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The glass was cold against his forehead. Outside, the landscape passed, dull and dreary. Black pavement rushed by, green grass on the highway shoulder interspersed with brown dirt and grey pebbles. There was the typical trash found on a roadway drifting a little into the air with each car or truck that passed by; colorful plastic bags, cans, bottles. The occasional dead branch from one of the scraggly trees at the side of the road.
The sky was blue, with only a few wisps of white cloud trailing near the horizon. The sun was warm. Dick couldn’t see it, it was behind them now, but he could feel its warmth even through the window. It seeped into him, reminding him that once he had deserved the light’s warmth, and so he pressed his head against the cold glass so he wouldn’t feel it anymore.
The sun shouldn’t be shining. The sky shouldn’t be such a brilliant blue, it should be grey and weepy. The other cars on the road shouldn’t be driving forward with such equanimity like it was an ordinary day and nothing had happened. For a moment, Dick resented the nameless, faceless people in those cars, peacefully driving towards their normal jobs and homes and schools and families, while he was-
Was-
He remembered when his parents had died. He remembered the shocked silence as they hit the ground, his own scream the only sound. He remembered the way everyone had started screaming a moment later, like they were on a time delay, after his parents were already broken on the sawdust and it was too late to do anything. It had been dark outside, the cheerful lights that interspersed the fairground suddenly seeming eerie and ominous. The bright searchlights. Mr. Haly’s voice thick with tears. People shouting and crying and asking questions. Nothing had been normal about that night, and and to a small boy whose world had just tilted off its axis it had seemed unnatural. Dick thought that nothing should be normal today either. It should be snowing even though it was well into spring, or the sun should set three hours early. Something to show that something was wrong. Everything was wrong.
Killing a man he’d never met, who’d never done anything to him, just because someone told him to. He was just as bad as Tony Zucco.
“You did good, kid,” Slade said.
Dick risked a glance at him. The man had both hands on the wheel, gaze fixed on the road ahead.
There were some days when Dick felt relieved to hear any word of praise from Slade, and some when it made him feel horrible. Some days it made him feel guiltily proud and satisfied, and some days the guilt of having Slade praise him for something, anything, tore away at him until he couldn’t eat or sleep. Days when he was glad to please Slade, because a happy Slade meant a better time for Dick and breathing Titans, and days when it angered him to have any remotely positive interaction with him, angry at both Slade and himself.
This was not one of the good days. Nausea churned in Dick’s stomach.
“I remember my first,” Slade went on. Oh, great. He was in a talking mood. “It was hard even for me, but the next one was easier, and the one after that was even easier. You’ll see. You’ll get used to it.”
That was Dick’s worst fear. Months with Slade had driven him to this. What would he be like if no one found him in a year? Hardened and remorseless, like Slade? Just like Slade wanted him to be?
His cheek still throbbed from where Slade had hit him before, when Slade had given him an order and for the very first time since Slade had taken him all those months ago, terrifying him into obedience and holding the lives of everyone he loved over his head like a sword, Dick had said no.
That hadn’t lasted long. Seconds, barely.
“I joined the army when I was right around your age,” Slade was saying. “It made me into a man. This will make you one. You’ll be great, kid.”
Dick didn’t feel like a man. Dick felt like the little boy who’d watched his parents fall and then been dragged away from the lights and sounds and colors of the circus that was all he’d known and plunged into a cold, unforgiving Gotham.
He stared out the window, hoping Slade wasn’t expecting him to answer. There were streetlamp poles on the side of the road, one every dozen feet or so, made of grey metal. They would turn on when night fell. They might still be driving then.
Dick had once perched on top of Gotham streetlamps, laughing and joking at those down below, afraid of nothing because he could fly, and because Batman was there. He’d been dressed in his colors of green and red and yellow, trying to bring a little of the circus into Gotham. To bring a little color into that grey city.
And now he hadn’t set foot in Gotham in months, and Batman hadn’t found him, nobody had found him, and he definitely wasn’t safe. Nobody was safe from Dick either. He hurt people. He killed people.
“It gets easier,” Slade said again. “Soon you won’t even blink.”
Dick could still smell the blood, thick and cloying, even though he’d washed his hands over and over before they’d left, before Slade had finally lost patience and dragged him out of the decrepit little warehouse washroom, telling him he’d damage his hands if he kept up like this, ignoring Dick begging him to let him wash his hands at least one more time.
His sleeves were wet nearly up to the elbow, but there hadn’t been any soap bars, only one near-empty liquid soap dispenser and the kind of paper towels that could barely soak up anything, so the red stains on the ends of the sleeves were still there, made darker by the water. They hadn’t even started to brown yet. Maybe the blood smell was from them. The dampness chafed at his skin, and he could almost feel the blood soaked through the fabric and now burning against his skin. He wanted to yank the sleeves off, rip the thick fabric into shreds with his bare hands. He would have to throw this shirt out later, or burn it, or something. Maybe Slade would let him get a new one. He bought Dick stuff sometimes if he was particularly pleased with how Dick’s training was going. New kinds of weapons, a guide to advanced gymnastics, once a figurine of a circus elephant.
“You did it well,” Slade said. “Quick and clean. You only took a few seconds - believe me, kid, I’ve seen deaths that were much longer.”
Yes, like - like -
Dick could still hear the screams. Could still hear the gurgling, choking breaths as he’d driven the knife through the man’s throat. Could still see the flecks of blood the man had coughed up, on his lips and chin and Dick’s own fingers.
Slade had taken a contract. Dick had gotten the impression that this wasn’t the type of contract Slade usually took. No international spy or wanted terrorist or superhero teenager was this, but a serial killer. This was Slade’s idea of a kindness, of having Dick’s first kill be of someone who had tortured and killed others for his own amusement, someone whom the world would be a better place without. It would be the only consideration Dick would get from him.
You’re doing the world a service by getting rid of him, Slade had said. You’re avenging his victims, and getting justice for them. Some people deserve to die.
But it wasn’t their job to decide who lived and who died, but Dick didn’t dare voice that to Slade. He’d tried, occasionally, in the early days. Not anymore.
And Slade hadn’t killed this man - no, that wasn’t true. Slade hadn’t made Dick kill this man out of the goodness of his heart. Slade had decided to kill this man because the families of his victims had pooled their money and decided to avenge their loved ones by hiring Deathstroke, because the man was well connected and unlikely to ever face justice in court. Slade had also decided to have this man killed because it was finally time for Dick to kill, and this was a perfect target for Dick’s first victim.
Slade had even given them a discount. He’d said that the value of this experience was worth more to him than money. They hadn’t known what he meant. Dick had.
Slade had tortured the man first. There was no other word for it. The people who’d hired Slade had wanted the killer to suffer as much as he’d made their family members suffer, and Slade had wanted the man to be in so much pain, so near death, that Dick would think it was a mercy to kill him.
So Dick had watched, paralyzed, while Slade had kicked and sliced and broken bones, moving with the practiced ease of a man who had done this sort of thing many times before, until finally the man was an incoherent sobbing bloody mess, looking just like the pictures of his victims Slade had made Dick look at in the car on the way there, so Dick could know exactly what kind of man he was going to kill, and why he shouldn’t feel bad about it at all.
Then Slade had dragged him over to where Dick was, handed him a gun, and said, “Kill him.”
Dick had looked at the blood on Deathstroke’s boots, and then up at Slade himself, and said, “No.”
That was when Slade had hit him.
“Do it,” Slade had growled.
Dick had shaken his head wordlessly, too terrified to speak. The gun was cold and hard in his hands. He knew how to use it now. Batman had never taught him, but Deathstroke had, along with dozens of other kinds of weapons over the past half year.
"How many times do I need to tell you to do exactly what I say?" Slade growled. He raised his hand again, but Dick didn't flinch. Several months of training with Slade and invoking his ire and generally being his punching bag whenever he was upset about something had taught him not to flinch, because Slade hated when he did that. It was cowardice and weakness, he said.
"You want me to get your friends here as a little incentive?" Slade asked, and that put a chill through Dick, because he knew Slade had resources, he knew Slade had money and contacts and safehouse everywhere, Slade could probably just chain him to the railing over on the side, here in the warehouse miles from where anyone actually lived where nobody would hear him screaming for help, and come back in a few hours with a captured Roy or Wally slung over his shoulder. Capturing any one of the Teen Titans would be easy for a man like Deathstroke. He'd done it with Dick, after all.
And Slade had been hinting heavily over the past few days that if Dick didn't finally give in he would get the Teen Titans and kill them one by one until Dick did.
It had been months. Months of training and pain and exhaustion and loneliness. Months with no one to talk to but Slade. Months of fear that if he put a foot out of line the Titans would be the next corpses he would see.
And suddenly Dick was so tired and every minute of the past six months had been slowly chipping away at him and he couldn't take it anymore.
"Not with the gun," he said through quivering lips. He wouldn't betray Bruce like that. He couldn't.
Slade wordlessly slipped the gun out of Dick's hands and gave him a knife, Slade's own eight-inch-long hunting knife, like the fact that Dick was using Slade's personal weapon and not one of the dozen other knives the man had on him was supposed to be meaningful.
He was doing this for the Titans, Dick reminded himself. He was doing this to keep them alive. And maybe he was a horrible person, to choose his friends' lives over someone else, but he couldn't bear to lose them, couldn't live with himself if he was the cause of their deaths, and Slade was looming over him and he'd had nothing but Slade's voice in the back of his head for months and he would be furious if Dick still disobeyed him and, and, and-
The knife went in. Dick felt it rip through skin and muscle and scrape against bone.
The man choked and gurgled and died.
There was blood everywhere. Blood on the floor, blood on his clothes, blood on the knife handle. Blood on his hands, quite literally.
Slade rested a hand on Dick's shoulder. "Good work," he said.
Dick let go of the knife and started sobbing into his hands.
Slade gave him a few minutes to clean himself up while he took the body away and cleaned the place to make it look like they'd never been there. Dick didn't know what he would do with the body. He didn't ask.
Then they were on the road again.
"You did a good job," Slade said now as he drove. "I'm proud of you, kid."
The sick feeling inside Dick swelled. His stomach churned and twisted. He swallowed down a gag.
"I'm gonna throw up," he said.
Slade was already pulling over.
Dick unclicked the seatbelt and fumbled with the door handle. They always wore seatbelts in the car. Always had the car doors locked. Slade always drove just under the speed limit. Safety first, and also making sure that any slim chance they might get pulled over was non-existent. He'd handcuffed Dick to the car handle in the beginning, but he hadn't bothered with that in ages.
Dick shoved the door open and stumbled out onto the shoulder, and then the grass. He fell to his knees and retched.
Nothing came out. Dick hadn't been able to eat for the past two days. He'd known what was coming and what Slade wanted him to do, and he'd barely been able to choke down a few sips of water. His stomach didn't seem to care that nothing was in it, though, so Dick retched and gasped and retched again and watched thin strings of bile drip down onto the grass.
His dug his hands into the scraggly grass, feeling it prick at him, digging his fingernails into the dirt. Cars raced by without a care for him. He breathed in exhaust.
Slade came over from the other side of the car and gave Dick a water bottle, a can of ginger ale, a paper cup, and a travel pack of tissues. He must have had all that stashed away somewhere in the car, like he'd planned for this, because of course he had.
Dick poured a little water into the cup and took a sip. He swished it around in his mouth and then spat it out. He took another one, shuddering.
Slade's hand was on his back, large and warm, gently rubbing between his shoulder blades like Dick was a sick little kid, crying from a nightmare about falling again. His skin crawled beneath Slade's touch. But it was so rare that Dick was touched gently these days, and he hadn't realized how much he'd missed any kind of physical contact, until he realized he was leaning into it. He hated it. He hated himself.
Slade gently ruffled his hair, like Dick's father had done whenever they finished a performance, like Dick's mother had done whenever Dick was sick and throwing up, and Dick hated that it felt so similar. Nothing Slade did should remind him of his parents.
They would probably hate him now.
"I know this was hard for you," Slade said, and the worst thing was, he sounded genuine. "But you did it anyway. You succeeded, and I'm proud of you." Dick distantly wondered if Slade could feel him shiver. "The first time is the hardest. The next one will be easier, I promise."
Dick felt the sunshine on his face. It was warm out here. He couldn't even close his eyes and pretend he was in Gotham, because the sun rarely shone like this in Gotham.
"I'll let you pick the next mission we go on, if you want," Slade said, like this was supposed to be some kind of reward.
Dick's shoulders shook. He leaned forward, trying to pretend it was another retch, but he couldn't disguise the sob that tore its way out of his throat.
What would Bruce say if he saw him now? Blood on his hands, having killed someone less than an hour ago, a mercenary telling him how proud he was of him?
Bruce would probably hate him too.
That was okay. Nobody could hate him more than Dick hated himself now anyway.