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[sub][color=#cc0000]“[b]T H E   G E O M E T R Y   O F   S H A D O W S[/b]”[/color]
[color=#c9daf8]Part I[/color][/sub][/center]
[b][color=#f1c232]G O T H A M   C I T Y[/color][/b]
[sub][color=#bf9000]NEW JERSEY, 2008[/color][/sub]

[indent][color=dodgerblue][i]The ground is forty feet below me.
 
There’s no net.
 
Nothing holding me up. I let go of the flying trapeze and, for a moment, I’m flying. I can hear the gasps, the collective holding of breath, and even a few shrieks rise from below. I’m starting to fall, but I’m not afraid. I just stretch out my arms, and I know she’ll be there to catch me. Because she’s always there. Because she always does.
 
The gasps echo, louder this time, as we both go sailing through the air. Me, dangling in mid-air, and my mother holding onto my arms with her legs hooked around the trapeze bar.
 
Then she lets go.
 
The screams pierce the air. I shut out the audience - the blur of faces and lights - as I tuck into a ball and flip through the air. Once. Twice. What they don’t see is my father, standing on the platform. He let the trapeze bar go right as I finished the first rotation. Coming out of the second, I plane my body out. My hands open wide, the trapeze bar smacking right against the palms. Holding fast, I sail through the air. Dismount, tuck into a backflip, and make the landing on the platform.
 
The cheers break out, even as my mother is following suit, until all three of us are standing on the platform together. The applause grows in intensity as she dismounts and joins us, then transforms into a standing ovation as we take a bow.[/i]
 
[color=silver]“The fearless Flying Graysons! Let’s have a great Gotham round of applause for ten year old [b]Dicky Grayson[/b]. The youngest acrobat performing today!”[/color]
 
[i]I step back, and soon I’m the only one standing on the platform. The performance goes into the second act and I’ve got the best seat in the house.
 
Stepping back from the platform, I put my back against the tent pole and slide down. The strength seems to go out of my legs and I’m starting to realize that my arms are numb. My heart is pounding in my chest and I’m still trying to catch my breath. Below, it probably feels a little cool inside the tent. Up here, with all the lights, it feels like it’s a hundred degrees.
 
There’s a strange [b]twang[/b] overhead. I look up, but it’s just the tension wires. In between the platforms, mom and dad are really putting on a show. I know every move. I know each routine. But it’s still incredible to witness. It takes my breath away, and I get to see this every day. The audience below? Amazed would be an understatement. I wish that I could be out there with them, but I’m still too little. Mom and dad are worried that I’ll get tired. Tired during practice is one thing. We have nets and safety harnesses while we learn a new routine. It gives us that little extra security to push ourselves to the limit to figure out what works and what doesn’t. Which, in my case, usually doesn’t. I hit the net four or five or even a dozen times some days.
 
But that’s practice, and this isn’t. So I come in at the start of the performance for the first act, then I’m sidelined for the second, and come back toward the end of the third. But I don’t really have any stunts after the first act.
 
The sound again. Louder, the cable and support structure giving a [b]snap-CLAP[/b] of protest that echoed like a roll of thunder. I heard it. I bet the audience below heard it.
 
My parents heard it.
 
They’ve paused their routine, missing the jump. They’re lower than they should be. From this vantage point, I can see that the trapeze is sagging. My dad’s looking up at the cables. My mom’s looking at me. I can see her face.
 
I can see her fear.
 
“Mom?”
 
The cable snaps before I can even get back to my feet. [b]“DAD!”[/b] I see them drop, and lunge forward. I collapse onto the platform, peering over the ledge and I see everything.
 
I see the end of the world.[/i][/color][/indent]
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[b][color=#f1c232]ATLANTIC CITY[/color][/b]
[sub][color=#bf9000]PRESENT DAY[/color][/sub]

[indent][color=silver]The brass echoed through the big top.

[url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x_XVntliea0][i]Entry of the Gladiators, Op. 68[/i][/url] was the comical march that played through the circus, setting the mood for the proclaimed greatest show on Earth.  Jugglers and clowns.  Acrobats and freaks.  And somewhere in the middle of all of them was a young boy.

Balancing precariously atop the back of an elephant, the youth was costumed as a little clown, white greasepaint and bright colors adorning his face, as he juggled a variety of balls while, around him, his parents jumped through rings of fire and twirled batons that were ignited on either end.

It was an ordinary day in the extraordinary life of a child brought up in the midst of the circus, putting on a show in Metropolis or Las Vegas or Star City.  The shimmery blue of his parent’s leotards matched the piping on the comical [i]Little Lord Fauntleroy[/i] styled clown suit that he wore, with its ruffled collar.  As the parade of the performers marched slowly on, through the cheers and gasps of the crowd, the boy-clown settled into the rhythm of the routine.  

It was, after all, an act.  Something that they practiced time and time again on the road.  He hadn’t started out juggling atop an elephant.  No one started out juggling atop the elephant.

A few had broken their necks juggling atop the elephant.

It was practice, practice, practice.  Until it was nearly perfect.  Until it was nearly perfect each and every time, because it had to be perfect.  Because there couldn’t be any mistakes in front of the audience.  No surprises.

Surprising an elephant was going to be a bad day for everyone, the elephant included.

And then it was over.  In so brief a time, the elephants had done their parade through the Big Top and now the ring was being cleared as the circus transitioned into the next part of the act.  As an intermission, a clown car was brought out, distracting the audience’s attention as the acrobats moved up the tent poles and into position.

“[i]And now the moment you’ve been waiting for! The fearless flying trapeze!”[/i]

Safely in the shadows, the small clown dismounted from off the back of the elephant in a single, graceful backflip.  The hairpins that fastened the conical hat to his head still didn’t quite manage to secure it in place, as the boy flipped upright and was oblivious to how disheveled he’d become from the motion.

Instead, rushing up to the edge of the shadows, the small clown poked his head back into the Big Top as the trapeze act began. 

Turning his head up, the boy stared up at the aging patriarch that was standing there watching from the sidelines. [color=#87ceeb]“Will I ever be up there, Mister Haly?”[/color]

He had to know that the question was coming.  The boy asked it every day.  Sometimes multiple times in a day.  He practiced with his parents.  He knew the routines.  He knew the act.  But if was always [i]when you’re older[/i] or [i]when you’re taller[/i] or [i]maybe one day[/i].

“Maybe one day, Jay,” the old man uttered.  Reaching down, the aging patriarch straightened up the child’s costume.  A patient smile tugged at the corners of the man’s well-lined face, as he said, “Maybe one day.”  Then, clapping the small clown’s arms, said, “Why don’t you go outside the tent and run around for a bit? I’m sure there’s some stragglers out there that would love to be entertained.”

The boy’s face betrayed any number of emotions. [color=#87ceeb]“Okay, Mister Haly,”[/color] the youth said, before turning and ducking low across the floor as he gathered up a few balls to juggle.  And then he slipped underneath the tent and was gone.

As the old man watched the boy leave, he couldn’t help but feel as though he was watching another boy.  Except, the person he was thinking of hadn’t been a ‘boy’ for some time now.[/color][/indent]
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[b][color=#f1c232]B L Ü D H A V E N[/color][/b]
[sub][color=#bf9000]1013 PARKTHORNE AVENUE[/color][/sub]

[indent][color=silver]The man's eyes snapped open, his breath frozen in his throat as he awoke to a world inverted and a sudden feeling of vertigo.  He screamed -- [i]out of fear, out of rage, a well-spring of frustration and despair[/i] -- as he flailed out with his arms to try and feel for his bearings.  He hit the floor less than a second later, as the bed sheets followed shortly after, entangled as they were in his legs.

A second sound escaped his throat then, exasperated as pain shot up through his leg and side.  It dropped him to his knees.

As he crouched there, it was some time before Dick Grayson truly knew where he was.  He had been back [i]there[/i], that circus in which he had spent the earliest part of his life.  Which might well have been the better part it, yet remained the bane of his existence.   Surviving and living were two distinct and separate realities, a lesson which Dick had found hard learned.  And not forgotten.  Through the fog of memory and dream, amid halting breaths, the man came to cope with the fact that he was not where he had believed himself to be.

This wasn’t Haly’s Circus.  This was his apartment.  Standing upright on his knees, the raven haired Roma caught his breath, before pressing a hand down on the bed and pushing himself to his feet.  Staggering through the confines of the brownstone to the bathroom, the former Boy Wonder rubbed at his eyes before plunging his hands under a sink of cold water and splashing it on his face.

Letting the water run down, the man felt up the wall for the medicine cabinet concealed behind the mirror.  There was a prescription there, staring back at him as he held it in his hand.  An anxiety prescription, one intended to be taken on the rare occasion that Dick experienced traumatic memories from the Flying Graysons, the adventures of Batman and Robin... In reality, Dick subsided on it. Become so routine with its use that he feared what life might be like without the pills and only the nightmares.

The clock on the wall mocked him with the question of whether he should go back to bed, though the thought of more dreams was enough to dismiss that idea.   So, instead, he showered and changed into fresh clothes as he went through the motions of someone living [b]a normal life[/b]. Someone who didn’t check behind every door for an instrument of paranoia and imagination.

Replacing the bottle in the cabinet, the man caught his own reflection in the glass as he swung it closed and beheld the mirror.  His face was gaunt.  Bags having long settled under his eyes.  There was always an excuse not to sleep.  Dreams.  Duties.  The man in the mirror wasn't at all the Boy Wonder he recalled, almost a stranger, made all the more haunting by the echo of that which was familiar.  He was that which survived.  And this was the price for living, he supposed.

He made his way into the kitchen.  As he pulled out what he needed to get the coffee maker going, he found a stack of envelopes on the counter.  Picking those up, Dick shuffled through the bills.  Insurance, medical claims...

Even with Wayne Enterprises coverage, he still had deductibles and co-pays.  And regular bills.  And rent.  As he set aside the stack of papers and got the coffee started, Dick casually picked up his phone and scrolled over to his mobile banking app.

His savings really wasn't what he needed it to be.  A glance over at the new 65-inch 4K HD television in the apartment was a recent purchase decision that seemed to be kicking him in the ass about now.

He might be Bruce Wayne’s foster kid, but asking the [i]old man[/i] for a hand-out was [b]not[/b] on Richard Grayson’s To-Do list for this morning.  Or any morning.

So what now?[/color][/indent]