Alternative Rewritten

Chapter Four: Richard Grayson

Richard Grayson

Bruce stared at the name on his terminal for a long moment, a long-buried memory kicking and squirming to the surface as his brain sluggishly attempted to make sense of what it meant. He blinked hard when it all caught up with him and twisted his face away from the screen, something resembling a growl caught somewhere in his throat as his emotions battled with his logic. 

He didn't believe in coincidences. Especially not something this enormous. A single child dug up from the depths of the painful moments of Bruce Wayne's past was dug back up in Batman's life. It felt too specific to only be a coincidence, but the longer he considered it, the more he realized how impossible it would be to have been anything but. How could someone on the enemy side know that he had become attached to Richard Grayson, all of those years ago? No one but Alfred even heard that name come from his mouth.

The tight coil in his stomach slowly unraveled as he came to the conclusion that it had to be a coincidence, but it left pain in its place. He could still remember it perfectly, the sight of the young man and woman plunging to their deaths and the heartbroken screams of denial from their devastated son. When the police arrived, the boy fled from the scene, clearly overwhelmed by everything that was happening.

That's when Bruce met him. They spoke for nearly an hour before CPS arrived on the scene and dragged Richard away. It wasn't long, but Bruce quickly came to the decision that it wouldn't be the last time he would talk to Richard Grayson. 

The world seemed to disagree with him, though. Richard and several other children went missing only a weeks days later. Bruce searched far and wide for any traces, both as Bruce Wayne and as Batman, but was never able to find a trail. It was one of the hardest failures he had to cope with. At a certain point, it became clear that either Richard was dead or trapped in some sort of human trafficking system. 

He never thought to check Cadmus.

Renegade said he had been kidnapped out of an orphanage, which added up from where Bruce last heard of Richard Grayson. The only slight error he could find was that the boy had been taken to a Juvenile Detention Center, rather than an actual orphanage. That, however, surely could have been explained by the innocence of a child not knowing the difference.

But the things he had hinted at, the things he went through? Being used to test drugs, and eventually being trained under an assassin?

With a low growl, Batman switched the monitor off. Guilt was weighing heavily on his shoulders and despite his best effort to assure himself the situation wasn't his fault, he still struggled. If he had searched longer, used every scrap of information anyone could give him, he could have found Richard. Hell, if he hadn't hesitated to speak with him sooner while he was still in the Detention Center, this entire situation would have been avoided entirely. He knew there was nothing he could do to change the past, but he couldn't shake the feeling that he needed to fix this. 

The question was, should he tell Renegade the truth about their connection? Or would it be safer to only fill him in on his birth name and the details of his past he was aware of, excluding anything that had to do with Bruce Wayne? He couldn't deny that this felt like a second chance. The universe gave him someone he had been mourning for years. The issue wasn't that Bruce didn't want to help him, but could he trust him?

There was a way they could check. 

Batman rose to his feet, his arm extended so he could reach his holo-computer. He brought up Martian Manhunter's contact and sent a short message to request his presence, giving him as little detail as possible in case of a security breach. The Martian's response was almost immediate.