Nightwing: Sins of the Fathers

Ashes To Ashes

My ears were ringing, and the air was thick with dust, I woke up in a heap amongst piles of rubble. My vision returned in a sharp flash but it was unfocused. My eyes stung as they were pecked by the snow that had started to fall in from the hole that had been blown in the ceiling above us. I'd been lucky, it didn't feel like any shrapnel had hit me, and there definitely wasn't much debris on top of me because I could move. As far as injuries, I could only feel a broken rib.

I felt drunk, like everything that had just happened was some kind of hallucination – like a lousy Vertigo trip.

My hearing was coming back, I could hear voices now. They were calling for Batman and me. I could only assume they hadn't seen what had happened.

The debris on my leg, which appeared to be a metal girder of some kind, suddenly felt lighter "Nightwing!" It was Batgirl, Barbara Gordon, she lifted the beam off me and heaved it to one side. Her hand wrapped around mine and pulled me from where I was laying – her suit was covered in dust, and her lip was bleeding, but other than that she looked reasonably unscathed. I could only hope my new sidekick had faired the same.

Barbara slung my arm over her shoulder and lifted up my chin to look into my eyes "Nightwing, what happened?" I was a man of many words, but I didn't answer her straight away. There was no way to tell her, I couldn't, "Nightwing..." She lowered her voice to a whisper, "Dick, where's Bruce?""

We walked arm-over-shoulder, towards the edge of the pit we'd been fighting on top of – everything we'd just experienced still swarming its way back into my mind. I weakly pointed down into the flames and rubble that now filled what had before been a large sewage duct. "He's down there, Barb" I finally said, "He's gone."

** Earlier that year**

College was a drag, especially for someone in my unique position. I was studying for a degree in criminal psychology, something I thought I knew a lot about. I figured since I was no longer under Bruce Wayne's care that I might want to get myself a job one day – as being a vigilante didn't pay and even though I still had access to the trusty trust fund, I wasn't feeling so great about not standing so much on my own two feet.

Unfortunately, my second-year studies weren't going all that well. In the year and a half that had passed since my return from living in Titan Tower, things had been heating up in the criminal underworld of Gotham, and I had been out on patrol almost every night for three weeks, leaving very little time for my studies... and sleep. The sleep I'd been involuntarily catching up on in class, much to the professor's dismay.

"Mr Grayson!" Professor Crane called out. I woke up abruptly, I'd been dreaming about my patrol with Barbara the previous night, lucky I'm not a sleep talker.

"Yes Professor?" I responded with an awkward smile. The girl to my left, I didn't know her name, let out a little chuckle. The professor's spectacles were perched on the end of his long hooked nose, he glared right at me with his piercing black eyes.

"I was wondering if you had any insight on the question I just asked, Mr Grayson?"

"Erm, could you repeat the question?" I had no idea what he'd said, obviously.

"A little hard of hearing are we?" He growled. He pointed to the girl sitting to my left, "Miss Daggett, could you please enlighten our poor friend?"

The girl turned and looked at me, she was beautiful with long blonde hair tied up. She wore glasses, but I could see that she had crystal blue eyes – undoubtedly one of the popular girls, which made it all the more embarrassing when she slowly worded the professor's question out for me.