Chapter Text
Slade Wilson was a lot of things: Deathstroke, a renowned mercenary, assassin, master tactician, a perpetual thorn in the Bat’s ass; but if there were some things he was not, it was tolerant of tardiness, and a fucking nursemaid .
“Get the hell up,” Slade ground out, slapping his employer’s face, being mindful of the vomit smeared on half of it, dripping from his chin. The motion revealed the heat radiating off the boy. The Arkham Knight remained motionless from where he was lying in a pool of his own piss and vomit. Dead to the world. His slow pulse indicated he was sick and wouldn’t be cognizant for an indeterminate amount of time. Slade followed the breathing exercises drilled into his head from his military days, trying to quell the anger. He had dealt with worse than parasuicidal contractors. But the act just made the reek of acid and rot pervade his sinuses - doing nothing to help his temper.
The scent of grief. Trenches. The ball dropping on wanna-be heroes. Child soldiers. Dead children. So many dead children.
Their faces morphed into a twisted mirror of his own. Grant, his sweet, steadfast Grant. With Adeline's razor-sharp humor and his cursed genes. Convulsing, falling to the ground like a marionette with its strings cut as his body gave away under the enhancements that promised him godhood.
All because he wanted to be like his worthless father. Deathstroke the fucking mercenary.
He took a deep breath, shaking off the ghosts of the past.
His gloved hand hesitated before delivering another slap. The knight didn’t do as much as twitch. His gaze shifted to his battered face, to the ever-present frown lines; his face seemed to carry the weight of a hundred lifetimes. The J branded on his face snaps him out of his bout of sentimentality. The Knight was a fanatic, unstable enough to brand himself for his cause. He was just like any other employer. And caring for him wasn't included in his paycheck. And yet.
Rain pounding against the Caracas rooftops. The Knight, on a routine watch. Extending a canteen to him with trembling hands.
Slade wasn't a good man, but he knew when he saw a commander looking out for the welfare of his troops. He wasn't entirely devoid of humanity. The knight was a fucked-up specter of a man. But he was more.
For the same damned reason, Slade couldn't walk away.
Taking care of angst-riddled men wasn’t what he had honed his abilities for, he thought begrudgingly, wrestling the .357 Magnum from the Knight’s vomit-slackened grip. He didn’t need to flip the magazine open to know it had a single loaded bullet. Russian Roulette.
He scoffed at the boy’s feeble attempt at self-destruction. As evident by several bumps on his skull. Adding to the rapidly growing one from the knight’s recent attempts at ruining Slade’s reputation.
Slade ground his teeth, frustration simmering beneath his tactical exterior, as he hoisted the limp body in a fireman’s carry, ruining his uniform. He trudged through the mess. This wasn't his job. Babysitting self-destructive maniacs had never been part of the contract.
The Knight chose that moment to grunt, giving no further indication that he had become somewhat cognizant. This was new—his pain tolerance was on par with his superhuman one. The fever was clearly messing with his inhibition. Slade smothered the groan and annoyance. He might have to deal with the Knight’s angst-infested delirium under the face of clinical professionalism.
(As if anything about this interaction was professional.)
He dumped the unconscious body into the rapidly filling tub and started stripping it down with clinical indifference. The warm water would bring the temperature down. Hopefully, making the Knight conscious enough to take care of his own mess and the earful Slade was stowing away for his blatant stupidity. And then the drills he was going to make the boy run for his indiscretion. He started with the vomit-drenched button-up. Tearing the fabric off. The Knight could afford the bil dollar contract and organizing a military ambush. He could afford a new shirt.
The flimsy fabric gave away to heavily disfigured skin and for the first time in ages, Slade’s focus stuttered.
The boy’s torso was a fucking mess. Not a single inch of skin was unmarred. Layers upon layers of raised scar tissue crisscrossed his entire torso. As if it had been whipped repeatedly. The wounds hadn’t healed when new were added and old exacerbated. There were discolored patches where the tissue had burnt off. The splattered distribution indicated that several of them were acid burns, interspersed with the branching arcs of electrical ones. His fingers traced the raised lines with a detached familiarity.
Electrodes attached to his body. Faceless figures. A hundred volts of energy coursing through his nervous system, lighting him up like a fucking Christmas tree.
He shook the memory off, taking in the rest of the damage. His chest tightened as he saw ligature marks wrapping around the kid's shoulders. Slade automatically reached for the Knight’s wrist, uncaring of the rot smeared all across it. It confirmed his suspicions. They were remnants of restraints. The Knight was never seen out of his tactical gear. Despite the sweltering heat and miasma of the training compounds. And Slade now knew why.
A sudden image of the Knight during drills flashed in his mind. Looking faint during simple pull-ups. He had attributed it to the disuse of muscles. And incorporated a shitload more to hypertrophy the muscle groups and build up the Knight’s resilience. But staring at the fucked up tissue, he has an ugly realization, the stress must’ve been pure agony.
Stupid, stupid boy.
The flesh around the nails was ragged and teeming with infection. The Knight picked at his skin. A nervous tic. He gingerly placed the hand back into the water. Slade's hands betrayed a slight tremor. He started undoing the Knight’s soiled pants in haste. And staunchly refused to ruminate over the reason for urgency. His hypotheses were realized when he saw several scars all over the Knight’s lower body. Over his thighs and hips. There were fucking figures carved onto the skin. A mark of owned property. The Knight had been brutalized and dehumanized.
The smell of disinfectant. Cold, clinical walls. Being strapped to a table. Needles. Poison setting his entire being on fire in a fucked up metamorphosis. Being vivisected. Torn apart and being rebuilt again in a twisted parody of a human being.
He followed the pattern of cruelty over the Knight's thin legs. The knee joints and hip bones were protruding despite the muscle. The Knight was severely lacking in visceral fat.
His left ankle was in terrible shape. A sad, ugly thing where the healing tissue and bone had warped from repeated breakage. He remembered the reinforcements on the Knight’s gear. And not paying it mind. His contract didn't include fodder for gossip. In retrospect, he should’ve asked. Given the persistent limp that the Knight had.
He was rearranging the boy's limbs to ease the stress off them when he caught the ugly, grotesque thing carved high up his inner thigh: HAHAHA . He distantly realized that the tub had overflowed and turned the faucet off.
He'd witnessed plenty of messed-up shit. The war had been enough to reveal that humanity was a fucking shit show. His time at the facilities as a lab rat and his tenure as a moral-less merc for hire just added to it. And yet, fury simmered within him, uninvited—
The Knight was young. How old was he when he had been stripped of all innocence?
"What the hell happened to you, kid?" He grabbed the rag and started scrubbing the crap off the kid’s body. If the scrubbing lacked in force, he blamed it on the emotional turmoil. Even if it was a shitty excuse as to why he was avoiding recent injuries with severe deliberation.
“Everybody seems to want a piece of me these days, huh?”
The Knight had come awake. His voice sounded as if he had been gargling glass. Slade looked up at the boy’s face. And hoped that his expression didn’t give away the fucking bomb he had just dropped on Slade’s conscience. The Knight’s gaze was bleary, unfocused.
“Well, don’t keep a man waiting,” the Knight— no, the boy —looks at him with a half-lidded gaze. With a sickening jolt, he realized it was supposed to be flirtatious. Almost convincing if not for the subtle tightness of his jaw. And the glassy look in his eyes. The Knight wasn’t wholly delirious; he was expecting to be raped.
Slade was a shitstain on the face of humanity. But there were lines even he didn't cross. He swallowed the burning remarks and bile. And directed his focus on the implications of the Knight’s words. And his gaze traveled to recent bruises on the Knight’s lower body, purpling and carrying the distinct evidence of pain and violation.
“Who the fuck did that to you,” he growled. If the transgressor was one of his men, they’d have to be dealt with. He had a distant memory of overhearing rumors of the boy's ventures. He'll have to dig deeper. The Arkham Knight's militia had no place for scum.
The Knight didn’t let him ruminate over the obvious, unsolicited shred of concern as he shot back bitterly, ”The fuck do you care? Don’t remember paying you to gossip about my shitty love life.”
Slade’s anger took the moment to find an unlucky outlet. "Answer the fucking question.”
He didn’t realize he raised his voice until he saw the knight flinch. The subtle threat of aggression didn’t stop the boy from shouting—with no less venom, ”A date, okay?” his voice took on a resigned tone.”Don’t get your panties in a twist,
I’m all yours now.”
The words were said with a lazy smirk, and supposedly suggestive lilt. If not for the slight waver and hoarseness from sick lungs. The boy looked as if he was bracing himself for the inevitable. Jesus.
Slade filed the information away with the white-hot rage that was thrumming through his veins. it was only years of professionalism that prevented it from bleeding into his tone as he stated neutrally, “I don’t want sex from you, Jason.”
His half-assed attempts at reassurance seemed to work as the Knight’s body lost some of its tension. And he slumped from where he'd shrunk like an abused dog preparing for a beatdown. At least the Knight acknowledged the claim that Slade kept his word.
The entire confrontation seemed to have drained the boy. Because he shut his eyes, face painted in defeat, not bothering to ask the reason for Slade's sudden sympathies.
Slade washed the boy’s ruined body with more gentleness than he’d given and received in years. Didn’t tap him awake he fell asleep against Slade’s shoulder as he scrubbed his battered backside. As he painstakingly shifted the boy’s slumbering form to rest his head on his knee, drenching his pants in the process, as he shampooed his hair. The uniform was already ruined.
The kid leaned into the touch. Semi-lucid. Soaking up the supposed clinical care like a starving man, despite the threat of assault suspended taut the air. Only held by Slade’s word and rep. And a twisted part of him observed the contrast in vulnerability with sick fascination.
The room echoed with the sound of water splashing, punctuated by the occasional groan from the Knight. The air hung heavy with the scent of soap, mixing with the remnants of sick.
He toweled off the kid’s body. His temperature has lowered somewhat. But the boy was completely passed out. His expression looked almost mournful over the loss of contact. A pang of something painfully familiar hit Slade—when was the last time someone had shown the kid a shred of kindness?
He picked the boy up in a bridal carry. Wrapped in towels. The boy buried his face in the crook of Slade’s neck. Completely unconscious of the conflict he was inflicting on Slade’s psyche. He simply cradled the boy’s ruined body so it doesn’t strain his neck. And carried him to bed.
He dabbed ointment on the kid's bruises and painstakingly drained the abscess out of his fingers, lest his young employer lose his fingers to necrosis. A waste of good potential. The shitty excuse itched at him as he wrapped the bleeding fingers in Wonder Woman-themed Band-Aids. Someone's idea of a practical joke.
(As he clothed the kid and wrapped his frail, shivering form in blankets he realized with nauseating clarity, that the incident today had moved beyond a simple transaction.)
Alfred is brushing the hair out of his eyes, warmth seeping into his skin and leaving him aching for more. He's in bed, sick with the flu. And it's one of the rare times Alfred lets himself drop the professional demeanor to reveal the compassion underneath. He rests his palm over his forehead, he's gauging out Jason's temperature. And he basks in the moment of affection, trying to lap up the most of it greedily before it's inevitably wrenched away.
"Oh dear," Alfred sounds upset. He shouldn't sound like that. He tears his eyes open to see his grandfather's reason for distress.
The dream shattered and he was back in bed at the compound. Head pounding as if it’d been through a grinder. He knew he was getting sick. He was playing his usual rounds. Too much of a coward to do it right away. His fingertips throbbed from the phantom impact. He obviously failed. Surprise, surprise.
He closed his eyes. Trying to revel in the lingering warmth from the dream. Another hazy memory emerged from his fever-muddled mind.
The smell of misery. Heavily callused, careful hands on him, washing it off, not wandering and hurting. Angry muttering, but a strange sensation that it's for him, not at him. Gentle hands carding through his hair, he expects them to pull, to wrench his head back, to dig into his bruises and hurt, but they just rub against the ragged skin and tease out knots. His head hurts and his body aches.
There's a soft pressure against his burn scar and he struggles to open his eyes, he doesn't want to be burnt again. The room is hazy, and a man is cupping his face, features distorted into something soft by the haze, looking angry, but the touch is gentle and his head is filled with fog and he's too numb to care. He'll be hurt when he'll be hurt. And a twisted part of him thinks that if he'll be punished for it later, it'll all be worth it.
This has to be a new low. Jason jolted up. He wasn’t in his room.
"Easy, kid."
He twisted his head around so quickly it gave him vertigo. And his head spun. Whatever meagre contents that remained in his stomach threaten to make a reappearance. And suddenly he remembered
Roulette, trying to get to the restroom, failing to get to the restroom, the overwhelming smell of his own piss. Being carried out of his room.
The world starts growing fuzzy at the edges. There's fist around his heart, squeezing the life out of him.
"Stop, stop please, I'm sorry, I'm so sorry—" Searing agony on his inner thigh, the sound of sizzling flesh.
"—kid?"
"Aren't you a pretty thing now," his Master says, dragging the red, hot poker over his skin. Marking him. He can't breathe through the stink, the reek of his mutilation.
"—you need to breathe—"
He can't.
He made the mistake of looking at the damage. The skin has peeled, creased, he could see his flesh glistening under the blood and urine. He threw up.
"Aw, the little birdie had an accident."
"Get out." His throat felt like he’d been gargling glass shards. It was Slade's room. He was too angry to care.
"Get the fuck out!" he screamed, and Slade, instead of tearing him a new one, just left. Closing the door behind him. And suddenly he could breathe. Fuck. Jason curled up on the soft sheets, and wept.