#teen titans volume3

[dc-said-bi-robin-rights]

Joey’s never liked the cabin.

He doesn’t hate it, not like Rose does, but he’s never liked it. Never. No matter how much Slade and Grant called him a wuss for it, Joey never quite warmed up to the concept of living in a cabin in the middle of nowhere, isolated and with no one around for miles, for large periods of time with only his fucked-up family for company. And if he didn’t like the idea of it, he disliked the execution even more—disliked the animal heads Slade mounts on the walls, disliked the deerskin rugs that decorate the floors, disliked the pretentious mythological artwork hung up in the bedrooms (Slade liked Achilles, even though he didn’t understand him), and specially disliked the way it felt like his Pop’s domain, like the rest of them were just guests in someone else’s house despite the fact he had supposedly built the cabin for them.

The things he disliked most about the cabin, however, were also the things that had brought him the most joy as a child: the statuettes.

Slade had never liked art, and he had called Joey a garden variety of words that would now be considered slurs for not being made of the same stuff as him and Grant more that once, but he had never begrudged his son his love for art or his gentle nature. Rather, he had prized it, encouraged it even, holding it up for anyone who would listen as irrefutable proof of the fact that he was capable of making something good, that Slade Joseph Wilson’s only legacy wouldn’t be violence and death and broken things. The statuettes had been part of that.

It had been Joey idea, of course. Slade had no mind for painting, but his hands were steady and his fingers precise—too precise, far too precise, even hiding it, specially hiding it—and he had taken to woodcarving like he had been born to it. The two of them had developed a system, eventually: every time Slade went on one of his “safari trips”, he would carve a statuette of the biggest animal he had managed to hunt on that trip and bring it back with him when he returned home so Joey could hee and haw over it for a little while before moving on to something else. Sometimes the statuettes were normal things, like deer (antelope, his father would correct him sometimes, or moose, or gazelle, but to Joey they were all deer), but other times they were stranger animals, fiercer animals, things people weren’t supposed to hunt in the way Joey understood the word, like sharks or elephants or even bears. He would ask his mom about it often, while his father was gone, but Adeline would only laugh and say Slade made those hunts up so he wouldn’t get bored of the statuettes… if she was feeling particularly kind that day. Otherwise, she would scoff and reply that Slade “had an active imagination” for achievements he felt he was owed regardless of whether he had earned them or not. Joey had always gotten the feeling she wasn’t talking about the statuettes anymore when she would say that and would quickly extricate himself from the conversation as soon as he could, leaving his mother to her mutterings, which would often continue long after he had left the kitchen.

Joey hadn’t believed the statuettes were fake valor then and he still doesn’t believe it now, even knowing what he now knows about his father’s “safari trips”. The stuffed shark head that once sat in the closet but now hangs above the fireplace is proof enough that not all of his father’s hunting trips were invented, if indeed any of them ever were. More likely he took the opportunity to indulge in both his hobby and his actual occupation while he was away from home, leaving his wife and two kids alone in a world in which he had painted a target on their backs. It would certainly fit with his actions up until that point.

One day, Joey had gotten the bright idea to try and replicate his father’s work while the man himself was away, just for the fun of it, and that had been incorporated into the system as well when he came back: Joey’s replica would stay in the family home in Vermont from now, and Slade’s original would have a place of honor on the mantelpiece of the cabin. It was a perfect arrangement, and it suited the imperfect father just as perfectly, so much so that Slade had once joked that he would have to go on safari trips more often, so eager was he to witness his son’s often superior replicas of his work. They had all laughed, then. Now, just the thought of that makes Joey feel likes he’s going to be violently sick.

Had he—had his innocent wish to impress his father by creating better replicas of whatever he had carved on his trips—been responsible for someone’s death? How many people had Joey indirectly killed by giving Slade Wilson a reason to hurry home every time he left? One? None? Many?

Joey doesn’t know, and it makes him want to take a knife to his own arm whenever he thinks about it, so he pushes the rogue thought aside and concentrates on navigating his vehicle through the trees ahead of him. He’s wearing long sleeves, as always, but Rose isn’t stupid: if his knife is even a centimeter off and his cut begins to bleed, she will notice, and there is no way in hell he can play off preferring to keep his sleeves rolled down when there’s an open cut on his arm. Joey has kept his cutting a secret from the rest of his family for a good decade, he isn’t about to be discovered on the one day that should only be about her little sister and her mental health.

Speaking of his little sister…

Rose is leaning against the cabin wall with her arms crossed, clad hair to toe in motorcycle leathers next to the sleek shape of her Harley. She looks up as his beat-up van struggles into the clearing, and Joey exhales in disappointment when he sees the cigarette wedged between her bottom and top lip trailing smoke into the air. He really did think she’d quit for good this time when he’d suggested she keep an unlit cigarette in her mouth whenever she felt stressed just to ward off the temptation. He had read about it in a book somewhere, how it apparently helped smokers in the process of quitting feel at ease without giving them the temptation to actually smoke. Evidently, he needed to read better books.

Shaking his head, he shifts the stick into its ‘park’ setting and climbs out of the van, nodding at Rose when she flicks her gaze over to him and raising his hands to sign. “Hey.”

“Hey,” Rose mutters, taking one final puff of her cigarette and leaning her head back against the wooden wall of the cabin with a sigh, closing her one eye a moment after as if in indifference.

Joey knows better, though, is maybe the only person in the whole wide world who knows better, so he simply waits until Rose is done gathering herself before speaking again, his lips curling into a smile. He knows Rose is wearing her motorcycle leathers instead of the sweater and beanie combo she would usually wear to an excursion such as this one because they feel more familiar on her skin than the alternative, but he can’t resist to urge to tease his sister a little over it. “Nice outfit.”

“Shut up,” she retorts, opening her eye and letting the cigarette drop onto the porch, stomping on it a moment after to ensure she doesn’t accidentally ruin their plans for the day. She pushes away from the wooden wall and walks up to the back of the van, quirking an eyebrow at him when he walks around to stand beside her. “Slade?”

Joey raises his hands to sign… before lowering them when he remembers that full conversations are still past his sister’s understanding of ASL and turning on his subvocal transmitter on instead. He doesn’t like using it much on account of the excessively robotic tone it assigns his voice, but… well, this is a special occasion, after all.

“He thinks we’re gonna have a picnic.” Joey dips his hand into his pocket and pulls out a keyring, twirling it around his finger with a smug smile. He doesn’t hate the cabin, but he does hate Pops a little, and that’s reason enough for him to smile about what’s about to happen. “Even gave me the emergency keys so we wouldn’t have to bother him about setting up the new biometrics.”

“Of course he did,” Rose snorts, shaking her head at their father’s complete lack of awareness regarding his children before looking back at Joey and putting a hand on her hip. “You got the stuff?”

Joey rolls his eyes at the dramatic, tv-like phrasing and walks forward, unlatching the van’s safety mechanisms and pulling open the door to reveal several gasoline containers in sizes that have been illegal since the 60’s. Joey still thinks it’s overkill, but if Rose wants this place gone from the map, who is he to object? “Yep. You owe me, like, half a grand, by the way.”

The gasoline had actually been nearly three and a half grand, but Joey is the Vice President of a large company and Rose hasn’t actually charged her clients anything for her “mercenary work”—which, these days, just seems like normal vigilante work with extra steps—in months, so he doesn’t mind footing the bill a bit just this once, even though his sister would probably find his little white lie condescending in the extreme.

“Ask Slade to cover it,” Rose replies flatly as she walks forward and grabs up a container one-handed, pulling it out of the vehicle like it weighed nothing and bringing her knee up momentarily so she can hold it against something as she unscrews the cap. “It’s his fault we’re doing this in the first place.”

Joey can’t argue with that. “Fair enough.”

Rose holds the gasoline up to her nose and takes a sniff, grimacing when it does, in fact, turn out to be gasoline—way to trust a guy, little sis!—before looking up at him with a frown. “You sure you don’t want in on the action? D-Slade messed with you even more than he messed with me.”

Joey shakes his head and leans forward to grab a thick plastic bag from the van, noting Rose’s slip-up somewhere in the back of his mind. “I don’t think competing with each other about who Pops hurt the worst this time is something we should be doing in the first place, for the record, but no thanks. You have fun, though.”

“Oh, I will,” Rose says, eyeing the gasoline container with something like hunger in her eyes. Joey briefly wonders if he made a mistake by agreeing to this before dismissing the thought as too self-righteous by half and giving her a competitive check on the shoulder as he walks past her and climbs up the stairs to the porch, laughing when Rose scoffs in amusement and follows after him, tilting the containers so that she leaves a trail of gasoline in her wake.

As he and Rose walk up to the front door, a panel on either side of it retracts, revealing a square hole with a brand-new biometrics scanner inside of it on the lefthand side of the door and a hollow cylinder on the right. Joey grins and tosses the keyring into the air, catching it by the single jagged, cone-shaped key it contains when it comes down and inserting the key into the cylinder. There’s a buzz, and Joey moves the key around in the cylinder before two sharp beeps ring out and the door unlocks. He turns to look at Rose and grins, making a show of pulling the door open for her with a stiff sweep of his hand reminiscent of Wintergreen’s excessively British mannerisms. Rose rolls her eyes at the bad impression and walks forward, pausing only to stand on her tiptoes and kiss his cheek before walking inside the cabin.

“Come on!” Joey calls after her, his grin widening. “Not even a snort?”

There’s no answer, so Joey sighs and follows after her, stumbling halfway through the doorway when the living room rises up to meet his eyes like a fuzzy, half-remembered memory. It’s a simple space, made entirely of wood, with six windows, a table for four, and a small fireplace above which hang the heads of half a dozen different animals with plaques underneath detailing the exact time and means of their deaths. Everything looks exactly as it should.

Shaking off his sudden disorientation, Joey turns to look at Rose and finds her gaze lingering on the far corner a beat longer than is necessary before looking away. He resolves not to ask, though he has a feeling he knows what happened there.

“Well,” Rose says eventually, giving him a glance out of the corner of her one eye. “What are we waiting for?”

Joey doesn’t need to be told twice.

They go room to room, Joey grabbing anything that stands out to him and stuffing it in the bag while Rose drenches every last inch of the floor in gasoline, making several trips on account of how overboard she’s going. There is a tightness to her face, a viciousness, a kind of hunger in her eyes that she’s doing a bad job of suppressing. She knows exactly how much this place means to their father, knows it is the one place he still considers his beyond its usefulness as a safe house, and not only does she not care, the thought excites her. Look at me, Slade Wilson, Joey can’t help but think she’s saying in her head. Look at me as I take something from you for a change.

Joey doesn’t hate the cabin, but he doesn’t love it either, so all he does is shoot her a thumbs-up and a smile when she turns to look at him. It doesn’t make her laugh, doesn’t even make her smile, though her lips do quirk up slightly when she responds by sending him an eyeroll and walking out of the room, and maybe that’s enough of a victory to still count under the circumstances.

~~

“Hey, Joey!” he heard Rose’s voice call out from outside the cabin. “You coming or what?”

Joey doesn’t answer, focused as he is on the statuettes on the mantelpiece. Should he save them, the way he saved the few family pictures that hadn’t been looted by either Slade or Adeline in the years following Grant’s death? Should he leave them to burn in the coming inferno?

What do they mean to him, really? Does he—

“I’m freezing out here, Joey!” Rose’s voice, again.

“I’m coming, hold on!” Joey responds, quickly throwing the statuettes into the bag and heaving it over his shoulder as he walks out to find the sun already long gone from the sky and Rose waiting for him with her hands in her pockets next to the very last container, which is open and dripping down gasoline even now. It’s an oddly beautiful sight, all things considered, thanks to the way Rose’s milk white hair is backlit by the moon and the peculiar silvery sheen that comes from the thick, oily gasoline doing its very best to reflect the starlight. It would make a good painting, Joey suddenly thinks, digging his phone out of his pocket and taking a picture before putting it away and walking over to Rose, who eyes him and specially the bag over his shoulder dubiously but says nothing.

She looks so much like their dad even in the dark.

“You wanna do the honors?” she offers, pulling out her lighter and tilting it towards him.

“It’s your day,” Joey says, putting the bag down on the ground. “You do it.”

Rose shrugs, her other hand emerging from her pocket with a cigarette. She sticks it in her mouth, lights it, takes a single puff from it, and then tosses it at the ground.

Flame leaps up in front of them and rushes towards the house, and soon Joey’s vision is entirely consumed by flames. He and Rose just stare for a while, before his gaze slides down to the bag still clutched tightly in his left hand by his feet.

He thinks about a lot of things, in that moment. He thinks about the good times. About Grant. About those few times his Pops came home to a happy house that was as happy to see him as he was to see them.

He also thinks about everything else. The way Grant died. The way his mom and dad hit each other all the time and he just had to listen to it happening. How Slade slept with his fiancée. How Slade turned his boyfriend into a monster. And he makes his decision.

He hands a bemused Rose the bag with a smile that looks just a bit too wide to fool anyone this time. “Ten bucks if you manage to get it unto the terrace before it collapses.”

Rose looks down at the bag, then up at him. “You sure?”

“Yeah, I’m sure.”

She shrugs and extends her leg, the ghost of a grin coming onto her face at the prospect of some fun to wrap up this depressing, horrible night. “Fine, have it your way. Just don’t come crying back to me when you’re short ten bucks.”

“I didn’t know trash talk improved your performance,” he quips, and there is definitely a glint in Rose’s eye now.

“Oh, you’re on.” Rose tenses her back leg, muscles straining as she rapidly turns and lobs the bag in an arc that goes a good ten meters in the air before ending atop the burning terrace, as Joey knew it would. She grins—actually grins, wide and happy and smug and brilliant, and maybe none of this even matters as long as he can make his sister grin like that. “Ha! In your face, Joey!”

Joey’s smile is soft as he shakes his head. “Don’t get an ego over it, sis.”

She grins wider, more giddy than she’s been in a while. “What? Butthurt I beat your challenge fair and square?”

“Yeah, yeah.” Joey opens his arms, and for once his sister accepts without an eyeroll, squeezing his waist in a quick hug before shifting over to lay her head on his shoulder. He presses a kiss to the top of her head and turns to look at the burning cabin. “It’s kinda pretty, isn’t it? The way the colors…”

“Joey?”

“Yeah?”

“Shut up.”

“Fine.” He lays his head on top of hers and smiles. “Happy birthday, Rose.”

“…Thanks, Joey.”

They stay like that for some time, watching the cabin burn.

[dc-said-bi-robin-rights]

“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?

[dc-said-bi-robin-rights]

Like most places, Titans Tower was quiet in the early mornings.

That’s not to say it was never quiet in the working hours, but any building inhabited by an unsupervised group of would-be uni students living in close proximity to each other for months on end tends to always have something going on. Not so in the early mornings. The early mornings were always quiet, which was why Cassandra Sandsmark so often chose to indulge in them ever since her appointment as team leader made it so that she always had to be the responsible one when shenanigans were afoot. It was just easier to simply exist in those precious few hours before the sun came up. There were no responsibilities, no disgruntled teammates to wrangle or heavy missions to plan, and even people who enjoyed leading the ragtag band of morons known as the San Francisco Titans into battle needed that from time to time.

That was why Cassie loved the early mornings. The space to think. The freedom from responsibility.

Well… that and one other reason.

Mumbled, off-key humming fills her ears as she walks into the living room, the sound clearly coming from the adjoined kitchen to the left, and Cassie feels her lips curl into a vexed smile. So she did come back.

Not that Cassie really doubted she would, but still.

Forgoing her usual morning routine of stargazing with a coffee on the attached balcony, she turns and walks into the kitchen, heat and the scent of food cooking assaulting her senses as she does so.

Cassie barely notices. Her focus is entirely on the sudden assault on her sight.

Rose stands in front of the stove in a purple workout top, her back to Cassie, her white hair, silver in the dim light, pulled back into a high ponytail that leaves the toned musculature of her lower back exposed to Cassie’s roving gaze. There’s still sweat there, evidence of the midnight workouts Rose sometimes engaged in, and Cassie is struck by the sudden irrational desire to walk up behind Rose and lick it before her unwholesome thoughts are interrupted when the humming starts up again.

Shaking her head slightly to clear it of any lingering lesbianisms, she leans against the doorway and closes her eyes as the off-key, on-off humming fills her ears. A small smile curls across her lips, her irritation slowly fading. There were maybe ten people on the whole planet who knew Rose liked to cook, and maybe three who knew why, but she’s almost certain she’s the only person—only living person, she amends with an irrational stab of guilt—that knows the song Rose likes to hum while she cooks was sung to her by her mother when she was teaching her how to cook. Rose’s official file claimed she had a “perfect recall”, meaning that her enhanced mind was supposedly capable of instantly and perfectly recalling any scrap of information or faded memory with impossible clarity, but Rose had once admitted to her that that wasn’t true for anything pre-serum. Hence, the intermittent humming.

For a moment, Cassie just stays there, listening to Rose as she hums a particular stanza over and over again with growing terseness before finally remembering the next part, the noise growing steadier as her confidence about her own recollection returns and the song transitions into a part she better remembers. Idly, she wonders what Rose’s singing would sound like. So far, none of them had managed to get Rose to sing. She typically stood off the side during karaoke nights, lips curled into an amused smirk as she watched her teammates make fool of themselves the way some people would watch a bad movie just to mock it, and neither threat nor bribery could make her join in with the rest of the group no matter how drunk they all were. She wonders if she’d be good at it. She doubts it, somehow, even if Rose’s voice could get wonderfully smoky in… certain contexts. She just can’t see Rose singing no matter how hard she tries to picture it.

The humming fades back down, and Cassie opens her eyes, drinking in the sight of her… whatever-they-are in all her post-workout glory for a few long moments before letting out a pointed cough. Rose doesn’t even bother turning around, but the dismissive noise she makes in the back of her throat is enough to tell Cassie she knows she’s there. She doesn’t stop whatever she’s doing, though, or make any other attempt to acknowledge her presence, and Cassie can feel her irritation returning with every passing minute of this interaction. She puts her hand to her brow and sighs, passing it through her short-clipped hair a moment after to see if she can bait Rose’s attention to it, but it’s useless. Either she hasn’t noticed or doesn’t care about her sudden change in style.

Fine. Whatever. Not like her hair is the important thing here, anyway.

“Where were you?” she asks bluntly, annoyance creeping into her tone. She’d been worried, and lonely, and… maybe she’d actually missed Rose, just a little bit.

“Aw geez,” Rose mutters, the unstated “here we go again” apparent in her tone. She picks up some kind of oil Cassie can’t see the label of and pours it into the pot, her voice growing louder as she addresses Cassie directly. “I wasn’t aware I needed to report to you, little miss scoutmaster.”

“Maybe you do,” Cassie says sweetly, putting a hand on her hip. “Maybe that’s what being part of a team means—ever think of that?”

“Whatever,” Rose says, turning the stove off and picking up a rag. She swipes her brow with it, and turns around to face Cassie, leaning back against the counter and crossing her arms. Her one eye widens for a moment as she takes in Cassie’s new look, but the seriousness of the situation reasserts itself a moment after and her expression tightens. “Look, if you want me to leave, just…”

“That’s not what I said,” Cassie says quickly, heart unconsciously skipping a beat. That’s the opposite of what she wants. “I… it’s just… you should have called. Texted me. Something.”

Rose’s lip curls. “Why, the tracker you let Tim put on me stop working?”

“That’s not…” Cassie begins, before cutting herself off and frowning. “Stop trying to change the topic.”

“Oh, is that what I’m doing?” Rose gives an exaggerated eyeroll. “What tipped you off?”

“The fact that you’ve always known about the tracker… just as you know we would never use it except in an emergency,” Cassie replies, dismissing the nagging thought that Rose might actually have a point. “Besides, I didn’t let Tim do anything. He was still team leader when he planted it on you.”

“And now he isn’t and I still have a tracker on me.” Rose’s voice was scathing. “Why’s that?”

“I… Rose, if I had any intention of using the tracker, we wouldn’t be having this conversation,” she points out, before sighing and running a hand through her hair. “Look, whatever, we can argue about it later. I just want to know why you didn’t call me after you left.”

“I didn’t call you because it didn’t have anything to do with you,” Rose says, rubbing her arms and looking away. “Besides, I wasn’t gone for that long.”

“Two months is ‘that long’,” Cassie replies angrily, her irritation flaring up again. “Great Hera… I can’t believe I have to spell something like this out for you! Anything can happen in two months when you live lives like the ones we do, Rose! Anything! You could have… you could have been ambushed, kidnapped… you could have been killed, and we wouldn’t even know! I wouldn’t even know!”

Rose looks at her for a long minute before turning around and going back to watching the pot. “You’re barking up the wrong tree if you think I need a guard dog, Wonder Girl. Go woof woof somewhere else.”

Cassie let’s out a frustrated groan and turns to leave, exasperation making her throw her hands in the air. “Fine. Fine! But next time you feel like taking a two month long AWOL trip… don’t bother coming back.”

Cassie hears Rose’s breath stutter and she almost takes it back, but the anger in her wins out and she stalks out the door without so much as looking back.

~~~

“… and then she says ‘go woof woof somewhere else, like I’m some kind of dog!” Cassie complains, throwing her arms up in the air as Bart zooms to her end of the ping-pong table and hits the ball with his paddle before doing the same on the other side, effectively playing ping pong with himself. “I mean, seriously, who does she think she is?! Here I am, just trying to tell her how worried I was about her, and she acts like I’m, I don’t know, trying to chain her up in the basement or something!”

“Have you tried—” Pwoosh, plunk “—just talking to her about it?”

Cassie is incredulous. “Just talking… have you even been listening to me?”

“Not about—” Pwoosh, plunk “—that, about her leaving all the time.”

“Well, obviously,” Cassie grounds out, unable to keep the irritation from her tone. “But she refuses t—”

“No, that’s not what I…”

“Could you stop interrupting me?” Cassie snaps, before sighing and taking a deep breath. “I’m sorry, Bart. What was it you were saying?”

Bart stops zooming around and turns to her, catching the ball in midair when it bounces towards him. “Well, she’s got to be going somewhere every time she leaves, right?”

“Uh, sure?”

“Well, if you found out where it was she was going to…”

“Bart, you’re a genius,” Cassie gasps, before turning and running from the room.

“I know I… wait, where are you going?”

~~

“… and then she goes and coughs at me, like I’m supposed to turn around and salute her every time she enters a room or something,” Rose complains, her wrapped fists hitting the punching bag so hard M’gann winces. “I don’t know how they do things on condescending little miss bossy-bossy’s planet, but here on Earth… wait, M’gann, I didn’t…”

“It’s fine,” replies M’gann, who is actually from another planet but doesn’t like making a big deal of it. “Just continue.”

“Right, yeah… anyway, after all the effort I put in into making something nice for her…”

“Did you tell her you were cooking for her?”

Rose huffs. “Well, no, but…”

“Rose, I’m the mind reader, not Cassie,” M’gann says gently, shooting the spherical punching bag a dubious look as Rose keeps pounding on it. “You… you know that thing is gonna break if you keep hitting it like that, right?”

“We can afford it,” Rose says dismissively, taking a step back and hitting the punching bag with a strong uppercut that rips it off its chain and sends it flying across the room, where it lands, tearing open like a sack of grain and scattering sand all over the floor. Rose flexes her hand, watching her enhanced muscles flex under the wrappings. “We’re gonna need heavier punching bags if I’m gonna stick around, anyway.”

M’gann notes the strange wording with a raised eyebrow. “If?”

Rose sighs, pushing her hair back with a wrapped hand and walking over to her locker. “Yeah,” she says, pulling a towel out and slinging it around her shoulders. “If.”

“Oh.” M’gann feels a pit form in her stomach. She hates it when people leave. “How long will you be gone for?”

Rose slams the locker shut and turns to her, lips pursed. “What makes you think I’m coming back?”

“You have to,” M’gann says, suddenly alarmed. “You… you can’t just leave us again, Rose.”

“Gee, what is about this place that makes people think it owns them?” Rose complains, walking towards the automatic door… only to jump back as it is pulled down in front of her as if by gravity. She half-turns to look at M’gann and scowls when she sees her standing behind her with her hand splayed out, eyes glowing green. “You can’t be serious.”

M’gann keeps the door down. “Deadly.”

Rose’s scowl deepens. ���M’gann, let me through. Now.”

“At least tell me where you’re going. I think you owe me that.”

“I don’t give a rat’s ass what you think I owe you,” Rose sneers, but relents after M’gann shoots her a glare. “Fine.” She sighs, pushing her hair back again. “I… I was thinking of going to Cambodia. Maybe the reason the trail went cold here in America is because she went back home after… well, you know, don’t you?”

She does. She’s been inside Rose’s mind, after all. “I do.” She let’s go of the door, and it slides back up, leaving the doorway free of obstruction. “Well… you know, if you ever need anything…”

“Uh-huh.” Rose wipes down her face and then throws her wet towel into a bin without even looking as she walks towards the now-unobstructed doorway. “I’ll keep that in mind.”

M’gann sighs, shaking her head as she turns away from the retreating shape of Rose and towards the remains of the broken punching bag, which she levitates into the air and floats into another, dedicated bin, which is already half full with the remains of all the punching bags Rose and specially Cassie break while working out. “Make sure you do, please. We don’t need another repeat of the Dark Side Club fiasco.”

“Low,” she hears Rose snort, and her lips curl into a smile.

~~~

“You don’t get it, Tim,” Cassie growls, resisting the urge to punch the wall next to Tim’s head to get him to look at her.

“You’re right, I don’t,” Tim says wearily, eyes still glued to his computer. “What are we talking about again?”

“Rose! We’re talking about Rose! About how she keeps leaving and telling no one where it is she’s going!” Cassie wants to rip her hair out… again. “Come on, don’t you at least think that’s something we should care about?”

Tim sighs. “Don’t tell me you still think she’s a security risk?”

Cassie’s cheeks color. “What? No! That’s not… I’m just worried about her, okay? I want to make sure she’s not getting into trouble.”

“Well, she’s not, so…”

“Ah-ha! So you admit you do know where she keeps running off to,” Cassie says, lips curling in triumph. “I knew it!”

Tim curses beneath his breath and turns away as Cassie leans in closer, her smile turning into a grin. “Come on, now you have to tell me. Besides, I’m the team’s leader, aren’t I?”

“You are,” Tim concedes, biting his lip, “but that doesn’t mean I have to tell you something that really doesn’t have anything to do with either you or the team.”

Cassie raises an eyebrow. “Since when are you the privacy guy?”

“I’m serious, Cassie,” Tim says, his voice hardening. Cassie sees the flash of an old pain in his eyes, but it disappears before she has a chance to ponder it further. “Rose isn’t going AWOL so she can go visit Disney Land without us knowing. What she’s doing is… well, it’s important, and if I was in her position right now I’d be losing my shit with myself for even discussing it with you. Okay? So… drop it. Seriously. This is the one thread you do not want to keep pulling until it comes undone if you value your relationship with Rose.”

“Rose and I don’t have a…” she starts, before trailing with a frustrated groan. “Look, can’t you just tell me if she’s okay? I’d hate to think she’s doing something dangerous without us there to help her.”

“The last thing Rose needs is our help,” Tim says with a degree of finality. “At least when it comes to this.”

“Tim.”

“Look, I don’t know, okay?” Tim says exasperatedly. “I don’t know if she’s getting into trouble. I don’t even know where exactly it is she goes. I only know what she’s doing because she’s doing the analysis work with our systems, it’s not like…”

Cassie sees Tim stiffen as he realizes he just let something slip, and she can feel her grin widen. “Our systems, you say?”

“Cassie, I’m serious, don’t,” he warns, but it’s too late. Cassie turns and walks out of the room, clapping Tim on the shoulder on the way out.

“Thanks for all the help, Tim,” she can’t resist saying cheekily as she leaves. “I really appreciate it.”

Cassie hears Tim let out a bone-weary sigh in response, and her grin widens even more.

It’s only when she emerges out into the hallway that she pauses to really think what she’s about to do over, the grin slipping from her face and being replaced with a frown. Does she really want to go digging into something Rose supposedly doesn’t want her to dig into?

On the one hand, she doesn’t owe Rose, who is the absolute worst and also not someone she has any kind of relationship with (no matter Tim says), any favors. And it’s her prerogative as team leader to investigate situations that could put the team as a whole in hot water.

On the other hand… it feels wrong. The thought of it makes her feel guilty for reasons she can’t really articulate. And hadn’t Rose once told her that part of the reason she had pursued this completely unnamed and impossible to define arrangement of theirs in the first place was because Cassie never lied to her or hid her opinion of her, no matter what that might be? This feels uncomfortable close to doing the one thing that their arrangement depended on her not doing.

On the other other hand, it’s not really lying, is it? If anything, Rose is the one lying by keeping the truth of where she’s going from he—from the team. And that wasn’t fair to he—to the rest of the team, who had to stay behind and worry themselves sick about where Rose was and what she was doing and… and…

Maybe Rose was out there killing people. Cassie steps to a halt in the middle of the hallway, struck suddenly by how perfect the thought is. Maybe Rose is out there killing people, and it’s up to Cassie to figure it out and stop it before more people die. That’s why she has to do this. For all the poor, innocent people Rose is probably out there killing. And also for the team. And also for Rose, who’s probably being blackmailed into this by either Clock King or her father or… someone. And… no, yeah, yeah, that’s perfect.

Her excuse reason for investigating crystallizing in her mind, she changes directions and walks towards the common room, finding Rose scrolling on her phone while seated on the couch in a different gym top, orange this time, with the Ravager skull and crossbones logo in black across the chest. She forces down a flush, pushing down memories of sweaty spars and stolen kisses in the training room as they threaten to resurface, and walks over to the couch, taking a seat next to Rose and playing with her hands nervously. Neither of them says anything for a long moment, but the silence is eventually broken when Cassie decides to just bite the bullet already and do the mature thing.

“I’m sorry,” she says, leaning her head onto Rose’s shoulder and sighing. When Rose doesn’t reply, she shifts, placing her hand on Rose’s chest and looking up at her from less than an inch away. “I didn’t mean what I said.”

“Which part?” She can feel the Rose’s breath on her face as she speaks. “The part where you said you didn’t want me to come back or…”

“I’m not going to apologize for saying you should’ve at least called me before you left, because you should’ve,” Cassie says, voice firm, “but I don’t really want you to stay away. Obviously. That’s what I’m apologizing for.”

Rose is quiet for a moment. “I… didn’t think I was going to take so long,” she admits. “Things just got… complicated.”

Cassie feels her heart skip a beat. A clue, even if Rose hasn’t realized it. “I’m guessing there wasn’t any service where you were?”

“What do you think?”

“I think you should answer my question before we start arguing again,” Cassie says flatly, and Rose sighs.

“Ugh, fine. Yeah, there wasn’t any service. Happy?”

“Very,” Cassie says sweetly, already thinking about how much this narrows down the list of places Rose could be going. “Thank you so much for your honesty, Rose.”

Rose’s lips curl into a smile. “Go die in a fire.”

“You first,” Cassie says, smiling back. They stay like that for a moment, just smiling at each other, before Cassie plants a small kiss on her not-girlfriend’s neck and moves back.

“I’m sleepy,” she says, yawning slightly for effect. “Stay with me tonight?”

Rose’s one eye flickers to the clock on the wall. “You know it’s nine pm, right?”

“Yeah, well, so it is,” Cassie flushes, swatting at Rose’s chest. Maybe she should’ve checked the time before making her move, but she has to play it straight now. “Are you coming or not?”

Rose’s eye flickers to her hair and her smile turns into a grin. “Only if I can call you wonder butch from now on.”

“No deal,” Cassie says immediately, because that’s horrible. “You can sleep alone if you’re gonna call me… that.”

Rose rolls her eye. “Wonder Girl, being stuck up? What a surprise.”

“I said no, Rose.”

“Don’t be such a party pooper, wonder butch.”

Cassie can’t help but grin. “That’s ironic, coming from miss grumpima maxima hers—”

She lets out a squeal as Rose suddenly stands up, forcing Cassie to wrap her legs around her waist and her arms around her shoulders to not fall off. “Rose!”

She can hear the grin in Rose’s voice when she says, tone as innocent as any, “What?”

“You’re the worst,” Cassie pouts, falling into a fit of giggles and letting her head fall forward to rest on Rose’s shoulder. “Seriously, put me down. I’m taller than you. This isn’t gonna work.”

“Don’t knock it til you’ve tried it, wonder bitch.”

“Rose.”

~~~

Cassie pretends to be asleep right up until the moment she feels Rose get out of bed. She waits ten seconds for the door to creak before letting out a yawn and stretching her arms over her head, blinking sleepily at the blurry image around her until it crystallizes into her—thankfully empty—room. Alright, she thinks, the fake sleepiness vanishing from her posture in an instant. So Rose isn’t onto her. What now?

Should she just go find her? She doubts even she would just leave like that, which means she’s probably still in the Tower, using their systems for whatever nefarious assignments Cassie needs to save her from being blackmailed into doing.

Right. Save Rose from her father. Or Clock King. Or whatever. That’s what this is about. Saving Rose. And also everyone else.

Definitely not about her being a nosy soon-to-be ex-girlfriend—not that Rose is her girlfriend or anything, that’d be ridiculous—who is 100% about to be dumped for poking her nose where it doesn’t belong. Nope. This is about saving people. She couldn’t save Kon, or Bart, so she’ll save Rose and she’ll thank her for it and everything will be just like it used to be in those days when Cissie still talked to her and Donna still cared and there was no need to know everyone’s measurements in case the memorial hall suddenly needed a new statue. She’ll do this and Rose will finally say I love you back even though she just stared at her like a crazy woman the first five times she’s said it and got really quiet the last two and everything will be fine and… and…

She tries not to think about how if she really thought Rose was being blackmailed into killing people she’d be taking far more drastic action than… whatever this was supposed to be as she walks down the stairs and enters the laboratory, finding Rose seated behind the terminal and staring up at the screen. Cassie plasters a sleepy pout on her face and walks up behind her, slinging her arms around her neck and leaning in close.

“It’s late,” she breathes in Rose’s ear, planting slow, sloppy kisses on Rose’s collarbone, her hips grinding forward slightly. “Come bad to bed, okay?” And let me see what you’re looking at in peace, she thinks but doesn’t say.

Rose doesn’t reply, so Cassie pouts harder and kisses down to her collarbone.

“Please,” she whispers, her hands softly sliding down the front of Rose’s chest. “Whatever it is, it can wait until morning.”

No reaction. Absolutely no reaction. Not a snort, not a snicker, not a soft hitch of breath or an impatient retort, just… nothing.

Cassie frowns and cranes her neck up to look at the screen, a gasp coming out of her mouth a moment later. She can’t help it. It’s not the image of a black-haired woman who looks a lot like what Rose might’ve looked like at forty if she died her hair black that draws such a reaction from her, nor the unfamiliar name at the top of screen, but what’s right in the middle of it. For there, written in big bold red letters, were the words MATCH FOUND.

[dc-said-bi-robin-rights]

New Eddie and Rose headcanon

One of the few personalized items in Rose’s room in Titans Tower is a flower pot with a single white rose in it because Eddie thought he was being slick by gifting Rose a white rose and Rose was amused by the pun too much to throw it out. She chuckled when she caught sight of it, every time.

When she left, Eddie took on the responsibility of keeping it watered. It wasn’t hard, it was a potted plant. It still died with him, though.

Rose left it in front of his statue when she came back.