Teen Titans Renegade; Prison Break – Break Out!
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Chapter 15: Hard Truths
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It was March now, just months passing by and Dick went along as Slade's apprentice; a sullen faced boy beside a serial murderer, what a pair they made.
When one spring day; the rain drizzling down from the safe house, right parallel and across from the roof in the rain, that Slade would be having his Renegade take out their latest target from…. Dick, almost faltered by whom it was watching the skies.
None other than the man he had disregarded in those months as a true coward. No Robins, no Batgirl.
Just, The Dark Knight up against a threat in this city.
This city, being no one's particular territory in Belarus.
"He has to move…" Dick groaned and kept his sniper in position, Slade through his ear piece as the man tried to warn the boy of any implications should he abandon his post.
The man the Bat was guarding soon moved with any delegates in a cluster. Dick clucked his tongue and set the device on a timer. He had to get to the bottom of this.
"You have six seconds to drop your weapon and remain; I know what official was in your file for an execution." The bat brought out his batarangs as Dick flinched a little at the man's expression.
"Or, his termination. Right, Slade?"
A stepping sound of steel toed boots came from behind the staircase wall of the rooftop where Dick had set his sniper –
Slade though, had decided not to trust him again.
But, it was for his own protection. Bruce would just have the Titans killed. He'd go back in a cell and be studied for any…abnormalities.
His eyes went wide as he backed up into his new master, the man nodding for the kid to move behind him as Dick's traumatic view of this was to just stay small and out of the way while that stupid figment from the dust made matters worse behind the bat and Deathstroke's backs.
~He's not here to help anyone but himself. Why not leave this one to the professionals? Your master is just looking out for your best interests.~ The fake lied and Dick nodded, Bruce picking up on the signals.
"He never destroyed the dust. Dick; I've been trying to track his last location – you have to know the whole truth."
"He doesn't want to here anymore, Batman!" Slade had come at him with a smoke pellet barrage, yet Bruce was trained to wake through haze. He dove into the brute as Dick tried to ignore the memory of the fight outside of Belle Reve.
"No…no…. don't kill him! Please!!" If Batman killed anyone, it would ruin him as a hero. He had to stop the violence. Not like that last time, but how??
"Slade…. ugh!" Bruce avoided a punch as he went and dove into a crouch to land one instead to the mastermind's metal jaw. Slade wiped off the blood. His goddamn presence was an eye sore. It was too late. Slade had kept Dick loyal through deception, and if the bat tried to open his mouth…there could be consequences for them both.
"He lied…. Scarecrow was hired……the DA…. he was, controlled……his mind altered by….hah! A chip, in his brain…. Slade's insignia…. You were –
"Apprentice! Do not engage. Return to the base at once –
"No! Listen to me for once!! Wyatt was also in on Slade's trikc….ghe was…cough….promised Waller's posi –
"UNG!"
Bruce?? You….you have to go…..he's not lying…please! Get out of here!" Dick begged, Slade giving the boy a glare as the rain fell in more drops, his equipment and hair a mess as Bruce forced himself to keep fighting. Even when Slade beat him down…
Wait…was, was he doing that…on purpose??
"Time is short. Renegade. NOW. Retreat –
"I…won't stand…to lie…you…. are a monster …" Growled the Bat as he shot a shock from his glove, only meant for tech. Slade cried out and was to one knee, the figment in his head getting angrier, more irritated while Slade was down.
~You need to listen for once! The bat will make you into a useless mental patient. You can NEVER be Robin if he gets his way. Come back to the safe house, don't make the same mistake of killing your family, twice. ~
Dick just stood, shivering from the rain as his heart and head raced through it. The blur was on two figures. And of Slade going down in a punch as he readied himself for the next hit. The rain was a barrier and his own eye had betrayed him.
Batman took out the rang, Dick watching a flashback of the first time as he strained to realize what Bruce was capable of out of his grief. Jason was alive thanks to Dick, the Titans and Waller. He had to keep things the way they were, even if right now…
Dick lunged forwards and shot his leg out at Bruce, his arms moving in a limber bend back to swipe a rang from Slade's belt.
They stood, barely; Batman's batarang angled at Dick's chin, tipping as he gasped, breathing with clenched teeth as Dick defended, his leg over the lying form on the ground. "Dick, if you try to do what he wants, you'll never learn the truth. Deathstroke wouldn't have died that day. He's a super soldier; his motive was to keep –
Dick snarled and let his eyes tell a new story.
"I don't care. He gets my friends; I get to be his damn apprentice. Who benefits, Bruce? You almost killed them, all because you wanted to save me…you would have killed the only ones I cared about…. just…. just, back off!" He shouted; the item still as aggressive as he demands. " Don't come after me! It's not your decision…. it's, mine….and, I chose to stay…"
Of the rantings of a mass murdering sociopath. The same man who had trapped his son behind bars too tall to scale, the same one who had infected Dick with a virus meant to keep him from budging. Or that menacing, fragile hurt in his son's masked eyes as he pleaded with a huff and a few pants to –
"Stand down…. Batman, or I won't go anywhere. Let us go."
His demands were yet again twisted by the menace who squirmed his way up. His feet moving to Dick's sniper station as he pressed a button, and the shot went right into the window where Bruce had failed to see it.
"Target; terminated." Slade rolled his shoulders. "Our work here is done. Come. Apprentice."
Dick got up, slowly he held the rang and backed in reverse, seeing Bruce's face yet knowing it didn't matter anymore. Slade had ruined him, and yet he didn't feel safe being here. Remembering his greatest loss.
The loss of his trust in a savior for another.
A master, as he and Slade departed from the police sirens and the rioting patrons at the parliament meeting's zenith. Bruce frowned and set off a grappler. His eyes dull and lifeless as he found his way back to the Bat Wing in record time.
That was all, wasn't it.
"I'm sorry. Dick." He fell apart as the man below who had been shot, bled out.
Just as Batman's heart, he was able to set the autopilot as his exhausted frame drifted off into the London fog of springtime.
/
Dick stood in front if Slade as he was going over some steps in his mind, counting as Renegade just stood, waiting to find a moment to break the dreary silence for once.
"You have something to say, then I'll permit it." Slade waved to him as a holographic screen popped up for the man to do some important work; while he was a mercenary, he was also the reigning crime boss of Jump City. The Titans could do little unless he allowed it, and they found ways to get under his skin upon the man's return to the States. He pressed a few buttons, the gears churning above his head as his ferocity was amplified by them and his protégé's next question.
"Was Batman telling the truth; are you really not able to die?"
/
The gears kept going, yet the man's fingers did not. He paused, eye not yet raised as the boy continued to find his strength through many a shattered opportunity.
"If….if you did end up…why then couldn't he do it? I told him to stop and he kept trying, then…he says a super –
"Best left unsaid, apprentice." Slade raised his head now, mask in place as he moved from his seat slowly. The boy tensed as he waited for either an answer or to be punished for his insubordination.
"You said it clearly, shame he didn't listen. That even if I had not STAYED dead, he'd be an enemy like you. You kept him in line as I did for you, yet you protected your master."
Dick's face went to chalk and ash as Slade revealed what Batman had planned himself to do all along.
"I made sure that the deadbeat warden was nothing more than an excuse if he should have succeeded, which he never could." Slade stood up taller, face to the screen as his eye looked back on every detail, Dick slowly starting to crack apart as he couldn't even shake his head like before.
"No…"
"The attorney was hired through my tampering; the chip implanted into your only witness AND Wyatt as well will have disintegrated by now." Je murmured, Dick balling up his fists.
Waller was after me, she used you and the Bat to pull me out of hiding, and your dark knight allowed it, on one condition – that Floyd's sentence with the rest of that squad should be cut in half. In return for his son's safety and rescue; you however, would have gone through Black gate's juvy system, and then. Only THEN." Slade turned to the boy. "Would he have ejected you from the situation entirely. Batman would never break the law to save you, Grayson. Not when his reputation is key to keeping himself at his post for countless others. You are just one in the few many…" He mused as Dick shook, his body not yet racked with sobs. "He "officially" adopted your brother , didn't he?"
Dick bit his lip, his mask feeling useless to him as Slade picked and picked his apprentice further apart. "He called you his ward….his son, so? Which was it?"
"W- we. … never signed them…I never…" Dick's hoarse voice has the elder male's eye twinkle a bit. "He didn't consider it, considering your feelings. What sort of parent neglects their own, Dick."
Dick did know, as he shuddered at the risks that Batman had gone through, he'd told Dick stay inside that death trap. He'd forced him to –
Nearly be raped by Bane's men.
All to get the drug into his veins, where now it would never come out. Slade didn't want to tamper, to hurt Dick any further. Slade had told Wyatt, he was responsible for Scarecrow's gas too. Why was he not going to hate his keeper?? Because it hurt to think that he was going to keep him alive longer than the kid's own adoptive parent?
"He was infected, not thinking –
"It left his system, but he would have killed for you. To have you back. He would have ruined you all to fix your mistake-
"NO!" Dick protested, stuttered. "I….Bruce, he'd never –
"But he was serious, Renegade." Slade moved in closer, his hands soon upon the boy's scrunched shoulders. "You dusted him off, and that was the right move, boy. He would have locked you up regardless of who you once were. Who you can never be again. The Titans by the way, tried to raid one of my warehouses while we were away in London…."
Slade saw Dick's eyes go as before. Dark, lost. "Feel like blowing off some steam? You don't have to attack them too much, just keep them away from my things." By things, Dick was his property. His, as the boy looked back on his time spent being well…to himself. It didn't feel real anymore as he nodded, shaggy hair now in his face as he flipped it away with another bob. "Are, are you sure I'm ready?"
Slade stood in front of Dick one hand moving from his right shoulder to tilt the boy's eyes up to meet his reassuring single grey and blue orb. "Have I ever thought you were not ready, apprentice? That is all up to you. The Titans can be spared, and you can further draw the line with your…ffirmer friends." Dick's eyes grew went as he blinked away his one weakness. "They can't attack, and you can only endure once you come to realize that like the Batman, they would do anything for those nameless others. You are just happenstance; an event they should be more prepared to overcome. A hurdle, as I've been to you in the past as Robin's former enemy made ally."
Dick replied with another nod, Slade dropping his chin as the boy seemed to calm down a little. More than the bathroom had done, trying to fix a broken system by becoming a part of the problem. Dick looked up at HIM now, and that was all he'd wanted.
And he'd listened, he'd learned that Slade's face would be etched over his brand. He could no longer stand beside the heroes when all they wanted was to lock him back away and steal that spark.
"Go, suit up and be prepared to have me contact you once you're in range of the shipyard."
"Yes, sir." An entirely different way that Dick looked, his features placid and cold through the shock of realizing it. That no one was coming. He could not save the heroes without wanting to die first.
"As you were, apprentice." Slade watched as the boy sprinted away into darkness as he was escorted out by Slade's robots. The kid's icy complexion only worsening once he'd come back after facing his team. Slade back then had dragged him in his arms to the medical bay. Like ice, and fir some reason he'd decided that it was time to keep his promise to his little trooper.
He injected the serum dose, and another for many months, saving Dick and having him remember nothing if the gift he had been granted.
Not until….
/
Gunfire split the sky as eighteen-year-old Renegade and Cheshire swerved to catch up with their senior advisor. Slade had gone on ahead, dead bodies in the building looking strung about as if this had been a college frat party.
Katana scrunched her nose and kept walking, Roy and Red Hood also looking at the damage and wishing it were a video game simulation they had lost instead of so many innocents.
"That killer has got to still be inside."
"What if we tried a stealth move –
"K." Red stopped them as he heard a strange sound.
"BOMB, MOVE."
The fell down as the wall came with it. A scientist about Renegade's shoulders, he just looked on as Cheshire grinned and did the talking for Slade's apprentice's sake. He was still in mourning.
"Had enough, Outlaw?" She let her sai direct itself at the others, Dick moving aside to head for his master's copter up top of the roof.
"Oh, you punks are so dead…" Jason twisted his torso and Dick's package went flying in a slid down the hall.
"Let um have it!"
Katana moved as quick as lightening with her sword, the sai pushed as Cheshire made sure to swiftly dodge and slip off to avoid being skewered by the newbie.
Roy used his words, maybe Jade still had a heart under all of that greed…
"Jade! It's us! Sportscaster –
"I'm with the league. Sorry you didn't get the update." She kicked Katana as the swords woman only parried, her hits falling short while Roy used an arrow to catch one sai as it swung towards his skull.
Meanwhile, Dick and Jason were falling over and forcing the other to relinquish the hostage.
"Drop the egg – head, dick head!"
Dick moved, knowing his eyes did not deceive him, until the unit on his ear broke his concentration.
~ RENEGADE; ABORT THE MISSION. NOW. YOU'VE BEEN COMPROMISED. WE HAV –
"I'm not leaving without the objective, sir."
~ Richard! –
"So, it was you…." Dick lowered his arms and Jade had only to groan as Katana was held in a headlock.
Roy had no choice but to use his fists as Jade only made this fight look a bit desperate with a twist of poor Katana 's skull.
"JADE!"
"Let us pass, Harper." She said in a deadly tone. "Give us the body, and nobody loses their head today."
Cheshire. Wonderland and queen of hearts! She was playing them rotten.
Red Hood's fists shook, his mask helmet popping off as the red Robin mask had never left. "I know you're no idiot, bro. Let the guy live. You aren't like Deathstroke. You didn't let us die, so why now?"
Dick didn't speak. He found out that his mind had built up a counter measure whenever he got to this point. When the guilt or fear resisted, he shut down and stayed a Renegade to bleed through the pain.
"Jade." Dick brought up a gun as it went in one side shot into Roy's leg.
Jade blinked. That was….
Jason spat out; his pity diminished as the fake Slade's words soon took over.
~ He'd kick you like this. He's nothing to you anymore, let him go. ~
"You lost it, dude?? I'm not gonna-
"TODD. You can't win. Let us out and I won't do the same thing to you. Get out, or I will take you down."
/
Vomiting was normal for him as the one to greet Dick was not Slade, but Wintergreen on the screen and the bots, who were commanded to escort them in their getaway back in Star City.
An hour in his return, Slade came out of his rooms with bandages strung around his torso and no mask, as if he'd been resting all that time.
"You got the captive out. Jade told me." Slade said with a muttered breath as Dick was ushered in by Wintergreen, the doors shutting behind as Slade's lair hadn't changed much over three years. "You also shot the young, archer."
Slade would never unnecessarily lie, so Dick had decided not to lie. "I did, sir. Nothing major, just -
"At the same time on the way back, do you know who it was I ran into? Asking questions about you, Renegade? "The man ignored him, the building ire there and standing in wait as Slade loosened his clenched fists as well. Dick wiping his lip to not think of what he'd done before having to address…his master, that was what he was.
Again, the boy's eyes grew dimmer. Any pain was washed away, the man taking a fistful of his hair as he wrenched the ex-hero up to look at him, eyes still emotionless as the squinting was a natural reaction. "The archer's EX partner, his mentor Oliver Queen; Green Arrow. If he sees what you did to his kicked protégé, do you know what that means for us?"
"N…no…. sir…."
"You wouldn't, seeing AS I'm the only one that can fix your new mess…. the interrogation went well, I imagine?" The man let go of Dick's scalp and again looked to the screen he'd been buried over in. "The CADMUS project was moved to Metropolis, sir." Dick managed to say through the returning wince of his emotional state. "They've probably upped security, though we have their intel and security codes. The person we took was a steal….ah, and Arsenal was –
"Wounded, but he'll survive. Next time…though you didn't try to attack your brother."
"He wasn't worth it, sir." Dick shook his head slowly. "Batman lost him as well. He only has so many that….that can handle what he does to them."
"That's enough for tonight, apprentice." Slade cut his student off sharply. "Go get ready for tomorrow's briefing with our associates. I want you well rested and with any thoughts finished by tomorrow. The Titans were no trouble….not that you've been needing to hide yourself for very long."
"Titans West…!" Dick gasped, eyes turning back to the month he'd last fought his friends. Slade saw the switch and acted quickly. "They could s –
" Apprentice." Slade lowered his gaze darkly onto the boy, "To bed, that is all."
/
It was age twenty one as the man he once knew, turned out to be unstoppable in his own right. Jason saw the body of his former family rise and return to its post in the shadows, the one overlooking the ex – hero's accomplishments was not far behind as Jason swung out a fist from behind. The one that caught it wasn't who he had expected.
"B…Don't sneak up on me like that." Tim Drake and Stephanie Brown or Spoiler, and Black Bat all stood in single near file behind the cowled crusader, as Jason looked back to the mass of angst running home in the thickest fog Bludhaven had ever witnessed.
"We have to stop the smugglers first, Jay." Tim informed the second eldest who turned to Bruce as he landed a punch.
And the bat allowed it.
"You let him go."
"Not, our concern –
"Your son, just rose from the dead…. again!" As Jason seethed through his nose, helmet off to breathe, Steph took out her binoculars and sighed with a shake of her head and a squint. "Sewers…Figures." Cassandra Cain as Black Bat shuddered at the idea of getting raw sewage all over her new upgraded tech. Such was a neighborhood of poverty and grime, or just a city.
"Spread out. We can always cut him o –
"This time, let him go." Batman stepped towards Todd, front to front. "Dick isn't the one who has the meta- trafficking data we require to shut down the Light's operation."
"What?" Tim blinked up at the bat, who was busy staring at Jason in case he needed to blow off anymore steam. "B, Dick is pushed in a corner. We can take him –
"Renegade is lethal." The bat went on to say. "Though Bane and the league of assassins right now is more frustration than we need and they have the answers we want. Deathstroke is just a proxy to the Light, he doesn't own anything. Slade on the other hand….is a threat."
"Deathstroke and…" Stephanie trailed off as Black Bat shrugged her shoulders. "Are we seriously saying, or are you stating that they aren't in the same league? That his two identities are…different?"
"One manipulates to get answers, the other is cutthroat and enjoys rubbing elbows with the fam." Todd snorted. "All the more reason to get into his sights before he becomes impossible to catch –
"There is less to debate, or would be if you two just…." Tim heard Cass talk before, but this was a first as everyone looked her way. "He's there, he looked unharmed for now. We can save him once Slade's mini empire is in shambles." She said, less than confident that it would fall. "The Titans are not powerless to keep him from taking the city, and he's not there to do anything but be a pest most of…"
Steph blinked below her hood. "You…. just called him a roach, didn't you?"
Tim bit his lip, Steph snorting as the call was a bit uncalled for. Cass blushed a shade too dark.
"Whoa, ok…. this is –
"SPREAD OUT!" Jason shouted as Batman forfeited his fist into someone's face. This was just his way of taking back control of his family's dignity, before one of them did something they might later regret.
/
"They are still just kids…" Dick winced as Wintergreen plucked a piece of glass out of the younger man's leg with a set of tweezers. "At this time in your life, who told you to take that leap? You fell, could have been more than a few shards in your torso." Slade whacked the boy ex – wonder in the back of the head as he winced. The reaction from before had since vanished and the prescribed drugs to keep the figment of Slade helped poor Renegade to get his new life together. The Light was an organization that was fond of exploration and expansion as well as making themselves highly anonymous. Dick had just been there to keep the bat's kids off of their trail, yet now?
He'd just liked too much to get whapped for being a bad apprentice.
"To the main room after for a debriefing." Slade told the assassin, his teeth gritted as he was strung up with a shot of some pain killer that stung like a –
" Apprentice!"
"Yes, Nnn…. master…. Sorry…Won't happen again…" He sweat through the stress, Slade getting a glare from Will as Deathstroke just left the two to patch things up in the meantime.
/
"He's not going back to them." Dick was resting after their little session of punishment. Will and Slade stayed up to watch the news and so far, there was truly no real drop in critics over the newest Wayne to join the pack. A boy of ten, dark green eyes and no smile. None.
"You know that young lad by chance, sir?" Will drank out of his china cup as Slade did the same. He mulled over his options. "Once, it was a long time ago for that to have been something of importance. Ra's is that boy's grandfather." Slade told his old friend. "And the father, is none other than Wayne himself."
/
Dick was nearly immortal as Slade upped his training each day, the strain getting to him no more than it had at eighteen or even fifteen when he'd lost in a war against himself.
"Keep your arms up, no getting sloppy. I don't see you trying, apprentice! Face it!"
His fear was that he'd break the robot. Tear it to pieces as its claws went down, just as he grabbed one arm and pulled. Slade was walking over, the grip getting more frantic as the wrenching of bolts and –
Dick dropped the arm and heaved up his last meal of that day.
"If that had been your target, you would have needed to fix him up with your own uniform." Slade grabbed the ex-hero's arm and hoisted his body from the floor. "All my knowledge, all my power…yet that's not what you really want. Is it, Renegade?" The man hissed the question just above the boy's shoulder. He panted, brow dripping as the bot lay motionless by his knees. "No…. I….I want…to control it…why…why is th –
" Robin was stubborn, impatient and reckless as you are now. Do you want to go back to what you were, Renegade? Die like you did when your own friends had almost ended your life??"
Dick fought the memory. Through the haze, he saw Raven sending her waves of black and white to lap at his flesh. Starfire roasted him on a spit and knocked him off of a ledge so high, he could feel the creeping vertigo that had never once existed.
Cyborg insulted him, told him to wake up and do so many things that he just couldn't do. Beast boy had snarled and slashed him up, stomping on him until he groaned, blurry vision as soon as a bot had recovered him not too far from where he had fallen. He'd woken just before the door, not even as they carried him in and Slade was there. Fiddling with wires and so many massively annoying beeps…. he was dying then, all because they couldn't listen to him. He was always doing it for them. To save them!
"No." Dick snarled out as Slade had his boy stand up taller. "Good, now finish it."
Renegade could erase lives, cut souls out of living dummies and stitch them back together again.
However, he could never defeat Slade until he was sure he could live through enough torture.
He could do anything with the right, motivation. The day he'd decided to quit being Slade's good puppy, the day Slade was at least half way to a "very bad place" while Dick took his revenge in the swiftest moment. He took the trigger and it was done. The Titans were free. He drugged Slade while he was bloodied and worn, Will not here but in another city someplace off. Dick walked out the door, seeing so much of his complexion again go to fog and hail. He walked out with his hands in his pockets, money in his bank account until he had to fess up to Slade again, and he had a plan only to see to it that the man would not touch him this time. He was ready to bring himself to justice.
/
Epilogue
Black Gate was for people like him and Slade had complained about it at nausea in their time as master and apprentice in a rather flowing narrative. He was given his orange and black, but not the kind his mind needed to conjure up. A somber afternoon of anti - psychotic low dose drugs and a way to call one last person to the stand later, Bruce answered and he even told Dick he'd see what could be done.
A month in this place, his eyes sagging before the door went off, the buzz an indication of a visitor at his block.
The white hair, glass eye and suit had the ex-boy wonder desire to know if he'd imagined the whole episode, that was until Slade snuck in and made him a rather tempting offer this time at age twenty-one.
"You don't get much sleep on the heavier doses…" The man sat back; his eye brow raised while Dick's stayed lowered at the table. "Feel like apologizing yet?"
"Not even if you paid me to kill a guy."
Slade snorted at the answer. "Renegade never died, but where I wonder, is the boy wonder?"
"He's not here, leave a message –
"That's all that you have to say?" Slade cut the ex-hero off. "That damned laceration was a dozy."
Dick replied back cheekily with a fake smile. " Glad you liked it! So, should I give you another -
"You can't stay in here, kid." Slade hissed across the table. He knew Dick was hiding his emotional guilt with pills and banter. The wit was lacking this time. "Look, you can't be….in here, if this is that bat's t –
Dick raised his face.
"You, took his advice." Slade felt a slap in the face by that look.
"Maybe." The ex-hero didn't have a poker face before. Had this place hardened him even more or did Slade do all of the work to create a perfect killing machine…
Slade sat back, fingers drumming against the table between them. "We'll find a way. You didn't get….?"
"No, they called me the emo kid and said I'd put a curse on anyone who got too close." Dick sighed. "Oh, and I know how to snap a person's collarbone –
"Did you?"
"No." Snorted the ex-hero. "I wanted to, but I do have a dream to get out of here once I'm no longer a raging psycho."
"You'll end up as one if you stay another month." Slade looked to check if the guards were giving them some space. "Here." Slade moved his hand over as he gripped Dick's with a bit of a squeeze. "If you ever need to be set free of this cage, you hang onto this. Bruce won't do what you need him to." The man told his still technically a protégé softly. "I don't want to see you change anymore."
"Like you did by making me immortal." Dick deadpanned, head turning to ignore the man. The
"The Titans aren't my family. Batman cared…he can't do more but you'd kill to have m –
Dick stopped that sentence. Slade motioned to move and leave his chair, knowing all too well what the ex – hero was thinking. "I have your best interests; you'll know how to find me." He tipped his head to the guards as the men checked and found no device.
It wasn't until Dick found out that his record wouldn't allow him respite that his bubbling well of feelings finally had him press the only button he could. That was only a few weeks later, as a prison break had the protégé waiting for the man outside.
He didn't have to though. He had a choice, so he didn't go and find the man.
He instead, went to go locate the rest of himself.
/
"You heard about the league fightin' off the legion of doom? I heard the assassin Deathstroke got himself a new look – alike."
Dirt cheap bars were a great place to pick up information and snag something to heat his lungs. In the colder months since the spring, Ric Greyson (Changing it slightly) had never run into the arms of anyone who had promised to save him. He made scratch as not really an anti – hero, and even the bats had failed to scent him out of Blud's less grungy of street saloons. He'd cut his hair into a crew cut. Wore baggy clothing and lied about his age. He'd become a master espionage agent in the time it took to dismantle a bomb and now? Now?
"She's cute. Wonder if her daddy would kill anyone fer sayin' that."
"Deathstroke could trace a rat in Manhattan to Gotham. Ya think? Just drink and keep yer hed down…"
Ric waltzed into the bar with his thug dynamic of interest to some women in low cut dresses by the entrance.
"OH, are those real pecs? Wanna sh –
"You." Ric ignored the women and made his way over to the bar. "I got a date with…. Sionas. You wanna point me to his back room? I know you aren't just a bar on the outside." He smirked at the two men; their drinks downed rather quickly as they hurried off coughing a fit. Ric turned to the bar tender.
"You know em?"
"Yeah."
"Got a real bad score to settle, he has somethin' I need." The man that he was, the bats and knives coming up as Ric got ready to fly. He thought he'd already found it….
/
Damian Wayne had run after a crook with an owl mask sneaking into the manor and he didn't quit his chase until he was halfway through the city. When it finally dawned on him that the nutball was gone, a set of boots were heard clodding behind his panting form.
"You lost, kid?" The man was with short dark hair, built like a tree and indefinitely gave off a strange vibe. Dami sniffed and stood to dust off his coat sleeves. "No, I am quite capable of finding myself back in the residence of my choice." The boy moved and yet the man walked ahead of him, Dami squinting to see….
Wait…
The man walked faster, Dami only tried to keep up. The man's white tank hid a few tattooed letters in another language across from it –
Dami snarled and as soon as he'd gotten very close to unmasking this smirking weirdo…
He started to dash!
Dami was not ok with being undone, and they were in….
He looked, the manor! How did this freak know where he had to be?
The grinning idiot turned while jogging before running even faster, wha –
Dami was already returning every ounce of energy to his lungs with a yell as the stranger only laughed into the night, a family event. Not a psycho clown. An actor on a stage as the youngest Robin didn't try again to pummel this loon in the spine.
He did, yet the bouncy punk just got back up, his grin as sun shine friendly as the image of one such…
Dami's eyes shut as he bolted up onto the walkway of the Wayne family matter, the feet of that trotting psycho had vanished. Dami looked up in a tree, his barking insults were enough to make Ric snicker.
"Get away from this property, poser! You should be locked up for –
"Ah, so I got you home? Is knowing where I lived a crime?"
The man smiled down, a light going on in the hall only feet away as Ric rolled his eyes and then his whole body as the branch turned into a trapeze high bar.
"Damnit! Who are you?? You can't run away! Hey!"
A dog barking up a tree, Ric's concern turned on him as a face from the window had the ex – hero flee into the bushes. Dami started "barking" again as Alfred came out to tug the young master, Bruce watching from the window as Ric took his time escaping down the hill into the garden.
/
Bruce came later, his huffing was an indication of his annoyance from Dami's episode.
"Damian claimed that he was made to run after a fae. Though, he said it to humor us both."
Dick returned to the world as he leaned back into the trunk of an old oak. The tree had stood here in Gotham for probably as long as Renegade would with the serum coursing through his veins. He wasn't Renegade however, and he still had a lot of himself to recover since those days…
"You act like you don't exist." Bruce chastised his old ward. "Have you decided on a name, a city?"
"Blud has my heart. And, a name? I can't give you an answer on that yet." Dick looked at the ground, arms dropping with a flop. "The owls almost took him all over the city. You were right." Dick chuckled; Bruce having had a sit down with this false face before. "Kid is a hot head, but he can kick a grown "me" down if he gets the jump…. What are you going to do? Train him to be a better Robin –
Bruce turned to Dick, a hand on his arm as Dick just chuckled nervously. "Jason…he gave it up way too soon –
"But you've never forgotten."
Dick looked at him, Bruce's smile threw the antihero a loop. "That tattoo says in Romani "Robin." There is still some part of you that's a hero, Dick."
Richard's body would have gone into that dark place, had he been given the reason not to flee. "Dami needs someone, if I one day am not here…I want you to take up the mantle. Become a father to that boy until you're sure about my status."
"When." Dick breathed. "When are you going to break that kid's trust? You can't be –
"You know this city; you know who you are and I don't care about what you did to survive. You never killed anyone, you hurt them like I taught you. But you never took a life."
"You're wrong." Dick couldn't listen to this…. he was, giving his home, his cowl to…
The worst Robin?
Why?
"I can't take care of him! That's not my problem…. you're trying to save anyone, stay. Be what he needs. Stop…. stop doing what you can…."
"I can't, I need you. Dick."
Slumbering away, the words were there. He was needed? He, had his family but Bruce really didn't care that he was a wanted…. wanted…
"Don't cry, not here. Come inside." Bruce sympathetically let the weeping adult pull himself together. He had family, he'd never be alone. "I'll be sure you can have your room back." Slade had given Dick a lot. He had treated him as if the power inside was, useful. But…
The cold bars of a cell that thick could not compare. He trudged forth. Finally forgiven, could he really succeed as Dick Grayson again? Could he really be, a hero and do what Slade had told him could never happen??
In the window of his room, Dami stared outside, his hand grasping an image in the manor that had still been in that one empty room that was about to be occupied again.
"You never left, acrobat." Smirked the kid as he set the photo down and pulled the covers over his head.
"Glad to finally meet the very first of the batch, yet you'll never be as good as me…." Dami yawned and ignored the feet in the hall. Dozing off and imagining a banner and parade held in the new Robin's honor.
This was going to be fun, to have another brother…. well, he'd get to assure his conquest even further. The hall lights went out, the crickets chirping.
And owls, hooting as phantoms.
Waiting for their time to rise and greet the next witching hour.
~ FIN ~
/
Ric was more of a ruse to get away from Slade. The court, the light, all of it is in different order and I made it so the serum saved his life but at a cost he couldn't manage to maintain. Dick lost his overall "self" by shutting down which was actually a side effect of the effects of the drug countering the dust Slade used. The drug he was really given wasn't the dust, but a reagent that worked alongside it to you know, make him a bit more agreeable and it wasn't until Dick got off the pills that he found what he was missing. Bruce even after all that, still knows Dick is not a killer. He acts tough, but he's more a punk than an anti – hero. He didn't kill "yet" and Slade waited too long once Dick ended him (until he healed) and destroyed the probes device, deactivating them. Slade later tried to help Dick but, Dick had no desire to play lap dog to a merc like he had been. Dami was tugged out of bed tailing a Talon, so Dick was back in town when Bruce saw him by some happenstance and urged the man to be vigilant since the court was after the new kid hero. Bruce is hinting that he WILL go on a dangerous mission and that he MAY NOT come back while he needs a stand by batman for however how long. Dami needs a teacher but noted; Slade has Rose as his protégé, she is still too young so Dick may end up as Renegade into THAT later arc. Didn't want a repeat. So, did it look ok towards the end where Dick gets his playful spirit back? Tell me in the comments, till next time!