Teen Titans – ReBeL Yell; If I had Stayed a Renegade

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BLOOD AND BONE; CRADLE MY PASSAGE TO A NEXT LIFE

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THIS IS SAD BUT IT GETS A SAD ENDING. AND ITS NOT THE LAST FIC.

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It smelled here, worse than his body, his blood. Hearts beating, he heard them all, he felt them all.

His master had drilled him on fighting Jean Carlo's men and he'd wanted to repay a debt quickly.

Midnight in the Sicilian air, the waterways outstretched as Renegade dragged himself out of the waves, coughing wildly. Flopping as a fish, the patrol then was…

Silence greeted him with ringing ears and a dehydrated migraine. Duck shut his eyes behind the mask. He still wore it, despite not being a flightless bird, grounded. His fingers tracked his side, his temple.

Blood. He was caked with it, sickly. Dick wedged his body up onto its side as he groaned, twisting and growling back from the bullets stuck to his meat and muscle. How many shots, how much fir half a meta. Slade said the serum would make him ballsy as all hell. It would make him stronger.

He never had described the true pain of living. A corpse walking, he crawled until his legs cracked back to life, biting back a yell under his chin. Blood dripped from his chin to the cobble stone of this old city.

Where he'd been told to sleep off the last jobs, he never seemed to sleep anymore.

Dick coughed up a clot, dizzy as he put himself upright, lurching and trying to walk and wandering up a wall, a stairway as blood layered his gloves fingertips. He smeared the enemy's blood there, a clear read of who was dead, while he still walked free. Slade was going to make him pay for it.

For taking a job that could do this, torture his guts out, the man had not come looking. He had been resting up from his own injury as Dick got even. Went back out while Slade had to work overtime to heal his wounds. He slept for four hours to heal, so Dick sneaked out, got mad and stole any intel Slade had on his last job. He could have won, but his daze was a sentence. Richard was the cure. That was why he was the man's apprentice for so long.

Sixteen, eighteen now. The kid never aged, never changed. At seventeen, he got at the end of the year his biggest new year's resolution; the serum in his bloodstream for good. He couched again, clots going south as his head spun. It was a process, he'd lived through the screaming, delirium and the tears for that long. Slade called him unpolished.

Dick thought it didn't really matter. He needed to run away, to get out. Yet, he CHOSE to stay. He CHOSE to live like this, day after day. Shipped from room to room, desk over desk to be lectured, punished…

Beaten red, well. Slade didn't have to try this time so hard. Dick was bleeding out like a stuffed pig. The meal at your Thanksgiving table? He gave no thanks. He wanted death, and now…now. That was an impossible feat for the rest of his life.

He could bleed, suffer immensely and profusely spill his organs all over the floor.

They'd come back. He'd be back from the grave, so why did it matter?

His eyes saw a blurred street as he wiped them, deeming him night, done. His face was matted and his head spinning. He didn't find himself falling until he came to catch himself on a ledge of some high-rise Italian property. The person in the room looked gravely distraught. Dick flopped to the floor on his hands and knees, the boots of the other person tapping to shut the windows. "How much."

"Fifty…" Dick rasped weakly. Coughing, the face didn't show as his eyes were foggy, dying…

"No one saw?"

"No…" The boy shook his head, then refrained with a small groan. His neck…it hurt to move it anywhere but by his chest. His body was racked with shuddering, healing up at a rate that wasn't healthy.

"They tortured you, how long?"

Was he –

"Not sure…was in the water, broken legs, healed….mind, foggy….concussion….sliced torso….migraine…coughing up –

He did it gain, the sloppy red coating the floor as Slade moved quickly. "Up." The man had the boy sway as he was caught and moved to the bathroom to wash off the rest. Stripped down, a bottle of water in his hands once he was starting to scab and scar all over. Down the drain, the rest of the blood ended up meeting an even bloodied ocean.

"Jean Carlo, you took my files on him."

Dick scrunched his shoulders, rounded and defensively expecting to –

His chin was grabbed, jaw rearranged as Slade checked him out. "It's going to need some care. Stay."

Dick didn't dare move as his head fell to gaze lazily at the water bottle he'd been handed. His ears, ringing as Slade returned with his kit. The lit he'd used after training and after many lesson- fails that Robin couldn't master. Only Renegade could survive, he'd learned. The bright colored bird of spring never let its song be sung again as the colors of a merciless murderer smothered his love for this lifetime. He squinted his eyes shut, avoiding tears since salt would burn him. Cleansing as it was, antiseptic was far easier than his own worried sorrow right now.

"Hold still." Slade slathered something cold and clear only him side as he maneuvered the towel, having Dick leave his chest bared as he let it fall.

"You messed up, badly." Slade snorted as he dipped his fingers into the box beside him. "Yes, sir."

Sir, was an insult, but it hurt to say more. His head was pounding, making him sick.

"You delivered a curse onto us both with your actions tonight. Is Jean Carlo-

The needle was in a few stitches through as Dick swallowed, "I killed him, sir."

Dick's eyes watered as Slade tilted up the boy's chin. "Why? How could …" He didn't think the serum worked that well yet. Dick was still a foolish rookie with it. Like Grant, willing to die for a larger goal. A lofty, dense hypocrisy that was ingrained into him by his keeper.

"I killed him, he…hated you. I did…. what you –

"Stop talking." Slade pulled the needle back through. He started on the boy's torso next, pulling out what he could, slathering on a balm with the intent of killing off whatever was in that filthy river. "He still got a part of you; I wouldn't have allowed that. You broke my trust."

"Was, for you trust …sir…." Dick winced as Slade bent the boy's arm to pull out a sharp or six of broken glass. "You dove in a window?" He grunted. "You're not wearing a dense enough suit for that yet."

"Sorry, sir. You…. got hurt."

Slade again had to sigh. "You felt like playing the hero. I'm not worth helping, you know that-

"Not me, Robin. He'd say that…." Dick bit his lip as Slade plucked out another tweezer eased shard from his elbow. The humerus was not amused.

"Slade, had to do something."

"You were restless, pissed. Yet, maybe you weren't expecting to succeed."

Dick's body turned to ice as Slade kept talking. "Dick, dud you want to make me worry? You're under oath for years now. You haven't finished with your training and I could extend it to longer. You may be too dangerous to leave all alone, if you've become this willing to "self-destruct…"

"You want to see them, go to them. You made a promise that isn't dead yet." The last snip as Dick held his breath, aches easing as his body started to tingle by whatever the serum had in mind. "Not, yet. Never you. Go. Dry off and get under the covers. If you can't sleep this off, you'll disappoint yourself by morning." Slade put a good few swiped of antiseptic over the scissors as he turned his one eye to the boy. Dick was still seated on the toilet and shocked by what Slade was again doing to his life.

"Did I stutter? Bed. What?" The man raised his head, "Do you need my arm again, apprentice?"

He wasn't wearing the mask, and Dick's will withered in knowing that the masked psychopath was this human in comparison to the one in his nightmares. Slade Wilson, but he didn't go and call him master unless they were on a job. Unless he was less damaged than right now. Dick nodded, slowly, hands moving him up as his knees adjusted to stand. Slade hummed softly as he aided the boy, an arm to guide him to the lofty bed in the room still stinking of his blood. "I'll be cleaning up. You need to sleep this off." It was an order, he couldn't oppose it since…he was so tired…

Dick bit back a yawn as Slade crooked a small smile. "You're bushed. Listen to your body. I need to take care of the floor before tomorrow's ride out to Naples." Slade saw how the kid's focus was on keeping the towel to his waste, feeling less exposed in the warm September night as the temperature didn't matter. The windows were shut. Those goons were all dead. Dick was…not hurting as much, minus the mild concussion as Slade left the room a second, swiftly returning with a ice pack as he handed it to Dick. "For your head."

Dick, had saved this man from a second wave, he realized as he took the pack, mouthing a "thank you" hoarsely. He tried to lay on his side, yet Slade's fingers moved him to his right where the pain was lessened. His back to the window, to the man, it was the most vulnerable he had felt in days. Always watched. Always considered of value…

The Titans didn't know him anymore, he shut his eyes and sighed, exhaling raggedly as if wanting to moan in his pain. Slade ignored it and went to gather his removal for the mess on the wood that just touched large rug. It would be no time at all. The scent was strong now with lemon and bleach, ammonia stung his nostrils as he soon had the energy to cover his head with the quilt as Slade got onto his knees and scrubbed over the damaged wood. He even had polish, this safe house having every luxury an assassin and mercenary support could want. Dick was so sure Slade would have made him do it. But…

He wanted this. Sleep never came well after the changes. His insomnia was enough to put him in a fog for hours. Slade had ordered the boy, used a special hypnosis and that, worked for a bit.

Now, he just…realized that pain helped and that hurt.

The only peace he'd ever get would be when half alive, blood and bone reading up the apartment.

Slade wiped his brow and collected the tools he had used. Slade knew the kid was up, to his surprise…how wrong he was. Upon moving to the other side, the kid was konked out, his soft breaths touching the pillow even as weak as he was. His nose had healed, no blood on the white. His bound-up wounds looked a wreck as Slade shook his head and crossed his arms before heading for the next room. He'd be able to sleep this time. Dick had eliminated a sworn enemy and despite why or how, it was to save him.

Robin was peeking through those blinds as Slade reached his own door, looking back down the hall.

In a few days, they' attend a new contract at a gathering of socialites in Rome. If he dared to stop them then, well…

The boy wasn't emptied yet. He still had yet to ever called that man, Master. Maybe, it never would happen. Slade scratched his white main and unclicked the door to enter. Silence, minding the open window he'd forgotten to shut, Slade walked to it and looked around. "Sleep, I'm done with that."

"It's not like you to say that you can rest over a blood-stained child."

Slade turned at his eye to a miss by the curtains. "The gala needed your one with a plus one. The League hired me to get you into their circle."

"Jade, I told him there wasn't a chance." Slade sniffed and walked to his dresser, her masked face not betraying her mannerisms. "The Shadows miss you though. Your new pupil was working up to become just like the master…how did it go? Did he get shot? Ripped apart?"

"Testing his abilities and my own, that won't be overnight." Slade curled a hand round the edge of the dresser. "Tell him that our work is separate. Jean Carlo's secret is that he had trafficked plenty of them. We just put a halt to the situation, unlikely bound to change without any interest-

"They have more than stored data on potential meta teens. You have one, and now, what will you tell tour pupil? That you aren't involved with the extermination? That half of those bodies were supposed to have died? That boy blew the entire facility UP." She snarled, Slade going silent as he let go of the dresser's wooden crutch.

"His trail of blood was thick with desperation of a man, dying. You make sure he can't lose his mind first, since you never did…our clients aren't happy. Jean Carlo and those under him are dead, yet so are the specimen he was housing."

"He lost control."

"YES." Sneered the cat faced woman. "He killed dozens more than he'd intended, because you forgot to tell him to stay in control. He doesn't want to save anything else, not even himself." She huffed, moving to unlatch the window. "Get your little errand boy back in line, or we'll do what the HIVE never could with your first. Not at first site of the injection…"

His eye never caught her as wide and furious; he held his temper. Stay in line. Their catches…

Dick has massacred meta brats in the place Jean Carlo had the kept. He'd sacrificed lives to avenge his master….

Slade's face broke out in a grin as he laughed, low and deep. "He's loyal, alright…I've never seen a display that reckless. That boy would die to keep his apprenticeship alive." He sighed. "He'd die. To stand by me, because he cares."

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So, Dick is not suicidal ENTIRELY. He basically lost his temper because of the tendency to depend on Slade, and breaking him took three years until now. Dick is now a weapon; a blockade and Slade is stunned by that level of trust. However, he trusts Slade to watch his back and he wants to save at least one person. Robin is gone yet his desire to protect is warped beyond repair. All it took was some tweaking. So? Also, the meta trafficking thing and league of shadows is borrowed by Young Justice.

Dick is officially a berserk killer. Will Slade be able to harness him as a working, dependent and broken weapon as he maneuvers the new him around from country to country? Find out – van be used as a future fic add on to Our Time in Reverse.