Everywhere I go, someone's pounding the 'grieving process' into my head. Health, that mandatory divorce class in court, FACS… It's drilled in now, so I might as well do something to express that I get it. Let's DABDA tears from your cheeks and get started, shall we?
Disclaimer: This is before Young Justice's start, so I do believe I don't need to issue an OOC warning, but I don't own the characters.
"You say they were murdered?" the officer adjusted in his crouch, resting the arm holding up his notebook along the bend of his knee with an intent gaze resting on the child atop the crates before him.
The boy swung his bare feet without thought, pale fingers taut to the baby blue blanket cradling his shoulders, those small digits the only thing tightly drawn along his small frame. Even the deep ruts starting underneath his eyes to the stop of his cheeks from those inevitable tears were fading gently up into the bright puff of cold that trickled from the sharp of his nose with each steady breath.
"Without a doubt," the nine year old murmured, raising the blanket with his hand to push the dark of his bangs from his eyes sorely, "and I can describe the men that took care of it. All three of them. Only one name I know for sure, but the others acted like his wives, so it shouldn't be too hard to piece together. A city man doesn't wear suede shoes."
With visibility adjusted, he went back to hugging himself, cracking a hint of a smile at the amazement to dart across the man's face before him. Everyone always assumed a kid so little couldn't handle himself. Now there was nothing holding him back. They might as well brace themselves.
"Bring me the sketch artist," the thirty year old relayed into his walkie-talkie before raising his gaze again, asking the orphaned boy to elaborate a bit.
"I have a name, you know," the ebony reminded him, "And I'd appreciate you to use it. My name's Dick. I bite, but I have all my shots."
That brought the policeman to a quiet laugh, a surprised grin hovering to the scruff of his cheeks.
"Of course, Dick. Why don't you tell me a bit about these three men? Did they confront you?" he still spoke as if the child was a mere infant, but the crate-straddling boy couldn't seem to care less.
Without unwrapping himself or growing, the kid spoke a tale better than a man four times his age could've done after hours of preparation, never losing his cool on any well articulated letter. It was more like he had lost a baseball game, rather than the only family he had left in the world.
Halfway across the tent, Gotham's multimillionaire stood beside his butler and before the chief of police with a concerned tent driven up out of his face. His eyes lay to rest on the boy so calmly sitting there, his feet bobbing and his head raised, seeming to be so genuinely unfazed by the accident that he felt a pang in his heart.
Oh yeah, I have one of those he was reminded, raising a hand to rub at the ache, easily playing it off by going a bit higher and rubbing his shoulder.
"How does he seem to be taking it?" Bruce Wayne curiously asked the official that kept him from getting closer, a back part of his mind telling him not to get involved.
This was also the part of his mind that told him to skip out on the banana caramel mousse cake that night he had a drink too many. It was worth every minute he spent retching it back up. Tasted even better coming back up when he was sober.
The chief scratched at the side of his jaw, peeking back at the kid once before folding his arms delicately to his torso in a confused sort of manner.
"S'got me in circles, Wayne. This kid just watched his folks die, and… he's practically oblivious to it! Not giddy and grinning like before, mind you, but I've seen him smile recently and I heard the smallest of a laugh from the poor thing… Realization's gonna hit 'im like a train," he concluded, cocking an eyebrow at the expression Gotham's finest gave.
It was just a flicker, but he could've sworn there was sorrow in that briefest of a glance.
"It's just one last night to help him find closure," the nine year old heard Jack insist to the people from the orphanage, cracking a small smile as he trudged weakly up the weathered stairs to his family's trailer.
Just as his hand set to the handle, the navy of his eyes flitted up to the painted grins of his parents' faces, a heavy surge tearing rough from the center of his heart outwards. The Flying Graysons had fallen. The handle underneath his grip was nearly wrenched from the iron of the door, staggering the boy from his feet for a second before he caught himself (like they couldn't) and walked in.
A somber accent was chiseled against his natural features, aging him far past the days his mind clutched to, as his eyes adjusted to the dark and swept the clean of the only home he'd ever known. His hand held to the light, but a tremble raced along his arm and he couldn't bring himself to flip it on. There was nothing there he wanted to see. He wanted it all gone. How dare his house remain after his home had left him?!
Not even a step in, he wrenched the pointless painting of the flower vase from the wall above the couch and threw it with every ounce of strength he had towards the family's small TV. The frame struck the screen and a sharp crackle of electric current pierced the darkness in a neon set of nerves before both toppled to the tiled floor with a sharp crash.
Every pillow from the couch was hurled across the space, the sound of the cookie jar shattering muffled by the lamp tipping and shattering out onto the edge of the kitchen table. The couch cushion long ago stained with a dark stain of fruit punch tipped the table and forced it strong to the wall, the other thrown with a furious battle cry towards the still up-righted chairs that effectively crashed them to the flimsy metal wall of the trailer with a clatter.
"It's not fair," the navy eyes were dark slits, furious huffs attempting to part the gritted teeth, chalked fists drawn until they matched the white of the refrigerator.
Bare feet carefully crept around the shards, managing with suddenly gained night-vision, until he made it to the thin hallway. Eyes of great exhaustion hovered on the entry marking his own room, holding a sense of disdain that would stop any man towards it before turning and pushing open the door to his parents' room.
"Why did they have to die..? What did… what did I do to deserve this?" tears had long ago built along the rims to his eyes, but only now had he began his stagger, his knees crying out for him. "Why couldn't it have been me?!"
Anger fought hard for control, but a wave of guilt took it by the neck and cleanly snapped all thoughts of it away, now nothing but a desperation pleading his length to the hair he was tugging at to the toes he had curled.
Maybe they would survive this, his mind unraveled itself as he knelt there in the open doorway, each thought outracing the first. He had seen the police shows that his dad had always told him not to watch, usually after a harsh practice that left his parents conked out and snoring loudly. He'd turn the TV on three and listen intently with wide excited eyes. People had fallen from buildings and survived! The limbs could be replaced with robotic parts! There was a chance! There… there had to be…
Amongst that hope though, the truth was carving its way at his already limited supply of Dopamine and sucking him dry. In an effort to keep from shriveling into a raisin of a person, the first few tears dropped and nipped their way down his cheeks. Their strike to the carpet floor helped him to his feet, but the stagger from before was back with a vengeance. It was a hobble of sorts, only making it a few steps before his hands grasped for the empty bed and weakly crawled up into it.
The small ebony felt four again, as if a nightmare had just woken up, attempting to find his parents' reassuring embrace and gentle lips to blow reality back before his gaze. Mary and John Grayson weren't there to hold him, though. The bed was flat and made, and he was alone, trapped in a nightmare he knew he'd never wake up from. There it was: the gentle lips, reality… and it stung worse than anything he'd ever felt before.
The tears fell just a little faster, heavy breaths coming from his parted lips as he crawled up farther on the bed and turned the pillows the opposite direction, a vertical position atop the mattress beneath the covers. Then, satisfied, with his work, he lay between them and clutched them both tightly with eyes squeezed tight enough to keep a war from leaking out. This was nothing compared to the corpses in the morgue at the hospital, he was well aware, but it eased the hurt for the first few minutes.
Reality wasn't going to let the stand though. A child should suffer like a man, it seemed to decide, before striking him with its full wrath. The scream to tear Dick's lips open into a gaping hole was inhumane, all but animalistic, drenched from its start to what the pillows muffled in the most heart-wrenching form of grief. It didn't stop there. Sobs grasped the toned frame and wrenched it open with a single break, a hot mess of tears slipping between the thick eyelashes and staining the pillow.
"No!" he shrieked, fingers digging into the cloth of the pillow until it tore a small hole, all the heat in his body flooding to the digits, violent convulsions curling him deeper against the pillows. "N...No! Please!"
The circus bowed its top in remorse, not a eye staying even relatively dry at the pitiful wails erupting from the soon-to-be demolished trailer, but no one had the heart to intervene. Breaths just remained baited and glances were painfully exchanged, heads bowing down with small grimaces until the world fell silent at the collapse of the last Flying Grayson.
It started with Denial, in his calm and steady head. The Anger came when he faced the undisturbed trailer's insides. Bargaining crept in as he dropped to his knees in their rooms, holding out a helpless hope that something would save them. And from there, Depression wrecked him until he passed out. The Acceptance never quite sets in. DABDA.
-F.J. III