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chief-of-restless-hearts · 2 years

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Chapter 23: Blindsided

. . .

The empty eye socket throbbed still, despite the flesh, bone, and nerve endings that had mended overnight. Outwardly, no evidence of damage remained, but not even Slade’s regenerative factor could restore a missing organ. Once, he would have said that he could navigate Wintergreen’s favorite safehouse blindfolded; in practice, it seemed as though losing even one eye was sufficient to render a trip from the couch to the kitchen wine cupboard a painful chore.

His right foot slammed against the doorframe, and he swore.

“Clumsy as ever, I see,” came Wintergreen’s dry greeting from behind him. “If I didn’t know better, I’d think you were hung over.”

He was, of course, but Wintergreen knew that. Slade ignored him as he continued toward the kitchen, opening the cabinet and fishing through it, his right hand clanking clumsily against the surrounding bottles. He grasped his target with enough force for a hairline crack to splinter down its side, and twisted the cork out with his steadier hand.

“One hangover wasn’t enough, I see,” Wintergreen continued, the already present edge in his voice sharpening with each successive syllable. “The alcohol does no favors to your healing factor, but surely you took that into account. Deathstroke is a professional, after all, someone who plans ahead. He wouldn’t let a little thing like visiting his son in the hospital take priority over his favored narcotic.”

“Billy,” Slade’s voice crawled out through clenched teeth, sharp and heavy as gravel. “Do I look like I’m in the mood for your asinine sense of humor?”

“All I want to know, Slade, is what gives you a right to wallow here in the dark while your family is falling apart around your ears. I don’t give a bloody damn who took your eye, you have responsibilities--”

“Addie.” The name felt strange in his mouth, rasping and wilted to his ears, somehow altered down to its very essence. “It was Addie, you bastard.”

Wintergreen’s silence was cavernous, all encompassing. “So she finally found out about the business,” he said softly, slowly as piece after piece of the puzzle clicked together in his mind. “But Joey...how did it happen, Slade? What aren’t you telling me?”

Slade approached the couch where he’d passed out the night before, now stained with blood where his head had rested. Gathering his items into his bag would be a simple enough task, that he set about immediately, keeping his back to Wintergreen. “I have a contract waiting for me. I’m expected, and already was when I still had two eyes in my skull. Don’t worry, you won’t see any more of me.”

“...What? You need an aid, Slade. A partner.”

“I’ll do without.”

The door stood directly ahead of him. Practically within arm’s reach, yet somehow still an unbreachable distance away. His head throbbed, his vision swayed, and there was no telling the source of that discomfort now.

“You will not,” Wintergreen ground out in that tone Slade knew better than to waste time arguing with. “You’ll get yourself killed without someone to keep you in check. In one capacity or another, I’m coming with you.”

Slade turned his head a fraction to the left, studying his old friend from the angle that it was most comfortable to do so. “If you do, Billy, we’re playing by my rules. It’s my work.”

Wintergreen’s shoulders relaxed a fraction, but as Slade watched him draw a deep breath, he couldn’t miss the slight--perhaps permanent--shift of expression behind his eyes. “There we have it, then. At your word, sir. What would you have me do first?”

+ - + - + - + - +

Dick’s head was throbbing. He had to feel his way down the hall because he could barely see--or even hear. His ears were still ringing from the blast. He’d had just enough time to dive behind the cover of a half-standing wall that had shielded him from a bullet spray of burning sand and fragmented rock, but the physical barrier had provided no protection from sound. He clutched his head and waited for a new wave of pain to abate. The hand came away sticky, red.

He blinked, gaze again swaying upward. He saw a shape ahead, running. Toward him, not away. Slade? No, it was nowhere near the right size. Half-consciously his feet shifted into a fighting stance, and then he blinked again.

Warm red spray splattered across Dick’s face. The running shape--the man--dropped like a limp doll in front of him...like a plastic doll with its head rolling on the ground beside it.

Slade’s sword was red.

Standing over the body, Slade was checking his timer, saying something. Staring at him. Renegade must have taken too long to cross the battlefield after all. Dick tried explaining. His mouth was moving, probably, but nothing quite came out. Slade’s eye narrowed, his gaze shifting to the side of Dick’s face and neck.

Dick’s mouth tasted like dust and sand. He might have mumbled ‘concussion’, and then he might have blinked, because Slade was touching his face and pushing back his eyelids to check his pupils.

After that, the flight home felt like a timeless void of sound and silence, and dreams without the blessing of sleep. He barely remembered most of them, but the muffled clanking of gears began to creep into them before he finally opened his eyes.

His temple throbbed. He reached for it, and felt a fresh bandage. He could still feel sandy grit against his scalp as his fingers dragged through tangled hair. It was longer than he could remember it ever being, trailing below his jaw and all the way down his nape. Alfred always had said his hair grew so fast that he needed it cut twice as frequently as Bruce did.

He held his head in his hand until he stepped out of his room and all but slammed face first into Slade’s chest. He staggered back a step, startled. Slade was decked in grimy armor that, despite the buttoned up trench coat, reeked of dried contract sweat.

“You...” He blinked, shook a wave of dizziness from his head. “How...long was I out for.” His head was throbbing again by the time he finished his sentence, and he winced reflexively. Unsure whether he’d missed Slade’s answer, Dick was making an effort to focus his eyes on Slade’s face when the man shoved three VHS tapes against his chest. “What are these?”

“Your requests,” Slade said in a low voice. When Dick only stared at him uncomprehendingly, his mouth twisted wryly. “...Of course you don’t remember.”

Dick looked down at the tapes of Dumbo, 101 Dalmatians, and Robin Hood, chagrined to admit that he would request these--if he was half-conscious and forgot who he was talking to. “You went into...” he checked the sticker on the side, “...Blockbuster...smelling like that?”

“My boys loved those movies,” Slade continued, as though he hadn’t heard him, “--when they were five.”

Dick watched Slade out of the corner of his eye. Slade’s gaze was fixed somewhere to the side, his fingers working at the buttons of his coat. “Then they had excellent taste,” Dick said at last. He shuffled the tapes in his hands as he wandered through the open doorway beside them toward the television. “Who was the Robin Hood fan?”

Silence.

Dick glanced over his shoulder. Slade was gone.

His lips pressed together tightly, Dick’s fingers fumbled to remove the plastic from its paper case and then press it into the player. He slumped onto the couch more gingerly than he usually did, and watched as Dumbo’s opening scene played across the screen.

Maybe fifteen minutes in, twenty, he heard the softest hint of footfalls in the corridor. Dick twisted in place just in time to see Slade stumble against the doorframe. Within that instant Dick took in Slade’s crisp civilian suit, a hat in his hand, and a suitcase--containing clothing or weapons, Dick couldn’t say--but Slade had a white-kuckled grip on the doorframe, as though it were the only thing holding him upright.

“Sla--sir?” Dick said quickly, leaning over the back of the couch, “wha--”

Slade’s free hand snapped out to halt him before he could come any closer. Slade straightened, slowly, using his grip on the frame to pull himself upright.

“Hey, uh...” Dick swallowed, unable to ignore the too-familiar smell that had already slithered across the room, despite the shower Slade had clearly just taken, “where are you going dressed like that?”

Slade continued down the hall without looking back. Dick vaulted over the back of the couch and staggered toward the doorway. “Is it a contract? Wait--”

Slade’s pace didn’t slow as he continued down the hallway, and this time Dick was gripping the doorframe to keep a new wave of dizziness from knocking him off his feet. Slade turned off into the gear room, out of sight, the pungent stench of sour brandy filtering in his wake.

. . .

“Mister Wayne?” Dick whispered. The man froze halfway through rising from the couch, with Dumbo’s first minutes still playing on the TV in front of them. Mr. Wayne’s gaze flickered furtively toward him, a guilty shift. Dick’s heart sank.

“It’s business,” Mr. Wayne murmured. “I’ll be back...soon.”

Dick pulled his legs more tightly against his chest and wedged his face between them so tightly that it hurt. “Whatever,” he mumbled. “Why would you care about a stupid circus movie anyway.”

Mr. Wayne’s steps, which were always so soft that Dick could barely hear them, paused. Hearing whispers, Dick turned his head against his knee just enough to glimpse Mr. Wayne bowing his head next to Mr. Pennyworth’s. The butler, straight-backed as ever, whispered something back, and then Mr. Wayne was gone. The butler’s head turned toward Dick, who quickly turned back toward the television. He waited a few thumping heartbeats before sneaking another glance over his shoulder--and nearly jumped out of his skin.

Mr. Pennyworth gazed down at him placidly from directly behind the couch. Dick, who hadn’t heard even the faintest footfall, stared.

“So, Master Grayson,” the butler began courteously, “which masterpiece of cinema shall we behold on this fine night?”

“What is this,” Dick burst out, “some kind of...tag team sport? One of you hangs out with me just to push me off on someone else the first chance you get?”

The butler, to his credit, looked uncomfortable. “Only an affair of the utmost importance would prevent Master Bruce from spending this time with you,” he said gently.

Dick shrugged, pressing the TV power button with more force than he needed to. “I don’t care what it was he decided was more important. It’s not like I want to be here any more than he does.” He jumped up and stalked out of the room, ignoring the butler’s protests as he began planning out the way he would have preferred to spend the night anyway. After all, his parents’ murderer was still out there, and just because no one else wanted to do something about it didn’t mean he was going to do the same.

. . .

Dick stared at the movie on the screen, frozen on a single moment, the remote still in his hand. Several long moments later, he pressed rewind, having taken in none of what had already happened on the screen.

. . .

The hallway stretched on longer than it had in months, and his footsteps rang louder.

He’d passed out halfway through the Dumbo rewatch. Several hours of deep, uninterrupted sleep, which was enough to tell him with absolute certainty that Slade hadn’t returned. Slade’s door was shut tightly as ever, though Dick had never gone so far as to check the lock. He found the fridge fully stocked, and soon muscle memory was carrying him down to the gym.

Spinning vision with black creeping in on the edges dropped him from the bars long before the exhaustion he’d been hoping for had a chance to kick in. With the sweat soaked back of his shirt flat against the cold floor, he waited just until he could tell which way was up again before rolling over to fall into another round of pushups.

. . .

Sitting cross legged with the repetitive but reliable thunder of the gears above his head, he stared at the computer screens that towered above him, black, empty of the blackmail they had displayed the first time he’d set foot in the place. None of it was necessary, anymore. Slade had long since made his point.

Dick closed his eyes, scooted backward until his back pressed against a cold tree of iron. The turning gears above were like stirring boughs, the forest was dark, and cold, and...he opened his eyes to gaze at the blank screens again.

Whether Slade had been headed for a contract or not, he’d been drunk. Wherever he’d been headed, had he even made it there? If so, he should have been back already. Why wasn’t he?

Dick waited, and waited, and woke curled up on the floor.

. . .

The gym waited before him, spacious and echoingly vacant. Dick, who had halted in the doorway he’d approached out of nothing but sheer habit, turned on his heel and stalked back toward his room.

He dropped before the uniform pieces Slade had left neatly piled in the corner of his room and fished through them until he had the communication earpiece in his hand. He studied it in his palm, as unexpectedly heavy as it always was. He shot a brief glare at the camera in the corner of his room before fitting the piece into his ear.

“Hey, uh...sir. Just checking in.” Not enjoying the feeling that he was talking to the wall he was facing, he closed his eyes. “Three days is a long time for a contract, right?”

He opened his eyes to stare at the camera again, the piece sitting, utterly silent, in his ear.

. . .

Fingers rifling pages, eyes drifting toward the clock. Fingers that itched until he finally had a sword from the rack in his hands, the mat under his feet. He closed his eyes, fought the man behind his eyelids, and didn’t hold back.

. . .

The bats were gone.

Dick stared up at the fan, at the light filtering between the slats. In his mind he went through the maneuvers necessary to reach it. He could do it. If. If, if, if.

He fiddled with the comm in his hand, and pressed it again into his ear.

“Hey. Feeling up to letting me know you’re not dead? Because if you are...” he swallowed, the action suddenly difficult, “there’s no reason for me to wait around, is there?”

. . .

He glared into the nearest camera as his fingers closed around the handle to the elevator door. He tugged once, experimentally. The door swung open. He nearly staggered backward in surprise, and stared into the elevator in front of him, a dark space lined with metal grating that he had never once stepped into alone.

He stepped inside, turned toward the keypad. Reaching for it, he hesitated. His fingers froze uselessly an inch above the button, sweat beading on his forehead. With the beginnings of a dizzy spell creeping in on the edges of his vision, he took advantage of the excuse to sink into the corner of the tiny space, his eyes wandering toward the camera staring down from the opposite corner.

. . .

“I’ll bet you tripped headfirst off a building because you...” His tongue flicked over his dry lips, the ends of the knife fiddling between his fingers as the gear beneath him turned round and round. “That’s why you left me behind, isn’t it? It’s not because of the concussion, gimme a break--you’ve made me go out with worse. What, did you think I’d jump at the chance to stab you in the back if you went out on a contract drunk? ‘Cause without me watching your back you’re gonna end up dead anyway.”

Too late, he realized he was gripping the blades so tightly that blood dripped from his palms to the knees he’d dragged close to his chest.

. . .

“Still listening?” Dick muttered as he slipped the knife into the keyhole to Slade’s bedroom door. “Well, if there’s something you don’t want me to see behind this door, you’ve got about twenty seconds to prove you’re not rotting in a ditch.”

It was a generous estimate, and the lock clicked open within fifteen. Dick drew a deep breath, glared once more into the hall camera, and stepped inside. The first thing he laid eyes on was the work desk directly across from the door, and the longsword that lay across it.

Dick stared at the one weapon that Slade had never left for a contract without, and then his eyes shifted toward the unmade double bed in the center of the room with Deathstroke’s costume strewn in pieces across it. Either Slade had elected to pursue a contract unarmed, unmasked, and without armor...or he hadn’t gone on a contract at all. Somehow that second possibility twisted Dick’s stomach into even tighter knots than before.

He forced himself to look away from the gear and stepped further inside. A quick survey of the room, that was at least twice the size of Dick’s new quarters, revealed hunting trophies similar to those he’d seen first in that TV room and then in Slade’s home, but no cameras. Not that it would have stopped him if there had been. He stalked toward the closet in the far corner, swung the door open, and found exactly what he’d expected: the space packed so tightly with empty bottles of beer and brandy that without the shut door to hold them in, several rolled out to disappear under the bed. Dick dropped down on his hands and knees to paw through the mess until he uncovered the stash of unopened bottles in the back, boxes stacked up nearly to the half-empty coat rack. His mouth hardened into a satisfied line.

“Hey,” he snapped as he started pulling the collection out, box by box. “Sir. Mr. Wilson. SLADE. Pick up now or I’m dumping every bottle in this room until you do.” Hauling a box of beer into the bathroom just a few steps away, he dropped it beside the sink and set about prying the caps off with the blade of his knife. “If you’ve muted me then that’s just too bad. Maybe you should’ve put cameras in your room too.”

With one box down the drain he turned back for another, and another, and another, with only the occasional expensive-looking bottle of brandy to interrupt the pattern.

You’re dumping a dead man’s alcohol, his brain whispered, a voice worming into his ear. Rusty liquid swirled down the drain and he tossed another empty bottle into the nearest empty box. He’ll be back any minute now to flay you alive. The blade slipped under the cap. Dick saw the welling stripe of blood across the fleshy base of his thumb before he felt it, blinking at the wound before he reached forward to twist the knob and let lukewarm water rinse the red away.

With a tissue wrapped tightly around his thumb, Dick grabbed the next bottle, poised the knife to pry off the cap, and saw a thin smear of blood he’d forgotten to wash off the blade. He eyed the beer bottle in his hand, just one of a hundred like it. In one swift motion, he popped off the cap and threw back a swift gulp.

The bitter liquid burned just enough to earn a grimace. Clutching the bottle with both hands, Dick sank down to the floor with his back against the doorframe. He tipped it back again, and within a minute he had finished the bottle. His mouth tasted like skunk, though the drink had tasted almost sweet by the time he reached the bottom. He rolled his head sideways to study the pile beside him, and pulled out the last of the brandy bottles. Twisting the cork out with his knife, he drew the bottle to his lips. He coughed, wheezing at the fire in his throat, on his tongue. Heavy drops of liquid sploshed from the bottle onto his shirtfront as it jolted in his hands.

Dick groaned at the mess, and at the realization that Slade could have heard. With a sigh, he twisted and pushed himself to his feet. Mid-process, he inhaled the smell of brandy-soaked clothing--overpoweringly familiar. Bile jumped in his throat. His feet shuffled clumsily under him, a wave of unsteadiness he hadn’t felt in days, and he had to clutch the doorway to hold himself upright. He froze there, breathing deeply and waiting for the nausea to abate. That had happened far more quickly than he’d expected.

With clumsy haste he dumped the rest of the bottle down the drain, and he dropped it back into the box. He didn’t even watch as it smashed into pieces, his fingers already digging the comm out of his ear to throw it across the room.

Breathing heavily, the blurry sight of the rest of the bottles strewn across the floor--more than half of the pile that he’d first started to work through--stopped him just short of leaving. He looked at his trembling hands that doubled as his eyes tried to focus on them. If he kept going, those hands would end up with more than just that first sloppy cut on his already bandaged palms. The mess could wait for his head to feel less like it was about to split in two.

Unsteady feet carried him across the glass minefield, with his hands bracing against the wall, the bedpost, the desk, his eyes squeezed shut through half the journey. It was chance that his eyes caught on a framed photo tucked into the corner of the work desk, behind Slade’s sword.

It took a moment to make out the figures in it, the woman and the two teenage boys in front of her, one with chin-length hair as dark as her own, and the other with thick blond curls and a high turtleneck that framed his beaming face. Dick’s throat tightened with the realization of who he was looking at. Reaching for the picture with careful fingers, he pulled it closer.

Grant. Joey. Slade’s...wife? Slade himself was notably absent. Dick’s eyes darted between the boys, searching their faces. One of them had died as ‘Ravager’ in Deathstroke’s arms; the other had ‘used to sing’, but was still alive. Somehow Dick immediately knew that the blond boy’s face had never worn Ravager’s mask. That left the dark haired boy--Grant--who was eyeing the camera with a reluctant but genuine smile.

Dick hadn’t forgotten his debt--he could never have forgotten why he was there, what he’d taken from Slade--but looking into that boy’s face...

What day was it? His eyes flashed to the calendar above the desk, open to March, and...oh.

Maybe he didn’t need to wonder where Slade had gone, wearing a suit, on the first anniversary of the day his son died in his arms.

. . .

“...an’ they say Robin Hood’s just a legend, but if he wasn’t we’d never’ve heard of him, so maybe being a legend’s okay, ‘cause if you think ‘swashbuckling hero’ y’think of Robin an’ his merry men, right? So even though it was my nickname, it’ll mean something to everybody else too.” Dick paused just long enough to gulp in a breath, not taking his eyes off the fox-shaped Robin Hood swinging across the screen. “This version’s great, but it’s too bad they couldn’t use the theme song that went--by the way do you know which one I mean, since you’re old an’ all and the tv show was...”

Dick trailed off as he turned to look at Bruce, whose eyes were closed, leaning back on the couch with his chest slowly rising and falling in what looked, for once, like peaceful sleep. Dick heaved a long suffering sigh, and stretched over to pull up one of Bruce’s eyelids, just to make sure he wasn’t faking to make a point. He wasn’t, which disappointed Dick only a little. He could always risk tickling Bruce awake again. Dick’s ability to dodge Bruce’s startled waking-up-punch that not even Alfred was willing to risk was one of his proudest talents. He carefully pulled his hand away from Bruce’s eyelid--revealing a smudge of makeup on his finger, and a hideous blue bruise peeking through the spot where he’d touched Bruce’s face.

He could just make it out, once he was looking for it: the slight puffiness under the flesh-colored makeup that extended from the edge of Bruce’s eye socket, across his temple and into his hairline. Dick stared, trying to remember how Bruce had got that injury, already knowing that it must have happened since they last teamed up over the weekend.

The angry tightness in his throat threatened to reach his eyes. He rolled over abruptly, pressing himself against Bruce’s side. Pulling Bruce’s broad arm around him, he fixed his attention back on the tv and tried to focus on the rest of the movie, his fingers tracing the ragged scars across Bruce’s arm that he could feel even through the sleeve.

. . .

Staticky snow flickered across the tv screen, white noise filling the room and Dick’s already buzzing ears, but not his head, as he stared blankly at the screen.

. . .

Dick woke with static still buzzing in his ears, penetrating the all-consuming headache hammering inside his skull. Rolling over on the couch (which he did not remember deciding to use as a bed), he clutched his head with a groan. The hammering was so loud that it almost sounded like...footsteps.

Dick scrambled off the couch, reeled into the hall, and nearly slammed into Slade’s blood-soaked shirt-front. Dick took in the blood that was smeared on Slade’s face as well, or what he could see of it through the dirt and sweat. Slade might not have even seen Dick for all the acknowledgement he gave him as he veered into the room Dick had just exited without so much as looking in his direction.

Accusations that would have revealed far too much rose and died in his throat as he watched Slade all but collapse onto the couch. Rushing over to the couch, no sooner had Dick’s hands touched the back of it than Slade snapped back to awareness--and Dick was staring down the barrel of a gun.

He raised his hands cautiously, trying to measure the clarity in Slade’s eyes. Slade blinked at him and lowered the weapon before sinking deeper into the cushions.

“Don’t worry,” he rumbled, patting the red stain over his gut. “It’s all mine.” Closing his eyes again, he snorted. “But don’t get your hopes up, you little vulture. It’ll be gone in an hour.”

Even if he’d tried, Dick couldn’t have overlooked the brandy in Slade’s voice. “You’re, uh,” Dick was still staring at the red stain, “bleeding all over the couch, sir.”

“My couch,” Slade countered. A few seconds passed without Dick moving, and Slade’s eye opened to fix on him. “--Christ, kid, don’t you have something to do?”

Slade reached under his coat to pull out a flask. Dick whirled around to leave before Slade could take a swig from it, but...seven days. The past seven days had done more than enough to prove that time away from Slade didn’t solve anything.

“What happened?” Dick asked quietly.

“What happened was that I found trouble or trouble found me, depending on your point of view.”

Did you hear me? Even once? Dick still wanted to ask, a plea rather than a demand, as though he didn’t already understand exactly why Slade wouldn’t have answered.

“I’m...sorry,” Dick murmured, wincing between the words. Slade looked at him, and Dick hunched slightly, bracing himself to continue. “About Grant. I should’ve...” Should have what? He’d run over that fight hundreds of times, and he’d never once been able to answer that question.

Slade was slowly shaking his head. “That...wasn’t your fault,” he said, his gaze sliding back to the flask in his hand. “Grant was my son. My responsibility. I knew he was in the city weeks before the HIVE got their hands on him, and I didn’t even tell his mother. I just...watched.” He threw back a swig of brandy, and studied the flask as he swallowed. “That’s all on me.”

“What?” At the quietly, venomously spoken word, Slade’s attention snapped back to Dick’s face. He had turned to grip the couch, to search Slade’s face for an answer with every possible emotion warring across his face. “You said that I owed you a life. That I owed you my life.” Wide eyed, fingernails digging, clawing into the couch, he bent closer. “If that’s not true, why am I even here?”

Slade stared back at him for a long, inscrutable minute. He heaved himself up off the couch, moved past Dick for the door without looking back.

Dick followed. “How much more of my life are you planning to take, huh?” Slade didn’t even turn his head as he strode toward his room, pushed through the door to slam it shut and locked tight against Dick who slammed his fist against it. “Because I’ve already repaid you in spades!”

. . .

It didn’t take long for Dick to remember what Slade would see behind that door, the mess of bottles, half of them empty--and only half. Dick had completely lost his chance to finish the job, and whether that was for the better or for the worse, he would discover sooner than he liked.

He waited stiffly in the tv room, staring at the blood-stained leather couch from the untainted chair he’d curled up in until the hangover headache returned in full force.

Why am I even here?

The question he’d thrown at Slade kept running through his head--because he knew exactly why. The reason had become blindingly clear to him during their return to Bludhaven, but to one extent or another he had known long before then: Slade was being selfish.

So why did knowing that Slade didn’t blame him for Grant’s death anymore make a difference? It was certainly no better an excuse than loneliness.

And he hadn’t been making excuses for Slade.

He took his vigil to the kitchen, sitting behind the counter and fixing his eyes on the doorway. Slade would need to pass it if he came for him--or tried to leave.

Sleep wasn’t an option.

The clock’s hour hand had nearly made a full rotation--and Dick had long since laid his throbbing temple against the cool counter surface--when he heard Slade’s door open. Dick straightened and got off the stool with a hasty apology on the tip of his tongue until Slade turned into the doorway laden with boxes of empty bottles. Clearly he had washed himself up, and replaced his bloodied clothing with clean civvies. Dick’s mouth snapped shut as he watched Slade dump his load into the waste, and, without acknowledging Dick’s presence, promptly return to his room. Within a minute Slade returned with a new armful.

Loneliness wasn’t an excuse. Missing someone wasn’t an excuse.

Gingerly, Dick rose, followed Slade, and wordlessly began to gather up the bottles beside him.

. . .

The second day of flight ended with Slade’s plane bearing back down to earth. Slinging his bag over his shoulder, Dick jumped out into the scorching African heat. Slade had barely spoken to him through the trip, not even supplying an explanation for the sudden return to Slade’s home.

This time, Slade didn’t wait for Wintergreen to come to the door. He unlocked it with his own key and they both stepped inside--to confront a charging German Shepherd. But the dog bounding toward them was a gangly, half-grown puppy, with a furiously wagging tail. He circled Slade first--and the man’s terse surveyal of the puppy told Dick that the source of their enthusiastic welcome was just as much of a surprise to him. As the puppy wiggled his way over to Dick, he offered his hand to be slobbered before kneeling to offer his face as well.

“I heard a rumor that you like dogs,” said Wintergreen’s voice from the hall.

Dick lifted his head, and looked between Slade and Wintergreen--at Slade, who was giving Wintergreen a frustrated but resigned look, and the self-satisfied smile Wintergreen gave him in return.

Dick’s eyes widened with realization, and he looked again into the eyes of the puppy--his puppy?

He’d known it was March, that the first day of spring was coming, but still he found it hard to believe. It didn’t feel like his birthday. But the puppy’s fur under his fingers was thick, and warm, and...his.

It felt so strange to hold something that was entirely his--or was it? Suddenly uncertain, he looked up at Slade again. Slade, already looking down at him, sighed, his expression softening into the barest hint of a smile.

“Happy birthday, kid.”

. . .

“He answers to basic commands--sit, stay, and the like,” Wintergreen said as they all three migrated toward the kitchen, where, judging by the trays and various cooking parafernalia scattered across the counters, Wintergreen had been at work. The puppy trotted happily at Dick’s heels all the way to the counter.

Slade slipped past Wintergreen to duck into the fridge.

“He’s not purebred, mind you,” Wintergreen continued as Dick ducked scratch an itchy spot behind the dog’s ear, “but breeding isn’t everything, as I’m sure you--”

Something clunked onto the counter in front of the seat Dick had just half seated himself on, and he looked up to see an opened beer on the counter.

Slade pried the cap off his own with his fingers and dropped heavily onto the stool to Dick’s left just as Wintergreen leaned across the counter to snatch up the bottle. He leveled Slade a stern look before he took it away, but Slade only smiled.

“You’re worried for nothing, Billy. Going by the empty closet I came home to, this kid has the liver of an elephant.”

Slade clapped a hand on Dick’s shoulder, all but knocking him off his seat. He turned, wide eyed, to check whether Slade was serious. As soon as he locked eyes with Slade, who had clearly been watching his reaction, one look at the man’s smile told him it had been a joke.

Feeling his cheeks going beet red, Dick quickly turned his face away.

Wintergreen emerged from the fridge with a soda that he set in front of Dick. “Out, both of you,” he said in a tone that would brook no complaints. “I’ve got a birthday dinner to arrange for a very hungry young lad.”

“Well,” Slade said as he heaved himself to his feet, “I’d for one like to stretch my limbs after that flight. Kid, why don’t we find out exactly what that dog can do?”

. . .

“Bloody hell, Slade,” Wintergreen sputtered, “I thought the dog would be the one chasing the ball.”

Slade and Dick had returned to the man’s kitchen with enough dirty scrapes to prove that somewhere along the line the game of catch had turned into a sparring match.

Exhausted, and quite satisfied with himself, Dick stooped to wrap his arm around the panting puppy. “Slade said the dog wasn’t the only one whose training was rusty, so I bet Slade couldn’t take the ball from me, and...drumroll...he couldn’t.” Ignoring the look Slade was giving him, Dick smiled broadly. “Ace won.”

“Ace?” Wintergreen raised an eyebrow. “You’ve named him already, then?” He paused to wipe his hands on his apron. “Ace of spades?”

“Ace detective, I think,” Slade said dryly, settling down in a seat at the counter, his fingers creeping toward the aromatic cake cooling on the counter.

Dick considered clarifying that the first name that had sprung to his mind had been ‘Ace the Bathound’. He held his tongue and planted a kiss above the puppy’s warm brown eyes.

Wintergreen chased Slade away from the cake with threats of starvation, and a shower and a change of clothes later, Dick was sitting under the patio table, where Wintergreen had already laid out strips of unfamiliar but delicious smelling meat.

The darkening sky brought a welcome chill, and Ace, who had long since worn himself out, lay with his head in Dick’s lap. Dick rubbed his ears gently, and was rewarded by the steady twap of a tail against wood slats. Wintergreen was reclining in a seat on the opposite side, and had some minutes ago pulled a cigar from his breast pocket. He seemed to have no intention of lighting it, merely rolling it between his fingers as he divided his attention between the cigar and Dick, who noticed the long glances out of the corner of his eye.

Dick slipped a strip of meat from the table to Ace, who gobbled it up eagerly. Whether a gift or a bribe, whether from Slade or Wintergreen--Ace, the birthday...it was all nothing but an apology. An infinitely insufficient one.

That last night in the base was still swimming through his skull, as though he were still making sense of it. He knew, now. Slade didn’t have a reason to hate him...and didn’t hate him. The concept wound around Dick’s mind, tangling with the past day and the soft fur between his fingers.

The screen door slid open, and Wintergreen slipped the cigar back into his pocket as Slade stepped outside.

Dick snatched another piece of meat from his plate as Slade seated himself in the chair to Dick’s left. Dick glanced up at him--and immediately ducked his head, blinking hard. Slade was wearing a black turtleneck, just a turtleneck, but one that looked so familiar that, for just an instant, Dick had seen Bruce. The confused pang was almost immediately distracted as Dick realized the sweater also reminded him of someone else: Joey, from the photo in Slade’s room. That uncomfortably high turtleneck, unseasonably warm compared to his family’s clothing.

“Get up here and eat,” Slade said. “Unless you plan on feeding it to ‘Ace’.”

Dick pulled himself up toward the table, shoveled a heaping forkful of meat into his mouth, and was about to duck back under the table when Slade set something on the table and pushed it toward him.

“That’s for our now sixteen-year-old Robin Hood enthusiast,” he said, pulling his hand away from a hardcover copy of ‘The Adventures of Robin Hood’ by Howard Pyle. “Don’t come whining if you’ve already read it, because I’m not buying you another.”

Dick had read it--he’d been obsessed with it, rereading it until he practically knew it by heart, only to read it again. “Thanks,” he murmured. A nostalgic smile tugged at the corner of his mouth, and he pulled the book closer to his placemat.

He snagged a few more scraps of meat with his fork to not so subtly start feeding them to Ace.

“Should I take that as an insult to my cooking?” Wintergreen asked wryly.

Dick smiled again at Ace, and tossed him another scrap.

“Grant liked dogs,” Slade said abruptly.

Dick’s fingers, that had been scratching Ace’s chin, stilled. Without looking, he could feel the weight of Slade’s undivided attention. A cooling wind stirred the chimes by the door.

“Slade had hunting dogs,” Wintergreen interjected into the new silence. “When he brought them home, the boys got to treat them like their own.”

Dick slipped another sliver of meat under the table. “And now when Slade brings me home, Ace gets to treat me like his owner?”

Slade’s chuckle rippled across the table, and a pleased warmth filled Dick’s chest--even while the irony in his own joke gnawed away at the feeling.

“I’ll...see to that cake.” Wintergreen’s faltering voice startled Dick out of his thoughts. The man stood and passed rather quickly through the sliding doors.

Dick could still feel Slade’s gaze on him until at last Slade pulled out his hunting knife to spear meat onto his plate, and broke the silence:

“Feel like camping?”

. . .

Dick looped the end of the leash around the railing and tied it off, meeting Ace’s questioning look unhappily. Slade had said Ace couldn’t be trusted out in the wild yet--though something in his voice made Dick wonder if he was considering Ace’s potential as a hunting dog. It would ‘take time for him to recognize them as his masters and the house as his home’, and as much as that sounded like common sense, his stomach twisted unhappily at Ace’s questioning whine.

“Don’t worry, buddy,” he murmured, kneeling to give his ears another rub. “I’ll be back.”

“Pick up the pace, kid,” Slade called, already walking toward the looming shadow of the trees in the deepening dusk.

Dick stood to follow, trying to ignore the feeling that Slade had just tugged on his leash.

“Dick, a moment,” Wintergreen’s voice stopped him. He turned, and the man approached, a thoughtful expression on his weathered face. “I don’t know what happened while you were gone, but...Slade hasn’t touched the brandy once since he’s come here. Now, I don’t know whether you had anything to do with that, but, if you did...If I can’t be there, I’m just glad that...you’re good for him.” His lips pressed into a peculiar smile, and he squeezed Dick’s shoulder briefly before stepping back. “I thought you should know.”

Wintergreen retreated back into the house, and Dick could only stare after him.

“Kid!”

Slade’s bellowing voice traveled easily across the field despite coming from out of sight in the trees, and Dick snatched up his pack to bolt after him. Ace leapt to follow, only for the leash to stop him short with an unhappy whimper. Dick sent him one last wave before disappearing after Slade in the trees.

The underbrush thickened as they went, until finally Slade took out a long knife to hack out a path through the densest portions of the jungle. At Slade’s insistence, they’d both packed lightly, though clearly packing with hunting in mind. Slade had wasted no time in gathering up the bare necessities, even insisting that Wintergreen pack their slices of newly frosted cake for the road. Dick had only pulled on his jacket and boots before heading out the door, and as he noticed the collar of Slade’s turtleneck under Slade’s jacket, he saw he must have done the same.

“So,” Dick said eventually, once the fading light had all but disappeared under the trees, “we’re getting back to the essentials of nature. Why? Did you get too much of the comforts of home? Too much of Wintergreen’s delicious-smelling chocolate cake?”

Slade whacked aside another cluster of vines. “Anyone would get fat and lazy by spending too much time in that place.”

“Maybe I’ll tell Wintergreen that,” Dick teased.

“Try, and I’ll personally ensure that you never taste his cooking again.”

“Oh, of course, sir.” Dick dipped into an exaggerated bow. “Pardon me, sir.”

“Maybe I just wanted to get you away from that dog. You keep going the way you have been and you’ll spoil him rotten.”

Despite Slade’s words, Dick saw humor in his expression as he glanced back. Pleased, Dick almost snapped back another quip, but the words slipped entirely from his mind as his eyes fixed again on the black collar of Slade’s turtleneck.

“What happened to Joey?” Dick asked suddenly. The answer, he knew then with absolute certainty, was a puzzle piece--a crucial one that he’d been missing all along yet never thought to ask. “You said he’s safe now, but...you said that Joey used to sing.”

Slade stopped in his tracks. He turned, and at the look in his face Dick nearly took a step back. Then, just as abruptly, Slade turned back to continue on his course as though nothing had happened. Dick was almost wondering whether Slade would answer at all, and was already deeply regretting his question--when Slade finally spoke.

“Joey is mute.” Slade’s tone was flat, with a needle-sharp edge. “An enemy of mine cut his throat because I refused to give him the information he wanted. Irreparable damage to his vocal cords. All my fault. Oh yes, and my wife watched the entire thing.” Slade looked at him again, and this time he wanted to sink into the ground. “Did that satisfy your curiosity? Since you’re so deeply invested in my private affairs.”

An hour passed in silence. It felt like an age, as though more than five feet stood between them, or an impenetrable wall had formed in the gap that Dick could only stare through helplessly.

Slade never deviated from his course, weaving between trees corded with thick vines that dangled like a waiting noose. Bruce hadn’t trained Dick for survival in this kind of jungle, and in the dark, every step was an uncertain one. Slade hadn’t even offered him a flashlight, and as Slade had yet to so much as knock his toe against a root, Dick could only conclude that he should add ‘enhanced night vision’ to Slade’s growing list of talents.

Dick realized that, among other things, he had never asked where Slade’s enhancements had come from. Once he started thinking about it, he wondered if the answer had been in front of him all along. He knew Slade had been in the military. He’d guessed that practically from the start, as soon as Slade started making him call him-- Dick blinked, startled out of his own thought. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d thought twice about saying the word ‘sir’. He shook the new, unpleasant thought away. The point was that Slade had been a military man, and hadn’t Bruce mentioned his suspicions that the US military had been using their soldiers as lab rats?

Dick stared at Slade’s back, still reading traces of tension in his bearing, willing Slade to turn and look at him. At all. Even the way he had last time. Fear stirred in Dick’s gut, threatening to tremble into his fingers, and he gripped his packstraps more tightly. No. He could fix this. If he knew anything, he knew how to fix this--how to fill the silence, or at least take the ice out of it.

Slade dropped his pack, bringing them both to an abrupt halt. They had just walked into a gap between the trees, knotted over with roots and slabs of vine-tangled stone.

“You should be able to find materials for a lean-to around this clearing.” Crouched beside the bag, Slade pulled out one of the airtight food stores and waved it in Dick’s direction. “But far be it from me to keep you from Billy’s baking.”

He tossed the cake in Dick’s direction. Dick was so ravenous that he’d caught and shoved the cake between his teeth almost without remembering to remove the bag. As his birthday dessert vanished down his throat, Dick noticed Slade watching with his mouth twisted wryly.

“Watch the mess, kid, or we’ll end up with the wrong kind of company tonight.”

Dick scrubbed the frosting from his mouth with his sleeve, earning a grimace from Slade, and flashed him a grin. “Oh, I dunno. It might save us some time in the long run.”

Shaking his head, Slade turned away, but not before Dick saw the humor tugging at the corner of his mouth. Dick’s own grin broadened, and encouraged, he kept talking as he began searching for suitable branches.

“I mean, c’mon, it’s not like you weren’t planning to sleep with a gun next to your pillow anyway.”

“And here I thought I’d only need it to ward you off,” Slade’s voice called back, dry and teasing.

Gathering the shelter materials was a simple chore, complicated only by the darkness, but with new lightness in his chest it never occurred to Dick to complain. As he dropped his pile in the clearing, Slade dropped a few staves of his own--looking far too heavy for Dick to have lifted himself.

“You’ll start with the frame,” Slade began, lifting one of the largest staves. “We’ll carve them to interlock and then bind them together with twisted grass or vines--”

“Don’t worry,” Dick interjected, pulling his knife from his belt, “I could do this in my sleep.” Though it had been a hellish experience getting to that point. And Dick wished he didn’t remember the occasion Bruce had made him set up a lean-to in the rain so vividly.

Slade didn’t comment, but he pulled back to let Dick carve a notch into the wood. Dick started wrapping a cord of vine around the new joint, but Slade’s hands snapped out to take the work from him. “That’s how you make a lean-to collapse around your ears,” he said tersely, unwrapping and rewrapping the cord into a different knot. “Now start the other side. Closer--how many times do I have to tell you, you need to pull it closer than that.”

Dick didn’t remember Slade telling him that before, but he complied, tying it as Slade instructed until the new joint met Slade’s approval.

“Better,” Slade conceded at last, sighing. He shifted to rise to his feet, and then Dick felt a hand on his head, ruffling his hair gently. Dick grinned, ducking slightly under the new weight. “Maybe next time I’ll let you handle it alone, Grant--”

Slade’s hand froze on his head, the contact turning as icy as the newly silent heart in Dick’s chest.

Slade’s other hand reached for his belt, yanked something out. Dick dared to turn and look, but steel fingers gripped his skull, and he only just caught a glimpse of Slade’s hunting knife. Dick’s heart came alive in his chest, hammering with primal fear, screaming at him to run, run from the blade, from the man with a deathgrip on his skull--a scream that faltered into trembling fingers and frozen limbs.

The steely fingers released Dick’s skull just long enough to grab a fistful of hair above Dick’s ear. The blade sawed through it, haphazard and rough. Dick realized what Slade was doing, but the pounding in his chest didn’t ease. He felt cold steel whisper against his scalp.

“Sir--sir, wait,” he stammered, words rattling out in a single breath, “wait, can Wintergreen--can he do it?” The blade never faltered under those harsh, angry, unsteady hands--

Dick’s hands had moved of their own accord. Gripping Slade’s wrist, every ounce of strength in him strained just to hold it still, and at last, at last, the blade went still. Icy metal still pressed against his scalp, and...and his ear. Warm, sticky liquid slipped down his jaw, down his neck, dripping onto his shoulder.

The two hands against his head were trembling.

Locked together in that eternal instant, it was Slade who finally withdrew. The shaking hand fell away from Dick’s head, and as the tension left the other arm Dick let the knife pull away. Distantly, he heard rummaging behind him, felt something pressed firmly over his ear, and then footsteps, equally distant, stumbled off into the trees.

Still, he knelt facing the half-finished shelter. He was a statue: eternally unblinking, unbreathing. Tremors shuddered from Dick’s shoulders to his hands. A cold night wind brushed the patch of bare skin on his scalp, whispering strangely against...

His fingers fumbled for his ear, and he felt...no, he didn’t feel. He didn’t feel anything until his fingers made slippery contact with tape well below where he should have found the top of his ear. Only under that touch did it begin to burn.

His hand drifted back to his side.

Slade must have drunk something before they’d left the house--he must have, or at some point on the hike. Dick had just missed it, somehow he must have...but he hadn’t. Excuses shriveled under searing reality; he knew, with a blindingly absolute certainty, that Slade had been sober.

His gaze shifted toward Slade’s open bag, fixing on the familiar photo inside, and on Grant’s hair, as long and dark as his own.

#punny titles ftw #slade wilson #dick grayson #william wintergreen #bruce wayne #batman #batfam #teen titans #deathstroke #bad company #bad company ch 23 #the apprentice #my writing

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starry-bi-sky · 4 months

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I am procrastinating homework and finals studying so I'm making another DPxDC au -- or more accurately, I am making an au of an au. or combining two aus to make a third one, because I am Procastinating And thinking about it.

(the part two for my Danny is Jason Todd au is like,,, half-made and I will get around to finishing it, promiiissse)

So the two aus I had in mind were combining, of course, the two clone aus - the Danny Clone and the Damian Clone au. For folks who haven't seen either posts (or saw one but not the other) here are summaries of both:

Damian Clone Au: The LoA make a clone of Damian Wayne specifically to either kill Damian Wayne and have the clone take his place as the heir to the LoA, or to bring him back. At 6 years old though and through magical teleportation mishaps, Baby Damian ends up in the warehouse district of Amity Park and picked up (and later adopted) by Danny Fenton. They develop a brotherly dynamic with one another.

Danny Clone Au: Danny is straight up a clone of Bruce Wayne, doesn't find out until a year after he has his accident. And, for the fun of it, is also mostly-powerless (he retains his ghost sense and a semblance of a ghost core and signature, but no ghost form). His reasoning for becoming Phantom is because he has walked into the lab watching his parents dissecting ghosts post-portal working more times than he can count. And due to this, changes his beliefs from "ghosts are evil" to "ghosts are sentient and sapient beings who don't deserve this treatment". (masterpost pinned on my blog, its currently incomplete) He is also a little GNC, as a treat. Long-haired Danny ftw. Ellie is a halfa because of the ectoplasm that Vlad used, and also the same age as Danny. They call each other twins and she is viciously protective of him. He uses a baseball bat and brass knuckles that I call 'jawbreakers' to fight ghosts.

Now admittedly, not much probably changes with the combination of these aus other than the potential parallels between Damian and Danny, and Bruce and Damian - and of course, I am always a sucker for parallels. Plus Damian's running off would take Danny finding him much longer, since he can no longer fly, but all the more meaningful because he still took so much time to find him.

(It probably also makes their first meeting different as well - Danny wears a ROTTMNT Casey Jones Jr. esq. mask when he goes out, but Damian would recognize lazarus green anywhere. He'd probably try harder to kill him though once he sees his face, since he knows that its not his father but an imposter.)

It also includes what I consider a hilarious conversation: "Since I'm a clone of Bruce Wayne, does this make me your dad or your brother?" "Don't be an idiot, laeazir." "You didn't answer my question."

The biggest change that comes from this is, of course, the fact that Danny now no longer has a leg to stand on with the "you're a human, I am a ghost" excuse in order to prevent Damian to help him with ghost-fighting, because now Danny is also a squishy, fleshy and fragile human just like Damian. And a human who, arguably, has less combat training than Damian and no powers to make up for it.

Now, Danny in both aus are about 16-17-ish in age, so they've had time to adapt to their new vigilante-hero lifestyle, but its still not the same as Damian's training as an assassin. Damian, unlike in the original clone au, remains insistent on his want to help Danny.

And,,, eventually wears him down after weeks or months of sneaking out after him, helping in fights, interfering, arguing, etc. Danny eventually agrees, exhausted, but he makes Damian promise, promise, that he will be careful and to focus on dodging and distraction. At least until Danny can figure out a safer alternative. He wants him as far removed from the fight as he can, he's a child for ancient's sake, after all.

Which is another issue too - if we follow Damian Clone timeline, then Damian is six years old when this happens. I'll be point blank, I do not see Danny ever actually agreeing to let a literal 6 year old go with him. SO, solution, I bump Damian's age to 7 when he arrives in the Fenton Family, and make him freshly eight years old when he finally gets Danny to agree.

It still SUCKS. He is still very much an itty bitty child, but as someone who has seen the difference between a six year old and an eight year old due to working at a daycare, an eight year old is still... slightly feasible. And an 8 year old assassin even more so (even if he hasn't trained properly in nearly a year or so)

So Danny, reluctantly, agrees to let Damian come with him on patrols.

He ghost-proofs Damian's sword (as he has since learned to do with his bat and jawbreakers), makes him a grappling hook and a Fenton thermos, and reluctantly lets Damian come with in his old LoA uniform that he appeared in (with some tailoring and ghost-proofing, because he has since begun to grow out of the uniform).

(and Danny himself also finally starts looking into alternatives to improve his own "suit" - which is all but a hoodie and reinforced jeans and a hockey mask. He needs to set an example to his little brother, goddammit.)

Then, as they're planning for Damian's eventual (dreaded on Danny's part) debut, they sit in their shared room and brainstorm for what to call Damian. "Ellie already uses the name Spirit." Danny says, sitting criss-cross at his desk with the eraser nub of a pencil chewed between his teeth.

(Behind him he has an investigative corkboard set up -- his accident left him with the ability to see ghosts not capable of being seen on the visible plane. 'Stereotypical' ghosts. Between school work, his social life, and ghost fighting, some of his downtime is spent figuring out ways to help them move on. His most recent is a cold case.)

(Bc with Danny, I loove to have him have some sort of trait that ties him in with his original counterpart. Nature vs Nurture and all that. Investigative work can be part of that.)

"What about Wraith?" Damian suggests from the floor, leaning against the bed frame while he goes over one of his english books. They've been practicing his reading and writing.

Danny furrows his brows. "A ghost seen typically shortly after or before someone's death?"

Damian nods. "Yes, it's of a similar cadence to 'Batman and Robin'."

"What's with you and your thing with Batman and Robin?" Danny asks with a playful half-smile, Damian shrugs and looks at his books. Danny sticks the eraser back between his incisors. "Phantom and Wraith... that works, though."

The first night out together, Danny fusses over Damian, making sure every bit of uniform was secured and in place -- something Damian took mild offense over. His outfit was far more reinforced than the juvenile get-up that his older brother wore.

But he let him fuss anyways. It made him loved.

"Now remember, Wraith--"

Damian interrupts him: "Yes, I know, Dany. Avoid and distract. Stay situationally aware. I fear that is something I should be telling you, however. Mother would have your head if she ever saw what your training was like."

(It was, not for the first time, that Damian wondered how his,,, "mother",,, would react if she ever met Danyal. Not good, he knows.)

Danny's shoulders sag, and he sighs. "I believe that, what with that super-secret spy--"

"Assassin."

Danny sends him a half-hearted chagrined look, "Assassin," he corrects, "organization that made you. I'm sure I'd give your mother an aneurysm." When he's finally okay with whatever make-believe issues he found with his suit, Danny reaches for the nearby side table and carefully slips on a black domino mask over Damian's eyes. It was thin, flexible, and made with some kind of material that Danny reassured was environmentally safe.

("Some kind of matieral that Wayne Industries invented awhile ago, Sam bought it for me." Danny told him when he first showed it to him.)

It was also cold. But the chill was made up for, slightly, with Danny's warmer hands smoothing it out over his skin, and ridding of any ridges that could form. Damian isn't sure entirely what Danyal did to keep it stuck onto his face, but when he touches it with his fingers he feels a very faint seam at the edge, and it doesn't budge against his hands. It felt like a second skin.

"There we go." Danny smiles, pulling his hands back. He still looks nervous. "It's not the same as my hockey mask," which sat atop his head, ready to be pulled down, "but I think a domino mask will work better for you considering your background."

He was right, a hockey mask would only hurt Damian's peripheral vision. This mask was thin enough that it didn't.

"Ready to go, Wraith?"

"After you, Phantom."

+++

Damian has much issue with Danny's suit. He can think of a million ways to make it better. It is one of the things he and Samantha Manson can get along with, and the few times they have spent time together they have brainstormed suit ideas. He knows that since Danny took him on as Wraith, he has started to look into better suit alternatives.

However. They are both aware of the same thing:

Danny is not Batman, nor Superman, nor Wonder Woman, nor Aquaman, or the Flash, or Green Arrow, or Nightwing, or any single hero on the public roster. He is also not rich like Lex Luthor or Vlad Masters or Bruce Wayne himself.

He has no money and no contacts, and thus, no way of properly improving his suit to be something even half as safe as the other supers.

And he refuses to let Samantha Manson help him find a way to fix that - even with all that money, Samantha Manson is on an allowance from her parents, and also, despite her other range of abilities, not capable of getting those materials without putting herself on a list of some sort. They are at a standstill.

Damian knows this, because he has asked.

Until one day when Danny is talking about a case he is working on and telling Damian about old adventures he had in the Ghost Zone, does he see his brother get hit with a lightbulb.

He slaps a hand against his forehead and straightens up from his swivel seat. He huffs a laugh, "Of course! Why didn't I think of it sooner?" And he turns on his heel and hurries to his bookshelf, pulling down a notebook and flipping open to an empty page.

Damian frowns, "Laeazir?"

"I know you don't like my suit, Damian," Danny says, striding over to his desk and snatching a pencil out of a cup. He begins jotting something down on the notebook. "And there's nothing I can really do about it because, well, I'm poor in comparison to my facesake, and I don't have the resources to get my hands on someone who would make me a new suit."

"Yes, we have talked about this..." Damian nods slowly, still frowning, and trying to follow his brother's line of reasoning.

Danny shoots him a megawatt, half-tilt smile, his hair tied up into a half-bun. "But! I was thinking about it from the wrong angle. I don't have the living resources to help me get a suit, but..." he trails off, staring at Damian intently.

It dinged in Damian's brain to where he was going, "But you have the undead resources instead." He says, his eyes widening slowly. Of course, of course! Danyal was ridiculously charismatic by accident, and Damian has seen plenty of times where his heart-of-gold had one or two non-hostile ghosts be incredibly grateful to him.

His brother makes a loud, 'ding-ding-ding!' sound, pointing his pencil at Damian as his smile stretches further across his face. In a few quick strides, he was sat down next to Damian and showing him his notebook. "Correct! When I first started out as Phantom a few years ago, I managed to help a ghost who called herself Taylor, and apparently she was a seamstress both in and out of life."

Damian watches as Danny writes the name at the top of the paper, and creates bullet-points down the page. "She said that in return for saving her, I should come find her in the Ghost Zone if I ever need clothes made for me. It's a one-time thing, but I was thinking that she could perhaps help make me a new suit."

Danny turns a bit pink at the ears, and rubs his neck, "I never thought much of it because I didn't think I'd ever go into the Ghost Zone, or ever need ghost clothes, so I forgot about it up until now."

A scoff forces itself out of Damian's mouth, but he is smiling. "Danyal, you are the smartest idiot I have ever met."

For the next hour, both he and Danny make a bullet point list of what both of their suits would need. Reinforcement in certain areas, gauntlets with reinforced knuckles to replace Danyal's jawbreakers. A different weapon than a bat.... a utility belt, reinforced boots. Anything they could think of.

It was Damian's idea to add a cloak to both of their suits, asymmetrical and torn at the edges for a more 'ghostly' look. They have a theme, after all. It's quite fun.

Then Danyal calls up Sam for help in drafting up design ideas. And while Danyal steps mostly to the side when it comes to the design itself, Damian and Sam fill pages with designs until coming up with one they both agreed on and like.

"What about a lightning bolt on the chest?" "Why are we using my traumatic accident as a symbol of my identity?" "Ghosts do it all the time, Danny. Ember sings about her death." "I'm not dead?" "No that won't work, Manson. Shazam already has a giant lighting bolt emblem." "Okay, but I still want to use it somewhere." "How about this?" "...That could work. Okay, now onto your emblem--"

Last was the hard part: getting into the Ghost Zone without the Fenton parents noticing the disappearance of their precious Fenton Specter Speeder. They employed Jazz's help with that. She would get the Fentons out of the house long enough for him and Danny to get into the ghost zone, hopefully find the seamstress, and cash in that favor.

They went through with their plan that following weekend. Danny tossed Damian a small jumpsuit as they both climbed into the specter speeder, but did not grab his own. He had a small duffle bag on him that he threw under the seat.

"What is this?" Damian asks, nose scrunching up at the gaudy picture of Jack Fenton's face square at the center of the chest. He held it far away from it, as if it had a disease.

"Your hazmat suit." Danny replies, settling himself into the driver's seat as the door hissed shut and he began turning it on. He had some sort of gas mask on in his lap, too small to fit Danny's head, but certainly the right size to fit Damian's. "Normally you wouldn't need it since you'd stay in the speeder, but we're both getting out once we find Taylor. It's to protect you from the ectoplasm."

A scowl forces itself across Damian's face, "You don't have one." He points out, finding seat in the passenger chair next to Danny. His arms cross over his chest, and he was not pouting.

Danny looks at him amusedly, "I have enough ectoplasm in my body that I don't need one, you however, do not." He retorts, poking a finger into Damian's ribcage pointedly. "If you don't put it on now, you'll put it on when we find Taylor."

Damian's scowl deepens, feeling petulant as he sunk into his chair. Danny turns back to the console and flips a few more switches. "I will not, it looks ridiculous." He turns it around to show Danny the Jack Fenton Face.

The Specter Speeder hums to life, and there's a moment of turbulence as it lifts off the ground. While it does, Danny turns back to him blankly, stares at the emblem, and then reaches forward and yanks it off with a scriiiiich of the emblem. He crumples it up with one hand, and throws it into a small bin at his feet.

"There, fixed." He smiles. Then turns back to the controls, taking the yoke with both hands. "And I'm calling Dad Rights; you will put it on when we find Taylor or you'll stay in the speeder."

Damian sputters, sitting up incredulously. "You are not my father." He argues.

"Teeechnically, I am." Danny says, "I'm a clone of your father, and since I am fully his clone, that makes you my son by a technicality." He says cheerfully, pushing the specter speeder forward and into the swirling green portal.

Before Damian can retort, they're passing through the portal. This was his first time going into the Ghost Zone, and for a few seconds there was nothing but bright, swirling green filling his vision. His body felt like it was being twisted and pulled, his up and down reversing and returning. It was painless, but dizzying.

It only lasts for a few seconds, but it feels like a minute, and when they exit out the other side, Damian is holding his head while his vision spots and swims. Internally, he felt like those cartoon characters when their eyeballs rolled around in their head.

The dizziness fades away slowly, and as Damian regains his sight, he notices Danny's hand splayed over his sternum, gently keeping him pressed against his seat. It fell away when Danny saw that he was alright.

"Put your seatbelt on," Danny orders, nodding to his chair. Damian listens absently, before remembering their conversation before they went through the portal.

"That is not how it works." He scowls, and, annoyingly, only gets a challenged eyebrow raise from Danny. He could see the words written on his face without Danyal ever having to say it.

Because, dangit, he was technically right. Damian refuses to say this aloud. He screws his jaw shut, and crosses his arms back across his chest.

Danny chuckles under his breath, and turns his eyes back to the ghost zone. "My point still stands, either you wear the suit, or you don't leave the speeder."

"Fine."

+++

They eventually find where the seamstress is. Through quite a lot of Danny stopping to ask questions with any friendly ghost he came across, they eventually locate an island with a strange, urban city bustling with life on it. Massive, rocky stalagmites grew from the ground, and buildings were built on top of it or around it, with strange, warping architecture.

It was oddly beautiful.

Danny parked the speeder on the side of the street with a two hour parking sign on a nearby post. As he turned off the engine, he flipped a switch on the console that darkened the windows. He unbuckles his seat, and stood up, stretching out his back with a deep groan.

"Alright, put your suit on. The windows are tinted, so nobody should be able to see into the speeder." He orders, pulling out the duffle he brought in earlier and unzipping it. He pulls out his hockey mask and the hoodie he wore out for patrol, and the notebook they'd been using to jot down ideas for their suit.

Danny even had the hindsight to write in their respective heights, and with Tucker's help, some of their measurements. While he did that, Damian sourly pulled on his hazmat suit, irritated by the need to wear it.

Unfortunately, he also had to wear the boots and gloves for 'extra precaution'. Damian nearly bites out a grumpy 'you're as paranoid as father', but holds his tongue. He wasn't going to tell Danyal that secret.

Once he was done and Danny has his hockey mask and hoodie on, Danny grabs the gas mask and helps fit it over Damian's face. It was a sleek, simple design, shaped similarly to a regular face mask, with little filters on both sides of the mouth and a clear, protective covering around the eyes and forehead. Danyal improved it from the original his parents made.

He was smarter than he gave himself credit for.

Danny checks, then double checks that it the mask is tight, then smiles. Patting Damian's shoulders before standing up fully. "Taylor's shop should be somewhere nearby." He says, grabbing the notebook and tucking it under his arm.

Damian nods, and follows him out the door and onto the busy streets.

Finding Taylor becomes remarkably quick now that they were inside her city - something that Damian silently wondered was based loosely off NYC. Danny kept a firm arm around Damian's shoulders the entire time they walked down the street, keeping the both of them on the inside sidewalk.

Barely anyone passed them a second glance, spare the few odd looks shot at Damian. Danny whispers to him the first time it happens that it's because he has no ghost core, those more attune to their signatures might've been picking up on it.

They didn't notice Danny, because he had one, albeit a weak one.

Taylor's shop has a big sign on it in logographic writing that Damian has no idea how to read. The text shifts slowly, a jambled squiggle of lines, dots, and connected curves that look like a mix of messy cursive, gibberish, and logographic alphabets. He only knows its Taylor's shop because Danny pulls them towards it, stating that it was the place.

"You can read that?" He asks, incredulous as they draw closer to the door. Danny moves his arm off his shoulder, and wraps his fingers around Damian's instead.

"Yep," He replies, then scrunches his nose up, "sort of. It's - uh--" he stumbles over a word that Damian's ears cannot comprehend, but fills his head with slight static regardless. Danny winces. "It's the written form of ghostspeak, but since I'm not a ghost, I can only read some of it. Like uh, dyslexia."

"...I see." Damian says after a moment of silence, trying to replay the word in his head. His mind can't grasp the sound.

When they enter, the door doesn't ding with the sound of a bell, but rather it makes a low scream. Nobody bats an eye to the sound, keeping to their slow search through the racks of clothes.

At the counter was a woman talking quietly to another woman, one of whom Danny recognizes, as he walks over to her.

He doesn't need to say anything, because the woman behind the counter sees him coming, and her face positively lights up with delight. "Phantom!" She cries, and gestures to come over. "I was wondering when in the high ancients you were going to come see me!"

Danny's face is obscured by his mask, but Damian knows he's smiling sheepishly with the way he tilts his head and the way he tenses his shoulders. "My bad, Miss Taylor," he says, reaching the counter and standing beside the woman she was talking to, "It kinda... slipped my mind."

Taylor waves her hand dismissively, "Well you are here now!" She replies, grinning wide. Then her eyes pop open - literally - and she puts a hand over her chest. "Oh, how rude of me!" She turns and gestures between Phantom and the lady next to him, "Miss Mabam, this is Phantom. I told you about him a couple of years ago. He saved me from humans. Phantom, this is Gigi Mabam, she funds my shop. In return I make clothes for her and her staff."

The 'Gigi' woman turns just as Danny does, and smiles wide at him. Damian narrows his eyes at her, shuffling behind Danny legs as he looked her up and down. She had silvery-white hair and purple skin, and wore a darker purple business suit, a red gem cravat at her collar, and teal cat-eye glasses.

There was a lot of purple.

"So this is the ghost-touched you were telling me about, dear!" The woman, Mabam, said. Her voice was rich and low but she spoke in a whimsical cadence. It made Damian's skin crawl, and his narrowed eyes turned into a glare. "I must thank you for saving my seamstress, it would've been quite a fizzy-wink if she had been lost to those ghosty hunters."

What were those nonsense words? Damian hated it.

"Miss Mabam here runs a five-star hotel nearby," Taylor explains, her body turned to Danny, "she also is in charge of the city's Battle Nexus."

Danny is silent for a moment, and his free hand lifts and places itself on the back of Damian's head, keeping him close. "Battle Nexus...?"

Mabam claps cheerfully, laughing low, "Oh yes! Ghosts from all around the zone come to attend and watch as their fellow haunties are ripped from limbity-limb in a blood-curdling battle!"

Danny is still as stone. "I see." He says, careful. Damian wraps his fingers around his pant leg. "Well, I hate to interrupt your conversation, but I was hoping to cash in that favor, Miss Taylor?"

"Of course! What do you need?"

Danny looks down at Damian, and he looks up at him, locking eyes with the ominous green glowing from the eyeslits of his mask. He nods, and Danny looks back up. "Do you know how to make suits? Of the protective kind?"

+++

The seamstress it turns out, is capable of such a thing. And she ushers the both of them into one of the backrooms, sending off Mabam with a farewell and a promise to continue their conversation soon.

She flips through their design book, and immediately gets to work making their suits. In the end, with the help of her powers, she gets both done over the span of four hours. It's longer than both Danny and Damian want, but neither rush her.

Damian just hopes that Jasmine can keep the Fenton parents distracted for that long. She will have to.

The suits are better in real life than on paper, and Damian preens from the side in his own custom suit as Danny examines his own in front of the three mirrors. They were both dressed in all black, but whatever fabric Taylor used was of a blackest-black, turning Danyal - and Damian's - bodies into a black hole to look at. Both of them were fitted for agility, with reinforced padding around their shoulders and chests, as well as around the joints of their legs. Their boots were reinforced as well.

("It was hard to make your boots shock absorbent," Taylor explains, "since we all fly, but I applied similar stuff to what I did with your shoulders and chestplate.")

On the side of Danyal's legs were raised, black, lichtenberg-like figures that were contained to the seams and disappeared under his boots. There were similar designs going up his sleeves, with spiked gauntlets wrapped around his lower arm and hands. The knuckles were reinforced, just like he wanted.

Damian's favorite parts were their capes, however. Black like the rest of the outfit, but "wrapped" around their shoulders like an apocalyptic shawl with a back that went down to their knees, and at the hems the capes were torn and ripped like a wraith. Danyal's mask had gone through very little change. It was made of a stronger material, and Taylor had gone and made it more skull-like in its shape, with three large grills at the front, and the sides curving inward below the 'cheekbones' of the skull to better fit his face. It was still shock white, the only white part of Danyal's entire costume.

Damian's suit was almost identical. However, rather than having the seams of his suit resemble lichtenberg figures, the seams of his sleeves and upper torso were that of a black skeleton, with bone-y designs over his gauntlets and the fingers an ombre of dark red-to-black. And around his torso were raised lines that looked similar to a ribcage. The edge of his cloak was splatter a dark red as well. And he had a new domino mask that looked similar to the upper half of Danyal's mask, with the outer edges curved downward over his cheekbones. He was briefly allowed to take off the upper part of his gas mask to try on the mask.

The best part however, was that since the suits were made of material native to the ghost zone, they could also be taken off quickly and hidden in a small artifact. It was magic, is what it was. Danyal chose earrings, and Damian chose a ring.

When they got back to the Fenton house, Jazz demands a box of chocolate for her hard work. Damian thinks that's only fair as Danny takes them both out to get candy for Jazz.

+++

But other than vigilante stuff, not else much changes. Danny gets to pull a "Dad By Technicality Rule" card over Damian when he's being a brat. Danny doesn't have his run in with Rift (a ghost who portals him into Gotham) until after he meets Damian/lets Damian join him on patrol and when they get new suits.

My reason? Because I want it to happen after that point in time lol. It also makes the eventual "heyyyyy you have a clone" @ bruce much funnier to me because not only does he have a clone of HIMSELF but also THAT clone has a clone of Damian living with him.

Also when Danny destabilizes for the first time Damian is terrified for his safety. The fentons are surprisingly good at cloning, Danny hasn't had any issues up until this point in time, and that's only because he got hit with a new gun from Skulker that messed up the ectoplasm he had in his dna, which in term fucked with his own DNA.

Danny's destabilization, imo, is not "I cast you with Melt" he's not Ellie, he's not made of 50% ectoplasm. His parents surprisingly knew what they were doing, and he was human. So his destabilization should be unique to himself and different. Thus his destabilization is "I cast you with Compromised Immune System" his body slowly weakens over time as his cells destabilize. He becomes unnaturally frail and sick. Damian calls Ellie for help when Danny doesn't get up after being hit in a fight that he normally, and Ellie helps figure out that he's destabilizing. This is whats gonna happen in OG clone au too, but Ellie is going to be there rather than Damian.

It makes going to Wayne Manor after that slightly more interesting,,,

#dpxdc crossover #dpxdc #dp x dc #dp x dc crossover #danny fenton is not the ghost king #danny fenton is a clone #damian clone au #i couldnt NOT describe their new suits. i just couldn't. they're leaning into the ghost culture of being scary as fuck looking #i feel a little cheesy for giving them magic jewelry that lets them hide their suits instantly #but i have to make up for danny's lack of ghost form SOMEHOW #damian just gets it too by association #if anyone is curious #Ellie's ghost form is identical to Danny's suit just the colors are inverted. so her suit is all white and her mask is all black #its not a starry au unless its got a read more #did anyone notice the Big Mama cameo from ROTTMNT #its because Danny's mask looks like Casey Jones Jr's mask from ROTTMNT without the red marks on the eyes #Danny and Damian's dynamic itches my brain #Danny: im calling Dad Rights - youre grounded #Damian: nnOOOO #also also. danny uses sign language if he's in view of the living since they could recognize his voice. damian does not yet know ASL #so thats on his 'languages to learn' list #although he is not seen by the public since he has school and ghost attacks happen around danny and not him #Red Huntress gives the Phantom so much shit when she sees his sidekick. Phantom tiredly explains that he had no choice - Wraith would have #come with anyways. truly a robin at heart.#“idc if you say no imma do vigilantism ANYWAY. i dont NEED ur permission” is robincore and bruce/danny going #“fine but i'm gonna make sure you dont DIE then”#clone^2

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