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The wind is a listless thing that paws at the muggy Gotham fumes, batting them an inch to the side before it gives up and the stench slumps into the pavement and asphalt with all the sulky obstinance of a toddler two seconds away from a tantrum.
Some of that obstinacy must be drifting up with whatever ambitious draft dares to crest the buildings,because Slade is staring down a man with a deathwish.
Slade is a very reasonable man, practically transactional. Entirely transactional, actually--he is a mercenary--and this attack falls outside business. And, while Slade doesn't take it personally, the attack is deeply personal , and that changes up his usual rules. Usual rules being: if he isn't paid for it, it's not worth his time. Any other day and any other suicidal and self-righteous man, Slade would put a bullet in his skull at twenty paces to make sure he didn't have to waste time getting blood out of his suit.
"He's a child ," the man snarls, aiming a punch at Slade's chest. When Slade dodges to the side, the man turns and blocks the sword Slade brings around with an armored gauntlet. It keeps the man close enough to land a blow that just glances off Slade's kidney before Slade spins and flips to get some distance between them. Then he straightens, chest heaving with irritation.
He has survived wars between nations and wars between gangs and the war within his own household. He can navigate a boardroom, a ballroom, just as well as a battlefield. He can detach himself from the mission.
He may be fond of dramatics--he has a brand and anyone can pay extra to keep him subtle--but he is reasonable .
He'll give Batman a single hit, maybe a few, a nod to the fatherhood they share and a nod of respect from one accomplished soldier to another. (But, mostly, it is the fatherhood. Slade would murder a nation for a sin implied against his children. He would expect them to avenge themselves, of course, but Slade is not so absent a father he would deny himself vengeance.)
And then? Then it's a fight and Slade isn't going to go down easy. Not for a bat that couldn't keep a single birdie in hand.
And the little bird is so good in hand.
"He's a child !" Batman screams again. He's wild and emotional and Slade is both pleased and pitying. He's never had so much pleasure touching a nerve like this and, oh , he feels for Bruce Wayne.
But, raise a soldier and be prepared to reap the crops of war.
Even if Slade is the one to have plucked that fruit.
Robin was so sweet for him. Firey and spirited, sure. Nippy and furious, of course. Robin is shaping up to be the kind of man to fight tooth and nail for his cause, no matter what that is. A blind, fanatical devotion that Slade wants to be the center of. It's not humanly possible to stand in the gaze of that piercing sun without wanting it forever. And when the boy snapped like a glow stick he lit up Slade's blood with his passion.
Slade doesn't want to let him go, but unlike his shadowy predecessor, Slade knows when to catch and when to release .
"He is a soldier ," Slade says, evenly, dodging a strike, a kick, a furious snarl. "You made him perfect ," Slade adds, just to watch the mouth tremble under the cowl before Batman tries to take them both over the edge of the brownstone they're scuffling on.
Slade shouldn't have taken the contract in Gotham, but it wasn't about the money. He wanted to see .
Robin has been leashed, under observation like a wild thing and Slade sings with it, with the knowledge that he made his little bird a creature to be restrained. He wants to watch Robin tear something apart; he wants to watch Robin slink like poison through the shadows. He wants to watch the little soldier hurt and know just how sweet he can be.
Slade remembers warm skin beneath his fingers and hears his knuckles creak as they form a fist longing for flesh beneath it.
"You will never touch him again," Batman promises, like ultimatums in abstract can be presented as facts. Slade shoves him away with two feet to the man's Kevlar covered gut. Batman wheezes as he's launched into the air and rights himself as Slade deftly rolls to his feet. Slade scoffs and rolls his shoulders.
"After the taste I gave him?" He says and let's the heat in his gut of a good fight and the memory of a good fuck leak into the air between him and the Bat. "You're damming the wrong end of this river."
"Leave Gotham," Batman warns, nearly rabid with the righteous fury that makes him focused. "Walk away, or I'll make sure you never walk again."
Improbable, with Slade's ability to heal.
"He came onto me," Slade offers as a non sequitur and watches Batman's lips thin and pale as his visible chin turns red. "He needed me. You pick them feisty ."
Batman roars and throws one of his sharpened and horrifically named batarangs at Slade. It catches him on the shoulder and he grunts with the bruising impact as it embeds itself in his armor. He yanks it free with an unseen sneer and throws it back. Batman dodges and throws down a smoke bomb.
Slade's mask works to filter out any noxious particulates, but he still can't see through the haze. He loosens his stance and turns in a lazy circle, ready to dodge or roll with the impact. He hears another pwumf as the smoke grows thicker. Batman must have deployed another smoke bomb.
"How is the little bird?" Slade asks, voice muffled flatly by the smoke and his mask. He thinks he hears the scuff of boots on concrete, but with no echo, no solid object to bounce off, the sound is swallowed greedily by the haze. "Has he forgiven you? For abandoning him ?"
There . Slade turns, standard bowie knife drawn, and nearly slices a few bat-fingers free as Batman wrenches Slade's blade to the side only moment's before an armored fist connects to his mask and he hears a crack .
He leaps back and shakes his head to dispel the dizziness. When he looks up with a snarl, Batman has sunk back into a haze made thicker by two more pwumf-pwumf s. Now, Slade can smell the acrid stench of burnt sulfur and something sweet. He knows that smell and he swears, dodging backward as Batman tries to split his head open.
"Dirty," he hisses and lets Batman drive him back, waiting for the smoke to clear. He's starting to feel a bit dizzy and any other man would be drooling unconscious from the fumes in the air, but Slade isn't any other man and he fights the influence of the smoke that leaks past his mask. "My bird know you fight like this?"
"He isn't yours," Batman growls, his voice more solid than his hazy form, and, finally, Slade feels a teasing fingertip of fear along his spine. It's tantalizing and terrible.
"He isn't yours ," Slade can't help but counter. "I made sure of that."
Batman rushes forward and Slade has been so distracted by his opponent's anger that he forgets to keep his footing and suddenly he's stepping back onto nothing, and not even his superior reflexes can save him as his own momentum takes him over the side of the building, and rushing back-first toward the earth.
He thinks, if he were any other man, this fall would kill him. He isn't any other man, though, he isn't, and he pulls a page from a bat's book and fumbles a grapple gun out in time to shoot and land a shuddering line. It barely saves him from going splat and knowing that he's evaded gruesome injury makes his heart race. Knowing that the non-lethal Batman nearly tried to kill him? That makes his heart soar as he swings up and lands on a rooftop and runs.
He doesn't look back, doesn't check to see if Batman is following him or not. He isn't ashamed to have lost that fight.
He's already won the war, even if Batman doesn't know it yet.