watkins, don't call my mom, she'll tell him!" he pleaded.
"What, you're scared, Grayson? Gonna cry now, Dick?" Brad teased.
"I said enough! Let's go." Mr. Watkins said, shoving both boys towards the main office.
"Want to tell me what happened?", Mrs. Grayson said. Dick shook his head no.
"You're gonna tell him, aren't you?" He told his mom timidly. She sighed.
"Honey, I know Frank is not the best man to have around, but right now we are broke and have nowhere else to go. At least he can put bread on the table."
"Why can't we go back on the road, like before with Dad? Aren't there other traveling circus?"
"You know that's not an option, Son…"
He looked out the window at the spectacle that was The Narrows. Only despair and poverty looked back.
"I miss Dad, that's all."
"I know honey, me too."
After a moment of silence, she turned towards her son.
"I won't tell Frank that you got in trouble, ok? Just promise me it won't happen again. I'm not taking you to martial arts classes so you can fight other kids in your school. Ok?"
"Ok, I promise."
Mary Grayson sat in front of the TV, nervously tapping on the remote.
"Dick, come here!"
"Mom, what's going on?"
"Someone let all the patients escape from Arkham Asylum."
"That place two blocks from here, the one for crazy criminals?"
"Yes. The police are trying to capture them. They're telling people to stay in their homes."
Just then, they heard some screams from the next door apartment.
"What was that?"
"I don't know. It sounded like Mrs. Smith from next door."
A muffled scream was heard, then a series of crashing sounds.
"Oh my God, I think they're in the building…" Mrs. Grayson whispered.
"I'm scared, mom." Dick whispered back.
She silently cursed Frank for not being there right now, guessing he was at the bar with his friends.
"Honey, I want you to go out the fire escape and down to the street."
"What? You're coming too, right?"
"I'll be right behind you, honey. I just need to get something." She said, trying to remember where Frank hid his gun.
"Get what?" he asked. Then, they heard footsteps just outside their door.
"Do as I say, son, now!" she said as quietly as she could. He ran towards the window, while she ran back to her room. Quickly, she opened Frank's drawers, found the gun, and ran towards the dining room. By then, Dick had gone down two floors. Just as she passed by the front door, it opened with a loud bang. She screamed, then turned and aimed the gun towards the person in the hallway.
"Stay back or I'll blow your brains out!" she shouted.
The man laughed, and walked in. She could now see that he was dressed in prisoner garb.
"Lady, I bet that gun ain't even loaded."
Mrs. Grayson's heart skipped a beat. She had forgotten to get the ammo.
Someone shouted from the other side of the hallway.
"Hurry up, man!"
The man smiled, walked closer to Mrs. Grayson, and shouted back.
"Relax, man. I think we just found us a gun."
Dick saw a group of police officers and walked towards them.
"I can't find my mom" He said, but the guard pushed him away.
Rachel Dawes, who was walking by looking for a way out of the Narrows, saw this and scolded the officer. "Hey!" she said to guard, "What the hell are you doing?".
Just then, Ra's al Ghul came out of the SWAT van "Gentlemen, time to spread the word. And the word is…panic."
He turned on a strange-looking machine, which emitted a loud hum. Suddenly, street manholes started blowing off and clouds of steam shot up into the night.
The white gas covered the street. People started running and screaming. Rachel grabbed the boy and tried to ease his fear.
"It's okay". She said. Rachel knew exactly what was in the steam: Scarecrow's fear toxin. Batman inoculated her, but the boy in her arms had no such protection.
Dick Grayson is back in the circus show. He knows exactly what night this is. About two years ago, when he was eight years old. They were doing their trapeze routine, when his father's trapeze rope broke. Dick screams as he sees his Dad fall to his death.
Rachel felt the boy trembling and crying in her arms. She knew the fear toxin makes you see your greatest fear. Helpless, she could only hold him tighter.
"It's okay. It's okay. No one's going to hurt you."
As if on cue, the Scarecrow appeared riding on a horse.
"Of course they are!" he shouted.
"Crane?"
"No. Scarecrow."
Rachel took the boy and they ran into an alley. They could still hear the galloping of the horse in the distance. Several minutes later, satisfied that they had lost him, the pair emerged back onto the main street.
Suddenly, they heard the horse once again.
"There you are." The scarecrow said. His horse rose up on two legs. Still under the influence of the toxin, Dick saw flames coming out of the horse's nostrils.
"There is nothing to fear but fear itself." The scarecrow said menacingly. "I am here to…"
Tired of running, Rachel took out her taser gun and shot, hitting scarecrow's mask. The man screamed as the spooked horse ran away.
However, the commotion had drawn attention to themselves. The street was teeming with escaped convicts from Arkham. One of them was a serial killer known by some as Mr. Zsasz. He recognized the D.A. that helped put him in lockup.
Taking out his knife, he walked towards them while other escaped convicts looked on. Dick grabbed Rachel tighter.
"Batman will save us. He'll come." He said.
Rachel took a gun from an unconscious policeman and aimed it at Zsasz
"He'll come" Dick repeated.
"Don't peek" Rachel told him as Zsasz kept getting closer.
Suddenly, Batman dropped out of nowhere and landed on top of Zsasz. The Batman then grabbed Rachel and the boy, and used his retractable rope to take them both up to a nearby roof.
Dick started feeling better as soon as he was out of the steam cloud. Sitting on the roof floor, he looked at Batman, then at Rachel.
"I told you he'd come". He told her. Batman looked at the boy but gave away no emotion. He stepped on the ledge and got ready to jump down to the street.
"Wait. You could die." Rachel told the Batman. "At least tell me your name."
Batman looked at her, and slowly said: "It's not who I am underneath, but what I do, that defines me."
"Bruce?" she exclaimed, as he jumped down and was gone.
Gliding through the air, Batman shouted as loud as he could. The people below, still under the influence of the toxin, saw a bat-like figure with fiery eyes. Scared, they ran for cover, even the escaped Arkham convicts. One of them, Jervis Tetch, a homicidal lunatic, saw the black figure above and started singing:
"Twinkle, twinkle, little bat!/How I wonder what you're at!/ "Up above the world you fly/Like a tea-tray in the sky./ Twinkle, twinkle, little bat!/How I wonder what you're at!"
Rachel turned back towards the boy. He seemed to be doing better now that he was out of the steam cloud below. Rachel figured that the toxin in the air was not as concentrated as what she experienced, thus making for only a temporary effect.
"What's your name?" Rachel asked.
"Richard." He answered
"Hi, Richard, I'm Rachel." The boy still looked frightened, so she tried to make small talk as a way to calm him down.
"Hi."
"How old are you?"
"I'm ten."
"So you're in…let's see…fourth grade?"
He nodded silently.
"So, what do we do now?" he asked, apparently tired of the small talk.
"I guess we wait. It's not safe to go down to the street right now, but I'm sure Batman and the cops will get things under control soon."
Rachel sat down next to the kid. He looked unconvinced by her reassurances.
"What about my mom?" he asked.
"When was the last time you saw her?"
"At our apartment, like half an hour ago."
He told her about what happened, and she tried to reassure him that his mom was safe, probably hiding somewhere.
"Do you live alone with your mom?"
"No, she has a boyfriend, Frank. He's not my dad."
"Where's your dad?"
"He died two years ago."
"I'm sorry."
They sat silently for a few minutes.
"I hope my mom's okay", he said suddenly. Rachel put her arm around him.
"Me too." She said.
Unfortunately, it was not to be.
