Hello all! Its been brought to my attention that I had a bit of a problem with randomly switching between the first person point of view and third person point of view. When I re-read this to see, it drove me crazy so I edited the mistake out and cleaned the story up a bit. I hope you notice the difference and it helps you to enjoy the story even more than before!
Disclaimer: I do not own Teen Titans or Batman. If I did, then season 6 would not just be a rumor and would already exist by now. Complete with lots of Slade and Robin moments and Batman cameos!
Slade Wilson was a very busy man. He was always doing something productive with his time, never allowing himself the chance to truly lay back and relax. He was constantly making plans and strategies for future scenarios and accepting jobs that were not always of the legal variety.
But somehow on this particular day, he found himself with nothing to do with his time. He had completed all his missions that he had been given over the week, as well as drafted many of his new concepts and ideas. Because of the fact that this type of thing never really happened anymore, he didn't exactly know what to do with himself. He thought about working out in his gym for a while, but that would only distract him for at most an hour or so. And so he found himself sitting around his bunker, staring at nothing in particular in the distance except a now very interesting bleak, gray wall.
"Slade, what are you doing?" Slade's old friend and butler had come up and noticed his charge's odd behavior.
"Nothing Wintergreen. Completely, and utterly, nothing." Slade grunted out, face resting on his fist.
"Then why don't you actually go out and do something?"
Slade thought about it, and decided that going out would be preferable to what he was doing right now. So, he stood up with a grunt, a wave to his comrade and went to get ready.
Winters in Gotham were infamous. Somehow, the season was able to make the city look even more gloomy and depressing than it usually was, quite the achievement because of the city's rep as being one of the most joyless in the nation. The cold would sink all the way to your bones if you didn't fight it with your warmest choice of attire. Because of this Slade had donned his heaviest winter overcoat, a deep black one with a high collar that he used to protect his face from the worst of the icy wind.
Now the reason that Slade was in Gotham in the first place was because of the fact that his last job had required him to assassinate a little-known politician that resides here. It went off without a hitch of course, not a single aspect of the job being unaccounted for by the known mercenary. Slade hadn't really seen the point to going back to his haunt in Jump, deciding to stay a few more days here in his hidden bunker at the outskirts of the city.
Besides, a certain little bird in Jump had suddenly disappeared, as if he was flying north for the winter like all the others. So, there was really no point in Slade returning for awhile, as there was nothing of interest in Jump until the feathered creature returned to his nest.
Slade found himself in the park located at the center of the area. It was surrounded by roads and skyscrapers, its small number of trees and actual grass-covered, albeit now dusted in the white of fallen snow, ground looking very out of place instead of the usual dirty grays and blacks that was everywhere else.
He simply strolled around for awhile, being one of the only ones there made the place calm and somewhat peaceful. There were only a few couples huddled together hand in hand; acting as if their love in each other was all the warmth they needed to not be too effected by the cold. Everyone else was either at work, shopping for the holidays or tucked away in their heated homes, hiding from the intruding frozen winter.
After a couple minutes of following the ice-covered paths winding throughout the park, the white-haired man settled himself onto a bench after dusting it of its coating of soft powder. He gave himself the chance to actually observe his new surroundings, and discovered that he was surrounded by bare trees and a small meadow of snow. A little way away was what looked like a small stage being built, probably for some Christmas festival in the near future.
He absently watched what looked like teenage volunteers as they set it up, laying out the base and then wooden planks on top, followed by stairs leading up to it on the side and finally deep red curtains being brought in and positioned as a backdrop.
"YOU HAVE GOT TO BE KIDDING ME!"
The mercenary tensed up slightly, but it was so slight that no one else besides himself would have been able to notice. That voice was very familiar to him; he looked around with his one good eye, expecting to be confronted by a certain spiky-haired rebel of a teenager. How said teenager would be able to recognize him without his mask was something that he questioned, but that kid always seemed to surprise him.
Slade was met with a different sight then the one that he had been expecting. When he found who he assumed to be the owner of the voice, it appeared to be someone similar to who he had been prepared to see, but subtly different. It was a boy around what looked to be 14 or 15, but it was hard to guess considering how small he looked to be for his age. Instead of his hair being styled in spikes, it was gelled back with not a single black strand out of place.
His back was to Slade, facing towards another teen. It was only then that Slade saw who was in the boy's company. There were two redheads with him, a freckled boy around 16 with a goofy smile adorning his face and another who appeared to be close to 17, looking much less cheerful than the other.
Slade's attention was brought back to the youngest and could practically hear the scowl that the kid probably had on when he talked. "Wally, its freezing out here!"
The freckled one who Slade now knew as 'Wally' didn't really react in any way. "Come on, it's not that cold! Right Roy?"
The other redhead who was leaning against a tree with his arms crossed gave a grunt. "I'm on his side; I'm freezing my behind off. The only reason why I'm out here is because Dinah made me get out of the house."
The black-haired boy turned towards the direction of Wally. With a triumphant grin he said "See? Told you so."
"Then why did you even come along if it's so cold!?"
"Oh, I don't know, maybe because you two literally dragged me out here!"
The two started to argue, 'Roy' not really paying them any attention, just looking fed up with his situation.
Slade wasn't paying the chatter of the boys any mind, because his gaze was now intent on the face of the smallest teen. He had turned around and was now standing alongside Wally to argue at him. This gave Slade the chance to really scrutinize what he looked like and what Slade noticed first of all was the striking resemblance he had to that little bird back in Jump. The shape and configuration of his face all perfectly matched his.
He would probably have the distinctly tan skin too if it wasn't hidden behind a tinge of pink from the cold. But there was one large difference. There was no domino mask covering this child's face, it was completely unveiled for the world to see. Where Slade would have expected to see white lenses surrounded by black fabric, there were instead the deepest, bluest eyes that he had ever seen.
Slade was mesmerized by those eyes, so full of emotion and depth. They made the boy an open book, bringing forth anything he was feeling right to the forefront as, in this case very accurately described, windows to the soul. Slade could barely imagine what it would be like to have those eyes directed solely onto him.
Slade made himself stray away from further evaluating those eyes, deciding instead to focus back onto the conversion the boys were having. It was now getting to not be at as passionate a volume as before.
"Dick, weren't you the one who always wanted to play out in the snow every year? You'd be out in it all day long, the only way anyone could ever get you to go back inside was to either threaten or bribe you!"
"Yeah well, it's kinda different when I- *sneeze* I'm not exactly in the mood to."
Roy finally joined in the conversation with a curt "If he gets sick no one can blame me."
Wally looked crestfallen and dejected, the complete opposite of what he had looked like at first. "You two are a bunch of grinches."
"I'd prefer scrooge, seeing as how I feel the need to say 'Ba, Humbug!' right now," the older redhead said, the slightest hint of humor in his voice as he said it, as if he was trying to lift the other's mood.
"Haha, good one Roy," said the boy who Slade was now able to give the title of 'Dick' too. While he would have been able to fit a name to him later on back at the bunker through some research, it was quite nice to be able to have one for him now as he observed them.
The smile was back on Wally's face, his emotions once again doing a one-eighty. "Great, let's play some ice-ball!"
"Is that why you brought along the bucket?" Dick asked.
"Yep!" the redhead stated gleefully.
"Wally, is it really the best idea to play ice-ball? Do you even have a bat?" The raven asked cynically.
"One, it's always a good idea to play ice-ball. Two, yes I do have a bat, Roy just took it away from me."
"I don't trust idiots with objects that can cause bodily harm," Roy stated impassively.
"Words to live by," Dick said with the corners of his mouth lifting upwards, his mood lifting as it appeared he might have been thinking of past incidents involving Wally and harmful objects. At least, that was what Slade was guessing had caused the change in emotion. "I'll play, but as long as we stop as soon as more people start showing up. I don't want us to accidently hit anyone."
"Deal! Come on Roy, go get the bat and bucket!" The teenager responded by moving off the tree with a huff, going down a path and returning a few minutes later with the wooden object and bright orange home-depot bucket.
"Who wants what position?" Wally asked.
"I'll bat!" Dick replied, his enthusiasm to play now very evident.
"I'll pitch," Roy stated, still looking on the grumpy side but also kinda eager to play.
"Fine, then I'll be emperor!"
"Umpire, Wally," Roy told him with an eye roll, Dick shaking his head with a chuckle.
"Yeah, that. Let's play!"
They opened the bucket and inside were what appeared to be balls made out of, you guessed it, ice. Dick picked up the bat and got into position, Wally a little way behind him. Roy stood a few yards away and started winding up for the throw. He had a good arm, the ball flew through the air right towards the others. You could hear the sound of the ball cutting through the chilly air with a swoosh.
But the black-haired teen had it in his sights. He lined up the bat and his eyes narrowed into slits as he took aim for the projectile. A sly grin spread across his face, and Slade chuckled lightly, knowing that he was going to hit it just from the expression he was making.
And hit it he did. There was an almighty CRACK! as wood met ice, and the orb sailed through the sky and continued to do so for a couple seconds. The gaze of the three teens and the unknown observer following its path. Its arc ended when it smashed into the trunk of a tree, a shattering crash could be heard as the sphere of ice broke into numerous crystal-like shards.
"DickthatwasAMAZING!" Wally's sentence tumbled out in a rush. He threw his arms into the air, exclamations and compliments about the hit coming out in a stream. Dick proceeded to give a laugh, and then run around the meadow in the shape of a diamond, pretending as if there were actual bases on a baseball field instead of nothing but snow. Roy had a warm smile on his face, and was watching both of the other boys as they had their child-like antics.
The game then started up again, Wally going to bat and missing the first couple of times until he hit one that traveled a few yards then right into the ground where it rolled. The freckled teen madly dashed around the square path that Dick had first made, trying desperately to stay ahead of Roy who had retrieved the ball and was now running after him with it. Dick cheered both of them on, as if he couldn't choose who to root for without upsetting the other.
It ended with Roy pouncing on top of Wally as he was just about to make it to 'home base.' He acted all mad about it for one second, then the next he was back to being overly cheerful and playing around with the others. They kept playing until they ran out of balls because they had either been smashed to bits or were too well hidden, which was around an hour later. They started to debate who had won, but it was obvious that not one of them had taken the initiative to keep track while they had been playing. It looked friendly sibling squabbling.
Slade, of course, had subconsciously kept score of the game for reasons unknown to even himself. He found that Wally had gotten a total of 7, Roy had 11 and Dick had gotten 19.
A strange emotion flitted upon Slade as he reflected on the game scores. Especially on how Dick had won so far ahead of the others. The emotion felt almost foreign to him, as if it was one he hadn't felt that often.
Then it hit him. Slade was feeling proud. He was feeling proud for this boy that he knew almost nothing about. It was an emotion that Slade could only ever remember feeling with his sons, so far back in the past, before everything had been destroyed. Like when Grant had shot his first bullseye on a target, or when Joseph had played the piano perfectly in a recital.
It appeared that there was more than met the eye with this kid. It seemed that some further observations were in order to truly get to know who Dick was, and if perhaps, that was not the only name that he went by.