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acceptsonlynttnightwing · 2 days

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After hours of searching, he finally gets a trace of Dick’s scent. It’s clear and sharp and not tainted by wolfsbane. It smells like blood.

The wolf runs.

Traitor, his mind hisses, Dick betrayed him, betrayed them all, Dick is the reason his son still hasn’t woken up, and if it weren’t for the babe inside of him, Slade would’ve gutted him and left his corpse in the woods. Good if he’s injured. If he dies, Slade will just cut the baby out of him. Their pack has great healers.

The smell of blood gets stronger. It’s all Slade can scent, just blood blood blood, and there’s a twisting inside of him that is tight with worry. That…is too much blood. A part of his mind whispers that it’s a trap, another one of Dick’s nasty little tricks, how deceitful all humans are, and he doesn’t know which makes him run faster.

The scent leads him to a narrow ravine. The way down is jagged—easy on four feet, but treacherous for two, and the smell of blood is so much sharper. Slade is cautious, but there is only one scent. Only Dick’s blood. Nearly overpowering.

Slade stumbles upon his mate at the bottom of the ravine.

Dick is only a few paces away from the bottom of the trail, leaning against the cliff wall, sitting awkwardly with legs spread. He doesn’t look up at Slade’s approach even though Slade is making no attempt to be quiet. His focus remains on his arms. No, on what’s in his arms, the folds of a shirt containing a small, wriggling bundle.

Slade registers the new scent, barely detectable under the blood, and shifts back before he makes the conscious decision to. Dick does look up at that, craning his neck to see Slade looming over him. He doesn’t quite meet Slade’s gaze, eyes fixed in the vicinity of Slade’s shoulder, hazy and distant.

“I just—just wanted to see her once,” Dick slurs, voice a hoarse rasp. “My baby.”

Slade has to take another glance to fully comprehend the situation. Dick is sitting in a puddle of blood. His legs are splayed wide, one knee up, his leggings ripped down the middle. The other leg lies limp and twisted, ankle swollen. Dick’s skin is tacky with sweat and his eyes aren’t focusing and that is a lot of blood.

Slade crouches without meaning to, and Dick extends his arms. His expression is soft, almost dream-like, and he doesn’t try to stop Slade taking the baby from him. His cheeks are wet and as Slade watches, a few more tears trickle out.

“Bye-bye, Mari,” Dick whispers. “I’m sorry. Mama loves you.”

The baby shifts a tiny, closed fist and makes a quiet, plaintive sound.

It’s like the world rips down the middle.

Slade falls to one knee, arms tightening around the baby—around his daughter, around their daughter, and he can’t breathe because his mate is in front of him, barely conscious and bleeding out, and memories and emotions are twisting and warping and his mind is suddenly clear for the first time in eight months.

“No,” Slade breathes out, starkly horrified. What has he done? The emotions carve through him—rage and terror and guilt and confusion and Slade throws his head back and howls.

The sound splinters through the air, grief and warning and threat all in one, and it doesn’t die until Slade runs out of breath. Slade howls again, desperate to get out the storm brewing inside of him, but the baby—Mari, Dick called her Mari, their daughter, their precious baby girl—starts crying and Slade breaks off to press his face to hers.

She smells like Dick, like Dick’s blood, but underneath that is the clear scent of a pup, is the hint of Slade, and Slade doesn’t realize he’s crying until he sees the tears splatter against his daughter’s skin. He takes a ragged breath, head spinning, before turning back to Dick.

Dick, whose eyes have closed.

No. “No!” Slade says sharply, shifting his grip on baby Mari to grab Dick’s shoulder, to shake his mate. “No, Dick, little bird, please, you have to wake up, get up!” The shaking wins him a low moan and Slade redoubles his efforts. “Dick, my love, please!”

Dick’s eyes flutter open, blue eyes glassy and unfocused. “You need to stay awake,” Slade tries to order. “Do you hear me? Dick? Stay awake.”

“Can’t,” Dick whispers, indistinct. “‘M sorry.”

“No,” Slade’s voice cracks. “No, little bird, I’m the one who’s sorry, no, please, Dick!” He shakes his mate again when Dick’s eyes close, but he’s growing alarmingly limp. “Dick!”

“Take care of her,” Dick mumbles. “Our pup.” He slides sideways at Slade’s pull, and collapses against the stone. His face is gray and his breathing is slowing.

“Dick!”

Slade, desperate, throws his head back and howls again, this time a call for help. It feels like too long before he gets a distant, answering howl, seconds stretching against each other, seconds he spends patting Dick’s cheek or watching his pulse, absently rocking Mari with one arm to quiet her fussing.

“Dick, please, please don’t leave me, I’m so sorry,” Slade’s voice is choked and his throat is tight. “Little bird, please, I’m sorry, I’m so very sorry, please come back.”

Dick doesn’t respond.

Slade’s face is wet with tears by the time his pack comes, racing into the ravine in a flurry of paws. There’s a healer among them and they grimly take charge as Slade’s led away, as he listens to the healer barking orders to try and keep Dick alive, to try and save the mate Slade all but threw away.

Hive. This is the Hive pack’s fault. His turbulent emotions seize upon the dark thread of vengeance and grow stronger, stabilizing with a clear goal for him to take. He will go after the Hive pack and raze it to the fucking bones if it’s the last thing he does.

For his mate. For his pup, who might grow up without a mother. For the aching wound in Slade’s heart.

Revenge will be his.

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acceptsonlynttnightwing · 2 days

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Slade isn’t expecting visitors today, so he’s annoyed that the sound of footsteps interrupts his book. The curtains are drawn wide to let in the sunlight, and he doesn’t bother getting off the chair. As one of Talia’s best gladiators, he can get away with a lot more than anyone else. He’s earned enough to buy his freedom ten times over, and Talia knows that the only reason he’s here is because he wants to be here.

It’s in her best interests to keep him sweet. A lesson Ra’s never learned.

“Slade,” she calls out before she fully steps into view, wearing a low-cut dress typical of high class fashion and yet bristling with knives, “I’ve brought a gift.”

“I wasn’t aware I was expecting one,” Slade says, still in his seat. There are two guards with her in addition to her personal shadow, and they’re holding someone upright between them.

“This was one a long time in waiting,” Talia smiles, and beckons the guards forward. It takes a long time to recognize the stumbling figure between them—clad in the typical revealing silks of a bedslave, bandages wound around their torso and half across their face, ruffling dark hair. Their head is bowed, golden cuffs around their wrists, but it isn’t until Slade spots the blue brooch clipping the silks to the unassuming black collar that he realizes who this is.

Nightwing. Richard Grayson. Up until recently, one of the Arena’s favorite gladiators. And the man that killed Slade’s son.

He doesn’t realize he’s on his feet until Talia’s smile widens. He ignores her, and stares at Grayson. The man is gaunt where he was once gleaming, a golden young gladiator now gray and exhausted and faintly trembling. The outline of his collarbones is starkly visible, as are the dark shadows around his visible eye. Grayson lifts his head to meet Slade’s gaze, expression cool and blank, and there’s no fire in that startlingly blue eye.

He looks like someone walking to their executioner.

“And what’s the gift?” Slade asks sharply. He heard of Grayson’s loss weeks ago, a startling upset with one of Talia’s young gladiators, and the Arena had voted to spare him. He assumed that Talia would’ve used Grayson in one of the games she was always playing to catch Lord Wayne’s attention, not bring him here.

To the first person in the country who wanted to tear him apart.

Talia smiles, and gestures to Grayson. There’s a flicker of something in Grayson’s eye that fades to blankness. It isn’t quite resignation or quiet placidity. It’s a mask, and Slade’s itching to tear it off his face.

“He’s yours,” she says. For what? For a night, a day, a week, a fuck, a beating, a—“to do with whatever you wish. Keep him or kill him, I do not care. His fate is yours.”

Slade blinks. This time, the fracture across Grayson’s mask spreads wider before it’s suppressed. Before Slade can fully understand what’s going on, his cell door is opened and Grayson is none-too-gently shoved inside.

“Have fun,” Talia laughs, smirking at Grayson before she walks away, “Goodbye, Richard.”

Grayson doesn’t say a word. Soon, the guards and Talia are beyond hearing, and the heavy weight of the silence is the only thing there. Silence, and Slade staring at the single person he’s wanted to tear apart for years.

He takes a step forward. Grayson presses back against the bars, clearly trembling now, expression fighting to be blank but panic too hard to fully conceal. He’s trapped in a corner and there’s nowhere to go and Slade stalks forward with all the time in the world.

“Nothing to say?” Slade asks, because he’s been waiting for this moment for so long, stoking the fires of his vengeance year after year, waiting for Wayne to finally buckle and schedule a fight between them, and in his dreams, Nightwing turns to Icarus, the boy that flew too close to the sun. And Nightwing dies, red spilling across the sands.

Now it looks like the wax wings burned on the way off but didn’t manage to take him with it, and Grayson’s thinner than he usually is, lost muscle and new scars and no matter how fiercely he tries to manage his expression, there’s a brightness he can’t quite mimic.

“Is there anything to say?” Grayson asks, voice hoarse, “You’re going to kill me. I don’t have a speech for pretty last words.” Defiant but weary.

This is a pale imitation of the golden, gleaming young gladiator that raised bloody dual swords to the roar of an Arena, triumphant over his son’s corpse, and frustration abruptly washes over Slade.

“Aren’t you getting ahead of yourself?” Slade growls, and he’s close enough to wrap a hand around Grayson’s throat and yank him away from the bars. “Do you really think that I’ve been dreaming of killing you for years only to give you the mercy of a quick death?”

Grayson does attempt to defend himself, long-ingrained fighting instincts unable to let him truly surrender, no matter how much resignation he feigns, but Slade flings him at the floor to avoid the retaliatory swipe.

That Grayson falls is the first surprise. The man has preternatural grace. Slade quickly calculates that the bandages across his right eye are the culprit, as are whatever injuries he’s hiding, but the thought is pushed aside when Grayson hits the ground.

Because he screams, actually, open-mouthed, screams, voice cracking in a way that indicates precisely why it’s so hoarse, and immediately rolls over to curl up on his side, gasping and shaking and nearly clawing at the floor.

That isn’t a minor injury. That is—

Slade’s not an idiot, not a mindless brute tearing people apart because he knows nothing else, no matter how much the impression suits him. He used to be in the military, used to command, used to strategize, and he’s spent years watching lords and ladies play their games.

It’s a fact that Grayson displeased Talia in some way, she would’ve given him back to Wayne otherwise. Dropping him in Slade’s lap means Grayson’s only coming out of the cell as a bloody ruin. So Talia got her money’s worth, sold Grayson to everyone that’s wanted a piece of the charming young gladiator, until—until someone damaged him so badly that Talia wouldn’t even try putting him back together.

Slade grabs that ridiculous brooch and uses it to lift Grayson off the floor. Grayson’s struggles are weak, and they cut out with a choked sound when Slade drops him on the bed. Slade finds the nearest knife.

Grayson sees the light glinting off the blade, reflected in his too-wide blue eye, and squeezes that eye shut. Stops breathing too.

Slade carefully slides the knife under the bandages and slices them all free.

The outer layer comes unwrapped easily, the cloth wrapped around Grayson’s head to keep it in place. The second layer is more packed together, but comes undone with a few more cuts. It’s the third layer that’s plastered to Grayson’s skin, and Grayson starts making those quiet sounds again, as if he’s trying not to shout.

It comes off, tugging at every inch of Grayson’s skin, to reveal a brilliantly red slash extending from just below Grayson’s right cheekbone to disappear into his hairline. In its path lies an empty eye socket.

One visible blue eye stares at him, glimmering and wide.

When Slade places the knife right under it, he gets the first true glimpse of terror.

~#~

Grayson is sitting on the edge of the bed by the time Slade steps through the curtain, a book in one hand but clearly alert. Aware of how long gladiatorial training takes, aware that Slade is back too soon, wary and—

His entire face brightens when their visitor steps past Slade. Any thought Slade had of keeping himself between the two is thrown out the window when Grayson pushes himself upright and nearly throws himself at Hood with a cry of “Jaybird!”

Hood catches him and clutches him close, spilling a long string of half-choked apologies, and now Slade’s curiosity is burning. Hood is murmuring “sorry,” over and over and over again, and Grayson is shushing him, and there’s a familiarity there that Slade hadn’t expected. Sure, he knows that Hood was trained alongside Grayson, before he went out to a match he wasn’t prepared for and became Talia’s, but Hood’s bitterness for his former master and all Wayne’s gladiators is fairly well known.

Until now.

“It’s okay,” Grayson finally says loudly, squeezing Hood tightly in a hug, “It’s okay, Jay, it’s not your fault, and I’m fine, I’m okay.”

Well, that was a lie. Hood clearly knows it as well because he disentangles enough to look Grayson in the face—and blanches. “What happened?” he says quietly, cupping the side of Grayson’s face that’s still bandaged, “Your face—your eye—” Quick as a flash, Hood turns on Slade with a snarl, “What did you do to him, you bastard—”

“Jason, stop!” Grayson gets between them, his back to Slade, holding Hood’s shoulders, “Slade didn’t do anything to me, calm down.”

The light in Hood’s eyes is a little less manic when his gaze drops to Grayson. “If it wasn’t him, then who?” Hood snaps. Grayson doesn’t immediately answer. “Dick.”

Slade crosses his arms and waits. Grayson didn’t tell him the full story, but it’s easy—“Sionis,” Grayson exhales.

Enough to guess.

Hood’s face runs a full gamut of emotions in half a minute. “Talia’s blacklisted Roman,” Hood says slowly, “That because of you?”

Grayson makes a weak smile and shrugs, “Difficult to do business with a man that insists on destroying your things.”

“Fucking hell, Dick,” Hood curses roundly, “Why the fuck—you can’t—stop trying to save me!”

The last one comes out as a shout, and far too loud. Grayson’s pressed his lips in a thin line, Hood’s eyes are flickering, and the silence is heavy and tense.

Both of them flick a glance towards Slade. “Don’t stop on my account,” he says mildly, “This is the most entertainment I’ve gotten all month.”

“Can we get a moment?” Hood asks, on the verge of rudeness.

“You paid for a visit,” Slade points out, “Not privacy.”

Grayson steps smoothly in front before Hood can retort, and asks quietly, “Can we purchase privacy then?”

Slade flicks a glance at Hood, who’s nearly vibrating in place, and Grayson, tense and desperate, and the way their hands are locked together, firm and tight. He pushes off the wall and heads for the curtain, “Fine.”

“How much?” Hood calls out.

Slade smirks before he lets the curtain close behind him, “You get to find out.”

He ends up waiting outside the cell, absently sharpening a knife, hearing a low murmur too quiet to make out distinct words. At one point, Hood’s voice rises into a tirade about Grayson’s intelligence and common sense, but it’s quickly hushed. It’s close to the half hour when Hood comes stomping out.

“Well?” Hood crosses his arms, “What’s the price?”

Slade arches an eyebrow, “You’re not the one who has to pay.”

For a moment, he thinks Hood’s going to punch him. The younger gladiator squeezes his hands into fists and his glare is vicious enough to set something on fire. “If you hurt him—”

“What, Hood?” Slade cuts him off, “What will you do? You can’t stop me, and Talia won’t stop me, so explain to me how exactly you propose to protect him?” Hood is vibrating in place, a murderous statue. “If you threaten me again, I won’t be so obliging to the next deal you want to make.”

The paleness is from fury and fear both, and Hood keeps his mouth shut as he roughly stomps past Slade. Slade watches him go until his footsteps stop sounding, and then heads back inside.

Grayson is waiting for him, again sitting on the bed, hands crossed in his lap, gaze fixed on Slade. “What is the price?” he asks quietly. Evenly, for all that he’s tense and clearly scared.

“Answer some questions,” Slade says, taking the chair, “Honestly.”

Grayson looks suspicious. “What questions?”

“What did Hood mean when he told you to stop trying to save him?”

Grayson purses his lips but deflates, leaning back, clearly resigned. “It’s not really a secret,” he sighs, “I threw the match.”

It takes a second for Slade to comprehend. “You threw it,” he repeats, “You threw the match.”

Grayson shoots him a half-irritated look, “I wasn’t going to kill Jay.” Something crosses over his face, a flicker of the death that still hangs between them, the dead boy that Slade wants to avenge. “And I—I knew they wouldn’t vote for my death,” Grayson says quietly, “Jay—I couldn’t take that risk.”

On the surface of it, it makes sense—Grayson’s made a name for himself, been pretty and charming at every sponsor that flits his way, there’s no way they’d let him die without extracting their pound of flesh.

“And Sionis?” Slade asks.

At this, Grayson’s face twists. His gaze drops, and Slade doesn’t know if he’s doing it consciously, but his hair drifts over the bandages, as if to conceal it. “Sionis—has his preferences.”

“And Talia whores out the gladiators that aren’t doing well.”

Grayson’s expression twists further. “Unless she had reason to doubt his self-restraint,” he says quietly, and Slade can see it. Can see Grayson provoking Sionis until the man lashed out with a wound too egregious to ignore. Lashings, brutality, blood and pain? Fine, when it could all be concealed under shifting silks, and everyone wanted scars on a gladiator.

But a missing eye on one of the Arena’s prettiest warriors? No, even Talia al Ghul, with all her animosity, couldn’t ignore that that was a step too far.

“Regardless of whether or not it worked, you had to know she would kill you for it,” Slade says.

Grayson doesn’t look him in the eye when he responds, “Talia was clear on my eventual fate from the very first day.”

Slade blinks. With that interesting piece of information, Grayson shifts up the bed, until he can lean against the wall, and cracks open his book. He doesn’t say anything else.

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