Summary: Chapter 3- Flashpoint- The Flashpoint Paradox AU. Thomas Wayne goes to the circus.

AN: If you haven't watched Flashpoint yet, this may be a tad confusing so I will provide a small summary of the world (only Bruce's past though), please do not read this if you are planning to watch it and do not want it to be spoiled. You've been warned. SPOILER Summary: In this world Bruce is the one who was killed instead of his parents. His father Thomas Wayne is now Batman and his mother had gone crazy (she turns into a villain) Thomas is a bitter man who has turned into an alcoholic and has no problem with killing. He actually uses guns as his weapon and shows no mercy to his enemies. All right, now on with the story!

His face would always stay the same.

The smiling image of the child in the videos would never have the chance to grow up. Thomas would never be able to watch his shoulders broaden, never get to see his jaws grow angular and grow a beard and use a razor. He closed his eyes at that thought, taking another swing of the bitter sting of alcohol, his thoughts on the plastic razor toy his son had played with that fateful morning, mirroring him and giggling as he was handed the foam to put on his smooth baby face. It took a moment for the guilt to quell before he opened his eyes and continued to watch, making sure to take the raw pangs in his chest as his punishment.

The screech of the bats over head was overpowered by the static laughter from the large computer screen. The old videos played like a fresh memory in his brain. If he tried hard enough he could still touch his boys' soft cheeks as he kissed him goodnight, smell the lotion he used after his bath, hear his sons laughter as he played around in the living-room while he worked in his study.

But like the videos, those things would always stay in the past. Thomas looked down at the beverage in his hand. Pathetic. He was pathetic. For second, a question slapped itself across his face. What had happened to his life?

The answer though, stared back at him from the screen.

Bruce had been his life. He had been his future, everything he had loved and hoped and dreamed was in that boy, his own flesh and blood. The most precious thing he and his wife shared.

But his son was gone now.

The son who he had promised to love and care and protect, he, Gotham's most renounced doctor and he had been helpless. Left there to watch the body of his son cool as his wife fell into insanity.

He tightened his hands around the flask thinking of all the things his sons could have been. But Bruce would never have that chance. Bruce would never made it to his ninth year; he had barely made it to his eighth. Hardened blue eyes watched, only softening when it landed on the innocent smile of his boy. The bright blues looked up at the video camera before the boy waved. A final good-bye to his father.

How miserable, his job as a father and husband destroyed in a single night. Because of some common criminal, a thug, a man who would never live to repeat his act again. He made sure of that.

The anger he felt when he watched them lower the body of his son to the ground resurfaced and devoured him. He threw the whiskey on the floor watching the liquid flow from the tin metal reminding him of his sons' blood on the floor of the alley.

Bruce would have been twenty-eight now, if he had lived.

He stood up and walked up to the screen, his sons face still smiling back at him before it turned black. With heavy steps filled with renewed sorrow and anger he grabbed the guns that laid on the table and set out to the city.

The city that took everything from him.

It would not be a wise choice for any villain to be out tonight.

He had seen it on the papers through out the last two weeks. Even with the world in impending doom the circus had still arrived. It had been the whole highlight of Gotham, miserable town that it was, the bright colors displayed on the front page in bold letters announcing the exciting Haly's circus. It was the first time in a long time he wanted to go anywhere and for once he had changed into his civilian clothes and visited the city without Batman or his casino being the reason for it.

As Thomas stepped into the colorful tent of the big top, he only had one thought in mind, Bruce would have loved this. The crowd was a happy one, families together, laughing as they took their seats for the show. It was probably just one last happy memory for them before the war killed them all. He took a lonely seat in the back and ignored the fathers, mothers and children surrounding him.

"Ladies and Gentlemen, boys and girls!" The ring master called out and he leaned back in his seat, ignoring the memory of the excited look of his sons face if he had been there.

The show passed by in a blur for him, his awareness lost in the sea as it flickered in and out as the performances ended one after the other. He stayed longer than he thought he would, wondering what had made him stay; but the sounds of the children squealing in delight did it for him. He stood to leave when the last act was called out.

"Please welcome the Flying Graysons!" He looked up and saw the tiny family. The Flying Graysons, he remembered reading, was a family act that consisted of a husband and wife along with their nine year old son, he had been more curious than anything.

How could the parents put the boy in danger by letting him fly hundreds of feet in the air without the safety of a net? They were crazier than he was.

Those thoughts however were dashed as the act began, when he watched the family fly through the air, their forms reminding him of birds enjoying themselves in the sky. Thomas stood awed at the way they would let go of one another with the confidence that another hand would catch them. He let out a small humorless chuckle at the realization of the small family. Their trust was what kept them safe and that was better than any net to catch them.

He sat back down as the family glided through the air, making him wonder if they were secretly meta-humans with the ability to fly.

Finally the young boy was deposited on the platform as the last flip were to be performed by his parents.

Thomas doesn't know exactly what had happened next, only that there was a loud snap that didn't register to him that it had been the rope that carried the couple. His eyes had immediately gone to the falling bodies but it quickly turned its attention to the boy before the bodies hit the ground.

He didn't remember standing up, only that his eyes stayed on the little boy on the platform. He watched as the boy quickly slid down the stairs and ran to the body of his parents. For a second he felt a pang of jealousy, jealous at the fact that the elder Graysons would never feel the true pain of losing a child, jealous that their child had survived. How many times had he laid awake at night wishing that it had been him that had died that night?

Those feelings were pushed away and replaced with disgust at the thought as he watched the boy fall to his knees, unable to even cry out as he took in the scene before him. He knew that feeling, the shock, the unrealism of what just happened, the sudden feeling that he had lost something so great and yet his brain had not yet registered what or why.

Time must have stopped for the boy as it had been with him. He stood as the audience around him panicked emptying the tent faster then a stampede of antelopes from a hunter.

Thomas watched as the boy began to breathe deeply, face crumpling as his world started to crash around him, slowly he knew, the overwhelming realization had finally started to spread through the boy like a black hole.

The first cry was loud, a heart-wrenching wail that sounded like a cry of physical pain, like someone had just taken a hot poker and stabbed the boy through the heart. He watched as the Grayson boy laid his head on the collapsed chest of his father, the blood painting the side of his face as he trembled from the power of his cries.

It wasn't long before Thomas was standing in front of the wailing child, watched as the boy cried out for his parents to wake up. It was probably just sick fascination than true empathy that Thomas went to him, to look at the bodies of the parents and see the boy. At least that was what he convinced himself. Fighting crime for him always been bitter hared and vengeance, what did he need empathy for?

He didn't do anything to comfort the boy, but that was taken from his hands when a few of the other circus folks dropped beside the boy and held him tight, trying too late to pull the boy from the wretched bodies of his parents.

"Oh, Dick." The older man, the ringmaster, whispered against the child's hair, "I'm so sorry son, so so sorry." Dick shook his head in despair, not wanting to hear those words.

"Please…they could still be alive." He hiccupped, a flash of hope, a desperate cry, anything to make it feel better.

"Oh son, I'm so sorry." Thomas watched the exchange before he felt a hand on his shoulder.

"Mr. Wayne?" The voice called out quietly, as if worried his voice would break some semblance of the ambiance around the crying duo, "I'm sorry but we'll have to ask you to leave while we…" a crack in the mans voice as he gathered himself, "sort this out." Thomas nodded, he looked back down at the child who, finally realizing that he and the old man were not the only ones in the tent.

He looked up and Thomas stepped back at those eyes.

Those familiar blue eyes. The boy looked like him. He felt his heart surge at the similarity, before anger settled in. No, the boy before him was tinier than his son had been, his hair and skin darker, his eyes larger and eye color a shade lighter almost bordering on silver-blue. The boy sniffled, eyes dazed and searching as he stared up at him.

Thomas withdrew, spinning around so fast he became dizzy, or maybe that was just the fact the boy had looked like his dead son for a second.

He walked briskly towards the exit before his eyes caught sight of the rope he knew was from the swing. He knelt down and picked up the rope and narrowed his eyes at the obvious clean cut before the wires frayed out. It didn't take a genius to figure out that the couple had been murdered. He stood up and held on to the rope, no one in Gotham police would think twice about a murder case, not at these times anyway.

He exited the tent with a goal.

There were people he needed to see.

He threw the struggling body in front of the boy who looked up at him with those damned blue eyes. Thomas looked away quickly from behind the cowl, he didn't think the boy would come, after he had sent the letter telling him he had his parents' killer he thought the boy would be smart enough to ignore it. Maybe his vengeance ran deeper than Thomas first thought.

He glanced back at the boy and took in his appearance for the first time since under the tent of the circus. Dick Grayson stood under the light of the alleyway wearing worn graying clothes given to him by the orphanage that he had probably escaped from. He looked thinner than Thomas remembered him from a few months ago, his eyes looked larger and made him look almost doll-like, but they reflected a broken boy. The eyes were not hollow like most that had lost everything, no, his eyes were a reflection of all the horrors he had seen, and it had lost some of its blue tint and looked grayer than the smog that covered Gotham.

Dick stood there looking up at cowled eyes before he looked down at the man thrown at his feet.

There were no words to be said. Instead Thomas stared back, face frozen in a stoic mask, he was giving the kid a chance. A chance to avenge his parents, it was the one thing he could give him to ease the pain. He had gotten the satisfaction of killing the man who took away his family; if anything else he could give this child the same.

From one of his many holsters he pulled out one of his spare guns, a lighter model and threw it at the kids feet. He stood there and watched as Dick picked it up, even though smaller then most of his pistols the gun still looked too big in those tiny hands.

He looked down at Tony Zucco as he grunted like an animal probably recognizing the boy he was given to, but with Batman at his back it gave him no lee-way of escape, but that did not stop him from trying.

Thomas growled out as he kicked the man down as he struggled to get up, laying his feet on the small of the mans back and pressing on the bone to make him stop.

Dick bit his lips as he hiccupped watching as Batman held the man still, a silent battle erupted in his head as he looked down at the heavy and loaded gun, he had never held a gun before, it was heavy and cold, and a tool that could very well end the mans life before him. After his parents' death he had felt so helpless, so weak and now he was give the power to balance righteousness in his hands.

The decision weighed as heavily as his world did the moment his parents died.

And for a second he let those memories wash through him.

Thomas knew that what he was doing, giving a child a choice to kill was probably the worst thing he had done in his life, but that emotion baggage was nothing to him now. He thought about what he would do if the kid refused to kill the bastard, he scoffed, yeah right; he knew what he would do, if the kid refused, he would end it. Gotham didn't need another thug in her streets.

The kid better be fast, his trigger finger was getting restless and the bug underneath his feet would start getting ideas in his head.

Dick wondered what his parents would think if they were here, and right then a moment of clarity. If they were here… The voice mocked out, they weren't here, this man took them away, he would never see them again, never hear their voice, never feel their arms around him when he was scared. The image of his parents face as they fell cemented his decision.

He looked up to Batman and nodded.

Batman nodded back.

He raised the gun, holding it with two hands and Batman was surprised the boy knew how to hold it; the gun shook as his tiny shoulders trembled. His eyes blurred with tears as he aimed at the man before him.

Tony struggled but the bindings and the man behind him held him in place. He shook his head in plea, words muffled by the makeshift tie around his mouth.

Dick looked up with Thomas and for a second the lost look in those eyes seemed to clear up as the gun went off. He staggered back at the recoil, falling back in tandem with the thud of the falling body.

Batman stood there and watched as the boy looked at the body and cried, his mouth spewing out apologies to his parents.

His work was done here.

...

...

...

...

It was only a few steps when he heard it. The soft foot falls of someone following him. He stopped and he knew before he turned around what would be there.

The boy stood behind him gun still in hand and the bottom part of his jeans bloodied by the act of what he had done. Those eyes stared up at him in a daze, a little lost lamb.

Batman turned and continued on.

And the boy followed him into the darkness.

END.

AN: So I have two more chapters I plan to put up for this before I wrap it up, which I can hopefully post along with a new chapter of 'In my son's eyes' if you guys are also reading that.

Also my work has been pretty hectic lately so even though I always write I never have time to read through my works and edit them. That's the problem with me. I know I should probably look for a beta, but I feel like my writing is so boring and suck-y that I'm too embarrassed to ask for someone to proof read it. I liken it as torture for them if I do.

Lastly, I have posted a poll that will probably be open for the rest of the month, as I've been poking around and writing some one-shots which I have yet to edit, I've put up a poll to prioritize so please check it out and vote. Thanks!