Work Text:
Dick took slow, deep breaths, keeping his face blank, not letting his anxiety and desperation show. He knew his companion could hear his racing heartbeat but that didn’t matter. It was normal to be scared. It was normal to be terrified when facing one of the Fair Folk, even when they weren’t the world’s deadliest mercenary.
“Richard,” came out in a voice too cold and sinuous to be human. It sounded like bell chimes, if the bells were made of ice. “I hear you’re looking for me.”
Dick had been looking for him. Dick had put out feelers everywhere. Dick had still somehow not expected to be accosted half-naked in his own bedroom.
“I wish to make a deal,” Dick said, slow, careful, to the point. Never say anything to Them that you don’t mean, his mama had taught him, rules upon rules of how to live when blessed with the Sight. And, Dickie, my robin, never ever ever make a deal.
“Oh?” the smirk deepened. “Color me intrigued, little bird. I thought you knew better than that.”
Dick set his jaw. “I wish to make a deal,” he repeated.
“After you flung the last one in my face, I’m disinclined to acquiesce.” One cold blue eye, flickering like an icy fire, narrowed. “I don’t take kindly to being cheated, Richard.”
Dick remembered being eighteen, eighteen and terrified, eighteen and frantically trying to find a loophole before a homicidal grieving fae murdered him and all his friends. He’d never forgotten the simmering fury in Slade’s eye when he succeeded.
He hadn’t forgotten the glimmer of interest either.
“You wouldn’t have come here if you weren’t interested,” Dick said, careful to keep his voice even, not arrogant. Everything needed to go right. He couldn’t fail this. Not when there was so much riding on it.
He had read all the lore he could get his hands on, all the stories of previous deals, every opportunity, every precedent, every loophole. He spent ages researching, hiding from Bruce and Babs both, to find the crucial piece of information he needed.
All that remained was for Slade to take the deal.
“Fine,” Slade shrugged. “Maybe I am interested. Maybe I’m very interested as to why Bludhaven’s golden, gleaming vigilante is suddenly so adamant about contacting me.” The smile slipped to something wider, darker, with too many sharp teeth. “Didn’t you learn your lesson about entangling with the Otherworld, little bird?”
Dick knew the dangers of the Otherworld better than most people. He’d been lost there once, as a child, after following a robin into the woods. After he came out—well, Dick was the best acrobat in the world. If he flew a little too high and stayed in the air a little too long, who would suspect anything amiss?
Jason had gotten the closest. Robin is magic. He had had no idea how right he was.
The loss hit him like a pang all over again.
“I wish to make—”
“A deal, yes, I heard you,” Slade exhaled sharply, expression twisting to irritation. “Very well, what is it? What do you want?”
An old deal. A powerful one. A dangerous one. “A life for a life,” Dick said quietly, and extended out the scrap of paper with the name written on it.
Dick was lucky that his target was mad. Mad, and so easily coerced into freely giving his True Name. The harder part had been hiding it from Batman.
But Dick wasn’t breaking any of Batman’s rules. No one would be killed tonight. For a given definition of death.
Slade took the paper and read the name. And then his smile turned into a laugh as he looked up with a coldly calculating eye. “Clever. Very clever. One could almost say too clever.” The smile kept widening, and Dick felt growing disquiet. “You want to make a deal, Richard John Grayson?” Slade asked, low and sibilant. “What are you going to offer me to bring your little brother back from the dead?”
This would be so much easier if he knew what the fae wanted. But asking him would be a terrible decision—Dick didn’t want to leave his fate up to a fae’s imagination. The challenge was offering something that Slade wanted without giving him everything he wanted.
“A night. In my bed,” Dick said carefully. Slade had been leering at his naked chest since he got here.
Slade rolled his eye. “If you’re not going to take this seriously—”
“A night, having sex with me, in my bed,” Dick spelled out this time, jaw tight.
Slade smiled. “Much better, Richard,” he said. “But do you truly think one night is enough for your dear brother’s life?”
So he was on the right track. “Two nights,” Dick countered.
“No.”
“Three nights.”
“No.”
“Four nights.”
“No.”
“Five nights.”
“Six—”
“No.”
The bastard was smirking. It amused him to watch Dick’s increasing frustration. Dick could continue to spout off numbers, and maybe one would be the right one, or maybe Slade was just toying with him, or maybe when Slade finally said yes, Dick would’ve agreed to sign away ten years of his life.
“How much do you want, then?”
Slade’s mouth quirked. “Forever.”
Dick stared blankly at him. “No,” he retorted automatically, voice rising in agitation. What the fuck was Slade on?
Slade merely smirked. “Then give me a better deal, little bird.”
Dick forced himself to breathe in and out. Slow. Steadying. In and out. The bastard knew what he was doing. He was spiteful and vicious. He was interested, but he knew that Dick was desperate, that Slade could push this as far as he liked.
He knew he was in control.
Dick kept up the steady breathing. Robin is magic. What was his little brother’s life worth?
Everything.
“I’m not immortal,” Dick said finally, voice even. “I can’t promise you forever.”
“That wouldn’t be an issue,” Slade dismissed easily.
A thrill of dread went down Dick’s spine. How many stories had he heard of the humans lost in the Otherworld, mindless thralls devoured in the Queen’s Court, the endless nights of dancing and feasting for mortals that could no longer remember their name? A lifetime as a slave to creatures that considered them little more than pets.
Forever, Slade had said. Subject to the whims and fancies of the fae, of course, but that meant this was no idle request. Slade intended to have him and keep him. Dick could see the sharpness of his gaze—of a hunter fixed on his prize, determined not to lose it.
Dick swallowed. Jason. His little brother. His family, whole again.
“I get a human life first,” Dick bargained. Everything felt cold as he watched Slade’s smile sharpen. “You can have an eternity in the Otherworld, but I get to live first.”
Slade looked at him with an amused expression, like a parent heeding to the silly demands of a child. “Sure,” he agreed. “It’s not like this form doesn’t have its own benefits.” His gaze dragged down Dick’s body, slow and lingering, before it flicked back up, hungry and intense.
“Very well,” Dick took a deep breath and let it out slowly. Never say anything you don’t mean. “Do we have a deal?”
Slade met Dick’s outstretched hand with his own, engulfing it with his firm, encompassing grip. He smiled wolfishly, “We do, little bird.”
Dick yanked his hand free as soon as the tingle of magic faded and Slade let it go with a smirk. Dick took another step back, because he’d gotten too close to the mercenary, and Slade huffed out a laugh before sauntering closer.
“Our deal,” Dick said, voice high and Slade rolled his eye.
“Yes, yes, I’ll get to it,” Slade dismissed. “But we can have some fun first, since I’m already here.”
“No,” Dick said. His heart was pounding in his ears.
“No?” Slade chuckled, raising an eyebrow. “You made a deal, Richard, and I intend to collect.”
“I promised you an eternity in the Otherworld,” Dick pointed out, praying that his voice wouldn’t crack. “As long as I’m still mortal, you cannot touch me.”
That drew Slade up short. His expression narrowed. Dick edged back another step. Dick had promised Slade forever, but if he was mortal, he couldn’t promise forever, and Slade had promised not to give him immortality till the end of his human life. The smallest of loopholes.
Though judging by Slade’s expression, he looked like he wanted to end Dick’s life right here and now.
“Clever little bird,” Slade hissed, and it did not sound like a compliment. “But never clever enough, are you?” He advanced forward and Dick scrambled back—fae or not, this was still the deadliest assassin in the world and Dick was unarmed and wearing only boxers. “Do you know the only thing more dangerous than making a deal with a fae, Richard?”
Another step back, and he’d reached the edge of his nightstand, his escrima were here somewhere—
“Trying to cheat a fae,” Slade growled, low and deep, more animalistic than human. In a single blink, he was in front of Dick, and the escrima stick made no difference—Slade had him slammed back against the wall, hand around his throat, face to face with a very angry mercenary.
“Have your human life,” Slade snarled. “Have your brother.” Something started burning around Dick’s heart and he didn’t have the breath to scream. “But you’re mine, Richard, mortal or not, and I will ensure you never forget it.”
The burning turned agonizing and Dick could scream after all, but it didn’t help the tortuous sensation of a brand carving into his flesh, tracing over his heart like the mockery of a caress. Slade’s hand disappeared and Dick crumpled to his knees, curling over the wound, struggling to breathe.
“I’ll see you on the Other Side, little bird.”
Dick took a breath of Gotham air and pretended like it wasn’t a retreat. The sun was starting to set as the neon lights flickered on, illuminating the grimy streets. It was too early for Batman, not that Bruce did much patrolling nowadays, and Tim was in charge of Jason at the moment.
Slade had upheld his part of the deal. Had returned Jason to life. Still in his goddamn grave. Between the trauma and the injuries, Jason had dissociated and gone nonverbal, and nothing they did brought him back.
So Dick got his little brother back in body but not in spirit.
There was always a cost to dealing with the Fair Folk.
Worse was the guilt. The nagging voice in his head that told him that if he’d just surrendered to Slade, Jason would be hale and healthy. Bruce wouldn’t be searching for treatments for a condition half-magical in nature, Tim could be a brother and not a babysitter, and Dick would still—Dick would still be able to touch people.
The brand was throbbing painfully under his shirt, a reminder of the sharp flare of agony when Jason had hugged him. Dick had extricated himself as quickly as possible, and definitely too fast to be subtle to Tim’s narrowing expression.
Alfred wouldn’t have noticed Dick’s sudden aversion to hugs, Bruce was too caught up in Jason to notice, Jason was too out of it to put things together, but Tim was coming out of his shell of shyness and too smart for his own good. Dick didn’t think his explanation of bruised ribs would continue to hold water.
Damn Slade. Damn the fae and all his kind. It wasn’t just romantic embraces that Dick had to avoid and if the choice was between living a full lifetime like this and giving in to Slade—
Dick wasn’t letting the fae get what he wanted that easily. But his conviction was wavering.
It was making him worse as a fighter too. Punches and kicks were fine, but holds set off the magical brand and Dick had started flinching at dangerous moments. He couldn’t tell Bruce, because it meant explaining everything, and Dick wasn’t even sure where to start.
Hey, so remember Jason’s mysterious resurrection? Well, haha, funny story, the world’s deadliest mercenary is actually a fae, the Otherworld is real, and I’ve essentially sold my soul.
Bruce would have a fit. Dick was not dealing with that. He needed to come up with a good cover story, but he kept blanking.
Dick shivered at a particularly cold gust of wind, casting a glance down a dark alley, and walking faster when he saw the huddled figures inside.
Slade had ignored him after making the deal and Dick didn’t dare try to contact him after the extent of Jason’s injuries was known. The mercenary was extremely pissed and Dick wasn’t so sure he’d survive another encounter. He couldn’t forget that the Fair Folk in no way saw themselves as equal to humans.
Dick was an amusement. Entertaining, if he played his cards correctly. But never anything more.
And the thing with entertainment was that the moment it stopped being entertaining....
Well. The Joker’s bloody carcass was a testament to that.
A stray footfall sounded out, breaking his concentration. Dick glanced behind him and found a group of men in hoodies following him. He abruptly noticed that the noise of the city had faded, and the only other people on the street were scurrying away as fast as they could.
A sharp wolf whistle.
Dick ignored it and picked up his pace. He was in the East End somewhere, he knew that much, but this wasn’t a part of town he frequented, he hadn’t been a regular in Gotham in years, and cities looked very different from the skies and the streets.
The footsteps were getting closer.
Dick tugged up the collar of his coat and glanced at the nearby alleys. Finding a fire escape and taking to the rooftops was not the most subtle escape, but Dick wasn’t in the mood to defuse this. He just had to find a likely candidate—
This fire escape was rusted through, holding on by splinters. And the alleyway was a dead end.
Dick tried to back out but it was already too late. “Where are you going, sweetheart?” one of the thugs crooned, the six of them spreading out to block the alley opening. “Stay a little longer. Have a chat with us.”
“No,” Dick said flatly. “Get out of my way.”
“Seems a little rude,” another man piped up. “Someone should teach you manners, sweetheart.”
“Say please,” another man taunted, “and maybe we’ll let you go.”
Dick tried very hard not to grind his teeth. “Please get out of my way,” he said, voice hard.
“Hm, no, not feeling it,” another thug mused. “I think you need to get on your knees and beg properly, sweetheart.”
Dick’s temper snapped. “Go to hell,” he snarled, shifting back into a fighting pose. It was too dark to make his face out properly and there were no cameras here, he wouldn’t be compromising his identity to beat these shitheads up.
The lack of weapons could be compensated for. The magical burning handicap…could not.
“Not so hotheaded now, are you?” someone laughed, Dick couldn’t tell who, because he couldn’t see anything through his blurry vision, brand burning furiously hot from the grip around his chest.
Dick struggled as hard as he could, but the pain was reaching nearly unbearable levels and he barely managed to deliver a sharp kick before someone sliced through his shirt.
“Still feisty, though,” came through distantly, because Dick’s skin was suddenly on fire.
He didn’t know the brand could get worse. Didn’t know that hands groping across bare skin felt like his bones were liquefying from the heat of invisible flames, like his skin was peeling off, like someone had poured acid straight into his heart. He didn’t even have the breath to scream, writing in silent agony as the brand carved deeper and deeper into his flesh.
“Damn that’s a nice ass—”
“Aw, he’s already started crying—”
“That looks like an expensive coat, make sure you get it off of him—”
He hoped the agony of the brand would cancel out everything else. It did not—it kept increasing, kept suffocating him, kept paralyzing him with never-ending torture, but it didn’t stop him from feeling the sharp jolt of pain up his spine as the first man pushed in. The disgust as someone else forced his way into Dick’s mouth. The shame at their comments and sneers and laughs.
The pain blurred everything into a sickening kind of clarity, keeping him prisoner in his own body, forcing him to feel everything even when he couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think.
Please, repeated on a loop in his head, please, please, please, please.
He just wanted it to stop.
After the longest eternity he’d ever endured, the brand abruptly stopped burning. It flooded him with cold, slamming the real world back in—the gasps and moans, the tears freezing on his cheeks, the taste of cum in his month, the squelching—
But the sudden cessation of pain brought a different kind of relief with it, and Dick felt himself slipping to merciful blackness.
The last thing he saw before he closed his eyes was orange and black.
Dick woke up to sunlight. He was curiously heavy and light at the same time and he slowly sat up, squinting at the room around him. This wasn’t his apartment and it wasn’t his room in the Manor either—the room was full of light, airy fabrics and gleaming golden decorations.
He slipped out of bed—the carpet felt like walking on a cloud—and went to the window, where he could hear musical chimes of birds and the breeze whistling through the trees. One bird landed on the windowsill, looked up at him, and cheeped.
“Hello, robin,” Dick smiled, feeling as though he was greeting an old friend—and froze.
The robin cheeped again and, in a move no real robin would make, hopped on his hand, still looking up at him. Dick swallowed and looked out of the window, really looked, at the trees and the sunlight and dazzling splendor of it all.
He remembered, now.
Dick shooed the robin off his hand and stepped away from the window. The pain was gone. The agony was gone. Dick could feel nothing of what those men had done to him, only a soft ache over his heart. The lightness of earlier was dissipating fast, replaced by a low headache and a parched throat and the stirrings of panic.
He made a deal, after all.
There was a bandage over his bare chest where the brand used to be, and Dick didn’t touch it. He forced the panic down to think, to breathe without hyperventilating, to accept the futility of his situation. It was easier to cocoon himself in numbness than resign himself to a fate that had come much faster and more abruptly than he’d expected. Dick had never even gotten the chance to say goodbye.
There was no sign of Slade in the room. Dick thought about staying here to wait, but restlessness crept in on the heels of realization and while his thoughts weren’t compelled at the moment, Dick didn’t know how long he’d be able to keep his own mind.
The house was very large and very empty. Dick crept through the corridors, trying hard not to think about Bruce and Alfred and Jason and Tim. At least there wouldn’t be a body for them to find, though Dick didn’t know whether the uncertainty of what happened to him was better or worse. Maybe if Dick begged prettily enough, Slade would concede to healing Jason, one last gift for his family.
He’d hoped for more time. But he knew what he was getting into when he made a deal with a fae.
Dick emerged in a large atrium, incongruously sized for the rest of the house, and stared. There was familiar equipment here, ropes and swings and nets, stretching up and up to a ceiling Dick could barely see. Before he could take a step forward though, he was interrupted.
“It’s not finished.”
Dick flinched hard at the sound of Slade’s voice—it was deeper and darker here than it ever was in the mortal realm—before he turned to the fae. “What?” Dick asked, gaze skipping over Slade and relaxing slightly when he saw that the mercenary hadn’t changed forms.
Slade merely scowled, looking—not human, exactly, but like the same dangerous mercenary he always appeared as. “It’s not finished,” he repeated, beckoning Dick towards him.
There was no instinctive urge to obey, no whisper of compulsion, but Dick followed anyway. Slade didn’t try to touch him, didn’t make any comment about how Dick was a few steps behind and carefully out of reach. He led Dick to an open-air balcony and Dick couldn’t stop himself from going to the railing and looking out at the forest.
It was beautiful. That was the problem, the greatest lure the Otherworld had. It was stunning beyond mortal comprehension, breathtaking in its splendor and inescapable in its grandeur.
Dick was lucky, the first time, that the spirit that lured him in didn’t want to keep him. There was no chance that he’d be that lucky a second time.
“How are you feeling?” Slade asked, voice quiet. He was being unusually controlled—there hadn’t been one hint of a sneer this whole time.
“Fine,” Dick responded, turning back to him. The table between them had only one thing on it, a closed bag, and Dick eyed it before turning back to Slade. “Those men—”
“Dead,” Slade responded instantly, and this time his voice was truly a growl, dark and furious. His blue eye flickered like fire. “They will never touch you again.”
Dick swallowed. It wasn’t as though he wasn’t expecting it. Slade’s possessiveness had always been clear.
“Actually,” he said, dropping his gaze and clearing his throat, “I’m a little thirsty. Could I have some water?”
Dick wasn’t expecting to be met with a no.
“I don’t have normal water,” Slade said tersely. He sounded angry, but not at Dick. “Drink or eat in this realm, and you won’t be able to return back.”
Well, no, but Dick didn’t think that was on the table to begin with. “What do you mean?” Dick blinked. “I thought our deal—”
“Was that I’d give you immortality when your mortal life was ending,” Slade finished roughly. “You aren’t dying.”
Dick stared at him blankly. “Then why did you bring me here?”
Slade narrowed his eye, made a disgruntled sound, and stalked out. Dick stayed where he was, numbness giving way to surprise and confusion.
He didn’t remember being seriously injured, if the searing magical brand didn’t count, so Slade could be right—but that didn’t explain why Slade had come. Or why he’d taken Dick instead of just slaughtering all the men there, punishing Dick, and leaving him on that Gotham street.
Dick, struck with a sudden thought, carefully peeled off the bandage on his chest. Underneath was the brand, but faded into a scar, no longer the pulsing ache that used to haunt Dick’s steps.
“The cream for the wound.” Dick startled at Slade’s sudden reappearance, and barely managed to catch the bottle thrown at his face. “Magical wounds take longer to heal.” Slade rounded the table and motioned to the bag. “That has the potions to heal your brother.”
Dick’s fingers went white with the effort it took him to stay still. “And what do I have to do for it?” Dick asked as levelly as he could manage.
Something flickered in Slade’s eye before going completely dark. “Nothing,” Slade said simply. “The bag is yours.”
Dick stared at him. Everything They promise has a price, his mother warned him, there is no such thing as free.
“Believe me, don’t believe me, it’s up to you, little bird,” Slade said, and there was a ghost of a smile on his face now. “But the bag’s yours, and the path from the gate will take you to the standing stones behind your Manor. I trust you can find your way home.”
Like Dick was going to let the fae wriggle out of an explanation that easily. There was a catch here, Dick just had to find out what it was.
“And then what?” Dick asked coolly, before jolting. “Wait—you put a faerie circle in my backyard?”
Dick had never given permission for that. Wild circles were one thing, but if there were standing stones on Wayne Manor property, then his family was suddenly in a lot more danger than he previously assumed.
“I don’t make a habit of creating portals,” Slade said flatly, but Dick only continued to glare. Slade rolled his eye and said, in clearer terms, “No, I didn’t put a faerie circle in your backyard. From my understanding, it’s been there for centuries.”
“That’s not possible,” Dick said, disbelieving. “Bruce would’ve known about it.”
“I can’t speak to what your father does and does not know,” Slade said, shrugging. “But did you truly never wonder about that butler of yours?”
“Alfred?” Dick choked. “No. Alfred’s from England. He’s a retired soldier or something. There’s absolutely no way—”
“How old is he?” Slade interjected.
“What?”
“How old is he? What war did he fight in? Where does he go, when he’s not at your manor? And have you ever heard him tell a lie?”
This was ridiculous. Slade was being ridiculous and this was a stupid distraction and the fact that Dick could answer none of these questions meant nothing.
“You’re deflecting,” Dick said, crossing his arms. “You still haven’t told me what you want.”
“The potions are a gift, Richard,” Slade said smoothly.
“Bullshit,” Dick retorted. “Fae don’t give gifts. You want something.”
“Do I?” Slade was starting to look amused.
Dick took a deep breath and let it out slowly, letting the tension seep out. “Slade,” Dick closed his eyes, wearier than he’d meant to sound. The past months had taken a toll. “Just—what do you want? For rescuing me, for healing me, for helping Jason. Just make the goddamn deal.”
He kept his eyes closed as he heard the footsteps, heard Slade round the table, heard the clink of glass bottles, heard the steps stop right in front of him. Slade grabbed his free hand and dropped the bag in it, Dick opened his eyes before he dropped it.
Slade was so close Dick could hear him breathing.
“Foolish, foolish little bird,” Slade murmured, cupping Dick’s face with a hand and tilting it up, until Dick could look at nothing else but that icy blue eye. “Of course I want.” The intensity felt like a compulsion, but Dick could feel no magic. “And I’m not good at waiting,” Slade dipped his head and Dick froze, but Slade didn’t try to kiss him. “But what is a handful of decades to an eternity?” Slade whispered in his ear, close enough to make him shiver. “I can be gracious enough to let you fritter away your mortal life however you like.”
Dick swallowed, but he felt like he couldn’t pull himself away. “And you’ll leave me alone?” Dick asked. “You won’t try to kill me sooner, or hurt my family, or—”
“Typically, when receiving a gift, the common response is thank you,” Slade murmured.
“Typically, the fae don’t give unpoisoned gifts,” Dick snapped back.
Slade sighed and drew back enough to look Dick in the eyes, dropping his grip. “Go home,” he instructed. “Give the potions to your brother. And the next time you’re foolish enough to go walking at night in that cesspit you call a city, take a damn weapon.”
Dick clutched the bag tighter, but Slade’s glower was all annoyance and not fury. He made no motion to stop Dick when he skittered a step back, or to bar his path when Dick went for the door. No one stopped him from leaving the house, from getting on the path, from passing unmolested all the way to the faerie circle.
He stepped through and took a sharp inhale of surprise. Slade was right. He was on the Manor grounds.
Dick turned back towards the stones and waited a stretching moment. Nothing followed him. “Thank you,” he said out loud, before heading home.
“What possessed you to let the mortal go?”
“It’s only for a short while,” Slade rolled his eye. “You know these mortal lifespans. And the mortal realm has gotten quite entertaining, if you ever felt like coming back.”
“But why? Why, when you can have him right now? Why, when you could’ve bound him up and forced him to kneel at your feet—”
“If I wanted a thrall, I would’ve snatched one anywhere,” Slade snapped in irritation. “There’s easily a thousand mortals that are equally beautiful.” He watched the gates, gaze dark. “I want him,” he said quietly, “and I will have him, till the Otherworld ceases to exist.”
“…I still don’t understand.”
“You can’t keep a bird in a cage and expect it to fly,” Slade replied. “The trick is to learn when to let it go, so that it always flies back to you.”