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Bruce took a deep breath before raising his hand to knock on the door. It felt stuttered, feeble, weak, and he let his hand drop as he winced.
He was…anxious. Nervous. It had been a little more than six months since he’d last spoken to Dick, their last conversation an awful, hate-filled argument about Jason that ended with Dick stalking out and not coming back.
I should never have had a Robin. I should’ve never let you talk me into it. It’s your fault.
Bruce thought he lost both his children, weeks apart. The realization had only been cemented by Dick’s avoidance of Gotham for months afterward, and Tim Drake’s stuttered explanation that he’d tried telling Nightwing to come back only to be met with Dick’s abject refusal. And so Bruce had resigned himself to misery, to keeping tabs on Dick from afar because there was no chance of regaining what he’d lost.
Until Nightwing had shown up in Gotham last week to help them with an Arkham breakout.
Dick had still been stiff and wary, still distant, but they had worked together again, fitting together as seamlessly as they had back when they’d been Batman and Robin. He’d stopped by the Cave for a debrief and ruffled Tim’s hair and acquiesced to the younger boy’s plea of training. He’d even agreed to stop by to have tea with Alfred.
He had thoroughly ignored Bruce, of course, but even that felt more like one of Dick’s old moods, when he would stop by to catch up with Jason and give Bruce the silent treatment the whole time.
Bruce thought—wished, hoped—that this meant he still had a chance. A chance to fix things, to repair the relationship that had fractured when Dick was seventeen. A chance to apologize for at least one of his mistakes.
He’d lost Jason. He could never apologize to him, could never even try to heal the betrayal caused by his distance and distrust, hadn’t been able to do anything but hold his son as he took his last wheezing rattle of a breath. Bruce couldn’t, wouldn’t, make the same mistake twice.
…Dick was taking an awfully long time to answer the door.
Bruce knocked again, stronger, heart lodged in his throat. Maybe he’s avoiding you, the insidious voice inside his head whispered, maybe he doesn’t want to see you. Bruce swallowed. He admittedly had very few ways to track Dick’s whereabouts in Bludhaven. Maybe he’s standing on the other side of the door, waiting for you to leave.
That was even worse than the worst case scenario Bruce had imagined, that Dick would open the door to coolly sneer that he wanted nothing to do with Bruce and to leave him alone. If Dick wouldn’t even open the door—
His knocking was perhaps louder than it had to be, and Bruce nearly lost his balance when the door swung open abruptly. Steadying himself, Bruce opened his mouth as he looked up—and up. And up.
Tall, taller than him, broader than him, casual clothes that did nothing to hide musculature, silver hair cropped short, an eyepatch cutting across a gracefully aged face. One icy blue eye looking down, impassive.
“Can I help you?” Deathstroke asked, leaning against the doorframe with his arms crossed.
Bruce’s thought processes stumbled to a screeching halt.
Deathstroke the Terminator, Batman identified, world’s deadliest mercenary, villain, enhanced strength and agility and healing—
Except he wasn’t Batman right now, he was Bruce, and Brucie Wayne didn’t know who Slade Wilson was.
But Bruce Wayne knew who Wilson was, because Bruce Wayne was Batman, and the man in front of him knew that.
So it was Batman facing Deathstroke, except Bruce wasn’t armored and neither was Wilson, but Deathstroke didn’t need armor—
This was Dick’s apartment.
Everything else froze like Bruce had pressed stop on a remote. That was Slade Wilson, alias Deathstroke, a mercenary with prodigal talent and a taste for murder. This was Dick Grayson’s apartment, alias Nightwing.
There was an assassin in his son’s apartment.
“Yes?” Wilson asked coolly and dispassionately, like he wasn’t fully aware that Batman was standing in front of him. Bruce just stared back, blank, dread pooling in his gut. A thousand contingency plans and he had nothing for an enhanced mercenary showing up out of the blue to murder his son.
Jason’s body, broken and bleeding, too small, too light in his arms. He couldn’t do it again. He couldn’t.
“Dick,” Bruce breathed out, barely a whisper, throat closing up—red, red everywhere, Dick lying limp and cold and still, Bruce was too late again—
He was eight years old again, staring at a gun in a dark alley, and he couldn’t move.
“He’ll be back soon,” Deathstroke said casually, incongruous to Bruce’s panic, stepping back out of the doorway. Was that glint in his eye sadistic amusement? “You can come in.”
Bruce was helpless to do anything but follow, swaying forward after the mercenary as Wilson walked through Dick’s apartment like he belonged there.
There was no blood. No mess, no broken furniture or bullet holes, nothing but a curiously neater apartment than Bruce remembered Dick keeping. His examination went from the apartment to its occupant, and Deathstroke was wearing cargo pants and a button-down, hardly the armor and suit of the world’s deadliest mercenary.
“You can sit,” Wilson said upon reaching the couch, as though he was the host. There was a rifle on the coffee table, half dissembled, clearly in the middle of being cleaned. Bruce looked up, and caught the ghost of a smirk on Wilson’s face.
He sat.
The rifle and its pieces were laid out methodically on the table. The cleaning solution, the gun oil, the rags, each were in a careful placement. The work of a man not rushed for time.
How long had Dick been gone?
How long had Deathstroke been inside the apartment?
How long until Dick came back?
Dread alchemized into terror, sharp and thick and paralyzing. Bruce was not a man accustomed to helplessness. He dressed up in a bat-themed suit to menace criminals precisely because he hated helplessness. He’d sunk into a grief spiral so complete it threatened to end him because there had been no worse feeling than the weight of his dead son in his arms.
It felt worse to be perched on his son’s couch, in his son’s apartment, waiting for his son to get home so Deathstroke could put a bullet in his head.
There had been a report years ago about Deathstroke going after the Titans, but by the time the Titans had released the report, the case had been done and dusted, Joey Wilson had joined the Titans, and with a human shield in the form of his only surviving son, Deathstroke had left instead of completing his contract. The only contract he’d ever broken.
Bruce had filed it away and thought nothing more of it, the Titans had a hundred life-threatening missions and Deathstroke had never been a high-priority villain. Now, he wondered if the reason the mercenary had been written off had more to do with the sheer headache it would cause and less to do with the threat he actually posed.
Because taking Deathstroke seriously meant that there was a superpowered villain trained, smart, and dangerous enough to take out the entire Justice League roaming around entirely unobstructed. And now he was in Bruce’s son’s apartment.
His mind ticked through contingency plans, one after the other after the other, trying to find some way to give himself an upper hand. There was no way he could alert anyone without Deathstroke realizing. The only person who could get here in time to nullify the threat was Clark, who was currently off-planet. Bruce had no weapons on him. The closest weapon to him was the half-dismantled gun, and Deathstroke could walk back over to him and strangle him to death before Bruce finished putting it back together.
Bruce could try talking to him. Reason with him. Offer to buy out his contract. If he was here on a contract, if this wasn’t just a revenge plan, if Deathstroke allowed himself to be bought at all.
If Bruce could make his voice work.
Bruce could hear movement in the kitchen. Either Wilson thought he wasn’t a threat or this was some sick game, retreating from Bruce’s line of sight to see what he’d do when he wasn’t being watched. His emergency button was on his phone, in his pocket, and Bruce couldn’t get it out soundlessly but he could try to do it slowly, and then hopefully someone would get the message and mobilize a rescue and—
Bruce heard the key turn in the lock a second before the door opened.
“So, they were out of mango ice cream,” came Dick’s voice as he stepped inside, juggling five grocery bags and trying to kick off his shoes and pull the key out at the same time. No one else was with him. Bruce wanted to shout at him, to scream out a warning, but he was locked in place and he could barely breathe. “But they had kiwi and I thought we could try—”
Dick caught sight of him a step away from the door and froze, eyes going comically wide. “Bruce?” he inhaled sharply.
Run, Bruce wanted to shriek, but there was no use, he was trapped inside an old nightmare, the ones where he watched his mother and father be gunned down, unable to make a sound. Except in a nightmare, he could wake up.
“I wanted mango,” Wilson said from the kitchen doorway and Dick’s expression changed to something distinctly like horror.
“I—Bruce—what are you doing here?” Dick’s voice rose high, grocery bags lowered to the floor as he darted a look in Deathstroke’s direction. But his gaze came back to Bruce, clearly indicating who he was talking to.
The surprise wasn’t aimed at Deathstroke. The conversation had been aimed at Deathstroke. Bruce was—Dick was—Wilson was—
“Bruce?” Dick was in front of him now, expression still tightened into a grimace. “What are you doing here? Is everything okay?”
His voice still wasn’t working. The words wouldn’t come. In lieu of them, Bruce reached out to catch Dick’s hand, moving his focus away from his son’s bewildered expression and towards tapping against the back of Dick’s palm, out of Wilson’s line of sight.
R—U—O—K
Dick’s expression changed several emotions too fast for Bruce to see, and he stepped back, nearly out of Bruce’s grip, eyes flickering over the rest of the room. Bruce’s heart nearly stopped beating for the stretching moment of time before Dick squeezed Bruce’s hand, expression pained but soft, and said, “Yes, I’m okay.”
One of the bands tightening around Bruce’s chest loosened.
“Slade,” Dick pitched his voice, still looking at Bruce, “can you give us some privacy please?”
“I don’t know,” Deathstroke drawled. “This seems far more entertaining.”
“Slade,” Dick snapped, voice going hard and flat the way it always did when he got angry. Bruce squeezed his hand tightly—don’t antagonize the deadly superpowered mercenary—but Wilson only huffed before stalking past them both.
“Let me know once your conversation is over, little bird,” he said, something in his tone too sinuous to be professional, flashing a smirk at Bruce before he shut the apartment door behind him.
“Bruce?” Dick repeated, quieter. “What’s going on?”
Bruce should be thrilled right now. This was more attention his son had paid to him since long before Jason’s death. More solicitousness than Bruce had seen since Dick had been Robin. Dick was here, Dick was talking to him, Dick was alive and unharmed and warm in Bruce’s grip.
“Bruce?” Dick was beginning to sound alarmed, dropping into a crouch to look up at him. “Are you okay?”
“Deathstroke,” Bruce managed to force out, because this wasn’t about him. This was about the superpowered mercenary in Dick’s apartment. This was about the threat in close proximity to his son.
Dick made a face and pulled his hand out of Bruce’s grip entirely. His expression shuttered, concern vanishing behind coolness, and Bruce felt its loss like a knife in his heart. “Yeah, no,” Dick said, straightening up. He hadn’t glanced at the dismantled gun, not even once. “I’m not doing this. You can leave.”
“What,” Bruce said, voice still weak, heart seizing painfully at the sight of Dick walking away.
“I’m not doing this,” Dick repeated sharply, not turning back. “I don’t know if Babs told you, or you found out by stalking me, but I could care less what you think of who I fuck.” Bruce could hear words but he couldn’t understand them, something was broken in his brain and it was all leaking out of his ears. “Not that you have any room to talk,” Dick’s voice dropped a tone, more vicious, “after Harvey and Selina and goddamn Talia al Ghul.” Who I fuck, echoed in Bruce’s head. “So get out. I’m not having this conversation with you. You can either leave with your dignity intact, or I can call Slade back and have him throw you out.”
He couldn’t stop himself from superimposing Deathstroke the Terminator next to Nightwing. The man had a foot on him, broader than Dick, imposing. Between Dick’s skintight uniform and Deathstroke’s array of weapons, the juxtaposition was even more one-sided. In Bruce’s mind, Deathstroke grinned with his hand around Dick’s throat.
Little bird, he cooed, and it dripped with menace.
Bruce had to struggle to get to his feet. He felt alternatively cold and hot, still paralyzed, still stuck in that horrible mire. A gunshot kept echoing in his ear, the clatter of pearls hitting the ground, the awful smell of smog and garbage refuse and gun smoke.
“Bruce!” The voice was loud and in front of him and between one blink and the next, Bruce’s gaze was filled with worried blue eyes. “Fuck—sit down, you look like you’re going to collapse, what happened—” Bruce was pressed back into the couch, still in front of the pieces of the gun.
Dick followed his gaze and cursed, before sweeping the gun pieces to the side and covering it with the cloth. Casually, unthinkingly, like it wasn’t the property of a man that had a four-digit kill count.
“Deathstroke,” Bruce repeated, feeling vaguely faint, “you and Deathstroke.” The thought didn’t compute in Bruce’s head.
Dick drew back slightly, still gripping Bruce’s shoulder. “…You didn’t know,” Dick said at last, sounding surprised. “You actually didn’t know.”
“I,” Bruce started, and then stopped. He should’ve been keeping tabs on Dick much, much better if Slade Wilson had been waltzing in and out of Bludhaven and he didn’t know. “How long?”
Dick’s face went eerily blank, the same way it always did when he was preparing to lie. “A month or so,” he said. Bruce didn’t push it. A month was already enough to steal the air from his lungs, to imagine a fight, a contract, a mission ending badly, with a loss of control and broken bones. “Wait—if you didn’t know, then why did you think that Slade was in my apartment?”
“I thought he was here to kill you,” Bruce said, too shaken to come up with a lie.
His son went still, poised in the way of something dangerous, eyes wide. Bruce didn’t know whether he should be apologizing, he was still too raw, terror only gradually receding back down, panic releasing its grip, a finger at a time, with Dick whole and hale in front of him.
Dick, like Dick usually did, took matters into his own hands. Firm arms wrapped around him, clutching as tight as they did when he was a child, and Bruce didn’t remember the last time Dick hugged him but it felt so achingly familiar. He hugged back, tears stinging in his eyes and then dripping down his cheeks, because this was another thing he’d missed, another thing he’d ruined, another thing that was squarely his fault because all of it was—
“I’m okay,” Dick said into his shoulder, muffled, but unable to hide the way his voice was hoarse. “I’m not—Slade isn’t hurting me. I’m fine. He’s not going to kill me.”
Bruce counted his breaths, in and out. Dick didn’t mention Jason, but his shadow hung over them both. Bruce didn’t say that it would’ve killed him to lose both sons in such a short period of time. Not when he’d been so convinced it was happening.
“I came to apologize,” Bruce said softly. “I—I said a lot of horrible things. I didn’t mean them.” I swear, I swear on my parents’ grave, on Jason’s grave. “I—you’re my son.” The only one I have left. Bruce’s voice cracked, “I can’t lose you too.”
Dick’s arms tightened on him, utterly silent. Bruce wasn’t sure if he was still breathing. His shirt was getting damp, though, and Bruce rested his cheek against Dick’s hair and tried to transmit all the thoughts he couldn’t put into words.
How very sorry he was. How desperate he was that Dick believe him, that Dick tell him what he needed to do to fix it. How terrified he was of the very thought that the world’s deadliest mercenary was in bed with his son, how Bruce needed to get back to the Cave and draw up contingency plans so that Slade Wilson would be locked in the deepest, darkest prison in the world before he ever hurt Dick. How badly Bruce needed Dick to come home. Please.
“You didn’t lose me,” Dick said finally, voice shuddering and soft. “I’m right here. You didn’t lose me.” It wasn’t a I forgive you, but Bruce took what he got.
“I’m sorry,” Bruce croaked out. “I’m so sorry. I miss you.”
Dick made a choked noise that sounded like he’d been gutted, and Bruce held him like he was sixteen again, like he was Robin, like Bruce could protect him from the world if he tried hard enough.
“I miss you too,” Dick admitted, voice small and cracking.
It wasn’t hard to track down Deathstroke, now that Bruce knew where he was. Bludhaven was a big city, and Nightwing couldn’t cover it all, didn’t have any helpful Oracle watching the streets to tattle that Batman was there.
Of course, the Batsuit wasn’t subtle, especially when he tackled Deathstroke through a skylight to crash into a deserted warehouse, but Dick should only learn about his visit after he left. Bruce was probably going to get an angry voicemail.
“Deathstroke,” Bruce growled as the mercenary flipped back to his feet and dusted off the glass.
“Batman,” even with the mask on, Bruce could tell that Slade was smirking. “Here to warn me away from the kid?”
Bruce’s vision washed red at hearing the mercenary call his son, who he was having sex with, a kid, but he ground his teeth and let it pass. He’d done his research, and there were some lines even Deathstroke didn’t cross.
There were a lot of lines Deathstroke didn’t cross, if you were paying attention.
“No,” Bruce said.
“No?” Deathstroke looked taken aback. “No, you’re not here to warn me away from him?” The mercenary moved to the side as Bruce advanced, both of them circling each other as glass crunched under their boots. “So you attacked me just to say hello?” Bruce glared, wishing he could borrow Clark’s laser vision, just for a night. “That’s what I thought,” Deathstroke said, amused. “Can’t handle that your son is sleeping with a mercenary, can you?”
The world’s deadliest mercenary, Bruce wanted to scream. A man with a kill count on the scale of natural disasters, a man with enhanced abilities, a man trained and armed and very, very dangerous.
But he wasn’t going to fall for the baiting. He had come here for a reason. “But you’re not just sleeping with him, are you,” Bruce said evenly.
Deathstroke paused. “Excuse me?”
“I don’t remember sex ever involving groceries.”
“Well, maybe you’re not doing it right,” the mercenary tried to sneer, but it was obvious that Bruce had scored a point.
“You’re living at his apartment. Your gear is there. You fly in and out of Bludhaven for contracts, but you don’t take any contracts in the city.” All of it pointed to a long-term stay. That whatever mistakes Dick was making, Slade Wilson was right there with him. “Let me guess—you haven’t put a label on it because you’re terrified of what it’ll mean when you do.”
Deathstroke regarded him in silence for a stretching moment, and then he unsheathed his sword.
“You’ve really gotten ahead of yourself,” the mercenary drawled, a dark edge to his words. “I fuck him because he has a nice ass. I’m sure you noted it when you built him a skintight suit, or maybe when you stuck him in those panties.”
“And now you’re trying to bait me,” Bruce replied calmly. “That afraid of your own feelings, Wilson?”
The mercenary made a dark growl that shivered into his bones. Bruce set his jaw and his stance.
“I’m here to tell you that if this is a long game,” Bruce warned, “if this is a trick, or some fucked-up entertainment, I—”
“You’ll what?” Deathstroke snorted. “Kill me? Like you killed the clown? Oh wait, I forgot, Batman doesn’t kill.” The mercenary stalked closer, sword twirling idly in his grasp. “You’ll put me in Arkham? I’ll be out in a week, you know that. You know there isn’t a prison on this planet that can keep me.”
“I think Amanda Waller would disagree,” Bruce said evenly. Deathstroke paused. “The U.S. Army doesn’t like losing its assets. Apparently they have a special cell for when they manage to catch you.”
“So the Bat sanctions torture and human experimentation now?”
“My rule is no killing,” Bruce said, letting his voice go darker and deeper, to the early days of Batman, when he was nothing more than a terror in the night. “Don’t make the mistake of thinking that means I’m soft.”
For a long moment, Deathstroke just stared at him, free hand curled into a fist, utterly still.
“But I’m sure you don’t need the reminder,” Bruce said, stepping back and half turning away. “You’ve learnt your lesson on pretending like you have nothing to lose, haven’t you?”
That won him a sword to the face.
Bruce caught it on his gauntlets and leapt back, disengaging as the sword sliced above his head. “You,” Deathstroke snarled, dark and rough. “You dare—you kicked him out of your house, you shoved him out into a world that wants to eat him alive, you twisted him up into a soldier and then derided him for it—you’re questioning my intentions?!”
Deathstroke was fast, and he was furious. Not a pleasant combination to face. Even having prepared for his meeting, it was taking everything Bruce had just to keep up, to stop the mercenary from slicing off his head.
“You didn’t even know I was there!” Deathstroke hissed, and Bruce had to dive out of the way of a strike that would’ve bisected him. “If I was going to kill him, you would’ve shown up to a goddamn corpse!”
“You’re judging my child-rearing?” Bruce said, breathless as he dodged again. The mercenary was too fast to hit with batarangs, but the wires slowed him down a little bit.
“At least my son didn’t die in a suit I shoved him into!”
It hurt. Months later, and it still hurt like a raw wound. Bruce breathed through the agony of it, but that second of distraction was all Deathstroke needed, and Bruce ended up staring at the ceiling, woozy and stunned.
The sword point nestled under his jaw, a sharp counter to the heavy boot crushing his chest. Bruce struggled to draw in breath without lacerating himself.
“Maybe I should be warning him away from you,” Deathstroke said darkly. “Nothing I’ve ever done to him has been as painful as when you told him that his little brother’s death was his fault.”
Bruce shoved the guilt down, pushed the hurt away, he could break down when he was back in the Cave. Instead, he made his expression as amused as he could get it with a sword digging into his throat.
“What?” Deathstroke snarled.
“‘I fuck him because he has a nice ass,’” Bruce quoted.
For a moment, he thought that Deathstroke was actually going to skewer him, consequences be damned. Then there was the tinkle of falling glass and an angry voice calling out, “Get off of him!”
Deathstroke didn’t move the sword until an escrima stick snapped through the air, forcing him back with a displeased grunt.
“What the hell is going on here?” Nightwing snarled, stalking towards them in fury. “Why are you attacking Batman?” He whirled on Bruce, who was picking himself off the ground. “What are you even doing here?”
“He started it,” Deathstroke muttered under his breath, sounding faintly sulky.
“I wanted to see you,” Bruce lied through his teeth. “To catch up.”
“Dressed like that,” Nightwing snapped, unimpressed. “And I suppose it’s a coincidence that you ran into Deathstroke.”
Bruce fought the urge to fidget. Nightwing had definitely picked up on Alfred’s admonishing tone better than the rest of them.
“Goddammit, Batman, you never learn, do you?” Nightwing pressed a hand to his face and took a deep breath. “I thought you listened, I thought you were being an adult about it, but no, you just waited until I wasn’t looking to attack my boyfriend, didn’t you?”
Bruce stared at him. Nightwing seemed to realize what he said seconds after he said it, and blanched behind his mask. “I—I didn’t—” he whipped his head around to stare at Deathstroke—“I didn’t mean—it’s not—it was just—”
Deathstroke took pity on him. “Don’t strain yourself,” the mercenary growled. “It’s fine.”
Nightwing was now chewing on his lip. “Is it?” he asked softly.
“If I said it’s fine, it’s fine.”
“But—you—are you sure—”
“Do you really want to have this conversation in front of your father, little bird?”
Nightwing spun back to him. Bruce froze in the act of inching away. “Alright,” Nightwing said, eyes narrowed. “You’re going to tell me why you really came here. The truth, Batman.”
Bruce scanned his brain for a reason that wasn’t I needed to give a shovel talk to your mercenary boyfriend and hit upon a good one.
“The last time you came to Gotham, we worked well together,” Bruce said gruffly. “So I wanted to ask. If you wanted to do it again.”
Nightwing eyed him dubiously before his expression smoothed out. “Sure!” he said agreeably. Bruce exhaled in relief. “If I can bring Slade.”
Bruce narrowly avoided choking. “Excuse me?” Deathstroke said.
“He helps me in Bludhaven,” Nightwing shrugged, smile still concealing razor sharpness. “So he should be able to help me in Gotham, right?” Nightwing tilted his head to one side, a gesture Bruce knew and dreaded from his time as Robin. “Unless you have a problem with him?”
Bruce glowered at Deathstroke. The man couldn’t see it through the lenses, but it made Bruce feel slightly better.
“Fine,” Bruce said curtly. “But if he kills anyone, he’s out.”
“Great!” Nightwing beamed at him, thoroughly ignoring both Bruce’s and Deathstroke’s dark frowns.
Bruce consoled himself with the thought that if Deathstroke came to Gotham, Alfred would meet him, and Alfred was definitely more terrifying.