I'm proud to say, that I've finally wrote out an outline for this story to aid me in my monthly updates (don't be expecting any sooner) and honestly I am over the moon. I'd like to thank everyone for their nice comments and I did take them into consideration and I'm still fishing for more. I thank you all anyway and you might see a hint of some ideas meantioned in this book in general. Thank you!!

Honestly I don't know how long Bats was stuck in the maze but since this isn't canon who cares!? This chapter might also be a bit crazy and it jumps a lot so bare with me, the ones after this won't be as bad. Just have to set the scene. For what? I don't know.

Disclaimer: Listen, if you think I own DC -- you're wrong. I would've made the Bat family much scarier. Hehehe...hint hint.

Notes: Updated as of 2nd of June, 2018.

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Chapter 2: Maze of Marble

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He woke up face to face with and gleaming white floor that smelt like sewage.

His first thought to that was; shit. The second; who the hell changed me? Becasue he was wearing his batsuit and he was pretty sure he hadn't been before. That and it felt weird, like it had been tugged onto him rather than fitted on with the machines.

The window smashed inwards, too many Talons to count jumping through. Searing pain in his head. The female Talon had played him like a fiddle and he'd been clueless the entire time.

They'd knocked him out with a hit to the head if his headache said anything. Which meant he couldn't fall asleep anythime soon, just to be sure he didn't have a concussion. (He didn't think he'd be sleeping anytime soon anyway.)

His cowl was on and he felt safer with the Bat Computer connected lenses in it so he had no woes about standing and looking around himself. The lenses (they were in the cowls eyes but he was now also working on contacts to wear outside of the suit.) would analyse everything anyway (being connected to the Bat Computer as they were which fed them all the information they needed).

The lenses were working but without some sort of connection he was clueless as to where he was. They didn't need a connection to actually work just to give information sourced from the computer. He could still use them to pick up on the smaller details.

He wasn't called a detective for nothing.

Judging from the distinct smell of sewage and the marble he assumed he was near (or, in) the sewers and far away from civilisation. The marble looked to stretch and twist for yards. He was in a maze. And if he had to make an educated guess, he guessed he was in the Courts Maze.

He knew that didn't bode well for him. If he didn't die of starvation or dehydration, insanity or a Talon would get him first. From his current track record he could safely say a Talon would probably get him first.

The marble was bright but the sheen was dulled a tad by his lenses, allowing him to see a few feet into the adjoining corridors that extended out from the circular room he was in. It all seemed to be made out of white marble, with a huge statue of an owl standing in the middle of the eccentric room. It's wings were flared defensively and its beak opened to unleash a constant, steady stream of water that according to his lenses scans contained hallucinogenics.

He had actually been captured by the Court of the Owls.

His instincts kicked and screamed at him, saying this wasn't a good idea to stand in the open. There was tok much at stake to stand around where they could see him. He knew how to survive in shadows, he had veen for years as Batman, so now was no different.

Setting off on the furthest passageway to the left, with his cape licking soothingly at his heels and wrapping around him, Batman resolved he'd get out of the labyrinth.

Even if it killed him.

He had a city to save after all.

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It didn't take him long - three days, if his lenses digital clock was true (he regretted not adding a date to the display as well, he'd add that when he got back) - to find the room of photos.

It was a small boxy room. With walls lined with endless photos marking and showing the people before him, how they'd lost themselves to the insanity the fountain offered, how they lost their reasons to live and just gave up. It smelt of damp and death. It disturbed him and Batman had wandered onto the next corridor as soon as possible.

He tried to ignore the flash of light that came from another camera as he stalked out, it surprised him and had him slamming sidewards into the darkened corner.

A quick glance back had him seeing a second one for him pop up, the others had at least fifteen so he knew he was fine for now. They all looked to go insane around the ten or eleven day mark. Batman knew he'd last longer than that. He had to.

It was there and then, hunched in a darkened corner, Batman promised himself - if not for him, then for Alfred, Gotham, the Justice League (if it came down to it) - that he wouldn't die there.

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Five days in he stumbled upon a fork in the current corridor he'd decided to explore. An arrow of black blood marked the way left.

Blackish blood dribbled from her mouth.

Scowling, he turned around and explored the next corridor.

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He felt like crying as he gazed at his reflection in the water. He'd torn hjs mask after falling over at the sudden surprise of a camera flash, his cape was torn and stretched after he'd caught it on a chipped piece of marble and the kevlar felt sweaty.

He looked like a druggie who'd went too long without a fix.

He looked like he'd fallen down a hole and had given up hope of climbing back out.

Batman wondered how long it had been. Was Alfred home yet? Or had Gotham already crashed and burned? Was this even real? He ended that train of thought where it was, narrowing his eyes at his depressing thoughts. He watched as his one white masked eye and other ripped unmasked, bloodshot eyes narrowed as one. The dehydration and starvation was getting to him.

His gaze drifted to just the rippling, sparkling clear water that was - confirmed traces of hallucinogenics. WARNING: Do not drink.

God, he was so thirsty.

A little sip.

Just a little...

It couldn't.

It wouldn't.

Just a little.

He shoveled his gloved hands (he wouldn't dare let go of his gauntlets, not in this place) into the clear, clean water (oh god, yes!) and gulped it eagerly down, relishing the feeling of the cool water rushing down his so, so dry throat. Done and feeling fine he slinked off back to the shadows.

Where they couldn't see him.

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He should've known (no, he thinks absently staring at a chip in the marble from his current shadow. I knew. I just didn't care.) that the water was drugged because almost immediately after, he started seeing the hallucinations.

They started off as nothing more than brief flashing glimpses of Alfred, beckoning, calling (sometimes screaming, looking so pain stricken it physically hurt him to see) for him to come home but then they grew bigger. They grew and grew until he could see the Justice League tutting at him for failing so terribly, until he could see and hear his mother's pearls running down the sides of the scarcely lit corridors where he hid. They vanished down fake, made up drains in the wals or floors. That didn't stop the heart wrenching pain of the memories, it couldn't stop him as he growled at the surfaces and (sometimes just sometimes) screamed and punched and kicked at them until he collapsed back into a corner.

He didn't like this.

Not one bit.

So when he came across that now flaky and dried, black blood arrow he stared at the direction it went in and sat down. He felt like he was waiting for something or someone but he didn't really care anymore. He just didn't want to walk into another room to be greeted with the flash of an ancient camera that should've stopped working years ago, to be reminded his pictures were nearly halfway. (He would've yanked them off the wall and burnt them but he'd already done that three times and they kept coming back.)

All the pictures stopped at the same spot, which gave Batman a sick feeling because if his calculations were right (they usually were) that meant no one had lasted over two months in this hell hole.

And that... That scared him.

He would've laughed at the irony.

The Big Bad Bat was scared.

Scared to die.

Though he didn't dare tell himself he might, could, if he tried, live longer than the rest because he wasn't sure he wanted to.

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He'd been there for over two and a half weeks. He wasn't too sure on that though. Batman had made it a point to make off the hours, about a day in, with tally marks in the underside of his gauntlet. He'd been dedicated too, watching the clock closely, setting timers, keeping notes for how long he napped. But somewhere a week in he'd gotten messy (it had been the water) and the scratches had all blurred into a big scratch. He'd given up after that.

Eventually he ran into the arrow again after too long of screaming at the cameras and going in circles. Deciding the worst that could happen was death (even that would be a blessing right about now) he followed it.

What it led to made him want to gag. It had to be the cruelest most disturbing thing yet. Far surpassing the flashes of light from cameras over 50 years old, running straight past the falling pearls and even worse than his horrifyingly dead looking reflection.

It led to death embodied.

It led to a room of coffins.

Batman felt his insides twist when he saw her. Sitting on a coffin at the far edge of the huge room close to the middle: pale skin with black veins standing out like light against the dark with the dead look in her cerculean blue eyes rivalling his own. It was the female Talon. Onky now she looked worse, sick and tired and close to becoming suicidal if not already.

Upon seeing him she perked up, tilting her head tiredly and standing and jolting in a poor mockery of a bow. He strode forward, meeting her dead on, a few feet from the oak coffin that sat with half of itself open. He assumed it was hers. (Disgust and anger boiled within him, that was just wrong. To make people, even Talons, sleep in coffins.)

He made no move to speak, waiting for her to react and after a few minutes she did. She blinked at him, her pupils contracting with hate as she hissed. "Weeks ago. The arrows were there, why you take sl long?"

Batman blinked at her and winced when his bloodshot eyes gave a twinge of complaint. The coldness of the room didn't help, instead making them water. He couldn't flunk this, so he finally said after a moment of thought, "I was exploring my options."

The Talon gave him a look of dead amusement, her pupils expanding in postive emotions, but it was wiped from her face in an instant. She gazed at him blankly again. "We'll deal. You want free? We'll free."

His insides contracted painfully and his stomach rumbled silently, sending vibrations through his weakening body. It reminded him how hungry he was, how he'd been surviving by drinking a pool of water he'd found in a dark corner only surviving disease by using his water purifying straw. Batman desperately wanted to agree but years of paranoia kept him back, she'd said it was a deal. That meant she wanted something out of it too. He doubted she was doing it from the good of her heart.

"What's your price?" He rasped. He really was desperate, he supposed. At this point he'd probably give up a limb. Which was either good planing on her behalf or just sheer luck he'd been this run down when he'd followed the damned arrow.

"Kill me, after you fly."

He hadn't even taken a second to think, nevermind process that, before he was nodding. "Of course."