Teen Titans; ReBeL Yell – If I Had Stayed a Renegade –
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Dreary cause of my autoimmune condition popping up to make trouble, so this one is about Dick being ill while combatting his insecurities while still as Slade's apprentice. Who comes to the rescue, but your own worst critic? We shall see…a bit long so hand in there, Renegade!
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Fractured
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"Swim to shore!!! Apprentice! Dick? Damn it!"
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"Dick….is he –
"Richard tried to…
"I don't know what he was thinking, Will…."
"Wait, yes…he's waking up…"
/
The steady beeping of a nearby hospital monitor pulled him from his daydreams.
Two figures, blurry, towered over him.
He was….
Dick felt his eyes itch, nose burning by the heightened recall of just that week on the ship known as…
As…. The Ravager…
Coughing, his cough…he looked up and strained to see the blurry characters with his ebbing sights.
"He's alright…" There was the oldest; Wintergreen. He looked tired and as drained as Dick was…the boy being combined to a hospital bed, sweaty. In a thin gown…while he was…
And then, one other voice shattered his illusion back into the ground. Shards as thick as tree trunks, he forced his words to come as they did. He coughed, finding that thought now utterly useless.
"Good, you're awake." A voice sounding, unamused as Dick curled his fists. His iv-drip allowed that much movement. "Don't get up." Slade still wore his mask as Deathstroke; it was their first hit together as…as…
Criminals, killers… He had jumped, gone after something in the water. Dick winced at the pain towards the crown of his head and to his masterfully bandaged temples.
"A concussion was diagnosed, though minor…I want him fully recovered and ready to pack up by the seventeenth."
Slade told Will this as Dick tried to open and close his fists. "I…what happened….to…"
"Not another word, apprentice." Slade commanded the kid with a lowered and overpowering glance. "You'll focus that energy on getting out of this bed. We'll resume some simple routine check ups for a few more days but I will be administering a special solution to speed up the process."
He was talking about him; the blood of Slade's own calling was the kind that could stump even the most brilliant of doctors. He was going to force Dick to get "better" by…
The last time, it had been painless enough. Just a prick and some stitches. The second time however?
He'd become ill for days.
Dick shook his head and dragged his fingers to latch around the drip. Will tugged the boy's arms down and fastened his straps, oh yes. The kind of beds Arkham NEVER ran out of.
Dick bit his lip and tugged, panting and biting back a whimper as his skull felt ready to pop.
"Not this time, Richard." Slade nodded to Will who was too busy dragging out something unethical from a medicine cabinet behind them.
"No…no! I…I can't! Hu…hurts…the serum…it….no! Get that away, from me!"
"It will hurt a lot more if you continue to disobey and damage yourself like this." Slade chided the boy and clamped down onto his arms from tugging against the restraints. "This is for your own good. You're going to sleep this fit off."
"No…I won't go through wi…. with it!" Dick growled and would have kicked, had Slade not been so agile. "Will!" Slade called over his comrade who had gotten a long needle ready. "Trust me, kid." Slade let his breath tickle the boy's nose through the grates of his mask. "You'll do fine. Let me help, or you won't be in one piece again."
"Slade!" Will shouted at the man, shoving him aside in time to see the horror on Dick's young face. "This is only temporary, child. Please…Try to relax…" Will breathed a sigh, as a tear was held back from Richard's swollen and bloodshot eyes as the needle breached pale skin.
/
A few hours and a day later, Dick didn't look so good. On the upside, his injuries were healing well enough, but he had acquired flu- like symptoms and a high fever as the hero had predicted he would once again suffer as before.
A bit more aggressive than the last time Slade had injected him, to save him from an injury that Slade's torturous jobs had only aggravated, Richard to ask himself; was he even cut out to BE this reckless?? What the hell did Slade see in a useless brat who couldn't even take his medicine properly…?
The hours felt much longer. Day after day, Slade's butler came at extra intervals to check the teen's vitals and to replace his drip. Soon he was off it for good, but the ache of pure hunger had returned in the form of remorse. Another side effect, so he'd gotten liquids to digest before oatmeal... Flipping mood swings, he figured were part two of the side effects as he'd cried over his bowl like a toddler. How had Grant or Adeline Kane put up with this, Dr. Strange? Was Dick destined to do the same?
/
In his medical bed, his thoughts seemed to riot, while his healing skull paid little mind that it had been experimented on by some underqualified and uncertified mad scientists. Wintergreen might have rubbed his back before as Dick cried into his pillow, but the pain in his head wasn't at all why he wept into the sheets every night. His eyes had been opened, he decided to believe. He'd convince Slade he was not cut out to stay as his protégé. That he'd slow the man down with these fits, he'd only get sicker. And because he wasn't compatible with Slade's miracle curative, that made his case even more plausible when it came to begging for a way out.
He said he'd never do it, but…
Dick wouldn't survive another swim with the sharks in his state. He'd end up blowing himself to bits from the extra trauma he'd had to add to the list of afflictions caused by that one, mad man.
Seeing bodies killed one by one with a single bullet each to the skull. Sprayed with blood on a rocking ship that was headed, out for deep water…
He felt panic rise in his chest as he coughed, shivering at the thought of replaying those events.
A full-blown post traumatic experience as Dick imagined Wintergreen still with a calming hand to his spine.
Telling him to hush and let it all go.
A few days more, just two, and Slade stepped in for a visit. That was when Dick was ready to plead his case.
"Up? Wonderful." Slade was pleased. His masked eye said it all, but his heart…wherever that still was…
"I don't think I should join you on any future missions, sir." Dick gulped, seeing Slade's stance stiffen.
"And just why is that, apprentice."
Dick opened his mouth to speak, now permitted to do so. "I'm getting injured more than you or Will, and I'd only slow you down. If I stay, one day this job may have me not coming back here. Alive."
Slade paused to consider this. It was logical to fear death. Dick had only just discovered Slade's real occupation by the apprenticeship. His lies had since run out and now, and Will was going to lose a lot of money in this bet.
"I'm only human, Slade." Dick sat up and rebuked strongly to his keeper. "If I die like one of your sons, what would be the point of all this? You wanted a loyal apprentice, but I don't want to end my life to prove to you that I won't ever betray you. These jobs ARE suicide!" He exclaimed; his brow coated partly due to the returning fever. "If I'm not compatible with the same serum that made you…invincible, then maybe someone else with powers…" Dick headed a sigh, gripping at his sheets, heart pounding by the stress of having to confront his fears like this.
"I'm only human, but you think I have nine lives…well, I don't. So, I'm requesting that my jobs stay here. In this city and not out in the middle of nowhere, where not even the "highest" authorities will be able locate my body…"
The elder was quiet, but the confession was a strong one to pin onto the man. He didn't have to think that long and hard on what he was about to counter, as he'd decided.
Dick's hope had to go. It was treason if ever Slade saw it, and very unbecoming.
He decided to set the boy straight, fears and all.
"You stayed my apprentice." He began. "You swore to serve me, and no one else, Richard. That meant through war zones and even to the guillotine."
Dick stifled a small gasp, eyes shining back with tears.
"If you try and get your way, try to change our agreement because of a little blood and sweat, you can't even be called a hero again. Can you?" He hissed with his eye on the child. "I chose you; it should have made you feel honored to stand beside me, but then? You swore to even die for the Titans, but you won't say the same of your master."
"Slade, I…. just don't want to be useless."
"Then get better soon, take your medicine and stop whining that you can't endure what I have to teach you." The man snapped at his future heir. "Your path was never meant to be easy. I never wanted that, not like the bat's methods that made you soft to begin with."
"Bruce saved me!"
"And now, this discussion is over –
"SLADE!" Dick panicked and sat up. "I'm not fit to keep doing this! You're going to get me-
Slade slammed the door shut, leaving Richard to bawl and yell all he wished, as Slade robotically put his emotions on autopilot and stormed ahead back to his throne room.
/
He thought the rest was done, but the fever did not abate, which had Will to come to Slade – to poke some sense into that stubborn ox if ever he could.
"We can't move the boy, not in his current condition."
"He's rejecting the process because of his stress." Slade sighed in his seat, body limp as he heard the crying daily on those blasted monitors.
"Which is why you should be more supportive emotionally to the boy –
"I took off from any contract…" Slade himself, "I stayed, but he's worrying himself to death over a gunshot wound, Will."
"Were you not the one crying to me about how Addie never let you sleep in?" Will said, rather expecting Slade to bite his knuckles at the question. "Or did Grant not call his mother to come pick him up when you went a little…overboard with his training –
"It was to toughen him up, like my work did for me. This body, is not Immortal, William." Slade reminded the elder soldier in the room. "I can get destroyed just as easily as the Batman, and Dick is only aware of part of the story he uncovered from those files back on the safe house's computer."
"He hacked your laptop that night I was away, sir." Smirked Will, who found it remarkable even if Slade was torn on the issue.
"I wasn't ready to tell him everything, so this job…had it gone well. He would have been rewarded in some way…"
"But..."
"But the boy didn't get out in time." Slade pulled off his mask slowly and let his hair flop a bit from an underuse of product. Richard had not been returned that bare privilege in months. "He's sick because he keeps fighting me." Slade shook his head. " No, because he's finally able to see why I don't hold back anymore." The man admitted ruefully. "He's brilliant, but emotional now, Will. How did the Bat put up with…"
Will seemed to blink back, stunned that Slade had such a question planted on those lips at this time in his life.
"You are asking me, how Bruce Wayne parents his, protégé?"
"Should I phone the butler. Really Wintergreen? Am I that desperate." Snorted the annoyed mastermind.
"I'm going to win him over like any war, any challenge."
"Which is why you are missing the most important weapon in your arsenal, my friend." Will spoke calmly and sincerely to his companion.
"What, how can…" Slade felt like an idiot for considering it.
Smiling with a hand to the man's shoulder, Wintergreen's tongue was as sharp a blade as any. Even now, he knew where to land the killing blow.
Right through the heart.
"Compassion." Was his answer to Slade's incomplete question. "The boy needs it most of all. If not from his friends, then who else can be there to see him through these tough times he's been forced to endure against his will? He knows it, and he knows how much you think of him, why he can not leave his apprenticeship willingly as he wants."
"Because, I won't let him quit on me." Slade bit his lip, chewing it thoughtfully. "All he needs is a pat on the back, William?" Slade turned to the man with one more thought in his mind that just wouldn't quit.
"Fine, then…What is today's date?"
/
As soon as he was ready for it, Slade really took on the role of coach. Dick had to walk again, to get his blood pumping despite the viral effects not ebbing as much as he'd wanted.
He still was fighting, despite it all. He did want to get home. That was the only thing keeping him from cracking, yet Slade wanted to see even more of an effort.
"You'll be retraining your muscles, loosening them up today." He told the teen as he sat across from Dick without his mask on. Dick has seen Slade without it on two missions, and before that during his training in California. After he'd cracked the man's mask and the Titans had missed their cue by a dummy location – a false lead that Slade had set up to have them on their chase across the city, only to come up later empty handed…Slade had graciously taken off the mask, giving the boy a run for his mentor's millions.
He'd revealed after their escape from Jump for a while that he'd met Wayne and that was why he'd sent the boy to steal from the billionaire's sister division in California.
Dick had never pushed to know more, because he'd rather have taken that info for himself by breaking his trust in the man who had spared the boy's pathetic friends. Slade tried his hardest to get the kid to adjust once the jig was up, about who he really was and what he'd done before staking his claim on Robin's city.
Deathstroke. A mercenary with an endless kill list of terminated individuals around the globe.
Dick had fought back then, only before relenting to his fate, not telling Slade that he was afraid to lose much more than his former identity in the process.
Slade's talk with Wintergreen had him wonder if the boy would recede inside of his shell or come crawling out. Vying for some, attention. Like a neglected child.
Well, teens were a complicated bunch, even despite Robin's extraordinary history in his position. If getting the boy to accept that he'd have to do as Slade had done for close to more than a decade now, then so be it. He'd try Will's way before reverting to his own as a failsafe.
Should the kid start to question his master's ethics.
/
"Good, you're not completely helpless. See?" Dick's flexibility in his joints had not suffered a great deal in that week, so he'd be good to go by the date set onto their calendar. "The next job is in Madrid." Speaking up, the kid didn't need to be so skittish in his new home here as Slade recited the brief preview of their contract. "Bane might be present, but it's only a cargo we have to secure, nothing more."
"So, will I need to fight him."
Slade looked at the kid's unmasked eyes. Since the big reveal, he'd been despondently staring off into space in moments of mental crisis. Slade was one of his triggers, as the man tried to down his explanations a bit. Taking things at a different pace. " You'd be my eyes and ears from the base. You won't be far, but I don't want you to get hurt."
"Then keep me here."
"No."
"I'm not even ready to –
"Trust me, apprentice." Slade let go of the boy's bed frame and stood up. "You…should get some rest. I'll be back to check on your progress –
"Don't keep running away! I –
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He paced and he hated himself for choking like he had. That nail - biting little…
"Are you brooding this early on, Slade?" Sardonically, the butler could lilt all he wished.
" What are the odds that the boy has you in stitches –
"Not funny, Will." Slade seethed. "He is refusing to think I won't do the right thing."
"Though, you did mention one of Batman's foes being present." The older man shook his head with a white gloved hand to his sore temples. "He'd panic; given that the Batman was injured not too long ago by that brute. The boy has never fought that Diablo on his own. He must think you'd send him to his death with that type of warning."
"I wouldn't let Bane anywhere close –
" You, told him that? What did he say to you?" Will cocked his head, quizzically.
"He…asked to stay here, to not go with me. Which is just as puerile an excuse as I'd expect from Jump city's former finest…"
"And, did you try to convince him like you'd planned to?"
"No."
Will blinked, dust rag in hand. "No? Then what did you-
"I choked, William." Slade growled and lowered his eyes as he sat, contemplating why he was sounding so hopeless in said situation. "The same thing, I didn't want to see him upset. It's too much work."
Oh, I see." Will waved around his rag like a flag, making Slade turn beat red by this belittlement of his authority.
"You want this to be an easy job, yet what happened to conquering your apprentice. What happened to all of that gusto?"
"It's…. hard, Will."
Wintergreen swatted the man with his cloth, making Slade turn his head. Eyes front and center.
"Tough." Will huffed in disappointment at those words of defeat. "Did you overcome your many adversities and fight through death's door to get where you are today, Slade Wilson?" Will demanded a response, having Slade sputter out a blasted reprimand of his own before taking matters elsewhere.
"It's not a war. I'm going to –
"Ow!"
"You'd turn your back on everything you've built from the ground up by your exploits? Would you return that boy to his teammates and mentor without a second opinion? Hope he remembers being cared for by a war hero, not some devious mastermind?"
"Will…" Slade did find this to be, a bit much.
"Can't you say the same for that boy? Seeing as you've pushed all of your candidates to the brink before –
"Grant ran off and didn't even regret what he did!" Slade rebutted that claim. "He was not willing to follow orders and almost got himself killed! (Not dead yet, not until the Nightwing years.)
"And that is why Richard is worse off with handling his emotions. He'll willingly end up dead because of them."
"Don't you think I know that, Wintergreen??" Slade was feeling cornered now. Probably how he'd done the same…
Slade gawked.
"Aw, shit."
"Do you see my point? He needs a guide, not a coach. Not some enigma that hides its true feelings behind a mask. He needs the only person he has left; you and I are that resolve. You can't question what comes next." Will sighed and put down his dust rag. "Nor can he for that matter, yet you can soften the blow. You must try harder to help him to get through this pain."
"Why?" Slade still had regrets in his life, for sure. But…was the boy really not…
"Easy enough. Unlike you, he can get very well injured even on the "easiest" of jobs you set for yourself to teach him." Will made Slade's stomach lurch by those words. A picture painted in his mind of Bane coming after…
His blood ran cold.
"That, or he's likely the kind to look for another way out without your permission. An escape, possibly even –
"Will."
The man looked up from his many grim, speculations. "Yes, sir?"
Slade walked for the exit, a hand to the frame as William simply waited to hear what he'd been waiting for.
"Thank you."
"Always, sir. Good luck."
The door slid shut as Will continued to dust, humming to himself that something better might have come from their talk.
He prayed no bruised egos though would arise from this lesson.
That he did, as the butler continued to dust and hum to drone out his thoughts throughout the haunt.
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There is a part two to this, getting too long so look forward to it. Posting on Archive of Our own for a while until malate on site is fixed on . Be careful with that log in issue for desktop from mobile if it's an issue for you too.
