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Essex is known for a few things.
It’s contributions into the artistic progress, it’s brewing of creative minds and the way it can influence television shows around the globe, how it’s bad reputation tends to be proven by even the wealthiest (of the wealthiest) of people.
Something that people mention often is it’s private schools, filled to the brim with preppy girls, posh boy and corners of the schools where they bully one each other, kiss, or the little spots against the fence they’d meet. The atmosphere there, always strict and dull, made for angry demeanors of many young minds.
There’s always the group of boys who think they’re allowed to beat on everyone else, the group of girls who think being the teachers pet is the best thing ever, they pull hair, ruin homework and shove you into those polished private school lockers.
It always felt as though the adults did nothing, it was an unjust part of life. In the summer everyone would get a chance to breathe, to be themselves outside of the stuffy school regulated uniforms.
Of course, it’s also known for its beauty. For it’s perfectly mowed lawns, the great architecture outside of those same schools that made them look like museums, the statues at every corner, the perfect white fences, the shiny cars, the sunsets framed by blooming plants on windowsills and five-hundred dollar glasses.
Sometimes, what they don’t tell you about it, is the thing most worth mentioning.
They won’t tell you that the Pennyworth family had stayed there for enough generations that everyone knew them by name, and that one day randomly their house was left abandoned, the man of the house shot dead in the study and the family gone.
You won’t hear how that man’s grandson, named after him- - Alfred, such a strong name for such a small boy, means counsel and somehow even at a young age he was always the best listener, not always the biggest talker however- -wailed throughout the night.
Never will you hear how he cried, or begged his mother to go back, or crash around his new home in America. His parents were butlers now, for a rich family called the Wayne’s, all while acting like they weren’t worth something.
The summer before Alfred Pennyworth turned nine, the Wayne’s had a boy named Thomas Gabriel and not but forty years later, a petty man mugged Thomas and his wife, Martha and killed them in cold blood in front of their eight year old son, Bruce.
For that entire year, Alfred would hear whispers cut off in public as he walked the boy around. People would tell him, reassuringly, like it made it better, that they just knew he was doing the right thing.
They knew. Alfred knew. Alfred knew that the Wayne boy needed someone and that Thomas would put up one hell of a fight if he ever thought someone did his son wrong. He knew that Thomas didn’t die easy, and he knew that the trait was passed down. Alfred woke, clenching his bed sheets and heart jumping in his chests as he felt something tug at the foot of his bed.
He resisted the urge to kick and instead turned one the light, a small wince and ultramarine blue met his vision- -his young master there, at the foot of his bed, eyes rimed red, pajamas askew, mouth pouted- -and Alfred has to refrain from flinching.
Thomas was once a eight year old boy too, who worshiped the quiet and interesting, seventeen year old British butler his parents often had watch him. The Wayne boy wrapped himself in blankets, tighter, and tighter, until he lost the fight with darkness and shuffled past his parents’ room to get to Alfred’s.
Thomas had not died peaceful, and Martha had built her life around the foundations of using her husband’s wealth for peace. Bruce wrapped himself in blankets, tighter, and tighter, until he lost the fight with the darkness and had to remember to go to Alfred’s room instead of his parents’.
This sight was a familiar one.
The Wayne’s bed was empty, on the other side of the manor’s main hall. Alfred had pulled him out of school when his parents were killed for the rest of the year, understanding from his own mother’s death that grieve is best learned-through when the teaching comes from someone you trust.
Alfred went through all of the Wayne mail even when Bruce turned twelve and stopped climbing into bed with him, because other students and the Gotham Elite only wanted to hide their excitement about knowing a dead famous person under flimsy condolences.
None of it was real.
Alfred, for the first time in his life, related to Bruce Wayne. He skipped school for a year and lived through the next one. He managed to smile charmingly at all well-wishers from twelve to fourteen, and bowed at galas and let the older ladies pinch his cheeks.
Bruce’s first night at a private school, age fifteen, Alfred Pennyworth had laid on his back, fully-clothed on top of his bed sheets, blankets pooled at his feet, and tried not to think about the sight of a teary-eyed eight year old boy needing him during this time of night, trying to find a place of comfort without his parents.
When he was small, Alfred’s grandfather had walked him to school every single day (until his parents made him walked alone at six, to build character). They stopped for hot chocolate at a bakery every Wednesday.
When Alfred was seven, only months before his grandfather would die, one day he insisted on walking his grandson to school ‘for old times sake’ and instead of actually doing so, took him to the nearest park and made a day out of their rebelliousness.
There was a tradition there, Alfred had decided, and so he leaned into them, found comfort in getting behind the wheel of the shiniest vehicle the Wayne’s owned at five in the morning on a Wednesday to drive down to the private school Bruce was at.
Found strength in the way when he walked through the gates, Bruce immediately ran over to him and asked why he was here, smiled charmingly, and let Alfred lead him back to the car. Over the years, he saw how it became habit for Bruce to wait at the gates of Gotham Prep, and Alfred refused to let this particular tradition be corrupted.
His father used things like this like a blunt weapon, had snuck it into his mindset like a termite burrowing into wood, undermining the foundations until Alfred could stand over his grave, passive and watching his mother cry, thinking how could she love someone so unloving.
When Alfred Pennyworth was sixty-five, he would look across his steaming mug of coffee at a bakery across the street from his boy’s school, and sees Bruce downing his third cup of hot chocolate in seconds. He was an adult now, freshly eighteen, and he talks more about justice and doing what’s right for a corrupt place like this more than anyone Alfred has ever met -more than his mother.
It’s like watching an old building be torn down to the base, replaced with tar and concrete, and then rebuilt with the same floor plan. Only this house could not be torn down; it’s walls were thicker, foundation stronger.
“Your parents died for you,” Alfred once told Bruce, but would not tell him how his grandfather did the same when Alfred was just a few months younger than he had been. “And putting it to use is something I could not help put implore you to do, Master Bruce.”
But using his pain for good was years away.
Now they were both just relishing in his childhood, torn apart by bullets. It is no secret why Alfred still calls Bruce his Master instead of Mister Wayne -even if he is an adult, it is too painful a reminder for them both that he was now filling his father’s steps.
Alfred grew up with Benjamin Wayne, he helped raise Thomas, now he has raised Bruce and all the previous Wayne men are the same through heartache; headstrong, tolerant, self-destructive, driven.
Bruce Wayne was the same.
But sometimes he still reminded Alfred of the scared eight year old boy who climbed into his bed after a nightmare, who held his hand when crossing the road, who broke down crying tears ever after days of doing good.
Alfred was dreaming of driving the the police station late at night, the ending different this time. Thomas and Martha were alive, their son dead. It was a terrifying thing, he realized, to lose a child before the parents.
He preferred it the way it happened, as vial as it might be.
They- -Alfred and Bruce, alone as always- -had passed another seven years, Bruce was twenty-five now, and still stubborn as ever.
Thomas was once a twenty-five year old man too, who respected the quiet and formal, old British butler his parents left to watch him. The Wayne man woke him in the middle of the night, grinning, and grinning, until he finally confessed that he came to Alfred’s room to announce that he was marrying Martha.
Thomas had not died peaceful, and Martha had always told her son that Gotham could be a place of peace one day. Bruce woke him up in the middle of the night, grinning and grinning, until he finally confessed that he came to Alfred’s room for help on something he was doing to avenge his parents, to prove Martha right.
Thomas had not died peaceful, and Martha had built her life around the foundations of using her husband’s wealth for peace. Bruce wrapped himself in blankets, tighter, and tighter, until he lost the fight with the darkness and had to remember to go to Alfred’s room instead of his parents’.
He was bleeding and had bruises just about everywhere, but he was smiling charmingly, grinning, letting Alfred pull at his cheeks to inspect the damage. Bruce was a Gotham Elite, but he was also a Wayne. There was someone terrorizing his city that his parents had lived and died in.
His parents had died for him, and now, he was ready to die for this city.
“This is ignorant speech now, Master Bruce,” Alfred had said. “It’s time to stop.”
“And cower away?” He replies, voice tight.
He is not the same boy that was scared of the dark anymore, Alfred knew. “You are an important figure, and a Wayne, you shouldn’t risk your life life this.”
“Like you said,” Bruce shrugs, grinning sharply. “I’m a Wayne.”
They spent three weeks debating this attempt at justice before Bruce made the final decision for them, he was going to be a hero. Bruce had figured it all out apparently, he had a suit, he had the glare, and he had Alfred’s help back at the manor -to drive a specially built car to pick him up, and run the technology that he hated just to help the Wayne man.
This was a bit much for the butler.
And definitely not part of his yearly contract.
One night as he is stitching up the so-called hero’s back after quite a nasty fight with the Joker, a recent villain that he- -Batman, he’s calling himself- -has had the most problems with, Alfred can’t help but to keep his mind off of the blood on his hands even as they stay steady, eyes never moving from the deep cuts.
“Why, Master Bruce,” He begins. “Did I ever tell you about the first time I had gotten into a fight of my own? It was with one of those silly Kane boys, one of them is your mother’s uncle. Unfortunately really, didn’t quite inherently the peacemaker gene, that one.”
Bruce, ever so curious about his ancestors, especially ones he doesn’t know about, instantly asked him about this uncle and so Alfred told him what he knew -the Kane’s bold and brutal truths, his mocking of the Pennyworth accent, weakness for gossip but strong willed nature, tenacity and boldness.
Back then, Kane’s were a strong group, he told him. Of course now, they were more trouble than they were good and Bruce could see that for himself.
Alfred learned what it meant to be selfish, something that he previously thought it already meant; raising a kid that wasn’t his own, exasperatingly holding hands as he walks across a street, getting ready for school every day, smiling as tells Bruce he won’t retire until he wants him to.
Alfred learned what it was like to want justice- -an itch in the back of his mind- -and not know when it could be given.
That feeling stopped being a problem after the first few months that Bruce was Batman and became something to reply on, that itch, that edge to his thoughts. For the rest of his life, he assumed, that feeling would always make him rise to his feet.
Another few months later, Bruce was gone for three days and Alfred assumed the worst, he carried on as per usual and that feeling grew into a headache. He left all the doors at the Wayne manor unlocked, and went to bed with his door open; because being alone right now feels like the same kind of heartbreak as watching an eight year old teary eyed boy cry out for his parents in the middle of the night.
He was torn between slapping some sense into him and hugging him when Bruce first walked back through the front door looking completely unscathed. Honestly, he was leaning towards the slapping when a small boy, looking about eight, came bounding out behind him.
“Hello!” He chirped, hand outstretched in a civil greeting as he bowed deeply. It was almost comical. “I’m Richard Grayson but you can call me Dick. Are you my new grandfather as well then?”
Apparently Bruce had adopted the boy after an unfortunate accident that made him an orphan.
Dick was flexible, intelligence, peppy and always ready for anything. The moment that Alfred let the term “Boy Wonder.” slip from his mouth there was no going back. The only thing that he wished he did better was stop Bruce then, stop him from letting the boy become Robin, his side-kick, stop him from putting that small, nine year old boy in danger.
They ate at a nearby diner in the morning some days for eggs, bacon and waffles when Dick discovered how much he despised the way Alfred made waffles. They went out for hot chocolate on Wednesdays between work, school and patrol. They took to the streets at night- -Robin brightly colored, Batman not- -until the city was buzzing with the news of a new hero.
When Alfred first realized the consequences of harboring the equivalent of a human storm in his house, it was far too late.
Dick had a habit of breaking everything. The chandelier he tried to flip off of. The stair guard rail he did flip off of. Vases he crashes into while racing around the halls. Somehow his bed frame, after one too many of his so-called tricks.
It was no wonder Bruce got him from the circus, acting the way he did.
Thomas was once a eight year old boy too, who worshiped the quiet and interesting, seventeen year old British butler his parents often had watch him. Once the Wayne boy wrapped himself in blankets, tighter, and tighter, until he lost the fight with darkness and shuffled past his parents’ room to get to Alfred’s.
Thomas had not died peaceful, and Martha had built her life around the foundations of using her husband’s wealth for peace. Once when he was eight, Bruce wrapped himself in blankets, tighter, and tighter, until he lost the fight with the darkness and had to remember to go to Alfred’s room instead of his parents’.
Bruce had not lived peacefully, and Alfred had tried to build him a safety net around the foundations of justice he had in mind. Now his son was nine, and Dick wrapped himself in his blankets, tighter, and tighter, until his lost his footing in the hallway and tripped inside Alfred's room door -grinning when he explained why he was there.
This sight was a familiar one.
When Bruce brought home the next kid, there were no tight hugs. There was no acceptance of leaving the manor to go get a proper breakfast somewhere else, there was quietness, and flinches and acceptance of terrible waffles. This boy was not a crying eight year old or an overzealous nine year old, he was twelve years old and knew too much about survival.
He would wake up at dawn before Alfred and as long as he got permission the night before- -that was something about Jason, Alfred doesn’t think he’ll ever forget; that he always asked for permission to do anything - -he was in there, making himself food in the morning.
Jason Todd avoided close corners where he’d be force to brush against someone, he avoided places in the house he’d be easily cornered. He shut doors gently instead of slamming them like Dick did at his age (he was just about eighteen now, almost an adult), he helped Alfred tend to the gardens without questioned, he asked to bake at night and strangely, he knew his way around a tire iron.
Once Dick followed through in his ridiculous tendency to try and prove to people who don’t doubt him that he could do a flip and land right on the side of a building. And well, he couldn’t, as so Alfred stayed up all night tending to him.
Just as he was leaving the medical wing, he found Jason on the manor floor. It was the hallway right outside of his room, on cold hardwood floors. And this sight -this sight… it was unfamiliar, strange even.
The boy did not trip, he was not wrapped in his blankets and at first, Alfred wasn’t even sure if he was alive. There was panic in his system, Jason was pale and unflinching as the butler crouched in front of him. Then his blue eyes slid up to him and he said, “Couldn’t sleep.”
Alfred pauses, caught between asking if he had a nightmare and just accepting the truth. “And so you are here, Master Todd?”
“Yeah, didn’t wanna bother Bruce y’know?” The boy climbs to his feet, rasping on the wall with his knuckles. “Wanted ta’ ask if I could go for a run.”
“A run?” The butler sputters. “It is past midnight, young Master. I would well advise that you head off to bed instead. Attempt to sleep again. Or perhaps, I could make a cup of tea-”
Jason shrugs, turning back with his hands deep into his sweatshirt pockets. “M’good, thanks though. See ya’ tomorrow, Alfred.”
“Yes, see you tomorrow, Master Todd.” Alfred watches him walk away, and wonders if the boy will ever get good sleep. It’s no wonder Jason never went inside of his room, sometimes knowing you need help and asking for it are two separate problems.
Alfred is kind, but good things can hurt.
The first time that Jason went missing, he got ‘safely’ back at home with his abusive father for a week in a broken down part of Gotham. He kept the phone Bruce gave him hidden in an empty shoe box, and Alfred found him chewing on a granola bar on the steps of the Wayne manor alone.
Beaten and bruised, blood smudged from a cut on his cheek.
He didn’t let Alfred check his injuries, didn’t explain and only stopped his snarky protests when Alfred insisted he come inside.
All the warming up and adjustment that the boy went through when it came to Alfred, Bruce and Dick were long gone. He was all but fourteen, he had time to learn, to grow, to heal. Alfred had hoped that he wouldn’t let Bruce change him, but he was already the new Robin.
Already a bigger part of it all.
War was what came to Alfred’s mind when the major fights with Joker broke out. War had already lived in the halls of Gothamite homes, in the fists of angry fathers, the tears of manipulative mothers, in the broken equipment in entertainment centers, in the hands of petty men.
It liked in the ways the citizens learned to dodge around the corners, the way half of them ran, stammered and screamed at loud noises; expecting it to come from the end of a barrel instead of a workman dropping something heavy, in the way that the other half didn’t even flinch.
When Batman, Nightwing and Robin took to the streets, the citizens- -and begrudgingly, the police department- -waved them through and pointed them to the danger, and they ran headfirst unblinking.
Alfred was always a quiet man. He always kept his opinions to himself until he saw fit, and when that time came he didn’t hold much back. He wasn’t afraid to speak his mind, even if he preferred not to. And unlike Bruce Wayne, he understood that for some criminals, you need to kill them like how they kill others.
The Joker would not stop until he was truly stopped.
An empty corner of Wayne manor where Alfred had once played tag with a young Thomas Wayne was now the medical wing. The quietest corner of the basement he learned how to sew in from his mother, illuminated by iridescent bulbs, was now a workshop for the technology that Batman needed to thrive. The outdoor field was now measured in how accurate they could aim their weapons, instead of how far they could kick a ball.
All the walls were the same, but the people inside had changed.
They had spent two years living in the same brightly lit house, Alfred Pennyworth, Bruce Wayne, Dick Greyson and Jason Todd. Each year the two boys would ask Alfred to measure them against each other, and in the same spot he would mark Bruce’s height, the same place he’d mark Thomas’ he drew straight lines on top of both black mops of hair.
Jason was always stocky and tall for his age, Alfred was sure he’d catch up to both Dick and Bruce soon, no doubt.
Bruce and Dick still mindlessly did Alfred’s own tradition, even through the toughest of weeks, but while they were at the bakery right across the street from Gotham Academy. They slipped into the same worn seats that Alfred sat Bruce at, that Alfred sat across Bruce and Dick when he was still little, that Alfred drove them both to when Jason first came and wouldn’t leave home.
But Jason was not like them.
He was a genius, he loved to read, to cook. He had all A’s without trying but when Bruce or Alfred tried to congratulate them he brushed them off like he didn’t deserve it. Alfred didn’t know what to do with boys who claimed they didn’t like hot chocolate.
Especially not on Wednesday afternoons.
Alfred was on the comms when it happened. Fifteen minutes into the fighting, Nightwing went down, a gash in his thigh, shouting for backup. When Batman went to get him, he instructed that Robin stay put. That he does not move, that he doesn’t go anywhere that he’s not supposed to; Gotham was dangerous, and even more dangerous when you’re Joker’s number one problem. The butler was insisting over the comms that, when he saw the boy’s tracker start beeping, he follow Batman’s orders.
That’s when he stopped responding.
If there was one thing that he shared with Bruce, it was how headstrong he could be. He saw something, or someone was leading him, and he was refusing to share what was really happening. Alfred would have to insist on looking at the footage his mask took. All he could do for now was get a report from Batman and Nightwing, and worry.
Of course, all three of them would protest against any injuries that Robin got, but even limping he moved quickly.
Joker once asked them to give up. And Robin gave himself up. He died. The news came hours later after radio static and it torn him apart. Robin died. Jason Todd died. But he had died fighting, he had been ready. He had his weapons, he had his armored suit. He was Batman’s legacy, and he would not die easy.
Just as Thomas did not die easy.
But he died anyway.
Alfred took off screeching out of the garage to get to the scene before Bruce could even respond, he already lost one of his sons today; he could not lose another. Commissioner Gordon promised him that he didn’t want to see the body.
That night he looked as wide-eyed, as terrorized as he did when he passed eight year old Bruce into Alfred’s arms, saying he never heard a child recount something terrible so vividly.
But Jason’s father survived the night, so did his brother, and grandfather, if Alfred dared call himself one.
The war did not end that night.
They all went home with cold hands to an empty kitchen that once housed a lively boy that loved to bake.
But that’s the way it always ends in Gotham, isn’t it? In heartbreak.
Dick, who had been a vigilante hero since he was nine but had not earned the title from his local government, was offered a place in the Justice League, the same one Batman was in. He turned it down in favor of a team and took of to Blüdhaven.
The manor never felt so empty.
Once again, it was just Alfred Pennyworth and Bruce Wayne in the house. And once again, Alfred had to comfort the Wayne during the nights when it became too much, when he blamed himself too much, when all they could do was remember. They were afraid.
Their boy, their Jason, was killed by the Joker.
Isn’t that what they’re supposed to be fighting against? Isn’t that what they’re supposed to be preventing? It’s not supposed to be easier for him to find his next victim.
But it was.
And now they had to deal with that.
Bruce had protested against the next child for months on end, and even when he stopped arguing just at the sight of him he’d still come home muttering about Tim’s appearances at Wayne Enterprises and how he wanted to be the Wonder Boy without knowing what happened to the last.
Alfred tried to talk some sense into him, really, said if the kid was so desperate he could talk him in -just not let him fight with him. You don’t send children to win your wars for you; he thought they both knew that by now.
Though, Tim wasn’t having it.
He did not accept a single time that Bruce turned him down- -he wanted to be a hero, and apparently getting in touch with Batman was the easiest way to do that. So he simply figured out who Batman is, that’s all- -and the one reason why he kept pressing was because he was thirteen, only thirteen, and everyone knows that the first two Robins were younger than him when they started.
But Bruce’s eyes were exhausted as always, tired, sharp but clever, weighing out injustice and deciding it when appropriate to serve out the proper justice. He spent a lot of time weighing the pros and cons of his situation, and in order to decide he agreed to something with Tim.
A year of training.
Alfred didn’t approve.
He said that the boy needed a good home, a caring home, a home that took him out to eat in the morning for good waffles, and for hot chocolate on Wednesdays, and let him find comfort in the night even when the entirety of Gotham wasn’t comforting.
He didn’t say to train him, to test him, to turn him into a better version of what he wanted Jason to be, to turn him into the next high-tech hero, to turn him into a weapon to use against the Joker, to turn him into a weapon he can use for himself.
It wasn’t fair, how things happened to those in the Wayne manor.
The survivor of the family should never had been the butler or the eight year old son. And the dead ones should never have been young parents, and an even younger teenage boy.
Jason was only fifteen.
Dick moved back home for two months. During that time he beat the Joker to death much like how the Joker beat his little brother to death with a crow bar. The only difference was that Batman was able to save the Joker, and not his own boy.
“I thought when I did that, it would-” The emotion behind Dick’s words were thick in his tone, his tears were coming in hard. Alfred knew what his face looked like when he was trying not to show his emotions, but there was too much. This was that.
It rarely happened anymore; the Boy Wonder was far too well trained.
Alfred knew what it was like to have your world turned upside down. To lose someone in a vicious way, to have them torn apart from you, to not recognize your own home, your own space after. To want to move, to need to move. To get away.
The cookies sheets placed under the kitchen island was mocking and Alfred refused to make even the simplest kind of sweets now, even when Tim was over. He instead brought out the waffle iron and ignored when there was an itch in the back of his mind telling him there’s something you need to do.
His favorite place to sit and drink tea was now tainted by the memory of Jason sitting across from him, mocking his movement right up to every sit though Alfred was sometimes sure he did it even subconsciously, as the boy loved reading far too much just to sit there and ignore the perfectly good book in front of him.
Alfred wondered when it was okay to let himself stop crying.
So when he woke in the middle of the night, phantom memory of someone tugging at his feet, of a small boy rasping on his bedroom door, at one tripping through the frame and finally one sitting outside in the hall, Alfred put on his slippers and walked down to Bruce’s room.
He rasped on the door, and swings it open seconds later when there’s a grunt instead of a reply.
“Come on, Master Bruce,” Alfred instructs, flicking on the light. “We are going to young Master Grayson’s, I want to do something for the night.”
“What-” He threw the blankets off of him haphazardly, and the butler had half a mind to scold him. “Alfred, you can’t be serious.”
Alfred holds his ground. “I am.”
Alfred Pennyworth, Bruce Wayne and Dick Grayson sat on the floor outside of his room and stared at each other for a few minutes until Dick sighed, looked at his father hard and asked, “How could you save him?”
Bruce replied in the same hard tone, that it wasn’t their place to decide who lives or dies. To take a life. That if he let Dick kill the Joker, he’d regret it. That he’d never be the same. There’s few fates Bruce finds intolerable for his boys; that was one of them.
And then Dick was looking to Alfred, and asking how he stood it.
This wasn’t the first loss that Alfred has suffered. He has lost his grandfather, his father, his sister and mother, his two old masters, and the boy he helped raise along with a woman he’d call a great friend. There is nothing that he cannot withstand anymore.
It was not the first time that he came home with cold hands.
That was the end of that conversation, and for the rest of the night they talked about what they wanted to remember about Jason. About how goofy he was, how intelligent he was. How stubborn and headstrong he was.
Around five, Tim Drake walked into the hallway and nearly tripped over Dick’s outstretched legs and they were all lost for words as the fourteen year old asked who Jason really was. It was in the press of course, a car accident taking one of the Wayne’s adopted children far too young.
But knowing who Bruce was, that wasn’t exactly true, was it?
Alfred told him that Jason was a boy who had all A’s even if he acted like he didn’t deserve it, that he didn’t like hot chocolate even on Wednesday afternoons, and he liked to read, and draw, and bake cookies even during the night, that he tended to camp outside of Alfred’s room until he noticed, that he was stubborn and never stopped putting up a fight.
Quietly, with a nod of understanding, Tim promised that one day- -next Wednesday, he said- -he’d bring Alfred a cup of hot chocolate from his favorite bakery -the little one right outside of Gotham Academy, he said.
Maybe another kid wasn’t so bad after all.
Alfred did not clean out Jason’s room, even after Tim moved in.
Hard work, tolerance, muscle memory, dedication, reaction time, flexibility, justice -those were the things that Bruce tried to drill into this boy. Tim Drake never went down easy.
But he had always been small -worryingly so.
He was smaller than Thomas had been, smaller than Bruce, smaller than Dick who was muscled piled on lean tones and much smaller than Jason, who was skinner than Alfred knew he should have been, even as large as he was.
Sometimes though, Tim proved himself as better than the others at their age, with his political understanding of Gotham, with his useful connections and understanding of technology, with the innocence people assigned to him at such a young age, but mostly Tim showed how he was able to use his weapons and mind to his advantage more than Dick even did.
There was more to this boy than meets the eye.
Still, Alfred didn’t want to spend any more nights meeting with the wide-eyed Commissioner, hiding away the cookie trays or staying up sitting on the floor outside of his room.
“Jason was braver than we are,” Tim told him, after asking again about the street rat who replaced the Boy Wonder. “I think, anyway. Living like how B does -it’s more luck than it is anything else. He knew that before he got the job. We didn’t.”
“Why are you still doing this, now that you’ve figured it out?” Alfred asks in reply. “Are you not scared of being hurt, Master Drake?”
“We all choose our fights.” He shrugs, taking a big drink of his coffee. “This one’s mine.”
He’s fifteen now, the same age that Jason died, and just as strong; just not nearly in the same ways. Now their biggest problem was a criminal named Red Hood, the Joker has been laying low more and more after Nightwing killed him.
This was not about death, about the fame that comes with the Wayne’s, about fifteen years worth of someone’s life, about Dick’s flexibility or Tim’s skills, or how many criminals they can put away in a year. That isn’t how Alfred likes to find the value of someone.
Going through this war, this life, with or without a mask, without grieving a death, dealing with a wound… there’s nothing that he could say that could make any of it worth Jason’s life.
Thomas Wayne was once a boy, who shared many nights with the British man tasked to care for him. Once the Wayne boy wrapped himself in blankets, tighter, and tighter, until he lost the fight with darkness and shuffled past his parents’ room to get to Alfred’s.
Thomas had not died peaceful, and Martha had built her life around the foundations of using her husband’s wealth for peace. Once when he was eight, Bruce wrapped himself in blankets, tighter, and tighter, until he lost the fight with the darkness and had to remember to go to Alfred’s room instead of his parents’.
Bruce had not lived peacefully, and Alfred had tried to build him a safety net around the foundations of justice he had in mind. Once when his son was nine, Dick wrapped himself in his blankets, tighter, and tighter, until his lost his footing in the hallway and tripped inside Alfred's room door -grinning when he explained why he was there.
That sight was familiar.
Dick tried to live peaceful, and Bruce had trained him to fight against the injustice happening all around him, fight for peace. Once when he was thirteen, his brother Jason held onto himself, tighter, and tighter, until he lost the fight with his mind and found himself on the floor outside of Alfred’s door.
Jason had not died peaceful, and Alfred had changed his life around the idea that within the edges of his kitchen counters there was peace. Once when his replacement was fifteen, Tim wrapped himself up in thick sweatshirts, tighter, and tighter, until he could not force himself awake any longer and collapsed outside of Alfred’s door.
“Couldn’t sleep.”
This was a sentence shared by two of the boys Bruce has brought home now. One said steadily, blue eyes locked onto his own, pale frame holding onto himself, the other muttered out briefly, barely conscious and eyes lidded.
The differences were stark, but it was easy to tell why Bruce chose them both.
They’re fighters.
You have to remake things, sometimes, in life, like laying out a new layer of earth over already growing plants or filling your now too-big kitchen with different pots. You have to live, it’s worth it. But sometimes, you have to change in order to do so.
It was unbearable when Jason first died but now that he’s back-
He’s back.
Jason Todd was brought back from the dead, given life by the Lazarus pit via Ra’s Al Ghul. Now they had two separate problems -trying to distinguish what is the pit’s effect on his growing, dead mind and what was general side effects from a hurt, damaged boy (now eighteen and acted like he didn’t know Alfred at all) who also happened to be a trained vigilante.
And second, understanding why the League of Villains wanted Jason alive. He clearly didn’t have a problem killing people, other criminals nonetheless, as Red Hood. Maybe Ra’s was just bloodthirsty, or wanted to stir up problems for Batman. Either way, he told Jason that he was the only one to survive the cleansing process from the pool
Jason Todd was Robin, now Red Hood.
And he still didn’t like hot chocolate, even on Wednesday afternoons (and Alfred still didn’t know what to do about that).
But he was still the boy he helped raised. He still baked cookies late in the night, offering Alfred a “Couldn’t sleep.” as an explanation even though Alfred didn’t ask anymore. He still would wait outside of the butler’s door until he noticed him.
Though he didn’t read much anymore, at least not in places Alfred could see, he still sat across from him in that little nook that Alfred sipped his tea, and mocked him. Things didn’t work out like they were supposed to nearly often enough, but they worked out this time.
Miracles weren’t something that Alfred ever liked to rely on; they never actually happened.
Sometimes he liked being proven wrong.
Alfred Pennyworth was still patient to Bruce’s insane ideas in order to serve justice, to the amount of flips Dick Grayson thought it was appropriate to do inside, to the caffeine-filled nights that Tim thought okay to go without sleep, to the guns that Jason keep firing around the house to get their attention when he was bored.
Because there’s always going to be something else -someone else.
Going to be the daughter of Commissioner Gordon on their doorstep, rolling through the entryway to flirt with Dick and then work on the computers with Tim until their eyes are bloodshot- -the abandoned child of two great assassins who still is learning how to use her voice, who freezes when you turn the corners, who reminds him too much of the way Jason was when he first arrived- -the eccentric girl off the streets that told all of them you can do this and still be happy and work every day to prove it to Bruce and even to Dick who sometimes only pretended.
He didn’t know the consequences of having the human equivalent of a hurricane in his home until this moment, but now understands why people say when you’re in the eye of it, for a single moment-
It’s peaceful.