Chapter Text
From a young age, Sarah Grayson was introduced to flying. She was six years old when she started performing her act with Dick.
The Golden Boy. The one she always wanted to be like. Her older brother, her role model, her hero.
But all heroes fall at some point.
***
The night that would change her life forever. Dick was nine. Sarah was six. The nights that the Flying Grayson's performed were some of her favorite memories. Her proudest. all the times she could remember her mother and father flawlessly executing their act. The way the crowd roared when Mother caught Father. The anticipation and held breaths whenever she and Dick would climb to opposite platforms to do their own.
They didn't that night.
She wasn't even old enough to be in school yet. Sarah didn't know what the sound of bones snapping was supposed to sound like, or that the blood in your body was supposed to be so red. What she did know was that Dick was the one who was supposed to protect her - because that's what big brothers do, it's why they're all so brave - and her mother and father loved her very much. They told her so every night when she went to sleep and every morning when she woke up.
John and Mary. Those were nice names. Kind names. Names she'd never allow herself to forget.
Sarah wouldn't learn until she was much older who killed her parents and why she was forced to watch them fall to their deaths. One minute they were preparing to wow the crowd, and the next they were falling falling falling and the net below wasn't strong enough to catch them. Then there was screaming. Why was everyone screaming? And why was it so loud?
"Little Wing," Dick's voice is nearly incomprehensible in the midst of all the screaming. Her older brother is kneeling in front of her on the platform, just barely blocking the view of her parent's bodies on the ground. "Sarah, look at me."
Then two pairs of identical eyes are meeting one another. Dick is panicking, and rightfully so, but Sarah is too young to really understand what's going on.
Dick will learn later that his sister was disassociating. She was so little, she'd barely begun her career as the youngest and the most agile of the Flying Grayson members. She was so talented.
So innocent.
Dick Grayson wrapped his arms around his little sister and tugged her into his lap to hide her view of the floor below. The tent is abandoned and there are sirens echoing in the distance that signal the incoming police force. Someone is crying, she doesn't know if it's him or her, and he keeps murmuring the same thing.
"She's only six years old, she's only six years old..."
The police would've separated them had it not been for the intervention of Jim Gordon. He was kind. Sarah was catatonic - Dick had told the police she hadn't spoken since before the accident - but her brother was safe, and alive, and she couldn't find it in her to let go.
So she didn't.
***
A week later, they were Bruce Wayne's wards. Sarah didn't know who he was or why he was letting them live in their house. All she knew was Dick. Dick was safe. Dick loved her.
Bruce wasn't and would never be her dat.
It was within their first few days in Wayne Manor when she dared to talk again. Sarah curled in tightly on herself and shifted her weight to look at her brother, reaching a tiny hand out to press it to his cheek. "Big Wing?" Her voice was hoarse from lack of use. It hurt to talk. She didn't like it.
"Yeah, Little Wing."
Sarah didn't like how tired and old he sounded. Dick was strong. He had to get through this. She needed him. "Mommy and Daddy are really gone?" She whispered.
Dick paused for what felt like hours. He knew what happened. He saw how his parents died. Felt the anger and the hurt and the guilt for not being able to save them.
That pain always seemed to dissipate when Sarah was near. Despite her shock and not speaking for days until this moment, she nestled closer and buried her face in her brother's neck. That little girl was trying to desperately block out the sound she could hear of snapping bones and the way their blood spilled onto the floor.
The circus wasn't supposed to be scary. Sarah loved the circus. It was supposed to be fun!
"So who is going to protect us now?"
If Sarah was a few years older, Dick would've assumed they were twins. She had yet to lose alot of the baby fat that came with being a young child but her hair and eyes were almost the same as his. Hers was just curly and her eyes were brighter when the light reflected off of them.
"Me. I'm going to protect us, Little Wing." Dick said it so confidently that she knew it was true. "We're family. We always look out for family, right?"
Sarah nodded. Her eyes were getting heavy. "Right. Family always." A pause. "I love you, Dickie."
The Grayson siblings fell asleep wrapped around each other. It was in the moments he watched their interaction that Bruce Wayne decided one very easy thing. Probably the easiest decision of his life.
These kids needed a guardian. A father. Someone to love them. He'd never considered himself to have fatherly potential but he would do it for them.
And anyone who came after them.