Disclaimer: I do not own the Teen Titans or the franchises mentioned in the work.
a/n: I've never read the Teen Titans comic books, but I do know about Deathstroke - . Slade, our favorite bastard. I've decided to adopt his physical appearance and some of his canon history into my story, since the Slade from the television show had so little. Not to mention that I could definitely see Ron Perlman's voice come out of comic-book Slade. Look him up.
Let me know if the characters come across OCC to you. I did my best to keep them as faithful to their T.V. counterparts, but if you notice anything I did not, feel free to comment on it.
Reviews, sharing, etc. are greatly appreciated.
"I felt very still and empty, the way the eye of a tornado must feel, moving dully along in the middle of the surrounding hullabaloo."
- Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar
Robin: Slade! I don't know where you've been, but you shouldn't have come back. I'm still ready.
Slade: That's precious, Robin. But, I didn't come back for you.
- Birthmark
Chapter Two: The Beginning
Starfire and Robin behaving like an official couple was like seeing atoms - no one doubted an atom's existence, and the very idea of an atom had been theorized long before it was confirmed, but if the human eye became aware of protons and electron clouds and nuclei all around, the public reaction was bound to be an odd one.
Such was Raven's train of thought as she sipped a cup of tea from the Titan's kitchen, eyeing the two lovers sprawled out on the team's black sofa. Never in a million years had Raven imagined Robin to be the type of boyfriend that openly displayed affection; yet somehow, Starfire had managed to convert their fearless team leader into a hand-holding, door-opening, purse-carrying gentleman within the span of only a few weeks.
Of course, Beast Boy and Cyborg would persistently pester the Boy Wonder about the dynamics of their relationship, always leaving Robin flustered and spluttering that no, it was him who wore the pants, and yes, he still had his man card.
Man card. Raven's gaze rolled to the ceiling. No real man needed a card to prove his masculinity. At least, no man she would ever date.
"Raven!"
Alarmed, Raven twisted her head to answer Cyborg's dramatic cry. Perhaps he'd caught her staring at their lovesick teammates - God, may have he not caught her staring. One could only imagine the implications that could be - and would be - drawn.
But Cyborg made no indication of noticing Raven's behavior. In fact, he appeared to be absorbed in some sort of card-stacking game with Beast Boy; Raven heard the periodic zip! of his robotic eye, focusing in and out on a trembling tower of playing cards.
"What?"
The half-robot squinted at a particularly crooked Queen of Spades in the structure. "Could you get me a some water? I'm kinda tied up right now."
"Something wrong with your legs?"
"Ah, c'mon, Rae," Beast Boy chided the cards, gingerly adding one to another layer of the little building. "Why do'ya gotta be so moody? The making of Titans Tower the Second is a matter of life or death."
"No, it's not."
Cyborg managed to tear himself away from the game to throw a pleading glance at his friend. "Please, Rae? If we can get this to reach the ceiling, B.B.'s gotta do dishes for the rest of the year."
Raven sighed, unable to think of a good enough reason to be rude. Besides, the promise of Beast Boy having dish duty for the next twelve months was almost enough incentive for Raven to join in herself and stack the cards to the moon. Levitating a water bottle from the fridge, Raven tried being as gentle as possible when setting the bottle down within Cyborg's reach.
However, her caution was to little avail - the soft thump garnered a startled yelp from Beast Boy, who promptly flailed his arms and knocked over the card tower just as Cyborg had added the finishing piece to another level.
"Awh, man!" Cyborg wailed, thirst forgotten as he wept forlornly over the scattered deck. Beast Boy, realizing he was at fault, quickly morphed into a green snake and began to slither away. His escape was short-lived, however, because Cyborg promptly snatched the reptile from the ground and began to holler a stream of insults at his wriggling form.
Well, there goes that dream, Raven thought dryly. She knew it had been too good to be true.
Inadvertently, Raven glanced back to Robin and Starfire. As predicted, the Boy Wonder and the alien girl took their companion's distraction as an opportunity to kiss one another, with maybe a few more risqué maneuvers that Raven would have preferred not to witness.
She surveyed the chaos in the Titan's living room, feeling slightly resigned. It was times like these when Raven really had to stretch her memory to recall exactly why it was she lived her, instead of anywhere else where she did not have four hormonal teenagers for roommates.
Today, the market was a safe zone. Any other day, Raven would have picked a bookstore, her favorite café, or even her room in order for some time away from the Titans (all of whom, Raven hastily reminded herself, she loved very dearly).
But today was today, and Raven felt compelled to walk into Jump City's only Ralph's and roam the aisles, inspecting apples for bruises or deciding which rotisserie chicken looked the most appetizing beneath the glare of a heat lamp. Titan's tower could always use more food, anyway; God forbid if Raven had to choke down another T.V. dinner because everything in their fridge had turned blue. After all, couldn't go out for pizza all the time.
So there Raven was, staring down boxes of cereal and deciding whether or not she should purchase the in-store alternative or brand-name kind, when she felt something familiar.
Raven didn't hear something familiar, nor did she see something familiar - she felt something familiar. Like a color in the air, or smelling a flavor, Raven sensed something she had encountered many a time before. Her head spun with possibilities, but as each one seemed more and more unlikely, confusion took its place. Raven was not a particularly popular person, so the chance the presence would be friendly was slim to none.
That unease, that strange sense of foreboding which had made a quiet home in Raven's mind, suddenly sprang to life. The sensation raced through her entire body, stiffening everything in its path.
What now?
Raven grimaced, pulling the hood of her cloak over her head.
Carefully, she set her grocery basket down on the yellowing linoleum and began to creep around the corner of the candy aisle. Raven desperately hoped no villain was trying to take over the world in the middle of a supermarket. The Ralph's was filled with diligent mothers pushing bouncing babies in their kiddie carts, elderly folk picking out pastries from the bakery, and other innocent civilians. Raven planned on taking down whatever malignant presence with the least amount of damage, so she could get back to wondering exactly what part of "what now" she wanted answered.
The feeling, the intuition, the sixth sense - whatever Raven was willing to call it - grew magnified as she approached the back corner of the store, towards the meat department.
Great, Raven groaned inwardly, we're going to have a killer butcher on our hands.
It's a change in pace, Intelligence replied wisely.
Yay, something new, Raven! It's so exciting! Happy giggled.
How is a killer butcher something good? Timid mumbled to Happy's prancing pink figure.
Forget I said anything, Raven said tiredly to her personalities, silencing them.
By now, the presence was so overwhelming, Raven swore she could see a faint trail of a burnt-orange aura, curling away from it's source. Hiding behind a wine rack, Raven poked her face around the bend to see exactly who she was up against.
A man stood in front of a case filled with cuts of red meat. He was tall and broad-shouldered, with white hair framing his face and lining his jaw. Raven couldn't make much of the rest of his face, as her hiding place only allotted for a profile view, but it didn't matter - Raven had no idea who the man was.
Bemusement rattled her nerves. Raven was positive she had never seen this man in her life, neither did he resemble anyone she knew. She rubbed her eyes and attempted to sweep her mind of any distractions. It was possible she just needed some meditation.
"Azarath, Mentrion, Zinthos," she muttered.
At her words, the man looked up, making eye contact with Raven, and revealing an eye patch secured to the other half of his face.
Recognition clicked between the two of them. Raven nearly had a heart attack, right there, in the middle of the supermarket.
"Slade?!"
Fortunately for her, the man - Slade, in all his unmasked glory - seemed just as taken aback. He was still, one hand gripping the plastic-covered handle of his shopping cart, the other clutching a pack of diced red meat.
Now, on various occasions, Raven had envisioned what her next meeting with the Titan's arch-nemesis would entail. Her fantasies generally involved some gear-filled lair, witty dialogue between the Boy Wonder and said villain, and if she was feeling particularly sadistic, a few well-placed kicks in the groin for ruining her last birthday.
Beast Boy claimed a robotic double of Slade had harassed him when he'd met the Terra look-alike, but for the most part, the Titans hadn't encountered the man who'd managed to make each of their lives a living hell for years. Occasionally, Robin would go off a tangent about how Slade was still out there, no doubt threatening thousands of lives and killing puppies for fun while he plotted something nefarious for his favorite group of teen heroes.
But with the Brotherhood of Evil and subsequent problems, such episodes became less and less frequent, much to the collective relief of the Titans. Privately, Raven had halfheartedly hoped Slade would cause trouble in some other, far away city. The entire Trigon fiasco put Raven's view of Slade in a strange spot: while he'd chased, burned, and generally caused more misery for her during the end of the world, it had been Slade who led Robin to her weak, childlike form, Slade who helped bring down her father. Granted, the latter was entirely due to selfish reasons (Raven could barely stand the thought of Slade as a person, much less a walking, talking skeleton), but it had been aid all the same. And God knew they'd needed help then.
Still, it didn't excuse his crimes, nor did it lessen her hatred for him.
So to say it was a complete and utter nightmare that Raven was facing an unarmed, unmasked, civilian Slade alone in between the frozen pulled pork and a case of on-clearance chicken was an understatement.
However, Slade appeared to have recovered faster than she did, and gave her a smirk.
"It's been a long time, Raven."
That voice. The voice that had slipped through slits of a two-toned masked, haunted Robin's dreams, and recited her fate as a catalyst to the apocalypse, now fell from the lips of a forty-something year-old man pushing a grocery cart with a bag of potatoes in it. Raven didn't know whether to laugh hysterically or cry hysterically - either way, her reaction was not going to be pretty. Thank God she seemed to have been rendered mute from the shock of it all.
A thick, white eyebrow raised above the eye patch.
"My, my, Raven. Whatever happened to that sharp tongue of yours? It hasn't been that long."
"It's been long enough!" Raven spat, regaining her composure and assuming a defensive stance. Rage blazed her way through Raven's psyche, cackling madly at her newfound freedom and tinting everything in her host's vision a deep red.
Slade considered this, a meaningful expression donning his features. Yet his good eye, the eye Raven knew him by, glittered with promises of darkness.
What now?
"I suppose it has been some time since your father's downfall." Slade conceded, elbow bent and palm up in a gesture of agreement. Raven couldn't shake how peculiar it was to see such familiar nuances, now portrayed by a stranger.
Well, almost a stranger.
"What are you doing here?" Raven demanded angrily. Again, a look of incredulity donned his features.
"In spite of what you and your friends like to believe, I am human."
"But I've never sensed you here before!"
"I had a butler to do the more...mundane chores before."
"What happened to him?"
"He died." Slade's tone was simple. Ice crept into Raven's veins, stinging her bones.
"What are you waiting for?" Brave popped out of the haze in Raven's mind, gun-ho as ever. "This is mother-freaking Slade! Show that creep how much you've learned since he felt you up on -"
"Quiet!" Raven mentally hissed at her green-cloaked doppelgänger.
"Go for the groin," Rage chimed in pleasantly. "He's not wearing armor. It's bound to hurt more."
A grimace twisted Raven's mouth. This was not the first time her emotional counterparts interfered with her actions; more than once, Raven had contemplated lobotomization to rid herself of their presence. Needless to say, they were all vehemently averse to the idea, and luckily for them, Raven wasn't so keen on having her brain poked at.
But now, Raven deeply regretted not following through on her threat. Her head was beginning to pulse with early indications of a migraine, which would definitely make it difficult to speak with Slade, much less engage in combat. Raven knew that if she pulled out her communicator and called for backup, it would only provoke him into battle. He didn't care about civilian casualties. Perhaps she could grab him and phase into the wall, but if she missed or Slade darted out-of-the-way, it was another opportunity for a fight. To her dismay, stalling the man was the most reasonable decision Raven was left with, until some deity took pity on her and gave Slade an aneurism, or had him spontaneously combust into flames.
But what could she say?
Actually, Raven wasn't deterred so much by what she could say as opposed to what to say first. Like, where have you been? Where did you go after Trigon's banishment? Why didn't you fight with the Brotherhood of Evil? Did you erase Terra's memory? Where are you hiding? What are you planning? And why, oh why, are you unmasked in a civilian area, shopping for steaks when you could be using this time more efficiently as, I don't know, Slade?
For the first time in a long time, Raven had nothing to say - not because she did not want to speak, or that she simply didn't have anything to add to the conversation, but because she was struggling to decide on which topic of conversation she wanted handled.
So there the two enemies stood, immobile, surrounded by perishable goods and the occasional beep of a distant checkout counter.
What now?
Slade's single eye bore into her, not blinking, waiting. Seeming to realize his opponent was struck speechless, he tilted his head and inquired, "Do tell: exactly how did you manage to find me?"
"Aside from the obvious?" Raven countered, glaring at the offensive eye patch.
"Yes, my dear. Plenty of people have lost eyes."
Lost eyes. Slade made it sound like his eyeball had been misplaced. How silly of him. Raven was willing to bet everything she owned that his damaged eye had been the result of some nasty combat, or a business exchange gone wrong. Most humans tended to retain both eyes if they led a relatively healthy, crime-free lifestyle.
Sticking her chin out, Raven replied cooly, "I sensed your presence. I followed it."
Slade nodded, like he understood, which only served to irritate Raven further. Of course he knew. He'd worked for her father, God damn it. Who knew what Trigon had divulged about her to his pet skeleton? This thought awakened an old fear, one that held memories of flaming hands and frozen faces and a burning touch, ripping away her clothes and gripping her shoulders as they overlooked a vision of despair, together -
"How's my favorite team of heroes?" Slade drawled, snapping Raven back to the present. He'd taken to leaning against the cart, clearly more at ease than she was. The package of diced meat had been placed neatly on top of the potato sack; vaguely, Raven was reminded of the card game Beast Boy and Cyborg were playing this morning, and didn't think that Slade's grocery arrangement was the most stable of structures.
It was probably the way he liked it, she thought wryly. Unstable. Just like his brain.
"Better, since you've been gone. What have you been doing? What did you do to Terra? What - "
"Perhaps it hasn't been that long, after all," Slade mused, looking far too smug. "You've seemed to regress, my dear. I've always considered patience to be one of your strong suits. I think you're beginning to take after Robin."
Robin.
Oh hell. What would the Boy Wonder do when he found out Slade was back on the prowl, running around willy-nilly at their favorite grocery store, without a mask to boot? Robin would probably crap his pants with excitement, that's what. The chance to finally capture and imprison his arch-nemesis, once and for all. Raven could already picture all the coffee he would drink just to stay up and fester about the man who'd blackmailed him into an apprenticeship.
Something about this image did not sit well with Raven.
"I'll take that as a compliment," she retorted evenly, scanning the area for something to levitate. Maybe, if she had an object approach quietly enough, Raven could knock him out from behind, and -
"If you're not going to fight me, Raven, would you please be so kind as to move out of my way?"
Slade's face was blank, but the boredom was evident in his tone. Rage screeched in fury.
"I don't think so!" Raven snapped, clenching her fists. Dark energy engulfed each hand, pulsating with her heartbeat. "You're a wanted, criminal, Slade. I'm taking you to jail!"
"Really?" A smirk quirked his lips. "After all we've been through?"
It's just you and me now, kid.
"I don't owe you anything!"
But that was a lie. Sickeningly enough, Raven did feel obligated to Slade by some twisted moral dilemma. On one hand, stripping her of her dignity and helping bring forth the apocalypse. On the other hand, saving her from the lava-filled underbelly of the Earth and joining in the final battle against her father. What to do, what to do.
What now?
As if reading her thoughts, Slade said, "My dear, I think you do. Have I done anything to harm the Titans within the past year?"
No. The answer, unspoken and unseen, floated between them.
Raven grit her teeth. "It doesn't excuse your past crimes."
"I never said it did."
God, did he always have to be such a smart-ass?
Still...
At that moment, Raven hated everything. She hated her mother for falling for her father, cursing Raven to be the Gem; she hated the Titans for taking her in and making her develop attachments to them all; she hated Slade, for being the manipulative bastard that he was; she hated God for not utilizing divine intervention to save her ass; most of all, she hated herself for walking into this goddamn Ralph's in the first place.
Suddenly, a vision of Robin, tired yet angry, and Starfire, miserable and neglected, danced before Raven's eyes. Beast Boy, agitated once more about Terra. Cyborg, working tirelessly to make sure everyone retained their sanity.
"Always dragging your friends down," Rage whispered darkly. "Always making them unhappy."
No.
Raven would not do this to her friends. Not when everything just seemed to be going in the right direction. If she owed anyone anything, it was the Titans. They were her family; their happiness would come first.
"I'm going to make you a deal."
If Slade was intrigued by Raven's proposition, he did not show it. Rather, he cracked his knuckles in response, giving the girl a withering look.
But Raven was undeterred. "You're going to give me your address. I'm going to check in on you every day, and I'm going to make sure you're not planning something against the Titans."
Slade said nothing, but Raven swore his good eye started to twitch.
"And this is just between you and me," Raven added for good measure, sticking a finger in his direction. "I won't tell the Titans, and you won't tell anyone else about this. If you try to double-cross me, or hurt my friends in any way, I will personally make sure you rot in Jump City's worst prison. Don't think I won't tell every officer, reporter, civilian and child exactly what you really look like!"
Intelligence was impressed with Raven's quick thinking. Rage basked in the anger behind her threats.
Slade was obviously unamused. Arms folded over his broad chest, Slade took quite some time before answering.
"And, I suppose, the bargain entails that I will remain out of prison, should I comply with your terms?"
Breathlessly, Raven nodded. Somewhere behind them, the wheels of a shopping cart squeaked by.
Slade's annoyance lifted from his face, and for a second, all Raven saw was a tired, world-weary man. She felt no sympathy.
What now?
"Fine. I live on Washington Street, sixteen-seventeen. Knock."
Wait.
Raven blinked. Did her attempt at blackmail actually work? Her head swam with relief.
Without waiting for her answer, Slade abandoned his cart and walked right past Raven, fists clenched by his side.
In a rare moment of indecision, Raven blurted to his retreating figure, "This doesn't change anything!"
Slade did not even pause when he answered.
"I wouldn't expect anything less."
