Dick watch as the light faded out of his eye as he retracted the knife.
What had he done?
He felt cold. It traveled from his blood drenched hand down his arm. Down his spine, up his neck, and down his legs.
The floor was shaking. His legs gave out.
He landed next to his victims head. A look of shock still etched on his face.
What had he done?
He could feel the cold travel to his stomach. Twisting it. He got on his knees and threw up.
A cry leaked out. High pitched like a wounded animal.
What had he done?
It came out again. This time more hoarse. Then again and again. Distantly he realized he was sobbing.
What had he done?
He killed someone.
Oh God what had he done.
no
No
No!
Dick took a few ragged breaths, trying to calm himself.
He had killed Slade Wilson, Deathstroke, the man who has had a sick obsession with him for years. Who had acted out on that obsession by stealing one of Ra's al Goul's unholy Lazarus Pits just so he could have Robin all to himself.
Dick should be dead. He was dead. Died by that Clown's hand in the dark and all alone. No Batman, no Babs. Just him and that crowbar warm with his blood, mocking him. He thought it would be the end there when the Joker left, leaving a ticking time bomb in his wake.
But no, fate had other plans for him.
He had been Slade's slave.
Dick got up slowly. He looked down at the body below him. He had been that man's slave. Now he was free.
Dick looked at his clothes. They were drenched in blood. He felt the cold return to his throat. No, he fought it down. Not now, not for this monster.
Numbly he walked out of the room and closed the door. There was a bathroom to the right of the hallway. He stepped inside.
He stepped into the shower, taking his clothes off down to his underwear. The blood was sticky on his chest. He turned the water on. It rolled off him in pink rivers down the drain. Grabbing the soap, he calmly lathered it in his hands. He rubbed the lather over his chest and watched it turn a salmon color.
The blood was also in his mouth, he realized. It must have gotten splattered on his face. He took his hand and wiped his cheek. It came back smeared a sudsy red.
After he was done he stepped out, leaving his clothes inside.
The blood was still in his mouth. He walked to the sink and rinsed it out.
It wasn't enough. He could still taste the blood. He reached for his toothbrush. The toothbrush that had been appointed his when he first woke up here. The toothbrush that was one of the few things he could call his in this hell.
He squeezed toothpaste on it and brushed calmly. Calmly, not frantically like he wanted to. No so fast that it would shred his gums and teeth and get rid of the taste of Slade's blood in his mouth.
Just. Calm.
Once he was dome Dick washed his mouth out. He then looked at himself in the mirror.
His hair was long, down to his shoulders, longer then he would ever let it grow on his own. Slade didn't let his cut it. Said he liked it that way. Dick reached into the medicine cabinet and the blunted scissors Slade used for himself. He pulled his hair back and cut it in one fell swoop. The hair fell onto the floor like tiny dead bodies. Dick looked at himself. It was kind of uneven, but it would have to do.
Without the long locks blocking his view Dick could see how gaunt his face was. All his baby fat was gone. All that was left were hollow cheeks and empty eyes.
So this was the face of a murderer.
He held out for so long, never giving into his captors demands, never letting himself be twisted into the monster Slade was.
Until today.
Now it all seems wasted. The pain, the torture, the absolute humiliation, it was all for nothing.
You should have done it a long time ago.
He would have been saved all the pain if he just gave in earlier.
Dick turned away from the mirror. He walked out the bathroom and back to the bedroom where the body was.
Dick looked at it for a moment. Slade's body was hunched over with his head turned to him. Gray hair was splattered with blood. His eyepatch had come off, revealing a dark hole that Dick had never seen.
He walked around the blood puddle and went for the dresser where his clothes were. He pulled out a red shirt, thick black jeans, and socks. These were about all he had in way of normal clothes. He didn't have any shoes, so he took a pair of Slade's black steal toed boot. He also took a black leather jacket. It was all Slade had in terms of outerwear.
He walked out of the room quickly, ignoring how the boots were slightly too big for him and how the jacket had another man's smell to it.
This was it, he was about to leave.
He reached the end of the hallway and stopped at the bottom of the stairs. At the top was a thick steel door. He couldn't count the hours he spent trying to break that thing. A few times it had opened, giving him a brief but wonderful moment if hope, only to reveal Slade on the other side.
Today it was open. A testimony to how unprepared for Dick's attack Slade was. It had been a long time since he had done anything to try to get out.
There was a sliver of light coming in.
Daylight, the first he had seen in an eternity.
Dick walked up the stair, each one a mountain as he slowly made his way up.
He reached the end. For a while Dick just stood there, unable to cross the boundary that had been set before him.
You can do this. You've already done so much.
Slowly he grasped the door's edge. It took a large amount of effort to try to open it. His atrophied muscles hadn't done this much work in ages. It squeaked, gave a little, then with one enormous push that left him breathless, it rolled away
Light surrounded him.