NOW.

GOTHAM

THERE'S A HEART-LURCHING MOMENT when the world goes like a rug pulled out from beneath her abruptly and without ceremony.

Reality jerks Sloane back into the present. Eyes snapping wide open, panic flashes through her like a flood, soaking her bones before she feels her bike whip out from under her, and it all happens in slow motion. A vicious curse tears from her snarling mouth when her front wheel clips on the pothole, and her bike snaps forward with enough torque to throw her like a bucking horse. One moment she's soaring down the hill on both wheels, and the next, she's launched from the seat of her bike and into the air like an acrobat. For an endless minute, she's suspended in midair, fear icing her veins, bracing, bracing, bracing—

Pain explodes in her shoulder. She hits the ground hard enough to rip the skin off her cheek. White spots flicker in and out of her vision and as she lies on the cold cobbled pavement, the feeling slowly seeping back into her body as she lies sprawled on the ground. Blinking in shock, Sloane sucks in a deep inhale, the frigid air slicing into her lungs, ignoring the agony firing up her expanding ribs as her chest heaves.

Above, dawn bruises the sky, saffron-robed and gleaming.

Grinding her teeth, Sloane pulls herself upright. One sweep of her surroundings tells that she's only halfway down the hill, and the street lamps glowing an incandescent orange ignite the mist-damp cobblestone in a muddy glow. A stinging pain lances through her knee, and Sloane glimpses the blood oozing through a scrape the size of her fist through the rip in her black jeans. Staring in detached amusement at the blood glistening in the slow light of dawn and trickling over the side of her leg in dark rivulets, Sloane pinches the wound between her thumb and her forefinger and squeezes until shallow waves of pain began rippling up and down her leg.

Sometimes she does that—picks at old scabs, rips them clean off her skin just to see the blood. Maybe she wanted to savour the sting, the warm trickle of blood, the only thing tethering her to reality, because to feel is to be alive, and what else is there besides the granulating guilt but pain? Proof that she bleeds, proof that she is real, when there are days that she feels like a voyeur of her own life, floating inches above her body, watching life pass her by through a smokescreen, constantly screaming that even though her hands were hers, they never did what she wanted them to, but nobody could hear.

Glossing a dirt-speckled, paint-stained finger over the wound, Sloane clamps her teeth down on the inside of her cheek as the pain reverberates down from her knee to her shins.

When it clotted, she'd pick at the scab. Like a child's scrawl piece, Sloane's skin screams. Scar tissue stretches over her body, a graveyard of existence, the darkest acts made light. Sometimes she sliced up her own skin in lines and concentric circles, hoping the razor might dig a little too deep, go a little too far, nick an artery and end it there and then in the bathroom, until she was drained of the colour she splashed across walls at midnight, blood smattering the bathroom tiles. When they healed over into pink pillowy tissue, she opened them again. Sometimes she peeled off the scabs that grew, as though by inhibiting the healing process, she was punishing herself. It never felt like punishment, in the moment. Just right. Each time she ripped the dried skin off to let the new blood spring to the surface, a fire tearing up through her knee that wasn't born from anger, Silene would start fussing, nagging at her to let it heal, to take care of her own body by dressing the wound, to let the wound purge itself, so it would stop scarring over.

But Silene—perfect and innocent and pearl-smooth Silene, whose person festered in auras and perfumed the room in a pleasant glow, a sharp contrast to Sloane's whose essence waged a war within her mutilated skin and exploded outward, seeking nothing but obliteration—wouldn't understand. Silene's hands weren't stained with sins and blood and the aftermath.

Not everyone deserves to heal. And Sloane hasn't seen Silene in ten years.

✷

Sloane jams her keys into the lock and lets herself into the apartment.

Searing heat emanates from the scrapes on her cheek and palms, trickling down to her bloodied knees, but the pain is a mere prickle in the haze of her exhaustion. While the relief of being home instantly floods her body, knowing there's a warm bed waiting for her to collapse into, there is the familiar slow-drip of anxiety in her gut that won't go away each time she has to shut herself back in, a wolf closing the cage doors on herself. Nearly all her life had been spent looking at the inside of walls, too sheltered and never free. Shackled in captivity, all day feeling its soft, feathery turnings, a dark thing and its malignity.

Letting out an exhale, Sloane swallows down the bile threatening to rise at the back of her throat, a bitter taste in her mouth. You're free to come and go, Sloane has to remind herself. Floyd isn't Ma. Floyd doesn't care what you do. Floyd won't trap you in.

Even though she is nowhere near comfortable, Sloane feels the cold finger of doubt sliding down her spine subside. She kicks the door closed as she strides in, stopping in the vestibule to unlace her combat boots.

At the sound of the front door shutting behind her, a skitter of nails against the floor tugs at the corners of her lips. A huge, black mass comes barrelling into her, barking loudly. It leaps at her, nearly knocking her off her feet.

If Sloane hadn't been in close companionship with Bullet for as long as she had, she might've mistaken his menacing appearance and violently eager greeting as intended hostility, but that was merely the optics. Once malnourished and the runt of the litter, Bullet has since filled out, sprung into an overgrown hellhound of a Doberman almost overnight. He would never hurt her, though nobody would believe that for a second. Stumbling beneath his weight, Sloane lets out a groan as she winds her weary arms around his shoulders. He's slobbering all over her ear now, his incisors jutting out from his upper jaw, gleaming like twin scythes. He stands on his hind legs, front paws propped against her shoulders. He towers over her—much bigger than the day they'd found each other in the back alley—his shiny coat glossy as the night sky, and Sloane suspects he won't stop growing for a while.

"Gross," Sloane says, grunting as she, with Herculean effort, pushes Bullet off her, feeling his muscles straining against her resistance. Back on all fours, Bullet lets out a plaintive whine and Sloane meets his pleading gaze with a narrow-eyed glare, pulling off her shoes, a habit permanently ingrained into her. Though she rebelled against most of her upbringing, this one piece of her past, she can't seem to shake. After a while, Floyd stopped wearing shoes in the house, too.

Bullet nips at her fingers in disgruntlement as she straightens, his teeth staking into her flesh—not hard enough for her to bleed, but enough for her to feel his disapproval.

Scratching the spot behind his ears fondly, Sloane almost misses the very visible red dot marked steady against the black of her leather jacket, right over where her heart should be. Sniper's eye. Without taking her hand off Bullet's head, Sloane raises her free arm, the familiar frequency humming in her ears once more. She flicks her fingers. Somewhere beyond the living room, something dense and metallic clattered to the ground.

"That was new," a familiar voice scorns, deep and rasping and leaden with disapproval. "And you're late."

Sloane ventures into the dining area, Bullet padding alongside her. She finds Floyd sitting at the table, his firearms dismantled and laid out before him, a cloth in hand. Slung around his torso, the bronze shells lining an ammunition belt gleams in the garish light. At his feet, a black sniper's scope attached to its laser pointer lies on the ground. Floyd bends to pick it up, inspecting it for any sign of damage. When he finds none, he returns to cleaning his weapons, globed shoulders hunched over, a mountain of a man attempting to carve himself into a smaller, imaginary space.

Much like her, Floyd conducts his work mostly in the dark, their internal clocks set to a nocturnal routine. It's not much of a surprise that he's still awake. Still, some starved part of Sloane likes to think he waited up for her to come home.

"Sorry, Dad," Sloane says, sneering, because she knows exactly how much he hates when she does that. Make him into something more than what he is. He's twice her age—an approximation Sloane's been forced to make—and though he's not yet grey, he wears his age in the lines creasing his rugged face, and the dark, deep set of his brown eyes. Ethnicity aside, he could easily pass as her father.

A shadow passes over his face. Floyd flicks her a cool look, but there's no real antagonism in it. "Get the fuck out."

Between them sits an unspoken debt. One that Floyd never acknowledges, but Sloane knows it's there, feels the gulf of its weight pressing against her chest. She has lost count of the things she owes him, but she knows the most important ones.

First, the fact that he'd taught her everything there is to know about contract killing. Even though he prefers to do things solo, just as she does, he'd taken her along on some low-stakes jobs to show her the ropes. Everything from who he killed for—which was pretty much anybody that could afford the infamous, prolific Deadshot—to the most effective ways to kill. In return, she helped him sort through his arsenal of weapons and ammo, using her abilities to discover which ones were duds and which ones would jam.

Second, she owed him her life.

Pulling out the chair across from him, Sloane shimmies out of her jacket, leaving her in a comically oversized black shirt with the words FUCK YOU, YOU FUCKIN' FUCK printed in faded white ink on the front. She'd found it in a charity shop a year ago. Floyd catches a glimpse of it, and chuckles to himself.

"You look like crap," Floyd says, as Sloane picks up a part of the disassembled gun and examines it. His stare is surgical, slicing up pieces and parts of her for inspection. Under his scrutiny, the weeping wounds of her fall throb with a burning vengeance. She can smell the musk of the plasma and pus trickling from her cheek and the heels of her palms, stinging with blood.

"You should see the other guy."

Floyd shakes his head, but the corner of his mouth twitches, and the shine of mirth in his dark eyes is unmistakable. "You know where to find the first aid kit. Go get yourself cleaned up."

"Thanks, Dad," Sloane drawls. It slips out before she can catch herself. This time, it's an accident, and it catches in Sloane's chest like a bullet jammed in the barrel. For a second, her blood turns to slush and the world goes cold. Frozen in place, she watches Floyd's stilled hands, hawklike, her nerves alert and blazing.

But Floyd doesn't strike her. Just sends her a deadpan look, like he's done with her antics, and it bounces off her impassive expression. Slowly, her muscles unlock, the tension wired in her back easing up.

"Go," is all he says, before turning back to his disassembled arsenal, running his cleaning rod over the chamber.

Quietly, Sloane departs, her footfalls silent against the creaking floorboards. Showering is an excruciating event, but she sits under the warm spray, teeth gritted and trembling, white-knuckling the wall, until the sting subsides, until it is nothing more than white noise and blood swirling in the drain.

When she meets Floyd at the dining table again, she smells sharply of mint and eucalyptus and antiseptic ointment, and her right pant leg has been pulled up over her skinned knee to let the wound breathe. He glances at the blue dinosaur bandaid haphazardly slapped over the minor cut on her jaw, and lets out a breathy laugh. She tosses her balled-up sopping towel through the kitchen doorway and into the straw-woven hamper by the washing machine with frightening accuracy. Almost instinctively, she glances at Floyd to gauge his expression.

"I was thinking we get some breakfast," Floyd says, just as Bullet curls up between them, completely ignoring the fact that he isn't a puppy anymore, and there isn't nearly enough room to accommodate his size, dark tail flicking idly at Floyd's ankles. Leaning back in his chair, Floyd pins Sloane with a scowl as she starts to open her mouth. "If you dare tell me revenge is the best dish again, I will put my foot through your face. What do you want to eat?"

Setting the polished part back into its original place amidst the other parts, Sloane hums contemplatively, resting her chin in her palms. "Pancakes."

Moments later, Sloane drags her hash brown through a glob of ketchup, marinated in the greasy ambience of the only twenty-four hour McDonald's they could find, a couple blocks down the street. Floyd readjusts the trucker's hat on his head. She combs another hand through her dark hair, which she let out of its ponytail and now rests against her mid-back, long overdue for a trim. It hasn't been this long in ten years, and the added weight of it is a foreign tug on her scalp. When she was younger, her hair had always been slashed to her shoulders, a sensible length to sustain her through childhood. In Velocity Labs, her hair was constantly shorn to her scalp, prepped for the electrodes.

Now, though, she doesn't have a mother holding her hostage at the sink with a pair of silver scissors, or a woman in a white lab coat waiting to bag chunks of her hair. Now, it hangs around her face, a long, dark curtain blocking out parts of the world she doesn't feel like engaging with.

There's a reason why she always takes to the rooftops—less people, less of the world to see. Society is a living, breathing organism. Its body constantly fluctuates, but the structure is there. Gotham is a city of stone and metal, its veins humming with cold steel, but it is also one of the more populous territories, and Sloane has lived half her life sequestered from its body. When she broke out of Velocity Labs, her escape plan had ended there. She spent months adrift, a piece of flotsam caught up in the waves, not knowing where to go or who to turn to. That feeling had assimilated into her bones, like she didn't belong anywhere, and was most comfortable inside, yet, she never wanted to be locked in ever again.

In the bright lighting of the McDonalds, they sit in comfortable silence in their corner booth, the only sounds between them the shuffling of hash browns in the basket, the crinkle of plastic under Floyd's fingers as he brings his bottle of water to his mouth, and the dissonant early morning traffic on the street. It's the lack of activity that sends a bolt of anxiety through her. She digs a finger through one of the cracks in the old vinyl seats as the waitress serves them their pancakes.

In the late dawn, there aren't many patrons, mostly men in construction uniforms lining up at the counter and slinging back cups of hot coffee. No one pays them any mind. Still, Floyd cases the place, moving about the establishment with precision, his back never to the windows, ears pricked for the slightest shift in the wind. They keep their heads down even when the food comes.

By force of habit, Sloane reaches down to her knee, expecting a wet nose to demand her attention, until she remembers they hadn't taken Bullet with them. They left him sleeping under the dining table back home. A small part of her feels disorientated without him. Sloane wipes her palm over her thigh instead, smearing grease from her fingers over her jeans.

"What happened tonight?" Floyd asks, after a moment of silence. An indecipherable expression crosses his face. He sweeps her with a weighted look, chewing his sausage slowly and taking sips of his black coffee.

After a moment's deliberation, Sloane drenches her pancakes in the rest of the maple syrup and says, "he had kids. It was a mess. It's going to be a mess."

She doesn't know why she tells him this, nor does she know what prompted the question. They never talk about the business of their hands. They might grab something to eat, or sit quietly at the table, working in parallel, until one of them decides to catch some sleep, but there will be no discussion about the blood on her clothes. When he comes home from a job, he inks the names of his victims into his skin, but he never speaks to her about them, and she never asks. At first, Sloane couldn't tell if he was trying to honour the memory or savour the kill. Until recently, when Sloane began to understand that the dichotomy isn't so simple.

"Yeah, that's why I like my way." He lets out a sharp whistle, taps his index finger in the spot between her eyes. "Clean shot. Less personal. Less fuss. You sit a couple kliks away, you don't have to deal with clean-up and all that crap."

"I wanted to leave a message."

Shaking his head, Floyd pins Sloane with a flat look. "Remember what I keep telling you."

"Don't get cocky," Sloane recites, rolling her eyes. "Cocky gets you caught. Understood."

"If your work gets flagged by the Justice League, I'll throw you into prison myself."

She gets the underlying message, and the sudden disillusionment cracks the warmth of the moment. Floyd might be her mentor, her protector, but that doesn't mean he thinks the same way about her. She isn't family, nor is she vital to his survival. She's just some girl he picked off the streets. He isn't going to die for her. If she gets caught, it's highly likely they'd get him too. And that can't happen. And it wouldn't. No matter the cost, Sloane would never let anyone touch Floyd, even if the sentiment isn't reciprocated. Maybe it's his subconscious way of redeeming himself. Sloane knows he has a daughter. That little girl in the picture he keeps on his nightstand—one of a thousand other things that he never speaks about. Perhaps in giving her a second chance to live, he's giving himself another as well.

Eyeing Floyd thoughtfully, Sloane chews on a mouthful of her pancakes.

"What?" Floyd grunts, catching her gaze as he pushes his half-empty cup of coffee. He squints in suspicion, a hard gleam in his gaze. Paranoia. His mouth twists.

"Nothing." She saws her plastic knife down the middle of her pancake.

"Sloane." His tone is almost menacing, her name darkened between his gritted teeth. "What did you do?"

Bringing her still-warm cup to her lips, Sloane fixes him with a flat look, but doesn't answer. What she intends to do with her list, the trail of bodies she left for Sergio, Floyd doesn't have to know. And what he doesn't know won't kill him if she's careful enough.

AUTHOR'S NOTE.
next one's a roy chapter!!!!