"He who laughs, lasts."
~Mary Pettibone Poole (i think)
I headcanon that Mary Grayson lost her parents young, which is part of how she ended up at Haly's, and because of this, she lost her fluency in whatever dialect of Romani her family spoke, so she uses what words and phrases she remembers, and the bits and pieces other Roma she has met have taught her from other dialects, and she supplements that with her husband's french and whatever other languages are spoken at the circus, which is what Dick also learned to speak.
Tl;dr: I threw a bunch of languages in a blender, botched them even more, and came up with an in-world explanation to excuse my actions.
:::
When Dick Grayson was five years old, his daj fell from the trapeze.
It was only rehearsal for a new trick, and there was a net to catch her, but the impact knocked the breath from her lungs. John dismounted and scrambled down the rigging in record time, reaching his silent wife moments after Leonard, the circus's resident doctor.
There was nearly a minute of horrible quiet. (Not silence. There were birds and an elephant and dozens of people on the premises who hadn't seen what was happening.)
Jaleigh, one half of the lion tamer duo, snatched Dick up in her arms as he tried to run to his daj. Small and wiggly as he was, she was very strong and she'd wrangled lion cubs, so Dick didn't stand a chance. She held him there while Doc Leonard and Dick's tate examined Mary.
The suspense was shattered by Mary's laugh. It was quiet at first, just little gasping huffs, but those quickly turned into louder peals that had her husband bending in relief to press his face to her shoulder.
Not long after that, Doc Leonard diagnosed her with bruising through her ribs and the muscles of her back, declared she should expect to be very sore tomorrow morning, and gave her strict orders to rest for the next few days.
Mary giggled the whole way through the examination, and through her husband lifting her from the net and settling her feet on the grass. When Jaleigh released Dick and he sprinted for his daj, she welcomed him in for a hug despite his worry about hurting her, and laughed all the louder.
At lunch break, Pop Haly announced to the company that the Graysons would be on performance leave for the foreseeable future. There were many concerned exclamations and questions and John seemed a little overwhelmed, but Mary took it all with grace and a chuckle.
That afternoon the Graysons retired earlier than the rest of the company, having been released from evening strike. While his tate fetched dinner, Dick curled up against his mother in their trailer. She hummed a lullaby her daj had sung to her and combed her son's hair with her fingers.
"Daj?" Dick whispered into the not-yet-twilight.
"Ava, chōṭā loli-kolinaki?"
"Did falling hurt?"
"Ava. You've hit a net before: it hurts for a little bit, and you are sore for a few days, but so long as you land well it is not so bad. That is why we spend so much time practicing how to fall. You know that. Why do you ask?"
"If you were hurt, why did you laugh?"
"Ah…" Mary was quiet for a little bit. Dick waited. Tate had told him that sometimes the best way to find things out was to ask, and then be quiet, so that's what he did.
"Joy and sadness and fear and anger," she began, "are all very loud feelings that need to come out of us. They demand that we laugh or cry or shout. What many people don't know is that we get to choose how all of those feelings come out. After I fell, I was very scared and a little bit hurt, but instead of screaming or crying, I decided to laugh."
"Why?"
Mary shrugged.
"I like to laugh. Much more than I like to scream or cry."
"I like laughing, too, daj."
Mary hugged her son closer to her side.
"Well then, chōṭā loli-kolinaki, what will we do when we are sad or scared or angry?"
"We'll laugh!"
"Ava. We will laugh. Just like this!"
Dick was suddenly trapped in what his tate called câlin de poulpe and his daj was burying her nose in his shoulder and making noises like she was going to eat him. Dick shrieked and giggled and flailed as much as he could, and when his daj released him, she was laughing too.
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Alrighty. I have five or six equally short pieces that go along with this, but they are significantly sadder. Is anyone interested in them, and if so, would it be best for this to be made into a series, or a chaptered fic, or stick them all together in a single piece?
All opinions are appreciated.
"Happiness is not a possession to be prized, it is a quality of thought, a state of mind."
~Rebecca by Daphne Du Maurier