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autisticrosewilson · 4 hours ago

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Heart to Heart

More transfem Grant and angst! Chronologically, this happens before my first excerpts. OOC slide because this is an au where he sucks less. Well. He sucks differently than he did before.

~~~~~~~~~~

Someone is following her. Has been for a while, and they're good enough that she hasn't caught a glimpse of them yet.

Greta scans the crowd but no one is ever looking at her, there's no telltale glint from any of the rooftops. She steers clear of every visible security camera but the feeling never lessens.

Their gaze is a prickle up her spine, and no matter how many times she changes her routine or her route home she can never seem to lose the tail.

In the end, the man finds her before she finds him.

"So how mad is he?" She can't meet the eyes of that mask, doesn't want to see what's reflected at her from the blank white lens.

"He's not-" Deathstroke starts but it's two AM and she is so very tired of looking over her shoulder and policing her own every move, lest she make an even bigger mess for herself.

"Of course not," she scoffs, "never mad, just disappointed." Greta quotes. "Always so disappointed." She glares at the sticky tile that's been bothering her all night, but that was the day shifts job and she's firmly refusing to pick up their slack.

"...He loves you." Is what the mercenary says after a moment of silence, gruff and quiet.

It catches her off guard enough that she looks at him. "You don't know that." Is the first thing out of her mouth, before she'even had a chance to process the thought.

"I do." He insists. "You're his oldest, you were the first one he loved."

"Did he tell you that?" She snorts, derisive and on edge.

Jarringly, he doesn't hesitate like she thinks he should. "Yes. He's told me a lot about you."

"..." She stops short, pursing her lips for a moment.

"... He's more sorry than he'll ever admit to you. He's not good with his words, but he wishes he made more of an effort. You deserved it. He'll never run out of things to apologize for to you. He just... doesn't know how to make it right." It's word vomit, desperate and nonsensical. Greta can hardly recognize it as a language she speaks.

Slade? Sorry? As if. She says as much, and the Terminator just sighs.

It's quiet for a while.

"He used to tell me stories about you." She says eventually. Deathstroke perks up, and she almost wants to giggle over how puppy like the gesture is. "I- I didn't know you actually existed, I just thought you were a hero he made up. I thought...that was what he wanted me to be. Like you. Like him. Like a man. " She runs a hand through her messy curls, undoubtedly making the tangles worse. "I tried," her voice breaks embarrassingly, "I was never the son he wanted. I don't want to be his son anymore. Never took him as much of a girl dad though." She sniffles, suddenly glad for the smudge proof mascara she splurged on last week.

Deathstroke looks...lost, hands hovering like he wants to help but isn't sure how. Now ain't that fucked up? She's so pitiful the contract killer thinks she needs help.

Maybe she should start therapy.

"He's an idiot. The biggest fucking moron that's ever lived, and he never deserved you." It's scornful, far too malicious for someone talking about the man who's paying him.

"Careful, he might take that out of your paycheck." She snorts.

He doesn't dignify that with a response. "His number is still the same, if you ever decide to give him another chance. Not that he deserves one." He adds. "But... I think he's more amenable to having a daughter than you might expect."

Greta shifts uncomfortably, tries to subtly wipe her nose and knows she failed miserably When he hands her a tissue, not that she has a clue where he might have gotten it. "I'll keep that in mind." It's not like she hasn't thought about calling before. Or just showing up at their doorstep and seeing how they react. Or sending them a post card or a magnet or something when she travels. Joey would like that, she thinks.

"Weird question but do you like, keep an eye on my brother too...?" She asks him out of the blue.

"Naturally." He admits easily.

"Is he safe?"

"As he can be."

"...is he happy?"

"..."

Greta braces herself against the counter with a wary sigh. "He's mad at me, isn't he?" She wouldn't blame him.

"Why would he be mad at you? He adores you." D assures her.

She shakes her head. "I left him there. I left him there with Slade knowing that if I'm not there he's got no one else to smack around. I left him there with both of them and their dumpster fire relationship. In that awful fuckin house with the nosey neighbors and their vicious kids."

She grips her hair to steady herself.

D is tense across from her, so still Greta bets he isn't even blinking. "He would never hit Joey."

"Course not, just me, right? Poor stupid Grant, never smart enough or strong enough or stoic enough or happy enough. Never fucking good enough." She wants to break something, wants to curl up and cry somewhere. She's starkly aware that she's at work right now.

"...You are so much better than anything he could have made you." He says softly.

She stares vacantly at the counter between them. "I don't think I would have survived what he wanted me to be. I think I would have killed myself trying to be like him and I don't think it would even matter. Sometimes I wonder if he wishes I had, and then he wouldn't have to deal with how ashamed he is of me."

Her fingers dig into her arms hard enough to bruise and the metal counter creaks when Deathstroke mimics the motion, leaving indents of his fingers.

"He never wanted you dead. He loves you so much it hurts to think about." He insists and Greta can't imagine why he's even bothering.

"Good thing I'm not around anymore then, out of sight and out of mind. He can go back to pretending he only has one kid without my constant vexing presence." She drawls bitterly.

D just sighs and it sounds so very tired. "...I'm not here to convince you to go back-"

"Could've fooled me." She sniffles.

"-just think about it." He pleads with her.

She doesn't manage more than a nod before she abruptly decides that this is enough vulnerability for the night, and maybe the rest of her life. Her eyes ache, her face is blotchy and red, her dollar store eyeliner is probably smeared beyond being salvaged. She kicks him out and spends the next fifteen minutes in the bathroom trying to make herself look a little more the strong independent adult she's been trying to become.

The house looks the same as it did the night she ran away. There's a noticeable absence of Joey's toys in the yard that makes her chest ache, the yellow paint is starting to chip, the garden looks too wild and ecologically diverse to be HOA approved.

Things must have gotten bad after she left, for mom to let it get like this.

With a lump in her throat, she approaches the door. It's the most notable difference, the same shade of white as the old one, but it's thicker, the lock so advanced as to be out of place in the gated neighborhood, and there's no windows - just an almost hidden security camera staring at her imposingly.

Her fingers barely brush the doorbell before the door is being flung open.

Greta freezes. There's a girl. 13 or 14, brown skin and eyes. And white hair. Distantly she's aware of shouting in the background, slowly getting closer.

She walks away. She registers the shouts of her name at about the same time she slams the door shut. She floors it, tires squealing on asphalt and probably leaving nasty tracks for Susan to gawk at.

A lot of things have changed since she left, saw wad prepared for that. She's changed to. She's got a science degree. She's legally cha get her name. She's been on HrT for almost 4 years.

Joey's mute. Mom lives in New York.

And Slade has a daughter. A daughter who looks nothing like mom. A daughter too old to have happened after the divorce.

Fuck him. Fuck them both. How could he- why would he- it doesn't- she can't-

Her phone is ringing, despite the fact she put it on DND. She knows who it is without looking, and she just barely refrains herself from launching the damn thing out the window. She'll do it once she gets on the highway, so D can't try to bring it back to her like a cat with a dead mouse.

Passing the Welcome sign feels the same way it did when she was 16 and too stupid to know what she was doing. Like she's lost. Like an ending. Like missed calls and lonely nights and nightmares with no one to put her back to bed.

At least she has a car this time.

#Slade when he can only show affection to his children when he's hiding behind a mask:#I'm transing everyone's genders this is a THREAT #dc #grant wilson #slade wilson #Greta Kane #transfem Grant wilson #my writing #Do you guys notice that Slade ysed to openly cry and show emotion all the time #and now they're trying to convine us he's some emotional badass #this man is a pathetic wet cat first and foremost

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autisticrosewilson · 5 hours ago

Note

JOEYJANE WEDDING

Jane's leaning over his piano, She's either been standing on her tip toes for the past 15 minutes or she's wearing one of the new pairs of heels that seem to spill out of her closet at the Tower. She's humming along with the song he's playing but her eyes never leave Joey's face.

His hopes that this is going to be one of those days where she just listens to him play quietly are immediately dashed. "You should play this song at our wedding." She remarks absently, resting her cheek on her folded arms.

He could stop playing to sign at her, or he could let her follow this familiar train of thought until she convinces herself his lack of response is a confirmation. He settles for a third option.

She ignores his deadpan look. "I keep going back and forth on the colors. Yellow and blue, maybe? Or pink, yellow, and blue. It's going to be in spring, so maybe green too? All pastels, obviously." She continues.

Last week she'd been deciding between a spring or summer wedding. As usual, he'd declined to comment. It seems she's come to a conclusion without his input.

He keeps playing.

"I've always liked nontraditional wedding dresses. My moms was mostly white, but it faded into an earthy pink at the bottom. Apparently, it was her mom's wedding dress that she altered for her own wedding. I wonder if I could get it back for ours...?" She trails off thoughtfully.

Joey hadn't known any of this, and he's not really sure how he feels about knowing it under these circumstances.

"She probably wouldn't mind if I altered it myself. She always said I had a talent for sewing."

Joey is inclined to agree with her on this. He's seen some of her work, and if she ever wanted to go that route, she could probably make a career out of it.

"I don't think you should wear a black suit, it would clash too much. I guess you could wear white, but that seems too boring. You should wear blue, you always look good in blue." She suggests.

He prefers purple, but it's not like it's ever going to happen so he doesn't bother arguing.

"Or maybe green to match your eyes?" It's takes him a moment to figure out she's waiting for his input. He glances up at her, eager brown eyes fixated on him like an excited puppy. He keeps playing.

"Fine," She huffs, "be that way." She keeps talking, and eventually, she pulls out a frankly ridiculous looking binder helpfully announcing Wedding Plans in glitter gel calligraphy.

☾︎☀︎︎☽︎

I'm thinking about carnations instead of roses, pink ones, with honeysuckle or heliotrope? Joey rambles, the electronic voice grating on Jane's already frayed nerves.

She ignores him, wishing not for the first time that she hadn't bothered with her hearing aids before she sat down to clean her guns.

"Maybe we need something more yellow to match your dress," he continues. "You still want pink and yellow, right?"

She can't help but imagine it. The dress her mother and grandmother wore stretched over her wide shoulders, delicate tulle and embroidered flowers against her jagged scars. She can't see it as anything but an insult to the woman who raised the girl she used to be.

"No." She says without thinking, voice raw.

Joey looks at her, that look she used to bend over backward for. Coring her and picking apart her thoughts effortlessly. It makes her nauseous. "That's okay," he says after a while, "The color scheme won't change much." He assures her.

He's lying, she labored for hours over that stupid binder, everything was perfectly cohesive and changing something as massive as the color scheme would throw everything off, but if she didn't know any better she'd fall for his sincerity so easily.

She stays silent and tries to pretend that she can't see Joey waiting for her response.

"Well, I've been thinking of some other options anyway. How do you feel about lilac and maroon?"

Anyone else would wither under the glare she levels at him, but Joey has never been most people.

"We can keep the heliotrope and instead of carnations we can do red aster." He decides.

"There isn't going to be a wedding." She grits out, her too sharp teeth grinding against each other.

"That used to be my line." He grins at her, all self assured and just a little smug and somehow entirely too sweet. A part of her she's been trying to keep buried delights in it. The rest of her knows better.

"We're not kids anymore Joey, no more playing pretend." She keeps her face blank, her voice steady. She tries to pretend she doesn't feel anything about the way hurt flickers in his eyes.

It's just grief for a girl who doesn't exist anymore. All of this It's just- just misplaced guilt. He's playing with ghosts like everyone else. She doesn't want to draw it out, the realization of who she is now. Red Hood. Jane Doe. No name and no symbol, just blood under her nails and anger blooming like flowers behind her ribs.

☾︎☀︎︎☽︎

"Ooh how about dark chocolate cake and raspberry cream cheese frosting?" Adeline offers.

"I don't know I'm still set on the pomegranate filling, the raspberry might clash." Nathalie muses, fussing with the extensions she'd insisted Jane wear.

Talia pauses the argument she's been having with the venue owner to peer over the women's shoulders. "Both of those seem too pink for the color scheme, I still say we go with the cherry filling if we're not using the red velvet cake." She tsks before swiftly switching back to heated French to continue lecturing whatever poor fool was unlucky enough mess up the flower arrangement.

"Cherry and pomegranate taste basically the same anyway." Joey tries to be diplomatic.

All three women look at him appalled before going back to their tasks.

Jane sends him a mostly amused look of pity from the stylists chair. He responds with a bashful shrug.

"Well, we can always compromise by adding another tier." Adeline hums thoughtfully.

"That might be too much, even if we send people home with leftovers." Jane frowns. "I don't want any of it to go to waste."

"Oh don't worry about that," Nathalie assures, carefully pinning her curls in place, "I'm sure we'll have plenty of uninvited guests dropping in. We'll see if we can't talk them into eating some before they start monologuing."

"Whats the point in having all those ninjas hiding in the bushes if the party is being crashed anyway?" Joey huffs.

"Oh please, your father is a lot of things but incompetent isn't one of them. No security detail on the planet has managed to keep him out of anything yet." Adeline snorts. "No offense to your assassin's of course." She adds at Talia's withering glare.

The doorbell rings, and Nathalie squeals loud enough that Jane winces and reaches for her hearing aid on Instinct. "That must be the dress!" She bounds for the door, Adeline hot on her heels, and Talia brings up the rear - still muttering curses at the person on the other line.

Joey meets her eyes with a grin, and her scowl looks more like a pout where it's softened by the flush in her cheeks.

He manages to get the barest glimpse of dark satin and lace before Jane is dragged away, to be properly fitted and doted on away from his prying eyes.

It's bad luck for a groom to see the dress before the wedding.

He entertains himself by flipping through the binder with all the planning. There's two now, the Big Book as they've taken to calling it - a huge binder with 10 overstuffed folders, carefully labeled to keep everything organized- and the original, a worn thing covered in glitter and peeling stickers, crammed full of sticky notes and sections where things have been scribbled out and changed and changed again over the years. The Big Book is the official wedding guide, commandeered by their moms almost immediately, and only kind of inspired by all their earlier plans. The original...well, Joey doesn't think he'll ever be able to part with that. Even after its place on his bedside table was replaced with an aged first addition Jane Austin book in what might be Mandarin - Joey can hardly keep up with all the languages Jay knows - he's held onto it too long to be content with shoving it in a junk box or under his bed to collect dust.

Most things have changed. Some have non-negotiably stayed the same. Jane asked him once if he thought it was worth the wait. He knew she wasn't just talking about flower arrangements or dress patterns.

Joey didn't even need to think about it. He'd smiled and quoted something by Neruda that made Jane turn bright red and pouty and they both knew that Joey would wait a million lifetimes for her, for this. Because she came back to him. She slipped through the fingers of death and clawed her way from the earth and she found her way back home, in his bed, in his arms, at his back and by his side.

He has a million pages of words that fail utterly to explain his love for her. Diary entries scrawled in the pages of too sparse sketchbooks and poetry that you couldn't torture him into digging back up. Notes in the margins of books creased from being read a little too often. Stock cards filled front to back with quotes about soulmates and stardust and the parts of him that cease to exist without her. None of them are good enough. He could write a thousand symphonies, spend the rest of his life kneeling before a canvas trying to capture every part of her that he has always recognized as home. It would be a life well lived, and an unimaginably fruitless endeavor.

He's snapped out of his thoughts sometime later by the front door slamming shut. Jane trudges back to the kitchen, finally letting herself relax. Neither of them are exceptionally fond of company, but unlike him, Jane has never had any interest in pretending otherwise. She leans over his shoulder to look at the page he's absent mindedly staring at, strong arms draped over his shoulders and her chin resting on his head. His Voice emulator drops to his lap and he sighs, leaning back against her.

"Have any grand revelations about the center pieces?" Her voice is a low rumble that reverse through his bones. She must have taken her aids out at some point, she isn't focused on how her voice is pitched.

"Just feeling grateful that we talked Nat and Talia out of the purple pitcher plants." He muses.

He can feel her smirk when she buries her face in his neck, the dull spikes of her labret piercing familiar enough now that he stops jumping every time he feels them. "It was a miracle," She agrees, "thank God Addie was a tie breaker on the side of sensibility."

"You're only saying that because she voted to let you wear combat boots under your dress." He snorts.

"It's probably a losing battle, but I'm thankful for the support nonetheless."

It's quiet for a moment, the comfortable kind that always makes Jay a little sleepy. When it's just the two of them, as safe as it's possible to be, and she can finally relax. He can feel her steadily resting more of her weight on him, and he delights in the warmth of her.

"You know you'll have to actually tell Bruce you're getting married soon right? He'll be worse if he's surprised." He regretfully breaks the peace to be right.

Jay groans, a bit too loud and far too dramatic, and he grins till his cheeks hurt as he's hauled towards their bedroom.

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