Chapter Text
“Never allow the bell to ring more than three times. It annoys the Family and makes the House appear disordered.”
The doorbell rang a second time.
Alfred’s slumped shoulders jerked at the sound. He hadn’t truly registered the first ring. He had been staring at, but no longer seeing, the school photo permission slip.
Perhaps it was Alfred’s imagination, but the third ring carried a desperate air.
A reporter must have bypassed the gate. At least this one has the courtesy to ring the bell. In the weeks surrounding the funeral, Alfred had—literally—shaken paparazzi out of trees. Now, he shook himself and moved to view the security cameras, sliding the offending envelope into his pocket.
At first, Alfred had not been surprised when school materials kept ending up in the manor’s mail. Many of them were still addressed to the Waynes, who had been dead for less than four months.
But this one was addressed, in crisp, familiar penmanship, to “Bruce Wayne c/o Mr. Alfred Pennyworth.”
The problem was that Bruce Wayne was no longer “in care of” Alfred. And the school knew this. (There had been reams of paperwork to verify this fact.) Bruce was with his uncle. A plan which everyone (except Bruce and the Waynes’ will) had agreed was for the best.
No one in the small circle of adults around Bruce overtly blamed Alfred for the “incident.” But everyone had stopped suggesting that patience and the passage of time would heal this wound. “Some new scenery might do him good,” Dr. Thompkins had said. “I wonder. . . .” the school counselor had ventured, “if staying in that house, around his parents' things, is keeping him too focused on his loss.” And “Let me try,” Philip had begged. “For her. I hate seeing my sister’s kid acting like a little old man with half the life gone out of him.”
And what could Alfred say? Even Bruce's protest against his change in location had been muted and sullen, almost impossible to untangle from his constant protest against . . . everything. Give us more time, Alfred had wanted to plead. I know Bruce is still in there somewhere. But what claim could an actor-turned-bachelor-butler make on the health and happiness of Gotham’s richest heir?
There were others who should have stepped in from the beginning. He had watched Gabrielle and Jacob Kane at the funeral and thought, Help him, damn you! They already had two girls. Sweet, exuberant children. (Kate had slipped into Bruce’s pew and held his hand while he silently cried. And Alfred hadn’t had the heart to redirect her, despite Bruce’s previous insistence that he wanted to sit alone.) Obviously, the Kanes were doing something right. And they were family. They could offer what Alfred never could. They could teach Bruce how to navigate this strange world he’d been born into.
Thomas Wayne had never mentioned any friction with his brother-in-law. But once, Martha had explained the missing name from a guest list: “They got into a terrible argument over dinner, about Gotham and responsibility and I don’t even remember what else.” Her sigh said paragraphs. “They want the same things, you know. But they have very different ideas on how to bring them about.” Alfred supposed they would have to—the doctor who stuck with his city, no matter how grim it became, and the soldier who moved about constantly, eyes on the troubles of the world.
Jacob’s stormy expression at the funeral suggested this was a disagreement that even death had failed to soften. Perhaps the Kanes’ geographic instability, coupled with Jacob’s hostility toward Bruce’s father, was the opposite of what the boy needed. And who was Alfred to ignore the wishes of the dead Waynes?
Apparently, that was Philip Kane’s job. Martha’s other brother.
When Martha had talked about Philip, it had been with a different kind of sigh—the exasperation of an older sister for a scapegrace sibling. “He’s better with money than Dad was, at least. I trust the other things will come later.” She had not mentioned what these “other things” were. And Alfred had not asked.
The Waynes’ retainer had warned Alfred, privately, that if Philip Kane tried to contest the guardianship, his lawyers would have a heyday with Bruce’s current state. To Philip’s credit, he hadn’t said a word about revoking Alfred’s status—either as Bruce’s guardian or as trustee of the estate. He seemed content to take over Wayne Enterprises (as the will stipulated) and take in the Waynes’ boy.
So Alfred was left dusting rooms that would no longer be occupied, opening mail that was not meant for him. And occasionally, staving off the reporters who had made it past the gates.
How had his life turned to this? He hadn’t even intended to become a butler. After retiring from counterintelligence, Alfred had been reacquainting himself with his first love: the stage. (And healing from his second love: Joanna.) And then the call from America had come through.
***
As long as Alfred had possessed a number to ring, Jarvis Pennyworth had called his son every Sunday evening, like clockwork. This had not changed since Jarvis’s move to America, following Mary Pennyworth’s death.
No one else called Alfred (not since Joanna). So when the phone rang on a Thursday morning and a woman with an East Coast American accent was on the other end, Alfred knew it was the call he’d been dreading ever since they’d buried his mother.
“. . . I’m so sorry, Mr. Pennyworth.” Martha Wayne hesitated before offering, “My own father died of a heart attack a few years ago. . . .”
Alfred cleared his throat. He was not prepared for the intimate sympathies of a strange American woman, no matter how “fond” she had been of his father. Jarvis had worked for one of “the best families” in Britain when Alfred had been growing up—Alfred was familiar with how far these expressions of compassion would actually stretch. “Yes, well. His heart had been bothering him for quite some time. This was not unexpected. When do you need me to come and take care of the details?” At the last minute, he refrained from saying “the body.” His father would have appreciated that delicacy.
“It’s still always a shock, isn’t it?” she said quietly. “Jarvis was a very good man. I imagine he was a good father.”
“He was,” Alfred found himself saying, throat abruptly constricting, petty arguments and disappointments disappearing in the face of this simple truth.
“As for details . . . I think Thomas should explain.”
The long and short of it was that his father had wanted Alfred to take over for him if he passed. And the Waynes were more than willing to hold the position open for him.
Alfred didn’t know how to explain that this was impossible. But he still needed to bring the body home. And for his father’s sake he could politely pretend to consider the offer.
***
“When you answer the door, you are the embodiment of the House and its dignity. You are the first impression visitors—expected or otherwise—have of the Family.”
The CCTV footage of the front steps revealed nothing. Uneasy, Alfred checked the other exterior cameras.
A squirrel on the west lawn. Also, a painful reminder that Mrs. Wayne’s roses were being neglected. (No one else had been allowed to touch them while she lived. Would she forgive Alfred if he hired a gardener now?)
The bell buzzed a fourth time. A cut-off ring, as if it hadn’t been pressed fully.
A simple electrical problem? Is that too much to hope for?
Alfred trotted to the front hall and yanked open the door with significantly less decorum than he was accustomed to.
For a fraction of a second, Alfred made the same mistake as the adult-height security camera, missing the lower periphery of the wide front stoop.
“Alfred, I—”
“Master Bruce!” Alfred took in the boy’s paleness and the nervous way he stretched out the fingers of his right hand. He was long overdue for a haircut. Mr. Kane needed to see to that before school pictures were taken.
Alfred wondered if he should drop a hint about the barber Martha used to take Bruce to. He wondered how Mr. Kane would handle that. The last outing Alfred had taken with the boy had been a fiasco, to put it mildly.
***
“There is no household concern small enough to be beneath your attention. For want of a nail a kingdom was lost.”
The milk had spoiled. A heedless oversight on Alfred’s part. He had not appropriately prepared for the household’s dramatic decrease in food consumption. Instead of a full staff, now it was only Alfred. Instead of a small family, just a child who had always had milk with every dinner and breakfast. He’d also always had a mother to insist that he drain his glass to “build strong bones” and a doctor-father to patiently explain the role of calcium in bone density.
Bruce wasn’t complaining about the missing beverage, but he was eating even less dinner than usual.
There had been difficult assignments back during Alfred’s military days: Sleep deprivation. Playing field medic with what amounted to a bit of twine and a safety pin. Longs treks with little food or water. And he had shrugged off these hardships the way a duck shook off rainwater.
But now he felt older than his years. It was impossible to imagine facing tomorrow without the small comfort of milk in his morning tea. He almost called Dr. Thompkins, but she was working tonight, and Alfred knew that, even if she weren’t, once Leslie picked up the phone—voice sharp and efficient—he would be ashamed to ask for aid with such a basic thing.
“Grab a jumper, Master Bruce. We’re going to the shops.”
They had not gone anywhere together since the funeral. Bruce had looked horrified any time Alfred had tried to suggest an outing. But now he shot out of his chair, eager to leave behind the food he has been politely shuffling from one end of his plate to the other.
Alfred tried to dress down, a disguise of sorts, and then he left through a little-used gate that opened out of the woods toward the back of the property. He drove them to the outskirts of town.
***
Before their deaths, the Waynes had been known but not always recognized. They had founded charities and appeared in the society pages from time to time. But they had been quiet people, with an old money suspicion of showiness and celebrity. And they were, most of the time, wealthy enough to live under the public radar. (Privacy was a commodity just like anything else.)
But their deaths changed all that. Suddenly, Thomas and Martha Wayne were no longer people but symbols. They were a national—no, an international—tragedy.
And Bruce wasn’t a grieving little boy but a story everyone thought they deserved a piece of.
The first week, Bruce had done little but silently cry. He barely spoke. But then the tears had turned off like a faucet. Alfred had been almost relieved when the rage kicked in.
The plate of pancakes—Thomas’s favorite breakfast—flung across the room might mark a turning point. A move from silent sobbing to speech. (The “We don’t throw dishware, Master Bruce!” had been automatic. But then Alfred had crouched by the boy’s chair. “I'm sorry. It isn’t fair. They should be here.”) Although Bruce had buried his face in Alfred’s lapel, he didn’t cry and he didn’t talk.
The rage went on for over a week with no signs of slowing. No more articulate than his weeping had been. The few times Bruce spoke were to refuse to return to school, and Alfred was afraid to send him in this state.
“Don’t!”
At the beginning of week three, Alfred found the eight-year-old shrieking at Maria. The trembling housekeeper was crouched in Thomas’s study next to broken glass from the face of the grandfather clock. Alfred didn’t need to ask how it had broken.
“I . . . I have to clean it up. Before he hurts himself.” Maria looked up at Alfred, as though afraid he might contradict this. Her hand inched toward the dustpan.
“NO!”
“Master Bruce. Apologize to Ms. Bianchi.” If he had been Thomas, that tone would have quelled Bruce in his tracks.
Instead, the child picked up a paperweight from the desk and chucked it at the poor woman. A bad throw. One that was easily intercepted. But the paperweight was heavy, and Alfred was horrified to consider the damage it could have done.
“Enough!” He put his hands on the boy’s shoulders. “What would your parents think of this behavior?”
“Who knows? They’re gone!”
An obvious, terrible truth. But not the one needed right now.
Alfred’s shook the boy, lightly. “Yes, they are. But you know very well that they would be appalled by this behavior. What if you had hurt Ms. Bianchi? You know better.”
Bruce clenched his small fists. And then he slammed them into his forehead. Hard. And again.
Alfred grabbed his wrists. “Stop this.”
The curse was so shocking that Alfred involuntarily released the boy’s hands. He hadn’t even known Bruce knew those words.
He froze, staring at the spot where the child had been only seconds earlier, before he realized that Maria was still crouched on the carpet with the dustpan. “My apologies, Maria. He’s not. . . . Please. Allow me.” This, at least, was one mess Alfred was capable of taking care of.
He scheduled a therapist for the next afternoon.
Alfred would never know what had gone wrong with the therapist. Bruce wouldn’t talk about it. After the second session, he didn’t talk to anyone for a week. At all. Like talking was a trick. Any time Alfred asked him a question, Bruce just clamped his lips shut and eyed him suspiciously.
Instead, Bruce hid in the library. Alfred would find him curled up around books far beyond his age: chemistry, anatomy, history, Sherlock Holmes.
Meanwhile, someone was leaking the intimate details of Bruce’s troubles to the press. And the more the public learned, the more they wanted to know. Now Alfred was getting almost daily voicemails from Philip Kane's secretary. Polite and pointed voicemails. Had Alfred seen the Gotham Gossip column? Would Alfred like WE to release a statement? Would Alfred be interested a list of local grief counselors? Was Alfred certain he was up for this task?
At least the leak helped Alfred make difficult decisions. He had been uneasy about keeping on a full staff for one boy.
The Waynes had always been generous employers. So Alfred oversaw the signing of substantial termination bonuses. And some updated NDAs. Then it was just him and Bruce rattling around the giant manor: two tin soldiers abandoned in the bottom of a toybox.
Toward the end of the fourth week, as the butler scooped the sleeping child up from the floor of the library, Bruce stirred and croaked out, “Alfred?” The first words he’d spoken in over a week.
“Sir?”
“If . . . if I apologize to Ms. Bianchi and promise to go to school, will you stop bringing strange people into the house? I don’t want talk to anybody new.”
“The therapist is not a punishment, Master Bruce.”
“You brought him here because I was throwing things.”
“I brought him here because I was worried about you.”
“Don’t worry about me anymore,” Bruce said. As if that was the perfect, obvious solution.
And true to his word, Bruce wrote Maria an apology. (Alfred half feared it would end up reprinted in the morning paper, crooked letter Rs and all, but that seemed a poor excuse for discouraging basic etiquette.) And Bruce went back to school. Over the following weeks, the behavioral reports from the school were mixed, but Bruce's grades were good, and at home, he no longer raged or cried. Instead, he became quiet and inexpressive in a way that was jarring against Alfred’s memories of the open, bright, and curious child he had been.
Bruce was still curious. But about things that disturbed and bewildered Alfred.
“Did you know that a chicken can live without its head? One did for eighteen months.”
“I read that you can change your fingerprints, but you have to burn them off with chemicals and it hurts a lot.”
“There are sixteen major earthquakes every year, Alfred. Most of them occur in a place called ‘the Circum-Pacific Seismic Belt’—”
What a relief, Alfred thought, that at least some tragedies are localized elsewhere. And immediately, he winced. He was standing in the kitchen of a manor in one of the biggest cities in one of the most prosperous countries on earth. Sorrow was making their world insular and self-absorbed. A problem Alfred had no idea how to solve.
He wanted to redirect the boy’s interests. And Alfred suspected he should try another child psychologist. But he didn’t want Bruce to stop talking. With tentative hope, Alfred was considering this a step toward healing.
But then he made the mistake of running out of milk.