He stood with his eyes closed, there was nothing to see. Not yet. The world around him would only appear as a dense fog.

His Robes were black. They should have been white, but no one would notice the difference. That was one of the beautiful things about this place, if things were not as they should be, no one would notice. No one could notice.

Sensation like static passed over his body and faint sounds began assailing his ears, he flexed his forearms once and felt the deadly blades spring free, returning to their protective sheaths only once he relaxed the muscles.

He opened his eyes and watched as the world began to materialize around him; it wasn't real. He knew that. But he didn't care.

The buildings were old, the architecture having gone out of date several hundred years ago, but they looked as though they had been recently constructed. A crowd of people milled about him, all in a hurry to run about whatever errands possessed them, and all too eager to ignore the man who was standing to one standing near the perimeter of the central plaza. He slipped past people dressed in decadent silk garments as easily as the homeless beggar who wore his rags and shuffled about asking for handouts; a ghost in the crowd. He didn't know who his target was and he didn't care. If he happened across him, the target would die. If not, then he wouldn't. But he was here to have fun.

He was The Master; Ezio Auditore, Mentor of the secret Brotherhood of Assassins. The citizens of Constantinople finally took note as he began to run, first with anger at being pushed aside or brushed past a little too hard, and then in fear of the Assassin who hunted in their midst. He was notorious to these people. In an instant he found a barrel sitting against a wall and leaped on to it, his momentum carried him up on to the roof in an easy motion and he was off across the rooftops. The huts were small, so he was only about ten feet above the ground but it still felt good to use his body to its full potential, the wind in his hair, his legs pounding the clay tiled roofs, easily propelling him across streets and alleys as the gaps opened before him.

He leaped straight across a street and his fingers easily found purchase and he scaled the shear face of the Grand Bazaar. The guard was unusually perceptive, calling for him to identify himself and get down even before he had properly cleared the roof.

The guard stood no chance, he'd only needed two paces to work up the momentum for another leap, this one carried him on to the man's chest, the hidden blade slid free of its sheath and he guided it with practiced ease straight into the man's neck, cutting off both his jugular and the half-formed cry in his throat. They hit the rooftop with the clatter of armour and weapons and he pulled the blade free, allowing it to return to the protective embrace of the mechanism that hugged his forearm.

He carried on like this for some time, eventually finding himself surrounded by over a dozen guards. All clad in Byzantine armour, weapons drawn and seeking blood.

There was a shaking in his shoulder and a familiar voice floated into his head but he ignored it.

He dodged and slashed, dancing around his opponents and striking with his blades, feet and fists. But he wasn't perfect and he'd taken hits, more than he should have. It was time to make good his escape, a smoke bomb distracted his attackers and he was out in open streets. There was a tower a couple blocks over that would be the perfect place to regain his anonymity.

The smoke bomb didn't distract his pursuers for very long and they were hot on his heels in moments. He was too injured to beat them in a game of speed and it took only seconds for his trained eye to spot exactly what he needed; a scaffold had been erected against the wall just a little further ahead. He swallowed his pain and called upon his body to give him just a bit more. He leaped on to the first, waist height platform of the scaffold and landed in a roll, carrying his momentum through the roll and diving out the other side.

The wooden tower was jarred by his passing and was bumped by the first of the knot of guards that were hunting him. The bump was enough to slow the guard and cause a brief pileup amidst the armoured soldiers, the pileup proved fatal as the wooden beams came down upon their heads. The guards scrambled for safety but it was a rather large and sturdy structure and came down in a heap on all but four of his pursuers. Two of which were too buried to be of any help to the other two, who were just picking themselves up after diving away.

They never even had time to turn around as his hands flashed and twin blades sprouted from their necks. There were more guards coming, just trying to work their way over the pile of recently fallen timber.

More shaking and talking echoed through his head but he ignored it as he reached for his medicine, the fragrant salts revitalizing his body and allowing him to put extra distance between himself and his pursuers. It took no time at all for him to regain the rooftops. But he was distracted by the shaking, more insistent this time, and as soon as he leaped for the side of the tower he knew that he would just miss the ledge that he needed to grab.

He was out in open air when the world stopped, leaving him suspended in the void, unable to move. A feeling like static passed over his body and all sensation left him as the world began to fade away.

"Dammit, Bruce, WHAT!?" he snapped as the real world came back to him, his thoughts and perception no longer effected by the neural helmet that he wore.

"It's time to put the game away, Dick." Bruce told him, looking sharp in a suit that cost more than most folks make in a month, "The party has started and the guests have asked to see you."

"Of course they have." Dick bit out, "When was the last time any of them have seen a cripple in real life." He sounded like a petulant child, but he didn't care.

"You're not a cripple." Bruce told him firmly.

"Tell that to my missing arm." Dick retorted as he hoisted the remains of his right arm, a shapely stump sprouting just below his elbow. "Or better yet. Why don't we go find my legs and tell them that I'm not half a man!"

"Dick…."

"Those people aren't my friends Bruce, they don't care about me. They just want to see the freak while it's still fashionable."

"The Titans have been calling for months." Bruce reminded.

"And I've been ignoring them for months. My friends all died where I should have." He added quietly.

"Dick, I-" Bruce left it alone. He didn't know what Dick had been through while he had been missing. Dick refused to talk, and J'onn couldn't penetrate his mind. Even his own investigations hadn't yielded much more than he had just shared. Dick had been in a war, he had been found in a crater while a team was investigating a powerful explosion that took out an entire town and made a new lake beside the river there, one nearly on par with a modern nuke, less the radiation, and he felt that the Titans had grievously slighted him. What could he say to that?

"I'll deflect the guests."

"Thank you Bruce."

Dick selected another virtual life to live and retreated back into the safety and comfort of the virtual world, where he could be whole, and strong and able. He stayed there long into the night.

"Keep moving. Look at the mirror, use your eyes to see where you might falter." Is what the doctor had told him during his one and only rehab session. He was supposed to be learning to use the robotic prosthetics he had been given. It was supposed to be easy, after the integration process and the calibration it was supposed to be just like having his own limbs back. If he wanted to walk, they would walk. If he wanted to pick up a glass and take a sip, they would.

But they did not work as advertised. It took superhuman feat of concentration and will power to just do something simple, like move his leg in a controlled manner. It was like the limbs were under the control of a kid with wicked ADHD, and he had to constantly fight to make the limbs do ANYTHING. So in the end he'd decided it just wasn't worth it.

Unfortunately he had been forced to adapt to them by necessity. Some situations just warranted mobility, like now.

"Dick, you look horrible!" Lois exclaimed even before he had finished extricating himself from the seatbelt in the car.

"Nice to see you again, too, Miss Lane."

"Oh don't you 'Miss Lane' me, boy." She scolded with a smile, reaching across his body and hitting the latch for him.

"I haven't been sleeping well." He confessed soberly, answering "Strange dreams." When she prodded further.

"J'onn thinks it's my minds way of coping with everything." He told her once they had been seated at the private table that Alfred had reserved for this interview.

"So is it true that J'onn can't…."

"No, he can't." Dick told her, "And Fate isn't having any luck either."

Once they had covered the important ground, Lois receiving the same abridged version of the last time he'd been missing, the interview began; inane questions that the avid reader would want to know.

Questions about his recovery and what had happened. Plane crash on the way to some exotic destination.

How the new prosthetics were. Manageable.

What were they? Advanced robotics, merged with neural interface and low-level Artificial Intelligence to translate neural impulses into physical movement.

How was he occupying his time? Video games, books, and modelling the last one was a joke.

He answered with varying degrees of truth and earnestness and before too long, her supply of questions was exhausted. They dallied for a bit longer in the privacy given them by the corner booth of the quiet establishment before finally paying the tab and going out into the evening. The interview was over, but Perry White had been very specific when he'd told her to spend time with him, see how he was faring and what he was doing. She noticed him stumble several times but manage to right himself fairly quickly, except for one time where she was forced to catch him as they stepped out to cross a street.

"They're top of the line." Dick said about the prosthetics, "about as close to having my own limbs back as I can hope for. Or so they say. But they're not perfect. They're sluggish, and hard to catch myself. I feel like I'm just blindly stabbing my feet at the ground and hoping for the best. I have pretty decent control over the limbs, almost like a real one," He balanced on one leg and lifted the other one up, bending it several times, flexing the ankle and even rotating it," but the lack of feeling is hard to adjust to. If I don't keep a sharp eye out and miss a step, or take one that isn't there, I usually end up falling flat on my face. They're just not quick enough to react to things like that."

After a while longer, as they were passing in front of a condemned apartment building they heard the shattering of glass, and a shrill scream. It took Dick only a second to find the source of the screams, and a second more to note the orange glow of flames and the billowing smoke behind her. He had no idea why this small child was in an abandoned building, or why it was burning.

"Call 911." He told Lois before he took off for the door to the building. He was quick, but not as quick as he should have been.

Entering the building had been rather easy, the city relying more on signs than real barricades to prevent entry, and made his way for the stairs. Climbing was awkward but manageable, and he was soon forced to take his shirt off and hold it over his mouth, eventually going by the feel of his remaining hand as he tried to get to the trapped girl through the thick, choking smoke. It was hot, but not unbearably so. When he got to the right door he threw it open and rushed through, his ears easily leading him to the screaming, choking child even as his eyes welled with tears and stung from the acrid smoke. He stumbled against the walls, his foot sinking through the creaking floor in a heart stopping moment of panic before he righted himself and moved on. The flames were everywhere, a towering inferno that scaled the walls and spilled across the ceiling. He didn't waste a second to consider how the heat was not nearly as unbearable as it should have been.

When he got to the right door, it pushed open with almost no effort. A sensation like ice danced across his skin and his shirt caught fire so he took it away from his face and threw it down as he went to the girl. She screamed at his approach but he couldn't comfort her, his throat was raw from choking on the smoke and the spasms sent him on to his face. Suddenly the prosthetics were slower than normal to react, and harder to control.

Lois was frantic. Count on Clark to be out of reach at a moment like this, and she didn't know how to get ahold of anyone else, even the Batman.

It was painstaking, waiting for the firefighters to arrive, though they made impressive time. She pointed out the window and within moments of arriving the ladder was moving into position to rescue the suddenly screaming girl. She turned to the scene commander and frantically told him that someone had run in to try save the girl, but that had been just before she'd called in. He was about to give more orders when his eyes grew wide as they fixated on the window.

Lois turned to see a nightmare handing the frantic girl to the fireman. She understood intellectually that it had to be Dick, but he was so badly burnt. His hair, barely regrown, was gone and part of his face was wilted red and black. His lips had charred and bared his teeth and gums. The poor girl was hysterical in her attempts to escape from Dick.

The firefighter went back for him but the window collapsed and when he tried to pull him out, Dick didn't even budge as his arm simply came off.

The scene commander was screaming at someone, and the firefighter tried to readjust the ladder and suddenly he was screaming too as someone on the ground overrode his controls and pulled it away.

She watched in horror as Dick tumbled out of the building. A moment later the towering inferno was raging all the hotter as the floors gave way and the windows either melted or shattered, allowing more of the life-giving oxygen to feed the flames. Minutes later, the building collapsed.

It was a strange blur, watching the paramedics work on Dick. He was still alive and in pain, if his continued moans were any indication; long and drawn out, screams dulled by burnt up vocal cords. But somehow he had survived, the warped and still somewhat liquid state of his prosthetic limbs lending extra credence to the rage of the inferno that had failed to kill him. Thank God for Shell-Shock; she could deal with all of this later.

He grabbed the little girl and suddenly his situation came crashing back to him. He understood that he should be dead, but was somehow still moving, though he didn't think that would be true much longer. His plan instantly formed. He would grab the girl and jump out the window, using his body to cushion her fall, it was only three stories, she probably wouldn't even get hurt too badly from the fall. He grabbed the girl and struggled to his feet, the robotics seeming to fight him the whole way. He staggered toward the window, but ended up falling against it as his left leg suddenly gave out all together, the straps that held it to his stump letting go.

When he righted himself he was greeted by the figure of a firefighter, approaching on the hydraulic ladder that was mounted on the truck. He couldn't make out any sounds, and the world seemed strangely dim, though he noticed the terror in the man's eyes as he handed the girl out to him. The man turned to pass the girl down to another firefighter and then reached back to Dick, grabbing both of his hands. It was at this moment that his right leg gave out beneath him, sending him down. The firefighter had his prosthetic arm, while his real one clung to the window sill, trying to pull himself up as the strength seeped from his limb.

Would this be it? Would he finally die? He should be dead already, would he finally give up and just let go?

Before he could decide, the windowsill disintegrated. The firefighter tugged harder on his prosthetic arm, easily snapping the weakened straps. The man tumbled back a step, and Dick was left balancing on nothing, peering out at what little of the world he could still see. He thought it odd, how he could be in a raging inferno, but have his body assailed by sensations of icy numbness.

Was this the end? Was this how he would die?

The firefighter righted himself on the ladder and moved it closer, but something happened and suddenly he was gesturing wildly and the ladder was moving itself away. Man and ladder quickly faded from sight.

His strength failed and he succumbed to gravity, becoming suddenly weightless as he tumbled forward. He could no longer see, and could not remember, or tell if or when he had last drawn a breath.

Was this the end?

A/N: I know this was a long time coming, though not as long as the last one, so I AM improving somewhat. I'm not really sure how I feel about this chapter, something about the execution just doesn't feel right to me. I think that I would have liked it to be longer, possibly have 2 chapters where Raziel has to deal with his injuries and trying to adjust to his new situation, but I just don't think I have the chops for it so I'm settling with this. Any way that'll be enough of me feeling sorry for myself.

Thanks for reading, and for your continued support :)

I'll continue to hammer out the flaws in the next update and hopefully it'll be better. And posted sooner. I really hope I can post sooner.