Chapter Text
1.
The first night Talon spends in Deathstroke’s possession is a miserable experience for both parties. Deathstroke spends most of his time cleaning his (spotless) equipment and idly grumbling about diner food. Talon, on his part, is busy trying to sneak out of the window of the motel room.
After the fifteenth time Talon almost gets free, the man ties him to a motel chair. “Stop squirming,” the man growls as he struggles. “You aren’t going to get rid of those ties.”
Talon looks at him.
Deathstroke puts the knife he’s sharpening down. “I’m not trying to trap you, kid,” he says. “You know the Court’s on your heels. You want to crawl back? Feel free to do so. Just don’t drag both of our skins into the mix.”
Talon does not see the difference between the masters that stick him in icy coffins and the masters that tie him to a chair. He does not bother to inform his current captor of this fact.
Deathstroke sighs. One hand reaches down towards Talon’s head.
Talon bites his fingers.
2.
He was born to be a hunter.
This is something he reminds himself of whenever he catches himself relaxing in the beat-up cars Deathstroke steals or snuggling into the blankets from the motels that Deathstroke puts them in. His role is to stalk, to chase, and to kill. Everything else is secondary.
Deathstroke, he knows, is made of the same stuff. Talon has seen the gear he keeps stacked away — it is fine gear, with an almost perfect mix between practicality and intimidation. And Talon has seen the way Deathstroke hunts – a clean incision that leaves a neat void where a target once was.
They are killers, the two of them. Born as soldiers, deployed as peacekeepers. Any time off the hunt is preparing for the next hunt.
Talon does not quite begrudge Deathstroke’s care. But he will not stay, because if Deathstroke is off the hunt then that means Talon will be used in his next hunt, and Talon has no intention of sticking to any hunt but his own.
(Sometimes, dimly, he sees warm lights and laughing faces. If he tries, he can fly to the beat of a drum and the roar of a crowd. It is a lie.)
They were born to be lone hunters. This must be enough.
3.
“If you really wanted to run,” Deathstroke says, “you should have noticed that the hole in my security system was deliberate.” He sounds almost bored.
Talon snarls. The effect is dampened by the fact that Deathstroke is currently holding him by the scruff of his neck, but he still tries anyway. He planned his escape from the house perfectly. The assassin, not the security system, was the wrench in his plans.
(Not that his plan went much further than climbing from the drain pipes to the concrete roof they’re currently standing on, but the principle still remains.)
Deathstroke stares at him for a long moment. Then, he drops Talon. “Come on, kid. Let’s go for a trip.”
Talon stares at him.
Deathstroke is already walking towards the edge of the roof. “You coming or not?”
More out of pure spite than anything else, Talon bolts in the opposite direction. He darts for the shadows, clambering down the fire escape faster than even an Owl could follow.
Talon knows it is useless to run. He barely knows this city, and Deathstroke is just a couple steps away, practically breathing down his neck. Sooner or later, Talon will lose his way, and only the assassin will be able to guide him out of the alleys and the dead-ends.
But if Deathstroke wanted him to stop, Talon would have been caught long ago.
So they dodge and jump side by side, and Talon’s legs move faster, and his blood sings as he leaps and turns and flips. The pounding of his feet on the concrete and the creaking of the metal in his hands sits just so, like this is where he’s supposed to be, one thousand glorious feet above Bludhaven.
It is…not bad.
He pulls to a halt when the skyscrapers start collapsing into suburban apartments and townhouses. Deathstroke climbs up beside him a moment later.
“Not half bad, kid,” the assassin says, and there’s a note to his voice that is foreign to Talon.
He’s too far away for Deathstroke to stop him. It is no one’s business if he charges towards the abandoned box on the roof with a bit more speed than necessary. And it is absolutely no one’s business if he sends his heels over his head as he flips over the box, because the night is young and he wants to see if he can.
Deathstroke laughs at that. “Little monkey, eh?”
Talon walks to the edge of the building. For a moment, he believes he can fly.
4.
He is less than enthusiastic about meeting Deathstroke’s children (Wilson’s children, the man’s name is Wilson, it has been since he settled for real in the house). But enthusiasm counts for nothing, so he is still stuck where he is.
“This is Grant, Joey, and Rose,” Wilson says, pointing to each kid in turn. “Be gentle.”
That is as close to a warning as he will get. He heeds it well.
Wilson retreats to the back of the room, supervising the interactions from a distance. He is stuck. Nowhere in training did they talk about what to do with small human children.
Rose is the first to approach, stalking towards him like she’s trying to make him think she’s a threat. She extends her hand. Her head barely reaches his chest.
He understands what is expected of him. They shake hands solemnly. He nods as if this girl is his commander and not a tiny preteen, and the girl for her part accepts the gesture with the bearing of a queen.
Grant is next. The boy offers a quick hi and a suggestion to play with “Legos”. He politely avoids responding to said offer.
Wilson has not moved from his position, so he assumes that the man must be pleased. That leaves one more child he has to deal with.
Joey is still awkwardly standing in the corner. He carefully crouches down to the child’s eye level (that’s what he’s supposed to do, right? Get on their level?).
The boy slowly stands.
“Joey,” he says. After all this time, his voice sounds more like a rasp.
He lays a hand on top of Joey’s. It does not crush.
5.
He works in silence. It is the thing that makes people afraid of him – the absence of noise instead of its presence.
It is a while before he realizes that silence is different now. It is nights spent eating burgers while dangling his legs off a billboard and mornings spent watching Rose and Joey fight over the last strip of bacon. (He has learned how to steal said piece when neither of them are looking. Grant is normally blamed.)
His territory stretches from City Hall to the Wilson apartment; his people range from the principal at the middle school to the nice coffee shop lady with the extra pens. Bludhaven has stains of her own, but she protects his people, and in the early dawn she is magnificent.
His nights are split between long crawls up fire escapes and lazy naps in front of the television. He watches all sorts of strange movies, dances with Joey to songs about certain men in Russia, and learns how to stuff an entire cookie into his mouth. After so much time, it seems natural to turn Wilson into Slade, and once that business (a messy one, filled with awkward staring and even more awkward pats on the head) is complete, he feels settled.
Weeks turn into months, the bacon strips slowly become rationed, and he is…not normal, but not Talon, either.
Slade calls him kid, and that sounds right. He’s a kid of Bludhaven.
+1
“So what’s your real name going to be?” Rose asks one morning at the breakfast table.
“My real name?”
Rose arches an eyebrow. “You know, the name we’ll actually use for you,” she says. “Dad just calls you the kid, and that’s not a real name.”
He freezes. (Because he’s pretty sure he can’t bring himself to say that Talon is still the only thing that he is, but also because “I don’t know what I am so maybe just call me kid like everyone else” is not, as far as he knows, an appropriate response to tell a normal child.)
“It used to be Talon,” he says at last.
Joey frowns. Codename, he signs. Codenames don’t count.
“Codenames are real names,” Grant says, swatting his brother from across the table.
Joey looks at Grant like his brother’s gone insane. Is Batman a real name?
“It is because Batman doesn’t have another name,” Rose says, ending the argument. She stares at him again. “But you are going to have another name, so you can’t go by Talon.”
Distract her, the voice in his head that’s not having a crisis says.
“I don’t have any ideas for my name,” he says. “What do you think I should pick?”
“Well, it has to start with R,” Rose says matter-of-factly. “That way you’ll match with me.”
Joey pouts.
“You and Grant can take the middle name,” Rose tells her brother grandly. “There’s tons of R names. Like…Rachel.”
Girl name, Joey signs.
“It’s still an R name!” Rose shoots back, furious that her brother is questioning her intelligence. “And there’s lots of boy names. Like Rudolf.”
“Rudolf is a stupid name. Ryan is cooler. Or Richard.” Grant apparently has opinions on names. Alternatively, naming is more fun than eating oatmeal. “And there’s Robert, Ronald, Reagan—”
“Do not name the kid after President Reagan,” Slade’s voice says from the kitchen.
It is Slade’s calm acceptance that makes the reality of the entire childish business crash down on him. He does need a name, something that isn’t kid or boy or a Russian diminutive that no one can translate.
And it would be nice to match with Rose.
He considers his options. The table of children looks expectantly at him.
“Well?” Rose asks, growing impatient.
Rudolf, Robert, Richard…
The last name sets off a tingle in the back of his mind. He doesn’t know anyone with the name. But something sounds familiar about it anyways. It feels right, like a worn-out fuzzy blanket.
He makes his decision in the time it takes for Grant to lean forward and Rose to open her mouth to complain.
“Richard,” he says.
Grant lets out a whoop so loud that Slade materializes from the kitchen.
(It takes two hours for Joey to start signing his name as Rick, two days for Rose to come up with a variety of ways to make Ricky sound like an insult, and a whole week before Slade calls “Richard Wilson” over for the first time.)