AN: Disclaimer, I wrote majority of this chapter before my laptop decided to die on me. I lost all that work, so I'm genuinely sorry if it's not the best, I felt like my first draft was better *cry*
"Good Afternoon Mr. Wayne, it appears we haven't had much time to speak." Vlad greeted him moments after he finally arrived at the dinner. The smirked that stretched along Vlad's lips left an unsettling feeling.
"Please, call me Bruce." Nonetheless, Bruce kept his demeanor, accepting the hand in greeting.
Even though Bruce had very limited interactions with the other billionaire, this trip hadn't been a massive waste in his investigation. Many of the guest didn't like Vlad, not in the way that they acted. Vlad was a dark shadow over all of them, many of them worried he was going to come after their empires next.
It took quite a bit of carefully digging until he found someone who seemed to know how Vlad tanked these companies. Know isn't quite the right word. All he was able to gather was what Vlad did. It was strange, and Bruce was still left in the dark of just how the man did it.
He would find the secrets each enterprise held close to their core. Whether it was seeds of corruption, or simple weak spots in it's security. He would strike when he had enough information. Before long the company would be burned to the ground, or merged into Dalv co. It helped explain how he's company grew as quickly as it did.
It didn't give the man any insight on just how it all happened.
Even with the more he learned, Vlad Masters still held a mystery. A mystery that Bruce was no closer to figuring out. As minutes ticked by, while Bruce kept a smile and played nice with the other man. Bruce started to realize he wasn't going to figure it all out in just a week. No matter how well he's detective skills were, Vlad held he's cards too close to his chest. No one really knew the man.
Short of attaching a camera to Masters, there was no way he was going to crack it in just a few days.
Instead, he started planning for what to do once he got back to Gotham. How he was going to investigate as Vlad invaded his home. Soon the public will catch wind of just how much time Bruce spent with Masters. The vigilante wasn't going to let the other man roam Gotham without his carefully eye on him. Gotham had enough corrupt businessmen. If he has a chance to take one down, he's taking it.
"Mr. Wayne, I hope the dinner was to your taste." The man that greeted him reeked of high-class. Although something about the look in his eyes didn't sit well with Bruce. Thing was, no one at this dinner really sat well with him. Bar for the few he'd rubbed elbows with prior.
"Ah, everything was perfect." Bruce smiled, tipping his glass to the shorter man. "Mr.?"
"Apologies. Bertrand. Philip Bertrand."
Most of what came out of the smaller man's mouth was nothing but empty space. Filler, something to keep Bruce around if he had to guess. Bertrand had entered his space just as Bruce was about to call it a quit. After all, he had an unspoken meeting to attend to later that night. Relatively soon based on the color of the sky through the window.
After the fifth person to step in and talk to him, Bruce started to lose count. And patience. He'd already spent hours in this suit, laughing and chatting it up with plenty of people he didn't want to give his time of day to.
By the time the guests of the evening were bid a farewell, Bruce knew he was late. They didn't have a set schedule, after all every time Bruce found himself at the park, he expected it to be empty. Without fail, Dany would already be settled in grass, playing with Cujo in whichever way the dog had asked.
It felt like it took a lot longer to get his suit on, and make his way to their spot. The night seemed stiller than usually, but not in an off-putting way. It was surprisingly comforting after all the bustling he had to deal with.
"Cujo!" Bruce couldn't stop the laugh that left him the moment he was met with a face full of green fur. Cujo happily yapping at his arrival. "I'm sorry, I think the little guy missed you." Once the dark knight was able to shift the small dog to his arms, his gaze landed on a sheepish looking Danny.
By the time he settled next to the teen, Danny was on his topic for the night. It was an assignment Bruce had given his input on, and thankfully it seemed to go well for the teen. It stung ever-so-slightly every time the older man had to hear Danny talk down about his intelligence. The way he spoked about a lot of things reminded Bruce about his own kids.
All his kids were bright, but they were bright in their own ways. Just like Danny was.
"I have a question." Bruce spoke once the rambling hit a lull, eyes trailing over the glowing dog. "What is Cujo, exactly?" Bruce had tried researching about it, most of the published works he found didn't settle well with him. They seemed to hold a very strong bias towards ghostly beings.
"Oh, of course!" Danny nodded, rolling Cujo onto his back for belly rubs. "He's a ghost, which honestly could mean a lot of things, but if you really broke down the details, he's a relatively low-powered spirit."
Bruce watched carefully, taking in the way the kid's eyes light up as he spoke. A passion filled his voice that seemed stronger than when he spoke about the stars. In that moment, the vigilante realized if he wanted any decent input on the ghosts that haunt the town, Danny was his best bet for information.
"...A lot of people think ghosts are just shadows of beings, but I don't think people realized that not all ghosts were actually people that died." Danny explained, occasionally glancing at Bruce as he spoked. There were a few words that Danny used that Bruce didn't quite understand, but he was just going to save those for later research. "A ghost is formed when a strong emotional imprint is made on ectoplasm, often times when a soul is released into the world, other times is when someone feels so strongly about something the notion is imprinted."
It was complex, detailed. Even if it was completely out of Bruce's realm of knowledge, he never felt lost. Not completely. Not with the way Danny would pause in case the vigilante had any questions, or carefully watch his features for any hint of confusion.
"I'm rambling again, it's just..." Danny laughed, awkwardly rubbing the back of his neck. A habit he seemed to do a lot. "It's just, my parents study ghosts, so I learned a lot."
"Do you help them?" The shift was immediate, but very subtle.
"Not really, I mostly just read their works... or learn from experience." Danny tapped the end on after a moment, motioning towards the tiring puppy. "I think Cujo was the first ghost to ever be friendly to me."
"There are others?" Bruce wasn't sure if he should push, but he couldn't help worry about how this all affected the teen. In the few days he has been here, he's already running out of fingers to count how many times he's encountered something supernatural.
"Oh yea! Like I mentioned before, many of the ghosts aren't actually evil." Danny reminded. Bruce remembered it being mentioned, but Danny never name dropped any spirits that were good or neutral, just evil. "Most of them just get kind of bored, and miss being alive, so they take any chance they can to get out. Just most people are scared of them."
The rest of the night, Bruce learned more and more about the spirits that haunt the town. He learned about how they didn't actually stay in Amity Park, there was a pocket dimension called the Zone where they resided. The only way a ghost would leave the Zone was through portals. There were two in existence that were man-made, and the rest are natural portals that could appear anywhere there is ectoplasm.
Danny cut himself off at one point, deflecting by saying he was bound to be overwhelming Bruce with all the new information.
In truth? Bruce loved hearing Danny talk about it. The kid held a glow he never really saw before, not like when he talked about anything else he was into. It was different, in a great way. Watching Danny order Cujo in that language, Esperanto, to help showcase some of the basic abilities a ghost would have.
By the time that night met it's end, and Bruce was watching the teen walk off into the night, he wished he didn't have to. Wish he could talk more with the boy, learn more about him. Figure out more about his family, how he's so knowledge about ghosts, and why he seemed to always spend his nights in the park. How he could do it, wouldn't his parents be worried?
He had plenty of questions, plenty of things he wanted to point out. He wasn't going to. This relationship felt fragile, Bruce felt like if he pushed to hard, if the teen felt like he was trying to help him, he'd never see Danny again.
But Danny didn't need saving. Not like the way his other kids had. Not in the way it might seem. Danny seemed to just need someone in his corner. Someone who would listen to him, and spend time with him. Without the pressure of whatever else might be going on in his life. Someone away from it all.
Bruce can be that. He reminds himself every night when he's back in his hotel room, wondering if the young teen was safe in bed.
He reminds himself that when he finds himself randomly thinking about the teen through out his day.
He can be an uncomplicating factor in his life. Even if the concept of befriending an out-of-town vigilante was already complex enough. He can keep a distance. It wasn't impossible.
That didn't stop him from still worrying.
It was a refreshing type of worry. Bruce wasn't staying up worried if the kid was going to be alive in the morning. If a patrol went wrong. Worrying why someone wasn't answering the communicator, or where they've been for the past few days.
It's a nice break from his normally abnormal worrying. This was just worrying about a normal teenage boy. With normal problems. Even in a not-so-normal town. The thought pulled a smile on Bruce's face just as he settled for bed. Even with the looming reminder of spending another day with Masters.
He could sleep worry free.
Bruce Wayne should not have been surprised.
His past few nights in Amity Park had been oddly quite. Even if it wasn't Gotham, something was bound to happen. Except this time, it didn't require the vigilante to leave the quietness of his hotel room.
A simple call, an apology, followed by straight rambling about the situation.
Most of the time, Bruce would be met with one of the voices of his children. Sometimes frantic, sometimes calm and collected, but always one of them. They were in a situation and they needed help. Which normally would be fine, Bruce always was happy to get a call from them even if he feared what he would hear on the other side. It was nice to know they still needed him, even as the calls became less and less common.
He was their last resort, not the he can blame them with Barbra on their team.
This time, Bruce stayed up longer than intend, coaching one of his employees through a simple issue. A security alert. A security alert Bruce was able to easily trace back to his place, to the cave. He's guess would be one of his kids trying to pull something up, and had not realize that Bruce recently upgrade his security.
The employee seemed five seconds away from a panic attack, having frantically tried to remove the alert to no prevail. It appeared that not only did his kids not know how to navigate the knew system, but his staff didn't either. He'd have to look at getting his security team a full rundown of it all.
By the time the employee was calmed enough for him to hang up, the sun was high enough in the sky. Peeking through the curtains of his room. He had to meet Masters in just two hours. A powernap was out of the question, the likelihood of sleeping through too high of a risk.
Instead, he took a cold shower to help remove any remaining drowsiness. Brewed a pot of coffee in his room, and did a quick work-out routine. Followed by another shower.
Probably not the most effective way to handle it, but it was the way his brain decided to play it all out. By the time he left his room, he was already ten minutes late. By the time he arrived, he was almost hitting the thirty minute mark. Was he really Bruce Wayne if he wasn't fashionably late at least once a week?
"Interesting night, Bruce?"
Even with annoyance he felt the moment he was faced with an all too familiar face, he laughed it off. Making a half-assed comment that could only be taken one way, and launching into questioning what the plan for the day was. Afterall, Bruce wasn't here to focus on himself.
Not when Masters was offering a tour of his facilities.