Chapter Text
She knew from the moment the phone rang that something was wrong. It had been several months since Dick had shown up at the Manor, much less talked to her, so Sarah was skeptical when she picked up the phone a week after Jason showed up to her brother’s name flashing across the screen.
Call: Big Wing - Mobile
What did he want? And did he want it now? Why the silence?
Jason eyed her from his spot across the room - his room, mind you, which she had made a reading nook in for them both to indulge in - and crossed his arms over his chest. “You glare at that phone any harder, it’s gonna explode.” He teased.
“It’s my brother, you dingus.” She retorted in reply. “He hasn’t talked to me in months.”
“Then pick it up! What do you have to lose? He’s already gone off the grid.”
It’s been a month since Jason arrived and Sarah’s already so taken with him.
Bruce wasn’t expecting his drive after Dick’s departure to lead him back to the Cave. The only thing he could vividly remember from that night was the bleakness of the Batcave and the sound of Alfred’s shoes on the floor, the gentle look in his butler’s eyes as his ward sprinted across the floor and threw herself into his arms.
There was a point in time where Bruce would’ve given the little girl the cold shoulder and stalked off into the darkness for his solitude. Alfred had been encouraging him since the Graysons were children to embrace his feelings and recognize that he was allowed to be loved by them the way he loved them in return.
With that realization dawning upon him once again, Bruce took Sarah Grayson into his grasp without a second thought. He’s no master at this parenting thing, not yet, but there’s never been a moment where he’s doubted the depths of how much he loves both her and her brother. He’s doubted himself, sure.
Bruce has never doubted his love. Not for his daughter and his son.
Several moments passed as Sarah fell limp in her father’s embrace. Bruce was uncomfortably positioned against the floor, ankles aching under the weight of squatting in his armor to meet her as she buried her face in his neck. “I failed him.” He whispered in Sarah’s ear. Sarah was wound so tightly around his torso that she almost felt like another extension of his body. “And you. ‘M sorry, Little Bird.”
Bruce willingly admitting his failures was a huge step in the right direction.
Sarah sniffled as her father hid his face against her temple. If she was quiet enough, she could just barely hear the hitch in his breath as he tried to keep his tears at bay. “Someday,” She said in reply. “We’ll get him back. Someday.” A pause. “Can we go driving? Please? It’s too quiet.”
The distraction was more for him than for her.
Alfred knew the girl needed time away from the Manor. There were too many reminders of the years that Sarah had spent here with her brother, reminders of growing up in the only home she’d known besides the circus for her to remain.
“Of course, Sarah,” Bruce murmured. The two parted and turned in the direction of the Batmobile. “Where to?”
They were both still dressed in their uniforms. Batman stared down at Spectral from behind the cowl as he slid it back on, now hiding the red rims of weary grey-blue eyes.
Spectral slid her domino on and grinned. “Into the shadows, Dark Knight.”
***
Sarah grumbled and pressed her phone to her ear as she turned back to stand at her easel. She and Jason had evenly split his bedroom - freshly carpeted and painted deep red on two walls and black on the other two - into both a reading area and a painting area. With her reputation as an artist growing in Gotham, Sarah was desperate for new inspiration for the upcoming contest Bruce had entered her in.
The latest inspiration wasn’t looking promising so far. Not to her. People liked… bright colors. Not the dark reds and golds of what appeared to be the inside of a circus tent.
The trapeze wasn’t quite finished yet. She still had to decide who would be on it. She and Dick, or her mother and father.
“Hello?”
There was silence on the other side of the line before a female voice replied, “Hello? Is this Sarah Grayson?”
“Why is my brother’s newest side piece calling his baby sister from his phone? Don’t you have more decency than that?”
Male laughter echoed from the other side of the line. Given that the only thing she’d known was that Dick had gone off with the Teen Titans, Sarah assumed that this was one of them. Probably a girlfriend.
“I’m Starfire,” The woman replied. “And I’m calling you, Miss Grayson, because your brother is in a catatonic state and none of us can pull him out of it. I’m asking for your help.”
Sarah’s blood ran cold. For Dick to have gone into such a state of shock like that would mean that either something happened they were unaware of, or something had triggered him.
“Text me your address. I’ll be there shortly.”
Jason was laughing so hard that he had tears rolling down his cheeks by the time she hung up the phone. “You-You’re-“ He peered back down at the dictionary by his thigh through the haze of tears. “Incorrigible! How are you going to get past Alfred?”
Sarah grinned wickedly and wiped at her cheeks, unaware that she’d stained them a mixture of red and gold. Jason tilted his head and simply looked at her for those several seconds that passed before she replied.
Jason Todd had only been at Wayne Manor a month. He wasn’t sure of anything. Who he was to Bruce, what his role was here if he would remain, what new book he’d pick up to read after he finished the first edition of Moby Dick that Bruce had let him borrow.
What he was sure of? Was that Sarah Grayson-Wayne was the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen. More beautiful than anything in this house, then the night he’d found a home, then living off the street.
If miracles existed, she was it.
“You’re going to cover for me, Jay.” Sarah stalked forward, the hunter circling her prey, and smirked as Jason slowly backed into the reading nook. His copy of Moby Dick thumped against the ground as it slipped through sweat-slicked fingers. “You’re clever. Smart as a whip. I’m sure you’ll think of something.”
“You want me to lie for you? That’s evil.”
“Says the former street kid who nearly got away with stealing Batman’s tires.” Sarah blew a strand of obsidian hair from her face and narrowed her eyes. “It’s a good thing that pretty black-haired girl who can turn invisible at the push of a button was there to save his skinny hide.”
“Skinny?!” Jason guffawed. “You’re so full of-“
With the way that Sarah beams as she swoops it to kiss his cheek before running off, Jason is convinced he might be falling in love. So what? He’s thirteen. Love isn’t as gross now as it was when he was a kid and didn’t believe in it.
If anything, Sarah Grayson makes him want to fall in love. Just to know what it feels like.
But it has to be in love with her. There’s no one else he wants.
***
Bruce knew that he was struggling. The fallout with Dick had gone wrong, leaving a desperate little girl without her brother and Bruce feeling like an even worse father than he had when he took the Graysons as his wards. Now his daughter sits faithfully by his side, humming some soft Romani lullaby as she watched the Gotham skyline pass through the tinted windows of the Batmobile.
He would be lying if he said he didn’t vastly appreciate the meager comfort of her hand on top of his own.
Even with the suit, Batman is very much still a human. Humans still bleed.
“I hope I can make you proud, B.” And Sarah - his Spectral, his first daughter, and his only daughter - says it with such a lack of confidence, like she’s not sure she can live up to the expectations of a Robin, but she’s never needed to. Sarah has already made him so proud his heart could practically explode with pride just by gazing at her. “I’ll do my best.”
"Just stick by me, and be careful. Be on guard.” A long pause follows before Batman continues, voice dropping and hoarse with a desperation she’s never heard, “And please be safe.”
Hard to ask that of a soldier he’s made with his own two hands, but being with Batman is ultimately the safest place for a vigilante in Gotham. If Sarah can’t keep herself safe yet, he’ll do it for her.
Bruce owes Dick at least that much.
***
The coordinates that Sarah has been sent lead her to a tower she doesn’t recognize that is molded into the shape of a giant T. She snorts quietly on her way inside, fingertips dancing across the watch Bruce had given her to act in place of her gauntlets whenever she was not wearing her suit. The technology preventing unwarranted break-ins blinks out immediately, followed by the soft click of the electronic lock as she slips inside the building.
There’s a group of young adults clustered outside a door. Dick hadn’t informed Sarah about his new friends once since he’d left Wayne Manor, so she’s unaware of who any of these people are. The boy closest to her nearly jumps out of his skin when she slinks from the shadow to greet them.
“Holy crap! Maybe that is Bat’s protege, she moves just like he does!” He flails his hands in exasperation, most likely trying to eradicate the obvious fear coursing through his blood. Sarah smiled. “And she looks like she could be Dick’s clone!”
“Forgive him,” The girl, clearly the leader, called out as she stepped into view. “Starfire. That’s Wally. Donna is behind me..” Starfire peered over her shoulder at the remnants of the Titans - those who were awake, anyway - before turning to greet Dick’s sister. She looked completely unimpressed. “Nice to meet you, she who breaks into our security without breaking a sweat. I’m impressed.”
Sarah crossed her arms over her chest. “Any idea what happened that triggered my brother so badly?”
She knew Starfire had some semblance of an idea whenever she purposefully averted her gaze. Wally rose a tentative hand. “I may… but I don’t want to make assumptions. It’s just better that you be the one to meet him.”
Blue eyes flickered to the door with the word Nightwing scrawled across the paint.
Okay. Let’s go then.
She wrapped her fingers around the door and pushed.
***
- this particular portion is a daydream -
Dick Grayson couldn’t remember a time when he wasn’t flying. There was so much freedom in flying and weightlessness that you don’t get with your feet planted on the ground. There’s the weight of reality, that heaviness that comes with simply living.
Especially in Gotham, there’s no weightlessness. There’s no freedom.
There’s only fear.
He’s nine years old again, dangling high above the catch net dozens of feet below him while he and his baby sister prepare for their act. Both their mother and father were already working on their trapeze maneuver beneath him.
They were so natural at it. So natural at flying, at the weightlessness and the trust placed in each other.
Dick looked across the gap at his sister. That toothy grin practically made his heart explode with pride as she eagerly waved at him, shouting something indecipherable in Roma that she’d only just learned - their dat had been giving her lessons during their travels - before Sarah was gripping her trapeze and flying in his direction.
You can’t let her fall. Fly, Nightwing.
The scene shifts just as Dick catches Sarah’s hands, and he’s suddenly 17 years old and Sarah is 14 and there are bodies beneath the broken net below them. They land on the platform in a heap and just out of sight of the blood - there’s so much of it, it’s like the reds and gold aura of the circus tent are tainted by death and blood - and then there are fingers pressing against his cheek.
Sarah Grayson-Wayne looks tired. Far too tired for someone who’s only just become a teenager.
"It’s okay for some of us to fall, Dick,” She said quietly, curling her fingers and slowly pressing them against her brother’s cheek. There’s a broken sound that echoes around them at that moment as he leans into her touch - and it takes Dick several to realize that the sound of agony came from himself - and allows his eyes to close. “And it’s okay to let other people be there to help carry you.”
Tears fall down his cheeks. The image flickers - because they’d been spattered in blood until Starfire had cleaned his skin - and he’s suddenly clinging to his sister’s body as he weeps.
***
He’s staring at the ceiling. Barely breathing, unmoving, pale fingers loosely wrapped around her own.
What Sarah wouldn’t give for him to look at her. To flash that famous Golden Boy grin, to tickle her until she couldn’t breathe, and hug her until her lungs ached.
Sarah had been sitting against the headboard of the bed for half an hour, humming quietly under her breath as she ran her fingers through Dick’s hair. “We were on a case,” Starfire murmured from her spot across the room. “One of the leaders of the ring we were following was a woman. She was older, stronger, and-“ The older girl swallowed the bile in her throat as she shuddered. That was a dead giveaway. “She nearly got the upper hand on him. Touched him- felt him-“
Sarah’s ministrations stopped. Oh.
Oh.
It had only been a year ago whenever Bruce had found out about Liu. Sarah had never met the woman herself, but the day had come when Dick refused to leave her side, and Bruce came home fuming after a confidential meeting at Wayne Enterprises.
Someone had used her brother. Had emotionally manipulated him, strung him up like her own personal toy, and had their way with him. Dick. Her Big Wing.
“That’s all I needed to know.”
“Is this something that’s happened before? Because-“
The look Starfire received was so sharp it could’ve cut glass. “I said that’s all I need to know,” Sarah snapped. “Now please leave us alone. I will tell you when he’s coherent.”
The older girl nodded and slipped out the door without another word. Sarah returned to Dick, leaning forward to slowly roll Dick’s shirt upward so she could inspect his chest. Just like all the times he’d come to her after patrol for their routine check-ins so Sarah could sleep more peacefully knowing he wasn’t injured.
As expected, angry red lines marred his abdomen. Nail marks.
Her blood boiled at the sight. Exhaling sharply through her nose, Sarah moved to roll down Dick’s shirt and slip away to grab him something more comfortable to wear when a pale hand shot outward and wrapped tightly around her wrist.
Then he was wailing. A haunted, broken sound that reminded her of the caged animals at the circus begging to be left alone. The caretakers hadn’t always been the kindest.. and it showed in the reactions the animals, particularly Ghost, had with humans.
“No-No, stop-“ Dick cried, and it took all of her strength to hold her brother to the bed as she wrapped her body around his torso and held on for dear life. “Please-I can’t take it again, not again, I don’t deserve-“
Tears burned Sarah’s eyes as she began singing that same lullaby her mother had sang to her in Roma as a baby. They didn’t have a name for it then. She’d had to come up with one herself.
As the sound of her voice echoes in the otherwise empty room, the tension in Dick’s shoulders gradually begins to bleed until his fingers are lax at his sides and his tear-stained cheek is hidden in his sister’s shoulder.
A long moment passes before he whispers, “Little Wing?”
Sarah nodded and tucked her head under his chin. He’s so tall now, tall even at 17, and she wonders if he’s hit another growth spurt since leaving the Manor. The warmth and familiarity of being back in her brother’s solid embrace are enough to drive her to tears.
She swallowed the knot in her throat and whispered, “I’m home, Big Wing.” Sarah curled her fingers around his nape as Dick dragged her upward, leaning his body slowly against the headboard so he could hold her more comfortably against his chest and hide from the world outside the bedroom door in her shoulder. It was easy to feel weightless here. To fly. Here was safe and Sarah was safe and she’d never hurt him. “And you’re safe. Do you remember the song I sing to you? Our song.. when you have nightmares?”
He does. Dick replays that short lullaby in his head every single time he has to face something traumatic, whether or not it’s as Night Wing or when he was Robin.
His tongue feels like it weighs a thousand pounds as Dick slowly asks, “Will-Will you sing it for me?”
Sarah’s smile breaks through the cracks in his chest and warms the ice that’s settled in his heart. He’s been a fool. An absolute idiot for abandoning his little sister and not seeking her out when he needed her.
“Always.”
That’s how the Titans find them later. The Grayson siblings are tucked into one another in Dick’s bedroom, the littlest one quietly singing to her brother in Roma as he sleeps peacefully for the first time in over a week.
Starfire smiled. Despite how desperately Dick had held onto her and how frightened he'd been after Wally had rescued him - because this, this one thing, was something Dick needed someone else to help him carry - she always knew that at the root of it, he needed to reconcile with his little sister.
He needed to assure her that he hadn't left her as their parents have.
For Dick, the circus dreams are different now. The warm reds and golds have returned; The roar of the crowd around them and 6-year-old Sarah’s toothy grin flashing in his peripheral from across the gap on her platform.
When she jumps,
He catches her.
***
Remarkably enough, Bats was completely off of his game by the time they’d gotten back to the Batmobile. Sarah threw her arm out just before she and B entered the alleyway so she could listen to the gentle clink of a wrench undoing the lugnuts on the tires of the Batmobile.
If she looked through the heat sensors on her cowl, Sarah and Bruce would both see the emaciated form of a thirteen-year-old boy who had been born and bred on the streets of Gotham. Just trying to survive.
“Woah, Woah.” Sarah held a hand out behind her toward her father as she approached the opposite side of the Batmobile. “That’s a pretty impressive job, dude. Stealing for money? You’d make a killing off those tires.”
The look of wonder Jason shot her was remarkable. Here he’d been expecting to be chastised and thrown into a shelter, if not called for CPS, but the girl with the long black hair and the pretty eyes just watched him.
He tried very hard not to look behind her at Batman. Vengeance. You know, the vigilante who flies from roof to roof and beats the crap out of the guys he’s been running from his entire life?
Yeah. That Batman.
"You’re not mad?”
“Of course, I’m not mad! it’s freaking impressive!” Jason eyed her suit - he’d seen it somewhere before… oh, it looked like Nightwing’s suit! - and the escrima sticks attached between her shoulder blades. While the former Robin’s newly donned suit as a part of the Teen Titans was royal blue, hers was lavender. Almost like…. An apparition. “I can do something equally impressive, Mr-“
“Just call me Jason.”
“Well Jason,” Jason gasped as Bruce stared on, slightly flabbergasted by how upfront and careless she was being, while Sarah activated the invisibility controls through her gauntlet and disappeared before reappearing in front of his eyes. “You can call me Spectral.”
***
Several days later, Bruce finds a finished painting on an easel in his mother’s rose garden. It’s a perfect portrait of one of the first times he’d gone to Haly’s Circus and had seen the Grayson children do their act together.
This moment, however, is fleeting. The reds and golds of the circus tent are tainted amber, like the whispers of a fire linger just outside of reach; The edges of the easel are orange and black, and the little girl reaching for her brother - both of whom are smiling - bears the eyes of someone who has seen far too much.
Those blue eyes could pierce his soul if they wanted to.
The words, “DELIVER US” are scrawled in calligraphy between the hands that reach for one another.
Bruce leaves the painting to stand in the rose garden.
He has work to do.