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Dick stirred back to consciousness with the distinct thought that this night was not going his way.
He’d known it when his simple surveillance had turned into a building full of goons shooting at him, he’d known it when he caught a flash of the orange-and-black that never foretold happy things, and he’d especially known it when some idiot set off explosives. Waking up to darkness and the jagged outline of broken concrete around him was just the underline to this complete clusterfuck.
Dick groaned as he tried to shift enough to reach his pockets. His left arm pulsed with the edge of sharp pain that signified something broken and he didn’t want to move it unless absolutely necessary. His legs were ominously numb. But his right arm was working and he groped around until he could reach his gear.
His comm had shorted out, not even static amidst the ringing in his ears, but he found a glowstick. Cracking it illuminated his predicament.
Concrete and broken wood stretched above him and around him and below him. Dick had been on the fourth floor of the building when it blew—a long way to fall and a lot of weight to collapse on him. It had mercifully not pulverized his skull.
The rest of him was not that lucky.
Dick took a breath to assess. His left arm pulsed in two distinct spots and he probed enough to decide to leave it alone. He had enough motor control to attempt to flex his legs and draw them closer in. The left leg didn’t respond at all, a shrieking alarm nearly overshadowed by the wave of fire that drifted up his right.
Not good. Very not good.
The pain was centered on his knee. The part of Dick that could still future-plan was thinking of how many months of rehab it would be, how long it would take him to regain his mobility, if he could regain his mobility at all.
He carefully didn’t think about his left leg. Succumbing to blind panic was an excellent way to ensure he didn’t get out of this mess at all, much less in one piece.
And Dick needed to get out of here by himself. The BPD was still holding on to a grudge about Blockbuster’s fall and the destabilization of organized crime and were inclined to shoot him on sight. Given that the building had also been full of hostiles before its untimely destruction, a silent and speedy exit to the nearest hospitable medical care was Dick’s only option.
Dick took a deep breath. Slow and steady. A good compartmentalization tool to shove down the shock and panic and pain in favor of a clear, well-defined goal.
He needed to get out. First came wriggling free of all debris pinning him down. Second, scouting ahead for a likely way out. He could reassess at that point.
Goal and plan in mind, Dick braced his working hand on the rubble beneath him. There was a hollow of sorts around his upper body, extending several feet to his left, so logically that was the best direction to move. He took a deep breath in, ready to yank his legs free, and—
A sharp, sudden flare of pain.
Dick aborted the movement, but it was too late. Agony coursed through him, a vicious searing burning pain that sparked somewhere in his groin and bloomed like an oil spill, winning a shocked, strangled scream before he managed to snap his mouth shut.
Fuck. Fuck. Oh fuck—fuck—it wasn’t stopping—
Dick could taste blood but couldn’t feel the pain of biting his lip, or the pain of digging his fingers into his thigh—nothing but the fire lancing through his body. He was as tense as a live wire, toes curled in his boot as he wheezed out ragged breaths.
He—he needed to relax. He needed to think. He needed the pain to fucking stop already, for fuck’s sake, he’d gotten the goddamn message!
First it was one full breath. Then two, managed between desperate gasps. Then three, and Dick managed to unclench his right foot and relax his leg, dimming the shrieking of his knee. Four, and he let his left arm go limp to avoid the pulsing of multiple fractures. Five, and his stomach finally undid the knots it had tied itself into. He breathed in and he breathed out.
Okay. So he was more injured than he originally thought.
Dick gingerly patted on top of his stomach, searching for the source of the pain. He reluctantly prodded swollen, hot flesh until his questing fingers met something far harder than skin.
Tubular, no bigger across than a finger, extending straight up and disappearing amidst the splintered wood above him. A rugged surface, wet with what was definitely his blood. Hard and unyielding. Dick craned his head as far as he could, holding the glowstick, to confirm what he’d missed on his initial scan. That was a metal rod sticking out of his left hip.
The important thing, Dick instructed his increasingly hysterical mind, was not to panic.
Compartmentalization. It was even more difficult now, the agony teetering on the edge of unbearable, but Dick breathed in and out and in and out, trying desperately to dampen the flames. The points of pain had grown too numerous to count, skull throbbing with more than a simple headache and one out of four limbs still functioning. The part of his mind that was tallying up the months of rehab had gone silent.
He could get out of this. He could. He just—he needed to be careful.
Dick broke another glowstick, pretending like the black spots hovering at the edge of his vision were just shadows. There was no point in rationing his supplies—Dick needed to make a push to get out now, before the blood loss and pain and exhaustion made it impossible.
It was possible that the metal rod wasn’t affixed to anything. Maybe if Dick moved slowly, inch by careful inch, he could slowly slither towards his left—
Pain swelled with a sharp, distinctive tug.
That was not a good sign. He pressed his hand to the wound, curling around the rod, and tried to judge how deep it went. His back was beginning to hurt, a tight pain like a cramp—and Dick had a horrible thought.
It was stupid, it was beyond stupid, but seized with sudden panic, Dick yanked upwards on the rod.
It didn’t budge an inch.
Harsh wheezes turned higher, tighter. Black spots swarmed as he gasped for breath that had fled his reach. There was a metal rod sticking out of him. No. There was a metal rod in him, all the way through, pinning him to the chunk of concrete below him like a butterfly in a case.
Another stifled sound, though this one came out distinctly like a whimper.
Compartmentalization. Dick couldn’t. He literally, physically couldn’t. Pain warred with panic, a fight-or-flight instinct running against a physical obstacle, and every turn of his mind was met with a dead end.
He had nothing capable of cutting the rod, even if his fingers would stop trembling long enough to try. The comm wasn’t working, no matter how many times Dick turned it off and on again. He couldn’t call for help because there wasn’t a friendly in the building and waiting for a sympathetic fire-and-rescue to find him was a shot with very long odds.
Dick was stuck here, unable to move, alone and isolated. Waiting to die.
The half-hysterical, half-morbid thought well it can’t get any worse had barely crossed his mind before the universe reminded him that it could always get worse.
A soft scrape of concrete. Dick tensed despite his body’s fierce protestations, fingers clamping tight over the metal rod as he swung his gaze to the crawlspace to his left. Orange-and-black stared back, the single eyehole shadowed and impassive.
Of fucking course.
The last time he’d seen Slade, he’d spat venom at the man’s face and stripped Rose’s disillusions about the father she so desperately wanted. Rose had cut ties with Slade not long after, fleeing to the relative safety of the Titans. There had been no reprisals from the mercenary. Not for ruining his contract, not for betraying him as Renegade, and not for turning his youngest child away from him.
Dick wasn’t foolish enough to believe that Slade had taken all of that lying down.
When he’d imagined the reunion, he’d expected it would be on equal terms. Or as equal as it got when one party was essentially a killing machine. That Dick would have his escrima, his suit, an appropriately dramatic backdrop as they faced off against each other.
Not like this. Not stuck and injured and panicked, unable to do more than swipe ineffectually at the mercenary with shaking fingers.
“Nightwing.” Deathstroke’s voice was completely even, not betraying a hint of emotion. The crawlspace wasn’t big enough for him to straighten into a crouch, but that didn’t matter. Having two free hands was enough of a threat.
Deathstroke, Dick meant to say, but, “Slade,” was what came out, thin and weak and raspy. Deathstroke shifted forward and Dick flinched—pain spiked up his torso and he stifled the groan to a hiss.
His back was beginning to seriously ache, muscles taut and burning, the pain only adding to his helplessness. Black spots swarmed like flies around him. His ribs felt like a literal cage, lungs beating uselessly against their grasp as Dick tried and failed to breathe.
Please, he imagined saying. Help, he could almost hear. Slade, the plea to the mercenary’s better nature, or maybe his amusement with Dick, or whatever it was that made Slade decide to help him on occasion.
He didn’t dare voice it now. Whatever goodwill had been between them was long lost by Renegade and Rose.
The best case scenario would be Deathstroke turning around and crawling away. Leaving Dick to his fate. The worst case scenario—quite honestly, Dick couldn’t imagine the worst case scenario.
He couldn’t move. He couldn’t call for help. He was, in all likelihood, going to die before help reached him. The only thing Deathstroke could do was hasten the outcome.
The sob surprised him and he didn’t managed to suppress it before it rattled free. His cheeks were already wet—with tears, with sweat, with blood.
“You’re stuck,” Deathstroke informed him, matter-of-fact. Dick wanted to laugh. The orange-and-black mask moved, visibly scanning over him. “Very stuck.”
“Observant,” Dick said hollowly. He didn’t have the energy to turn it into a quip.
“Without backup.” Another observation. Not a question. “No one else is coming.”
Dick tried to breathe. In and out, in and out. His heart pounded oddly in his skull. The pain was growing curiously more distant—or maybe that was just him, detaching from his body in the face of his imminent death.
He blinked, vision going soft and blurry around the edges, and the mask was right in front of him when he opened his eyes. Deathstroke was studying the metal rod sticking out of him and Dick’s grip on it was getting weaker.
“Please,” slipped from his lips as an exhale.
Deathstroke slowly turned towards him. “Please what?” the mercenary asked, a dark edge to his tone.
Dick blinked. Please help. Please go away. Please kill me quickly. He didn’t know which one was right.
“I’ve dreamt about this,” the mercenary said conversationally. “A broken little bird, all alone.” He’d wrapped an idle hand around the rod. “No friends, no family, nothing but the weight of his own failure.”
Dick stayed perfectly still, stomach knotted, waiting for Deathstroke to yank on the rod, to twist, to pull, to cause fresh agony to lace through him.
“Well? Nothing to say for yourself? That’s a first.”
“Slade,” Dick exhaled. His voice was breathless. He couldn’t curl his fingers anymore, they kept faltering. “Please.”
He just wanted everything to stop.
Dick could feel Deathstroke’s fingers tighten on the metal, the faint vibration shuddering through him. He could make out the mercenary grasping the rod with both hands. He didn’t quite understand why, his foggy mind taking too long to make the connection, and the screech of metal snapping came as a sudden shock.
He couldn’t stifle the sharp cry at the burst of pain, but it was short-lived, leaving him panting as it spiked through his body.
Dick could barely see through his teary eyes but he could make out the jagged metal spike, now ending a couple inches out from his body. Deathstroke turned over the other half of it in his hands, slow and calculating, and Dick wondered if he was going to use it.
He didn’t remember getting impaled the first time. It was an experience he didn’t wish to recall.
But Deathstroke tossed the rod away instead of turning Dick into a pincushion and Dick was left teetering on the ledge of uncertainty, forced to watch Deathstroke knowing full well that he was unable to defend himself.
“It goes all the way through?”
That was a question and Dick took a long moment to understand it, and then ponder over the implications, and then decide whether to tell the truth or not, and finally come to the resigned conclusion that he didn’t have the energy to care. “Yes,” Dick replied simply.
Deathstroke made a low grunt and bent closer. At first, Dick thought he was trying to grope him, a thought accompanied by a surge of irritation, because was this really the time or place—but fingers hit something that reverberated dully through him, causing fresh seizing in his back and glutes, and Dick realized that the mercenary had found the exit wound.
“Slade,” Dick near-whined, trying not to scream as fingers determinedly inched between his back and the rubble he was lying on. “S-Stop.”
“Stay still,” Deathstroke retorted, ignoring his protests. Once his fingers had wormed all the way in, the mercenary pushed up, forcing Dick an inch higher, the rod jerking inside of him.
Dick scrabbled against the rubble, mouth open in a soundless scream. His left arm jerked up—to hit Deathstroke, to block him, to tear him away—and Dick bit his lip at the fresh wave of agony.
Deathstroke didn’t care, didn’t even budge at the attempt, his free hand pulling back and then front again—was that the flash of a knife?—before bending down. At the first scrape of metal against metal, Dick screamed out loud.
“Quiet,” Deathstroke snapped, as the—the blade, it had to be some kind of blade, something sawed at the metal rod. The vibrations coursed through Dick, shuddering through his bones, and distantly Dick recognized that he was being cut free but all he could perceive was the pain.
It hurt. It hurt beyond description. His vision spotted in and out as Dick arched as much as he was able, his entire body tensing to try and get away from the source of the agony. He grabbed rubble, and then his side, and then the rod sticking out of him, something, anything that could make it stop.
Sobs filtered between agonized moans, the only sounds other than his heartbeat and the godawful screech of metal against metal. Deathstroke was completely silent as he sawed Dick free. Dick, for a moment, wished that the mercenary was at least gleeful, something for Dick to focus on besides the unending agony.
By the time the vibrations stopped, Dick was clinging to coherence by his fingertips, mind swimming in a haze. “P-Please,” he forced out, desperate and grasping. He would beg, if he had to. He would do anything to make it stop. “S-Slade. Hurts.”
He could barely form words though, his mind was too slow, his face too numb. His tongue felt clumsy in his own mouth, slurring as he fought it to work, and Deathstroke moved too fast. Between one blink and the next, the man had changed positions like the Flash, and somewhere in the blink after that, an arm curled under his shoulder blades, propping him up.
Dick cried out in remembered pain, but there was no tugging anymore, no sharp pain. His legs protested being moved, concrete scraping across his shins, but they were finally yanked free, leaving him loose-limbed and utterly defenseless amidst the rubble.
He closed his eyes. Exhaustion folded over him like a blanket, sapping every remaining bit of energy he had left. Even the threat of the world’s deadliest mercenary couldn’t stem the tide.
Dick surrendered into the darkness, half-resigned, half-relieved.
Slade could tell when Grayson awoke, because any attempt to keep quiet was swiftly broken by a strangled groan.
He returned to the room he’d stashed the vigilante in to see the kid moan, face twisted in a pained scowl as he attempted to gather himself up. A movement halted by the metal bands pinning him to the cold table. Grayson’s eyes squinted open in confusion as he tugged at his wrists, fingers curling and uncurling, breaths getting harder and sharper, as he tried to figure out what was going on.
Slade leaned against the doorframe and watched dispassionately. There was one shackle for every limb, and then several more across his torso and hips—Slade wasn’t taking any chances—and one around his throat.
The last one, admittedly, was personal. The sight of Dick Grayson swallowing past the thick metal collar, blue eyes hazy in confusion, was enough to make Slade’s fingers itch.
“Deathstroke,” Grayson rasped, confusion flickering to fear and then blankness. The composure broke a few seconds later, Grayson biting his lip as he went tense, arching under a silent wave of pain, muscles rippling, bare skin gleaming in the harsh lighting.
He was sweating so much there were puddles of it on the table. Grayson relaxed as much as he was able in the aftermath of the spasm, fixing his gaze on Slade as he subtly tested his bonds. Subtle to anything but a supersoldier’s eye—Slade could see his wrists twisting for space in the shackles, see his feet shifting as he tried to pull on them. “What,” Grayson’s voice was high and thin, “what do you want?”
It tried to echo with the vigilante’s usual defiance, but it was audibly lacking. Grayson’s mouth opened as he tensed again—he didn’t scream, but the strangled sound was close to a whimper.
“Typically, people thank their rescuer,” Slade said evenly.
“I—I don’t—you didn’t—” Grayson was panting now, hands spasming into fists, pulling harder at his bonds. “Where—where am I?”
“My safehouse.” He’d written off all his safehouses in Bludhaven as burned. To his surprise, most were untouched. He hadn’t gone to check the one he’d stayed at with Rose.
“I—where—” Grayson bit off again, this time with a curse. He jerked more sharply and his groan swelled. “It hurts.”
“I know.” It would feel like fire running through the kid’s veins, like he’d been pumped full of liquid magma. The thought of the agony Grayson must be in was a small balm to the seething knot of rage and frustration that Slade had been carrying around for months.
Grayson cursed again, this time arching off the table as he fought the restraints. Slade remembered how the pain built slowly, higher and higher as it passed his tolerance, higher and higher until it reached unbearable, and then higher and higher passed that. Grayson took a ragged breath, not at screaming yet, fingers curled so tightly his palms must be bleeding.
“S-Stop.”
Slade considered him. Considered the image he made, writhing on the table, entirely naked, gleaming with sweat. The wounds had been treated minimally, gauze and braces that Grayson was swiftly putting into disarray. The furrow on his face deepened with every passing second.
“Why?” Slade asked.
Grayson looked at him in pure incomprehension.
“Why should I stop?” Slade asked. Slow. Even. “Why should I not stand here and revel in your pain after what you did to me?”
Grayson was starting to curl in on himself. Defensive. Finally recognizing a threat other than the liquid fire in his veins. “I—you—you cut me free—”
“That was too easy. Too quick. No way to watch you suffer.”
Grayson shook his head roughly, left hand scrabbling to try and reach his hip. “The metal rod—”
“Shattered your pelvis,” Slade informed him coolly. A hospital could’ve maybe pieced it back together. But Grayson would never be able to fly again.
That won a strangled sob from Grayson’s throat, his movements jerkier and faster. Metal creaked as he struggled harder. “No, no,” he repeated, high and tremulous—Slade didn’t know if he was talking to himself or to him. “Why?” the kid asked plaintively.
“You know why.”
Watery blue eyes fixed on him, tears leaking into dark hair. Slade waited as Grayson shook and struggled and panted, groans turning to whines as the pain grew worse. “I’m sorry,” Grayson finally rasped.
Slade just watched.
“I’m—I’m sorry for—for betray-raying you,” Grayson cried out, straining against the bonds. “Sorry for R-Rose.” Another groan, higher and sharper. “Sorry—sorry for—sorry—”
Grayson screamed, short and frantic, tossing his head from side to side to vent the pain. The table shuddered underneath him.
“Slade,” the kid said finally, in that plaintive, broken tone that had compelled him the last time. “Hurts.” He was openly crying now—huge, heaving sobs nearly choking him. “Please.”
Slade stayed where he was, expression a block of ice.
“Please what?”
Grayson looked at him, desperate and imploring. “Make it stop.”
“I can’t.” It was even the truth.
Grayson cried like Slade had shot him, his entire body stiff like a block of wood. Tensing only made it hurt worse, but it was hard to fight the body’s natural reaction to pain. Grayson again weakly tossed from side to side, moving nowhere but unwilling to stop fighting.
“Slade,” the kid begged without words, face screwed up and eyes squeezed shut. He didn’t notice when Slade straightened off the wall and stalked closer, too focused on his pain.
Slade watched the lines of Grayson’s face, the frantic motions as he fought and lost against the restraints, the tension written in the hard jaw and sharp furrow. Slade placed his palm across the side of the kid’s face and watched the kid go rigid.
“Slade,” Grayson’s voice cracked, eyes opening a sliver. Begging.
“I can’t give you more painkillers,” Slade said levelly. Grayson had, in fact, stayed unconscious for longer than Slade had expected. “The serum will eat through it faster than it can work.”
“The serum?” Grayson’s face twisted quizzically.
“Your injuries were too severe.” It had been at that moment, staring at the unconscious, broken Nightwing in his grasp, that Slade had realized that he didn’t want to clip the vigilante’s wings forever. That it was, in fact, a damn shame if Nightwing never got to fly again. “The serum was the only solution.”
This close, this unguarded, Slade got to watch every one of the kid’s emotions flash across his face. Confusion, followed by suspicion, surprise, and then wary, hesitant hope. It paused momentarily as Grayson spasmed again, hissing at the pain.
“Super,” Grayson panted harshly, “supersoldier serum?”
“Yes.”
It was activated serum, filtered from his blood. As far as he was aware, no one had yet been able to reverse engineer the pure serum from his blood, but the filtered serum still caused a brief boost in strength, sensory perception, and healing. Each vial was worth its weight in gold, if Slade cared to sell them.
“How—how long?”
Slade was tempted to say it was permanent, just to see how the kid would react. But staring down at Grayson’s tear-streaked face, at the clenched jaw and pained furrows and hollowed exhaustion, Slade couldn’t bring himself to do it.
“A few hours,” Slade answered gruffly, stepping back.
Grayson automatically followed the movement, hissing when he jolted against the restraints. “Do I—have to be—tied down?”
No, not anymore, not when Grayson’s wounds were well on the way to healing and he was conscious enough not to aggravate them. Slade ground his teeth together, swallowing down his irritation at the thought of a free and mobile Dick Grayson—but the kid wasn’t looking at him, panting as he twisted in place. He looked miserable.
Slade exhaled and began unhooking the restraints.
“You’re not close to being healed,” Slade warned, undoing the wrist restraints first, then the collar, then the torso bands. “Don’t—” sit up, he was going to say, but Grayson already pushed upright and learnt the consequences. He collapsed back on the table with a sharp cry, hand clenching tight above his left hip as he whined sharply. Slade sighed.
“Are you capable of listening or am I talking merely for my own amusement?”
Grayson didn’t answer, but he didn’t try to get up again and Slade accepted that as the best he was going to get.
He finished unhooking the metal bands and unlatched the metal shackles before stepping back again. It would serve Grayson right to spend the next few hours of agony lying on the hard table, but Slade found himself scooping the kid up and heading towards the bedroom.
Grayson pressed his face to Slade’s shoulder, breathing raggedly. One hand curled in Slade’s shirt, right above his heart, like he was afraid of being dropped.
“Thank you,” he murmured, muffled and weak.
Slade flexed his fingers to keep them from digging in.
He deposited Grayson on the bed, ready to leave the kid to his own devices as he hunted down something to make himself forget that this ever happened, but Grayson’s grip on his shirt only tightened, hand balling into a fist with a weak protest. Slade grabbed his wrist to yank it off, only to be arrested by the sight of blue eyes.
“Stay?” Grayson asked softly. It wasn’t a command like the others, too vulnerable and hesitant to be a plea.
Slade looked down at him. At the vigilante who’d pretended to switch sides and lied to Slade so convincingly that he’d almost begun to believe it. At the hero near-singlehandedly responsible for Slade losing all of his children. At the man that Slade couldn’t help but return to, like a moth encircling the flame.
He pulled Grayson’s hand off and watched his eyes squeeze shut in disappointment. But Slade didn’t move far, only reaching to pull the blanket up to cover Grayson’s nudity—not that the kid seemed to care; what was modesty to a vigilante that wore a skintight suit?—before he slipped next to him.
Grayson immediately turned towards him, wriggling forward until he could rest his head against Slade’s chest, fingers again gripping his shirt. Tears seeped through the shirt, Grayson’s shudders quieter but no less pained, soft whimpers interspersed between hitched breaths. He clung to Slade like a drowning man and after a long pause and a short mental battle, Slade curved an arm around him.
He felt Grayson relax, an infinitesimal thing, as Slade’s hand settled on the back of his head. Slade didn’t remember much from the serum—between the agony and the weakness, everything had been a blur—but he remembered sinking into Addie’s grasp the moment he was out like a man seeing the sun for the first time.
Slade curled his fingers and stroked, gentle and soft. Grayson shuddered and pressed further against Slade, heart rate calming the longer Slade continued it.
By all rights, Slade should snap his throat. The enormity of how thoroughly Grayson destroyed his relationship with his daughter necessitated a response and Slade had ruminated over no shortage of them, including the overly complicated but nicely dramatic plan to nuke Bludhaven via radioactive meta. Grayson had turned him into a man with nothing to lose and Slade was hellbent on ensuring he suffered the same.
Except.
Slade did have something to lose.
And he wasn’t particularly inclined to lose it.