Chapter Text
Bruce Wayne was trained by the League of Assassins. He was trained by masters of their crafts, he was trained by the instructors he sought out, he was trained by himself.
But before all that, when he was nine years old and angry, wanting some way to protect himself from physical horrors when he couldn’t protect himself from the intangible ones that came in his sleep, he was trained by Alfred Pennyworth.
And so the basis of Batman, in so many ways, is Alfred. And so the basis of each and every bat that comes after has a little bit of Alfred in them — the way they stand, the way they hold their hands. How they shake out their left wrists when they’re at their very last reserves in a hard fight, each and every one of them, unconsciously taking on the motion.
They don’t have Alfred’s bad wrist, the one he’d shake out after teaching Bruce, the one Bruce subconsciously began to shake out after a bad confrontation, the one each Robin learned in turn. Their left wrists weren’t broken under a boot in Germany in 1942 and splinted amateurishly in a trench, but they shake them out anyway.
They all have incredible amounts of training, the Bats, so much so that the minuscule amount Alfred taught them is buried beneath a slough of other knowledge. But he’s there, in their bones, deeper than anything else.
And how he loves them, his family. Bruce, the child he wishes he hadn’t had to raise but is still so thankful to have; Dick, his first grandson, so sad but so bright; Jason, his second grandson, intelligent and fierce.
He loves his boys.
People know Alfred is the heart of the home, the warmth in Wayne Manor. They know that he presses their suits and school uniforms, that he cooks their meals and drives their cars and polishes their silver. He combs their hair back. He ties their ties.
But before Alfred was anything like a butler, he was a soldier. And the first way he ever learned to love the Waynes was violence. His first ever kind of love for Bruce, the first attempt to connect with that scared little boy, was teaching him those basic jabs. And that love lived on when Bruce had his own scared little boys to comfort, Alfred watching as his own moves were passed on to them amid all their other training.
Alfred’s love is pressed shirts and warm food. And his love is a gleaming knife, too.
He would bleed for his boys. He would make others bleed for them.
And so he does.
The day they lose Jason is the worst day in Alfred’s life.
When he was nineteen he watched a man get a field amputation. It was gruesome. The man screamed and screamed until he passed out, the paltry morphine not enough, the grime and the rot and the blood everywhere. The rats were sickening. The vomit was, too. The smell unbelievable.
Losing Jason was that lost arm. The awful sawing, the blood, the screaming.
The loss of something so great and close that it feels unbearable.
The grief of losing Martha and Thomas still weighs on Alfred’s heart, but they weren’t his responsibility. They weren’t children.
Every day Alfred wanders through a kitchen that feels too big for him, no teenage boy chopping vegetables for him or complaining about not being allowed to eat microwave burritos. There’s an apron that’ll never get stained red with paprika ever again, a new set of chef’s knives he’ll never give to a boy who absorbs recipes like a sponge.
A few days ago, Alfred broke an egg over his hand making bread, and just stood there, the bright yolk dripping down his palm, pierced like an eye, for half an hour. He couldn’t bring himself to move.
The grief makes him feel his age, makes his bones ache and his chest tight. He gets migraines he didn’t have before, has to lie down in his bedroom with the curtains drawn, skull throbbing as he tries to keep himself from crying. He knows the image he has in the boys’ eyes: unflappable, calm, assured. He doesn’t feel like any of those things, these days.
They’re all suffering. Bruce is devolving fast in the aftermath of everything, and Alfred fears losing another child so soon after the last one. They are all children to him. Bruce will always be both the man he is and the boy he was.
And Dick, Alfred’s first grandson, is always either off-planet or in Bludhaven. Even when he’s in Gotham, he’s still out of reach. Something in his eyes has gone distant and lost, and Alfred fears he may never find his way back.
So Alfred lives, and cares for his family, and keeps the dirt of his youngest’s grave clean and neat, white yarrow growing tall and strong in front of the stone.
And late at night, out of sight of his beloved boys, he presses his face to his pillow and shakes.
TWO YEARS LATER
Alfred’s at the grocery store when it happens.
His usual one was fear-bombed by Scarecrow last night (“Sorry, Agent A,” Bruce says over comms as he herds people through the destroyed produce aisle, “I know tomorrow’s Saturday.”), so it’s closed until next week. He has to get food to feed the ravenous vigilantes in the house somehow, though, so he heads to his second-favorite grocery store, the one farther downtown.
He’s just inspecting a squash, tutting at the state of the butternut ones, when he looks up and sees him.
There’s a hunched young man bent over the bell peppers. He’s broad-shouldered and tall, but holds himself like a much smaller person, even as he moves with a trained grace. His hair is a riot of dark curls.
Alfred can’t shake the feeling of— something. It fills him up, makes his hands shake a little. He doesn’t know if it’s the adrenaline before a rescue or an ambush.
He moves over to the zucchini, silent, and the new vantage point affords him two observations: the man, from the sliver of cheek Alfred can see, is tan-skinned with freckles, and he is—
He is very carefully picking out one perfect green pepper, one perfect yellow one, and one perfect red one.
Alfred watches as he places them in his cart on top of a bag of rice. Green first, then yellow, then red.
It’s the motion of someone who’s always done it like that. It’s the motion of Alfred’s youngest grandson, who used to eat slices of bell pepper while he studied. Green, yellow, red. He ate them in sequence.
(“It’s called ‘the traffic light,’ Alfie,” Jason had explained once, twelve years old and sort of embarrassed. “My mom used to make it for me.”)
It could almost be a coincidence, the world’s strangest coincidence, if it were not for the flash of nose and eye as the man turned to look at the eggplant. A face Alfred knew, a dear, dear face.
The acceptable butternut squash Alfred had unearthed from its more disappointing fellows rolls across the grocery store floor as Alfred drops his basket, goes striding across the aisle, seizes the man by his forearms, blocks the incoming automatic blow by the man, and wraps his arms around him.
The man goes still.
Alfred squeezes him a little tighter, this hulking man who is, somehow, his youngest grandson. It’s impossible, but the certainty of it is like lead in his bones, refusing to be denied.
“Alfred?” Jason says, his voice still small though his body is bigger. He sounds like the name is torn out of him, and Alfred felt the moment’s hesitation where Jason almost tried to deny being who he was. “Alfie?”
“My dear boy,” Alfred says, muffled by Jason’s sweatshirt. He thinks his voice is trembling.
“This wasn’t supposed to happen,” Jason mumbles, panicked. His body is shaking in the cage of Alfred’s arms. “This isn’t how it was supposed to go.”
For all of his protesting, he’s let go of his own basket too, the plastic landing with a thump, and is holding Alfred just as tight as Alfred is holding him.
It takes a long moment, but eventually Alfred finds the strength to draw back, processing what Jason’s said and finding distress in his grandson’s eyes.
“The tea shop on Murphy Avenue is open for a few more hours yet,” he says, very gently, reining in his grief and rushing gratitude, and Jason looks like a trapped animal.
“Just tea. Just me,” Alfred says, and he must have guessed the source of anxiety correctly – though why the thought of his family brings a hunted look to Jason’s eyes, Alfred doesn’t know – because Jason relaxes a little.
“Okay,” Jason says, and doesn’t comment on how Alfred hangs onto his arm the entire way out of the grocery store like the frail old man he isn’t.
The tea shop is a little place Alfred had taken Jason to when he was first adopted, still angry and suspicious of everyone.
It’s small and perpetually deserted, and for some reason, no technology works there. The lone waitress uses a little pad of paper to take down orders, and phones stop turning on when you walk through the door. Alfred has been coming here for thirty years, and not once has anything tech related ever worked inside. It’s not a mafia base, it has no ties to any Rogues, and he’s never had trouble with anything villainous or even suspicious there. Their financial records are immaculate, employees well-treated, and it doesn’t appear to be attached to any meta or alien.
It just is.
Two weeks after Jason came into the family, Alfred brought him here, sat him down with a cup of Earl Grey, and told him all of this. He showed Jason how his phone didn’t work, and said, “I am telling you this here so you know that it is between us, and no one else will hear it.”
He had looked at Jason’s face, anger and frustration and fear all mixed together into one nauseating miasma, and told him, “I have a shotgun in my quarters.”
Whatever Jason had been expecting, that clearly wasn’t it, based on how he’d reared back in surprise.
“It is the only gun on the entire grounds, and I alone know where it is and how to get to it. I know some of your fears, Jason—“
Why you barricade your door at night, why you flinch from touch, why you are afraid of everything but especially large men, he doesn’t say.
“— and I tell you this in return: if Bruce Wayne ever lays a hand upon you for any reason other than paternal reassurance, I will shoot him.”
Alfred had leveled a look with Jason, then, Jason who was scrutinizing Alfred for truth, looking for tells. He wouldn’t find any. Firstly because Alfred had long gotten rid of his, and secondly because it was the truth.
“You raised him,” Jason had said, almost accusatory.
“If he touches you, he isn’t the man I raised,” Alfred had answered.
And that was the moment Alfred gained his most ardent admirer.
Jason is fidgety and nervous looking in the seat in front of Alfred. His hands flutter around the teacup, and he won’t make eye contact.
Alfred looks at Jason, who doesn’t act like someone who just arrived in Gotham after a long absence. He looks at the exposed palms of Jason’s hands as they flutter, at the new callouses. He looks at the bulky frame, at the bruise on the meat of Jason’s bicep, almost hidden by his t-shirt sleeve. He runs through the newest players on the scene.
“You’re the Red Hood,” Alfred says, tone neutral.
Jason flinches like the words are a full body blow, then straightens almost defiantly.
“Yeah, I am,” he says, the harshest tone he’s taken with Alfred since he was twelve years old. Like always with Jason Todd, it is anger over fear. The core of him has always been afraid.
See, when Alfred first began as the Wayne butler, shortly before Bruce’s birth, Thomas Wayne brought home a feral cat.
It was a hissing, spitting thing, and Thomas had asked so pathetically if Alfred would care for it that he couldn’t say no. Martha had apologized for Thomas after, and offered to find somewhere for it, but Alfred had already agreed and would not renege. Besides, where could it go? Gotham’s humane society was chronically underfunded and overfull.
So the cat had stayed. It was named Reginald, after one of the more dour-faced Wayne portraits in the hall, the one it liked to nap under because the sun came in the window across the hall and made a little warm patch on the floor. It lived there for its remaining three years, until it passed quietly one night due to a heart defect.
During its residency, Reginald was happy to live solitarily, though Alfred had a hell of a time getting it litter trained. It would destroy furniture, so it was confined to one wing, and all the doors closed so it had only the stretching hallway and one mostly-emptied living room to roam through. In those spaces, the most it could do was knead the carpets too aggressively. Martha hated them anyway, so this was accepted as Reginald’s new home.
Thomas had not truly understood what ‘feral’ meant. He was empathetic to a fault, and would spend hours on his belly, feeding the cat bits of food. After a while it would take the food off the floor, but not out of Thomas’s hand.
He had tried to pet it exactly twice, and the animal had savaged his hand both times.
The thing was: the cat was not angry. It was not mean. It was just really and truly afraid, all the way down to its bones. The Gotham streets had been cruel to it, leaving it with patches of fur missing and half a left ear and spots that looked like burns along one leg. It was unable to accept kindness. The most it could do was live peacefully in the quietest wing, left alone to nap under its namesake and destroy the interactive kitty towers Alfred hauled in.
He had considered petting it exactly once, before Thomas’s second ill-fated attempt, but he’d seen the look on its face, the tense muscles in its lithe body, the way Alfred knew no matter how much food he fed it, no matter how unthreatening he was, no matter how much love he gave it, it would always be afraid. That was what life had taught it was necessary to survive. So Alfred had left it to its food and walked away.
If he had reached out, it would have bitten. It was so afraid that it could do nothing else.
Alfred sees Jason, leaning away from the table and snarling, and thinks, I am about to be bitten.
But here there is no option to pull back, leave Jason to himself. Alfred can only forge forward, and hope to survive the fallout. Knowing it is fear, fear in his dear grandson, enough to reawaken an old rabidity that had once been his only method of survival.
One can do terrible things in the grip of fear.
“Oh, my dear boy,” Alfred says, and reaches out.
Jason looks at his hand like it’s electrified, and Alfred feels a hard lump form in his throat, but he had put in the work to earn trust once and he’ll do it again. “I’m so sorry you have been alone.”
Jason blinks hard, eyes shiny, and twists his mouth into a snarl. “What, upset you couldn’t stop the murderer?”
The Red Hood has been slowly working through the Narrows and Park Row. He’s killed the worse pimps and the drug dealers targeting areas around schools. He’s killed a few of the recurrent domestic abusers that the police could never get enough of a case against. His body count is around a dozen, that they know of.
“There are positions that Batman cannot fill. It does not mean that those positions are not needed. And besides, it would be somewhat hypocritical of me to condemn you, wouldn’t it?” Alfred asks wryly. Jason rears back, genuine surprise painted across his face.
Alfred straightens his reaching arm. Upturned, old calluses and scars are visible. His palms are unmistakably those of a soldier. Guns and knives fit as easily as spatulas and dusters.
Jason always knew he was in the army, of course, and that he’d been part of the Commandos, but Alfred supposed that the boy had never really confronted exactly what that meant. Alfred is a killer, just as Jason is.
Jason still looks like someone’s just slapped him. Very slowly, he detaches his left hand from his teacup and inches it across the table. He stops when their fingertips are just touching.
They sit there in their odd little tableau for a moment, before Jason says, lowly, “It’s different.”
“I don’t believe it is, in the end. But this feels as though it will be a longer conversation, one we have in the future. For now, Batman is quite upset about it,” Alfred says, and Jason flinches, whole body rippling with the impact of the words. “But I’ve seen the files. The Red Hood isn’t trying to cause chaos, he’s trying to handle it. And I know you well enough to know that this is all in the name of a greater purpose, that these actions are steps in some grand design. My dear, you always did have a flair for the dramatic. I suppose you got it from me.”
Jason lets out a dry laugh, one that sounds scraping and painful. “Of course you see me and know all that immediately. Of course. If I’d known you weren’t going to your usual grocery store, everything would still be on track. But no, I had to go on the same day you always did, to your second favorite place. I had to.”
“There are many things I want to ask you right now, as you can imagine, but they can all be answered later, after you’ve come home. Now, I suspect your plan is connected to why you haven’t returned to us. Will you tell me how?” Alfred asks. He wants to bundle Jason up and bring him back to the Manor right now, but Jason has always had his reasons, and Alfred will accomplish nothing if he doesn’t know what they are.
He’s still in shock, to be honest. He knows tonight will be awful, as he finally allows himself to process it all.
But for now, he has a goal to focus on.
Jason is looking down at their hands, just barely touching on the counter. The shop is silent. Their tea is cooling.
“Him,” Jason says, finally, uncharacteristically quiet. “He’s still alive. I want— I wanted— B always said he’d protect me.”
Alfred processes this. The pieces come together slowly.
He knows Jason, and he wasn’t such an accomplished tactical mind in the war for nothing. The Joker, the name Jason can’t bring himself to say, is still alive. Bruce didn’t kill him. Jason wanted him to, still does. He feels alone. Afraid. He’s not safe in Gotham with his murderer still alive, and he can’t go home knowing his family didn’t protect him in the way he needs most.
Jason is going to try to force Bruce’s hand. All this planning is in the name of revenge, and a revenge that will destroy them both.
Alfred knows how this will end. “My dear boy,” he says, hating the words even as he says them, not for their content but for the circumstances that led them here, “is that what it will take? That man dead?”
“Yes,” Jason says, his voice scratchy and raw. He’s looking down at the fabric of his black pants. They’re darker in spots, visible only to someone like Alfred. Only someone like Alfred would also know they are bloodstains.
“Your family will take care of this. But you must know that it will not be Master Bruce.” Alfred holds up a hand as Jason leans forward to protest, his other hand still on the table, still connected to Jason’s. The boy’s hand is rough in his. There is a frisson of grief at the sensation – he had never imagined being able to hold this hand again. “Hear me out. Master Bruce wanted to kill that monster, and could not. Initially he was physically incapacitated. He could not get out of bed. After his night job resumed, he realized he was unable to begin, for he would never stop.”
Alfred stops to take a deep breath, and knows that it is a mark of the respect Jason has for him that the boy — young man, really, now — does not interrupt him, though he shakes with rage and fear and a wild look in his eyes at the thought of the Joker’s death.
Alfred looks at Jason, knowing his grief is bleeding through. “Batman is hope, my dear boy. He is hope, wielding fear. If he kills the Joker, he becomes fear. And that would be the end of it all, eventually.” He closes his eyes for a second and sighs. “For the record, for the… past few years, Batman and associates have doubled down on rooting out corruption in homeless shelters, addictions services, and the foster care system. It’s been a harsh purge, and a somewhat endless one, given the nature of this city, but by no means has there been nothing done in your name.
“You are with us every day. The Joker is still alive, but it’s not because your father doesn’t love you. It’s because he loves you too much to become a monster. He did not want to do horrible things in your name. He wanted your tributes to be ones of love.”
To protect the children in this city the way he could not protect you. The unspoken words are deafening, hanging in the air between them.
Jason looks like a little boy again, his rage bleeding out like a head wound. It’ll be back, Alfred knows, because it’s the only way Jason can protect himself.
“Nonetheless, I understand that what you have asked for is what you need, and only you know what you need. I will ensure it is taken care of. He will be gone by the end of the week,” Alfred promises. His conviction is steel. “Will you come home then?”
Jason looks torn, deflated. This isn’t what he thought would happen, Alfred knows. But Alfred has a lot of experience in cutting problems off at the root.
(He also knows that at least some of this rage has been sparked by an outside party, and there is someone who has been helping Jason. There has to have been. But that’s a problem for later. He already has several potential candidates in mind, and he’ll deal with them after. Anyone who assisted in keeping Alfred’s grandson away from him will learn very soon just how bad of an idea that is.)
“Yeah, Alfie,” Jason says finally. Alfred knows he’s seeing all his elaborate plans crumble like dust before him, and having very mixed feelings about it. The relief still shines out above all, though — the fact that someone is seeing what he needs, and promising to have it done. “I will. If he’s gone. Not locked up in that revolving door, but gone.”
“Of course, my dear boy. I give you my word.” Alfred stands, ruthlessly suppresses the voice screaming at him to stay, lays down enough cash to cover their teas along with a generous tip, and squeezes Jason’s shoulder tight. Then he walks out the front door, leaving his grandson behind.
If he didn’t get up first, he wasn’t leaving at all. And he has a job to do.