{the snatched spoiler}
-In it, however, the shade of difference which existedbetween the buyers and the stealers of children is very strongly marked-
She had the simple grace to call herself an independent soul. She was free to do as she pleased, and that was a gift in itself. Being free of her father was like being a bird trapped in a horrible cage, and stretching her wings for the first time in her life. It was refreshing, and it made her feel alive and capable. She could be anyone. She could do anything! The sky was hers to conquer, and she was ready for it all. Life was finally starting to make sense, and she felt it all swirling around her, breathing through her wings as they unfurled, and she took flight into the night.
Stephanie Brown still stole things. It was second nature to her, and she didn't have much of a choice. She was a girl who had little skill but what her father had taught her, and she needed the money. So she stole. Sure, she was a little guilty, but she was also kind of proud. At sixteen, she was living better on her own than she ever had with her father. She loved the taste of independence, and she loved to run across rooftops, and she loved the exhilarating feeling of knowing that she was good at something.
Living life as a crook was like having a large blot on her soul all the time. Simple thoughts plagued her, worry and fear over the thought of getting caught. Stephanie Brown was a good person at heart. She knew she was good. She knew, and she feared a good bit of the time for her well being. She knew it was all very horrible, and she'd end up getting hurt, but the blot on her heart only grew. Light was swallowed by gaping shadow, and the smiley kid crook she had once been turned into a smiley adult crook. She called herself Spoiler. Because why the hell not?
Her chances at a normal life dwindled and dwindled, and the light that she sought after grew dim. Steph knew that her life was going down a dark path. When she was seventeen, she thought that maybe things were looking up. She flirted with the boy, Catlad, and she thought, Damn, maybe I can have something that I haven't spoiled for once!
How foolish she was. The past came back to bite her, and one horrible heist gone wrong had bloomed into a poisonous web that had snagged her before she could fathom what was happening. And a spider came to whisk her away. She had not realized at first what had happened, but it made sense after some quick thinking on her part.
What had happened was, admittedly, her fault. She had gone on a heist a few months previous, and ended up bumping into another thief after the same object. That happened to her a lot. So she simply shrugged it off, and stole the thing anyway. It had been a pesky item, and she'd sold it quickly, not thinking much of it. But the thief had come back for her.
The thief, she found out, was a mercenary. And he was called Deathstroke.
"That," she told him, hogtied in a plane going fuck knew where, "is the most bullshit name I've ever heard in my life, and I used to be called Kid Clue!"
She ended up with a bullet in her shoulder, and a gag in her mouth. She grew terrified and feverish after that, her mind half obscured in slumber. The world was raining stars, and they felt like ice against her skin. Lightning pierced her, sending her jolting and gasping, half on the brink of lucidity, but something dragged her under, a monster in the dark. Perhaps the monster was she, and this was the hell she'd been allotted.
"Wake up."
She was slapped, and it was an iron fist that struck her cheek, forcing her to surface in a tub of ice. In reality, she was laying on the ground, her shoulder hastily patched, and Deathstroke's masked face hovering above her own. She stared, her heart hammering in her chest, and she flinched away as he reached for her.
"I think it's only fair that I apologize," said the man, grasping her wrist. She wriggled and glowered weakly. "However, you went into shock before I was able to. I don't want to kill you, foolish girl. I want to train you."
"Train me?" she repeated faintly. Her words sounded slurred, as if she was drunk on her own pain.
"I've been watching you," the man said, pulling her up straight. She winced and gasped, her eyes flashing around the plane wildly. She didn't know what was happening, and she was rightfully in a state of panic. "You have the makings of a good apprentice."
She glanced up at him, her pale eyebrows furrowing together in a bout of bewilderment and alarm. And then she blurted in a thin, throaty voice, "Oh fuck no!"
He slapped her again for that, knocking her back down against the thin blanket he'd laid her on. She'd been knocked out soon after— and that was where her training from hell began. See, she had no choice but to follow him. There was no escaping it, and she realized quickly that if she wanted to survive, then she had to obey. That beautiful taste of freedom had been so sadly ephemeral, she was in dismay at how easily her wings had been clipped. She had no independence now, only aching limbs and prayers that were never answered. Eventually she accepted it. She embraced it.
Deathstroke wasn't as bad as her father had been. Deathstroke was smart, and after she proved that she wasn't running anyway, he got kinder. She bore no love for the man, but she learned to trust him. Why? Because the world was cruel, and it only became less cruel when she shut her goddamn mouth long enough to begin listening. I'm alone, she reminded herself one night, nursing the wound Deathstroke had delivered to her side. I've always been alone, and I always will be. But I have to start trying if I'm going to live long enough to keep being alone.
"Foolish girl," Deathstroke cooed, his blade smashing against her own. She was breathless, sweating, and bleeding profusely from her left leg. She kept going, ducking and swerving around, hissing as she put weight on her injured limb. "You still don't get it."
"Don't care," she hissed, blocking a blow and kicking up her feet, driving them into his chest. She heard herself give shaky cry, and they both toppled back. She, however, actually landed on her back, tears in her eyes, and her leg throbbing with unfathomable pain. Her breathing was erratic as he picked her up by the thin strap of her black camisole. When it threatened to snap, he readjusted his grip to her neck, and she squeezed her eyes shut, her head pounding furiously.
"Start caring," the man barked, his face bare to her, hard and severe, scar tissue visible beneath the dark fabric of his eyepatch. Grizzled stubble crawled across his harsh jaw, and it made him look older than he truly was. His hair was silvery, sheered short. He'd shaved her head when she had arrived, but it had grown out into odd yellow stubble, and now the fine blonde strands ran askew across her forehead. Still shorter than she'd ever had it in her life, but she was glad it was growing.
"Yes, Slade," she mumbled reticently. Then she whacked him across the jaw with the crossguard of her sword. He dropped her, and she stumbled, grunting a little as pain lanced up her leg. She blocked his next blow, and stared up at him with an impassive expression, steeling her features and praying he didn't realize how weak she really was. She felt as though she was about to puke the pain was so intense, and there were tears stinging in her eyes, so she narrowed them.
If Stephanie was steel, then Slade Wilson was metal unearthly. Tempered in hellfire, or the sun, he was a resilient blend of brass and steel, an alloy of brilliance that outshined her and made her feel worthless and forsaken. That left her with sorrow unbidden, and every time she thought perhaps she could impress him, she was left feeling empty and useless.
"Foolish girl," he said, a grim smirk pulling at his thin, wormy lips.
"Stephanie," she told him. She straightened, jerking the point of her sword forward. "My name is Stephanie. If you want me to respect you, then you have to respect me!"
And then, he smiled. Maybe I'm not such a disappointment after all, she thought as she trudged back to her room, nursing a bloody nose.
She met his daughter only once, and it had been a test of Deathstroke's. The poor girl had already lost her eye trying to impress the man, and she was not ready to lose her life to do the same. Stephanie, however, was desperate. The fight that followed had been pointless and bloody, but after it Deathstroke had given Stephanie an almost affectionate pat on the head.
He took her to the League of Shadows once, introducing her only as Spoiler, his apprentice. She was proud that it got her some semblance of respect. And then, the truth of the visit was revealed in a stage of red and black. Spoiler, who was forced to wear the garish orange she despised since her father had once stuck her in the same awful color, became a coldblooded killer. An executioner. She should have stuck with being Kid Clue, if only then because the dark blot on her heart could have been washed away. Now it stained, seeping through the fabric of her soul and bleeding into her heart and mind, turning her into a dark creature. A girl with morals obscured by pain and fire and a stroke of death.
She'd killed the man quickly, sliding a dagger between his ribs before he even realized that he was at his execution. He'd been a league deserter. She wondered if one day, perhaps she would be in his place. I'll know better, she told herself. In the following days, she refused to leave her room until she was dragged out by Deathstroke, and warned of the repercussions of her insolence.
"I'm a thief," she spat at him, raising her chin high. "Not a killer. You wanted me to be your apprentice, and I thought you meant that you wanted me to steal. I thought you were making me stronger so I could fight my foes instead of running away. I didn't think you were training me to be an assassin."
"I'm an assassin, dear girl," he said, his voice cold and sharp, piercing her like shattered glass. "And you were a child who needed directing. I've had apprentices before, and perhaps I simply did not expect you to surpass my expectations."
She had no response for that. Instead she shoved him away, and stalked down the corridor, letting him follow at her heels. "If I'm going to kill for you," she said stolidly, feeling worms crawl through her stomach, a plague itching beneath her skin. She felt disgusting, and her conscience was eating at her from the inside out. I'm an awful person, she thought wildly. I'm going to go to hell. She didn't know if there was such a thing, but she hoped there was a god so someday she could repent. "I want to be Spoiler. I want to look like me. Give me a uniform that suits Spoiler, not Deathstroke's apprentice."
He rewarded her with a mousseline cloak the color of amethysts, and it rippled around her form like purple water. Sheer and thin, it was delicate and beautiful. She wondered why he cared so much as to give her such a gift, when it would just be ruined in battle. But she found it was much more durable than she had credited it for.
She was nineteen, and she knew her place. She did what she had to, and that was a world of guilt and confusion, but she did it. Stephanie could only pray that someday she may break free of the hold Deathstroke had grasped over her, but there was no end in sight. She spent nights thinking, imagining happier scenarios, and letting herself be lost in a field of dreams.
"Spoiler," Deathstroke said to her one evening. She had just gotten back from a mission involving the Teen Titans, and frankly she was a thousand percent done with everyone and everything.
"Yeah?" she asked, plopping down at the table, grabbing his coffee cup. She took a gulp of it, and smirked up at her mentor, setting it back down on the table. "That shit is cold, Slade."
"I've been waiting," the man said, watching her with his one eye staring at her coldly. She balked, wondering what she had done wrong.
"Um," she said, pushing her sheer hood back. Her short blonde hair curled around her chin and forehead, always awry and windswept. "Oh. That's cool. Why, exactly?"
"Well, my dear," a low, archaic voice said from behind her. Stephanie stiffened, her eyes widening as she turned slowly to meet the piercing green eyes of the Demon's Head himself. Oh shit, she thought, her heart beginning to pound furiously against her rib cage.
"Oh shit," she blurted, jumping to her feet. Deathstroke peered at her, and said nothing, reaching for his coffee with disinterest. "Ra's al Ghul. Slade, what did you do?"
"Spoiler," Deathstroke warned mildly, taking a sip of the grossly bitter, grossly cold coffee.
"That was a serious question," she said, glancing at Ra's with wide eyes. "I know I didn't do anything, so it had to be you."
"I have a job for you, Spoiler," Ra's al Ghul stated, watching her with a mask of pure impassiveness.
"You," Stephanie said, "have a job. For me?"
"Calm, Spoiler," Deathstroke sighed.
"Yeah, yeah," Stephanie said, waving him off. "Okay, wait, back it up. Why me? I mean, no offense, I totally trust your, uh…" She shifted her footing nervously under the legend's scrutiny. "Obviously wonderful judgment. Sir. Great one." She felt Deathstroke shoot her a look, and she let herself go still, and she schooled her features. "But Deathstroke is a seasoned assassin. I've only just begun running field missions on my own."
"I trust that Deathstroke has trained you justly," Ra's said, raising his head high. "And my mission for you is rather simple. In fact, you are not required to kill anyone except perhaps a cripple."
"Oh." That thought made her feel ill. Kill a cripple? That's cruel, even for me. "Uh, sure. Yes, I mean. Yes, sir."
"Deathstroke, leave us," Ra's said, taking Stephanie by the shoulder. She could feel his long, bony fingers through the thin fabric of her cloak, and she met Deathstroke's eye. She stared at him in horror as he took his coffee, giving her a level look before leaving the room. Stay calm, he'd ordered her. Don't say anything you'll regret. She might as well just say nothing at all.
Once Deathstroke was gone, Ra's grasped her wrist, and yanked her very close. She tried to wrangle her emotions, but terror had an iron grip on her, and she stared up at the man with wide eyes. His green gaze was near the point of glowing, a crazed effect of the legendary pit that kept him alive. She could hear herself breathing, and she was hyperaware of it, wondering if he could tell how panicked she was growing by the sudden change in her breathing regulation.
"Listen to me very carefully, girl," he whispered, gripping her wrist tight enough that she let a little breath of pain slip through her teeth. "Nothing I tell you next will leave your mouth. You will not tell a single soul, and if you do, I will have your tongue, and that is only where I will start." He lifted her chin with the tip of his finger, and Stephanie shuddered involuntarily, her eyes flashing away. She didn't like the way he was staring at her, as if she was a piece of meat.
"Yes, sir," she said, her voice soft and demure. "I understand. Not a soul."
"Then sit." He released her, and she blinked rapidly, dropping into the chair behind her. Vaguely she wondered what was so important that the man couldn't wait for them to come when summoned, and instead came to them. "This mission is dire. And if you fail, I will make certain you suffer a fate far worse than death. Do you understand, little girl?"
"Yes," she said weakly. Her mind was revving on overdrive, and she thought she might scream in panic. What if she failed? She wouldn't know what to do. "I understand."
"Then let me begin," the man sighed, sitting down across from her. "First you must know your objective. A ghost has escaped me. Catch him and bring him home, unharmed, and you shall be handsomely rewarded."
Note: Figuring out what to do with Steph was a little tricky. Deathstroke was my top option because I have a soft spot for Deathstroke. So everyone is an assassin except Timmy and Jason. Ha ha oops.
Cred to Victor Hugo. Because, you know. He's a cool old dude.
