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sylph_ficsAll previous parts of the "A Darker Path"-verse can be found here. It was getting to be kind of a long list.
Here's the newest part.
Title: Crossed Lines and Revelations
Characters: the Wilson clan, with a guest star
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Nah.
Disclaimer: I wish these guys were mine, they'd be treated better than DC does. But they're not, DC still owns them.
Summary: Old shames and old lies are never as far away as their holders hope, and the truth always hurts like hell when it comes out.
Notes:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
merfilly wrote Dinah and Slade, and Rose. I wrote Dick and Roy, as seems to be the standard.
The woman moved with precise intent, as if she were on the hunt. The man called Deathstroke in most circles had reason to be cautious as he monitored her. He was certain she had not yet tracked her quarry to his care, but he wanted to avert any violent repercussions of his decision. He really had not been pleased when his network had informed him of the woman's presence, so close to his home turf. He had occupied his household with training, and then slipped away to drive the few hours to intercept her. He had no wish to face her at the manor, and have it compromised. Once he was positive she was not being trailed by either a Bat-brat or one of the Birds Oracle employed, he opted for the most direct approach.
"Lady Shiva," he greeted, using full professional courtesy. The man was dressed in casual clothing, presenting no immediate, outward threat. He had no urge to draw full attention to himself today.
"Deathstroke." Her eyes studied him, appraising the man who had so recently been testing the young Batgirl. "Why are you in my path?" The path of destruction that Shiva carried in her whims was not an enviable place to be, and few stepped willingly into it.
"I have business with you." He kept his voice neutral.
"I have doubt of this."
"You may find different. I know you are seeking someone, perhaps a student?" Slade could play his cards close, but did not have time to ghost around the issue very long. She eyed him sideways as they walked down the broad sidewalk together.
"What do you seek in return for the knowledge you possess?" she asked him directly.
He smiled a half smile. "I'm here to make you a deal, concerning the Society. I know you refused them. I know they will keep sending annoying representatives to persuade you, annoyances that take time away from your other pursuits." He saw her nod once. "I can stop them, if you drop your search. The bird is of use right now, and is not available for finding."
"Threats? I suppose next, you will intimate that more serious petitioners will come, eventually with an offer that cannot be refused and still allow me to live," she said, amused.
"That depends." He was not smiling now. "Tell me, specifically, what your student is worth to you."
Shiva paused their walk, considering what he had asked. "There is a matter of honor between she and I. She is not of a caliber to discharge that, which I seek to remedy. Then, I am sure, she and I will cross paths one last time, to see whose ideals are the better foundation." She inclined her head briefly, considering. "So she is worth a small portion of my honor at this point."
"Then my offer is this; you walk away, and I will see that she comes to no harm by another's hand. I may even be able to see to improving her caliber." He could see the potential, begun by raw talent, shaped by this woman and others, which he could mold further. "Once her purpose is at an end, I will deliver her into your hands only." He kept his ideas of the time frame involved to himself.
"I have one further stipulation, Slade Wilson." Shiva pinned her eyes on him with unnerving intensity. "Should she come to harm, before the end of her usefulness in your plans, you owe me a new student."
Deathstroke considered that. He had the unpleasant feeling that she would only accept a female student, and that meant Rose…or Lian. A slow warmth filled his one eye, and he nodded. The thought of Lian being trained by Shiva for hand to hand, himself for marksmanship was one that bore entertaining.
"Deal." He nodded to her, ready to part ways.
"And Deathstroke?" Shiva added, making him pause. "I choose not to tell Huntress that we had this conversation."
"Courtesy between peers," he said with a smile, but she shook her head.
"No. Interest in seeing how you might break her from her principles." With that, Shiva left him, considering all her final words implied. He began walking back to where he had left his car, his mind on her words in view of Rose's recent vision. Dick had immediately thought of Dinah, and dismissed her, but now Slade wondered just what it would take to win her loyalty.
`~`~`~`~`
Canary had just thrown Rose as Slade came in to lounge in the door. He noted she was only using her own style against his daughter, which blended boxing with her martial art almost seamlessly. The girl got up and immediately attacked with raw power, only to find herself sitting on her butt quite harshly. The next attempt relied on speed, and again, she wound up on her tailbone. Canary was breathing hard, but her years of experience were making her a more than adequate teacher. Slade wondered just how long they had been practicing from the signs of exhaustion creeping into the Canary's form, and the fact it was pushing close to midnight.
Rose maneuvered to attack one more time, trying for guile, as she employed more subterfuge in her body language, bringing a small smile to the lips of her teacher. When Rose sliced the blade in on the left, Canary slapped the flat of it down, and was caught by a cunning sweep that followed it. When she regained her breath from the fall, she came to a kneeling position, holding her broken arm up as a signal to stop.
"Very good. Thinking it through is better than overpowering or rushing," Canary said. "We'll get to a point where you'll know which of the three to use against what type opponent, and even work to blending them, but anytime your opponent is experienced, the mind comes before the body."
"How are you so able to anticipate me? You don't have that meta ability," Rose accused.
"She has experience, with some of the fastest fighters the heroes have ever offered, instead of the meta advantage," Slade said, breaking into the training.
Canary tried hard not to scowl at the man, and focused instead on her student. "Rose, I think that's enough for today. My arm is killing me," she said, cutting a small look Slade's way. He merely met her gaze unrepentantly, but nodded to his daughter to go. Once Rose had cleared out of the training room, Slade closed the door and sat on one of the benches, while Canary eyed him warily.
"I handled the matter of your former teacher." He carefully watched her face, seeing the fall of hope, though she quickly tried to hide it. //She knew.// That thought angered him, reminding him of both her duplicity in Light's case, and her stubborn streak of independence. "In case you wish to keep anything else from me, remember this; I've promised her a student in your place if I decide you are no longer necessary," he growled.
The fact she paled almost immediately told him his threat was aimed true. She had immediately thought of Lian, in Shiva's hands. "I did not 'keep' anything from you. I suspected my teammates would have thought she was responsible. Whether she investigated further…"
"You knew she would, after I warned you she did not need to come near this household," he stated. "Do not let this happen again."
Canary considered his words a long moment, actually being both still and quiet. She then nodded. "Fine, Wilson. Whatever you say." The harsh tone belied the words, anger rolling off her in waves. She was not going to push a fight, not now, when she was backed up to a wall, figuratively. "I'll be in my damn room." She strode out, jarring her arm with the angry steps she took, but he said nothing to stop her. In truth, he was rather pleased to see her angry rather than cowering; he saw it as a part of the spirit he had once respected, one of the traits he wanted instilled firmly in both girls.
Only when she slammed the door in leaving did he decide that she would need lessons in self-control. He had a good idea of what needed to be done, to start bringing her in line. All he needed was to have a small conversation with Dick and Roy.
`~`~`~`~`
Roy shut the door behind them, stretching fit to pop his spine as he sighed. "What a day. I'm glad she's finally down..." It felt so strange to be just talking with Dick, with so much hanging between them... but it was nice, too.
"Me, too. And Dinah's got Rose, so we're safe from her..." Dick arched a brow and looked towards the bed--and Roy smiled at him, shaking his head just a little. "I love you, you know that?" How screwed up was it that only in Deathstroke's home could he be that honest about how he felt about Dick?
"I... yeah. I do. I wonder how we survived, sometimes, but..."
"We're too stubborn to let go," Roy reminded him, the same words he'd used when he finally told Dick he'd forgiven him for the… difficulty of that first night, admitted he'd protested but never called his safeword, never put Dick to that final test. Dick's smile was the same joyous expression, and Roy just curled against him, kissing him for a while before finally pulling away. "Hey, speaking of Rose."
"Yes?" Dick asked curiously.
"I spotted something while she was sparring with you. Crawl in with me, and we'll talk it out," he invited, stopping just long enough for Dick to slip his collar back around his neck.
~*~*~*~*
Slade glanced at the large grandfather clock at the end of the hall, and then nodded. He was fairly sure his boy was in Harper's room, and headed that way. He twisted the knob, opening the door and leaning in the doorway, to see his boy laid back on the bed, Harper's head on his thigh, as they spoke quietly. Both were still dressed, with Roy looking rumpled from a hard day of chasing Lian.
Dick glanced up as the door opened, bright smile flashing across his lips as Slade came home unharmed again. The move and the smile alerted Roy that Slade was at the door--he remembered that smile entirely too well, remembered how Dick's face used to light at the very sight of Bruce... He shifted to sit up, and the touch of Dick's fingertips against his shoulder stopped him. He gave Dick a curious look, and waited.
"Slade, what is it?" the lack of an immediate summons made him wonder, and they'd been right in the middle of talking about a problem they'd both noticed in Rose's form. "Do you need me?"
"Both of you." Seeing Harper had cinched Slade's suspicions on how to best clip Dinah's wings. "We need to discuss some of the events influencing the current power plays."
Dick pulled his hand away from Roy's shoulder, letting him move as he cocked his head curiously. "Here, the office, or somewhere else?"
Roy twisted around to look at Slade, still disturbed by his apparent preference for casual wear at home.
Slade inclined his head to the hall. "I think it might be best to do this in my office." He turned to walk out. "You two need to see some files."
Roy slid to his feet, immediately followed by Dick, and side-by-side they trailed Slade down to the office and inside. //What in the heck is he planning?// Roy wondered. In sharp contrast, //He's finally going to tell me, he's finally going to tell me,// was the main thought on Dick's mind.
The man in question had gone to a file cabinet, and opened it removing three files. He slid these onto the desk, opening them to show images of Dr. Light from three very different time periods. The ones in the middle were very familiar to Roy and Dick, as some were telephoto shots of him fighting a younger team of Titans. The ones before that showed a man involved in far worse crimes than the Titans had ever stopped before. The final shots were of a nervous, broken man pleading with Slade, Luthor, and other powerhouses of the Society. "You recognize that this man is in three different mindsets, from three separate time periods?"
"Yeah, that's easy enough to see... I mean, that first set looks like the Light we fought last month, I remember these second ones, how on earth--never mind; but those last ones... There's so much difference here..."
Roy's lips skinned back from his teeth in anger at the sight of images of the man that had beaten his father, tried for his little sister and then nearly kicked the ass of every last Titan... but he studied the pictures, pushing it down. "I'll give you that those don't look like the same guy, sure."
"He hired me, to protect him. That was unusual in itself; I don't do the bodyguard scene." Slade's anger boiled up, laced his voice as he pointed at the pictures of Light speaking to the Society's heads. "But his story, once he told it, made me drop my original asking fee."
"You... dropped the price on a contract?" startled voice from Roy. He knew Slade, after all.
"Why?" Dick asked, cutting to the more important question. "What would be a good enough reason for you to take that on?"
Slade took a deep breath, his nostrils flaring with the anger he was barely containing to tell the facts as he knew them. "He was mind raped. That's what changed him from being a fairly competent, if distasteful criminal, to an idiot that barely fumbled through meetings with a bunch of half-grown kids."
Blue eyes and green snapped to his with a combination of indignant anger at the insult and complete shock, "What? Who by?" came from Dick, who had much more right to question Slade's announcements.
Roy's skin crawled at the very idea, bad memories crawling through his mind. It wasn't as if anyone that'd ever been a Titan didn't have plenty of experience with telepathic //or empathic// villains.
Slade met Dick's gaze evenly, then turned to Roy, knowing where the break point truly was. "The Justice League," he said, with a note of complete disdain.
Roy shook his head, "No way. Just, no way... That's not--I mean, that would've had to have been way back in the day, to make Light a moron when we were kids--you sure he wasn't lying to you?"
Dick didn't want to believe, either, but there were very few people that could lie to Slade--and Light was certainly not one of them.
Slade growled his answer. "Your precious mentors did this to him!" With a clenched fist, he pushed back away from the files, moving around his desk to sit in the chair there, to control his anger. He had always worked by his code, expecting the heroes to abide by certain rules as well. This, though, had shown him, shown them all, that the so-called heroes were not above using Nazi tactics for their own purposes.
"Bruce--"
"Ollie--"
"--would never," the instinctive defenses snapped from both of their mouths in an uncanny stereo--and a heartbeat later Dick was on his knees in front of Slade, eyes wide and apologetic, "I'm sorry, I believe you, I just... I don't want to believe that..."
Slade's anger relented somewhat, as he caressed Dick's face. "I don't lie about this, or other things so important."
Roy was torn between defiant anger and the sure-and-certain knowledge that Slade was, actually, telling the truth--//as he was told it//. Seeing Dick like that shook him badly, but he hung on to the anger. "I know you don't, and if you're saying it you believe it, but not everyone has your code, and I just... I can't believe it. I can't..." If Slade knew his history, the damned mercenary would understand why...
Dick pressed his cheek against Slade's hand--and froze in pure terror as Roy kept arguing. //Roy, stop, please... please just stop...//
Slade raised his gaze back to Harper's face, rage fighting his solid control. "Why don't you go ask, then?" he asked in too soft tones.
Roy blinked at him, then understanding crossed his face, "Yeah, Dinah would've been on it then... I... tell me the rest, tell me why you're so sure it's true and I will."
Dick relaxed, tension flowing out of his shoulders as that dangerous rage wasn't targeted on his lover, and his ears were wide open as he listened.
"Certain...acquaintances were maintained even before the Society was conceived. We might have dismissed his story, if we had not come to see the pattern in others. Most notably, the Top." Slade drew in a deeper breath, stroking Dick's face and hair almost absently.
"The Top? Fleetfeet's pain-in-the-ass, the crazy one? The one that tried to make Barry crazy?" It had taken Roy a minute or two to process the name, longer yet to remember who it was...
Dick shifted closer, leaning against one of Slade's legs, wishing he could see Roy.
Slade coaxed his boy into laying his head fully on his thigh, caressing that hair, the line of the neck and feeling his icy calm come to him fully. "The Top nearly broke the Flash, apparently. And The Flash...the real one, Harper, retaliated in such a way that the Top went to the other side for a time. Before going insane."
"Retaliated... Flash didn't have that kind of skill, how could he have screwed with somebody's head?"
Dick swallowed hard, having already thought that League roster through. "Zatanna, Roy. Zee can do damned near anything... that's who you mean, isn't it?" tilting his head up enough to look up at Slade's face.
"That's what Light remembered, who he feared nearly most of all." Slade looked at Roy with a cocked eyebrow. "Nearly." He left it hanging, pushing at the redhead's curiosity.
Roy gave up and bit, "Nearly?" //Oh, yes, let him bait you...//
"One of the men apparently pushed the young witch quite a bit," he replied, before looking back down at Dick. "But, as you said, Harper, this is all as I have been told. I was not there."
"No way it was Ollie," Roy told him, head tossed back, clearly revealing the black leather band Dick had left wrapped around his throat and still completely defiant. "No way in hell."
//Bruce wouldn't, he wouldn't, not ever, not in a million years he wouldn't...// Dick pressed tighter against Slade's leg, unable to even consider it rationally.
"Anyway, no matter who it was, tell me why. What could ever have made the League decide to play god with someone's mind?" Roy couldn't help thinking about the televised accusations against the League, that they'd stolen his dignity... He'd taken that as the ravings of a madman, not the truth...
"Fear, I suppose." Slade ran a finger down the exposed part of Dick's neck. "Light admitted to getting to the Watchtower, learning who they were."
Cold lanced down Roy's back--he knew what Wally had had done, how frantically some of the older heroes protected their identities... "No. No, damnit, that's not enough reason... I... I've got to talk to her," his voice shook with the stress and the disbelief and all of the fear that this just might be true, and Dick shifted, neck pressed to Slade's light touch as he looked back at Roy, understanding in his eyes. They flicked up to Slade for a moment, checking, and when he saw permission, they flicked back to his beloved. "Go find out, Roy."
"Always two sides to a story," Slade conceded. "She was there, so get her side." Slade then tapped Dick's shoulder. "She should not, however, have to see her son's ownership so clearly."
Roy knew absolute, naked gratitude was standing in his eyes as he looked at Slade. He couldn't remove it himself, and the sight was likely to throw Dinah into too strong a rage to reason with. The older man inclined his head marginally, returning the gratitude with acceptance.
Dick slid to his feet with a nod, going to Roy to pull him hard into his arms, holding him tight for a long moment before he could slide his hands up to unfasten the collar, lifting it so very gently away from his neck, tucking it into a pocket. "I should've thought of that. Sorry, my own." He kissed him, hot and sure, then slowly let go.
Roy flashed a smile at him, shrugging a shoulder. "It's fine, Dick, she'll see me in it eventually. I'll be back..."
Slade watched the kiss, then Harper leaving before focusing on his boy. "Come here, kid," he ordered in a gentle voice, flicking on the monitor closest to Dinah's room. She was sitting in her armchair, feet tucked under her as she held her face in her strong hand, the broken one tucked close.
Dick went to him, studying Slade's posture for clues to where exactly he was supposed to put himself, then settled in, watching the monitor with a small, amused smirk, though he wondered what had gotten to her this time.
Slade kept one hand on Dick the whole time, adjusting the volume and camera angle once Harper reached the room.
Roy rapped once against the door, hard, then pushed it open, his eyes wide as he located her, "Dinah, tell me he's wrong, please, tell me he's lying..."
Dick curled back against Slade, watching the monitor, body tensed as he listened to the beginning of this. The mercenary watched the blood drain from Dinah's face, the look of knowing just what Roy was speaking of.
"How will the bird sing?" Slade knew, beyond the shadow of a doubt, he would kill her if she tried to lie. He would just have to pay Shiva's claim with Harper's daughter.
Dinah had slipped from her chair, rising and turning away from Roy, her entire posture defeated. "Never meant for anyone to be hurt...."
That single phrase ripped through Roy, making him reel, slamming a knife through everything he'd ever believed about the life he'd lived, "oh, god. ...he's not. You... you all really... That's..." he stuttered with the pure force of his disbelief and shock.
Dick pressed tighter to Slade's body, closing his eyes tightly. //God damn it... the bastard was telling the truth, all along, and I refused to believe it... I wanted it to just be the ravings of a madman, and it wasn't...//
"She's not denying it," he said approvingly. It helped him be more open to what she might say. His touch was consoling in its own way to Dick, knowing the boy had grown up worshiping the people in question.
Dinah had been silent a long moment, then turned back, her eyes full of tears. "They voted, we lost the vote...Had to follow it."
"What the hell, Di? Explain to me what would possibly cause the Justice League--" and all of his shattered faith was in those two words "--to vote to Rape. A. Man's. Mind. Tell me it wasn't just the identities. TELL me."
Dinah reacted as if slapped. "Roy...God no!" She looked horror struck. "If it had been just that, we might have argued them down...." She shook violently. "But after what he did to Sue..."
"Sue? Di, tell me WHY," his voice begged her, even as his heart leapt at the confirmation that it wasn't something so petty.
Dick tensed, eyes snapping open. There was more to this story than anyone outside that League had heard before.
Slade leaned forward, face dropping into the frown of concentration, reading the lines of his prey's body for truthfulness.
Dinah clung tightly to herself, her eyes closing and spilling those tears of pain. "He ...she was so...." She swallowed hard. "Worse than what the Slasher did to me..." was all she managed, knowing Roy could understand that.
"He raped her. Raped Sue," Roy's voice was a soft, harsh hiss. Non-powered, non-hero, sweet, gentle Sue, who's death had nearly ripped them all apart... he'd attacked her?
Dick bit at his hand, fighting to stay silent, to make himself listen to all of this without reacting emotionally.
Dinah nodded slowly, her entire body shaking as she remembered finding her like that.
"Two sides," Slade whispered, so softly that Dick knew his lover had not known.
Roy was so utterly torn, between going to hold Dinah tight and the knowledge that she might reject his touch and by the fact that part of him was too angry and shaken and hurt to even consider going to her, and all of his words got trapped in his throat.
Dick's eyes were darkened with anger and grief. They'd all liked Sue. He'd helped hunt her killer as eagerly as he'd ever hunted Gotham's rogues... And only the fact that Roy had never coded him to stop, and had now willingly forgiven him, kept him from sinking into an utter ball of self-hate. He fished for one of Slade's hands, feeling their whole world reel from what was being said. //Who knew? Who didn't? Who was in on this?//
Slade was tense, too tense, but he did grip his boy's hand, thinking hard. In his eyes, what Light had done was inexcusable. Had she been an active hero, able to fight him on his level, that would have been one thing. But Sue Dibny had been collateral damage, a civilian too close to the ongoing battle. The sharp distinction between fair game opponents and civilians came to mind quickly. It was a rule he had discarded in the past, but always with a clean death. There were things far worse, and what Light had done was one of those.
Dinah did not have the words to reach out to Roy; she found herself moving away from him, feeling the fact she had done this horrible thing all over again. A hundred years might pass, but she would never forgive herself for having failed her mother, her father in living the way they would have been proud of.
"Dinah." From somewhere Roy found the strength to speak, "Okay. That's... unconscionable, no question. You know what I think of rapists, Di, and not just because of you... but how could you be part of raping someone's mind just as much as he'd just raped her? How could they, could you, cross that line? Weren't you the one that always tried to teach me that it was justice, NOT vengeance, we served? That the only thing that made the difference between us and them was that we didn't take vengeance?"
Slade made a low noise in his throat. Half a dozen encounters with the blonde, and he began to glimpse just how much bravado had poured across in her incessant verbal sniping at him. She had always been careful to never show him weakness, and that now had the taint of a woman who had clawed her way up from a very low place. He continued to seethe at her involvement in the event, though, filing away the information for later to research.
The small frame shook as if he had physically assaulted her, before Dinah turned back to Roy, angry hurt on her face. "I didn't want this! Ever! But you don't go against your... DAMMIT!" She could not help the hint of the Cry; she was too emotional, and the mirror on the wall trembled from the power echoing in the room.
"Don't go against your what, Dinah?" Roy was trying to understand this, "Make me understand, Di, please."
She dropped her eyes, her voice falling in volume, and going toneless with the recall of it all. "Seven of us, Roy. That's how many got there, saw...her. Found Light who was threatening all of us... our loved ones. Knew who we were, who our lives touched." She slowly sank to her knees, sobbing. "Roy...I voted against it! We did, and if Barry had been with us like usual...."
Roy couldn't hold out against her agony--not Dinah's, not with what she was to him--and he went to her, kneeling at her side, hands going out to her. "Tell me, Di. Tell me everything..." his voice was gentle as a hand brushed lightly over her hair. "C'mon, Di, sweetheart, let it out..."
"I've never seen her like this..." Dick's voice was shocked. All the years the Canary had been around, all fearless grace and strength and quick, sharp mind... he'd never guessed how much that was hiding.
Slade nodded. "No." The woman had been foe and ally both over the years, but this was a side of her well hidden.
Dinah flinched from the touch, every sign in her body language one of being repulsed, but not by him. She did not want him to touch her, to dirty his hands by doing so. "It was less than six months after Iris... do you remember her, Roy? Barry's love?"
"A little--y'know, I didn't see her much, but I remember what that did to Wally..." Roy pulled her in anyway, pulling her tight against his body.
Dick watched his boy pull his 'mother' close, and worried for him. God, this was hurting him so badly... He was more angry than hurt, the fact of the League's guilt now unquestionable.
"Will he be able to pull her together?" Slade questioned in a neutral voice.
"I... I'm not sure," Dick admitted.
Dinah began through a shuddered sob, calming some. "We had just lost her. Barry was still a wreck from it." She grew silent a long moment, violently tense. "We wanted justice, but we had to find some way to protect all of you. You kids, girlfriends, all of it." She started to cry again, but bit her lip hard, focusing on that pain to fight it down. "Hal and Ollie were adamant. I backed them; no matter how sickened I was, how scared I was, I believed we would find a way to have justice and see you all safe from him."
"Okay... so what happened? What changed? If you were saying no..."
Dinah looked up at last, her eyes haunted. "We voted. Zee...she had been so hurt, and there was Carter, pushing her, telling her she had the ability to fix it all. Atom had his wife, and would have done anything to protect her." She gave a harsh, bitter laugh. "Then you had team green and blonde. I think even Carter was sure we had the vote, as solidly as Hal and Ollie spoke. Barry never went against us when we agreed like that. He was a cop...he knew..." She brought her fist up to her mouth, pressing the knuckle hard to her lips, the pain flaring sharply. "He couldn't stop thinking of Iris."
Roy held her, trying to get this image solid in his mind, "So... Hawkman pushed her? Hotheaded son of a bitch... and Ray and Jean were still--" he tried NOT to think of how that all had ended, "And you and Ollie and Hal were fighting it?" He paused a moment, hearing himself say that, shoulders shaking with relief, //thank gods,// "You should've had it, you were right... But I don't understand how Barry could..."
"Zoom knew everything about Barry. Every little detail. He had already seen what could happen, and lost his soul's mate," she managed, around small shudders. "We lost the vote, and had to abide by it...back then, it seemed so simple. You did not go against your team...and Barry...he was one of mine. My damn leader." She tried to pull away from him, struggling with it. "I trusted him to lead us right. So much like Dad..." She was shaking again, the coiled tension snapping out in the flex of her hands.
Roy held her crushingly tight, absolutely unwilling to let her go, knowing all too well what that moment when your leader broke and betrayed you felt like--and he was still following Dick through hell. "Di... god, Di, I get that... I, do, but... someone's mind, someone's soul? How could you let a vote justify playing god like that?"
Dick waited for her answer to that, wondering what possible justification she could see for that kind of an action.
Slade considered the information being revealed from his own perspective. To be betrayed by a team leader was a very difficult thing to overcome, he would admit. And he almost saw the way the losers of the vote could not have broken ranks. It would have broken the corps fidelity. Still, Roy had a strong point.
The blonde shook her head. "We had no right. Not a one of us. We turned into our worst enemies, took away all the justice from it by doing that." She flinched again from her memories.
"Yeah." Roy couldn't argue, wouldn't disagree, not when she was so damned right. "But it'd happened, and for whatever reasons you couldn't change the vote, couldn't change their minds..." he shook his head, holding onto her, "Di... please tell me that was the only time? I mean, between the rape and that he knew and his powers I can understand the need---Ollie should've just put a broad head through his heart, but I can understand the need... as long as you tell me it was just that once." He needed something to cling to so very badly, some proof that it had been an extreme situation, not something they did regularly...
"Ollie hadn't killed yet, then...and it was Carter's wish to kill him, and Ollie arguing that down..." She wrapped her good arm around her knees, looking for the entire world like a scared kid.
Slade leaned forward sharply. "She's evading," he growled, all his anger coming back again.
Dick caught that too, caught the shift in her posture and the tone of her voice, "It's not the only time, or she'd have said so... gods, who else?"
Roy winced, closing his eyes at the sudden memory of hearing of his "father's" first kill, contrasting the world they'd left so far behind with the blood on his own hands. "No, he hadn't... god, that's so Ollie... Di, please..."
She flung herself away from him, moving with the speed that came from being a world-class martial artist, and only stopped at the far wall. She would not turn around, would not look at him. "They...we...were interrupted. Someone came up, before Zee finished. I...I'm not sure how it really came about; I was still reeling from what they...we...were doing."
"A hero?!" the startled exclamation ripped from Dick's lips.
Roy froze, kneeling on the floor with his arms still open, eyes tracking up her legs and back to her shoulders, "oh. god. di, no..." his voice as small as she'd ever heard it. //No, no, Dinah, don't tell me you did this to one of our own...//
"Roy, every night I've seen him, worked alongside him...I wished I could just..." She broke it off, hanging her head further. "You have no idea how much he has done for me over the years. And I always come back to that, to the second vote, and what was decided." She was almost whispering. "Working in his city...so glad when she moved us out...it was too much."
The hand in Dick's squeezed, painfully, as realization broke for Slade who she was referring to.
"Even working past it, now that he knows...I'll never be worth his notice."
"Oh that fucking bitch!" low, savage hiss as the Bat's child stared at her image from Renegade's cold eyes, incandescent, seething fury lashing through him, "That backstabbing, lying, deceitful little bitch... And they've both kept coming on to him for how long?!" Dick fought the urge to curse like a sailor, eyes going dark and hard. "The League fucked with Bruce's mind? God, I knew he wouldn't be part of that..." Too much relief in that last for his own tastes and he turned to press a kiss along his lover's neck, body saying, //yours, still yours, no matter what.//
Roy tilted his head, not understanding, not for long, long seconds, then 'she' and 'moved us out' and 'His city' and 'done for me' all registered and "BRUCE? You... they screwed with Bruce's mind?! Di, how could you?!"
"It was not my conscious choice!" She turned back, her eyes desperate that he believe her. "It all happened so fast."
Slade held his boy tight to his body, the timeline immediately presenting itself to him. He knew Dick's history so intimately, and had tested himself against Batman for years. There was no doubt in his mind that what had been done had led to the evolution of the son of a bitch he had stolen Dick away from.
Roy forced himself to his feet, watching her, more than half-broken by what she'd revealed, by what the heroes he'd grown up worshipping had done, not only to an enemy but to one. of. their. Own... "Di... Bruce? Wait. What exactly did you do to him?"
Dick shuddered in Slade's arms, hands fisting in his shirt to make himself keep listening...
She shuddered. "We made him forget what he had seen, what we had done." She shook her head. "It was a panicked reaction, and one I know I always regretted. He was not the same from that day." She fought the urge to breakdown again. "He should hate me," she whispered.
"They... took. his. Memories?" low, shaken hiss as the little boy he'd once been tried for a moment to rejoice at the thought that it wasn't all Bruce's fault--but yet, a few moments of stolen memory shouldn't have so utterly destroyed their partnership. No matter what the League had done, he shouldn't have... That shouldn't have been enough to sever the bond between Batman and Robin. "Oh, god..." soft, low moan.
Roy flinched back, winced, for the first time understanding the reasons behind the protocols the Bat had built against their metahuman allies--right now, they frightened him...
Dinah showed that uncanny ability to think with someone, especially one so close to her. "Batman remembered, at some level. He had to have, because the man I revered would never have engineered the means to take down the League otherwise."
"Dick," Slade began, his voice hard and cold. "They will pay."
"No... oh god, Dick... this is gonna kill him..."
Dick purred harshly, eyes hot and hungry, "All his warnings about playing god, he knew all along, even if he didn't...." He shook his head violently, twisting around, looking at Slade with desperation to even the scales blazing in his eyes. He might not be Bruce's son anyone, not with the amount of shed blood and betrayal between them, but this still cut deep.
The mercenary was watching the drama in his guest room more intently.
"It all started to come out, when Light....when he was our main suspect. The others wanted to know why, and even though Ollie tried...Carter still would not let anyone admit it." Dinah clenched her fists so tightly her nails were cutting skin. "I told Ollie, and we both were going to lay it out...but then it all blew up anyway."
Roy tilted his head--the Outsiders had been just a little busy lately, running desperately to keep up with the surging villain activity, so he wasn't sure what she meant. He hadn't even talked to Mia recently, let alone anyone else.
Dick settled back against him, hands flexing with his desperate desire to move...
Dinah shivered. "We went to fight Light. And the truth came out after ...after he beat us, guarding the bastard." She winced, remembering how easily Deathstroke had beaten them. "It was the original six, and Flash." More tears tracked her cheeks. "I hated that he had to find out like that, but I was damn glad when Br...Batman did. I could live with his hate."
"So he does know," Slade said. He thought to the night he had taken Dinah, remembered seeing her and the man on the roof. Batman had not been unwilling in that kiss.
"That's why Fleetfeet called and warned us, he knew... god, he knew and he didn't tell Dick..." he bit at his lip, shaking his head, "So he knows? That's why he left the League, not just the thing with Diana?"
"I... I can't deal with this..." Dick shuddered, trying not to struggle in Slade's grasp, but he needed to do something...
"Go." Slade released the boy, knowing it was best. His own anger was just under the surface. Part of him wanted to go take over the questioning, to learn everything, and the other part knew Roy was actually gaining far more honesty from the lying bitch than he ever would.
"He was struggling with it, Roy. Barry was his world. The man was everything to him. Imagine if it had been Ollie." Even she physically flinched from that. "Who had done something so against code...remember your initial reaction to him killing the Slasher. What that did to your image of him."
Dick flung himself up out of the chair and went, out of the office and down to the training room, taking a spot in the center of the training dummies before he exploded into motion, envisioning certain heroes faces over the blank dummies as he let himself flow through routine after routine, the hard, jarring impacts disturbingly pleasing...
Roy closed his eyes, nodding slowly, "I... yeah, you're right, Di, he would've been... And I don't have to imagine, it was Ollie. And Hal. And you, Di..." his green eyes dark with pain. "Damn it. I didn't want to believe him..."
Dinah lowered her eyes again. "He's always been an honest man, by and large," she said, following his thoughts of who had told him. "Roy..." her voice broke. "Please, believe this one thing...I've never regretted anything more in my life than letting myself bend that day." She paused a long moment, then continued, "Not even letting Ollie go."
Roy looked back at her, eyes still shadowed, "I... believe you, Dinah. But... when I'm taking Slade Wilson's moral side on this, when I can't even think of the 'justice league' without feeling revolted... there's something deeply, deeply wrong."
She nodded, wiping the last vestiges of tears from her face. "I gave myself to Oracle so strongly, away from the League, to the JSA, to try and make amends. But I can't. What I took part in is unforgivable." Just as she had faced Batman, she faced her son/brother/friend, refusing to make excuses for herself, even as she had tried to point out the reasons her friends had failed. "You...you are strong, Roy. And no matter who you work for, you have the right heart for this, the way to decide what is right." She turned away, making it plain in her silence that she knew she did not.
Roy walked to her, then, "You used to, Di. Who do you think taught it to me? You gave me that. I just... hope what I may have to do doesn't break your faith in me... I don't know what's going to happen--and I don't know how much they'll let me tell you, but I could see in his eyes that he's planning something..."
Dinah reacted to that with a wide-eyed look. "God, Roy..." She gripped his hand. "He..." She cut herself off, clenching her jaw.
In his office, Slade wondered just what the woman had started to say, not sure he had read the look in her eyes just right.
"What, Dinah?"
"He can't want a world where that...Society rules with a clenched fist. Won't be good for business, at the least," she said softly, a tang of bitterness in her voice. "Just be a voice of reason to him, Roy. He's got a better code than we did, apparently."
"No, I can't see him wanting that either--I could be wrong, but I doubt it... That code of his... it's not such a bad way to live, not really--I mean, god, he ran with us Titans for how long?"
Dinah shook her head. "There was a time when I did not really..." She stopped herself again. "Much as he's done that is inescapably wrong; I'll still back him over Carter, a hundred times over. But the ones he works with?" She shuddered. "Not that nest of vipers."
"I can just guess who's leading that unification charge, and it scares me to death," Roy agreed.
Dinah shook her head. "Oracle had definitely pinpointed Talia's handiwork. Hard to hide that from a bat."
Slade's eye narrowed as he ran over the words again in his head. He supposed Rose might really have seen Dinah in her vision, and it made him set some small part of his anger for the League aside, in her case. If she wanted to find redemption, he was sure he could find a place for her to work toward it in his plans.
"Yeah, maybe just a little..." he laid a hand on her shoulder gently. "Di... You fought it... and that helps. It... means you're still my Dinah..."
She was tense, vibrating almost as badly as Wally could. "No, Roy...That Dinah fell to the earth years ago, when she lost sight of what was right."
"So what, you're going to curl up broken-winged in a cage and die? That's not the woman that dragged me kicking and screaming out of my addiction, that supported me and pushed me and fought for me, don't you dare give up now!"
Dinah shook like a leaf, and then buried her face in his chest. "He gave me this cage; what else am I supposed to do? I have to behave, for you, for our little girl!"
Roy found his arms wrapping around her again, whispering to her, his voice soft, low and gentle. "Oh, Dinah... You might have to behave, but that doesn't mean you get to just give up…"
She kept her face pressed to his chest, her tears soaking through his shirt now that she was not fighting them. "He's not going to trust me, Roy. I know that beyond the shadow of a doubt. Even if he has a plan I could conscience, I'm irredeemable."
He couldn't stand to hear her say that, not about herself, not now or ever... "No, you're not, Di. You've done too much good for too long for this to be the end of it, for the worst decision you ever made to be the one thing people judge you by..."
"Why not? These decisions have had the harshest impact of any I have ever made in my life, Roy. I helped …I helped destroy a man I respected, saw to the rape of a man's mind, which led to where we are now, and kept silent on both decisions," she told him, the bitterness mixed in equal parts with defeat.
""Yeah, you did... but that's not who you are--and if you think it is, try telling that to everyone you ever saved, Dinah. You look me in the eye and tell me what you were forced into invalidates the fact that you saved my life and my sanity!" His hands locked hard on her shoulders. "Hal might've pulled me out, but you're the only reason I'm not dead in an alley with a needle in my arm."
She slowly brought her face up, her eyes completely lost with her guilt now that he knew. "How could I turn my back on you, baby? Ever? You were hurting so bad."
"You couldn't, you wouldn't. Because that's not who you are. It never has been... and don't you dare make yourself some that would because you're drowning..."
Dinah drew away from him. "Roy, I..." She shook her head. "I think I need to be alone, Roy."
"And I think that's the last thing you need, but if you want me to, I'll go..."
She nodded, not trusting her voice.
He hugged her tight, gave her a long, worried look, and slowly turned to leave, hating it so very much. Despite everything, she was still Dinah, and leaving her aching and so broken ripped at his heart.
She did not move from her position as he left, did not call him back. She just stood there, longing for a view of the outside, hugging herself tight.
Roy stopped outside her door, leaned back against it and closed his eyes, shuddering. The taint of this was spreading throughout the world, had spread, and the knowledge that his "father" and his "uncle" and... and everything Dinah was to him, mother and sister and confidante and friend... that they'd all helped in this... He felt unclean.
Slade stared at the monitor as Dinah slowly sank down on the floor, shaking her head in denial at all of it. She gave a few silent sobs, hand up over her face. He was about to stand, his mind on ways to make both the League and Light pay, when he saw her jerk violently and scan the ceiling.
Roy forced himself into motion, making himself go back to that office, feet kind of slow, however. He didn't want to do this--hell, he wanted more than anything not to have to go make this 'mission' report to a man that would gloat so much over being proven right.
"No, son of a bitch...no," Dinah cursed, before collapsing against the carpet, racked by sobs and shuddering spasms yet again, as she realized just what she had betrayed in her conversation.
Slade sat back in the chair, his eyebrow arching as he saw her newly broken state. "Forgot my eyes were on you, Little Bird?" he mused.
Roy made it back and rapped at the door, not willing to walk in without Slade's consent.
"Enter," the mercenary called, not removing his gaze from the monitor.
Roy stepped in, his eyes snapped to the monitor, and anger overrode almost every lick of his self-preservation instincts, "You bugged her room?!"
"Don't be stupid, boy. I monitor all aspects of my household." Slade continued to watch a moment longer, then turned back to him. "Well?"
Roy bit his lip until it bled, "I showed up to tell you you were right--but you already know that," eyes glaring at the monitor, then the realization hit. "Oh, god, where's Dick?"
Slade inclined his head to the door. "Training room, most likely." The voice was cold, fully under control in the way Roy had heard too many times in the heat of a battle going against Slade's wishes.
Roy nodded, turned to go, and Slade spoke. "Harper."
That voice dragged him up short, but only for a moment. "Was there something? Or can I go try and coax my lover back to something that vaguely resembles sanity?"
"He would hurt you right now. Your association with her is too strong." Slade studied Harper for a long moment. "I suggest letting him work thorough it fist, until he is no longer violent."
"…he's that flipped? What'm I saying? Of course he's that flipped." He stopped, shook his head, scrubbed his hands over his face, "I... jesus. Effing. christ, this is..."
"Where do you stand now, Harper?" Slade asked, while the man was still disoriented. "Does your answer remain the same as when we discussed it?"
A million responses ran through Roy's head, 'I can't back the League, not now' collided harshly with 'I can't go against the Titans", and screams about the idea of a world where the villains ruled flung themselves hard against his control... "I still stand with Dick, yes," he managed to answer--hopefully before Slade could get pissed off at him.
The mercenary nodded sharply. "Very well." He glanced again at the monitor, where Roy could see Dinah was neither moving nor making any sound now. "Don't make him regret that." It was the only warning Roy would get from him, and had the feel of a dismissal.
Roy shrugged a shoulder, then nodded. "I'm going to go hang around the training room and pray he stops before breaks something else..."
Slade let him reach the door. "Harper, tell Rose to go assist her teacher," he added.
"I figured she'd gone to bed, this late," Roy said, "but I'll go tell her."
"I sincerely doubt she is asleep." He knew his daughter. "Be ready to go operative tomorrow or the night after." He was pulling files close, sorting through them, as he prioritized his work in view of the new information he had.
Roy froze for a moment, then nodded once. "All right. I'm gone," and he did just that, walking down to rap his knuckles against Rose's door. The sound of a stereo turning down accompanied a call that it was open.
Roy sighed and pushed the door open, just knowing he was walking into more trouble. "Rose, are you decent?" he asked once he had the door open about halfway.
A girlish giggle preceded her answer. "Am I ever?"
"Okay, fine, are you dressed? If not, get that way, your dad wants to you to go take care of Dinah."
There was a pause, and then she was standing there at the door, dressed in a pair of sweats he recognized as Dick's and one of his shirts from the wardrobe he had been given. "Is she okay?" The detached tone was at odds with her eye searching his face for clues.
"No. She's not. She's... really not. Be... be careful with her, Rose, she needs someone--and since she won't let it be me, maybe you've got a chance..."
She reached up, patting his cheek gently. "I'll be good to her." She slipped past him, heading down the hall in the direction of Dinah's room.
"Thanks, Rose," he called after her--then realized what she was wearing and wondered how in the heck she'd gotten to their clothes. And why... but there were other times to try and get answers to those. Right now, he was going to go wait for his lover.
Here's the newest part.
Title: Crossed Lines and Revelations
Characters: the Wilson clan, with a guest star
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Nah.
Disclaimer: I wish these guys were mine, they'd be treated better than DC does. But they're not, DC still owns them.
Summary: Old shames and old lies are never as far away as their holders hope, and the truth always hurts like hell when it comes out.
Notes:
merfilly wrote Dinah and Slade, and Rose. I wrote Dick and Roy, as seems to be the standard. The woman moved with precise intent, as if she were on the hunt. The man called Deathstroke in most circles had reason to be cautious as he monitored her. He was certain she had not yet tracked her quarry to his care, but he wanted to avert any violent repercussions of his decision. He really had not been pleased when his network had informed him of the woman's presence, so close to his home turf. He had occupied his household with training, and then slipped away to drive the few hours to intercept her. He had no wish to face her at the manor, and have it compromised. Once he was positive she was not being trailed by either a Bat-brat or one of the Birds Oracle employed, he opted for the most direct approach.
"Lady Shiva," he greeted, using full professional courtesy. The man was dressed in casual clothing, presenting no immediate, outward threat. He had no urge to draw full attention to himself today.
"Deathstroke." Her eyes studied him, appraising the man who had so recently been testing the young Batgirl. "Why are you in my path?" The path of destruction that Shiva carried in her whims was not an enviable place to be, and few stepped willingly into it.
"I have business with you." He kept his voice neutral.
"I have doubt of this."
"You may find different. I know you are seeking someone, perhaps a student?" Slade could play his cards close, but did not have time to ghost around the issue very long. She eyed him sideways as they walked down the broad sidewalk together.
"What do you seek in return for the knowledge you possess?" she asked him directly.
He smiled a half smile. "I'm here to make you a deal, concerning the Society. I know you refused them. I know they will keep sending annoying representatives to persuade you, annoyances that take time away from your other pursuits." He saw her nod once. "I can stop them, if you drop your search. The bird is of use right now, and is not available for finding."
"Threats? I suppose next, you will intimate that more serious petitioners will come, eventually with an offer that cannot be refused and still allow me to live," she said, amused.
"That depends." He was not smiling now. "Tell me, specifically, what your student is worth to you."
Shiva paused their walk, considering what he had asked. "There is a matter of honor between she and I. She is not of a caliber to discharge that, which I seek to remedy. Then, I am sure, she and I will cross paths one last time, to see whose ideals are the better foundation." She inclined her head briefly, considering. "So she is worth a small portion of my honor at this point."
"Then my offer is this; you walk away, and I will see that she comes to no harm by another's hand. I may even be able to see to improving her caliber." He could see the potential, begun by raw talent, shaped by this woman and others, which he could mold further. "Once her purpose is at an end, I will deliver her into your hands only." He kept his ideas of the time frame involved to himself.
"I have one further stipulation, Slade Wilson." Shiva pinned her eyes on him with unnerving intensity. "Should she come to harm, before the end of her usefulness in your plans, you owe me a new student."
Deathstroke considered that. He had the unpleasant feeling that she would only accept a female student, and that meant Rose…or Lian. A slow warmth filled his one eye, and he nodded. The thought of Lian being trained by Shiva for hand to hand, himself for marksmanship was one that bore entertaining.
"Deal." He nodded to her, ready to part ways.
"And Deathstroke?" Shiva added, making him pause. "I choose not to tell Huntress that we had this conversation."
"Courtesy between peers," he said with a smile, but she shook her head.
"No. Interest in seeing how you might break her from her principles." With that, Shiva left him, considering all her final words implied. He began walking back to where he had left his car, his mind on her words in view of Rose's recent vision. Dick had immediately thought of Dinah, and dismissed her, but now Slade wondered just what it would take to win her loyalty.
`~`~`~`~`
Canary had just thrown Rose as Slade came in to lounge in the door. He noted she was only using her own style against his daughter, which blended boxing with her martial art almost seamlessly. The girl got up and immediately attacked with raw power, only to find herself sitting on her butt quite harshly. The next attempt relied on speed, and again, she wound up on her tailbone. Canary was breathing hard, but her years of experience were making her a more than adequate teacher. Slade wondered just how long they had been practicing from the signs of exhaustion creeping into the Canary's form, and the fact it was pushing close to midnight.
Rose maneuvered to attack one more time, trying for guile, as she employed more subterfuge in her body language, bringing a small smile to the lips of her teacher. When Rose sliced the blade in on the left, Canary slapped the flat of it down, and was caught by a cunning sweep that followed it. When she regained her breath from the fall, she came to a kneeling position, holding her broken arm up as a signal to stop.
"Very good. Thinking it through is better than overpowering or rushing," Canary said. "We'll get to a point where you'll know which of the three to use against what type opponent, and even work to blending them, but anytime your opponent is experienced, the mind comes before the body."
"How are you so able to anticipate me? You don't have that meta ability," Rose accused.
"She has experience, with some of the fastest fighters the heroes have ever offered, instead of the meta advantage," Slade said, breaking into the training.
Canary tried hard not to scowl at the man, and focused instead on her student. "Rose, I think that's enough for today. My arm is killing me," she said, cutting a small look Slade's way. He merely met her gaze unrepentantly, but nodded to his daughter to go. Once Rose had cleared out of the training room, Slade closed the door and sat on one of the benches, while Canary eyed him warily.
"I handled the matter of your former teacher." He carefully watched her face, seeing the fall of hope, though she quickly tried to hide it. //She knew.// That thought angered him, reminding him of both her duplicity in Light's case, and her stubborn streak of independence. "In case you wish to keep anything else from me, remember this; I've promised her a student in your place if I decide you are no longer necessary," he growled.
The fact she paled almost immediately told him his threat was aimed true. She had immediately thought of Lian, in Shiva's hands. "I did not 'keep' anything from you. I suspected my teammates would have thought she was responsible. Whether she investigated further…"
"You knew she would, after I warned you she did not need to come near this household," he stated. "Do not let this happen again."
Canary considered his words a long moment, actually being both still and quiet. She then nodded. "Fine, Wilson. Whatever you say." The harsh tone belied the words, anger rolling off her in waves. She was not going to push a fight, not now, when she was backed up to a wall, figuratively. "I'll be in my damn room." She strode out, jarring her arm with the angry steps she took, but he said nothing to stop her. In truth, he was rather pleased to see her angry rather than cowering; he saw it as a part of the spirit he had once respected, one of the traits he wanted instilled firmly in both girls.
Only when she slammed the door in leaving did he decide that she would need lessons in self-control. He had a good idea of what needed to be done, to start bringing her in line. All he needed was to have a small conversation with Dick and Roy.
`~`~`~`~`
Roy shut the door behind them, stretching fit to pop his spine as he sighed. "What a day. I'm glad she's finally down..." It felt so strange to be just talking with Dick, with so much hanging between them... but it was nice, too.
"Me, too. And Dinah's got Rose, so we're safe from her..." Dick arched a brow and looked towards the bed--and Roy smiled at him, shaking his head just a little. "I love you, you know that?" How screwed up was it that only in Deathstroke's home could he be that honest about how he felt about Dick?
"I... yeah. I do. I wonder how we survived, sometimes, but..."
"We're too stubborn to let go," Roy reminded him, the same words he'd used when he finally told Dick he'd forgiven him for the… difficulty of that first night, admitted he'd protested but never called his safeword, never put Dick to that final test. Dick's smile was the same joyous expression, and Roy just curled against him, kissing him for a while before finally pulling away. "Hey, speaking of Rose."
"Yes?" Dick asked curiously.
"I spotted something while she was sparring with you. Crawl in with me, and we'll talk it out," he invited, stopping just long enough for Dick to slip his collar back around his neck.
~*~*~*~*
Slade glanced at the large grandfather clock at the end of the hall, and then nodded. He was fairly sure his boy was in Harper's room, and headed that way. He twisted the knob, opening the door and leaning in the doorway, to see his boy laid back on the bed, Harper's head on his thigh, as they spoke quietly. Both were still dressed, with Roy looking rumpled from a hard day of chasing Lian.
Dick glanced up as the door opened, bright smile flashing across his lips as Slade came home unharmed again. The move and the smile alerted Roy that Slade was at the door--he remembered that smile entirely too well, remembered how Dick's face used to light at the very sight of Bruce... He shifted to sit up, and the touch of Dick's fingertips against his shoulder stopped him. He gave Dick a curious look, and waited.
"Slade, what is it?" the lack of an immediate summons made him wonder, and they'd been right in the middle of talking about a problem they'd both noticed in Rose's form. "Do you need me?"
"Both of you." Seeing Harper had cinched Slade's suspicions on how to best clip Dinah's wings. "We need to discuss some of the events influencing the current power plays."
Dick pulled his hand away from Roy's shoulder, letting him move as he cocked his head curiously. "Here, the office, or somewhere else?"
Roy twisted around to look at Slade, still disturbed by his apparent preference for casual wear at home.
Slade inclined his head to the hall. "I think it might be best to do this in my office." He turned to walk out. "You two need to see some files."
Roy slid to his feet, immediately followed by Dick, and side-by-side they trailed Slade down to the office and inside. //What in the heck is he planning?// Roy wondered. In sharp contrast, //He's finally going to tell me, he's finally going to tell me,// was the main thought on Dick's mind.
The man in question had gone to a file cabinet, and opened it removing three files. He slid these onto the desk, opening them to show images of Dr. Light from three very different time periods. The ones in the middle were very familiar to Roy and Dick, as some were telephoto shots of him fighting a younger team of Titans. The ones before that showed a man involved in far worse crimes than the Titans had ever stopped before. The final shots were of a nervous, broken man pleading with Slade, Luthor, and other powerhouses of the Society. "You recognize that this man is in three different mindsets, from three separate time periods?"
"Yeah, that's easy enough to see... I mean, that first set looks like the Light we fought last month, I remember these second ones, how on earth--never mind; but those last ones... There's so much difference here..."
Roy's lips skinned back from his teeth in anger at the sight of images of the man that had beaten his father, tried for his little sister and then nearly kicked the ass of every last Titan... but he studied the pictures, pushing it down. "I'll give you that those don't look like the same guy, sure."
"He hired me, to protect him. That was unusual in itself; I don't do the bodyguard scene." Slade's anger boiled up, laced his voice as he pointed at the pictures of Light speaking to the Society's heads. "But his story, once he told it, made me drop my original asking fee."
"You... dropped the price on a contract?" startled voice from Roy. He knew Slade, after all.
"Why?" Dick asked, cutting to the more important question. "What would be a good enough reason for you to take that on?"
Slade took a deep breath, his nostrils flaring with the anger he was barely containing to tell the facts as he knew them. "He was mind raped. That's what changed him from being a fairly competent, if distasteful criminal, to an idiot that barely fumbled through meetings with a bunch of half-grown kids."
Blue eyes and green snapped to his with a combination of indignant anger at the insult and complete shock, "What? Who by?" came from Dick, who had much more right to question Slade's announcements.
Roy's skin crawled at the very idea, bad memories crawling through his mind. It wasn't as if anyone that'd ever been a Titan didn't have plenty of experience with telepathic //or empathic// villains.
Slade met Dick's gaze evenly, then turned to Roy, knowing where the break point truly was. "The Justice League," he said, with a note of complete disdain.
Roy shook his head, "No way. Just, no way... That's not--I mean, that would've had to have been way back in the day, to make Light a moron when we were kids--you sure he wasn't lying to you?"
Dick didn't want to believe, either, but there were very few people that could lie to Slade--and Light was certainly not one of them.
Slade growled his answer. "Your precious mentors did this to him!" With a clenched fist, he pushed back away from the files, moving around his desk to sit in the chair there, to control his anger. He had always worked by his code, expecting the heroes to abide by certain rules as well. This, though, had shown him, shown them all, that the so-called heroes were not above using Nazi tactics for their own purposes.
"Bruce--"
"Ollie--"
"--would never," the instinctive defenses snapped from both of their mouths in an uncanny stereo--and a heartbeat later Dick was on his knees in front of Slade, eyes wide and apologetic, "I'm sorry, I believe you, I just... I don't want to believe that..."
Slade's anger relented somewhat, as he caressed Dick's face. "I don't lie about this, or other things so important."
Roy was torn between defiant anger and the sure-and-certain knowledge that Slade was, actually, telling the truth--//as he was told it//. Seeing Dick like that shook him badly, but he hung on to the anger. "I know you don't, and if you're saying it you believe it, but not everyone has your code, and I just... I can't believe it. I can't..." If Slade knew his history, the damned mercenary would understand why...
Dick pressed his cheek against Slade's hand--and froze in pure terror as Roy kept arguing. //Roy, stop, please... please just stop...//
Slade raised his gaze back to Harper's face, rage fighting his solid control. "Why don't you go ask, then?" he asked in too soft tones.
Roy blinked at him, then understanding crossed his face, "Yeah, Dinah would've been on it then... I... tell me the rest, tell me why you're so sure it's true and I will."
Dick relaxed, tension flowing out of his shoulders as that dangerous rage wasn't targeted on his lover, and his ears were wide open as he listened.
"Certain...acquaintances were maintained even before the Society was conceived. We might have dismissed his story, if we had not come to see the pattern in others. Most notably, the Top." Slade drew in a deeper breath, stroking Dick's face and hair almost absently.
"The Top? Fleetfeet's pain-in-the-ass, the crazy one? The one that tried to make Barry crazy?" It had taken Roy a minute or two to process the name, longer yet to remember who it was...
Dick shifted closer, leaning against one of Slade's legs, wishing he could see Roy.
Slade coaxed his boy into laying his head fully on his thigh, caressing that hair, the line of the neck and feeling his icy calm come to him fully. "The Top nearly broke the Flash, apparently. And The Flash...the real one, Harper, retaliated in such a way that the Top went to the other side for a time. Before going insane."
"Retaliated... Flash didn't have that kind of skill, how could he have screwed with somebody's head?"
Dick swallowed hard, having already thought that League roster through. "Zatanna, Roy. Zee can do damned near anything... that's who you mean, isn't it?" tilting his head up enough to look up at Slade's face.
"That's what Light remembered, who he feared nearly most of all." Slade looked at Roy with a cocked eyebrow. "Nearly." He left it hanging, pushing at the redhead's curiosity.
Roy gave up and bit, "Nearly?" //Oh, yes, let him bait you...//
"One of the men apparently pushed the young witch quite a bit," he replied, before looking back down at Dick. "But, as you said, Harper, this is all as I have been told. I was not there."
"No way it was Ollie," Roy told him, head tossed back, clearly revealing the black leather band Dick had left wrapped around his throat and still completely defiant. "No way in hell."
//Bruce wouldn't, he wouldn't, not ever, not in a million years he wouldn't...// Dick pressed tighter against Slade's leg, unable to even consider it rationally.
"Anyway, no matter who it was, tell me why. What could ever have made the League decide to play god with someone's mind?" Roy couldn't help thinking about the televised accusations against the League, that they'd stolen his dignity... He'd taken that as the ravings of a madman, not the truth...
"Fear, I suppose." Slade ran a finger down the exposed part of Dick's neck. "Light admitted to getting to the Watchtower, learning who they were."
Cold lanced down Roy's back--he knew what Wally had had done, how frantically some of the older heroes protected their identities... "No. No, damnit, that's not enough reason... I... I've got to talk to her," his voice shook with the stress and the disbelief and all of the fear that this just might be true, and Dick shifted, neck pressed to Slade's light touch as he looked back at Roy, understanding in his eyes. They flicked up to Slade for a moment, checking, and when he saw permission, they flicked back to his beloved. "Go find out, Roy."
"Always two sides to a story," Slade conceded. "She was there, so get her side." Slade then tapped Dick's shoulder. "She should not, however, have to see her son's ownership so clearly."
Roy knew absolute, naked gratitude was standing in his eyes as he looked at Slade. He couldn't remove it himself, and the sight was likely to throw Dinah into too strong a rage to reason with. The older man inclined his head marginally, returning the gratitude with acceptance.
Dick slid to his feet with a nod, going to Roy to pull him hard into his arms, holding him tight for a long moment before he could slide his hands up to unfasten the collar, lifting it so very gently away from his neck, tucking it into a pocket. "I should've thought of that. Sorry, my own." He kissed him, hot and sure, then slowly let go.
Roy flashed a smile at him, shrugging a shoulder. "It's fine, Dick, she'll see me in it eventually. I'll be back..."
Slade watched the kiss, then Harper leaving before focusing on his boy. "Come here, kid," he ordered in a gentle voice, flicking on the monitor closest to Dinah's room. She was sitting in her armchair, feet tucked under her as she held her face in her strong hand, the broken one tucked close.
Dick went to him, studying Slade's posture for clues to where exactly he was supposed to put himself, then settled in, watching the monitor with a small, amused smirk, though he wondered what had gotten to her this time.
Slade kept one hand on Dick the whole time, adjusting the volume and camera angle once Harper reached the room.
Roy rapped once against the door, hard, then pushed it open, his eyes wide as he located her, "Dinah, tell me he's wrong, please, tell me he's lying..."
Dick curled back against Slade, watching the monitor, body tensed as he listened to the beginning of this. The mercenary watched the blood drain from Dinah's face, the look of knowing just what Roy was speaking of.
"How will the bird sing?" Slade knew, beyond the shadow of a doubt, he would kill her if she tried to lie. He would just have to pay Shiva's claim with Harper's daughter.
Dinah had slipped from her chair, rising and turning away from Roy, her entire posture defeated. "Never meant for anyone to be hurt...."
That single phrase ripped through Roy, making him reel, slamming a knife through everything he'd ever believed about the life he'd lived, "oh, god. ...he's not. You... you all really... That's..." he stuttered with the pure force of his disbelief and shock.
Dick pressed tighter to Slade's body, closing his eyes tightly. //God damn it... the bastard was telling the truth, all along, and I refused to believe it... I wanted it to just be the ravings of a madman, and it wasn't...//
"She's not denying it," he said approvingly. It helped him be more open to what she might say. His touch was consoling in its own way to Dick, knowing the boy had grown up worshiping the people in question.
Dinah had been silent a long moment, then turned back, her eyes full of tears. "They voted, we lost the vote...Had to follow it."
"What the hell, Di? Explain to me what would possibly cause the Justice League--" and all of his shattered faith was in those two words "--to vote to Rape. A. Man's. Mind. Tell me it wasn't just the identities. TELL me."
Dinah reacted as if slapped. "Roy...God no!" She looked horror struck. "If it had been just that, we might have argued them down...." She shook violently. "But after what he did to Sue..."
"Sue? Di, tell me WHY," his voice begged her, even as his heart leapt at the confirmation that it wasn't something so petty.
Dick tensed, eyes snapping open. There was more to this story than anyone outside that League had heard before.
Slade leaned forward, face dropping into the frown of concentration, reading the lines of his prey's body for truthfulness.
Dinah clung tightly to herself, her eyes closing and spilling those tears of pain. "He ...she was so...." She swallowed hard. "Worse than what the Slasher did to me..." was all she managed, knowing Roy could understand that.
"He raped her. Raped Sue," Roy's voice was a soft, harsh hiss. Non-powered, non-hero, sweet, gentle Sue, who's death had nearly ripped them all apart... he'd attacked her?
Dick bit at his hand, fighting to stay silent, to make himself listen to all of this without reacting emotionally.
Dinah nodded slowly, her entire body shaking as she remembered finding her like that.
"Two sides," Slade whispered, so softly that Dick knew his lover had not known.
Roy was so utterly torn, between going to hold Dinah tight and the knowledge that she might reject his touch and by the fact that part of him was too angry and shaken and hurt to even consider going to her, and all of his words got trapped in his throat.
Dick's eyes were darkened with anger and grief. They'd all liked Sue. He'd helped hunt her killer as eagerly as he'd ever hunted Gotham's rogues... And only the fact that Roy had never coded him to stop, and had now willingly forgiven him, kept him from sinking into an utter ball of self-hate. He fished for one of Slade's hands, feeling their whole world reel from what was being said. //Who knew? Who didn't? Who was in on this?//
Slade was tense, too tense, but he did grip his boy's hand, thinking hard. In his eyes, what Light had done was inexcusable. Had she been an active hero, able to fight him on his level, that would have been one thing. But Sue Dibny had been collateral damage, a civilian too close to the ongoing battle. The sharp distinction between fair game opponents and civilians came to mind quickly. It was a rule he had discarded in the past, but always with a clean death. There were things far worse, and what Light had done was one of those.
Dinah did not have the words to reach out to Roy; she found herself moving away from him, feeling the fact she had done this horrible thing all over again. A hundred years might pass, but she would never forgive herself for having failed her mother, her father in living the way they would have been proud of.
"Dinah." From somewhere Roy found the strength to speak, "Okay. That's... unconscionable, no question. You know what I think of rapists, Di, and not just because of you... but how could you be part of raping someone's mind just as much as he'd just raped her? How could they, could you, cross that line? Weren't you the one that always tried to teach me that it was justice, NOT vengeance, we served? That the only thing that made the difference between us and them was that we didn't take vengeance?"
Slade made a low noise in his throat. Half a dozen encounters with the blonde, and he began to glimpse just how much bravado had poured across in her incessant verbal sniping at him. She had always been careful to never show him weakness, and that now had the taint of a woman who had clawed her way up from a very low place. He continued to seethe at her involvement in the event, though, filing away the information for later to research.
The small frame shook as if he had physically assaulted her, before Dinah turned back to Roy, angry hurt on her face. "I didn't want this! Ever! But you don't go against your... DAMMIT!" She could not help the hint of the Cry; she was too emotional, and the mirror on the wall trembled from the power echoing in the room.
"Don't go against your what, Dinah?" Roy was trying to understand this, "Make me understand, Di, please."
She dropped her eyes, her voice falling in volume, and going toneless with the recall of it all. "Seven of us, Roy. That's how many got there, saw...her. Found Light who was threatening all of us... our loved ones. Knew who we were, who our lives touched." She slowly sank to her knees, sobbing. "Roy...I voted against it! We did, and if Barry had been with us like usual...."
Roy couldn't hold out against her agony--not Dinah's, not with what she was to him--and he went to her, kneeling at her side, hands going out to her. "Tell me, Di. Tell me everything..." his voice was gentle as a hand brushed lightly over her hair. "C'mon, Di, sweetheart, let it out..."
"I've never seen her like this..." Dick's voice was shocked. All the years the Canary had been around, all fearless grace and strength and quick, sharp mind... he'd never guessed how much that was hiding.
Slade nodded. "No." The woman had been foe and ally both over the years, but this was a side of her well hidden.
Dinah flinched from the touch, every sign in her body language one of being repulsed, but not by him. She did not want him to touch her, to dirty his hands by doing so. "It was less than six months after Iris... do you remember her, Roy? Barry's love?"
"A little--y'know, I didn't see her much, but I remember what that did to Wally..." Roy pulled her in anyway, pulling her tight against his body.
Dick watched his boy pull his 'mother' close, and worried for him. God, this was hurting him so badly... He was more angry than hurt, the fact of the League's guilt now unquestionable.
"Will he be able to pull her together?" Slade questioned in a neutral voice.
"I... I'm not sure," Dick admitted.
Dinah began through a shuddered sob, calming some. "We had just lost her. Barry was still a wreck from it." She grew silent a long moment, violently tense. "We wanted justice, but we had to find some way to protect all of you. You kids, girlfriends, all of it." She started to cry again, but bit her lip hard, focusing on that pain to fight it down. "Hal and Ollie were adamant. I backed them; no matter how sickened I was, how scared I was, I believed we would find a way to have justice and see you all safe from him."
"Okay... so what happened? What changed? If you were saying no..."
Dinah looked up at last, her eyes haunted. "We voted. Zee...she had been so hurt, and there was Carter, pushing her, telling her she had the ability to fix it all. Atom had his wife, and would have done anything to protect her." She gave a harsh, bitter laugh. "Then you had team green and blonde. I think even Carter was sure we had the vote, as solidly as Hal and Ollie spoke. Barry never went against us when we agreed like that. He was a cop...he knew..." She brought her fist up to her mouth, pressing the knuckle hard to her lips, the pain flaring sharply. "He couldn't stop thinking of Iris."
Roy held her, trying to get this image solid in his mind, "So... Hawkman pushed her? Hotheaded son of a bitch... and Ray and Jean were still--" he tried NOT to think of how that all had ended, "And you and Ollie and Hal were fighting it?" He paused a moment, hearing himself say that, shoulders shaking with relief, //thank gods,// "You should've had it, you were right... But I don't understand how Barry could..."
"Zoom knew everything about Barry. Every little detail. He had already seen what could happen, and lost his soul's mate," she managed, around small shudders. "We lost the vote, and had to abide by it...back then, it seemed so simple. You did not go against your team...and Barry...he was one of mine. My damn leader." She tried to pull away from him, struggling with it. "I trusted him to lead us right. So much like Dad..." She was shaking again, the coiled tension snapping out in the flex of her hands.
Roy held her crushingly tight, absolutely unwilling to let her go, knowing all too well what that moment when your leader broke and betrayed you felt like--and he was still following Dick through hell. "Di... god, Di, I get that... I, do, but... someone's mind, someone's soul? How could you let a vote justify playing god like that?"
Dick waited for her answer to that, wondering what possible justification she could see for that kind of an action.
Slade considered the information being revealed from his own perspective. To be betrayed by a team leader was a very difficult thing to overcome, he would admit. And he almost saw the way the losers of the vote could not have broken ranks. It would have broken the corps fidelity. Still, Roy had a strong point.
The blonde shook her head. "We had no right. Not a one of us. We turned into our worst enemies, took away all the justice from it by doing that." She flinched again from her memories.
"Yeah." Roy couldn't argue, wouldn't disagree, not when she was so damned right. "But it'd happened, and for whatever reasons you couldn't change the vote, couldn't change their minds..." he shook his head, holding onto her, "Di... please tell me that was the only time? I mean, between the rape and that he knew and his powers I can understand the need---Ollie should've just put a broad head through his heart, but I can understand the need... as long as you tell me it was just that once." He needed something to cling to so very badly, some proof that it had been an extreme situation, not something they did regularly...
"Ollie hadn't killed yet, then...and it was Carter's wish to kill him, and Ollie arguing that down..." She wrapped her good arm around her knees, looking for the entire world like a scared kid.
Slade leaned forward sharply. "She's evading," he growled, all his anger coming back again.
Dick caught that too, caught the shift in her posture and the tone of her voice, "It's not the only time, or she'd have said so... gods, who else?"
Roy winced, closing his eyes at the sudden memory of hearing of his "father's" first kill, contrasting the world they'd left so far behind with the blood on his own hands. "No, he hadn't... god, that's so Ollie... Di, please..."
She flung herself away from him, moving with the speed that came from being a world-class martial artist, and only stopped at the far wall. She would not turn around, would not look at him. "They...we...were interrupted. Someone came up, before Zee finished. I...I'm not sure how it really came about; I was still reeling from what they...we...were doing."
"A hero?!" the startled exclamation ripped from Dick's lips.
Roy froze, kneeling on the floor with his arms still open, eyes tracking up her legs and back to her shoulders, "oh. god. di, no..." his voice as small as she'd ever heard it. //No, no, Dinah, don't tell me you did this to one of our own...//
"Roy, every night I've seen him, worked alongside him...I wished I could just..." She broke it off, hanging her head further. "You have no idea how much he has done for me over the years. And I always come back to that, to the second vote, and what was decided." She was almost whispering. "Working in his city...so glad when she moved us out...it was too much."
The hand in Dick's squeezed, painfully, as realization broke for Slade who she was referring to.
"Even working past it, now that he knows...I'll never be worth his notice."
"Oh that fucking bitch!" low, savage hiss as the Bat's child stared at her image from Renegade's cold eyes, incandescent, seething fury lashing through him, "That backstabbing, lying, deceitful little bitch... And they've both kept coming on to him for how long?!" Dick fought the urge to curse like a sailor, eyes going dark and hard. "The League fucked with Bruce's mind? God, I knew he wouldn't be part of that..." Too much relief in that last for his own tastes and he turned to press a kiss along his lover's neck, body saying, //yours, still yours, no matter what.//
Roy tilted his head, not understanding, not for long, long seconds, then 'she' and 'moved us out' and 'His city' and 'done for me' all registered and "BRUCE? You... they screwed with Bruce's mind?! Di, how could you?!"
"It was not my conscious choice!" She turned back, her eyes desperate that he believe her. "It all happened so fast."
Slade held his boy tight to his body, the timeline immediately presenting itself to him. He knew Dick's history so intimately, and had tested himself against Batman for years. There was no doubt in his mind that what had been done had led to the evolution of the son of a bitch he had stolen Dick away from.
Roy forced himself to his feet, watching her, more than half-broken by what she'd revealed, by what the heroes he'd grown up worshipping had done, not only to an enemy but to one. of. their. Own... "Di... Bruce? Wait. What exactly did you do to him?"
Dick shuddered in Slade's arms, hands fisting in his shirt to make himself keep listening...
She shuddered. "We made him forget what he had seen, what we had done." She shook her head. "It was a panicked reaction, and one I know I always regretted. He was not the same from that day." She fought the urge to breakdown again. "He should hate me," she whispered.
"They... took. his. Memories?" low, shaken hiss as the little boy he'd once been tried for a moment to rejoice at the thought that it wasn't all Bruce's fault--but yet, a few moments of stolen memory shouldn't have so utterly destroyed their partnership. No matter what the League had done, he shouldn't have... That shouldn't have been enough to sever the bond between Batman and Robin. "Oh, god..." soft, low moan.
Roy flinched back, winced, for the first time understanding the reasons behind the protocols the Bat had built against their metahuman allies--right now, they frightened him...
Dinah showed that uncanny ability to think with someone, especially one so close to her. "Batman remembered, at some level. He had to have, because the man I revered would never have engineered the means to take down the League otherwise."
"Dick," Slade began, his voice hard and cold. "They will pay."
"No... oh god, Dick... this is gonna kill him..."
Dick purred harshly, eyes hot and hungry, "All his warnings about playing god, he knew all along, even if he didn't...." He shook his head violently, twisting around, looking at Slade with desperation to even the scales blazing in his eyes. He might not be Bruce's son anyone, not with the amount of shed blood and betrayal between them, but this still cut deep.
The mercenary was watching the drama in his guest room more intently.
"It all started to come out, when Light....when he was our main suspect. The others wanted to know why, and even though Ollie tried...Carter still would not let anyone admit it." Dinah clenched her fists so tightly her nails were cutting skin. "I told Ollie, and we both were going to lay it out...but then it all blew up anyway."
Roy tilted his head--the Outsiders had been just a little busy lately, running desperately to keep up with the surging villain activity, so he wasn't sure what she meant. He hadn't even talked to Mia recently, let alone anyone else.
Dick settled back against him, hands flexing with his desperate desire to move...
Dinah shivered. "We went to fight Light. And the truth came out after ...after he beat us, guarding the bastard." She winced, remembering how easily Deathstroke had beaten them. "It was the original six, and Flash." More tears tracked her cheeks. "I hated that he had to find out like that, but I was damn glad when Br...Batman did. I could live with his hate."
"So he does know," Slade said. He thought to the night he had taken Dinah, remembered seeing her and the man on the roof. Batman had not been unwilling in that kiss.
"That's why Fleetfeet called and warned us, he knew... god, he knew and he didn't tell Dick..." he bit at his lip, shaking his head, "So he knows? That's why he left the League, not just the thing with Diana?"
"I... I can't deal with this..." Dick shuddered, trying not to struggle in Slade's grasp, but he needed to do something...
"Go." Slade released the boy, knowing it was best. His own anger was just under the surface. Part of him wanted to go take over the questioning, to learn everything, and the other part knew Roy was actually gaining far more honesty from the lying bitch than he ever would.
"He was struggling with it, Roy. Barry was his world. The man was everything to him. Imagine if it had been Ollie." Even she physically flinched from that. "Who had done something so against code...remember your initial reaction to him killing the Slasher. What that did to your image of him."
Dick flung himself up out of the chair and went, out of the office and down to the training room, taking a spot in the center of the training dummies before he exploded into motion, envisioning certain heroes faces over the blank dummies as he let himself flow through routine after routine, the hard, jarring impacts disturbingly pleasing...
Roy closed his eyes, nodding slowly, "I... yeah, you're right, Di, he would've been... And I don't have to imagine, it was Ollie. And Hal. And you, Di..." his green eyes dark with pain. "Damn it. I didn't want to believe him..."
Dinah lowered her eyes again. "He's always been an honest man, by and large," she said, following his thoughts of who had told him. "Roy..." her voice broke. "Please, believe this one thing...I've never regretted anything more in my life than letting myself bend that day." She paused a long moment, then continued, "Not even letting Ollie go."
Roy looked back at her, eyes still shadowed, "I... believe you, Dinah. But... when I'm taking Slade Wilson's moral side on this, when I can't even think of the 'justice league' without feeling revolted... there's something deeply, deeply wrong."
She nodded, wiping the last vestiges of tears from her face. "I gave myself to Oracle so strongly, away from the League, to the JSA, to try and make amends. But I can't. What I took part in is unforgivable." Just as she had faced Batman, she faced her son/brother/friend, refusing to make excuses for herself, even as she had tried to point out the reasons her friends had failed. "You...you are strong, Roy. And no matter who you work for, you have the right heart for this, the way to decide what is right." She turned away, making it plain in her silence that she knew she did not.
Roy walked to her, then, "You used to, Di. Who do you think taught it to me? You gave me that. I just... hope what I may have to do doesn't break your faith in me... I don't know what's going to happen--and I don't know how much they'll let me tell you, but I could see in his eyes that he's planning something..."
Dinah reacted to that with a wide-eyed look. "God, Roy..." She gripped his hand. "He..." She cut herself off, clenching her jaw.
In his office, Slade wondered just what the woman had started to say, not sure he had read the look in her eyes just right.
"What, Dinah?"
"He can't want a world where that...Society rules with a clenched fist. Won't be good for business, at the least," she said softly, a tang of bitterness in her voice. "Just be a voice of reason to him, Roy. He's got a better code than we did, apparently."
"No, I can't see him wanting that either--I could be wrong, but I doubt it... That code of his... it's not such a bad way to live, not really--I mean, god, he ran with us Titans for how long?"
Dinah shook her head. "There was a time when I did not really..." She stopped herself again. "Much as he's done that is inescapably wrong; I'll still back him over Carter, a hundred times over. But the ones he works with?" She shuddered. "Not that nest of vipers."
"I can just guess who's leading that unification charge, and it scares me to death," Roy agreed.
Dinah shook her head. "Oracle had definitely pinpointed Talia's handiwork. Hard to hide that from a bat."
Slade's eye narrowed as he ran over the words again in his head. He supposed Rose might really have seen Dinah in her vision, and it made him set some small part of his anger for the League aside, in her case. If she wanted to find redemption, he was sure he could find a place for her to work toward it in his plans.
"Yeah, maybe just a little..." he laid a hand on her shoulder gently. "Di... You fought it... and that helps. It... means you're still my Dinah..."
She was tense, vibrating almost as badly as Wally could. "No, Roy...That Dinah fell to the earth years ago, when she lost sight of what was right."
"So what, you're going to curl up broken-winged in a cage and die? That's not the woman that dragged me kicking and screaming out of my addiction, that supported me and pushed me and fought for me, don't you dare give up now!"
Dinah shook like a leaf, and then buried her face in his chest. "He gave me this cage; what else am I supposed to do? I have to behave, for you, for our little girl!"
Roy found his arms wrapping around her again, whispering to her, his voice soft, low and gentle. "Oh, Dinah... You might have to behave, but that doesn't mean you get to just give up…"
She kept her face pressed to his chest, her tears soaking through his shirt now that she was not fighting them. "He's not going to trust me, Roy. I know that beyond the shadow of a doubt. Even if he has a plan I could conscience, I'm irredeemable."
He couldn't stand to hear her say that, not about herself, not now or ever... "No, you're not, Di. You've done too much good for too long for this to be the end of it, for the worst decision you ever made to be the one thing people judge you by..."
"Why not? These decisions have had the harshest impact of any I have ever made in my life, Roy. I helped …I helped destroy a man I respected, saw to the rape of a man's mind, which led to where we are now, and kept silent on both decisions," she told him, the bitterness mixed in equal parts with defeat.
""Yeah, you did... but that's not who you are--and if you think it is, try telling that to everyone you ever saved, Dinah. You look me in the eye and tell me what you were forced into invalidates the fact that you saved my life and my sanity!" His hands locked hard on her shoulders. "Hal might've pulled me out, but you're the only reason I'm not dead in an alley with a needle in my arm."
She slowly brought her face up, her eyes completely lost with her guilt now that he knew. "How could I turn my back on you, baby? Ever? You were hurting so bad."
"You couldn't, you wouldn't. Because that's not who you are. It never has been... and don't you dare make yourself some that would because you're drowning..."
Dinah drew away from him. "Roy, I..." She shook her head. "I think I need to be alone, Roy."
"And I think that's the last thing you need, but if you want me to, I'll go..."
She nodded, not trusting her voice.
He hugged her tight, gave her a long, worried look, and slowly turned to leave, hating it so very much. Despite everything, she was still Dinah, and leaving her aching and so broken ripped at his heart.
She did not move from her position as he left, did not call him back. She just stood there, longing for a view of the outside, hugging herself tight.
Roy stopped outside her door, leaned back against it and closed his eyes, shuddering. The taint of this was spreading throughout the world, had spread, and the knowledge that his "father" and his "uncle" and... and everything Dinah was to him, mother and sister and confidante and friend... that they'd all helped in this... He felt unclean.
Slade stared at the monitor as Dinah slowly sank down on the floor, shaking her head in denial at all of it. She gave a few silent sobs, hand up over her face. He was about to stand, his mind on ways to make both the League and Light pay, when he saw her jerk violently and scan the ceiling.
Roy forced himself into motion, making himself go back to that office, feet kind of slow, however. He didn't want to do this--hell, he wanted more than anything not to have to go make this 'mission' report to a man that would gloat so much over being proven right.
"No, son of a bitch...no," Dinah cursed, before collapsing against the carpet, racked by sobs and shuddering spasms yet again, as she realized just what she had betrayed in her conversation.
Slade sat back in the chair, his eyebrow arching as he saw her newly broken state. "Forgot my eyes were on you, Little Bird?" he mused.
Roy made it back and rapped at the door, not willing to walk in without Slade's consent.
"Enter," the mercenary called, not removing his gaze from the monitor.
Roy stepped in, his eyes snapped to the monitor, and anger overrode almost every lick of his self-preservation instincts, "You bugged her room?!"
"Don't be stupid, boy. I monitor all aspects of my household." Slade continued to watch a moment longer, then turned back to him. "Well?"
Roy bit his lip until it bled, "I showed up to tell you you were right--but you already know that," eyes glaring at the monitor, then the realization hit. "Oh, god, where's Dick?"
Slade inclined his head to the door. "Training room, most likely." The voice was cold, fully under control in the way Roy had heard too many times in the heat of a battle going against Slade's wishes.
Roy nodded, turned to go, and Slade spoke. "Harper."
That voice dragged him up short, but only for a moment. "Was there something? Or can I go try and coax my lover back to something that vaguely resembles sanity?"
"He would hurt you right now. Your association with her is too strong." Slade studied Harper for a long moment. "I suggest letting him work thorough it fist, until he is no longer violent."
"…he's that flipped? What'm I saying? Of course he's that flipped." He stopped, shook his head, scrubbed his hands over his face, "I... jesus. Effing. christ, this is..."
"Where do you stand now, Harper?" Slade asked, while the man was still disoriented. "Does your answer remain the same as when we discussed it?"
A million responses ran through Roy's head, 'I can't back the League, not now' collided harshly with 'I can't go against the Titans", and screams about the idea of a world where the villains ruled flung themselves hard against his control... "I still stand with Dick, yes," he managed to answer--hopefully before Slade could get pissed off at him.
The mercenary nodded sharply. "Very well." He glanced again at the monitor, where Roy could see Dinah was neither moving nor making any sound now. "Don't make him regret that." It was the only warning Roy would get from him, and had the feel of a dismissal.
Roy shrugged a shoulder, then nodded. "I'm going to go hang around the training room and pray he stops before breaks something else..."
Slade let him reach the door. "Harper, tell Rose to go assist her teacher," he added.
"I figured she'd gone to bed, this late," Roy said, "but I'll go tell her."
"I sincerely doubt she is asleep." He knew his daughter. "Be ready to go operative tomorrow or the night after." He was pulling files close, sorting through them, as he prioritized his work in view of the new information he had.
Roy froze for a moment, then nodded once. "All right. I'm gone," and he did just that, walking down to rap his knuckles against Rose's door. The sound of a stereo turning down accompanied a call that it was open.
Roy sighed and pushed the door open, just knowing he was walking into more trouble. "Rose, are you decent?" he asked once he had the door open about halfway.
A girlish giggle preceded her answer. "Am I ever?"
"Okay, fine, are you dressed? If not, get that way, your dad wants to you to go take care of Dinah."
There was a pause, and then she was standing there at the door, dressed in a pair of sweats he recognized as Dick's and one of his shirts from the wardrobe he had been given. "Is she okay?" The detached tone was at odds with her eye searching his face for clues.
"No. She's not. She's... really not. Be... be careful with her, Rose, she needs someone--and since she won't let it be me, maybe you've got a chance..."
She reached up, patting his cheek gently. "I'll be good to her." She slipped past him, heading down the hall in the direction of Dinah's room.
"Thanks, Rose," he called after her--then realized what she was wearing and wondered how in the heck she'd gotten to their clothes. And why... but there were other times to try and get answers to those. Right now, he was going to go wait for his lover.
