I'm so excited about this chapter! I've been waiting for this one forever! I think you guys are going to like the end of it too ;)!

Thanks to everyone that added TSC: A Year Without Birdsong to their favorites or alerts! Special thanks to reviewers!

zappeli: Actually, the organization was using the Latin language (mostly because Latin's a pretty old language and I thought it sounded cool), but Dick Grayson came from an acrobat family that had Romani heritage, so he's Romani himself and I just sort of assumed that he would've been sung Romani songs by his mom. It's not the most common knowledge, but I've heard about it quite a bit and I looked it up...so I threw it into the mix because a Romani lullaby, I think, makes a great memory trigger! Hope that clears some things up! Thank you for the review!

ashley: Just be patient, dearest reader! They'll come into the mix sooner or later! Thanks for reviewing!

Raven: I'm really glad you liked the chapter so much! I really liked writing that one! And it's okay that you didn't review! I hate it when internet privileges are taken ! Thanks for reviewing!

Hope you guys love this chapter as much as I enjoyed writing it!

Disclaimer: Ugh. Nope. No ownership here. Just an anti-social teenage girl with nothing better to do (because home work is way too over-rated)!

Please review!

Love ya' guys!

~AvenJackel

****YOUNG JUSTICE****

The door had been unlocked. The children had been fast asleep, no signs of waking up. With just a single drop of poison into Alexander's mouth, and the man's heart was quickly dying. The poison was extracted from a rare tree sap in the Amazon; as soon as it touched the inside of the body, the enzymes attached themselves to the biological composition of organs and began a de-regenerative process.

Within moments, Alexander's breathing had ceased, his mouth parted slightly and his face forever frozen in a state of peace.

It was almost a sick joke when, the next morning, the two kids came to his room to see if their father was awake. There he was, for all the world looking as if he was sleeping, only to have the screams of vanishing innocence as two young children lost their father forever.

I smiled sadly, glancing once more at the newspaper in my hand. At the top, in bold, black, ominous letters, it read: Civilians Lost to Building Cave-In. At the bottom of the article, there was the list of names of all the people killed in the accident. One of the names just happened to be Maria Tallik. But I knew this hadn't been an accident, it had been planned by the Boss. This was exactly what he wanted.

This was exactly what I wanted.

The Boss had wanted me to stick around, ensure that Alex was, in fact, dead-dead. And, due to my perfect assassination, he was gone for good. Now, with his death spreading through town, I had to take my leave from Romania, heading towards London, where my next contact would meet me.

A private jet picked me up at the nearest airport, and I went to the bathroom to change into some civilian clothes: a long-sleeve hot pink v-neck, dark wash skinny jeans, and some sneakers. Pulling my hair back into a bun, I exited the room and sat at the co-pilot's seat.

By the time we were landing in London, I was feeling tired. But I had no time to sleep. I had no urge to sleep. Because whenever I was unconscious, dangerous things happened. Even though I would never remember in the morning, I knew that my sleep was filled with nothing but pain.

It had always been like that, no questions asked. Pain made me stronger. If I could feel the pain that my victims suffered, then I could defeat anything that crossed my path.

****YOUNG JUSTICE****

My contact this time around was a sleazy woman, Madame Illiana, a prune-like lady with tons of inheritance, too much time on her hands, and not enough to do. So she spent her extreme amounts of free time making enemies and then persuading the Boss into sending one of us. Madame Illiana provided quite a bit of money for the benefit of us all, in fact, she was the one that supplied the costs for my own weapons and armor.

The busy April streets of London were packed, filled with a cacophony of cars, buses, people, and dogs in every which way. Even with my casual appearance, I had to force any rising anxiety down. I had a lot of scars, accumulated over my years of fighting, and I had to be careful that they stayed hidden from civilians, as if they saw the angry red scratches or the fading white marks, they could become fearful and potentially give away my status. And that would be very bad.

As the Boss always said, "there's nothing more vicious than a cornered animal". That was a statement which couldn't be truer.

I got on a crowded bus, headed towards the part of the city that Madame Illiana resided in. Since all the seats were taken, I grabbed one of the hand loops and stood near the front of the bus. At one stop, a rude man plowed past me and I scowled angrily in his direction. Glancing at the seat he left, I had all the mind to take it, as my legs were beginning to feel like lead. I took a step in the seat's direction, but then sighed in defeat and chivalrously held my arm out, signaling for the elderly lady behind me to take it instead.

Once back in my spot, I mentally cursed myself. First thinking about Georgia's grandson, then feeling bad for the Romani siblings, and now giving old people my seat? What's wrong with me? Sooner or later I'm going to be known as the "Soft Assassin". And then I'd never get another job again!

My mind kept throwing itself around and around the same conversation. It started off with a strong voice ridiculing my actions with an "Assassins don't help people unless they're helped first!", followed by that really teeny tiny voice murmuring in utter terror "But that doesn't mean assassins can't be compassionate."

I didn't know which voice to listen to.

The bus driver announced the spot I needed to get off at, snapping me out of my delusional reveries. Shaking my head to clear it, I shoved my way through the other people and out onto the cobblestone streets of Madame Illiana's hometown. It was a quaint place, retaining all the historical look and feel that London once had. It was a place for the rich, with huge manors and several boarding schools in the vicinity.

This would be my first time meeting Madame Illiana in person. I knew which manor was hers', the one with an authentic castle-like appearance that for some reason made my chest constrict tightly, as if I was subconsciously missing something...

As I stepped up to the wrought iron gate, it swung open, probably by a remote control. Walking onto the gravel driveway, the gate clanked closed behind me, but I kept my eyes ahead of me as a tall man in a classy black tail-coat came out of the prestigious manor and greeted me.

Something about him felt extremely familiar. I couldn't tell what it was, but it made me feel almost relaxed around the British butler, even though I knew I should've been alert and completely focused.

He escorted me through the expensively decorated halls of Madame Illiana's mansion, past elegant paintings and sculptures, finely tuned grand pianos, and shimmering windows of stained glass. We came up to a white stained double door, which the butler silently opened and held his arm out to usher me in.

A curvy woman with dark brown hair pulled back in sophisticated braids sat with her back to me, stiff-backed in a dark mahogany leather chair behind a matching desk with the awe-inspiring sunlight filtering in through the wide windows.

With a pompous turn of her head, she cast a disdainful look at my face, emerald green eyes skimming across the faint white lines from past scars and the smudges of dirt that I had forgotten to wipe off.

"You're much too young to get the job done properly," Madame Illiana remarked snidely, turning her face away and looking back out through the window.

"Listen you hag," I started coldly, surprising both the strangely familiar butler and the bratty rich person with the venom in my voice. "My Boss sent me for a reason. I'm ten times the man-power of any other whimpering mercenary you could ever find for the same price."

Slowly, she faced me, her eyes now narrowed in skeptical fear. Nodding curtly, she reached down with deft fingers adorned with flashy jewelry and grabbed a large manila folder out of a desk draw, her eyes never leaving mine.

A large manila folder in an elegant mansion with a British butler. Why did that feel so...familiar?

She set it on the desk before me, now acting cautious. I always found it amusing how disrespecting my contacts always were. And then I showed my colors and they retreated into their puny shells.

With a calloused hand, I picked up the folder and opened it. Inside there were a few papers. On top was a confidential document printed on thick, off-white, legal paper. I pulled it out and my eyes skimmed over it. A lot of information was blacked out, none of it disclosed to people like me. But I did know a few things about my target.

It was a boy, aged fourteen. He was the ward of one of the richest men in the entire world. When I looked at the picture of my target, I narrowed my eyes automatically. There, with neatly arranged black hair, brilliant blue eyes, and a casual smile that seemed infectious, was the familiar stranger, my familiar stranger.

My target was Richard John Grayson.