A/N: Hello m'dears… I hope the week has been a good one for you!
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"You realize that I am only doing this for you, right?" Sienna said as she approached the cell. "I would not otherwise be stepping one foot inside this..." she paused as she glanced at the solidly constructed structure secured to the very bowels of the island by thick rods of glistening iron. A small shudder snaked her frame, and her face revealed her utter dislike for the cage that Slade paced the length of. Then, with a small sigh she said, "Incredibly small enclosure they've got you locked up in."
"I promise to make your sacrifice a highly pleasurable one," Slade assured her in that rich, velvety tone that always turned her insides into melted chocolate. A herd of buffalo stampeded through her fertile mind, each and every one with a poster board strapped to its back that depicted some illicit little image. Heat pooled in her belly, shivered in her veins, and infused her face with mortified color.
"Slade!" she hissed while sending the smirking man a furious look.
An air of innocence (a feat he somehow managed despite the smug smirk trembling upon his lips) emanated from Slade, who asked, "Yes, love?"
That the blasted man was unrepentant about his innuendo was obvious. Her face flamed hotter and she refused to look at Oliver when she stepped by him. She thought she heard him snort what suspiciously sounded like a laugh and shot him a dirty look before swinging her head around to glare again at Slade.
"Didn't your mother teach you about there being appropriate times to make comments like that?" she huffed.
Whatever Slade might have been about to say in response to her question got halted by the slamming of the cell door. The sound reverberated throughout the bunker and increased the slight panic that was already settling into Sienna's bones. She watched Oliver input the code, heard the lock click as the pin hammered home and knew there'd be no leaving the enclosure now. At least there will be no leaving for the moment, she added silently as she stepped over to where Slade was smiling smugly at Oliver.
The all too familiar magma churned in his gut, mixing with the bitterness of his resentment and hatred to become a conflagration threatening to erupt in one volcanic blast. And all of it for the man currently giving him that infuriatingly all-knowing smirk that said he knew why Oliver had shut and locked that door the second Sienna stepped inside the enclosure. Oliver met Slade's gaze, telling him silently that while he knew why it was that he'd locked that door, it was because of him that Slade was behind the bars separating them. Slade's smirk vanished in an instant, pleasing Oliver, who smiled slowly.
A brief battle of wills ensued between them, but a clear winner was left undecided the second that Sienna reached Slade's side. It was like a snake shedding its skin. Every virulent emotion which had been alive upon that swarthy face a moment ago melted away as soon as Sienna circled his neck with her arms. Slade reached up and cupped her cheek in his palm. There was always a wealth of tenderness in the way he touched this woman, the slight sweep of his thumb over that jaw still bearing the reddish-blue mark his fist had left when he'd chosen to strike her in order to save her from his madness. He treated her as if she was something fragile, delicate, and easily broken.
Like a piece of fine china.
Yet again, Oliver got treated to a glimpse of the man he'd thought only existed as a specter in the past. Again he saw the man Slade Wilson had been, once upon a time. Here was the brother who'd taken him beneath his wing, the mentor who'd taught him how to survive, the friend who'd walked at his side through those darkest of days and helped him plan how they'd escape this island. This was the man Slade had been before the Mirakuru, before the death of Shado. This was the morally just man, the one who would risk his life to save those he cared about, who was loyal to a fault and who bowed to no man (no matter the tortures inflicted upon him).
This is the man who'd never have considered murdering an innocent woman just so he could get vengeance for another, Oliver thought with just a trace of the familiar resentment. This was the man he missed talking with the most. This was the friend he so often found himself thinking of. Not for the first time, and Oliver was certain it would not be the last, he found himself wondering how it had come to this. How had the bond they'd forged become so broken? Was it always destined to come to this? Was it set somewhere in stone that he and Slade would become the best of friends, and then the worst of enemies?
Is this all part of the plan that Sienna keeps talking about?
Oliver didn't know. Yet he couldn't deny that it wasn't a distinct possibility. There were too many things that had happened for it not to be likely. Everything that happened was all part of one huge, catastrophic disaster. Were it not for the influence of the people who chose to toss them together on this rock, were it not for the Mirakuru that he'd administered to Slade, were it not for Shado's death, Slade might never have become the revenge obsessed monster he was. His mother would not have died and his city might not have been ravaged by a bunch of masked goons. At the same time, he realized that if none of those things had happened that he'd never have grown up, discovered that he could be something other than he was, someone more than he'd imagined himself capable of being. Were it not for this island, those people, and everything that happened here, he'd never have met Felicity. And, he realized now, Slade may never have met Sienna.
She's as much the light inside him that Felicity is inside me.
One look at the way Slade curled his arm around Sienna, much like a boa constrictor wrapping around its prey, made him see he was making the right decision in leaving her here. That these two loved each other was as clear as the nose upon his face. He felt a slight prick of envy stabbing him in the gut for what the two had somehow managed to find inside this mad world they were living in. He immediately pushed the feeling aside, told himself that he, too, could have what they did if he would just allow himself to reach out and take hold of it. Even as the thought took root in his mind, he set it aside. He knew better than anyone (and largely because of the man who was currently doing his absolute best to ignore him) about the dangers there were in getting involved with someone he cared about.
Seeing Felicity with Slade's blade at her throat had torn a hole in his heart that still dripped blood. The night he'd defeated Slade had reminded him, once again, about how love could never exist in a game constantly being played for keeps. So to protect the woman he loved, to keep her safe, he chose to give her up. Just as Slade chose to give Sienna up. Just because he refused to allow himself the luxury of love did not mean he begrudged the two of them for it. Even after everything Slade had put him through, everything he'd done to him, he could not bring himself to deny the man deserved to find some type of peace and happiness, or to have some type of a life (albeit from behind the iron bars currently keeping them apart).
God knows this island had stolen enough from the both of them.
It was time it gave them something back.
Slade must have remembered he was there still because that cold and hate-filled mask he habitually wore whenever Oliver was around fell into place and he snarled two words.
"Get out."
Sienna felt Slade's body go taut as a string against hers. She cast a quick glance at his face. She had only seen it blaze with that much vitriol once before. His face was alive with an intangible force that was reaching out, and almost touching her with its intensity. Even as a reactive tremor coursed through her at sight of the raw, primitive hunger prowling through his eye, she felt again that compulsion to stroke his face. A sudden hunger to soothe him, to put out that conflagration washed over her. She set her hand on his arm; felt the way the muscles coiled and tensed beneath her palm.
"Slade?"
At first, he ignored her. His gaze remained locked upon Oliver. A quick glance at him showed her how his face could have been carved from granite. The same dark tidings swirled in his gaze that was in Slade's. The tension between them was so intense that it had an electric current stinging the air. Sienna could feel the hair on her arms and the back of her neck crackle with it. Afraid there would be a scene between them (and being far too tired to deal with one), she tried to draw Slade's attention to her by repeating his name again.
"Slade..."
Slade's gaze instantly shifted, pinning her within the heat that pulsed from that glittering orb. She shivered beneath the weight of that emotional charged glare, but did not turn from it as she once might have. He'd only ever struck her once, the night of his showdown with the man watching them with eyes Sienna found hungry with want, with need. If you'd only stop being an idiot... she told Oliver silently. You'd have what he has if you'd but reach out and grasp hold of it.
"Yes, love?"
There was a nip, just a mild one, in that velvet tone. It was a pointed reminder she needed to tread lightly. However, just because they were now enemies did not mean that civility needed to be completely cast off. Sienna rubbed Slade's lower back in small, lazy circles. The muscles quivered beneath her hands, telling her louder than words ever could about how tight a control he'd been keeping over his emotions.
"Could you at least try and say please while you are throwing Oliver out of our cell block? The man did save my life after all."
"No." Sienna let out a disgruntled harrumph. Slade's lips twitched. "You asked if I could try," he pointed out, "and I have answered you honestly that I will not."
"I'm noticing how you say will not instead of cannot," she said dryly.
His fingers slid into the hair at the nape of her neck, rubbed in a slow, soothing circle that made her want to purr with contentment. Then he was saying in a honeyed tone, "I will not lie to you, little one. Not about this, or anything else. Not again. I can promise you that."
That, Sienna knew, was a promise he'd move Heaven and Earth to keep. However, good manners did need to be observed…
"Slade," she began in a soft, reasonable voice. "Oliver brought me here with the intention of using the island and you in order to manipulate me into doing what he wanted me to do. And while I have contented myself with the fact that this is his way of keeping me alive…"
"…you're welcome by the way," Oliver interjected.
Sienna cut him a cool look over her shoulder. "I will admit that his arrogantly manipulative fashion has left me quite a bit put out with him." She swung her gaze back to Slade. "The truth is I might not be alive were it not for his friend, Diggle, putting himself between me and that assassin's bullet. So some civility should at least be shown to the fairy." She snuggled against him, blatantly using those feminine tactics Marta had told her to use, before purring, "Please, Slade? For me?"
His reaction was instant. The thunder clouds lifted and his expression went dark with a different kind of hunger. He bent his head and murmured in her ear, "Only for you, love. Even after," he continued in a tone like crushed velvet, "your little manipulation."
Her lips twitched a second before she said in a voice for his ears alone, "I promise to make your sacrifice a highly pleasurable one."
She watched that dark eye become even more unfocused than it already was. Yes, it was going to be a lot of fun, she thought with a small, secretive smile, to blindside him with statements like that for the next fifty or sixty years.
Then he snapped at Oliver, "Get out," followed by a pause and then a softly growled, "Please."
Well, it was a start. Oliver opened his mouth to tell Slade where exactly he could go, and what he could do with himself, but was stopped when he heard the latch turn on the hatch leading down into the bunker. He, along with Sienna and Slade watched as Diggle descended the ladder.
"Dig?" Oliver asked, one eyebrow shooting up in surprise. "What are you doing down here? Has something happened?"
Diggle glanced first at Oliver, and then over at Slade and Sienna. His expression grim, he said, his eyes never leaving Sienna, "Oliver, man, we got a big problem."
In a lavish office overlooking the glittering city of Metropolis, a man contemplated the great plan he'd put into motion five years ago. A plan which had, much to his great annoyance, completely unraveled at the seams.
All of his time spent on meticulously planning every moment, every detail, undone.
All of the risks he'd taken, the brutal executions he'd ordered, unnecessary.
All of it done in order to obtain a formula that would make him a God among men.
A serum which he still did not have because the man who was supposed to be bringing a supply of it to him had managed to get himself killed.
He did so despise wasting both his time, and his hard-earned money.
It was time to cut his losses.
And that? He thought while he stared out the windows at the world that was his for the taking, annoyed him most of all.
"Alstatia," he said in a low, gravelly voice to the blonde woman sitting quietly in front of his desk. "Contact the Harbinger. Tell him that he is to clean up this mess that Sebastian Blood has caused."
"Yes, sir," came her quiet reply.
Every part of Oliver's body tightened as a thousand possibilities (none of them good) raced through his mind. "A problem?" he questioned. "What sort of problem?"
Of course, he as well as Diggle (and he assumed Sienna as well) knew that what he really wanted to ask was:
Is Felicity okay?
Is she in any danger?
And of course:
Why didn't you bring her down here so I could protect her?
When Dig said nothing for a number of tense moments, Oliver repeated his question. "What problem do we have, Dig?"
Diggle kept his eyes on the woman who was standing in front of the man who'd almost caused Starling to be nuked off the face of the map. For a moment he tried to imagine how a father could hate his daughter so much that he'd sell her into sexual slavery. As a man about to become a first time father (something he'd yet to share with his friends), it sickened him. Barclay James's actions went beyond reprehensible. They were downright contemptible.
"You want to explain it to them, Miss James?" He rumbled gently. "Or do you want me to do it for you?"
"I'm not quite sure what it is you want me to explain to them, Mr. Diggle," Sienna said in a quiet voice. But Diggle saw by the slight stiffening of her body that she had an idea of what it was he wanted her to tell Oliver and Slade about. The humiliation and shame which swept across her face kicked him in the gut. Yet it was not something that she could avoid talking about any longer. Not when so much of it explained what happened to Slade and Oliver.
"Her father sold her to the human traffickers," Diggle stated in a quiet voice, "and then hired Deathstroke to take care of them once they'd served out their purpose."
"What?" Slade and Oliver growled.
"Barclay James sold her to the traffickers," Diggle repeated the damning words, knowing that they were like arrows in the heart of the pale woman standing there so silently.
"He sold her?" Oliver choked out around the fury nearly threatening to consume him whole. He could only imagine the heat of the rage coursing through Slade at hearing how the woman he loved had virtually been sold into prostitution by her own father. "He sold her to those men? Why?"
"I dunno, man," Diggle said softly. "You'll have to ask Miss James about that."
Oliver was about to do just that when he saw Slade had whipped around to look at Sienna. Her eyes had a glassy, faraway look to them, and her face was shadowed by something he still couldn't define. It was the same look he had whenever he stared at himself in the mirror. It was the look of a person haunted by demons they had no hopes of ever vanquishing.
"Is this true, little one?" he heard Slade ask her. "Did your father sell you to those men?"
Miserably embarrassed, horribly shaken, Sienna could do little more than give a jerky nod of her head. Slade pulled her into a tight embrace before he murmured against the cap of her hair, "Why did you never tell me about this, love?"
What he wanted to ask her was why did you never tell me about this so that I could kill the bastard for what he did to you? But he didn't ask her that. He knew it wasn't what she needed, or wanted to hear.
"Why didn't I tell you that my father hated me so much that he sold me into hell?" Sienna asked a second before sliding her arms around him and pressing close. She let out a tiny sigh when his arm curled, much like a cat's tail when it curved around its body, about her waist. "Could you admit something like that, Slade? Could any of you admit that your own parent despised you so much that he'd sell you to vermin just to teach you a lesson?"
His sigh ruffled the hair at her temple. No, he would not have been able to have admitted something like that. Who could?
"Why, love?"
There was no censure in the question, no slick surface of pity or underlying score of blame. All that she heard in his voice at that moment was the sizzle of virulent emotions only barely being kept in check. The animal within him had shifted into hunter mode. Only the lion was caged in a cell for that moment and could not go after the gazelle taunting him from the other side of the Savannah.
"Why, Sienna?" he repeated when she remained quiet. Sienna let out a tiny sigh and curled her nails into the material of his shirt.
"Oh, why do you think, Slade?"
She didn't growl it. No, Sienna just sounded exhausted. And so achingly sad that it ripped his heart into pieces.
"This is about the Mirakuru?"
There was as much surprise as anger in his tone now.
"It's always been about the Mirakuru," she said on one long breath. "Everything that has happened has been about that damned serum."
"How would your father have heard about it?" Oliver questioned. "It's not something I imagine was well-documented."
"I don't know the answer to your question," she told him honestly. "All I know is that formula is the cause of everything bad that has happened in the last five years to everybody standing inside this bunker." She lifted her head and looked at Slade. "And unless we find the shipment of Mirakuru that left Starling a few days ago and destroy it, there will be a whole lot more bad things that will happen to a whole lot of people."
"Where do we begin looking, Miss James?"
Ravaged eyes shifted to him, punching an even bigger hole in Diggle's gut. "Gotham," she told him somberly. "You start in Gotham, Mr. Diggle."
"You think your father has the shipment of Mirakuru?" he quizzed.
"No," she refuted quietly. "But I do know there's one man in Gotham who can help you to track that shipment down and destroy it."
"Batman's only a myt…" Diggle trailed off when he saw the smile curving her lips. "He's not a myth, is he?"
"Is Robin Hood over there a myth?"
Oliver gave her a look that said he was not amused by her in the least. "How many more of those archer insults do you have, Sienna?"
"Dunno, Telemachus," she snipped. "But I'm planning on making up a ton while I'm locked in this cage."
Oliver sighed as Slade chuckled softly. "Do you think Batman will help?"
"Kid," Slade rumbled. "Would Sienna be telling you to find Batman if she hadn't already spoken with him about helping track down this shipment?"
Oliver's eyebrows shot up. "You already contacted Batman?" he asked Sienna, who nodded. "When?"
How was what he wanted to ask.
"On the plane," she replied. "I sent a message to him through a mutual friend that we have."
"Why?"
"Because the other thing that Slade Wilson taught me was the importance of contingency plans."
"You didn't trust me." For some reason, that hurt.
Her lips curved. "I knew you were up to something, Oliver. Though this?" She said while glancing around the cell. "This wasn't what I'd imagined."
"It's the safest place..." Oliver began but Sienna interrupted him.
"You're right," she said, nodding. "Here, with Slade, is the safest place for me." Then she added, "And now that I am protected, you need to go. Pack your arrows, Odysseus, the real journey is about to begin."
On a rooftop across from a small apartment complex, a phone chirped, telling the man who'd been waiting for the appearance of the woman that the Harbinger had been dispatched to take care of that he had a message. One chirp meant a text was incoming. Two chirps indicated a phone call. Three chirps said he needed to return to nest. He had time still. In ten minutes he would be adding her name to the list of those he'd reaped. Ten minutes and he'd be one step, one name closer to being the number one assassin in the world. Ten minutes and the pleasure would burn, hot as the desert sun, through his veins. Ten minutes and he'd feel... alive.
The phone vibrated. So it was a text. He reached down and picked up the vibrating phone in one tanned hand. Silently, he wondered if it would be Truth or Consequences messaging him. Not that it mattered. So long as they fed him what he wanted, he'd serve either man. He slid his thumb across the screen in one smooth and effortless motion in order to read the message sent to him.
I have a mission for you, the first message read. It was followed by a second that said, I want you to clean up this mess.
Interesting, he mused. Consequences is cutting his losses and eliminating all those who could lead back to him.
The Harbinger found himself wondering why. He only speculated about the reason for a moment, however. The gift of three names was far too tantalizing a prospect for him. Tapping the screen he text back: Names?
It was silent for all of thirty seconds. Then the phone pulsated in his palm. He glanced at the screen and saw three names had been typed in the message box:
Justice.
Truth.
And lastly: James Sr.
A soft sound rumbled deep in his barrel chest. The Harbinger had been given a rare treat. A smile stretched across his full lips, illuminating a pockmarked face that only his madre loved (may God rest her sainted soul, he thought).
He text back three words: As you wish.
He then set the phone upon the ground and reached for the rifle he'd laid across his lap. Lust churned in the pit of his belly. The Harbinger thirsted for carnage and fed upon death. Pleasure peaked as he dropped a round into the chamber, heard the click which told him that the countdown to redemption had begun. Now, it was only a matter of waiting for when his target would stick her pretty head out her front door.
Then, only then, would he would reap the next three on his list.
Then, only then, would the hunger gnawing at his backbone be satisfied.