Richard had little to no memory of his past life. He knew he was born into a circus trapezist family, and he knew he could speak Romani fluidly even before the Court´s teaching. He, however, held no memories of his lineage other than his name, and what he used to refer to as ´button memories´, than where mostly quick flashes he got from what seemed like a lifetime ago, like the way the smell of ginger reminded him of a redhead woman he just knew was his mother, or the way the phrase ´heads up´ brought the image of warm deep blue eyes very similar to his own. But mostly his memories were filled with fearsome teachers, morbid lessons and horrific acts he had committed for the Court since he was eight years old. He had been trained to be the best of the best, and at the end he was indeed the best, for he alone managed to run away.

It had been late, he was supposed to be asleep but something deep down told him not to, and he heard, he heard the conversation the Elders were having regard him, just a few meters from his coffin, they talked about his improvements, his skills and his maturity. It was decided that he had reached the top of his physical development ahead of time, and so the next time he woke up it was in an operation table, a vial attach to an empty serum bag jabbed in his arm, the day of his fifteen birthday. The Court referred to what they did to him as "drinking from the cup of immortality", to say that he wouldn´t ever grow more body hair than he had now was an understatement.

He escaped the following night, after they assigned him to kill the Mayor´s three year old daughter as a threat to his father. He couldn´t kill the child, who died anyway due to an asthma attack produced by the stress of watching his father beg for her life. The Court hunted him for a few months, sadly for them, he had been made the best of them all. They received at their headquarters seven heads of seven top members of the Court, one for each year he had lost to them, assuring more for every year they made him loose. And so they had decided he wasn´t worth the effort and left him alone as long as he didn´t intervened with their business. He had paid with blood for his freedom.

Shortly after, he had made his home of the little abandoned warehouse in the old district.

It wasn´t until a year later that his path crossed with another's person again.

He was walking home through the nicer zone of the historic center when he heard sobbing and a gentle voice trying to smooth it in a nearby alley, there in the floor were three people, the first being a redhead girl not much older than himself, hugging a raven haired child and trying desperately to look at anything but the blonde woman who laid in the dirt, obviously dead. Dick didn´t know what refrained him from continuing his way, but soon enough he found himself crouching next to the child, blocking his sight of the corpse.

"Your mother?" he asked in a raspy voice due to the lack of use.

The boy just sobbed harder.

The redhead hugged him tighter and spoke "I found him trying to wake her up. I didn't know what else to do so I called the police, the social services will…"

"Be full. And send him to Jubilee. He won´t get out." Richard cut her.

She didn´t like that "Well then, could you do it better?"

He seemed to think it for a moment, scanning the kid´s face for any sigh of danger, he found only a traumatized scare little boy, much like he had being before the Owls. "I´ll take him"

"What?! You can´t simply take a child like that! You need papers, and permissions, and you need…you need…" She cringed under the stare of the male, those unblinking wide deep blue eyes that were smoothing, intriguing and unnerving at same time. She didn´t know why, but she trusted him, and so she carefully handed the hiccupping kid. "Alright, you better hurry or the social services will come. I wish you luck,…." She inquired while standing up.

"Richard"

"Right. Wish you good luck Richard. Bye Jason" She kissed the kid´s forehead, and watched the man (no, now that the light was better she could see he was very young) began to make his way to the entrance of the alley before remembering

"I´m Barbara, by the way. Barbara Gordon" She smiled at him and, for the first time since he could remember his lips curved upside the tiniest of bits.

He and Jason soon became friends, he didn´t seem to mind their state of living, and he just followed Richard around like a puppy, a puppy with a colorful mouth at that. The first time he called him Dick had been when Jason was twelve, three years after they´ve met. He had found the ex-Talon´s mask and equipment and demanded to know what they were, at Richard´s refuse he began shouting about trust and secrets. The moment the D word left his mouth he had suddenly shut, a scared look on his face.

Dick. It didn´t offended him at all, if so it felt familiar, it felt right. Jason must have misinterpreted what was going through his mind for he started trying to apologize.

"I´m sorry I swear I didn´t mean it, Richard!"

"Dick"

"…Uhh?"

He shook his head at the boy´s confusion "I like Dick better than Richard"

The twelve year old grimaced "You sure about that?" at the others nod he drop the matter, not hiding his hurt expression when he looked back to the owl-like mask.

"Beware the Court of Owls, that watches all the time.

Ruling Gotham from a shadowed perch, behind granite and lime.

They watch you at your heart, they watch you in your bed.

Speak not a whispered word about them, or they´ll send the Talon for your head"

Dick then proceed to tell him everything, how the Court had kidnaped him the night his parents were murdered, how as a first test they had brought him Zucco to do whatever he wanted with him, how in the following years he had been taught to kill, to be perfect, how they had stolen his mortality, and how he had succeeded in getting the Owls out of his life.

Suddenly it all made sense to Jason. Why his friend always seemed to be on guard, his sharp movements, how his face would get inscrutable when something bothered him, the way he would get spaced out with his eyes wide and unblinking and his breath shallow, and why every night he would wake up with a jolt and accelerated respiration and hug him tight with his eyes hard shut.

They became brothers after that time, in everything but blood.

Since he couldn´t give Jason a proper education, Dick had made it his mission to teach him every bit of useful information and general knowledge he had been given by the Court, like the vast knowledge of human anatomy and the sharp extensive mathematics, or learned by other medias, like Barbara, whom they had stayed in touch with. She would invite them to the library and then to have pizza at least once a week. Her encounters will always leave a calmer, happier Dick, as Jason had noticed. Those meeting always had the purpose of learning something new from a random book at the library.

Every once in a while Dick will take Jason on a Field Trip to Gotham´s frontier forest to put in practice some of the learned and, sometimes when Jason insisted enough, to practice the physical training he had begged Dick for.

It was in one of these trips that they came across the soon-to-be addition to their makeshift family.

Dick had taken Jason camping for his thirthteen birthday. True to be told he wasn´t expecting anyone to be out there in the hot middle August, nor was he expecting an eleven-year-old to fall off a tree next to the cave they were refuging in, even least was he expecting said kid to cling to him sobbing and crying for help. Once they´ve managed to get the boy to calm down and drink some water he had explain how he had ended lost in the forest. The kid´s name was Tim Drake, he and his parents had been taking a flight in their private helicopter when something had gone wrong. The vehicle had fallen and both his parents as well as the pilot had died on the crash.

Dick remembered the kid´s name from the newspapers. The accident had occurred a week before, so the little child was report missing and only a few days later he was assumed dead. Apparently he was smart enough to stay alive.

And such, having developed a love for lost children such as himself, Dick took him with them when they got back.

It wasn´t long before Tim, being the little genius he was, found out who his new oldest brother was. He had been intrigued and, like Jason, asked for training. Dick had only agreed because he knew things were tough outside the safety nest he had made of their warehouse, and like it or not, he couldn´t be with them all times. He had omitted the lethal techniques, though, making himself the promise to always be there for them whenever the situation required such actions.

That situation came the time they found Damian.

It had been a pair of years since Tim came along, they had been walking off with Barbara after their weekly session in the library when Dick had spotted some struggle a few blokes back and, after pointing it out, the three wanna-be heroes he had with him jumped into action, putting some make-shifted clothe masks over their eyes, the oldest had no option than follow them.

Gotham was a strange place, but being honest, a dozen ninjas fitting off an eight-year-old, and loosing, seemed a bit too much.

Of course, bare-hand combat vs guys with katannas wasn´t exactly a fair fight, so soon blood was drawn. Dick only needed that one yelp of pain to push them all off the fight, barking at them to get the kid before snapping the neck of the closest ninja and using his katanna to slash and cut and impaled the others.

When he reached the alley they had taken the child to he was covered in blood, a cold look on his face that took his friends by surprise.

The boy was in a corner holding onto his own sword like a life-line, pointing it towards his saviors, he looked like he was trying stubbornly not to show how terrified he was.

Dick hold a hand up towards his companions, and the other towards the child while he approached him. The boy´s eyes grew wide and he jumped forward with the sword, the ex-assassin simply took it in his hand, the deep cut of the blade healing so quick it almost didn´t bleed, which did not help the scare kid.

"Stop." Dick said before the younger had another chance to attack. "We won´t hurt you. And guessing by the display of out there I´d say you need us"

"Tt. I don´t need you. I can do fine on my own" The boy spit the words.

"It´s that so? Because for me it looked like my brother saved your arse"

"Jason, quiet. Look, whatever the reasons, you don´t want those guys to catch you, do you?" The child shook his head "You need to get them off your back. I can help you. You may be a great fighter but, in this city, you won´t make it far by yourself. Let us help you" Dick again used The Face, with his wide unblinking eyes that seemed to tear your interior apart.

The boy hesitated.

Then lowered his sword.

Turns out the men that had attacked Damian where assassins trained by his grandfather that, after betraying him, had killed both his grandfather and his mother and tried to kill him to. He had come to Gotham hoping to find his father whom, his mother had told him, was Batman himself. Dick, Jason and Tim had helped him to get the ninjas off him by faking his murder.

And afterwards took him to their secret home, as one more brother.

And so the lone ex-Talon had become the proud and protective older brother of three children at the age of twenty one.