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It was quiet.
It was always quiet. It was winter, and most animals up here were hibernating or had migrated. The snow was inches deep, with more falling every so often, blanketing the ground and trees and roof. It swallowed up all sound, noise disappearing into its silence, so that even the loudest crash or scream sounded muffled. Slade's cabin was miles from the nearest road, even more miles from any other people. The only sounds here were the sounds they made themselves, and it felt like they were the only two people in the universe. Dick could scream and scream and nobody would hear him. Slade probably wouldn't even care.
Dick limped down the narrow hallway. He should clean up, probably. Sweeping up was his job every day, along with chopping wood for the fire and lugging it back inside and starting the fire and collecting snow for water and hauling it inside for buckets to boil for drinking or cooking or bathing, because Slade's favorite little hunting cabin up north in the middle of nowhere didn't have heating or electricity or even running water. Like it was the eighteen hundreds or something.
Slade had asked, once, a while ago - time sort of blurred together at this point, Dick wasn't sure how long ago that had been - what living in a trailer had been like, if it had been anything like this. Dick had said no. Trailers might be small, and they might be on the move. But they had been able to hook them up to the utilities in most places they stopped. They'd had a regular route. It hadn't just been randomized stops at the side of the road. They'd been able to attach to electrical hookups, too. And when they hadn't, they'd had generators, so they had actual lighting instead of having to rely on daylight and flashlights and even candlelight like that one time the batteries had run out and it had been snowing so Slade hadn't been able to go the miles and miles to the nearest store to replace them. Some of the trailers had had their own water tanks to use when on the road. They had radiators or heat ducts for when it was cold, so the trailers, their homes, were actually warm, instead of having to chop up wood and kindling and start a fire with matches and huddle under a blanket like Dick did now, because apparently Slade wanted to teach him survival skills as well. And they hadn't lived in the trailer for most of the winter anyway. The circus didn't do much business in the winter; nobody wanted to spend hours huddling in an outdoor tent at night in January. Dick's parents had had a little house down in Florida, and they'd spent winters there, where it was nice and warm and completely the opposite of this barren snowy wood.
Slade had actually listened, with genuine interest. He'd nodded along at all the right parts and made agreeing or inquisitive noises. He'd asked about all the technicalities like he was really interested in how things worked. Like he wanted to know all about Dick's life before Robin. Dick hadn't been able to suppress the leap of pleasure it had given him to finally be able to talk and talk without restraint. Slade didn't usually like his chatter, but sometimes he was in a good mood.
The little living room was clean. Sparse, like it always was. The table, four chairs, a stiff sofa that had somehow survived well over a dozen Canadian winters, given the scant hints Slade had rarely mentioned about when his sons had died and the dates on some of the cans in the cabinets. Dick had swept up last night. This night? Was it past midnight yet? There were no clocks here, so Dick had mostly been telling time by when the sun rose and set. But it was hard to tell at night. Slade had a watch, but Dick didn't. He'd said that he would start teaching Dick how to tell time by the stars once it got warmer and Dick could spend hours outside at night navigating.
By then, Slade would probably have trusted Dick to navigate his way through the forest back to the cabin without even trying to run away. That was what Dick had been afraid of.
Dick entered the kitchen. There was a half-empty bucket of water next to the sink, with a thin film of ice crusted over it. That was funny. Dick didn't feel very cold.
Dick put the stopper in the sink. He gently tapped the ice with his hand until it cracked, water leaking out and dousing his hand. He gave it one last push and the whole crust broke, pieces of jagged ice floating through the water and bumping against his hand.
That hand was mostly clean now, so Dick went to one of the cupboards and took out his mug with his wet hand, the one Slade sometimes made him herbal tea in. Once, just once, he'd made him hot cocoa. It had been Dick's birthday, or so Slade had said; Dick had lost track of the days by then. The cocoa had tasted so similar to Alfred's that tears had come to Dick's eyes.
He dipped the mug into the bucket and filled it up. There were a few small pieces of ice floating in it. He held his other hand over the sink and poured the water over it, rubbing his fingers together to help clean them. He did it again. Usually he shivered and hissed through his teeth when washing his hands or his hair because of how cold the water was; they only heated up water for cooking or bathing, and it was too much work to warm some just for handwashing. Now, Dick barely felt it, even though there was still ice in it.
His hands were clean now. Dick put the mug back on its shelf in the cupboard, leaving the cupboard door open. The air would dry it. He wiped his hands on his pants, wincing at the movement.
Only then did he realize that he could have simply submersed both of his hands in the bucket to wash them instead of the whole rigmarole with the mug and the sink. Stupid of him. Slade would have chided him for not thinking of the simpler solution. Don't waste your time with grandiose plans when the simplest way will work just as well, he'd said a few times.
Dick hobbled back down the hall and checked on the master bedroom.
When he came back to the kitchen he tried to decide what to do next. He could make a fire for the stove again, but he still wasn't cold, and he wasn't planning on cooking anything either.
He should wash his clothes, or at least change out of them. The ones he was wearing were filthy. He was wearing his pajamas, the thick woollen ones that Slade had bought him in the last store they'd stopped at before making the rest of the journey out here, perfect for keeping warm during an icy cold winter. He should wash them.
Dick peered into the sink. He'd never unplugged it, so the water was all still in there. Two mugs' worth had outweighed what had been on his hands, so the water in the sink just looked mostly pink. Dick reached for the bar of soap that sat on the shelf next to the sink.
Right. He should take his clothes off before washing them. That was how it worked.
Dick went to his room.
Everything was just as he'd left it. Neat and tidy, everything in its place. Here wasn't where he had to clean. Slade liked everything to be clean and orderly, everything put in its place with military-like precision. Which made sense, because he'd been in the army once. Dick went to the closet to look for clothes.
He had plenty of clothes here, regular outfits of shirts and pants made of thick durable material suitable for hard work in the Canadian winter. Some were sewn or patched up, from the times Dick hadn't dodged fast enough when Slade was training him with knives or swords. Dick had managed to clean those perfectly well. He could do this too.
There was also a little Deathstroke uniform, complete with a full face mask, although Slade only made him wear it whenever he was going out on missions, and they hadn't gone on any since coming here.
Dick turned away from the closet and opened the bottom dresser drawer. There was another pair of pajamas inside. He had two of them. Slade had made sure he'd gotten the right size and everything. Maybe he should put that on. It was still the middle of the night.
No, that was silly. Dick wouldn't be sleeping anymore. Not tonight, and it felt like maybe never again.
Dick went back to the closet and chose a blue shirt and grey pants. None of the clothes he had here were in any shades of red, yellow, or green, not even the socks.
He shrugged off the pajama shirt, wincing at every movement. Slade didn't like it when he showed pain after the fact, but Slade couldn't see him now, so.
He looked down at his chest. Once, he would have been horrified at the colorful assortment of bruises blooming everywhere, ranging from palest purple to mottled green and fading red and everything in between. It would have meant spending a day or two in bed, calling in sick to school and trying to move as little as possible, Alfred doting on him and Bruce lecturing him about being more careful one minute and awkwardly asking if he was comfortable the next.
Now, though. Now Dick was used to it. Even though he was getting hit the equivalent of a bad night on patrol every day, new bruises on top of old ones on top of older ones. Slade said that he wouldn't make a good apprentice at all if he couldn't take a couple of hits. There was already a new one forming, worse than the others, a giant one all down his side from where Slade had thrown him into the wall before. Dick gently pressed it and winced. It felt like some ribs might be cracked. That explained why it hurt if he breathed too deeply. He should probably get bandages or something, but there weren't any.
It wasn't that Slade purposely didn't let him treat his wounds to make him suffer. Slade said himself that he needed Dick to be in good health; a sick or hurt apprentice was of no use to him. But Slade healed almost instantly from almost any injury (Dick had never quite dared to ask him why his eye hadn't grown back) and never needed any kind of medicine or first aid or even so much as a Band-Aid, so he didn't always remember to buy some for Dick whenever he hiked the almost four miles to the road and drove the ten more miles to the nearest store to buy supplies. And he got in a bad mood if Dick reminded him, so Dick usually had to make do with whatever he had.
The scrapes and gash from when he'd been thrown into the corner of the dresser still stung. There were more scrapes all down his side. Dried blood. His nose and cheek still hurt, but he didn't think anything was bleeding, at least not anymore. There was no blood in his mouth, anyway. It felt like he might've broken something, but it didn't seem very important at the moment. His leg and foot still hurt, but it wasn't that bad. He'd had worse.
He put the pajama shirt on the floor so he could put the new shirt on, then did the same with his pants. It took a lot longer than usual, because everything hurt more than usual. He had to remind himself a couple of times that Slade wasn't waiting outside impatient for him to be ready for training or chores, or timing him to see what the fastest time he could be ready in was. Slade said that taking too long to wake up or get dressed could mean death out in the field. He'd told stories of nights spent camping out in forests and jungles when stalking a target, his own life sometimes saved by mere seconds. Dick had said that it was easy to be ready in seconds when you had superfast reflexes and enhanced strength. Slade had hit him for being disrespectful.
Dick spotted his shoes on the floor next to the bed, where they always were. He hadn't put them on before, knowing he'd have a better chance with shoes but a greater chance of being detected, because no matter how silently Dick could move in bare feet and shoes and even boots it was never good enough. He suddenly realized that his feet ached. Maybe the floor was cold.
Dick put his shoes on, wincing at the movement of his fingers as he pulled them onto his feet. Dick had one pair of shoes and one pair of snow boots, and Slade took them both with him whenever he made a trip to the store to stock up, even though Dick hadn't tried to escape in months and had promised he wouldn't do it again. Slade didn't bother to tie Dick to anything when he left, or even lock the door. Dick had free run of the house except for Slade's room and the weapons safe. It was nearly February and the snow was nearly a foot deep. With no boots or even shoes, Dick couldn't go anywhere. Even if he tried, his footprints would lead Slade right to him.
Once the weather warmed and the snow melted, that wouldn't be a problem. Dick could go outside in nothing but socks and not worry about his feet freezing off. But Slade had been certain that by then - two more months from now at least - Dick wouldn't even want to try to get away. Dick remembered thinking on the drive up here that this might be the last time he was himself, Dick Grayson, and not whatever Slade wanted to turn him into. That once he let Slade get him to the hunting cabin, the same one he'd used to take his sons to, and Dick didn't like to think about what it meant that Slade was taking him here too, it would be over. He would be alone with Slade, just each other's company for months and months, miles away from any people who might ask questions about the bruises that dotted him or why Slade was teaching him how to use so many weapons. That the isolation would wear away at him and slowly break him down, and Slade would build something new out of what he used to be. That the Dick Grayson who would leave would not be the same Dick who had entered.
That was what had led to his last escape attempt. It. Hadn't gone well. He still didn't like to think about it. Slade had been angry for weeks, or at least what Dick guessed were weeks; he'd lost track of the date pretty quickly. He wondered if that had been intentional. Dick's arm still hurt sometimes, if it was twisted the wrong way or he was carrying something heavy, but he knew better than to show any signs of it.
He picked his pajamas up off the floor. Now there were stains on the floorboards too. He'd have to scrub them later.
He left his room and checked on the master bedroom. Then he went back to the kitchen. He dumped the pajamas straight into the sink. They were going to get wet anyway.
He poured a little more water into the sink to wet the clothes completely, lifting the bucket with both hands and watching the little chinks of ice fall along with the thin stream of water. Then he picked up the bar of soap in one hand and fabric in the other and began to scrub.
He'd done this before, because it wasn't like Slade had a washing machine up here. Before that, the last time he'd washed clothes in the kitchen sink had been with the circus. Years ago. They had had washing machines, but sometimes you noticed a stain in your uniform twenty minutes before your performance started and had to get it out quickly, so you scrubbed it with a soap bar in the bathroom sink and wrung it out as best you could and hoped nobody noticed the damp spot. His mother had shown him how, bending over the sink, himself standing on his tiptoes to see - he must have been very small - her low voice murmuring to him. He couldn't remember what she had said. Probably just directions for how best to get a stain out, but suddenly it seemed vitally important to remember the exact words she had said.
The shirt was almost clean now. The water was red-brown and his hands were freezing.
Dick draped the shirt over the edge of the sink so it could drip and dry. The water would puddle and freeze on the floor. In the morning they would have the stove on again, and the room would warm, and the ice would melt and the water would drip away somewhere, leaving dark wet trails on the wooden floor, almost like tear tracks.
Dick dried his hands on the towel carefully. His hands were red and raw. They would get painfully chapped, if he kept on like this. He should put on gloves or something. He went to check on the master bedroom.
When he came back he started scrubbing the stains out of the pants. They weren't as dirty, so he hadn't had to add any water like he had before. This meant that the water was a bit warmer now, because his hands had moved about in it so much. It made it easier to wash it, even as he withdrew his hands from the lathered water and they dripped red.
Of course they did. All the water in the sink was red now. His poor pajamas were probably ruined, no matter what he did. Washing clothes in the sink was a lot easier when you had actual running water to clean them with. He draped the pajama pants over the other edge of the sink and went to dry his hands on the towel again. It was stained now, but he didn't have the willpower to clean that too. Instead, he took the towel, dipped it in the bucket, wrung it out, and brought it to his room.
The stains on the floor from his pajamas weren't nearly as bad as he'd feared, only a few smears. He'd had to clean much worse before from all the times he'd bled onto the floor. This was simple. A few rubs with the towel and it was clean. He checked on the master bedroom and put the towel in the sink. Maybe he would clean it later.
Spending all that time with his hands in the water had made him realize how cold he was all of a sudden. He went to put on his coat, wincing again as he zipped it up. At least he felt warmer. He opened the door.
Now he was cold again, although he knew from long experience that it would take a while for the cold to really sink into him. He picked up the axe from where it leaned next to the door and went over to where they stacked the firewood, stumbling through the snow. He should have put on his boots.
At least he didn't have to go into the woods and chop up dead trees for new firewood. He had to do that every so often, just like he was always the one who had to bring it back to the cabin, and who chopped it up into kindling to bring inside. Dick was the one who shoveled the snow and brought buckets of it inside and hauled buckets of dirty water outside and who went out to check Slade's traps every other day. And that was besides for all the training, the training that was harder than anything he'd ever done with Bruce. Dick fell into bed at the end of each day almost too exhausted to think. Which, he supposed, was the point.
Most days passed in a sort of grey fog of work and training and more work and more training. It dulled his senses, making him not feel as much, letting him absorb blows from Slade while barely blinking. It clouded his mind, letting him focus only on the task at hand, at what he was doing now, at following Slade's orders and not thinking about the future. The fog had lifted, briefly, earlier tonight.
Dick looked up. The sky was still dark. The sun wouldn't rise for a few more hours yet. At least it would be slightly warmer than. The sky was almost cloudless, with bright stars twinkling down and the light of the half moon illuminating the shadowy trees. There was no sound but the crunch of snow beneath his feet and the thud of the axe into the wood.
It was pretty out here.
He had enough wood. He walked back the way he had come and leaned the axe against the wall of the house. Then he went back and scooped up the chopped wood. His hands felt numb again.
Inside, he stomped the snow off his shoes - he really should've worn his boots, Slade would be upset if he ruined a pair of perfectly good shoes - and fed most of the wood into the oven, leaving a couple of pieces on the side for later. The wood was wet from the snow, and the fire inside the stove was almost nothing, down to a couple of barely smoldering coals and nothing else. Dick spent some time stirring it up with the fire poker until he was sure the fire was strong enough to catch. It would smoke, but it would catch. It was his job in the morning to restart the fire too, unless Slade was in one of his domestic moods and decided to start it himself to boil water for tea or coffee. This was just Dick starting it several hours earlier than usual.
The snow on the floor would melt and evaporate eventually. That wasn't his problem.
Dick went to check on the master bedroom.
It was still dark outside but he wasn't tired. He could cook something, maybe, but he wasn't hungry either. He could practice, maybe, with one of the staffs or swords or martial arts, but Dick had no one to spar with. Slade would be disappointed if Dick didn't keep up his training every spare second he had.
Slade had guns, too. He'd taught Dick how to use them along with everything else. There were targets outside in the woods and everything. Slade had never worried that Dick might turn one of the weapons again him. Why would he? Even Robin couldn't hope to defeat Deathstroke the Terminator. That was how he'd gotten stuck with Slade in the first place. He'd thought he could fight him, and then it turned out Slade had planned to capture him all along.
He should warm up his hands. Slade always got upset if he let his hands or feet get too cold and numb to feel any sensation in them. That was one of the reasons he had Dick do so much work, he said. To keep the blood moving. As long as Dick was moving around, as long as they had a fire, as long as he had his coat and boots, Dick couldn't freeze. To let his hands lose sensation because he'd forgotten his gloves and had let the fire burn itself almost out was just carelessness.
Dick rubbed his hands until they started to tingle, and then shoved them in his pockets and stood next to the stove, enjoying the reprieve as the air grew warmer. His hands hurt as blood rushed through them, but it was a good kind of hurt.
He looked out the window. The sky was beginning to lighten. Dick couldn't see the horizon, surrounded by trees as the cabin was, but the eastern edge of the sky had begun to lighten to dark blue, the stars there fading.
He went to check on the master bedroom.
He should tidy up. He stacked the remaining pieces of firewood in a neat little pile in the corner. He took another towel and dried the melted snow on the floor. He swept up any bits of wood shavings or dead grass he might have brought inside with him. He should do something about the horrible red water in the sink, but he didn't want to do anything there until the pajamas were dry and he could move them away.
The little kitchen had been mostly clean already. The really big job, the room with the biggest mess, the wreckage to clean up, wasn't this one. But Dick couldn't do it yet.
He looked out the window again and winced; the snow was sparkling white, reflecting the sun, as it always did. It hurt to look at.
He opened the door to get a better look.
The sun was fully up now. Dick had been awake for almost the entire night. The sky was a bright, clear blue, with only a few wisps of cloud. The snow was white everywhere, making the world look clean and untouched. The trees, mostly pine trees, were green and brown and white.
Dick took a deep breath of the cold clean air. Then he went to check on the master bedroom.
He went to his room. It was time to make a decision.
It had been hours now. Long enough for the night to be over and the sun to rise. Nothing had happened. Maybe it was true. Maybe he had done it. Maybe he was never coming back.
Dick couldn't stay here forever. He'd had a life, before. This was Slade's cabin, anyway. Living here all by himself would just be silly, no matter that there was enough canned and dried food here for months and Slade had taught him how to hunt and nobody would ever discover him and after so long somehow the thought of encountering someone from the outside world made something inside Dick quail.
No. He didn't want to be afraid anymore.
But where could he go? He didn't know where the road was. He'd only walked here from it once, and it had been the middle of the night.
There was no phone here. No electronics of any kind - no TV, no computer, not even a radio. Well, Slade had a phone, but Dick wasn't going to use it. Compared to the lack of things like plumbing and running water, Dick hadn't even noted the lack of other types of technology. This had been on purpose, no doubt. Spending months here completely off the grid, with no devices and no electronics and nothing that could be used to track them. Nothing that could ever be used to find their location, so that nobody would ever, ever find Dick. That, and the benefits of keeping Dick here for a long time with no other influences and no distractions, so that Slade was the only person he saw and the only source for any information at all.
So. He couldn't go anywhere and he had no way to contact anyone. That left him with only one option.
But could he do it?
It felt silly to wonder. He'd done it plenty of times. But then had been before. Before Slade had made him his apprentice.
He'd been here for months. He'd worked with Slade before that. He'd helped him. He'd hurt people and stolen things, all to help a villain. Slade's end goal had been to finally coerce Dick into killing, because he'd seen something in Dick that was just like him. And he had been right. Dick was hardly any better than Slade.
Bruce would be so angry at him if he knew what Dick had done. No, worse than angry. Disappointed. And he would know, if Dick did what he was thinking of. Everyone would know. Dick wouldn't be a hero anymore.
But he hadn't been a hero for months, anyway. Robin was gone. Robin might never fly again. After so long of telling Slade that the mercenary would fail, that Dick wouldn't be like him, well, Dick had been wrong. What difference did it make if everyone knew? He deserved their scorn now.
"Superman," he whispered. Once, he had used the title uncle for the Man of Steel. But that had been months and a lifetime ago, and Dick didn't deserve to call him that anymore. "It's me. It's Dick. Dick Grayson. Robin-"
He almost choked on the word. He hadn't dared say it in a long time. Slade hadn't wanted him to be Robin anymore. And he wasn't. He wouldn't be able to be Robin anymore.
It was stupid, anyway, to say his name when Superman could recognize his voice. Of course Clark would know who he was. Still, Dick couldn't help reciting his full name, almost by rote. "Richard Grayson. Richard John Grayson. Richard Jean Grayson," he pronounced carefully. He felt like he was four years old again, being drilled by his parents on what to say if he got lost - Richard John Grayson, my parents are John and Mary Grayson, of Haly's Circus, telephone them at-
"I'm here," he said. "Um. In the cabin. It's in Canada."
Dick knew where the cabin was, more or less. Slade had let him look at the map, had even asked him directions once or twice. Maybe he'd wanted to taunt Dick with his own powerlessness, how it didn't even matter if Dick knew exactly where they were going and gave directions to his own captivity, because he would never be able to leave. Maybe he'd wanted to drill into Dick exactly how isolated they would be from anyone else, so it was pointless to even try.
Dick didn't know exactly where the cabin was, though. After his escape attempt Slade had locked him in the trunk for the rest of the way, squashed in among all the canned and dried food and winter gear. It hadn't been very pleasant, and Slade had only let him out once they'd reached as far as they could go by road and it was time to walk the remaining few miles. He hadn't been using the map then. So Dick didn't know the exact location. Still, Clark could follow him by sound, right?
"If you could come get me," he finished awkwardly. What was he supposed to say? If it's not too much trouble? I need to be rescued? Come help me? It wasn't like he was in danger. He wasn't going to die.
Slade didn't want him dead.
What had he done? Slade was going to kill him.
No, even worse. Slade was going to kill everyone he cared about.
He'd disobeyed Slade. He'd called out for Superman to rescue him. Slade was a metahuman, he might stand a chance against Superman, and even if he didn't he'd get out of prison eventually, the villains always did. And Slade had made it graphically clear exactly what would happen if Dick dared shout for Superman.
Dick curled up on his bed, hugging his knees to his chest, shuddering. He felt cold again. He was hyperventilating, he realized abstractly, and he felt dizzy. He closed his eyes, but that didn't stop him from seeing nightmarish images behind his eyelids. The common room of Titans Tower with the walls painted in blood. Donna crumpled and lifeless on the floor, Kori writhing on the ground screaming, Victor's cyborg parts strewn carelessly on the floor like so much trash, Wally's head exploding in a red mist of gray matter and white bone shards, Garth desperate for water twitching on the ground as he choked on air, Gar's head on the wall like a trophy. Slade would do all that and worse. They would die, they would all die, and it would all be Dick's fault.
The wall exploded.
Dick curled up even tighter at the deafening noise, clenching his eyes shut as rubble clattered to the ground. It was only then that he realized that it wasn't Slade bursting in to catch him after all.
Half the wall was gone. It was freezing all of a sudden, because now the room was open to the air. Snow was drifting down to the floor from the roof, along with some wood shards. Snow landed on the bed, the nighttable, the dresser. Dick had time for a single, hysterical thought that Slade would be furious when he saw what had happened to the wall before he registered that Superman was there.
Clark was floating in midair, staring down at Dick like he couldn't believe his eyes. "Dick," he said with wonder. "We'd nearly given up hope."
Which meant that there had been hope in the first place, which meant that people had been looking for him, which meant that Slade was wrong and somebody had been trying to find him after all.
Clark dropped to the ground right in front of Dick's bed. "Are you all right?" he asked, looking around the room and then at Dick with terrifying gentleness. He placed a hand on Dick's shoulder.
Dick couldn't help himself. He flinched.
Clark instantly withdrew his hand. "You're hurt," he said.
"S'okay," said Dick. He was hurt, but he was used to it. It didn't hurt that much. "I'm sorry." It had just been so long since anyone who wasn't Slade had touched him, and Slade had only touched him during training or to hit him.
"You're injured," Clark said. Of course he knew that - he could probably see every last injury, the healed bones and the cracked ribs, the knife slash on his arm and the scrapes on his side. "Have you been here all this time?"
"Last few months," said Dick. "We moved around a lot, at first." He was suddenly afraid to ask how long it had actually been.
"I can take you to the Batcave," Clark said. "Or would you prefer the Watchtower?"
"The Watchtower?" Dick blinked at him. He didn't know why it was so hard to think. It had just been so long since he'd talked to anyone who wasn't Slade, and he worried he was forgetting how. And it had been just as long since he'd had a choice in anything he did.
"You need medical treatment, Dick," said Clark.
"Oh," said Dick. Right. "I'm sorry."
"It isn't your fault, Dick."
"Not that." Dick shook his head. "I'm not Robin anymore. I can't go to the Watchtower." Maybe not even the Batcave anymore.
"Of course you can still go," Clark said. "Being kidnapped doesn't negate your Watchtower access. And even if it did, civilians have received treatment in the Watchtower before during emergencies. Dick, you're hurt and miles from the nearest hospital."
Clark didn't understand. "I wasn't just kidnapped," Dick said, even though every sense he has is shouting at him not to argue with Clark, despite the fact that logically he knows Clark would never be angry at him for arguing. "I helped him. I - did bad things."
"It wasn't your fault," Clark said.
"It is," Dick said. "I - Bruce will be mad at me." His voice was thin and plaintive, trailing off like a timid child's.
Clark knelt in front of Dick. He picked up his hands like he wanted to touch Dick again, but didn't. Dick wasn't sure if he wanted Clark to or not. "Bruce would never be mad at you, Dick," he promised solemnly, and Dick wished he could believe it. "Not for this."
Clark hadn't asked what Dick thought Bruce would be mad at him for.
Clark hadn't asked Dick who he had helped.
Clark hadn't asked Dick who had taken him in the first place.
Clark could see through walls. He had scanned every one of Dick's injuries in an instant. Of course he had looked at the rest of the house, to see if there was any threat there.
And. And that meant. Clark had seen.
"You saw," Dick whispered.
Clark was looking at him with terrible understanding. "It's all right, Dick," he said. "It wasn't your fault."
"It is," Dick said. "I killed him."
Once he said the words they were out, floating in space, final, irrevocable. He wondered if Clark's X-ray vision could see inside people. Not just their bones and muscles, but their souls. Who they were. What they had done.
Clark knew what Dick had done, now. Clark had no doubt looked through the whole house. Clark would have seen the pajamas in the kitchen, and the fire in the stove, and the remnants of the woodpile in the front of the cabin. He would have seen the hallway and the sofa and the knives and guns Slade had everywhere. And he would have seen what was inside the master bedroom.
Dick had hardly seen it, not until tonight. Slade didn't like it when Dick trespassed into his room. But Dick knew what the room looked like now, and so did Clark.
He knew what Clark had seen.
Slade's bedroom, with the heavy curtains over the window and the antique knife collection on the desk and the framed photographs on the wall, one of his dead sons and the other of the woman who had loved Slade Wilson enough to marry him and hated him enough to shoot him in the head. The broken mug on the desk and the blood on the dresser and the empty gun on the floor and Slade slumped half out of the bed, half-healed bullet wounds covered in dried blood and the knife sticking out of his side and the whole back half of his head blown off and shattered, splattering the headboard in red and grey.
He hadn't been wearing his eye patch. Somehow, that detail stuck with Dick. Slade took off his eye patch when he went to sleep, and he didn't seem quite fully himself without it. Like he was still in his pajamas. If Dick was going to kill a man in his sleep, at least give him the decency of letting him put his eye patch on first. But what part of killing a man in his sleep was decent in the first place?
"It was self-defense," Clark said. "It wasn't your fault." How many times was he going to say that?
"It wasn't self-defense," Dick said. "He wasn't going to kill me. He never wanted to kill me. He wanted me to be his apprentice. He said that when he was done with me I would kill Bruce myself for him, and I would be happy about it." He was shaking, he realized absently. His cheeks were wet. When had that happened? Dick hadn't dared let himself cry in months.
"Dick," Clark said. "He kidnapped you. He hurt you. He was holding you captive for months. You did what you had to do in order to escape."
"He was happy," Dick said. "At the end. When he woke up."
Slade hadn't been sleeping the whole time. A man like Slade hadn't survived this long for nothing.
Dick had known it was be difficult to kill Slade. His enhanced strength gave him durability, his enhanced senses the ability to detect the slightest noise. And his healing the ability to heal nearly instantly from almost any injury.
Dick had been training with Slade for months. He knew how long it took wounds to heal. Mere seconds, most of them, but seconds could be enough.
No matter how much he seemed that way to Dick, Slade wasn't invulnerable. His eye had never grown back, after all.
Dick just needed to hurt Slade badly enough that his body couldn't finish healing before those injuries killed him.
He'd crept inside Slade's room on padded feet, and pointed the gun at him and fired with hands that did not shake. Slade had woken up and struck him with the knife he apparently kept under his pillow, because of course he did, and then when Dick hit him in the head with the gun he'd thrown him into the dresser. Dick had grabbed another knife off the top of it and stabbed Slade with it. Slade had kicked him into the wall. Dick had pointed the gun at him again and fired and fired until there were no more bullets.
It hadn't even taken a full minute.
Slade had been angry, when he'd first woken up, but when he realized he was dying, Dick had seen him smiling.
"He was happy," Dick told Clark again, "because he succeeded. He did what he wanted to do all this time. He turned me into a murderer."
Slade had even tried to laugh, a rusty wet chuckle. His lips had tugged at the corners, a garish bloody smile.
"He spent all this time training me to kill people and I finally did it. He died knowing that he won. He told me-"
Slade had rasped, Good work, kid.
Then his head had lolled and the harsh breathing had stopped and there'd been no sound in the room at all. It had taken Dick a minute to realize he hadn't been either, conscious effort to refill his lungs.
He'd checked on Slade what must have been every hour, unable to let himself believe he'd actually succeeded. He'd had to make sure Slade wasn't slowly healing. That his body wasn't knitting itself back together and he would come out roaring for vengeance. Dick had had to be certain.
"Dick," Clark said quietly. "You're not a murderer."
That wasn't true.
Clark took off his cape. He held it out to Dick. Dick stared blankly at it.
"You're shivering," Clark said. Oh. Dick supposed the room was cold, because it didn't have a wall anymore. He hadn't noticed.
"Can I-?" Clark moved to the side, holding the cape right next to Dick. Dick leaned forward, and Clark wrapped it around him.
It felt nice. He did feel a bit warmer like this. But more than that, the cape's weight felt familiar. It reminded him of when he was younger and newly Robin, and would duck under Batman's cape at the first sign of things getting too dangerous.
Dick couldn't stop a sob ripping its way out of his throat.
"Oh, Dick," said Clark, his voice kind and gentle. This time Dick didn't stop himself from leaning forward into Clark's arms. Clark wrapped his arms around him as Dick sobbed.
He felt warm and safe here, wrapped in Superman's embrace, listening to his heartbeat inside his chest. He could almost pretend there was no cabin, no forest, no Slade alive or dead. So Dick closed his eyes and let himself cry out months of loneliness and fear and pain, and the whole time Clark gently rubbed his back and murmured in soothing Kryptonian, occasionally interspersed with "it's okay, it's okay now."
It wasn't okay. But maybe it could be, if Superman said so.
"Come on, Dick," Clark said quietly when Dick had finished, wiping his eyes with Superman's cape and having gotten tears and snot all over Superman's shirt. Clark didn't seem to notice or mind at all. He picked Dick up, still bundled up in the cape. "Let's get you home."