Chapter Text
“Ouch.”
“What--- What is it?”
A tight smirk stretched across Slade’s face, tugging almost painfully at his cold cheeks. Prague was never very friendly in February. Tempers especially tended to flare at night, as they were doing now. A woman standing outside of the closed coffee shop across the street had just insulted her supposed mate’s manliness before stalking away. The milksop didn’t even call after her. “Just a splinter, Drake. Don’t tell me you were worried.”
“Psh, for you? No.” Faint tapping filled the background. “I just can’t access every camera in the city being this remote, so you’re my eyes. Well. EYE.”
Slade rolled it, sipping carefully at the protein shake he’d bought from the gas station a few blocks back. Bitter flavors insulted his heightened senses, reminding him faintly that he had only bought the crap for show. Three minutes until the switch of the night shift. “I don’t know if you’ve been on a stakeout before, but it usually pays to focus.”
“I stole from Catwoman once, does that count? I’m multitasking.”
“Unnecessary.”
“Ugh, you’re just like B. Why did I agree to this?”
“As I understand it, you volunteered.” Slade could feel his eyelid twitch. “Why I agreed is the real mystery.”
“Uh, ‘cuz your pack is busy hunting Mask?” The kid’s voice lowered into what was probably supposed to sound like a dangerous register. “Besides, this got you out of our city. I like to keep a close eye on men like you.”
Slade wanted to pinch his nose. He heroically refrained. He was attempting to blend in here, especially as his window for action grew so close. He could not afford to be distracted by the reminder that this kid had every reason to hate him--- to lead him astray--- to sabotage his attempts. He especially had no time for the bristling anger creeping up his spine at the thought of his pups hunting that cowardly bastard without him.
It was fine. They had each other to rely on. They had Batman. They had the Birds of Prey--- the Justice League. They would be more reliably protected now that the older vigilantes had fully realized just how useless the name of Deathstroke was as a stopgap measure to his packmates being kidnapped---
His nostrils flared as he measured his breaths. Tasting the reality of a nervous system that wasn’t feral at all hours of the day had made those instincts harder to control as of late. He did not speak again until he had reined his emotions in, locking them tightly under ironclad discipline. He didn’t need to wear scent blockers. No one could smell him like this. The hoodie hid his hair, the sunglasses his eyes. Unless someone was aware enough to clock the odd use of sunglasses during the nighttime--- At which point Slade would have much bigger problems to deal with than their observation skills, because no one harmless would think twice about that--- he was truly invisible.
The typing filtered back in as the angry ringing lessened. “Tell me what you see.”
Slade’s attention flicked briefly to the front of the bank down the road. “Standard Thursday night shuffle. Some traveling prostitutes. Graveyard shifts ending; tired pedestrians on their way home. A drunk couple probably about to be mugged.”
“A drunk couple?”
“I think they just broke up, actually.” Slade kept his eye on the bank, waiting for those doors to open. Any second now…
The typing stopped. “Most bars in that city close at one on weekdays. That was three hours ago.”
Chilly apprehension raced down Slade’s spine as he broke his staring contest with the front steps of the bank, scanning. The couple he had observed only minutes before had split up--- and disappeared. “One?”
“Oh-one-hundred, Wilson, yes; what did you miss?”
“Nothing.” Slade straightened from his casual lean against the wall, forcing himself to keep twitchy instincts at bay as he meandered slowly down the street. A couple of men were trudging down the bank’s steps. “Target in sight.”
“Uh, okay, yeah; Berens just clocked out.”
“You can access the security cameras of the bank but not of the traffic lights?”
“You need to be on site for some of this shit. I wouldn’t expect an amateur like YOU to understand---”
“I’m going to drop you down a gutter.”
“Noted; shutting up. I’ll try to access---”
Slade turned the com off, effectively muting both sides. He wouldn’t be able to disable the tracking in Bat tech without the proper tools--- Pity--- but that had been one of the conditions wrestled into place before his pack omega had allowed him to travel after a lead around the world alone. Never, at any time, was he to disable his trackers. As long as they stayed functional--- and he wasn’t actively dying--- Hood would remain in Gotham.
There were a lot of logical reasons for the two of them not to be seen together in enemy territory (Everywhere Deathstroke went was enemy territory), such as the fact that the criminal underworld at large didn’t yet know of their alliance. The League of Assassins might have… Cheshire certainly did… but they were their own ghost story, enemies of everyone else’s enemies, and judging by the bitch’s body language the last time they had gone toe to toe, she worked alone.
Really, though, the logic was just an excuse. Hood was dangerous, but not on Deathstroke’s level; not with a mercenary’s reach. Slade didn’t want his pup to see how deep that rabbit hole could go.
“Neblikni,” a whisper hissed from the shadows.
Slade flinched toward the noise before his brain had even begun to translate. Don’t blink, a familiar voice repeated, echoing with months, years, decades of repetition, a voice that wasn’t here right now---
The shadow melted between buildings, retreating. AWAY from Slade’s target.
Slade breathed slowly, continuing his careful approach about two blocks behind Berens with barely a hitch in his step. He was being lured away, hunted like a damn animal, but he couldn’t let his reactions get the better of him. As soon as he was made, the organization of ex-DI individuals corralling local crime--- Vigilantes with strictly personal vendettas--- would close in. He had handled much bigger fish than secret service agents, but he didn’t need to make a splash just yet.
He didn’t want to know what Billy would do if… and when… he saw Deathstroke coming.
Berens reached his car at last, fumbling with his keys. Trying to ignore the heightened warning signal lighting up the backs of his shoulders with a hot itch, that unmistakable tell of being watched, Slade concentrated on cultivating his scent. He projected hormones facilitating calm focus, coiling reflexes, and overwhelming presence beneath his skin--- Everything but the flight-sparking adrenaline of a hunter on the chase--- before releasing that scent ahead of him into the air.
The man caught a whiff of him before Slade had reached the car. True to proven field data, he froze, instincts caught in the freeze response as Slade’s carefully crafted scent overwhelmed his reaction time. That sensation of realizing you had wandered straight into a lounging predator’s sights.
Slade grabbed the man’s right arm, squeezing a pressure point at his inner elbow to keep the muscles relaxed. In the same movement, he reached his other hand around the man’s left side in the guise of a hug, fishing only for a second before finding--- and drawing--- the sidearm. He dropped his voice into an edgy rumble. “Smích.”
Berens burst into startled laughter that, to his credit, almost sounded real. “Co to tu děláte?”
“Dobré.” Slade patted Berens’ chest with the flat of the pistol before stepping back, still holding onto the man’s right elbow as he hid the weapon under his own jacket. He smiled widely, all teeth, and raised his voice. “Těší mě. Do you speak English?”
The man mirrored Slade’s showy, friendly body language, putting on a paper-thin act to play along. “Yes.”
“Good; my tail isn’t as quick on that uptake.” Because now that he was several seconds removed from initial contact, Slade was sure he recognized that voice, and the knowledge only turned the uneasiness of not-knowing into a hardened caution, quick calculations of what had happened during their last mission, what grudges were likely still held, how many operations run, what possible leverage, and above all… temperament.
He dropped his voice again, keeping it friendly despite the threatening hug he still had around Berens’ back. “Agent Seven Nineteen.”
The man swallowed, smiling through the faint stubble gathering under his weak jaw. “I do not know of which you speak.”
“Agent Seven Nineteen, Agent Winter, where is he?” Slade’s fingers dug into the man’s flesh. “You’re the last person who made a deal with him alive.”
“I know a Winter.” The man’s eyes flashed with the beginnings of defiance. “Agent Two Twelve. You have the wrong man.”
Slade’s blood ran absolutely cold. The last day they’d spoken face to face, February twelfth. There was no way that was a coincidence. The texture of a rifle barrel slid beneath his fingertips, blood on his hands, under his nails; echoing last words before everything had gone sideways for the monster in Slade’s head, before he had wrestled back control at the last possible second---
“I suppose it was only a matter of time.”
The man sneered, jarring Slade back to the present as sense memory threatened to pull him under. Billy changed his ex-intelligence information--- How? “Agent Seven Nineteen does not exist. Agent Two Twelve is dead.”
“Yes, he does that.” Slade projected another wave of scent, this one tinged with the feral, furious desperation ready to unsheathe its claws. “Where… is he?”
The man’s brief confidence evaporated. “I do not know; he would not tell me, only that he was retiring.”
Slade’s jaw flexed. Vermont should be beautiful this time of year. It was a joke, a dry crack at the possibility of ever retiring. It had also been code, code for the place Billy had actually wanted to retire, a place he said he’d never been, but swore on his (at the time) three graves that he would visit someday--- “What was the last thing he said to you? Think… carefully.”
The man licked his lips, accent thickening as his fear increased. “He told me Vermont should be beautiful at that time of year.”
Slade squeezed his eye shut for the briefest of seconds. Billy had changed his code names--- Why? Billy had left a trail for Slade to find him--- Why?
The lapse in his focus allowed the man to twist free, darting frantically down the nearest alleyway at a full sprint. Impressively, he held onto his briefcase. Slade’s fingers twitched. It would be so easy to shoot him…
He sighed heavily, turning around, and finished walking down the street before the itch in his shoulders crept into a present sense, a space being occupied to his left where there should have been nothing. He stopped quietly, gazing out over the rooftops down the sloping blocks ahead. The river glittered under city lights in the distance.
The shadow didn’t move for a while. Neither did Slade.
“Honestly,” a rough voice finally lifted, Czech with a heavy Russian accent. “I never could figure out what that joke meant. Every mission we ran together… seven? Your man always told you not to blink.”
Slade removed his sunglasses to reveal the eye patch. “We ran nine, Volkov. There are RULES.”
“Yes, yes, never approach you off the clock.” The man stepped from the shadows in a long black overcoat, smiling with a cheer that did not at all match his crooked nose, dark seedy eyes, and days-old stubble. “We are old friends however, are we not?”
Slade’s eye narrowed. Strike one had been using a phrase that was only Billy’s to trip him up a few minutes ago. Strike one point five had probably been the fake drunks following him from two different directions. (How had he been stupid enough to miss that?--- Rule number one about blending in to people who wouldn’t recognize your face was to draw attention to yourself.) Strike two was obviously the infraction. Deathstroke had a very strict, very well-known set of public guidelines.
Familiarity, which this man did not have beyond knowledge of a friendship that no longer existed, did not render those rules null.
“Business or pleasure?” Volkov was pressing.
Slade casually drew his own sidearm, tapping it against his leg with careless body language. He couldn’t look as shattered, as staticky as something deep beneath his sternum felt. He couldn’t reveal that he was on the third most important mission of his life. “Some personal business. What can I help you with, Volkov?”
The man’s false smile eased into an exaggerated pout. He switched to Russian. “You never call; you never write. I have tried to find you for a very long time. You are a hard man to reach.”
“A private contract.” Slade stayed in Czech, subtly refusing to let this slobby bastard dictate the terms of the conversation. Volkov was buying time for something. If he didn’t stay focused, Slade was very quickly going to find out what. “Do you have an offer?”
The man raised both hands defensively. “Some bitch insulted my sister. I want the fear of God in his soul.”
Slade’s eyebrow twitched. That would have been strike two point five if he wasn’t sure by now that Volkov was distracting him. “I don’t do family drama; you know that.”
“What, too unimportant for you?”
“Too damn messy. I can’t afford to rack grudges like that.”
“Not even for the Secretary of State?”
Slade’s instincts ticked up a few notches, heartbeat speeding beneath his ribs. He could sense a couple of entities behind him, both at different degrees to his left, and something was moving to his right over the skyline. They were closing in on him; he couldn’t tell who they were yet. “I’ve hidden most of my assets in the states. I don’t benefit from throwing their government into chaos QUITE yet. Why--- what did he do to your sister?”
Volkov sighed heavily, pretending to observe his (gloved) nails. “He gave her his money. I just want you to know, ey? This isn’t personal.”
Slade’s shooting hand twitched up a fifth of a second too late. The street to his left exploded into blinding white light, noise, and scent; a flashbang for enhanced individuals. He staggered back. “SHIT---”
Volkov already had his gun raised, palming a pair of glowing blue cuffs. Slade’s mental assessment of the surprise attack moved from bounty on my head to trained task force and private contract and quite possibly army. The price already required to pull this hit off---
His blood unfroze as shadows began to descend, reality clicking into place around the appearance of those cuffs. They wanted him ALIVE.
Slade dropped every ounce of fight, booking it.
“You cannot run,” the mercenary cackled distantly through what little was left of Slade’s hearing, bouncing with the sharp deflection of bullets tearing up his clothes, peppering his back, his shoulders, his legs--- “Not from them!!!”
A round skipped under his foot; Slade missed a step, slammed into the corner of a building, and shoved off in a new direction. His ears were still ringing, his nose flared, full of sinus-melting scents; he couldn’t---
His finger pressed the mute button on the com. “Kid?”
“--- sneak attack, Wilson good GOD, if you’d LISTEN to me---”
“I can’t see.” Slade’s heart shot into his throat, fear threatening to rabbit its way into his focused heartbeat. The prospect of revealing a weakness to a venomous ally seemed far more dangerous than the reality of being attacked by people who were clearly well prepared to bring him in. He changed direction again, shedding his torn coat. The Ikon suit flexed with every movement, lighter now that it was charged with kinetic energy from deflected bullets. “Get me to the waterfront.”
“Uh, okay, hang a left.”
Slade clipped another corner on his way, almost too late for the turn. More rounds cracked past his head into crumbly brick. He wished faintly that he’d brought his helmet. Then he was hit broadside by a clothing line full of dresses. “Fuck---”
“Right.”
Slade skidded into a slide, twisting, and shot right. Cracking his burning eye revealed a dead end. He sped up, tic-tacking from wall to wall on his way skyward. “Kid!!!”
“Whoops,” the young voice said dryly. “I had the map in 2D. How’d they get the drop on you?”
“They DIDN’T.” Slade vaulted over the edge of the roof, grunting. “I don’t have a grapple.”
“Can’t you jump like forty feet?”
“Less snarky pup, more direction.”
“Jump… now.”
Slade surged into the air, buoyed by stored energy from his suit. He couldn’t see anything but passing blurs, but he managed to break his fall with a roll, hitting the ground at a faster sprint. “Keep it up.”
“Jump… jump… jjjjjjump---”
More bullets scraped the space around his skull, whizzing past. Slade rolled over the edge of the fifth roof instead of jumping, dropping down out of sight with one hand clenched around the ledge hard enough to crack stone, to yank, to stop his fall. He kicked off the wall, launching himself at a lower roof. How were they keeping up with him?
“Take a left. The waterfront is directly ahead of you.”
Hands slapped against the wall; brake right, surge left, open eyes, cutting wind, JUMP---
Something punched Slade in the ribs. He corrected reflexive body language before he could ruin his trajectory, spinning into a tight somersault, a skidding stop on his stronger leg to break his fall. He’d lost all momentum by this point, but he didn’t hang around to give the sniper--- Fifty yards east, two floors up, right in the open--- another chance. He rolled again, avoiding the next few shots with the force of adrenaline-heightened speed, took a deep breath, and dove from the edge of the last roof on the shore.
Plunging into cold water shocked every sense that was still working. Slade swam toward the nearest bridge in three powerful strokes, then floated through the rush, consciously calming his heartbeat. He had seven fucking minutes. Every movement counted starting five seconds ago.
Shots pelted into the water behind him, but it was dark; too dark to see even with a flare. They would send trackers into the current after him unless they had tagged him already.
Slade reached out, catching the edge of the bridge’s support, and braced his feet against the slippery side. He curled tight, holding on with three limbs as he swept sensitive fingers over his body. No discernable trackers. The red glow of the flare floated past; he pressed his forehead to the slimy stone, swallowed whatever air was still trapped in his mouth, and slowed… slowed… slowwwwwwwwed.
They would assume he was swimming down the Vlatava river. All he had to do was mute his core temperature… limit his movements… and hold his breath.
The minutes ticked slowly by. When he noticed his internal timer speeding up, lungs burning far earlier than they should have, Slade consciously kept a steady count of the seconds. Panicking would be highly counterproductive. His awareness narrowed as he slipped into a meditative haze. Four slow minutes. Five. Six. Seven. Seven point five.
Just shy of eight minutes, his heartbeat started to pound. Slade squeezed his eye shut, holding on a little tighter. His lungs spasmed. At eight point five minutes, his mouth opened against his will. He kicked against the bottom of the river--- hard--- and shot upward, expelling the water in one harsh breath.
When he broke the surface, flinging hair from his face, he still managed to swallow river sludge as he gasped frantically for air. “Kid.”
“---on’t--- ear--- each---”
Slade grabbed onto the support before the freezing water could sweep him away, panting. Focus slipped back as his cells became saturated with oxygen. “Kid?”
“--- new--- without m--- ost them---”
Slade dug the frizty commlink from his ear, growling as shivers began to travel through his chest. All traces of the men on the shore--- all hints of gunfire--- were gone. It would only take them seven more minutes, ten at most, to circle back.
Slade was down his only set of civilian clothes, cut off from his nearest safehouse, and pinned beneath one of Prague’s most public bridges with a few helpful answers and a lot more unhelpful questions.