Teen Titans; ReBeL Yell: If I Had Stayed a Renegade

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A post Apprentice Part Two 2003 scenario! You've asked, you shall receive! Renegade is next. but don't wait up! ~

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Cut Lip

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"You've made quite a mess…"

Slade looked down as the boy with a boot imprint to his cheek, and marks layering the back of his throat where Slade had pushed him down.

The Titans?

No more.

He'd even said it a DOZEN times, and when the boy awoke from his bruises and insecurities, they would up his training for real. A new lair would take a while, the safest place was Slade's estate outside off Jump city, and according to Will.

They had scratched a few heroes off that list to outrage the Justice League.

He wasn't pepared for what would be, yet Slade made it simple.

His incentive wouldn't change. The probes still worked fine, the Titans had simply been test subjects.

How had it gotten this far? Dick was, was going to hate him for a long time, up until Slade gave a damn as he took to stitching up the boy's face while he was drugged to lay still. Will bandaged what he had to, yet those bruises would be a reminder of who Robin – Grayson, worked for and how he'd crossed Slade's path, tried his patience and it all came back –

With a snip, the thread was cut.

To bite him, in the end.

"Will you b requiring anything else, sir?"

"No, Wintergreen." Slade closed his kit and looked over the sleeping brat he'd kept too close. It was too late to start over. That part was a scar, as he traced it to the boy's lip with an ungloved finger.

"I'll be sure to keep that from showing. Do we still have that military solution? The one that erases scars?"

"I believe a case of that liquid was kept in your supply room, sir."

"Good. Administer it once he's functioning properly." Slade grunted and took his hand away with a bit of shock to what he was touching.

Whom, the son of the Bat.

"I won't have my apprentice with a split face."

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Dick wasn't roused by a vacuum roaring against the rug in Slade's study. He wasn't woken by two big hands lifting him to his new room a few doors down the hall. Nor, did the sun breaching his tower window wake the princess as Dick slept for three days without any interruption. Not a single dream, as he dared not stare upon the face that had killed his best friends.

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To Slade's relief, the boy's state was still only due to the shock, and so he awoke after the silent passing of those days to the scent of flowers at a bedside dresser, in what looked to feel like…

Dick blinked and groaned with a hand rubbing at –

He gasped.

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"Where is it? And where is my suit?? Slade…. You –

Slade sat at the table and to Robin's shock, he wasn't wearing his armor or mask.

Dick didn't care. The grief of that fatal loss, the fact he didn't feel any pain from the shock of being…beaten while Slade killed the only people he had ever cared for besides his Bat and real biological family….it was all wrong, and Dick had to stop it.

"Why?"

Slade sipped his coffee, reading the Daily Planet and not paying a mind to look up. That infuriated the boy as Wintergreen was getting up –

"Don't." Slade put up a palm. "Let him speak."

Dick's fists grip angrily as they splayed out, palms down once he'd put them over the top of the man's kitchen table.

"My mask." Dick sounded like the Bat, how cute.

"Where is it."

"You won't need it, not until a mission."

"There is NO way." Dick growled at the man twice over.

"That you have that rigth –

"I." Slade slapped down the paper, hands to the table and eye overstepping boundaries as they laser pointed his pupil to shut up.

"Have EVERY right, Grayson."

Slade had told Robin that he knew back during the thermal blaster episode. That he wasn't just some two-bit thief, but a master planner and an old foe of the Bat's who knew the names and faces of all of his enemies.

And clients. For a price.

"You forget, apprentice. We had a deal."

"Ask someone else." Snipped the kid, getting tough as few more bruises would look pretty much like a cry for help if he got Slade angrier.

"You killed my friends; you don't have the incentive to keep me here. Our deal is over –

"On the contrary, kid." Slade tugged out the trigger as Dick launched at it, Will ignoring the figt at brunch until Slade's elbow decided to pummel the brat onto his face as he was man handled to let the boy lay against it, kicking uselessly to be let up.

"Slade! You're going to crush that child's poor skull. Have some self-control, man!"

The brit tugged Slade's arm back from the barbaric form of punishment, knowing full well that in this mode of combat off the mat the man could in fact have Dick's brains splattered against the glass table top.

It was already starting to crack, as Dick was let go.

Shaking out of rage, not of the same fear that Will had just activated in the back of the fourteen-year old's mind.

"That's enough of your back talk, Robin. You're not a hero, not if you can't figure out what I expect from you. In fact, you'd be an accomplice if the police were to ignore a little…. evidence."

Dick's eyes widened. "What…. are you talking about?" He shook his head, fussing over the fact that Slade was a Moriarty of his time.

Dick was far from a perfect Sherlock, sad to say.

"Think about it, little detective."

How he HATED being compared to Bruce!

"I'm not one to play pretend, but if it were labeled as a murder, who do you think they'd blame first? The boy on the cameras as Wayne Enterprises? Or an enigma in the dark that even the Titans as I recall from that broadcasting, did not disclose to the general public."

Dick froze, they…. didn't tell the people about his…

Of course not. It was heroing 101. You never got the city into panic until…

Oh, shit.

"They'll come looking. They knew I wasn't the one who could have –

"Maybe." Slade paced a few steps and bent down to pick up his shattered plate so that he'd make better point.

"But if they can't catch me…most might resort to other methods to get me to talk…"

Slade let the china cut his finger as Dick watched in ridged horror, as the small slice had started to vanish completely.

"They'd have to try. Even the Bat might come to save his ward from danger. That's what he's always seen you as. Never his real –

"Shut up!" Dick barked back, palms sweating now by the enigma that was…

Could heal himself, quickly.

"Bruce knew I was here, troubling your friends. Maybe he wanted to test that, see if you'd survive a pop quiz and not quit on him –

Dick roared out and ended up hitting the chair in a slam against it, blacking out as Slade shifted the kid to bring him to the study for an even bigger shocker.

/

The corpses at the morgue did not go to one, yet to the hall of Justice, where an autopsy of a more specific nature was taking place.

"Clear!"

The breadth of life washed over the heroes, all except of course, for two. The ones not protected by science of magic.

Beastboy's heart had stopped beating, while Starfire's had failed the moment, she'd seen Dick get kicked in the head by his keeper.

Cyborg rebooted a part of his brain with Green Lantern's support and Raven was aided in returning to the waking world by Martian Manhunter.

Both awoke with that sense of dread and despair, in how they'd lost three heroes – if not two, that October.

"We have to go back."

"That criminal who took your leader will be found and brought to justice." Diana of Troy responded with her lasso in hand.

"I am afraid we can't let you go back to your city until that mercenary is behind bars at Blackgate." John Stewart told Cy, who looked to the others for that, interesting tid bit to be explained better.

"Slade Wilson; A.K.A, Deathstroke."

Raven gasped at the face of the foe who'd destroyed half of her team.

"He's….a killer? As in…."

"He killed for profit in Metropolis to Gotham and Steel. No price was high enough for this lucky bastard." Green Lantern told the two.

"Slade Wilson was given enhanced healing, intelligence and strength and stamina by a delay in a military experiment to create a super soldier. That was back during the Korea war." She paused.

"So, he's older than –

"Robin is with him, he's the one who tried to destroy our team. You have to help us." Raven didn't want to beg, but if Slade was still aware that they were not all dead, then that could put the city and Robin in greater danger…

"I don't care about that, Rae! What Slade's doing is highly unethical for a merc an' he can't be the same guy if he's looking to make Rob into a criminal –

"Not unlikely, but still as possible." Manhunter shook his head. "He holds the key to your destruction and his plan I imagine was to have the city under his thumb; Robin was in his way of achieving that goal, so there can be no better explanation."

"But, Cy's gotta be right about our old DS doin' somethin' as big as holding an entire city for ransom. As a crime boss? Could it be a cover?"

Diana shook her "We won't know until –

"But, I may."

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The teams stopped as doors swung wide to reveal a man clad in a black cowl. Face unseen by the rest of his team and the two awake Titans, Bruce's dread only increased as neither Beastboy or Starfire bothered to stir.

"Do one, mind – test and then if there is still no response, contact their families immediately." Bruce was aware that it sounded less empathetic to be so stoic after a hero had passed on or become injured, yet he didn't do well with seeing children die under his watch. At a point in time, Slade also never killed children under his.

"No one is moving them." Raven got up and went over to Star's supposed frame lying motionless against the same table she'd been forced to lie across.

" Azarath…. Metrion…. Ziinthos…."

She wanted to see; the last image Kori saw as the flashback tasted vile at the roof of her mouth.

~ From now on, I want you to call me, Master. ~

~ I won't let you do this! Let them go! Slade! Please!!~

A smack across the face as Dick didn't meet his chance in time, as Slade's boot fell right across his captive's already bruised cheek while Star's tears made it hard to see anything but a blur before they closed for good.

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"He's hurt…" Raven gasped and returned to the living world, letting Kori…

"She's gone…I didn't sense her soul inside of her body…They, are b-

"We can't let Slade get what he wants. I'm not letting BB and Star's sacrifice be for nothin! Let us fight!"

"Cyborg. Stand down. This is no longer your top priority –

"He's your partner!" Shot the older big brother. "You're just gonna' give up on him and walk away?? Right when he –

"I am not discussing this now, meet in the central hall for a debriefing in fifteen minutes." Bruce eyed Diana as her gaze met his, understanding everything enough to carry out orders.

"Hey!" Cy shouted to the man as Lantern held Cy back with his powers. Diana went to Raven to see to her state, yet the empath was more eerily quiet than usually depicted of her case.

"Don't you walk away! Robin needs the –

SLAM!

"Bat…man…"

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