Chapter Text
Bruce Wayne had his hands on the perfect specimen, and he wasted the opportunity. Wayne managed to get his hands on Richard Grayson before the rest of the world, and he had taken the child’s potential and squandered it.
Slade considers the man an idiot.
The child had been undeniably talented. Flexible. Strong. Intelligent. One of the best athletes in the world, by the age of eight. Then, his parents had died in a tragic accident while the world watched. And in the shadows, several parties awaited the opportunity to grab hold of the child with potential—
And yet, it was the Batman who had been the first to reach him.
That in itself was another tragedy for the child.
It had only been mere months after the death of the youngest Wayne, Jason Todd, when Richard Grayson was taken in by the Batman.
Slade knows the story. Everyone who worked in this industry knew the story. It involved the clown, and a crowbar, and a death in the family. He had been glad to see Batman suffer the consequences of his actions. If you take in a child, you needed to train them to survive. Batman did not understand this, it seemed.
His first child had been a meta made of sturdier stuff. His second, his biological son, trained by the League of Assassins for sixteen years. Brutal and efficient, that child had not needed training. The third was trained by Slade’s associate David Cain. She was effective as well, and Batman had not needed to do anything.
The fourth had merely been lucky. Her father was a small villain Slade had hardly heard of, but she was not trained or well equipped. Batman did not train her. Not well enough. Slade recalls hearing she had nearly been killed herself— beaten so badly, she had spent a year in a coma.
Jason Todd had been like her. Human.
And while the youngest child had never been on the scene himself (yes, the teen was instead trained by Oracle to serve as a behind the scene operator like him, because neither Jason Todd or Tim Drake had any real reason to become vigilantes themselves, especially when Batman did not train children) he still managed to catch the Joker’s attention.
The boy was an easy target.
He died painfully.
It was a pleasant experience for the mercenary.
Like the professional he is, Slade kept close tabs on the family of vigilantes. He himself wouldn’t care to go after them, not unless it was needed, not because he was afraid, but because Batman tended to be more trouble than he was worth. He steered clear of Gotham, but always paid for information.
When he had heard of the passing of Jason Todd, Slade had thought: Good. It was due time someone hurt Batman.
He hadn’t kept too close of a watch on the Waynes in the months after the death. Instead, something else had caught his attention: A child prodigy that had apparently caught the attention of the darker shadows beneath Gotham. Whatever interested the court, interested Slade, as a way to figure out which stocks were worth assessing.
Then, the child’s parents had died, and it was the perfect opportunity to strike—
And somehow, Batman had striked first.
The funny part was, Slade knew that the man didn’t have a clue about the child. No. He had merely been at the circus with his family when the boy’s parents had died, and decided to act out of a bleeding heart. How disgusting. Shadows had slunk back into Gotham’s sewers, content to sit back and wait.
Slade had watched, as Wayne wasted the perfect specimen.
The family hadn’t been prepared for another child. Two months after Jason Todd’s death. None of them were prepared for a new addition. And the other children were all grown, adults out of the house who couldn’t be spared to welcome another kid so soon after losing their brother. They didn’t even try. Wayne sent Grayson to boarding schools. Rich international schools abroad, where strangers raised the child he had stolen. The boy never even came home for holiday breaks, according to the rumor mill. Winter, spring, and summer breaks spent abroad and alone.
Slade kept tabs on Richard Grayson. Waiting for an opportunity to strike.
The boy switched schools relatively often. At first he considered Wayne doing it to protect the boy— Slade had broken into several school records to discover the boy being suspended and expelled at his schools for records of delinquency. Reports stated he was quite a troublemaker. An aggressive boy who started fights with his classmates. Too stupid to pay attention in class, fidgety and dense. Antisocial, spending too much time alone, etc., and etc. The switch in schools was not for protection, but a necessary change for the boy.
The boy was thirteen, before Slade had his chance to intervene on Wayne’s mistake. He kept closer tabs on Richard Grayson than his own children. He wondered what Adeline would say to that.
Nonetheless, five years after Batman had foolishly taken the boy in, Slade had an opportunity to right that wrong.
In a boarding school in Madeira, Portugal, the boy had gotten the idea to run away.
Slade had coincidentally been working on a contract not too far— Valencia, Spain, under three hours by plane—- when the computer tracking system he had trained on the boy’s name and face, alerted him to news. An email chain from the boarding school to the boy’s guardian, Bruce Wayne, after the billionaire had declined the school’s calls enough times. We are so sorry, but Richard Grayson has tried to run away. We have footage of him breaking out from the dorms last night, with a packed bag. Do you have any idea where he could be or where he would go?
It took Bruce Wayne nine hours to reply to the school.
In those nine hours, Slade had crossed borders and tracked the boy down. He found Richard after the boy had foolishly tried buying a train ticket under his father’s name, John Grayson. The thirteen year old had been sitting alone in the train station, a packed duffle by his feet. He was easy to spot.
It hadn’t been hard to steal the child. Slade waited until the boy went to go use the restroom, and used chloroform to put the boy to sleep. By hour five, Richard Grayson was unconscious in the back of a car Slade had rented under one of his European identities, on the way to Slade’s safe house just outside Lisbon. By hour seven, Slade had erased all evidence one could use to track them— the fake identity he used for the car, the surveillance camera from the train platforms. All except the train ticket, purchased by John Grayson, heading in the direction of France. He left the paper trail of the train behind as a red herring, dare Batman try to find Richard.
By hour nine, when Bruce Wayne finally responded to the email about his ward missing, Richard Grayson was already waking up with Deathstroke in his safe house.