I've had this idea in my head for quite a while, and finally got the inspiration to post it after seeing this prompt on the YJ Anon Meme. Warning: We're heading into Joker territory now, which means blood and dark stuff. Just letting you know.

Disclaimer: I am not, even in my wildest dreams, the owner of Young Justice or anything DC comics related.

The pure and simple truth is rarely pure and never simple - Oscar Wilde

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Lately, Dick Grayson has had a lot to deal with. What with leading a double life as a vigilante and being leader of the Young Justice team, aka Nightwing, such responsibility was expected. As was a certain accustomed attitude towards bizarreness. In the past few weeks alone, he'd dealt with an alien invasion, the departure of his mentor to a trial on a foreign planet, not to mention The Light's continued progress towards its unknown goal.

...yet he couldn't fathom why on earth he was being summoned to the Gotham City Senior Care facility at almost midnight of all things.

But Dick had a strange feeling about this appointment and was curious to know why the message had been so urgent. So he took a cab through the normally busy streets of Bludhaven and made it to Gotham in record time. To his continuous surprise and growing suspicion, the door to the facility was still open, as if awaiting his arrival.

There was a single night nurse on duty at the front desk. She hardly spared him a glance as he approached, despite him showing up way past visiting hours.

"Good evening, ma'am," he greeted politely, extending a hand for her to shake. "I'm—"

"Mr. Grayson, correct?" she finished. A cheery smile lit up her otherwise tired face. "Visiting hours ended a while ago, but I've been informed to make an exception in your case. Come," she said promptly, hooking a finger down the hall.

Stunned, Dick retracted his hand and slowly moved to follow. Curiouser and curiouser...which reminds me, I need to return Arty her copy of Alice in Wonderland.

"Here we are," she announced after leading him down the hall, gesturing to the door she'd stopped at, and Dick waited, sensing she had more to say. "I'm so glad they managed to find you on such short notice. At the end of it all, family is the most important."

Then she trotted away before Dick could question her any further.

Well, the white rabbit was no help, he huffed. Cautious and slow, as to not disturb the resident inside, Dick opened the door. It's about time I find out where this rabbit hole has lead.

Nobody was present except for an old woman lying asleep in bed. Dick slowly slid the door shut. He walked to the edge of the patient's bed and observed the medical chart hanging there.

In short, it read:

Ethel Napier. Age 76. Stage four lung cancer.

According to the chart, Mrs. Napier didn't have long left on this world. In fact, judging by the timeline her attending physician gave, she could go at any minute. Visualizing himself in this woman's room as she passed without even knowing why sent a shudder down Dick's spine.

Suddenly, the woman awoke in a jolt, revealing a pair of sluggish brown eyes dimmed by the influence of drugs. When they fell upon him, however, the dying embers of her retinas ignited like a flame of recognition.

"Oh...oh, it's you," she sighed, a smile curving around her wrinkled cheeks. She looked close to tears. "My boy. My dear, sweet boy. Let me have a look, here."

Dubiously, Dick stepped forward. He hadn't any idea why the woman was acting this way, but after seeing the dosage of morphine they had her on, he could excuse it. Stepping out of the shadows, he watched as the weary, wrinkled face lit up in absolute joy.

"How handsome you've grown," she remarked amazedly. "And those eyes...they're gorgeous. Just like hers..."

That detail left him only more confused. Dick had always been told he'd inherited his mother's eyes. So, maybe this woman was a friend of the family who met him too far back for his infant mind to recall? An old acquaintance of Haly's Circus?

In an effort to avoid giving himself a headache, Dick decided to discover what he could from the she in question before coming to a conclusion.

"Excuse me, Mrs. Napier? But I...do I know you? I'm sorry if I don't remember, but maybe I was too young," he said reasonably.

The smile fell from the old woman's face.

"We've never met," she answered sadly, which surprised Dick into silence. "And I regret it everyday...but, it was for the best, I suppose...or at least, the police supposed...they said I couldn't have contact whatsoever. It hurt, but I understood. It was my duty to keep you secret. Keep you safe."

Her lower lip wobbled. "But Officer Wales promised...promised me, that he'd make an exception, that he'd bring you to me, just so I could see you once before I passed on. That's all I asked."

"Mrs. Napier, I don't understand." Dick shook his head in frustration. "Why am I here? Why did you want to see me so badly?"

A sad, little smile graced Mrs. Napier's face.

"'Cause you're my grandson," she enlightened, sorrow tainting the fringe of what was meant to be bright tone of voice. "And you're all I've ever dreamt of meeting since the day I lost my son."

"Your son?" said Dick slowly. Did that mean that Dick...? But no, the woman was clearly confused. "You must have me mistaken for someone else, ma'am. My father's parents were—"

"Graysons," she clarified, sounding more lucid than Dick gave her credit for. "Lovely family. That's why Officer Wales was so adamant on letting them have you. Such loving, wholesome circus folk..."

He tried to ignore how his hands began to shake, or how the words opened up a pit of dread in the base of his stomach.

"What are you saying? I was adopted?" He scoffed. This conversation was becoming less sane by the second. "That's ridiculous. How could I have never known?"

Mrs. Napier's grin was almost dark. "If the police want something hidden, they can certainly make the trail disappear. And I'm sure the Graysons, lovely as they were, hadn't the heart to tell...well, most secrets are buried for a reason."

Dick didn't disagree with that—it was everything else he was having a tough time believing. Trying to rein in his incredulity, he forced the coversation on.

"Alright, let's say any of this was remotely believable; why keep it hidden? Mrs. Napier..." he began gently, mindful of the wound he was prodding at, "...who was your son?"

The grin slid right off her face at the request.

"His name was Jack. Funny boy. Always first to crack a joke, always last to be picked for kickball. So strange, so smart. But mine nonetheless." Her line of speech trailed into oblivion, lost in the distant swirl of memories, and he watched her eyes go glassy as her mind drifted off...

"Ethel!" Dick exclaimed.

Then she blinked, and the reverie receded, leaving her as stranded in the present as he was.

"Sorry, dear. I think I left for a minute. I was remembering the day I lost my boy." She glanced at him sharply. "Also, it's very rude to address your elders by their first name."

At the absurd amusement the admonishment brought, Dick laughed shortly. It quickly subsided due to the seriousness of the situation, the sound sobering them both. He pressed forward, "How did it happen that day?"

"Jack got tangled up in some bad business," she explained hoarsely, coughing a wry laugh. "He had a knack for trouble. Starting it, at least. This time, though, I think he got in too deep to dig himself out. Or maybe he just didn't want to..."

Her eyes darkened in a manner that had nothing to do with the drugs and everything to do with grief.

"My boy may not have died that day, but I lost him anyway. Jack Napier put on the Red Hood and never took it off."

The Red Hood? Dick knew that name. He had been through Batman's old case files more than once. But that's...no. No, it can't be.

"He was caught and chased through the plant and fell into the chemical waste; there the toxins turned his skin white, his hair emerald, his lips blood red, and his heart black as coal."

Dick's heart fled into the pit of his stomach.

No.

"My son became the comedian he always wanted to be," Ethel said in a hollow voice, "and the monster known as the Joker."

NO!

"No," Dick choked, mouth finally catching up with mind. "That's wrong. It has be wrong."

"Jeannie," Ethel sighed nostalgically, the glassy gleam to her gaze returning full-force. "Sweet Jeannie, my daughter-in-law. She was utterly devoted to him, despite his eccentric tendencies...she loved him anyway, despite the fact that he got scary sometimes. I blame his father."

She chose not to elaborate on that ominous accusation, and went on,

"Even after he tried to murder her in a psychotic rage, she still wanted his child to live. She crawled, bleeding profusely, and begged the ambulance to hurry, to save you, that's all she asked..." Her voice grew somber and sad. "She died minutes after the emergency C-section...hadn't even a chance to hear you cry..."

And that was the last straw.

"Lady, you're insane!" yelled Dick, standing up in rush. He needed to leave this place and never come back, erase this lunacy from his mind, and forget and forget and forget forever. His mother hadn't died on an operating table, she'd died a hundred feet below the tightrope; that clear-cut fact still clutched at his chest coldly.

Whatever lies this woman was intent on spouting, he didn't want to listen anymore. Dick was so angry he seethed, "This is a sick joke, even for the Joker's mother!"

His hand was on the doorknob, ready to twist it and wretch it open, ready to leave this madness behind. Until Ethel spoke up again.

"You have his laugh," she cried out.

Frozen where he stood, Dick forgot to breathe. The horrible hysteria in that single statement shattered his determination to leave like glass. As though a blind man searching for salvation, he stumbled into his seat again, face buried in his trembling hands.

They remained silent for a long, long time.

"Why?" asked Dick eventually, voice deceptively calm. "Why would you summon me to your deathbed, only to tell me these horrible things?"

Ethel's eyelids drooped, while something akin to an apology registered on her face.

"All I ever wanted was the chance to say goodbye," she confessed wistfully, exhaling a soft breath and shutting her eyes in exhaustion. "Goodbye, Richard. And may all the rest of your years be happy."

Five minutes ago, the only thing on his mind had been getting the hell out of this room. Now, Dick sat motionless in the uncomfortable plastic chair. He sat and stayed silent and wasn't disturbed. The clock on the nightstand ticked by. One, two, three hours passed, until the same clock read 4:07am.

He waited until the steady rhythm of her heart monitor faded into failure. He owed this poor, old woman that much. The night nurse came inside and didn't both to resuscitate. She simply unplugged the machine and covered Mrs. Napier's serene white face with an even whiter sheet.

"Thank you," she whispered, careful not to wake the dead. "For making her last night worth it."

She must have presumed he was in a stupor of grief, because she let him leave without a reply, and didn't react when he slammed the door behind him.

Dick paused outside the building and stood on the sidewalk, just trying to breathe, just trying to figure this out and not have a panic attack.

What Ethel had said...everything she had said...none of it could have been true, right? Of course not, no. Her story didn't make sense...but the details, considering her state of mind, had been eerily in depth and accurate...and her desire to see him before she died...that was genuine.

But what about everything else? Had that also been—

"Get a grip, Grayson," Dick snapped himself out of it. "Stop indulging her delusion. Just an old lady's delirium. Nothing more."

He started walking towards the nearest pay phone to call a cab when the idea struck. Officer Wales. That was the man Ethel said worked with the police, the person who summoned Dick to her in the first place. If anybody could clarify this tangled mess, it would be him.

And, well, he was already in Gotham...why waste the trip?

Sighing, Dick changed direction and went in search of the Wales' residence. Honestly, he didn't want to go doing detective work on a case long closed, but...but a part of him needed to know. That didn't stop the other part from feeling sick.

He hated digging up old graves.

Afraid of the ghosts he might find.

So...opinions, thoughts? Good, bad; continue, scrap it? I tried to keep Dick in character, so hopefully I suceeded, and Ethel Napier (a character of my own creation) well, what did you think of her? In fewer words: Please, Review!