The sharp click of heels echoed of the walls of the alleyway with the beginnings of being emphatic, the repetitive beats sounding each time her foot hit the asphalt. The walls on each side were akin to something you would see in a greek dungeon that reeked of death and abandonment, not a populated city. 

It wasn't hard to find something to hate about Gotham, to abhor. The streets acted as a large cesspool that simply invited the dregs of society to escaped their own personal hells in favor or creating someone else's. Mothers held their children tight to their chests as they shuffled along with trepidation, fearing what may be lurking in all of the cities dark corners. Even now her skin tingled as the beginning of bumps ghosted her arms, partly from the cold air, partly from the voluminous unease that had dredged into the folds of her mind. 

It looked like the world had finally caught up to her, she had stabbed a knife through beings three times her size, and now her heart hammered louder from the one yellow flickering incandescent light at the edge of the street. It was the beginning of anxiety, increased heart rate, dilated pupils, shortening of breath. She couldn't fathom how this city had egde fear into her brain, but that seemed like one of the only things that this city brought forth. One of the great accomplishments of it, other than breeding murderous psychopaths.  

So yeah, there was a lot of things displeasing here. The government was corrupt, the vigilantees that took action weren't enough sometimes. There was more abandoned warehouses than trees that didn't seem monochromatic. Heck, the people matched the overall theme, but she guessed that was why it drew her in like curse she couldn't escape.

She breathed on the way her heart was racing, how the adrenaline pumped through her veins in a vicious cycle. For the first time in a long time something felt good, felt different. There was energy flowing like fire underneath her skin, the heat she hadn't felt in a long time. No, she hadn't really felt those emotions, the fear so bad that her hands shook, since she was a petty teenager going from saving the world to developing a crush in five seconds flat. 

Since that night, she hadn't felt anything reminiscent of energy. She didn't even care if it was fear blocking the empty void of tasteless food and gray walls, the city had somehow made her feel alive. The grime all over the filthy walls, the dark skyline drenched in rain, she breathed it in and relished it like home. 

And she didn't have to wait very long till she wasn't alone.

The flap of his cape in the wind gave him away, she heard it over the noises of the city, above the midnight traffic and the bystanders walking by. It was like a flag, billowing it's colors in the sky, only there was no color coming from the source. There was no other sound to indicate that the man had dropped down and was now next to her in the all too atramentous ally, but she knew he was there. She always knew.

"You know, Batman." The name sounded strange in her mouth. "I don't think the cape is necessary."

She turned around and gazed up at his cad-in-black figure that was peering down at her with masked eyes. The whites of his mask were slit, as if he were glaring at her. He was glaring at her with the same glare they had shared. She let a small grin infect her lips in the finality of that thought, it was the glare he had taught her.

"It serves it's purpose" He responded in a gruff manner, through that she couldn't tell if it was amusement or vexation. 

"Oh yeah mister wise guy, and what purpose would that be?" She raised her eyebrows.

"Nothing that you need to know." He replied again, and that was definite anger laced into the tone. She held up her hands in surrender.

"Alright then, definitely not here for small talk are we?" All he did was purse his lips in reply.

"No, you want to know what I am doing here. So casually displaying my whims to you, playing my cards in an illusion so it may seem like a magic trick." She stepped closer to his form allowing him to see her eyes that were lined with red. "But you were never that difficult to understand B, neither am I."

"Then tell me, who are we?" He questioned in the same indifferent tone.

"I'm a daughter of logic, who thrives in danger and holds herself in a false light." She began, poking his chest. "You're a rich kid with issues, that can never stop trying to solve the puzzle. Even when there was never any pieces."  

When she looked back up into his the white slits, it seemed like he was staring through her. She pursed her lips.

"And most of all?" She found herself continuing. "Despite what we can do and what we've done. You and me are both human."

"Half human." Was all he said after a moment of silence.

She just sighed.

---FLASHBACK---

She watched with morbid fascination as the new recruit for the Hermes cabin stuck his finger into his nose. 

He was at least two years older than her, around ten. But through the five minuets she had been analyzing him he had done this action four times, and she was stumped by someone she had initially thought to be a child of Athena. As he ran through the woods entering the camp the day before, the grayish blue eyes and golden yellow hair had given her hope that she would have a new brother. Now, as she stared at him picking through his own bodily fluids, she would rather be disowned.

The Athena table was becoming less crowded, through a time of peace and quiet over the winter months. The whole camp was not as barren as a siberian countryside, but no less freezing. Her cabin mates, huddled up along the table conversing idly, and she who could not keep from staring at the ten year old picking his nose.

She wanted to slam her head upon the table in retribution, in listlessness. It had been weeks since she had taken up anything truly interesting, something not of planning out the next capture the flag routine. The only person who had made her life interesting as of fault had left for christmas with his butler. He said it was important to him, to be there. She didn't have the will to tell him she would rather clean the dishes with the harpies for the next month than have him leave.

The rest of the campers breathed in close to the campfire as the night went on, like always. The fire was warm and bright as the rest of the campers were cuddled up in their coats, signing ridiculous songs. She reached out and let the fire heat up the frozen frozen fingertips on the end of her hand. 

Tomorrow was Christmas eve, and she was fully aware of the fact that she would be celebrating it without anyone who truly mattered. The other children of Athena all surrounded her, laughing and singing along enjoying the holiday, but she felt disconnected, on a whole other plan of existence. Everyone else was laughing, but she didn't feel like laughing. 

Why would she laugh? She hadn't even heard the joke. She heard the singing, but was not in any way compelled to join in. To be honest, the whole idea of christmas seemed like a joke. They worshiped the gods each night, yet worshiped the birth of another pantheon. To be honest the holiday only ever brought her monotonous feeling of dread.

So she got up off the bench and left the campfire without a word, no one noticed she was gone, she didn't really think anyone cared. She walked in the murky torch lit air silently until she was pulling the door to her silver cabin open and walking inside. She pulled a pouch from under her mattress and opened the zipper slowly to find a single golden drachma perched lonely in the corner.

She frowned before taking a flashlight and shining it through a prism and a pane of glass. A  variant or colors reflected off the glass and she graced her fingers off of them before standing back.

"O' Goddess please accept my offering." Before tossing it into the rainbow. It disappeared..

"Show me Bruce Wayne. Gotham City, New Jersey."

Then she was staring at him, dressed in his night clothes in the living room of his manor. As the image came into into existence it took a moment for him to realize what was going on. She had caught him thinking, gazing to the ceiling and grimacing as if he wondered if doing nothing could solve all his problems.  

When he did finally see her, or in this case realize she was existing in mist in front of him, his eyes lit up with their usual sky blue. He seem much less interested in his previous thoughts as he jumped up from the couch and came closer to the image, a bright grin plastered on his face. At least he was happy that she had appeared close to midnight inside the confines of his home.

"Anne, you have no idea how much of a life saver you are." He rushed out and her eyes widened.

"I-I am?" The layer of confusion was thick in her voice.

"Yeah..." His brightness seemed to damper and she felt something inside of her twist at the thought that maybe Bruce hadn't been too pleased to have not seen her in over a month.

"Sorry I hadn't contacted you sooner, camp doesn't really isn't the same without you there." Her eyes shifted to the ground, looking anywhere but the image she had been longing to see for a while. 

"Yes, I have found the manor to be quite objectionable after so much time interacting with other children." The reply was disheartened at best.

"I have found the camp to be quite objectionable after so much time spent with only one person. There's no distractions other than our old friend Plato." She said mirroring his distaste. Bruce snorted.

"I thought you would be thoroughly distracted from those psychology books you found." 

"Are you kidding? I finished them all in four days!" Bruce was laughing at that revelation.

"I don't even want to know how many times you've read the odyssey." 

"To be honest, I lost count after 47."

They stared at each other for a moment before losing it. It wasn't lighthearted sounds, no it was ugly hog-like sounds accompanied by intermediates of gasps for breath. It was ugly, but she would be lying if right then and there t wasn't one of best feelings in the world.

"I miss you Bruce..." She breathed after they had both caught their breaths.

"I know Queen Keen, and to be honest I don't want to spend another christmas alone in an empty house." Her breath caught in her throat.

"You mean-" He cut her off.

"Yes, do you want to?" He asked.

"The last time I wanted to do something so much you had just shown me blueprints of the Pantheon." They both wore matching grins at that, the memory of a little girl nearly screaming with joy resurfacing in their minds.

"Well we're only human Anne, we feel emotions and localise the people in our life like the rest."

"Half human."   

---FLASHBACK OVER---

It was further into the night that she had brought him back to one of the many abandoned buildings in Gotham. It looked like anyone would expect, complete with rust and the musky stench of mold. It served it's purpose though, she supposed. She would be the last person to complain about finding a good warehouse.

She could feel the tautness in the night air, and by the looks of it, the stiff armored man across from her looked like he would rather be anywhere else than out in the open, under the uncomplimentary lighting. This needed to happen though, for any of this to work. If any of the years they had spent attached at the hip meant anything, then what he did in that little cave under his manor concerned her to the highest degree.

She wasn't what any one person would call obtuse, but she couldn't help but feel that with the silence that engulfed them, the conversation was going nowhere. All it needed was a little push.

"To be honest, you don't owe me any explanations. I wasn't a part of your life anymore, you had no obligation to tell me. I didn't come here for any kind of apology, or any sort of story, but I just need to know if we trust each other." Her voice came out stiffer than he meant it to be.

"I've always trusted you." Was his reply, that was it. One day she swore to smack him for his lack of tone, he was quite frustrating to understand.

"This threat daunts me, I won't lie. I know that you've taken on so much more, so have I, but I had some sort of knowledge over the thing I was fighting. With this i'm going in blind, I have no idea who they are even though they have made their intentions very clear." She made a frustrated noise.

"The riddle they gave you, do you know what it means?" he asked.

"Of course I have, I knew the minute I read it." She folded her arms. "They want to meet in Gotham's first public library on the Fall Equinox."

"And the last line, 'That is where you lose it all'?" She shifted in her stance.

"That line remains unclear, but I have come to the conclusion that it may mean death."

That was the comment that made her hairs stand up on end as silence engulfed them, with only the sounds of the city reaching their ears. It finally sounded real as she said it, no longer that myth and fantasy she had been fighting in her mind but a real group potentially gathering her head onto a pedestal.

"That's not going to happen." And he said it with so much belief and determination she almost wanted to believe him.

Death hadn't scared her before, she wasn't going to start now. She may not have a demigod army at her side, a shed full of weapons other than a knife, or even the youth she had 7 years ago, but quite frankly she didn't give a mildly disturbed harpy. She had herself and she prayed to the gods that that was enough.

They may have planned on continuing the conversation, may have actually done it, but they both went stiff as a scream erupted from a place not far from where they stood. She knew that a man with a superhero complex was not going to let anything slip through his fingers, no matter who it was that stood in front of him. So a he made eye contact and they had a moment of apology before she whispered 'go' to herself. 

She didn't watch him leave.

---FLASHBACK---

When she woke up on christmas morning, the first thing she thought was that it was way too dark out to be physically compelling in getting up. The window curtains were closed and the room was shrouded in a cloud of darkness. It was all a little to monochromatic to be normal and her heart thrummed faster as she realized this.

It took her a moment to realize that this was not her cabin, another moment to remember where she was. Her eyes widened and she sat up straight in bed. 

Only moments later was she pulling Bruce downstairs towards a massive Christmas tree, grinning brightly as he wiped the crust from his eyes.

"It's 6am in the morning Anne, I thought you said you didn't like Christmas." The tone was joking, but she pouted in response.

It was something she had always done, no matter what else had happened. She loved Christmas trees in the early morning of the day when they began to mean something, the multi colored lights dancing in her grey eyes. Her father had always told her that Christmas  wasn't about the things you had received, even the things you had given. Christmas was about family, sharing their moments of happiness on the day where nothing else mattered.

She got onto her knees and pulled out a small box from under  the lights, the one she had slipped there as she had arrived. A simple blue paper and stick on ribbon, the one she had planned to give him as he returned to camp when christmas had gone. She stood and walked back to him shyly, handing him the package without a word. 

He eyed it in what she figured was surprise, running his fingers down the side slowly and turning it in his hand.

"Open it." His head snapped back up and his mouth opened as if he wanted to respond, but he promptly closed it.

 His fingers turned to the edge of the package, pulling at the edge where tape held it together. A few moments accompanied by a noise of tearing wrapping paper, and he held a small grey box that he was opening on a moment's notice. She grinned as he pulled out two pendants in the shape of an owl. 

She plucked one from her hand and attached it to her night shirt, him doing the same.

"Now we match." 

She rushed to him and wrapped her hands around his mid waist, squeezing the life out of him with all the strength she could muster. Feeling the warmth coming from him, she never wanted to let go. 

"Merry Christmas Bruce."

"Merry Christmas Anne."

---FLASHBACK OVER---

As she entered through the door to her bedroom, she made no delays in collapsing onto the velvet comforter with no inch of grace. The blankets consumed her, and she had almost broke into laughter. That could have been one of the most arduous activities she has ever done, and all it was, was a conversation. She had fought giants, was dragged through hell, and her chest was caught up in her throat from a simple conversation?

Her pulse had been thrumming with every word that glided out of her mouth. At this point she no longer cared whether it was fear. All she knew was that, with the sole prospect of being around someone who was a fighter, a fire burned in her veins that she hadn't felt for a while. She wanted nothing more than to spend the night watching him chase the edge of the skyline from one rooftop to the next.  

Her dreams that night were vivid, colorful. Most importantly, they were dreams and not the gray nightmares that woke her up in a cold sweat. To her, it didn't matter if Bruce was nothing but a man in a suit coming close to being killed. He was real, he was there.  He promised.

"Thank you for being my brother." She looked up at him close to tears. So she wouldn't have to celebrate Christmas alone.

"I'm not going anywhere Anne. Promise me that we will always be family, no matter what." He squeezed her tighter.

"I promise."