#I'm almost done with this bugfuck huge story

[yellowocaballero]

Is Dick Grayson a Good Person? Slade Wilson's Opinion Fails To Count.

“You realize that this frees you.”

“Gotham’s not a chain!” Dick snapped, before he even had the opportunity to control himself. “I put half my life into that city and I won’t abandon it just because everybody else in your stupid country has! It is a starving child, it is not a burden.”

Slade’s lip curled upwards. Dick wondered if he had fallen into a rhetorical trap. “Defensive. I was referring to your obligations towards the Batman.”

“Batman isn’t dead,” Dick said coldly. “You won’t get that lucky.”

“But you are far out of his reach.” Slade folded his arms on the table, eyes glinting. “As you said, there’s not much work you can do for him now. You’ve always found the task distasteful. The lying. Prioritizing Batman’s mission over the greater good. You can remove the mask you wear. However necessary the subterfuge was in the past, it’s hardly necessary now. You can do what you like. And you’ve never liked your job. You’re free.”

So I did that thing I always do when writing a bugfuck huge story and wrote a smaller story off it for fun. Normally I'd save this for much later, but this time I thought I'd be fun to post it before the main story and have it be a teaser. I think this very short slice of the universe must be really fun to read if you have no idea what the hell's going on!

I think by the end of it you can get a good idea of what's happening. This will be more difficult if you aren't familiar with certain Batman plotlines. This one requires some basic Teen Titans know-how to fully get, but I can offer a Cliff's Notes if requested.

Very short 5k mystery under the cut.

He was standing in the gift shop.

Just standing. He wasn’t scrolling on his phone or pretending to browse or doing anything that would keep him remotely invisible in the crowd of children. He stood in front of the back door to the gift shop that led into the main Tower building, hands in his pockets and aimlessly looking around. Zero fucking shame. 

“Why didn’t he just call?” Gar hissed. “That’s why we have a phone. That is the purpose of phones! What’s his purpose? Annoying us to death?” He glanced back at Joey, who was looking thoughtfully at the screen. “Uh. No offense.”

“For the last time, please do not censor your words for my benefit,” Joey signed, eyes crinkling in faint amusement. “He’s a difficult person. Nightwing, I’ll go down and speak with him.”

Dick was too tired for this.

He hadn’t been sleeping well, or at all. Gigantic fucking surprise, that one. It was worrying Kori. She was looking at him now, with her eyebrows furrowed in that increasingly familiar way. She barely looked at him normally anymore.

For the five millionth time, Dick thought that he ought to break up with her. For five millionth time, he decided it wouldn’t be worth it. Maybe next time. 

He adopted a Leaderly Thinking Pose anyway, rubbing his thumb over his bottom lip. It was his genuine body language while he was solving a problem on the ground as Nightwing, but he had to force it now. He really just wanted to stare blankly into space now. “If he wanted to speak to you, Joey, he would have randomly showed up on your balcony.”

“He also never wants to speak to you!” Danny piped up. Pantha flicked him on the temple. “Ow! Child abuse again!”

Vic’s eye twitched. “No horseplay in my security booth, guys.”

“Oh, but horseplay literally everywhere else is fine?” Donna asked archly.

Gar grinned. “Horseplay? You call that horseplay? I can show you -”

“Do it and you’re dead, little man!”

“But I could be a little horse! Just a little one! Shetland pony!”

Dick was way, way, way too tired for this. 

“If he had actually wanted to speak with us, he’d just show up.” Dick resisted the urge to pinch the bridge of his nose. “Standing in our darn gift shop’s a message. A ‘come out and play’ thing. It’s a…”

“Power play,” Donna sighed. “The Slade Wilson special.” 

“Which means he wants to talk to me,” Dick agreed. He stepped away from the console, waving the sweaty young adults out of his way as they tried to make room in the overstuffed security booth. “I’ll be back.”

An awkward silence fell over the assembled group. Dick forced his way back into the hallway, leaving the others to trip over their feet and follow after him, but the sound didn’t obscure Panthera whispering a question in Gar’s ear. 

“Uh,” Gar said, furry green ear flicking, “I’ll tell you later, yeah?”

“Oh! I know this one! I got it!” Danny thrust his hand in the air, ignoring Panthera grabbed him by his collar and physically towing him along. “Slade Wilson kidnapped Nightwing from the circus when he was twelve and taught him how to be a super-badass bounty hunter mercenary! But then Nightwing was like - no way, Jose, no mercenary looks this good in Spandex. Lookit my toned butt. So Nightwing made a break for it and decided to use his ill-gained skills in pursuit of heroism and justice and making me clean my room -”

“So if I look inside your room, it’ll be clean?” Donna asked mildly, and Danny froze. “If I go in there right now, it’ll be sparkling? Just like you said it was? Because if you lied, I’ll have to take you off -”

“Give me ten!”

That successfully got rid of Danny. Panthera obviously had a billion more questions, but after Gar whispered something back she nodded and peeled down the hallway in the opposite direction. Dick finally made it to their cavernous living space, stuffed full of couches and empty soda cans and video game systems. The familiarity and safety didn’t make him feel any less claustrophobic. 

The Tower had been his home since he was eighteen. He had never moved out or gotten his own place, choosing to live on site like their more vagrant members. Nowadays he spent most of his time at Kori’s place, to the point where he might as well be moved in already - but the Tower was still Nightwing’s home. The Titans were still Nightwing’s family. 

“Love, please wait,” Kori said, and because it was her he stopped. 

He turned around to see his friends in front of him, and realized for the first time that they all looked worried. Kori, Donna, Gar - old and familiar expressions on their faces.

“I really hate that guy,” Gar muttered, glaring at the floor as his tail lashed. “How does someone get worse the less evil they are?”

“Somebody may be a ‘good guy’ and a bad person. Or somebody may be a ‘bad guy’ and a good person. Evil or good - I believe it has little to do with your character.” Kori turned to Dick, and Dick forced himself to meet her eyes. “Nightwing, you do not have to meet with him.”

“Kori, he’s not going to leave until I -”

Kori grinned. Like Gar baring his teeth was a grin. “I would enjoy the opportunity to remove him myself.”

“There’s no need for violence.” As much as he loved to see it in Kori, he would like to avoid traumatizing schoolchildren. “God knows I’ve talked to him enough times, one more won’t kill me. It’s the fastest way to make him go away.”

“That’s not the point,” Donna said sharply, crossing her arms. “You shouldn’t have to be left alone with the man who kidnapped and abused you as a child.” Dick flinched hard. “We’re your family, Dick. Let us protect you from him.”

Her words made Dick sick. He let them see it. They’d misattribute the emotion. They’d attribute anything to anything they wanted. And it wouldn’t matter if Dick had never said a word. That wasn’t what they would remember. 

“If I have to hear the word ‘apprentice’ from his gross yellow teeth one more time, I swear I’m going to turn into a horse and bite him.”

Kori turned to Donna. “Please let me kill him.”

“Dick already said no.”

“We can all outvote him.”

“Joey would make that kind of weird, Kori.”

“Joey will live.”

“And Slade won’t!” Gar said cheerfully. 

There was something Dick didn’t know how to admit. Thankfully, he didn’t have to. “He didn’t kidnap me and he didn’t abuse me,” Dick said evenly. Frustration flashed in everybody, even Kori, but the denials were important. The denials wouldn’t make them forgive him, but they would keep him out of any potentially illegal waters. Dick knew the value of a technicality. “I wish you guys wouldn’t make those assumptions.”

“Assumptions are all we have!” Gar protested, throwing out his arms. “You still haven’t told us anything! Like, you don’t have to, really, but - all we have are the weird scraps you drop, and the picture is super worrying. Everything you have told us is scary as hell. If we’re misunderstanding, then why can’t you just -”

Scary? Scary? They’d said it a hundred times, and he’d never disagreed - out of context, the way everything slipped out, he knew what it looked like, but even Dick wasn’t perfect and even that was too much to say. They’d said it a hundred times and it had never bothered him before, but today - now -

“Thank you for worrying, Gar.” Dick smiled, warm and sincere. “But I can handle one old friend. I’ll be back soon.”

“Love, I don’t -”

Dick cut her off by kissing her, and he left to get changed with no more fanfare. There would be no need to go downstairs and talk with Slade, or to coordinate a meeting place. They knew each other too well for that.

He didn’t relax until he was out of the tower in his civvies, the clothes that felt almost alien on him. The suit had felt alien on him for weeks. Everything was alien on him. Everything was alien - even his home, even his family. His world, shifted irrevocably to the right. The United States of America, two million people short.

Dick piloted the boat back to the mainland in silence. The boat had a video camera in it too, so he did nothing but stare at the waves.

*

The reserved room was under the last name ‘House’. Ha, ha. Never let it be said the man didn’t have a sense of humor. Dick was proof enough of that.

The Japanese restaurant was upscale, but it was their regular haunt. Slade was in Japan for business frequently, Dick had spent a vaguely traumatic but extremely educational summer studying under a master there, and Jump’s very sizeable Japanese population had resulted in some authentic restaurants with private back rooms for business deals.

Slade was already waiting, which was a surprise. Maybe he already had gotten in his power plays for the day. Unlikely. Normally he liked to make Dick wait twenty minutes. Maybe he had picked today to be unusually kind and considerate. Even more unlikely.

Without looking up from his phone - undoubtedly working, the man never stopped - he said, “The sake’s poisoned.”

Dick glanced at the innocuous bottle on the table and the two stacked bowls next to it. “My enemy or yours?”

“Mine. Don’t worry, they don’t know you’re here. I’ll resolve this after we’re done here.” He put his phone face down on the table, looking up at Dick for the first time. “You look quite well. Funny.”

“Let me guess,” Dick said wryly, sliding into the seat across from him, “you’re about to congratulate me on my lying skills again?”

“I’m hardly effusive with praise.” Slade reached into his jacket and pulled out his own flask, taking a bowl and sloshing a dark amber liquid onto the porcelain. “And I thought the term was ‘performance’?”

“Performance is the word for you this morning.” Slade held out the bowl to Dick, who held up a hand. Slade shrugged - your loss. “Was embarrassing me in front of the entire team really necessary?”

“Was it fun?”

“Are you an asshole?”

 “It was a favor,” Slade said archly. He tipped the bowl into his mouth before setting it aside. “Which is why you’re here. Because you recognize the favors you owe me.”

“And you recognize the blackmail I have on you,” Dick said sweetly. Slade’s mouth twitched backwards a little. “I think last time we established quite well that we are at a standstill, Slade. What did you call it - an impasse?”

“If we are at an impasse, then why did you come?” Slade twisted the cap back onto his flask. Dick was silent. “Joey well?”

“Very. Talia?”

“Unhappy.”

“Unsurprising.”

“She asked me to check in on you,” Slade said lightly. “See how you were doing.”

Dick snorted. “Is that why you came?”

“Yes.”

Dick stopped short. 

Slade half-smiled. Point to him.

Then there was a knock on the door, and when the waiter walked in Dick expected to be asked for his order or given a menu. He wasn’t expecting the waiter to bring the entire meal, including Dick’s order. Mapo tofu extra spicy. His favorite. That explains the power play. If it wasn’t obvious, then it was hidden. No situation in which there wasn’t a power play. Fantastic. 

“Okay,” Dick said sourly, picking up his spoon. “So why are you actually here?”

“Don’t worry about the check, son. It’s on me today.”

“You are so divorced.”

“And you stink of orphan. Let’s move on from the obvious.” To Dick’s shock, Slade pushed away his own bowl of tonkatsu ramen - a working class dish for the high class man - and folded his arms on the table. He gave Dick his full attention, so heavy it could squeeze the breath from him. He almost never did that. Not outside of a fight, anyway. “How are you doing?”

Dick ate his tofu.

“There’s nobody else you can speak to about this besides me.”

Barbara. Who was even more distraught than Dick, and who Dick had been focusing on supporting instead of dumping onto. Who still believed in the police. In her father.

Alfred. Who was suffering enough.

“I’m not stupid enough to bare my neck to you,” Dick said quietly.

Slade leaned back, crossing his arms. “Vulnerability? You were flayed open to me many years ago, Dick. I have seen parts of you that even you have not seen.” Dick snorted softly. “Like will always recognize like. What’s a few words of frustration between an apprentice and his old master?”

Dick put his spoon down. Dick breathed. In one. Out two. In one.

“You don’t have to hold your temper, Dick.”

“I shouldn’t have come.”

“You knew you had to come,” Slade pressed. “You aren’t perfect. Nobody can hold all of this within themselves. You came because you needed to talk to somebody, and I am the only person in the United States of America that you can be honest with.”

“It’s ridiculous of you to act as if a lie entitles you to honesty.”

“I’m just trying to do you a favor, Dick. I’m the only person left who wants to help you.”

Dick breathed. 

The first unexpected thing of the night happened. Slade sighed, rubbing his forehead in an exact mirror of Joey’s expression from earlier that day. “I’m here when you’re ready.”

Then he picked up his chopsticks and began eating. Dick and Slade ate together in complete silence. Somehow it wasn’t even that awkward. The food was good, and if you were in a room with Slade the ideal environment was silence. 

He wasn’t halfway through his meal when he noticed that his hand was trembling. Dick watched it, detached and half-interested. That didn’t normally happen. He wasn’t feeling much. Certainly nothing intense enough to make his hand shake like this.

Slade definitely saw it, but he politely didn’t say anything.

He was halfway through his meal when he noticed that his careful breathing had gone off the rails. His breaths were coming in too hard, too fast. He was lightheaded. He needed to get out of this room. This claustrophobic back room in a Japanese restaurant under the name House, a grim fucking parody of his real home and family, eviscerated and dead. 

Dick dropped his spoon. “I should go.”

He didn’t stand up. Slade ate his noodles.

“You did this after Jason.” Exactly this. He had done the exact same thing, down to the same restaurant. Dick hadn’t even registered. He didn’t remember the month after Jason too well. “You - you sat me down and told me that I could talk to you about it. You did, didn’t you?”

“Goodness, Dick, I wasn’t hiding it.” Slade blew on his spoon. “I remember finding it interesting. You and Joey couldn’t be more different. When Grant died, Joey only - well. Of course Joey didn’t say much. But I remember he just lay there in that hospital bed. Just staring out the window. I didn’t really know what to do. Let his mother take care of it.” Big-ass fucking shock, that one. “You, however - you, I knew what to do with. And you look exactly the same now as you did back then. Do you know who you look like, Dick?”

Dick didn’t say anything.

“You look like a man angry enough to strangle the world.”

Dick bit his tongue.

Slade looked back down at his bowl, sipping his broth. “Tell me about it.”

Bruce would be so fucking disappointed in him. But it wasn’t as if Bruce could know.

“I’m not like you, Slade,” Dick said. He forced himself to keep staring at the man instead of looking at the woodgrain like he wanted. Do not forget who you’re speaking to. Don’t let him win. Was this letting him win? Were there some battles he wanted to lose? “But I’m not like them either. They’re honest people. Their lives have been messy, and they aren’t always nice, and sometimes they don’t always do the right thing. But they are honest people. They’re guarded, but none of them are pretending to be something they’re not.”

“Are you?” Slade asked mildly. “You’re a hero. There’s no doubt about that. I believed that was the only qualification for membership into that club. Certainly not talent.”

“Yeah, I’m a hero. I’m a good person. I’m a leader, I’m a boyfriend. A son and a brother.” He would always be a brother. Jason could be dead for fifty years and Dick would still be his fucking brother. And Tim… “But I’m a soldier too. At the end of the line I’m a soldier. Which is why I’m out here playing video games and eating ramen instead of where I’m needed.”

“Batman needed his spy?”

Dick winced. He hated that word. Accurate as it was. “The world needed Nightwing. That’s what he said. I’m not much good as a spy right now.”

“You were always a very good spy,” Slade said lightly. “I couldn’t even get Terra past you.”

God. Terra. Dick had almost forgotten about that. Maybe in self-defense. “Terra was a rank amateur and a little girl. You’re disgusting, by the way.” Slade shrugged. Dick didn’t know what part of leading a gullible teenage girl into believing that you might fall in love with her if she did everything you said warranted a shrug. “So unless you have any more Terras or Amanda Waller has any more ideas, Gotham needs me more than the Titans do.” 

“And yet here you are,” Slade said. “A soldier following his final order. No wonder you’re distressed. The only thing keeping you with the Titans are orders you don’t want to follow.”

“I was raised family uber alles,” Dick said lightly. His hand wasn’t shaking anymore, so he carefully picked his spoon up and started tucking into the tofu again. “Congratulations. You got what you wanted. Are we done here?”

“Are we?”

“I’m two seconds away from that sake.”

“Don’t stop on my account.”

“Oh, you wish.”

“We’re both well aware that I prefer you alive, Dick.” Great, that old power play - you’re alive only by my will! Just because it was true doesn’t mean he should lord it over him. Everybody Dick knew was alive because he wanted them alive, it wasn’t really something to brag about. “You realize that this frees you.”

“Gotham’s not a chain!” Dick snapped, before he even had the opportunity to control himself. “I put half my life into that city and I won’t abandon it just because everybody else in your stupid country has! It is a starving child, it is not a burden.”

Slade’s lip curled upwards. Dick wondered if he had fallen into a rhetorical trap. “Defensive. I was referring to your obligations towards the Batman.”

“Batman isn’t dead,” Dick said coldly. “You won’t get that lucky.”

“But you are far out of his reach.” Slade folded his arms on the table, eyes glinting. “As you said, there’s not much work you can do for him now. You’ve always found the task distasteful. The lying. Prioritizing Batman’s mission over the greater good. You can remove the mask you wear. However necessary the subterfuge was in the past, it’s hardly necessary now. You can do what you like. And you’ve never liked your job. You’re free.”

Dick’s hand clenched so hard his knuckles turned white. He turned his attention back to his breathing again. In one, out two. Slade watched, amused.

It all flashed through his mind. The news coverage. Bruce’s face in that D.C. hotel room. The gossiping, the smiles. The Titans. The scorn.

They had been sympathetic. They were good people. Danny said a lot of callous shit, obviously. That kid needed therapy badly. Donna had tsk’d over it, Kori had solemnly proclaimed that it was the decision of a weak leader. 

“That place is so scary,” Gar had said, shivering. “Gotham bad guys are bad guys on steroids. I can’t imagine being trapped in a city full of them.”

“And they aren’t even letting us do anything about it!” Wally had announced. That was what had really galled him - Wally hated inactivity. “Is this really the end of it? It’s so unfair.”

“There was no other outcome,” Vic had said shortly. He was the ‘cold hard reality’ one. “That plague could have swept the US. Shitty how we aren’t even trying to make a vaccine, but quarantining the place is the only thing that kept everybody else safe.”

“But to just abandon it!” Kori had said. “It’s too unfair.”

“Yeah, it’s fucked.”

“Well,” Wally had said, “nothing to do.”

“Nothing we can do,” Donna said.

“Gotta say,” Gar said, “kinda glad it’s not my problem?”

“With you there,” Vic said. 

Raven had said nothing. Dick didn’t remember what he had said. He only knew that she had stared at him the whole time, and that he had to eventually force himself not to care. Raven had his number. She knew what a liar he was. She never told anybody. She’d kept every secret so far - she’d keep this one too.

Everybody had jumped to conclusions. Nightwing never said a word about why he had the skills and drive he had, why he chose their strange and unsettled life. The first person they see who really seems to know him is Slade Motherfucking Wilson, who won’t stop going on about their fated master-apprentice destiny. Who wouldn’t assume that they had a history? And wasn’t that a pretty fantasy too convenient to destroy? 

Dick hadn’t lied about that. Slade had. Completely out of his ass, with full abandon. Gleefully. Called it a favor to him. Dick could do without his favors. Sometimes Dick wondered if he believed his own lies.

Dick didn’t have to say it. Slade knew. Slade knew full well, and he had only said it to make Dick see it too. 

The mission was worth it now. It was worth it. The lying, the masks, the betrayal, their fake history - it was worth it and more. He couldn’t imagine wanting to do anything else.

“You can say it, Dick.”

Dick dropped his spoon, letting his fists clench in his lap. 

“I already know. You can say it.”

Dick’s teeth grit together.

“I want to hear you say it. Admit it, Dick.”

Maybe Dick had been kidnapped by this man one too many times. Maybe hearing that tone of voice, a tone he only used when he had Dick at his complete mercy, ground against his mind at just the right angle and produced a spark. Or maybe Dick was just weak without Bruce - weak, when he was alone in the world - and he just wanted to say it. 

“I want them to pay for this.”

Slade was polite enough not to gloat. God only knew he’d worked hard enough over the past five years to try and squeeze something half as cold out of him. “And you have to stay undercover to do so. Even now, when it’ll be more difficult than ever.” Dick nodded. “Revenge, then. What will that look like?” Dick shrugged. “You haven’t figured it out yet? Unlike you.”

“Hard to figure out something you don’t like admitting,” Dick said lowly.

“Sounds like I’m doing you another favor, then.”

“Sounds like you need to watch your mouth.”

Slade barked a laugh, making Dick roll his eyes. “Let me guess - you’ll rather die than accept my help?” Dick flipped him off, and he laughed again. “So be it, then. That’s a pity. I would have liked to know what your revenge would look like.”

“I can do it on my own,” Dick snapped, a second before he realized what that sounded like. “Christ, Slade, I’m not taking revenge on the United States. That’s supervillain behavior. I’m just -”

“Fantasizing about it?” Slade asked archly. “Thinking, dreaming, wanting? Not doing? It’s unlike you. You’ve always taken what you wanted.”

“Are you seriously trying to convince me to go supervillain right now?”

“Just trying to help.”

“Your help’s sh - not welcome, thanks.”

A dim, sunken light shone in Slade’s eye, and Dick looked away. He hadn’t allowed Dick to curse at him for those long two months. Knowing that shit from so long ago still stuck probably got him off. Asshole. Bastard. Fucker.

“It’s here if you want it,” Slade said. “It’s always been here. Just because you’ve ungratefully rejected it, thrown it back in my face, doesn’t mean it’s no longer here. For what it’s worth, I think you’re more than capable of the revenge you seek. If you’re actually willing to take it.” Slade angled his head down, one watery blue eye piercing straight through Dick. “Are you willing?”

Dick couldn’t breathe.

“My little brother is twelve,” Dick whispered hoarsely, and for once in his life Slade fell silent. “He is a little boy. And he is trapped in that city fighting Bruce’s crusade. If it doesn’t kill him it’s going to break him. And I’ll have lost two brothers in two years. Two kids. Because there’s ‘nothing we can do’. Or because ‘there’s only criminals left in there anyway’. Because of the greater good. Because some asshole in charge decided my family wasn’t worth a couple of bucks. Again.” Dick’s breath was coming hard and fast, and it took all he had not to fall. “I almost killed the man who did it. Bruce had to pry me off him and rip the knife from my hands. I can’t kill the people who did this. I would not do it. I can’t kill everybody who isn’t lifting a finger to help. That’d be - that’d be everybody. And I wouldn’t want to hurt them either.

“I keep on trying to think of a way to make sure that they wouldn’t get away with it. That the people who trapped Tim and ground Jason into poverty experience the consequences of their actions. But I can’t think of it. I don’t know how.”

Short of air-dropping them into Gotham. But that would just be murder. What with the rampant plague and everything. On top of the earthquake. And the riots. Jesus.

“You can’t,” Slade said simply, and Dick didn’t know why the words were crushing. Maybe it was just hearing them from Slade, of all people. “Those people pressed a few buttons and took a few bribes and ruined millions of lives. They will never face ramifications for that. You cannot bring justice for Gotham. The best you have now is payback. The best you can do is revenge. Is that good enough for you, Dick?”

Dick was silent. 

And Slade just shrugged. He pushed his bowl away - when had he finished it? - and stood up. He reached over the table and picked up the small poisoned sake bottle with two fingers, tilting it gently back and forth. He put his hand in his pocket, angling his arm back just enough to flash his concealed gun.

“The person who ordered me the poisoned sake is sitting in a business meeting with his fellow executives. They’ve stiffed me on a payment and are trying to get away with it. Of course, nobody stiffs me and walks away. My life exists on a permanently balanced system. Everything in my life is fair. You should give it a shot. It’s quite pleasant.”

“I have better things to do with my time,” Dick said cooly.

“Ah, yes. We all best return to our lives. And you to your friends.” Slade walked past him, pausing only to rest his hand on Dick’s shoulder and bend down. His breath was hot on Dick’s ear, and Dick found himself  freezing still. Another ancient reaction, persistently clinging. “Word of advice, Dick. Don’t tip your hand to your friends just yet. Your fight will only grow more complex from here. You’ll need as many allies as you can.” 

Dick turned to look at him. His skin crawled at the smile on Slade’s face, at that familiar bristly stubble. Thank god Joey was identical to his mother. “Every ally I have?”

“Every one.”

They stared at each other, heavy and sour, and for the first time in a long time -

“Then I guess I’ll need all the help I can get,” Dick said softly.

Slade straightened, clapping a hand on his shoulder. “Attaboy. Now, if you excuse me. Wait until the gunshots stop to come out.”

“You’re always taking care of me, Slade.”

“I told you I would,” Slade said loftily. “Have I ever lied to you?”

“No,” Dick said, “we’ve never lied to each other.”

Dick stayed seated in that room long after Slade left. He stayed seated through the murmur of voices, the first screen. They’d need to find a new meeting point. 

A hail of gunshots descended over the restaurant, far away and close, and Dick finally broke into tears. Nobody could hear them over the sound of the shots, and nobody could see him in here, and nobody had to know. 

He cried as long as the gunshots lasted and no longer. After ten minutes, he wiped his face and exited the room. Better hurry home. It was getting late. 

They’d be expecting him.