Chapter Text
Usually, when people hire him, they either do it completely online or choose neutral locations to meet. They definitely don't invite him to their very public office in the middle of the day when anyone could walk in and witness what's going on.
And yet that's exactly what Bruce Wayne does.
The man doesn't look nervous at being alone in a room with Deathstroke, doesn't do anything other than lean back against his desk and smile politely at Slade, eyes bright and not afraid at all. With anyone else, Slade might be impressed by that—he knows exactly the sight he makes, in his armor and with his weapons proudly displayed—but he's watched the news enough to know Wayne is simply an idiot. An occasionally clever one, maybe, but still an idiot. So he probably just considers himself perfectly safe.
Not that it matters to Slade, of course. Sometimes the sniveling ones can be especially irritating to deal with, so if Wayne wants to be relaxed, then at least Slade doesn't have to deal with stuttered words that make these meetings take twice as long.
"You do bodyguard jobs, yes?" Wayne asks, in the same casual tone he greeted Slade with, the same absent but bright smile he was wearing after the initial jump when Slade first appeared in his office.
"I do," Slade agrees. "Are you anticipating a threat on your life?"
"Every day," Wayne says, with a surprising amount of dryness. "But this isn't about me." His brow furrows with something like concern, and his gaze drifts to one of the photos hanging on his wall.
It's of a large group of people, Wayne standing in the back row with a small but clearly happy smile on his face. All the kids in the photo look just as happy, even if one of them is glaring at another. It's a cute photo, and quite obviously Wayne's large family. The man's propensity towards adopting children has been a joke in the media for years now.
"One of my sons," Wayne continues, soon enough that Slade doesn't have to prompt him. "He's getting involved in something dangerous, and no amount of trying to reason with him will get him to back off. He has become...adept at avoiding my eye, vanishing before I can get a real focus on him, watch his back myself. I have no doubt his older siblings have taught him that skill, and there's nothing to be done about it now."
Wayne's gaze returns to Slade, firmer than the distant look from before. "I need someone to watch his back. Make sure he doesn't actually get himself—killed. So I want to hire you to do so."
Slade tilts his head. Now, Slade isn't one to talk his clients out of paying him lots of money, but as a father himself with children who have a propensity for getting into trouble he can't stop himself from offering, "Wouldn't it be simpler to just hire me to find him and return him home?"
Wayne sighs. "I would say yes, except I know less than a day later he would already be back out on the streets doing what he thinks he has to do. So I'd rather not fool myself into believing that would be effective."
Slade hums an acknowledging sound. Yes, well, children often don't do as they're told.
"Money isn't an issue," Wayne continues, with the blasé attitude that only comes from being born rich. "I'll pay you whatever you want to have his back until he decides he's done."
Slade's brows arch under his mask. "So you have no idea of an end date to this job?"
Wayne grimaces and shakes his head. Slade sighs.
"Alright. Then you can pay me my retainer now, and after this is done you can pay me in full for the job. I trust you'll have no issue paying."
It's both a threat and a statement; with the kind of money Wayne has, Slade very much doubts that this will make much of a dent in his wealth. But Slade has dealt with rich men before, and they can be greedy—the media makes Wayne out to be some sort of sunshine man, but good men can always make bad choices. And Slade wants to impress upon him just how bad a decision cheating Deathstroke would be.
Thankfully, Wayne's expression turns grave, and he nods his understanding.
"Good," Slade says. "Now, which son might this be?"
Duke is self-aware enough to know he's not yet at the level of his siblings.
He's been doing this for far less time, after all. Only be actively working as a vigilante for maybe a year, and before that yeah he wasn't exactly some random civilian, wasn't helpless in the slightest, but there's a difference between strengthening his mind and leading other untrained teens, and actually taking to the skies every day, to picking up cases around Gotham, to spending nearly all of his time dedicated to crime and trying to help Gotham.
So yes, he knows he's not there yet. Doesn't have their honed skills from years of experience, from all the masters they've learned under. Doesn't have all the instincts that come to them so easily after all this time.
But he's not a slouch, either. He's a damn good detective, and has nearly mastered his powers, and he sure as hell can fight. So when he told Bruce he could handle this case, he wasn't being cocky. It wasn't bravado. He can handle this. He can succeed.
And if succeeding means he has to take his gear and slip off into Gotham, avoiding Batman's ability to find him like Dick and Jason and Tim all taught him, then he'll damn well do it.
Because people are vanishing. People are dying. And yeah, maybe the people responsible for it are powerful. Maybe they're a threat, one that makes Bruce nervous to allow any of them near. But it's not like they're infallible, it's not like the Bats could leave this alone, and Duke is, frankly, the best equipped to get close.
They're taking metahumans. And, well, Duke's obviously the only hero in Gotham who has that going for him.
He isn't running in gung-ho. He's going to make a plan, cover his bases, find where they're taking their abductees and what their procedure is for selling them off. He has a couple leads, so his main step right now is simply checking them out, doing a little surveillance, and see what pops out. The vague ideas in his head for what his Big Step is going to be is...not yet necessary.
By the time it is necessary, he's hoping to have the confidence to reach out to one of the others to provide a little backup. Maybe none of that will be needed, of course, but he does think it's the best option. But he knows better—knew better even before he started learning from Bruce—than to just go ahead with that.
So, surveillance it is.
He isn't in any of his Signal gear, instead wearing civvies as he enters the bar where two of the individuals taken were last seen. The man who could generously be called a bouncer doesn't do more than give a bored glance to the boy's fake ID, waving him inside with a lazy hand. Part of Duke is a little irritated by that—he did make this ID himself, actually, and it's pretty damn good—but the rest of him is just pleased to be in the place.
It's the type of place that no one really looks at him, not even the bartender when he asks for a beer. Not that Duke is going to drink it, of course, but it helps for blending in.
Duke takes a seat at the bar, casually glancing around the room as he pretends to take a sip of his drink. Nothing stands out immediately, but he really wasn't expecting it to. There isn't going to be a sign above their heads that screams I'm a trafficker.
After maybe an hour of 'drinking his beer' (and the second one he orders to keep up appearances) and pretending to play on his phone like the Millennial he's pretending to be—which, honestly, isn't all that difference from being a Gen Z—Duke decides to give something a shot, boredom beginning to creep in despite how hard he tries to ignore it.
He'd feel worse about it, except he knows Dick and Jason get antsy on stakeouts too, and they're great at their jobs.
So, Duke pretends to put his phone down with half-faked boredom, glancing around the bar like he has nothing better to do. He leans back on his stool as if to just stretch his back, and settles his hands on the bartop, fingers curling ever so slightly.
And then he focuses, and calls on his powers.
It's dim in the bar, so not a lot of light to bend, but he manages to form a ball between his hands and passes it back and forth. Subtle enough that to any of the normal patrons in the bar who couldn't care less about another patron, it would go unnoticed. But definitely obvious to any folks present that might be interested in stealing metas.
He does that for a few minutes, just to make it last long enough that if someone is present, they must've noticed by this point, and then gets up and heads casually out of the bar, like he's simply given up on whoever he'd been waiting for.
He doesn't rush down the street, doesn't go extra slow. He buys a hot dog from a street vendor, and pretends to text on his phone, and after a block makes it to the safehouse he's been using as a home base for this. One hand slides into his pocket, fiddling with the distress beacon that he always has on him just in case, but he can't tell if the itch between his shoulder blades is actually someone watching him, or just because he's waiting for it.
Either way, Duke makes it inside the building and then the apartment. He gives a disappointed sigh, and then has to laugh at himself—has he really reached the point of being disappointed that he wasn't attacked by people who would want to sell him?
He never had the best survival instincts, always tended to throw himself into the thick of it, but he swears since he joined the Bats he's gotten worse. They fucking feed off each other; Alfred still hasn't forgiven Duke and Tim for their backflip competition (which they were doing...off the roof of the Manor).
Deciding to take a short break, let his brain relax and then decide on his next move, he heads for the kitchen and takes a casserole out of the fridge, one of the various things Alfred handed him with a knowing gaze before he left. The instructions are taped to the top, so he preheats the oven then slips it inside, setting the timer before leaving it be, heading for the bathroom.
He doesn't take a long shower, still feeling a little antsy from what he was trying to accomplish and not liking the vulnerability of being naked, even in the isolation of his locked safehouse.
So he washes quickly, and then dries himself off and redresses, heading back out into the main body of the apartment.
And then stops dead, because standing in the middle of his living room is Slade Wilson.
Duke's never met Deathstroke; the man hasn't done many contracts in Gotham since Duke started the vigilante thing—at least not ones that made the Bat's radar—so there hasn't really been much opportunity for it. His knowledge of the man really just comes from the files in the batcave, and the few tired and dry stories Dick has about their long history.
Mercenary. Father of three (two deceased). Enhanced. Extremely deadly and dangerous. Do not engage.
"Duke Thomas," Slade greets, voice deep and with a hint of roughness.
Duke's mind races, trying to figure out what the fuck he's doing here. As far as Duke knows, Slade doesn't have any of their identities. So why the fuck would Deathstroke come see him? Shit, is he working for the traffickers? Nothing he's read or heard makes it sound like the man ever takes contracts like that, so it would be really strange for him to suddenly be at the beck and call of traffickers, immediately on-site to pick up a meta teen they witnessed in a bar.
"That's me," Duke says tightly, fingers curling into loose fists. He fights the instinct to pull the light to him, to strike out; he can't make the first move, not when he has no idea what's going on. "What are you doing in my apartment?"
"My name is Slade Wilson," Slade says. Duke notices, suddenly, that the man's hands are down by his sides, palms tilted towards Duke. Like he's trying to look unthreatening. Duke nearly wants to laugh. "Your father sent me to have your back while you act like a hero."
Duke blinks at him.
Blinks again.
Bruce...hired Deathstroke to track Duke down and—guard him?
This time, Duke does laugh.
Slade just watches him placidly, apparently unbothered by the laughter. Duke presses a hand against his forehead, trying to digest just how insane this situation is, that the fucking Batman bought a mercenary's time to go spend time with his vigilante child. Just. What even.
"He takes helicopter parenting to a whole new level," Duke announces, and Slade arches a brow at him.
"In Wayne's defense, you are apparently attempting to take down a trafficking ring by yourself. A seventeen-year-old boy who attends prep school. Because that's the logical decision."
Duke can't explain that he isn't defenseless, that he has experience going up against people like this. He can't provide the reasoning for just why he thought this was a good idea, why it was, frankly, the only idea, because he sure as fuck can't be the one to out the identity secret. Especially not when Bruce apparently managed to hire Slade without giving it away.
"I can handle this," Duke says stubbornly. "If I could handle Riddler's riddle when the whole city was sitting on their hands, then I sure as hell can manage this."
It's the only thing that, as a civilian, he has any claim to. Though going by the way Slade simply blinks slowly at him, he couldn't care less about Gotham's issues. Figures.
"You can't," Slade disagrees breezily. "But my job isn't to drag you back to your fancy manor, it's to make sure you don't get yourself dead. So why don't you tell me exactly why you think you can do this, and what your plan is, and we'll go from there."
Okay, yeah, Duke can see why Dick finds this guy infuriating. The condescension already has Duke prickling, and the guy has only been here for two minutes.
"They've been taking metahumans," Duke says, automatically slipping into the tone of voice he has when giving mission reports to Batman. "Gotham isn't the first city they've hit; the places they've pinged the radar are Boston, New York, and Metropolis. So mainly east coast based, but them branching out further west to Metropolis clearly shows that they're planning on expanding their operation.
"They take people in batches of fives. There's usually about a week between grabs, assumedly while they're locating their next targets. Gotham has no shortage of metahumans, created by the various events that have rocked this city and also born with them for much the same reasons, so it's no wonder that they've appeared to set up shop here, more permanent than any of the other places they've hit.
"They're smart—they manage to avoid security cameras, not that that's hard for the ones they've taken from the East End, and any potential witnesses never got a good look at them, or only saw black masks to hide their features. They have access to a large supply of dampener collars, which implies they probably have a tech on their team since there's no sign anywhere of such a large quantity being bought up.
"There have been a couple abductees who were taken from the same location—that's what I was scoping out tonight. I wanted to test if they're still watching the place, still looking for meta activity. I wanted to get an idea for how they're finding the metas—is it simply they managed to catch everyone in the act, or do they have a way of testing or even detecting? That's definitely important to figure out before moving forward, but I can't see a way to without moving forward."
Slade watched him intently through the entire speech, and Duke appreciates that he seems to be taking everything Duke said seriously, that he isn't dismissing it as the imaginings of just some teen.
Eventually, Slade says, "Not some dumb kid, hm?"
Strangely, a certain kind of satisfaction settles in Duke's gut, similar to whenever Bruce tells him he's done a good job. Pride, maybe. Though he doesn't appreciate feeling it from a mercenary.
(Maybe that's another reason he drives Dick nuts. Having the respect of someone like this must give you a few sleepless nights.)
"No," Duke agrees, "I'm not. And I'm a meta, too, so I can..." He steels himself, shoulders squaring against the push back he knows he's going to receive, "So I can go undercover once I have more information. Can allow them to take me as if I'm just another victim, and find where they're taking all of these people."
Slade raises a slow eyebrow, but the expression doesn't seem like judgement. He can't read it at all, actually, but the lack of derisive words is certainly appreciated.
"Alright then," Slade says, and nothing else.
Duke blinks at him. Alright then. "So you're going to help me?"
Slade hums, sliding his hands into the pockets of his jeans. "Well either I do that, or you hand yourself over to what boils down to a group of rapists all by your lonesome. It's not like Wayne will pay me for the job if that happens."
Duke huffs a laugh, his own amusement surprising him. "Then I guess we better get started."