Chapter Text
Gregory Saunders had come into his life at the most unexpected yet opportune of times.
It was supposed to have been a joint operation with Lex Luthor to finally rid the world of the menace that was Superman. Ra's had planned to deal with the threat to his overall dominion that was Lex Luthor for after the kryptonian had been handled- and that had been his mistake.
The ruse had been a successful one, to his most humiliating misfortune. Lex's plan had never been one to rid the world of the kryptonian scourge- had had just needed to make Ra's believe it to be so. From the very beginning, Luthor had wanted to ensure Ra's ultimate demise and had simply utilized his disdain for the kryptonian as the perfect misdirection to convince Ra's to work together.
When the Vigilante had come into Ra's life, Ra's had been forced to crawl away from the infuriatingly arrogant Luthor; a poisoned dagger lodged deep within his rib-cage, having missed his heart by mere centimeters when Luthor had stabbed him in the back.
"Well, ain't you ever been taught any manners, Luthor?" had been the first thing Ra's had heard from that syrupy voice that seemed incapable of knowing what alarm or urgency meant. "Once a man's down and can't rightly defend himself- well, that ain't justice. That's just greed meetin' cowardice."
The man had been a ridiculous sight in his red, white, and blue costume that had screamed nothing short of pure anachronism. His accent had been so ridiculous Ra's had found himself believing it to be earnest and real. His words should have sounded smug but had only sounded disappointed, as if he had expected more from the world class supervillain genius that was Lex Luthor.
Ra's al Ghul's first impression of Greg Saunders had been a simple one. He had thought the overconfident fool incapable of any greatness; he had thought Lex would manage to dismantle this new threat before turning his sights on Ra's once more.
He had known an opportunity for what it had been, though, and so Ra's had forced his drugged body to continue moving, to widen the distance between himself and Luthor and find anything he could utilize as a weapon in the solid monument of steel and glass that Lex Luthor's inner sanctum had been.
Ra's had not seen how Vigilante had overpowered Luthor. All of his senses had zeroed in on ignoring the effects of the poison coursing through his system; on ignoring the fatigue that had settled into his bones without a shred of mercy, on ignoring the trembling of his limbs, on ignoring the cold that had begun to spread from the tips of his fingers into the whole of his body. Ra's eyes had only focused on the tiles before him, his ears on his own heartbeat so he could understand how much faster it had begun to beat.
One moment, Ra's had been crawling towards opportunity.
In another, Ra's had found himself suspended, his whole essence picked up as if he had weighed nothing.
And then Ra's had found himself looking into eyes of pure, emerald green, bright and unbothered, as crystalline as the most luxurious of jade found in only the most pristine of conditions. And Ra's' breath had been stolen from him.
For the rest of his days, he would insist such a human reaction had been forced from him by the poison within his system. But he had known the truth. It had been the beauty within those eyes that had struck him.
Those eyes would have inspired poets the world over to attempt and encompass the true definition of perfection centuries ago. But there was no combination of words in any language ever created by humanity that would ever come close to what was held within those eyes. Ra's could not describe it himself; had not been able to, even when he had tried.
"Well, ain't you the most unique damsel in distress I've ever saved?"
It was then that Ra's al Ghul had learned that the Vigilante, the hero to have saved the Demon's Head himself from treachery, was infuriating... infuriating because Ra's had illogically come to respect the fool within only a handful of seconds of having met him.
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Against his better judgment, Greg Saunders had managed to fall in love with one of the most dangerous supervillains on the planet. And it had happened the very moment he'd looked into dull green eyes that had lit up the moment they had found his face.
He'd been called in by Superman to help out with the situation going down in Metropolis not because he had been wanted, but because he had been needed. It had been one of those days when the League had been spread far more thin than had been advisable and even the reserves had needed to be called in to deal with all the sudden emergencies popping up throughout the world.
Considering how Luthor had been involved in one of the major cases, it hadn't been all that difficult to connect the dots and come to the right conclusions about what had possibly happened to make the whole world go mad on that one day- money and lots of it.
It hadn't been a mindful, purposeful thing for him to have been the one to stop Luthor from dispatching of Ra's al Ghul. It had been a necessary evil, even, and one he'd taken with the mindset of simply stalling things from getting any worse while any of the more powerful members of the League handled their own situations and had been able to come in and clean everything up.
He'd clearly overestimated Luthor, though, and underestimated just how successful he could have been in dealing with Ra's. And that meant he'd been able to lasso and incapacitate Luthor within only a handful of seconds; and that Ra's al Ghul hadn't been a threat to his life because of whatever it had been that Luthor had managed to do to the feller.
When he'd seen the supposedly great and mighty Ra's al Ghul, Head of the League of Assassins, a man so renown for his tactical prowess that he was considered to be one of Batman's most dangerous adversaries, squirming on the ground like his very soul was fighting against death coming for it... well, Greg had felt a twinge of pity come over him.
In that moment, it had been easy to make the decision to pick Ra's up and get him some medical help.
Even though he wasn't the most enthused about the time's insistent belief in the sanctity of life and how little he agreed with the Justice League's insistence on arresting all criminals, no matter the depravity of their crimes, Greg had always been capable of nuance. In his mind, there was a difference between letting an evil man die by the hand of another evil man and killing said evil man himself.
It was one thing to take a criminal down in self-defense; it was a whole other thing to let a man die just for the convenience of it.
So he'd picked Ra's up to carry him out. Because in the moment he hadn't known what Luthor had done to him, Greg had decided to be sympathetic enough to lift him up carefully rather than just roll and force Ra's up and onto his shoulder as would have been easier.
It had been the wrong thing to do and he had known it the moment he had looked down and smirked at Ra's, making some dumb quip about Ra's being vulnerable and in need of help.
Ra's' eyes had looked up at him and Greg had seen them shift from unfocused and dull into razor sharp focus and an indescribable warmth that had melted down the image of pure ice he had crafted of Ra's al Ghul in his mind. Dark green eyes, many shades darker than his own, had looked at him with such wonder... as if he had done more than just hog-tie Luthor up and stuff a wad of the billionaire's own suit, ripped off with little care by Greg because he had just wanted the man to stop snarling and posturing, into that mouth that had refused to shut up even when he'd asked all nice-like.
Greg had not been a stranger to saving folks and being looked at like the hero was. He was not foolish enough to minimize his own capabilities, either, because his community- his family- hadn't raised a fool.
But there had been something about the way Ra's had looked at him that had broken something open inside of his soul that Greg hadn't even known could break.
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Greg Saunders had not looked at him as if he were a myth come to life. This simple, rugged, unimpressive cowboy with an easy speech pattern and an infuriating aura of genuine nonchalance had looked at him as if he were nothing more than a fellow man; as if Ra's had not watched empires come to splendor and fall to ruin, as if he was not the leader of one of the most dangerous guilds of assassins to ever be found on the Earth, as if he did not have the power of true immortality accessible at his fingertips.
When Greg Saunders had looked at Ra's al Ghul, he had not seen an enemy so dangerous it would have been simply logical to allow the poison to finish running its course and hopefully be rid of him.
When Greg Saunders had looked at Ra's al Ghul, he had simply seen a human being in need of aid.
And Ra's still did not understand why that had meant so much.
Ra's only knew that he had fallen in love with that infuriatingly earnest gaze.
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Heaven forgive him, Greg Saunders had been a weak man when Ra's had looked at him as if he had hung the sun, moon, and stars in the sky; as if he had been more than just a man with a six-shooter at each hip, a small supply of defensive and offensive weapons at his disposal, and little more than a piece of red cloth keeping his identity known from the greater world at large.