Our Time In Reverse- What it Takes

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Chapter 63: Back Home

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So, Richard thinks no matter what, the old him wanted to trust Slade. Yet in the back of his mind, this new set of abilities has strengthened his skepticism as to why Slade wants him to come away – that some new and dangerous is about to happen to them. Big reveal, the end arc in this to come. But first, skipping over Brother Blood because Cy is now the leader and Dick was away fir about a month without realizing a thing.

Slade is playing on his tactic of only speaking out at certain times, expecting the boy to pry so he can twist that knowledge and further subjugation his apprentice to these changes and the oath he'll be made to take in helping Trigon. The only reason stayed around and had Trigon as his ally, was because the book that he found in Forces of Nature ( similar to brushogun,) he wants to use his new powers to seek out what is Trigon's way to earth. I'm making this like finding the eighth Digi-destined, Hikari in Digimon, because that arc was insanely good.

Fun to see, Dick will open up to Slade only to sneak away and learn the truth while playing the game. But will Slade and Trigon allow him to wander far? Find out!

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Dick clung to the man for a bit before his feet touched rock. This cavern was dry, hotter even as the sun bathed it in a warm light of day break. It was afternoon back in Gotham, so to Dick's senses, this was something he was craving without realizing why- not until he saw outside of the cave as Slade let him walk into the sun. "Home…" Dick gasped, that glorious manor atop a hill that watched over the plains of this time as he remembered it. In California, by the forests before the city he'd come to hide below with his master, Dick remembered coming here to gain his mission and how upset he was to leave it behind.

A part of his room had to still be kept as it was. Had it been a year yet?

Slade walked beside his pupil with a thinkly veiled smiling pulling at his lips. He kept up the mask as Dick followed behind the soldier's larger footsteps. His own feet still had on white martial arts slippers as the grasses that peaked below drying earth tickled his ankles.

Home. He was finally were he'd wanted to return, all along.

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The door opened without any aid or support. Richard stayed in single file behind his master, like old times. That was until a gent with a feather duster curved round the corner of the estate hall and dropped his guard a bit.

"William." Slade said, "Glad you could take some time to come and help."

"Again…" With huffed, running a hand over a thinning scalp. "Slade, that boy. Is he really here and willing to-

"I said I would follow my master, anywhere, Major. Sir." Dick bobbed his neck, Will not totally convinced.

"I'll gladly stay for a few days, but that's it! After this entire mess is handled, you either beg me to give up my position as aide to a man man, or I'm glad enough to defect on the spot. Very happy to see you, lad. Come, come."

He had changed. More than ever, Will knew why he had left, and why he had returned to watch over mostly, his old friend's new brand of madness.

Slade, wasn't at all this hungry for power before. He wanted to shut off the sounds and settle in, truly. Yet the only thing Slade had battled Will in doing was staying to protect that boy. That boy who had simply been nothing but an unfortunate crutch to place in front of a man who had never had such a need before.

Dick Grayson's introduction had been a sureness song towards that madness, Will believed, and what Slade didn't know was that Will too only wanted to further force them apart. To have the old masterminds back WITHOUT the madness they kept to, rising with the fires of some unholy prophecy.

"Let us attend to matters in the kitchen. Follow me, then."

Dick didn' forget to turn to Slade as a nod from him allowed Richard to sigh a thank you with a small, tired smile.

To him, this could end badly if he broke character.

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~ Slade was working with Trigon. All along, whatever he is planning…~

~I, don't think any of us coukd stop him. What i would have done, had he…~

"Richard, it's alright. I lost you fir nine years and I can't ever let you return to him. I won't, and neither will you let him change who you are meant to be. Understand?~

"Yeah, B….can, can I go and rest? I'm really tired out.~

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Every time he dive away to do that, the monster prevailed. The him that was a darker side, and he didn't want it coming any closer. He'd almost believed himself cursed, not until Slade appeared before him that the opposite arose. Someone was going to get hurt. The Titans, they'd never listen after all that they'd been put through…

Flesh would turn to stone, the skies would burn …

Slade had muttered an excerpt when that book had become his new best friend. Dick remember in the haunt how glazed that one eye was at times. How on the screens, the translated texts would make his iris pop in excitement.

How gleefully he expected something to happen to change his entire life.

Just as the pact with a demon's work, Slade had power only because he'd asked to set his sights on this city. He was here to claim it once for the reason of conquest, abd then…

Raven. She had a story to tell, and Dick –

"Boy, pay attention."

Will tugged the child out of his own head as he reached for the kitchen on foot, with Richard flanking him behind.

"You're to prepare the meal with great care. Master Wilson took every opportunity with you and is now attempting to reseal wound the Batman left. I know what it was like. I'm very sure he attempted to bring you back, yet why the hesitation?"

"My memory, Manhunter blocked every access of him from my mind. I couldn't even hear or say his name. It, it was-

"Really, and his very presence was a mystery as well? Then, tell me; how exactly did you break it?"

"I…" Dick knew it was the control he took back, yet why didn't it hurt. Why was no resistance placed up? That, worried him enough.

"OH, dear. You have been probed."

Dick pulled back as if these walls were made of lapping electric currents. "What?? Will! I cane back-

"He could be watching your every stance, and for that. It's no wonder I as told to babysit."

Dick bit his lip as Will beckoned the boy to follow him and pulled out a large cookbook – the item let to the counter top with a thwap of its spine. "We'll need a few things and I want you to be absolutely certain that you won't try to hide or run. Is that clear?"

"It is." Dock nodded, making gingerly over to see what Will would ask –

"In the hen house out back, I want you to take about two large hens by their necks if you must to the work place just across. The shed has everything you'll need to take them…"

Dick's mouth went very dry as he realized the cold bucket of water that Wintergreen was throwing over his head.

"What? Are you ducking from your title? He wants to keep you well fed, and we must not waste anymore time here. You recall where the pen is? Just a few-

"I…I do." Dick swallowed with a reluctant bob of his head. "Is the other for, for a different day?"

"Tomorrow's supper. Sniffed Will putting down the book as he pointed his gaze at the boy from over his shoulder. "Well. Get on it, then. Haven't got all bleeding day to finish one chore, lad."

That…Will never talked like that before. He truly wanted Dick to fail. Yet he'd done this, he'd…it was just a chicken. Dick moved out the exit to the back and walked into the grasses as they pinched him, dry earth perhaps the strangest thing. A drought had not hit the country. It was not that. Yet the warm earth had his feet moving out to find the closest hen house.

Alfred had that luxury as well, though they didn't kill the hens in such a manor, only take their eggs. Gerty was getting fat enough to lay a baker's dozen in one swing, yet Dick wasn't expecting such well to do hens in this house, that he'd be killing with his bare hands before supper time.

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Dick decided to do the human thing and not make them bleed. He had the ability to choke them. The serum would…be their mercy, he swallowed with a budding grief to his afterthought.

And maybe, the Bat was watching, just like Will had said. If he was, did that mean…he wasn't going to be rescued in time to stop Slade from confronting Trigon?

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Slade had the luxury of going after some game once he was in his gear. It relaxed him. Helped him to think. Richard bad responded poorly to this sort of training in the past, so he'd been more gentle and the boy took his time handling a pistol. The shotgun, would have been for now…

Slade shook off the concern and focused on a young buck. It was just growing in its antlers which…

He put down the rifle and pursed his lips. It was not time for that. He'd been trapped in the past, expecting Richard to p –

Slade saw across the way with the sight of something inhuman, a figure walking woth its back right as a pin. Jn both hands, were off white blobs and they didn't even sing a song upon their last wills to live. Slade propped himself onto the log he'd hid behind as the buck took off. "Apprentice." Slade let hos voice carry across the field.

Dick didn't have a hand to wave, so he stood there. Purely black expression before he tried to smile back. "For later!" Dick called out, Slade grinning with something that made Dick want to chuck the hens down in the grass and run from that man's mocking set of brows.

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Dick walked up ridgeway to the door and pushed it open, Will there with carrots, oil and onion as well as some herbs from the garden in view upon time boy's return. "That was rather quick. It seems the serum gave you a similar speed force." Chuckled the old timer. Dick sighed, almost smiling back. Will was in better spirits. He'd done as he was told.

"Your Master Slade will be returning a while later; it seems he was pulled away for work. We'll be busy anyhow fir this term. Come, I'd gladly see…" Will tugged one hen out of Richard's shaky grip as Will noted the boy's reaction. "This one…put up no sort of fight? Had it been the real enemy, you'd have been forced to see to annihilation of the threat."

"It went, without getting too wild, sir." Dick told the adult. "What is my next task?"

"I had told you to go out to the shed, had I not."

Dick froze. "I already killed –

"My own order was to do just this, yet it is nk wonder why your master will have that dort of delay. Child, do as you sre expected. Whether here, preparing the meal under MY guidance, or on the battlefield, selling your bleeding soul. Now. Hop to it!"

Yes, sir!" Dick gasped and took the dead creatures to this shed Will was so eager to have him remember.

The creatures went peacefully. To him, he…the serum made it hard to tell if they caved first or if he snapped their necks right before their eyes went dim.

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Slade had seen the child take orders better than this. He was too fragile right now, too soft. Whatever Wayne had refuses to enforce, it means he would have turned that child into something unlike the Grayson Slade had weaned on his life. His likelihood.

Slade saw the door shut as he held his rifle over his shoulder, the buck over his other arm. Losing it would have been a small price. Yet one young buck had a lot to learn. He also needed to visit that shed anyway.

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Dick popped back the latch as it looked to be just a regular work shed from the inside A note on the bench read however, a drawer down had his tools neatly kept via the instructions written on it. Dick placed the clean animals out onto a work table and tugged open –

He shut it, his pulse racing at the instruments inside.

One hen was, for tomorrow. Today….today wasn't for the meal…

The latch behind the boy came loose as another figure walked in with a dripping, bullet wetted deer over his back. "Ready, already?" Slade chuckled, thinking the kid looked worse than the dear had when he'd cornered it.

"Sir, are….these are for skinning-

"We'll be going over the basics."

Slade partly ignored the kid's nervous chatter as he set his catch onto a separate table. "No organs should be left, nor should the bird have any feathers."

Dick seeped a breath as Slade watched. "Would you rather work on something with a hide, apprentice?"

Dick…He didn't think much of the topic; in the past, his curious nature was exploring the wilderness. Not….pulling feathers, and that wasn't what this was about. He was going to flay and skin a dead animal…! And one that was dead on a table… this was no torture chamber, yet Richard begged to differ.

He swallowed what pride his mind had to salvage abd stepped away from the one table to swap positions. Slade bowed his neck in assurance as the boy walked up to the larger buck. As if he were its brain surgeon, the coroner, the…

"Slade, do I –

Slade's back muscles stiffened under his vest.

The boy's lips moved carefully as his eyes settled on his supposed new task. His acid churned while Slade could definitely hear the grumble. "What tools work… for the, stomach."

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Guts and blood with dead fish eyes looking up, Dick dreamed of the feast among devils as they watched him carve out the deer with this "initiation" rite. He stood over that table and hacked and clawed until his hands were like sharp knives, melded together with the instruments of torture and decapitation of life as the squawking hens in their pen and the chickens even hatched. Some spoke and said things he understood. Some begged the boy in black to stop.

Dick's brow wouldn't stop sweating as the alarm in his ear, meant a new day.

A new type of kill to be had.

While he cracked open one from under the covers, only then to groan and fall back asleep.

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Dark. I thought; post Halloween? Naw, Dick has to numb himself a bit and we'll see him shut down a lot differently in the next chapter. Fibd out!

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