merry christmas (please don't call) - 4 parts, 23k words (completed series)
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
HOLDING ALL YOUR BAGGAGE (you know i'm not your father):
Slade will know, based on all the nights like these, exactly what buttons to press to keep Dick where he wants him.
He will sow just the right doubts to stop Dick from running back to Bruce.
He will spoon feed compliments and corrections the only way he knows how - with blunt honesty - to keep the boy at his side.
Dick will fall for this hook, line, and sinker.
OH GOLDEN BOY (don't act like you were kind)
Tim will try not to think about this moment.
He will remember, every time he closes his eyes, how Jason broke him into pieces while waiting for Dick to get there.
He will learn about the Lazarus Pit later, about the madness, about the rage.
It won’t change what happened.
He will forgive Jason anyway.
I DIED SLOW (running through the halls of your haunted home)
This will be the way that they rebuild the bridge between them, after they come home.
A simple, lingering presence, shifting and fidgeting while he tries to read in silence.
Jason will take the olive branch for what it is.
Dick will keep offering it, until the air between them stops feeling thick with things left unsaid.
DON'T TELL THEM WHAT YOU TOLD ME (don't hold me like you know me)
Funny enough, a handful of years later, standing in the hallway before interrogation room #3 in the Watchtower, Roy will look at Wally and say, “we need to do something about Deathstroke.”
They won’t suggest speaking to an adult about it - they will be the adults by then.
But they’ll look at each other, with all the authority on the world that mid-twenty-somethings can muster, and agree that the way Deathstroke was with Dick back then wasn’t right.
