AN: Felt like doing a quick one-shot. Just in case you didn't know, in the Young Justice universe Dick's uncle actually survived the fall which killed the rest of the Graysons, but he's been left paralysed. Hope you like it!
My name is Richard Grayson, and I've spent the last five years of my life in a hospital bed. Generally, that's all I need to say to people when introducing myself. They're able to figure out who I am from there. Everyone in Gotham knows who the Graysons are, and even if they've never seen me before in their lives, they're always pretty quick to deduce my story. I'm not Richard Grayson, the poor orphaned circus boy who was forced to watch his family hurtle into the ground after their trapeze was sabotaged. I'm his uncle, his namesake, and I was on the trapeze when it broke. By some miracle (at least that what the doctors call it), I survived. Sure, my spine was broken beyond repair, I'd lost four of the most important people in my life, and I was paralysed from the neck down, but as long as I'm still alive, everything's great, right?
People have a habit of forgetting about 'the second Grayson'. I've seen those newspaper articles, with their clever, snappy titles like 'Graysons now Flying Solo', always accompanied by some sombre photograph of my then nine-year-old nephew. The papers had just loved the story. A famous family all murdered in some hideous twist of fate, leaving behind one miserable, blue-eyed little boy. What more could a journalist ask for? In the weeks following our fall, Dick had been the star of the show, his face slapped across the front of countless papers. If I was lucky enough to make an article at all, I would always be some off-hand, meaningless sentence squeezed in right at the end of the story. 'Meanwhile, it has been reported that Richard Grayson's condition has stabilised, though it is unlikely that he will ever walk again.' I wasn't important. I was just some grumpy, paralysed man lying in a hospital bed somewhere. The reporters didn't want me, they wanted Dick, with his adorable blue eyes and his messy black hair and that sense of despair which hung around him wherever he went. Surprisingly, there'd been hardly ever media coverage when Bruce Wayne had taken the kid in. It should have been the story of the year, but I only ever found a couple of articles, carefully tucked away at the back of the paper and consisting of little more than ten sentences. Wayne must have more influence than the media would care to admit, because as soon as he came into the picture, the stories on the Flying Graysons had stopped. It must have come as a relief to some reporters. Towards the end of the media storm, there was so much controversy, so many different stories flying around, that no-one was really sure what had happened that night.
I remember what happened. I've turned it over in my mind so many times that I've practically burned it into my memory. I remember glancing absentmindedly over at Haly's new 'friends' the day we arrived in Gotham, how I ran a curious eye over the smirking, skinny man with a toothpick dangling out of the corner of his mouth. I remember the way his goons had leaned over my boss, muscles rippling and vicious grins spreading across their faces. I'd considered going over there, wondering whether or not I should be escorting these men away from the circus, but Haly hadn't needed my help. The guy had never been physically imposing, but that loud, booming and occasionally menacing voice of his was the only weapon he'd needed. The guys had skulked away, and I assumed that we'd seen the last of them. I didn't even think about them until three weeks later, when I'd woken up in a hospital bed with a snapped spine and a bunch of anxious doctors hovering over me.
Funnily enough, I don't remember a thing about the actual fall. I've tried to conjure up some vague recollection of it, but it was as though my brain had stolen it, locked it up tightly in some iron box and stashed it away in the darkest corner of my mind. The last thing I really remember is watching my old co-workers untie the net in preparation for the Flying Grayson's big finale. I'd felt a small thrill as I had watched that net sag uselessly before it collapsed, kicking up a small cloud of sand as it hit the ground. Then, after that, it's just... blackness. I don't even remember the last time I leaped onto the trapeze.
Dick remembers. We've never talked about what happened, never attempted to recall the events of that night. But I can tell, whenever he visits, how he looks at me and for a second all he can see is some broken, twisted body, lying on top of the mess of limbs that was our family. My son's body had cushioned my fall, apparently. The thought makes me physically sick, and I didn't even have to see it. Dick watched everything, though, and I've just become a reminder to him. He's cut himself off from me, tries not to open up to me too much. I tell myself that the only reason he's distant is because he's working so hard to keep his little secret to himself.
Yeah, I know about Dick. Or Robin, I should say. I'm amazed that the kid doesn't think that I know. A small strip of black fabric isn't going to protect Robin's identity, not from the man who had once changed his diapers and helped him with his homework and told him that 'it'll be fine, the net's going to catch you!'
Sometimes, I wonder which one is really my nephew, and which one is just some mask which he's slapped on. I barely know the Dick Grayson who comes to visit me in hospital every Friday afternoon. He's got his hair slicked back and his fancy private-school uniform on and he's always got some shiny new trophy for 'excellence in mathematics'. When he talks to me, I can see my nephew in there somewhere, but he's been buried under all of that money. Dick Grayson is mischievous, sure, but he's also too quiet, too reserved, too forgettable. The kid I used to know loved to put on a show, always had to be in the spotlight.
I'd like to meet Robin, someday. Dick's great, of course, and I can't deny that his weekly visits have probably been the only thing which has kept me sane all these years. But I want to see my nephew again, and from what I've seen on TV Robin has a lot more in common with him than Dick Grayson ever will.