AN: There is mention of miscarriage in this chapter. A character is reading about this happening to someone else. The character does not focus on this and it will not come up again. I do know this topic can be upsetting for some people and I do not wish to cause anyone further stress.

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Falling.

Seeing the edge of the building rushing past him. His fingers missing the frame. Falling.

Then it stops and there is just pain. Pain as his body slams into the building. Pain as his right shoulder threatens to come out of its socket. Pain as he looks up and the sun blinds him. But there...right there, is a figure. Someone caught him. Holding tightly to his right wrist.

"Give me your other hand!"

Dick knows that voice. He knows when he hears an order, and for once he doesn't balk at being told what to do. He reaches up and a familiar hand, with familiar calluses, grips him firmly.

"Dick! We need to change the grip," ordered Bruce from where he's half hanging out of the window, looking down at Dick who dangles above the street, fall interrupted.

Dick looked down to see a line attached to the bottom of his jeans, by a miniature grapple hook. Following the line, Dick can see Cobb on the other end, staring up at him.

"Dick! Focus on me!" yelled Bruce from above as the grip around his left wrist slips slightly. "You need to grab my hand, I can then pull you up. Understand?"

"Y-yeh," said Dick as he tears his eyes away from Cobb to look at Bruce. Tightening his own grip on Bruce's left hand, ready for the moment when Bruce lets him go. He needed to react quickly or he will pull Bruce over the edge too, but he knows what he needs to do first. "Go!"

Bruce lets go of Dick's right wrist, ready to catch his hand. Dick though reaches for the base of his back and pulls out the hidden blade he had stored there. A small curved matt-black blade that looked like a bird's talon.

Using his core muscles, he braced to pull his leg up that held all of Cobb's weight, using the blade to slice swiftly through the line, letting Cobb fall to the pavement below.

He can feel Bruce gripping his left hand tighter as he holds Dick's full weight in one arm. Instead of dropping the knife or taking the time to re-sheath it, Dick moved to grip the blade between his teeth before using his now free hand to reach up and grab Bruce's right hand.

Bruce was frowning at him as he gave the next instructions. "On three. One, two, three!"

Simultaneously, Bruce pulled Dick upwards while Dick pushed off of the building with his feet, so he was high enough to grip the edge of the building with one hand.

Letting go of Bruce's hand allowed Bruce to reach around and grip under Dick's shoulder and round his back and pull them both into the building.

Breathing heavily, Bruce lay on his back with Dick resting on his chest, gripping him closely. The two not moving for a moment.

"So I know who the Talon is," said Dick as he pushed himself off Bruce and re-sheathed his blade. Bruce frowned slightly when he got a good look at the weapon. He knew it was one of a pair that Slade Wilson had gifted his son. Three years after that one mission and Deathstroke still had his claws in his son.

"That was the Talon?" asked Bruce as he pushed himself up to sit against the wall, a slight sense of relief passing through him that Dick hadn't callously dropped a man to his death. In all likelihood the Talon would have just walked-off the fall.

"Yeah, William Cobb my grandfather," shrugged Dick, wincing slightly when his injuries made themselves known. "But you knew that already, right?"

"Lets-"

"Gotham Fire Department, anyone in here?" interrupted a voice from the office entrance.

"In here," shouted Dick, ignoring what Bruce was about to say as he started to get to his feet. He didn't want to think too much about secrets and what Bruce felt was relevant for him to know.

"You're bleeding," pointed out Bruce as he scrambled to his feet and went to support Dick, seeing the blood covering his right side, the same place where he'd been stabbed last week. Dick pushed Bruce's hands away as he pulled down his shirt.

"Help me cover this up. I am not going to the hospital," hissed Dick.

"We can't cover this up, half of Gotham just saw you hanging out the window," muttered Bruce as two Fire Fighters came into view.

"I'm fine," grumbled Dick as he swiped blood that was running down his forehead, glass falling free from his hair.

"Anyone else up here?" asked the taller of the two fire fighters approaching them.

"No," answered Bruce. "Just us."

"You okay to walk?"

"Yeah, let's get out of here," said Dick standing up straighter and moving to the exit. Seeing his fallen backpack he bent down and grabbed the straps.

"Leave the bag, sir," said the 2nd fire fighter.

Dick glared at the man, "Not a chance." He carried on walking towards the nearest stairwell, gritting his teeth to hide how much his side hurt. He could hear Bruce talking to the two fire fighters as they moved to catch up with him. Dick though just kept walking, one foot in front of the other as he tried not to think about the fall.

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Several hours later, after the police questioned him, with him lying through his teeth about not knowing who the attacker was. Followed by an unwanted trip to the hospital, that had resulted in a lot of glaring from him towards Bruce, the EMT's and the hospital staff until they agreed to let him go home. Dick was finally walking down into the cave after getting a clean set of clothes from his room. Bruce was already at the computer with Tim and Steph standing behind him, security footage of the Wayne Enterprise building and the surrounding area was running on multiple screens.

"Did you see where Cobb went?" asked Dick approaching them. He found himself smiling when he saw Tim jump slightly before he turned around to face him.

"Hey look, it's the living mummy," grinned Steph.

"Hah, funny," huffed Dick. Though he had to admit that the amount of bandages covering his arms from where the window glass had cut him, did kind of make him resemble the movie monster.

"No," said Bruce. "Cobb landed on the pavement, laid there for a minute. Emergency responders approached, then he got up and pushed his way through the crowd.

"I lost him at the intersection."

"I want to know how Cobb knew I was going to be at the W.E. building," stated Dick. "It's like he was waiting for me."

"He was," said Tim. Everyone turned to look at Tim, making Tim feel very nervous. The younger teenager approached the computer and reached past Bruce and pulled up a few camera views. "For the past week he stood waiting outside W.E. He only left his post when he saw Bruce leave each day."

"So this guy knows you're Nightwing and Dick Grayson," said Steph quietly. "That's…"

"Not surprising," sighed Bruce.

"What?" asked the two younger teenagers in shock. Dick crossed his arms over his chest, ignoring the sting of the stitches under the bandages as he tried to remain calm.

"When I first took down the Court, there were a few members who knew my identity. All of them are now deceased. I didn't think there was anyone remaining."

"Have you met Cobb before?" asked Dick.

"No. I believe he was frozen at the time I took down the Court and he must have been stored elsewhere to the main base of operations as I destroyed that place and all the remaining Talon's."

"He said he was family, my grandfather."

"There is a William Cobb among your ancestors," said Bruce as he clicked a few buttons on the keyboard and a family tree popped up on screen. "He was declared dead before the birth of his own son. It's not surprising that you didn't know about him."

Dick opened his mouth to say something then closed it again, swallowing down his anger. "What happened five months ago?"

When no one answered him, Dick explained. "Cobb said he woke up five months ago, that's how long he's been looking for me.

"Five months ago I was helping Roy with… something," shrugged Dick. "So what happened here?"

"Nothing out of the ordinary," said Bruce.

"Well unless you count the multiple brown-outs in my neighbourhood, though that happens every summer. So yeah, nothing unusual," said Steph as she jumped up to sit on the nearest bench. "What? Why are you all staring at me?"

"How long did they last?" asked Dick.

"Err…this time it was for a couple of days, which is longer than usual. We normally get full-power after about twenty-four hours," shrugged Steph still not seeing the connection. Low power and complete power outage was common where she lived.

"Enough time for the cooling system on whatever was keeping Cobb frozen to warm up enough to wake him up," stated Dick looking to Bruce for an answer. Bruce though didn't answer, he was already looking through the power company database to find the dates for the longest time of Brown-out to narrow the area where Cobb might have been stored and might now still be based.

"Question? You said the Court was run by the elite of Gotham, why would they have a base in my neighbourhood? Plus, anything left abandoned for that length of time would have been found and used by squatters," pointed on Steph.

"It could just be a coincidence," said Tim.

"Great, I've got another killer after me because of chance events happening," said Dick rolling his eyes. He looked over to see if Bruce was going to comment on this but the older man was still typing away at the computer. He knew Bruce would have heard him but as always he was choosing to ignore him.

Walking over to the bench where the contents of his backpack were laid out, Dick started stuffing everything back inside. Tim had been scanning them for any trackers that Cobb might have left on him. Seeing the envelope that was now looking a bit crumpled, he was glad to see that Tim hadn't opened it.

Picking it up he turned and started walking back to the stairs that would take him back up to the manor. There was no point in hanging around the cave when Bruce had gone all-silent. There would be no answers from the man at this point.

Up in his room Dick closed the door behind him before tearing the top of the envelope open. He needed to know what Slade knew. Good or bad, now was the time to get answers.

There was several pages within the document, the first Dick recognised as the results of a blood sample. One number and code being circled with the word handwritten in Slade's handwriting next to it – UNKNOWN.

One number and code was underlined with another word handwritten – MIRAKURU

The next page was more blood test results, all of them had a number circled and a number underlined.

Dick laid the pages out next to each other on the bed making sure the test results were in date order. He remembered Slade taking multiple blood tests while Dick had stayed with him.

In chronological order, Dick could see how the Mirakuru number decreased as the number labled unknown increased. The last page had both numbers close to zero. The date being near the end of Dick's forced period of being Slade's apprentice.

The next page had the code of the unknown blood component with one word next to it – SYNTHETIC.

Dick frowned at that word. That meant whatever the component was it wasn't natural. Or the very least wasn't natural to his own body. So someone had introduced it to his system, but when?

Certainly not while he was with Bruce and it wasn't something Slade had introduced. So it must have been when he was with his parents.

Dick felt tears welling up, before he roughly swiped them away before they could fall. There was still a few more pages that he needed to read.

Turning to the next page Dick found himself frowning again, it was information on his mom. It was a handwritten page, that looked to be from a journal – it wasn't either of his parent's handwriting though. Nor was it Slade's handwriting.

Reading through the page Dick discovered that Mary Grayson had been pregnant twice before she had him, both ending in a miscarriage. The third pregnancy, Dick was born healthy and there was no complications. The reason being put down to a tonic she had been given from one of the other performers.

Slade had circled the word tonic and wrote beside it – BINDING AGENT FOR ELECTRUM

The next page had a detailed component list of electrum and how the Court of Owls could use it. There was information going back centuries. Different types of formulae for different purposes.

The final words on the last page was Slade's handwriting – DECAPITATION

There was no explanation around the word but Dick knew what it meant. That was Slade telling him how to kill a Talon. Sinking to the floor he held his head in his hands. So much information. He had no idea how Slade had put it all together and he honestly wasn't sure if he wanted to know.

The why Slade put it together was obvious though. This was the mercenary's way of telling Dick he cared, that he still had a place with Slade. The man never gave up.

Taking a deep breath, Dick sat up straight and reached up to the bed to pull down the papers onto the floor with him. The pages scattering around him he pushed them aside until he found the page he wanted. The information on the Electrum and the binding agent.

Was this why Cobb wasn't a puppet like the Talon's Batman had encountered in the past? Is this what made him different? Is this what made himself different?

It still didn't explain everything.

Like why this component hadn't been discovered before in his own blood? Or was it something the Mirakuru did? Did it change the synthetic component? Had that changed him?

Dick groaned, he was getting more questions, rather than answers.

The last word at the bottom of the last page caught his eye again – DECAPITATION

Killing was against Batman's code. Against his own code. Dick had made that choice, he wasn't a killer. But was a Talon human? Did not being human make a difference?

Batman said he'd taken out the other Talon's, the puppets. Maybe that was the difference?

Cobb wasn't a puppet though. He had free thought, his own agency.

No, Dick needed to find another way. Cobb was just like any other bad guy and bad guys went to prison.

Dropping the pages down on the floor he got back to his feet, he needed to stop moping and waiting on others to act. He needed to make his own plan.

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AN: Thanks for sticking with me on this and your thoughts are appreciated.