Reclaiming an Owl

by wellthatjusthappend

Summary:

The Court didn’t use half measures. By the time Bat’s made the connection between the nanotech planted on Robin and Nightwing’s sudden disappearance, it was far too late.

The Court anticipated that the Bat’s would still try and ‘save’ Talon anyway. However, they weren’t prepared for Deathstroke. No one ever was.

Notes:

Had this one in my head since the 2018 SladeRobin week. Actually draw a picture for it (x) but never got around to writing it until now.

Chapter 1

The kid was already regenerating from what should have been a fatal blow. He was out cold for now though and it was a good thing too because Slade was having a little trouble processing what he was seeing. 

One of the Court or Owl’s lab rat Talon’s had taken out one of Deathstroke’s targets before he could get there. An Owl feather on the scene was hardly subtle and Slade wouldn’t be paid for the job. He’d been pissed, so he dealt with the Talon the way he would anyone else who was stupid enough to sabotage one of his contracts before he got paid. 

Except the ‘Talon’ turned out to be Dick Grayson. 

‘ What the hell…’ Slade thought as he stared down at the boy. What was Dick-too-good-to-apprentice-with-Deathstroke-Grayson doing running around in a Court of Owls uniform? Killing people no less.

The answer was staring him in the face- the dark veins visible on the boy’s face, the regeneration, the lack of reaction to grave injuries until Slade put him down- but Slade didn’t want to believe it. 

They couldn’t stay where the were though. Slade knew enough about the Court to know that someone would come looking for their prize Talon sooner rather than later. In the meantime, Slade took Dick back to one of his safehouses. He’s have to ditch it later, but it was worth it. He stripped off all Dick’s Talon gear and did a quick scan to find 3 trackers embedded under his skin. 

Dick woke when Slade was digging out the second and nearly took out Slade’s good eye. 

“Really fallen off the deep end this time haven’t you, Grayson?” Slade grumbled as he pinned him down, probably getting both their blood everywhere. 

Dick stared back at him with unnatural gold eyes.

There was no recognition in his face.

There was something rising in Slade. Something hot and ugly and possessive.

How dare they… how dare they.

Slade was going to burn the Court to the ground for this. 

Quickly shooting Dick full of enough tranquilizers to down an elephant, he slipped some of Rose’s spare clothes onto the unconscious assassin and loaded him into the back of his truck. He took care to make sure he was bound with metagrade restraints before hitting the back roads. 

Once he was far enough out of Gotham, Slade made the call.

“Who gave you this number?” Damian al Ghul- Slade would refer to him as a Wayne the moment he stopped acting like the heir to LoA- snapped.

“I was working a job in your city and I happened to run into your bother,” Slade said, not bothering with formalities either, “Want to tell me why the hell Dick Grayson is running around Gotham as a Talon?”

Damian sucked in a breath. 

“Where did you see him?” Damian demanded. 

Ah, so Dick hadn’t left the coop by choice. They’d be different- less frantic- about it if he had. It’s what Slade had suspected, but it was still good to know. 

“Around,” Slade said vaguely, “I might tell you where if you tell me what had happened.”

Damian was apparently desperate enough for information that he didn’t make Slade push for information. 

“There was a Robin War. All these untrained imbeciles running around in the Robin costume ruining my birthright,” Damian began hotly. Slade vaguely remembered hearing about that. 

“The Court, kid,” Slade said impatiently. 

“We think it was all a trap… for Grayson. Father says the Court has always been obsessed with him and tried to get custody of him after his parents died. They knew he wasn’t dead so they engineered the Robin War to draw him out of hiding,”

“And then they kidnapped him?” Slade guessed even as he frowned. How the hell had Grayson allowed himself to be captured by such silver spooned idiots?

“Perhaps,” Damian said, but there was something in his voice…

“Spill it kid,” Slade growled.

“I don’t have to answer to you-!” Damian began.

“You do if you want to help your brother,” Slade shortly. 

“What do you know?” Damian demanded, “Tell us at once or-”

“Or what kid?” Slade said unimpressed, “You first. What really happened?”

“Tt”

There was a strained silence.

“...it was likely my fault,” Damian said finally, “I was wearing one of their masks and we found nano tech embedded in my skin afterwards that could be triggered remotely. We think they may have threatened my safety for Grayson’s initial cooperation.”

Ah, that did sound like the self-sacrificing idiot Slade knew. 

“When we saw him again, they’d turned him into one of those creatures. He didn’t seem to recognize any of us. Even Father couldn’t get through to him,” Damian said miserably. 

Well no, that would have been the first thing the Court conditioned Dick to resist. 

Slade had what he needed for the moment. In the meantime, it’d be good if the Bat’s could do some of his dirty work. 

“I can give you the details on 4 different Court bases and a few names that may lead you to more,” Slade said, “Think of it as a favor for the training Nightwing gave my daughter all those years ago.”

Or revenge, but the kid didn’t need to know that. 

“We’ll look into these,” Damian said, suddenly eager to be off the phone. 

“See that you do,” Slade said shortly and tossed the phone away.

Hopefully the Court would be too busy with Bat’s for the next while so Slade could get to work on deprogramming their Talon. 

No, not their Talon. Dick would never belong to those idiots as long as Slade had anything to say about it. 

Slade set up his base deep underground at one of his more secure safehouses. The cell he placed Dick in was sparsely furnished with everything bolted to the floor or walls. The restraints and tranquilizers the room was equipped with would give even Slade some difficulty so they should at least buy him some time to start getting to work on the kid. 

Dick didn’t respond to his own name- had probably been conditioned not to- but Slade sure as hell wasn’t going to call him Talon. If Slade were more creative, he might have picked a new name for him, but it seemed like a hassle. Better to reattach him to his own name so he dealt with his previous memories attached to that name sooner rather than later.

He could just keep calling him ‘kid’ though. 

Dick hadn’t been a ‘kid’ for a while, but old habits died hard. Frankly, Slade figured he could call anyone considerably younger than him ‘kid’ if he wanted to- the privileges of being older without ever feeling his age- including Batman. But he couldn't deny that there was something a little vulnerable to Dick like this. Displaced of his handlers, he was ripe for the picking, for someone to come along and mold him into something new. 

Slade couldn’t help but find the idea appealing.  

“You can stop that,” Slade said when he entered the cell. Dick ignored him, just continued to dislocate his thumbs to get out of his restraints. 

His silence felt particularly unnatural now that Slade knew who he was, but he wasn’t surprised either. The Court wasn’t about to let someone like Dick have a scrap of individuality or autonomy. That shit was dangerous if you wanted the perfect soldier. 

Slade rather liked dangerous things. 

“The Court is done,” he said bluntly.

That got the kid’s attention. 

“The Bat’s have them, and they’re going to hunt the remnants to the end of the earth,” Slade said, flipping on the news so Dick could see for himself. 

If the Bat’s missed anyone, Slade would be more than happy to destroy them himself. Maybe he’d set Dick on them once the kid was properly deconditioned… or at least reconditioned enough to suit Slade’s needs.  

Dick seemed intent on the screen, but…

Fork, jammed up under his ribs. Slade had had scarcely seen the kid move. It hurt like a hell and would have been fatal on anyone else, but as for Slade-

“Nice,” he grinned, even as blood dripped down his chin.

Dick twisted out of reach of retaliation the moment it was clear he hadn’t managed to down him, but Slade came after him hard. After all, it wasn’t as if Dick didn’t also regenerate now. 

Back when he’d considered making Dick his apprentice, Slade had once considered giving Dick the super-serum before eventually deciding to save it for Rose. Now he effectively had that and he was beyond pleased. 

There was no expression on Dick face when Slade broke his legs so he couldn’t get away.

Well, there were some things that Slade could take or leave. They’d get there. 

---

 

The process continued over the next couple weeks. 

Slade would come visit Dick and bring more evidence that the Court was done, that they’d abandoned him and that there was no point in trying to return. Dick would try to maim him and escape and Slade would have to put him down for the day. 

Rinse, repeat. 

Eventually, after he’d finish temporarily crippling Dick, Slade started lingering with him. Fingers in Dick’s hair or along his body. Holding the assassin in positions of comfort and affection while Dick was unable to respond. As this continued, even after Dick’s body repaired itself, Dick would stay pressed close without trying to escape again. 

Robin and Nightwing had always been hungry for physical affection and Slade doubted he’d gotten any of that as Talon in the Court. He was almost definitely starved for human contact and Slade intended to take full advantage of that. 

Slade knew they were at a turning point when one day, instead of trying to murder him, Dick simply tilted his head in offering for Slade’s touch. It was an appealing sight, and it made Slade want to follow the curve of his throat with his mouth. But as he was, Dick would either try to kill him or just lie there like a lifeless doll, neither of which would be particularly enjoyable. 

One day. 

Until then, Slade would enjoy the easy way Dick let him bury a hand in his hair in a few soothing strokes until Dick’s eyes drooped ever so slightly. 

“The Bat’s don’t want you like this,” Slade murmured as he enjoyed the sight, “They think they do, but the truth is they wouldn’t know how to deal with you. They’d lock you in some secure cell and bury you in their guilt.”

Dick said nothing.

“You already know that though,” Slade said thoughtfully, easing his grip to cup the back of his head make him look up at him, “It’s the real reason you wouldn’t go back even once the Court loosened their leash. You know who they were to you, but you choose to stay away.”

Dick didn’t answer that either, but he did glance away. With the kind of conditioning he’d likely had, there probably hadn’t been a real choice left in his head. But Slade didn’t want Dick running back to the Bat’s again. They’d lost their chance, and now it was Slade’s turn. He still wasn’t sure how much Dick allowed himself to remember about the time before the Court, but he’d be happy to guide and reframe his conclusions. 

“You think the Court ruined you for them,” Slade said bluntly. 

Dick didn’t look back at him, but his fingers did clench for a moment before relaxing again. It didn’t matter if that was really true or not for the Bats; he was sure that was Dick believed. It suited Slade’s purposes anyway so he wasn’t going to refute it. 

“But not for me,” Slade promised.

That made Dick go unnaturally still again before turning back to him at last. Slade would miss Dick’s blue eyes, but he thought that unearthly gold might grow on him. All he had to do was put some of that fire back into them. 

“You were incredible out there,” Slade told him with a savage smile, tracing the blue veins on Dick’s cheek, “And here, whenever you fight me. I always knew you could be. They fucked you up good, but I can work with that.”

Even if Dick didn’t say anything, Slade knew he had his undivided attention. 

“You’ll have to relearn some things if you’re going to be my boy, but… heh, I have faith in your ability to always be what I want,” Slade said, before pausing and pretending to consider, “Or do you want to go crawling back the Bats?”

Dick hesitated, before shaking his head. 

Satisfaction coiled low and warm in Slade’s stomach. 

“Good boy…” Slade rumbled. 

Dick didn’t react visibly, but Slade saw the way goosebumps broke out over his skin at the praise. It made Slade want to smile a little more predatorily. It was good some triggers stayed the same. 

Slade was good to leave it there for the night, but Dick surprised him by speaking for the first time.

“...Why?” Dick said. He didn’t say more, but just the one word spoken aloud was unexpected enough. Slade had thought it would take a lot more time before he’d be able to coax actual words out of him. That didn’t mean he wasn’t extremely pleased. 

“Why what, kid?” Slade asked. Dick stared at him for a long moment before pursing his lips and grabbing hold of Slade’s hand to bring it to his chest. An interesting choice, and part of Slade wanted to push and see if he could get more words, but…

Dick’s hold was pressing his hand flat against his chest and Slade so could feel the slow steady feel of his heart. Slade could kill him this way in an instant and they both knew it. He also wouldn’t. He was pretty sure they both knew that too. 

“Why?” Dick asked again, unnatural gold eyes looking straight into his. 

Ah. Why Dick? Why was he doing this? Slade should probably struggle with the answer for that more. The real answer, anyway. But Slade wasn’t a good man and he gave up pretending otherwise a long time ago. He’d known his answer the second that he’d realized what had been done to his chosen Bat. The raw- slightly unexpected- fury that had overtaken him when Dick had first looked up at him without recognition. 

Mine , He’d thought. Slade had never seen much use in denying his greed and this was no different. 

“You were never theirs to take,” Slade said staring him down, “I’ve put too much time into you to let some idiots fuck up all my work.”

Well, maybe that wasn’t the whole reason, but that was all he was willing to admit outloud. 

Dick blinked, real emotion flickering through his eyes for the first time since Slade picked him up, before they were back to blank as he simply nodded in acceptance. After so long in the Court, the kid was probably used to thinking himself as an object at this point. 

That’s not quite what Slade wanted though. 

They’d get there. Because this time, Slade didn’t plan on letting the kid go again.

Chapter 2

Notes:

Yes, I know I haven't posted for Day 4 yet, I'm behind as usual

SladeRobinWeek 2019 - Day 5 - Apprentice

This was an excellent excuse to come back to this story :D

When Slade had thought about having an obedient Dick Grayson under his power, it had never been quite like this. 

Dick wasn’t supposed to obey him because he’d had the fight brutally tortured and conditioned out of him, he was supposed to obey him because he was Slade’s and no one else's. As it was, in Dick vulnerable mental state, there was a fair number of people who could have been Dick’s new ‘Master’ if Slade hadn’t gotten there first. 

It was unacceptable.  

He needed to restore Dick’s sense of free will… so he could freely and completely give it up to Slade. 

“Again,” Slade growled as Dick hit the training mats and rolled perfectly to his feet again. 

There was a slight flicker in Dick’s blank gaze as he obeyed and Slade zeroed in on it immediately.

“You have objections? Speak,” Slade barked. 

“I have no objections, Master,” Dick replied tonelessly. At least Slade had managed to get him talking again, even if it usually had to be ordered out of him. It’d taken weeks to even get that far, but Slade still had to remind himself not to get impatient. 

“But you have thoughts about this training style,” Slade said. Dick shook his head and Slade gripped him by the hair and made him meet his eye, “Don’t do that.”

Dick’s gaze was carefully controlled, his body alert and primed for whatever punishment Slade wanted to deal out. Slade suppressed a sigh. Conditioning didn’t disappear overnight and Dick would doubtless flounder without a firm hand. If he was to make any progress, he had to coax Dick out in terms he understood. 

“I won’t punish you for voicing disagreements when we’re alone,” Slade told him, “I will punish you if you lie to me.”

There was no change in emotion in that blank golden gaze, but the air around Dick seemed to relax ever so slightly. 

“Yes, Master,” Dick replied. 

“Good, now speak,” Slade ordered. 

Dick still paused, clearly still expecting punishment even with Slade’s reassurance.

“...my Master has not said what it was about my fighting displeased him. It is difficult to correct such a thing,” Dick said very very carefully.

Heh, good boy.

“The Court allowed you no freedom,” Slade said, “there was a correct way to respond to every fight and they ironed out many of your other reflexes.”

“Imperfections have no place in the Court,” Dick agreed. 

“Imperfections make the game,” Slade scoffed, “They made you textbook. If your opponent is powerful enough, they’ll see you coming a mile away. This way of being might be good enough to take down the Court’s pathetic enemies, and maybe even the Bat, but there’s a much bigger world out there and I mean to take you there.”

Dick frowned ever so slightly, but didn’t voice the way he obviously struggled with his old Masters being anything but correct in all things. 

“They had reasons for training you this way,” Slade allowed, barely stopping from gritting his teeth, “There is a legacy of Talons to uphold. Part of their mythos comes from those Talon’s seeming immortal… and that means they have to be as much alike as possible.”

Not to mentioned, allowing too much individuality would undermine some of their conditioning.

Dick’s gaze flicker to the side for a moment, so Slade took advantage to relax his grip in his hair and pull him a little closer. Almost helplessly, Dick pressed greedily against him. 

“I once saw you leap off a skyscraper with no line onto an overpowered metas head,” Slade murmured, using his free hand to smooth circles into Dick’s back. 

“Nightwing was a very reckless person,” Dick recited, even as he practically melted into the touch. Slade did enjoy exploiting this vulnerability whenever he had the chance. 

“Nightwing knew that a little carefully applied recklessness could shock an opponent much stronger than you into giving an opening,” Slade corrected, “the closest you’ve ever come to beating me was fighting that way. You need to relearn some of that instinct.”

“Yes, Master.”

This time when Slade signaled his, Dick came at him with a flurry of movement much closer to what Slade remembered. 

“Close, but not quite,” Slade tossed him through a wall. Dick grunted but came right back for him, one arm hanging uselessly at his side while the muscle reknitted itself with staggering speed. 

Slade caught him a moment later in the side with a kick that audibly cracked his ribs. Dick managed to get a knife in Slade’s leg in return, which was good, but-

“Sloppy,” Slade scolded, “Did getting regeneration powers make you forget how to dodge?”

Dick barely blinked at him before diving in once more.

“Pathetic.”

Dick wasn’t reacting visibly to the pain, but Slade could see him losing the nuances of his fighting style and relying more and more on Court training again as his arm slowly came back on line.

This time, Slade stabbed him the shoulder and pinned him the mats to prove a point. 

“You’ve been trained not to react to injury, but that doesn’t mean you don’t feel pain,” Slade growled in his ear, “You’ve let yourself become complacent. But if you have functional nerve endings- which you clearly do- then there are still ways to hurt that you won’t be able to ignore.”

To demonstrate, Slade jabbed a more mean spirited nerve-strike he picked up from slumming around with assassins. Underneath him, Dick’s body jack-knifed and he screamed for the first time in their fight. 

“Do you understand yet?” Slade pressed.

Dick panted, his body still shivering. 

“You’re useless as the puppet the Court turned you into,” Slade said cruelly. 

“ Shut up…! ” Dick hissed and flew at him with a fury that Slade had been missing. 

This time when Slade lunged with his blade, Dick jumped straight up into the air and used his sword as a pivot to flip over Slade’s head. The move was flashy and slightly unnecessary and Slade found himself grinning hard enough that he almost got his head taken off with the subsequent kick. 

Slade was forced to block that a little harder than he’d like and Dick used the slight opening to topple them again.

“There you are…” Slade purred, “Perfection.”

Dick made a small sound and lunged for a kiss.

No exactly the reaction Slade was expecting, but he wasn’t complaining. A part of him was insisting that he hadn’t called time to their training yet and that he should dump Dick on his ass for letting his guard down, but another part….

This was definitely the kind of break in conditioning that he wanted to go out of his way to reward. 

Still, he needed Dick to know that this was not part of training anymore. Bats might believe that training never ended, but Slade was of the opinion that carefully applied leisure time made training a lot more focused. 

“I agree, time,” Slade gave him and firm kiss and drew back enough to let his beard scrape against Dick’s skin, “That was much better. Tell me what you’d like.”

Dick shook his head, but Slade was pretty sure it wasn’t at him but whatever war was in his head at the moment. 

“Use your words,” Slade chided as Dick wrapped his leggs around him and tried to pull them closer. 

Dick’s mouth opened and closed, but no sound came out, his breath coming out ragged as panic began overtaking desire when he wasn’t able to immediately obey. 

Slade suppressed a sigh. 

“Calm,” he ordered, and Dick immediately went lose in his arms. Slade pressed a slightly possessive kiss over the dark veins at the corner of a golden eye, “It’s okay if you don’t know right now. I’ll make you feel good this time, you can leave everything to me. But next time, be prepared to tell me what you want.”

Dick nodded and buried his face in Slade’s neck as he scooped him up and carried them away from the training room. Slade slid a hand under the loose training clothes Dick wore and his apprentice made an almost wounded sound at the feel of bare skin against his own. 

“Slade…” he breathed out, almost unconsciously. 

It was the first time Dick had said his name, the first time he’d acknowledged that he remembered him at all from his past. Slade felt himself get instantly hard and gripped the lithe man in his arm even closer. 

“Mine,” Slade kissed him again. 

“Yours...” Dick breathed back ever so softly.

Notes:

Dick's regaining a sense of self slooowly. Although, if Slade keeps up with the targeted antagonism he's going to lose him eventually even with Dick's conditioning + loyalty.

Notes:

Slade is going to mess thing up as much as he's going to fix things and it's going to be great.

Series this work belongs to:

• Part 2 of SladeRobin Week 2019