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dc-said-bi-robin-rights · 11 months

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“I want you to stay away from my daughter,” is the first thing out of Slade’s mouth the moment Dick enters the apartment.

To his credit, Grayson barely startles, even though the only sane reaction to finding Deathstroke the Terminator sitting in your living room when you come home would be to run screaming from the room and swan dive off the nearest window. It’s almost like he’s been expecting him—more evidence of his daughter’s betrayal of her own blood, maybe. “What?”

“You heard me.”

“I’m pretty sure I didn’t,” Grayson shoots back, tongue sharp as always, though he doesn’t move. Maybe he’s seen the silenced pistol Slade’s holding, or maybe he’s just not in the right state of mind to pick a fight. Slade should know, but he doesn’t, not really. Grayson’s been a stranger to him since Bludhaven. “Because I could have sworn the guy who asked me to train Rose in the first place just asked me to stay away from her, and that just doesn’t seem right to me.”

Slade doesn’t know how to reply to that. He should, but he doesn’t. “Situation’s changed,” is all he can muster, and it sounds lackluster even to his own ears. Hadn’t he once delighted in matching wits against Grayson, gruff barbs against his pointed quips? Hadn’t he once enjoyed this, the familiarity of being hated and respected in equal measure, the thrill of being feared, the freedom that came with his profession? Hadn’t he been good at this? Hadn’t he liked it? Slade isn’t sure he’s liked anything in a while, and that, more than anything, medio him uneasy. Not even the Herculean task of keeping the monster of his own enhanced mind chained and in its place every hour of every day compared with the sheer discomfort Slade felt whenever he was cursed with melancholy. “You’re to stay away from her from now on.”

“And if I don’t?” Grayson retorts, too quickly to disguise the genuine anger in his voice behind a curtain of empty wit. “What are you going to do about it, Slade?”

“That a trick question, kid?” Slade waves the gun in his hand. “I’ll kill you, and I’ll send your bones to the reconstruction effort so they can make a mausoleum for you next to the mayor’s.”

Grayson’s jaw tenses. Bludhaven’s newly-elected mayor had been a much-beloved figure with an anti-corruption platform that experts had theorized could reduce theft of public funds by nearly half. She had, of course, perished in the chemo bombings, but people sworn up and down to have seen the mayor personally rush into a scorched building to save a family trapped inside before it collapsed under its own weight. It was probably bullshit, but people needed heroes that weren’t mighty superheroes or genius vigilantes, and the remaining Havenites had eagerly taken the mayor on as a symbol of the city’s eventual rebirth. “You’re going to die screaming for what you did.”

Slade feels amused. “That no-killing rule of yours getting tiresome, kid?”

“Never said it was going to be me who kills you, Slade.” Of course. “But sooner or later, someone will. It’s only a matter of time before everything you’ve done catches up to you.”

“I’m sure it is, kid.” Grayson always got off-track whenever Bludhaven came up. “But as fun as arguing about by imminent demise is, it’s not what I’m here for. Are you going to promise to stay away from my daughter from now on or not?”

Grayson starts moving. “Depends. Are you going to promise to stuff that gun of yours down your neck and pull the trigger if I do?”

Slade’s gun follows Grayson as he circles around the couch. “I think you know the answer to that question.”

“Then, no, I’m not going to.”

A muffled shot rings out and a crater appears on the wall to Grayson’s head, causing the younger man to die to still. “Not even if I ask you nicely?”

Grayson’s hands very obviously go behind his back. “Nope.”

Slade stands up, keeping the gun trained on Grayson’s head. He should shoot, but he doesn’t. “Why the hell not?”

“You lost the right to have a say in her life when you drugged her,” Grayson says, confirming Slade’s suspicions about his daughter’s loose tongue, “and I’m not a big fan of people telling me what to do, anyway.”

“That’s news to me.” Slade’s lip curls into a sneer. “Or does daddy bats write his commands down now?”

Grayson’s eyes narrow. There’s a pause. And then he moves.

There’s always a grace to the way Nightwing fights, but it isn’t Nightwing who leaps at Slade in that moment, but Grayson, who had once found a home in the walled-off ruin that could still be seen from Gotham harbor and desperately loved each and every one of its inhabitants. There’s no agility in his tackle, only the hateful strength of a grieving man, and Slade had thought Grayson was smarter than that because Slade would always win a strength match, but then his back hits the floor and Slade grunts in surprise, and he keeps grunting as hit after hit after hit hits his face, and for a moment—

Yeah, no. Slade’s fist crashes into Grayson’s face and his head snaps back, then forward, then back again, blood spurting from his mangled nose, and Slade almost thinks he dented Grayson’s face in before he realizes it doesn’t matter and he throws Grayson off him, leaping on him before he can recover. They roll along the floor, Slade on top, then Grayson, then Slade, then Grayson, before Grayson manages to get his legs underneath Slade and he feels himself being launched into the air. His back hits the wall, hard, at an angle that takes the breath from his lungs, but he manages to turn so that he can roll to his feet as soon as he hits the ground only to finds Grayson on his feet as well, a pair of escrima sticks in his hands.

“Not bad.” Slade wipes at his mouth and begins circling again, cursing himself for his sloppiness. This is not going how it should be going. He’s being slow, impatient… he’s letting his emotions get the best of him, and it’s costing him the fight. Maybe it’s time to change tactics. “But tell me something, Grayson—have you ever considered that maybe Rose doesn’t deserve you sticking up for her?”

Grayson’s brows lower into a frown. “What the hell are you on about now, Slade?”

“Think about it,” Slade says, his tone painfully condescending. Condescension had always worked like a charm on the acrobat—like any son of Batman, Grayson hated not knowing all the facts, and pretending he had missed an obvious conclusion planted seeds of doubt in him like nothing else did. “Did you see me drugging her? Even once?”

“What are you—”

“Did she seem drugged while you were training her?” Slade presses, his one eye observing every little twitch Grayson’s face makes as Slade speaks so his enhanced mind knows where to take this based on his reactions. There was nothing more important to his craft than knowing where to push and where to withdraw—every human had things they were sure of and things they weren’t sure of, and drawing attention to the wrong thing was a surefire way to get your statements thrown back in your face. “Did anything about her behavior even suggest it?”

“Are you seriously trying to… what, imply that Rose made the whole thing up?” Grayson asks, not so much skeptical as wholly incredulous, but Slade can swear he hears the tiniest hint of doubt in his voice.

“I’m not ‘implying’ anything, kid,” Slade retorts, I’m saying that’s exactly what happened.”

“Do you think I’m an idiot, Slade?” Grayson asks, scowling. “Putting everything else aside for a moment, you realize that it wasn’t just Rose you drugged, right? Cassandra says you drugged her too, and they can’t both be making it up.”

“I did drug Cassandra,” Slade admits, because he senses pressing in that direction would be the wrong move, “but I didn’t drug Rose. Why would I? She came to me willingly.”

“That’s not what she says.” Grayson’s hands are tight on his escrima sticks. “You kidnapped her after her foster parents were killed. The Titans confirmed it.”

“She stayed with me willingly, then.”

“Not the same thing.”

“It might as well be.” Slade senses he’s getting closer. “Try to use that brain of yours for a moment, Grayson. What’s more plausible to you… that I drugged my own daughter for months on end for no benefit to myself and that no one ever figured it out… or that Rose felt ashamed of what she’d done after she had a change of heart and made the whole thing up to try to exonerate herself in the eyes of those around her?”

Grayson is silent for a moment. Then: “What about the eye?”

Shit. He hadn’t thought about that. How was he possibly going to justify what Rose did to her own eye if she wasn’t being drugged?

Grayson scoffs after three seconds pass with Slade saying nothing. “Thought so,” he says, and leaps… only to grunt as Slade catches him in the air and throws him to the ground.

“Mistake,” Slade growls, delivering a brutal kick to Grayson’s face before jumping back as Grayson’s leg sweeps the bit of floor he was standing.

“You wanna know what I think, Slade?” Grayson sneers, spitting out a mouthful of blood and swinging his legs around behind him, arching with the motion and getting to his feet. He raises the escrima sticks, his lips curling into an expression that is not at all like a grin. “I think you’re jealous.”

Strike one. “Jealous?”

“Yeah, jealous.” Grayson advances, escrima sticks crackling with electricity. “Jealous of little old me. That must be so embarrassing for you.”

“Did I hit you in the head too hard, kid?” he growls, stepping back despite himself. “What the hell are you talking about?”

“Come on, Slade, don’t pretend that’s not what this is about,” Grayson says, turning sideways as Slade flings a chair at him and smashing the vase that flies at his head next in midair without breaking his pace. Slade heard the sound of the chair smashing through the floor-to-wall window behind Grayson a moment later. “I mean, seriously, it’s a little pathetic, don’t you think? Trying to kill me just because your daughter likes spending time with me and Joey more than with you?”

Strike two. Slade’s lips curl into a scowl. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“You wanna know what the worst part is?” Grayson continues, his tone turning conspiratorial, the crackle of electricity growing louder as he gets closer. “I wouldn’t even have met Rose if you hadn’t asked me to train her. Hell, I only came for her after you blew up Bludhaven. She might still be with you if it hadn’t been for you messing with people I care about.”

Strike three. Out.

Slade suddenly grins. “You stupid idiot.”

Grayson blinks, lowering the escrima sticks in bemusement. “Huh?”

Slade clicks his earpiece, and the dark room suddenly floods with light as the television screen turns on by itself. Grayson slowly turns around to see Rose there, eyes wide, lips slightly parted in shock.

“You got all that, honey?” Slade asks, even though he knows she did. He has to give his tech guy a raise. Guy had some seriously good ideas.

Rose doesn’t reply. Slade can hear Dick’s breath catching in his throat as he realizes whats just happened.

“Rose, that’s not… that wasn’t… I didn’t…” he tries, but the damage is done. Rose furiously stabs the monitor on her end and the transmission ends, bathing the room in darkness once more. Slade is pretty sure he saw tears in her eyes before the screen went dark.

There’s silence for a long moment, before a small chuckle escapes from Slade’s mouth, and then another, longer one. He’s won. He’s won in a way he couldn’t have imagined even in his wildest dreams. His chuckles rise into a scathing laugh as Grayson stands there, staring stupidly at the dark screen like he could will it to turn back on so he could explain himself if he stared hard enough.

“You… you…” he whispers once he’s gotten over his shock, turning to Slade with wide eyes.

“Me, me, me,” Slade mocks, the final vestiges of his laugh slipping from his mouth. “Not so clever now, are you?”

“I… that’s not what I meant,” Grayson says desperately, his own words clearly replaying in his head. “I would’ve come back for her eventually. I just didn’t think… I… that’s not what I meant at all.”

“I know that.” He nods at the screen, his grin growing larger. “She didn’t.”

Just then, the sound of rushing wind fills their ears through the broken window, and Slade’s grin widens even further as he walks towards it, clapping a still-stupefied Grayson on the shoulder as he walks past. “And that’s my ride. Thank you for being such a great sport about this, Grayson, I really do appreciate it.”

“Slade… you… this doesn’t mean anything,” he snarls, turning towards him. “Rose will understand if she just lets me explain.”

Slade steps out into the open void, grabbing hold of an unseen rope ladder and hooking his feet around one it’s rungs. “And here I thought you’d know your own so-called protege.” He can’t help his smugness. He’s won. Completely and utterly. And he didn’t even have to falsify something to do it—Grayson just said everything Slade needed him to say with his own damn mouth. “My daughter isn’t a very understanding person, Grayson. In fact, I’d say you can go ahead and lose her number now… I have a feeling she won’t be picking up any of your calls anytime soon.”

Grayson’s hands bunch into fists. “Slade, you… you bastard.”

“No, that’s her,” he grins, pulling on the ladder. It begins to retract even as the helicopter begins rising into the sky. “So long, kid. I’ll tell Rose you said hello.”

He laughs all the way to his safe house. Who knew that cutting Rose off from the people she cared about would be so easy?

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