Disclaimer: I lay no claim to any licensed characters or intellectual properties that were used in the making of this work.

you are my fire, my one desire

He meets her in the midst of another one of his assassinations.

By now, Dick Grayson has gotten used to the blood and death associated with his tasks. A part of him even enjoys watching the life fade from his victims' eyes; most of him just wants to throw up his innards — tear out his soul! — if only so it wouldn't feel as if his heart was drowning as much as it really is.

(Just because he's acquainted himself with murder doesn't mean he has to like it.)

Still, this sort of thing is routine: set up the stand and exchange the scope, adjusting the sights until the crosshairs line up — just enough that the kickback after he pulls the trigger won't force the bullet off its course. Simple, really.

Immediately after the movement of the barrel, un-assemble the parts, — dis-assemble makes no sense, really — remove all evidence of the sniping from the rooftops, and return to the Haunt. No mess, no complications, no emotions. Again, routine.

So, when the routine is broken, Robin — no, Renegade, remember? — panics.

(He's not sure if he's ready to let go of his parents so completely, but he's not sure if he deserves the title of "Robin" anymore, and, well, someone already owns that title, doesn't he?)

It all began earlier, back when he'd voiced his uneasiness in the matter. In hindsight, he should've trusted his instincts, should've trusted that prickling crawl of tarantulas on his skin, that slithering, haunting creep of laughter in his ears and screams in his throat.

(Tarantulas and Blockbusters were always a bad sign, apparently. So were clowns. And guns. And coin tosses, and ropes and crowbars and dark, dark magic that shouldn't have ever twisted anything out of shape…)

And, in hindsight? Renegade should've known something most definitely would go wrong when the gears in his grappling gun had locked up. Because, generally? When there's that much apparent bad luck on your side, you don't play Devil's Advocate; you wonder why the heck that oil job hadn't worked and get the hell out of Jump City, California.

It's just as the shot's about to hit his target that a meteor crashes, shaking the foundations of the entire business district and, ultimately, veering the bullet off course enough that it manages to merely shatter the glass. And, when the target — faceless, nameless, because it's easier not to care if he doesn't know they have lives apart from just this— looks up from his panicked position sprawled across his desk, eyes widening and jaw settling itself into stubbornness, that the Robin knows he's screwed.

The jugular, heart, liver, lungs — everything was missed, and the bullet managed to nick nothing, nothing, nothing. Everything is not okay, and it all becomes a blurry haze of runrunrun, of leaping and shooting and grappling, of swinging and tumbling and flying across the city. The mistake needs to be fixed before it gets back to Deathstroke, or else he'll be just as screwed as the guy he'd been sent out to kill.

(Of course, Slade knows everything, anyways, meaning Deathstroke knows, but — the Robin in him can dream, can't he?)

Finding an opening, Renegade silences the Robin and smothers Dick Grayson, pushing the Acrobat's talents to do what they do best: perform. With a well-placed kick, he crashes through the glass screen and into a thankfully empty office space. A few doors, a few stairwells, and he manages to shadow the businessman long enough that, by the time the target notices, he has a lesser gun pointed at the guy, and several knives holding him pinned to the front of the secretary's overturned desk.

It figures that, just as he's about to make the messy kill and shoot the target right between the eyes, a warm-cold-warm, heavy, heavy weight lands crashes into him from the left, leaving him on the ground, breathless and struggling to breathe. Seriously, what the heck?

In the time it takes Renegade to wake up, Dick has already registered the pain. Renegade's task of compartmentalizing its body's limits and Robin's task of assessing the situation become slightly more difficult. The man takes this momentary imbalance in power to roughly shrug out of his coat and run screaming out the window.

"He better hope he doesn't survive the fall," Robin growls under his breath, letting Renegade imagine the gruesome payback for wasting so much of his time. Dick's too distracted by the sight of fiery red hair and warmth to act as intermediary.

The Commish's daughter? Isn't she supposed to be in Gotham? It's safe to assume that this is Barbara Gordon — Batgirl, he thinks, but upon further inspection, he's pretty sure this… person… is someone else entirely.

(After all, Babs doesn't have soulless green eyes, or orange skin, or a harsh, guttural voice that sounds as if nails are being ground into sawdust. Also, she doesn't glow.)

More importantly, Renegade interrupts, is the fact that the target has escaped. Dick cheekily smiles, knowing that he's unable to move, let alone get up, and so finds no harm in delaying.

Upon further observation, Renegade, too, notices that the weight is a girl. Bright, energy-speckled skin, bioluminescent and orange and splattered with scratches and a sticky, transparent film — either sweat or blood. Long, messy hair, ginger-red and matted with dirt. Emerald-green eyes, lighter sclera, pupil-less. Height of approximately five feet, eight inches. Weight bordering on what Kara can lift.

Conclusion: Subject classifies as Alien, with danger level slightly below Superman's own. Not Thanagarian or Kryptonian, though, nor Martian in origin.

(On the tip of Robin's tongue, memories lie waiting. Tamaranean, he offers, and Dick all too happy to agree.)

It takes a while for Deathstroke's apprentice, as a whole, to understand that the girl is angry, furious, shouting something exotic, unintelligible, and primal at the world as a whole. Normally, Dick would find the passion on such a — curvaceous?— babe hot, but he doesn't have time to enjoy anything about this situation.

(Besides, villain or not, Babs would kill him if she ever found out he was cheating on her, even if they weren't even dating, even if he hadn't seen her since months ago in Gotham — even if it was purely… aesthetic… admiration in his mind.)

The alien girl — Space Kitty, Dick corrects, with Robin snickering something about Catwoman getting a new apprentice and the old one graduating — shifts a little, and he can see her arms are bound by mechanical locks, her hair clamped down by a metal plate.

"S'varf vorn'i form'et!" she shouts at him, leaning in close enough that he can smell the scent of space on her breath. She pushes her arms closer to his face, as if asking him to take the shackles off. He wishes she could speak something human, or if he could talk to her in what appeared to be her native tongue, if only so they could understand one another.

At the very least, it would make this whole misunderstanding go by quicker. Which is. Well. Sort of better for his continued existence.

He doesn't have time to even try to decipher what she means, though. Before she can finish saying, "Goc'ta bu-agna," Renegade has pushed her back and cut through the device with a small laser. Whatever's still holding the bonds together is easily manageable for the girl, and with a tug, the cuffs slide off her arms and fall to the floor like so much water.

The dull thunk of heavy bearings hitting the floor is enough to make Dick wince and Robin to admire the girl all the more.

"Listen, Miss," he begins, because he is nothing if not polite. Deathstroke, like his parents, insists he keep his manners around all company; it makes the information-gathering that much smoother, the killings that much quicker and safer. "I don't really know what you want," but I do want you to get off of me so I can go, "but —"

And then he's not sitting up anymore, but lying across the floor, with hands clutching his collar and a body pressing down on him and Space Kitty's lips against Dick's own, and — "Mmmph!"

A breath, and then Dick's shouting, stupidly, "Mi develeskie gueri Mary!"

"… Nokkum? Who is this Mary, and why is her virginity sacred?"

Renegade is confused, Robin is fascinated, and Dick is a bit too shell-shocked to do much more than open and close his mouth, again and again, like a fish out of water.

Raising what Renegade supposes is an eyebrow, Space Kitty looks at him, confused, before her eyes… the only thing Dick can say is that they smile and shine like the sun he hasn't seen in who knows how long. "I thank you for the freedom that you returned to me."

With Renegade and Robin out of commission, all Dick and his very, very small acquaintance with the female species can utter is, "Uh…"

And then the green hardens, and her tongue becoming wickedly deep, as she shoves violet fire in the general vicinity of his mask. "X'hal, shom to jav, but that I would warn you. The Citadel is coming; leave, else never will you be safe."

"Uh…"

"Is this not your jib? You seem to be incapable of speaking it."

"Uh…"

"Hmph. Rutha."

…Well. That word is enough to shake Dick out of his stupor. In fact, it's enough to make Dick's foot-in-mouth confidence boost itself to the point where he asks, stupidly in hindsight, "Um, hey, wanna go get a drink?"

The resulting confusion on her face is accompanied by silence. Renegade chooses this moment to punctuate the bizarre with a shot out the window — one which, miraculously, hits the target; the yelp was a dead give-away, really.

When the girl, who he hasn't even bothered to get to know the name of, let alone understand how she knows English or why she kissed him, finally responds to what cannot be called anything other than asking her out, it is with the only a one-word answer that makes perfect sense.

(Definitely more than he's making, at any rate.)

"What?"