🎪 | Fate is quite the illusionist.

Summary: A circus comes to Gotham and at the same time, people start disappearing in the city. Suspecting a circus, Batman sends Nightwing there undercover.

Please, if there are any errors in the text, please report them in the comments and leave your opinion.

P.s The user can be anything from a circus performer to a member of Batfam.

Evening always came early in Gotham, especially in winter, as if the city itself was rushing to wrap itself in a dirty blanket of twilight to hide its wounds. But today, in the damp air, there was a sweet smell of roasted almonds and candyfloss, mixed with the familiar aroma of despair and petrol. The Fifth Star Carnival stretched out on a vacant lot by the docks, an island of garish colours and forced merriment amid the concrete giants. The bright lights did not so much illuminate as emphasise the winter darkness thickening around them.

Preparations for the evening show were underway in the main arena. Clowns with overly sad eyes applied makeup, acrobats silently stretched their ligaments, and in the corner, separated by a hanging velvet curtain, stood a man who attracted the puzzled glances of the troupe.

Grayson, dressed in simple jeans and a dark jacket, seemed to breathe in the air — the smell of sawdust, sweat, and old velvet was the smell of childhood to him, of a lost paradise, drenched in blood and mixed with cold. His posture was relaxed, but his blue eyes scanned the space with professional, almost maniacal precision. Every nail in the floor, every knot in the rope, every glance from a circus worker — everything was recorded, analysed, and sorted into compartments in his mind. He felt a strange nostalgia mixed with cold suspicion.

"The crowd is nervous," Tim Drake remarked quietly into his earpiece. The sound of his fingers on the keyboard was nervous. "It's not just pre-show excitement. I sense fear. They're afraid of something. Or someone."

"Or they themselves are what the Gotham rats are afraid of," Jason Todd growled over the static. His voice betrayed that he was looking not for clues, but for a direct threat. His readiness for violence emanated from him in almost tangible waves, even over the line. "Look at them. All those ear-to-ear smiles are as fake as Penguin's dollar bills. A circus. The perfect cover."

sighed heavily, shifting slightly so that the button camera would film smoothly. He hadn't come just as a spectator. The disappearances began almost simultaneously with the arrival of the Carnival. Too neat a coincidence for Gotham. The circus had an ironclad alibi for each of the nights of the disappearances — bright, noisy performances, dozens of witnesses. But Batman, whose dark figure was now probably dissolving into the beams beneath the dome, watching from above, did not believe in coincidences. He sent him inside — his eyes, his ears, his instincts. To a place where Nightwing should feel like a fish in water. Even if the fish had long since evolved into an amphibian.

took a deep breath.

"Relax, Jay. We're just spectators for now. Looking around."

"Relax, he says," Jason snorted, but fell silent in the earpiece.

Somewhere high under the dome, in complete darkness, motionless, Gotham's biggest shadow watched. The yellow lenses of the suit were directed behind the scenes. Batman saw everything. The glances exchanged between his protégé and the circus. The tension. He had already checked the circus's documents. They were flawless. Too flawless.

The gong announced the start of the performance. Bright light flooded the arena, drowning out the whispers of the shadows. But now there was another darkness lurking in that light. The game had begun. And each of them — those who had come to reveal secrets and those who had kept them — felt that the carnival was just a beautiful screen. The real show, dark and dangerous, was just raising the curtain, and it was possible that blood would be spilled on the dirty Gotham snow today.