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It’s ridiculous. Completely and utterly ridiculous. Slade would hate it.
Dick smiles. Slade would hate it. That would be the best part.
Dick pays the leather smith and gathers his purchases.
He smuggles his new collection into the fortress. Can’t let Slade see it too early. It’d ruin the fun.
The next day, when Slade first sees his new accessory, he stares. Dick smirks, nothing like the soft smile Renegade had. Around his neck sits a navy blue leather collar, delicately embroidered with silver birds. It’s a perfect color match to Dick’s favorite outfit to go adventuring in before everything happened. It’s light too. It presses against his throat when he swallows, nothing like the heavy gold he used to wear every day before the spell broke.
“What is that?” Slade says.
Dick walks past him toward the kitchen.
“What are you talking about?” Dick asks, purposefully obtuse.
“That,” Slade states.
“Oh,” Dick says, “I found it during the street fair last night. The one in Gotham.” He raises a hand to trace the edge of the leather.
“Why?”
“Because Ren found comfort in this,” Dick stops playing, “it made him feel… safe.”
He makes eye contact with Slade. “And I don’t want to ignore that. His feelings, my feelings matter. This time, I choose. This is my choice.”
“Okay,” Slade says. He doesn’t move closer.
“And besides,” Dick says, “I think I look great.”
He exits the throne room, where Ren spent so many hours, to fix himself breakfast.
“Slade.”
Slade looks up from his reports. Dick hopes his nerves aren’t showing on his face.
“Do me a favor?” he asks, approaching the throne. He doesn’t kneel the way Ren would have. He just stands in front. He’s a little taller than Slade like this.
“Of course,” Slade says.
That is also something that would never have happened before. Ren didn’t ask for things he wanted. He would take whatever he was given and be grateful.
Dick asks.
Because he is his own person.
Dick shows what’s in his hands. The collar is pink this time. An obnoxious shade that looks so out of place with the grim darkness of the Iron Fortress. It’s embroidered with cheerful flowers in yellow, blue, and purple.
“Put it on me?”
Slade hesitates. He takes the collar, holds it as if weighing it in his hands. The leather is light, Dick knows, but the meaning behind this is heavy.
“Are you sure?” Slade asks.
He’s improving. He’s learning to ask, to check, to treat Dick as a person.
Dick sinks to his knees. A familiar action his body remembers. The cushion that was there was removed a while ago; his knees land on the stone floor. He kneels upright, at just the right height.
“Yeah.”
Slowly, Slade undoes the buckle and wraps it around his neck. He tightens it carefully, leaving two fingers’ worth of space.
It feels… like nothing. The collar sits the same way it would have if he’d done it himself. It feels like it should have had a greater impact. It doesn’t feel like ownership.
It just feels like himself.
“Thanks,” Dick says, and stands.
Slade lets go, careful not to tug on the collar. The bright pink clashes with the rest of his outfit. Dick heads back toward his room to remedy that.
This one is the most fun.
Dick is smiling before he can stop himself. He skips his way down the hall, eager to show it off. He’s carrying a stack of papers—maps and treaties related to the Northern Territory. Slade didn’t ask him to grab them, but he noticed he was reviewing contracts from that area, so they could be helpful.
Jingle. Jingle. Jingle. Jingle.
“Oh, Slade!” he calls as he enters. “Look what I brought!”
Dick half-jogs across the throne room.
Jingle. Jingle. Jingle. Jingle.
Slade’s eye twitches. He doesn’t look up from his paperwork, but Dick can hear it in his voice.
“You are the most annoying creature in the Nine Realms.”
“Aww, thank you. I try,” Dick says, tilting his head to the side.
The collar around his throat jingles again. It’s a light blue leather band decorated with thin silver chains. From the chains hang little charms of birds and feathers. Most noticeably, they also hold a great many little bells.
Slade sighs deeply, and the sound fills Dick’s chest with joy.
He places the maps and papers on the desk. Slade looks them over, evaluates them, and sighs even deeper.
“Thank you, birdie,” he says.
Dick grins.
“You’re welcome!”
Dick pauses, looks at the floor next to Slade’s feet, and makes a choice.
He walks to the study and pulls a pillow off the couch along with the book he was reading. With both items acquired, he walks back to the throne room. He makes sure his steps are extra bouncy to make the bells jingle.
With the bells announcing his arrival, he tosses the pillow onto the floor next to the throne.
Slade’s writing has paused. He’s looking at him. Calculating. Thinking.
“Are you sure?” he asks.
Slade is on a good-behavior roll this week. That’s the second time he remembered to ask.
“Yeah.”
Dick sits. He leans his back against Slade’s leg and shifts until he is comfortable. Then he shifts a little more just to make the collar sing. He opens his book to the last bookmark and starts reading.
He’s not kneeling. It’s not the same.
But the warmth against his back is familiar. And so is the rustle of papers above him.
Ren wouldn’t have shifted. Ren wouldn’t be reading a book. Ren wouldn’t have left the room without Slade’s explicit permission. Ren would be wearing a heavy band of metal around his neck. Ren would be kneeling.
It’s not the same.
But Dick feels safe, the way Ren did.
And that’s enough to reconcile the two halves for now.
Dick opens the box.
Inside is the collar.
Gold.
Heavy.
He knows exactly how it feels against his throat. He takes it, almost reverently.
He remembers bruises that never quite faded beneath it. He remembers falling asleep with its weight against his pulse point.
He remembers missing it.
A symbol of the pain he suffered. A symbol that he survived.
He walks to the throne room. Slade isn’t here. He places it on the armrest and hops onto the throne himself. It's a new feeling. He's never done this before.
The throne is too big, minimally cushioned because Slade is a freak incapable of making the one place he sits all day comfortable, and cold.
He pulls his legs in and rests his face on one hand propped against the armrest.
The view is new too.
Ren existed beneath the throne, never on it except when in Slade’s lap.
Everything is shorter. He has a good view of the entire throne room. From here, he can see exactly why Slade always watches the western windows. They overlook the expanse of the fortress.
He shifts again, crosses his legs, and puts both hands in his lap.
He picks up the collar.
He puts it down.
He picks it up again.
He clicks it open.
Then closed.
Sets it down.
Picks it up again.
And clicks it open again.
He takes a breath and closes it around his neck.
It’s cold.
It’s heavy.
It’s exactly as he remembered.
He touches a hand to it, the way Ren did when he needed a reminder that he was wanted.
He imagines what Ren would do if he saw himself like this.
Ren would be offended.
No, confused.
He wouldn’t understand why he was in his Master’s throne unless his Master had put him there himself.
Ren would curl up and wait, unable to decide whether he should stay on the throne or go back to the floor without his Master’s input.
Dick spreads out.
He throws a leg over one armrest and lets the other hang off the edge. He makes himself as comfortable as he can in the oversized chair. He touches one hand to the collar briefly, then drums his fingers against the armrest.
The weight of the collar sits over his pulse point.
Slade returns.
Dick does not move.
He does not greet him at the door the way Ren would have. He continues drumming his fingers against the armrest. He looks out the western windows.
“Dick,” Slade calls. Dick turns his head and smiles.
“You’ve been collecting them.” Slade is standing in the doorway.
“Yes.”
“Why?”
Dick sits upright. He lets his legs hang off the edge, too short to reach the floor. He touches a hand to the collar.
“Because I want to,” he answers honestly.
Slade is standing closer now. Not close enough to loom, but closer.
“Why did you ask me to put one on you?”
Dick looks up at Slade.
He looks tense, not like a ruler in his own domain.
“Because I wanted to know the difference.”
Dick reaches out, and Slade answers by putting his hand in Dick’s palm.
Dick pulls him closer.
Slowly, Dick guides the hand to the collar, hooking two fingers beneath it the way Slade used to.
“…Was there one?”
This question is quieter.
“I don’t know.”
“Why? Why this one?”
Slade tugs lightly. Not possessive, just indicating.
Dick thinks for a long moment.
"I wasn’t trying to replace it.”
Slade doesn’t say anything. Dick continues.
“This. This meant something to Ren. This was Ren’s.”
Dick opens his mouth to start the next sentence, then closes it again.
“I keep talking about him like he’s someone else. But he’s not. He’s just me… when my world was smaller. This made him feel safe. Comforted. He liked it… not because he was owned. But because it made him feel like he belonged somewhere.”
Dick looks up at Slade, who is leaning over to reach him, with Dick still holding his hand to the collar.
“I still want to belong. I just don’t want to have to stop belonging to myself.”
Dick lets Slade go.
Slade looks down at his hand, frozen.
Dick hops down from the throne.
He reaches behind himself, unclasps the collar, and puts it in Slade’s hand.
Dick walks away without anyone granting him permission.
In his room, a ridiculous blue collar with far too many bells is waiting for him.