"Richard!"

The pleading voice shouted out his long forgotten name and he ignored it, pleading with his limbs to go faster, forcing his feet to fly quicker, and all the while, trying to block out the words that were making his knees pathetically weak.

"Let me help you!"

No. He can't help him. He won't be able to.

"Please!"

He shook his head vigorously as if the speaker would be able to see his action through the thundering rain around them, before urging himself to move faster, with hope that he would get away from the person whose words were sickeningly sweet, dripping with the poison of being untrue.

"I've failed you once! I can't. No! I won't fail you again!"

And oh, how Dick wished those words were true.

A tear slipped from his eye, fading in with the torrent of rain that fell down in drops.

--------- 9 months earlier ----------

As usual, Dick Grayson screamed in his sleep. It was of regular occurrence, although he was the only one besides him who knew it, and it was the cause of his lack of sleep, his fear of the nightmares that haunted him making the familiar tiring ache in his body all that more bearable in its perpetuity.

It was always the same dream, him, his old naive self, vigilantly watching his parents in their graceful act of flight, their usual entrancement holding the audience and even him, who had seen this so many times, at the edge of their seats in awe. And as always, when John and Mary Grayson graced their viewers with a particularly death-defying act of art, they were rewarded with the surreal and thunderous applause that Dick had once loved, their nameless faces filled with the awe that the Graysons themselves had put on their faces.

He always knew it was a dream, but the events that followed never grew easier to see, watch, feel, nor hear.

The pull of the strings, and the realization of what was about to happen, his mouth forming a shout of warning that would never be quick enough. The shock on his loving parent's faces as their eyes slowly followed his to what was the subject of his horror. And most of all, the voice of his mother as she whispered breathlessly,her form slowly plummeting to the ground,

"Richard..."

His hand would reach out in response, as her once graceful now stiff with shock body fell near him. He'd attempt to catch her, and barely, by the arm, he'd suceed, gasping at the sudden burden of weight that was his.

And then, he'd fall instead of stopping her fall, and together they'd plummet, down, with oh so different reactions.

In real life, he knows what he would have done, if that had been what truly happened, cause he knows he would have screamed, unable to stop the screams that were no longer screams of exhilaration from coming out of his mouth. But this is not real, and instead, it's just a wistful dream, and so, instead, he smiles serenely, at peace, because he knows what will happen, and he'd rather die with his parents than live without them.

But then he hits the ground, and his smile fades, because it's so painful, just like it had felt to watch his mother and father fall, so he screams, just like he did in the past, his vision blurred from the agony of the fall and the agony to know that he's still alive and he won't be joining his parents after all.

And when he finally stops screaming, and his vision had focused enough for him to see what had happened to his two loving companions of the air, he screams again, but even more tortured, his agony all the more worst at what he sees.

Because now he can see the blood, and the broken bodies of his parents that lay beneath him, there to protect him from the impact.

And he screams.

And he screams.

And he screams, all the while as his mother whispers hauntingly into his ears that don't want to hear.

"Richard..."