Our Time in Reverse- What it Takes
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Chapter 74: Nothing to Decide
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Flashback chapter, Harvey dent, Dick, and Tim's family according to what he tells Mr. WAYNE. SPOILERS FOR ABUSIVE PARENTS. AND PROTÉGÉ MASTER AFTER SPRINGTINE CHAPTER WHEN DICK IS TAKEN BY SLADE FOT GOOD.
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There was nothing his ex – father could have done. Not really.
Dick heard the clang of the door open as Slade marched in with what looked to be a change of sheets and a wash bucket.
He'd been trying to overcome this torment of being a mercenary's last resort to atone for losing one child, that fact sticking that Grant must have been crazy to stay at all.
Which to Dick's understanding now, he never did and flew the coop to join the H.I.V.E.
Meaning, Dick would likely be hurt the same way to make a soldier out of himself, for his new master.
"UP." Slade dragged the boy's arm along as he was bearing his weaker muscles and thinking of what being Robin really would have meant. Had he gone back to Bruce to apologize.
He needed that apology and almost got it, or Slade wpukd have snapped Bruce's neck to make Dick change his mind.
"Renegade, UP."
He did, slowly as Slade caught the kid and took him to wash him properly down. "Did you tug at these stitches, boy?"
HHead, to distract from the fact that they were earned through bloodshed. The first agreement in Russia had led to dead bodies all over the war general's office. Dick didn't know how to cope, so Slade took them away and got the bill taken care of. It was an ambush anyway, yet he's lost control when they'd tried to touch his belt by mistake.
For some reason, without the serum he felt fine bit with it coursing there, under flesh and meager bone…
He died and returned to life, only to crave to be alone.
That never happened.
"We'll be removing those to replace…"
Slade was checking the bruises as he grunted again. "You made new one on yourself, and you continued to so as to prolong the effect?"
Dick didn't nod back as Slade lathered the kid's scalp in that portable wash tub the bots had helped being in. Slade's skin touched his now longer hair as he tugged at it gently. "Needs a trim. We'll arrange that once you've gotten through that head of yours who is in charge…" He tugged the rest of Dick's hair to make him look up into that loathsome eye.
"You didn't struggle to say goodbye, boy. Bruce is glad to ne rid of anything you would have told him. Dunk." Dick did as he was told and tried to submerge himself as Slade poured warm water over the rest. "The clothes you were left woth will be trashed, and if you promise to come back to stay at my side as before, you'll have a better uniform to wear. I'm looking into something a bit more form fitting for our next stealth mission. When you've decided to stop playing the quiet game with me, Apprentice…we can train you to narrowly escape any attack through a series of air ducts. These will be quite –
"I can fit now." Dick lifted his arms, showing the man his build as it had become frail, yet still remained strong as it needed for the mission. "I didn't want you to think I couldn't perform under pressure, Master."
If this got him out sooner, so be it. He needed to see the sun. After a few deaths like it was nothing, it was something Dick wanted to shy from to process.
"Arms down, I can see." Slade made the kid scrunched up as the water came over his face and hairline again, dropping at the bridge of his nose as he sputtered soap from his lips.
"I told you to stay and you panicked. If they had found out, you'd have been experimented on by the Kremlin secret service. A whole mess, and losing out to a vicious killing. You really have no control over your frustration. I see that now, never have."
" What good am I, if it happens again?" Dick turbed to him with a frightened, child like glance. "What if I attack a target wrong….or, or mistake a lesser threat as –
"Calm yourself, Richard –
"I'm sick! You know I'm a defective project, just say it!" Dick splashed as he tried to stand, only to be yanked to sit in the wash bin tub. "No. You'll overcome this as I have, and if you do step one foot out of line again, Dick…Renegade's power to recover won't save you. Only I can do that, apprentice." Slade told the teen. "You know I'm here, and I'm not going anywhere."
"Right." Dick frowned under his breath. "Because you have to own up to your "mistakes."
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He was the mistake, and overtime the greatest sacrifice to ever wear the moniker of Deathstroke.
The last sighting of Roy had been him taking an interest in an old LOA ally, no longer. Jade Nguyen; daughter of Sports master, Mr. Crock. Well, an ex-soldier himself, he was more a dejected outlaw in the assassin game than Slade. The men squabbled in a bank once when they were in civilian attire in France. He didn't have Jade, but a blonde girl who was no more than fifteen, Dick being seventeen then.
Later, there was a headline with son of Bruce "Jason, and his new alien sweetheart. Kori Anders."
Dick immediately went to Slade and trained like a demon in the gym fir hours before finally talking and bawling in front of the man about why he'd never have that sort of life again.
"You never did, so don't disillusion yourself with such trials, apprentice. Over time, love can be as deadly and painful for some as it is for those that will see the end of time itself."
What he meant, was that anyone Dick knew was either a potential threat or would die long before he and the immortal beings that stood on this green earth. He felt even more alone than before and went to bed, choosing not to finish his supper as Slade only nodded and gave the kid his choice to be famished by midnight. Thankfully, the estate kitchen wasn't off limits since Dick had serum – sized cravings from time to time, adjusting to his new life.
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In the seedier spaces between just inside the most crooked of manufactured wastelands in Gotham City, an enigmatic soul was also coming out of the dark. His reflection months ago had never lasted, his image. The ego that drove a mighty campaign to gain favor with some of his own people, friends even.
Even….
He had been buried alive by a hit to the face, a scarred pulp of tissue and flesh that was partly grafted and worked on by dome of those "friend's" supported doctors for the job.
A job, that drove the patient mad enough to need a new friend. One as ugly as he was, and just as willing to gain the respect that Gotham had shut away from that old reflection.
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Harvey Dent knew Bruce out of a hole in the wall. Anytime he had a favor in the court cases the Attorney shelled over to the billionaire, there was something to discuss over dinner at an upscale joint.
He even leaned of Harvey's fiancé. Her smile was never the same after the incident as he'd never trusted one…
A bat, his brother in wallowing misery.
That bat had a secret. The other face had told him so. When they'd not yet operated on the entire picture, it got lose. Another side as the Hyde to his Jekyll.
Harley took on a new name, s suit and a coin toss away from his new dream.
Dismantling the Batman while becoming the biggest criminal in the city.
He'd heard about later the kid Bruce had adopted, even met him once. Moody thing. Sad.
Now, the word was up that Robin , side kick to the bat was out for good. As for his latest quarry…
His bench folk had seen a kid running right up to Wayne's big fancy castle. In a nutshell, it meant that trouble would happen if Harvey got the book thrown at both sides of his mangled face. If he did, Bruce was see the truth. As would every citizen in Gotham. And…his ex – fiancé's future family.
He'd gotten them scared before, yet the bat came through. Though, if that Timothy Drake had anything to say, he knew to keep his mouth shut to the coppers.
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~ I told ya you didn't rough em up enough. The kid ain't gonna respect Hyde, you idiot puppet!~ The voice harassed Harvey to no end, coining them "Two Face" as Harvey had rejected in in the beginning. Not before he came to see it was the only friend that spoke the full truth, he a monster. Period.
And, Bruce?
He'd ruined him to no end, forever. He was the biggest piece of garbage this city had to cage up. The very, biggest.
~ You gonna do like I want and catch that brat, Harv?~ The voice wasn't wrong. He had to act quickly. Keeping the Drakes toed up in a crate wasn't gonna last.
" I, can do one better." Harvey answered back, wavering a bit by what that meant. Killing a minor, a family.
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Bruce came up the drive a bit closer to four, burned out slowly and on a slow day at the office. He asked to work from home just to get his head clear, which was permitted by his rank. In truth, he had some questions for himself and a youth seated at the kitchen table.
"Tim Drake, I'm guessing."
"You've guessed." Tim bobbed his head in a solemn nod. "And I'm going to tell you what I can too…There is still time, Mr. Wayne."
"The boy came snooping about fir a savior, simply. Sir." Alfred explained. "Jason's keen eyes caught the intruder, yet he us in grave danger and cannot return to his family's home."
"A threat against them?"
"Abduction, and I wasn't caught in time."
"They didn't see where you were headed? These pursues. Why not the police-
"I'm on the lam, sir. If I told them, they'd find me. The man after us, had men in station. I ran from that too." Tim never had that said earlier. He must have been more composed to explain, as Jason stayed in his room and tried to rest. In actuality, he was online asking a friend for a favor.
"If Master Drake cannot recover his parents and unmask the deviant whose job it was to procure information from them, then what of the rest?"
"And you said that he knows our identities. How, Alfred?"
"I saw the Graysons fall, and it fell into place." Tim told the men. "You have to take the case, Mr. Wayne. I think, he knows your identity already too."
"Who's to blame –
"No, he boasted that he did…well, half of him did."
"Half?" Bruce thought back. "Was he wearing anything, a suit. Tie?"
"White and black, vertical… his face was all burned up."
"That is….Dent?" Alfred gawked and put a hand to his face.
"The politician?" Tim asked. "Sorry, I remember reading about that accident. He was badly mangled. It took the world's top doctors and surgeons-
"And there was a component that didn't work, is what the public does not know." Bruce said, keeping in mind that minimal drugs sadly dud exist away from the eye if the people of their world. "Was that he's since developed a split personality. One in each side of his face. He's now a crime lord called Two Face. The one and same, and he's been after Drake industries' secrets since Wayne's influence become a bad taste on the man's tongue."
"You used to be so close in the tabloids, I'm sorry…" Tim ducked his neck as Bruce went to seat himself at the head of the table instead. He pulled back his seat as Alfred found that approaching so soon would do them no favors, so he went instead to check on that evening's meal in the oven and then side additions, on the stove. To his wonder, there was something in the mail slot of the back doorway.
Alfred went to fetch whatever had been left, finding that one bat was not the only roosting character he'd have to later console.
Positioning himself in a very precarious place was another matter; Jason on the note it had read "have gone to see Roy Harper about a missing part of my past and future."
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No one knew where Roy had gone to. First a Titans' East candidate, then a drug addict and lastly, a nobody.
He'd left Oliver for a few years and didn't turn back. Sticking to his nicotine patches as a crude way to remedy the other itch, there was no useful thing he could be doing but going for helping out an old friend in need right now.
"I came as soon as I –
"I hate myself for doing that. I hate how Dick is always on his mind, how he just digs at us both by trying not to see what he's doing to me…Al knows I'm just jealous. He knows Bruce rarely talks to me since the –
"Slow down, Cowboy." Roy put a hand to Jason's shoulder to calm him. "I'm not leaving until we get this all looked at. Got the time?"
"Lot more than you." Jason snidely remarked.
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Start of the Outlaws but not the same. You'll see.
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So, we are growing up, but where is present day Richard? ROSE??
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