The past is a strange thing.

The past, what they had experienced. And then the past, what they would never dream of holding beneath their fingertips.

Some parts of the past are, for lack of better words, bad. Some parts are better left forgotten in unmarked graves. Some hold onto the past like a lifeline, not treating the things they had experienced like what they really are, the past.

Sometimes the past treats your memories like gold, others like a guillotine that cuts off what makes you, you. Cuts off the parts that made you important, made you like the one in your dreams.

So yeah, the past can be a strange concept. Some can never let go and never forget, some have no problems with shoving it where it came from. But we all came from the past, the choices we made and paths we followed shaped the present, the present shaping the future. So the past is potentially one of the most important things, yet it is treated as a distant memory, a recollection of what once was and not what could have been.

Past.

Good, old, detached, past.

Only, he couldn't leave the past well enough alone.

The night was blue. It was near midnight with the stars hidden behind ominous clouds and the lights of skyscrapers dampening the burning suns lights that resembled holes in a canvas. But the night was blue, felt blue if you could feel a colour. Most of the time it was the incandescent lights against the concrete and drops of blood the mixed in with rain, hidden in the charcoal folds of his suit. Not this night though, it felt different, but not exactly better.

It was also quiet. Not completely, no the city was never quiet, but there was no major crime and that unsettled something inside him. He had saved a woman and her child from a pitiful street thug that had pulled a knife on her, leaving him tied to the door of the Gotham city police department as a present for the commissioner. There was a minor drug deal in the shadows of some forgotten ally in the downtown slums. Then, that was all, that concluded the action for the night.

Sure, no major crimes committed by over glorified villains. It was quiet, quiet never meant anything good. Quiet meant planning, silent moves that wouldn't catch your eye across the chessboard. Quiet meant something was coming and people had boarded up their doors from paranoia in the silence.

All he could do was wait for the inevitable fallout.

Fallout. The adverse side effects or results of a situation. Used to describe the consequence of a nuclear incident as the surrounding area becomes radioactive for thousands of years. It was not exactly something he was looking forward to.

It would blow up anyway, unless he could figure out why everyone seemed to bite their tongues and hold their breath in the presence of a invisible source. Well invisible to him. There was someone he loathed asking, but someone that always knew what was running through the minds of he Gotham underworld.

The Ghost King. An undercover operative in the hit-list business that still killed people for the right reasons when he thought no one was looking. Though he thought you could never kill someone for the right reasons and that The Ghost King deserved a One track ticket to Arkham. He was left to turning a blind eye when he found out what he actually did, and the amount of connections he had obtained.

That and he stopped a human trafficking operation single handily, not something that was easy. Not to mention he still knew nothing about him other than him name, it was like he never existed.

So he sat in front of the computer, eyes raking over the large console hesitantly. It did no good hesitating, he was going to do what he was going to do, weather or not it be consorting with know criminals to receive information.

His fingers danced over the keys before typing in the code to connect to the secure line. It was simple hacking to keep any other programs out of his system as he connected to it. Not that the defenses in the higher-than-military-grade computer would let anything get past its walls, but you never knew what was hiding in the hidden pieces of code.

And he was in, opened up in a message chat room. His fingers ghosted over the keys in a moments hesitation before typing out the message.

Awfully quiet out there. -B

The response only came moments away, faster than he would have expected.

Who talks about the elephant in the room? -GK

So he did know, not that surprising to be honest.

Hopefully, you. -B

I'm not that easy, not when Horton has such big ears. -GK

Was he...scared of them? He doubted but he could tell that something unsettled him.

You know mine are better -B

That may be true, but you're too blind. -GK

He clenched his teeth.

What's coming through my city? -B

The city was never really yours, not really, not when they were just sleeping. -GK

Who? -B

It doesn't matter, they are already awake and you and everyone that you love are going to suffer for it. -GK

Over my decaying carcass. -B

You're getting warmer. -GK

What's their game? -B

They thrive in manipulation, love the way that they put fear into the darkest minds, but they have the firepower to back it up. -GK

Who. Are. They. -B

I'd love to help you, but you see they really hate you for some reason, both of you. I'd rather not get caught with my hand in a cookie jar. -GK

That made him stop typing for a moment. Both of me?

You fear them? -B

I would never fear death, but death would be a mercy to what they have planned. -GK

So help me stop it. All I need is the name. -B

You know the name, from what I heard they used to sing it as a song that chilled your children's bones. -GK

He couldn't mean-

What do they want of me? -B

Your head on a silver platter, and believe me they always get what they came for. -GK

Ghost King has disconnected.

He took a strong breath, holding it deep in his chest for a few moments.

The Court Of Owls.

It was only a story that people told their children to make them behave. Don't speak a whispered word of them or else the talon will come after while you sleep. It wasn't suppose to be real. It was a tall tale told to scare children like the boogeyman, the monsters in their closet. He stopped believing in them since he found the monsters were real, but they weren't hiding under the bed.

He knew that fear wasn't always a terrible thing, and that if you overcame it you left a better man. But this was different, the fear was different. Something inside of him jumped at the slightest hiss of a bat. He was always paranoid, it would be stupid not to be, but this got under his skin and sank it's teeth into his bone. Then it was the thought that ran across his mind, that if he left it all behind that maybe he didn't have to fight what was a goddamn fairytale. And that scarred him in itself, the thought of running away from a fight when they were attacking everything that was important to him.

Ghost King had told him that they run in fear, in panic. He was right, and that even the great persona of Batman was weakened from a blow that was only their name and agenda, which was taking him down. Maybe it was only the subject of fairytales that got under his skin, perhaps it hit close to home. He had tried so hard to forget that part of his past, and he would be damned if he ever called that cesspool of delinquents and heroes with daddy issues his home. All he learned there was that the rest of his family was the definition of messed in the head.

Except her, she was young and she still stood strong against her fears. She was the only person who had anything nice to say to him and the only person he would ever regret leaving. But seeing her again, it rummaged up a lot of things that he didn't want to remember. Things that he had put behind him and made to forget about. They didn't like that he was different, but he would come to find that it was inescapable, no one would like that he was different. But then again no one cared either, but it was her that took notice to his different and cared anyway.

Beautiful, yet painful. Painful in how much of a clueless child he had been with what she drove from her heart.

---FLASHBACK---

Summers on long island, he found, were not something he was pleased with. It went passed the 'shall I compare thee to a summers day?'. No it was sweltering, his sweat was sweating. The whole camp was out training to be soldiers, warriors. He wanted to be able to defend himself against what was out there, but it also felt to wrong. He was about as good with a sword as he could be, it was ok, but it felt wrong to be in his hands.

No scratch that, the entire camp felt wrong.

It was different from school, yes, of course it was they had horses with wings. It wasn't the different he wanted. He didn't like the people around him, he wasn't meant to play playground with the other kids. They taught him how to shoot an arrow and throw knives, and they wanted him to feel like he was in this giant family. When all he felt was the urge to leave and take his chances to train with someone who he knew wouldn't put him in the standard of a social hierarchy. Then again, that was the same person who thought this would be good for him. Good for him to learn and be around people like him.

Except these people both did not like him and were not like him. They shared the same blood, but gods did they not share the same mind.

All but her. He couldn't get that girl out of his heart if he tried.

He let the knife fly out of his fingers, calculating the amount of pressure he released behind it. The target was twenty meters away and then he added wind resistance into the equation, the weight of the knife and the volume. With that he new that the knife wasn't going to even hit the target before it hit the ground. He was still working on the aim, and it didn't really help that he read 4 books on the laws and theories of knife throwing and aerodynamics. By this point he could, theoretically, write his own book on the laws and theories of knife throwing and aerodynamics before he actually hit the target.

Then the person next to him hit dead center on the bull's-eye and all he could do was stare.

"It's in the wrist you know." A voice piped up behind him causing him to almost drop the knife him his hand. A voice he couldn't forget with it's smooth, calm undertone.

"Annabeth." He responded in greeting.

"As much as it pains me to say this, books only get you so far. You know it was you who told me that it's not childish to ask for help-"

"-but don't cry wolf, yeah I know." He took another shot at the target. At least it was an effort.

Her eyebrows were raised, in a look of 'Are you expressing frustration or are you trying to prove my point.' She walked up to the station, grabbing a knife in her hand and shooting him a look. He held his hand up in surrender and backed away from the station. She flipped it in her hand once before logging at the target from her small but strong stance. It hit dead on.

He bit his lip, he had just gotten beaten, badly.

"In the wrist" She repeated.

"How did you-"

"I asked. You could chose to do the same instead of isolating yourself for a point." She enunciated the 'T' on point as she moved closer.

"I don't-"

"Yes you do." She poked him in the chest. "Throw from there, not in your mind you have to feel it. Don't detach yourself because, yes, it really is you throwing the knife."

"Your reasoning seems flawed and untested." She glared up at him as she blew a stray stand of hair from her face.

"To be fair, so are most attempts at the scientific method." She shoved another knife into his hand quite dangerously and turned on her heel, leaving him.

"Throw from my heart." He parodied disbelievingly.

"And turn you wrist thirty degrees to the left!" She shouted back at him and he grinned.

He took the knife in his and, heading her directions and throwing at the board with the final piece of the equation. At least it hit the board.

---FLASHBACK---

He jumped as the ringing of a phone broke his thoughts, he had gone to deep inside his own mind, which was something he never wanted to do. Not all of it was as pleasant as knife throwing. Only a few people knew his number on a private cell line, it was heavily encrypted and only those who had the number which were preprogramed ones in his phone were let through. The ones he trusted with his life.

The caller I.D. showed the face of the one and only that had been occupying his thoughts. Finger swiping against the screen faster that he would ever admit.

"Annabeth?" He asked, he could hear heavy breathing on the other line that was otherwise silent. Not exactly a good sign.

"Y-you said to call," Her voice was stiff and closed of, like she was trying to keep her self together. "if anything happened."

"Anna-"

"They left a message for me. It wasn't there when I fell asleep. B they were in my room." She was panicked.

"I'll be there in a moment. Are you-"

"Don't bother, there already gone." Her tone seemed to empty out.

"The note, what does it say?" He questioned softly.

"It's carved into t-the wall. " She breathed in shakily. "They'll send the Talon for you head."

"Are you okay." His voice was tired above anything.

"Fine." The line went silent for a moment before he heard a loud bang.

"Annabeth! What's wrong?" He interrogated.

"It's written in blood, the smell, oh gods." Her voice was barely above a whisper, choking up at the end of her own words.

"I'll be there in 10. Your not safe there." He heard a noise of indignation.

"I'm going to be fine it's-"

"End of discussion." He snapped and she went quiet.

"Just don't hang up...."She pleaded softly.

"Annabeth?"

"Yeah?"

"What is written in blood?" He heard her swallow, and after a moment.

"You will soon come to regret the only thing that made you great."

He no longer felt like running, no all that was underneath his skin was fire. Whoever the Court Of Owls were, they wouldn't be for long.