Archive of Our Own ^beta

The rain had turned to sleet by the time Bruce returned to the Manor.

Alfred heard him before he saw him—quiet footfalls crunching through gravel, the rustle of a ruined cape dragging along wet stone, the brief stutter of the east gate’s lock before it opened. By the time Bruce pushed through the front door, Alfred was already waiting in the foyer, tea tray balanced effortlessly in one hand, the other holding out a dry towel.

Bruce grunted something that might’ve been a greeting. Blood smeared his gauntlets.

Alfred glanced down. "Sir, I believe you’re bleeding on the floor I just polished."

"Sorry," Bruce muttered, stepping in. He accepted the towel but ignored it in favor of pulling off the cowl. His face was pale, jaw clenched. There was a deep tear through the fabric of the suit along his side—Alfred caught a glimpse of skin beneath, bruised and red.

"Dining room or cave?" Alfred asked dryly.

Bruce gave him a look. "You know the answer."

"I was afraid of that."

The Batcave smelled faintly of ozone and scorched electronics, courtesy of whatever mess Bruce had gotten himself into tonight. One of the computer monitors flickered in the low light, running scans of an unfamiliar object sitting on a lead-lined table. Alfred noted it in passing—metallic, sleek, pulsing with soft golden light, etched in lines like circuitry that was far too advanced for this dimension.

He made a mental note to ask later. For now, he focused on the task at hand.

Bruce sat shirtless on the medical bench, scowling as Alfred cleaned the wound on his ribs with practiced ease. It wasn’t deep, just messy. Surface damage from a glancing strike. Judging by the bruises blooming across his back, the rest of the fight hadn’t gone much better.

"Didn’t time your landing, did you?" Alfred muttered, inspecting the damage.

"I was thrown through a wall."

"As one is."

Alfred didn’t ask what had thrown him. Bruce would tell him when he was ready—or never, which was just as likely.

The silence stretched between them, broken only by the sterile clink of instruments and the rhythmic beeping of vitals on the screen nearby.

Bruce shifted. "The device we found… it’s not from here. Not from this Earth."

Alfred’s hand stilled, just briefly, against the bandage.

Bruce didn’t notice—or chose not to. He gestured toward the table with his chin.

"The energy signature doesn’t match anything from Apokolips or Kryptonian tech. But it’s active. Like it’s waiting for something."

Alfred wrapped the bandage a little tighter than necessary.

Bruce winced. "You think it’s dangerous?"

"I think anything glowing with runes and humming ominously should be treated as such, yes." He stepped back. "You’ll live. Try not to be impaled again until next Tuesday."

Bruce snorted. Then, quieter: "Thanks, Alfred."

Alfred gave a slight nod. "Of course, Master Wayne."

He turned away—toward the tray he’d brought, the one with tea that was now slightly cold, but still steeped to perfection. He poured a cup with steady hands, even as his eyes drifted—just for a second—back to the device.

Still glowing.

Still waiting.

The sky had torn open above Manhattan.

It started with a shimmer—like heat haze on asphalt—but the air warped, bent inward, and cracked. People screamed. Streetlights exploded. Cars flipped from the shockwave.

Peter was already in the suit when it happened, web-slinging through the upper east side with a half-eaten shawarma tucked awkwardly under one arm. Then came the scream in the comm.

“Parker! You’re closest! That breach is destabilizing reality—get to Strange, now!”

“On it!” He threw the shawarma into a trash can mid-swing. “Man, I really wanted that.”

By the time he got to Bleeker Street, the Sanctum Sanctorum was glowing from the inside out. Strange stood at the heart of it, cloaked and grim, eyes locked on a floating core of magic that pulsed with golden threads—fraying at the edges, tearing into cracks that bled light.

“What did you do?” Peter yelped.

“It wasn’t me!” Strange shouted, sweat streaming down his temple. “Something from the other side is trying to breach—if it gets through, it won’t stop at just this world!”

“And you’re just telling me this now?!”

Strange snapped his fingers. The room shifted. Runes flared around them, forming containment circles. “I need time. You have to hold it. Anchor it.”

Peter blinked. “I’m a science nerd in spandex!”

“You’re Spider-Man,” Strange said sharply. “You’ve done more with less.”

The breach pulsed again—one of the tendrils lashed out. Peter caught it with a web line, planted his feet, and gritted his teeth as it pulled.

“Okay—okay—I hate magic—!”

The energy wrapped around him like cords of fire. Every cell in his body buzzed.

He heard Strange scream something—another spell, maybe a warning.

Then the light swallowed him whole.

He woke up in the rain.

Not a metaphor—actual cold English rain. Peter lay half-submerged in a ditch outside a foggy countryside lane, soaked to the bone, every nerve screaming from the trip.

He still had his web shooters. But no mask. It was shredded. So was his suit. He only had the tattered remains of a hoodie and his sneakers, in his old backpack, already caked in mud.

He stumbled into town three hours later. Tried to ask where he was. Got strange looks.

This wasn’t New York.

Wasn’t his world.

No Stark Tower. No Oscorp. No Avengers. No one recognized the name Peter Parker.

It took three months to stop waking up screaming. Six to stop trying to build a dimensional tracker from scrap tech in alleyways. Eventually, he stopped waiting for Strange to find him.

One night, on a walk, he passed a small cemetery outside a church.

There was a stone near the back. The name caught his eye.

Alfred Pennyworth. 1916–1945. Faithful in Service.

He stood there a long time.

When the local authorities finally asked for his name, he gave them a tight-lipped answer and a British accent that wasn’t quite right yet.

“Alfred. Alfred Pennyworth.”

The artifact hummed when no one touched it.

Bruce stared at it from across the cave, arms crossed, cape still damp with city mist. On the workbench, the multiversal device pulsed with a rhythm like breathing—soft, golden, patient. It didn’t fit anywhere in his database. Not Kryptonian, not Atlantean, not even Martian.

He’d tried every scan. It responded to none of them.

Except proximity.

Except, perhaps, someone in the house.

Peter’s new name fit like a coat that was too clean, too dry, and not quite his.

The accent came first. He mimicked it from news anchors, radio hosts, old men at the pub. A little stiff at first, too posh, but people didn’t question it. He slept in a shelter under an assumed name, worked odd jobs—kitchen porter, shop clerk, factory loader.

He didn’t use his powers. Not even when it would’ve helped.

Until the day he couldn’t look away.

It happened on a Tuesday. Dull sky. Burnt toast smell still in his clothes.

He was walking back from a late shift when he heard the scream—shrill, real. A woman shouting for help, and the crack of gunfire behind it. Peter didn’t think. He never did, not when it mattered.

He ran toward it.

Two men in masks. One with a knife. The other already holding a stolen purse. The woman was pinned between them and a brick wall, frozen in fear.

Peter didn't hesitate. He stepped into the alley.

“Alright,” he said, voice low. British, clipped. “Drop the purse. Or I drop you.”

They laughed.

He didn't.

Ten seconds later, one was unconscious and the other had his knife webbed to a drainpipe—courtesy of a very discreet web-blast from his concealed wristband. Peter vanished before the police arrived.

But not before someone else saw.

Three days later, men in black coats cornered him outside a laundromat.

They didn’t ask who he was. They already knew.

“We’ve reviewed the footage,” one said, stone-faced. “You’re not normal.”

Peter said nothing.

“You’re fast. Strong. Strategic. We need people like that.”

Peter met his eyes. “You need a freak.”

The man didn’t blink. “We need a weapon.”

Peter almost walked away.

Almost.

The training was brutal.

Peter passed every test too quickly. Ran faster, hit harder, memorized maps in seconds. When pressed about it, he shrugged. “Genetic condition. Born lucky.”

They didn’t press again. He knew they didn’t trust him. He didn’t trust them either.

But it gave him purpose. Missions kept his hands busy. Kept his mind from drifting back to red and blue suits, to voices long gone, to the ache behind his ribs where May’s hug used to land.

He learned to kill. Hated it. Learned to wound instead. Became disturbingly good at it.

They called him a ghost. Professional. Efficient. Disposable.

It suited him.

Until it didn’t.

They offered him a promotion—overseas post, covert ops. Peter said no.

He wanted out.

He didn’t say why. Didn’t say that every time he looked in the mirror, he saw a gravestone and a boy who died in another world. He didn’t say he woke up every night dreaming of web-slinging through buildings that didn’t exist here.

He just packed up, changed cities, and waited for something else.

Something better.

It started with champagne.

Peter—now going by Alfred full-time—was working security detail for a high-profile diplomatic gala. He hated suits. He hated politics. But the pay was clean and the job quiet.

He didn’t expect to run into Thomas and Martha Wayne.

Or rather—he didn’t expect to see them and feel something.

Thomas was tall, charming, direct. Sharp eyes, warmer smile. He asked Alfred for the time and ended up in a ten-minute conversation about British education systems and American investment regulations. Martha joined halfway through, all silk gloves and intelligent laughter.

They were kind.

The rare kind. The kind Peter hadn’t seen since before.

Thomas leaned closer as they left and said: “If you ever want something steadier than bouncing between jobs and scowling at diplomats, come to Gotham. I could use someone like you.”

Alfred smiled—his first real one in years. "I'll consider it, sir."

He meant to say no.

He didn't.

The job was listed as house manager, but it became so much more so quickly.

Alfred found himself drawn into the rhythm of the Wayne household—subtle, elegant, alive. Thomas left early most mornings, Martha read in sunlit corners, and Bruce was barely a toddler. A quiet child. Big eyes. Curious.

He reminded Peter of himself—before everything.

The first time Bruce cried after scraping his knee, Alfred reacted before either parent. Swift hands, calm voice. He cleaned the cut, gave the boy a quiet nod, and said, “Hurts now. Won’t always.”

Martha watched from the doorway, surprised.

“You have children?” she asked gently.

Alfred froze.

“No,” he said. “But I… knew someone. Once.”

He never meant to stay.

But he taught Bruce to tie his shoes. To aim a slingshot. To sharpen his mind like a blade. And when Thomas offered to make it official—to move from staff to family—he couldn’t say no.

Bruce tapped the edge of the console. His eyes hadn’t left the artifact in hours.

The readings were irregular. Sometimes strong, sometimes dormant. Always just a little warmer when Alfred was near.

And Bruce was starting to wonder if the man who raised him—who had guided him through grief, patched every wound, watched over Gotham’s darkest nights—was a stranger in his own skin.

He didn’t want to believe it.

But something was coming unspooled.

And the thread led straight back to Alfred Pennyworth.

Wayne Manor slept like it had for over a century—heavy with memory, too old for dreams.

But Alfred didn’t sleep.

He sat in the study, long after midnight, with a fire he hadn't meant to light flickering low in the hearth. His back was straight, his shoulders still. The only movement came from the slow rotation of the ice in his untouched glass. Somewhere above, the rain had resumed—drumming soft and steady against the windows like distant footsteps approaching.

The artifact in the Batcave had started humming again. He didn’t need to hear it to know. He could feel it. It was like a tug in the back of his ribs—old instincts stirring. A ripple in the thread he had tried so long to sever.

He had always known this would come.

He just hoped it wouldn’t happen on a Tuesday.

Bruce stood in the doorway like a shadow that had taken form.

No footsteps. No warning.

He didn’t knock.

Alfred didn’t turn. “Would you care for tea, sir?”

“No,” Bruce said. His voice was low. Strained.

The fire crackled between them.

“I ran a final scan,” Bruce continued. “On the device.”

“I imagined you would.”

“It reacted.”

Alfred’s fingers tightened slightly around the rim of the glass.

Bruce stepped forward, the movement stiff. Controlled. “It showed me a city. Tall buildings. Strange architecture. Some kind of… tower with a giant ‘A’ on it.”

There was a pause.

“And I saw you.”

That did it.

Alfred turned.

The two men stared at one another across the room, separated by more than distance—by decades of secrets, by lifetimes unspoken.

“You were him,” Bruce said.

Alfred nodded once. “Yes.”

Bruce’s brow furrowed, as if saying it out loud made it more absurd. “You were a hero. You were Spider-Man.”

A smile ghosted across Alfred’s face, faint and weary. “Once.”

The sky over Gotham was gunmetal grey, stained by sodium lights and dirty rain.

Alfred was returning from a late errand. He never learned why—perhaps Martha had wanted a particular tea, or Bruce had run through another stack of blank notebooks. The specifics never mattered.

What mattered was the scream.

A scream he knew. One that shot straight through his chest and into his bones.

He broke into a run.

He didn’t think about the cane he didn’t need. Didn’t think about age or decorum. Just rain and speed and please, not again.

By the time he turned into the alley, it was already over.

Thomas was on the ground. Blood pooling in the cracks of the cobblestones. Martha beside him, her pearls shattered across the street like broken promises.

Bruce was standing between them, small and shaking. His fists were balled. His mouth was open but no sound came out. The shooter—a man with a face Alfred would never forget—was already fleeing, swallowed by the city.

And Alfred… froze.

He was Spider-Man once.

He could have moved faster.

Could have webbed the alley from above.

Could have stopped it.

But he didn’t.

Not this time.

Not in this world.

And now he was just a man. Too late. Again.

He dropped to his knees in the filthy street and wrapped his arms around Bruce before the boy could fall forward.

“I’ve got you,” he whispered.

Bruce didn’t speak. Didn’t cry. Just leaned into him, shaking.

“I’ve got you,” Alfred repeated, over and over. A prayer. A curse.

Bruce’s eyes were distant, focused somewhere past the firelight.

“I remember that night,” he said. “But I didn’t know you blamed yourself.”

Alfred was quiet a moment. Then: “I always blame myself.”

Bruce looked at him, really looked.

“You were just a man.”

“Was I?”

Another pause.

“I thought you were just a man,” Bruce said quietly. “You said you were a soldier. A field agent. A teacher. But I didn’t know you were…” He trailed off.

“More?” Alfred offered.

“Different,” Bruce corrected. “You were a superhero.”

Alfred’s smile didn’t reach his eyes. “That was another life.”

“You still have the powers.”

Alfred nodded slowly. “I do.”

“Why hide them?”

Alfred looked at his hands. “Because the last time I used them to save someone… they still died. Because the world I came from didn’t need a Spider-Man anymore. And this one didn't either.”

Bruce flinched.

“Besides,” Alfred continued, his voice gentler now, “I was tired, Bruce. I had been Peter Parker for too long. Lost too many people. I needed to become someone else. Someone useful.”

“You’re more than useful,” Bruce said.

“Am I?”

Bruce stood, suddenly restless. He paced to the bookshelf, fingers trailing across spines of biographies, science journals, and military histories Alfred had always claimed were “for decoration.”

“You raised me,” Bruce said. “You trained me. Protected me. You taught me everything I know. But you never once let me see who you were.”

“I didn’t think it mattered.”

Bruce turned. “It mattered to me.”

Alfred watched him, face unreadable.

“You think I would’ve looked at you differently?” Bruce pressed. “That I’d have loved you less, respected you less, if I knew?”

“I thought you’d see a liar,” Alfred said. “Not a guardian.”

There was silence, broken only by the storm outside.

Bruce finally sat back down.

His voice was quieter now. “Did you love them? The ones you lost?”

Alfred’s gaze didn’t waver. “With everything I had.”

“Then you understand.”

Alfred said nothing. That was answer enough.

Later, Bruce wandered the manor alone.

The rooms felt unfamiliar now. Not in appearance—but in memory. Every corner had Alfred’s fingerprints on it. Every habit Bruce had learned—his posture, his calm, his relentless drive to protect—it had all been shaped by a man who once swung between buildings with a grin and a webline.

He passed the grandfather clock leading to the cave. Paused.

For a long time, he simply stood there.

Then he opened it, and descended.

Alfred remained in the study long after Bruce had gone.

He sat back down in the old armchair, pulled the blanket tighter around his shoulders, and stared into the dying fire.

His reflection danced in the glass of the window: not a butler, not a spy, not a boy with a backpack full of regrets.

Just a man. A thread from a web long since broken.

Wayne Manor was sleeping again.

The patrol was done. Gotham was quiet—for now. Even the cave had settled, the whir of scanners and tracking drones replaced by the slow, deliberate processing hum of the Batcomputer idling. The only light in the cave came from one display: a file window still open from earlier.

A name blinked softly in its tab: "Peter Benjamin Parker."

Bruce didn’t close it.

He just walked away.

He found Alfred in the upstairs study, as always.

The lights were low, but the fire was out. Alfred sat in the chair by the window, wrapped in one of the older shawls, more out of ritual than chill. A book rested in his lap, unread. The pages hadn’t turned in an hour.

He looked up as Bruce entered.

“You’re early,” he said.

Bruce shrugged, pulling off the glove of his right hand. “The city was unusually well-behaved tonight.”

“A minor miracle.”

Bruce didn’t smile. Not quite. But the edge of him softened.

He walked over and sat on the couch opposite. The cushion sank under his weight with a familiar creak.

They sat in companionable silence for a while.

Finally, Bruce said, “I used to think you were too prepared.”

Alfred raised an eyebrow. “Only used to?”

“I always wondered how you knew exactly what kind of injuries I’d come back with. How to predict when I’d push myself too far. How to stop me before I tore something permanent.”

Alfred’s gaze didn’t waver.

“I thought it was just because you were observant,” Bruce continued. “Or because you’d seen so many soldiers in the war.”

“But?”

“But now I know you saw it from the inside.”

There was no accusation in his tone. Just something tired. Something that had been settled inside him quietly, like dust after a storm.

“I understand now,” Bruce said. “What it cost you. To stay silent.”

Alfred exhaled slowly, his breath fogging faintly in the glass beside him.

“I was afraid,” he said.

Bruce frowned. “Of what?”

“Of becoming him again,” Alfred said. “Of being tempted. Of thinking I could still be the boy in the mask.”

He turned away from the window, back toward the room. Toward Bruce.

“Because if I ever put that mask back on,” he said softly, “I wouldn’t take it off again.”

The silence between them wasn’t cold.

It was filled with weight. Shared history. Trust not broken, but reshaped.

Bruce leaned back, resting his arm over the side of the couch.

“I thought I was alone in this,” he admitted.

“You never were.”

“I mean before. Before the cowl. I thought I was the only one carrying a graveyard on my back. But you… you’ve been carrying two.”

Alfred didn’t deny it.

“I didn’t want you to follow my path,” he said. “I wanted you to be smarter. Kinder. Better.”

“I’m not,” Bruce said flatly.

“You are,” Alfred replied, voice firm. “You’ve done more good than I ever did. And you never let yourself stop loving this city. Not really.”

Bruce looked down at his hands. “And you never let yourself stop loving me.”

Alfred blinked, caught off guard.

“I wasn’t easy to raise,” Bruce said. “I know that.”

“You were,” Alfred said gently, “the most important thing I’ve ever done.”

A long pause passed between them. Then Bruce cleared his throat.

“The web-shooters. Do you still have them?”

Alfred gave a small, almost amused exhale. “Of course I do. What kind of butler would I be if I misplaced something so precious?”

Bruce stood. “Show me.”

He followed Alfred down the hallway, past the grandfather clock, past the stairs that led to the Batcave, down a less-traveled corridor lined with paintings and old books. They stopped at a door Bruce had never thought twice about.

Alfred reached up and pressed a sequence into the wood panel beside it.

The door opened with a quiet click.

Inside was a small room—barely larger than a closet. No dust, no clutter. Just one wall-mounted drawer and a shelf with a single framed photograph.

Alfred stepped forward and opened the drawer.

Bruce leaned in.

Two web-shooters, silver and black, padded with red grips and faded notches from long use. They gleamed faintly under the light.

Beside them was a strip of red fabric, frayed at the edges—part of an old mask, carefully folded and preserved. And beneath it all, the photo: a young Peter Parker, wide-eyed and smiling, arms around a woman with warm eyes and a man with kind ones.

May and Ben.

Bruce didn’t speak for a long time.

“They were your family?” he asked at last.

“My first,” Alfred said. “Before I lost them. Before I lost… everything.”

Bruce glanced at the web-shooters again. “Do they still work?”

Alfred smiled faintly. “I imagine they do. But I have no plans to find out.”

He closed the drawer.

Later that night, Alfred stood alone on the terrace outside the east wing.

The city lights shimmered in the distance—orange and gold and unblinking. The breeze carried a chill, but it didn’t bother him.

He sipped his tea. Let the silence rest against his shoulders.

For the first time in years, he allowed himself to think of Peter Parker—not as a mask he buried, but as a younger version of himself. Someone foolish, and kind, and brave. Someone who tried to do too much and carried too little for himself.

He smiled, small and private.

Then he spoke aloud, not to the wind, not to the city, but to the ghosts in the night.

“It mattered, didn’t it? All of it?”

The wind didn’t answer.

But it didn’t have to.

Even later that night, Bruce passed by the study again. The lights were off now. The rain had returned. The house was still.

He paused. Just for a moment.

Then he whispered, “Goodnight, Peter.”

And moved on.

The artifact no longer glowed.

Bruce stored it in a secure containment vault beneath the manor—not out of fear, but respect. Whatever it had needed to do, it had done. Whatever message it carried, it had been received.

The portal was closed.

And no one needed to open it again.

Alfred kept the photo near his bed now.

Not on display. Just… nearby.

He didn’t dream often anymore, but when he did, sometimes he could still feel the wind against his face, the tension of a web-line between his fingers, the sensation of falling—and catching himself.

Once, he had been a boy who swung between skyscrapers and laughed in the face of danger.

Now, he was the man who raised the Bat.

And that, perhaps, was the greatest thing he’d ever done.