Title: Porphyria
Author: Katarik
Fandom: Animated Teen Titans
Rating: R
Pairing: Redwing [AU Nightwing]/Slade

Summary: Someone else has Slade's attention. Redwing hates that.
Warnings: Do not read if you are easily squicked by Arkham inmates like the Joker.
Disclaimers: Katarik owns Redwing; DC Comics owns the original characters.
Notes: Based on Katarik's AU drabble where heroes become villains, and villains become heroes.

*---*---*---*---*

Redwing smiles up at him, lenses retracted and showing glittering blue eyes. Looks like a damn *kid*, part of Slade's mind notes numbly. Even covered in Adeline's blood.

Slade feels his unmasked face--Adeline doesn’t like seeing him in the armor, and he always comes to her on the anniversary of Grant’s death. So he’d started taking it off as soon as he entered, except… the *blood* was rather distracting--twist into a horrified grimace. No one who's just *slaughtered* someone else should look so... *happy*. His clenched fist snaps out and crashes into the boy's face before his mind fully registers the desire to do so.

Redwing falls backwards, graceless for once. His head would have smacked into the slick floor, except that Slade catches his collar and drives his fist into Redwing's face again. Whirls to throw him against a--blood-spattered, his mind screams; Adeline died in pain--wall.

Soft sound breaks the miasma of fury clouding his blood: the boy had whimpered. Like he had when Slade had slapped him, all those years ago.

The noise makes him want to comfort a crying child. Slade remembers that the boy isn't a child anymore. He's an *assassin*, not just a killer. He steps forward and very deliberately kicks in the boy's--*Redwing's*, he can't let himself forget that again--vulnerable ribcage.

The killer cries out harshly. Slade refuses to listen; Redwing won't say anything useful. He never does. But Slade does wonder, in some part of his mind *not* focused on causing pain without causing permanent damage, why this... this *assassin* isn't fighting *back*. At the very least, Redwing should be defending himself. But he doesn't, hanging limp against the wall, just... *looking* at Slade with those damn blue eyes.

Blue eyes in a blood-spattered face, framed by long black hair crusting over with Adeline's drying life. Slade snarls furiously, feeling tears burn in his throat. "I *loved* her!" he hisses. Redwing's eyes flicker.

"I know," he chokes out. "That's why she's dead."

Slade stares. *Shakes* Redwing hard. "Who paid for her death?" His mind races; Redwing doesn't come cheap. Someone had to have a great deal of money to buy Adel--his mind shies away. To hire this hit. And quite a grudge against Slade.

"*No one* did," Redwing gasps against Slade's hands. "I killed her for free. Because you loved her and you're *mine*."

Slade's hands unclench as he takes a step back in utter, horrified shock. Redwing collapses to his knees, holding one hand to his bruised throat and coughing. Looks up, and his eyes *sparkle*. "No," Slade breathes. That... *no*. Absolutely not.

"No!" Slade shouts desperately, and just that fast a knife is in his hand. He retains enough sanity to slash with the hilt out, rather than the blade, but he hears the crunch of bone anyway. Cheekbone, he thinks inanely. He's broken the boy's cheekbone.

Slade has a cold place in the center of his chest that feels like a bullet hit him. He also feels very calm, and yet he thinks that he would rather like to smash something so that he may watch it break. But he doesn’t want to break the boy.

Redwing still isn’t fighting back, lying crumpled and very still on the floor instead and holding a hand to his injured cheek. That fact is… disturbing, somewhere inside where Slade still cares. Right now, all he cares about is the fact that he can feel his throat clenching, wanting to weep or maybe scream, and that he has a *target*.

Slade snarls, yanking the killer’s hand away from his face and *stomping* on the delicate fingers. Redwing screams: Slade’s boots are soled in lead. The bones are probably crushed. At the very *least*, they’re fractured.

Slade doesn’t stop, grabbing Redwing’s hair and using the length of it to hold the boy still as Slade slams a fist into his stomach. Again. And again. He knows that he should stop, but--Adeline is *dead*.

Dead like the boy’s parents are. *That* thought makes him stop, as he drops Adeline’s murderer onto the floor.

Redwing isn’t unconscious yet. That’s impressive, Slade thinks fuzzily, or at least--it *should* be. He knows it should be.

The boy’s limp body has landed in a pool of Adeline’s blood. When Slade smashes a fist through the floor by his head, there’s barely even a flinch. Blue eyes flicker. Redwing’s slim fingers--broken, bruised; Slade has not been kind or merciful today. He has not been a hero, save for the fact that Redwing is not yet dead--raise themselves trembling to Slade’s chest armor. Slade does nothing to stop the movement, hoping that *finally* the boy will fight back.

He doesn’t.

Redwing’s hands are drenched in both dried blood and in fresh from the pool in which he’s fallen. They trace something onto the chest plate; Slade doesn’t know what it is. But he hears Redwing’s voice clearly enough.

"Mine," the boy breathes out. Wondering and naïve and *possessive*. Dark.

Slade needs him to stop talking. He can't... he can't *handle* this.

He knows many ways to stop Redwing's speech. But... the kid's too badly hurt for most of them. Slade closes his eye and slams his hand around the child's throat, squeezing until he goes limp and passes out. It doesn't take long: only a few interminable minutes of the kid's bleeding mouth forming his name.

At no point does Redwing struggle against the lack of air. At no point does he stop smiling, not even when his lips start turning blue from lack of oxygen.

Slade forces his fingers to unclench: he doesn’t kill. Not since he left the army.

He… doesn’t quite know what to do. So he simply sits there, idly stroking Redwing’s hair and trying not to think.

In a few minutes, he hears the door open and someone swear. Someone else says his name, prying Slade’s hands away from Redwing and saying meaningless words about prison and justice.

There’s a pink-haired girl at his side: Jinx. She works with some league of heroes or something like that. She says nothing, merely standing there, until Slade rises and she sees his chest armor. Then she gasps.

He merely looks at her, then goes across to Adeline’s bathroom. It’s not her guest one; he goes to the one he’s always gone to: the one in Adeline’s room. Fierce colors, functionality and elegance, the scent of jasmine. Slade looks in the mirror and sees an "R" written--in blood, of course; *Adeline’s* blood, no less--on the armor.

Ah. So that’s what the pink-haired girl had gasped about.

Slade clenches his hands white-knuckled on the sink and lets the tears rip themselves free.

But he doesn’t wash off the "R", and when Jinx approaches him a few hours with an offer to join the League--they have access to technology that will enable Slade to do more, be better, keep a closer eye on the kid--Slade accepts.

When he goes home that night, he’s still wearing the "R". It’s almost *comforting*; Redwing’s a psychopath, but he won’t leave.

It’s nice to know that there’s someone who won’t leave. Even if it is fucking *disturbing*.

--Fin.

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End Notes: There's a poem called "Porphyria's Lover". It's about a guy who kills the girl he's in love with because unless she's dead she can't be with him--she's noble-born, and her family won't permit it. He strangles her with her long hair.