To the people of Gotham city, to his friends and those he considered family, he was a diamond. A diamond, shining in the shadows of the darkness his life took place in, and the shadows of the lives and deaths of those around him.
But Richard Grayson was not a diamond.
He was nothing more than broken glass, glimmering in the moonlight, amidst the grass aflame with silver dewdrops.
Only one person saw him for what he was, and he was smart enough to not broadcast the fact.
Alfred knew.
Others, they saw the shimmering light refractions, and they thought, 'What but a diamond can shine so brilliantly?', but Alfred had lived much longer than these people, and he was well aware that sometimes, glass glitters more than diamonds because it has more to prove.
And Dick Grayson had more to prove than anyone he'd ever met.
So he swept up that pile of broken glass, and he kept it safe for years on end, watching it shine for so long that it began to seem less like broken glass and more like the story of a life- a soul- starting from the day it fell with a small boy's parents and shattered on the floor of the circus tent.
And over time, when he wasn't looking, those shards of glass and soul rearranged themselves into something more spectacular than any diamond. They became something insignificant to all but those who saw it, and in its insignificance, it shone.
He became a mural- a picture of a story embedded in stardust, from the days of flying without a care from one day to the next on a trapeze wire, to the days of running through life like a city street chasing after the moments like a thief in the night. Then, on to countless hours of simple existing, and existing in such a way that no one could deny, that in broken glass lies more potential than any diamond could reap. From existing, a life of danger took over, and the mural swirled in patterns of daring chases, epic fights, and lone words of wisdom scattered among the stories, still winding along, all written in broken glass.
And it was still going.
The beauty of broken glass had yet to end.
It was still going.
Because for every person Dick knew, he gave them a shard of himself, and over time, it splintered into more, and through this, a million, million worlds were written in an infinite art, and written with glass.
A million, million facets, a trillion ways for the light to shine on the mural of glass that was Richard Grayson.
And people thought he was shallow. Weak, even. They went so far as to call him a coward.
And he just smiled at them, and tried to keep his soulshards in check, to stop from cutting anyone.
But every once in a while, he slipped. A drop of blood was added to the mural, and just like that, someone else became a part of it.
And no one could see it but Alfred.
Alfred, who kept watch on the story of the circus boy who never grew up, until he did.
The boy who had more to prove than half the world combined.
The boy who lost his parents, and on that day, broke.
The boy who pulled himself together, and created something even greater than before.
The boy of broken glass.