Chapter Text
Renegade wakes up with Slade’s cock buried to the root inside him. The sheets are plastered between him and his Master like a second skin and the first thing he smells is sweat so heavy he can taste it. A little cool air comes in from the opening between the blanket and the mattress, so he tilts his head to breathe. In the process, Ren’s chin nestles itself just above Slade’s collarbone, his forehead resting against a spiky goatee.
He can feel the soft inhale and exhale of Slade’s breath against him, the rise and fall of his chest pressed against Robin’s body. His heartbeat pounds, slow and steady, still fast asleep. Ren tries to pull himself up and to the side, but he feels heavy fingers clamp down on his hip hard enough to start to hurt. He freezes.
Even asleep, he’s possessive. There’s no point to trying to get out of his grip, so Ren settles back against him. He’s used to Slade’s cock inside him. He tries to shift his legs so that the wet sheets aren’t so uncomfortable, feeling them peel away from his ankles and thighs. Slade is even sweatier than he is. It must have been a nightmare—Robin has been woken up in the middle of those, Slade panting and furious, Ren faced with an empty hole and a far-off eye and fingers bruising his upper arms.
There’s a little light seeping in through the windows, but he’s beginning to feel tired again. Slade’s hand loosens on his hip, the weight of his arm still thrown over him. It seems strange and not right that anything could trouble his Master. The idea sends discomfort through Ren, so he pushes it out of his mind.
He relaxes, lets himself feel Slade against him and inside him. Moving is more trouble than it’s worth, anyways. He belongs next to his Master. He should be happy there.
Ren lets out a loud noise of protest as he’s dragged by the collar and pushed out of the bed. He barely gets his legs under him as he lands on the carpet, swaying dangerously as the haze of sleep starts to drift out of his consciousness. Slade’s fingers catch the loop in his collar and steady him by his neck.
“Get dressed, kid. We’re going hunting.”
Ren hears the satisfaction in his tone. He feels nerves start to shiver in his gut at the reminder of their mission.
Slade had driven for almost forty hours nonstop over the past two days. They’re here for a reason—they’d scoped out the place last night. Slade seems to have endless energy sometimes, and Ren is glad he’d been able to sleep in the car. He’s ready to work.
He goes to one of the duffel bags and retrieves his gear. Slade’s sword comes out of it, carefully wrapped in cloth after the last time Ren cleaned it. Renegade finds his knives and puts them to the side as he digs for his uniform. The air is cool over his naked body, Ren shivering. One hand absently rubs dried semen off from between his thighs.
The black undersuit goes on first—deceptively thin, its job is to stop him from being cut. It won’t stop bruises, though, as he’s learned the hard way. It hugs his body like spandex. Next are the pants, heavier but still flexible, and the shirt with his Master’s colors that hooks into his collar. Gauntlets are attached, along with a belt and heavy, treaded boots.
Last is the mask, pressing it against his face and feeling it stick, blinking for a few seconds to get used to it.
In the bathroom, Slade is stepping out of the shower. He towels himself off, running a comb through shoulder-length hair. Ren ducks under his arms to find the toothbrush. It feels dirty not to take a shower, especially after being so thoroughly used last night. “Can I shower?”
“You take too long,” Slade says. As if Ren doesn’t shower in less than five minutes—when he’s alone.
Ren squints at himself in the mirror. Going out might darken his skin from the slight tan he looks now, but it won’t do anything for the white streak in his hair. Ren spits in the sink and takes the comb his Master hands him, dragging it through the few knots in his hair.
Ren walks back into the suite, reverently slipping his knives into their sheathes. He retrieves his extensive equipment and his tech. He goes through his checks on his equipment—checks that had been done last night, but must be done again today.
Then he sits on the bed and watches Slade get dressed.
Slade pays no attention to him as he pulls the undersuit on in smooth, fluid movements. Thighs and then groin disappearing into the darkness, followed by the white hair trailing up his stomach and across his chest. Then he pulls on his black and orange suit. It redirects kinetic energy, something much higher tech than the simple armor Renegade wears. A large broadsword goes over Deathstroke’s shoulder, gloves on his hands, and a belt full of armaments on his hips. It takes a solid two minutes for him to pack all his sidearms onto him. Whatever they’re taking on, it’s enough that he wants everything at his disposal.
When Slade finally turns to him, he offers him the butt of a small sidepiece. It feels strange and heavy in Renegade’s hands. He hasn’t gotten used to guns, yet. He doesn’t know if he ever will, and the thought seems somehow traitorous. It goes into the holster on his thigh made for it, off balance on him. He will . . . be expected to use it, he knows. He has before.
Hunting animals isn’t so different from hunting humans, he tells himself. They both bleed and die. Ren’s killed them both, seen them killed in front of him.
The gun is heavy.
“A gun is an effective weapon. You know how to use it. Get used to carrying it.”
Renegade looks down at the ground. “Yes, Master.”
Leather-gloved fingers tilt his head up. Ren looks into Slade’s eye, the lined face familiar and so, so far above him. “Don’t disappoint me.”
There is promise in those words, dark and dangerous. Renegade shivers under the hard gaze and under his Master’s hand. “I won’t, Master. I promise.”
Slade nods. Then he’s sweeping off to the minifridge, pulling out a six-pack of Gatorade and beckoning his apprentice over. Ren jumps at the opportunity, grabbing one and swallowing it down with vigor. These things disappear into Slade between blinks of an eye, meaning if Ren wants any he has to take advantage.
Granola bars are shoved into his hands. They’ll eat again after the mission—enhanced stamina and reflexes means enhanced metabolism. Yesterday they’d sat down at a local restaurant and eaten three courses, too many calories to even count. But they’ll be hungry again in hours’ time. Then, if he’s good, he’ll get to eat his fill.
Slade pulls his mask over his head. Ren’s heart already pounds in anticipation.
The early morning fall air bites into Renegade’s face as he climbs out of a window—tilting back into the air three stories above the ground before he fires a grappling hook built into his gauntlet and jerks forward.
He flies.
Ren rejoices in the feeling.
Flying is something he’ll never lose.
It reminds him of . . . Before. Before is now a capital-letter word in his thoughts, a stand-in for something he hasn’t forgotten—yet something he doesn’t want to remember, either. Things that flit around the edges of his mind and scream in pain like broken limbs when brushed against. If he’s been trained into anything, it’s his base instinct to shrink from pain and embrace that which does not hurt, so he avoids it as gracefully as he avoids the window boxes the next floor up.
Deathstroke arrives seconds after Ren lands on the roof, crouching and staring at the dark sky as the first bits of sunlight gesture at the horizon. The city makes him feel small, skyscrapers towering above him and the tops of buildings going on forever in every direction.
Slade leaps to the next building. Ren has to move double time with his much shorter legs, pushing himself so he’s not left behind. Be useful, he reminds himself as the cool air rushes by. The city isn’t familiar enough to be comforting, but flying is enough to make his blood run hotter. He has to fight the urge to do a flip or a corkscrew as he propels himself off of the next building, landing heavily on the concrete and rushing forward.
Something grabs him so hard he chokes. The air left in his lungs is let out in a humiliating wheeze as he’s slammed against the back of a building. His Master looms over him, cutting any questions Ren might have off before they can begin. “Listen.”
Renegade does. The sounds of the city ring in his ears, no longer faded into a whirr behind him. There’s one that’s louder than all the others: the telltale whirr of a helicopter.
“Copter?” he rasps. He rubs his throat under his collar, feeling it start to ache slightly. Not as much as when his Master decides he’s lost the right to breathe.
“Yes,” Slade murmurs. “Stay aware of where you are.” He eyes him critically. “Enhanced senses aren’t useful if you don’t use them.”
“Sorry, Master,” Renegade murmurs.
“Don’t just apologize,” Slade says. “Do better.” This time, he pauses to listen before moving out behind Slade. There’s not many people to see them so early in the morning, but it doesn’t mean that there’s nobody here. Cities never really sleep. They always at least dream.
The target’s building towers in their view, the tiny bit of sunlight reflecting off with a glare. Ren draws up the blueprints in his mind, glancing down and finding the window they plan to enter in. Target: Stephen Decker. Hired a private security company after receiving death threats.
There’s no verbal communication needed here—they know what to do.
It’s too tall to grapple to the top of and doesn’t have anything that looks like holds to climb on it, so they’re reduced to pulling equipment out of their belts and taking in the side of the building. Slade gets a running start and jumps the half-foot to jam himself against the building. He starts to scale the side of it like he was born half-spider, Ren following.
Ren counts the floors as he climbs next to Slade. It’s a penthouse, fifteen floors off of the ground, Ren able to look in and see the pristine carpet and large couches—a door leading off somewhere that he knows goes to a bathroom, and another one for a bedroom. He’d seen the blueprints and memorized them. Stephen Decker, 43, running for Senator.
Slade pauses, holding himself up with one hand and pulling something else out of his belt.
Slade presses a small charge against the glass. He presses a few buttons before swiftly moving back down. Ren only has a few seconds to get ready before the explosion rattles through him. He has to use his memory of the penthouse to launch himself up, grabbing at the sill. Ren knows he’s there by the glass digging into his palms and forearms, hauling himself up and being grateful for the weave in his gauntlets and gloves.
Decker is pointing a gun at them. Ren dives for cover, slipping his knives out of their sheathes and getting ready to look for an opening. Slade already has a bead on the target, facing him from one knee.
Ren sees moving shadows behind Decker seconds before the room bursts into motion. He doesn’t think before hurling himself over the sofa to slide at the legs of one of the heavily armored men. There’s too much body armor for a bullet to connect, but a knife severs his achilleas’ tendon with only a little resistance. The man goes down screaming.
The bullets make Ren’s head ring so loudly he can’t hear anything his Master says, but he doesn’t need to, not when Slade himself is shooting, blood spattering all over the pale carpet and turning it slick and crimson. Kill the target. Easy enough.
He points the grappling hook at one of them and it clamps onto his vest, sending Ren rushing forward on much lighter limbs and the man stumbling forward seconds before heavy steel-tipped boots collide with his face with a nasty crunch. He's right in the middle of their formation. Slade backs him up, using gunfire to break them up and push them off balance. He presses the muzzle of his pistol up against one’s gut, firing three rounds in before he goes down spitting blood up from his stomach.
Ren stabs through the arm of one man holding a gun. He’s forced to jerk it out of muscle and sinew as the man uses his other hand to draw a weapon. Next to him, he’s spattered by viscera as Slade shoots another man.
Another grappling hook slams against the side of the building, the line starting to move. Someone is coming.
The target must think they’re with Slade because he makes a desperate dash to the door—the one that leads to the elevator. Ren jumps for him, sending a throwing knife into the chest of the guard near him.
Decker spins and once again Ren is staring down the barrel of a gun. Ren throws a lamp at him, kicking down and ducking behind a coffee table. It’s bad cover.
“Shoot him!” Slade says. Slade should be shooting him but Ren can’t see Slade from where he’s hiding. He draws his gun, feeling wrong and too-heavy in his hands.
“How old are you, kid?” Decker asks. Ren hisses at him in wordless fury, holding his gun at the ready as he crouches behind cover. Kid sounds wrong when it comes out of any mouth but his Master’s.
It hurts. It’s another thing that hurts so he stops thinking it and goes back to staring down the man he is supposed to kill. There’s commotion from across the room, but Ren can’t pay attention. Can’t wrench his gaze away from the man pointing a gun at him.
Decker is tan, but only a little, as if he’d gotten exactly the right amount of sun and not a minute more. Some of his hair is tilted to the side, Ren realizing that it’s fake. The fear in his eyes is deep and dark and so familiar.
“Shoot him, Renegade!” Slade orders again.
Ren feels the gun, cold and heavy in his hand. The knives feel natural by now, but the gun is . . . strange. Killing is easy, when it’s all hand movements and hot blood. It hurts but it’s tolerable. He can do it.
The gun is—
Something. Something wrong. It burns in the back of his mind. His fingers don’t move how he wants them to, head tilted, staring into lighted eyes he needs to snuff out. It’s been a long time since he couldn’t kill for his Master. Shame overtakes him.
He still can. Just not with a gun.
Ren lurches forward, dropping the gun and grabbing at his knives. The blade moves forward, slicing into fabric and drawing blood—
He’s hit from the side and crashes into the wall. Ren feels his head bounce against plaster, cracking through it as pain jolts down his body. One of his knives slips from his fingers. An arrow lays on the floor.
Ren has his feet under him before he hits the ground, looking around wildly for the target. Decker is halfway out the door when Ren tackles him, trying to haul him back through the door with one hand and slip a knife through his ribs with the other.
Decker’s gun presses against Ren’s cheekbone. Ren barely jerks his head out of the way before it discharges next to his ear. The world dissolves into a high-pitched ringing. Ren hisses with pain, ducking the now-hot muzzle. He leans forward and digs the knife in. It sinks into the man’s stomach like quicksand, guts spasming around it as Decker opens his mouth in what’s probably a sound of pain.
The gun is pressed against his shoulder. The finger starts to move ever so slightly on the trigger by the time Ren rolls away. He needs to find a way to finish Decker off now. The target jerks forward, one hand pressed to the crimson spreading in his gut.
Ren brings the knife up, spearing through the arm. Decker screams again, but Ren might as well be deaf. He uses both hands to yank it out through muscle, finally bringing it down hard through the man's throat. Decker’s open mouth fills with blood, any noise he might have made muted forever.
Ren turns. Slade is advancing on a man in green. He wears the same kind of thin-weave armor they do, but more stylized. He holds a bow and arrow in his hands, the bowstring snapped clean in half. As Ren watches, he ducks behind a sofa to avoid Slade’s gunfire.
Ren quickly retrieves the knife he had dropped, now soaked with blood up to the hilt. It slips into his sheathe. Cleaning for later.
Slade keeps covering fire as he makes signals with one hand. Man, and then, down. Ren is ready to duck until he realizes it’s a question, in military hand signals.
“Yes, Master.”
Slade points to the window. They’re leaving.
The crash from the glass being broken a second time seems tinny and far-away to Ren’s ears, but the sight of the woman who jumps onto the floor in front of them speaks for itself. Her boots crack the floor, old-fashioned armor crawling up her legs into greaves. Wonder Woman stands a head and a half taller than Robin, as tall as Slade. The lasso at her waist glows softly with its own light.
She says something loudly, and Renegade can register the tone but not the words. Wonder Woman draws her sword, Slade drawing his own off of his back. Renegade isn’t sure what he should do—stay, and risk Slade being hurt, or risk getting in his Master’s way? He rushes forward.
Ren doesn’t get to them. Green Arrow comes out from behind the sofa, blocking his path. He’s bruised and battered, breathing hard. With his bowstring cut, all he has to use as a weapon is one of his arrows. Ren brings out his knives again, looking for a way around.
Green Arrow’s eyes flick back to the bloody man behind him and to the bloody knife in Ren’s hands, making the connection.
Who is it that he reminds Ren of?
(Speedy.)
They square off for a few precious seconds until they both realize that the other is more interested in getting past them. Renegade holds onto his knife and slides between his legs, hoping Green Arrow will go to try to help the dead Decker. It buys him a few precious seconds.
The fight he sees would have been too fast to follow before his Master had given him the serum. Now it’s just too fast to fully take in, the two warriors circling each other before moving in, the fight devolving into a flurry of quick blows and parried attacks. Renegade is sure Slade sees him as he rushes forward.
If Ren hadn’t hesitated, they would be gone already, the few precious seconds saved. Ren feels disappointment in himself burn. Focus.
(He will be punished as much as he deserves, later.)
Wonder Woman sees him, he’s sure of it. Slade tries to disengage, managing for only a few seconds, preparing the both of them to leave as their job is done. He moves swiftly for the exit, Renegade following—
Something burns around his ankle. He sprawls on the broken glass—thanks to his suit, it doesn’t pierce, but it makes the floor under his hands shifty. He whips his head around and sees the lasso of truth wrapped around his boot. How does it burn through his boots?
Slade turns on his heel. The sword hooks under the lasso, but it doesn’t cut. Ren leans forwards and tries to loosen the lasso. Before he can, Wonder Woman jerks it hard and he’s sent skidding through the broken glass. Shattered pieces slice his cheek, Ren hissing.
A heavy boot lands near his head as Slade runs at her, smashing the glass under it. Ren pulls himself to his feet, untangling the lasso as quickly as he can while still being careful.
Wonder Woman is talking to Slade. This close, he can see how Slade actually looks . . . beat up. The arm his ikon suit doesn’t cover is smeared with blood from his wounds, part of his mask is slipping off—Wonder Woman is a heavy hitter.
This is my fault.
Ren starts to run for the door, but Wonder Woman isn’t done with Slade. She pulls him up by the hair that’s visible through his mask. He’s breathing hard. She has blood streaking her shoulders and thighs, but the cuts don’t go nearly as deep as they do on him.
Renegade . . . doesn’t feel fear. His Master is the one constant in his life, the one thing he has been taught that will never not be there. It would be . . . unreal, to think that Slade could be hurt. But he does feel . . . worry?
He shivers a little with the weight of a new feeling. But he knows better than to indulge it, here and now. Emotion is a silly, fuzzy thing, half-there and half-not, and that makes it easy lock up.
Ren moves towards his Master until he notices something out of the corner of his vision. It’s nestled in the carpet. An explosive charge, like the ones Slade had used on the window.
Ren jerks his head up just in time to see Slade press a button on his belt—just in time to jump backwards as their floor shakes with the impact and smoke and shrapnel shoots up around them. Ren takes the distraction, running into the smoke. He can see shapes moving in it thanks to his enhanced vision and the mask shielding him from any burn, but there’s no way to tell them apart.
Ren moves towards the ledge. Behind him, Green Arrow has to be moving towards him. He’s boxed in. He needs to get out of here, running forward and—
A gleaming breastplate takes over his vision. Ren hisses, leaning back on his feet and pivoting, but strong fingers close on his wrist. He spins, twisting his wrist and slamming his forearm against her taut elbow. On anyone else, he would’ve snapped their arm. She only lets go. Is it because of his strength or her surprise? He yanks himself back into the smoke where she can’t track him.
Ren pulls back from the edge of the building. Most of the glass has been blown off. Ren shoots his grapple, launching himself into the air towards another building. The target is dead. Mission complete.
Something flashes out of the corner of his vision. The grapple loses tension and Ren yells in surprise as he falls. Cut.
He tumbles through the air, readying his other grapple. It shoots out in front of him as the air rushes past. Ren is yanked forwards by it—and backwards by something hot and heavy wrapping itself around his waist. For a few seconds he’s being torn apart at both ends, hanging in the air, before an arrow shoots across his vision and slices clean through the grappling line.
They need to be stronger, he notes as he’s yanked back up by his waist. He pulls his knife, ready to fight as soon as he’s dragged to the top, but it only clangs loudly against one of Wonder Woman’s gauntlets. The lasso burns hot around him, keeping him in place. Further bits of it wind around his arms, pinning them to his sides as he curses and tries to squirm his way out.
“The Lasso of Truth is too strong for you to break,” Wonder Woman informs him. Ren sags into it, taking in the surroundings. The explosives weren’t large enough to take out the floor, but they sent up massive amounts of wood. Plaster clings like a dust to everyone. In the corner of his vision, Green Arrow is holding his restrung bow. He looks down the side of the building.
“I’ll go after him. You take this kid to Iron Heights.”
Renegade hisses, narrows his eyes, and looks for an opening.