(no subject)
Title: If truth in hearts that perish
Summary: Long before Slade Wilson was Deathstroke, or even a soldier, he was just one more kid.
Author's Notes: Written for Psych_30 number four, Ego/Id.
When Slade Wilson is five years old, he asks his mother for the puppy in the window, and she strokes his hair as she tells him they can't afford it.
When he is eight years old, his father leaves to go to war, and his mother goes to work in the factory with Annie's mother and Johnny's one-legged uncle. He used to like beans before they ate them all the time, and when he pokes at his plate with his fork his mother snaps at him to eat without fussing.
He asks her for pork chops the next night, and she tells him they can't afford it before she sends him out to weed the garden she planted for the war effort.
He really hates the garden. He really *really* hates turnips.
He steals Annie's war bond, when she's showing it off in school, and she cries for an hour before he slips it back in her bag.
Nobody knows it was him, and he thinks for a minute, "I can do this," before he remembers stealing is bad.
Johnny's uncle teaches them how to play poker. Slade doesn't have many nickels to put in the pot after the first night, but he stays and watches anyway. The rules aren't that complicated.
He slips a dollar out of his mother's purse and joins Johnny and Mark and Luke, two weeks later, and makes three-fifty. He puts a dollar fifty back in and doesn't say anything when she wonders where the fifty cents came from.
When he's visiting Johnny next week, his uncle tugs Slade over and offers to teach him an even better game, and Slade doesn't want to go home to see his mother looking tired -- she's started coughing lately -- so he says yes.
Three-card monte is pretty easy. You just have to be fast when you slip the queen up your sleeve. It's cheating, and that's bad, but Alec says Slade's not fast enough to pull it off, and then when Slade beats him Alec gives him a quarter.
That's enough to get him a milkshake and a grilled cheese sandwich at the ice cream parlor, and Slade thinks, "I can do this," and gives his mother his portion of beans at dinner. She's tired enough that she lets him.
Two and a half months after Slade's ninth birthday, his mother falls down while she's washing dishes, and he shakes her and runs over to Mrs. Mack's to use her phone and call the doctor.
It takes three days before she dies. Overworked, the doctor tells him, too stressed, something wrong with her lungs, and he stares at them and thinks, "But she's my *mom*," but Mark's daddy died last week, even though peace was declared the day after his mother collapsed, so that doesn't really mean anything at all.
Johnny's mother lets him stay with her and Johnny and Johnny's uncle while they're waiting for his father to come back. Slade makes Johnny's uncle teach him more card games, in exchange for ten percent of whatever Slade wins. It gives him something to do.
A week later, he's counting the money he got from going down to the bar and betting he could beat Four-Eyes Mr. Smith at poker when the door opens and he looks up to see someone he vaguely recognizes as his father, only smaller than Slade remembers, holding the hand of the second-prettiest lady he ever saw.
She's his stepmother, "Frannie," she says with a German accent, and he dodges the hand she tries to lay on his hair and grabs his money and runs upstairs. He slams the door mostly because his mother always told him not to, and when his father whips him with a birch switch for being rude Slade bites his lip and doesn't yell.
He goes home. Frannie makes pork chops, and she doesn't snap at him when he doesn't eat them.
He weeds the garden after dinner without anybody telling him to, even though his father says, "The war's over," sounding as tired as his mother ever did.
He's ten and a half when Frannie -- he's still *not* calling her his mother, no matter what -- starts getting fat, and he's eleven and a quarter when Frannie and his father come home from the hospital with a yelling, squirming, red little baby in Frannie's arms.
His name is Wade, and he's Slade's new brother. Slade sneers at the crib and goes back outside to pick another fight with Alec.
When he comes in a few hours later, Frannie smiles at him a little before she washes the dirt off his knuckles and says, "I could teach you a better way to punch," and when he laughs she hits him in the gut.
When he can breathe again, he makes her promise she'll show him how to punch someone like that.
It takes three months before he's better than any boy for three blocks around, even the big high-school boys, and Frannie can still knock him down. She makes him do more pushups than even his father ever does, but when he finishes she holds his hands steady and teaches him how to pick locks.
On his twelfth birthday, his father gives him two new shirts and Frannie gives him a Swiss Army knife with fourteen pieces, and when Mark tries to take it from him the next day Slade breaks his nose and keeps kicking him until Mrs. Dame threatens to suspend him.
Mark's mother comes over that night. Frannie has her hand in Slade's hair, stroking, and she sounds like she's about to laugh when she tells Mark's mother that her son shouldn't have been stealing.
The next month, when Frannie finds his deck and his collection under his mattress, he tells her that he bought the baseball cards with money from doing odd jobs for old Mrs. Johnson across the street instead of with the money he won from poker and three-card monte and hustling pool down at the bar -- nobody expects a twelve-year-old, not even one with the reputation as a troublemaker he's starting to get, to be any good -- and she laughs so hard she has to sit down. Then she tells him to find a better hiding place and kisses his forehead.
When he is thirteen, he wakes up with his pajamas are all wet and sticky, and when Frannie laughs at him and asks what he was dreaming about he doesn't tell her, "You."
He figures out that he's been obvious when she kisses his cheek and lets him have a glass of his father's bourbon, telling him that she's too old for him, which he already knew, and that he'll find someone prettier, which he knows he won't.
Amelia down the street, who all the boys like because she's sixteen and a half and has breasts and wears skirts up to her knee, smiles at him and he buys her a soda and teaches her some of the easy rules for poker. Next week she borrows her father's car, even though she's not legal, and they drive down to the lake, and she lets him put his hand all the way up under her shirt before she tells him to stop.
He doesn't tell anybody. He just grins when Luke asks if he wants to see pictures of a naked lady.
The week after that, Amelia lets him put his hand up her skirt.
It takes another month and another ten dollars of buying her milkshakes and bracelets and teaching her how to play pool before she lets him have sex with her, and even though she makes him pull out instead of coming inside her he walks every inch of the two miles home grinning.
He doesn't tell anybody about that, either. Amelia's nowhere close to prettier than Frannie, anyway.
When he is fourteen, he steals a pair of sneakers from the corner store because he wants them and can't buy them, and he tosses his old ones away and wears the new ones home.
When he is fifteen, he plays three-card monte in Sunday school, and when Frannie peeps in to see him she hides her laugh behind her Bible.
Slade grins at her when the teacher says he's the best student in class, and winks at Mary Anne and grins more when she blushes.
After church, he finds out Mary Anne has pink panties on under her skirt, and when she tells him to stop he kisses her again and strokes her thigh right above her knee and steps back.
When he is sixteen, he overhears the teachers talking about what their students will do once they leave school. Slade hasn't really thought about it past vague plans for the money hidden in his closet.
He doesn't want to stay here. He's never been more than twenty miles away from his house, and from the stories Frannie's told him he thinks he'd like Germany.
He never wants to work in the factory.
Sometimes he has nightmares of hearing his mother coughing, falling.
Next month, after class lets out, he goes to the Army recruitment building and signs up. He has to lie about his age, but the bald man behind the desk is new, doesn't know him, and Slade doesn't look anything like sixteen.
He packs his bags when he gets home after the physical, just in case, because he remembers how sudden it was when his father left, and he slips in his deck of cards and Frannie's knife, and when he goes downstairs he gives Wade his pork chops and smiles at his father and meets Frannie's eyes squarely, smiling like he's got nothing to lie about.
-- Finis
Summary: Long before Slade Wilson was Deathstroke, or even a soldier, he was just one more kid.
Author's Notes: Written for Psych_30 number four, Ego/Id.
When Slade Wilson is five years old, he asks his mother for the puppy in the window, and she strokes his hair as she tells him they can't afford it.
When he is eight years old, his father leaves to go to war, and his mother goes to work in the factory with Annie's mother and Johnny's one-legged uncle. He used to like beans before they ate them all the time, and when he pokes at his plate with his fork his mother snaps at him to eat without fussing.
He asks her for pork chops the next night, and she tells him they can't afford it before she sends him out to weed the garden she planted for the war effort.
He really hates the garden. He really *really* hates turnips.
He steals Annie's war bond, when she's showing it off in school, and she cries for an hour before he slips it back in her bag.
Nobody knows it was him, and he thinks for a minute, "I can do this," before he remembers stealing is bad.
Johnny's uncle teaches them how to play poker. Slade doesn't have many nickels to put in the pot after the first night, but he stays and watches anyway. The rules aren't that complicated.
He slips a dollar out of his mother's purse and joins Johnny and Mark and Luke, two weeks later, and makes three-fifty. He puts a dollar fifty back in and doesn't say anything when she wonders where the fifty cents came from.
When he's visiting Johnny next week, his uncle tugs Slade over and offers to teach him an even better game, and Slade doesn't want to go home to see his mother looking tired -- she's started coughing lately -- so he says yes.
Three-card monte is pretty easy. You just have to be fast when you slip the queen up your sleeve. It's cheating, and that's bad, but Alec says Slade's not fast enough to pull it off, and then when Slade beats him Alec gives him a quarter.
That's enough to get him a milkshake and a grilled cheese sandwich at the ice cream parlor, and Slade thinks, "I can do this," and gives his mother his portion of beans at dinner. She's tired enough that she lets him.
Two and a half months after Slade's ninth birthday, his mother falls down while she's washing dishes, and he shakes her and runs over to Mrs. Mack's to use her phone and call the doctor.
It takes three days before she dies. Overworked, the doctor tells him, too stressed, something wrong with her lungs, and he stares at them and thinks, "But she's my *mom*," but Mark's daddy died last week, even though peace was declared the day after his mother collapsed, so that doesn't really mean anything at all.
Johnny's mother lets him stay with her and Johnny and Johnny's uncle while they're waiting for his father to come back. Slade makes Johnny's uncle teach him more card games, in exchange for ten percent of whatever Slade wins. It gives him something to do.
A week later, he's counting the money he got from going down to the bar and betting he could beat Four-Eyes Mr. Smith at poker when the door opens and he looks up to see someone he vaguely recognizes as his father, only smaller than Slade remembers, holding the hand of the second-prettiest lady he ever saw.
She's his stepmother, "Frannie," she says with a German accent, and he dodges the hand she tries to lay on his hair and grabs his money and runs upstairs. He slams the door mostly because his mother always told him not to, and when his father whips him with a birch switch for being rude Slade bites his lip and doesn't yell.
He goes home. Frannie makes pork chops, and she doesn't snap at him when he doesn't eat them.
He weeds the garden after dinner without anybody telling him to, even though his father says, "The war's over," sounding as tired as his mother ever did.
He's ten and a half when Frannie -- he's still *not* calling her his mother, no matter what -- starts getting fat, and he's eleven and a quarter when Frannie and his father come home from the hospital with a yelling, squirming, red little baby in Frannie's arms.
His name is Wade, and he's Slade's new brother. Slade sneers at the crib and goes back outside to pick another fight with Alec.
When he comes in a few hours later, Frannie smiles at him a little before she washes the dirt off his knuckles and says, "I could teach you a better way to punch," and when he laughs she hits him in the gut.
When he can breathe again, he makes her promise she'll show him how to punch someone like that.
It takes three months before he's better than any boy for three blocks around, even the big high-school boys, and Frannie can still knock him down. She makes him do more pushups than even his father ever does, but when he finishes she holds his hands steady and teaches him how to pick locks.
On his twelfth birthday, his father gives him two new shirts and Frannie gives him a Swiss Army knife with fourteen pieces, and when Mark tries to take it from him the next day Slade breaks his nose and keeps kicking him until Mrs. Dame threatens to suspend him.
Mark's mother comes over that night. Frannie has her hand in Slade's hair, stroking, and she sounds like she's about to laugh when she tells Mark's mother that her son shouldn't have been stealing.
The next month, when Frannie finds his deck and his collection under his mattress, he tells her that he bought the baseball cards with money from doing odd jobs for old Mrs. Johnson across the street instead of with the money he won from poker and three-card monte and hustling pool down at the bar -- nobody expects a twelve-year-old, not even one with the reputation as a troublemaker he's starting to get, to be any good -- and she laughs so hard she has to sit down. Then she tells him to find a better hiding place and kisses his forehead.
When he is thirteen, he wakes up with his pajamas are all wet and sticky, and when Frannie laughs at him and asks what he was dreaming about he doesn't tell her, "You."
He figures out that he's been obvious when she kisses his cheek and lets him have a glass of his father's bourbon, telling him that she's too old for him, which he already knew, and that he'll find someone prettier, which he knows he won't.
Amelia down the street, who all the boys like because she's sixteen and a half and has breasts and wears skirts up to her knee, smiles at him and he buys her a soda and teaches her some of the easy rules for poker. Next week she borrows her father's car, even though she's not legal, and they drive down to the lake, and she lets him put his hand all the way up under her shirt before she tells him to stop.
He doesn't tell anybody. He just grins when Luke asks if he wants to see pictures of a naked lady.
The week after that, Amelia lets him put his hand up her skirt.
It takes another month and another ten dollars of buying her milkshakes and bracelets and teaching her how to play pool before she lets him have sex with her, and even though she makes him pull out instead of coming inside her he walks every inch of the two miles home grinning.
He doesn't tell anybody about that, either. Amelia's nowhere close to prettier than Frannie, anyway.
When he is fourteen, he steals a pair of sneakers from the corner store because he wants them and can't buy them, and he tosses his old ones away and wears the new ones home.
When he is fifteen, he plays three-card monte in Sunday school, and when Frannie peeps in to see him she hides her laugh behind her Bible.
Slade grins at her when the teacher says he's the best student in class, and winks at Mary Anne and grins more when she blushes.
After church, he finds out Mary Anne has pink panties on under her skirt, and when she tells him to stop he kisses her again and strokes her thigh right above her knee and steps back.
When he is sixteen, he overhears the teachers talking about what their students will do once they leave school. Slade hasn't really thought about it past vague plans for the money hidden in his closet.
He doesn't want to stay here. He's never been more than twenty miles away from his house, and from the stories Frannie's told him he thinks he'd like Germany.
He never wants to work in the factory.
Sometimes he has nightmares of hearing his mother coughing, falling.
Next month, after class lets out, he goes to the Army recruitment building and signs up. He has to lie about his age, but the bald man behind the desk is new, doesn't know him, and Slade doesn't look anything like sixteen.
He packs his bags when he gets home after the physical, just in case, because he remembers how sudden it was when his father left, and he slips in his deck of cards and Frannie's knife, and when he goes downstairs he gives Wade his pork chops and smiles at his father and meets Frannie's eyes squarely, smiling like he's got nothing to lie about.
-- Finis