A/N: Please read and review!
Taken from the files of the Behavioral Analysis Unit of the Federal Bureau of Investigation:
Rossi: When you came into the building, what did you see?
Rogers: The home was turned into a cult sanctuary. The living room, which was in the center of the house, was cleared away to allow for worship. The island in the kitchen, normally used for cooking or eating became their black altar. The omega symbol was painted in blood all over the walls as well as a very dark language being painted by the altar.
Rossi: You don't recognize the language.
Rogers: Did you? (Pause). No. I didn't recognize that language. To me, it didn't look human.
Rossi: You were seen sketching the scene by some of our agents.
Rogers: I know an alien. At least an Asgardian. I thought Thor would have been able to recognize that language, so we would have been able to know what we were dealing with.
Rossi: Were you able to have him look at it?
Rogers: More than you would be able to believe.
Rossi: I have seen many things I would not be able to believe in recent months. Try me.
Rogers: He knew that language. Almost on sight. He called it the language of Apokolips. That the gods the gods worshipped, the darker ones, the destroyers, were the ones who spoke that language.
Rossi: What did it say?
Rogers: Darkseid is coming. The Multiverse will be his.
I pushed my way into that house, being on complete alert in case one of the people who called it home were ready to attack. Nothing. I had no reason to worry about what was happening. The people were all dead.
Gunshot wounds to their heads.
Execution style.
Someone else had beat us there.
I was still on alert, but I allowed myself to take in what was going on around me. The living room was completely rehauled to be the center of worship for their cult. It looked nothing at all like it should have been.
Strange markings were all over the walls, and those symbols were written in blood. They did not look to be of this earth, and there was something about them that had caused me to feel like they were nothing good. I reached out to touch the omega symbol that had seemed to have been the center of it all, and I could feel how my blood started to run cold.
"It's the symbol of the Religion of Crime," Damian had explained to me when he came up from behind me.
"How do you know?" I asked of him.
"Came in from Gotham City," Damian explained to me. "On my Earth." He paused as he looked around us, wearing a thoughtful and troubled look. "The only thing I would have to question about this would be how did it end up on this Earth."
I walked through the house, and I came to a room off to the side of everything, and I pushed open the door. There was one woman who remained in there, lying on the floor and trying to remain conscious through it all as she slowly sipped the orange juice she had been holding.
I knew who she was on sight.
Birdie. . .
How was that even possible?
I thought I watched them kill her, so I could not really focus over what was going on at that moment as I was suddenly at her side.
"Birdie. . ." I somehow managed to choke out to her. "How. . ."
She blinked as she looked up at me. It was all slowly registering to her that I was there with her. She actually relaxed around me.
"Are you Steve?" She asked me, and she was unable to really focus on what she had been talking about.
That was a huge sign. Low blood sugar from her powers and her extremely high metabolism, so she had not eaten in a very long time.
"Yes. . ." I said to her, having her look up at me. "Yes. It's me."
"They. . .killed someone else," she said to me. "Made it seem like me."
"What happened here?" I asked her.
"Someone. . .came," she struggled to really say to me. She took another sip of the orange juice she had been drinking, holding it with a very shaking hand. "Someone came to. . .save me."
"They gave you the orange juice?" I asked her, and she had nodded at me. "What made you trust them enough to take it?"
She swallowed, and she momentarily looked very confused over what was happening. She was trying to think through everything. "I think . . . I think I knew him." She shook her head over that whole thing. It had bothered her more than anything else, not having any of the much needed answers. She liked knowing everything and having all of the answers. "I think it was Bucky."
"Bucky?" I asked her, and she nodded.
"It looked like him. And . . ." She paused for a moment as she had taken that moment to really think about what she had wanted to say next. That was the problem with her incredibly high metabolism. She would lose all focus and functionality if she had not eaten in a long time. "And, he spoke about you."
"What did he say?" I asked. Maybe that would have been the reason I would have been able to know if it would have been true or not if I heard what he had to say to her about me.
"That he used to always save you when you guys were younger," she said to me. "But, he couldn't really do that anymore. But, he would be able to save your best girl."
I showed Thor those sketches I had made of those symbols that I had gotten from that house where I found Birdie.
"What do you make of these?" I asked him.
"It is an ancient language. One older than the multiverse itself," Thor explained to me. "This is not a good language to be seen."
"What does it mean?" I asked. "You're not really answering my question."
"The language of Apokolips," he said. "It's the dark home of darker gods. Gods worshipped by your own gods." He motioned towards the omega symbol. "Darkseid. They are trying to prepare the world for the return of Darkseid."